Fandom: Transformers Bayverse/SWAT Kats
Author: Gatekat and Karl Wolfemann
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13
Codes: Crossover, Furry
Summary:
Disclaimer: The authors are only playing with their own twisted muses. Transformers belong to Hasbro. Fandom-side, check the inspirations page (anhrefn-hyfryd .livejournal .com/22919 .html) We draw from a ton of amazing stories and authors you should read.
Notes: klik = 1 minute, breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 1.2 hours; orn = day/32 joor; metacycle = 6 (5.9285) years; vorn = 83 years/14 metacycle
~text~ bond/hardline talk
::text:: comm/radio chatter

Allsparked Aristal 12: Coming Half Clean

Perceptor watched silently as Jake continued to work on following his code and thought trees. Even with the simplified, translated version he'd turned over, it was occupying Jake's attention entirely too well.

He needed some way to get Jake's attention off of analyzing the quirks of his systems. It wasn't that he was worried about Jake finding out the truth. Honestly, he was more worried about Jake working himself to death trying to figure out a secret that had made Perceptor one of the most brilliant researchers of his age; the ability to make nanoklik-fast leaps of logic from the most minute piece of information. The kat was good, but tracing logic chains that had been forged over what his species would consider an evolutionary time frame was simply too much to ask.

He had an idea though; he hoped that he might be able to fill in some of the blanks with a little demonstration.

"Jake, is there anything I might be able to help with?" He asked.

"Unless you know how your coding works, not really," he murmured. "This is as complex as anything I've seen."

"It was designed so that I could inspect broken fragments of a machine and reassemble it into a functional one," Perceptor pointed out. "There is a great deal of complicated logic in there that traditional coding is ill-suited for. There are other functions as well," he offered. "I believe it may help if I showed you why I have the code that you're working with now. Would you be willing to back away, so that I will have room for the conversion?" He asked politely.

"Okay," Jake gave the tank-like construct a curious look and got well out of the way.

Perceptor started moving with surprising quickness. He didn't leave his position, but all of his parts began twisting and pivoting. Hands extended from two arms that formed, his scope sliding off to the side so that a head could emerge with bright, glowing blue eyes. By the time he was done, the mechanical sounds of gears twisting into place and locking his body into a bipedal form that towered above Jake in the lab. When he knelt down, one of his hands was large enough to carry the lean tom.

"The coding you were looking at includes the routines necessary for bipedal mobility," he explained. "As well as a number of other related functions. Hands are sometimes necessary for working with larger machinery, so I was built with this form, while Zed was given his own abilities to adapt."

Jake's mouth hug open, his eyes wide as he took in the new look and replayed the sequence in his mind several times. Eventually he gathered himself and blurted out "can you do that slowly?"

"If you are hoping to replicate the process, I am afraid that there are several very difficult procedures involved," Perceptor warned him. "Most critically, the ability to shift the excess mechanics in and out of real-space is something that Dr. Greenbox could only do with great difficulty."

"I'm familiar with the concept," Jake was fully in designer mode now and all but unflappable, his amber eyes intense and tail flicking in excitement. "Yes, it's very difficult, but not impossible. Is the sequence in schematic in your databases?"

"Not in a format that would make any sense to you at the moment, but if I can have a moment..." Perceptor trailed off, extending a cable to the computer. The sequence loaded on in perfect schematics. "Would that be sufficient?"

"Mmm, yes," Jake purred, his mind going a mile a minute as he contemplated modifications to the Turbokat. "Omegas are going to have quite a surprise in a few months."

'They're not the only ones,'Perceptor thought to himself. "I'm not sure how well it would work for the cockpit," he offered. "Where it would be on me is rather occupied with other components at the moment. That's one of the things that would require subspacing. Did this help with making sense of the code, though?" He asked.

"Mmm? Oh, yeah." Jake said, already distracted as he looked around for paper and pencil to begin scribbling. "You weren't designed with combat in mind. Anything that would have Stormshock transform would be a case where size and mass are an asset. I don't need to subspace nearly as much, and there's already a huge chunk of space available in her bomb bay. Subspacing ... good name for it."

Perceptor mentally kicked himself; he shouldn't have said that. It was easy enough to pass off as something he didn't understand entirely himself if there wasn't a name for it. As soon as he gave it one, that at least suggested that he understood it.

And it made it quite clear that it could be understood much better than Aristal was ready for.

Maybe he could get away with not bringing that particular part up in his next report to Jazz.

Though, frankly, probably not.

Chance waited in the main hanger for the Turbokat to lower from the ramp, then release her small tank-like passenger from the bomb bay.

"Hi, Perceptor. Hope you like it here in chaos central."

"I am sure I will be able to adjust," Perceptor reassured him, lowering himself to the ground with a mighty, hissing vent of air to soften his impact. "Is there anything that I can help you with?" He asked politely.

"Just don't distract the brain there before I get him for a few hours of actual income-earning work," the tabby smirked as his partner jumped down. "We're days behind thanks to his fixation on whatever you've been telling him."

"That means we keep ourselves entertained until I go on patrol near midnight," Stormshock snickered. "Though while they're working on cars, Wheeljack can come down and chat too."

"I'll avoid distracting him," Perceptor promised, finding a corner near Stormshock to settle down in. It would be good to see Wheeljack again. Maybe he could let him just how serious Jazz had been about slagging his lab down to make him focus.

The two kats walked off, towards the ladder that went to the surface building they used for a cover.

"Did you really show him you could transform?" Stormshock almost pounced on the subject as she rolled off the lift so Wheeljack could come down.

"It was the only way I could think of to help him with accepting the code he was looking through," Perceptor admitted quietly. "It may introduce complications with the planned upgrades."

"Why? He'll know what... oh..."

"He'll know that the work isn't his, which will beg the question of just who it was performed by," Perceptor confirmed. "Especially if we introduced the planned upgrades in materials and abilities."

She grumbled wordlessly, mostly the revving and growl of secondary engines.

"What's got you grumpy?" Wheeljack's chipper voice interrupted the pair.

"I just pointed out the difficulties of her upgrades given that Jake is going to want to be performing a similar operation himself," Perceptor pointed out. ::What Jazz was so upset about.::

::Gotcha; don't worry, we've got it covered,:: Wheeljack reassured him.

"Yeah, we'll have to be careful about it, but we can make arrangements that will help out. It'll just slow things down a bit."

"Assuming you haven't come clean to him by then," Stormshock said, her processor working on contingencies on her own. "A lot is likely to happen in the next couple months."

"Yeah, it is, especially if another bad Omega attack hits," Wheeljack agreed. "We're trying to keep things under wraps, but there's only so much that we can do. Particularly as little things happen that keep shifting the arguments for continued secrecy," he admitted. "Prowl's still re-running his numbers after Perceptor's revelations."

"Which one's Prowl again?" Stormshock asked.

"Chief tactician and third in command," Wheeljack offered.

"I did not intend to disrupt any of our plans," Perceptor offered defensively.

"They know," Wheeljack reassured him. "And it's not that big a change, honestly. Prowl hates to admit that there isn't a perfect solution, but he was never going to get the full time he wanted. This planet just doesn't allow for it."

"That is very true," Stormshock snickered. "If they don't realize it yet, they will in a couple years. Aristal moves fast."

"A few years is most of what he wanted, but Prime and the Omega situation simply won't allow for that," Wheeljack explained. "'Every life is worth protecting' is a hard line to take when you're trying to keep yourself a secret. As for Jazz... well, he's forgiven me for that little incident on board the prototype Nemesis, so I'm sure he'll get over you giving Jake a name for something he was already doing," he promised Perceptor.

"Do I want to know?" Perceptor asked.

"I do," Stormshock trilled, her ailerons fluttering in excitement.

"It's a good story, even if it is one of the main reasons Jazz authorized me for a transfer to lab work," Wheeljack snickered. "The Decepticons were building their prototype Nemesis; interstellar, Iacon-class battle transport. A lot like the Ark, but with more guns attached and officially a much nastier security system."

::Officially?:: Perceptor interrupted silently.

::Whose paranoia and nastiness do you want to bet on? Shockwave and Soundwave, or Red Alert and Jazz?:: Wheeljack observed.

::Mmm, you have a point,:: Perceptor sounded a touch amused. Officially, Shockwave and Soundwave are definitely worse. However given the freedom I know Prime and Prowl granted Red Alert and Jazz, I have to agree they have it.::

"At any rate, the Ark wasn't ready to fly yet, and we couldn't risk the 'Cons getting a colony-capable ship into the sky before we could. We knew the first thing they'd do would be to leave it there waiting for our exploratory teams to take off, shoot them down, and then head out to look for planets to strip. So Prime authorized Jazz to put together a team to go and make sure it stayed grounded.

"He gathered the Wraiths once more. We had some fun with that one; my main task was to make sure that if the main charge didn't ground the ship, the rest of it was completely unusable. It's almost a pity that the charges did work; I would've loved to find out what happened the first time they used the washracks after I was done rigging them to spray molecular acid instead of standard solvents."

"Oh, you are mean," Stormshock twitched at the thought of just what that would do. "Creative, but vicious."

"Only when they deserve it," Wheeljack said with what sounded like a bemused shrug. "Countermeasures are always most effective when there's no way to see them before they go off, and when you only have one shot you want to be sure it counts. Well, I finished up my job first, since it involved going places that weren't under heavier guard. That was all as-planned. What wasn't planned was that the rest of the Wraiths were taking longer than expected, but hadn't been spotted yet. They'd planted the charges on the engines, but were busy arranging some backup charges and doing the sort of general mayhem and recon that the Wraiths were known for. The Nemesis was being prepped for takeoff though; I had to pick between setting off the charges with most of the team on board, or risk that the ship might get out of transmitter range for the detonators before they were all safe and clear. I picked setting off the charges on the engines while the ship was above the Rust Sea; everybody who was supposed to got out safely, but it was a near thing. Jazz was not happy with me, especially when I pointed out that he'd have done the same thing if our positions had been switched."

"If it's what he would have done, why was it a reason to transfer you?" Stormshock asked.

"Don't get me wrong, I wanted to transfer to lab work," Wheeljack explained. "I'm good at the intel work, but I don't like it as much. But when Jazz has a good agent, he doesn't like letting him go so easily. I think the fact he was still sporting scorch marks on his aft helped convince him to sign off on it," he snickered, one she joined in.

"So how did you end up back in the field?"

"They needed me down here more than in the lab," he said easily. "We only have so many intel agents on board the Ark, and even fewer of them who'd be able to comprehend half of what Jake's talking about. Not that the tech is that advanced, necessarily, but following his logic takes a special sort of mind."

"The brilliant kind," Perceptor agreed. "There is a critical difference between being able to understand a technology and being able to talk to somebody who would be able to invent it from scratch."

"At least you have the advantage of knowing the tech," Stormshock chuckled. "Probably why he likes you two so much. Even the other kats in his field can't keep up with him a lot of the time. Percy's code is the first thing he's encountered that wasn't half magic that he couldn't just look at and comprehend, then improve."

"No offense, but I would be very frightened if it wasn't," Perceptor chuckled softly.

"Yeah," Wheeljack chuckled grimly. "There's brilliant, and then there's dangerous."

"According to most, Jake's the second kind," Stormshock said quietly. "Some days Chance is the only thing keeping him on this side of the Omegas."

"Stormy... we should probably go silent for this conversation, but I think we need to have it," Wheeljack decided, opening a comm line between all three of them.

::How often do those days come up?::

She was quiet for a while, mulling it over as she realized just how wrong this could go for her creator. ::You know how he is over Percy? Those are the days. He's a good kat. He really is. He just ... he can have a hard time seeing the ramifications.::

::That isn't as big a concern,:: Wheeljack admitted to private relief. ::That ... that we can still work with, around it. Help get him people who can see the ramifications of what he's doing, or at least help him keep it out of the people who don't care.::

::There's a difference between the scientists who split the atom to create energy, without realizing at the time the weapon they were creating, and between somebody like Shockwave or Skywarp who actively wants to wreak havoc with his discoveries,:: Perceptor agreed.

::Or Dark Kat,:: Wheeljack added, to put things into perspective. ::If Jake's 'Omega days' are ones where he just doesn't think about what could be done with his inventions... that's more like Dr. Hackle. Good kat, just not necessarily one who stops to think about what happens if the wrong people use his work.::

::Or the technicalities between 'doing what needs doing' and 'going too far'.:: Stormshock added, since they were talking about helping and not locking him away. ::He's on the front lines, already going beyond the law ... his job, it pushes him too.::

::Stormy, were you conscious when Jake thought that he'd injured those two 'civilians'?:: Wheeljack asked her.

::Umm, I think so. He was pissed in the end,:: she tried to dig that out of her memory banks. ::Upset Chance a lot too.::

::Mostly because those 'civilians' were really Dark Kat's agents, according to the log files,:: Wheeljack pointed out, bringing the files up for her. ::Jake's logs indicate that he was considering quitting SWAT entirely because he thought he'd hurt innocent people; he couldn't even take a clean shot until he'd found out Dark Kat had been playing him.::

Her engines rumbled, disturbed by the statement more than she was her creator going Omega.

Perceptor opened a private comm with Wheeljack. ::Should this reaction concern us?::

::Possibly, but I think I can handle it,:: Wheeljack reassured him.

::Stormshock, he didn't quit,:: the truck pointed out firmly. ::And I imagine he's come to realize a few things since then, like how vulnerable it could make him in the end. He's not the first good warrior to have serious problems with hurting an innocent person, and he's not the first to learn that sometimes accidents happen, and that you have to live with that. It's a very hard lesson to learn,:: he said with the weight of somebody who'd learned it himself.

::True,:: she responded, though less than certain. ::I never quite understood his reaction.::

::You have the advantage of being a sparked soldier,:: Wheeljack chuckled gently. ::It helps quite a bit... I don't know that you'd handle a peaceful situation well, but you're not likely to crack because of collateral damage. You'll get along well with Sideswipe and Sunny, once they get here, after we've convinced them that you're on our side.::::

The rumble of excited engines and her EM field flickering to a youthful eagerness. ::Why wouldn't they take your word for it? Peace+Aristal just doesn't happen.::

::They have a distinct bias against jets,:: Perceptor chuckled. ::They were trained Seeker-hunters; the Seekers almost entirely went to the Decepticons, so we needed to train grounded troops to be able to fight some of the best aerial combatants in the galaxy. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe are among the best of them.::

::Yeah, but they'll get along with you once they get past the gut reaction,::: Wheeljack promised. ::Sideswipe, at least, and Sunny'll go along long enough for you to win him over. They'll probably just be happy to meet another sparked soldier.::

::Sparked soldiers aren't common, even after so long at war?:: she asked curiously, only to have her EM field prickle with excitement. "All right!" came the cheer when sirens went off. "Play time," she giggled, almost giddy with eagerness.

::Definitelya sparked soldier,:: Wheeljack chuckled, backing out of the way to be sure he'd be well clear of her exhaust when she took off, Jake and Chance already rushing down with not a few grumbles between them.

::Agreed,:: Perceptor said with a bemused tone.