Author's note. Just another crazy plot bunny of mine that just had to be written. Short chapter to start with but the next one should be longer.

I should point out that the Airelbots aren't infected but since their brothers, the moment they do interface with another flyer, they'll be infected. And since they were build rather than born, their coding is no good to help find a cure.

Suggestions are very welcome, I need them.

Enjoy and please review.

Seekers were a very unique race of Transformers. They had their own culture, language and way of doing things. They existed high above the cities of Cybertron, dancing among the clouds. Many of them were capable of space travel, or even just making in into space.

They walked like the other Cybertroians but in an instant could take off, shooting straight into the air. They were the envy and the pride of Cybertron and they knew it. Seekers were usually a bit on the egotistical side but they had every right to be.

They were warriors, they had a natural ability for fighting, using their grace in the sky to full perfection. Other were forced to spend Orns learning to move like they did, but hardly any of them could reach the same speed of a Seeker.

Of course, Seekers had weakness and there were plenty of things that ground Mechs were better at. For instance, lock a Seeker in any kind of underground room and they just couldn't cope. Unless there was a way to escape to the open air, they'd be reduced to quivering wrecks.

But this fact didn't bother them, underground was for ground pounders. They had no interest in what lay beneath the earth, only what was above it. They lived to fly, to soar and that's what they did. The feel of the wind on their wings was pure heaven.

There was another thing that separated Seekers from all the Transformers.

To put it bluntly, Seekers loved interface. And like flying, they couldn't live without it. They were capable of doing it anywhere, anytime. That included on the ground, in the air and with more than one partner. It was said among grounders that once you did it with a Seeker, you never forgot it, no matter how many times you interfaced after that.

Because they were just that good.

Now since they were so interface mad, Sparklings were an evitable eventuality. All Seekers at some point in their lives had one Seerkerlet of their own. This was even true for the warrior elite, even if both creators were involved in training. The Sparklings simply went to crèche where they were looked after by dedicated carers, where the creators could visit when they wished.

Even when the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons began this didn't change. Sure, there were slightly less Sparklings born but this didn't worry anyone as numbers were still good. Both the Autobot and Decepticon grounders knew better than to try and interfere with this, they'd literally be slaughtered if this happened.

And so things continued more or less as normal in the interfacing and Sparkling department. Sparklings were born, raised and then trained to join their parents. It wasn't as good as during the Golden Age but it wasn't all that bad. As long as they had their Sparklings, everything was fine.

But then everything changed.

About a million or so years into the War, an epidemic hit the Seeker population. It didn't kill them, or even cripple them in a physical way. It was much worse than that. It affected their systems and turned them...infertile.

They couldn't have Sparklings anymore.

And what was worse was because of their vivacious appetites for interfacing, it soon spread until every single Seeker was barren. They all desperately tried to find a cure, anything to solve this devastating occurrence. But none was to be found.

The problem was that it had changed their systems in such an unbelievably subtle way that they just couldn't find the precise coding. Coding that they could change to reverse this virus that existed within them and save them all.

Because without new Sparklings and a War on, the Seeker population began to decrease steadily.

Strangely, the virus did not affect grounders even after they slept with a Seeker. However, the Seekers still couldn't get pregnant and neither could they impregnate the grounders. So there was nothing to be done there.

It was engrained within all Seekers to produce Sparklings and many fell into deep depression when they couldn't fulfil their programming. They all got urges at certain points but they couldn't do anything about it but mourn their loss.

The Seekers became harder and more vicious in battle so that all of Cybertron feared upsetting them. They still flew, interfaced and went about things as normal but the light had gone out of their lives that not even the open sky could cure.

The last of the Sparkling grew up and became infected themselves because they just couldn't stop themselves from interfacing with their fellow Seekers. And now there were no more Sparklings and only a few older Younglings. The crèches were empty and the caregivers had no one to look after any more.

When the two main armies of the Autobots and the Decepticons woke up on Earth, things hadn't changed on Cybertron. They were still all infected, every single Seeker and flyer on both Earth and Cybertron.

Except for one.

To be continued.

Author's note. In the next chapter, Starscream makes the discovery for the millennia, find out what that is next time. Until then.