The Shadow of Kaon

The Darkest hour

In the darkest hour of the night, when not even one soul was up in the Autobot base, a quiet, scraping noise rustled through the medbay as the seeker sat up on the berth. She lifted her servos, testing her movements by clenching her fists a few times, then looked around in the almost pitch-black room with a disgusted expression on her face.

With the old, rusty machines, it was surprising for her that their captors were able to survive this long. The dripping sink in the corner, the blurry remaining smear of the splashed Energon on the ground, and the big drawings on the walls about the cybertronian bodies... it was all too familiar to a situation she was in before.

"Tck... Pathetic..." Shadow scoffed with an unamused look while her wings shot up on her back.

She took a moment with closed optics to concentrate on her sister's slumbering mind, approaching slowly and gently poking her consciousness without waking her. To her satisfaction, Darkwing was deep in recharge. She felt how happy she was in the made-up dream, completely still and content in the little world Shadow created just for her, so she would be able to rest peacefully. It only took her a little bit of attention to keep up the little fantasy at first, but soon Darkwing's mind started to make the dream more colorful and detailed by herself.

Textures, lights, and other small things that she observed without her own knowledge seeped through her sister's memories, giving a more real feeling of those sweet dreams.

Shadow finally returned to her own side through the thinning connection, letting her little sister sleep. She deserved it after all, and while she recharged, she had the chance to follow up with her plan.

She opened her subspace and took out the datapad, but without caring about it she put it down and her hand returned inside again. She rummaged in it for a moment, her digits seeking out the thin crevices between her inner plates, then as she found what she searched for, she flinched from the pain.

The crazy femme pried open her own insides with her sharp digits.

She only lifted one of the plates and reached behind it, and when she pulled out, there was a handful of little gadgets in her palm.

Screws, bolts, thin wires, and a small and a bit scraped motherboard were illuminated in the light of the deep red of her optics, only getting enough light to be recognizable to her.

Shadow smirked at the sight, putting her treasures down on the berth next to her cautiously to not make too much noise, then glanced down to her other servo, which was still cuffed to the berth.

She tugged at the restrain for a second before she did a painful movement and unnaturally twisted her servo around until a little square-shaped thing fell out of her sleeve. The femme caught it mid-air, lifting it to her eye level while the smile on her face only grew.

Between her digits, a pink little phone laid, one that was originally owned by that female human youngling.

It was not difficult for her to snatch it away, but it was still surprising that the children didn't even notice the missing of it until they left to go back to their homes. It only took a half moment for Shadow to change control with Darkwing and instead of leaning to the datapad to write in another set of her scribbling, she moved just a little bit further and made the mobile vanish from the table, while the smaller kid was occupied with helping, and the bigger played on that torturingly sounding instrument.

Her sleeve, that tiny bit of gap between her wrist joint and her outer part of armor was the smallest, but safest she could put it without them noticing, and with only the slight disadvantage of how she had to take it out.

But it was worth it.

Shadow opened the phone to see if it got damaged when she squeezed it in and to her luck, it was nothing serious.

Only a thin crack appeared on the screen, showing the dozens of missed calls and messages on it, with the blurry, pixely background. With one move, she pried open it on the edges and took apart the insides of the phone, putting everything down next to her side just like she did with the things she took out from her subspace. Soon, every part of the device was beside the femme in neat rows, divided into useable and unusable components. She stared at the memory card for a moment, turning it between her digits back and forth before she put it in the unusable pile too, watching her little collection with satisfied pride.

She finally had everything to make her plan work.

Shadow stole the unnecessary components one by one since the day Darkwing started working on the groundbridge. A wire here, a bolt there, only taking things when she knew they wouldn't notice it immediately, but even if they would find those pieces, she was sure they wouldn't know what she wanted with them.

Suddenly, a reflection of her own red optics caught Shadow's attention on the edge of her sight. She reached out her hand toward the datapad and lifted it so she could see the dimmed contours of her own frame on its surface. She tilted her helm to the side, turning left and right, as her gaze was glued to the familiar face before her like a cockatoo with a mirror, while her expression slowly changed from the maniac grin into a more neutral one.

Their big round optics, which were always so full with life with her sister, were now clouded almost unrecognizably, and their dermas, which should have been identical, were just as different too. The only thing that connected them were the dark circles under their eyes, showing the exhaustion their body went through in the last weeks.

Shadow's wings lowered bit by bit as she continued with her thoughts.

Was it her face, or Darkwing's?

They were two sides of one coin after all for so long, sharing every bit of their life from the start without the smallest exceptions. They were one. Day and night, love and hate, body and mind... they were more together than any other cybertronian would ever be, stronger and better than anybody else from their kind. She believed it. No...

She knew it.

The femme shook her helm to escape from the shadows of her own mind and dropped back the datapad to the berth, turning her attention toward the work she had to do while her wings returned to their high-placed positions too.

There was no time to waste on foolish thoughts.

Hellooooo my dear little readers! 

As I can see, Shadow is planning something big, so be ready for the incoming events my sweeties! By the way, I think some of you already found it, but The Shadow of Kaon is on instagram and youtube too, with shorter little animations I made, and fellow arts from my other OCs. If you like my work you can follow me there too.