Chapter Text
Rain fell from the sky without end on Aquatron, trailing frigid rivulets down the windows of his altmode while he ascended a steep hill. Blurr could not say he was fond of the watery planet, but he had been sent to it for a reason, and he would do his job regardless of his frustration with the scarcity of land and over-abundance of roiling seas.
But before he could do his job there was a more pressing matter to deal with first. A wave of pain reminded him of the urgency of the situation he’d found himself in, and he switched gears to go faster, almost recklessly rushing.
When he reached the mouth of a cave eroded into the side of a black cliff, he transformed to rootmode for the first time in nearly a solar year. He stumbled into the dark shelter, wiping water from the glass of his optics and wobbling unsteadily on his pedes. His bipedal rootmode may have felt awkward, but his vehicle form had felt even stranger to him over the past few quartexes he'd spent undercover as it had changed to accommodate his expanding gestation tank.
He hadn’t known he was sparked before he’d begun the mission.
The alert from his systems had come a deca-cycle after landing. It was a recon mission that depended on him maintaining complete radio silence for a solar year. He was given strict instructions to send only one data transmission with a summary of his entire findings to Autobot command right before meeting at a rendezvous point once the year ended. He was stranded. And sparked. And now the sparkling was ready to emerge- making itself a painful nuisance that could not be ignored any longer.
Panting, squirming, he laid onto his side on the gravelly cave floor and clutched at the alien curve of his abdominal plates. Rain pattered bleakly in his audials and grey-blue light filtered from the entrance. Waves crashed against the base of the cliff, sending sea spray into the cave at odd intervals.
Pain encompassed his entire neural net and he wished, not for the first time, that Longarm Prime were with him.
The storm outside only seemed to worsen while he labored for joors, and when he finally eased a servo between his legs and guided a tiny, angular helm from his frame there was a blinding flash of lightning that threatened to disrupt his optical sensors. Energon soaked the ground and his servos, it slicked his sparkling’s soft protoform, and it reeked of the ozone-like smell of stress and pain. His thigh plating was streaked with pink and his legs trembled while he used the last of his energy to prop himself against a wall and look at his creation.
He saw her frame first, which was too new to be fully formed but developed enough to discern that she was a femmeling. Her colors were inverse to his; primarily black with notes of vivid blue. She was so very tiny, barely large enough to fill both of his servos, and he wondered at the idea that such a tiny thing could be so difficult to birth.
Her vocalizer spit static and the softest cries he’d ever heard. Her helm shape was a replica of his exactly- long and angular and pointed. He slipped a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face to greet him, and his spark froze with pure horror.
She had no face. His sparkling had no face - all that was there was a single red optic inset into a flat sheet of black metal. He nearly dropped her in his fear, arms shaking and processor racing to understand.
There was no trace of Longarm in her frame.
One-opticked mechs were a rare, older model of Cybertronian- only a few such cases known to him from all of history. The physical trait could only be passed down directly from an affected creator to creation.
He had only interfaced with Longarm.
The truth was clear to him immediately, his processor far quicker than most bots could comprehend. Its revelation had him turning his helm to vomit to the side, tank churning with fear and revulsion and spark-breaking pain.
There was only one mech he knew of that made sense, one who was famous for his single optic, cruel intelligence, and ability to shapeshift .
Shockwave.
His processor bounded ahead of itself with logical conclusions. Shockwave had infiltrated Autobot High Command under the guise of ‘Longarm’ , Shockwave was currently on Cybertron and in possession of a veritable mountain of top-secret intel, not to mention he had unlimited and unmonitored access to all radio channels and spacebridge technology and-
And he was the sire of Blurr’s sparkling.
The truth was undeniable, especially when his femmeling whined and stretched, causing two soft antler antennae to uncurl from where they’d been plastered to her helm. Damning evidence; he remembered the grainy wartime holos of Shockwave that were kept in the intel database, and those antennae were near identical.
For a klik he didn’t want to touch her, let alone look at her. He shivered and muttered distressed nonsense to himself, optics searching the cave for something else to focus on while icy anger gripped his spark, but something wrapped around one of his digits and he startled, looking down to meet that red little optic. Instead of fingers she had three tiny claws, and she tugged at him instinctually from where she laid across his chassis, cooing so softly that his spark broke.
No matter how painful it was to look at her, no matter how her existence had shattered his functioning into chaos and disarray, she was his sparkling. She was just a newspark. He could not blame her for the crimes of her sire.
Carefully, he held her frame closer and wiped away the excess energon and chunks of his own torn internal protoform mesh that clung to her form. His frame was still a mess but he was in far too much pain, and far too exhausted, to do much more than slump into a comfortable position and cradle his sparkling close. Cold wind rolled over his plating and the rocks felt sharp against the sensitive gaps in his armor, but where his sparkling was pressed stayed warm and safe, sheltered by his arms and legs.
The temptation of recharge nipped at the edges of his awareness, but he brushed it aside to focus on a line of thought that sent dread shooting down his struts.
A spy like Shockwave would not abide the idea of allowing such significant evidence of his deception to exist. He would likely kill both Blurr and the sparkling, in some similar way to how he –now that Blurr thought about it- had likely murdered Highbrow Prime. As a spy, Blurr knew very well that maintaining one's cover was paramount to anything else.
As a mech, however, his spark recoiled in disgust and horror at the thought that any mech could slaughter their creation to maintain a cover.
The sparkling’s existence was likely the result of an oversight on Shockwave’s part. Blurr had been purposefully distracted by their relationship –he winced- to keep away any suspicion on Longarm’s character. He’d been used, and outplayed like an idiot by the very Decepticon he’d suspected of hiding within the Autobot ranks.
But he took comfort in the knowledge that he wasn’t the only fool. He’d erroneously assumed Longar- Shockwave was as sterile as the rest of the Autobots on Cybertron were. Millions of years spent depending on the Allspark and Vector Sigma for reproduction had taken its toll on Cybertronian Autobot CNA, but Blurr was not Cybertronian, and Shockwave must have been unaware of the fact that Velocitronians had no issues with reproduction whatsoever. As such, neither of them had taken any precautions to avoid this very scenario from occurring.
Foolish. He wanted to rant and scream and pace until he left frustrated grooves in the rock floor, but his condition and the sight of his sleeping creation kept him restrained. He settled on gritting his denta and releasing a sharp, angry hiss from his vents before he forced himself to relax.
There could be no return to Cybertron for them, he realized once his engine had quieted to a calm rumble. He could not complete his mission; he could not return home. He needed to escape.
Trembling, he clutched his sparkling closer to weather through a stronger burst of wind as the storm outside picked up, and set his processor to work on creating a plan.