Pt. 39: Soundwave is good at his job; officer dynamics aboard the Lost Light; on the shuttle; what Whirl has become; join the D.J.D. and shovel snow; Tarn likes pets; the reality of this new Cybertron; the limitations of before the war; The Curious Case of Too Many Hounds; Bob and the vet appointment of doom; Chromia's reason for betrayal; What Ifs and Alternate Universes; Prowl's desk; Optimus Dies Again; the Party Ambulance; height discrimination.
Title: Candy From Strangers, Pt. 39
Warning:
Rating: R
Continuity: IDW, G1
Characters: Constructicons, Soundwave, Megatron, Rodimus, Drift, Ratchet, Whirl, the D.J.D., Knock Out, Ratchet, Blaster, Jazz, the Coneheads, bunches of Hounds, Sunstreaker and Bob, Chromia, Starscream, Optimus Prime, Wheeljack, Bumblebee,
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Various Tumblr things.
[* * * * *]
Alabama - "hyper-competent!Soundwave mindfuckery"
[* * * * *]
Strangely, Hook's pride, Mixmaster's insanity, and Long Haul's apathy didn't start the trouble. It was Bonecrusher taking a swing at Rumble.
"Scraplet," the Constructicon grunted. "Get the frag outta the repairbay 'fore I turn you into spare parts."
Rumble dodged the punch easily but bristled at the dismissal. "Hey! I can be in here if I want!"
Bonecrusher eyed him, amused but irate. It was a common mood for him. "Not if I say you can't." He kicked at the Cassetticon as emphasis.
Rumble could dodge his slow blows all day, but that wasn't the point. "Frag you, bolthead. I'm surveillance. I can be anywhere I wanna be," he said. He sounded as cranky as he felt. This whole living-in-close-quarters thing here on Earth was turning into an ordeal. Soundwave liked having his fingers in everyone's cube, living like this, but Rumble hated being forced to share a base with all these losers.
"Scram," Bonecrusher ordered.
Losers with big weapons. Rumble zipped out of the repairbay, heels singed and language blistering audios.
Complaining to the boss wasn't a great strategy for his pride, but frag that scrap. Usually mechs weren't stupid enough to take a shot at one of Soundwave's minions. Seriously? What in Cybertron's rusted understructure was going on in Bonecrusher's empty head?
So Rumble tattled to Soundwave, who gave him an unreadable look but called Scrapper, expecting an explanation involving an annoying prank pulled on the Constructicons. That was understandable. Rumble and Frenzy had a habit of getting bored and taking that boredom out on people they really shouldn't. Some threats were to be expected, in that case.
Scrapper didn't bother with any sort of explanation. He went for full-on dismissal. "Shortstuff shouldn't have been in my repairbay," the Constructicon leader said curtly. "Anything else?"
Soundwave gave him the unreadable look this time. Scrapper took that as the end of the conversation and hung up.
He
hung up
on
Soundwave.
Frenzy and Rumble stirred in Soundwave's chest, and across the room, three pairs of wings suddenly spread in a call to action. Ravage melted out of the shadows to cock his head at the blank screen. Soundwave's hand fell to his back, and master and symbiotes hummed on a frequency most mechs simply weren't formatted to hear.
Scrapper found every one of his projects deluged by an unprecedented amount of filework in triplicate, every supply list randomly deleted items upon submission, and a thousand errors afflicted his blueprint archives. It drove him half-mad attempting to sort out. That would have been annoying and frustrating, but the file glitches were frankly dangerous. Bonecrusher's personnel file kept disappearing from the base's security database. Four increasingly severe injuries from the automatic security system had Bonecrusher wary to leave the repairbay at all anymore.
No help came from the base's technical support. Messages left for Soundwave vanished into the ether. In-person demands to fix the problems went nowhere, as the surveillance room was oddly empty any time he stormed up to confront Soundwave. Megatron, of course, witnessed none of these errors and tolerated no ill word against his most loyal follower. He regarded Scrapper as one would a whining complainer the two times Scrapper dared raise his voice on the issue during meetings. Starscream just shook his head at the Constructicon, a smile showing just how much he enjoyed the mech's frustration. Soundwave ignored everything said during the meetings and disappeared afterward before Scrapper could catch him.
It was the Cassetticon's fault. It had to be. Neither Scrapper nor Bonecrusher were stupid. If someone was dancing a merry jig with information control, then Soundwave was on the other end pulling their strings.
Despite Hook's disapproval and Mixmaster's giggling, Scrapper took Scavenger aside to assign a personal mission. Scavenger liked to collect useful items, and Scrapper had some things he'd like collected. "I could use some parts," Scrapper said casually, handing Scavenger a list of parts that just so happened to match the schematics of one of Soundwave's flying pests.
Scavenger lit up like one of those Christmas tree things he'd decorated their quarters with. Off he ran. Scrapper threw the nearest security camera a smug look. Well. That would sort this out. One thing every Decepticon knew: don't mess with repairmechs. They were the ones who had to patch fighters up after battle, and so many things could be pulled out of a wounded mech while they were on the repair slab.
That was the intended message, anyway, but somehow the wires got crossed during delivery.
Long Haul had declared, "Not even going there," and walked out when Laserbeak came in unconscious, but Scavenger started digging for parts. Ravage sprang off the overhead light and bit right through the back of the unlucky Constructicon's neck, dropping him where he stood.
Bonecrusher sprinted into the room just in time to see the Cassetticon claw skeins of wires, cables, and bleeding tubes from Scavenger's throat, tearing into him. Ever try to punch a tiny moving target? Brute force didn't stand much of a chance against Ravage's speed, and the technimal grabbed his downed compartment mate to take with him when he finally bounded out of the repair bay.
"I didn't even see him up there," Scavenger croaked after he woke up.
"I couldn't hit him!" Bonecrusher said.
"Next time, try harder," Scrapper ordered.
"You're all idiots," Hook grumbled as he patched Scavenger.
Scrapper argued with the surgeon, but his spark wasn't in it. As much as he seethed, Soundwave had made his point. Surveillance and espionage specialists might depend on repairmechs to keep them healthy, but the Constructicons couldn't live their whole lives checking every single corner for cameras, every high point for a watcher, every vent for an ambush. Soundwave held the advantage.
Unfortunately, he also held a grudge. Bonecrusher learned to restrain himself, and Scrapper muted himself to silent fuming during meetings, but the filework problems continued. They multiplied. Plus, Scavenger started getting the daylights scared out of him every other hour as shadows growled, ceilings rattled, and cameras turned to watch him pass. His terror was starting to make the whole team paranoid, and the situation continued to worsen the longer it stretched on.
"Somebody's watchiiiiiing," Mixmaster cackled, undisturbed by the jittering of the other Constructicons. "Watch watched watching! Hand me that chloride."
Scrapper handed it over without objection, too busy watching the door of the repair bay for uninvited guests to care that his subordinate was ordering him around. "Fine. How do we get him to stop watching us?"
Mixmaster shrugged. "Like I know?"
Long Haul gave him a bored look. "Try apologizing."
"Erk," Scrapper said, because that's what pride and an apology sounded like when colliding in his throat.
"No," Bonecrusher shouted from across the repair bay.
Scavenger shrieked right then, tearing out of the back room as though he'd seen a ghost, and Bonecrusher flinched.
"…maybe."
Hook trained his visor on the ceiling and sighed. "I cannot believe I have to fix your mistakes. Again."
"Why you little - "
"I'll handle this," the surgeon said as he strode for the exit.
"What're you going to do?" Scrapper called after him, a little afraid to know.
Hook turned at the door to snort contemptuously. His hands flexed in illustration of acts best left unknown. "There is little in life that can't be solved by a massage."
The Constructicons couldn't meet each other's optics after he left, because he was right but they could have lived without having that mental image.
But at least the harassment stopped.
[* * * * *]
"counterpart"
[* * * * *]
Something Perceptor had said during the two hour lecture - he swore Ultra Magnus was a sadist practicing vigorously upon him by sending him down to the laboratories - stuck with Megatron. It grew in his thoughts like a rust infection. It itched. It bothered.
He finally opened his mouth to ask during the late shift when it was just himself and Ultra Magnus on the bridge, not a flame-painted maniac in sight. "You were there during the shut-down of Tyrest's machine." A machine he'd had trouble believing, simply because of the scale of ridiculously unchecked madness it implied. He had trusted Tyrest, trusted him enough to believe in that Accord and follow its rules, and that had been the mech's goal? A madman on a galactic scale, and he'd trusted him?
He shook away the thoughts as Ultra Magnus nodded. "Of course."
"I was told Rodimus' participation was vital to shutting down the killswitch," Megatron said. Ultra Magnus nodded again. "What I don't understand is why that's so. It was the Matrix that canceled out the killswitch's effects. Why was it necessary for Rodimus to have put himself at risk that way when he could have simply taken out the Matrix?" Half the Matrix, anyway. He still wasn't clear on why Optimus had kept the other half.
Ultra Magnus considered him for a moment as if judging how or if this information could be used against the Autobots. "Perceptor thought it likely the Matrix would refuse to interact with his machine, if taken out of Rodimus," he said slowly. "It is surprisingly inert outside of a Prime. Thunderclash is the only one I can think of that it has responded to other than Optimus Prime and Rodimus."
"Ah. I see." That made sense. "Wait." No, that made no sense. "Rodimus is - you're telling me that - " Megatron turned and stared at the captain's chair, which only last week had been spraypainted with flames to match the immature fool's paintjob. "He's actually a Prime ?" He knew his optics were wide in shock, but he thought it justified.
Turning, Ultra Magnus set down the tablet he'd been working on. The conversation seemed to have finally earned his full attention. "Of course. He did change his name at one point, but then he gave the Matrix back to Optimus Prime. I believe he dropped the title to pay respect to Optimus Prime. Then there was the breakage, and he confessed to feeling uncomfortable under the title when he didn't bear the full Matrix. Now we continue to call him Rodimus out of respect for what he was and, perhaps," a twitch at the corner of his mouth signified as much of a smile as the stoic mech ever gave, "knowing the quest so far, what he might be again."
Megatron kept staring. "I was under the impression he'd changed his name because he's a conceited twit."
"That is a reasonable conclusion," Ultra Magnus conceded, somehow managing disapproval for the insult and rueful honesty in just five words, "but that has little bearing on the rest of us agreeing with the change. Many Autobots change their names, but few of them can manage to persuade everyone else to call them by their new names. It takes common agreement or a persuasive person to make that kind of change stick." Megatron looked away, remembering a cold grey corpse down in the morgue, but Ultra Magnus appeared not to notice the sidelong reference to Trailcutter. "Hot Rod had some of both to aid him."
Megatron said nothing more about it.
However, walking to his quarters later, he glimpsed a laughing riot of red and gold sprinting across an intersection up ahead, and he remembered Ultra Magnus' explanation. It had stuck in his mind as stubbornly as what Perceptor had said.
Rodimus had given the Matrix back. He didn't have to. He remained a Prime, and potentially could still take up the Matrix once more.
Megatron found himself murmuring, "There, but for the grace of Optimus Prime…"
[* * * * *]
Minnesota - "Megatron/Rodimus"
[* * * * *]
Of all the things he expected of the baby Prime, he hadn't thought to brace against cruelty.
He should have. Historically, or at least in Megatron's experience, it had been a trait of all the Primes, but Rodimus didn't seem one to continue that legacy. Maybe it was because Rodimus was something of a buffoon. He hadn't thought Rodimus capable of hurting him because after so much war and so many injuries, nothing but words could truly affect him anymore. The previous Primes had been great wordsmiths. Optimus Prime was capable of cutting-cruel words toward Megatron, their long enmity and his skill of oration giving him the power to carve grooves into Megatron's spark using nothing but the sharp edge of his tongue.
For all his charismatic presence and ability to inspire mechs to follow him into the Pit, Rodimus wasn't a good public speaker. Optimus Prime was known for his speeches. Megatron had begun a revolution through the power of his own words. Rodimus...
Rodimus had had Drift write his speeches. On his own, he fumbled for words. He used 'like' and 'um' and 'cool.' Grammar was an option. The slang and cant of Neocybex was more familiar to him than literature in any form. His poetry was street grafitti. He could verbally mix up using 'their' and 'they're', which seemed impossible to detect and yet drove Ultra Magnus up the wall every time he somehow, impossibly and inexplicably, managed it.
The first time Rodimus read Megatron's poetry aloud, it was the most painful torture a Prime had ever inflicted on him. The words flayed open his spark.
The cadence was all wrong, some of the words were mispronounced - the words Rodimus had likely only ever seen written instead of spoken - and the fool stopped in the middle of a verse to argue about how stupid it was to write a poem about such a lame-aft subject. Megatron looked down his nose at the baby Prime and curtly told him to keep reading, but inside he bled.
Oh, he bled.
Rodimus was cruel. His cruelty wasn't the deliberate torture Optimus Prime had turned on Megatron, twisting their familiarity into pain. When he actually attempted to hurt Megatron, Rodimus said quick, biting things, off-hand comments never regretted because the effects failed to really penetrate, and Megatron shrugged them off. Rodimus rarely meant to do more than wound the surface. The deep pains, the true hurts, never left his lips intentionally. It was when he didn't try that he tore Megatron apart and ripped out his core.
Megatron folded up to sit silently beside him, and Rodimus' callous, bright smile faltered. The kindness tucked underneath the glittering egomaniac personality came out to peer up at him, concerned. The baby Prime wasn't intentionally cruel, but that made it hurt worse.
Rodimus read Megatron's poem aloud in the voice of an uneducated mech forced into a function he'd never had a choice but take up. All options had been stripped from the baby Prime just as they'd been taken away from the miners. Just as they'd been taken from Megatron, long ago, and he heard all his decisions read back to him as if down an echoing tunnel lined in a war that hadn't changed anything. Cybertron had been brought full circle in a tablet held in someone's hands, and it was cruel how he ground Megatron's face in his mistakes.
"Did I say it right?" Rodimus asked, trying not to look as though he needed the approval, and what could Megatron say? Rodimus hadn't meant to reopen old wounds so deep Megatron bled an entire abandoned life out on the floor between them.
"You read it right," he said at last.
[* * * * *]
Texas - "Rodimus - Drift"
[* * * * *]
Rodimus missed Drift on the turns.
As long as he drove straight forward, he didn't have to look back. That was the thing Ultra Magnus and Megatron didn't get when they scolded him for rushing ahead. Yeah, he was impetuous. He ran on before everyone else. He hurried. He sped out the door before instructions finished, before cautions were handed out, before anyone could stop him, and it wasn't that he didn't understand it was foolish. No, seriously, his audios worked just fine, he didn't need a medic to check them out for the third time. Intellectually, he even understood that his refusal to stop put people at risk sometimes, including himself.
It was just that…it had taken so long to convince Drift that Rodimus trusted him. Drift had naturally stepped in to pick up the pieces whenever Rodimus cut and run. It had become Rodimus' default tactic for forcing Drift into the middle of things with him. Rodimus sped out the door deliberately, and it made Drift throw rigid rules out the door and just deal with what was there, taking up the slack. Ultra Magnus never really understood that was what Rodimus was doing to him, so focused on the violation of duty that he never recognized the training he was receiving on the job, but Drift had caught on eventually.
Rodimus led. He was the fastest. He hit the track, accelerating until all his gauges hit red, recklessly throwing himself headlong into the straights, but there was a method to his madness. He had a plan, and every part of that plan involved a team.
Drift wasn't as fast on the long stretches, but he was greased lightening on the turns. He drifted without slowing, whereas Rodimus had to hit the brakes or he'd go tumbling off. In a race, they ended up in heated competition for the winning spot. Rodimus took off from the starting block strong, but Drift caught up on the turns.
That was where Rodimus missed him. He hit the turns, turning almost sidelong to the track behind him, and suddenly Drift would be there. That's how it was, right? That's what it took forever to convince Drift to be. To be there. To grab everything Rodimus dropped at the starting line, catch up at the turns, and join him. They'd race together, but Rodimus led, Drift followed up, and far behind them, Ultra Magnus had all the back-up plans, leftover information, and probably enough infrastructure in his trailer to construct a lecture machine when he finally arrived at the finish machine to join them.
Rodimus made the turns now, looking back, and no one was there. Just disapproval from far back at the starting line, two disapproving figures standing there with their arms folded, united in disliking how he led the pack. They blocked the rest of the runners, organized them, and took over the running of the race. Instead of a team effort, Rodimus was left waiting up ahead, looking a fool, feeling foolish, and missing the presence that should have been between him and them.
He slowed down on the turns, waiting for someone to join him, but Drift wasn't there anymore.
[* * * * *]
Texas - "Drift finding Ratchet's little Drift action-figure"
[* * * * *]
It'd never have happened if Drift had respect for people's boundaries, but Drift's respect for boundaries started and ended in the metaphorical sense. He wouldn't trespass on someone's beliefs, even if he poked fun at Ratchet by putting little crystal clusters everywhere in the shuttle and meditating in the co-pilot's seat. Beyond that, he had a healthy respect for other people's thoughts. The mind was the last place anyone else could claim in a mech, the fortress where a last stand could be made.
Stuff, however, was another story. His regard for material ownership hadn't developed much past 'If I grab it, it's mine.' The Decepticons had refined that street mentality into an entire system of morals. His enthusiasm for the difference between Autobot and Decepticon rules couldn't be faulted, but, well. Ratchet found the little meddling pest digging through a locker which most definitely didn't belong to him, busily investigating Ratchet's things.
"A-hem."
For all that they weren't mobile, tall white helm finials gave every impression of sleeking back like a technimal's audio receivers. Drift looked up nose-first, optics huge. Bam. Caught.
"Uh…I can explain."
Ratchet folded his arms slowly, more entertained than he let on. Drift fidgeted, still shoulder-deep in the locker. The medic firmly buried the part of himself that liked seeing Drift curved into a lithe crouch on the floor to access the lower shelves. "Explain why you picked the lock and are going through my things?" He waved one hand. "This I have to hear. Alright. Let's hear it."
Fidgeting shifted Drift on his knees, although the speedster kept his hands inside the locker. That did nothing to make him less guilty. How strange. "I, um, wanted to organize your - "
"Weren't you a Decepticon? Please. I expect a better quality lie from someone with that kind of faction name." It was rough humor, harsher than he usually used around Drift, but this was giving him a weird sense of nostalgia. He'd caught Ambulon investigating everything in the medibay more than once, especially new shipments of supplies. The ward manager had been good, very good, but Ratchet had a feel for when people delicately picked through his things. He'd come into his office many times, taken one look at his desk, and stepped back to nail Ambulon with a speaking glare. Ambulon had generally ignored him.
It was that 'If I grab it, it's mine' street sense again. Applied to a medibay, it spelled out how little Ambulon had cared about who was in charge. If something was in the medibay, he'd considered it part of the inventory and therefore available to use in case of emergency. Locking it into the office as one of Ratchet's personal belongings had made no difference to Ambulon.
Plus, the mech had been one of the most suspicious, wary fraggers this side of the faction line. He'd just hid it in a far different way than Drift. Drift had a happy-go-lucky hippy mask pulled over Deadlock, and that mask had no way to defend itself when confronted by the owner of the things in the locker.
Nervous blue optics darted around the shuttle cargobay. "Um. Kind of out of practice in lying."
The lie stung slightly at Ratchet's spark. He wished it was true, but Drift buried himself in lies among the Autobots. Sighing, Ratchet unfolded his arms and reached out to put a firm hand on the locker door. "Then either don't get caught or practice more."
Drift hastily scooted out of the way of the door, but he came out of the locker holding something - oh. That made more sense of why he'd been reluctant to get out of the locker before.
Ratchet and Drift spent a long moment avoiding each other's optics.
"So…"
"What?" Ratchet thrust his chin up, optics just daring him to say something. "It's a medical device."
Drift blinked rapidly. A second later, he caught the half-sparked joke and grinned. "You gotta work on your lies, Ratchet." He handed over the, ah, 'medical device' gingerly, holding it extended by two fingers. "Guess you're already working on your endurance."
"Har har, yes, very funny." The medic opened the locker door to throw the thing back where it belonged: out of sight in the depths of a box that shouldn't have been opened by anyone but him. "A mech has needs."
When he closed the door, Drift was waiting on the other side, holding another one of his belongings up. This one was almost as embarrassing. "Needs, huh?" the speedster asked lightly, optics full of hope as he leaned forward. "What do you need this for?"
Ratchet reached out to wrap his fingers around the little figurine. He refused to break optic contact. "Guess."
White helm finials perked, he could have sworn it, but Drift leaned in further before Ratchet could make sure.
Where had their boundaries gone?
[* * * * *]
South Carolina - "Whirl - sensitive"
[* * * * *]
The Functionalists had removed his face and his hands to punish him for refusing to conform. They'd assumed it would destroy his life entirely. They hadn't been far off. He'd lost his job, his friends, his beliefs, and eventually, his freedom. Empurata had taken away almost everything that made him who and what he was, and what was left was grateful he looked different.
Whirl wanted his hands back, but he didn't fool himself. He wasn't who he used to be. Getting back what had been taken away from him would destroy him more assuredly than losing it in the first place. He told Cyclonus he kept his pincers and mono-optic lack of face as an excuse to hold onto his anger, and it was true. There wasn't much holding the recycled scrap of this old clockmaker together but an overabundance anger. Strip away the form his violent urges were barely contained inside, and he'd fly to pieces.
If he regained his face and hands, he'd have to look himself in the optics, face to face with what he'd become. Whirl was surprisingly self-aware. He knew he couldn't confront himself without breaking apart at the seams at last. The expression of disgust and hatred he saw would wear his face, reflect off every shining surface, and the finger pointing blame at him would be his own.
He'd self-destruct like a star collapsing inward, burning out as it consumed itself.
Sometimes he wistfully took an optimistic view, usually when Rung sat beside the couch looking at him as though he'd wait through another war to meet the person he believed Whirl wanted to be. Whirl wasn't even sure who that person really was. He certainly didn't want to be who he used to be, at least not when he thought about it realistically. He could never go back in time, stripping away the war and empurata as if they'd never happened, and what kind of personal growth would that be, anyway? Pssht. Rung didn't want to meet the clockmaker. Rung…
Rung wanted him as he was during the good sessions, the better times when Whirl found the banter naturally turning to interesting conversation. There were topics they talked about that ached without stinging him to the defensive, and it felt as though he might rebuild a real person inside his war-battered, self-abused, Functionalist-discarded body. It felt like he could be someone who didn't loathe his own reflection for what it had replaced. Rung didn't want him to revert to who he'd been. Rung wanted Whirl to be a person at peace with what the mirror showed.
On Whirl's more optimistic days, he asked Rung what the mirror showed the psychotherapist.
"Potential," Rung said quietly, absurd brows tipped down in Serious Mode. Whirl knew what Serious Mode meant. Rung really meant what he said. "We're all in the process of changing. The war's over, and this is a brand new situation in an old universe for all of us. Even you, Whirl." He smiled as if he knew something Whirl didn't, which Whirl always hated because most people judged him by what they saw on the surface. Whirl put more effort into his surface than he let on. It wasn't fair that Rung could see past it into what he was trying to hide.
Then Rung smiled that smile, and Whirl was grateful someone could still see past the bristling weapons and massive, fragile ego to the scared clockmaker crouched on the floor of a ruined workshop, surrounded by broken glass as the Senate goons kicked in his door and windows to take him away. The mono-optic head and twisted claws had warped him, the anger and loss had infected him like a terminal disease, but Rung smiled past all that, all the way down to the spark that had hurt, had hated, but hadn't been destroyed.
The Functionalists had wanted empurata to destroy Whirl, but he was still Whirl. He looked different, unrecognizable as Whirl-who-was, and that was fine. The old Whirl wouldn't have survived. That Whirl couldn't live now.
Whirl treasured his past, however. It fueled him in the present, fire licking ever closer to the present until, someday soon, he'd probably combust. It's not as though anyone would be surprised by that. He was a burning, open wound, and he plunged up to the shoulders in his own injury to throw his energon on the flames. It took a special kind of crazy to do that.
Rung looked at Whirl, smile turning sad, and put his hand into the fire.
[* * * * *]
Missouri - "something fluffy with the DJD"
[* * * * *]
"'Join the Justice Division,' he said. 'Good healthcare,' he said. 'Lord Megatron's personal appreciation,' he said. 'Show traitors the fear and pain they've brought down on themselves,' he said. 'Be famous! Notorious! Make the Empire a better place!' Fragging glitchhead cogsucking morphing-addicted cannon-junky clunker."
The complaining temporarily halted while two pairs of hands took a brief break, flexing to work the ice crystals out of their joints. Of all the scrap Tarn had spouted about joining the D.J.D., one thing he'd completely failed to mention had been the distinct lack of a functioning heating system in their base on Messatine. It's was cold enough to freeze a mech's lugnuts outside in a minute and a half, and five indoors.
Hence why Helex was the one shoveling out the east gate. Storms from the east always jimmied the stupid thing open enough to create a snowdrift indoors, and the thing usually froze into a solid icebank if left overnight. The miners sure couldn't clear it themselves. They could gear up and tromp around outside once he got the blast gate clear, but sitting still for any length of time was practically a death sentence for the poor guys. Digging out the gate would kill them.
The Decepticons put their deadbolts on lousy duty, not imprisonment awaiting execution. Their refuse and rejects were shipped to the mines, and then they didn't even need the D.J.D. planting their headquarters square on top of the mines to keep the fraggers in line. The deep mines were warmth traps. The only place the miners could safely move around without cold weather gear was down in the shafts. Topside in the base, they were okay so long as they kept moving at a brisk pace. Outdoors, they were goners. But they did like to see the sun, and there wasn't actually a reason to keep them locked up underground all the time. If the miners wanted to get outside, then the D.J.D. would dutifully clear the doors to give them access.
According to Lord Megatron's own writing, Messatine hadn't been quite as extreme when he'd mined here. Helex wasn't one to doubt his leader, but it was hard to believe this frozen exhaust pipe of a planet had ever been anything but an icy backwater. It was especially hard to believe when he was the one hugging himself for warmth as the winter wind smacked into him like a fendered ice effigy of Optimus Prime. Bam!
"Augh!"
At least the slagging gate was clear.
Muttering angrily to himself, Helex stomped back into the more sheltered internal areas of the base. "I know exactly why you recruited me!" he yelled down an intersection after catching a glimpse of purple, but Tarn knew better than to cross his path the day after a storm. The nigh-undefeatable commander of the fearsome D.J.D. made himself scarce while slightly louder mutters announced Helex's bad mood, opinion on Tarn's smooth patter, and various reasons why Messatine sucked greasy crankshafts.
As soon as he reached his quarters, Helex transformed. Say what they will about him after a torture video was broadcast to the Decepticons, but nobody on Messatine denied that he had the best altmode in the history of this planet's weather.
Perking up to a higher temperature, Helex settled down to thaw out his extremities. If a couple teammates snuck in later to lie on top of his lid to absorb some heat, he kept his peace and turned up his smelter to share.
[* * * * *]
Texas - " Tarn and Pharma"
[* * * * *]
If he has a weakness, it's that he keeps rescuing pets. Pets to keep, to coddle, to protect, to use. For their own good, really, and Tarn doesn't feel a shred of guilt over opening their optics to the greater war, but he does hold them close to prevent that war from destroying their bodies. Their sparks and minds need the blunt force of reality. He doesn't shelter those. He relishes watching realization strike those, in fact.
The weakness is why he does it. He saves his pets to keep from snapping. The things he does are horrible. As lightly as he treats the atrocities he commits, as little as he cares for the Autobots and traitors sent to torture or the smelter, some part of who he was knows exactly what he does. Sickening acts done for the Cause are still sickening acts, and guilt burns so cold under his spark the frigid chill will turn him into an unthinking, murderous sociopath worse than anyone he's put down over the years. He has to care about his pets because if he doesn't care for something, he will stop caring entirely.
So he collects pets. He rescues them from around the war and protects them in his own way. He saves Autobots in prisons like Grindcore. He puts together his unit once he takes command of the Justice Division. He finds Pharma when he arrives on Messatine.
As always, the pet thinks he exerts some control over the relationship, like a mouse feeling entitled to a piece of cheese in return for running a maze. It didn't understand yet that its punishments and rewards came at the whim of its owner.
Tarn smiles behind his mask and leaves Pharma the delusion. It won't last.
It never does.
[* * * * *]
Alaska - "TFP Knock Out/Breakdown"
[* * * * *]
Knock Out's favorite color was blue. Not a light, clear blue of Earth's sky, or the bright strong true-blue Optimus Prime had sported. It wasn't a rich blue, or a quick blue, or a deep blue that invited waxing of words or hands. It was the strong blue that faded easily to navy, then black. It was the kind of color that disappeared into back alleys and didn't stand out in a crowd. It was the mass-manufactured blue formula that somebody in Supplies had discovered best endured scuffs, scrapes, and, in extreme circumstances, fire. If torched black, the burn marks didn't look horrible against the rest of the plating so long as that plating was colored the same blue. It did well with a matte finish and never quite polished to a real shine.
That was the color blue Knock Out chose as his favorite. He didn't like it, not in an 'I enjoy this' sense, but it was his favorite.
The Eradicons knew why. It wasn't really a secret. Vehicons who'd worked with Breakdown knew what his favorite color had been, too. They knew why the flash of glossy red plating had made him look up and smile.
Blue tended to make Knock Out irritable. He grew louder and prone to snide insults when he caught a glimpse of it. He hadn't always, but it wasn't a secret why that had changed.
Maybe in time he would quiet down. Maybe age would rub the edge off his defensiveness toward the pain. Someday seeing a utilitarian blue mech walking down the street would only make him pause as nostalgia ached in his chest. He might stare for a moment into the past, all the colors of the rainbow blurring through the years between them, and then the glimpse of blue memory would turn a corner, and Knock Out would be left in a future without it.
[* * * * *]
Ohio - "Smokescreen/Knock Out"
[* * * * *]
"You never leave here. You know we got roads now, right?"
Knock Out didn't look up from the bent shaft he was easing straight. "And you have new policebots, too. I can be pulled over between here and the city limits seven times for violating every rule in their books just by existing." He glanced up as his unwelcome visitor bounced, about to protest, but he cut the protest off by bluntly stating, "That's not a guess; it's what happened the last time I left to drive on those roads I know about."
Smokescreen frowned and settled back slowly on his heels. "But…you're an Autobot."
"No, I'm not. I've never and will never take your stupid Autobot oath." Knock Out sniffed contemptuously, although mostly from habit. He didn't even feel much anger for the pressure to give in, anymore. He understood that his presence disturbed the newbie recruits. He even understood that it would make his life less difficult if he'd give up being a neutral party and joined the Autobots formally instead of just working alongside them as Cybertron slowly came back to life.
Tough. If having an unrepentant ex-Decepticon in their midst upset them, good. He wouldn't let the issues that started the war be swept under the rug, as the humans said. Ultra Magnus would slagging well sit and listen to him every time he felt treated like a second class citizen, even if he had to shout through a megaphone and file his complaints in triplicate. He'd borrow that ugly old codger Ratchet's siren to make sure everyone heard him coming on the complaint train.
Arms went around him from behind, and Knock Out stiffened, startled out of his increasingly dire thoughts. "You promised you wouldn't start trouble," Smokescreen mumbled against his back, sounding unhappy, and he knew the silly youngling would be all sagging doors and sad face if he turned to look.
So he refused to. "I won't be the cause of a problem," he repeated for the umpteenth time, because Smokescreen did care and Knock Out didn't want to lose him. He'd been a very good ex-Decepticon in an Autobot society, and he wasn't about to ruin a good thing by going out and starting trouble.
But by Primus, he would finish it.
[* * * * *]
"TFP Ratchet starving himself for reasons and trying to hide it's killing him"
[* * * * *]
He'd had uneasy tanks since the synthetic energon. It wasn't an excuse for what he was doing, but it made it easier to actually do it. His fuel gauge just didn't register regular energon anymore. He always felt hungry no matter how much energon he put in his tank, but normal energon upset his systems in a queasy roil. Being physically full meant he felt hungry and sick at the same time. It was unpleasant enough that he'd been habitually running as close as he could to empty well before this.
This being a hunger strike.
He had his reasons. Before the Decepticons' defeat, it'd been to ensure the more valuable Autobot fighters had the power they needed. He was the least valuable member of team Prime in terms of combat. Giving himself the smallest amount possible was just practical rationing.
After the Decepticons were defeated, after most Cybertronians returned to their homeworld, Ratchet had another reason: the Eradicons. The Autobots were perfectly willing to use the Decepticon troops for manual labor, especially for energon mining back on Earth, and the humans agreed. However, neither of Autobots nor humans were willing to grant the Eradicons enough energon to fuel a potential rebellion.
Ratchet understood that, but there was a vast difference between measured rations and starving prisoners. His original protests had fallen on deaf audios and ears alike. Well, fine. Then he'd give them a graphic example of what happened when someone they knew and cared for tried to exist on starvation rations. Ratchet had been intaking exactly the allowed amount of refined energon that the Eradicons were allowed. It felt no different than normal for him, and the weakness of systems shutting down into powersave mode was easy to hide from a distance. The point had to be made in dramatic fashion, not by stumbling in front of Ultra Magnus. They wanted to starve living Cybertronians in the name of a dead war? Then he'd show them a starved mech.
Hopefully someone would notice he wasn't around before he slipped into stasis lock, but if they didn't, well, more fuel for the more valuable Autobots.
[* * * * *]
Texas - "Jazz and Blaster, prewar"
[* * * * *]
He wasn't supposed to do this. Jazz craned his neck to see the speakers Blaster was carefully wiring into his doors, and Blaster was reminded once again of how illegal this was. Jazz was the wrong frametype for a sound system this juked. Form determined function. The only people on the broadcast system should be mechs built like Blaster, masters of the frequencies, channel surfers extraordinaire. Somebody pumping up their body with extra mods for the sheer love of music was a freak, a dangerous one at that, and Blaster shouldn't be helping him.
The brightness of Jazz's visor calmed his unease, however, and the communication specialist took another swig of high grade to bolster his courage. Jazz's offerings weren't worth much in cold hard shanix, but the engex went down smooth and the mech knew how to make a little stretch a long way. "Tell me 'bout the beats, m'mech."
Jazz didn't wriggle, though his grin ticked up a notch. "Street's kickin' that new song by Biolight Night. You know the throwaway line? The bass drops for half a klik."
"Critics hate it," Blaster said, neutral. He liked the change, but official talking heads on the music shows condemned it. He couldn't risk his job disagreeing.
"Pffft, critics." Jazz waved a hand. "Love it, love it, love it. Two clubs on my schedule rock a playlist of remixes usin' that line."
"Toss me a download."
"You got it."
This was the real pay for Blaster. This was why he fixed a street artist up with illegal sound mods. Jazz performed without a musician's license in underground nightclubs Blaster couldn't attend, and he had access to music the official channels never carried. The download added flavor to his life. He didn't starve on a diet of state-sanctioned music, but it was so terribly bland. The rhythms sounded the same. The lyrics were recycled. There was no message beyond the usual sparkbreak over love never meant to be - and submission to authority. Always, always submission to authority.
"Naw, Blaster, you gotta listen closer. That song's gotta deeper meaning. The beat falters," Jazz said as he twisted to test the wiring Blaster had just hooked in. "It's sarcasm. He says, 'Hold your head up,'" he sang, accent disappearing into the original singer's cadence, "'Take a bow / You're scaling up the charts now,'" his voice dropped back to normal, "but what he means is that acting right is more important than singin' well."
Blaster tweaked Jazz's handle, making the whole door twitch. "Biolight Night doesn't take those kind of chances. He plays it safe."
"Yeah, but that's why he don't just say it. He put in that little dip, and nobody not listening for it would hear it."
"You're giving him too much credit."
"Y' ain't listening!"
The mesh cover clicked on over the speaker, and Blaster patted it. "Alright, test that. Play me the song, and I'll tell you what I hear."
Jazz turned to grin, ready to jam, and Blaster didn't care that it was illegal.
[* * * * *]
Arkansas - "The Curious Case of Too Many Hounds"
[* * * * *]
Arkansas was a weird state.
It didn't really look that different in terms of humans, but that wasn't saying much. Ask a Decepticon to describe a human, and he'd be clueless; ask him to describe what the human had been driving, and the Decepticon could probably describe it down to what brand of tires it sported. The Decepticons couldn't really keep track of humans. There were pasty colored ones, and less pasty colored ones, and then it didn't matter because they all turned red when opened up.
So the Decepticons on this mission didn't know anything about Arkansas' local human population, but they'd decided that state sure had a thing for Autobots. One particular Autobot.
Thrust squinted at the road. "He's orange this time."
"Oh, come on!" Ramjet and Dirge put down the sheet metal they'd been heaving around for the Constructicons and stomped over to join him. Sure enough, there was Hound. "How many times does he have to fake blowing up before he gets that we're not falling for it?"
"He's pretty good at this," Dirge said grudgingly, looking down at the wreckage of the other Jeeps they'd shot up. "He even projects the fires burning out."
"Wonder how much it takes to keep a hologram like that up for hours like this?" Ramjet shaded his optics with one hand. "Ugh. What a fugly color. Hey, Autobot!" He cupped his hand around his mouth to call down the hill. "This is for your own good!"
"Saving Autobots from poor color choices since the dawn of the war," Thrust muttered as his wingmates took off to bomb the fragger. Again. Sixth time today. "Isn't their stupid ship that color? They gotta fire their decorator."
Half an hour later, Thrust stopped sorting screws to look at traffic again. "You're kidding me. Another red one, guys!"
"You tried that one already!" Ramjet yelled down the hill without stopping what he was doing. "Do yellow!"
"Blue!"
"But not navy blue!"
"Why not navy?"
"Don't like it."
"Fair 'nough."
Joint exasperation kept the Coneheads glaring down the hill, and to their surprise, the Jeep bumbled on his way, weaving past the gutted skeletons of its brethren still smoldering on the road. Huh. Must be a scout thing.
"We're probably going to have Autobots on our afts any minute now," Thrust said as he went back to sorting. "Definitely recon."
"Yeah."
"We should get ready to fight."
The three Coneheads dithered for a while. They took potshots at the black Jeep that zipped by, catcalling Hound's choice in colors. "It makes you look fat!" Dirge sneered at the swervy little fragger. "Sit still and blow up like a good 'bot!"
"Wide aaaaaaaft!" Ramjet crowed.
"Oh, now that's not even original anymore," Thrust said, looking down the road where a convoy of Autobots had suddenly appeared. "What happened to the purple? I liked the purple."
"Yeah, c'mon," Dirge said as he looked around his wingmate at the oncoming Hound and friends. "That looked good on you."
The Autobots slowed warily. Hound hung back among his friends, unnerved by the critique of his color choices as done by enemy forces. Also the plethora of burnt-out Jeeps around their feet.
"You should try those racing stripe things."
"What? Are you serious? Look at him, he's a box on wheels. Putting racing stripes on that would be like gilding Ravage: totally missing the point."
"A secondary color could look pretty good on him, gotta admit..."
"Lose the stars, though."
"Pfft, like that was even a question. What's next, painted-on flames? Groundpounders do some slagging tacky paintjobs, you ask me."
"I didn't ask you!" Hound yelled at them, and the Coneheads made piffling noises at his objection.
"Obviously you should."
"Looking at you, the last mech you asked 'bout your paint was blind."
"Saw on a spectrum unknown to Cybertron."
"Can't do worse than asking your worst enemies for advice - oh wait, you already did worse. So you want that advice now or later?"
Hound went very quiet, even his engine dropping to a growl so low it was more felt than heard. "Someone," he said after a moment, "shut. Them. Up."
The Coneheads jeered at him.
"Now!"
Optimus Prime jolted on his tires. "Autobots, attack!"
Thrust just had to get the last word. "About fragging time."
Ugh, Arkansas. Too many Autobots, most of them looking like Hound.
(The Decepticons never did figure out they were down the road from a Jeep dealership. Shh. Don't tell them.)
[* * * * *]
Ohio - "silly fic with Sunstreaker and Bob"
[* * * * *]
He had a plethora of choices, honestly. In a ship of over 200 people, somehow they'd ended up with three actual medics and two makeshift ones. Four, if one counted Perceptor and Brainstorm, but anybody who went to those two for repairs was asking for trouble. Tripodeca came out of Perceptor's lab somehow signed up to be his rifle support, and Whirl came out of Brainstorm's lab cackling madly. The latter wasn't unusual, but it did alarm people that there was no visible reason for Whirl's glee. Brainstorm's visible weapons weren't nearly as frightening as his invisible ones.
That eliminated those two from the pool Sunstreaker was delicately testing. Lancer was okay but was only pulled into the medibay during emergencies. Sunstreaker actually liked Hoist, but the engineer insisted he was only on-call as a last resort. He refused as soon as Sunstreaker said it was a medical issue. Ratchet…well, Sunstreaker wouldn't voluntarily face Ratchet without an entire room full of Autobots to cushion them. Their past issues made the situation awkward and tense, he felt. He had no idea how Ratchet felt. He didn't want to find out, frankly.
The choice ended up being between First Aid and Ambulon. First Aid seemed somewhat okay. Ambulon kept to himself. Neither had been on Cybertron during the Swarm, so there was a good chance either one would give Bob a chance. There wasn't exactly a veterinarian he could take the bug to, after all, and technically, under all the forced mutation, Bob was still a Cybertronian mech just like any of them.
It took him a week to choose. It took him a day to negotiate an appointment with Ambulon, who seemed like the kind of mech incapable of being shocked by something in his ward until he lost his slag. Sunstreaker almost ended up asking First Aid instead, but Ambulon had sucked in a deep breath, nodded briskly, and bent to shuffling the medibay schedule with ruthless efficiency to fit the appointment in.
Sunstreaker needed an hour to coax Bob into the medibay. Seriously, how did the bug even know? Sunstreaker had taken him into the medibay for his own maintenance appointments. How had Bob figured out that it was his turn for a check-up?
"Daffy bug. Get in here!" Sunstreaker leaned back, hauling on the leash. "Here! Here, boy!" Frag, he'd have to mention to Rung in their next appointment that he was slipping into Earthisms again. Or rather, he'd have to mention that it didn't bother him when he did it, if it was related to Bob in some way. It was becoming a strange coping method, according to Rung. All Sunstreaker knew was that yelling, "Bad boy!" at Bob got the point across better than scolding him by name.
Bob's antenna laid back, and all four optics widened pitifully. Cringing, he crept forward to snuffle and nudge Sunstreaker's knee, giving his most pathetic, apologetic look all the while. Sunstreaker felt like a heel, but if he gave the slightest bit, Bob would run right over him.
"No. Bad. Bad Bob. Now, come here or no treats."
A mech would think he'd just threatened to slaughter Bob's entire Swarm in front of his optics. No treats? Oh, the horror!
"You heard me. Get in here."
Ambulon busied himself across the room preparing a row of antivirus boosters. Muffled vent-bursts came from his direction, as if he was attempting not to laugh at Sunstreaker shaking his finger at a whining Insecticon. Being the ship's vet was obviously going to have its perks.
[* * * * *]
Florida - "Windblade and Chromia"
[* * * * *]
The City Speaker had a bodyguard. It was unheard of on their homeworld, because who would dare attack a City Speaker?
The fear was that foreigner would offer threat to Windblade. Especially, she was cautioned, on Cybertron. Cybertron had long been embroiled in the fierce hatred of a war against its own. Who knew how that would impact a City Speaker turned envoy?
Chromia worried more that the impact was more psychological. Windblade's sudden in-depth involvement in politics had her rubbing wingtips with the acknowledged Traitor with a capital 'T' of Cybertron. If such a position was granted by popular vote, Starscream would have won by a landslide. As it was, he won as a politician, which was almost the same thing. Chromia thought it utterly bizarre that the Cybertronians saw nothing strange about the open acknowledgement that their leader was a lying, scheming, underhanded, backbiting, cowardly, treasonous heatsink of a slimy mech. They actually seemed vaguely puzzled she didn't see the inherent symmetry of appointing him their leader.
"Politics," even Swindle said, shrugging at the rest of the bar, "am I right?"
Everyone nodded, toasted him, and seemed strangely content with how things were.
"He at least knows how to lie convincingly," Blurr said, as though that mattered. Although, given his description of the last Senate and its appointed Prime, caring enough to tailor the lies to public sensibilities sort of did mean Starscream wasn't a complete loss. From their way of thinking, apparently. Chromia still thought it was insane.
"He's fun to complain about," the Tankors explained. Considering the state of faction relations after the war, it seemed Autobot, Decepticon, NAIL, and badgeless alike found complaining about Starscream's leadership a uniting factor. Again, it made sense, in an extremely backward way.
"You ever notice," Wheeljack said slowly, tracing something complicated in the spill from his glass on the bar, "that he's actually doing what he said he'd do? Despite everything he was and is, he's actually doing a good job. It's just that nobody seems to notice through it all." The 'all' meaning Starscream in general.
And that was what worried Chromia. She'd been sent to bodyguard her City Speaker, and what worried her was what she couldn't guard against. These weird ways of thought, backward and violent and contradicting, made a kind of sense to Windblade. Windblade considered them how Cybertronians thought, and she tried to understand them. Chromia couldn't stand Cybertron's strange thought patterns. The people here were warped by war, and what they were doing to her City Speaker surely had to be harmful.
She had to get Windblade home before the effects were irreversible.
[* * * * *]
"Optimus - What-ifs/Alternate Timelines "
[* * * * *]
"Slag!"
The hissed comment from the shadows drew a sharp look from the winged shape at the mouth of the alley. "Keep it down." Starscream scanned the street, but the street lights showed no one drawn out of their safe evenings at home to investigate the sudden clatter. The people around here knew better than to look too closely into dark alleys.
After another look, he stepped back into its shelter himself. "Is there a problem?"
The little groundpounder he worked with grimaced, straightening up from the body. "I know y' don't like cops, but I knew this one. An actual good guy, if y' believe it."
Starscream didn't, but he kept his peace. He'd never seen anything close to regret on Jazz's face before. Sometimes, the innocent got ground up in the start of a revolution. He didn't believe the cop they'd take out was one of those innocents, but sometimes the wrong person ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jazz knelt a moment more by the boldly colored police officer, then sighed and shook it off. When he looked up at Starscream again, the purple emblem on his chest gleamed in a stray beam of light from the mouth of the alley. He shook his head again. It was a shame.
And the two Decepticons melted into the night, leaving the body behind.
[* * * * *]
"Megatron - Scars or painful spots "
[* * * * *]
He didn't take his helm off anymore. There were many reasons why, perfectly rational reasons, enough to satisfy any asker, but they weren't the real reason. Soundwave knew the real reason. Soundwave was the one to delicately hint at and eventually bluntly state that it would be wiser to keep his helm on.
Understand, the helm wasn't a natural part of Megatron's body. It started out as safety equipment in the mines. It became a piece of his combat armor in the gladiatorial arena, but it's not part of him. His native metal ended where the helm begins. Latches held it on.
His helm covered his real head, frail petals of a powerful communication array folded up under the heavy metal like origami. Flared at full extension, its mere existence was a direct defiance of the Functionalists. They demanded he keep it tucked tight. They covered his head with a blocky safety helm and sent him to the mines where his body belonged, if not the extravagant aberrances that contradicted it.
Why did he have an array if not to use it, however? It could catch signals through snow, rock, and metal. He could communicate with someone across half of Cybertron if he tuned into the right frequency, but his training in using his own equipment is spotty and rough. It took him discouragingly long find whatever channel he searched for. He could do it, however, if he kept trying. And he did.
Explaining why Soundwave told him to keep his head covered. Every time he stretched his array, he exposed a weakness. He opened himself to injury. He frequently sought an answer only to be met by silence, but he kept trying . Megatron searched endlessly, the petals of his array quivering as they strained to find a familiar voice amidst the chatter of a thousand open commlines. Eventually, someone would notice he wanted to find something. Someone. A missing person he'd been looking for so long he'd do practically anything to find them. Megatron couldn't help but comb Cybertron for one transmission, a single answer to a ping. Anything.
It was a weakness the Decepticon leader couldn't afford to show. Soundwave advised against it.
The helm stayed on. He was less vulnerable this way.
[* * * * *]
"Thundercracker - What-ifs/Alternate Timelines"
[* * * * *]
"I hate you all."
So stated the Autobot Air Commander. As per usual, and therefore nobody took much offense. They kept monopolizing the television, watching local news while ignoring the clearly superior soap opera marathon happening on Channel 13. The miserable slaggers. They knew he was writing an AU fanfic for last week's plotline.
Thundercracker glared across the common room at the damnfool Prime and his honorable pack of well-meaning idiots. Well, except for Jazz and Prowl. They were okay. Sometimes he could almost tolerate them, but then he saw their wheels and shuddered to himself. Grounders.
He stalked across the room like a dark blue shadow of miffed sensibilities to retrieve his cube of high octane jet fuel. Sideswipe immediately looked his way. Thundercracker met his gaze, saw the greed in it, and downed his ration in one go. Sideswipe made a face at him, and he smirked back. No sneaked sips for him. Yeah, how about them oranges. Apples? The humans had an idiom for this situation. He really had to work on sorting their weird little bits of slang out if he was going to get Sharon's voice right in the fic.
Thinking hard, he drifted over to his usual table and sat down to ponder human vernacular.
"Megatron's made a ground team," the Terrible Two said in tandem as they slid in on either side of him. He twitched toward freedom, but Ratchet had him by the left wing and Wheeljack was already pushing what looked like blueprints in front of him. "What do you think about a counter gestalt to throw against the Stunticons?"
Thundercracker looked down at the blueprints - 'Superion!' the label proclaimed with two exclamation marks, a smiley face, and hand-drawn fireworks - and reminded himself there was a reason he hadn't joined the Decepticons. Yes, even though he hated working with all these wishy-washy civilians groundpounders. "Narnia help us, as the humans say," he said dryly.
Ratchet and Wheeljack exchanged an amused look but didn't correct him.
[* * * * *]
Prowl - "Dark secrets/'skeletons in the closet'"
[* * * * *]
It was Spring Cleaning day in the Ark! Bring on the overabundance of Windex, dithering over whether or not they really needed to throw that away, and the funky smell of an entire spaceship closed up tight for four million years. One would think giant robots wouldn't produce a nasty stink, but the Ark itself festered with mold in dank corners, the odd animal infestation here or there, and Beachcomber's artificially-lit greenhouse.
Actually, the greenhouse smelled pretty nice. Hound attempted every spring to bribe Beachcomber to move it closer to his room to combat the bat guano reek.
In any case, Spring Cleaning had been embraced by the Autobots as a ritual of sorts. It meant Wheeljack really did have to decide which, if any, he needed to keep of all his half-finished projects, and Perceptor hummed happily as he organized the living frag out of anything he came across. Nobody could deny someone that happy to clean. Optimus Prime suffered the artifact in his chest to be carefully dusted by Ratchet. The Protectobots stampeded back to the Ark from their homebase like a joyful tide of Clean All The Things. Blaster made a 'Cleaning to the Oldies' soundtrack that had been outdated before the Golden Age.
And then there was Sunstreaker, who got stuck on paint detail. All those scuffed corners on furniture? The edges of doors where the bare metal was showing? The scraped areas on the walls down where people's hubcabs kept rubbing? Those all had to be touched up. It was a tedious job that involved crawling around on the floor a lot, but he had a good optic for catching the tiny patches. Besides, it gave him a handy excuse to go into everybody's rooms and snoop around. While looking at furniture and walls to fill in the worn spots, admittedly, but it was a more entertaining job than doing inventory in the medbay and didn't involve talking with people.
Jazz shoved a brush and a can of paint at him, and Sunstreaker wandered off to go be a nosy fragger in the name of duty.
Which brought him to Prowl's room. It was about an unexciting as rooms came. To be honest, he hadn't expected anything different.
Except something was different, and Sunstreaker blinked when he figured out what it was. The desk showed a surprising amount of wear around the edges. The whole top surface was scuffed and dented, and all four corners were buffed down to shiny bare metal. The edges had been worn down so far they were rounded. The entire desk looked as though it had already been brutally cleaned.
Sunstreaker ran his thumb over some of the weird scrapes marking the desktop. There had been paint transfers deep in these scratches before someone had stripped the incriminating details away, mark his word. He grinned. Interesting. Not his business, but he made a mental note to keep his options open if Prowl started looking antsy.
Shaking his head, the golden Autobot opened the paint can and set about concealing the evidence a bit better.
[* * * * *]
Krok & Fortress Maximus - "What-ifs/Alternate Timelines"
[* * * * *]
"He killed ten thousand of us at Simanzi," Krok said thoughtfully, squinting in the weird pod. The whole ship was weird, but the containment areas full of what were supposed to be mechs were well past just normal levels of weird. The one holding Fortress Maximus looked like a stasis pod. He knew how to operate one of those.
The others were panicking, but they caught on quick. Spinister moved in, briskly evaluating the life support stats on the control pad. "Misfire, how many of those boosters you got left?"
"Errrr." Misfire leaned back and checked Flywheels' storage pack, because nobody in their right mind trusted him to hold the boosters himself. At least not more than once, as he'd immediately downed more than a few and been high as a kite as a result. "Ten vials? Ten…eleven."
Spinister eyed the stasis locked Autobot in the pod. "I'm going to need them all." A booster-high Autobot powerhouse versus the Decepticon Justice Division? This plan was going to get them all killed. It was still their best chance of surviving.
[* * * * *]
"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh frag."
That did seem like an accurate summation of the situation. All this because he had the bad judgment to see how Demus was getting on and hoping for a job to pull his group through a tight financial spot. Using the Triple M to network for employment was a decent use of contacts, normally, but come on, how was he supposed to know Demus had gone full-on evil business mogul?
"Are you sure you didn't know about this?" Fulcrum hissed, optics narrow, and Krok awkwardly motioned a negative. He hadn't known, he swore it!
"Grimlock's going to track us down no problem," Crankcase said into the comm frequency. "Misfire, I'm worried he's gonna find out about Fort Max."
Two minutes later, the Duly Appointed Enforcer of busting up heads took off on a rescue mission to rescue a mech who drove through walls in tank mode more often than not. Five minutes after that, the Scavengers pelted after him. Time to rescue their already rescued charity case Autobot from being rescued.
Oi. What a slag day.
[* * * * *]
"Optimus dying"
[* * * * *]
"Fraggit."
Well, there went another life down.
Optimus reached into his subspace and fished out his Frequent Die-er card, optics squinted up at nothing in particular as he tried to recall just what had ended him this time. Megatron? Galvatron? Unicron? He usually remembered. Something unusual must have happened. Probably someone whose name didn't end with 'ron' had gotten him this time around. Hot Rod came in at close enough.
The ticket machine beeped at him impatiently. Someone was already fading in behind him, ready to log out. Life didn't give the round-trip tickets often, but Optimus didn't even think about it as he swiped his card for one. "Starscream?" he mused to himself. "It better not have been Starscream." He wasn't sure he wanted to remember if that was the case.
Pushing the door to the next life open became a long effort as the hinge rotated, turning the whole thing into a revolving door. Optimus Prime walked back out to where he'd started looking a little different but mostly the same. As always.
"Here I go again," floated wryly in his wake.
[* * * * *]
"Ratchet/Wheeljack"
[* * * * *]
The reputation for kicking aft on the battlefield didn't stop the Party Ambulance from gettin' down with his bad self when the shifts ticked over. Off-duty was free time, and nobody gave half a scrap about Behavior Unbecoming Of An Officer once the duty board showed said officer was done for the shift. Sure, Jazz's voice could crack like a whip the second he had to step in somewhere around the ship, and Prowl's expression could chill from a smile down to an ice block if he had to assume the mantle of Responsible Officer while he was officially off-duty, but if Jazz wanted to open a kissing booth in the common room or Prowl went chasing after the Dinobots with his sirens on once they were properly off the clock, well, that was their business. The war had been going on too long to tell the survivors they couldn't enjoy what life it left them.
Therefore: Party Ambulance.
Party Ambulance teaching himself to salsa?
Wheeljack poked his head out of the lab just in time to catch a sweet optic-full of Ratchet's aft cha-cha-cha-ing from side to side as the medic didn't a quick step-return-turn. Shoulder up, shoulder, down, and Ratchet's hands splayed out in a back-and-forth push-pull in time with whatever beat he was dancing to.
Sunstreaker leaned against the wall by the door, his bright gold having alerted Wheeljack to the ongoing spectacle. Familiar as his frown was, the frontliner seemed more puzzled than angry at the moment. From the look of him, he couldn't quite get the hang of the dance steps. Wheeljack recognized the aborted twitches. Somebody would be practicing those moves later in his quarters. Heh.
Entertained, Wheeljack stepped out into the hall. That was close enough to catch the faint, breathy hum as Ratchet provided his own music at the lowest volume, obviously listening more to whatever he heard in his mind than giving a rusted fender if anyone else wanted to hear. After a second of nodding along, Wheeljack deliberately stepped to the side, leading with his hip.
Ratchet's shoulder echoed the scoop and shimmy almost on instinct, and suddenly they were dancing together, delighting in the company of a private party.
Sunstreaker could just stand there and watch. He wasn't invited.
[* * * * *]
" Bumblebee and Optimus Prime's first meeting"
[* * * * *]
"Prime." Jazz had his face in his hands, for once in his life so embarrassed he couldn't laugh it off. "Prime. Boss. Boss, don't do this to me."
Optimus Prime rubbed his wrist in total, awkward fail at what he could do to smooth this over. "I…I apologize. I…simply…" Why, of all days, of any time, did all his skill as an orator choose to desert him? Primus save him now.
Jazz refused to look through his fingers at his stammering leader. "I don't know ya. Who's this mech, and how'd he get promoted? Nope. Don't know."
Sometimes, Optimus didn't know, either. "I'm so sorry," he apologized for the fourth time, helpless to explain further. It wasn't as though he could explain to the little scout that he used to be a lot shorter. Orion Pax had gained quite a bit of height in becoming Prime, and he used to have a field of vision that didn't require actively looking down to see minibots. Jazz was short. Optimus had automatically assumed the scout Jazz was introducing him to today would be in the same size class.
"This's Bumblebee," Jazz had said.
Optimus had promptly glanced around and asked, "Where is he?"
The minibot standing there looking up at him had politely reset his vocalizer and said, "Down here," whereupon Jazz had begun disowning the Prime every which way from Iacon because what kind of size discriminating mech was he? Seriously?
"He's not usually like this," the poor guy weakly tried to excuse his boss. Bumblebee looked skeptical. Optimus kind of wanted to disappear. Jazz threw up his hands and gave up on words.
Not one of the Prime's best first impressions, that was for certain.
[* * * * *]