Title: Meaner Than The Streets Are Those Who Would Protect Them
Continuity: G1 Cartoon
Characters: Excelsior, Sanction
Rating: PG
Genre: Crime.
Warnings: Violence. Drugs.
Word Count: +800
Summary: After the war, before the Downsizing, colonies were settled and developed their own standards of justice.
Sanction sniffed at the box where the syk, a circuit-boosting drug, had been kept. The syk batch was just newly stolen, so the scent traces were fresh. He pulled his head out of the box and sniffed the air before ducking back down to test the scent on the latches. The mechanical, boxy German Shepherd was determined and serious in his task, not bad at all for Excelsior's first effort at building herself a partner. She was law enforcement, not an engineer, but out in the fringe colonies like Adamantine City, scratch-building was the only way to make new Transformers.
Excelsior had already had her fill of smelling the box, but two olfactory sensors were better than one. Syk was a familiar, home-like scent to her, which might have amused Excelsior, were she so inclined. Syk was illegal on how many worlds? Ah, but here, in the back end of nowhere, syk was not, and it was the theft and not the production that was the crime. The law had many shapes and forms, spreading to match crime's own diversity.
Then again, crime was all the same in the end, and so law was constant. Sanction almost daintily stepped off the table, down to a chair, and onto the floor, pointing out the direction the scent told him. Excelsior agreed with a curt nod. Only then did the tense springs in Sanction release, sending the dog bounding after the trail.
Excelsior could have flown, as was her creation-right, but she followed on foot. Flight was fine for fast transport as the Seeker flew, but it was outright laziness on an investigation. The crystal spires that pierced the sky dazzled the optics and drew attention away from a door ajar, a streak of tyres, or the stench of leaded fuel exhaust. They sky had its place, but for now, her place was right down here.
Sanction let out a whine and stopped, looking sheepishly over his shoulder at Excelsior. Her jaw locked, and the actuators in her fingers twitched. So the suspect had run to the spaceport. They often did. All the crisscrossing odours were dizzying to a sensitive olfactory receptor. Excelsior tilted her head slightly to one side and looked to Sanction. She offered, "Looks like I'm going in blind."
Sanction whuffed dryly in response.
Sight was overrated. Leaders only spoke of vision in an attempt to deceive. Deliberately, Excelsior shut off her optics and cranked over the processing power to her olfactory sensors, struggling to make sense of the strands of information that swirled in the air currents around her. There was always a faint scent of syk here, the drug being a valuable export of the local economy. Some of the air smelled stale, like a sour note. Following the sound of Sanction's clickety-clickety steps, his claws rapping the ground, Excelsior tried to separate out one strand, a density of air where the scent of syk was coupled with cheap off-world metal and propane. The suspect must be awfully flammable, she mused darkly.
There, in a sea of complex molecules, swirled a tendril of simple hydrocarbon. Excelsior broke out into a run, passing the sound-shadow of Sanction. The crystal walls resonated, sounding sharp edges and regular structures. A sprint through a hallway, a flash of clearance, and pounded steps down an access stairwell, and Excelsior found herself in the loading docks, the crash and boom of shipping containers painfully loud. The clatter of Sanction's claws was distant, somewhere behind and above, back in the stairwell. Her head almost ached with how the reek of propane and pot metal assaulted her sensors.
Reluctantly, she shunted the processing power back to her optics, her circuits protesting the influx of searing light after the dark, rich abyss of scent and sound. The ring of a bored cylinder still reached her, though, and she found herself staring down a wild-opticed bandit with a gun to her face. Excelsior let slip a contented sigh and smiled. The alien looked taken aback but insisted on waving the weapon in her face. She intoned, "You realise that I am an Adamantine City police officer?"
The shell tore into her head, severing circuit and smashing structure. The pain was nothing. Already, her balisong naginata flicked into her hands. The weapon snapped open with a deft flick of her wrists, the blade lashing out in an arc. When would these amateurs learn? The rumours about Adamantine City were all true! His arm hit the floor with a dull thud that was smothered by his ragged scream. Voice calm, she continued, "And you just attacked an officer of the law. Do you know what the law says about that?"
Excelsior loved Adamantine City, which had been settled by Decepticons, not Autobots. She loved its laws. Most of all, she loved what its laws allowed, nay, suggested that she do next.
Indeed, crime was always the same in the end.
The End
Author's Note: This was written after I had binged on a lot of Battle Angel Alita, hence the balisong naginata. I like playing with the concepts of nonstandard sensor arrangements and what happens to Transformers who are not Cybertron after the war. This is an old fanfic of mine, written 2006-09-18, and mostly just tossed up here to collect my fanfics in one place.