The Diego Diaries: Shadow Box Interlude 13 (241) editted for boo boos :D
-0-On the way out of the stadium
The Prime group were caught in a long line of individuals heading out to the city once more. They were featured on cameras stationed all over the city along with thousands of others, some of them becoming well known to humans. The feed was continued to Earth as background for the after game discussion that Blurr and Blaster conducted.
The cameras caught the image of the Prime and his family as well as Ratchet and Ironhide. The skies overhead were blue with the heat of the orn rising to nearly 80 degrees. Dust and wind borne sand, a major problem for them had been largely corralled by Sciences in a weather making project helping the sky become more clear and crisp.
The arena entrance was wide funneling mechs and femmes outward to the city beyond. Many walked to the subway station entrances disappearing into the underground to go home or other places swiftly. Others walked down streets heading out or transformed driving off in all directions.
By the time they reached the streets themselves the humans were with Prime's group driving their segways toward the Fortress to take part in the after game ritual with the bots. Zipping around huge mechanisms, they buzzed ahead unencumbered by size.
The crush began to thin as the family group walked toward the Fortress. They entered the courtyard, then the big doors, pausing long enough for Prowl to check in with the skeleton crew at Ops Center. He assured them that they would be free in a few joors, then turned to rejoin the group heading with a lot of others to Cafe Praxus.
Inside …
The bar was going great guns as lots of friends were there along with other mechanisms that they didn't know personally, the city was so big now. Pausing to trade slag, they continued onward to the greatly expanded dining room and found their tables grouped together in the usual place. Sitting on the middle of the table already, their segways lining the wall, a number of human friends were seated on nice chairs the length of the middle of the table. Trading slag and welcomes, the bots joined them with sparklings and younglings as well.
The waiters brought high grade and drinks for the infants, then hurried off to wait on others in the crowded room. Their food ordered earlier was coming shortly. Morshower who sat with his wife glanced at Ratchet. :This is a day that will live in infamy:
:You said it: Ratchet said with a grin. :I will frame this in my calendar with sad face emoticons:
Slag met that remark. Dinner came and was placed before each mech sitting at the table. It was a dazzling array of dishes from traditional Cybertronian to Earth concoctions.
Ratchet grinned at them. :Don't mind us. We're going to eat in front of you without shame:
:Don't mind us. We're having a pig out at the big habitat in a short while. It's being cooked as we speak: Will Lennox said.
:This stuff looks awesome, Ratchet: Jessie Landon said walking to Ratchet's plate. :Is that really sushi?: she asked with a grin.
:It is. Rampage strikes again: Ratchet said.
:It looks like sushi: Barbara Morshower said nodding. :But what does it taste like? Is it just colored formed energon?: Barbara Morshower was a gourmet cook who had things simmering at the habitat that would be hugely well received.
:Actually, its a long story: Ratchet said popping a California roll in his mouth. :Rampage is the master chef of the colony and he revived a lot of dishes from Cybertron that hadn't been made in ages. He's also very creative and has studied the cuisines of Earth adding a lot of things beyond appearance to the food you're looking at. He's been taking chemistry for two years, then applying it to food production. Every few days a shipment of food items arrives from Earth and he takes them to a lab at his production facility to study all of it. He applies a chemical number to each thing for color, texture, flavor and shape. Then its entered into the database. Consider Ironhide's dinner:
Everyone looked at Ironhide, whose fork poised at his mouth. He looked back at them, then Ratchet. :Yes, look at me: he said with a smirk.
Chuckles greeted that remark.
:Ironhide is eating what you see is chicken, potatoes and gravy and corn on the cob. All of it is created from base energon paste. That is the base of everything on this table. What they do now is decide what they are going to make and consult the database. The various additives are added, then the stuff is formatted either by servo or machine. The production facilities make the ingredients and food items for the stores and restaurants in the city.
"Vegetables are made to look like their images as well as everything else. Those potatoes were made from their root formats that were made to resemble potatoes. They were taken here and cooked the way you would to make potatoes this way. The gravy was a series of ingredients that blended made gravy. Everything that you need to make food is available at stories in the malls and centers. The corn was heated and came in the shape you see. The chicken came looking like chicken and was cooked.
:My sushi was made from all the ingredients being applied together the way sushi required but the different parts were needed to make it. It isn't spray painted solids. Its different things put together:
:We went to the supermarket in the Polyhex Business Plaza. It was like walking around Whole Foods back home: Barbara said nodding.
:They provide all the stuff you need to cook both our own food and yours. There are as many different ingredients and foods across the spectrum as you would find on Earth. There is a renaissance of cooking going on in the city. We cook a lot at home anymore which is good:
:Some do: Ironhide said sipping his high grade.
:Your aft isn't stapled to your chair, Ironhide: Ratchet replied with a grin.
:I cook: Ironhide replied.
:You burn stuff, Atar: Sunspot said pausing his hotdog before his mouth. It was everything a hotdog should be on Earth but was made from different kinds of energon formatted as wieners, buns, condiments including lettuce, and pickles. He caught himself and leaned back hiding behind Prowl.
Everyone chuckled. Ratchet grinned. :But he does that like a champion, right Sunspot?:
:He does: Sunspot said behind Prowl.
:You can cook by combining ingredients and have some things come whole?: Jessie asked glancing from Sunspot to Ratchet.
Ratchet nodded. :Yes. Makes things interesting at the grocery store and on the odd orns when dinner gets cooked at home:
:That's an understatement: Ironhide said just before he got a slap on the back of his processor.
The conversation continued as they chatted, the mellow ambiance of the room reminiscent of any restaurant on Earth after a game.
-0-Out there
Paragon watched the leaked downfeed from the city. Blurr and Blaster he knew. They were discussing the football game with aliens he had never seen before. They were organic and strange appearing, seemed to be well known to the Autobots and companionable in conversation.
The game had been shocking. It was held in a giant stadium. There was another arena nearby about the same size and an even bigger group had gathered at their airfield to watch as well. There were tens of thousands of mechs and femmes living at Autobot City. There were endless towers of habitation reminiscent of Cybertron. He could only imagine the industrial base they had built to support their life.
The airfield was ringed with seemingly endless lines of ships that bristled with guns and armaments. That didn't even include the guardians who had watched the giant projection of the game themselves. He had recognized them, all of them. Kappa and her brothers he thought were dead but for Omega. He knew Omega was still around somewhere because he had fought the beast himself. The others? They were a surprise, especially Metroplex and Fort Max.
He had seen dozens if not hundreds of faces in the crowds that he recognized from battles or life before the war. He himself had been a professional soldier all of his adult life, someone recruited from colleges and universities to join the officer's corps. He was so smart and machine like that he had been on a fast track to become the Second-in-Command of the Armed Forces. That is, he was until a taciturn winger from the Praxus Policing Forces was discovered and coveted with a maniacal focus that left him in the dust.
Prowl.
That name had haunted his career. That bot had finally been recruited and stood in the way of his finely tuned, finely plotted path to power and personal esteem. They were both high caste, incredibly intelligent and able as well as coveted by officers who saw them as essential to their own climb in the army.
Prowl had walked from the detective ranks of Praxus to the side of the Prime, the spot he himself had wanted from the beginning of his enlistment. There were no intervening steps for that enigmatic unknowable machine. There were no words for his own angst and disappointment. He had put Prowl on his list, working to undermine and replace him with the Primes, the last one being Sentinel.
But then it all came a cropper. Sentinel set his sights on making Prowl his lover and there was little Paragon could do about it as long as Sentinel had that goal in his mind. What was even more maddening than Sentinel Prime abusing his office in pursuit of the admittedly handsome enticing figure of Prowl. No, that part was typical Sentinel. What was the most maddening of all was that he doubted either of them even knew he, Paragon existed.
Prowl was Sentinel's shadow, the main reason that the plates kept spinning. Sentinel was never a detail mech. That part he delegated to Prowl who was to minutiae what clouds were to the sky. Without Prowl's lazer-like focus and intense nearly obsessive attention to detail, the Fall would probably have come sooner. Paragon never had a chance to speak to Sentinel out of the hearing of the mech he kept at his side almost constantly. The only time he could see him alone was on his rambles in the shadows of propriety.
That wasn't often enough.
The Fall came and the rise of Megatron was inevitable. There would be no way to save Cybertron and there was no guarantee that Prime would be able to pull off any other outcome. So he cut his loses and decided to become Megatron's Prowl. Of course, that meant relieving Shockwave and Soundwave of their sparks. He had been on that task when Megatron disappeared.
With that mech gone, the field was open. When it was clear that the Empire was breaking apart, he took his core group and left to find his own base of operations. It was only the worst or perhaps the best of luck that he came across Prime. The call had reached even the depths of the Empire. Now he was here in this sector digging in and expanding. That Prowl would be his opposition once more was almost comical.
They were joined at the hip.
He would have to recalculate his position to figure out how to keep his team together. A flight of Seekers had already defected, that he was sure. More would follow if he didn't tighten discipline and make incentives. First of all, he would block access to transmissions. He would watch them alone for intell. Then he would put out a call himself. Come to me, he would say. Come here and help me make a new Empire. Help me make it possible for our Cause to rise again.
Cybertron was waiting. Soundwave was on borrowed time. He would rebuild their base, shore up their army and take on Cybertron. Once he secured that plum, then he would be able to turn and consider the problem of Prime. And if Megatron returned? He would personally tear out his spark chamber himself. Prime wasn't the only one done with that lunatic.
The ball game would be the last general broadcast allowed at his base. He would make sure of it himself.
-0-Later that night
They tucked in the sparklings, then walked to the living room to sprawl in their chairs. Ironhide grinned. "You alright, old mech?"
"Nope," Ratchet said. "However, it will be therapeutic to watch Kaon rip the aft off your backside in the championship game. My younglings will avenge me."
Ironhide snorted and squeezed Ratchet's servo. "We'll see."
"You watch, Ironhide. The younglings will be awesome."
"As awesome as me?" he asked with a grin.
Ratchet glanced at him and smirked. "No one is that awesome, Only One."
Ironhide smirked back. "Ditto, Only One."
They sat together watching The Hourly News recap the orn's happenings. It would be the pleasant ending of a mostly pleasant orn.
-0-In the habitat
They ate an astonishingly good meal and talked long into the evening with beer and chips. The Hourly News was viewed as they began to drift off to bed contented with life and the view outside. By the time the place was silent again, the news from Cybertron was beginning to filter in.
-0-TBC
2013 (3)