#thunderrodweek

Thunderclash stiffens in surprise. The smooth tenor is easily recognizable to anyone who pays attention in such things. How he managed to sneak up on him is another matter entirely. The convoy offers up a weak but welcoming smile to their former captain and shakes his helm.

“No, it’s all yours,” he admisses. Rodimus takes the invitation with his usual swagger, and perches on the bench beside him.

“I hadn’t expected you to be out here,” the speedster says after a tense moment of silence.

“Oh?” Thunderclash prompts before taking a sip of his drink. He hasn’t the commitment to question further.

“It’s just, you know…” Rodimus shrugs. As if to explain, he adds, “You’re so… you.” 

Thunderclash’s expression quirks and he can’t keep the tinge of amusement from his field. The former captain scrunches up his features in his struggle to explain.

“You’re just… You’re always in the thick of it, always talking to everyone. I would’ve thought you’d be the last person to brood alone over Ratchet’s…” Rodimus frowns, stopping himself. He glances down at his servos and starts picking the paint there, field suddenly heavy. After a moment of thought, he ponders aloud, “Then again, I guess you knew him longest out of any of us, didn’t you?”

“Certainly not the longest,” Thunderclash defers, “but a long time, yes.” His spark gives a weary tug at the mention of the mech they’re in mourning for.

“Are you sad?” Rodimus blurts before he can stop himself. His optics cycle wide and he grimaces. “I’m sorry, that was rude, you don’t have to answer that,” he rambles, moving to stand, “I should go, this was stupid-”

Thunderclash reaches out to grab his elbow, halting him before he can escape. “It’s fine,” he insists, “and to answer your question, yes. I am… sad.” To put it in simplest terms.

Rodimus sits back down and the convoy quickly lets him go. He nearly jolts in surprise when the former captain offers him a pat of consolation. “You… you wanna talk about it?”

“No,” he sighs, but noticing Rodimus’s deflation he quickly adds, “but thank you. I appreciate that.”

“Yeah, sure. No problem.” The speedster shrugs and the two settle into another uncomfortable silence.

To fill the gap, Rodimus pipes up, “You know, the first time I ever met Ratchet, it was shortly after I, uh… after I first joined the Autobots. I was… pretty torn up about my home, you know, getting destroyed and all. Everyone I had met up until that point either pitied me for what had happened, or they went on and on about how it was my duty to avenge my fallen city.’

“Not Ratchet, though. When we first met, he put me straight to work helping him haul medical supplies.” Rodimus chuckles softly at the memory. “It was the first -- dare I say, normal interaction I’d had since Nyon.”

“Ratchet certainly has his way with that sort of thing,” Thunderclash hums in thought. He sets his emptied cube down on the little stand beside the bench. “There were always jokes at the academy about how dreadful his bedside manner was, but… Well, I think he’s more real than any of us understood.”

“You two used to be real party kings, didn’t you? Back in your academy days?”

Thunderclash lets out a soft chuff in amusement. “Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

Rodimus grins. “It’s hard to picture either of you going hard on the dance floor.”

“We did more than just dance,” Thunderclash banters back playfully, “We flew.”

“Oh yeah? Then why don’t you show me?” the speedster challenges. He throws a teasing expression coyly over his shoulder plating. “Because I don’t believe you.”

Thunderclash hesitates, his spark clenching in trepidation. “I don’t know…” he mumbles.

“I mean… What would Ratchet want? For us to sit on our afts all day and mope about? If you two were really all that, then you gotta show all these other phonies how it’s done.” With that he stands up and offers a servo to help Thunderclash up. “Unless you’re scared~” Rodimus prods, a smirk flirting across his derma.

“Perhaps your right…” Thunderclash finally acquicises. The speedster’s smile more than his words prompts him to reach out and take his servo. Rodimus hoists him off the bench with his remarkable Primely strength and drives them forward, towards the party and glittering lights.

“Well, it’s true. I could be getting a lot more recharge,” said Rodimus, electing to ignore the skipping comment. Captains didn’t skip. He didn’t skip, at least. He had no idea what Megatron got up to in his free time, but—

Blaster stood up. “Well,” he said, yawning, “I dunno about you, but I’m ready to catch up on said recharge. See you around, Captain.”

Rodimus nodded and sat down in the newly vacated seat. Right. Communications watch. Why did he put himself on communications watch, again? It was dull, mind-numbing work. You sat there in front of the consoles waiting for any incoming signals from any nearby planets or ships, and you occasionally made announcements. That was the most exciting part of the job in Rodimus’ opinion, and therefore his favorite part. But he always got a note from Magnus reprimanding him for improper usage of the ship’s intercom. At least he wasn’t Siren. He swore he could still sometimes hear his audials ringing if it was quiet enough, and it’d been weeks since the last… schedule mixup.

But the Lost Light was thousands of miles from any immediate planetary body. Not a single ship blipped the radar. The consoles were utterly still now. The only signals they would be receiving were radio waves produced by nearby stars. That left Rodimus plenty of space leftover in his processor to be filled with thoughts of the note. He furtively glanced around the room; no one was looking at him. As quietly as he could, he opened his subspace and discretely brought the note out to stare at it. Last night, he’d been curious about the sender. An amount of curious any reasonable mech would have after receiving an unsigned love note on their door. Now, though, he was absolutely dying to know. The need itched along his plating, worming its way to nip at his very protoform. The long game had never been one he’d been any good at.

You put the brightest of stars to shame. That was—That was sweet. That was tender. That something someone infatuated with another would say. Rodimus had no idea what to do about it.

“You look mighty concentrated on that there, Captain.” Crossblades voice cut through the silence as easily as his namesake. “What is it?”

Rodimus shrugged, suddenly cagey. “Just a note,” he said offhandedly. “Someone left it on my door last night, and I’m trying to find who.”

“What’s it say?” Hound piped up.

All optics in the room were on him. Rodimus opened his subspace and put the note back. “Nothing big, just some… request for a private meeting.”

“What kind of meeting?” Crossblades asked with a particular twinkle to his visor that Rodimus did not like at all.

Hound frowned. “Is it not signed? Doesn’t that make it pretty redundant?”

“Yeah, and why would they need a paper note to do that? We all have your frequency.”

“Dunno. I just know they’re trying real hard to remain anonymous.” Rodimus shrugged again. “To each one’s own.”

“And that isn’t the least bit suspicious to you?” asked Sunstreak. Bob chirped in agreement.

“Nah, it’s nothing that serious. Unless there’s another mutiny underway”—more than one mech in the room flinched slightly—” and someone’s trying to trick me into getting killed—points for creativity—I don’t think it’s anything malicious. It’s just a little weird is all.”

The mechs in the room made noises of disengagement, and the air returned once again to a sleepy quiet. Huh. That’d been easy enough. Rodimus brought out the datapad he’d snagged from his desk before leaving for his shift this morning and crossed out a few more names. Surely, if someone here had been the sender, they’d have had more of a reaction.

The note floated away entirely from the forefront of his processor as the day went on. He finished his shift on the bridge, then went and got his morning engex. He poked Drift, who didn’t respond (meditating), and then after that… A usual blend of meeting, meeting, squabble with Megatron, squabble with Magnus, write up the next shift schedule, approve a few requests for materials and new viable experiments, squabble with Megatron again, renew Swerve’s bar license, another fragging meeting (how in the Pit was there so much stuff to meet about?), his evening engex. Then, just like that, the day was done.

Drained how only a day of talking could make one drained, Rodimus dragged himself back to his hab suite. He pressed his thumbs against his jaw joints to chase away the aches that had somehow managed to settle in there. He’s looking forward to merely collapsing into his berth and zonking out for the next twelve hours. But first…

He scanned the doorway for any sign of another note. Nothing. His spoilers sank in disappointment, far further down than he expected. That couldn’t be… it though, could it? No. They’d probably only been brave for that one day. Maybe tomorrow, they’d try again. He entered his hab suite, set the note on the nightstand, and fell into a deep recharge filled with dreams of sparks and smiles.

But the next few days came and went with no sign of the sender or of another note. He and Drift met up a couple of times, only to run into the same dead ends over and over again until Drift, brilliant Drift, suggested, “Maybe we need a change of scenery. Why don’t we go to Swerve’s for the night?”

“Please,” grumbled Rodimus. Sick of looking at the note, he left it behind on his desk as he and Drift meandered towards Swerve’s.

“We can ask around while we’re there,” Drift said. “Perhaps more than one mech is involved.”

“Ooh, maybe. Do you remember how many of us it took to get Toxin and Aquastar to just talk to each other?”

“Not our finest plan ever.”

“Hey, it worked, so it’s a win in my book.”

The sound of chatter and laughter grew louder and louder as they drew closer to Swerve’s. Ten spotted them from his usual spot at the doorway and waved at them.

“Hey, buddy,” Rodimus called as they approached. “Been holding up alright?”

The dents that were Ten’s ‘eyes’ curved into a smile. As Drift handed off his swords to him, he idly said, “Perhaps they’re shy.”

Rodimus snorted. “They’re shy, so they decided to take a shine to me?” he asked incredulously.

“Hm. Fair point. But we can’t always control our feelings.”

“Tell me about it,” Rodimus muttered against his better judgment. Drift’s optics lit up with a dozen questions. But before he could start drilling Rodimus with any of them, an enormous weight shifted the floor just in front of them.

“Captain Rodimus! Drift,” Thunderclash exclaimed with a polite nod in Drift’s direction. “Good evening. I wasn’t expecting to see you—either of you—tonight.”

Rodimus flashed a grin up at him. “When did you ever think you could predict me?” he said, placing one curled servo on his hip.

Thunderclash chuckled, biolights turning from a sparkling red to a pink shade that could have almost been red if one didn’t have an optic for color. “Fair enough,” he said. “Oh, but I really did have a question for you, Captain.”

“Shoot.”

Thunderclash’s chest swelled in a motion that could have been mistaken as him steeling himself if Rodimus didn’t know better. “Could I get you a drink?”

“Uh.” He glanced at Drift, who nodded encouragingly with a mischievously sharp grin. “Yeah, sure.”

Thunderclash beamed. “Wonderful!” he said, clasping his servos together. “It’s my treat, of course.” Drift waved his digits teasingly (what was up with that?) at Rodimus as Thunderclash led them to a table where a half-finished drink had been clearly abandoned. He pulled the seat back and gestured for Rodimus to sit. “You usually get a Solar Sweep, correct?” Thunderclash asked as he waved down a serving droid.

“Yep,” Rodimus said as he sat. “How’d you know?”

“It’s, er, a hard drink to not notice. You—it caught my optic more than once.”

Fair enough—the drink in question was a garish cocktail of neon purple and glowing orange. Swerve was a genius for somehow figuring out to keep the two from mixing into a muddy brown.

“Shame we don’t get to catch up more often,” Thunderclash began easily as he placed his shanix on the serving droid’s tray. “Though I suppose your duties as captain far outweigh your free time.”

“Everytime,” Rodimus sighed, “everytime, I think, ‘I’m done with today’s meetings!’ And then I’m not! And then I’m not!” he repeated, his voice straining in a slightly hysterical whisper. “I genuinely have no idea how there’s so much time in the day that can be spent in damn meetings!”

“Goodness.” Thunderclash rubbed the bridge of his nose between two digits. “Believe me, I can more than sympathize. Forget a life support machine, they should’ve just turned the Vis Vitalis into one enormous board room.” Rodimus snorted into his drink. Thunderclash’s smile grew. “But meetings aside, how have you been?”

“Eh,” Rodimus said with a shrug accompanied by a tilt of his helm, “you know.”

“Neither here nor there?”

“Pretty much. Oh, something weird did happen a couple nights ago…”

Thunderclash went oddly still. “What was it?” he asked carefully. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course. I’m simply curious.”

The serving droid returned with Rodimus’ drink then. He picked it up, tilting the contents to and fro and watching the colors flawlessly shift into one another. “Someone left, like, a love note on my door.” Thunderclash’s optics went wide. “I know!” Rodimus exclaimed, mostly into his drink. He swallowed before continuing. “I have no clue who it sent it, though. I’m trying to figure out through pure sleuthing skills, though. It’s kinda hard. No clue how Nightbeat does it all the time.”

“You’re plenty clever. I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Thunderclash said warmly. But the warmth vanished beneath a suddenly cool, serious expression. “Did you find it at all… odd? Discomforting? If so, you ought to tell someone.”

“Not really. I—Primus, this is sappy,” Rodimus huffed, lazily tracing his glass’s rim with a digit, “It’s the definition of corny, but also kinda sweet?” Too focused on keeping his smile from growing too large, he did not notice the strange tension vanish from Thunderclash’s shoulders. “I just wanna know who wrote it and talk to them, ’cause I mean, this stuff is… I’d feel bad if I just ignored it.”

Thunderclash hummed thoughtfully. “Perhaps it’s more than a note,” he said mildly.

Rodimus furrowed his brow. “What else could it be? A clue? What is this, a treasure hunt?” His optics blew wide with a hot rush epiphany. “A treasure hunt!” he shouted, causing a few mechs to turn his way. “Wait, wait, hold on, I gotta—” He fired out of his seat, knees clunking the bottom of the table hard enough to nearly upset the drinks. He snatched up his Solar Sweep, downed the rest of it, and set the cube down as quickly as he could without shattering it. “Thanks for the drink!” he called over his shoulder, leaving a faintly bemused Thunderclash to stare at his spoilers as he dashed out of the bar. He transformed in the hallway with an excited roar of his engines, neatly dodging Rewind, who yelped as he went blazing past.

The note had mentioned stars. So maybe Rodimus was meant to find the next note in a place to do with stars. He slowed as he rounded a corner into a less populated hallway. The Lost Light was an interstellar spacecraft. Everything about it was meant for space travel, and by extension, the stars. How was he supposed to find one specific spot on the ship that had to do with stars? Maybe the observation decks? Lots of mechs liked to head up there just to watch the void of space roll by. Personally, Rodimus never really saw the appeal, but to each one’s own.

There were ten main observation decks on the Lost Light. He had half a mind to page Drift and ask him to come and help him look, but a quick look at his messages with him revealed he’d put himself on Do Not Disturb. For Drift, that very literally meant to not disturb him unless it was urgent. Resigning himself to an hour or two of his time possibly being wasted, Rodimus made his way to observation deck one.

There were a few mechs on duty when Rodimus arrived. He could feel the inquiry in their fields as he scrutinized the doorways, searched the tops of the desks, even looked underneath the chairs and benches. Nothing. Onto the next one.

After the six observation deck, Rodimus was beginning to suspect his initial guess had been incorrect. He was tempted to start looking somewhere else, but if he had to come back here and finish looking at all of the observation decks after all, then way more time would be wasted. Then again, he really didn’t want to have to answer ‘what are you looking for’ for the seventh time.

He slowed to a roll, engines rumbling in thought. After a moment, he pulled up the Lost Light’s diagrams and began picking through it level by level. He had no clue if this place even existed, but he had to try, right?

After a few seconds, his efforts were paid off. There, on the fifth level, was a huge circle labeled “PLANETARIUM”.

“Why do we even have a planetarium?” he muttered. This was a spaceship. It flew through space. Why would they need some more fake space inside of the ship when one could just… look outside? “Whatever. Worth a shot.”

The drive up to the planetarium was uneventful. Rodimus flipped to a stop in front of the doors, scanning it up and down for any sign of red. When he didn’t see anything, he stepped forward, the doors smoothly gliding open before him. He stood in the doorway for a moment, squinting into the empty darkness. Perhaps there was something further inside.

The second Rodimus stepped in far enough for the doors to automatically close behind him, the projector switched on with a hum, and the heavens of Cybertron glittered to life over his head.

Rodimus whistled. He walked out further inside the room, one slow step at a time, until he was in the center of the viewing platform. He craned his helm back, drinking it all in. He’d become familiar enough with Earth’s skies after his time there in the desert, working to build his way to freedom alongside the Decepticons. But Cybertron’s skies? His home? He had no clue. It was difficult to imagine. He only remembered neon lights in a city of noise and movement; bristling, dark clouds of engineered acid storms; smog from smoldering ruins of recent immolation. He took a step backward, only to freeze when something made a soft shuffling sound beneath his pede. He looked down.

There, poking out from beneath his pede, was an orange piece of paper.

Grinning, Rodimus knelt to pick it up. He opened it, and in words lit by starlight, he read:

To build the greatest empire is nothing compared to the honor of being by your side.

Rodimus shuttered his optics once, and then twice, and then a third time for good measure. He brought the note closer to his face, flipped it over a few times, even held it up to the light, before jerking it away to snap his helm up and down the hallway. It was, obviously, completely empty. No one was there shyly peeking around the corner. No one dropped out of the vent to shout ‘surprise!’ at him. He looked back to the note.

“Jeez,” he said. He finished typing in the rest of his passcode and hurried inside his hab suite without looking away. He deftly navigated the drawing irons on the ground he kept vowing to pick up and sat down behind his desk.

You put the brightest of stars to shame.

Rodimus smothered a silly grin and tried to focus. There were so few reasons to write anything when datapads existed, hardly anyone ever actually wrote things down. So unless he wanted to go make over two hundred mechs write down the message until he found a match, guessing on penmanship alone wouldn’t be possible.

There were a dozen other ways he could figure it out—requesting security footage, setting up a twenty-four-hour watch out in the hallway, Pit, just asking around would probably yield some answers. Yet he felt oddly reluctant to do so. True, he was insanely curious about who the sender could be, and it took everything in him not to call Nightbeat right away to tell him about another case. But he also wanted to see things play out on their own. It could be… exciting. Fun, even. The kind of fun he hadn’t had in a long, long time.

(And he wouldn’t complain if he got a few more notes like this.)

He decisively planted his chin on the tops of his servos. If the notes suddenly turned creepy or threatening, then he’d act accordingly. But for now…

.:drift:.

.:drift:.

.:driiiiiift:.

.:Yes?:.

.:can you come to my hab suite? there’s something weird i wanna show you:.

.: I’m feeling oddly disinclined given the last ‘weird’ thing you wanted to show me involved your exhaust pipes exploding in my face.:.

.: it’s way weirder:.

.: I’ll there soon.:.

Sure enough, a few faithful moments later, a polite knock sounded at the door. It slid open a second later, and Drift strode in with a curious tilt to his finials.

“What is it?” he asked as he came to a stop before Rodimus’ desk.

Rodimus handed him the note. “Someone left this outside my door,” he said as Drift took the paper from his servos. “I wanna know what you think of it.”

Drift sat down on the edge of his desk as he read the note over. His optics crinkled slightly in an amused smile. “I think someone’s very interested in you,” he said.

“Yeah, no slag, but I wanna figure out who. But like, the old fashioned way.”

“Hmm.” Drift gave the note back to Rodimus. “I can’t think of anyone off of the top of my head.”

“I’m guessing whoever put it there must have gone out of their way to get paper,” Rodimus mused. It made sense. Everything aboard the Lost Light was tech and metal. Any organic materials would likely only be found in the labs for whatever reason the science folks needed them.

“And there’s even a wax seal,” Drift pointed out. “I think it’s a human tradition to seal letters with a wax stamp, but I could be wrong. Either way, whoever it is clearly cares a lot about you.”

“So it’s probably from someone who I’ve already got some kind relationship with. Someone who’s been with me since the beginning of the quest.” Rodimus drummed the tips of his digits across his desk. Then he pulled a datapad from a drawer and pulled up a roster of the mechs on board. After a few swipes, the roster shrank from two-hundred to around forty mechs. “Not Magnus,” Rodimus said after a moment, crossing his name from the list. Drift snorted.

“Definitely not. Besides, I don’t see him being so indirect about it.”

“Or poetic.” The energon drained from Rodimus’ face. “Oh, Primus, you don’t think—?”

“I sincerely doubt Megatron is even persuing a romantic relationship of any kind,” Drift quickly assured. “Even if he were, I don’t think he’d be using love notes to tell you.”

Love notes. Now that was a phrase Rodimus hadn’t heard since he’d graduated from the Academy. It made him feel eons older and younger simultaneously. He grinned. “He’d probably see it as a waste of time. Sucks to be him, love notes are great.”

“How would you know?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“You know, you never did finish telling me that story about you, Two-Step, and the scented—”

“Not about me!” Rodimus hissed as Drift chuckled. He shot him an ineffective glare before swiping another line across the datapad. Then he glanced over at the note again. “Actually, hold on, look. It’s got the Nyon dialect, look, there are the weird swirlies on everything…”

“Oh, you’re right. So they could either be from Nyon—”

“Or they’re trying to impress me.”

“I was going to say they could simply also be very thoughtful, but that’s an option too. I guess.”

Rodimus hummed. “Not Mags, not Megs… Someone who’s been with me since the beginning... Is it you?”

“I’m a married mech, Rodimus.”

Rodimus curled his free servo and swung his forearm in a small damn motion. “Had to try.” Drift rolled his optics and shook his helm as Rodimus crossed his name off with a small tsk.

They continued back and forth like that for a while, slowly whittling down the list from forty to thirty to twenty potential mechs. Even then, barely any of them particularly leaped out at Rodimus as the potential note-sender. The only one that really seemed to match in terms of thoughtfulness and care was Thunderclash. Which had to be wrong, because one, there was no way a mech like him was still single, and two, they barely knew each other. Well. He knew some stuff about Thunderclash, like his favorite drink, and how his laugh filled up a whole room, but that didn’t count.

“It’s getting late,” Drift eventually said. His optics were beginning to dim with exhaustion. “We should pick this up in the morning, though.”

Rodimus glanced down at the time on his datapad in surprise. “Scrap. I have a morning shift tomorrow too. Ugh.”

“Have fun with that.” Drift gracefully pushed himself up and off the desk and made for the door. “Maybe whoever sent it will come forward soon. We’ll just have to wait, I suppose.”

“Guess so.” Rodimus stretched, groaning as struts in his back tensed and released. “Thanks for helping me out.”

“Anytime.” Drift smiled. “Good night.”

“‘Night.”

As the near-silent sound of Drift’s pedes faded away, Rodimus shut off the datapad and picked up the note once again. The berth sank slightly beneath his weight as he sat down on the edge of it, still reading the note.

You put the brightest of stars to shame.