Got bit by a song!bunny.
Oct. 18th, 2009 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ante_luceTitle: Substitute
'Verse: IDW Transformers - Megatron Origin
Characters: Can you guess?
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing.
Notes: I'd just finished reading the comic too. Let's just say having source material on hand is not good for the sanity.
They were here again. The fraggers from the Senate, on a two cycle ‘routine inspection’.
What ‘routine inspection’ needed a full complement of Enforcers? And for an aft end of Cybertron energon mine?
If energon had been going missing, fine, bring the entire slagging army, he’d kick out the ones found thieving personally. But all communications with the Senate had insisted nothing was out of the ordinary. The Enforcers were just a standard measure.
Standard measure, his aft.
You only brought out the guns when you expected trouble. Miners were reasonable, practical bots. If the inspections were for the well being of the miners, then the Senator could walk in unarmed and with minimal escort. The bots in this outpost had enough common sense to recognise a good thing when they saw it (you didn’t live long in the mines without that ability). They didn’t need weapons shoved in their faceplates to make them line up. They had nothing to hide.
The Senator’s craft had landed. He gritted his denta. Time to fall in.
= = =
Those Enforcers had almost been required, after all. The crew had not been happy with the new allocation system of supplies, and with the increase in the energon quota their mine had to fulfil. They’d raised their voices at the Senator, and the mech ordered the Enforcers to suppress them if they so much as stepped forward.
He’d seen where this was going, and shoved his way to the front of the crowd to hold his comrades back. They subsided, and he dropped his guard a little, turning around to face the Autobots once more.
How was he to know Flashpoint would be an idiot?
The glitch broke ranks to ‘personally express his discontent’ to the Senator, and he’d had to lunge at the mech to stop him. Unfortunately, one of the Enforcers had been on a hair trigger, because the next thing he knew, he was on the ground, clutching his side.
The rest of the miners murmured, stunned as the Senator shouted for the Enforcers to ‘suppress’ them. They would have done so if someone hadn’t snapped at them to stand down. He looked up with pain hazed optics to see a mech standing in front of him, between him and the Autobots. The mech’s back was to him (already he could hear the others muttering about the gesture; proving his lack of fear, or a show of trust?), and he could see a pair of distinctive panels extending from the other bot’s shoulders, shifting back and forth as the black and white Enforcer stared down his fellows.
“What is the meaning of this?! These miners need to be reminded of their place!”
“With all due respect, Senator, I lead this squad, not you. The responsibility of an Enforcer is the protection of the Cybertronian citizenry, a population that includes these miners. I will not allow my bots to abuse their authority in such a manner. The crew of this outpost are not a threat to you.”
His processors felt slow, but he recognised what the mech was doing. Rolling over so he could see his colleagues (frag, that hurt), he hissed at them to stay back and not do anything stupid, and for someone to sit on Flashpoint before he got anyone killed.
They did so, and crisis averted, he allowed himself to pass out.
= = =
He onlined in pain. Someone had dragged him to his berth. As a team leader, he ranked a private room, though he often wondered what purpose that privacy served. He usually went offline the nanoclick he hit horizontal.
Now, he shifted experimentally, and winced as his damaged plating cracked and shifted. Glancing down, he noted that something was sparking and energon had dried around the edges of the wound, then groaned and looked back at the ceiling. His door slid open and he jerked upright, instantly regretting it as his circuits sang with agony. Biting back the curse, he nodded to his visitor, the black and white Enforcer from before.
“Does the Senator want to check our quarters now?”
His voice was steady, giving away nothing, but the mech didn’t seem fooled.
“The inspection is concluded. We will leave next cycle, in accordance to our schedule. I came to apologise for the actions of my subordinate. Why have you not received treatment for your wound?”
He laughed, dark and bitter.
“With what supplies? Mining’s a rough operation, we run out fast and every time the Senate gets it in their exhausts that budget cuts are required, we’re the first ones to get hit. I can’t look my team in the optic some cycles. And now the fraggers want to make things worse. Do they want us to die out?”
“Hold still.”
The mech was kneeling before him and this close, he could see every detail of those distinctive features. To distract himself from them, he asked what he was doing.
“What I can. Every Enforcer carries a repair kit.”
“I see.”
He fell silent, left to his thoughts and contemplation of black and white paint and sensor panels. There wasn’t even any pain to draw his attention. The Enforcer had deactivated the sensor nets around the wound, something the mine’s slapdash medical facility (at least, what they passed off as a medical facility) usually didn’t do. They didn’t have the luxury, the miners were needed out and on their pedes as fast as possible.
“Can you feel this? Does it hurt?”
Startled, he realised the mech had finished the repairs, and was now gently pressing on the fresh welds. He found his voice.
“There’s pressure, and slight pain. Less than before.”
“Good, that means I reconnected everything correctly. Your self repair will have to do the rest, I’m afraid. A kit is no substitute for a med bay and a trained medic.”
The Enforcer rose, wiping white hands clean of his energon. He rose as well, finally noticing that the other mech was smaller than him. It had been hard to judge while lying on the floor in a puddle of his lifefluids, and the mech had a… presence, about him that made judging from any sort of remove difficult.
“You didn’t have to. My thanks.”
“You were hurt by a member of my squad through no fault of your own. It was my duty to see that you were treated.”
“And if it had been my fault?”
“Then you would be in stasis, on the way back to Cybertron for a trial if I were not able to convince the Senator of extenuating circumstances.”
Honour and common sense, with a practical sense of compassion.
And it had been a long time since anyone had shown him any sort of care.
His hands moved of their own volition, tracing the edges of the Enforcer’s sensor panels. The extensions quivered, rising sharply away from his touch as the mech turned to face him. He didn’t look away, meeting piercing blue optics with a steady gaze of his own.
“Please.”
He didn’t know how the word escaped him, only that the Enforcer’s optics flickered briefly, as if in hesitation. When the mech didn’t say anything, and didn’t leave, he closed the gap between them.
= = =
He woke as the mech slipped off him and moved towards the door.
“Wait.”
The mech looked back, and he stalled. What could he say? He was a miner, stuck in this Primus forsaken pit until it ran dry and they moved on to the next Primus forsaken pit. The mech was an Enforcer; a ranking one who’d risked much to stand up for the miners, and would likely never come back here again, even if he was permitted to. An unreadable look passed between them, and he had to tear his optics away before he did something more idiotic than Flashpoint.
“Rest. My report will keep the Senator’s from causing your operation more difficulty. The Autobots are not all like he is.”
Then the black and white mech left.
It would be many, many vorns before he saw the Enforcer again.
= = =
“I’ll gut every one of you!”
“Inhibitor claw and Class 3 restraints! Now!!”
He knew that voice. Heard it in his recharge, like a fool sparkling who didn’t know when to let something go, saying his name in various tones, a name he’d never told its owner.
But he had to admit the mech definitely knew exactly what he was capable of (the bot was intimately familiar with a miner’s strength, after all). The Senate should have put that Enforcer in charge of the shut down operation on the C-12 outpost. He’d have made sure they couldn’t have escaped.
Then again, they might have considered the mech unsuitable for such a mission. Perhaps he’d refused to accept the order. He seemed the type.
The inhibitor claw powered up, and he fell into stasis.
= = =
Holed up in Kaon after their takeover of the city, he contemplated the mech who’d once been an Enforcer.
Prime’s… The ex-Prime’s Second now. Huh. He’d been a busy mech.
Something scrabbled across the floor and he had it in a choke hold in nanoclicks. The glitch held out a datachip, squealing something about information and a deal. He snatched the chip and dropped the malfunction, growling for someone to take the bot away until he’d made his decision.
In the privacy of his personal quarters, he viewed the data. His optics widened.
The black and white mech was bonded, and had been since before he’d entered the security force.
= = =
He stood before the glitch’s cell, sneering down at the chittering turborat of a mech that occupied it.
“Was- was the data to your li-liking?”
“How did you come by this information?”
“All- all on my own, sir! Chrr. I’ve got the- the dirt on all the top mechs in- in the Autobots! I can make it worth your- chrr while.”
“How can I be sure your data is reliable?”
“Chrr. I used- used to be a records mech in- in the Autobots. They didn’t think to- chrr check if I- I copied anything when they fired- fired me.”
“I want everything you have. Then you get your reward.”
“What do- do you offer?”
His smile was full of dark promise. “It will be generous. I assure you.”
= = =
He dropped the carcass into the smelter personally. He’d been generous, as promised. The traitor’s deactivation had been quick and painless. Going over the data, he extracted the information he would give to Soundwave, then deleted everything else and crushed the chips for good measure.
= = =
They’d caught a squad of Autobots. Most of them were knocked offline by the time they were dragged into their base, but one remained awake, clearly fearful, but determined not to show it. There were fewer with chevrons and sensor panels since Praxus had fallen, but enough still existed that the mech’s frame type wasn’t enough to give him pause. It was his colours.
Red detailing on grey.
He ordered the mechs kept alive, threw them into isolated cells, then left for his quarters (he’d finally come to appreciate the benefits of having privacy) to ponder his next decision. It was one he didn’t have to make. Alarms shrieked, and he was storming along the corridor. While the others swarmed in the direction of the breach, he headed elsewhere.
= = =
He was just in time to see a visored mech help the grey one through the hole blasted in the cell block. Another stood between him and their escaping forms. Black and white. Sensor panels flickered as he approached.
“Your bondmate. And our sparkling, I presume.”
The mech said nothing, though his panels flared, then went stock still.
“A crushed sparkchamber. Not damaged enough to kill him, but enough to make spark sharing life threatening. So you used me. Does he know?”
The mech spoke at last. “They both do. My bonded gave me his blessing, and I would never keep such information from my own creation.”
“And your… bonded. He cares for our creation?”
“Like his own.”
He bowed his head, coming to stand before the mech.
“… I’m sure you know my name by now.”
Blue optics, still as piercing as when he’d last seen them this close, met his. “The name of the Decepticon, yes.”
He cycled air for a long moment before he spoke. “An Enforcer once told a miner that the Autobots were not all like a certain Senator. Unfortunately, they were not all unlike him either.”
He gestured at the hole in the base’s wall. “Go. May that miner live on in your memory banks.”
A white hand laid itself briefly over a long healed wound, then withdrew as the Autobot vanished down the passage. He stared into the darkness for a moment, then turned and walked away.
'Verse: IDW Transformers - Megatron Origin
Characters: Can you guess?
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing.
Notes: I'd just finished reading the comic too. Let's just say having source material on hand is not good for the sanity.
They were here again. The fraggers from the Senate, on a two cycle ‘routine inspection’.
What ‘routine inspection’ needed a full complement of Enforcers? And for an aft end of Cybertron energon mine?
If energon had been going missing, fine, bring the entire slagging army, he’d kick out the ones found thieving personally. But all communications with the Senate had insisted nothing was out of the ordinary. The Enforcers were just a standard measure.
Standard measure, his aft.
You only brought out the guns when you expected trouble. Miners were reasonable, practical bots. If the inspections were for the well being of the miners, then the Senator could walk in unarmed and with minimal escort. The bots in this outpost had enough common sense to recognise a good thing when they saw it (you didn’t live long in the mines without that ability). They didn’t need weapons shoved in their faceplates to make them line up. They had nothing to hide.
The Senator’s craft had landed. He gritted his denta. Time to fall in.
= = =
Those Enforcers had almost been required, after all. The crew had not been happy with the new allocation system of supplies, and with the increase in the energon quota their mine had to fulfil. They’d raised their voices at the Senator, and the mech ordered the Enforcers to suppress them if they so much as stepped forward.
He’d seen where this was going, and shoved his way to the front of the crowd to hold his comrades back. They subsided, and he dropped his guard a little, turning around to face the Autobots once more.
How was he to know Flashpoint would be an idiot?
The glitch broke ranks to ‘personally express his discontent’ to the Senator, and he’d had to lunge at the mech to stop him. Unfortunately, one of the Enforcers had been on a hair trigger, because the next thing he knew, he was on the ground, clutching his side.
The rest of the miners murmured, stunned as the Senator shouted for the Enforcers to ‘suppress’ them. They would have done so if someone hadn’t snapped at them to stand down. He looked up with pain hazed optics to see a mech standing in front of him, between him and the Autobots. The mech’s back was to him (already he could hear the others muttering about the gesture; proving his lack of fear, or a show of trust?), and he could see a pair of distinctive panels extending from the other bot’s shoulders, shifting back and forth as the black and white Enforcer stared down his fellows.
“What is the meaning of this?! These miners need to be reminded of their place!”
“With all due respect, Senator, I lead this squad, not you. The responsibility of an Enforcer is the protection of the Cybertronian citizenry, a population that includes these miners. I will not allow my bots to abuse their authority in such a manner. The crew of this outpost are not a threat to you.”
His processors felt slow, but he recognised what the mech was doing. Rolling over so he could see his colleagues (frag, that hurt), he hissed at them to stay back and not do anything stupid, and for someone to sit on Flashpoint before he got anyone killed.
They did so, and crisis averted, he allowed himself to pass out.
= = =
He onlined in pain. Someone had dragged him to his berth. As a team leader, he ranked a private room, though he often wondered what purpose that privacy served. He usually went offline the nanoclick he hit horizontal.
Now, he shifted experimentally, and winced as his damaged plating cracked and shifted. Glancing down, he noted that something was sparking and energon had dried around the edges of the wound, then groaned and looked back at the ceiling. His door slid open and he jerked upright, instantly regretting it as his circuits sang with agony. Biting back the curse, he nodded to his visitor, the black and white Enforcer from before.
“Does the Senator want to check our quarters now?”
His voice was steady, giving away nothing, but the mech didn’t seem fooled.
“The inspection is concluded. We will leave next cycle, in accordance to our schedule. I came to apologise for the actions of my subordinate. Why have you not received treatment for your wound?”
He laughed, dark and bitter.
“With what supplies? Mining’s a rough operation, we run out fast and every time the Senate gets it in their exhausts that budget cuts are required, we’re the first ones to get hit. I can’t look my team in the optic some cycles. And now the fraggers want to make things worse. Do they want us to die out?”
“Hold still.”
The mech was kneeling before him and this close, he could see every detail of those distinctive features. To distract himself from them, he asked what he was doing.
“What I can. Every Enforcer carries a repair kit.”
“I see.”
He fell silent, left to his thoughts and contemplation of black and white paint and sensor panels. There wasn’t even any pain to draw his attention. The Enforcer had deactivated the sensor nets around the wound, something the mine’s slapdash medical facility (at least, what they passed off as a medical facility) usually didn’t do. They didn’t have the luxury, the miners were needed out and on their pedes as fast as possible.
“Can you feel this? Does it hurt?”
Startled, he realised the mech had finished the repairs, and was now gently pressing on the fresh welds. He found his voice.
“There’s pressure, and slight pain. Less than before.”
“Good, that means I reconnected everything correctly. Your self repair will have to do the rest, I’m afraid. A kit is no substitute for a med bay and a trained medic.”
The Enforcer rose, wiping white hands clean of his energon. He rose as well, finally noticing that the other mech was smaller than him. It had been hard to judge while lying on the floor in a puddle of his lifefluids, and the mech had a… presence, about him that made judging from any sort of remove difficult.
“You didn’t have to. My thanks.”
“You were hurt by a member of my squad through no fault of your own. It was my duty to see that you were treated.”
“And if it had been my fault?”
“Then you would be in stasis, on the way back to Cybertron for a trial if I were not able to convince the Senator of extenuating circumstances.”
Honour and common sense, with a practical sense of compassion.
And it had been a long time since anyone had shown him any sort of care.
His hands moved of their own volition, tracing the edges of the Enforcer’s sensor panels. The extensions quivered, rising sharply away from his touch as the mech turned to face him. He didn’t look away, meeting piercing blue optics with a steady gaze of his own.
“Please.”
He didn’t know how the word escaped him, only that the Enforcer’s optics flickered briefly, as if in hesitation. When the mech didn’t say anything, and didn’t leave, he closed the gap between them.
= = =
He woke as the mech slipped off him and moved towards the door.
“Wait.”
The mech looked back, and he stalled. What could he say? He was a miner, stuck in this Primus forsaken pit until it ran dry and they moved on to the next Primus forsaken pit. The mech was an Enforcer; a ranking one who’d risked much to stand up for the miners, and would likely never come back here again, even if he was permitted to. An unreadable look passed between them, and he had to tear his optics away before he did something more idiotic than Flashpoint.
“Rest. My report will keep the Senator’s from causing your operation more difficulty. The Autobots are not all like he is.”
Then the black and white mech left.
It would be many, many vorns before he saw the Enforcer again.
= = =
“I’ll gut every one of you!”
“Inhibitor claw and Class 3 restraints! Now!!”
He knew that voice. Heard it in his recharge, like a fool sparkling who didn’t know when to let something go, saying his name in various tones, a name he’d never told its owner.
But he had to admit the mech definitely knew exactly what he was capable of (the bot was intimately familiar with a miner’s strength, after all). The Senate should have put that Enforcer in charge of the shut down operation on the C-12 outpost. He’d have made sure they couldn’t have escaped.
Then again, they might have considered the mech unsuitable for such a mission. Perhaps he’d refused to accept the order. He seemed the type.
The inhibitor claw powered up, and he fell into stasis.
= = =
Holed up in Kaon after their takeover of the city, he contemplated the mech who’d once been an Enforcer.
Prime’s… The ex-Prime’s Second now. Huh. He’d been a busy mech.
Something scrabbled across the floor and he had it in a choke hold in nanoclicks. The glitch held out a datachip, squealing something about information and a deal. He snatched the chip and dropped the malfunction, growling for someone to take the bot away until he’d made his decision.
In the privacy of his personal quarters, he viewed the data. His optics widened.
The black and white mech was bonded, and had been since before he’d entered the security force.
= = =
He stood before the glitch’s cell, sneering down at the chittering turborat of a mech that occupied it.
“Was- was the data to your li-liking?”
“How did you come by this information?”
“All- all on my own, sir! Chrr. I’ve got the- the dirt on all the top mechs in- in the Autobots! I can make it worth your- chrr while.”
“How can I be sure your data is reliable?”
“Chrr. I used- used to be a records mech in- in the Autobots. They didn’t think to- chrr check if I- I copied anything when they fired- fired me.”
“I want everything you have. Then you get your reward.”
“What do- do you offer?”
His smile was full of dark promise. “It will be generous. I assure you.”
= = =
He dropped the carcass into the smelter personally. He’d been generous, as promised. The traitor’s deactivation had been quick and painless. Going over the data, he extracted the information he would give to Soundwave, then deleted everything else and crushed the chips for good measure.
= = =
They’d caught a squad of Autobots. Most of them were knocked offline by the time they were dragged into their base, but one remained awake, clearly fearful, but determined not to show it. There were fewer with chevrons and sensor panels since Praxus had fallen, but enough still existed that the mech’s frame type wasn’t enough to give him pause. It was his colours.
Red detailing on grey.
He ordered the mechs kept alive, threw them into isolated cells, then left for his quarters (he’d finally come to appreciate the benefits of having privacy) to ponder his next decision. It was one he didn’t have to make. Alarms shrieked, and he was storming along the corridor. While the others swarmed in the direction of the breach, he headed elsewhere.
= = =
He was just in time to see a visored mech help the grey one through the hole blasted in the cell block. Another stood between him and their escaping forms. Black and white. Sensor panels flickered as he approached.
“Your bondmate. And our sparkling, I presume.”
The mech said nothing, though his panels flared, then went stock still.
“A crushed sparkchamber. Not damaged enough to kill him, but enough to make spark sharing life threatening. So you used me. Does he know?”
The mech spoke at last. “They both do. My bonded gave me his blessing, and I would never keep such information from my own creation.”
“And your… bonded. He cares for our creation?”
“Like his own.”
He bowed his head, coming to stand before the mech.
“… I’m sure you know my name by now.”
Blue optics, still as piercing as when he’d last seen them this close, met his. “The name of the Decepticon, yes.”
He cycled air for a long moment before he spoke. “An Enforcer once told a miner that the Autobots were not all like a certain Senator. Unfortunately, they were not all unlike him either.”
He gestured at the hole in the base’s wall. “Go. May that miner live on in your memory banks.”
A white hand laid itself briefly over a long healed wound, then withdrew as the Autobot vanished down the passage. He stared into the darkness for a moment, then turned and walked away.
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Date: 2013-11-29 04:07 pm (UTC)