Sometime during the previous night, lying awake and cursing his bad luck, Terrorsaur had realised his biggest problem in dealing with his twisted ankle wasn't going to be his inability to walk, it was going to be his claustrophobia. Maximal quarters were small. Under ideal conditions he might last a day. Semi-immobile and alone, his phobia would be aggravated. He needed a plan while he could still think rationally.

He had decided on the cargo bay, which was where he currently was, sitting on a low-slung shipping container with the library datapad that Optimus had lent him. Outside would have been better but not now, not when he couldn't put any weight on his ankle so he could only get around by hanging on to a wall and hopping. Outside he would need help and there was no help today. Megatron had seen to that. He'd shown up at Terrorsaur's quarters the previous evening to find Waspinator to inform her that she was to spend the next day assisting Scorponok's work.

Both flyers had protested. Megatron had been unmoved. Terrorsaur was a Predacon, Megatron had told him, therefore he was supposed to be strong and adaptable. If he couldn't handle a minor injury in a fully-stocked base during a truce then he might as well join the Maximals.

So the cargo bay. Waspinator had started to help him there before being accosted by Inferno sent to fetch her. Inferno had assessed the situation and decided that the most efficient thing to do was put Terrorsaur over her shoulder and deliver him to the cargo bay herself. Fortunately there had been no one around to laugh at him.

But he couldn't just park there all day. His current body required ridiculous amounts of upkeep that sent him back into the main body of the ship. So, holding the wall and hopping.

"Do you want help?"

All his concentration occupied by not falling over, Terrorsaur hadn't heard Optimus approach. He clung to the wall and scowled. He didn't detect any 'please say no; I only asked because it's expected in a truce' in the Maximal's tone. Still: "What would you expect in return?"

Optimus looked puzzled. "Nothing."

Terrorsaur took another hop. "Then what would you get out of it?" Hop. "No one does anything for no reason." Hop.

"Are all reasons selfish?"

"Yes. You'll say you're just doing it to be kind." Hop. "And I'm supposed to go, 'Oh, why have I been fighting Maximals? They're so nice!'" Hop. "Or maybe it just makes you feel superior to extend charity to a wounded enemy." Hop.

Optimus thought that over. "You've already done work that benefits us. You did testing on the commlinks and fixed a jamming tower," he tried.

"You lent me a library datapad already. I won't be indebted to you."

The Maximal gave up and left, which was a relief and a surprise - Terrorsaur thought Optimus would be pushier about it.

Predacons were a relatively recent part of Terrorsaur's life but he'd immediately felt at home with them. It helped that they hated Maximals, but, more than that, Predacons made sense.

A Predacon wouldn't offer to help, not in a situation like this. Megatron was right - a Predacon had to be self-reliant. It was a compliment, really, another reminder that Terrorsaur had been fully accepted as one of them. Waspinator would help but the rules were different for partners. Helping the other was ultimately helping oneself - survival chances increased with a loyal partner. Inferno would help as well but Inferno was a mobile etiquette disaster. At least she fell under the general heading of 'wingmate' so any fussing she did over Terrorsaur or Waspinator was mostly acceptable.

Airazor had helped him back to the Axalon when he'd first twisted his ankle because she knew there would be trouble if she abandoned him. That made sense - she helped him because it benefitted her.

Optimus offering to help him in the corridor for no reason? He must be up to something, maybe gathering little debts to spring later.

Prima was not entirely alone, for no Cybertronian is ever alone so long as Primus sings and dreams under their feet, but Prima was the only Cybertronian.

Prima was of the substance of Cybertron, firstbuilt of a god, and life and power flowed through him. He reached down and drew a form out of the land, a matched companion, but while the life of Cybertron flowed through it, the Automaton had no soul.

Prima showed Cybertron to the Automaton, and the Automaton would look, and listen, and even reply. For a time this was enough - Prima could share the land he loved and the Automaton was as enthusiastic about the world as Prima was.

Eventually Prima realised that the Automaton had no true thoughts of its own, that it was only a mirror to Prima's moods. It did not care about the things Prima showed it, it only echoed Prima's excitement. It had no opinions of its own, no ideas to share. The mere sight of it began to bring Prima pain, to mock his loneliness, but Prima could not bring himself to send it away or destroy it because even a mockery is better than nothing.

Prima's pain became great enough that it permeated the dreams of Primus. The vast mind roused itself to consciousness and reached out to His creation and asked, Why do you treat this living statue as a companion?

I have been lonely, Prima explained. A mortal needs mortal company, someone outside themself to share thoughts and know reality. I cannot do this with You, for I am a piece of Yourself.

And Primus understood, because He and Prima were one, and Prima's loneliness flowed through Him. So Primus dreamed a spark for the Automaton ...

"Where is Waspinator?"

The sudden voice jolted Terrorsaur out of the story. He looked up from his seat on the packing crate at a large red blur, realised his eyes were leaking for some reason, and dragged his sleeve across them. Inferno came into focus, glaring down. "I haven't seen her since you took her away this morning," Terrorsaur complained.

Inferno loomed over him. "She abandoned her duties. Where is she?"

"Like I know. I have a hard enough time keeping track of Waspinator even when I'm mobile."

Order to interrogate him completed, Inferno shifted from Megatron's enforcer to Terrorsaur's wingmate. She bent down to look at him more closely and took his chin in one hand to tilt his head to inspect him better. "I thought only your ankle joint was damaged, not your eyes." She wiped away a bit of the fluid with her fingers, then let him go.

Terrorsaur rubbed his sleeve across them again. "They don't hurt. It's probably just another stupid organic thing that doesn't make sense."

Inferno sniffed at the liquid on her fingers, then, in a test that never would have occurred to Terrorsaur, tasted it. "Coolant," she decided. "Are your eyes overheated?"

"I ... guess they do feel warmer than usual. My whole face does."

She nodded and stepped back. "We are already outnumbered - you must tend to yourself. My orders are to find Waspinator." With that, Inferno turned sharply and marched out.

Terrorsaur returned his attention to the library datapad and immediately closed the story, angry at it for upsetting him, angry at the Maximals for writing it that way. The version of The Forging of the Automaton that he knew, the version he had learned from Decepticon artists, was that Prima had created the Automaton out of godlike vanity, not loneliness ...

... Wait. Armature had the Maximal versions of these stories. I read them over and over because there was nothing else to do. Why is this the first time I've seen this one? Armature's file of these myths was missing this story - it just jumps to the next one, after the Automaton was sparked. Was it just an abridged version or did Armature delete it? Why would he ...?

He thought the answer before he could stop himself: Because it made him feel what I did just now.

Terrorsaur took the thought, crumpled it up into a ball, kicked it to the corner of his mind where he put everything that he didn't like to think about, and selected the biography of some Maximal scientist he'd never heard of to read instead.

The cargo bay's outer doors opened a megacycle later. Terrorsaur glanced up, expecting a Maximal or maybe Inferno again, and was surprised to see Waspinator. Double-surprised since Waspinator was carrying an armload of flowers. He sat up from his slouch, careful of his injured ankle. "Inferno was looking for you earlier."

"Waspinator decided that Waspinator deserved a break, so she waited until no 'bot was looking and ran." She dropped the flowers in a messy pile on Terrorsaur's crate.

"You snuck out and you didn't come here?" Terrorsaur demanded. She'd obviously been free for a while to collect up that bouquet.

"Would have been first place Megatron looked," said Waspinator.

It was, wasn't it? "So you went outside and picked flowers instead."

"Yes," said Waspinator, impervious to or ignoring the snarky tone. "Terror-bot stuck inside so Waspinator brings some of outside inside."

Gratitude was not something that came easily to Terrorsaur. Instead he said, "You'd better get back to Megatron before he comes looking for you himself."

Waspinator nodded and left, familiar enough with her partner to know her efforts were appreciated.

He'd wanted her to stay - for himself, someone to keep him company and make getting around easier. Also, if he was honest, for her - sending her back to Megatron was sending her straight to a punishment. But, he knew, less punishment in returning willingly than if Megatron had to have her found and dragged back. At full strength, Terrorsaur would have risked Megatron's anger. Injured, he couldn't stand by Waspinator, only try to keep her from getting into worse trouble.

Terrorsaur picked a flower out of the pile, a bright pink blossom with petals like a tube had been split and folded back in five pieces. The stem was woody, the end jagged where Waspinator had hacked it with a knife. The leaves were long and narrow, smooth glossiness segmented by rigid veins. He saved the petals for last. Flower petals were a softness he had nothing to compare to. The surface wasn't smooth but it felt smooth, like the softness extended just beyond the petal's physical boundaries. Yielding and bendable and, if he was gentle, stiff enough to return to its original position. He sniffed at it cautiously - some flowers had odours so strong they were unpleasant - but this one had barely any scent at all, just a faint sweetness.

He hadn't expected he would like flowers. His creator had been obsessed with the things and generally anything Armature liked, Terrorsaur hated on principle. Flowers were one of Armature's favourite subjects. The Gallery was full of sculptures of plants from all over the galaxy, painstakingly rendered to be lifelike in the finest detail.

On this planet Terrorsaur encountered real flowers for the first time. He had expected them to be hard like the sculptures and had been surprised to find them soft and scented.

That was why he liked flowers so much - because they were a joke on Armature. The sculptor had never seen a real plant in his life, working from pictures and holograms. Obsessive, hyper-realist, perfectionist Armature would forever create hard, scentless, imperfect flowers.

The cargo bay door opened as he was inspecting three small white blossoms on a branching stem. Terrorsaur flinched - it had to be Megatron this time - and found someone even less welcome when he looked up. "You again?"

Optimus shrugged. "Waspinator ran out earlier, telling us not to tell Megatron where she'd gone, and came back with a pile of plants. I got curious."

Terrorsaur felt his fingers tighten around the stem he was holding. "Did you tell him?"

"We couldn't possibly. We had no idea where she went," said Optimus, all innocence.

Terrorsaur grudgingly granted the Maximal a point for covering for his partner. Megatron must know by now what she did. Why haven't I heard from him yet? Shouldn't he shout at me for distracting Waspinator or complain that I'm far too coddled or otherwise make his displeasure known? Did he just shrug and accept that Waspinator gets these ideas in her head or is he up to something? Terrorsaur didn't think Megatron would go so far as to harm Waspinator, not in these unpredictable flesh bodies. "You must be having a really boring day if the big excitement is Waspinator doing something silly."

"She only brought flowers?" asked Optimus, inspecting the pile but - and he gained another point - not touching it.

"I like them."

"How much do you know about botany?" asked Optimus, and Terrorsaur remembered:I told him what was in Armature's library. He knows I used to read xenoflora catalogues because there wasn't anything else to do. He ... actually listened and remembered something I said?

... No, I'm not doing this again. He doesn't care, why would he, he just filed some possibly-useful information away. I've trusted Maximals before and it always goes wrong, Terrorsaur chided himself. Stay suspicious. Offer nothing. Aloud he said: "I can identify various types of flowers. That's all." So go away.

Optimus smiled. "That's more than anyone but me and Rhinox. Would you be interested in learning more?"

In Terrorsaur's short life, no one had ever offered to teach him anything before, not unless he counted Waspinator teaching him to play cards. In his experience, education was something to be stolen - read at odd hours, picked up through observation, practiced in secret. Optimus knew Terrorsaur craved power, but did he realise that Terrorsaur knew that knowledge was also a kind of power? Was it an honest offer or a calculated strike at a weak point? Terrorsaur's resolution wavered. "You want something."

"I do," Optimus admitted. "We've been collecting plant samples since we first arrived on this planet. We didn't have time to get much done with them before. Now botany is actually useful to our survival and there are new factors to consider. Rhinox and I are the only ones with any training in botany, we can't devote as much time to it as we'd like, and it would help us to have an assistant with specific training rather than a generalist."

"Someone to collect and catalogue samples so you can do the real work."

"That's science internship for you," said Optimus with a shrug. "Cataloging at least. It'll give you something to do while your foot heals. If you want something to do."

Terrorsaur narrowed his eyes, calculating. At least Optimus is honest that this is for his benefit, and he can't reap the full benefit without holding up his end of the bargain and teaching me. I might not come out ahead on this but at least I'll break even. This aids the Predacons as well as the Maximals. And I hate sitting around uselessly.

"All right," Terrorsaur said eventually. "You tell me what to look for, I'll find it. I want these flowers dropped off in my quarters first."

"Thank you," said Optimus, with a sincerity that hit Terrorsaur in a vulnerability he hadn't even known he had, and started to very carefully collect the pile of flowers for him.

To be continued ...

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