The Diego Diaries: Stuff (Dd6 496)
-0-Praxus, Cybertron
It was dark and noisy as they sat together winding down from lunch. A short catch up of the sit rep was had for Prowl's benefit before things wandered. Hercy glanced at Hard Drive who was staring in the distance. "You didn't live downtown. Were you in the District?"
"We had a place there and so did Blackjack and Raptor," Hardie said as he glanced at the recruit. "Not much there now though. They tried to take all of us out, getting the military in one fell swoop and preserved this area altogether."
"You had a nice neighborhood if I remember," Hercy said.
"Its about two feet tall now," Hardie said. "I went there and used my GPS to find the place. Nothing is left. Its all obliterated down to the ground."
"Where did you live, Prowl?" Prime asked.
Prowl who was sitting on the edge of a ship beside him glanced toward the City Hall. He nodded that direction. "About two miles straight ahead. We had an apartment in a tower that faced this way. We could see for miles and miles. If you had good optics, you could watch the football games in the arena."
"Why?" Kup asked with a grin.
Huge mockery and a very handsome winged scowl greeted that. "Fraggers. This was a great city."
"It will be again," Prime reminded him. "We have to go by the shrine. They opened a couple of vaults and get readings there that might indicate Primal relics."
"I wish they'd find the keys," Prowl said.
"Won't find them here," Ironhide said. "Would be nice though. Imagine this place rising up rebuilt."
They all could.
-0-Prison
Crader watched as the guards walked past with some of his party in custody. He was being kept alone in a small pen while the majority of his 24 companions were held in small groups in the same cell block. Outside, it was cold and clear with a weak sunlight making the place look much friendlier than Cybertron. They had remained a long time, hanging on in the Empire until just before Prime took it back. They were contraband shippers, thieves, data miners, scam artists, killers, unscrupulous fraggers without seemingly redeeming features.
Their journeys had taken them far and wide, their contacts had become nearly unparalleled, their willingness to gather strange things and apply them notable. Thus, they had been to secret spaces, gathered a lot of dangerous things together and met with sparkless inventors and manufacturers to find this and that, then put them all together. Their tech was an amalgamation and the inventors as shady and amoral as they came.
Walking down dripping alleys on open planets where anything and anyone goes, they had made a plan, then worked out the details. Coming toward Razorclaw had gotten them into the migration to Oasis Base. They barely made it out of there without detection or more than the usual notice, a plan they hadn't wanted to undertake anyway, to find themselves walking into Prime's hideout. Razorclaw was close so they expected to take a shuttle and make a run for it. They hadn't banked on this place and its layers and layers of obstacles. Now they were fragged.
He walked to the fence and stopped as the heat of the bars reached him. It was disconcerting. Heat didn't phase him before, nor did pain. He was invincible. Now he was a slagging mini-con. He felt hatred rising inside as he watched more of his people being locked up. The protoform he was inhabiting didn't have the internal conversation feature functioning. They would have to either yell to each other or figure out some form of sign language. The signing he knew required both mechs to lay hands palms together. That was out of the question here.
Standing nearby, Warden Gee-Gee stared at him, her internal alarms signaling trouble ahead. She had done this too long to ignore such intuitions. Glancing upward at her lieutenant warden, Colius, she considered things. "Turn that up higher. For all of them. As high as you can get without blowing a fuse. I don't like their energy, Coli."
He nodded. "I don't either."
-0-Ops Center
"What's the word out past the DMZ, Prowl? I'm going out now," Paragon said as he paused beside the command table before heading out for a tour of the ships posted there.
"We have odd signals past him, out toward the different groups that live there. It could be that he's harassing them or raiding. I have it flagged for Optimus," Prowl said as the big mech, someone who bore a good resemblance to Prowl sat down. "I know he can't keep all those mechs busy and inline without throwing his usual business in. Even if he could be as strategic as he likes to be sometimes, his mechs will get restless."
Paragon nodded. "Where is Imperialis in this? You know he was thought to be headed the long way around or is he still dug in back at the old Functionalist site? If he is, who has he aligned with? We need more information."
Prowl nodded. "I'll get Starscream on it. We can't let this get out of servo," Prowl said. "We're going to be rescuing out that way through Oasis Base with Atlas. These fraggers need put down."
Paragon nodded. "We have a meeting of the minds then," he said as he stood. "Keep me informed." He walked toward the door and disappeared.
Prowl considered that, then wrote a note to flag the intel he did get straight to Paragon. He bent to the 101 tasks already on the table.
-0-School, Library
They stared at the three kids standing by the stack watching Lumi and Fireball. Glancing at each other with surprise, Santee and Saber moved closer before stopping. The kids were snickering and whispering like kids do, then they turned to go. Freezing at the sight of the two behind them, then turned around and lit out for their table the other way, passing by Lumi and Fireball who didn't notice them. Sitting with other kids, they glanced at the two as they walked over to join Lumi and Fireball.
Those two looked up, then Fireball grinned. "Look at this, Santee," he said, then froze. "What?" He stared at the pair, then glanced over his shoulder. The kids watching glanced into their books quickly. He looked at the two again. "What happened?"
"They were talking about you two and snickering," Saber said with a bit of anger.
"Who? Us?" Fireball said as he sat straighter. He glanced at Lumi with confusion, then began to stand. He was going to talk to them when their teachers, two of them were using the library at the same time, called all of the kids to go back to their rooms.
They stared at the three kids who jumped up and hurried out the door. Gathering their own books, they finished checking out, then walked back to their classrooms. It was a big group of grim faced titanic boys that walked into their classrooms for science.
-0-Industrial Park City, Site 235, Part City #6, at the Foundry with the Master of Metallurgy and Tie Down of Iacon
They watched the huge box come in with alien handwriting on the side. It was being carried on the huge overhead pulley system after offloading from a huge non-sentient flat bed truck that took joors to drive from the airport after delivery. It then went overhead across the huge warehouse toward the enormous vault room where the most precious or dangerous materials were held. It rumbled slowly, then lowered to enter the vault on a specially built trailer with tiny drone vehicle that would take it inside. They followed it, then watched as the drone backed up, parking it in the space for it, then unhooked and drove out to wait again for a task.
Walking to the huge box, they peered over the edge to see immensely dark bars, ingots that were dauntingly heavy stacked inside. They were as dark as the night, the long slender bars. They were kept slim and long, ready for smelting and easier handling. They made the sharpest cutting edges every created anywhere and this was the same stuff that was plated on mechs, blazing hot and applied directly, that made phase six mechanisms not only so hard to kill but probably made them so crazy as well. The only way to make this kind of armor possible was to heat it red hot, then apply it to the bearer's body to cool there and form a bond that was nearly impossible to break.
It was also the single most valuable metal in the known universe. The only way to get this metal was to draw it from the event horizon of a black hole. The only individuals who knew how to do it were the aliens who lived near the massive and violently active singularity at Caris V. They were deeply reclusive and self protecting. Whenever anyone tried to go to them directly, they receded their space ship transports into the horizon itself. When whoever it was pulled back, they came out again. No one knew how they managed to do that and not die but they could. No one had ever seen them, they traded through messaging and distance delivery and were incredibly scrupulous, honorable in their dealings and famed for their reputation. It was an enigma to everyone everywhere.
The Master of Metallurgy, Camden of Tyger Pax turned to them. "When will the dies be ready, Tie?"
"We have them here now. I put them in your office, Camden," he said.
"Thank you. The portion of the material for your blades and tools will be ready when you are, Tie. We're going to do the smelting here but you can go from there. The forge room and all the rest is at your disposal," Camden said.
"Thank you," Tie said as they walked toward the door of the room. "I have to make the tools for my son given some prisoners came who bear phase six level armor. I'm hoping that I'm fast enough to remove the casts from the dies before they harden too much. It was very nerve wracking last time we did this."
"If anyone can do it, you and Ravel can," Camden said as they stepped outside. He pressed the buttons and the door closed, sealed until he came back to begin the difficult process of turning the detritus created in the event hell of a black hole into liquid again just long enough to fill molds for tools. It would take them both all orn long.
-0-School, Intermediate, Iacon
They stood on the schoolyard having finished lunch, a group of very tall boys standing together with a few smaller ones. Rambler was laughing with them as they waited for the bell.
Then Lumi saw one of the kids from the library walk past nearby. He frowned. "Who is that mech?" he asked as everyone turned to see what he was staring at. No one knew.
"Why?" Coros asked.
"He's just a pest, that's all," Lumi said as Fireball squeezed his servo.
"Ignore him," Rambler said with a grin. "What about the science test coming up in chemistry?"
All of them commiserated over having a full professor from the Science Institute of Praxus for an intermediate school teacher. The test was going to be a corker.
-0-At a bench nearby waiting for someone
Metrotitan was off shift and waiting outside the Intermediate School for his girl, the luminous and hysterically awesome 2-Lip of Stanix. She was a level 3 student working her way to certification and graduation. She was an artist, natch, and was taking up dancing at the University when she graduated. She was MAD!MAD!MAD! for Metrotitan and he was MAD!MAD!MAD! for her. Her family who had blanched when she came home to tell them in the most dramatically Stanixian way possible that she was IN LOVE WITH A TALL BOY! melted immediately in the warmth of the big frames and this one in particular. 2-Lip's ada already called him 'my son-in-law, the city'.
They had gone to jail together, cavorted on television during a half time and were as simpatico as two individuals could be. She was hilarious and he thought she was hilarious. She was short, he was massively tall, three times taller than her given she was slightly taller than most mini-cons her age. She was smart, funny, delighted with life, loyal to a fault (the motto of Stanix), artistic, doted on him like an old hen her chicks, thought he was HANDSOME!HANDSOME!HANDSOME!
And smart. Did I say smart?
Tyke on the other servo worshiped the ground she hovered over, thought she was the most beautiful femme he ever saw, loved her art, loved her family, loved being this happy. Whatever she wanted to do, he was good to go. Carrying her with him half the time, they had a constant conversation together which was great since they nearly agreed completely on everything. The best part of all? No one in his giant (sized) family ever gave him slag over it.
Titan was really gone over 2-Lip.
The doors opened and big kids fogged out, half of them running for buses or the metro. Waiting on his bench, he saw her exit. She looked for him, smiled brightly and waved. He watched her run his way with a fluttering spark. She hugged him around the leg, then grinned upward. "HI!"
"Hi," he said as they walked toward the metro.
Chatting about her orn, telling him more about the parties her gigantic family would throw for her pending graduation, she held his servo as they walked through the crowds. They disappeared down the steps just as she was telling him how Uncle Buzzie would be putting together one of her parties himself.
Yes, Metrotitan was flirting with the idea of calling Cliffjumper 'uncle'.
-0-TBC 10-15-18 edited 11-1-18