III. Perched on the edge of her recharge bed, she nestled her chin in shaking hands. So they asked you. Big deal! You should be thrilled! Then why am I so nervous? The red Seeker shifted uncomfortably. It was apparently a great honor to chosen by them. She had felt like she was being watched, sized up since being stationed here. She had perused the whispers from others concerning the group, their ideology, their beliefs: she'd also heard how they were supposed to be just this side of crazy. Their antics were tolerated because they were good flyers; their other skills made them indispensable; they had something on their commander; they were a covert group placed there by Megatron until his return...so the rumors went.. However, the pranks, unauthorized raids, stunts, and nearly blatant insubordination merely verified the lunacy. It also brought to mind what a Seeker had hushingly told her, "The skies belonged to us even before we were Decepticons, and they always will." But we are the best...without us, the Decepticons would have a lot tougher time! She gasped, covered her mouth with her hands, then smiled. She'd thought that way all along! Turning, she faced the wall and studied her doppelganger in the reflective surface, searching for a sign that she was somehow different after the epiphany. Slightly shorter than most Seekers, she had learned to tolerate teasing, to match the insults that were always tossed around. Her optics traveled down: yellowish-orange armor, white gauntlets and hands, red upper arms, legs, and boots. The red wings with yellow-orange striping that formed a 'V' on her back when she was in robot mode. No, she still looked the same. She stared into her own optics, trying to ignore the squarish chin. There. Something was different. She stood taller. I will be Wings Of Doom. I am one of the best, she stated triumphantly, but shrank a little at the thought. Her allegiance was supposed to be to the Decepticon cause first. She believed in it completely, but... Her wings tilted forward, trying to curl around her. She checked her chronometer. A decision had to be made: if she declined, they would never ask her again. She thought about the trial she'd have to complete, and shuddered. The Run. At the Academy, they'd been strictly forbidden from even discussing it, had been shown the remains of the ones who had tried to trace its course, scattered on various levels far below. Threading over, under, around, and sometimes through buildings, roadways, and tunnels, it was flown at top speed, and forced flyers to spin, flip, and transform at one point to pick up a marker. The temptation of it invariably thinned out the population of students before graduation. . Her classmates had spoken in hushed tones about who had originally constructed the hellish obstacle race. One of them was hinted to be the Decepticon Air Commander himself, another a Wings Of Doom member, a femme who had been reassigned to a munitions plant, supposedly at her own request. She remembered the holopic of a previous graduating class... The Seeker who had given what at first had been good news had been in it. So had most of the ones gathered in his quarters. In another class pic, someone had attached a datapad next to it, with the names of the graduates. Matching names to faces out of curiosity, she had come to the name 'Starscream', and smiled shyly to herself. Perhaps she would get to meet him, eventually. After connecting the next two names, she had narrowed her optics at the three fingers they and the Air Commander had secretly displayed. When an instructor was questioned about it, he had become angry, and stated in no uncertain terms that she was to forget about it entirely. Nodding her head, she now understood what the statement had meant. Pivoting, she glanced sadly around her quarters. Not much of me here, she mused. If she failed, would anyone remember her? She wondered if that one Seeker, Kamikaze, would come up with a song about this, if her attempt would become part of the tales that over-energized flyers slurred to each other. Would anyone try to recover her laser core, or would she come to occupy one of those levels, a warning to the next class? Shutting off her optics, she drew herself together, searching for any calm before the storm she was about to hurtle herself into. Her radio chimed, shattering her concentration. "Yes?" she answered hesitantly. "C'mon Firefight, let's see if you deserve this." Powerdive growled at her. For a microsecond, the words 'No, forget it' almost escaped from her vocoder. Then, every doubt she had entertained vanished. "If I didn't, you wouldn't have asked me, ground-lover. Be right there." Continue... |