𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐮𝐦 - A Transformers Story

Background Noise Core

"That was so hard," Navia complained as the trio walked from the high school to the base. "Today was so long and boring," She added and hopped over one of the large tree branches. Maria followed in pursuit and jumped over the tree log before catching up to her:

"Ugh," Maria groaned in response to Navia's complaints, and allowed herself to relax for a moment. It was just like every time she had walked home with Navia and Lola. And routine was a good thing.

"I know. I just want to crash," Navia typed into a metal pad that was hidden under a rock panel disguised into the wall of the cave. Maria didn't know the password. That really hurt.

"Same," Maria agreed with the sentiment. She was exhausted both physically and mentally. All she wanted to do was scale the pole up to Shockwave's lab table and play on the XBOX he had hooked up after her complaints.

The cave door came sliding open and the three embarked down the faintly illuminated hallway. Navia always told Starscream that he was "making the place emo" and that if he didn't change it up then she would give him an "emo haircut".

"Do you think he will know?" Report cards had been given out in third period and Navia had sent an SOS text to the group chat saying, quote, "Starscream is going to kill me when he sees this!"

While he would claim it was to make sure she graduated and got out of the base, Maria prided herself on perceptiveness. She thinks she can read people pretty well, at least in her eyes she can.

"Not if we don't tell him right away," Maria responded. Her own report card was nothing special, yet nothing absolutely horrendous that it was noticeable. She felt as she always did: too stupid to be smart and too smart to be stupid. A painful average.

"Exactly. He won't know, how would he know to check?" Navia smiled as they entered the main room of the base. It was filled with furniture for both humans and Cybertronians and with ladders to the cabinets for the humans to climb up. Each cabinet had little lawn chairs that had been carried in by Lola and set up as a joke originally. They now just reside there.

"Report cards! Report cards! Guess who got their report cards?" As soon as Lola sang those words both Navia and Maria turned to glare at her as if to say "Seriously?" Navia looked like she was about to both cry and drive herself into a spree of panic.

Maria wanted to smack Lola (nicely) for the sake of Navia. She knew that Navia was failing math but would Starscream understand? Likely not.

"Oh really?" Starscream entered the room on cue and looked down at the three before focusing in on Navia.

"Before you read it," Navia handed the paper over Starscream and had a sheepish smile present on her face. "Math is really hard."

Maria didn't know Navia's exact grade. But she knew it was a bad one. Starscream's red eyes scanned the paper before he turned to Navia.

"I may not know human school, but I know you're failing 'math'." Starscream threw the paper on the Cybertronian sized cabinet. "Even I could do that!"

"Can you?"

"I led the entire seekers! I can do some silly human 'math'!" Starscream looked over Navia then shook his head. "You said you would pass math. Does this look like passing?!"

"No! But the teacher is terrible! Blame her!" She crossed her arms aggressively and shook her head. "I bet you wouldn't last a day in the asylum that they raised me!"

"You were orphaned and unless you want to be orphaned again, you're going to pass math." Starscream turned back to a panel on the wall.

"Are you saying you're my dad?" Navia asked and stood right behind his foot.