An Unexpected Meeting

[Halrae]

Inside the small cottage it's single dweller was stirring, beginning her day. Halrae had in no way become accustomed to the odd place in the three days since her appearance there, but it was private, shelter, and safe.

She was well-used to not being choosy.

Plus there was The Door. The one that led to the Chainbreaker Garden, which had somehow been brought with her. Since that first day she hadn't gone back into it though she opened The Door every day at least four times to make certain it was still there. Case in point as she came out of the only bedroom she'd found in the place, across the hall, she opened The Door and looked inside.

Sunlight streamed down from a partly-cloudy sky and a gentle breeze stirred the familiar leaves and blades of grass. Just as it had before she went to bed.

Satisfied, Halrae closed The Door and went down the hall and through the living room to the kitchen to make a quick breakfast, then tried to decide what to do today. While she was safe for now she knew the supplies she'd found in the pantry would run out eventually, plus the happenstance of trouble that might force her to abandon the place or damage it and require repairs.

In short, though she was avoiding it, she would have to find other people and look into communication of some kind. Whether anyone could speak what she knew as Surface Common, Under-Common, or Drow was anyone's guess but she had to try.

So she geared up in her armor and halberd, just in case they did know what a drow elf was around here, and left the cottage, closing and locking the door behind her. After taking a moment to recollect where she'd seen a community before she turned and started walking.

Whatever gods had this far been keeping an eye on her keep doing so now!

[Zenith]

The morning warmed, Halrae prepared for the day, and Planet’s lone Cybertronian? He was making an aft of himself at 30,000 feet.

Zenith, you see, was sick to the struts of staying grounded. It ran counter to everything he was, every hard-coded impulse he’d been brought online with him. It was anathema. It was wrong. It was absolutely not something he was going to tolerate for a picosecond longer than he had to. The moment he got clearance from air traffic control- and what a mess that had been - he was up and away, merrily zipping through flight levels until the ever-present tug of gravity began to fade.

He could’ve kept going. Cybertronians didn’t need to breathe, after all, and aerialists were completely capable of interstellar flight. He could reasonably just... have kept flying, done a lap around the moon or something equally unlikely. But where was the fun in such displays of robotic might when no one was around to witness them? Primus, here he couldn’t even comm his cohort bragging about his exploits...

Instead he settled for cloud-diving, diving in and out of the few high cirrus clouds like some unlikely dolphin. Every arc brought him lower, gravity inexorably dragging him back to earth. Bit by bit he swirled and spun his way through the atmosphere, pulling every ridiculous maneuver he could for the simple pleasure of flight.

He was still a good fifteen thousand feet up when the sight of movement far (far, far) below pinged his sensors. A second, more focused scan turned up an unexpected result. Sure enough, that was a person down there, one of a type he’d never seen before. Silver hair, nearly-obsidian skin, and armed?

Zee was immediately fascinated.

Unfortunately for poor unsuspecting Halrae, a curious Zee was a Zee not paying attention to basic common sense. Her robotic stalker watcher folded back his flight panels and dove. Flight levels screamed by- fourteen, thirteen, ten, five...

A thousand feet above Halrae’s head Zee transformed mid-air, plunging the intervening distance in root-mode. Electing not to land directly atop his potential newfound friend, Zee settled for touching down a safe distance away. He came to earth in a great backwatering of wings and engines and Primus knew what else, scattering forest detritus every which way in the process. From this haze Zee himself emerged, field bright and wings flicked high in a universal aerialist greeting.

“Hey there! I don’t think I’ve seen you before!”

Because, y’know, there was no fragging way he’d just scared the pants off of a poor unsuspecting drow or anything.

[Halrae]

Even hovering at the edge of the treeline and contemplating the next step left Halrae feeling more exposed, more vulnerable, than she had in quite some time. She knew it was stupid of her - she was a competent warrior and could take care of herself - but she felt like she was in a sense regressing back to who she was before the Chainbreakers. Before she found out that trusting others wasn't always a death sentence.

She wondered if they'd be dismayed at the change.

Even caught up in her thoughts however couldn't take away the centuries-long ingrained wariness that often meant the different between life and death in the Underdark. Her keen ears heard the sound of something very, very large approaching thing from the sky.

*Dragon!* That was her first thought, remembering how one call to the Chainbreakers had involved a young adult red dragon that was lording it over a cluster of communities. She looked, But couldn't make out what it was diving towards her at high speed. Certainly the shape seemed off, but she was taking no chances.

As it dove closer she held her ground, then even as it suddenly (and alarmingly) changed its shape and free fell the rest of the way she darted forward and away. The very heavy impact shook the ground beneath her feet and she dove into a roll, coming up in a defensive crouch and drawing her halberd.

*What in the name of the gods...?* Halrae had never seen anything like the creature before her before. She was vaguely reminded of a golem, but this one was unlike any design she was familiar with. And the sheer size of him! Her eyes widened as she took it all in.

If she was in for a fight, she might be reunited with her friends shortly!

“Hey there! I don’t think I’ve seen you before!”

The Common words caught her off-guard. Definitely sounding male, and... that tone seemed... friendly?

Friendly to a drow at first sight. Not even those she'd eventually come to trust with her life had done that.

"I...am a stranger to this region," Halrae decided to try, slowly rising to her feet but not for an instant dropping her guard. Maybe she could at least get some information. "I have only been here a few days. Where am i exactly?"

[Zenith]

Had Zenith been privy to Halrae’s thought process he would’ve lit up like a laser display. Seriously, dragons? Were absolutely one of the coolest parts of human mythology. An aerialist could ask for no higher honor than to be compared to one. ...especially an aerialist as weedy and inexperienced as Zee, but he wasn’t about to admit that bit aloud, especially not in front of someone he’d just met!

“You and me both, mate,” Zee chirped, crouching down like a kid fascinated by a particularly interesting bug. Primus, why did all the natives (and not-natives) around here have to be so tiny? “I only got here... what, a week ago? Maybe two? My chronometer got knocked outta whack when I crashed and autorepair took its sweet fragging time getting it back in gear, so don’t quote me on that timeline.”

All of which probably sounded like a bunch of gibberish to poor Halrae. The moment he realized that the jet winced and whacked himself between the optics with the heel of one hand. (And yes, the movement resulted in a gratifyingly loud clank!)

“Right, sorry, uh- you asked where we were, didn’t you? Best I can tell, this place is called ‘Planet’, and you’re about fifteen kliks from what passes for a population center around here. I think they call it the... weird? The weyrd? I’m not quite sure on the spelling, but it’s the biggest ‘town’ for at least a couple hundred kliks in any direction. You should be able to find food and shelter there, if that’s what you’re after.”

See Zee. See Zee try to help the adorable little organic seriously contemplating putting a halberd through his middle. Ain’t he a sweet little idiot?

“I’m Zenith,” he added, bouncing on his heels like the oversized child he totally wasn’t, “Or Zee, or whatever you wanna call me. Just got here not long ago m’self, still sorta settling in. And, uh- sorry about buzzin’ you earlier, eh? Where I’m from folks are used to mecha flying all over the Pit and creation. I keep forgetting that’s not the norm here. I’m workin’ on it, honest!”

[Halrae]

Yep, the spiel that Zenith have did go as much over Halrae's head as he himself was over her head. The Drow elf was very much aware of just how much bigger he was even though he crouched down to seem smaller.

Golem. She was positive he was done kind of very advanced golem, especially by that metallic clank when he hit himself on the head. It was also gratifying to find that some gestures seemed to cross worlds.
Planet, how...simple a name. But it was sensible she supposed. But a village called Weird? That almost got a laugh; it had to be named by humans! Certainly no elf would call their home something like that, nor dwarf for that , and she doubted halfling founders would use that as a name. Only a human. 'Clicks' she mentally dismissed other than the obvious that it was a measure of distance.

"Food, yes. I have a shelter of sorts.' Like the abyss she'd tell someone where it was, especially someone she'd just met. It surprised her a bit how defensive she already felt over the cottage, but it was probably mostly the garden attached to it that she felt so strongly towards.

"I'm Halrae." It was only add Zenith had introduced himself that she realized he wasn't behaving like most people did when they encountered a Drow. She briefly hesitated to reply further in her surprise, then rallied her thoughts. "The only things I know of that can fly are wizards or things that typically want to eat you. Especially big things." As she was speaking she replaced her stance a bit, lowering the dangerous end of her halberd a bit more towards the ground though she didn't put it up yet. Big or not, Zenith didn't seem dangerous...yet. "Do you have any idea how I got here, who or what brought me here?" If there was a creature with that level of power she reasoned it would be wise to know about them in advance; they could be dangerous to cross, or useful to ally with.

[Zenith]

Score one for Zenith: he’d managed to fumble through the awkwardness of first introductions without scaring the poor little organic off. Mostly. He thought. she wasn’t running for the hills, that had to count for something, right

“Halrae, huh?” Zee tilted his head to one side, repeating the name under his nonexistent breath. Definitely unlike any name he’d ever heard before, but so was... basically every other name he’d heard since arriving on Planet. It sorta went with the whole ‘new and unfamiliar world’ thing. “I’m gonna trip over that nineteen times before I get it right, I can just tell. But, uh- it’s nice to meet you! And I’m glad to hear you’ve got somewhere safe to hole up. Some of the fauna around here aren’t, er, real friendly.”

Whers. He was talking about whers. Y’know, like the one who’d done its level best to take a chunk out of his pede three cycles after he’d first arrived. Just because it hadn’t succeeded didn’t mean it hadn’t left one Pit of an impression.

The halberd dropped, Halrae relaxed a smidgen, and Zee bit back a squee most unsuited for an intrepid explorer. Score two for the big green jet. If he kept this up he might leave in one piece after all, and wouldn’t that make his long-ago and far-off mentors proud?

“...okay, so, I’m guessing your homeworld’s a little different than mine.” Captain Obvious has arrived, folks, and he’s a big fragging moron of a jet. “But, uh- yeah, lots of things fly here, not just me. There’s dragons and giant eagles and these weird... space-bird-things? And probably a whole mess of others I dunno about yet.”

Then Halrae asked the question he’d been dreading, and Zee felt himself deflate. His wings went slack. His antennae drooped. He just sagged, a big sad robot pouting at the universe, and said precisely what he didn’t want to say.

“I... genuinely don’t know,” He admitted, scuffing at the dirt with one pede. “I’m not sure anyone does. Everyone I’ve talked to has said just about the same thing: they were going about their business back home, wherever that might be, and the next thing they knew they were here. It was the same thing for me. One breem I was on a ship bound for one of the rim colonies, the next the quantum engines were breaking down, then I was just... here.

“From the sounds of things you survived something similar, huh?”

[Halrae]

Halrae just have a short laugh under her breath when Zenith said how much he'd 'trip over her name.'


With names like Ched Nasad and Menzoberranzan among my people, he should be glad my name is so much simpler![\I] She'd keep that thought back as a private joke. She'd learned that among shone people you didn't say that kind of thing until you knew them better.

It had taken several dirty looks and a scolding or three before that lesson had sunk in.


"Considerably different," she agreed. "Though we had dragons, giant eagles, and other nasty creatures who like I said would've enjoyed anyone for a snack. Not land and start up a polite conversation. Especially with a drow. Not even the metallic dragons would chat with one of my kind." It was said without any sort of distaste or sadness; that was simply the way of things.


She firmly shoved down the stinging knowledge that she knew from those few, wonderful decades that it didn't have to be.


Ah, Zenith hardly had to say it. Not when he gave that change in body posture. As a matter of survival among often-treacherous drow learning to read every nuance of body language was just as vital as reading tone. This news was not going to be good.


And it wasn't. No one knew. That meant whatever force had dove so for its own reasons and might be able to be reasoned with or not. Or might be sentient or not. For all she knew she'd died and because she hadn't really followed any god in particular - none had really called to her or would accept her, being a drow - but had done some good in her later years she'd been shown a kind of mercy and sent here. Maybe her friends had pleaded her case.


No way to know.


"Something like that," she hesitantly admitted, weighting her words carefully. "In short, I went to sleep and woke up here. Besides that I know nothing about what happened." Halrae sighed; it was frustrating. So much for plan one of finding a powerful ally until she had her feet under her.


That's okay. I can handle things alone. Haven't I been doing that since Prince Kearis left the keep, and I found out Glavagool had died? The last Chainbreaker.


"Alright then, Zenith; who is in charge around here? What ruler or lord, and where could I find them." Because 'hey surprise! You have a drow in your realm' was never a good idea...especially for the drow.

[Zenith]

No matter how many new places Zenith visited or how many novel species he encountered, first contact was never not going to make his day. Nothing in the galaxy could compare to the rush of reaching out to the unknown. It made all the risks of space travel, all the discomfort of alien worlds, all the bureaucratic nonsense that went into planning and executing an expedition worth it. The fact that Planet seemed to be one giant, never-ending first contact experience just sweetened the deal. All Zee had to do was be patient, treat the natives like the people they were, and an endless stream of the new and exciting came to him of its own volition.

It was the kind of assignment xenoscientists would’ve killed for, and here he’d tripped into it completely by accident. take that establishment

“Wait. Why would I not want to talk to you?” Zee tilted his head first to one side, then the other, antennae plinking lightly off the sides of his helm. “You’re a person. Not like any person I’ve met before, I’ll own that one, but you’re still a person, and that makes you inherently interesting. I mean- I could stop talking to you if you wanted me to, but I don’t think that’s what you mean, right?”

See Zenith. See Zenith completely and utterly miss the point of Halrae’s misgivings. Then again, he’d never had the misfortune of facing an unfriendly drow.

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Zee commiserated, glaring off at some point in the middle distance. “Tracks with what everyone else has said, too. I’m sorry, though, getting yoinked is about as fun as... something really not fun.”

Then came a question so far out of left field Zee was scarcely sure he’d heard correctly.

“Who’s in charge?” He almost laughed, choked it back at the last second. “To be perfectly honest with you, I’m pretty sure there isn’t anyone in charge around here. Everyone just sorta... does their own thing. Sounds chaotic, I know, but it seems to be working out okay? I guess? I mean, I just got here, I dunno either.”

[Halrae]

"Why wouldn't you - ?!" It was very, very rare that Halrae was left sputtering. But Zenith had just sent her sputtering. He continued speaking as she mentally rallied, then shook herself back to task.

"So no one is in charge?" She couldn't help but scoff. "That sounds even more chaotic than the Underdark. But as you say you've just gotten here as well, so you might not have met them yet." A good leader didn't always reveal themselves right off the bat, so there was a chance that was the case here. Someone else might know that information then, or if she was patient and careful she might discover that on her own.

But that was for another time. Something else needed to be addressed first because her brain just wouldn't let it go.

"Do you not know what I am?" She gestured to herself, to her ebony skin and white hair and elven ears and red eyes behind her goggles. "I'm a Drow elf. A Drow. Bane of the surface worlds, cruel and bloodthirsty and evil. Monsters through and through. A Drow." A thought hit her then, and her voice became briefly wondering. "Do... I've never seen anyone like you before. Can it be that you really don't know what a Drow elf is?"

Yeah, somewhere in some heaven Mythias was laughing his fool paladin hide off.

[Zenith]

Not for the first time- or even the fifth time, for that matter- Zenith found himself blinking in complete bemusement. As far as first contacts went, this one was going swimmingly... at least from his perspective. Poor Halrae seemed to think quite the opposite. Every word Zee said ramped up her stress response another notch. It meant more adrenaline, a faster heartbeat, more rapid breathing, a physiological domino effect that boiled down to ‘get ready to fight or flee’. Except there was nothing to fight, nothing to flee from, and so the feedback loop from the Pit persisted.

Primus, but organics had it rough. At least Zee could kill processor threads when they started looping back on themselves!

“No one that I know of,” He replied, forcing himself to stop monitoring Halrae’s vitals like the medic he absolutely wasn’t. “There’s a goblin named George that folks seem to respect, but that’s more because he’s useful and reliable than because he’s in charge? If you ever hear drums going off, George is probably the one playing them, and the drums usually mean something interesting is going on, so.”

‘Interesting’. Not the word most folks would have used for ‘angry, blood-thirsty animals demanding bondmates’, but the less Zee said about that, the happier Halrae would likely be.

“You’re gonna have to explain to me what an ‘Underdark’ is, though. It sounds interesting.” Another head-tilt, this time to the other side. “...Uh. And what a ‘drow’ is.”

The drow in question gave him precisely that: a quick and dirty run-down on precisely what she was. Frowning, Zee tiered off a few processor threads to take notes on this apparent new addition to the Encyclopaedia Cybertronium.

“I mean... no, I don’t really know what that is?” He shuffled his pedes, vaguely disconcerted. “The drow species doesn’t show up in any databank I’ve got access to, and I’ve got access to a lot of archives. Chances are pretty good that if the Cybertronian race had ever encountered your kind before, someone would’ve written something about it.”

A beat, then Zee’s wings drooped.

“Unless those records got lost during the war, I guess. Primus knows plenty of other things were.”

[Halrae]

"Heh, a goblin." Halrae's somewhat dismissive tone was nothing personal against George, really. Goblin were often used by the Drow.

Used. Key word there.

She didn't know what he meant by drums per say, but Razok had once told her how his people sometimes used drums to communicate across distances so she at least had that reference. It was one she filed away for future usefulness. If they did as Zenith indicated say that something interesting was going on it would be to her benefit to investigate.

"No knowledge of drow...." Yes, Mythias, and several of the other Chainbreakers, were probably in a riot about this development. A small part of her that had been quiet for a while whispered that they'd be happy for her. Here she was, having walked away from the Underdark and temporarily found true respect, then lost it, and now had a chance (a slim chance, she firmly reminded herself) to find it again.

To be happy.

Ryvri shook her head to dislodge that thought, not willing to believe it for a second then refocused on the Cybertronian.

"I couldn't say if your records of drow got lost," she admitted. "I know I've never heard of anything like you before, except maybe a very, very large golem created by an ambitious wizard. Or a behemoth. I think I heard of a couple of them that looked humanoid in nature and were as large as you. So - " She crossed her arms and tapped a foot. "- basically I've been brought to another plane of existence, where there's no one really in charge, and there's a chance that people won't know what the Underdark or a drow even are? That about sum it up?"

[Zenith]

Good. Halrae’s runaway stress reaction seemed to have played itself out. Yes, the drow was still uncomfortable, at least to the infernally sensitive scanners of a Cybertronian, but she didn’t seem terribly inclined to... start shooting? Stabbing? Putting that halberd to use? She seemed disinclined to put any weaponry visible or otherwise to use, and that was a victory, as far as Zenith was concerned. Any day he remained unperforated and in more or less one piece was A Good Day.

Getting firsthand information out of an unwitting informant just upgraded his Good Day to a great one.

“Afraid to say I’ve never even met a wizard,” He admitted, wingtips fluttering in an aerialist’s laugh. “I was born like this. Or, uh- brought online, I guess? I’m a Cybertronian. My entire race is mechanical. We all look a little like me, at least as far as the whole ‘giant and made out of metal’ thing goes. No magic involved, just a lot of cutting-edge tech even I don’t really understand. If you wanna compare us to golems, though, you’re not too far off? Same idea, if what I read back on Earth was anything to go off of.”

He’d just... conveniently forget to mention that the sum total of his knowledge of golems came from video game manuals. The less said about a giant robot's gaming habits, the better.

“But yeah, you've got the gist of it, as far as I can tell. Planet doesn’t appear on any map I’ve got access to. Seems like it’s in a plane all by its lonesome, more or less unconnected to any other plane. Primus, even the stars are different, and that's all kinds of wrong. They're supposed to be a constant, aren't they? Anyway- you could probably poke around the village some if you wanted more information. Some of the folks there are natives, or as close to natives as you can get here. They probably know a Pit of a lot more than I do."

A fact that physically pained him, but hey, a bruised ego was a small price to pay for helping a fellow lost spark out.

sorry, halrae, you've got a friend whether you want one or not

[Halrae]

"Unconnected save by randomly opening windows to pull people through it seems." Halrae had always prided herself on her adaptability, and it was holding her in good stead now. "Well, I suppose it matters little now. Nothing back there for me to regret losing, and I doubt returning to your original plane is something easily done?" Really, aside from Prince Kearis, whom she hadn't spoken to in over ten years now, what was left? He had his realm and a frequenting drow, history or not, wouldn't set well in the minds of every other elf on Faerun. She still was amazed he hasn't been utterly ostracized by their brief association as it was!

But Zenith's final comment - the one about others - brought back some habitual unease.

"It would probably be wise for me to scout the village out." Nevermind how alarming such a phrase might be to hear from a drow otherwise. "If anyone there has more...experience with drow I don't want to walk into that blind. But further information can wait a bit. I'm in no rush."

Okay, that was a lie in a sense. While she wasn't in a true rush information was important. It was rare that a drow would reveal all their plans or intents to anyone, especially sometime they just met. She probably wouldn't have even shown much interest in the village save for needing Zenith for something more.

"Do you think you could show me how to get there? I admit my sense of direction above ground is a little sketchy at times, and I'd rather not waste time wandering around for hours."

[Zenith]

The longer Zenith spoke with Halrae, the more certain he became that she’d do just fine on Planet. Apart from that one brief spike of disbelief she seemed to be taking everything more or less in stride. More to the point, she was clearly thinking ahead, already planning on how to move forward as safely as possible. It was kind of admirable, actually, so much so that Zee caught himself smiling just a smidge. Not where the drow could see it, of course, but he smiled all the same.

Maybe, just maybe, this would be the start of something beautiful.

“It’s theoretically possible,” He mused, picking the thread of conversation back up, “Or at least I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t be. The problem is actually getting back home, wherever home might be. No one really seems to know how they got here or what dropped them here. Makes it a little hard to reverse-engineer the whole process and run it in reverse.”

The mention of ‘nothing back there’ made Zee’s wingtips fall an inch or two. There was a story there, a long and unhappy one if he had to guess, and it took a monumental effort to silence his vocoder and not ask the obvious question. Anyone with optics could see Halrae had been through the Pit. Chances were slim she’d welcome a virtual stranger prying into her affairs. For now, as much as it went against his most basic coding, he’d keep his curiosity to himself. Someday, he promised himself, he’d get the whole story.

But for now, he contented himself with a happy little wiggle and an eager thrum of internal systems. It... sounded oddly like a massive cat chirping, actually.

“Absolutely! Like I said, it’s not too far from here. I could even carry you, if you’d like. I know you’re not in any great screaming hurry, but it’s a beautiful day to fly.”

Of course, every day was a beautiful day as far as Zee was concerned, but that was neither here nor there.

[Halrae]

So a return was maybe possible. Would she if it were?

No, not likely.

But maybe a message back to Kearis, letting him know she was alright? She'd sent one to him discretely, but in it she'd said it had been her intention to wander, perhaps venture to the Sword Coast or up towards Mithril Hall. If he tried to find her now he certainly wouldn't.

Would he try to find her?

Rather than dwell on it at the moment Halrae decided to file away the maybe for another time. If there was a way she'd decide then, nd if not there was little point to set her wants to it.

Zenith's offer would get a raise of white eyebrows.

"Carry me?" she echoed. "Ride on your back, you mean?" Okay, so perhaps she had that little bit mistaken, but her tone was clearly skeptical and her gaze, even hidden, was searching. On the one hand it would save her time and prevent her getting lost, but on the other hand it would be quite a bit of trust. It would be only too easy to take her up and dump her off, or fly her wherever and have her at his mercy.

Drow didn't survive to adulthood by trusting blindly.

Aft the same time, while she didn't have Mythias' insightfulness she hadn't sensed any deception when Zenith had voiced an ignorance of the drow race, and no malice in him now. Some people and even entire races for the most part were generally good and held no ulterior motives behind their words.

(And seriously, what was that wiggling motion, and had he just...chirped?)

So instead of agreeing or not she decided top ask what seemed to be a fair question:

"Why would you offer to help someone you've just met to such a degree? There's not much I could give in return."

[Zenith]

“Not... quite on my back,” Zenith corrected, wings fluttering in amusement. Right. Only Transformer on Planet, currently interacting with a drow. Of course Halrae wasn’t going to know he could turn into an alien airplane. “I could carry you in my hands, if you wanted, or I could transform into my alt-mode and you could ride in my cockpit. Either or is fine by me, but the latter’s gonna be a lot more comfortable for you.”

And there, whether Zee knew it or not, was the crux of the problem at hand. In Halrae’s universe trust was the rarest of commodities, one carefully hoarded and rarely shared. In Zee’s it simply wasn’t. Oh, he knew plenty of mecha who struggled to open their sparks to others, indeed had grown up surrounded by them, but he himself had never had reason to doubt. The Great War still loomed large in most minds. No one wanted to be the idiot that reignited the flames of conflict so soon after peace had finally- finally!- been declared. And so even the most skeptical of mecha bit their glossae and tried to trust, to risk themselves, in ways they never had before the war.

The end result had been beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Yes, there were growing pains. Yes, there were scuffles between ex-Autobots and ex-Decepticons. But the vast majority of mecha had found, in spite of it all, that they had more in common with one another than they’d ever expected.

The fact an entire fragging race was learning how to parent all at once had made for a Pit of a great unifier, too. No one wanted to disappoint their bitlets.

“You... don’t have to repay me?” Zee reset his optics, not quite certain when transactionality had come into the equation. “I’m not looking to hold anything over your head, if that’s what you’re worried about. This is just... something I can do. You need to go to the village. I can get you there faster, and all it’s gonna cost me is a couple minutes of my time. I’m more’n happy to donate those couple of minutes. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. Even if I did, this is the nice thing to do. Gives you those warm-fuzzies, y’know?”

Primus, but this was more Pierce’s territory than it was his. The big blue priest would’ve known exactly what to say to allay Halrae’s suspicions. Zee- gawky, honest, too-exuberant Zee- hadn’t the faintest clue how to do it.

[Halrae]

Just as before, Halrae took in Zenith's words with a hefty dose of salt. No need to repay, a deed done for free out of kindness. It seemed some things crossed realm boarders because she'd heard the term 'warm fuzzy feeling' before, and even now she wanted to roll her eyes but was nervous about offending the massive metal being before her. (Who knew if he could see through her goggles'lenses?) What was the point of such a deed? A fleeing feeling? No, there had to be something else...

Abruptly a memory crashed through her mind and she had to shut her eyes, his ability to notice or no.

Her goggles.

"What are these?"

"They're for you, so you can see in the sunlight!"

"...Why? Do you think I'm a cripple otherwise?"

"Not at all, Halrae. You've been managing fine with the blindfold, we all know that. But we also know it hurts you. We don't want that."

"We talked it over and came up with these, and we've been working on them in secret for about a week! Surprise!"

"I know what's going through your mind, and don't need my magic for that. These are a gift. No repayment, no expectations. A gift given freely to a friend."

A gift given freely....

Her goggles had been the first truly kind gesture between them, the first without some kind of tit-for-tat exchange, and it had been the one that had broken the resistance around Halrae's heart though it had been many months afterwards until they realized that fact.

Halrae still didn't believe there was no utterly free gift given. There was always something that happened as a result. But sometimes the one who was the receiver was the one who choose that result, the as it were exchange.

A kindness now for a voluntary kindness later, the start of a friendship.

Could he actually be trying to do the same? Trying to treat me as a friend even though he just meet me? Could he be so innocent of heart - or whatever passes for his heart?...Mythias had been like that.

"Very well," she decided after what was probably a good minute of thought. "I'll take you up on your offer. It will be faster than walking and far less risk of my getting lost or running into trouble when i am by no means prepared for. But I doo have a question first: What in the name of the gods in a 'cockpit?'" She almost laughed as she said it; the word was kind of ridiculous -sounding, especially when taken as her ears heard it.

[Zenith]

There was that look again, that expression of carefully-hidden disbelief that wasn’t hidden quite well enough. The longer their conversation dragged on the more often it flickered across Halrae’s face. Every time it did, Zee felt something squeeze tight around his spark. He knew that look, albeit from a very different (and far less organic) source.

It was the look ex-Autobots wore whenever the Decepticons were discussed, or vice versa.

Every member of his cohort had worn it at one point or another, that look of ‘I don’t believe you but don’t want to say as much aloud’. He’d seen it on their faces, in their optics, felt it in their fields, heard it in their voices. As a sparkling he hadn’t understood. Even now, as a mech grown, he couldn’t really understand the skepticism that ran strut-deep, spark-deep in almost every mech that had survived the Great War. Come right to it, he couldn’t truly understand Halrae’s hesitance either. Primus and the Guiding Hand only knew what she’d survived, endured, and who was he to question that? His cohort’s wariness had helped them survive four million years of civil war. Perhaps hers had served a similar purpose.

But that didn’t mean he had to blithely accept it. His cohort had all begun to change the habits beaten into them by millenia of war. Halrae too could learn a different- better?- way.

“Wait, what do you-” Offhand Zee couldn’t tell what threw him off more: the sight of Halrae stifling laughter or the fact that the serious, stoic drow was laughing at a dick joke. The answer, he decided, was simply ‘yes’. “Har har, dirty joke goes here. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think it’s gonna be easier if I just show you.”

Because there really was no way to explain ‘yeah, I turn into a jet on a whim’ to someone unfamiliar with the concept of transformation.

Zee straightened, shook his plating back into place, and began to fold in on himself. Plates buckled. Wires writhed. Armored plating moved in ways it was never meant to. Zenith disappeared amidst a maelstrom of metal and cutting-edge technology, pitching forward as his center of gravity changed. Then... all at once the process finished, leaving a sleek blue-green jet bouncing on its tires.

“This up here,” Zee announced, popping his canopy and cheerfully ignoring the fact he’d just flipped physics the bird, “Is a cockpit. And no, I don’t have the faintest clue why they call it that.”

A ladder unfolded itself from somewhere underneath his plating, sliding down to land at Halrae’s feet.

“C’mon up,” He invited, and there was a smile somewhere in his voice. “Once you get strapped in we can get going.”

[Halrae]

Mythias had often scolded both Halrae and Razok for their joint sense of humor. One a drow, the other an orc, what was to be expected? She held back a grin that she normally reserved for the other Chainbreakers – something she hadn't felt impulse to do in literally over a decade – then physically backed up when Zenith suddenly started to fold in on himself and change, swearing audibly in the drow tongue! She'd seen his transformation in a sort before when he'd first landed, but this felt a lot closer and she hadn't realized he could do it seemingly at will.

The drow moved closer when the Cybertronian spoke again, opening up the thing on his... was that his back now?... and the ladder landed at her feet. Everything finally clicked at that point.

"Inside you," she clarified. "You were meaning I would be riding inside you. Under your armor. Whatever." Even though clearly it wasn't painful for him, or even uncomfortable because he wouldn't logically offer otherwise.

Still, unnerving to think about, even for Halrae.

After another small hesitation she carefully climbed up the ladder and into the cockpit, staring a bit at all the knobs and buttons and dials and switches that might as well have been a wizard's spellbook for all she understood it. She fumbled for the straps and how to get them properly together in place, took a breath, and held on.

"Okay, ready."

She had no idea if she was ready.

And, had she been able to see what was about to happen, she probably would know she wasn't.

[Zenith]

“Did you have to phrase it like that?” Even to his own audios Zenith sounded more amused than aggrieved. Apparently even giant robots from space could enjoy a good double entendre now and again. “‘Cos now you’ve made it weird. Weird and a little dirty.”

Halrae’s comparison to a wizard’s spellbook wasn’t entirely off-base. Zee’s cockpit was awash with buttons and knobs and complicated-looking machinery, all arrayed around a high-definition screen that displayed... something. Something that looked like writing. Cybertronian script, maybe? The words disappeared the moment Halrae got settled, replaced by a familiar (and visibly excited) face. Apparently Zee could project a mock-up of his own face on internal screens.

“This is why I mentioned I could carry you in my hands,” He quipped, wincing as Halrae struggled with the harness. There was no logical reason for a drow to know how to strap into a fighter jet’s cockpit, of course, but... c’mon. How could he not chuckle at such a competent woman so badly out of her element? “This’ll be a lot safer, though. A lot more comfortable, too. I’ve got climate control!”

Little jets of cool air blasted out from vents hidden amongst the technological wizardry. Apparently this Cybertronian came with air conditioning.

For the briefest of instants Zee contemplated taking off at full power. Halrae didn’t seem that fundamentally different from a baseline human. She could probably safely handle 7 or 8 G’s for the few seconds it would take him to clear the treetops... Common sense overruled that impulse a split-klik later. ‘Probably’ wasn’t good enough, not with an organic’s wellbeing on the line. Besides, there would be time for showing off later, once his newfound friend was more comfortable with flight and the forces involved therein. Best to play it safe for now.

Something hummed behind Halrae’s seat, a low, deep thrum that she’d likely feel as much as she heard. The hum slowly rose in pitch and intensity as interstellar engines spun up to redline. Then, all at once, the hum turned into a muted roar and up, up they went, light as thistledown borne aloft by the breeze.

It was a damn fine vertical takeoff, in Zee’s opinion, and the sheer smug pouring off of him was likely strong enough for someone without EMF sensors to read.

“Hold on,” He chortled, rerouting power from his VTOL systems to actual flight systems. “This is where things get fun.”

And just like that they were off, roaring off towards the village at speeds no terrestrial creature would dare dream of.