Sideswipe crept quietly toward the maintenance bay, occasionally glancing around to make sure that he was alone. His knee joint irritated him and clouded his mind. He would be hard-pressed to come up with a quick excuse if someone caught him lurking. He was determined to get into maintenance, take what tools he needed, and get out again without being seen.
He stopped to one side of the huge maintenance bay doors and leaned against the golden-orange wall, taking the weight off his right leg while he listened carefully through the metal wall. It was quiet inside. As he stepped in front of the massive doors, they opened before him with a soft hiss. Relief, here I come!
The doors hissed shut as Sideswipe hobbled toward Hoist's tool drawers. He glanced back at the closed entrance and relaxed. No one ever received maintenance without an appointment with Hoist. The maintenance Autobot loved his routines and scheduled his appointments around his daily activities. He let anything truly urgent be dealt with by Ratchet.
Sideswipe fingered through the contents of one shelf and then another. As he moved from a higher set of drawers to a lower set, he crouched. Something pinched in the sore joint and he lowered his right knee to the floor, one optic cover quivering, half closed from the pain. After a moment, he continued his search, sifting through two columns of tools and small parts before sliding the cover panel closed over them and moving into the seat at Hoist's desk.
An opened screen displayed the maintenance procedure for cleaning out the rock traps in the suction vents at the entrance to the base. Hoist would have downloaded it into a data pad before leaving for his chores. Sideswipe reclined in the chair for a moment, scanning the tool trays around the desk, deciding where to look for the right key for his knee cover plate lock. He popped open the central drawer and looked through it, but found nothing of any use so he closed it again. He pushed the chair across the floor with his good leg so that he sat in front of a stack of drawers to the left of the desk.
He smiled as he pulled the drawers open and laid his optics on dozens of tiny drawer divisions containing a bewildering array of small tools and parts. "Bingo!"
Sweeping his optics over the minute gadgets, he quickly located the tools he needed. He opened a cylindrical star key to reveal tooling for several multi-prong lock configurations. He would use it to take apart the stay plate underneath the cover plate so that he could get at his knee seal. It was a simple enough task to remove both plates and adjust the lay of the seal underneath. Sideswipe clutched the cylindrical body of the key device in his palm and then picked out the correct cover plate key with his thumb and index finger.
He had just sat back contentedly with the tools in the palm of his hand when the maintenance doors suddenly hissed open behind him. He flinched. He was no longer alone. There was no greeting as the metal footsteps approached the desk. He slowly turned his head to one side and caught a glimpse of black and white out of the corner of his optics.
"Oh slag!" he muttered and closed his hand around his booty.
There was no hiding himself, so he slowly spun the chair around and slouched as Prowl stopped in front of him.
"Hi, Sideswipe," the other Autobot said with a false smile. "What are you doing down here in maintenance all by yourself?"
Sideswipe did not meet Prowl's optics. Instead, he looked off to one side and tried to buy himself some time to come up with an excuse. He did not expect Prowl to bother him in maintenance.
Prowl leaned over and tilted his head to look into Sideswipe's faceplate. "You weren't down here waiting for Hoist, were you?"
Sideswipe had no alternative but to look into Prowl's authoritative optics. He could not think of a good lie so he tried a version of the truth. "Well, to tell the truth, Prowl, I couldn't get an appointment with Hoist today, so I thought I'd come down here and take care of something myself."
"Oh?" Prowl inquired. For a moment, Prowl's interest appeared genuine and it took Sideswipe off guard. "And what kind of problem were you taking care of?" He folded his arms together and looked sternly down at the red warrior in front of him.
Sideswipe thought quickly. He was not about to be led into a conversational trap. "I, uh, accidentally jammed the drawer casing to our desk closed and need something to get it back open," he answered, trying to appear as honest as possible. "The tools I could have used are stuck inside, so I had to come down here and find something that would un-jam it."
Prowl adjusted his stance and scrutinized Sideswipe's faceplate. At last he tipped his chin up and looked down at Sideswipe's closed hand. "What have you got in your hand?"
Sideswipe tightened his fist but then reluctantly opened it.
"Hmm," Prowl thought aloud as he picked the two tools out of Sideswipe's hand and placed them on top of Hoist's desk. "Those don't look like they'll help you, Sideswipe."
"Well, I wasn't finished looking-" Sideswipe began to explain but was rudely interrupted when Prowl pushed his hand against his Sideswipe's shoulder, pushing both him and the chair back at an angle.
"Look, Sideswipe," Prowl glared intently into the red warrior's optics. "I'm not here to fool around with you and listen to your excuses."
"Excuses?" Sideswipe sputtered in false disbelief.
Prowl tilted his head and narrowed his optics. "I know what you're hiding," he spoke through a tight jaw mechanism.
Sideswipe's optics widened and his mouth hung open, stunned. Prowl was looking for his cache of illegal energon. He had accidentally left a canister in the lounge, where it was later found. But he was not about to give away any of his secrets, so he remained silent.
"Tell me where it is, Sideswipe," Prowl demanded. But Sideswipe did not say a word. Prowl let go of his shoulder. As he stood back upright, the chair snapped back to its natural position. Sideswipe straightened his posture.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" The red Lamborghini chuckled to relieve the tension. "I told you-"
"You hid it here, didn't you?" Prowl raised his voice in a challenge to Sideswipe. But when he received no answer, Prowl turned and looked around the large maintenance bay.
Sideswipe stared at Prowl as the Autobot strategist swept his gaze around the room. As Prowl turned his back to him, a smile crept onto Sideswipe's faceplate. An instant later, the strategist's head snapped back in Sideswipe's direction and caught the red warrior with a smirk on his faceplate. Prowl's optic ridges furrowed.
"Why you little slagger," Prowl cursed at Sideswipe.
"What?" Sideswipe responded in mock shock. "I didn't do anything. Is it a crime to smile?"
Prowl drummed his fingers against his hip plates. Sideswipe was not giving him anything to work with. "You see some humor in this," he scowled and took a step forward so that he was uncomfortably close to the red warrior in the chair. He leaned over and put his faceplate right in Sideswipe's. "I'll let you know that fraternizing with the enemy would earn you the title of 'traitor.'"
Sideswipe flicked his head sideways. Prowl backed his faceplate away but remained uncomfortably close. "What are you trading to them, Sideswipe? Our secrets? Plans?"
"I said," Sideswipe reaffirmed with a straight face, "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not trading anything with the Decepticons."
Prowl glared at Sideswipe for a long moment while he decided what to do with the red Lamborghini. Then he grabbed Sideswipe behind one arm. "Get up!" Prowl ordered and forced him out of the chair.
Sideswipe co-operated and stood up. Prowl spun Sideswipe around by the arm and grabbed Sideswipe's other arm, holding both firmly together behind the red warrior's back. Before Sideswipe could react, Prowl shackled his hands together with energy bonds. Prowl then abruptly spun Sideswipe back around by the shoulder to face him.
Sideswipe stood quietly with his optic covers closed, trying to ignore the stab of pain in his right knee joint.
"Look at me," Prowl commanded, to which Sideswipe opened his optics and looked at the officer in front of him. "I'm giving you a job to do."
Sideswipe raised his optic ridges, surprised by Prowl's statement. "I thought you were arresting me."
"Don't be funny with me, Sideswipe," Prowl shot back. "I'm putting you to work with Perceptor and Wheeljack."
Sideswipe rolled his optics and slouched. "Oh, c'mon Prowl!"
Prowl was not about to let Sideswipe off the hook for his suspected nefarious activities. He did not have reasonable grounds for locking Sideswipe in the brig or punishing him, but nothing prevented him from keeping Sideswipe busy and thereby preventing him from getting into trouble. He had patience and would wait Sideswipe out until he caught him on the surveillance cameras retrieving more illegal energon.
"They can use some help with reverse engineering the space bridge control module we retrieved," Prowl explained, his harsh tone easing. "Sideswipe," he said with a pleasant expression, "science can be fun."
"Uh, yeah," the red warrior uttered, unimpressed by the idea.
"Get going," Prowl ordered and he pushed Sideswipe in front of him toward the door.
Sideswipe shuffled toward the door, disguising the lingering pain in his leg. Prowl followed. He held his head up despite the humiliation of being escorted through the Ark in shackles. He had nothing to say to the other Autobots they passed on the way to Perceptor's lab.