Why are Autobot ships always so darn tidy? And is that a plot I see starting to develop? Out, out damned plot!

Thrones

A figure moved through near-darkness. Weaving unsteadily, it tripped and stumbled over dead metal, the waste of the universe cluttered at its feet. Occasionally, it giggled. Occasionally, it muttered to itself. Once, it turned its head sideways to the city-glow in the distance, bared its teeth and growled.

Eventually it found what it was looking for. Who it was looking for. Muffled words were exchanged. Time slipped by, evening giving way into night.

Later, he would wonder if they had been scared. None of them acted like it, but who could tell?

Information delivered, he slunk back into the shadows. As they talked, he looked again toward Iacon, looming like a wave of gold, and smiled. Right then, he wasn't scared of anything.

"Wow."

"Please don't."

"Wow-ie. That's amazing."

"Stop it."

"How do you get it so clean?"

Optimus liked his office. It was spacious. It had a view of the city, downwards, a view of the training arena. In other parts of the universe, it would have had a potted fern in the corner and a bookshelf neatly packed with medical journals. As it was, it had a cabinet of information disks and a small but well-equipped weapons-mount in the corner.

Above all, it was neat. Any errant speck of dust or microgram of unnecessary clutter was immediately fallen upon and treated with the sort of heartless efficiency that made Higher Officers quake. It seemed to Jetfire that all the cruel punishment and harsh discipline Optimus didn't inflict on new recruits was stored up somewhere, released only when the slightest hint of messiness invaded his sanctuary.

Jetfire, whose living spaces tended to resemble the scruffier areas of Charr after a seeker attack, shivered over-dramatically and tried to avoid touching anything.

"Just because I enjoy a relatively normal level of order…" muttered Optimus, who was used to his friend's reactions.

Jetfire started to respond, then stared.

"Is that…polish?"

"Stop. It."

"You polish your desk?"

Resigned sigh.

"I just wanna get this right. In the middle of one of the highest alert war zones on the planet, fifteen clicks from the control central of Autobot High Command with Decepticons raining from the skies every other week, you, Optimus Prime, actually take time out to polish your desk?"

"We've actually had very little Decepticon activity during the last year", commented Optimus, tactlessly changing the subject. "We think they're moving on to Nexus…"

"Optimus. You're a freak."

"Thank you for that."

Snigger.

Optimus withdrew two energon cubes from his private storage cabinet, making extremely sure that both were low-grade. If Jetfire noticed, he failed to comment. The walk from the Pinnacle to base (pausing along the way, at Optimus's insistence, to sign Jetfire in at the city roster) had given the shuttle's ill circuitry time to recover. By the time they were halfway there, Jetfire was walking more-or-less on his own. To the casual observer, he would have been unremarkable. A flyer (hmph), but markedly unseekerish. Averagely pleasing to look at (despite being so unpleasantly…curvy, hmph, hmph). The casual observer would probably fail to notice the dim optics and slightly subdued energy signature.

Trying not to make a point of watching the other mech very, very carefully as he drank, Optimus remembered the first time Jetfire had seen the interior of his office. He'd perched in much the same position on the desk, legs folded over one another, slumped against the opposite wall with wings almost scraping the ceiling.

"You know what this place needs?"

"A pest exterminator?"

"Shut yer mouth. A throne."

"…A what?"

"A throne! With a big fat Autobot sigil and…let's see…a really big sign right at the top, something like, 'Here sits God, a dust-repeller at his right hand'. Or maybe something simple, y'know…'Kneel, mortals, before the glory of the supreme pencil-pusher'-...bastard, let go!"

The mech over whose head he had then placed a trash bucket, Optimus considered, had looked considerably better than the one currently juggling the empty-too-soon energon cube in his left hand.

His head turned at the crash, fingers instinctively tensing, mirror image to Jetfire, who allowed the cube to hit the ground. The container was too strong to crack, but Optimus found his inner soul aching to remove the taint from his spotless floor. He suppressed it, drawing his attention to the possible crisis, before recognizing the sound of a heavy, impatient fist connecting with his door.

Optimus relaxed. Knowing well the ways of those he worked with, he had become accustomed to Hacksaw's technique of knocking; namely, a brutal beating administered to the door in question, until whatever fool was behind it saw sense and opened up. Hopefully before said door was actually broken in.

Upon command, the door slid back, and a scowl with a paintjob peered in. It's optics alighted on Jetfire, and it got bigger.

"Hmph. Heard you were back", snorted the medic, as one who had just discovered the first sign of an errant cockroach infestation in his slipper, but can't quite be bothered to whip out the poison just yet.

As Jetfire began to mumble some unheard apology/greeting, Hacksaw's eye fell upon the empty cube. "Hah! Filthying up the place already, are you?"

"Hacksaw, what do you want?" said Optimus wearily. Wearily, but carefully, because he liked his limbs. Wisely, Jetfire fell silent. He also liked his limbs, despite the fact that his head was preparing itself to launch another armed attack on him.

Presented now with an individual he ranked slightly worthier of the floor-space he occupied, Hacksaw sniffed once more and refocused on Optimus. To the horror of the corporal, he smiled. Optimus had never seen Hacksaw smile. He'd heard that it had happened occasionally, generally before some poor trainee ended up welded to something, but had never seen it happen. And he'd heard, of course, that there were mechanisms who had their taste detectors cut into razor-sharp triangles, generally for the sometimes-popular, feral organic effect it produced. He'd never seen that before, either. Jetfire, he noticed, stood transfixed.

Horrible teeth gleaming, Hacksaw folded his arms and declared to Optimus, "Saw someone looking for you."

"Oh?" Beside him, Jetfire continued to stare.

"Not him." Hacksaw made a rudely dismissive gesture towards the flyer and nodded at Optimus. "You. Heard there's been some…trouble."

Another horrible smile. It often seemed to Optimus that the medic was rather overly fond of trouble.

"I don't suppose you caught his name?"

Snort. "What do I look like, eh? Your secretary? Looked like a Messenger."

"Ah."

Messengers were, by technical definition, an elite network of spies and stealth fighters, set up to transport information through the roughest terrain and across the most dangerous battlefields. In reality, they generally tended more towards being High Command's personal carrier pigeons. Psychopomps, they also brought the latest lists of the dead, although rarely from any of the more obscure cities, and never from anywhere off-planet. Dislike towards Messengers soared almost as high as hatred of seekers.

As Hacksaw departed without a backwards glance, Jetfire seemed to recover slightly. He looked at Optimus curiously.

"A Messenger looking for you, huh?" he queried as the elder stooped to pick up the cube. "Nothing to do with me, I hope?"

The joke fell flat for Optimus, who constantly feared that, one day,it would be. A weak chuckle was all he could manage.

Before either could speak again, a voice flew across the base, accompanied by an emergency siren. Jetfire jumped. Optimus didn't, but made note of the state of his friend's nerves.

"Attention! Attention! All officers to report to Headquarters' main hall! Repeat, all officers to report to the main hall immediately!"

A low hiss came from Jetfire and he shook his head to shake away the pain. Optimus pretended not to notice.

"That was a Danger Three alarm", he said instead, a note of confusion in his voice. New recruits all learnt to recognize the varying alarms within a few months of arrival. Not because it was compulsory, but because it was always useful to know the difference between a Danger One (squadron of seekers attacking a reasonably important weapons factory) and a Danger Six (base overrun with Decepticons, leave now, abandon those with less than three limbs remaining). There were rumors of a Danger Seven alarm, which no one had ever heard but was said to go off two seconds before your head was ripped from your shoulderswith the assistance of afusion cannon.

"Dandy. Can I hide out under your desk?"

They entered the main hall alongside a shoal of nervous recruits, most of whom were still equipped with bright new colors that flashed brilliantly against the harsh flood lights. The main hall could accommodate up to seventy Autobots, provided that they didn't mind being packed like sardines. Looking around, Optimus noted with satisfaction that most on-base soldiers were already present. Punctuality was so important.

Up front, a grizzled, battle-hardened and distinctly worried-looking officer waited for the last stragglers to arrive. As the assembly was called to order, Optimus stared at his face. It was the sort of face that bit swords in half for a hobby and it shouldn't have been looking worried.

"Oh, this is cheerful."

Jetfire, of course. Muttering with the sort of unconscious anxiety that attacked all flyers when shoved into any room with a ceiling less than seventy feet from the ground.

"I might point out that you haven't been on active duty for over a week. Consider this your penance."

"Slag you."

Optimus opened his mouth to reply, but speech fell dead in his mouth as the officer's words flew across the room on vulture wings.

"We have just received word that Nexus is under attack."