Lizard: Um...I don't know what to say...
Well, now you're going to find out who Catalytic and Shiver are, what's going on (basically) and a few other...details. Yeah. Have at it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers or any related characters. Just Shiver and Catalytic. Yeah.
Ironhide was, understandably, very confused. And for Ironhide, confused equals angry, and angry equals trigger-happy. Which was why he immediately took aim at the two transformers standing in front of them.
The purple and charcoal grey mech jerked back and held his hands up in surrender, blue optics wide in something that could have been panic, "Woah! Wait wait wait, I got this, just…let me explain!"
Next to him a tiny femme, white with some pale blue accents, gave him a dirty look, "You are so fragged."
He turned to give her a withering look, "I'm well aware of that, Shiver."
"A'right, one o' you had better start talkin', 'fore I start shootin'!" Ironhide interrupted with a growl.
The femme, Shiver it would seem, glowered at her comrade pointedly, "Yes, Catalytic, why don't you explain what you have done?"
"Way to throw me under the gestalt…," he responded darkly, then looked nervously back at the intimidating Autobots, "See, I don't really know what went wrong, but, uh…it would seem my subspace energy transistor -complicated, don't ask- malfunctioned and opened a portal of sorts to…wherever you all are from."
Ratchet gave the younger mech a skeptical look, "You mean Cybertron?"
Catalytic looked thoroughly confused, "Cybertron? But that's-," he cut off and a look of horror spread across his features, "Ooooo…Oh slag. I just…oh slag."
Shiver turned and glared, "What did you do?"
He grinned nervously, running a hand over the back of his head, and Ironhide noticed the two headfins placed at a slight angle on his helm, almost identical to Wheeljack's, "Well, ya see, there's this thing called the space-time continuum? And uh, well it can get, you know, torn sometimes, by uh…."
As he was talking, Shiver's ice blue optics had grown progressively wider until it looked almost painful, "You did what?!"
He flinched, but turned back to the Autobots, who were all still watching him warily, Ironhide, Chromia, and Bluestreak with drawn weapons, "Um, yeah I thought you all looked familiar. Prowl, Ratchet, Ironhide, Chromia, and…B-Bluestreak, right?"
Prowl was the one who spoke, optics narrowed dangerously, "That is correct. How do you know us?"
Catalytic twisted his mouthplates uncomfortably, "I, uh….can you put the weapons down? Please? I'm an unarmed scientist, okay, not gonna hurt you!"
Ironhide's systems snarled menacingly, "Well ya got us here, I find that a bit threatenin'."
"Uh, yeah, that was an accident though. Trust me; killing any of you would be seriously bad news for us. So…yeah, just, uh, put them away?"
Prowl stopped Ironhide from verbally beating the kid with his own implied warning, "You have yet to explain the situation to us," he pointed out none-too-kindly.
Catalytic winced and looked helplessly at Shiver, who gave him a plain "you got yourself into it, you get yourself out" look.
"Look, I, we, it…Mymachinemalfunctionedandtore aholeinthespacetimecontinuum thatdraggedyouall fromyourtimetonow whichforyouisthefuture soyeahitwasanaccidentandI'mreallysorry!"
Silence.
Ratchet was the first to speak, "Say again?"
Catalytic vented heavily, "I said that my machine must have malfunctioned and tore a hole in the space-time continuum, which in turn pulled you all from the past, your present, to now, your future."
Another pause.
Bluestreak spoke up for the first time, "Uh, what?"
Shiver finally rolled her optics and decided to come to her coworkers rescue, "Welcome to your future, and sorry, but it's not too pretty."
There was a moment in which everyone processed this, then there was a "fzzzt!" sound and Prowl promptly fell over. Apparently time travel didn't sit well with his logic chips.
"I'm really really sorry about this! I mean, I didn't think it was possible, but apparently it is, and I should have been more careful, it just…the energy spike, and the fluctuations, I didn't know what to do! And so…," Catalytic was ranting more to himself than anyone else as he went about running diagnostics, hoping to find the problem, "I swear, I'll get you back as fast as I can!"
Shiver quirked an optic ridge, "I talk too much?"
"Mute it."
Chromia spoke up, still a bit stunned by the "diagnosis" and not sure if she believed it, "Why would it have taken us?"
Catalytic looked up, seemingly surprised at someone else's voice besides his or Shiver's, "Uh, I don't know-"
"Where were you when the teleport occurred?" It was Shiver who spoke, her back to the group as she fiddled with some console at the other end of the room.
"My office," Ratchet muttered, still working on rebooting Prowl's processors.
Shiver thrummed softly, "That was…off the old medbay, correct?"
"That's right," he replied in a distracted manner.
"Well then, that makes sense. This room was the medbay once, before we made some changes to serve our purposes better. The medbay was moved to a more convenient location for our needs. Because you were in the same area in your time that the portal appeared in ours, it only makes sense that you would be the ones taken. It's merely a stroke of bad luck. And stupidity."
"You're not usually this disagreeable," Catalytic observed dryly, "Oh wait, yes you are."
"I'm a realist. Sugar-coating is a waste of time."
"At least then people like you!"
Ironhide snorted at their bickering, apparently a common occurrence, and looked around the room in a bored manner. It really did look a lot like the medbay, with quite a bit more unfamiliar devices and machinery, but the basic design was the same. Still there was no way….
'Is time travel even possible?' Chromia's voice suddenly asked incredulously over a comm. link to the three other still online Autobots.
Ratchet's mouthplates twisted in consideration, 'Not sure. It would take tremendous amounts of power I would imagine, and it doesn't appear they have that in good supply.'
'Well I'm not buying into this scrap,' Ironhide muttered darkly, crossing his arms and glaring at Catalytic, who cowered slightly when he noticed the attention.
"Uh…hi?"
Ironhide snorted, "Ya know we're not gonna believe this time travel slag, so why don'tcha just spit out th' truth?"
Catalytic winced and looked around helplessly, "It…is the truth. I'm not very good at lying, really. I start rambling," he tilted his helm almost pleadingly, "I don't know how to make you believe me. You can look around the room, try to find something familiar?"
Ironhide rumbled dangerously, but Ratchet cut him off with a comm. ''Hide, I think we should consider they may be telling the truth. There is something definitely familiar about this room, and I can't come up with any other explanation.'
The weapons specialist grunted and glared at his friend, before scanning the room again. Yes, he had already decided it looked like the medbay, but that didn't mean anything. It could be some elaborate Decepticon plot…Primus he was starting to sound like that new security director….
"What's that?" he suddenly asked, pointing at the far wall.
Catalytic looked up to see where he was pointing, then at the indicated mark. A small flaw on the otherwise pristine walls, it was a tiny hole through the thick metal, scarcely noticeable to anyone except those who knew it was there.
The grey and purple mech frowned, "I have no idea. It's been there forever."
Ironhide walked slowly over to the mark and ran his fingers over it with narrowed optics, "I made that. Th' Hatchet yanked on some o' mah wirin' too hard, an' I fired a shot inta th' wall…."
There was a thoughtful "hmm" across the room from the medic himself, "I remember that. You got a pretty good dent in the helm for that one."
Ironhide continued scrutinizing the small hole, made by a simple laser shot, then turned to look at the mech and femme who had apparently brought them there, "Which means…ya'll might be tellin' th' truth."
Ratchet looked over his shoulder at the red mech, "I'll recognize any mark you see if this really is the medbay."
Ironhide nodded vaguely, distracted by his close inspection of the room. Shiver and Catalytic watched him almost warily, while Chromia followed her mate's progress with anticipation, and Bluestreak started scanning the room as well.
"Hey doc, what about that one?" Bluestreak chirped, pointing to a dent right where the wall met the floor under one of the tables along the wall they were closest to.
Catalytic ducked his head to see even as Ratchet just glanced up from his work on their incapacitated tactician.
"Stray wrench. Ricocheted off Jazz's helm."
Catalytic thrummed in interest, "You have good mem banks. Is anyone starting to believe us yet?" he added looking around at the others.
Ironhide didn't answer at first; he was looking at something on the floor. After a moment, the mech started to chuckle softly, then slowly turned around.
"Yeah, I'm startin' to. That crack in th' floor was from Sideswipe. Didn' he try ta flip or somthin' to prove he was fine?"
Ratchet craned his neck to see the indicated flaw, and a scowl settled over his features at the memory, "Yes, and he fell on his helm and just gave me even more work to do."
Chromia turned to look almost wonderingly at the young mech and femme standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, "So you are telling the truth."
Shiver's face remained neutral, "That is correct."
Meanwhile Catalytic grinned sheepishly, "Once again, my fault."
His partner rolled her optics, "Get back to work and fix it, fragger."
He sort of jerked in response and nodded rapidly, sending the others an apologetic grin, "Sorry, we're on a deadline, so we're in a bit of a rush. Don't mean to push you all aside or anything, I am making this a priority, I assure you," he explained nervously.
Ratchet dragged Prowl to his feet, the tactician still a bit groggy, but coming back to the land of the living relatively well, "Wheeljack."
Catalytic froze, an odd look coming to his optics, "W-what?"
Ratchet turned around calmly to look at the scientist, "Your mech creator was Wheeljack."
It wasn't a question, and sounded almost like a disinterested observation of someone who couldn't care less. But the purple and grey mech went completely rigid and if Cybertronians could pale he would be whiter than a sheet. Shiver had whipped around, optics wide, and was looking back and forth between the two in alarm. Slowly, Catalytic reached up and rubbed his headfins.
"Guess these kinda gave it away, huh?" he asked weakly.
Ratchet shrugged, watching the younger mech carefully, "That and your speaking patterns. They're similar to his."
Catalytic grinned shakily, "Yeah, I've been told I'm…I'm a lot like he was."
Chromia wasn't the only one to jerk in surprise, but she was the first to speak, "Was?"
The young mech nodded and turned quickly back to his work, voice barely audible, "He was killed in battle several vorns ago."
That took a moment to process. Not all of them were all that familiar with the cheery walking explosion-waiting-to-happen, but they knew him enough to hear the sheer wrongness of that statement. Wheeljack killed in battle? He was an engineer! And the thought of such a warm, friendly mech being dead was…wrong.
Abruptly Catalytic turned around towards the door and left, muttering something about needing to talk to someone named Monochrome.
Shiver winced as he left and turned to the others, "I'm sorry that's a…sore spot for him. He and Wheeljack were close, and Catalytic…he never got to say goodbye."
Ironhide shook his head slowly, "What was a 'bot like 'Jack doin' in battle anyways?"
She pursed her lip components, "How much do you all know about the war?"
The group of five exchanged several very confused glances, and Prowl spoke up first, "What war?"
Shiver nodded as though confirming something, "We're at war. We have been for as long as I can remember, and I'm one of the oldest left on this ship. As soon as things started going bad they started using everyone capable of holding a gun, Wheeljack was actually one of the best by the time he…left."
Prowl narrowed his optics, "At war with who?"
"The Decepticons. You know them, don't you?" she asked mildly.
Chromia scoffed, "Those half-processed glitches? They couldn't handle a war against Autobots, they'd be wiped out in an orn!"
That struck a nerve.
Shiver's optics went ice cold and her expression slid into a deadly mask, while she spoke quietly with barely contained venom, "Oh really? Well then, tell that to the millions who have lost their homes, their families, and their own lives. I'm sure they would be relieved to know that the Decepticons couldn't defeat us, that the Autobots are indestructible and that's why we're all dying now. You know, I can take you to plenty of mechs and femmes right now who would love to hear this wonderful news," her visage shifted to something almost like sorrow, "I never even met my mech creator, Perceptor, and the last thing I ever heard my femme creator say was she couldn't be tied down by a sparkling during a war. So don't you dare tell me what the Decepticons can or can't do, because you didn't live it. We did."
That rendered them all speechless for a few breems while she went back to her work, still fuming.
Chromia finally found her vocalizer again and spoke hesitantly, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…offend."
Shiver snorted and didn't turn around, simply continuing her work, whatever that was. Many of the devices and consoles looked half-scrapped, or like they had come from the salvaged parts of very damaged machines. The silence stretched on, uncomfortable for most, but Shiver seemed completely unaffected, perfectly fine with everyone standing awkwardly behind her. Ratchet was still trying to wrap his processor around the apparent fact that she was Perceptor's creation. He could really see no resemblance between their personalities. Prowl, meanwhile, was still a bit too dizzy to do any hard thinking.
Bluestreak suddenly piped in a bit nervously, breaking apart everyone's thoughts, "So…does that mean all of us are dead? I mean I'm sorry maybe that's not something I should ask, but is it okay if I do I mean I don't-"
Slowly the white and blue femme turned around with a quirked optic ridge, the change of subject seeming to calm her, "You really did… do… whatever… you talk a lot, don't you? No, that's an understandable question," she tilted her head and looked towards the door, "Commander's here, you can ask him yourself."
"What?"
Just as he said that, there was the sound of doors whooshing open, and they all turned around to look. There in the doorway was an imposing figure, doorwings held high and proud, blue optics piercing, and chevron gleaming in the light. As they all stared in absolute stunned silence, a strong, commanding voice arose from the figure.
"Well now, what have we here?"
Lizard: Dun dun DUUUUUNNN!!!! Who is this mysterious Commander? (As if you couldn't already guess... It's Starscream ;P *gasp, shifty eyes* she has thrown in a twist! ...eh, not really. Seriosly though, you should be able to guess who it is. It's not like obvious or anything...) And where am I going with this story?
Ehm, yes. I hope that didn't come across as rushed...since I do that sometimes, and I hope Catalytic and Shiver were likeable enough. And I hope Ironhide's accent isn't as annoying to read as it is to write. I really shouldn't do that, it just happens. Whatever. Sorry.
Um...review? To bolster my microscopic self-esteem?
...I once again have nothing more to say. It is late, my brain is going into standby mode...no transformers pun intended.
Thanks for reading!!
LIZARD OUT
