Chapter 14
Roulette had switched shifts with another Enforcer just to be the Enforcer on hand when something happened, which would require an officer to be called to the Merchant's Square, a block of rather profitable businesses in the heart of the Simfur merchant's district.
It didn't even have to be a problem at this point, she just really wanted to figure out what in the Pits was going on.
A Praxian mech by the name of Nitro had called in a report about two bounty hunters once, and seemed more than just a little apathetic when told that the Enforcers had not caught the one bounty hunter who trashed his store front and got away.
Roulette was positive that the Praxian knew more than he was telling, but finding out what he knew was harder than she had counted on.
Until she got a call that required the presence of an Enforcer Sergeant of her rank, Roulette took her time wandering around the merchant's district and subtly inquiring around about the tan and gray Praxian that ran the parts/upgrade shop on the second level of the Merchant's Square.
Nearly every bit of gossip that she got was either about how the mech had helped out some of the other merchants in the area or about the rather mysterious origins of the mech himself. Some of the rumors were down right ridiculous, as some pinned the mech to belong to a group of military builts that once swept in at the nick of time and saved Iacon and the then two Primes from deactivation singled handedly.
Trying to pick through the tidbits of Intel that the other merchants were more interested in spreading around like gossip, she nearly missed the sight of a bronze and black femme that had the same glyph painted on her left arm as the Praxian merchant calmly weaving her way through the mid-orn traffic on a path that would take the femme pass the Enforcer. Roulette jerked upright, giving the merchant femme she had been listening to an apologetic grin as she hurried away.
The Enforcer trailed the femme down a few streets, noting that she walked in the same manner that the Praxian did. They both didn't just wander to and fro, using the method of other Cybertronians in pinging others' comm signals to ensure that they wouldn't run into any bot, the two looked around when they walked, keeping an optic on both the flow of traffic and their surroundings. The Enforcers trained bots to do that, but neither struck her as the type of ex-Enforcers that had been taught to do that.
Watching, she wondered about the relations of the bots that had the same symbol as the femme wandered her way into Nitro's shop. Roulette didn't have the authority to barge into the Praxian's store and demand answers, but she could at least observe for a few breems.
(ooo000ooo)
"What did you do to that Enforcer femme?" Holdout didn't even bother with formalities as she embraced her 'brother' enthusiastically.
Nitro, instead of fighting his way free from the unwanted contact, noted the stern tone in the officer's vocalizer and looked over her shoulder plates as the slightly taller femme lifted him off the floor.
He caught sight of the Enforcer femme that had been haunting around recently and snorted. "I'm not bugging her. That's her problem with me."
The tracker set the demolitions specialist down.
"Seriously? We just can't win, can we?" She laughed in wry amusement. "First Rook and her Enforcers, they wanted her to leave them alone, now you and yours, they wanted you to bother them."
"She isn't causing any problems, just poking around." Shrugging a bit helplessly, the tan and gray Praxian tugged himself out of the femme's reach, door-wings flicking minutely. "We'll have to waste a bit of time hanging around until she leaves, but other than that are you ready to meet my unwilling guest?"
Holdout gave a dismissive wave of one hand. "First things first. What kind of history do you have for this mech?"
"Axel is a bounty hunter, one that apparently takes after dear old creator. Normally, he goes after the bots with bounties that happen to run around the far reaches of the separate territories. Given his rate of return with the bots he's been sent after, he should be a decent tracker considering the sheer amount of blank terrain between cities here." Nitro flicked off his open sign, frowning slightly at the dust trail the SPARTAN-Bot's Supply Officer had tracked in with her. "From the looks of what Spotter dug up for me, this was his first foray into working for either faction. Shockwave contacted him and another bounty hunter, one by the designation of Copper, and had them work together to pick out where and what we are."
"And this led him to trying to pick a fight with a SPARTAN?" Taking a seat on one of the chairs left out for possible shoppers that wanted to make comparisons between parts the tracker kicked her dusty pedes up onto one of the display cases, correctly identifying the reason the Praxian was frowning in the first place.
Shooting her an un-amused glare, the demolitions specialist smacked his hand against her pedes, knocking them off the display. "Don't do that, unless you want to volunteer to clean. And… not exactly. Their orders were to apprehend one or two of us and ask some questions. What, I haven't asked yet. But they attacked me with the intent of either off lining me and sending my frame off to Shockwave, or disabling me and asking some questions."
"Is she gone yet?"
Nitro locked the shop's front doors as he took a quick look out. "Yep."
(ooo000ooo)
Axle whistled at the bronze and black femme that followed Nitro into the tiny underground room. "Well hello, gorgeous."
"Keep it up, and I know a certain Wrecker that will be having words with you." The tracker gave him a grim smile as he wiped any expression off his faceplate.
Nitro blinked at her back as he shut the door. "You finally gave that mech a chance? When the slag did this happen?"
Holdout shrugged dismissively, trying hard to keep the silly grin off her faceplate.
"Err… a few decacycles ago when we, me and 'fit that is, had to think of some way to keep 'storm from finding 'force's presence in our flat." She cleared her vocalizer sharply and looked down to the bounty hunter still chained to the floor. "So… Nitro tells us you're interested in working for us."
"I'm interested in anything that gets me out of here."
Axel raised his still chained hands and showed the femme the circle of bare metal that had been rubbed clear of any paint that had once been on his wrist joints.
"Nice as his accommodations are, I would like to get out and stretch my wheels now and again. Although," and here the mech tilted his helm to the side, "I have absolutely no complaints with the quality of care I've received."
The tracker blinked as Nitro started to laugh. She looked from one mech to the other, wondering when this had happened. "So, I take it the both of you have no issue with each other?"
They didn't from what she could see, but corroboration was always nice.
The SPARTAN mech merely shrugged as the bounty hunter looked up at her. "I like his humor, does that win me nice mech points?"
"Not really."
Holdout smirked as she drew a flat length of metal from out behind her right shin plate and simply sat herself next to the bound mech. The metal was worked into a handle-less combat knife, in the same style that the SPARTANs had trained with long before Refit had even been programmed.
The tracker now took this knife and stabbed it into the floor next to the bounty hunter. "But it makes a few things easier for me."
Axel looked from the femme with the knife to Nitro, who looked a little confused himself as to what the other SPARTAN planned on doing. "Uh… that's a very pretty knife?"
"I know that style." The demolitions specialist tilted his helm to the side as he examined the serrated edge. "Wasn't that the type used by the ODSTs?"
Holdout shrugged. "Don't know, don't care. Works for what I need."
She smiled rather evilly at the bounty hunter.
"Now then, this can go one of two ways. You can do this voluntarily, and hand over what you know, or you can resist and this will end painfully for you and I'll get to rip the Intel out of your cold dead frame. At this point in time, we are not going to trust a bot that tried to attack one of our soldiers on his word alone. Shadow' put her pede down about bots like you, especially considering what else she found out about Shockwave recently."
Nitro opened his mouth components to ask, but the tracker shot him a look and he kept his silence with a confused flutter of his door-wings. Axel looked from the grim smiling tracker femme to his wary looking captor, and sighed. "Look all you want, femme. I ain't going to do something as stupid as resist."
The SPARTAN femme's mouth components twisted into a more normal looking smile. "Good, because I'm not too sure if I have the tanks to try and force some bot in giving up what they don't want me to see."
"You… damn, femme. You're cruel." The bounty hunter shook his helm. "I believed you though, nearly scared the slag out of me when you stabbed that shank into the floor. I take it he's going to be doing the looking?"
Axel jerked his helm to indicate the Praxian.
"No," shaking her helm, the tracker indicated herself with the point of her makeshift knife after she yanked it out of the floor, "it'll be my systems you'll be hooked to, but the ones looking would be Spotter and Shadowdancer. They'll bounce your processor off the tactical link and pick you apart. Good news is the only thing their looking for is Shockwave, bad news is they ain't going to stop until they get all the way through your memory core and a good bit of your personality matrix."
The bound mech snorted at her. "That's better than what would happen if Shockwave ever figures out I'm crossing him. I may not have met him in person before, but I do know the mech's reputation. When is this happening?"
"Later, once both Spot' and Shadow' have a few breems, or joors, to spare to check you out." Holdout replaced the length of metal back behind her right shin plate and pulled out a few cubes of ATHENS energon from her subspace. "So… out of curiosity, what do you intend to do for us, officially?"
The bounty hunter cautiously accepted the cube and gave it a quick check. It was the same type that he normally got, the strange mid-grade was sealed and seemed un-tampered with.
"Not too sure, but I could try working as a courier or something similar. I probably will need a new paintjob, since Nitro reported me in to the Enforcers." Cracking open the cube, the mech took a draught of the softly glowing green energon inside. "That, or if he wants, I can work as an assistant-"
Nitro blinked as Axel suddenly slumped to the floor, completely offline, right in the middle of a sentence. "Damn, where did you learn that one?"
"You'd be surprised at the amount of information medics are given that can be used in not so legal ways. It's a bit of and additive that is usually for those that need a higher lead intake, too much in a normal bot's fuel and you risk knocking the intake measuring system in a feedback loop that crashes the bot." The bronze and black femme suppressed a smirk at the rather impressed look the other SPARTAN mech gave her. "But this is another one of Shadow's stipulations. She is not amused that this Shockwave mech popped up again and is not willing to take chances."
"So he's going to be out of it for the whole time?"
Holdout shrugged. "Pretty much. Roll him over, would you? Let's get this over with."
(ooo000ooo)
The next thing Axel knew, his CPU booted up out of a recharge cycle and he was staring at something other than the ceiling in the room Nitro had held him in for the last megacycles.
Additionally, his processors hurt… a lot.
With a groan, the bounty hunter rolled to his right, taking painful note that both the lengths of chain that bound his arms and legs had been removed. Slamming his pedes on the ground, the bounty hunter looked around briefly before stumbling out of the room that he had been placed in.
He followed the sounds of a femme's and a mech's vocalizer father down the short hall and stumbled his way into the living room of the cramped living unit behind the Praxian's shop space. "That last sip was a doozy."
Nitro snorted and helped him to a chair set around the only table, giving an unapologetic Holdout a wry glare and a sharp flick of his door-wings. "I wasn't informed that would happen. If you want to be torqued with some bot, Hold's your femme."
"Hey! That was on orders. Hate Shadow', I don't think she'd care."
Axel half powered his optics just to keep the glare of the mid orn lights from hurting his aching processors even more. "How about if you tell me if I passed your unit's little test or not."
"Test?" The Praxian tapped the side of the bounty hunter's helm as he passed him a cube of normal Simfur produced energon. "That wasn't a test."
The non-SPARTAN irritably smacked away the demolitions specialist's hands as he inspected the new cube. He would be damned if they got him again with whatever they pulled.
"Give him a moment. Shadow can be downright sneaky about this slag, but there are always the telltale signs that she did something." The tracker gave the very confused mech a grin. "How's the ordering system in your processor?"
"I don't have…" Axel blinked, sure that his files in his processors had never been that neat before. As the pain of a forced entry into his processors faded, the sheer amount of rearranging that had gone on while he was out of it surprised him. "How long was I off-line? It looks like you defragmented all of my hard drives."
"Eh… since last off-cycle. Kinda surprised me, but the others were done after three joors." The bronze and black femme rubbed the back of her helm sheepishly. "I may have miscalculated the amount of the additive that I needed to give you."
"Miscalculated? More like you gave him a does calibrated for a SPARTANs' system." Nitro glared at the officer, before catching the very confused look on the other mech's faceplate and trying to reassure him. "Shadow' and Spot' only found what you said, so they're prepared to accept you as a necessary evil. In other words, you've been hired."
Axel glared at the both of them. "There had better be a good reason for this. Now then, I think I've been good enough for the vorn. Can one of you two tell me what is so important that you'll dip into not so legal methods to keep your secret?"
The bronze and black femme smiled at him. "We're war bots. Purpose built war bots, with some very unique augmentations."
Neither Nitro nor Holdout looked away from the bounty hunter's optics, instead they kept their own oddly colored optics on him.
"Can you prove it?" Axel said slowly, wondering if the two needed to be checked in to the nearest medic's office.
"Well, that depends on what you think is proof."
The tracker suddenly smirked, something that had the bounty hunter instantly wary.
"I could rip out my primary motor control relays and walk around for you using the secondary, or even the third, backup relay. I could also pick you up and bend you like you're made of tin." She pulled a datapad out of her subspace instead. "Or I can give you this."
"And 'this' is?" The non-SPARTAN mech took the pad anyways, and read the list of what seemed like optional frame upgrades.
Nitro peered over his shoulder and snickered with a few twitches of his door-wings. "Well… that just so happens to be the list of irregular systems in my frame at the moment."
The Praxian tilted his helm at the SPARTAN femme sitting across the table.
"I take it to mean that he's allowed to parse through my systems?"
"Whatever's needed." She agreed, sipping another cube of energon. Since she planned on leaving once Axel rejoined the rationally processing, and considering the drain she had already gone through, the tracker would need the extra energy just to make it back before her leave ended so she would have the time she promised to Sandstorm. "If that doesn't do it, you got Ratchet's assistance waiting back in Iacon, if you two really want to go that far out of your way and bug the Head Medic of Iacon for his opinion on us."
Axel frowned at the pad he was reading, and twisted around in his chair to deftly unlatch the right arm armor of the Praxian. Nitro tensed at the abrupt movement, but refrained from lashing out like his SPARTAN trained responses wanted him to.
A few jerks of his door-wings and the SPARTAN mech sighed. "Well, you really shouldn't do that in mixed company, Ax'. Whatever is Hold' going to think about your morals now?"
"She would say that was rather fast. Are you sure you haven't done that before?"
The bounty hunter ignored them, looking into the arm assembly for the extra wires. He wasn't a medic, but in his line of work medical skills were always helpful and he had enough training to recognize an optimized layout even without a blueprint to compare the list to.
However… Cybertronians were not built that way. There was no need, seeing as there was a large source of energon in the planet, within easy reach.
He jerked back as the final wires he had been looking for showed up, neatly tucked nearly inside of an odd colored support strut. They were a part of the third motor relay synapse, and only worked when the first two were severed completely, if the data pad was to be believed.
"…I do so hope this isn't the only explanation that I will be given." Axel replaced the armor plate he had almost forgotten he had nearly absently; processors running over everything that Nitro had already told him and comparing it to what he had just now learned. "I'll take this on such flimsy proof, but if you seriously want me to believe that all of you are war built, I need some additional verifications."
The demolitions specialist flexed his arm assembly as he nodded. "Three and some stellar cycles, I head to Iacon for the vorn's report. You can come with, I suppose, and meet the others there."
Holdout smirked as she got up to her pedes. "That, and you and whoever else we drag there will get the other half of our so called horror story. But for right now, I got a mech waiting for me back home. Have fun you two!"
The tracker left them there, ducking her slightly taller frame under the door and out of the two mechs' sights.
"So," Nitro looked over to the still confused Axel, "having second thoughts yet?"
The bounty hunter snorted and set his helm on the table. "What the frag did you all put me under with? Slag still hurts."
\V/
Passing one of the training rooms late one cycle, Warcry had to slow down and admire Silentforce's method of teaching.
Since the stoic mech still couldn't use his vocalizer, the defensive specialist relied more on showing then telling. This really didn't help out those he was teaching very much. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, against the warnings each SPARTAN in Iacon tried to give them, had signed themselves up to be the first trainees for the SPARTAN-Bot Unit.
This cycle, they were with Silentforce learning the correct method of inspecting a building for structural weak points that could be used to collapse the structure if a barricade was needed.
The tank braced himself against the closed door as he watched through a convenient window that let watchers watch without accidentally becoming part of the training exercise.
The training room had holo-emitters, a veritable light show that could change the plain room into whatever was needed by the trainers. Silentforce had dredged up a city in the middle of being attacked by the Covenant from his memory core, something alien enough to throw off the twins who were expecting a more Cybertronian looking scenario.
The city built for organics was limited to a few streets in the training room, but Silentforce's memory file contained enough that the three had almost four city blocks to work with. The sky was burned orange with yellow clouds with the purple and black ships of the Covenant suspended above, most of the gray stone and steel buildings had holes melted or blasted through them, and the streets were clogged with either panicking organic humans, the occasional military unit or the invading Covenant forces.
The odd explosion occurred and rocked the entire scene, incurring more panicking from the organic images and more confusion from the few comm lines that Silentforce recalled listening in to.
Warcry had to hide a grin as the sheer confusion that painted the faceplates of both frontline warriors. Silentforce wasn't amused at the failure to even find a defensible position and he paused the scenario, pinning both mechs with a glare. He opened the doors just to hear the next bit.
"This is confusing. What the frag is this?" Sideswipe was as disgusted as his trainer, but more so at the organic images he had brought up. The world was obviously under attack, but he couldn't pin what organic race the SPARTAN was showing him. "Where is this?"
"Does it matter?" The tank gave all three mechs a grin, having surprised the twins but merely annoying the bodyguard specialist. "Point is that you will not always have time to process what's happening. What will you do then?"
"Stop being so slagging picky and simply take down a structure or two to shield one side of our position." Sunstreaker glared at both SPARTAN mechs, only to drop his attitude for surprise as both nodded at him.
"Sound reasoning, but where?"
Taking cue from his brother, the silver swordmech pointed to a dead end street that already had buildings that where half collapsed over the street. "Over there, only one clear method of attack is possible down here."
Warcry nodded his helm in approval. "Why can't you process that in the middle of battle?"
"It's confusing." Sideswipe protested. "You gave us no warning at all that this slag was going to change!"
Silentforce simply arched an optic ridge at them as the SPARTAN tank started to laugh.
Sunstreaker smacked his brother upside the helm. "Smooth, Sides'. How can he when he isn't supposed to be here to help us?"
Before Sideswipe could retort, Warcry entered the room fully and spoke up forcefully, drawing the twin's attention. "That is irrelevant. Silentforce's inability to speak out loud isn't the issue. You two are hesitating, and that's the problem. In the middle of battle it's always confusing, so you need to look once, note as many details as you can, and keep that in your processor even when the slag changes on you before your optics so you know where your options are."
"I'd like to see you do this." The silver swordmech grumbled.
Both SPARTANs exchanged looks. With where Silentforce had paused the image, a SPARTAN-III with the numbers 'G-337' stamped across his chest plates was visible just across the street, frozen in mid run with a rocket launcher perched on his shoulder and a ragged battalion of UNSC marines behind him, intent on joining the action a few streets from where the five now stood. "Where do you think he got this memory file from?"
"Some other bot, cause I can't see him here." Gesturing around, Warcry had to bite his lower lip plate when the silver twin actually managed to include the human version of Silentforce across the street.
:I'm giving up for the cycle, sir. This is just going to go around in circles if I try and press them.: The defensive specialist shook his helm and typed in the order to kill the scenario into the control panel next to the door as he left the twins with the SPARTAN-Bot CO.
Warcry inspected both trainees with barely concealed amusement as the organic world around them faded back to the plain gray walls of the training room. The three Autobot SPARTAN mechs were running the two ragged, with weapon drills in the early cycle joors, combat spars directly after, a single joor for them to refuel while they instructed them in tactical observations at mid orn, then into training much like what they had just gotten through with until there was a few joor for them to rest before they got up and did it all over again.
Galeforce and Silentforce were mildly impressed that the two had hung on as long as they had, especially since they had held the same routine for the last decacycle. Somehow, Sunstreaker still had the energy after it all to ensure that his paintjob was as good as it was, and he probably was the one to nudge Sideswipe in taking care of his own paint as well.
The tank shook his helm in fond exasperation. "Alright. You didn't do as well as the rest of us, but I suppose that was to be expected."
Sideswipe blinked at him. "What?"
"We only had a bare decacycle or two of training, same as you have now." Warcry gave both a sly grin. "Congratulations, you survived."
He clanged his hands together just in case the two had missed his point.
"Good." Ignoring his brother and what was now officially his commanding officer, Sunstreaker collapsed onto his aft in the middle of the room with a graceless thump.
"Did you do this as well?" The silver swordmech shook his helm as he joined his twin on the ground, moving gentler since his slower reaction times earned him quite a few dents in the spars.
The tank nodded his helm.
"It was both harder and easier. We had… well, Galeforce and I had about forty or so that pulled through the training with us, not including the number we lost after… well, we lost them. 'force and the others had about three hundred and fifty in their training class. There were a few numbers of both those classes that couldn't do it, couldn't pull through and ignore what was going on just to complete their training." Warcry dropped to the floor with them. "There are a few stellar cycles before you'll meet the others, and there is only one in the unit that never went through training like this."
"Slag me, I feel like I went a few rounds with big bot Op'." Sideswipe flexed his left arm, wincing as a few gears protested and ground together. "Now what?"
"Well… there are another few things that need to be done." Warcry glanced over to the doors as they opened again, revealing the other two SPARTANs carrying some cubes of the ATHENS grade energon. "First and foremost, is that you can stop with the routine that we've been pressing you in. The rest of this slag we learned on our own, in the middle of battle. We're not expecting you two to learn it the same way we did."
The SPARTAN-Bots' CO took the cube that Galeforce passed to him.
"Second, there are a few frame issues that need to be dealt with, but that's between us and Ratch'. Last but not least, you need to know where we came from."
The combat engineer and the bodyguard specialist sat on the floor with them, and the gray and green SPARTAN took a sip of his own cube before taking up the thread of the conversation. "There are a few problems with that, but you'll learn what we are when you meet the others. So for the few stellar cycles we got left, we'll continue like this, but at a much slower pace."
Silentforce held up a finger joint to attract attention.
:There is the AI's graduation, most of us are trying to clear enough time to be there.: He inclined his helm to the CO. :Us as well, sir.:
"Huh, yeah. Wonder how many are going to show up for that?" The combat engineer looked to the tank as well.
Warcry just shrugged. "Depends on travel arrangements. Shadow's got hers in, she's brining an ex-Enforcer with her and the bitlit. So has Nitro, but he has to deal with that bounty hunter tagging along and he's abstaining from showing up in Central. Rook's been begging to bring her own Enforcers with, and Drax is bringing the entire seeker council with him. Trick' is debating if he should bring a pair of femmes and their bitlit with, and Hold' is dithering over her Wrecker mechs."
The SPARTAN-Bots' CO snorted.
"I'm kinda surprised there are so many civilians coming with this vorn. We may just have to hold this every vorn we're out there."
Sideswipe looked from the red and black mech to the green and black tank. "What's AI? Or should I say who?"
Silentforce had finally given them his comm frequency a few cycles ago, and the twins had heard his comment.
"Who," Galeforce inclined his helm to them, "Refit, our soon to be team medic. She's graduating from the Academy's medic classes in two stellar cycles. Afterwards, she's coming here to complete her training under Ratchet. Her call sign is AI, for reasons you'll learn later."
"How many are in this fragging unit?" Sunstreaker scowled at the three SPARTANs as he finally turned his attention from inspecting his scratches to the cube of energon they had brought in.
"Seventeen, if you don't count Refit," Warcry smirked at the surprised looks, "eighteen if you want to, then there's also the XO's Scraplet. So, there are nineteen SPARTANs left, counting Kynaite by grace of his carrier."
Silentforce snorted in disgust. :If that wasn't scary enough for you though, there used to be thousands of us. Now, there are less than four hands full of SPARTANs.:
\V/
"Where are we going?" Zephyr watched her closest femme friend as she packed up a few things from her living unit.
"Elsewhere." Shadowdancer smirked at the un-amused glare the black and silver helicopter gave her. "Common, it'll be fun."
The ex-Enforcer did not look convinced. "Coming from you, that's more of a reason to stay home than to jaunt out in parts unknown. You haven't even told me what we're doing packing up and leaving like this."
"Do you need a reason?" The SPARTAN-Bots' XO ducked to peer under her berth. "Kynaite? If you want to take whatever you're working on with us, I need it now."
A burst of irritated chitters answered the Praxian, and her adopted sparkling appeared dragging something he had covered and wrapped up with the thermal blanket he wanted to take with him. He pouted up at his carrier, sitting his tiny chassis next to his bundle and crossing his thin arms over his chest plates.
Shadowdancer clicked her glossa at him, an action that never failed to amuse both the helicopter and the sparkling. "If you want her to, Zeph' can take it, but we are almost ready to leave and I need you where I can see you."
"Shadow'! This isn't… I mean, I can't just-!"
The electric blue and black Praxian looked over to her femme friend and simply raised an optic ridge. "I am your boss, I've hired you to help me care for Kynaite when I need help, and with a business trip like this one, I'm going to need some help."
Hands on her hip joints, the ex-Enforcer tilted her helm at her employer with a flutter of her helicopter blades. "So… business trip?"
"Whatever floats your ballasts." Shadowdancer shrugged with a few dismissive twitches to her door-wings.
Zephyr's mouth components dropped open.
"That! …aww. This is so many levels of unfair." The helicopter made a frustrated sound and was prepared to simply leave the room and not look back, but she took one look down at the sparkling that her friend had adopted and lost her will to walk away. "And that's even more unfair, 'naite."
Kynaite dropped his pout and copied his carrier's actions, he shrugged then pushed his bundle closer to her, giving it a few good nudges until the ex-Enforcer picked it up and placed it in her subspace.
"I have half a processor to mutiny."
"Well," the Praxian pretended to think about that statement, she even adopted a thinking pose to really encourage thought, "I have it on good authority that we are going to be using one of the few unmonitored paths in and out of the city. You being you… that is, an ex-Enforcer like yourself would have no interest at all about the illegal methods your boss knows to circumvent the Decepticon blockade."
She nodded to herself, not even requiring a look at the femme behind her to know she was glaring at her back.
"Then again, there are also rumors about this little trip of mine, that it is either to go see my youngest cohort sister graduate from the Academy or to see my plentitude of other siblings in a get together in a very… famous location."
Zephyr glared at her employer's back and door-wings, that didn't even have the grace to twitch under her less than happy look. "You… are evil…"
She had encountered the Praxian's bent in manipulating others before, but had never been the one being influenced before this.
Shadowdancer twisted around to give her a wicked smirk. "I'm a femme. Even worse, I'm a SPARTAN femme. That should have been warning enough for you."
\V/
Trickflip pursed his lip plates as he watched the chaos around him. Sometimes, being the only mech in the living unit above Rook's dojo was a very bad thing. He had finally bit the bullet when the saboteur propositioned her Enforcers and had invited Ruby, Flashfire, and Silverbell with them to Central and then Iacon.
Now, he was regulated to being a youngling sitter in the corner of the upper floor sky walks, watching two femmes race from room to room trying to find what they needed for a trip so soon in their tenure in Praxus. Silverbell sat in his lap, her second favorite place to be when 'home', playing with a digital puzzle box Rook had gotten her for her second spark orn anniversary two megacycles ago.
Said saboteur was out meeting with the Enforcer Chief of Smokescreen's Station, summoned to explain why the Military Commander of the Autobots himself requested specific Enforcers to escort what was supposed to be four civilian bots and a youngling on a trip to see relatives.
The infiltrator set the bottom of his jaw plate on the crest of Silverbell's helm with a sigh. "I hope you're not as high maintenance as those two when you're older."
"Why?" The youngling looked up at him from a particularly hard twist of her puzzle. "Is that bad?"
"Eh… it can be." The SPARTAN mech held out a hand and waved it side to side. "Rook's not high maintenance, but keeping up with that femme is like your box. Twisty like."
Silverbell looked from her creators to her puzzle and back to mech she was using like a chair. "So, is it a good thing? I'm confused."
Trickflip's lip plates twisted up in a smile. "I'm sure we'll see when you're older. It's not something to worry about now; there are still another vorn to go before you have to bother yourself about that."
"Then why bring it up?" The youngling pouted at the mech that had all but taken over as her Guardian.
"Cause I'm a glutton for punishment, apparently." The SPARTAN mech laughed.
(ooo000ooo)
Rook blinked politely, and damn if the Enforcer Station Chief couldn't say anything else about the femme who was polite.
He glowered at her, having subjected the gray femme to two joors of arguments that he should be told where his officers were being ordered to. She sat slumped in the chairs before him; one pede kicked up on his spotless desk, a smirk on her faceplate, and simply nodded at intervals in his rant. "Isn't there any slagging thing that you can tell me about why Ultra Magnus requested two of my best officers?"
"Sorry, classified." If anything, he would swear the smirk got bigger as he glared at her. Suddenly, she surprised him by sighing. "Look, if it will get me out of here faster, I do have some things to pack you know, I'll tell you this: escort is the only thing they'll be doing."
The old Enforcer pinned her with a look that had made lesser bots lubricate themselves when he had still been on the streets. She simply smiled back at him. "If that's all you have to say for yourself, know this: I'm holding you responsible for their condition. I get them back in any worse shape than they are in now, you and I will have a little chat."
Rook nodded slightly as she got up, she even had the ball bearings to wave at him as she closed his door behind her. "Then if we are done exchanging pleasantries, I have a trip to pack for."
The SPARTAN saboteur smirked to herself as she made her way into the more used part of the Enforcers' Station. That had been a bit of a blast from the past for her. It had been longer than she cared to remember since she had last been summoned somewhere to be interrogated for answers.
Her smirk widened into a full blown grin as she caught sight of both Smokescreen and Blaster waiting for her a good distance from their superior's office. "You two missed me that much, huh?"
Smokescreen gave her a once over, then turned to his partner. "You owe me five credits. She's still in one piece."
"Blaster! How could you!" Rook gasped theatrically, holding one hand to her spark chamber as if shot though. "Betting against me? You should know better by now!"
The communications expert gave her a dirty look as he handed over the credit chits to the diversionary tactician. "Our Chief never saw you coming and I bet against you before I knew you, femme."
"Well, you don't know me. Yet, anyways." The SPARTAN saboteur smirked at them both. "Now then, are you two almost ready? What about Blue?"
"Bluestreak will meet us at the city's gates when we leave." The Praxian Enforcer tilted his helm at the gray femme. "You haven't told us where we are going yet either, Rook."
She waved a hand at them dismissively before starting to shoo them out of the Station. "Details. Are your cassettes coming, Blast'?"
"Yes," Blaster gave her a sideways look for that comment, even as he allowed her to chivvy him out of the building, "they go everywhere with me. Their cassettes, Rook."
"It's not like I've ever seen cassettes before. I don't quite know how that works out."
\V/
"So… how is this going to work?" Markmaker had leaned his frame against the ATHENS' bridge's walls, arms crossed over his chest plates and a frown on his faceplate. "You got both the ATHENS and your… I suppose we could call them guests, but they're more like superiors. And damn if that isn't confusing."
The 2IC of the SPARTAN-Bots rubbed the underside of his jaw hinge as the SPARTANs' trine leader looked back just to glare at him.
Drax and Markmaker were technically in one of the hangers in the Aero Space Division. The seeker council had insisted that the ship be housed with them instead of leaving it out like the trine had originally.
When they had seen the state of the ATHENS, they had also volunteered to fix the gash in the side plating of the Prowler class ship. They did so simply to keep an optic on the trine when none of them had the time to keep the unbalanced trine company.
After Drax had given all of them the slip to report to Markmaker while the other SPARTANs went off to collect the ship, the seeker council wasn't going to take a chance in letting all of the trine out of their range of influence without some serious convincing.
"They aren't our superiors, yet." Drawing the tanks attention back to him, the dark painted seeker glowered at the uninvited guest. "And they won't be, unless they decide that I would make an acceptable Air Commander, which has a spark's chance in the Pit of happening."
A rev of the seeker's turbine, and Drax returned his attention back to the console he had been working on. Updating the ship for Cybertronian controls was little more than a chore that the trine used to waste time.
"Spot's going to handle the ship. He wanted to know if you want a lift to Central."
The tank smirked at the seeker's back. "That's a rhetorical question, right? Either go my own slow way, tank treads are not fast in the least, or get a lift by an interstellar… excuse me, intergalactic ship and be there the same cycle we leave? I wonder what-"
"Mute it and go away." Drax snapped back, not even looking at Markmaker.
\V/
Refit was excited enough to be bouncing off the walls of the living unit she and Holdout had been living in for nearly a vorn.
Sandstorm and Impactor, who had leave approved by the Autobots' Prime himself and had visited in order to find out why they had leave in the first place, watched on with amusement in the doorway as the soon to be medic graduate flitted from place to place with a very exasperated tracker trying to finish up buffing her paint.
"I swear to the Pit, 'fit, you don't hold still and I will use your new medic's tools to weld you in one spot!" Startled by the rough annoyance in her 'sister's' vocalizer, Refit paused in changing directions, which was long enough to have a femme that easily weighed half again her weight knock her over and pin her to the floor. The medic was on her front while Holdout sat on her hip joints and flashed the two mechs that had recently arrived a quick grin. "Be right with you, give me a moment."
Sandstorm shrugged and entered the flat, evading the portion of the room that had two femmes wrestling over the buffing cloth to see if Holdout had any high-grade in her room, well used to the antics that the two could get up to when one was hyper. Feeling a bit odd in the living flat of his soldier's femme friend, Impactor hesitated in the doorway until it beeped at him, a reminder to get out of the way so the door could close.
By the time the Wrecker came out of his courted's berth room with two cubes of high grade, Holdout had finished Refit's buffing and was helping the other femme to her pedes.
The tracker gave the cubes an arched optic ridge, but didn't say anything about them as Sandstorm passed one to his superior. "So, questions?"
"A few." The Wrecker Commander agreed. "You know the Prime?"
"It's more like he knows us." Refit, having divested herself of most her pent up energy, smiled widely at the two Autobots standing in the living room of the flat. "He asked a few questions, and our commander talked to him."
Impactor looked at her just a bit oddly for that, but Holdout finally realized the time and all but shoved the mechs and the medic out of the flat. "We need to leave now if you're to get there in time, 'fit! Gossip later."
The Wreckers let themselves be maneuvered out of the living unit, but Refit dug her heel stabilizers into the ground. "Wait! How many?"
"Eleven at the last count, not counting me. There might be more there, a few don't know if they'll make it in time. Those two new mechs will be there as well, and that's not counting the non-SPARTANs coming with. Now move IT!"
\V/
Warcry gently shoved his way through the crowd of bots, five other mechs following in his wake. He had to move slowly as his great weight could topple unwary bots if they ran into him.
Galeforce was right behind his CO, while Silentforce took up the rear. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had the happy task of keeping Ratchet from blowing a gasket over the press of Cybertronians on all sides.
"Damn, I recall graduating from the Youth Center's educational facility, but it was nothing like this." The silver twin looked around at the sheer turn out for the graduating class of medics.
"Medical Repair is a fragging respectable profession." The yellow medic right behind him growled out. "Most of these slaggers are administrators in hospital stations looking for more personnel as well as some family units here to see how their relations have done. How much longer are we going to be out here?"
:Not long, Ratchet. I think our CO finally found where we are supposed to be.: Even as Silentforce transmitted that thought, the tank's path changed abruptly to their left.
Rook waved them over, two Enforcer mechs and another Praxian mech behind her. She was sitting in a closed off wing of the auditorium, one that stated it was reserved for family units of the graduates. "Trick' already took care of the instructor's concern over the number of us showing up for 'fit, sir."
"And he is?"
"Behind you, sir."
Trickflip smirked at the disgusted look that earned him from the tank, who blinked and then started to laugh at the youngling on the infiltrator's shoulder joints. "Well, hello little femme."
Silverbell grinned down at the massive mech, delighted that she was taller than him on Trick's shoulders. She wasn't too sure why she was happy, but she was. "Hello, sir! My name's Silverbell, but you can call me Hell's Bells!"
Warcry's optic ridges rose sharply at that, while both Galeforce and Silentforce twisted around to look at her, then at Trickflip. Rook burst out laughing at her bold statement. The infiltrator sighed as he swung the youngling down off his shoulder joints and guided her up into an unclaimed seat. "I knew that was going to come back and bite me in the-"
"LANGUAGE!" Shadowdancer, balancing a sparkling on her hip joint, appeared out of the masses and smacked her subordinate in the back of his helm. "There are underdeveloped audio receptors around, Trick'!"
Kynaite clicked smugly, safely tucked at his adoptive carrier's side, as Silverbell snickered. Rook's laughter doubled as Flashfire and Ruby finally made their way to where Trickflip had pointed them in, giving a wary look at the other bots that had the same symbol painted on their left arms as the femme and mech they had been living with.
Ratchet gave the femme a glare from his position behind the twins. "I thought you said-"
"In Gygax and for Kynaite, I don't care. Still don't." The SPARTAN-Bots' XO nodded at the medic and handed over her sparkling so she could get over the railing. "But this isn't Gygax, and there are more younglings than Kynaite around."
Sort of familiar with the mech now holding him, the blue and silver sparking consented to the handling only long enough for his carrier to take a seat next to Aunt 'Ro', and clambered off the medic and across two mechs to reach her lap, chattering in annoyance the whole time.
Smokescreen had stiffened when the other Praxian's sparkling had used his frame like a jungle gym to reach his carrier. "Err… Rook, who-"
"Later. When it's not so hard to be overheard." The gray femme smiled back at them. "Introductions will be held after the graduation. Maybe not until we relocate to Iacon. Just sit tight, and stick to the SPARTAN you know."
The diversionary Enforcer looked over to the unknown Praxian as she waved over another femme, this one with a helicopter alt mode. "Over here, Zephyr!"
The ex-Enforcer nodded respectfully to the two still active Enforcers behind her employer as she got in range to see their decals. "I saw a few seekers here."
"We're expecting a number of them, was there another tank mech too?" Shadowdancer adjusted her hold on Kynaite as the sparkling decided whatever was going on wasn't for him and pried her left forearm plate off and started to take the tools concealed there out so he could safely mess with his carrier's systems.
Rook peered over the tactician's door-wings and spoke up before Zephyr could reply.
"You told me he did that, but I didn't think he actually did it when there are so many bots around." The gray femme quickly retrieved her superior's electric blue armor plate before it could get lost on the floor.
"He'll do that in the middle of a bar, so I don't think this would bother him." The helicopter clambered over the railing as she nodded to the saboteur as she took back the armor plate. She had seen her on occasions when the gray femme would call for Shadowdancer and she answered her employer's comms.
Further talk was interrupted by the arrival of Drax and his trine, with nearly the entire seeker council and Markmaker following him. Spotter didn't even wait to be greeted by the CO and vaulted over the railing, followed closely by a jade green seeker. Nodding respectfully to the officers, Tigerstripe helped a tri colored seeker femme over next before vaulting over himself. Drax and Markmaker waited patiently as a white seeker mech and gold and green seeker mech preceded them.
Rook arched her optic ridges at the number of seekers now sitting behind her. "Are you sure there wasn't one or two more that you wanted to take with you, Drax?"
Markmaker snickered as the trine leader glared at his fellow Covert Ops. "There's one seeker that's too big to duck in here, she's still with the ATHENS. Does that answer your question?"
The SPARTANs' saboteur nodded mockingly. "Besides her, I mean."
"Enough." Shadowdancer turned her attention to her subordinates. "You two start bickering, and I will send you outside. This is for Refit, not your amusement."
To Smokescreen's, Bluestreak's, and Blaster's surprise, Rook just nodded and sat back in her chair. The dark blue and black seeker gave a low turbine rev before hoisting himself over the railing.
Five breems before the graduation ceremony was to start, Holdout and Knightblade made their appearance with their own tagalongs. Since the volume in the auditorium had done nothing but rise since the group had been sitting there, the two SPARTAN femmes settled for simply saluting their officers and taking their places.
Sandstorm and Impactor were a bit nonplussed over the number of bots sitting in the wing reserved for the little medic femme as they followed the tracker, Wheeljack simply vaulted over to sit next to Ratchet, and Perceptor gave the number of bots that he had never met but knew the general layout of their systems a long look before taking a seat next to his assistant.
By the time Titan had gotten in, beating the last breem's countdown for his place in the family unit wing, the volume in the auditorium had risen high enough that the instructors had to use a klaxon to quiet down the audience.
(ooo000ooo)
Refit barreled ecstatically into the loose group of SPARTANs and their guests. "I got first in my class!"
Knightblade shared a clueless look with Rook, but Wheeljack and Ratchet made enough fuss over her accomplishment that the former AI didn't notice the lag before the other SPARTANs chimed in with their own two bits, the hasty explanation Perceptor shared with the sniper was rephrased over the tactical uplink to clued them in on the importance of being first in one's class.
Shadowdancer shifted her hold on Kynaite, who was not happy that he had to interrupt his work for something as ignorable as a nap. "What else were you expecting, 'fit? We're SPARTANs."
The ex-AI giggled at that, letting go of the tracker to give the tactician and her sparkling a hug. "Silly, I know. So?"
Kynaite twittered at her, impressed with whatever she had done to earn a hug, and snuggled into her side, making the ex-AI giggle.
"Now, or later? I'm processing later, 'fit. Let's do this only once, because repeating myself isn't my favorite pastime, and we are missing SPARTANs for a complete introduction." Shadowdancer returned the hug before stepping back so the new medic could greet another of her siblings. She retreated farther after a minuet, and repeated the same statement to the SPARTANs' CO.
Warcry gave a hum of his engine. "I can see the logic in that. How do you want to handle transport?"
"I don't. Logistics in transportation were never my strong point." The Praxian femme looked over the large group of miss mashed bots then back to the tank. "How about we just announce to move this slag to Iacon? Speaking of which, does Iacon have the space for all this?"
"Sure and yeah." Warcry grinned unrepentantly at the irritated look that earned him from his 3IC. "Have a little faith in your commanding officer, Shadow'. I know what to do in Logistics."
Shadowdancer snorted with a dismissive flick of her door-wings. "At least one of us does."
The two watched as Refit made her way through the SPARTANs, hugging one or two here and there and greeting the non-SPARTANs that congratulated her on her hard work. Once she got to the end of the line of SPARTANs. Warcry raised the volume of his vocalizer to be heard over the general noise.
"Alright, bots! Those of you with young attached, that includes you Shadow', meet up with the trine at the ATHENS. The rest of you, we're for Iacon for the second part of the festivities!" He grinned at the dirty look the tactician threw him before stalking off to join the femmes that had stuck close to Trickflip for most of the cycle.
As the group broke up into smaller increments, some heading off to refuel before the second part of their trips and some heading for the highway, the tank counted off how many were here and how many were supposed to be in Iacon's Autobot base by now.
Shaking his helm, he gave a look to the newly minted medic that was waiting politely for him to notice her. "Is there a problem, 'fit?"
The ex-AI fidgeted before shrugging. "Not really, I was wondering if I could bring some bot with."
She clasped her hands behind her back, a weak smile on her faceplate.
"With? Of course, you're a SPARTAN too, 'fit." The tank gave her a grin, wisely deactivating his audio receptors before she trilled. "Grab your bot and let's go."
Refit dashed back into the auditorium and returned less than a breem later, trailing a bright blue mech behind her. The ex-AI stopped in front of her CO and pushed the mech forward a bit. "This is Jolt. I would like permission to bring him with."
Jolt gave the six mechs in front of him a weak grin as he waved a hand. "Err… hi? Don't hurt me…?"
Wheeljack, who had abandoned the SPARTANs' sniper to travel with his best friend, snickered at the looks the other SPARTANs gave the unrepentant bodyguard specialist.
"They won't hurt you, Jolt. I should know, because I spent the first megacycle of our acquaintance annoying the slag out of them." The inventor extended a hand with a happy flash of blue light. "My name's Wheeljack or 'jack if you want.
Hand half way extended, the blue mech froze as the identity of the other bots made themselves known to his processors and badly lagging CPU. "Primus. I knew 'fit knew the Wreckers, but I didn't know she knew you two!"
He shook the inventor's hand enthusiastically.
Ratchet rolled his optics as his best friend brightened considerably. "Let's just slagging go! Please!"
Warcry chuckled as the older medic hurried his friend, more like harassed, on. He motioned for the two new medics to follow the older mechs before following behind.