Chapter Twenty Nine
23rd December
1201hrs
The City commander sat at his desk, elbows resting on the desk, his left hand placed limply over his right, the right hand clasping gently his left thumb, he was slightly leaned forward and hunched so his nose rested on the top of the left, his lips touching his thumbs. His optics staring ahead, not at the mechs in front of him, but beyond them.
"How interesting".
He said simply, still maintaining the position he'd taken less then a minute ago, just as the chronometer passed 1200hrs.
"Sir?"
The Commander didn't say anything, he just continued to sit the way he was, saying nothing, doing nothing, just staring ahead.
Jazz looked across at Kup who was standing on his right.
"Kup, they've officially stepped over the line".
Magnus stood from his position, his finger tips resting on the table as he looked at them.
"The line we discussed, Kup, they've crossed it".
"Yes lad".
There was a sadness to the old timer's voice and Jazz picked up on it.
Magnus removed the small digidisk from the player and flicked it so it skimmed across the desk; Kup picked it up and looked it over for a few moments, the desk having scuffed its once shiny surface.
"They've crossed the line. I will not tolerate this sort of behaviour. Prime will not tolerate this".
"Shouldn't we ask Rodimus that?"
Jazz asked, still not comfortable with calling the new leader Prime and he had to wonder if he ever could.
"Prime has more pressing matters which demand his attention; he has given full concern of this matter to me".
Magnus lifted his hands up and crossed his massive arms over his broad chest.
"Do you have a problem with that, lieutenant?"
He asked firmly.
"Well, as a matter of fact I do, Sir, I don't have to be no genius to figure out what you two peeps are jammin' about. You guys wanna offline the twins. Sure, they're not the most responsible and this event is just another in a long line of antics demanding reprimand, but an offlining? It won't go down well with the troops!"
"The troops will take down what I tell them to take down".
Magnus growled at him.
"This isn't a little picnic in the pleasure nebula, this is war, this is serious, we don't have time to adhere to some code of friendship you undisciplined whelps. Its commendable you obviously want to ensure the welfare of the subordinates and as you very keenly express you wish to have a good rapport with them, and that has its benefits on the battle field. But we must remove the rusted cogs from our machine; else we will not win this war".
Magnus walked out from behind his desk and strolled as if he were a man in a park and stood before the window, looking out over the city.
"But make no mistake, lieutenant, the war is still in motion, one victory against one Decepticon faction will not collapse their war effort, they will keep coming. And now we have new enemies that we must face, we have no time to ignore misalignments in our troop cache. And the twins are one such misalignment".
Jazz realised there was no arguing with him, and he realised he was more likely to benefit the twins if he still had those brandings of an officer. If he was busted down to the rank of some lowly recruit or droid then chances are there'd be nothing he could do to help those dunces.
"Yes Sir, I understand".
He said with an uncharacteristic depression.
"Dismissed".
Magnus stated suddenly and the two bots before him knew better then to stay around and have any further Q&A session.
Outside the office Kup and Jazz strolled along the corridor leading out into the main facility.
"You shut your yap just in time to keep your job, Lad".
Kup stated.
"You really think the twin's will get offlined?"
He asked in response, looking somewhat forlornly ahead.
"Dunno Lad, Magnus may be tough, but he's no monster, if those two wise up and surrender or get taken alive, Mag's won't have them in the chamber by the end of the hour. They'll spend some time in the brig, you and your chums from Optimus' team will nag Rodimus and Magnus and eventually they'll see the value of the twin's contribution to the war effort and they'll be out on the battlefield in no time".
"What you think made them flip their lids? You really think Perce is right about the whole split CPU thingie?"
Kup went quiet for a few moments, wondering if his recent experience and the screamed ramblings from the twins were connected, thinking better then to release such information to Jazz he replied that he wasn't sure, and it wasn't the place of a lowly solider with more dollars then cents to question a scientist of Perceptor's calibre.
1238hrs
Magnus had spent the past half hour pacing his office contemplating the actions of the twins and how best to deal with it. He also gave consideration to several recent attacks, possible Decepticon activities in a part of the quadrant that was too close to Earth. That was a whole heap of other trouble. Magnus reached over and picked up a mug of hot oil from his desk and gasped for a moment as he realised it was hotter then he had estimated. After a few small sips he placed it back down and cringed again at the absolute mess Optimus had made of this unit. Sure, Optimus was a great Autobot leader and would go down in history as probably the best, he'd served under this Prime, but Earth had made him soft. Maybe it was the stress of being away from his bond mate, maybe it was from his crew being up to shenanigans from sheer boredom, perhaps it due to the Decepticons being bored and being low in number and ability that they had lost their true understanding of the Decepticon cause, or maybe it was these natives. Magnus was well aware of Prime's relationship with humanity, and particular members of this odd little species. Whatever it was that had softened the crew, he hoped the surviving members of such would wake up to the true reality of war. This wasn't some polite little walk in the botanical gardens on Iacon. Primus, war isn't a game.
Something hit him.
Hard.
He spun around, his shoulder missiles ready to fire, even on the inside; the regimented cleanliness of his office took second place to any intruder. There was nothing or no one there… that he could see at least. On the floor, at his feet, was something small. He cautiously bent down to pick it up, his optics still scanning the room about him.
Picking it up in his bulky fingers he realised it was quite fragile, it had a dry sensation to it, it was brittle and something he'd never seen before, but something that was somehow familiar. He ran it through his databanks and then realised what it was.
A human skull.
"What in the name of Vector Sigma?"
He asked with complete and utter mortification that someone could throw a skull at him, a real skull. This was no plastic model found in the schools of human medicine, this was the real deal.
The back of the skull had been caved in, and while there were no fragments around his office to indicate such a break had occurred when it struck him, this was an injury that might had assisted in hurrying the owner of such towards their death. There were also blackened singe marks around the break. Maybe a laser blast or an explosion. It gave him a morbid fascination for a few moments, but then he realised he had more important things, finding the unpleasant individual who would desecrate a human grave and then throw someone's remains at him would have to wait, the twins were more important to be located. Of course, it could have been them, but his sensors would alert him to the fact if they came near.
He placed the skull on his desk and was about to contact someone to come clean it up when something hit him in the back of the leg. He turned quickly and saw on the floor another skull, the bottom half of it was missing, two empty sockets stared up at him, the rest of the face was gone.
"Who's there? Who's responsible for this? This is NOT funny!!"
He bellowed.
A skull then smashed into his forehead, small pieces of bone dropped down into his optics. He brushed them away, angry more then frightened at this point.
A bang.
He turned to the door that led to a closet in his office. It contained office supplies mostly and a few other trinkets but nothing that was contraband or inappropriate for an officer of his standing. He growled a string of words that were inappropriate for an officer of his standing and he went to open the door.
"You are in big trouble!"
He banged numbers into a coded entrance pad and the doors swished open.
He expected to find some cheeky young mech who'd lost a bet, was on a dare or was just out to cause some trouble. Maybe he'd get lucky and it'd be one of the twins, or both of them. Maybe it was a human with a sling shot and a tendency to be disrespectful to their dead.
Instead, what he found was a tsunami of skulls. They poured out over him, tens of thousands of them, perhaps even a hundred thousand. They wrapped themselves around his form, their fragile light weighted structures were able to push him down, he was stunned at the power they had, it wasn't right that they had such gravity, but they did. He was on the floor now, broken fragments of human life were grinding between him and the ground, they continued to stream out from the closet. He started yelling, they filled his mouth, he could taste them, smell them, feel them, and he could hear a sobbing in the background. The sobbing got louder and more precise, it was if a million human beings were lamenting all at once some terrible personal tragedy. It was loud. It was over powering. It stunk of death and he wanted it to stop.
At first he yelled at them, well, at whoever was responsible for such a morally repugnant prank.
Then he screamed at them, anger deep in his voice.
The he started screaming out of fear.
Then he started sobbing from the realisation that it wasn't going to stop because he was frightened or screaming.
He flailed his arms and legs about to try and dislodge the multitude of skulls from him but to no avail, they just kept coming. The sounds of them rolling, falling, sliding, breaking, rubbing against his metallic form, it was too much. He started crying for help, to Primus, to Kup, to his secretary, to the Twins, to anyone.
Just make it stop.
The ethereal weeping continued, it got louder, sharper, it tore into his audios and under the blanket of death he was able to feel a trickle of damp from his audios, energon, he was bleeding from the ears.
Oh Primus, please, please, make it stop. I beg you Primus.
He wasn't sure if he screamed it or thought it or what, but the door to the office came open. Magnus of course wasn't' aware of it, he was somewhere where there was no awareness of the physical world. Rodimus rushed over to the city commander who lay on his back, his arms and legs clawing at some unseen force. A fear so horrible Rodimus had never seen anything like it and never would again, etched on his faceplates.
And the screams.
They came straight out of the soul of that mech.
And it was then, Rodimus realised, something was really wrong with Autobot City.
"SOME ONE GET FIRST AID!!"
But he was pretty sure no one heard over Magnus' screaming.
