Back To You

Chapter 19: Revelations

Hotshot stared up at the ceiling, optics barely fixated on the cube he was tossing and catching over and over while a single thought crossed his numb processor: 'Booooored.'

He's been home for how long now? Four days? Huh, it felt way longer than that. He drew in a long breath and let out a yawn, despite not feeling even slightly tired.

One more day. He repeated in his mind. The most recent message from his Carrier had updated him on her whereabouts. She was wrapping up her current mission and would be back tomorrow morning. He was excited to see her, there was no question about that, but right now, as he was counting down the minutes of the hours with nothing to do, he was bored out of his mind.

He blinked at the cube he was tossing up in the air. He could play some more Cube, but he brushed the idea away. He'd played nothing but Cube for the past three days. As Cube eccentric as he was, even he had a limit.

He set his cube off to the side and lazily sat up. He scanned the room for something to do, but as his sapphires darted around the room, a dark shadow in the window caught his optic. "Huh?" he gasped and did a double take, but the silhouette was gone.

He stood there for a second longer, staring at the same spot until he finally came to his senses. "I need to find something to do." he thought aloud, assuming his boredom was starting to make him delusional.

He resumed his scanning and noticed his luggage by his berth. He hadn't properly unpacked yet. Everything he'd brought home was still crammed in his duffel bag. I should probably unpack. He shrugged.

He considered his options, glancing back and forth from his luggage to the cube on his berth. Eh, another game didn't sound too bad.

A few minutes later, Hotshot found himself running up a wall to reach the cube, but it dodged his servo and got away. The youngling rolled his optics and gave chase, mentally calculating the best way to catch it. He remembered a trick his Carrier knew. Some type of side barrel roll combined with a flip, but he could never perfect the landing.

Still, he decided to try it. With a running start, he jumped and propelled himself forward, successfully deceiving the AI-powered cube into thinking he was doing a mere flip. But before he tucked and rolled to complete the supposed flip, he quickly twisted his frame to the right and caught the Cube before it could come to its senses and fly away.

But his moment of victory was shortly lived. Still not knowing how to pull off the landing, his frame dropped to the floor with a painful thud.

"..Ow." he winced from the ground and lay there with no intention of getting up until a light buzzing sound from a nearby bench forced him to stand.

His datapad lit up with a group call. Right, he'd forgotten they agreed to call today.

"Hey, guys!" The static haze lifted on Hotshot's datapad, and Whirl's face was the first to appear on the screen, followed by Hoist, Medix, and Wedge.

"Hey, Whirl!" they greeted in return, some still shifting with their datapads to ensure they were in the frame correctly.

"How is summer break going so far for you guys?" She asked conversationally, and a chorus of replies ensued all at once:

"It's pretty good so far."

"Acceptable."

"Eh. It's good."

"It's okay."

"What are you all up to?" Hoist asked, partially looking up from whatever he was doing off-camera.

"Scrapbooking!" Whirl carefully lifted a journal to show them. Colorful scraps of paper covered the page and surrounded five headshots of each recruit, with their names neatly printed under each picture.