Hello! After one slaggin' HUGE dose of writer's block, I'm back with chapter four! FINALLY!!
Pivot: Thanks again for permission to throw Hypotenuse in. He appears 'bout halfway through this chapter and, apparently, is smarter than 3/5ths of Cybertron. And I had to look up "cephalopods" after I read your first review. Heh... Thankee for advice on narration, I worked on the end of chapter three a bit and I'll be more careful in the future. Thanks for the two reviews and good luck on your two dozen projects!!
Haley Macrae: An hour? O.o;; Hope that pizza was free. Interesting how you refer to the humans as "Alexis and the others." Did I influence that, or do you just like Alexis more than the other humans? Or, maybe, dislike Alexis less that the other humans? Anyway, thankee for the review!
Neko: Eh, that's okay, it was a pretty good pizza. It was worth the money. Glad you like, and thanks for the review!
Naphtali Phoenix: Cool name. What does Naphtali mean? Yes, I've made fun of Hot Shot a lot so far. He's just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The place being my fanfics and the time being any time I'm writing. :D Naah, I'm not always mean to him. You like the title? Squee! Thankee! Have you by any chance heard "One"? Or read the lyrics? Thanks for the review.
indigo-ink: Yes, he's a lazy idiot. But do me a favor and don't kill Hot Shot yet. I need him for the rest of the fic, and I like playing as him on Prelude To Energon. Heh. If you think Hot Shot's acting mean to Sideswipe, you should see what happens when Wheeljack's thrown into the mix. And I'm not talking about how Hot Shot treats him... Hot Shot and Wheeljack general try to ignore each other... no, it gets bad when Sideswipe gets near Wheeljack. All I can say is poor Wheeljack... Love your fics, update soon, and thanks for the review!
In this chapter some Energon characters are introduced, so for you guys who haven't seen Energon yet, for one reason or another (you know who you are! ;-) ), read this. Don't worry, it doesn't contain any huge spoilers. If you've seen Energon already, skip the next paragraph if you want.
Dr. Jones is a scientist/engineer/technologist of sorts, and is in Energon as the Dude That Makes All The Stuff. Kicker is his son who's sixteen at the start of Energon, which means that at the end of Armada he's only six years old, about kindergarten age. I could tell you a lot of stuff about that kid but I think I'll just tell you that he has brown hair, looked cute when he was a little kid (there are a couple of flashback scenes in Energon), and isn't incredibly fond of giant robots. There'll be more about that in a few chapters. Shockblast is a Decepticon who REALLY doesn't like Autobots, and from evidence in Energon it seems he didn't try very hard to be friends with Autobots in the ten year interlude between wars.
And that's all you need to know about them. They're introduced in this chapter (quite accidentally... I wasn't planning on throwing Shockblast in for at least five chapters!), so I just thought you guys who haven't seen Energon yet would need to know that these guys are, indeed, canon characters, and not spawns from my insane mind.
Quotes in bold are translated from Minicon-speak. Say, what is the official name of their language? Miniconian? Minican? Miniconese? Minicolonesian? Beepian? Who knows??
Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro, "One" belongs to Creed, Hypotenuse belongs to Pivot, and Diddlysquat, Regalix, Seek Destroy and the EV belong to me. The manmade island is kinda mine and kinda not. You'll see.
.....
"Hot Shot," Demolisher said into his communicator, heading towards the lifts. He was supposed to be across town in less than ten cycles, but couldn't leave until he got someone to meet the humans at the spaceport. "Hot Shot, come in. Do you read? Do you even have your communicator on??" Silence. "Optimus Prime is the kid of a toaster and a broken electric blanket!" Still silence.
"Guess he DOES have it off," Demolisher said. He turned a corner and found himself face-to-face with a VERY angry Sideswipe.
"Ah, good," Demolisher said before Sideswipe could speak. "You're here. You've met Diddlysquat before, haven't you?"
Sideswipe nodded quickly, opened his mouth to speak, and was cut off again.
"The humans are almost here from Earth. Go find Diddlysquat and tell him to go meet them at the Regalix Spaceport."
"But you-"
"NOW, Sideswipe!" Demolisher yelled. "That's an order!" Demolisher stalked off, muttering to himself. "I'm supposed to be checking that security breach at the penitentiary, which is just stupid since that place was made to hold prisoners of war and the war's OVER!! What are you waiting for, Sideswipe, do you want to leave your friends at the spaceport?! Get Diddly!!"
Sideswipe opened his mouth to retort, but thought better and went to find Diddlysquat. A thought struck him, and he groaned. Who'd watch after the Minicons?
...
Demolisher pressed the down button and waited for the lift, arms crossed and tapping his foot. "What's taking so long?" he muttered, waited another minute, then threw up his hands in exasperation. "How can it take this long for a stupid lift to get here!" he said, turning around and heading towards the stairs. "When I find out who's keeping that lift, I'm gonna tear them apart..."
((on the lift, two floors lower...))
The lift door swung open. Seek Destroy set a brick in the door to keep it open, then flew through the entire level, saying "Heeeeere, Diddlysquat, c'mon!" Seek Destroy turned to the three Requiem Blaster Minicons. "You remember what to do when we find him, right?" The RB Minicons exchanged nervous glances.
((back with Demolisher))
Demolisher growled in annoyance and kicked the lift door. Fine, he'd have to go the long way.
Taking the stairs down four at a time (which resulted in him tripping six times), he checked him internal chronometer. He had less than six cycles to get across town. Slag.
At the bottom of the stairs, Demolisher transformed and raced towards the doors, straight past Wheeljack.
"Wait, Demolisher! I need someone to..."
"SorryI'mlategottagoI'lldoitlater!" Demolisher yelled, and a second later was out the door.
Wheeljack stared at the place he had been. "Slag. Now I have to go find Hot Shot..." Wheeljack scowled. Not only was that a next-to-impossible task, he really didn't want to confront Hot Shot for any reason. Then he had an idea, and smiled.
"I guess I can consider my vacation request authorized," Wheeljack said, strolling out the front door.
...
Sideswipe had found Diddlysquat on the sixth floor, hiding from Seek Destroy, and sent him out of the base to get the humans. Diddly had eagerly gone, stopping only to get Hypotenuse and give Sideswipe six stun guns and eighteen smoke screen bombs. If Sideswipe was gonna be Minicon-sitting, he'd need 'em.
Diddly walked above the streets of Regalix in his alt-mode, a spider tank. He could move quickly through crowds by placing his four spider-legs in small gaps between Transformers and moving above everyone else. That helped, and the fact that when there's a giant walking tank around, most crowds tend to grow at least a little thinner around it.
Hypotenuse sat on top of Diddlysquat. Him being one of the more reasonable-minded Minicons Diddlysquat was responsible for, Hypotenuse had the honor of going with Diddlysquat on some errands. If owning Minicons was still legal, Diddlysquat probably would have claimed Hypotenuse. Of course, Hypotenuse probably would have killed him then.
Hypotenuse did not want to be owned.
"Why do we care about a bunch of humans, anyway?" Hyp asked. "I was only around them for a little bit, and they seemed pretty stupid to me.""We care about them because if we don't pick them up, I get fired. And you care about them because if I'm fired, you and all the other Minicons will be given to another Minicon baby-sitter--"
"Caretaker," Hyp corrected.
"Another Minicon caretaker who won't know how to handle Seek Destroy, and so he'll be slagged, and you'll all be labeled "dangerous" and locked up. I was a prisoner of war once, and believe me; being locked up is, more than anything else, BORING."
"Good point," Hyp said. "Let's go get them, shall we?"
They traveled in silence for a little bit. Bored, Diddly looked around for something to talk about. His eyes caught a heading. "Hey, look at that!"
They were passing a news datadisk dispenser, which looked a lot like Earth vending machines, except instead of snacks, they sold little disks you could insert into a datapad and read. One of the disks declared, "HOT SHOT VOTED MOST POPULAR OF OUR TWO NEW LEADERS". As they watched, a purple Transformer came up and bought one of the datadisks.
Diddly snorted. "What's that rookie so popular for? All he does is go around partying! I've never seen him do any actual work."
"Which is why he's so popular," Hyp said. "Demolisher does all the actual work, which makes him look like a boring killjoy. Hot Shot is going to a lot of parties, making sure everyone on Cybertron sees he's this great leader who knows how to have fun. He smiles for the camera, he does interviews, he goes to every social even from here to Iacon, and so he's popular. And it doesn't hurt that he's younger than Demolisher." Hyp paused. "And he's better looking."
Diddly screeched to a halt. "Better looking?? Since when did YOU care about..."
"Not my words! The femme Minicons! THEY said that, I just heard them!" Hyp said quickly. "And it's kinda hard not to. Every time he walks by, it's 'Oh my gosh! He's sooo good looking! Ohmigosh, Ohmigosh, lookit his SMILE!' Swoon, swoon, giggle, gag me please."
Diddly laughed, and started walking again, much to the relief of nearby Transformers who were afraid he had stopped to fire his cannon or something. Walking tanks do that to people.
"That's just stupid," Diddly said. "I don't know much about anything but war, but I know that someone who just sits on his skidplate all day doesn't deserve to lead."
Hyp grinned cynically. "It's all about popularity, and Decepticons don't have the popular view of life."
"What's that s'posed to mean?" Diddly asked.
"Autobots make up about two-fifths of Cybertron, Decepticons are another two-fifths, and neutrals are the last fifth. And Autobots and neutrals want to see a friendly face. The guy that goes to all the social events is the friendly face. Demolisher is the face no one sees. Only Decepticons see who's doing the real work."
"Well maybe Decepticons are smarter," Diddly said.
Hyp snickered. "I think you're right about that."
...
The purple Transformer who had bought the datadisk about Hot Shot leaned on a wall, out of everyone else's way, and inserted the datadisk into a slot in the bottom of a datapad. The disk uploaded, and an article appeared on the screen. It was about some place Hot Shot had attended the grand opening of. The purple Transformer skimmed the article with his one optic, snorted in disgust, and ejected the datadisk.
"There are a thousand useful things he could be doing, and he's watching the opening of an arcade," he sneered, throwing the datadisk on the ground and crushing it with one foot. "Idiot Autobot."
He looked up as two flier police Transformers skimmed over the street, scanning the crowds and communication over their com-links. He heard one of them say, "Shockblast should be somewhere around here..."
Shockblast ducked into an open doorway as they went by, only daring to look out when he was sure they'd gone by. They had no legal rights to keep him in that cell at the other end of Regalix. He had been a prisoner of war, and when the war was over, he should have been released, right? But noooo, they kept him locked up their for no reason at all! Oh, they'd find him all right, right after he'd gotten a two-million-signature petition to keep him out of a cell, a pardon from the two Cybertronian leaders, and a very good lawyer...
The Decepticon walked back into the crowd, and in another second couldn't be seen.
...
((back on Earth...))
About three miles offshore, there was a small lab on a man-made island, connected to mainland by only a four-lane bridge. The lab was designed to be able to sink under water in case of a storm, but it wasn't underwater now. Right now, it was above water and humming with activity.
The lab was filled with all kinds of scientists and technologists, studying everything from chemistry to psychology to agriculture to meteorology, and everything in the middle. But what the lab was famous for, at least amongst top scientists, was Universuspectare, or the EV. The EV was the most powerful telescope produced by mankind, and thus, was kept secret to everyone but the ones authorized to use it and those who worked on the man-made island the EV was kept on. Dr. Jones was one of the few elite scientists who were allowed to use the EV, and in fact his team of scientists were given full rights to it, even down to keeping it clean. And a lense that big in the middle of the ocean is hard to keep clean. Y'know, seagulls... you get the idea.
On this day, Dr. Jones and his team were about to make a most interesting discovery.
Dr. Jones walked into the laboratory, his six-year-old son behind him. On weekends and holidays, Kicker often came to work with his father, and now that summer break had started, he came much more frequently. The other scientists hadn't like it until the boy had caught an escaped hamster a month earlier. Now they didn't pay him any attention. At least, they didn't until they needed him to catch something.
"Dr. Jones!" a young man called from across the room. "You'll never guess what we saw yesterday! It's... it's amazing!"
Dr. Jones turned towards the voice, and saw his assistant Marty Alden waving. Dr. Jones smiled and nodded so Marty knew he had seen him, then looked down at Kicker. "It looks like I'm going to be busy awhile. You know where the room with the animals are, right? You can go there."
Kicker nodded. "I'm gonna see if Jenny will let me play with the big snake!" he said, running off. Dr. Jones smiled. Dr. Jennifer Warren would have her hands full with Kicker.
"So Marty, what do we have here?" Dr. Jones asked, coming up behind his assistant.
"You won't believe it," Dr. Alden said, turning towards the computer he had been working on. It showed a shot of space.
Dr. Jones leaned towards it. "You're right! I've never seen the moon so bright! Our telescope must've been able to cut through the pollution last night."
Dr. Alden shook his head quickly. "No, that's not what's so... weird. Dr. Jones, that's not the moon."
"What??" Dr Jones said, studying the picture closer. Sure enough, in the bottom right corner of the image, the pale sliver of the real moon was visible. "So what is that?"
"That's what we want to know," Dr. Alden said, magnifying the white circle. It was now a little irregular around the edge, and a bit of red gleamed on the rim of the circle, like it was burning. "But whatever it was, it's moving fast."
Dr. Alden switched the view to infrared. On the green background, the orb was still solid white. Apparently, it was very very hot. Dr. Alden showed another image that had been taken an hour later. The white spot was barely visible. He flipped to an image an hour after that, and obviously the EV had been adjusted to track the white spot. But now it was elongated, the front half a bright yellow and the back still white. Dr. Jones frowned. "Do we have any idea what this thing is?
Dr. Alden shook his head. "No. All we have is the infrareds, because when we change it back to normal view..." Dr. Alden did so, and the elongated figure disappeared. All that could be seen was a shimmer of white, "... we don't get anything."
Dr. Jones nodded thoughtfully. "Do we have any idea where it's headed?"
"Yes, actually. We calculated it last night." Dr. Alden called up a star chart that had a red arch drawn on it, intersecting three stars before it left the chart. "It could be headed towards any of these, but we think it's headed towards..." Dr. Alden moved the cursor so it pointed at the second one, "this one."
Dr. Jones looked at it and the name under it. It was simply called "JTG112096." He frowned. "What makes you say that? It's headed towards all three."
"These images." Dr. Alden pulled up three images, one of each of the three stars. One of the amazing abilities of the EV was that it was powerful enough it could actually see the planets orbiting distant stars. It couldn't exactly see the face of a dime from eight light-years away, but it could see path of the Great Wall of China from that far away.
"This star," Dr. Alden pointed to the first image, "doesn't have any planets. It's a red star, about ready to die. Now, this star," he pointed to the third image, "has three planets, but these two are just shapeless rock, and this one isn't solid yet. It's still completely molten, like young Earth." Dr. Alden clicked on the secon image, so it filled the screen. "And this star is about the age of our sun. But the interesting part of it is this." As Dr. Alden spoke, he zoomed in on one part of the image. There, plain as day, was a bright silver planet, with a chunk torn out of the surface. And on the dark side... Dr. Jones leaned forward, his brow furrowed. The dark side was ablaze with tiny pinpricks of light, the kind of light you see when a busy metropolis like New York City or Tokyo is on the dark side of Earth. Except these dots of light weren't scattered around. They were spread evenly and thickly, with two small areas solidly white.
"Something's on that planet," Dr. Jones murmured. He turned to Dr. Alden. "Do you know how big this planet is?" Dr. Alden shook his head. "We're still trying to figure out the approximate size of the sun. No one's really paid attention to JTG112096 before. It doesn't even have a name." Dr. Alden suddenly smiled. "Hey, how 'bout we name it? Right now?"
Dr. Jones considered it, and then shook his head. "Let's let them name it," he said, tapping the image of the silver planet.
.....
So, there, at long last, is chapter 4! I'll try to update as soon as possible, which unfortunately may not be very soon... I think I'm over my writer's block, though. I hope I am... We haven't gotten to the main part of the fic, but we're getting there! This is all kinda the intro.
Oh, and if you haven't figured out what the silver planet orbiting JTG112096 is, you're either very tired or haven't been paying attention. I'll just tell you now, it's Cybertron.
ckret2