The Diego Diaries: Cloudy With A Chance of Ejection (dd7 410)
=0=Ground level at the Shit Show™
The ref landed on his helm and lay still a moment before sitting up groggily. Surrounding Magnus nearby but not within swinging range, the entire referee/judge/officials contingent looked at Magnus and their (slightly) dented colleague with fear and loathing. It seemed silent between the player and the played in this interlude though the arena was losing its mind all around them.
Magnus glanced at a very amused Optimus, then turned toward the referees, line judges and a few officials of the league who decided to weigh in on the possibilit(ies)y of (a)(n) (funeral) argument.
"Well, that didn't need to happen," Magnus said as he (drilled) stared at them with his (ice cold professional gaze ala the FRAGGIN' TYREST TREATY ENFORCER, THAT GUY!) beautiful optics.
The referees et al stared (upwardly) at (the biggest fragging mech in a league of big fragging) (the) mech(s) with (fear, loathing, a sense of the frailty of their own mortality, an inhumanly intense desire to be as big and tall as Magnus was for at least fifteen minutes before they went to the Matrix, a resigned futility that they never would be, some with a strangely stirring desire to be bent over Magnus's knee and spanked, others who wanted the same thing and would be surprised by how many mechs and the odd femme had the same desire, a fervent hope to never personally piss him off, an understanding why most former Decepticons referred to Magnus as a 'demonic, satanic, ruthlessly relentless, incorruptible, holy rolling fragger from the center most spot of the Pit … 'that guy', relief that most of their official business as residents could be handled by the local government bureau officials in their city or their local councilor representative, then Password who cringed because they did. They were looking at and gathering behind Password as he cringed).
All of them were looking straight up at one of the biggest, handsomest (and oblivious that he was) straight arrows in the manifest and mani-full quiver of the Lord of the World(s), Optimus Prime™.
That guy.
"Uh ..." -all of them
=0=Nearby, Part One
"That mech of mine. He's something to behold." -Arcee
"Yeah. Look at dat ass." -Elita
Huge mutual laughter and agreement about a childhood friend by childhood friends.
=0=Nearby, Part Two
"Do you want to interject yourself and end this fear fest?" Hardie asked Orion.
Orion who forgot he could grinned. "I suppose I could," he said as he walked toward the (stand off) meeting of the minds over an (atrocity) infraction of the rules that resulted in a (near murder) misunderstanding.
That one.
Hardie grinned as he watched the big kid walk over to the slaughter/train wreck/goof up with the spring in his peds of Unfettered Youth™ getting ready to put one over on (The Man) their genitors. "You were always a cute guy, Orion. Why am I not surprised?"
Raptor who was standing beside him nodded. "He's a great kid. But then, look at his genitors."
Both nodded.
Raptor grinned. "Someone was slagging me and they had to grab Docker and practically sit on her to save someone a beating."
Both laughed.
"Sometimes life is good even when its weird," Hardie said. "It's been terribly fun to have infant back as a hard aft teenager. I'm glad I don't have an antique car here."
"Let's build one and see if he's going to steal it, the slagger," Raptor said.
Both mechs bumped fists. Done deal.
=0=Nearby, Part Three
"Are you still mad at us?" Ratchet asked.
Docker who was standing on the bench seating with her ped tapping and her arms crossed over her chassis like a miffed Daffy Duck glanced at him, then frowned. "Maybe. You don't think I can handle myself with a heckler?"
"No," Ratchet replied truthfully. "I was worried for the heckler."
Docker stared at him a moment, then grinned slightly. "I never told you of all the anarchist slag that I did."
Ratchet snickered. "Next Squad luncheon, you're on."
She smirked at him with a bit of prideful bemusement. "Prepare to sit a while."
Ratchet laughed loudly as Appa Ratchet hugged Docker around the waist. "THAT'S MY DOCKER!" He grinned at her. "Some of that hasn't passed the statutes of limitations, Dock. Only tell him what won't get you arrested now."
Ratchet stared at his amma and appa, both of them fearless lilliputs and felt like he was soaring in a cloudless sky. "If you don't tell me some stuff you did, I won't tell you what I did."
They smiled at him, the two, then Appa Ratchet snickered. "That goes for me, too."
Prowl who was watching them even as Orion defused the brawl down below felt a fleeting moment of envy. The most daring thing his own genitors ever did was once they used paper, not cloth napkins for dinner. He chuckled. He was lucky to get out of his childhood alive. Then he turned back to the confab going on at the sidelines.
=0=Nearby, Part Four
"What do you think?"
"I don't know, Bos, but Uncle Optimus will fix it. He's smart," Sunspot said with the pure light filled sweetness of the young.
Co-D, Reflector and Bos nodded. "We know," they said nearly in unison as they shined with Sunspot.
=0=Nearby, Part Five
"I do believe that the aura around Prime is the purest I've ever seen and I've seen nearly everyone in the Monastery and Temple since forever," Lauren mused. "It's pantheonic in its purity."
Alpha Trion who was still working on The Plan at the Athenaeum Sanctorum even as he sat with his brethren (and sistren™) at the game cheering for HIS TEAM™ which was already five points behind nodded in agreement. Though this version of himself didn't know he was working out The Plan in a Place Faraway with the Others because being, after all, a multiversal singularity as an original Prime, he was fully part of the world he sat in even if part of him was there, thus his Point of View was here, not there. Like that. "He is quite the mech, Our Optimus. I still hope he loses."
Everyone agreed, though only the older ones laughed. Optimus was, after all, a Prime and The One Who Comes. Decorum and the fear of profaning the sacred carried the day for half the Simfur priestly contingent.
At least, out loud it did. What they thought privately was still up for debate.
=0=Down there
"I think it would be fair," Orion said as the officials et al thundered their (terrified) outrage.
"I think it would be fair," Orion said as Magnus cold fusioned out his own feelings about the thing they were hung up in.
That thing.
"What train fell on me?" -a busted ass ref who was still getting his bearings together.
Literally.
"There, there," Elita said to that mech as she stood beside Prime. "Come sit on my lap. I'll spank you myself." (Elita intuiting the inner most closeted life of half the referees in the Adult Professional Football League of Cybertron, Mars and the Empire.)
Two refs in the official contingent nearly unswiveled their helms off glancing at her with surprise and a blinding thought that maybe they'd said their deepest and most secret desire out loud accidentally.
=0=Nearby, Part Six
Nitro and the Simfur goalie, Tinpot watched the shit show down field. Nitro glanced at the hulking mech who was one of the few Seekers besides himself that had been on any other team but the one for Vos, "HOME OF THE GREATEST! MOST PROFOUND! MOST CAPABLE AND HANDSOMEST MECHS IN CYBERTRONIAN FOOTBALL! Or so said a private ad someone always took out in the Autobot City Daily News on any game day Vos played … a full page ad with an anonymous author whose name wasn't Starscream.
Maybe.
"I'm going to kick your aft in a second. Just so you know," Nitro said.
Tinpot snickered. "If you say so, slagger. Try and catch me."
He wouldn't have to.
=0=Nearby, Part Seven
The humans watching in their protected space were dazzled and many were afraid of the action in a self flagellating sort of way, the kind one gets from an electrical shock that hurts but sorta feels good at the same time.
That kind.
There were rotating groups from all the habitats who were given the option of coming to a game in person. Fifteen from each were brought along from Earth1, Earth 2, the Consulate, Unidad and the Family while N.E.S.T. could bring unlimited fans. There were always Hu-An at the games cheering as loudly and happily as the humans and Cybertronians.
FOOTBALL, DAMN IT!
It was instructive that nearby in a protected space several alien traders who looked like humanoid camels and a couple who looked like nine foot elves were also watching. When they walked past the humans to enter the arena half of the humans did double takes. The jumbotron often showed aliens who were traders, passers-by or envoys from different places to make agreements for use of the War World space station down the Orion arm.
It was becoming a very highly trafficked place where aliens got what they needed and wanted for free and Mars got all the intel it could handle along with weird tech for Wheeljack and Receptor, strange food recipes for Rampage, art, fuel formulations and maps for Prowl. The reputation of the Prime was rehabilitating the reputation of Cybertron as it all transpired.
Win-win.
Between the game and the aliens nearby, the humans were well entertained. So were the 7.7 billion humans of Earth watching all agog as well.
For the Cybertronians, it was just First Friday at the old ball park.
=0=Down there
They came to agreement. Ultra Magnus won the fight and lost the war. He was benched for ten minutes. No one had the stuff to tell him he was ousted. The officials had enough crap thrown at them normally without banning one of the best and most popular players in the league.
Crater would have the ball because they had it before the hoo-hah took place. The two Man Mountain Deans shook hands with Magnus, then limped to the sidelines to get their helms reset in their shoulder pedestals while the rep who tagged Magnus's arm gave a fulsome apology and was hazed back to his spot by the official group.
On with the game.
Orion slapped palms with Magnus as he thundered all impossibly sexy and masculine back to the bench to pick up Sunspot and Bos to explain things while kneeling for the others. Every female creature in the stadium with or without tentacles and half the mechs nearly swooned from the gesture of tenderness thus displayed.
Magnus had no idea it looked that way and the children were fulsomely happy and radiant as they talked to him. A trifecta of goodness achieved once again by a very oblivious but decent mech of great and impossible sexiness.
So saith Ratchet.
The offense line walked out with Orion and got set. Orion had the ball at the quarter pitch mark. Simfur was jumping around madly, Crater was protecting and undermining the towers of windmilling Templars while Orion as doing the math to make a specialty shot he was famous for back in the neighborhood happen.
"Looks like he's going to do it, Deion," Elita said with a smirk.
"It looks like it, Ariel," Deion replied. He grinned. "I think I like being around Orion again. He was a lot of fun then."
"We all were," Elita said as they watched Orion come to a decision.
The players in towers could have been disorienting with their waving and cursing. His own team were doing the usual patterns they used to be open for a throw.
But not this time.
Orion noted the defenders, plotted their paths and timing and when it came together for that moment of sublime awesomeness that victory embodied, he threw the ball as hard and fast as a near phase six mechanism could. It went up, up, up, hard and fast. It came down just as fast and without even brushing the sides of the goal, the ball went through it with speed.
Simfur Templars, 0. Crater Comets, 10.
For a moment it was as if time had stood still. Everyone hushed almost as one as they stared at something none of them had ever seen before at that distance. Then the place went mad. All over the Empire, Cybertron, Mars, Earth and the forward bases, all over the parts of his sovereign territory out to the Bootes where Polity was still rebuilding as well as all the other fraggers inside the sphere of Prime's influence, literally uncounted billions watched that throw and gasped.
It was a hole in one.
The towers had turned to stare at the ball and saw it go through. The cameras had caught the throw from eighteen different directions. Every bar in the city and everywhere else the game was playing which was pretty much everywhere else, the masses had seen a toss that appeared to be easy, that appeared to be effortless thread the needle.
It was pandemonium.
What they didn't know was that whenever their group needed a new book, a new game or anything else, Orion Pax of District 17 in the Jumble put one through the hole after betting the slag off the suckers … er, other side.
Orion stared at the goal, grinned at his team who turned to him with appreciation and awe, then began to walk off the field like the emperor he was. He passed Magnus, then stopped beside him. They slapped palms as they stood side-by-side like two forces of natures, colossal figures of the perfect Cybertronian mech.
Deion grinned for a brief moment. "That never gets old," he said.
Orion who was younger at the moment yet no less amused grinned. "No. It never does."
=0=TBC 10-21-2020 10-22-2020 10-25-2020
Hugs of love and gratitude to you, my darlings. SMOOCHES! :D:D:D I will try and get the day's piece out before evening. That way if I get inspired I can write more than one a day.
:D
Maybe.
:D:D