Shadow Striker’s conflicting crushes on Nickel and Arcee—one transformer who despises organic life and the other who loves it—illustrate the growing conflict within herself about her place in the Decepticons.
I am excited to finally share this fic I wrote for the @womenintransformers Femslash Week. The prompt was Admiration/Hatred. Thank you to @vynxwave for beta reading this! This may be my favorite of all the TF fics I've ever written, and is one of the only times I've written continuity soup.
What if the fact that Shadow Striker isn't present in the Decepticon High Command after Cyberverse had an intrinsic explanation? What if being such a high-ranked soldier has inured her to the reality of being part of the Decepticons? Mind the tags, I'm sure by the title you can tell this is a twisted story.
Also, this is the current body I pictured for Shadow Striker and describe in the fic, it’s the Hot Wheels Bone Shaker recolored:
Image description: Shadow Striker in her asymmetrical colors from Cyberverse, but with a new vehicle-mode: a modified Ford Model T that is open-roof, has a red exposed engine, large red exhausts, and has been turned into a pickup. The front of the car that becomes her chest in robot-mode has a metal skull between the headlights.
absolute travesty that theres only like 4 total shadowcee posts on this website but by god as soon as i learn how to draw robots thats all going to change
Here’s a fic I wrote for the TF Rare Pairing Fest! This one is Shadowcee (Shadow Striker/Arcee) from Cyberverse, set post-canon with the two of them out on a trip together!
October 22: Butterfly/Waiting for the Great Pumpkin
As they raced down the Earth highway, it looked like they were speeding past a sea of green. Shadow Striker could take or leave this planet with its plants, mud, or snow, but now that the peace everyone had fought for was finally vaguely stable, she had been excited to spend more time with Arcee, a friend of hers who had bucked the trend of being stupidly brave enough to die for a cause. Based on how the two of them had blasted holes into the Quintessons together, when Arcee had suggested they take this trip, Shadow Striker had expected to sit down on some rocky cliffs in the woods to chat about firearms and swap gun maintenance tips. Even when it became clear that Arcee was going to enthusiastically photograph a bunch of organic creatures, Shadow Striker had been hoping for some decently-sized predators.
Instead, Arcee slowed down, then transformed. She looked left and right, then pointed exaggeratedly at a sign in the median. "Look, Shadow Striker! We made it! It says this is the monarch butterfly habitat!" She walked to the side of the road and motioned for Shadow Striker to follow. "I can see all the milkweed growing over here, which is the host plant."
Shadow Striker stomped her way over. She could see the same white fluff attached to the green plants that had been clogging up the air. "That's what all this fluff that we drove through is from? That got all over me?!" She scowled.
"Yes!" Arcee clapped. Her eyes were pressed into little happy crescents.
Shadow Striker suppressed the urge to gag. "What even is a butterfly, anyway?"
"Do you see these insects with the orange wings with the black veins?" She pointed out one that was flying by.
It did not fly like a jet, helicopter, or spaceship, instead alternating between fluttering its wings and gliding. Once she saw one, she suddenly could see many in her peripheral vision. They looked weak and their color and motion reminded Shadow Striker of embers that would break away from a blazing fire, and she hated it.
Arcee kept talking: "Of course, this is their adult form, they don't hatch looking like this. They begin as larvae called caterpillars and need to eat the host plant to grow larger and larger, shedding their skin until they're big enough to shed one more time and pupate to become the adult butterfly, which is their final form. It's so interesting, the patterns for all the body parts they don't have as larvae already exists in them encoded in imaginal discs—oh, here's a caterpillar!" She pointed out a plant.
It was so small, Shadow Striker could not even see it without increasing the magnification of her circular eye. The thing looked disgustingly squishy and bright, with bands of color and black things attached to the front and back that looked like tentacles. "Am I supposed to care about this... pathetic little thing that can only transform once?" She was the leader of the Decepticons! She did not have time for this.
Arcee turned to look at her. "Well, I can't say that you're supposed to care about monarchs, but I care about them not just because every life form on Earth adds something to its environment in a vast, beautiful web, but also because I think they're gorgeous," she said. How shallow. Arcee continued, "Oh, and sometimes, I think of them as a symbol of being trans!" She grinned. "Actually, I think butterflies in general are a great symbol for that, and so do many other people. Moths as well... this isn't even getting into the sexual variations of these insects either, hold on, let me show you a photo of a rare gynandromorph—" She brought out her little pink phone.
Shadow Striker reached out and pushed the phone away, shoving her way into Arcee's personal space, blocking out the sunlight. She tapped her claws against Arcee's chassis. "Why would you feel represented by a cliché like that?!" she snapped. "What, just because it changes, you think that means it's like you? We're transformers, changing is what we do anyway! Not to mention how small and weak it looks! Who would want that as a symbol?!" She scowled, and her scowl only deepened as she thought more about this. "Imagine just completely changing form once and being stuck that way until you die, and it being out of your control, just running on instinct. If you pick a thing that does that as a symbol, I bet people are just going to think something is wrong with being who you are. They'll just understand you less!" Shadow Striker did not have to imagine what it was like to go through a transformation like that. Even after everything she had done for Decepticons and Autobots alike, she still had to deal with people trying to help her, and she remembered how horrified that other Megatron had been when he had seen what she looked like.
Arcee put her hands on her hips and looked Shadow Striker dead in the eyes. "Why would I stop enjoying something that makes me happy because of what people who would hate me would think?" Because Arcee was in shadow, her own eyes looked just as bright as the blue sky above.
Shadow Striker felt her face heating up. She brought her hand back. "Never mind." Arcee was really something else. "Tell me more about those 'imaginal discs.'"
