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This post has a very low signal to noise ratio
/Crapdump begins.
Okay, so I'm bored and realised I have way loads of notes cluttering my computer's hard-drive. Here's some of them.
This bit is (obviously) set in the past. I'm still trying to think where to put it. :P
She stood a good head and shoulders taller than the rest – a willowy stick of jade coloured dermal plating, all angles and joints, looking like she’d been reformatted into a protoform very slightly too tall for her bulk once she’d emerged from her sparklinghood.
“Who’s that?” Hardline gave Boxer a prod in the shoulder.
“Eh, what? Where?” The bigger mech followed his pointing finger, and quickly found the gangrel femme that Hardline was watching. “Oh, her. Not sure what her name is. Exchange student from two districts over, started yesterday. Training for surgery.”
“Surgery? Skinny thing like that?”
“Ah, that’s only because she’s not had a refit yet."
The library was not a place Hardline often found himself; he wasn’t particularly academic and his course didn’t have much pre-reading to do, so his only reasons to come in would be to find a news article or else tagging along behind his more intellectual forensics coursemates. As such, it took him a good portion of a cycle doing a big looping wander all the way up to the top floor and halfway back down before he found his quarry, poring over a text in the quiet study area behind the engineering section. He dithered in the doorway, for a while, and only made himself look all the more self-conscious.
Finally he plucked up the courage to speak; rubbed the back of his neck and shifted from foot to foot, rehearsed the words in his head and came up with a totally ineffectual; “Um-… hello?”
She looked up from her databoard, at last, and her severe features relaxed a little, curving into something like a dry smile. “Hello. Can I help you?”
“Oh, um, well… is this seat taken?” he blurted.
She thankfully ignored the fact that the study area was otherwise deserted and there were plenty of empty tables around her, and instead used a foot to push the chair out from under the table. “Go right ahead,” she invited. “I’m not expecting company.”
“Um, can I be your company?” he wondered, boldly, and his optics instantly ‘blushed’ lilac.
The dry smile relaxed a little further, into something a lot warmer. “If you like,” she agreed. “But I’m not very interesting.”
“I’ll reserve judgement.” He slid himself onto the chair, and was relieved when his luck took a turn for the better and he didn’t immediately fall off the opposite side. “We might have a lot in common.”
She chuckled, and arched her brows. “Perhaps,” she allowed, although he sensed she probably actually meant although probably not. You’re a big dumb police trainee, I’m a med student, how much in common can we have?
He watched her squiggle characters onto a Notepane by her elbow, for a while. She had a concise, elegant precision about her that made him purse his lips and briefly consider calling this whole stupid thing straight off again. His own manner was so choppy – he’d only been here a hundred orns or so but had already earned the nickname ‘Hack’ – it just seemed like yet another difference that would make them incompatible.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around much. Are you new here?” Stupid question, of course she was new. He cringed inwardly and hastily added, before she could think he was too much of an idiot; “Uh, that is, when did you start?”
“Oh, only a couple of orns ago,” she confirmed, and shrugged, lopsidedly. “I always seem to pass under most peoples’ radar. Which is apparently a lot easier to do than you’d think, for such a tall skinny stem of green.”
“I wasn’t going to ask that,” he lied. “Or rather, I was going to say, how can someone as pretty as you go undetected?”
Her brow perked, curiously, and he immediately wished the ground would swallow him. Smooth move, Hardline. Now she knows you’re an idiot.
She didn’t tell him to stop extracting the purge and leave her in peace, though. “That’s not a label I usually get applied to me,” she confessed, dryly.
“Well, come on, police. If you’re going to put the moves on me, you can at least tell me your name.”
He managed to pick his sagging jaw up off the floor. “…uhh, it’s Hardline,” he choked the words out.
“Forceps.” She offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you, constable.”
He managed to get enough co-ordination together to accept the proffered hand and give it a shake; his blue fingers lingered a fraction of a second too long in her green ones, and he felt the red flush back into his gaze. “…uhhh, thanks.” He averted his optics and rubbed his neck, embarrassed.
“Will you be in training tomorrow?”
“Uhhh… yes?”
“Good!” She covered his hands with one of her own. “I’ll meet you in the library foyer at sun-high. We can take the noon break together, if you like.”
Power of speech had left him. “I-… well-… I-… yes?”
Her grin went lopsided again. “I’ll take that as an agreement.”
He dithered for a good breem or two; watched her from the training yard, just out of plain view, and chewed himself over. Who was he trying to kid, anyway? He was just a dumb protoform with delusions of grandeur, she was going to be a freaking surgeon. Eventually she’d cotton on to what he was and turn away and find herself someone with a comparable level of intelligence, and he’d find himself with yet another big pot of nothing. He should spare her the irritation and just… forget it. Back out. Save her the trouble in the long run.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” she observed, coming forwards, and it left him curling up in shame at seeing the relief painted so clear on her face.
“I was… held up in training,” he lied. “Sorry. I would have got a message to you if I’d known I’d be late.”
“That’s okay.” She shrugged. “I know I’m not everyone’s favourite design.”
“Oh, hey, hang on, I wasn’t late because-…” She thought he was going to stand her up because he didn’t like her looks? He gave himself another little inner kick and steeled his resolve. “I had no plans to set you up, Forceps. I don’t know if that’s what people do, where you come from, but I wouldn’t drop you because I thought you were unappealing to look at-”
“So you do think I’m ugly?”
“What? That’s not-… no! That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I’m just-…” He shifted awkwardly, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I’m just… I…” He lifted his gaze, humbly, and managed to hold hers for a few moments. “I’m not good with femmes. I’m big and clumsy and kinda stupid, and the few femmes I’ve known at any level past just saying ‘hello’ in corridors usually do a runner. I kinda… didn’t want to get here and see you’d set me up.”
“I’m not sure if I should be flattered or annoyed,” she deadpanned, and for a second he was convinced he’d put his foot in it again when she took his hand. “So let’s pretend it didn’t happen, right?”
(Big break here. Goes from "Golden Age" sort of setting - at least, certainly a good way pre-war - to the dawn of the fighting. Essentially, there's been an attack on a supply depot at the District General where Forceps is placed; no-one's really claimed responsibility, and because it was a hit-and-run fuel-theft it could have been anyone, but the Decepticons have got the blame anyway.)
“Sepp?” His voice came to her as if from a distance – out in the corridor, and behind the muffling fog of curtain. “Are you here? I swear, they’ve had me running in circles, if this is the wrong room again…”
He pushed the curtain back, and managed the shortest, faintest of smiles at realising he’d found her. She sat up on the berth, hands resting on her legs, looking shaky but physically okay. “Hey, Hack,” she greeted, faintly. “Yes, you found me at last. I’d have come to find you but I, um… don’t think I’ll be walking too far unaided.”
“Are you all right?” He sagged to his knees beside the chilly medical berth, and folded one of her hands into both of his. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she reassured, quietly, brushing the fingertips of her free hand over his cheek. “Physically, at least. No damage done. Not to me, anyway.”
“…the little one?” He gulped the words out.
She forced a smile that managed to twist her face into a mask of sorrow. “Harmonic wasn’t stable,” she rasped, simply. “I knew it was going to happen. I lost it.”
He visibly crumpled, as if someone had punched him square in the face. “…lost-…?” he echoed, shakily. “No, no, it… it was fine, before. It was fine! So-… so little time left to go, it can’t… it can’t be gone!”
She rested her cheek against his shoulder, and listened to the helpless static that poured from his vocaliser. The loss of their little one had left her feeling empty; silent, inside. The constricting discomfort of trying to hold two sparks in one casing was gone, but it felt like the dissipated spark had stolen a piece of her away with it, when it had faded.
In a way – a way she would never express to Hardline – it was a relief that it was gone. It had never felt stable, to her, not since the beginning. Her own spark had never had the sweetest harmony – a bit rough around the edges, like her moods – and she’d been amazed that the fission had gone as well as it had done! But the sparkling itself had always given her the jitters – there was something non-cohesive about the way it twisted, something too disperse about the harmonies. Even if she’d got it to term and into its own casing, there was no guarantee it’d have survived. And this… just… seemed like proof.
Not that it made much difference to the gentle-natured Policebot sobbing his despair into her shoulder. The idea of a sparkling of their own had put a spring in his stride and lifted the gloom off his shoulders – he’d suddenly turned back into the laughing, irreverent lug she’d known at University, before the fuel crisis began, and the rioting, and the fear that he was so constantly living shoulder-to-shoulder with and seeing the results of, day in, day out…
“We can try again,” she promised, faintly. “Once this has blown over.”
“I swear, Sepp, I won’t let this stand,” he wept. “If it hadn’t been for those Decepticons-… if it hadn’t been for them…”
“It was no-one’s fault,” she interrupted, tightening her arms around him. “This was going to happen. It would have happened if I’d been sat watching the news. No-one caused it except me.”
She felt him shift in her arms, draw his head back to look her in the optic.
“Maybe my spark just isn’t configured right for procreating,” she apologised, managing a lopsided, miserable smile for him. “I’m so sorry, Hack-”
“Don’t apologise,” he insisted, and enclosed both her hands in both of his. “Don’t apologise. This was not your fault.” His wet blue optics had taken on a hard, violet edge. “There’s only one machine to blame for this, and I’ll see to it that he pays his dues-”
“Hack-”
She noticed the new little patch of red on his powerful chest the instant the came through the door, but kept her vocaliser offline.
“So. You went, after all.”
It didn’t take university-level intelligence to work out what she meant. Even after all those arguments, you still went to the Autobots.
“Won’t you come with me?” he wondered, quietly, offering a hand for hers. “We can make a difference if we stand together on this. We can help end this stupid war.”
“No, no, we’ve been through this. I can’t take a faction.” She shook her head, backing up a step. “I can’t. It’s not right. My skills – and yours! – should be available to anyone who needs them. Let the politicians quarrel all they like, but we should be here to keep society running normally!”
“There won’t be any society left, if we don’t stop those Decepticons.”
“Then it’s all the more imperative my services are available!”
“You’re doing this for the wrong reason!”
“The death of our sparkling is the wrong reason to take up arms against the monsters that caused it?!”
“Hack, I caused it! It’s my spark that’s not got good enough fissive properties!” She clapped a hand down on her chest, angrily. “It was nothing to do with outside influences, nothing to do with ‘the enemy’! It was all down to me and my horrible, useless, substandard spark.
“Stop raking over this, Hardline!” she bellowed, losing her rag at last. “If you want to go play soldier with the Autobots, then go do it! But don’t use that tiny life we almost created as the excuse!”
He recoiled from her. “Forceps-”
“We should be trying to heal, not keep on picking the wound raw again!”
It was getting late, and Spotweld had already shut most of his televisual equipment off prior to getting his head down for a rest when there was a hesitant little tap tap at the door. Who could that be, this time of night?
It turned out to be Forceps – shoulders rounded, looking… tired. Wan. Didn’t take a lot of heavy thinking to work out what must have happened. Must have argued again.
“Hey, Spots.” She looked… forlorn. “You still have that spare room going cheap?”
“Well-… yes, I guess, if you need it?” He watched her duck under his arm and into the living room. “I thought you and-”
“It’s off,” she interrupted, curtly, and collapsed into the closest armchair. “Too many… intractable differences.”
Spotweld perched opposite her, and elected not to question too deeply about the scuffs of white paint around her brows, shoulders, the dull smudges of cobalt on the backs of her knuckles. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too, Spots.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, squinched her optics closed. “Me too.”
"Future Tense"
I'm sure I had more notes than this. Hrm. Oh well! Kinda supposed to be set after an attack of some sort which leaves several people trapped underground, in a cave system of some sort.
She thrummed her vents to get rock dust out of them, and stared blindly out into the gloom. “Hack?” Her voice sounded muffled by the snow of falling ash and detritus. “Hardline, answer me!”
There was a pause that felt far too long, and two muted blue lights finally appeared. “…hearyou,” he groaned.
She crawled forwards, patting her hands along the floor until the found the rest of him. “Are you all right? Any new damage?”
“…nothin’new,” he confirmed, heavily. “…jus’the… *khn*… just the same as b’fore… damn, does this hurt…”
“Of course it hurts,” she half-scolded, relieved. Nothing that could whine that much could be too badly damaged.
“Are we trapped in here?” he wondered, quietly.
She nodded, glumly. “Unfortunately. And I don’t even want to try and think how long it’ll take them to dig all the way down to us. I’m halfway inclined to think we’d be better off just going into stasis until they get here.”
He snugged the top of his head more comfortably against her side. “I don’t mind, if I’m here with you.”
Footloose was – miraculously – fine. She was fizzing with concerned static, and all over him with careful little fingers, checking for damage, but otherwise undamaged.
His right thruster just… stopped, abruptly, a third of the way down. He groaned, miserably, knowing what he’d done; it was only the third time he’d ever done it – the first time had been bad enough that he’d never done it since – but he’d jumped without a good view of where he was going. And had “quantum entangled” his right leg with the rocks – literally mixed the two different sets of atoms of the two different objects together into the same place. The only way to get out? Would be to cut his leg off.
“Lucy? You need to go to the surface and get help,” he instructed, a lot more calmly than he actually felt. “And you need to do it the long way. No teleporting!”
“It would be quicker-” she protested, but he lifted a finger for quiet and she actually did as told for once.
“You’ve seen my leg, haven’t you? And you’ve entangled yourself in things before as well. Now imagine you misjudge and entangle your whole body into the rocks. Who’s going to find us? If you even survive it! So no teleporting until you’re back on the surface. Right?”
You’re all right, he scolded himself. You’re fine. Aside from the thruster, you’re uninjured. Don’t need to overreact. Don’t need to overreact. Come on, what would TC do in this sort of situation? He’d be calm and collected and remind you that you’re not that far und-… undergr-… away from friends, all you have to do is wait for Lou to get back topside and they can track her positioning all the way back down here and get you out.
…Could take ‘em a while to triangulate where you are, though. And damn, it’ll sure take ‘em a while to dig all the way down here. All the way down here through all these-… all these rocks-…
Don’t need to overreact.
And that’s assuming Lou took your advice and kept her teleport offline! What if she went and blended herself with the rocks? Because damn, she’s still got your impulsive streak and might still think she knows best!
…Don’t need to overreact.
His fans hitched, a soft little stutter of gulping noise that he found himself focusing on.
Don’t need to overreact, Skywarp. Don’t. Need. To overreact!
She could be dead after all. Merged her little spark with the rocks and fizzled out.
Oh Primus please stay calm!
Melting down here. No air. Stifling hot, oh damn.
His spark felt constricted; thudding pain with every not-so-subtle shift in harmonic, and the twisting of an electrical arc with every movement.
Going to die down here. My spark is already losing cohesion, uncoiling, flickering out. And my hands-… is that the dark playing tricks on my perception or are they less brightly coloured than they were?
The words formed a drumbeat in his mind – repeating over and over, inescapable, impossible to ignore, a thudding cyclical pulse of intangible noise that seemed to go with every tiny shift in his spark’s harmonic. Get Out. Get Out. Get Out. Get Out.
“…get me out,” he pleaded, not sure who he was talking to. “Oh damn oh sweet Primus get me out of here…!”
Connectors tore away beneath his frantic, clawing fingers. Energon spat from ruptured lines, coating the rocks and fizzing a lilac fluorescence into the gloom. Get out get out get out.
The instant his leg was free – the instant he’d shredded his way through enough connectors to tear himself apart at the knee – he went against every instruction he’d ever given Footloose and teleported himself as far up as he could possibly manage. The moment of truth for Screamer’s silly adjustments to his gate! He felt a twisting jerk inside himself, somewhere, as he transitioned between places, but the sky was familiar and reassuringly cool.
The world that reappeared below looked… odd… but he put that down to fright.
He gave an over-stressed cry of alarm – there was only one thing almost as bad as being trapped underground, and that was falling. He’d gone from one bad situation to another one comparable in awfulness. And with one thruster missing altogether, the scramble to remain airborne and save himself from more damage was over almost before it had begun. He landed with a whunch in the heap of old recycling; scrap metal cascaded briefly across his flailing limbs.
The stars formed a reassuring, relaxing vista overhead; you’re not underground any more, and you’re not falling.
“Hello,” the little femme greeted, offering one tiny hand to him.
“How did you hurt yourself?” she wondered, settling down on her perch on his shoulder.
“I’m a teleport,” he replied, hobbling away; the crutch was just small enough to be unstable, but no so small that it was useless. “I wasn’t looking where I was going and got my leg trapped in the rocks.”
“You couldn’t just lift the rocks away?”
He smiled, painfully.
“Home is nearer than the station,” she explained. “We can call the Super from there.”
‘The Super?’ He smiled in spite of himself. Must be short for the Superintendent. “Let me guess, there’s a Policebot in the family?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, patting his wings. “You’re Police too?”
“You don’t already know me?” He gave her a curious look. Maybe he’d ended up further out of the district than he’d thought? And, well, the recycling plant was quite a way over.
She shook her head. “No. But I don’t know everyone.”
“He’s not home yet,” she said, disappointedly. “Want to come in and wait?”
“Now, you are really going to have to stop being so trusting, missy,” Skywarp chided. “I could be anyone! I could even be wearing these colours to trick you into thinking I’m a police officer.”
She led him over to the sofa, anyway. “Yes, but your squares are worn,” she pointed out, clambering onto the arm of the seat, and reaching out a small finger to outline the scuffed yellow and blue trim. “You’ve been dressed as police for a long time. So I think you really are police! Even if I don’t know you, and I think I’d know a flier as big as you.”
Hmm. Crunch time. “You don’t know Starscream?”
“Oh, yes, I know him,” she replied, blithely, not even blinking at the name. “He’s not as big as you, though.”
“You sure?” Skywarp gave her a suspicious look. “We’re the same model.”
“No.” She shook her head. “He has rounded arms. And polarity vanes, not big thrusters.” She stroked his wings, curiously, and ran her hands down his arms. “You’re all sharp angles and pointy bits. Scarlet and Dack are all smooth and soft-looking. Better for flying, and they can get further on less energon.”
Scarlet and Dack? Skywarp had to work hard to keep a straight face, and not because he wanted to laugh. Something was very, very wrong here, but he couldn’t quite plant a finger on it.
“Helloooo brightling,” a voice greeted, and Blink gave a squeak of laughter; there was a flicker of movement and her little feet came into view as she was swung around in the air. “How’s my bright little femme?”
“Being silly, Day.”
“We’ve got a visitor,” he heard her explain.
‘Day’ turned out to be Whitesides; the little gravity cycle met his gaze across the room and froze up completely. The flask of energon slipped out of his slack fingers and smashed on his foot; that seemed to wake him up. “Oh! Oh, Primus, what a mess. Um,” he flustered. “Blink, brightling? While I clear up all this mess, could you patch a signal to the station, call the Superintendent over?”
“What’s going on, Whites?”
The cycle finally glanced up and met his gaze, flicking pieces of broken crystal into the dustpan. “Uh, well. You’ve been gone a long time, sir. Everyone thought you were dead.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone a long time’?” the Seeker scoffed, humourlessly. “So I had a little panic attack underground and spent the night in a heap of recycling, so what? That’s hardly an eternity.”
“Well, sir,” Whitesides went on, quietly, although Skywarp barely heard him, transfixed as he was by Starscream’s strange, sleek new look. “You’ve been gone almost thirty nine Vorns.”
Well, it looked kinda like Screamer – it was red and white and blue and grouchy in all the right places – but it was a skinny little thing, slightly built and a whole lot less boxy.
“It’s called necessity,” the strange machine said, and Skywarp was half-relieved half-disappointed that it was Screamer’s voice. “Energy efficiency in a brave new world. The fact we’re not fighting over every last tiny erg of power doesn’t mean we’re still desperately short of it, and running those heavy alts with big noisy engines? We just don’t have the energon for it! So we had to make the sacrifice.” He patted his own wings. “We use a polarity vane system, now – takes less fuel to start with, and makes a better use of what it does use.”
He gave Thundercracker another resentful glance; his almost unrecognisably sleek, trim lines only emphasised how bulky their Earthly alts had been, and Skywarp felt unfamiliarly heavy, almost sluggish by comparison. “And you’re making me feel like a lumbering great heifer,” he grumbled, quietly, folding his arms.
“We already offered you the refit,” his blue wingmate reminded him. “You’re going to need the vanes no matter what, so you may as well go the whole way. Otherwise you’ll have to stay grounded, because we don’t have the energon to spare to power the old style propulsion.”
Skywarp propped his chin in his hands, tiredly. “You can’t make some sort of special dispensation for me? Until I go home?”
Thundercracker and Starscream swapped looks.
“Well, ah, that’s the problem,” Thundercracker started, uneasily.
“We don’t know if we can send you back,” Starscream interrupted, bluntly. “And I don’t just mean in terms of the science of it, I think we’ll end up with a set of monstrous paradoxes if we indulge you.”
Skywarp lifted his head back out of his hands. “…What?” His jaw had sagged in genuine horror. “It’s not about indulging me, or giving me special treatment or anything, you have to send me back! I don’t belong here…!”
“You can’t go back in time. The past is immutable,” Starscream scolded. “If you try and go back, you’ll change this future, and if you change the timeline after you go back you’ll put yourself into a paradox. This future won’t happen!”
“No offence, Screamer, but I don’t want this future to happen!” Skywarp folded his arms. “I don’t want to skip over forty vorns of my own life! And I don’t want to end up in this horrible alien world where everything’s just… wrong! To you, the past might well be… well… whatever you said it is. But it’s still my future, from my point of view-!”
“Is anything sinking through those thick dermal plates to your process core, or does it just take extra practice to be so stupid?
“Let me give you an example. If you go back in time and make sure we cure Sepp,” he said, softly, “she won’t still be ill when you get to this future. And if she’s not ill in the resulting future, how will you know to go back to your own time and give me the information I need to cure her? It goes round in circles, Skywarp.
“Maybe it’ll just affect me,” the teleport pleaded. “Maybe it’s just my own… ‘timestream’ or whatever old science-fiction nonsense they call it these days. Maybe it’s all self-contained or something! I’ll remember it all but you’ll tell me it’s a hallucination, or… I just-… I need-… You can’t make me stay here!”
“Now I know we let him watch too much television, back on Earth,” Thundercracker deadpanned.
/end crapdump
I'll probably check my emails before I scoot off tomorrow, BUT I'm off on a training course for a day or two. :) I'll be back friday.
Edit: Okay, things have been appropriately edited and stuff, and I'm heading off. See y'all laters. :)
Okay, so I'm bored and realised I have way loads of notes cluttering my computer's hard-drive. Here's some of them.
This bit is (obviously) set in the past. I'm still trying to think where to put it. :P
She stood a good head and shoulders taller than the rest – a willowy stick of jade coloured dermal plating, all angles and joints, looking like she’d been reformatted into a protoform very slightly too tall for her bulk once she’d emerged from her sparklinghood.
“Who’s that?” Hardline gave Boxer a prod in the shoulder.
“Eh, what? Where?” The bigger mech followed his pointing finger, and quickly found the gangrel femme that Hardline was watching. “Oh, her. Not sure what her name is. Exchange student from two districts over, started yesterday. Training for surgery.”
“Surgery? Skinny thing like that?”
“Ah, that’s only because she’s not had a refit yet."
The library was not a place Hardline often found himself; he wasn’t particularly academic and his course didn’t have much pre-reading to do, so his only reasons to come in would be to find a news article or else tagging along behind his more intellectual forensics coursemates. As such, it took him a good portion of a cycle doing a big looping wander all the way up to the top floor and halfway back down before he found his quarry, poring over a text in the quiet study area behind the engineering section. He dithered in the doorway, for a while, and only made himself look all the more self-conscious.
Finally he plucked up the courage to speak; rubbed the back of his neck and shifted from foot to foot, rehearsed the words in his head and came up with a totally ineffectual; “Um-… hello?”
She looked up from her databoard, at last, and her severe features relaxed a little, curving into something like a dry smile. “Hello. Can I help you?”
“Oh, um, well… is this seat taken?” he blurted.
She thankfully ignored the fact that the study area was otherwise deserted and there were plenty of empty tables around her, and instead used a foot to push the chair out from under the table. “Go right ahead,” she invited. “I’m not expecting company.”
“Um, can I be your company?” he wondered, boldly, and his optics instantly ‘blushed’ lilac.
The dry smile relaxed a little further, into something a lot warmer. “If you like,” she agreed. “But I’m not very interesting.”
“I’ll reserve judgement.” He slid himself onto the chair, and was relieved when his luck took a turn for the better and he didn’t immediately fall off the opposite side. “We might have a lot in common.”
She chuckled, and arched her brows. “Perhaps,” she allowed, although he sensed she probably actually meant although probably not. You’re a big dumb police trainee, I’m a med student, how much in common can we have?
He watched her squiggle characters onto a Notepane by her elbow, for a while. She had a concise, elegant precision about her that made him purse his lips and briefly consider calling this whole stupid thing straight off again. His own manner was so choppy – he’d only been here a hundred orns or so but had already earned the nickname ‘Hack’ – it just seemed like yet another difference that would make them incompatible.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around much. Are you new here?” Stupid question, of course she was new. He cringed inwardly and hastily added, before she could think he was too much of an idiot; “Uh, that is, when did you start?”
“Oh, only a couple of orns ago,” she confirmed, and shrugged, lopsidedly. “I always seem to pass under most peoples’ radar. Which is apparently a lot easier to do than you’d think, for such a tall skinny stem of green.”
“I wasn’t going to ask that,” he lied. “Or rather, I was going to say, how can someone as pretty as you go undetected?”
Her brow perked, curiously, and he immediately wished the ground would swallow him. Smooth move, Hardline. Now she knows you’re an idiot.
She didn’t tell him to stop extracting the purge and leave her in peace, though. “That’s not a label I usually get applied to me,” she confessed, dryly.
“Well, come on, police. If you’re going to put the moves on me, you can at least tell me your name.”
He managed to pick his sagging jaw up off the floor. “…uhh, it’s Hardline,” he choked the words out.
“Forceps.” She offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you, constable.”
He managed to get enough co-ordination together to accept the proffered hand and give it a shake; his blue fingers lingered a fraction of a second too long in her green ones, and he felt the red flush back into his gaze. “…uhhh, thanks.” He averted his optics and rubbed his neck, embarrassed.
“Will you be in training tomorrow?”
“Uhhh… yes?”
“Good!” She covered his hands with one of her own. “I’ll meet you in the library foyer at sun-high. We can take the noon break together, if you like.”
Power of speech had left him. “I-… well-… I-… yes?”
Her grin went lopsided again. “I’ll take that as an agreement.”
He dithered for a good breem or two; watched her from the training yard, just out of plain view, and chewed himself over. Who was he trying to kid, anyway? He was just a dumb protoform with delusions of grandeur, she was going to be a freaking surgeon. Eventually she’d cotton on to what he was and turn away and find herself someone with a comparable level of intelligence, and he’d find himself with yet another big pot of nothing. He should spare her the irritation and just… forget it. Back out. Save her the trouble in the long run.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” she observed, coming forwards, and it left him curling up in shame at seeing the relief painted so clear on her face.
“I was… held up in training,” he lied. “Sorry. I would have got a message to you if I’d known I’d be late.”
“That’s okay.” She shrugged. “I know I’m not everyone’s favourite design.”
“Oh, hey, hang on, I wasn’t late because-…” She thought he was going to stand her up because he didn’t like her looks? He gave himself another little inner kick and steeled his resolve. “I had no plans to set you up, Forceps. I don’t know if that’s what people do, where you come from, but I wouldn’t drop you because I thought you were unappealing to look at-”
“So you do think I’m ugly?”
“What? That’s not-… no! That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I’m just-…” He shifted awkwardly, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I’m just… I…” He lifted his gaze, humbly, and managed to hold hers for a few moments. “I’m not good with femmes. I’m big and clumsy and kinda stupid, and the few femmes I’ve known at any level past just saying ‘hello’ in corridors usually do a runner. I kinda… didn’t want to get here and see you’d set me up.”
“I’m not sure if I should be flattered or annoyed,” she deadpanned, and for a second he was convinced he’d put his foot in it again when she took his hand. “So let’s pretend it didn’t happen, right?”
(Big break here. Goes from "Golden Age" sort of setting - at least, certainly a good way pre-war - to the dawn of the fighting. Essentially, there's been an attack on a supply depot at the District General where Forceps is placed; no-one's really claimed responsibility, and because it was a hit-and-run fuel-theft it could have been anyone, but the Decepticons have got the blame anyway.)
“Sepp?” His voice came to her as if from a distance – out in the corridor, and behind the muffling fog of curtain. “Are you here? I swear, they’ve had me running in circles, if this is the wrong room again…”
He pushed the curtain back, and managed the shortest, faintest of smiles at realising he’d found her. She sat up on the berth, hands resting on her legs, looking shaky but physically okay. “Hey, Hack,” she greeted, faintly. “Yes, you found me at last. I’d have come to find you but I, um… don’t think I’ll be walking too far unaided.”
“Are you all right?” He sagged to his knees beside the chilly medical berth, and folded one of her hands into both of his. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she reassured, quietly, brushing the fingertips of her free hand over his cheek. “Physically, at least. No damage done. Not to me, anyway.”
“…the little one?” He gulped the words out.
She forced a smile that managed to twist her face into a mask of sorrow. “Harmonic wasn’t stable,” she rasped, simply. “I knew it was going to happen. I lost it.”
He visibly crumpled, as if someone had punched him square in the face. “…lost-…?” he echoed, shakily. “No, no, it… it was fine, before. It was fine! So-… so little time left to go, it can’t… it can’t be gone!”
She rested her cheek against his shoulder, and listened to the helpless static that poured from his vocaliser. The loss of their little one had left her feeling empty; silent, inside. The constricting discomfort of trying to hold two sparks in one casing was gone, but it felt like the dissipated spark had stolen a piece of her away with it, when it had faded.
In a way – a way she would never express to Hardline – it was a relief that it was gone. It had never felt stable, to her, not since the beginning. Her own spark had never had the sweetest harmony – a bit rough around the edges, like her moods – and she’d been amazed that the fission had gone as well as it had done! But the sparkling itself had always given her the jitters – there was something non-cohesive about the way it twisted, something too disperse about the harmonies. Even if she’d got it to term and into its own casing, there was no guarantee it’d have survived. And this… just… seemed like proof.
Not that it made much difference to the gentle-natured Policebot sobbing his despair into her shoulder. The idea of a sparkling of their own had put a spring in his stride and lifted the gloom off his shoulders – he’d suddenly turned back into the laughing, irreverent lug she’d known at University, before the fuel crisis began, and the rioting, and the fear that he was so constantly living shoulder-to-shoulder with and seeing the results of, day in, day out…
“We can try again,” she promised, faintly. “Once this has blown over.”
“I swear, Sepp, I won’t let this stand,” he wept. “If it hadn’t been for those Decepticons-… if it hadn’t been for them…”
“It was no-one’s fault,” she interrupted, tightening her arms around him. “This was going to happen. It would have happened if I’d been sat watching the news. No-one caused it except me.”
She felt him shift in her arms, draw his head back to look her in the optic.
“Maybe my spark just isn’t configured right for procreating,” she apologised, managing a lopsided, miserable smile for him. “I’m so sorry, Hack-”
“Don’t apologise,” he insisted, and enclosed both her hands in both of his. “Don’t apologise. This was not your fault.” His wet blue optics had taken on a hard, violet edge. “There’s only one machine to blame for this, and I’ll see to it that he pays his dues-”
“Hack-”
She noticed the new little patch of red on his powerful chest the instant the came through the door, but kept her vocaliser offline.
“So. You went, after all.”
It didn’t take university-level intelligence to work out what she meant. Even after all those arguments, you still went to the Autobots.
“Won’t you come with me?” he wondered, quietly, offering a hand for hers. “We can make a difference if we stand together on this. We can help end this stupid war.”
“No, no, we’ve been through this. I can’t take a faction.” She shook her head, backing up a step. “I can’t. It’s not right. My skills – and yours! – should be available to anyone who needs them. Let the politicians quarrel all they like, but we should be here to keep society running normally!”
“There won’t be any society left, if we don’t stop those Decepticons.”
“Then it’s all the more imperative my services are available!”
“You’re doing this for the wrong reason!”
“The death of our sparkling is the wrong reason to take up arms against the monsters that caused it?!”
“Hack, I caused it! It’s my spark that’s not got good enough fissive properties!” She clapped a hand down on her chest, angrily. “It was nothing to do with outside influences, nothing to do with ‘the enemy’! It was all down to me and my horrible, useless, substandard spark.
“Stop raking over this, Hardline!” she bellowed, losing her rag at last. “If you want to go play soldier with the Autobots, then go do it! But don’t use that tiny life we almost created as the excuse!”
He recoiled from her. “Forceps-”
“We should be trying to heal, not keep on picking the wound raw again!”
It was getting late, and Spotweld had already shut most of his televisual equipment off prior to getting his head down for a rest when there was a hesitant little tap tap at the door. Who could that be, this time of night?
It turned out to be Forceps – shoulders rounded, looking… tired. Wan. Didn’t take a lot of heavy thinking to work out what must have happened. Must have argued again.
“Hey, Spots.” She looked… forlorn. “You still have that spare room going cheap?”
“Well-… yes, I guess, if you need it?” He watched her duck under his arm and into the living room. “I thought you and-”
“It’s off,” she interrupted, curtly, and collapsed into the closest armchair. “Too many… intractable differences.”
Spotweld perched opposite her, and elected not to question too deeply about the scuffs of white paint around her brows, shoulders, the dull smudges of cobalt on the backs of her knuckles. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too, Spots.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, squinched her optics closed. “Me too.”
"Future Tense"
I'm sure I had more notes than this. Hrm. Oh well! Kinda supposed to be set after an attack of some sort which leaves several people trapped underground, in a cave system of some sort.
She thrummed her vents to get rock dust out of them, and stared blindly out into the gloom. “Hack?” Her voice sounded muffled by the snow of falling ash and detritus. “Hardline, answer me!”
There was a pause that felt far too long, and two muted blue lights finally appeared. “…hearyou,” he groaned.
She crawled forwards, patting her hands along the floor until the found the rest of him. “Are you all right? Any new damage?”
“…nothin’new,” he confirmed, heavily. “…jus’the… *khn*… just the same as b’fore… damn, does this hurt…”
“Of course it hurts,” she half-scolded, relieved. Nothing that could whine that much could be too badly damaged.
“Are we trapped in here?” he wondered, quietly.
She nodded, glumly. “Unfortunately. And I don’t even want to try and think how long it’ll take them to dig all the way down to us. I’m halfway inclined to think we’d be better off just going into stasis until they get here.”
He snugged the top of his head more comfortably against her side. “I don’t mind, if I’m here with you.”
Footloose was – miraculously – fine. She was fizzing with concerned static, and all over him with careful little fingers, checking for damage, but otherwise undamaged.
His right thruster just… stopped, abruptly, a third of the way down. He groaned, miserably, knowing what he’d done; it was only the third time he’d ever done it – the first time had been bad enough that he’d never done it since – but he’d jumped without a good view of where he was going. And had “quantum entangled” his right leg with the rocks – literally mixed the two different sets of atoms of the two different objects together into the same place. The only way to get out? Would be to cut his leg off.
“Lucy? You need to go to the surface and get help,” he instructed, a lot more calmly than he actually felt. “And you need to do it the long way. No teleporting!”
“It would be quicker-” she protested, but he lifted a finger for quiet and she actually did as told for once.
“You’ve seen my leg, haven’t you? And you’ve entangled yourself in things before as well. Now imagine you misjudge and entangle your whole body into the rocks. Who’s going to find us? If you even survive it! So no teleporting until you’re back on the surface. Right?”
You’re all right, he scolded himself. You’re fine. Aside from the thruster, you’re uninjured. Don’t need to overreact. Don’t need to overreact. Come on, what would TC do in this sort of situation? He’d be calm and collected and remind you that you’re not that far und-… undergr-… away from friends, all you have to do is wait for Lou to get back topside and they can track her positioning all the way back down here and get you out.
…Could take ‘em a while to triangulate where you are, though. And damn, it’ll sure take ‘em a while to dig all the way down here. All the way down here through all these-… all these rocks-…
Don’t need to overreact.
And that’s assuming Lou took your advice and kept her teleport offline! What if she went and blended herself with the rocks? Because damn, she’s still got your impulsive streak and might still think she knows best!
…Don’t need to overreact.
His fans hitched, a soft little stutter of gulping noise that he found himself focusing on.
Don’t need to overreact, Skywarp. Don’t. Need. To overreact!
She could be dead after all. Merged her little spark with the rocks and fizzled out.
Oh Primus please stay calm!
Melting down here. No air. Stifling hot, oh damn.
His spark felt constricted; thudding pain with every not-so-subtle shift in harmonic, and the twisting of an electrical arc with every movement.
Going to die down here. My spark is already losing cohesion, uncoiling, flickering out. And my hands-… is that the dark playing tricks on my perception or are they less brightly coloured than they were?
The words formed a drumbeat in his mind – repeating over and over, inescapable, impossible to ignore, a thudding cyclical pulse of intangible noise that seemed to go with every tiny shift in his spark’s harmonic. Get Out. Get Out. Get Out. Get Out.
“…get me out,” he pleaded, not sure who he was talking to. “Oh damn oh sweet Primus get me out of here…!”
Connectors tore away beneath his frantic, clawing fingers. Energon spat from ruptured lines, coating the rocks and fizzing a lilac fluorescence into the gloom. Get out get out get out.
The instant his leg was free – the instant he’d shredded his way through enough connectors to tear himself apart at the knee – he went against every instruction he’d ever given Footloose and teleported himself as far up as he could possibly manage. The moment of truth for Screamer’s silly adjustments to his gate! He felt a twisting jerk inside himself, somewhere, as he transitioned between places, but the sky was familiar and reassuringly cool.
The world that reappeared below looked… odd… but he put that down to fright.
He gave an over-stressed cry of alarm – there was only one thing almost as bad as being trapped underground, and that was falling. He’d gone from one bad situation to another one comparable in awfulness. And with one thruster missing altogether, the scramble to remain airborne and save himself from more damage was over almost before it had begun. He landed with a whunch in the heap of old recycling; scrap metal cascaded briefly across his flailing limbs.
The stars formed a reassuring, relaxing vista overhead; you’re not underground any more, and you’re not falling.
“Hello,” the little femme greeted, offering one tiny hand to him.
“How did you hurt yourself?” she wondered, settling down on her perch on his shoulder.
“I’m a teleport,” he replied, hobbling away; the crutch was just small enough to be unstable, but no so small that it was useless. “I wasn’t looking where I was going and got my leg trapped in the rocks.”
“You couldn’t just lift the rocks away?”
He smiled, painfully.
“Home is nearer than the station,” she explained. “We can call the Super from there.”
‘The Super?’ He smiled in spite of himself. Must be short for the Superintendent. “Let me guess, there’s a Policebot in the family?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, patting his wings. “You’re Police too?”
“You don’t already know me?” He gave her a curious look. Maybe he’d ended up further out of the district than he’d thought? And, well, the recycling plant was quite a way over.
She shook her head. “No. But I don’t know everyone.”
“He’s not home yet,” she said, disappointedly. “Want to come in and wait?”
“Now, you are really going to have to stop being so trusting, missy,” Skywarp chided. “I could be anyone! I could even be wearing these colours to trick you into thinking I’m a police officer.”
She led him over to the sofa, anyway. “Yes, but your squares are worn,” she pointed out, clambering onto the arm of the seat, and reaching out a small finger to outline the scuffed yellow and blue trim. “You’ve been dressed as police for a long time. So I think you really are police! Even if I don’t know you, and I think I’d know a flier as big as you.”
Hmm. Crunch time. “You don’t know Starscream?”
“Oh, yes, I know him,” she replied, blithely, not even blinking at the name. “He’s not as big as you, though.”
“You sure?” Skywarp gave her a suspicious look. “We’re the same model.”
“No.” She shook her head. “He has rounded arms. And polarity vanes, not big thrusters.” She stroked his wings, curiously, and ran her hands down his arms. “You’re all sharp angles and pointy bits. Scarlet and Dack are all smooth and soft-looking. Better for flying, and they can get further on less energon.”
Scarlet and Dack? Skywarp had to work hard to keep a straight face, and not because he wanted to laugh. Something was very, very wrong here, but he couldn’t quite plant a finger on it.
“Helloooo brightling,” a voice greeted, and Blink gave a squeak of laughter; there was a flicker of movement and her little feet came into view as she was swung around in the air. “How’s my bright little femme?”
“Being silly, Day.”
“We’ve got a visitor,” he heard her explain.
‘Day’ turned out to be Whitesides; the little gravity cycle met his gaze across the room and froze up completely. The flask of energon slipped out of his slack fingers and smashed on his foot; that seemed to wake him up. “Oh! Oh, Primus, what a mess. Um,” he flustered. “Blink, brightling? While I clear up all this mess, could you patch a signal to the station, call the Superintendent over?”
“What’s going on, Whites?”
The cycle finally glanced up and met his gaze, flicking pieces of broken crystal into the dustpan. “Uh, well. You’ve been gone a long time, sir. Everyone thought you were dead.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone a long time’?” the Seeker scoffed, humourlessly. “So I had a little panic attack underground and spent the night in a heap of recycling, so what? That’s hardly an eternity.”
“Well, sir,” Whitesides went on, quietly, although Skywarp barely heard him, transfixed as he was by Starscream’s strange, sleek new look. “You’ve been gone almost thirty nine Vorns.”
Well, it looked kinda like Screamer – it was red and white and blue and grouchy in all the right places – but it was a skinny little thing, slightly built and a whole lot less boxy.
“It’s called necessity,” the strange machine said, and Skywarp was half-relieved half-disappointed that it was Screamer’s voice. “Energy efficiency in a brave new world. The fact we’re not fighting over every last tiny erg of power doesn’t mean we’re still desperately short of it, and running those heavy alts with big noisy engines? We just don’t have the energon for it! So we had to make the sacrifice.” He patted his own wings. “We use a polarity vane system, now – takes less fuel to start with, and makes a better use of what it does use.”
He gave Thundercracker another resentful glance; his almost unrecognisably sleek, trim lines only emphasised how bulky their Earthly alts had been, and Skywarp felt unfamiliarly heavy, almost sluggish by comparison. “And you’re making me feel like a lumbering great heifer,” he grumbled, quietly, folding his arms.
“We already offered you the refit,” his blue wingmate reminded him. “You’re going to need the vanes no matter what, so you may as well go the whole way. Otherwise you’ll have to stay grounded, because we don’t have the energon to spare to power the old style propulsion.”
Skywarp propped his chin in his hands, tiredly. “You can’t make some sort of special dispensation for me? Until I go home?”
Thundercracker and Starscream swapped looks.
“Well, ah, that’s the problem,” Thundercracker started, uneasily.
“We don’t know if we can send you back,” Starscream interrupted, bluntly. “And I don’t just mean in terms of the science of it, I think we’ll end up with a set of monstrous paradoxes if we indulge you.”
Skywarp lifted his head back out of his hands. “…What?” His jaw had sagged in genuine horror. “It’s not about indulging me, or giving me special treatment or anything, you have to send me back! I don’t belong here…!”
“You can’t go back in time. The past is immutable,” Starscream scolded. “If you try and go back, you’ll change this future, and if you change the timeline after you go back you’ll put yourself into a paradox. This future won’t happen!”
“No offence, Screamer, but I don’t want this future to happen!” Skywarp folded his arms. “I don’t want to skip over forty vorns of my own life! And I don’t want to end up in this horrible alien world where everything’s just… wrong! To you, the past might well be… well… whatever you said it is. But it’s still my future, from my point of view-!”
“Is anything sinking through those thick dermal plates to your process core, or does it just take extra practice to be so stupid?
“Let me give you an example. If you go back in time and make sure we cure Sepp,” he said, softly, “she won’t still be ill when you get to this future. And if she’s not ill in the resulting future, how will you know to go back to your own time and give me the information I need to cure her? It goes round in circles, Skywarp.
“Maybe it’ll just affect me,” the teleport pleaded. “Maybe it’s just my own… ‘timestream’ or whatever old science-fiction nonsense they call it these days. Maybe it’s all self-contained or something! I’ll remember it all but you’ll tell me it’s a hallucination, or… I just-… I need-… You can’t make me stay here!”
“Now I know we let him watch too much television, back on Earth,” Thundercracker deadpanned.
/end crapdump
I'll probably check my emails before I scoot off tomorrow, BUT I'm off on a training course for a day or two. :) I'll be back friday.
Edit: Okay, things have been appropriately edited and stuff, and I'm heading off. See y'all laters. :)
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Blink is absolutely adorable! :)
And no, wait! Skywarp can't just miss his sparklings growing up!
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