Seem is staying with the Autobots, for a while. I don't think they're used to having such a young recruit in their midst, though - sometimes you forget exactly what their capacity IS...
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“Come on, Seemo. Step lively!” Sideswipe called cheerfully down the slope. “Good job this is just training, if it was a real situation we’d have passed you on the way back, by now.”
“Seemo?” Sunstreaker folded his arms and arched one eyebrow. “Slowmo, more like.” He followed the line of his twin’s gaze down the slope, to the small blue figure still toiling up it. “Aren’t you meant to have Seeker dynamics in your code? I never saw anyone so slow!”
Slipstream finally crested the ridge, trailing far behind them, dragging his feet. “I have got seeker code,” he agreed, helpfully. He felt a little dazed. “I just don’t have seeker engines yet.”
Sideswipe grinned and gave him a friendly slap on one shoulder. “Come on then. We’re almost there.”
“How much further is it?” Slipstream stood and watched the two bigger bots set off again, waiting for his gyroscopes to catch them all up. It felt like they were still halfway down the hill behind him.
“Why; tanks getting low?”
“A bit.”
“Better get used to it! Cons won’t wait around for you.”
Huh. That was a good point – Decepticons could attack them at any time, and he had to be ready for it. But he was getting a little low, too. The Twins had intercepted him in the Rec room, barely two breems after he came in from basic weapons-handling with Ironhide; he’d had time to gulp down half a flask of energon before being hauled off on this latest exercise. “Terrain management”, they’d called it. It turned out to be more of a hike through the woods, over a rough, mountainous landscape the like of which he’d never even imagined, let alone travelled over.
Slipstream carefully partitioned the last few drops from his secondary fuel tank back into his first, then ramped up the output from his fusion core. Next time he’d make sure he had something in his subspace for when his tanks ran dry. Or bigger tanks. Or something. He could maybe offline some gyroscopes or something, it didn’t feel like they were even online in the first place anyway. He could go for hours, yet, surely!
He squared his small shoulders and set off in the Twins’ wake, doggedly following them along the trail and trying to keep up, copying their lazy, confident stride across the dirt. He wasn’t sure how they managed to keep this sort of pace up, especially not on ground that shifted and lurched beneath them all. It was almost like they didn’t notice it was even moving.
Slipstream tottered unsteadily into a boulder, grabbing for it with both hands. “Can-can we stop a mo-moment?” The track was rotating in front of his face; if he didn’t hang on with both hands he was surely going to fall off it. “Just while I get-get my balance.”
Sideswipe turned to glance back at him. “…you okay, kid?”
Slipstream smiled and nodded… then the ground leaped up and punched him in the face. Bastard.