Work Text:
pardon me I make my way
have to get out
to the observation deck I go staring down
don't mind me I always seem this far off the rails
find some kind of happiness in all life's little fails
in these cold distances vacant and barren
we are the streamline
--"Open Arms, Empty Air" by Unextraordianry Gentlemen, from 5 Tales of God-Only-Knows
Debris
In orbit around Klo
Three Stels Ago
They waited.
Which, for Wreckers, meant drinking and brawling.
At the same time.
Artemis stayed out of the spotlight, nursing her stout. The facial seams had faded, but she kept those scratches and dents that did not impede her transformation in her exostructure. She needed a reminder — that's what happens when you get sloppy, Arty.
She was in a funk, but it came across to her brethren as determined and calculating. So be it.
Waiting for Skyfire's call, she claimed the back booth of the mess hall. Since the conflict with Legion, the Wreckers had grown from a handful of semi-retired soldiers stationed at outposts as guards or wardens to standing-order irregulars.
After a round of grappling followed by rowdy renditions of space shanties, Whirl landed in the seat next to her. Her first round as a Wrecker was with him, and although she initially liked him, Roadbuster's simple whisper of "don't trust him" in her audio receptor still resonated. But that first drink: Primus's Chosen Select, a premium engex whisky aged a quarter-millennium, and they had finished the entire bottle before she faced the Senate's inquiry on the disappearance of Rodimus Prime...
Hard not to trust a guy who brought a round of a favourite with him every time he sat with you.
"Damn, boss, you look like scrap run over," he greeted. "Boss," as she learnt early on, was an honorific Whirl used when he marginally liked someone. More that he was currying a favour to get on her good side in the case he did Something Stupid. Currently, he was under house arrest for the third time since she joined up.
"Aren't you sweet to notice?" She took the proffered shot. "What brings you to my corner tonight?"
"Can I ride with you?" He cut to the chase. "Seriously, I'm going mad with nothing to do other than punch myself in the face and 'Buster's telling me I've got to sit out. Again! C'mon, can't you just turn your head and let me board with you? This grounded slag is driving me frikkin' crazy!" He pounded back the shot in one go, so fast that Artemis did not see how he drank it without a discernible mouth. "Sky won't even know I'm there! C'mon, boss, please!"
Artemis raised the shot, pounding it back, then slammed it on the table, rim down. "Sorry, Whirl; we're looking at a suicide mission if things go south. I'd rather have you blowing the slag out of the 'Cons in my memory."
"Hey, I can do suicide missions! Those are my specialities!" He was desperate. Small wonder: a grounded flyer had no purpose. And Whirl needed a purpose, even if it was causing self-harm. "So what's the plan?"
She shrugged. "Kinda winging it."
"See! Perfect for me! I'm the champion of winging plans!"
"Whirl, the Senate's looking for a reason to get my aft in stockades; springing you off planet would be the nail in my coffin."
Whirl deflated, leaning forward on the table. "Probably wasn't a good idea to get sloshed before presenting your case to the Senate."
"How could I resist sharing a bottle of premium whisky with new friends?" She countered.
"Slag the Senate! Slag the High Council! We're frikkin' Wreckers!" He threw his shot glass onto the ground. "They go run and hide while we're out there risking life and spark for their war! You know what I say? Frag 'em! We got a planet to save! 'Cons to kill! Wrongs to right! Guns to fire! Yeah, let's frag scrap up! Whoooo!" He leapt from his seat and ran to the bar for another round.
"Someone's a wee bit cut off," Roadbuster chortled, taking the chair from another table and spinning it around to face Artemis. Straddling it, he set his own drink on the table. "So, any thoughts on the mission before we cut loose?"
"I made a bad call, and I've got to fix it." She took a pull of her drink. "I refused to consider using what we had...I wasn't going to risk our sentient ships to rescue Hot Rod."
"All for one 'bot," Roadbuster stressed. "Is Rod really worth one all this trouble?"
"Yes." She had no hesitation. "There's a reason why the Senate is scared of him. They learnt a hard lesson with Orion Pax and did not want it to happen again. They probably breathed a sigh of relief when Magnus took the Matrix, but did not expect him to put his chits in with Orion's ideals. With Rodimus, they lost control of the people."
"And you want that to continue," Roadbuster leaned back, tilting his glass.
"Control the Matrix, control the people," she nodded. "And with Rodimus, the people thought for themselves. They didn't need the Senate to tell them what to do. And it took a charismatic anarchist from Nyon to do it."
"Why not you, Prime?" he whispered, leaning forward as not to be overheard. "Why not you take up his path?"
"Because that's not my path," she hissed. "It's Rod's, not mine. As far as the Matrix is concerned, I'm only a courier."
"But what about you, Art? As far as you're concerned, that is?"
She grinned, raising her glass. "I'm a Wrecker."
*
Cybertropolis
Iacon District
Three Hundred Stels from Now, Two Decacycles Ago
Pantera gave the hammer a few test swings; it was beautifully balanced. When she had gained her current shell, she had taken up her escrima sticks once again. But this shell took to the blunt melee weapon as though it were her original form.
It felt wonderful.
"Primus, this is not good," Starscream grumbled. "I'm getting two different signatures — Sky's speculation is that somehow the generator split when it was engaged. I — I'm not a quantum physicist. I don't pretend to understand the details. All I know is that the ship existed in two states, and once observed, one should have collapsed into nonexistence, but for some reason, it didn't."
"And this massacre, perhaps, was done to rectify the damage of the same person existing in two places at the same time."
Starscream circled the generator, looking over at Pantera, and shrugged. "A theory. I'm thinking that where we are right now, this ship — this is the failed ship. And the universe tried to right itself and just shuttled it to somewhere where it did not exist — or had not existed in the first place."
"That doesn't explain the dead me," Pantera countered.
"Where's your original shell, Arty?" he questioned, holding up a talon. "What makes you you? Technically, you're not that shell in that room, nor does that shell have your spark. You can't be both dead and alive; they had to be removed from the original time line. At least, that's with my layman's understanding of quantum mechanics."
"What's going on with you?" she demanded. "You're being — " she let the observation hang.
"I believe the word you're looking for is 'nice'." He shrugged. "We're technorganics next to a quantum generator; no telling how that's affecting us. Maybe this is how I would have been if I had taken the right path in the road instead of the left."
"If you hadn't lost Sky," Pantera muttered, with no intention of him hearing it.
This quieted the Maximal Seeker, and he returned to the far end of the engine room, wings slumped and brushing the floor.
"Oi, flyboy!" she beckoned.
"You're right, Arty," he replied, sullen. "Who knows what would have happened otherwise? Maybe I'm tapping into that as to make you feel more comfortable. I've made you hate me for so long."
"Well, that's neither here nor there." Swinging the hammer back up to her shoulder, Pantera paced the perimeter of the room, staying outside the faded yellow markers. Her ears perked up at the sound of a small motor.
"Rattrap," Starscream hissed. "Slag."
"Oi, 'Tera! Skyfire! Optimus wants us gone five cycles ago!" He shouted, slamming on his breaks once in the room. His jaw dropped as he looked up at the generator, pointing a finger at the device. "What in the name of Gouda...?"
"That's what's been causing all the problems here," Pantera explained. "It's not supposed to be here."
"There's a factor I'm not finding," Skyfire revealed, returning from around the other side of the generator. "Something external affecting the system. And it isn't Megatron. Too old. Too deep. Too...I'm going to try something."
"Just be careful," Pantera warned, looking down at Rattrap. "Tell Optimus to pull the troops out; Sky and I have to stay."
"There's finding out what makes something tick, and things we're not supposed to know. This, kitty cat, is the latter. I say we get out of here before slag gets weirder than they already are." He scooted closer, keeping his voice low. "We need you to keep him from going full 'Kumbaya' on us, if you get my meaning." He nodded his head towards the door.
"That's Cheetor's job, not mine," she chided.
Rattrap held his hands out, optics wide. "'Tera — "
"Rattrap, I'm not leaving until we get this situation either under our control or out of Megatron's. There's no middle ground. He gets control of a quantum generator, it's the Beast Wars all over again, only on a universal scale."
"Slaggit!" Skyfire ran up to Pantera, grabbing her arm. "What are the chances that a metrotitan would be still integrated into Iacon?"
Pantera opened her mouth to answer, then groaned. "Metroplex."
"Metroplex," Skyfire nodded. To Rattrap, he asked, "Can you pick up certain energy signatures? Here's my thoughts: we need a team to go into Iacon, find the central hub for Metroplex. We need to hunt down the source for these energy signatures, otherwise we can't untangle this mess."
The rodent Maximal uttered a few false starts. "Do you realise how fraggin' large a metrotitan is?" Rattrap demanded.
"Optimus should be able to track down a spark that large," Pantera added. "Granted that the 'titan's still online."
"It can take millennia for a metrotitan to die from trauma," Skyfire explained. "Spark collapse is only phase one; on a primal level, the brain doesn't even get the signal that the titan's dying until the spark collapses completely. The moment you realise you're dying, you're already dead, and there's nothing that can be done."
"They're also survivors," Pantera added. "If one last ditch effort — " She and Skyfire exchanged a glance; they had come to the same conclusion.
"'Titans are equipped with spacebridges, ancient tech. If Metroplex was dying, with one chance to save himself — "
" — and blindly bridged a Cybertronian ship with a quantum generator out of deep space." Skyfire interrupted Pantera. "Oh, that makes so much more sense! If, of course, a metrotitan was in the equation."
"That's a big 'if', Sky, both figuratively and literally," Rattrap pointed out.
"Then you tell me how this ship got here," Skyfire snapped. "I'd like to know that. This ship should not exist. It jumped after the crew was killed, meaning it got here from external sources. The only thing on Cybertron that could pull something out of thin air is a space bridge, and seeing that Shockwave's been dead for three centuries, give or take, that leaves ancient tech, which means only one thing: metrotitan."
"I'll talk to Primal," Pantera headed to the door. "Sky, you'll be all right on your own?"
"Unca Rattrap'll stay with him to keep him company," Rattrap volunteered, crossing his arms over his chest. "Keeps both of us outta trouble."
Skyfire narrowed his optics, a spark of red licking the corners. "I don't need babysitting. I need someone with old tech knowledge. And 'Tera's the only one who lived through it."
Now it was Pantera's turn to correct him. "I'm not much help, Sky," she smirked. "I was a front-line grunt."
"You were a squad leader, there's a difference," Sky corrected.
"Rattrap would be more useful to you with the science stuff. I'll come back to relieve him in ten cycles."
"Understood, 'Tera," Skyfire retorted in monotone. He and Rattrap watched her leave, then Rattrap looked up at the taller Maximal, all while avoiding optic contact.
"Eh, look, kid, don't take it personally," Rattrap grinned; his raised brow revealed fear. "Just that back on Earth — "
"You don't trust me, and I'm fine with that. I don't trust myself most the time." Skyfire interrupted, returning to the control panel. "But I trust 'Tera. This ship is wrong. We need to get rid of it, the sooner, the better. If only I could access the datatracks, find out what happened!"
"You really believe that this could have been the work of a metrotitan?" Rattrap questioned. "I mean, they're legends — never real, were they?"
"Of course they're real," Skyfire snapped. "And I'm not saying that from a religious nutter's point of view, either. Think about it: We've been getting smaller, right? Our shells, we've been downsizing for fuel efficiency, right? Well, look at us now — we're technorganic. Is this an evolutionary process? The titans are so ancient that even we can only speculate their origins. And it goes from there — the guardians, the Autobots and Decepticons, the Minibots, now us. The thing is, our race has a habit of forgetting our past. Which is why we don't know anything about where the titans came from. Artemis — Pantera — was a history scholar who was discouraged out of her field because of Functionist thinking. Was it because they didn't want her to find out the truth, or was it because they deemed it unimportant, a waste of time? Hn." Tapping his cheek, Skyfire studied the output readings on the console. "I did find some data — and this ship should not be intact."
"You like talking to yourself?" Rattrap demanded.
"Keeps me sane. It gets noisy in my head otherwise. This may fit the running theory — if the quantum generator was destroyed previously, the radiation from the explosion — Good Primus." Skyfire jumped back from the console. "This got real bad, real fast. Quantum generators are rare for a reason: they're dangerous at best, and cataclysmic at worst. This one exploded, then was put back together possibly by a dying metrotitan; we're looking at an extinction level event for the entire Arm, let alone the planet, if the cohesion fails." He pressed his hands against his helm, staring wide-opticked with mouth agape, at the generator itself. "We're slagged. We're totally slagged."
NEXT CHAPTER: Haunted When The Minutes Drag