Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers.
(A/N: Set a few months after 'Rebirth')
The Greater Good
Chapter One: Lost Memories
Kup sighed as he entered the darkened chamber that was once the central hub of the Ark. Though he hadn't spent as much time here as some of his other Autobot comrades, he had still become fond of the place when he had been transferred to Earth during Autobot City's construction. Although, he wasn't sure if it was the Ark itself or the mechs who lived in it that had made it such a memorable place to be.
The Autobots certainly helped. He looked over to the smashed remnants of Teletran One, the once cutting edge computer now barely alive. Before it sat Goldbug and Bluestreak, their legs crossed in front of them as though they were human children. They were talking and laughing quietly about something as they worked on an open panel at the base of Teletran One.
"How goes the file transfer, lads?"
Goldbug looked up at the grey Autobot, still smiling beneath his faceplate. "Shouldn't take too much longer. Teletran took quite a beating, but we should get most of it."
The older Autobot nodded, satisfied. "Good. Where's Hot Rod?"
"I think he's in the med bay with Jazz."
"Right. Tell me when you start the transfer."
"Yes, sir."
Kup turned away and let the two get back to their work. Once the motion had been approved to excavate the Ark, Optimus Prime had insisted that the original crew of the ship be the ones to do the excavating, being as they had such a history there. However, after an incident involving Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, and a rediscovered stash of energon paintballs, Optimus had seen fit to send some other Autobots to oversee the operation. Namely, Kup and Hot Rod.
Speaking of Hot Rod, the ageing Autobot couldn't be more impressed with the ex-Prime. Since the Nebulos crisis, the young 'Bot had taken on many more responsibilities. Of course, that didn't mean he didn't still act like the impatient, brash, rude and generally young Autobot he was known as before he became leader. In fact, some of the Lamborghini twins' paintballs had mysteriously vanished, and Kup suspected that Hot Rod had had a hand in that. Especially since Ultra Magnus had recently been bombarded with said missing paintballs.
Kup smiled. The Autobot City commander hadn't been particularly amused.
The door to the med bay slid open, or at least attempted to. Some of the Ark's systems had been damaged badly during the battle with Trypticon, and as a result, some parts of the ship wouldn't function correctly. For example, the doors. Kup grimaced and shoved the doors open.
The older Autobot surveyed the room. All things considered, it was in pretty good shape. Some of the walls were dented where rocks had collapsed on them, but other than that… pretty good. He continued to look around the room, and what few memories he had of the place rushing back to him.
He saw one of the beds, and could immediately see in his processor's eye Sideswipe fidgeting as Ratchet worked on his leg, grumbling the entire time. Occasionally, he would explode at Sideswipe to stop moving so damn much, but most of the time, it was just a constant low grumble.
Kup smiled at the memory as he continued to look around the room. There was a control panel on the far side with a large monitor above it, most likely to display Transformer scans. There, knelt in front of the control panel, was Hot Rod attempting to re-activate it, with Jazz on the other side of the room, digging through a large pile of rubble.
"How goes it, fellas?"
Jazz looked at him over his shoulder, pausing his work for a moment. "Hey, man. Rod's just tryin' to get that thing to work while I try and get some of Ratchet's old tools."
Kup nodded in understanding. He knew as well as Jazz did that Ratchet's tools were most likely damaged beyond repair or obsolete (it was the nature of Transformer medicine – a few astro-cycles after you've learnt everything about Transformer physiology, your knowledge becomes obsolete in favour of new, more efficient techniques). The tools were just for nostalgic value. After the moon bases were destroyed, this was almost all they had left of the Autobots who had been on board that shuttle.
"And… there!" The control panel sprang to life, and an old scan appeared on the screen. Hot Rod smiled in satisfaction. "Got it, Jazz!" he said, quickly getting to his feet and tapping away at the control panel.
"Nice goin', Rod! Now if I can just…"
Jazz pulled on a particularly large piece of rock that had collapsed in through the roof, but to no avail. Kup lightly jogged over.
"Here. Let me give you a hand… with… that…"
Kup reached down and grabbed the other side.
"Okay… now towards me… one, two, three, lift!"
With an almighty grunt from both mechs, they lifted the rock and shifted over in Kup's direction before dropping it on the floor.
"You guys got it?" Hot Rod asked, still tapping away on the control panel in front of him, his optics on the large monitor.
Kup looked over at Jazz, who smiled and shook his head.
"Yes. We got it, lad. Thank you for your concern."
"Uh huh…"
Hot Rod wasn't listening.
Kup's attention was drawn back to Jazz as he made a noise of delight. "Ah! There we go!"
Reaching into the rubble, the white and black mech grabbed onto something of a dull grey shade. He pulled as hard as he could, eventually pulling out the object and flying onto his back.
The older mech went over to Jazz as he lifted himself from the ground, dusting himself off.
"You get it?"
Jazz lifted up his prize for all to see, grinning. "Ratchet's tool box."
"Well, I'll be… I haven't seen this since… since you fellas left for Earth."
Although his visor was down, Kup could see the surprise on Jazz's optics. "Well, then, my man, you're in for a treat." He reached down and tried to open it. "If I can just get it open. Ratchet learnt not to leave his toolbox unlocked around here."
"The twins?"
Jazz nodded. "The Dinobots, too. 'Specially Swoop, since he became interested in Transformer physiology. I remember he tried to practice operations on recharging Autobots. I remember Prime hopping into the med bay one time and asking Ratchet if he'd seen his leg."
Hot Rod laughed from where he was working, though it became stifled halfway through. "Huh."
"Something wrong, m'man?"
"Uh… no, I've just found some old scans."
Jazz smiled and made his way over. "Well… put 'em up."
The younger 'Bot tapped a few buttons, and an x-ray image of Hound appeared on the screen, with his left arm joint out of alignment.
Hot Rod hissed. "Ouch."
"Not so much," Jazz said, shrugging. "'Specially considerin' he did it to himself."
The two gave him a questioning look.
"Nature rambles with Brawn. Hound thought it'd be nice an' peaceful." Jazz grinned. "He was wrong."
"Ah," they said simultaneously. Hot Rod turned back and brought the next image up. This one was labelled Ironhide. Hot Rod grinned.
"Even I remember this one. This is after I first arrived, and he was trying to stop me from racing around the Ark."
"Yeah, and you drive right over his foot," Jazz said, smirking.
"Hey, I liked my new alternate mode. It was cool being a car. Just… not cool for Ironhide."
Jazz laughed, and pointed to the control panel. "Next one, next one."
A few more buttons were pressed, and an image of Gears appeared on the screen, with nearly every joint that could be dislocated or broken being so.
Kup grimaced. "Now how in the inferno…?"
"That's what you get for tickin' off the Dinobots."
Hot Rod smiled, but couldn't hold back the wince that followed as he looked back at the scan. "Nasty."
"Yeah. There's a reason the Decepticons are so afraid of 'em, y'know."
Hot Rod punched a few more buttons, and static filled the screen. "Ah, come on, you piece of-"
He tapped away diligently on the computer, before taking a step back and kicking the side of the control panel. He checked the monitor to see if the image had returned, then went back to tapping on the control panel.
"It's too damaged. I think that-"
Kup leaned forward. "Nah. It's a file problem. See? There's a security firewall on some of them."
Jazz frowned beneath his visor. "Firewall?" He came forward, looking at the message on the screen. "Huh. That's weird."
"What?" Hot Rod asked, turning his head to look at him.
"Well… Ratchet never really put firewalls and stuff on his files. For one thing, he hated using computers in the first place without loads of passwords and stuff."
The ex-Prime scratched his chin contemplatively. "Maybe it's a leak over. I've heard of that happening with damaged systems."
The two older Autobots looked over at him incredulously.
"What? I know do know some computer stuff, y'know."
Kup cocked an optic ridge. "A 'leak over'?"
"Yeah," the flame coloured mech replied, nodding. "The computer can get confused about which files it's protecting and leave some classified ones unguarded. At least, in the older models like this one. You gotta remember, the Ark was away from Cybertron for a long time."
Kup nodded. "Right, right… so can you trace where the firewall originally was? Maybe we can switch it back."
"Don't think we can switch it back, but I should be able to trace it. Maybe I can do something when I get the original file."
Jazz frowned. "But isn't that classified stuff?"
Kup shrugged. "We aren't going to be reading much of it."
"And besides," Hot Rod added, tapping away on the console, "Kup and I have enough clearance to read it anyway."
After a brief pause, Jazz just nodded. "Fair enough. See you guys later. I'm gonna go see if someone can get this thing open," he said, lifting Ratchet's toolbox slightly.
Kup nodded. "All right. I'll see you later."
"Later, Jazz," Hot Rod threw in, glancing at Jazz as he did so.
"Later, guys." That black and white mech half danced out of the med bay, leaving the two alone.
"So where is it?" Kup asked, turning back to Hot Rod.
"It is…" he pushed another button. "…in room CA. Prowl's room."
The older mech nodded. "All right. Let's go."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kup lifted up another piece of rubble. Prowl's office had been hit pretty bad by Trypticon's attack.
"So, lad… how are things with you? Seems like awhile since I've seen you."
Hot Rod paused. "It's been a few months, Kup."
"Well, it's been a busy few months. Headmasters, Targetmasters, Scorponok… not to mention the Deceptions being banished to the furthest corners of the universe."
"Yeah… but how long do you think that's going to last? Galvatron seemed pretty damn Megatron-like the last time I saw him. How long do you think it would take Megatron to get back here?"
Kup smiled. "You've got to stop worrying so much. You're sounding more and more like Prime every day." He looked over at the younger 'Bot, who had his back to him. "While we're on the subject, I take it those fishing trips are proving a great success?"
"He's got the patience for it, that's for sure," Hot Rod muttered, lifting a piece of Prowl's desk and moving it aside. "Ah, here we go," he said, pulling out a large box labelled 'Datapads'.
Kup shook his head as he saw the label. "That lad took things much too seriously."
"Oh, and you don't?"
"Of course not. I know how to laugh at life. Prowl… not so much."
"You do not know how to laugh at life. Just the other day I made a great joke about how old you are, and you just scowled at me."
Kup scowled.
"Yeah, like that," Hot Rod said, pointing at his face.
"Just open the box."
The flame coloured mech shrugged. "Prowl would have laughed," he said in a sing-songy tone, looking down at the box and getting to work on the lock. He pushed a few buttons on the locking mechanism. A negative tone came from the box, and Hot Rod frowned.
"Need some help with that, lad?"
"No, I've got it."
He pushed a few more buttons. Another negative tone.
Kup smiled. "Now you, see, lad, this is funny. I can laugh at this."
This time, Hot Rod scowled. "Screw it."
The older Autobot looked over at his companion. "…'screw'…?"
"Earth expression. Ask Daniel." Hot Rod placed the box down on the floor and took aim with his wrist blasters, mentally pulling down his optic visor.
"Lad, what are you doing- Hot Rod!"
The younger 'Bot fired, and a thin, cutting laser beam came from one of the blasters, cleanly slicing the locking mechanism in half. The top of the box sprang open, and Hot Rod looked over at Kup innocently, giving him a puppy dog look.
"What? You didn't think I was gonna blast it open, did you?"
Kup just mumbled something about respect for one's elders, and reached into the box, pulling out a datapad and checking it for the tell-tale signs of encryption transfer that Hot Rod had earlier told him about on the way to Prowl's office. Parts of the file would be distorted or unreadable as a result of parts of the old firewall still remaining.
"You did think I was gonna blow it up! Oh, Arcee's gonna love this."
Kup smirked. "Now there's an interesting subject," he said, placing one datapad to the side and moving on to the next.
"What?" Hot Rod asked, sparing him a quick glance as he checked another datapad.
"Arcee."
"What about her?"
"What's going on with you and Arcee?"
"Nothing. Why?"
"I don't know. Just seems there might be something going on there."
"She's with Springer."
"Oh, so you are interested?"
"No, I just… I know what you're getting at."
"And what would that be?"
"You know."
"Dammit, lad, you're as cagey as Prime."
"I'll choose to take that as a compliment."
"It wasn't."
"I'll tell Prime you said that."
"Don't change the subject."
Hot Rod tossed a datapad to the ground. "There is no subject! There is nothing going on with me and Arcee, there never was anything going on with me and Arcee, and there never will be anything going on with me and Arcee. Okay? Okay."
"All right, all right." Kup got back to his datapad checking, as did Hot Rod. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much…" the older Autobot quoted, and the flamer coloured 'Bot looked up at him irritably.
"What?"
"Shakespeare. You really should read it sometime."
"I have. I know all about it. And I know what you just said. You think I've got something for Arcee."
"Well, don't you?"
"No! We're friends, that's all!"
Kup stared at Hot Rod for a few moments before getting back to his datapad. "Right…"
"Kup. There is nothing going on between me and Arcee. All right?"
Kup was silent.
"All right?"
The older Autobot laughed. "All right, lad. You know, you really should learn to laugh at life sometime, Hot Rod."
"Oh, ha, ha. We'll see how much you're laughing when I release the video recording I took of you during the Golden Age celebration."
"There's no way you can prove that was me."
"Oh, come on. Who else knows all the words to 'Primus and Unicron are Dancing in the Energon Lake'?" Hot Rod got back to his datapad. "And you looked so pretty in the pink, too…"
"All right, all right. Let's just get back to work, shall we?"
"I'm sorry. Are you conceding defeat?"
"Hot Rod. Datapad. NOW."
The flame coloured Autobot, grinning inanely, got back to his datapad checking. "Ah. Got it. Let's see…"
"What are doing, lad? We're just supposed to find the firewall and fix it, not go snooping around in Prowl's personal-"
"Oh, don't get your panties in a twist. I'm fixing it, but I need to go through it to check where it's already encrypted."
Kup frowned in confusion. "Panties…?"
"There. Done."
"Right. Good. Now that that's taken care of, how about we get back to work in the med bay?" Kup said, walking over to the doorway.
"Right, right…"
Hot Rod stood and walked over to the box and began piling the datapads into it. He paused, and an optic ridge shot up in curiosity.
"That's weird…"
"What?"
"There's… some kind of… weird thing at the bottom of the box. Like… another layer."
Hot Rod took out all the datapads, and Kup made his way over, his curiosity overriding his earlier impatience. Hot Rod pointed to the bottom of the box.
"See?"
Kup nodded. The bottom layer of the box was dented at the corner, revealing a small layer beneath.
"I'm not sure if we should be snooping around in this," Kup said. "That looks pretty personal if Prowl went to that many lengths to hide it."
Hot Rod pulled away the bottom layer, revealing a lone datapad. The ex-Prime took it out and held it in the light.
"Looks like it's got a processor scanner on it, too…" Hot Rod said, absent-mindedly. "Looks like it's out of commission, though. Must have been powered by Teletran or something."
"All the more reason to leave it alone, Hot Rod." Kup stood. "Put it back in the box and we'll take it with us to Cybertron."
"…woah…"
Kup looked over to see Hot Rod reading the datapad. "What the hell do you think you're doing, lad?" he yelled, making his way over to the younger 'Bot.
"… it's, a, uh… it's a…"
Kup snatched it off him and glanced at the contents subconsciously. He froze when he saw one word.
'Murder'.
That wasn't something that happened very much on Autobot ships. The only time Kup had ever heard of it happening was when CFS, 'Combat Fatigue Syndrome' kicked in. And besides, Kup would have heard about anything like this happening on the Ark.
He shook his head vehemently, picked up the box, and shoved it inside, along with all the other datapads. He tucked the box under one arm and marched out of the room quickly, Hot Rod pursuing.
"What are doing? We've gotta look into this!"
Kup stopped and whirled on his heel, jabbing an angry finger in Hot Rod's chest. "No we don't, lad. We shouldn't have been looking around in there anyway. This is something we don't get involved in."
He turned and continued on his way. The flame coloured Autobot paused for a moment, then came after Kup again.
"What do you mean, 'something we don't get involved in'? It's a-!"
Kup put up a hand as Hound walked by. He gave them a brief nod and a friendly smile. He probably thought it was just another one of their arguments. Hot Rod lowered his voice output to a whisper.
"This is a murder, Kup, and you are deliberately ignoring it!"
"Damn right, I'm ignoring it! This is none of our business."
"None of our business! You're the head of security for Cybertron, Kup! What if the murderer is still at large?"
"We don't know if Prowl caught him or not. The Ark crew are a tight bunch, lad. Maybe they kept it quiet."
"Well we won't know unless we check, will we?"
Kup paused. Hot Rod, seeing his hesitation, pressed on.
"Would you be able to live with yourself if someone else died because you didn't follow up on this?"
The older Transformer paused yet again. He sighed. "I must be going space crazy…" he said, shaking his head.
Hot Rod smiled and nodded. "All right. Where do you want to do this?"
"Let's go back to Prowl's office," Kup sighed, gesturing limply back the way they came.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"All right, here we go," Kup said, lifting up the datapad and starting off. "Prowl log, date…" He paused. "There are big chunks missing."
Hot Rod frowned and took the datapad. He turned it over and sighed. "It's been damaged." He turned it over again to continue reading. "We'll just have to read through it and see what we can pick up."
"Isn't there any way to fix it?"
"The only thing I can think of is to reconstruct it, but you'd have to take it to one of the big brains on Cybertron like Perceptor or Brainstorm."
"You want to take it up there, don't you?"
Hot Rod shrugged. "If we don't, we could end up leaping to the wrong conclusion."
Kup sighed as he shoved the datapad back in the box, being sure to place it at the bottom below all the others. "When the hell did you start making so much sense?"
"When you started laughing at life."
The older Autobot smiled, and the two made their way to the med bay to finish their work. Their joking was only a very thin façade, though. They were scared. Scared of what a murder within the ranks of the Autobots could mean.
Kup prayed to Primus it was something else. It had to be.
The Autobots of the Ark were heroes, not murderers.
And Kup would be damned if he went down in history as the one who proved it otherwise.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A/N: A few things, first of all. This doesn't really have any relation to my 'Mixed Feelings' story, other than the fact that Hot Rod and Optimus are going to become central characters in it. Also, while this is set in the Post-Movie universe, I'm going to be revisiting the pre-Movie universe quite a bit, so those of you who are more pre-Movie inclined, please stay on board – your favourites are going to be featuring in this heavily.
And if there's any of you who haven't seen 'Rebirth', don't sweat it. I'm not going to be referencing it heavily, and it has next to nothing to do with the story, except the use of a few Headmaster characters, like Brainstorm, for example.
I'd like to give a brief shout out to Maria Shadow, because I got the term 'Combat Fatigue Syndrome' from her stories 'Playing the Game' and 'Playing the Game: Rematch' (although I'm not sure if she invented the term for her story or if she was just using it, I don't know).
But enough of my ramblings. Review!)