Title - PR-0W-1 (2/6)

Author - AotA

Rating – K+

Characters – PR-0W-1 (Prowl), Jazz

Warnings – child endangerment, death

Setting – pre-war movie verse, weapons development base

Summary – A careless mistake leads to a youngling nearly being killed in a weapon test simulation gone wrong. The weapon, PR-0W-1, decides the youngling's fate.

Notes – Metronome and Ricochet are Jazz's creators. Ricochet is part of base security, Metronome is part of the development team. This isn't important but: PR= Prototype Response [Unit], W=Watchman [Series]. Each part is extremely short, with the longest under 600 words. This has not seen the hands of a beta so if you see an error feel free to point it out to me. This is rather OC heavy for one of my fics.

Disclaimer – I do not own Transformers.

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PR-0W-1 stalked down the corridor silently. There were ten targets… No, PR-0W-1 revised, sensing another one, eleven targets. An erroneous intel, improvisation test? Likely. Was there significance attached to the unidentified target? Possibly. Not enough information to tell. PR-0W-1 disliked these kinds of tests immensely.

The first target, PR-0W-1 speared through the back and crushed the mech's spark chamber, absorbing the spark into specialty made stasis canisters. Bright blue-white energon coated his claws. He had a fifty spark capacity, not counting the one that pulsed within his own chamber. Once the spark was removed, PR-0W-1 lay the mech down and extracted the memory core. This he placed within a specialized subspace compartment. He could store about twenty-five memory cores in his subspace safely, depending on the size of the cores. PR-0W-1 searched for anything else that he should take and placed the shell in a location that he had previously noticed and marked for disposal of the dead.

One down. Ten to go.

Calculations spun though his processor and battle computer. Paths to the future opened before him. PR-0W-1 swept through the base, capturing sparks and memory cores without a single misstep. Some more ugly than others, with the second to last target having to be put down by his pulse cannon when he simply refused to go down easily and painlessly. By this point in his training, this kind of infiltration-assassination mission was exceedingly easy. Or it was until he found himself targeting the last mark with his pulse cannon.

A youngling?

It was huddled in a corner, pulled into as small a shape as it could, shaking. They had never included a youngling in one of his exercises before. Was he supposed to terminate it as well? Or was this one of the tests that they didn't tell him they were testing him on.

His overall orders, the ones that he lived his orn to orn life by, stated that he was not to harm younglings, but his mission orders demanded the elimination of all targets in the simulation area. PR-0W-1 winced as he tried to decide what to do as his logic systems tried to reconcile the conflicting orders. The two sets of orders were completely contradictory to each other, and he had no option for clarity of the orders. Not harming civilians was something that he was supposed to keep to, and that order was especially emphasized in the case of younglings and sparklings. But mission orders tended to override those basic orders of his non-mission existence. And mission orders required the elimination or all targets. But it was the reinforcement of non-harm in the case of younglings that let it match the weight of mission orders. It was an unending processor loop.

PR-0W-1 whined, and pressed his hand against his head as the ache moved into blinding pain, but the level of his pulse cannon didn't waver. The youngling looked up at him with an optical visor, startled.