"Prowl." Optimus Prime turned as his medic and his long-absent first lieutenant joined them on the hangar floor. His greeting was warm, his optics bright with pleasure.
His second in command met his gaze and that warm glow faltered. There was a long shadow cast across their reunion, and they both knew its lithe shape. The Prime neither deserved nor expected forgiveness in his old friend's optics, but he saw understanding and an acceptance Optimus himself was still striving for. Prowl didn't have the luxury of denial. He'd never be able to convince himself their missing third-in-command was just out of sight, that music and laughter and a sharp insightful mind would yet return to them.
Looking at Jazz's bondmate, Optimus couldn't cling to his own denial. He felt the pain and guilt of Jazz's loss anew, and then a new twinge of guilt for his self-indulgence, knowing his pain must pale into insignificance compared to Prowl's.
"Optimus." There was no accusation in Prowl's optics or in his soft voice. The Praxian stepped forward to stand at his Prime's right side, both taking comfort in the familiarity. He inclined his helm, first to Ironhide and then to the humans on the command gantry. His sharp red chevron framed the blue glow of his optics, and his door-wings were steady, if not held high. "I have much to tell you, and much to learn of your position here."
Prime blinked, his optics cycling through a reset as he considered that. There were so many ways he could respond to Prowl's statement – so many questions to ask that they piled up in his vocaliser. Only one command escaped.
"Report."
Prowl nodded, a small smile showing on his faceplates as his Prime trusted his judgement rather than chasing minutiae.
"I last had contact with Ultra Magnus and his division slightly more than a vorn ago, and with Xanthium a little less than that. Amongst other meetings in recent vorns, I encountered Mirage, Hound and Trailbreaker on my journey here, and remained with them for a few orns before departing. Others remain out of contact, or are known to me only by hearsay. However, while our forces remain scattered, I believe I have reasonable tactical information, based on updates within the last one point three vorns, for a fraction in excess of eighty percent of the surviving Autobot army."
The tactician allowed that to sink in, his expression betraying a familiar hint of satisfaction at Optimus's surprise. The Prime's optics dimmed, relief flooding through him. His frantic - necessary, but frantic nonetheless - pursuit of the All Spark had torn him out of contact from all but his travelling companions. His knowledge of the wider army had been limited to the occasional signal they'd been able to intercept, and the still rarer snippets of information Jazz could glean from an overstrained bond. He'd hoped and prayed that Prowl might retain more of a grasp on current affairs, but it was all too easy to imagine chaos spreading unchecked through their ravaged forces.
He nodded his acknowledgement and his thanks, letting a smile show on his faceplates.
Prowl echoed it, showing just the merest glimmer of a smile in return. It faded into an equally faint frown.
"I will upload the appropriate personnel data to your network as soon as I have been able to fully review its formatting structure and revise its security protocols." The tactician ignored Ratchet's snort and the cycling of Ironhide's optics. He went on before their human colleagues even realised there was offence to be taken. "Prime, the full re-muster your message ordered will not be a rapid affair. I believe it may be three vorns before such a gathering exceeds ninety percent completeness. However, my current understanding of the tactical position is that the Autobot army contingent present on Earth as a function of time will retain numerical superiority over incoming Decepticons for most, if not all, of that period."
That got an exclamation of relief from Major Lennox – one that bordered on the profane - and Optimus couldn't help offering his own silent echo: a murmur of thanks to Lord Primus for the unexpected boon. No doubt the full tactical analysis would follow this briefing. Prowl's offering had been cautious, but he wouldn't have made the suggestion if it hadn't carried a substantial probability.
Prowl's door-wings twitched, a strained expression flickering across his faceplates for a moment before his blank mask took its place. His door-wings straightened, their tips spreading in what was clearly a conscious attempt to keep them steady.
"When… when I felt… when I heard…" Prowl shook his helm, abandoning the sentence. "I transmitted instructions for Ultra Magnus to assume command of the rear-guard, until and unless he received instructions to the contrary from you, Prime. I also suggested that he established a more effective communications relay between Earth and his current location when resources and personnel are available. However, I fear that won't be soon."
The all-too-mobile door-wings wilted. Prowl vented a soft sigh, his optics several shades dimmer than when he had started.
"I have attempted to remain in contact, Optimus, but I'm afraid that in the last few decaorns…"
Optimus reached out, the hand on Prowl's shoulder intended to steady his Second, both physically and with an offer of futile comfort. He could feel the tension under his large servos, and had to resist the impulse to tighten his grip. The echo of Prowl's armour creaking under his effusive welcome, all too loud in his memory, was enough to still him. It was something of a relief that his friend didn't shrug off the gesture. Even that small crumb of positivity burned to ashes as he realised that Prowl seemed to need the support as much as he needed the sympathy.
Prowl cycled his optics and then his vocaliser. He shook his helm.
"If you have queries about any particular individuals or vessels – "
"He can wait until you're more rested." Ratchet's intervention was almost a snarl. The medic scowled, his clenched fists resting on his hips as he glowered at their second in command. "Unless Unicron's going to turn up on our doorstep tomorrow, Prowl, Prime can wait another day to hear about it, and a few scans isn't half-way to what I want to get done before you strain yourself."
Prowl's optics cycled for the second time in as many minutes, their glow more tenuous by the second. He shook his helm, and Prime braced against the perceptible swaying of his friend's frame.
"Reviewing the data on the Twins must take priority."
The conflict on Ratchet's faceplates was painful to watch. Ironhide's cannons cycled, the movement mute testimony to his unease. Optimus Prime just nodded, eager to push the discussion forward as much for his lieutenant's sake as his front-liners'.
"Initial thoughts?"
"The prevailing hypothesis – that Sunstreaker has fallen into the control of human car thieves rather than Cybertronian forces – is strongly supported both by medical evidence and more circumstantial features of this incident."
To one side, Prime could see disappointment colour Lennox's expression. Prowl's analysis was hardly new, and brought them no closer to focusing their search. His Second, of course, was well aware of that. Prowl inclined his helm, hitching his door-wings a fraction higher.
"The major's report makes it very clear that tracking a single stolen vehicle – even one of Sunstreaker's perceived monetary value – is non-trivial. However, there are some significant deviations in the twins' behaviour pattern before the crisis point that merit further investigation."
"Their behaviour before Sides keeled over?" Ironhide frowned, glancing from Prowl to Ratchet and Prime. "It's not like Sunny went out looking to get stolen."
Prowl crossed his arms across his chest-plates, one brow-ridge rising. "Then tell me, Ironhide. What did he go out looking for?"
Autobots lined the corridors as Ratchet led the way to the twins' quarters. They weren't overt about it, clustering in twos or threes and glancing over their shoulder armour rather than staring outright. The attempt at subterfuge was weak at best. Prowl knew precisely how many Autobot soldiers were on Earth at this time, how many were on duty, and how small the chances were of encountering every one of the remainder in a single walk through the NEST base.
He nodded to the mechs he knew, reserving a twitch of his door-wings and a small smile for the few, like Bumblebee, that he knew well. The rest he acknowledged briefly, giving them a chance to see Prime's legendary lieutenant standing in front of them as steel and energon rather than mere hearsay.
Optimus filled the corridor close behind him and even Ironhide's bulk seemed less imposing by comparison. The two of them carried Sergeant Epps and Major Lennox, the pair still an enigma to Prowl but their right to be present incontestable.
Ratchet hesitated as they reached their destination. His optics strayed from the door to one side, as if he could see through the walls to where Sideswipe lay. It wasn't the first time Prowl had noted the behaviour since his arrival. He wondered whether he should be flattered that Ratchet was prepared to leave his unconscious patient's side, or alarmed that his own condition merited such attentiveness. Ratchet didn't give him time to speculate. Venting a sigh, the medic entered his codes and overrode the door-lock.
The room assigned to Sideswipe and Sunstreaker was fairly large - officer's quarters according to the base plans Prowl had already studied. Given that two mechs were sharing the space, it still leaned towards cramped.
The first thing Prowl took in was an explosion of colour and imagery. Every wall had been covered in bright posters, many of them photographic image captures of animals accompanied by slogans that - judging by context alone - were presumably considered humorous. If so, they only underscored how much Prowl had yet to learn about his new comrades-in-arms.
Overhead, inflated balloons hung from the ceiling, their petro-chemical based films tinted in striking primary colours. Stepping in towards the centre of the room, Prowl felt grateful for the first time to realise he was carrying his door-wings low. There was enough of an obstacle course underfoot that worrying about a second, catching his upswept sensor panels, was beyond him.
A scatter of human debris littered the floor, ranging from sleek consumer electronics to bulky plastic constructions intended as playthings for human young. Some showed signs of use, others might have been discarded virtually untouched. A few were small enough that Prowl found himself wondering how Sideswipe had held the things without crushing them, let alone manipulated them.
And yes, it would have been Sideswipe. The near-random scatter, the fascination with human culture, commerce and interests, virtually screamed the red twin's name. The influence of Sunstreaker was subtler but there if you knew to look for it.
Sideswipe's posters presented a riot of random colour on first glance. On second, that impression faded. Their subject matter might be eclectic, but their positioning was far from random. The backgrounds and colour themes were carefully arranged to form a sweeping arc from one side of the room to the other, the posters' subject reduced to actors against that rainbow backcloth. One wall was empty entirely of the human overload. Its military-grey plasterboard had been left barren, save for a single sketch, centrally positioned.
Prowl tilted his head, turning slightly and confirming his guess: the line drawing of the All-Spark, in all its intricate glory, was positioned precisely so as to be in the optics-line of a mech lying on the left hand berth Sunstreaker preferred.
Frowning a little, Prowl turned his attention to that side of the room, flaring his door-wings as his sensors played across the storage container beside the berth.
His optics cycled, his door-wings rising before he could conceal his surprise.
"Sunstreaker is painting again?"
Ratchet shrugged, his frown growing a little deeper as he turned to Ironhide with a raised brow ridge. Standing in the doorway alongside Prime, both wary of stepping on the twins' scattered belongings, Ironhide shrugged too.
"Looks like it. There's a couple of canvases in the locker. Pigments too." The weapons-mech's cannons rotated, close enough to Lennox's head that the human's pulse picked up perceptibly. "Prowl, I told you: we've looked in here. It's not like a couple of slagging arty abstracts are going to tell us where Sunny went."
Prowl stared at him, his door-wings spreading in his surprise.
"Prowl?"
Optimus rumbled his name with a note of caution. Prowl raised a hand, stilling the question unspoken. He turned, stepping with infinite care as he negotiated his way to the locker that held Sunstreaker's sparse belongings.
"In all the time I have known him, Sunstreaker has only painted when he feels a deep emotional understanding of his subject or a need to develop one." He crouched, studying the lock on the container, and unsurprised to realise Ironhide had already broken it. Taking hold of the lid, he glanced back at his comrades. "He has never, never, painted a truly abstract canvas."
With care, he reached in and lifted out the three medium-sized canvases wedged against one side of the locker. Ironhide had exaggerated. Two of the canvases were figure-studies - one of a pair of human children playing a game at their father's feet, the other of Optimus Prime standing alone in front of the NEST base, blue optics distant as he gazed up at the night sky. Prowl studied each in turn, considering them carefully before laying them down on Sunstreaker's empty berth. Then he turned to the third.
At first even he thought Ironhide must be correct. The painting certainly looked like an abstract art work, streaks of colour and light running across a dark background. If there were shapes behind the light, it was only as suggestions, shadows in the darkness, formed from careful strokes and shades of black. Most of the streaks were white or a bright red. A few differed - flares of neon blue or an equally vivid green.
Prowl gazed at it until it felt as if the image were burned into his optics, his processor aching as he tried to understand what their lost soldier had meant by it.
"Prowl?" It was Ratchet this time, his voice a little raised as if this wasn't the first time he'd called the name. Given that Prowl's auxiliary systems were taking every opportunity to power down and rest, that was quite possibly true. He'd got out of the habit of keeping his audio receptors active, over decaorns alone where no sound existed to be heard. Prowl dragged his optics from the canvas with an effort, his weary systems leaving behind a distorted after image as his processor lagged.
He froze, turning sharply back to look at the painting and only half aware that Ratchet caught his arm to steady him as he did so.
"Not abstract," he said firmly.
"Looks pretty damn abstract to me." Lennox and Epps had moved into the room, lifted by Ratchet onto the berth where they could see the canvas that engrossed the newcomer. Now the major shook his head, tilting it as if the subtly different view could show him what Prowl had seen.
"Distorted, not abstract," Prowl repeated. "Major, have I your permission to access the NEST personal databases?"
Technically, Optimus could have granted that permission instead of his co-commander. In actual fact, Prowl didn't need it, and had already been in and out of the NEST systems half a dozen times before even entering the base. Lennox probably knew that too, or had guessed it already. Even so, the request was a recognition of Lennox's joint command, and Prowl was enough of a diplomat to understand the importance of that.
Lennox's eyes flickered from Prowl to Prime and back again, the frown on his face considering. He gave a brief nod.
"Help yourself. Do you need access codes, or has Prime already installed yours?"
There was no need to answer that question directly. "I have access."
Prowl's optics turned distant as he tunnelled into the system, using a combination of Jazz's codes, his own, and Special Ops-spec system-hacks that circumvented the bulk of the rather crude security protocols. Some fraction of the images he searched appeared on the room's large monitor screen, casting its glow across the assembled men and mechs. It took microseconds for Prowl to locate the system directories allocated to Sunstreaker for data storage or back-up of whatever personal files he considered important. It took almost ten times that for Prowl to circumvent the extra security Sideswipe had installed for his brother - the red twin's erratic programming style harder to process than the more conventional firewalls.
Sunstreaker, it seemed, had a preference for terse directory labels, and file structures which - while logical - were somewhat opaque to a third party. Prowl considered it carefully, weighing the evidence against the warrior he knew well, anxious not to access more of his soldier's private files than he must. Thoughtfully, flashing the code on the screen so Prime and the others could follow his reasoning, he set an image search algorithm with very specific criteria.
He found the directory he was searching for on his third attempt. The image capture of Optimus Prime, indexed and annotated in Sunstreaker's unique style, was almost certainly not the sole inspiration for his painting, but it was nonetheless a clear influence. Several other images in the directory appeared to relate to the painting - reference shots of the NEST base and the unfamiliar constellations in this world's night sky. If similar reference shots existed for the study of human offspring, they resided elsewhere, perhaps in the subdirectory that was twin to this one. That didn't matter to Prowl. The five individual photographs, each showing streaks of light cast in vivid contrast against a dark background, did.
"References for the 'abstract' painting," he noted with satisfaction, not even noticing when he swayed a little as he spoke.
Ratchet was leaning forward, one hand now gripping Prowl's elbow tightly but his frown firmly fixed on the images.
"Those are optic captures," the medic confirmed, his tone confused. "Time lagged processing - perhaps 1.5, 1.6 second sequences?"
Lennox walked forward to the edge of Sunstreaker's berth, craning to look up at the screen from his awkward angle. Frowning, he folded his arms.
"So Sunny took photos to work from in his spare time? Where's this getting us?"
Prowl wasn't aware of choosing to sit on the berth. He only realised Ratchet had manoeuvred him into that position when he saw Epps and Lennox adjust their footing to better ride out the vibrations. His door-wings, idling now that his concentration was on the screen, had slumped. His peripheral systems were trying to save power; the drain from his processor and social interaction algorithms were higher than they had been for decaorns. He was truly riding the edge of exhaustion, but this was important, and the expression on Prime's face told his lieutenant that Lennox wasn't the only one confused.
"These studies… they're each taken in the same place - the background light patterns are constant and distinctive - but with a dynamic foreground. And they're time-indexed across three distinct days." Even to himself, Prowl's voice sounded wrong, a buzz of noise blurring it as his processor sent too weak a signal to his vocaliser. He shook his helm, trying to concentrate against the increasing number of error messages from his depleted systems. "This is a location Sunstreaker visited multiple times, within a half-orn of his disappearance. If the images can be processed to recover the background…"
"They will be analysed." Optimus Prime's deep rumble made it not just a firm intention but a fact. "Prowl, report to medbay."
Prowl opened his mouth to protest, more out of habit than anything else. A sharp slap across his nearest door-wing from Ratchet, followed by a quick grab by the medic to stop his patient overbalancing, stopped him. Prowl cycled his optics in an attempt to focus them, a little startled that even a mech as trusted as Ratchet had caught him by surprise.
"You're running on fumes, and I still have tests to run. You'll recharge in medbay and like it, understand? I want you on an energon line for a few hours until your systems stabilise, and then a full recharge cycle before doing anything else."
Prowl vented a sigh, the exhalation soft but still very obvious in the quiet of the twins' room. He could still work from the medbay, and Ratchet was correct that he needed rest and energon urgently. This wasn't the time and place to argue.