The Diego Diaries: Incident: Find (dd8 254)
I sure miss getting this out everyday. Moral of the story: Don't get hit by a car. That is always my goal, every day. HERE WE GO!
=0=Out there
"What do you think, Appas?" a youngling mech asked 'Jack and Sun as they sat side-by-side in their shuttle. They were commanding but they let Hercy take point because of the obvious rapport with the 'Con captain.
Sun shrugged. "That ship is a hulk. Someone bigger destroyed them. What that might mean is curious but nothing to borrow trouble for. If there's a predator bigger than them they'll find us or not. Then and only then should you worry about the prospects. Anything else is wasted energy."
'Jack nodded. "I think given its age and derelict condition that whoever destroyed it passed on by long ago. We're probably in the clear."
The kids and even the veterans stared at them with varying degrees of agreement and hopefulness. If these two weren't worried, they resolved not to be themselves. They tooled ever onward heading for a break.
=0=Also out there
"Who could have done that, Captain? That's a huge ship and its pretty broken up," a youngster asked nervously as Cord sat down beside him again. The ship was picking up to continue on with the others. Bardo sat across from him with an unreadable expression.
"I don't know. Someone big and powerful. I'd say it was us if I thought anyone came this way but no one is that crazy," Cord said. He glanced at the nervous kids and the older mechs who but for Bardo who would follow him off the edge of a cliff if he said to go. "I'm not worried. We've added six heavily armed ships to our party and we'll go with them as far as we have to before we leave. We can use the fire power."
"That's a dangerous ploy, Cord," Bardo said. "Going along with Autobots isn't a good play."
"We've done it before with mutual enemies. We can make a play to live through cooperation or die alone. Whoever did that is big and powerful. I doubt that our ships could stand them off if they come back this way or we come upon them down the line. More of us means someone else gets the blast from the mutual enemy. Leadership one-oh-one."
Bardo was silent to the remarks but his processor was ever working.
It was tense in the shuttle for a while.
=0=Far Away
He sat at his desk pondering the million and one things that had to be done as a Prime. It was daunting, the various and sundry decisions and actions that were his alone to undertake. He had just had his regular call with his counterpart in the Autobots, Optimus Prime, a friend of such deep emotion and gratitude for Megatron that he felt he was staring into the face of his own brother.
He had two, both of them good mechs who had taken over the hardware store and small machine repair shop that his genitors had built up over their lifetime so they could relax and do what they wanted. It had been good for them, their store, and they were all able to go to school and get the education that his counterpart had been denied because of the caste system that existed where he lived. That had been a stunning revelation and a horror to him. What would Optimus Prime, that one, be able to do with his life had he had access to the education he so evidently loved, craved and succeeded in getting anyway?
Who knew?
The next batch of prisoners that they'd agreed to take were in jails in Nova Cronum. They were the harder-to-catch mechs and a couple of femmes that were dangerous mid level killers for Autobots and no one who could be trusted to live here even in prison. He could always put them into stasis himself but the fear that someone would remove them back into the world was something he couldn't allow his people to ever face again.
Killing them?
Some had suggested it or removing their sparks into confinement while destroying their bodes. That was also anathema. Killing was not their way. There was too much state killing already with their Optimus Prime and the Decepticons didn't believe in it anyway. It was an Autobot 'thing'. Also, the process of spark removal could end one and they also could be replanted into new and much worse bodies. Sending them away to another dimension was a godsend.
The door opened as Prowl glanced inside. "Your meeting is going to begin in a moment, Lord Megatron."
Megatron, the Prime of this version of Cybertron glanced at the handsome enigma before him. Prowl had attended Megatron's bonding ceremony where he joined his life with his longtime lover, Motormaster of Telemark. They'd been friends in school and it had bloomed into something beautiful for both of them. The News Net had played it up big after long speculative rumor mongering about him and Prowl, such was the effort Megatron put into keeping his private life private. Even digging with that many resources hadn't turned up anything but a 'friendship' with Motormaster.
Who Prowl was seeing, if anyone, was a mystery to him. He hoped it was someone who could show him life could still be good. It was a forlorn hope he feared but he was ever the optimist. Motormaster, himself a mech with a sunny disposition and a good spark was the best thing he'd done for himself in a long time, making legal a personal partnership that gave his life shape beyond the duties of Prime that he carried out so scrupulously.
"I am on my way, Prowl. Thank you," he said as he rose to go.
Prowl nodded, then held the door for Megatron who led the way to the conference room nearby in this version of The Citadel in this version of Iacon. It would be productive and Megatron wouldn't learn one more thing about Prowl other than he listened intently, took marvelous notes and made the ship he led sail smoothly through the waters of life no matter how hard they were churning.
=0=Mid morning in a medical center lounge in Autobot City
They'd eaten breakfast after their shift, gathered their happy little son, then headed to the Medical Center with dread and hopefulness. It was checkup time to determine if Tell needed further treatments for his condition. Gene therapy was hard on his tiny little self though it seldom lasted, the discomfort, for more than three or four joors. It was a grim pair that met Ratchet there rather than the children's clinic where he usually got his treatments with the specialist doctors and their machines.
Ratchet had grinned at both noting parental angst writ large on their handsome faces. Taking the baby, he sat and laid him on his lap. Hitting him with baby level scans, he grinned. "Well, aren't you the most perfect little mechanism."
"How is he, Ada? What's the scans say?" Springer asked with a tinge of anxiety.
"He's aces. He's so perfect it hurts to look at him," Ratchet said. He glanced at the two. "You know, even if he never regained his hearing he'd be that side of the awesome scale."
"We know," Drift said with a slight grin. "He's perfect to us. I just want him to hear the good things, like the sound of wind in the desert or birds singing on organic worlds."
"Us telling him he's perfect no matter what and we love him just the way he is," Springer said with emotion in his voice.
"That's the way," Ratchet said. "We have two kids with deficits. Both of them have speech therapy stretching out to the horizon but we love them and I have to tell you, if they get normal speech I'm going to miss what they say now. Love them as they are. All kids are blessings and their impairments? Its a love lesson to their families. How you manage to make a great life for them anyway is a great life lesson for everyone. You do remember that we all sign from the twinnies. Love will show you how to do this for him."
Both nodded, then glanced up when the doctors walked in with the tech who managed the baby through the system. They sat, grinned at the trio, then the baby.
"Well, this is the test we need to see how his course will run. We're going to test him, measure his CNA both in his systems and his protoform along with other tests. Remember, it won't take surgery to make his hearing happen. All it will take is a transformation through his CNA to do it." The doctor rose, took the baby and handed it to the tech. "We'll be back in about a joor." The three walked out with the baby who was making gurgling sounds that usually meant unhappiness to his fathers.
They stared after him anxiously.
"Sit back and relax. Do you want me in there, too?" Ratchet asked.
"No. Just hold our hands," Springer said as he stared at the empty doorway.
Ratchet would. Literally.
=0=Out there
They flew onward as more big shapes began to appear on their combined and now deep space sensors.
"Cord."
:Here, Abba:
"What do you make of this?" Hercy asked as they began to fly past another ship that was a massive, enormous perfect cube. That is it was until someone blasted the absolute slag out of it.
:I don't know. Wanna look?: a bemused voice replied.
"I will if you do," Hercy said. He waited, then Cord replied.
:Sure:
"Hercy to Jack and Sun. Wanna take a stroll?" he asked.
Chuckles met that.
:Sure. Lissie has the conn. Dev, you come with. We'll get in close, then float over. I want to see this and see if there's a way to recover data. We don't detect any life in the ship but there's electrical activity in the most minimal ranges which indicates the core computer might be still intact. We don't touch it if it could trigger a response from their people or the ones who did this: 'Jack said.
"Understood," Hercy said as he rose to go to the hatch. "Bring us in close, infant. You have the conn, Splice."
"On it, Appa," Splice said as the hatch slid open to the dark dank shadowy form of the giant cube ship.
Hercy stepped out and floated to the deck in front of him where Decepticons and other Autobots were gathering. The door would stay open while he was gone.
=0=Medical Center, Autobot City
"Then he decided to dive bomb the slaggers around the pool. He did it from a tenth floor balcony. It was almost, ALMOST funny how fast they came to throw us out," Ratchet said as he recounted a story about their much delayed and much ballyhooed legendary 'honeymoon'.
Ironhide who'd joined them to hear the verdict preened ever so. "That was a belly flop for the ages."
"He came like a slagging asteroid face down and spreadeagled. I have to say, it sort of turned me on," Ratchet said with a giant brilliant smile.
Huge laughter and mockery greeted that as they sweated out the results. Tell had just been returned and was lying in his Appa's arms resting from his ordeal of getting poked, prodded and sound probed. The results were being organized and discussed with the experts now. He was sound asleep he was so exhausted.
"It sounds so romantic," Drift said with a smirk.
"I thought so," Ironhide said. "I wouldn't recommend it. You sort of hit the bottom of the pool when all the water flies out of it when you land."
"That's why his nose is so small. It used to be a spare coat rack before he jumped," Ratchet said to agreement and deep amusement.
Around the room waiting with their leaders, heroes and role models, half a dozen youngling mechs from Lon and Bezel to four newbies who were being trained on horse patrol waited, worshiped and ate up the 'war stories' of Ironhide and Ratchet's famous and much storied bond.
A sound caught their attention as the two doctors returned, sending the room into a cold tension of anxious expectation. Everyone, that is, but Ratchet. They sat. One held a data pad.
"We did every test we could figure out and measured everything on this little sweetie. He didn't like it a bit," Doctor Mercer said with a grin.
"Well, he's little and uh, he misses us when we're not there when he doesn't feel good," Springer said.
Drift nodded with a slightly scared expression on his face.
Ratchet grinned.
"What we've discovered is that the treatment is working very well. His turnover is going well, faster in his systems than his protoform but that's to be expected. His natural systems for protoform maintenance, something we all have are showing signs of development, meaning its starting to do the job without our help.
"What we're going to do is skip this treatment but have him scanned by the CNA monitor here which is like a human CT scan. It can tell us by comparison with changes everyday if he's still on track. If he can do this by himself, then its going to be a stronger and much better technique to jump start his hearing.
"Every day, bring him here at 0900 to have the scan performed. He's just going to lay on a table that will slid into the big machine and read him down to the CNA level. We can see what happens. If he can't do this or it slows down then we can restart his protocols."
"You're saying he's getting better on his own?" Springer asked.
"He is," Mercer said with a smile. "What a great little mech this one is."
No one in the room would disagree.
=0=TBC 9-18-2021 I LOVE YOU! LIKE FOREVER! :D:D:D
NOTES!
jackalkat chapter 253 . Sep 16
(shudders) love me some star trek. TNG was one of the first shows i recall watching. Picard is so my captain. And the borg have always scared the pants off me even as they created some amazing story lines.
ME: I'm so old and was so blown away by Star Trek: The Original Series that I can still remember that night in September of 1966 or 1967 when it debuted. It was the salt monster story from Original Trek and it came on at about 10 pm. It. Blew. Me. Away. LOL! I can't tell you how different and revolutionary that show was then. Nerdom all over planet Earth burst into life and never went away. I even met the woman who invented slash with Kirk and Spock or K/S. She was amazing. Had to write it by hand, get a printer who would make copies because in those days it was considered porn and would land you in jail. Then she had to mail it to people in brown paper bags.
The black line art is AWESOME. Imagine the Vitruvian Man by De Vinci with Spock's face and wavy hair down to his ass. That was the one that blew me away. I wonder how much original copies are worth now with all that incredible art. SIGH! She was amazing. She created slash but practically also fan fiction almost singlehandedly. I got to look at her work and the art. OMG. Such talent and bravery. She risked jail to do this. She passed away some time back, maybe 20 years. She was a nice small lady, someone's granny type and she beta'd a lady I know who writes exclusively Sentinel fic. She deserved all props and got it.
I agree with you. The Borg actually scared me personally. The idea of losing your identity into a hive mind was terrifying and them coming and just taking people away. You wonder what happened to Seven of Nine's parents. Imagine, chopping up that little girl like that. Scary as you know what. Love ya, Honey! :D
ESL, BABIES!
Anathema: (uh-nath-uh-muh) against all their principles and desires. "Eating slugs was anathema to the children who watched them crawl on the ground though someone suggested one try." (By the way, someone suggested this to a teenager in Australia and he did. The slug poisoned him so thoroughly that he never regained consciousness and died nine or so years later in a hospital care center. Make sure your kids and pets don't eat them. End of public service message from Granny.) :D:D:D
tinge: this is an oddly spelled word that is pronounced for the ESL folks tin-juh. It means just a little bit, a tiny part. "The bird's black wings were tinged with just a touch of white on the edges."
CT scanner: when I got run over I had a CT or CAT scan. You lay on a table which slides you in as far as necessary, from your neck to your head or from your head to your toes or whatever they need. You're not there long. The one that's lone is the MRI scanner. Its rather the same but you have to lie in one place for about 70 minutes while banging sounds go off now and again. Some are claustrophobic and hate it but I'm not. What hurt was laying in one place for over and hour with tire tread marks up your ass. :D:D:D
It was tons of fun trying to figure out what terrible Decepticon wasn't in an Autobot jail who could be Megatron's true love. LOL! MOTORMASTER IT IS! Consider Thanksgiving with the boys. BY the way, if he's already in the Autobot jail, let me know and I'll try and find someone else. Of course, if this happened and I have to change it, the suggestion box is open. :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Man, I missed writing SO much.