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, Irani Rael
Warnings: Cannon-typical violence in this chapter. 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. 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.
Notes: So, uh, wow. It's been a while for this story hasn't it. I finally couldn't stand it sitting here, unfinished. Unfortunately when I came back to it and looked at my outline, it didn't make any sense at all. I was looking at what I remember had been a pretty epic b/romance and it might as well have been written in Greek. So in lieu of actually knowing where I was going with this, I'm bringing it to what I hope is a graceful end.
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INTERLUDE: Irani Rael.
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The dust settled. Neither transformer moved. Taking the chance that they were both down for the count, she ordered her men forward to secure them both. True she was hunting Prowl, but she hadn't been able to simply ignore the much more aggressive transformer that had started wrecking the city as soon as it hit planetfall.
Irani Rael had gone over every byte of data the Worldmind had on Prowl. She'd found that following this, highly aggressive, Decepticon would eventually flush out her own prey. It had been difficult to determine. This one's ability to hold onto multiple forms simultaneously had often given the illusion that there were more of them than just one present, but she had done it. And now she had both.
All that data, once properly correlated had revealed that Prowl's unknown partner was a sniper who had never come in close enough to be identified. She would have to be careful not to expose herself to another long-range shot, like the one that had freed Prowl on Xandar, but here in the middle of the city she felt safe enough.
Which she knew was a mistake, but without knowing where the sniper was, it would be almost impossible to guard against it otherwise.
Cybertronians were like Corossis Locusts, she'd been taught. They came, fought their war, leveled cities with their skirmishes, then left, not to be seen again for who knew how long. And there wasn't much to be done about it. Capturing or killing just one took the cumulative firepower of entire armies, and a lot of luck. Finding just one alone to capture was almost impossible.
But all the data, rare as it had been, on Prowl's partner and rescuer was that it stayed out of direct combat. It hid in the hills like a coward, revealing itself only when necessary.
So she actually thought nothing of the tank-operator pulling up to the two transformers, to level its primary roof-gun at the massive Decepticon until it stood up .
Shouts of alarm went up, weapons were leveled. One shot triggered a hundred others from soldiers nearby, but the robot ignored them. The weapons pinged off its shield harmlessly. Like a monster from legend, they were beneath it. It's focus was set on the Decepticon. Irani yelled for them to cease-fire and get some star blasters down here to capture it. It looked at her, orange optics burning into her skull, but then turned back to the Decepticon.
It flipped the ruined chassis of the robot over, though not without effort, until the robot was laying supine on the rubble, and Irani got her first real look at the damage it had taken. Even with that damage, she could hear it give out a sound that could have been… anything really, but to her ears it sounded like pain. Its optics were still lit.
The standing robot said something that sounded like gibberish and glass-shards being ground together. The winglike-appendages on it's back flared in an aggressive looking manner. The robot on the ground said something in response, and with a snarl of what looked like rage, the victorious one shot the Decepticon. Once, twice, almost six times, before the light in the Decepticon's optics finally went out.
It dragged the corpse over to where the building had collapsed on the other combatant.
"Where the frack are those starblasters," Irani muttered and the robot looked at her again.
"Hi! Hello," an unfamiliar voice said over the nearest communicator. "I'm sorry, but I'm kinda jamming your signals right now. It's really not nice, I know and I wouldn't, but I don't want to be shot and dragged off by your starships. I've always liked Xandaran starblasters. So pretty compared to a lot of others. It would really be a shame to have to wreck any more of them. And Xandarans! I don't like killing you either, so I'm just going to continue jamming you and we'll be gone in a few… minutes. Wow, such a short span of time. But we'll be gone in just a few of them and then you won't have to worry about us or Sixshot again for a long while, k?"
The interrogative snapped Irani out of her stupor. Her soldiers scattered as she fearlessly marched up to the robot, who'd dropped the corpse and was now digging the other out from the rubble. "No," she shouted, which drew the robot's startled gaze. "Not okay! That one," she pointed at the rubble, "is wanted for warcrimes against the Xandaran people and I have been tasked with its arrest." And destruction she did not say.
"I'm really, really sorry we've hurt you," the robot said again, this time directly to Irani rather than over the communications equipment, and she wracked her memory, trying to pinpoint an incident when the robots had ever talked directly to someone and came up blank. "But even if you had authority over us, which you don't, I couldn't let you take Prowl. We are… all we've got left. I can't lose him."
"You should have thought of that before you brought your fracking war to our worlds," she snarled. The men around her were starting to look impressed. Centurion or not, the robot would squish her flat if it was so inclined.
"Do you think we asked for this?" it retorted. "By the time we scattered across space, chasing and killing each other like beasts, the worst of our weapons had been destroyed. Warp cannons and sun killers… they're gone now. Destroyed, but not before they were used. On us . Our home is gone, our own planet dead and it was mechs like them ," it pointed at the corpse at its feet, "who killed it, before your race even crawled out of its primordial sea. And now they want to rape and pillage and destroy your worlds, and while he," again it indicated its companion, "thinks we should let them, leave, live out what's left of our broken lives in peace, he won't. For me and for loyalty, he won't. So no. Prowl is all I have left . I will not let you take him."
It went back to digging while Irani stood there and gaped.
Something chittered in the hole and the robot chittered back. A small streak leaped onto the robot's hand and she saw it brush it's fingers over it in what looked like affection, then the little drone scurried back down to the other. The larger robot finished clearing the rubble away.
"You'll never get past the blockade," Irani finally said. In truth she was shocked; it had never occurred to her that anything beyond programmed directives might factor into the transformers' behavior and enmities with each other.
The robot looked up at her and seemed to smile. "Our comet forms are very durable. He's just unconscious right now, but he does have active interstellar drives. I can get us out of here."
And with that he dumped the corpse in on top of the now-revealed lump of metal that she had to assume was Prowl's space-travel form. The little drone scurried over the dead robot's form, tearing at it viciously as it chittered. The awake robot crouched over the scene and connected to its compatriot with a series of wires that snaked out of its wrist.
A moment later they blinked out of existence. Gone again.
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end