The Diego Diaries: Thud (dd6 169)
Note: There are many bits and pieces of the characters I am using here to construct a history for the elders among the family and friends that is the start of a long intertwined backstory. I have pieced this together to make a story that fits this one. This encompasses the Age of Origins, the Age of Wrath and the start of The Golden Age on Cybertron as per the Chronicles of Primus. The framework is drawn from that and a number of other things. The Quintessons started the functionalist and caste system that ended in total destruction millions of years later. The bureaucracy that they built was too strong and entrenched to change and thus, ruin was built in.
-0-In the corridor/waiting room, Metro Femme
"Thud!"
Everyone turned toward the sound of something heavy falling. Keystock was standing next to the backpack which he had just dropped onto the floor. He was covered in dried mud and oil to his waist, something that disgusted him greatly. He leaned against the wall, then slid down to sit. Cargo who was next to him did the same.
Springer stared at him, then grinned slightly as he glanced at Hard Drive. "Appa, I see you have him carrying The Kit."
Hardie grinned back, then nodded. "A heady responsibility." Off line, the room was laughing loudly. No one would admit it but some of them could tell tales about 'carrying the kit'. None of the n00bie kids could but the others …
Springer nodded, then glanced at Keystock. "I wouldn't drop it like that if I were you. It isn't wise."
Keystock who was banking an ENORMOUS rage stared at Springer. "Why is that?" he asked coldly.
Springer stared at him, then made a gesture of explosion. "Ker-pow."
Everyone of the 'oldsters' picked up immediately and nodded. Some of the youngsters who had no idea what was going on but didn't want to look like yahoos nodded as well, affecting a look of deep appreciation and understanding as they did. Newbies like Partition, Bezel and Lon looked suitably impressed and didn't hide it, though they said nothing. They watched with heightened interest the goings on, missing the subtext altogether.
Keystock stared at Springer, then the bag. He pushed it over from him, then sat back against the wall. The laughter that generated didn't soothe him a bit. Springer grinned at him, then Hard Drive. "How long are these two going to be yours, Appas?"
"As long as the court and Ratchet allow it. Could be a while," Hardie said. He glanced at Raptor. "Progress report on Cargo, infant."
The big bruising mech grinned, then glanced at his father. "He worked for three orns without a cranky remark. I consider that progress. We had to pull solvents out of the ground with a hand bucket line, pull metal off a generator nexus, help refugees make it to a tent camp, took notes everywhere, had a shoot out at a wrecked warehouse when we interrupted a gang stealing stuff," Raptor recited.
"A shoot out," Bumblebee said with a grin. "You should have called us."
Everyone was in agreement, then all of them glanced at Cargo. "How did he do during the shootout, Appa?" Moonracer asked.
"He did what I told him to do. Lie flat and don't raise up anything you don't want shot off," Raptor said. Everyone grinned. "All in all, productive."
"That's encouraging," Hardie said.
"How did he do, Atar?" Raptor asked as he nodded toward Keystock.
"Passable fair. He helped carry infants to a transport. That was a good thing. Seeing the end result of your actions is medicinal. We carried bricks to a work site, traveled everywhere, slogged through the mud and solvents of a dozen toxic sites. Saw the shacks that our people are using until good housing shows up. We pulled a lot of unexploded ordinance out of sloshy holes in the ground. Its a mess but he didn't drop The Kit."
"Until now," Elita said as she glanced at Keystock. "I wouldn't do that again."
Keystock stared at her and the others but didn't say a thing. Both he and his brother felt out of place and they were both overwhelmed and rage-filled. Silence was their defense it would appear.
"You know, Appa," Partition said. "I just finished my medic exams. I can come with you and help. I think I'm going to pass it and I finished basic training yesterday."
Everyone glanced at the kid who had bloomed like a flower in the desert of his own life. He was genuine and sincere, sweet and unexpected. Hardie nodded. "You will pass that test with flying colors, infant. I have faith in you. I will talk to Ratchet about getting you into the field."
He smiled with overwhelming delight. "Thank you, Appa," he said, unconsciously calling him grandfather.
Lancer who was sitting on one side of him with Moonracer on the other slipped her arm through his. "Sounds like a plan."
He looked at her, a beautiful famous soldier and felt a tingle. "I want to be a soldier. It's the only life for me."
Lancer grinned. "Sounds good to me," she said as laughter and catcalls blazed all around the corridor.
Partition glanced around, then grinned. "Sounds good to me, too."
Huge laughter and applause greeted that, then it settled into a comfortable silence.
"What about you two? You ready for the soldier life?" Moonracer asked with a smirk.
Keystock looked at her coolly. "No. I don't have the yen."
Cargo didn't answer. He didn't feel comfortable enough to say much in this group, some of the most powerful Autobots in the new world order and famous hard bitten soldiers. He was out of his depth so he sat silently and watched.
"Too bad," Moonracer said. "It's never dull and you don't have to sit in an office pushing data." She glanced at Magnus. "No offense."
Magnus shrugged. "None taken. We all have our part to play."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"As I was saying," Magnus said dryly as the room exploded in laughter. Arcee hugged his arm as she beamed at him. He, himself, was feeling no pain. That was for Ratchet.
-0-Inside
The roar echoed off the walls but it still wasn't time. There was a bit more to go before the separation would happen. Everyone inside sat where they sat, their insides ringing like bells at the intensity of the hollering. Gypsy who sat next to Ratchet grinned at him. "Nothing wrong with your vocal processors."
"No," Ratchet said with a dazzling smile. "Nothing wrong with that." He looked at Ironhide, then grinned. "You look like slag."
"I AM IRONHIDE! I CAN LOOK LIKE SLAG IF I WANT TO!" he said with a grin of his own. He wasn't holding Ratchet's servo anymore. He had actually dislocated a knuckle joint two pains back so his bellow had joined Ratchet's. Fortunately, there were doctors in the room, so …
-0-Outside, listening
"Sounds like fun in there. Who's going to have the next sparkling?" Arcee asked just to be ornery. "Magnus already put you mechs into the dirt with his stand up manliness. What about it?" she asked as she slipped her arms around Magnus. He was a big, big mech. Fortunately, Arcee was a big, big femme.
"The Well. Never this," Springer said. "Some far off orn, we're going to the Well. Drift won't cooperate."
"Frag you, Springer," Drift said with a grin.
Laughter.
"What about you, Bee? Aid?" Jetta asked to be ornery.
Everyone looked at the two who were leaning into each other. Bee grinned. "Frag you, Jetta."
Huge laughter at the feisty little mech with a big spark and legions of friends.
"Its hard to reconcile the soldiering life with family," Twin Twist said.
"Ratchet and Ironhide have 827 kids," Sandstorm said with a grin. "I don't think that argument works anymore."
Huge laughter and agreement.
"I want Orion. And Praxus. Hero and Sunspot. I want Prowler," Drift said as Springer nodded. "I want them prefabricated. Building one myself has no appeal."
Springer grinned. "We took care of three once. They were amazing. If we do this again, we get three at the same time."
"That's a lot of infants at once," Elita said with fascination.
Springer nodded. "It was fun," he said.
"No kids for me," Jazz said. "At least, not now. I like the bachelor life."
Mirage nodded. "I hear you."
"We all have a duty," Magnus said. "We've lost a third of our population to war and we're still missing most of another third. A good meteor strike on Cybertron and we're on the road to extinction."
Jetta nodded. "I hear you, Magnus, and maybe some time in future. Right now, I'm hardly home and Elita has to find me wherever I am."
"You always were that way, Jetta, from the time you were a kid," Magnus aka Deion said as Arcee aka Arcee nodded.
"Back in the ice age," Bee said with a grin.
"I'm not that old," Magnus said. "I'm old enough to beat your aft. If you want to hear about the good old orns, speak to him or him," he said nodding to Hercy and Hard Drive.
Delphi grinned. "Are you going to tell about the old orns? If you do, you have to go to the museum and put it down for the Talking History program."
"You too, Delph," Hardie said. "You're only slightly younger than me."
"Tell us," Partition said. "Tell us about it, Appa. I'd love to hear it."
Everyone else in the room did, too, but they weren't ready to push it. Some of the elders didn't like to talk about the bad old orns. Hardie, however, was a teacher at spark and he looked at the kids staring at him. "What about it, Recruit?" he asked as he glanced at Hercy.
Hercy nodded. "On it, General."
"You know you're old when you can call Hercy 'recruit'," Springer said as everyone laughed. "How much older are they than you, Kup?"
"A lot. But at some point, that stops mattering," Kup said. He looked at Hercy and Hardie. "I would be honored to hear some of your stories."
The others nodded, then it became quiet in the room. Hardie considered that, then began. "I remember when the Quintessans came," he began to a rapt audience.
-0-Inside
"It's quiet out there. That makes me nervous," Ratchet said with a grin. "What's the word, Gypsy?"
"Not for a while, Ratchet. They need to be closer together," she said with a grin.
"Frag," Ratchet replied. "ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"
-0-Outside
"They came to every city, village and town on Cybertron all at once bringing order and higher purpose and status for our people, or so they said. We were unruly and out of control, a world of those who made a life for themselves as best they could in those leaderless vorns. We needed a Prime but didn't have one so we did the best we could as warring tribes and unified areas. They came and told us that the t-cog that we bore was their gift to us and we had 'ceremonies' where they would 'transform' us. We were dazzled. We were safer and unified. Then they took over. They enslaved us, making us work to create all manner of things for them. We were sold, some of us. Consumer goods and military hardware. It was a terrible time. We weren't treated as fully sentient and functional. They were especially cruel. They killed us for any reason or none. So many dead. They never noticed our rising wrath. They didn't even both to assign names to those they drew out of the Well or AllSpark. They just put them into work without a word. Functionalism came from them and a rigid caste system that held us all down.
"Finally, we rebelled. The rebellion was led by A-3, a mech I knew only marginally then. We had worked out a network and everyone worked hard to find out about the Quintessons, what they really were and how they could be defeated. We fought them and they died or fled. They weren't very much for fighting themselves. We could kill them easily and they were unable to fight us off we were so many. They had their own armies, Sharkticons and Allicons among them. They were slaves who did their bidding and carried out their decisions mindlessly. They were their enforcers. When the war came it was brutal but didn't last as long as you'd think. They died so easily.
"We drove them out and they fled. They had great ships and always kept them ready. The world was freed and so were our people. What followed after that was difficult and arduous. We had to figure out how to live with our own decisions and make our own civilization. It was a long process. Some of us took on the role of protecting the planet and others took up other professions. That was when I met you, Delphi."
Delphi nodded. "You were a leader of a battle group that overtook the airfields of Iacon. You nearly got them, Hardie."
Hardie nodded. "We broke out of the places where we were controlled, factories, pens, prison-like barracks. We all stood together, named and nameless. We took on their armies, the Sharkticons and Allicons, killing them wherever they were found. It was brutal. We made gains, then consolidated territory. It was a fire fight, lots of missiles, mortars and shooting. We found them everywhere they were, then chased them to the airfields to get the ships before they could go. We wanted them destroyed to the last one so they couldn't continue what they did or come back. It was a really devastating thing to do."
Delphi nodded. "We weren't equipped to fight but we had to. They kept us uneducated and made us believe that we couldn't survive on our own.
"Some of us had gotten together to talk, to figure out how to break them, then we networked. It took a long time but we had lots of that to do to make it real. We had to figure out how to get weapons and ships, part them out in stashes and develop leadership. There were so many brave spies, so many that worked to undermine the system, the Functionalist system that would be replaced by the System of Exception when they were overthrown," Hardie said.
"What was hard during that time was waiting and watching them kill us for no reason. They used us to fight each other to the death for their own amusement. They were fantastically callous and cruel. When we did rise up, we did so at strategic locations all over Cybertron," Hardie said. "We hit them in their communications and control centers. We hit them where they lived, in huge buildings that were heavily armed. Their armies came against us and we fought them with the fury that only slaves can feel when they throw off their chains.
"It was very bloody but one-sided because in the end we were many and they were cowards who had done what all cowards do, overreach and overestimate their power. They got into their ships and fled. You cannot know the celebrations that took place when it occurred to us that we had won and that the planet was ours. But it was a broken and battered planet we got back for ourselves. The Functionalists picked up the chains and carried on. When they were overthrown, the high castes and powerful merely 'modified' the Functionalist program, making it 'more humane'. It was maddening.
"After the hard battles, many of us, the military leaders, gathered around Praxus. It was an enlightened place, filled with learning and space for us to live. Out of that, when the castes were being fought over first through the Functionalist leadership and then the Senate and various councils, we formed a caste that would be the stop gap, the safety valve for everyone else. We were the warriors and we would develop The Code that would ensure that someone could stop the worst aspects of life under the System. It helped but it didn't in the end save anything."
"Without that, there would have been even more injustice," Hercy said. "It is hard to describe how hard the times were, the uncertainty and the dream of having a Prime strong enough to lead us. Guardian was a great Prime. Prima was as well. Then a long line of slaggers was next until Optimus. By then, the poison had overtaken reason. There was no way back."
Delphi nodded. "That's true. Raptor was a young mech entering the army when Guardian was Prime. We were all so divided by then. The Primes were supposed to unite but they were so corrupted after Guardian that it was hard to do that. Even Zeta took shortcuts. He was a promising Prime but he was as bad as any that followed."
"I remember," Hercy said. "My family had a business and worked hard. They took their function during the occupation and made a business afterward. It lasted a long time. I worked there and was a soldier. I learned everything I could. I remember after the battle ended against the Quintessons, you took me under your wing, Hardie. You were my mentor and teacher, you and Delphi."
Hardie nodded. "We took you and a lot of promising youngsters in, teaching them all we knew about soldiering and being honorable. I knew that the end of the road with the systems of the Functionalists and the System of Exception would lead us to ruin. The poison of superiority was never extracted from the body. The wounds to our collective psyches were never healed, not until now. We never had a unifying leader that was going to take us upward to what we truly were until Optimus Prime."
"AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"
The sound through the door was loud, breaking up the silence of the conversation. Laughter greeted that as everyone relaxed. Smokescreen who was sitting next to Devcon and his grandson, Smokey. laughed. "I almost forgot why we were here."
"No doubt," Smokey said with a grin. "Is that why you don't have caste marks on you, Hercy?" he asked.
Hercy nodded. "I don't because I was in the first rebellion and was considered exempt with everyone else who was there. I came in late because I was young and trying to protect my family. I joined up with the General here. I had Molotov cocktails and a good throwing arm. The Quintessons burned real good."
Devcon snicked at that remark. "I imagine." He looked at Hard Drive and Delphi. "Your caste marks are different, too."
"They are. All three of us, Hercy, Delphi and me are caste exempt. However, to get the upper hand with the Praxian Elites, we invented the caste mark that we wear. It's different than any other. Its the image of Cybertron, the engraving of 'Until All Are One' inside the hands of The One. We serve everyone. We leave no one out. It made us the most feared and powerful caste in our culture. It also kept the high castes from going around the bend."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!"
Turbine who was leaning against Raptor grinned. "That one was closer to the other. Things are speeding up. Blackjack, lean in and see how long this is going to take."
Blackjack leaned toward the door, then peered in. He talked a moment to someone, then closed the door. Leaning back, he grinned. "They're getting ready right now." He glanced at Alor. "By the way, where are the kids?"
"At Day Care," Turbine said. "I had Scout taken there, too."
Blackjack nodded. "Slagger. You going back in there?" he asked Alor, then his genitors and grand genitors.
Hardie grinned. "Not on your life. Infant is on his own."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!"
It was silent a moment, then Raptor laughed as he stood up. "That sounded like Ironhide," he said as he opened the door to enter. It closed behind him. Inside the room, Ratchet was laying back on a med berth as screens were being erected around him. They bore the symbol of the city-state of Praxus, a nice touch. Screens were being moved around Ironhide and one had holes for his servos to hold Ratchet's helm and nothing more. He would be as blind as a bat to the whole proceedings. Raptor walked to him, then shook his helm. "Did you just yell?"
"I DID!" Ironhide said as he glared at the curtain. "Can I say that right now, I hate our cultural rituals?"
"You can but it won't do slag-all right now," Raptor said as he grinned at his onliest and most beloved grandson.
"Okay, Ratchet," they heard Gypsy say on the other side of the curtain. "I'm going for the spark now."
"ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!" -Ratchet
"I think I'm going out the door. Join me?" Raptor said to Ironhide who was reaching through the holes in the curtain to hold Ratchet's helm.
"DON'T TEMPT ME!" Ironhide said through his emotional downpour.
Raptor slapped him on the shoulder, then with a grin at everyone in the room, walked out and shut the door. Sitting down again, he grinned. "He's got it completely under control."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
-0-TBC 10-25-17