Series: The Ghost Unit
Title: Callsign - Strength (9)
Setting: IDW Transformers, inspired by the "What's Wrong with a Little Destruction" 'verse by ajremix
Note: Many thanks to rexlapinii and ajremix for beta-ing!

Building the Team: Callsign - Strength
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."
~ Helen Adams Keller

Being touched was a bad thing. It wasn't anyone's fault, really. He had always suffered when adjusting to new sensors, and each upgrade meant previously unknown levels of torture as he tried to adapt to higher levels of sensitivity and sensation while everyone around him shrugged and went on, most not even trying to understand what was really going on. The other fliers usually shunned him, most staying away to avoid a reminder of something which could just as easily have happened them, though some did so merely not to remind him of what he could never have. The few mechs who did understand generally sympathized and tried to do what they could to make things easier for him, but there were also others who mocked him or sought to take advantage of his condition. In the end, there was only so much anyone could do and ultimately he learned his lesson well.
Being near others was a bad thing. Being touched made it worse.

Being a flier, created and built with an indelible love for the sky, he could of course never, ever give up flying. So it became a simple routine - one he perfected over time through much practice and through the use of his oft-abused sensors. Avoid other bots. Keep to areas rarely used by others. Find safe places to occupy whenever needed. Stay up high. Always have an escape route. Eventually he came to be known only whenever others mentioned him, for the mech was rarely if ever seen at all unless one knew what to look for. His missions were limited despite the fact that his sensors surpassed any other fliers. It was those very sensors' liability that made it so.

The flier didn't expect to find another mech on his roof, one day - a large, condensed looking combat type that nearly startled him right off the building he was using as his latest hideout. The other mech said nothing, letting him recover his composure and not commenting nor looking at him oddly for sidling around the edges of the area and staying as far away as possible from him. That was enough for the flier to not launch himself off the edge right away. Barely. He berated himself for staying, for wondering why someone would seek him out and finally despaired at himself for still needing others when others never needed him. The skittish flier waited, the breeze grating across his flight sensors like so many particles of sand during a desert storm. And then he moved once more, edging around the other mech crabwise as the other shifted and walked slowly, until they had traded spots.

"Is that better?" The question startled him badly and he would have likely tripped over his own limbs if he hadn't trained himself to not move when surprised so, in order to avoid even greater pain than what he usually had to go through. He repeated the question to himself silently and stared ahead at the other mech, not saying a word until he suddenly caught on, straightening up slightly from his hunched position. They had exchanged places. He was now in the usual spot he preferred on this roof - the one with no air currents, no dust particles floating about. The ache registering from his sensors was at its lowest. That was why the intruder had moved - to allow him a respite from the wind which any other flier would have wanted to stand in, when not in flight. The surprise was enough for the flier to tilt his head to the side in a silent question, wondering who this mech was that he understood why one like him sought out places such as these. High above, yet grounded. Near the wind, but not in it.

"Your sensor management programs are warped and no amount of patching has nor will ever resolve the issue. As a result your sensors put you through constant, crippling pain. But you love flying. You're afraid they'll take it away from you and try to tell you it's for your own good. They've tried before. If you're up high and always ready to take to the first air current, you can get away from anyone as quickly as you need to in case they try again. You can make sure, no matter what, that no one takes the sky from you." The mech paused for an instant, letting every implication of his last statement sink in.

The flier shifted his weight slightly, body angled towards the nearest ledge even as he listened to every word spoken. Sensors adjusted minutely, panels moving in ways they weren't meant to in order to avoid any wayward gust of wind or speck of dust whirling in from around the corner of a wall.
"You think no one needs you. That you have no purpose. No task to fulfill. No place of your own."

With a twitch, the flier retreated further into the shadows, shifting restlessly, panels flexing in the unmoving air. The whine of servos protesting constant pain, a sound he had long ago learned to filter from his audios, resonated in the small enclosed space.

"You're wrong." The mech lifted one large hand, clasping an incongruously colored, pearly white data card. He placed it on top of one of the many rails lining the ledges of the rooftop, balancing it there carefully. "My team needs you. Without you, I don't think we'll be nearly as good as we need to be." He removed his hand from the data card, and took a step back. "Everything you need to contact me is on that card." Without a further word the mech left, greens and browns fading to unseen in the shadows leading to the lift on the far side of the roof.

The flier stared from the cubby for a long time, looking at the data card. He'd learned long ago that other bots meant pain. That as much as he loved it, flying would only ever hurt. That the only surcease from agony rested in a lesser pain which could only be found where nothingness existed. When he did not fly.

The wind brushed across the roof and the data card wavered. Another gust of wind sent it leaning slowly to the side, until it slipped from the rail guard and toppled into nothingness.

Reaching out, the flier rushed from the safety of the darkness and flung himself over the edge.