Another chapter so soon you say? Why yes! Not a very common thing with me, huh?
Disclaimer: The usual, I own nothing besides the story and my characters, Sky and Steel. Blaster 2.0, my brother, owns Whirr, Blades, and Iron Blade. We share Ironshadow.
Also, thanks to Blaster 2.0 for checking this story to make sure I got his characters right ;) If you like his characters, you should totally check out his stories. They're pretty great!
Hope you enjoy!
Chapter Nine
"You know you messed up, right?" Skyshadow asked, crossing her servos over her chest as she stared at the frontliner.
Sunstreaker didn't return the look, simply grimacing at the monitor screen in front of him. "You think I don't know that?"
Letting out a vent, Skyshadow stepped over to stand beside him. "I told you to wait. And you didn't."
"Sideswipe can't wait," the frontliner growled lowly, glaring straight ahead. "You know why I went ahead and interrogated Steeldust. You're also the one who originally suggested to spar with him. Remember?"
"I know," snapped Skyshadow. "But I only again told you to do it after you decided to yell at him. Otherwise we might have lost him before we could test our theory."
"What do you mean lost him? We know exactly where he is now."
Skyshadow shook her helm, wings twitching in agitation. "He will never talk to you while he's down there. He won't talk to anyone hardly when he's in the brig."
Sunstreaker simply let out a huff.
"Sunny," the young femme said, tone less angry. "We lost him. He won't help us anymore."
"So, he said," muttered Sunstreaker quietly, finally looking at his beloved. "I'm sorry, I should have listened to you. I seen he was getting suspicious when we cornered him downstairs, but I couldn't let him go."
"Not when he knew we were investigating," the spy added quietly. She placed a hand on Sunstreaker's servo. "What's done is done. We need to focus our attention elsewhere for the time being. Steeldust isn't going anywhere currently. If we're lucky, he'll be willing to tell us what he knows."
Sunstreaker nodded, turning back to the monitors.
Neither said what they both were thinking.
That if Steeldust didn't tell them, they may have a lot less information to work with. And no future help.
"Do you think he did it?" Skyshadow asked softly.
Considering for several kliks in silence, Sunstreaker then shook his helm.
"I don't think it was him. But we can't be sure."
He turned his helm back to meet Skyshadow's optics.
"Not until we find out who did."
"If the Prime knows about this, I wonder why he wanted Sideswipe dead."
Despite vowing not to help Sunstreaker and Skyshadow, Steeldust found that he couldn't stop thinking about the whole thing.
There wasn't really much to do in the box anyways, so there was lots of time to think.
Or at least until someone had need of him.
So he thought while he paced.
Steeldust momentarily smirked as he imagined several different scenarios in which Lord Optimus Prime found out he was down here. But not by his orders or permission.
Steeldust tilted his helm, going back to his initial train of thought. Sitting down, he settled back against the wall, shifting to make his doorwings more comfortable.
"If Prime wanted Sideswipe dead, then who would he give the order to?"
The immediate answer was his personal assassin.
Narrowing his optics, the spy frowned. "Skyshadow wouldn't kill 'Swipes. And I think Prime would know that. If she refused, a target might be on her next, especially if 'Swipes was supposedly taken out for possible treachery."
Momentarily, Steeldust pictured Whirr being hunted down for his treachery.
"Prime wouldn't risk losing Skyshadow. She's too valuable to him. So, who would be his second choice to carry out a kill?"
Then, suddenly, Steeldust thought of something else.
"If Prime suspected Sideswipe of treachery, he wouldn't send an assassin. It wouldn't be done in secret."
Lifting a hand to the scar on his faceplate, Steeldust's optics widened.
"It would be public, made to be an example," he whispered. "Prime mustn't know."
That meant, if he'd heard correctly, Prowl and Smokescreen were operating without the warlord's authority.
"Smokescreen would, but I don't know why he would keep it a secret. Sideswipe was a fellow seeker though. But I think Prowl would never willingly go behind a superior's back while he has Prime's favour."
Steeldust scrunched up his faceplate, placing his hands on his helm.
"It doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense."
But then, not a lot of things had made sense to him for a long time.
"I can't believe Sunstreaker and Skyshadow thought I did it," he thought, regret clouding his features.
"I thought they were my friends. Don't they know I was Sides' friend?"
Steeldust scowled, the look in his optics hardening. "Not anymore I guess."
He lowered his helm, laughing under his breath.
"So much for trusting mecha I guess. That's okay, if they wanna be like that, I don't need them."
Recovering, Steeldust lifted his helm, a sharp smile on his faceplate. Optics narrowed, he glared at the cell door across from him.
"What mecha seem to not get, is I don't need anyone. Haven't for a long time now."
Hearing a set of light pedesteps, Steeldust dropped his smile, recognizing the gait of the steps.
Sure enough, Blurr momentarily looked in at him from the small window in the door.
From his seat on the floor, Steeldust couldn't see much besides his brother's disappointed faceplate. But he knew him well enough to know he had his servos crossed while his left pede tapped on the floor.
Neither brother said anything for many kliks, simply staring each other down.
Finally, Blurr sighed, shaking his helm.
"What are you doing, Steeldust?" he asked quietly. "You haven't even been out of here for one day and you already got yourself thrown back in."
Steeldust frowned, then looked away.
Blurr let out another vent, this time of frustration. He threw up his hands.
"Steel, come on. Don't do this. You can't just not talk to me."
Apparently, Steeldust could and did so.
"I know you can hear me," Blurr said, staring at his younger brother. "And I know you know how to stay out of trouble. So why don't you? You can't keep this up."
"Or what?" Steeldust asked, glancing up at his older brother, no emotion in his optics. "You'll tell our creators? They're dead. You'll tell the Prime? He knows. Magnus? He put me here. And Jazz and Prowl don't care anymore. That is, if they ever did."
Blurr's faceplate grew very solemn very quickly. "Steel..."
Emotionless optics continued to stare at him, accompanied by a flat tone.
"I'm not a child anymore, Blurr. You don't have to babysit me anymore."
"You're my brother, Steeldust," argued the older speedster. "And I promised Sire I'd look out for you."
A shattered smile flicked across Steeldust's faceplate for an astroklik. "Maybe it's time you quit worrying about me and look out for yourself. I can look after myself."
"Obviously you can't," the purple and black speedster countered angrily, gesturing to their surroundings. "Maybe you should wake up and realize what you're doing to yourself."
Blurr paused, wiping a hand over his faceplate. He began again, calmer and quieter.
"You might not think I know, but I do."
The red and black speedster glanced up at him again, a subtle tilt of his doorwings betrayed that he was paying more attention now.
"You know what?" he asked blankly.
"You," Blurr continued, frowning sadly. "You hardly recharge you're so busy sneaking around, both in and out of the base. You are in here so much that you're almost starving yourself. You've visibly lost weight now."
Steeldust narrowed his optics a fraction, but said nothing.
"And I have to watch! I can't help you if you won't help yourself! What do you have to say for yourself?"
Blurr then fell silent, waiting for an answer that he may or may not get.
To his surprise, perhaps, he did.
Steeldust blinked several times, then shrugged. "Ya know, I don't do some o' what ya said I do intentionally. There's things to do, places to see, so I can't stay here all the time. Ya should be happy bout that. If I'm not on base, then I can't mouth off ta someone and get thrown down here."
Blurr frowned, knowing he had a point. And noting his brother's slight accent being present.
Which didn't make him feel any better.
"Then, tell me, what do you find so interesting out there that you're rarely here at night?"
His brother shrugged again. "This and that."
"Where do you go?"
"Here and there."
"Ugh. Steeldust! Don't play this game with me."
"You're the one who came down to play it."
The seeker stared at his brother for several astrokliks, debating on whether or not to yell at him.
While he hesitated, the younger of the pair stretched his long limbs before moving to sit with his pedes crossed.
"So," Steeldust said, changing the subject. "Did they decide who Sideswipe's replacement is?"
"They've narrowed it down to Hot Rod or Bumblebee," Blurr said with a sigh, realizing he wasn't getting anymore answers from Steeldust.
"Oh. Interesting," replied Steeldust casually. He then narrowed his optics, tilting his helm as he did. "Do you and Smokescreen have a plan to get revenge for Sides' death? Cause I want in."
Blurr nodded solemnly. "I'll let Smokescreen know. We don't have a solid plan yet, but he plans to deal a hefty blow to the Decepticons."
"Good," nodded Steeldust, a dark smirk crossing his faceplate.
The older brother repressed a shiver at the intimidating look on his little brother's faceplate.
Mecha weren't wrong when they said the scar made him look scary. And those mecha were members of both factions.
A pang of guilt hit Blurr's spark and he made to finish the conversation.
"I will have him inform you of our plans. Try to behave, Steeldust."
With that, he hurried away.
Steeldust tilted his helm, then shrugged. He found it a little odd that Blurr had ended his visit so abruptly, but then, he probably had seeker business to attend to.
And the two brothers did technically hurry everywhere.
Down the hall, Whirr peered out of the cracked open door of his lab. His frown grew deeper as the older brother left the brig section of the basement.
He hadn't been able to catch everything, but he'd heard enough.
Leaning against the door, the scientist listened for any further noise from the younger brother.
But as usual when Steeldust was his fellow basement dweller, the young mech was silent.
With a quiet sigh, Whirr withdrew from his eavesdropping and slid the door closed.
"I don't know about those two," he thought. "And I still don't know if I can trust Steeldust."
After all, the kid didn't have a reputation for his niceness.
Whirr would have to keep an optic on him.
It hadn't been very long since he'd been discovered.
"More than long enough for Steeldust to have let at least one mecha know," Whirr thought as he went back to his invention.
The mech glanced at the blueprints, the ones he'd copied for another scientist.
He sighed, pain in his optics.
"I hope you make your own weapon, Iron Blade. Or learn how to destroy mine when it's finished. Because I have no power to stop it once Prime gets his hands on it."
Mirage followed Blurr back up to the main floor of the base, mulling over what he'd overheard.
Both from the speedster brothers and the conversation he'd listened to in the communications room.
While Blurr merely expressed concern for his younger sibling, along with potential future seeker business, Steeldust did not reveal anything in particular that gave the spy any clues.
That conversation had been made up of things Mirage already knew or had guessed.
He frowned as he split off from following the elder speedster and turned down an adjacent hallway, making himself visible once out of sight of the other mech.
What Mirage had overheard from what went on between Skyshadow, Steeldust, and Sunstreaker however...
Though not saying anything too specific until near the end of the confrontation, the trio of young mecha were up to something.
Something that Mirage had now figured out, both from piecing the hinted sentences at the beginning, and Steeldust's outburst near the end.
Not to mention, it lined up with the fact it was those three talking about the issue. Together.
They were looking into the murder of Sideswipe.
It had been supposed to be an open and closed case.
The head spy however, knew that it had been only a matter of time before it was blown wide open.
That was what happened when you didn't kill both twins.
Mirage shook his helm. "Sloppy. I have an inkling that Sideswipe is not even dead."
Why else would Sunstreaker be so bent on finding his killer?
If Sideswipe was truly offline, then he should be at the very least, either still wandering around, visibly sparkbroken or killing anything that looked at him wrong.
The latter, more often than was normal.
"And at the most," Mirage thought to himself, definitely not for the first time, "Sunstreaker should also have died.
"After all, you take out one splitspark twin, you take out the other."
But if Sideswipe was alive, then obviously, he was in a comatose state. Otherwise, Sunstreaker would not be prowling around playing detective.
And even more obviously, Sideswipe was not in the Autobot base.
Mirage knew his top spy likely knew by now, exactly where he was.
He could ask her. Or check all the secret bunkers and black sites that they had.
That was, if he cared to.
He had bigger concerns however.
Like who was trying to kill off high ranking Autobots. If it was being kept under wraps by the trio, or rather, had been, that meant they suspected one of their own faction.
The spy had his own suspicions, but knew they were likely on the right track.
After all, he hadn't taught Steeldust and Skyshadow nothing. They were good students and had been under his tutelage since before Jazz had stepped down from head operative.
And even that had been vorns ago.
Thus, Mirage had full confidence that the pair could finish this investigation without his help.
Which didn't mean he wouldn't do his own digging.
"As long as they keep quiet and don't let anyone else overhear them."
What was next on Mirage's list of concerns was that Ultra Magnus had just taken one of his mecha to the brig.
Which wasn't exactly uncommon, but bothered Mirage all the same.
After all, you would hope that the young mech would have learned to keep his thoughts to himself sometimes by now, but no.
Not that Magnus knew any better, but Optimus didn't seem to have an issue with him.
Or, as much of an issue.
But Mirage's mecha were supposed to be his to deal with. Not Magnus'.
And all punishments were supposed to be approved by the Lord Prime himself.
Having followed behind the third in command and his spy, Mirage knew for a fact that that did not happen. All thanks to Steeldust's little comment.
Mirage had to admit, Steeldust was a clever little turbofox. He only hoped it wouldn't one day get him skinned.
The spy decided to let the younger mech sit downstairs for a little while and think about his actions and then he would come up with something he needed Steeldust to do.
Then, as Steeldust had likely planned, Lord Prime would be informed that he was missing, found in the brig for some reason or other.
The head ops was all for Magnus getting taken down a few pegs.
"Perhaps he will even get demoted," he thought. "That however, may be a tad too good to be true."
And so, Sky and Sunstreaker try and decide how to proceed with what happened last chapter, the speedster brothers sort of have a heart to heart chat, Whirr eavesdrops, and Mirage finds out the three wanna-be detectives and has some plans of his own.
Thank you to everyone for reading! I hope you enjoyed and if you did, I'd love to hear what you thought. :) Or if you have any questions.
Until next time, stay safe!
