Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers.
The Greater Good
Chapter Three: Denial
Hot Rod and Kup turned the corner from the corridor and entered the command center, where Optimus Prime was watching over Blaster as he operated the comm.
He put a tentative hand on the older 'Bot's shoulder. "Kup… should we do this?"
Kup stopped in his tracks and turned to look at him, incredulity creasing his features. "What?"
"I mean… what if Prime already knows about this? We could be dredging up-"
"And what if he doesn't, lad? We can't just let him go on assuming that-" Kup stopped himself before he mentioned any names that would attract unwanted attention. "Look, if you don't want any part of this, that's fine."
"No, no... I… we should. I'm just…"
A silence descended between them, filled only by the bleeps and low voices of the busy command room.
Kup just nodded in understanding before turning once more and heading over to Optimus.
"Prime."
The hulking Autobot cast a brief glance over in his direction. "Is that the report?"
"…yes."
"And?"
"I think we should discuss this somewhere else."
Prime took a breath through his intake valve, looking over at Blaster.
"Do you think you can handle things from here, Blaster?"
The red Autobot grinned and waved a dismissive hand. "No prob. Springer's pretty much got control of the situation on the other end, anyways."
After throwing him a satisfied nod, Prime turned towards his office, beckoning Hot Rod and Kup to follow him as he did so.
It was one of the longest walks of Hot Rod's life, along with every single time he was forced to make some kind of inspirational speech as Rodimus Prime.
Although in retrospect, this felt much, much worse.
Before he knew it, however, the door to Optimus' office was sliding shut behind him, and the great leader stood before him was gesturing for them to take a seat.
They paused before doing so.
Prime cocked an optic ridge at their hesitation, but continued on anyway.
"So? What do you have?"
Kup took a deep breath. "Well… it's… about Elita One."
Optimus' expression was unchanged. "I see."
"From what I've read of the report when I skimmed over it, Prowl seemed to be of the mind that… she was murdered."
Once again, the Autobot leader's expression didn't alter one iota. "And not by a Decepticon, I take it?"
Kup and Hot Rod exchanged a look.
"…No."
"I see."
Hot Rod carefully observed his leader's expressions, his attempts made frustratingly redundant by that damned faceplate.
"Optimus… did you know about any of this?" he asked, leaning forward slightly.
Prime placed his hands on his desk with a dull thud, pushing himself up. He turned towards the window. "After the battle with the Decepticons where Elita… died… Prowl came to me, saying that he had evidence that she hadn't been killed by Decepticon fire. That…" He shook his head. "It's an insane notion. An Autobot wouldn't do such a thing, no matter what the reason."
Kup glanced down at the datapad he held in front of him with both hands. "That's not what Prowl seemed to think, Prime."
Their leader whirled on his heel suddenly. "Prowl was grasping at straws. I told him to leave it alone. That was almost directly before we moved up the Moon Bases, and when he and the others…" A sigh escaped the Autobot's vocal processor. "Well, I thought it was done."
"Well… it's not, Prime. And you're going to have to decide whether or not we should look into this."
"I… no. You can't. It's in the past."
Hot Rod glanced at Kup, then at Prime. "But-"
"No, Hot Rod! This…" he sighed. "This is something that should be left buried."
"But what if-"
"It doesn't matter, Hot Rod. It's done. Leave it alone. That's an order."
"You can't just-"
"Dismissed."
"I-"
"I said DISMISSED!" Prime bellowed, almost causing Hot Rod to leap from his chair. Kup stared at his leader, showing no signs of shock at his leader's sudden outburst. The older Autobot gradually levered himself up, before giving a small nod to Optimus and leaving the room, Hot Rod in tow.
The door slid shut behind them, and Hot Rod looked over at Kup.
"What are we gonna do?"
Kup looked down at the datapad.
"You're not thinking of leaving it alone, are you?"
Aged optics met his, and Hot Rod could see the conflict within them.
"Kup… we can't just leave this. I don't care what Prime says. If there's a murderer out there, we don't know who he could kill next. Me, you…"
"…Arcee?"
Hot Rod opened his mouth and froze. "I… yes. Arcee too."
A slight smile quirked at the side of Kup's mouth.
"So?" Hot Rod said, cocking his head to the side. "What are we gonna do? Leave it alone?"
Kup looked up at him.
"Like hell."
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The transport bumped yet again as it travelled across the supposedly smooth surface of Cybertron. As Hot Rod gazed out the viewing port, he pondered what had he and Kup had read in Prowl's report. It had been the year 2004 when Elita had been killed in battle on Earth. Metroplex's construction was nearly complete, and Hot Rod had only just been transferred there. Neither he nor Kup had been part of the battle, though they had heard the news soon enough.
Prowl had been tipped to something strange when Ratchet had shown him the results of Elita One's autopsy. The blast patterns weren't consistent with Decepticon weaponry, and had hit her in the back. Hot Rod had found the first piece of information interesting. He hadn't even known there was a difference between Decepticon and Autobot weaponry. But apparently, Decepticon weapons were equipped more for power than accuracy, while Autobot weapons were precise but slightly weaker.
Of course, they could still kill a mech if used properly. It was sort of poetic in a way. The weapons reflect the factions to which they belong.
If Hot Rod had been Rodimus, he probably would have smiled morbidly at that. As it was, he could barely find the energy to crack a smile. The thought that an Autobot could kill another, let alone someone from the Ark crew…
If he was honest, it shook him to the core. He wasn't sure how to handle it, so he had opted to push it the back of his mind until more facts were available.
After doing some investigating into the battle, Prowl discovered that only three Autobots had seen Elita's death; Trailbreaker, Ultra Magnus and Windcharger. The last entry in the tactical officer's log had detailed Prowl's intention to question the three.
The log ended rather abruptly after that. Kup suspected some foul play, perhaps on the part of the alleged murderer. In some leap of logic that Hot Rod didn't quite understand, Kup had decided that they should head to the Cybertron data archives.
The flame coloured Autobot turned to Kup. "Why are we going to the archives again?"
Kup sighed. "Listen. All the files from the Ark were transferred up here during the excavation, right?"
"Right… so?"
"Then it stands to reason that the 'Bot we're after – if it's a 'Bot – would probably want to keep Prowl's investigation from prying optics."
"But then… why not just delete the whole thing?"
The elder Autobot shrugged. "You saw how messed up the file system was. Maybe whoever it was could only get to a certain part. Maybe he or she thought no-one would be able to find the report, so only took out the incriminating evidence as a 'better safe than sorry' measure. Who knows?"
Hot Rod scratched his head as he wrestled with the concept. Kup smiled at the decidedly human gesture. It was amazing how the Autobots had known the humans for such a short time (by Transformer standards, anyway) yet they had made such an impact on their lives.
Jazz and Blaster could be routinely heard playing or humming human songs as they walked through the corridors of Cybertron. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker would randomly inflict pro-wrestling moves on passing Autobots. Hound spent almost all of his time exploring forests, jungles and any other place on Earth that was incredibly hard to travel through.
And Hot Rod scratched his head when he was puzzled by something.
"So… why would the missing stuff from Prowl's report be in the archives? I mean, if it was deleted, it was deleted, right?"
"Prowl was a stickler for routine and proper procedure. I'm just hoping whoever it is that deleted the segment of Prowl's report didn't know about or count on that. Everybody's got to slip up sometime, right?"
"That's not exactly airtight reasoning there, old timer."
"Best I could do on such short notice, lad."
With a wry smile creasing his features, Hot Rod turned back to the viewing port and watched the landscape zoom by.
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The librarian robot scooted over to them, the small graviton generators on its underbelly emitting a soothing humming sound.
"Good day. How may I help you?"
Kup seemed ready to step forward and smash the small robot when Hot Rod stepped between them.
"Uh, we've okay, thanks."
The robot looked from Hot Rod to Kup, as if taking in the elder Autobot's threatening posture, and then back again. "Very good, sir." It turned and left. If Hot Rod hadn't known better, he could have sworn it was moving away from Kup slightly faster than normal.
"Dang blasted machines. Can't stand them. How many of those things have asked us if we need help now?"
"Counting that one? Three," Hot Rod replied, thoroughly enjoying how stressed Kup was becoming over such a very small problem.
"Don't they communicate with each other? Tell each other 'say, those two Autobots walking around the library? Leave them alone'. No, they try and beat away at your resistance to them until you finally have to say-"
"-found it."
Kup looked over at his youthful partner, and saw him inspecting a computer screen on one of the library's towering disk shelves.
"Prowl logs… 2004… got it."
A small slot opened up next to the screen, and a disk neatly emerged. Kup smirked. Prowl would have been proud of the efficiency.
Hot Rod inspected the disk. "We need a-"
Kup handed him a pad. The younger Autobot stared at the pad for a moment, before smiling, shaking his head, and taking it. Kup walked around to Hot Rod's back to better see the details on the pad. Hot Rod frowned.
"Uh…"
The elder 'Bot's optics widened slightly. "It's gone."
Hot Rod's frown changed slightly. "Wait a minicycle…"
A shiny metallic silver hand darted around the datapad, pressing buttons and inputting commands.
"I thought so," the flame coloured Autobot said, his lips thinning.
"What?"
"There's telltale signs of deleted data here. Looks pretty recent, too."
A grunt escaped Kup's vocal processor. "Someone's been keeping tabs on our investigation."
"Looks like it."
Kup rubbed his weary optics.
"Hold up…"
At the sound of Hot Rod's voice, Kup slowly brought down his hand, daring to peer over at the Autobot as he feverishly worked on the pad.
"I think I can get some of the deleted stuff back. There's not much to work with, but I think that… there we go…"
Before Hot Rod could even start reading it, Kup had snatched the pad away and began consuming what little words were on the pad.
Windcharger isn't guilty, - ---- ---- much. Trail------- ------ ------- -----------, --- - ----- --'- --------. Ultra ------ isn't or wasn't -------- --------. I -----------------------------------------------------------
Kup looked over at Hot Rod. He shrugged almost desperately. "That's all I got."
"So…" Kup said, sighing heavily. "Prowl suspected Ultra Magnus, Trailbreaker and Windcharger."
"It's the logical thing. They were the only ones to see Elita die, and Prowl thought an Autobot did it."
"Yeah…" the elder Autobot replied, staring at the words on the pad. "Logical."
"But Windcharger didn't do it. He says so there."
"That makes it either Trailbreaker of Ultra Magnus, if it's either of those two in the first place. Prowl wasn't perfect. It's possibly he targeted the wrong suspects. He was only going with the logical course of action. And if what Prime said and these dates are correct, it wasn't long after this log was made that he was transferred up to the Moon Bases. He probably didn't get much of a chance to investigate further before…"
Hot Rod nimbly took the pad from Kup's grasp. "Well, it's all we've got to go on, and I'd rather follow Prowl's lead than none at all."
Kup nodded. "Right."
"So what now?"
"I say we talk to Trailbreaker and Ultra Magnus."
"Just what I had in mind."
"But we have to do it quietly. If Prime gets wind of it-"
The ex-leader of the Autobots brought his finger to his own throat and ran it across, making a strange ripping noise with his vocal processor as he did so.
Kup stared at him in silence for a moment. "What the hell was that?"
"It means it'll be our heads if he finds out."
The only response was a blank stare from Kup.
"It's an Earth reference."
Still the blank stare.
"It means Prime'll kill us."
"Oh. Right."
Hot Rod shook his head. "Let's just go," he sighed, pointing to the door.
"Well, why didn't you just say that instead of using some arcane Earth expression?"
"'Arcane'? I'm gonna tell Spike you said that."
The two were so busy talking, they didn't even notice the visual and audio scanners in the library robots recording their every move and word.
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(A/N: Ye Gods! How long did this take? Sorry for the delay, folks – other stuff to deal with, and all that.
Anyway, review!
P.S. While it didn't really show much Transformer-y type stuff, I've got to admit the trailer for the movie next year has me psyched. Awesome!)