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G
Bayverse
Jolt
no warnings except probably a ton of canon/characterization fail! ALL MY FAULT

Written for

konabluemustang who I got to meet for like 5 seconds at Botcon :c but who wanted some Jolt and Butterflies. I wanted to make it cracky, but...wtf.

A/N Selon le wiki, if Jolt does not discharge electricity through his whips, he begins to emit an energy field. That he can discharge as a burst weapon. Here…we play with that idea. This is also my first time writing Jolt, who is an Autobot, and I suck at Autobots, so…brace yourselves!!!!

******

Fraggin’ stupid, Jolt thought. He roared around the Diego Garcia atoll as the sunset blazed angry and orange beside him. Optimus was making a big mistake leaving him behind. Sure, he’d gotten a little…overzealous. But it wasn’t his fault the Las Vegas grid went down—he hadn’t designed it to be so fragile! And seriously, what was worse, a temporary blackout or having Bludgeon run rampant through the city?

Yeah, he’d tried all this common-fraggin’-sense and it had gone nowhere. Sure, Sideswipe agreed with him, but he didn’t have much pull. Especially after what he'd done in Uruguay. Ironhide had just…glared at him. And Optimus’s famous patience seemed a bit frayed as he had tried to explain to Jolt that they had to, you know, NOT destroy human cities. Yeah? Someone might want to tell the Decepticons that.

He came to a stop at Eclipse Point. The blue waters lapped at the white sand on the shore, a stark but gentle contrast with Jolt’s mood. What now? Turn around, and crawl, tailpipe between tires back to base, or drive through and back along the uneven U of the atoll. That was his choice. Both meant going backward. Retrograde. Going over ground already gone over. Stagnating. Pointless motion.

He pushed back, standing up. The cool ocean breeze brushed against his blue armor, sneaking through the seams, caressing his heated control cables, even while the sun, a reddening disk setting behind him, stretched warm fingers over the water, the backplates of his armor. Warming his back, cooling his front: Strange place, this Earth. Full of contrasts like this.

He stepped forward, off the sun-bleached macadam, onto the brilliant sand, so fine it felt like powder. It slipped under his footplates, making walking an uneven enterprise, as he made his way down to the shoreline. He could see the three islands as sunset-lit humps in the glittering water, and then, if he stretched to his optics’ max range, the other end of the atoll. As though Diego Garcia was a broken ring.

Nowhere to go but back. Nothing to do but fume as they left him behind, as too dangerous. As too destructive. Too much.

Frustration blazed in him, hotter than the sun at his back, or the afternoon-baked sand under his footplates. Didn’t they know he needed it? Not the way Sideswipe did, who needed combat to steady himself, to vent his darkness. Jolt needed it to discharge his excess charge. Needed it, at a systems level.

The sun set, the sky turning purple and gold before subsiding to inky tropical indigo, and Jolt held himself still. Simply because either option for movement was a surrender.

His armor glowed, softly, the pale blue of excess charge shimmering across it, casting dancing lights across the sand like a gentle blue flame. And for a long time, it was the only thing that did move: the ocean breeze, without the sun to warm the water, died , frondy leaves stilling in the air, the ocean’s waves a quiet restless murmur like an undercurrent. Stillness with motion. Restlessness undercutting peace.

And then, the butterflies came: orange and purple and white, fluttering around him as if dancing, wings bright shields of color and motion, defying--no, that was too angry a word--ignoring gravity. They swirled around him, like petals from a strange, wild flower, drawn to his shimmering blue electrical field. Motion, frantic and restless, and yet, somehow still beautiful, still peaceful. Never still and yet serene.

Jolt raised one hand up, allowing charge to gather there, watching with a sudden wonder, his anger dissipated, dissolved, as the colorful creatures gathered. Their wings brushed against his field, a thousand soothing touches.

And as soon as they had come, they flew off, the petal cloud shimmering into the night, seeming directionless. Not flying like airframes, with a pure, precise joy of vector, but with a strange wandering happiness, without rush, without anxiety. They had no place to go, and felt…no worry about it. Then why did he…?

Because they belong here, and you don’t, he thought. He kicked his feet as he made his way back up to the road, the powdery sand glittering in the light from his field.

But they’d come, and they’d danced around him, welcoming him, kissing at his energy field, not destroyed, not harmed, accepting him. And their flight was uneven, not straight and clean, but it went somewhere. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

pft. and you say you can't write Autobots.

this was fantastic, hon. reading through it, i could feel the built up tension and anger and then they way it just ...let go when the butterflies arrived. was great. ^_^

It was interesting to write...I think Jolt and I were both feeling each other out during this. He's apparently a bit of a hothead and a jerk in baycanon....I can work with that. ^^

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