Title: In Search of a Cause

Author: Dragon of Dispair (dragonofdispair)

Continuity: Bayverse (crossover with Guardians of the Galaxy)

Rating: T

Characters/Pairing: (currently unrequited) Bluestreak / Prowl, Sixshot

Warnings: Nothing as yet. Violence and plug'n'play and/or spark interfacing may come up in later chapters.

Summary: In which Prowl and Bluestreak save the galaxy from both Decepticons and Unicron. You'd think the galaxy would be grateful, but instead Nova Corps keeps trying to arrest them for war crimes. Go figure.

OR: A buddy-comedy version of Indiana Jones IN SPAAACE! but with two giant alien robot war criminals instead of a gainfully employed archaeologist-looter. Because Decepticons are totally the same as Nazis and Bluestreak is still a morality pet.

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CHAPTER ONE

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I don't care what sort of metaphysical slag organics believe about becoming 'one with their vehicle', nothing but nothing out drives a Cybertronian. Of course there were about ninety of them, just one of me, and they had spark-energy scanners, so, well… yay them. Difficult, but not impossible. Still it took five trans-scanned disguise switches and a dozen flaming wrecks (remember: ramming is a viable combat tactic) before I successfully pulled a bait and switch, sending them careening after some clueless sports car while I slunk away as a horribly maintained miniature cargo hauler.

I crossed their "vehicle lock down" by the simple expedient of waiting until the dark shift when most Xandarans went into recharge, hacking a couple of cameras to loop their footage, then stepping over the low wall that defined the outer edge of the city. Sometimes the simplest tactics really were the best. No vehicle exiting the city, no chance of being identified by a spark-scanner. Of course when Nova Corp got around to physically searching the wall, they'd see the prints I left in the soft ground, but it couldn't be helped. That wouldn't be until they finished rescanning every vehicle in the city again. Probably.

The other reason I wasn't worried about the pede-prints: Once outside the city, I switched back to the air-car both Bluestreak and I used as our default vehicle forms and flew away. No more prints to be tracked by. I stayed low to keep off of air-traffic radar, and under cover to avoid satellite imaging. Not that I had the energy to gain much altitude anyway. Seven vehicle form changes in less than two Xandaran days. Only a few joors. Primus, I was ready to fall into recharge right where I was, but I needed to get back to Bluestreak.

With luck, the solar energon collector he was sparkling-sitting would have produced a few extra cubes. I wasn't going to be critically low until the orn was through, at least, but we weren't going to be leaving the planet until I'd refueled.

I didn't rest on the drive back to the rendezvous. There were almost fourteen Xandar day-night cycles to a Cybertronian orn, and it only took five to get there, so I didn't need it. Yet.

Bluestreak was there when I arrived. He and I are both the same basic model - Praxan light-weight military - so with the same vehicle forms, we look nearly identical. He's about five-hundred vorns younger than I am, but as neither of us has any sort of age-related rust, that's hardly a difference worth mentioning. We have the same medium-light military grade armor. His door-panels are slightly larger (to make room for more sensors), and his chevron is a different shape (that's purely cosmetic) though we keep them same bright red color. Of course he chooses a dark matte grey that absorbs, rather than reflects, long range sensor-scans, with maroon highlights for the rest of his plating, while I much prefer a more sensor-obvious and less visually flashy black and white pattern. I also have a light bar and claws. He eventually changed his optic color to a more Autobot acceptable light-orange while mine are still dark Decepticon-red. Otherwise we're functionally identical in appearance. Same city of origin, same model, same factory. There are other differences as well, obvious to one of our kind who are less reliant on mere optics to catalogue the differences that go deeper, and are so much more significant than the surface differences organics identified us by.

The largest structural difference is that he doesn't have the extra support on his struts that make me so blasé about ramming other vehicles. Instead he has a much more extensive sensor suite and an actual communications hub. I have stealth mods that silence my movement (for which I am named); he has an upgraded hydraulic system that allows him to remain motionless for orns on end.

Our weapons are the other large difference between us. My custom low-energy hydraulic acid pellet gun, short-range pulse cannon, and pair of high-powered electro-batons are optimized for short range combat and melee, with only a standard issue ground-to-air missile launcher for combat against seekers. His missile launcher is designed for extremely long-range shots (with the proper targeting solution, he can hit a target beyond the curve of a planetary horizon) and can be loaded with a variety of custom shells; his Particle Projection Cannon can hit literally anything he has line of sight to, but he only has a standard issue energy sword for when he finds himself in melee. We both have TAG gear. Mine came standard with the installation of my tac-net and uses a standard issue green laser that can be picked up by anyone looking for targeting info; his is a customized blue laser (for which he is named) that can only be detected by someone using the proper frequency. I have an advanced tac-net; he has extra ammunition.

I'm a front-line combat tactician; he's a sniper.

And I don't try and adopt pets.

"No," I told him before he had a chance to click on his vocalizor and start pleading his case for keeping the little long-nosed mammal hanging upside-down from one of his digits by a set of wicked looking claws. It was … chewing on one of the thin armor panels of his hand and the fact that it was managing to leave denta-imprints only strengthened my resolve. Even if it was capable of surviving leaving the atmosphere and the trip through space, that thing - whatever it was - was not coming with us.

"But Prowl…" his glyph modifiers were pleading, with overtones of isn't it cute? and I'll take good care of it. "Please?"

"No," finality - don't argue with me. "You already have a pet, and it's one pet too many as far as I'm concerned."

"But you like Shiny."

Shiny was an H-1ME Battle Mechanic drone we - Bluestreak scavenged seven vorns ago. I was skeptical at the time, but for all that it was the unsparked creation of some probably-dead organic civilization with an utterly glitched excuse for an AI, it was useful. I didn't so much like the thing as much as acknowledge its that one or the other of us would have returned to the Well of All Sparks a long time ago without it and thus I tolerated both its eccentricities and Bluestreak's insistence on treating it like it was borderline sentient. And also, "'Shiny' could be modified to run off of energon and operate in a total vacuum."

As if it knew we were talking about it, the little ball shaped drone scurried around on it's half a dozen leg-like appendages, warbling in it's high pitched exceedingly simple binary code. "Hi Prowl. Hi. Hi. Hi! Hi hi hi hi hi!" I ignored it as it fearlessly clambered up my leg, pulling out glass shrapnel and re-soldering severed wires as it went. "Look! Look! Where'd you get all this shrapnel? Were you in a fight? With who? Who? Who who who who? Who hurt my Prowl? Because I will TEAR THEM TO PIECES!"

This from a drone about half the size of a Xandaran. Completely glitched.

It could also be disassembled, stuffed into one of Bluestreak's smaller missile-pods and fired into active combat where it'd start welding me back together even as some Decepticon insisted on shooting me to pieces. So useful, even if it occasionally tries fighting said Decepticon with its micro-welder.

Bluestreak's current prospective pet - not useful. The complete opposite of useful.

"It just eats plants," the grey mech said pleadingly. "Plants are everywhere. I'll just make sure to carry enough to get us to the next planet."

Given the way it was happily gnawing on Bluestreak's hand, I wasn't so certain that it's diet consisted entirely of the local flora, but I wasn't going to argue that point. Yet. "Plants with this composition of carbon based sugars only grow on M-class planets with a nit-ox atmospheric mix," I countered. Don't argue with me. "It could be a vorn before we land on another one. And what about water? Diseases? Atmospheric pressure, or for Primus' sake… Air? Do we really need a repeat of last time?" His sensor-panels drooped, almost folding flat against his dorsal plating. I stripped a gear in annoyance and gentled my tone. "I'm sorry Bluestreak, but we really can't take it with us. It'll be happier here anyway. Maybe it has a mate it'll want to return to whenever its mating season starts."

That perked him up. I'd have been more pleased if I didn't know that it was at the idea of finding a second disturbingly grabby little mammal, rather than any happiness at leaving the creature behind. "You're right, Prowl. I don't want it to be unhappy." And to my relief, he gently disentangled the creature from his hand and attached it to a nearby tree, where it started chewing on the branch it was attached to exactly as it had been Bluestreak's hand. "So… how'd it go? Did you find anything before they captured you? That was a good shot; right through the window. You're lucky they put you in one of the rooms on this side, or I wouldn't have been able to get a proper line of sight for a clean rescue. You picked up my shell, right? I've got more, of course, but we really don't have the materials for manufacturing new ones right now. I hope we get some too, but even I can admit that the capital of the Nova Empire isn't the place to set up a micro-forge, even if we had the metals. Which reminds me we need to replace the…"

I just listened and made my way to the small stack of cubes the energon converter had been accumulating, and consumed one. Bluestreak could talk forever, the chatter actually making a fairly good substitute for a more formal after-action report, but eventually he'd either start repeating himself or change the topic. We could start going over the data I'd collected then.

I have the utmost respect for Bluestreak, both as a warrior and as a mech of honor and courage. Anyone who could (alone, disarmed, with an empty fuel tank, in shock, and surrounded by Autobots) tell Prime to take his hypocrisy and shove it was not someone I ever wanted to be on the bad side of. And having the utmost respect for him, I've learned that there are just some programming flaws I had to learn to live with.

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Fun fact: In comparison to every other sentient race out there, Cybertronian civilization is really old. I was about a two-thousand vorns old when Megatron declared war on Prime and the senate. That was about three-thousand vorns ago, and I'm considered to be what an organic might call "middle-aged" by the standards of my kind: old enough to have earned some respect based on experience lived, but not yet developing physical deterioration due to that age. As an example, Asguard, the oldest interplanetary polity in this region of space, is only two-thousand vorns old. The escalation of our war, and Megatron and Prime both recalling the interplanetary militaries to fight for them, was one of the major factors allowing them to come to power. That's not the fun part.

The fun part is what this means for the perpetuation of technology. The computer technology of every space-flight capable species we've ever encountered has been inherited in part or in whole from us. Yes. At it's core, it's all Cybertronian technology. All computer codes are based on our codes; those species that program in base three, or five, rather than base two still draw some of their programming language from Cybertronian. Even if a species doesn't initially use tech derived from some bit of Cybertronian wreckage, once they become space-flight capable and encounter other species, they start using bits of what everyone else is using because its easier than coming up with a completely unique way of doing the things they haven't figured out.

Including the Nova Corp Worldmind. In fact that particular AI was built around a salvaged Praxan Foreign Affairs tactical projection computer and its core personality utilizes the original AI. Its original name was Naegi IV and it was part of the Arcadia-13. My ship, lost before the Civil War even started. It doesn't remember its origins, its original purpose, or even its actual name, but it still responds to its original override codes. It can protest, delay, obstruct, and obfuscate. It can send its Nova Corp minions after me. But in the end, it really has no choice but to fulfill any requests I make of it and give me whatever information I desire.

How's that for a "war crime"? The squishies should be grateful I didn't just crash their entire system to cover my hack and send their pathetic excuse for an interstellar empire crashing to back to early spaceflight. But no… that would be deliberate genocide and not only am I a self-righteous, sanctimonious Autobot, but it would take a dozen vorns for Bluestreak to stop looking at me with that horrible kicked turbopuppy look.

"So while the squishies may be operating under the delusion that they caught me before I could finish hacking their precious mainframe, I can assure you that I got everything I wanted before my capture," I answered Bluestreak's idle question of whether I was sure I'd gotten everything.

The data flickered between us as a map of the Nova Empire and the surrounding space with several places highlighted. I was projecting the hologram from my optics so we could discuss it, though we'd networked long enough to share it in its entirety. Bluestreak wasn't a tactician and did better with a visual aid. Just the way he was wired; blame the Allspark. Move on. "Of course, Prowl. I didn't doubt you at all. It's just that it would have been awfully inconvenient for us to have to go back for anything, so I just wanted to make sure that we had everything." He examined the data, tapping one insubstantial marker and I obligingly magnified the image of the planet to replace the larger star map. Blurry holographs taken from destroyed security and traffic cameras flickered around the planet and the reports, translated into neat Cybertronian text, scrolled through the air between us, until he finished reading my analysis at the end. "I agree… short skirmish," which wasn't what the squishies said about the incident; their words tended more along the lines of full-scale battle and untold destruction. "No more than four transformers total - oh! Look! Is that Skywarp!" It was. It was almost impossible to identify a Cybertronian with just visual information, given that changing the vehicle form changed all but the most distinctive features, but really? He was bright purple and a klick later he used his signature ability to warp out of the way of a pair of missiles. The Autobot cyclo-craft pursuing him was harder to identify. "I think that's Drift."

"Forty-one percent chance it's Drift; thirty-nine percent chance it's Springer. Seventeen percent chance it's actually two Autobots - a medium vehicle and a small cyclo-craft - and the appearance that both forms were the same transformer is an artifact of the primitive recordings and the chaotic situation." Bluestreak just smiled at me, brushing me with his EM field in uncomplicated affection. "Three percent chance it's one of the other Autobot triplechangers," I finished lamely. What was I supposed to do with Bluestreak's affection? I tolerated his programming flaws; he loved me for mine. "But that's not what we're looking for."

"No, you're right. And there isn't any reason to go check it out further. That was two decaorns ago - they'll be lightyears away by now." He flicked his door-panels sadly. "It's just nice to know that some of them are still alive, y'know?" I canted by own reassuringly. What attachment I'd developed to Autobots besides Bluestreak had been deleted or archived in the vorns since the Allspark's launch into space, but it was good to know that we weren't the last two left. Even I didn't like the thought of being alone in a universe full of enemies, if only from a tactical perspective. "I like Drift."

Okay. Changing the subject now. "I think this," I brought up another set of reports, these only an orn old and much closer to Xandar than the incident between Skywarp and maybe-Drift, "is what we're looking for."

Bluestreak looked over the reports. Wanton destruction spread out over three planets and half a dozen destroyed star ships. Entire planetary militias turned into scrap metal. Hundreds of conflicting reports from civilians and military survivors. Fuzzy, blurred snapshots from salvaged surveillance cameras showing at least a dozen different vehicle forms and only blurs of transformation and movement for primary forms. Nova Corp was guessing this was the work of a squad of at least five to eight Decepticons, but we knew better.

This was the work of only a single one of our kind, on of the very few so-called "Single Transformers Assault Groups". A one-mech army. And this one's destructive capability and the way he reveled gleefully in outright murder were both the stuff of legend. He was an enemy Bluestreak and I knew very well.

"Sixshot," Bluestreak growled angrily. My combat systems hummed in agreement.

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(tbc…)

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notes:

The H-1ME Mechanic Droid is also from Star Wars. It's about the same size as an astromech droid and fulfills the same combat-repairs function for ships that don't have space for an astromech. My rpg book describes their AI personalities as "daredevil", "possessive of the machines under their care" and "fearless". And that trick of firing them into combat stuffed in a missile shell… cannon.

Bluestreak's Particle Projection Cannon (PPC) is based on a battletech weapon that fires a concentrated stream of protons or ions at the target. It's a nasty weapon, capable of practically vaporizing smaller units, accurate at extremely long ranges, and in the Mechwarrior video games really frags up your sensors when you're hit with one. But it's heavy, which is why Bluestreak doesn't have a second arm-mounted weapon like Prowl does. It's also produces a distinctive "lightning"-like beam.