The Diego Diaries: Here, There and Back Again (606)
-0-On the beach
There were hundreds of individuals from the meet up and many more from the base on the beach sitting or standing around several bonfires. Food was being made on barbecues up in the turnout, music was playing, beer and soft drinks were had by all. It was peaceful, happy and interesting. Over the hill near the base several Autobots stood watching.
"What do you think, Blurr? Do we go join them?" Speedy asked.
Jolt shrugged. "Humans aren't much fun when they over energize. They pick fights."
"They do?" Speedy asked with surprise. "With us?"
Jolt and Blurr looked at the incredulous youngling Home Guard mech. "Yeah. Its hilarious," Blurr said. He stared at the party, then nodded. "Let's go." He moved forward to step over the fence. The others joined him, the group of three youngling mechs walking down the beach toward the humans.
They paused to look, a momentary lull in the noise as the big mechanisms appeared. The flickering light of the fires threw shadows on the bots making them seem sinister. Andrew Settles who was sitting nearby jumped up, then walked to the four. "HI! YOU CAME TO PARTY!?"
"We did," Blurr said with a chuckle. "You're drunk."
"I'm not drunk," Andrew said with a giant smile.
"I own a bar. You're drunk," Blurr said with a chuckle. "How's the party going?"
"It's going. Come on. You guys always make things better," Andrew said as he clambered onto Jolt's servo. "You won't shock me to death will you?" he asked that smirking youngling.
"You won't feel a thing," Jolt said as he stepped forward carrying the base commander's adjutant and right brain coordinator into the bright light of the fires. The others followed.
-0-Mars
Ratchet arrived a bit early when the conference was called for the orn. A good cross section of the world of Martian aliens had been profiled, all manner of civilian and military points of views and personal realities displayed for all to see. It had gone better than he thought. Some of them addressed directly the lack of respect and good treatment of the humans in service. Others talked about the lack of respect their culture had given their people on their home world. He had wanted a theme to be presented that had applications both inside and out of the military. His hunch that the military reflected the culture it served was addressed to his own personal satisfaction by his choice of speakers. If the dominant culture didn't see anything wrong with the way things stood in the military concerning bullies, abuse and other bad acting, then one could not expect the services to be different.
Mirror, meet slagger.
He stepped from the elevator to walk down a long corridor. It lead to the autopsy department and the morgue beyond on this, the second sub floor of the Autobot City Medical Center. Entering the suite where the activity was, Ratchet paused beside Perceptor. On the table nearby, a metallic drone Seeker lay partially dismantled. Several of the city's best engineers including a representative Seeker mechanic went over the figure to find answers. "How is it going?" he asked.
Perceptor looked up, then sat back. The pieces before him were various small delicate parts of the data system that all drones carried. Their function was to do the job programmed into them, then return to Cybertron so that the data regarding their flight path and all the various stops to seed appropriate worlds would be retrieved to be stored in databases.
That those huge computers were destroyed in the war made this set of data impossibly important. If they were lucky they would be able to pinpoint all the locations it visited. Thus they would be able to intervene against the Decepticons should they come close to detecting the planets that had been affected. "We have gotten the data blocks removed. They have damage. It will take a while to repair them but if we can, we can retrace its entire flight path."
Ratchet nodded. "Do you need anything regarding the autopsy? Extra optics? Conclusions? Servos?"
"We're finished. We are going to put him back together, then clean him up. Prime is going to give him a state funeral," Perceptor said. "He wants the drone to have honors because without him, there would be no energon here."
Ratchet nodded. "It had bothered Prowl earlier and I will say, it bothered me too. He never made it home."
Perceptor nodded. "We may never either."
Ratchet squeezed Perceptor's shoulder. "I think we will, Percy. I'm going to check in, then go back to Diego. We have one more orn, then we are done."
Perceptor nodded. "How is that going?"
"Pretty good. Sometimes when someone won't do the right thing because its right, a good public shaming by someone they like and respect is enough," Ratchet said with a grin.
"Good," Perceptor said nodding. "I'll send you a copy of the report when its compiled."
"Thanks, Percy," Ratchet said as he turned toward the door. "Good night."
"Good night, Ratchet," Perceptor said as he turned back to his task. A nice dinner and drink sat nearby untouched.
-0-Home again jiggity jig
Ratchet peered inside the apartment spotting his Appa. "Hi."
Appa Ratchet looked up, then grinned. "Hi yourself." He was sitting with a dozing Sunspot, the rest of the infants in bed. "If you're hungry, there's food in the refrigerator."
Ratchet nodded, prepped a plate along with a beer, then sat chatting with his grandfather until it was time to go back to Earth for the party.
-0-On the beach
They sat near the water, Jolt's alt sitting in the gentle waves. Humans were gathered around them taking 'selfies', chatting and touching their armor. The last thing was a very grave social offense among Cybertronians, touching someone without permission who wasn't family. It led to a lot of internal slag.
:JOLT!:
:What?:
:You have humans fondling you:
:I know, Blurr. What am I supposed to do about it?:
:Zap the slaggers, knot head: -Blurr
:You zap them, big mouth. We're supposed to be nice to them: -Jolt
:Not keeping your hands to yourself is part of the problem here. You have no boundaries. Make some: -Blurr
:Come over here and make them yourself, slagger. I'm having enough trouble without your *wisdom*: -Jolt getting pissy
The youngling stared down at a group of soldiers and sailors, upper ranks who had come to attend the meeting who were touching him. They marveled at his armor, the beauty and quality of his paint scheme and his alienness. He got the feeling that he was less a bot than a large dog that everyone wanted to pet. As he felt the burn creeping up, he felt the tread of heavy peds. Looking down the beach, he saw Ratchet and felt relief.
He also saw Jetta, Smokescreen and a rather intrigued if not somewhat sulky Smokey. He grinned. It was going to get entertaining now. Waving at Ratchet, the group changed direction pausing next to the slightly waterlogged youngling. "You look soggy," Ratchet said with a grin.
"So … its not a good look for me?" Jolt replied with his usual youngling sass.
"I told you about hanging out with Sideswipe and Sunstreaker," Ratchet said as a crowd of inebriated humans began to congregate all around him. "Look at the shorties." He smiled. "What's up, tiny people?"
They looked up at him and the others, then smiled nearly as one. "Hi, Ratchet!"
Ratchet grinned. This was going to be interesting.
-0-Later that evening
Smokey stood hip deep in the water with two humans sitting on his shoulders. Two men had walked over asking him to be their diving board. He had stared at them, then stood up from where he was sulking almost in defiance of his grandfather who smirked at him. Smokescreen was chatting with Fulton, Morshower and Lily Bolger nearby. He put the humans on his broad shoulders, then turned stepping over others to walk to the ocean's edge. It wasn't as dark as it usually was because the giant full moon threw a long sliver of luminous light across the vast sea.
He waded in until he was up to his knees. "Is this deep enough?" he asked glancing at the humans who were staring down at the water.
"Perfect," one of them said jumping off as he spoke. He fell straight down and splashed into the deep water.
Smokey watched him, then the other fell. Standing feeling like a dork in the dark water, he looked down again. Both of the humans were bobbing in the water waving their arms as they called to him. He picked them up and they grabbed his shoulders. "LET'S DO IT AGAIN!" one of the called out.
And they did.
-0-Nearby
"Your boy looked pretty pouty," Ratchet said watching Smokey and the two slightly tipsy humans.
"He was slated to go to Gliese until we checked the roster. Moda had him pulled off because Hot Rod was going there for the garrison duty," Smokescreen said with a grin.
"Poor baby. All impulses and no control," Ratchet said with a chuckle. "Were we ever that young?"
"I wasn't. I was born old," Smokescreen said with a grin.
"Your son and his bond are determined. He's the second Praxian to invoke here," Ratchet said.
"Who was the other?" Smokescreen asked with surprise.
"Prowl and Bluestreak," Ratchet said with a grin of his own. "He was livid about the twins. They both wanted Blue and he wasn't up on trines. Now its the best thing ever and we all agree. Getting an invocation helped sort the slag."
"That's funny. No one told me about that," Smokescreen said.
"Did your genitors ever invoke on you?" Ratchet asked as he moved a ped for some femme sailors to pass by.
"No. They gave up on controlling me early on," Smokescreen said with a chuckle. "Poor things. They were good folks."
"What happened to them, Smokescreen? Do you know?" Ratchet asked gently.
A cloud passed over Smokescreen's face, then he looked at Ratchet shrugging. "I don't know."
"Well, look at me. I got lucky and so did a few of us. More are coming. Tens of millions, hundreds maybe. Our people are coming," Ratchet said.
"I hope so. They would love Smokey. They loved Dev. They told him to run." Smokescreen grinned. "I'm glad he didn't."
"Me too," Ratchet said with a nod.
Nearby, watching with fascination Blurr found himself the object of affection of several tipsy civilian women. They leaned against his peds looking upward at him, drinks in hand. They were laughing and flirting, actually flirting with the big rangy mechanism.
"Blurr has a harem," Ratchet said with a chuckle.
"He always does. The humans like us. I think some of them really *really* like us, Ratchet," Smokescreen said with a laugh.
Nearby, Smokey walked back to the beach with a human in each servo. He put them on the ground, then looked around. He walked toward Ratchet and Smokescreen on the way to where Blurr sat as more humans began to crawl up onto his peds.
"Smokey," Ratchet said with a grin. "How are you?"
Smokey looked at Ratchet, then glared at his grandfather. "I don't want to talk about it."
Ratchet rose, then grinned at Smokescreen. "I hope you don't mind if I grab your grandson for a moment do you."
Smokescreen looked at his grandson who was wilting with whiny angst, his pert wings drooping mightily. "No problem."
Ratchet took the youngling's arm, then led him back to the sea where they walked until they stood in water up to their waists. It was silent a moment, then Ratchet grinned. "How is it going? I hear your father invoked."
"IT'S FRAGGED! I have a … a CHAPERONE ALL THE TIME!" he said. Glancing over his shoulder, he blinked. Half the humans nearby paused in their partying to turn toward them. They looked at Smokey as Ratchet chuckled. :Speak in Standard, youngling: Ratchet said slipping into their own language.
Smokey looked at him, then the humans. :Things are fragged. My atar follows me around and when it isn't him, its Ada. I'M GROWN UP! I DON'T NEED BABYSITTERS!:
:You're Praxian, youngling. You know the score: Ratchet replied.
:IT SUCKS!: -Smokey
:What would you rather be? From Stanix?: Ratchet asked with a grin.
:FRAG NO! I don't want to be from anywhere. Everywhere has slag:
:You do know why don't you?: Ratchet asked.
:I DON'T CARE! I WANT TO HAVE A … A LOVER! There. I said it: he said glancing over his shoulder at his grandfather with a glare.
:I really don't think they are against you having a fling. They just worry about you being flung. Hot Rod has a lot of miles behind him. They know him from many of them. They have concerns and frankly, son, you're from the wrong town to have your way: Ratchet said sympathetically.
Can you talk to them? Can you tell them that I'm a grown up now?: Smokey asked with a slightly pleading tone.
:I will but it won't do any good. I have already been through this with Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. Prowl invoked on Bluestreak:
:BUT BLUESTREAK'S OLD!: Smokey said with an angsty wail. :HOW CAN HE DO THAT WHEN BLUESTREAK IS SO OLD?:
Ratchet looked at the kid remembering once again just how young he was. Then he howled with laughter. Smokey looked at Ratchet, then turned and swiped his servo in the water. It flew off into the darkness, a wave of water surging away.: I'm glad you find me funny:
:I do. I forgot how funny youngling mechs can be. You are a good mech and you will have your time. Its just that you're from Praxus and you don't have a choice. Poor sparkling. Look for someone your genitors will like better:
:I DON'T WANT SOMEONE THEY'LL LIKE! I want to sort of live my life and do things my own way. You know … like anyone else. I want adventure and love and fun. It's my destiny!: he said with a lot of pent up emotions.
:I won't argue with you there, youngling. Its a great destiny. You will just have to get used to seeing a genitor behind you: Ratchet said with a grin.
He looked at Ratchet with a baleful expression. :It sucks to be me:
Ratchet patted Smokey's face. :Too bad you're so slagging cute. You're too cute for your own good. Just ask Mistermaster:
Smokey snorted. :That was one strange mech. I haven't seen him lately though:
Ratchet nodded. :Mistermaster is one of the few high castes who actually supported Prime from the start, with all his spark. He's really harmless for a full on train wreck:
:I know: Smokey said. He grinned. :Can I talk to you when it sort of gets too ...:
:Deep?: Ratchet offered.
He nodded, then glared at the beach where his grandfather sat watching them. Smokescreen grinned and raised his Kremzeek in salute. Smokey rolled his optics, then looked at the sea. :Hot Rod is on Gliese 581 g. I want to be there. MY ATAR GOT THE SCHEDULE CHANGED! PROWL HELPED HIM!:
:Prowl's genitor is Venture of Praxus. Last time I looked, he was your atar's supervisor: Ratchet said with a grin.
"WHAT THE FRAG!?" Smokey said as everyone within two miles turned to look.
-0-TBC January 30, 2014 edited 2-5-14
In one of the universes there is a canned drink called Kremzeek. I love the Kremzeeks. I loved that when Prime had to press the button to end the Kremzeek, he had to cover his optics. :D:D:D
Sorry. I had a punctuation problem with the last conversation. The punctuation didn't upload.
Regarding the Praxian rules: I wanted a few rules that didn't make sense or feel comfortable to readers to show their alienness. I think a great deal of their culture was predicated in making sure the young survived. I love the comments. :D:D:D