Wherein this author took Transformers prompt-challenges like, well, you know.
Title: Candy From Strangers
Warnings: Random prompts create random ficlets.
Rating: PG
Continuity: G1
Characters: Many.
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): An open post where I asked for people to please drop prompts for me, and I attempted to write them as fast they appeared.
[* * * * *]
Megatron/Optimus - negotiations
[* * * * *]
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"No?"
"Never."
"Never."
"Yes, never."
"Yes?"
"No."
Soundwave kept his attention on the datapad with the ceasefire terms on it. He had more dignity than Jazz, who was watching the negotiations like a tennis spectator. Back and forth, back and forth.
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes?"
"No."
"But..."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"We're going to be here a while," Jazz murmured.
Soundwave still didn't look up, but a careful observer would have seen him nod.
[* * * * *]
Metroplex - sometimes even cityformers needed a hug
[* * * * *]
Technically speaking, it was a difficult procedure. Even without a war going on, sheer size would have made it hard to implement. Coordinating with the strict patrols Red Alert had put into place for this very short time period of vulnerability plus wrangling personnel known for their independent personalities made the whole thing somewhat of a logistical nightmare. Still, anything worth doing was worth doing right, and nobody was going to allow First Aid to do it all himself. That'd be like a plush teddybear trying to turn back an ocean tide: kind of cute at first, but ultimately pathetic and probably lost to undertow. He'd turn up on a beach somewhere, wandering in dazed circles and convinced he could do better next time.
So. Coordination and cooperation, supersized. They were Autobots! Surely they could do this with a minimum of fuss!
The combiner teams tried, bless their contrary little sparks, but combining outside of combat required far more internal cooperation than they were used to. The outside pressure to combine or die just wasn't there this time. Defensor managed, of course, because his combiner team was all about stability. He combined on the first attempt and stayed combined the whole time, although he had a tendency to fuss as First Aid's worries came to the forefront. Watching First Aid fuss was adorable, but a full-sized gestalt fluttering his hands and twittering, "Oh my, we'll have to fix that later. Dearie me. Can someone get something from the medbay for us? Please?" was rather disconcerting.
Superion and Computron gave it three separate tries apiece before Defensor somehow got the 'sad First Aid' look down pat and turned it on the Aerialbots and Technobots. Giving up wasn't an option under that look.
While First Aid was guilt-tripping the other combiner teams like a professional emotional travel agent, Red Alert was working on the other Autobots. Trying to get three gestalts, five Dinobots, and every Autobot not on duty herded in one direction was like trying to sculpt water: yeah, good luck with that. But Red Alert had dragged everyone through security measures tougher than this, and he could deal with it. Even if he had to kick their collective afts one at a time. The procedure had a three-hour time block. He was an experienced aft-kicker. Do the math.
Calculating the speed of aft-kicking divided by acceptable time span squeaked them under the limit just in time. That, after Red Alert had screamed himself hoarse and Ultra Magnus had called on Daniel's puppy eyes as emergency backup.
But they did it. Eventually, everyone latched onto Metroplex, because sometimes even cityformers needed a hug.
[* * * * *]
G1, Cassettes - taking the high road
[* * * * *]
"Is this legal?"
"Do I care?" Frenzy ducked his head and scowled at the display. "Here, hold this."
Rewind jumped a bit as the Decepticon Cassette shoved the removed paneling at him. "Wha - o-okay." He managed to grab it before it fell, thank Primus, because he wasn't sure he wanted to endure another one of Frenzy's endless mocking sprees. He wasn't clumsy! He was just rattled by the other Cassette's methodology.
Infiltration was nothing new to the Autobot Cassette. Infiltration via forged identification cards and boldly walking through the front door of a Quintesson Consulate took ball bearing diameter Rewind wasn't sure he had the correct measurements for. Blaster had been the one pressing for more planning, but Soundwave's Cassetticon had been adamant that this was one assignment they could just wing-it on. Infiltrating the Quintessons was always a tricky matter, and Frenzy had argued that extensive planning just allowed for more confusion when the plans failed.
That argument still seemed off to Rewind, but they hadn't had time. Frenzy and Rewind had gone in with the bare bones of a plan, and now Rewind was stuck holding a computer panel as a Decepticon hacked into the network. He couldn't help but fidget, optics flicking up and down the - temporarily - empty hallway. They were going to be in such trouble if they were caught…
"Huh." Frenzy had tapped into the building's network, and the look he turned on the Autobot was surprisingly thoughtful. "This is...alright, Autodumb." Rewind let the name-calling pass. Frenzy's mouth ran on automatic on such things. "If we were gonna do this the legal way, what'd be our first step?"
Rewind was a Cassette. He knew that look. "Incriminating data?"
"By the cargo load." The two Cassettes shared a fierce, ugly grin. "I'll stay here and run interference to keep them from dumping the computers."
"And I," Rewind said as he put the paneling down to lean unobtrusively against the wall, "will be a concerned Cybertronian citizen and kindly inform the local authorities that they might want to investigate the Quint Consulate." The vengeful expression wiped away into something saintly, and Frenzy smirked in respect for the Autobot's acting ability. "Oh-so-legally, of course."
"Nice and legal," Frenzy agreed, and that made sticking it to the Quints even more satisfying.
[* * * * *]
Grimlock/Optimus, "That does not go there."
[* * * * *]
"That does not go there."
Optimus looked up. The proper grammar was almost as surprising as the words themselves, at least when coming from the massive Dinobot standing in front of him. "Pardon me?" Optimus asked, baffled. The table he'd just pushed out into the corridor sat there looking inoffensive. It'd been nicked and dinged but was still functional. The Autobot leader couldn't tell why exactly Grimlock was glaring at it like it had six fingers on its left hand and had killed his father.
"Me Grimlock said - "
"I heard you," he interrupted patiently. "I simply don't understand why you believe it shouldn't be here." He'd moved the table because Autobots were always leaving miscellaneous Earth objects of interest on his desk. He liked the practice of giving him things - it was a very appreciated gesture of affection he'd never gotten before becoming so close with this particular crew - but he wanted to share his collection with the rest of the ship. Having a display table had seemed like a viable solution.
Apparently not, if the glare meant anything. Grimlock started to say something, then just shook his head and stalked forward to grab the table and move it out of the corridor himself. He shoved it back into the office with a grunt.
Optimus stood aside and let him because it wasn't worth fighting over without reason. Which there must be, because Grimlock wasn't one for flimsy whims. "Why - ?"
Grimlock held up a finger: patience, please.
A minute later, the floor jittered. Both mechs adjusted their stances without even thinking about it. Some things became automatic when one lived with it on a daily basis. The jitter increased to a rumble, and suddenly there were Dinobots turning the corner. Optimus pressed himself to his own office door to get out of the way as three out-sized mechanical dinosaurs stampeded by in complete disregard for whatever might have been in their path. Grimlock just folded his arms and weathered the stampede by standing right there in the middle of the corridor, but then, he was big enough that getting nudged by a brontosaurus was no big deal.
The Prime blinked after the Dinobots, watching three tails turn the next corner. As…they usually did this time of day, now that he thought about it. Huh. "Ah. So it doesn't go there."
"Me Grimlock said so."
"Indeed."
[* * * * *]
Soundwave - "Tyrant of the Seraglio" 'verse
[* * * * *]
There were pillows missing.
Soundwave counted again, hoping against hope, but the count came up three short. He swung his head, searching the room by sight. Megatron and the ex-Prime were debating something by the window. Or rather, Optimus leaned against the window while Megatron stood as near to it as the slave-bands allowed. There were no pillows at their feet or in their hands.
He'd hoped the ex-Prime had the missing pillows, because visits from fellow Autobots roused nostalgia in Optimus. Sometimes the ex-leader handled the pillows afterward, appreciating them all over again as he remembered Earth and the Ark. Soundwave had hoped...but, no. Hope was useless. He knew better than to succumb to an emotional crutch. He needed to search, not stand here hoping.
Moving took an exhausting amount of effort, but it was easier than it had been. Soundwave carefully walked to the bed and leaned down to put his hand on the surface. His knees met the floor with a muffled thud as his balance gave out at the very end, but the two harem slaves didn't even glance over. Soundwave bent and peered under the bed, sticking an arm under to swish about in futile search. He'd already looked here. He'd already combed the entire harem for the missing pillows, and they just weren't here!
He looked uncertainly to the door. Brawl had done a standard post-visitation check on them after Ironhide had left. Usually the tank would kick any stray pillows back into the harem, so they likely weren't out there. He was technically permitted to leave the harem, but if he left, and someone was waiting outside -
No. Not even if Brawl had somehow ignored a pillow lying right in the middle of the guard room would Soundwave voluntarily leave the safety of the harem.
Yet his systems were starting to amp up as fear built, tarry and hot. The pillows were missing. They were his responsibility. He'd been explicitly ordered to keep them organized, and there were three missing. That was three times the failure. One pillow might have slid past, but three? His Master would know. Megatron had tried a lot in his time bound to the harem. Soundwave had attempted far less, but it didn't matter. Ex-tyrant or crippled Communication Officer, their owner always knew what they were up to. There were three pillows missing, and that meant Soundwave had failed to obey. Three times, meaning that the punishment would be multiplied by three as well.
The consequences would be...brutal.
Still on his knees, Soundwave stared fixedly at the door, convinced that the next time it opened, a world of pain would walk through and descend on him.
[* * * * *]
First Aid - drunk
[* * * * *]
Some mechs couldn't hold their highgrade. Frag, some mechs couldn't hold their mid-grade. A few extra cubes, and Prowl would start stifling giggles over the absurdity of life outside regulations. Ironhide tended to get maudlin. Optimus Prime got oddly quiet and stared into space until he passed out.
Nobody ever really thought twice about why First Aid, Hoist, and Ratchet, of all mechs, never once got sloshed. Didn't think about it, that was, until First Aid returned from battle absolutely drunk.
"I don't know what happened!" Sideswipe said as he poured the ambulance onto a repair berth. First Aid promptly slithered off the opposite side and puddled onto the floor, which he then started talking to. The red frontliner's expression of utter panic only deepened as he flailed, trying to catch the tipsy Protectobot before he slid out of reach. His hands snatched empty air. "He took a shot to the chest and just lost it!"
Well, that was slightly worrisome. The hole and associated burn mark seemed far below the spark chamber, but getting ahold of the wrigglesome junior medic to verify that fact took some doing. Ratchet finally enlisted a severely weirded-out Sideswipe and truly amused Bumblebee to coax him out from under the office desk once the Chief Medical Officer managed to corner his subordinate there. Who knew that a cratered First Aid would be so rambunctious?
"Punctured auxiliary fuel tank," Ratchet diagnosed with some relief after opening up the other ambulance - and swatting said ambulance's hands out of the way. "His holding tank for emergency patient transfers took a hit," he explained when Sideswipe and Bumblebee gave him quizzical looks. The puzzlement only deepened. "All medics have one." See the depth of their confusion, Ratchet? See it? "I don't suck down so much energon because I have a habit of getting overcharged," Ratchet said dryly. "Anytime we get access to mid or highgrade, we fill our auxiliary tanks with as much as we can. It saves lives out on the field."
That did explain why Sideswipe's homebrew disappeared in copious amounts at the medic table during parties, anyway. Huh. One puzzled solved.
That did leave First Aid and his inexplicable drunkenness. "Wait," Sideswipe said slowly. "He took a hit to a fuel tank, and he's still standing?" Er, slouching. Wavering in a vaguely upright manner. Whatever. Sideswipe's point was that that dead mechs shouldn't be managing even that much.
"It should have killed me," First Aid declared seriously, then ruined the scarily true statement by spontaneously hugging both his 'captors' around the necks. "I'm so lucky!"
Ratchet sighed. "Yes, it should have. A direct shot to a fuel tank should have caused a large explosion, not a puncture. You are very lucky."
"What're you going to do?" Bumblebee said over his new neck ornament. "Surgery?"
"Yes, but only after the tank's drained. At the rate it's mixing with his regular fuel, we're going to have an overcharged Protectobot on our hands for at least a day. I could drain it faster, but..." Ratchet gave the Autobot now determinedly squirming free of Bumblebee and Sideswipe a fond pat on the head. "Let him enjoy his luck for now. It's not every day one of us dodges a bullet with his name on it."
[* * * * *]
Optimus Prime - losing his temper. Spectacularly. Any reason.
[* * * * *]
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes, or I will use this table to rearrange your internal structures to resemble one of Wheeljack's design projections, rip out your vocalizer and replace it with Starscream's, put my foot so far up your aft your teeth with have tires, and donate your helm to a thirsty family in Africa for a bucket."
"...I'll think about it."
"You'd better!"
[* * * * *]
Footnotes AU, Sandbox Story Arc: Sunstorm meets the sand - "What's a religious mech to believe?"
[* * * * *]
Troubled, the fiery yellow Seeker stood on the peak of Shockwave's Tower and wondered why he'd been released. Because he was the Hand of Primus, the tool of holy destruction, but usually Megatron kept him statis-locked and confined behind security so heavy even a true prophet such as himself had difficulty escaping. Out of fear of Primus' judgment, no doubt(1).
"Go," Shockwave had said hoarsely, sounding strangely gritty as he'd waved Sunstorm out of his cell. "Defend us."
If there ever was a way to redirect his righteous wrath, a plea for salvation was a quick solution. Sunstorm's immediate fury had cooled to intrigue, and he'd followed the blasphemous Guardian of Cybertron's(2) instructions to emerge here.
The wave of sand descending from the sky was a visible, silty rain. The sentient lifeforms were numerous and deadly. They were killing Cybertron, grain by grain. Shockwave had probably meant for the Seeker to attack the waves, turn as much of them to glass as he could, but Sunstorm hesitated. Shockwave's words came back to him, and they troubled him.
Defend who?
By all logic, Primus had created the sand. The tiny lifeforms were far more closely related to Decepticons and Autobots than anyone would like to admit, by action and deed if not biology. Was Sunstorm to attack Primus' creations without provocation? Autobots killed Decepticons and Decepticons killed Autobots; murder was no reason for Sunstorm to destroy the sand. Yet Shockwave obviously thought he should.
"What's a religious mech to believe?" he whispered to his God. "Am I to let Your children die by killing others?"
Primus didn't answer.
(1) Yeah, because locking up the dangerous psychotic flaming ball of religious ire required a fear of Primus. Right. Whatever. Megatron only got religious when it involved a cult of personality focused on himself.
(2) The presumption of any Cybertronian taking on such a lofty title was enough to froth Sunstorm's foam on a regular day. Add to that the sheer unworthiness of a blatant atheist like Shockwave taking the title, and Sunstorm was reduced to sputtering indignation.
[* * * * *]
Bluestreak - human sign language
[* * * * *]
If Bluestreak had never been one for sitting still before Earth, he was positively twitchy afterward. He was always moving. His hands fluttered, his doors flicked up and over, his windows raised and lowered, and even when silent, his mouth kept shaping words. He squirmed when he sat, rocked back and forth when he stood, and his hands traced intricate shapes of nonsense no matter what he was doing at the time.
The rest of the Ark crew displayed several similar symptoms when they returned to Cybertron. The other Autobots thought they were restless. Decepticons thought they were nervous.
Truth was, they were really just a bunch of gossips talking behind everyone's backs.
[* * * * *]
Mikeala Banes - kicking ass and taking names ("The Princess Is In Another Castle" continuation)
[* * * * *]
Ironhide is dead. Ironhide is dead.
It's been years since the Autobots last had any contact with her. She'd dropped off their radar the moment Sam dumped her, and it wasn't like she'd ever been close to any of them. Yet she has loud, clear memories of the bark of guns, the sneer of an alien face as he supervised the firing range. She recalls the kick against her wrists and shoulder until she went home at night hurting, and his half-angry voice shouting insults at her until she picked up the gun again.
Ironhide is dead.
Worse, the other Autobots are gone. She's caught up on the news, staring in pale-faced horror at the antiquated TV set that spewed words it took her three repetitions to finally understand. It was the unbelievable footage of the launch and destruction of the Autobots' shuttle that shook her from shock into screaming and throwing her beer across the room. The Autobots have left Earth, the Autobots havedied, and the alien planet on the horizon is here. It's here, and Earth's goddamn leaders are stupid enough to trust the words of Decepticons?
She's looking out the back door, numb with something she thinks should be grief and feels more like rage, when the spacebridge goes down. The burning curve of Cybertron writhes, oddly flickering like the TV she's left on inside. The planet inverts like the hemisphere is getting sucked down a drain.
Maybe she should feel pity for the Autobot's abandoned world, but all she can remember is her introduction to it via Optimus Prime's optical lightshow. The planet had been ruined by war. The survivors had left, searching for the AllSpark to bring it back to life. The AllSpark, however, is gone. This 'Sentinel Prime' the news talks about failed before he even began this insane attempt. He was trying to resurrect a dead world using her living world, and she feels no pity whatsoever for his failure.
It twists her heart strangely to watch a world tear apart on the horizon, but she thinks it is vengeance. It is a proper ending.
Ironhide is dead, the Autobots are dead, and she will accept Cybertron as their funeral pyre.
There are explosions out in the desert, far above the mountains as the spacebridge flickers. One, then two, and flaming debris plummets downward. She grabs her binoculars, squinting and leaping up to stand on the old couch as she sees...what does she see?
Debris and. Something else. Falling out of control to the desert, to her desert, and even if she'd never worked with the Autobots and fought Decepticons, she'd have recognized those forms as alien.
She runs for her truck, the tools of her trade and whatever else she can fling into the back from the shed before she takes off, and there is cold fire in the very grain of her muscle. It lines her soul in frigid resolve and clicks forgotten knowledge to the forefront of her mind.
Ironhide is dead. But once upon a firing range, he'd taught her how to kill his kind, and Mikeala Banes remembers.
[* * * * *]
Grimlock and Jazz - Music lesson
[* * * * *]
Jazz was mesmerized. "I...seriously? They do that."
He got an irritated sidelong look for the disbelief. "Yes."
Oh, man, why hadn't he gone along to this Lost World island place? Okay, so banishing the Dinobots there in the first place had been a really bad example of the Autobots being bullheaded, ignorant, reactionary - right, well, they didn't like to dwell on it. The Dinobots were never going to let them live down treating an entire Autobot sub-group like dumb animals.
Justifiably so, really. There was nothing quite like being confronted with one's own misdeeds to really grind a point in. Prime still got uncomfortable when confronted with Grimlock's right-angle brand of intelligence during officer meetings. Prowl changed the subject, repeatedly if he had to, just to avoid thinking about the whole issue. Ratchet and Wheeljack made sure to bring it up all the time to make him squirm.
Jazz himself had adjusted fairly quickly to the Dinobots' sky-rocketing learning curve as their programming finally stabilized. He was cool with the dinos. Or so he'd thought, anyway, and now he was being boxed about the audios with how he'd personally marginalized the Dinobots. Yup, dumbaft Head of Special Operations went and shut a whole group of disparate mechs right into a small box of assumptions, then didn't even give them a second thought. Well, paint him red and call him Cliffjumper, because he'd jumped right to a wrongful conclusion without proof.
He'd given some wise-aft comment about how sentience could be measured by its ability to create music, and Grimlock had just put the royal smackdown of unanticipated information down on him. He hadn't really meant to disparage dinosaurs, not really, but he could sort of see how the comment could have been taken wrong considering just who he was talking to. He should have considered that, in fact.
Finding out that dinosaurs had an equivalent of musical sound, however, hadn't even entered considerations.
"Mating calls?" he hazarded.
Another annoyed look. Grimlock was not pleased with the saboteur at the moment. "Territorial marker."
"Ah." Like howler monkeys? Jazz knew he was bouncing. He knew it, and he hated how he looked when he did it, but c'mon. Music! New music! Different music! Magnified floors couldn't have stopped Jazz from bouncing. "So...can you..?"
"Yes."
Oh Primus, oh Primus, oh Primus. Grimlock already had a powerful voice, but Jazz had not once thought about what he sounded like in his dinosaur form! "And the other Dinobots?"
"Yes."
Eeeeeeeeeee! "Will you - ?"
"No."
ARGH.
Jazz turned up the optical lights in his visor and did his best to look like Carly's kitten pleading for dinner. "Please?"
Grimlock snorted and turned to stomp from the room, obviously unaffected by cute, fuzzy animals as channeled by non-fuzzy, not-quite-so-cute Autobots. "No."
Right. Jazz's visor dimmed and narrowed. This would require some planning. Mission: Get Dinobots To Sing was a go.
[* * * * *]
Blast Off/Mirage - upper caste
[* * * * *]
The other Autobots didn't get it. They watched closely, looking for signs of treason, but that's what they didn't understand. There were no signs. There was no communication, at all. No words exchanged beyond the stilted formal lines required of prisoner and guard, no extra glances that might have had deeper meaning. The words they might have been said were left far in the past, and any fellow feeling had been burned by millions of years of war.
The No-Man's Land of common ground remained, however, war-ravaged as it was.
Mirage simply requested guard duty on the brig whenever Blast Off was captured, and the two mechs...sat there. Blast Off ignored his guard and read the single datapad allowed him - from Jazz, so it never even passed through Mirage's hands. Mirage relaxed at the guard station with rifle at the ready. They never spoke. They never interacted.
Whatever understanding there was between the two mechs, it was at a level no one else could reach.
[* * * * *]
Ratchet/Wheeljack - a series of extraordinary events
[* * * * *]
Through a series of medbay incidents that were small individually and cataclysmic when they snowballed together, Ratchet ended up in the past.
Like anyone who'd ever dealt with the weirdness that was life during the Great War, Ratchet was prepared for this moment. Time travel? Pfft. Even boyscouts prepared for that one.
The rule was simple: don't interfere. Be invisible and nonexistent, because everyone knew that messing about with the past only caused trouble in the present. Ratchet was okay with that rule. In fact, he'd helped pound it into stubborn heads among the Autobots for ages. So noninterference was good, and Ratchet set about to obey that rule religiously.
...with one tiny exception. He just had to.
There was a massive engineering complex on the west side of Iacon, separate from the rest of the Iaconian Science & Technology University campus. It was so huge that Ratchet had no trouble blustering his way past security and disappearing into it. Once he was inside, he simply poked his nose into every construction bay and laboratory until he found the one he was looking for.
"Measurements came out perfect," the young mech inside was saying to his partner when Ratchet finally found him. "Formula seems spot on, and I double-checked the structure. Want to give it a test?"
"Sure. Hold on, somebody's pinging the outer security door." The other mech frowned. "Door's stuck. Can you go open it? I'll set the cameras while you're gone."
"No problem." Ratchet waited around the corner until the footsteps faded, then sent another ping for the opposite security door. Which he'd also glued shut. It was a University campus; pranks happened.
"Arrgh. Okay, okay, I'm coming!" More footsteps, and Ratchet was free and clear to do some very, very small interference. Very small. Just a tweak.
"No more blowing yourself up," the medic muttered as he made a few minor adjustments to the experiment. Little things that would make it better and safer, because Primus knew those things were typically left out by this particularly inventor. Unfortunately, Ratchet was in a hurry, and the jostling made something spin and hum deep inside the machine. "...oops."
There were footsteps coming back up the hall, and Ratchet didn't have time, and oh, slag, this hadn't gone how he intended at all!
"I don't understand," Wheeljack said forlornly, standing in the wreckage one breem and an extremely colorful explosion later. "We were so careful."
"Maybe we missed a figure in the schematic?" his partner suggested, sounding just as confused.
Hidden in a storage locker that he wasn't entirely sure how he'd wedged himself into, Ratchet clenched his fists and resolved again to save Wheeljack from the engineer's tendency to explode every experiment ever made. Next time, he'd do it right!
[* * * * *]
Shibara's Nomformers - "The trick was not minding that it hurt."
[* * * * *]
They already knew they'd take casualties. They'd have to dig deep, use their muscle, push hard, and show their salt. One couldn't cross Kitchentron's Great Table of Dinner without injuries. The war of Condimentbots and Foodcons had gone on too long for any open space to be safe. Fork marks and bites would abound.
The trick was not minding that it hurt.
Hamslaught chewed a piece of gristle and eyed the deceptively organized tableware. Bacon Off had already done an aerial survey; the lay of the Table had been set. There were linen napkin drifts, opaque drinking glasses ready to topple on the unwary, and vast empty platters with no cover available at all. The Great Table seemed empty, yes, but soon...yes, soon, the diners would come.
The Comeaticons would be waiting.
[* * * * *]
[A/N: This will likely happen again. It was fun. ]