In the medbay
Rodimus
-I hope you're not going to demand to see Megatron now.
/Ratchet glanced at him with displeasure. He's standing behind the wall, SG can't see him/
-Your twin started his… journey with this.
Snowy
-…. Is Megatron here?
Ratchet /in whisper/
-Rodimus, who asked you to-
Snowy
-I thought… I saw him myself…
Rodimus
-No, no, not your Megatron. Ours, from our universe. He's co-captain of this ship. And I'm the captain. The most important one :)
Snowy
-...Is he an autobot too?…
-He was once a con :)
/Ratchet is already gritting his teeth/
Sunday surprise! Suddenly a new piece of the Deal with a very tired Optimus and a bunch of Primes brothers arguing with each others.
ITA:
Nel boschetto della mia Matrice, c'è un fottio di Prime un po' matti, inventati da Primus, che mi fanno ridere quando sono triste, mi fanno ridere quando sono felice, mi fanno ridere quando sono medio... in pratica mi fanno ridere sempre, quel fottio di Prime inventati da Primus.
A little pic of what happen after Ripely was taken to FirstAid, Preceptor had a idea Ripely was just a kid after their first meeting. Now these two Scientists have a literal Toddler on their hands.
And Yea Ripely got his shots.
Megatron confirms, signing something on one of the datapads Soundwave provided for him. “Is this too much? I feel like I’m doing too much.” He asks, gesturing one of the datapads he’s got in his servos.
“Negative: introduction ceremony must be grand, very important.” Soundwave answers simply.
“Yes, yes I’m aware…. But it’s too soon.” Megatron counters, passing the data pad back. “I want to spend every waking moment with my kin, to make up for lost time.” He told the cassette player gaining another to read and sign off.
“Decepticon soldiers: get suspicious, they’ll want answers.” Soundwave provides, remembering their recent actions this cycle and how confused they all were about megatron’s actions and strange characteristics.
“Yet I barely know what my son likes, primus I barely know what he dislikes.” He counters again, signing off the data with a shake of his helm.
“Gonna have to decline that. My point is-… I’ll be hopeless.” He admits finally, placing it down beside him on the console before leaning on it.
“I barely know what he likes and I want this to be perfect. How can I make his return ceremony perfect if I know nothing of him?!” He stresses, servos clinging to his helm in a distressing manner.
Soundwave, with an understanding expression from behind his visor, he put the data pads down and removed his mouth guard with a swish.
“… I never knew much about frenzy and rumble the first time.” He shrugs, leaning against the control panel himself.
“I tried figuring out what their likes and dislikes are by tuning in on their feelings for certain things… but that didn’t turn out very well since they got defensive.” He shrugs, remembering how they felt at the moment when he’s around them.
“I thought that… being a good parent would be about being in tune to their thoughts and feelings but….” He pauses, placing his servo on the decks door.
“… after communicating with them without my ability, we came to an understanding.” He turns to megatron, seeing the mech intensively listening to Soundwave’s story.
“Learning about their likes and disliked are ok… but not being present to see how their interest grows has its downsides.” He says, smiling gently at the thought of his cassettes happy faces once he’s shown interest in their favourite things.
“So what you’re saying it, it’s better for me to bond with my heir and be present with his interests in order to learn?” Megatron asks, arching his optic ridge.
“Precisely! I found out early on that frenzy likes hard rock while rumble prefers pop music… most preferably k-pop and j-pop.” He adds, remembering how he used to tease him with ‘accidentally’ playing regular pop music.
“Huh, so that’s why I hear a lot of Japanese and Korean songs on our off days.”
“Yeah, he’s starting to really like this ‘hatsune miku’ artist, says she a vocaloid. Starting to like her songs myself.” He admits, showing an image of a somewhat human being dancing on the stage, it’s a bit uncanny… but cute weirdly.
Megatron hums with amusement, seeing so many people praise, clap and cheer for a person that doesn’t exist.
“I should probably go, I need to check on my son to see how he’s doing.” Megatron told him, standing up and walking out of the command centre and praising the constructicons with the decorations and curtains before leaving.
Halfway out of the room, he felt a tugging at his spark, he placed his servo on it for a brief before realisation hit.
Immediately he took off running, dodging confused cons and a squawking starscream, but the leader doesn’t care. Not in the slightest bit.
His son need him.
And he’s not loosing him again.
_____________________
We did it! We made it to the twentieth promise people!
🥳 🎉 🎊 woohoo! Sorry, sorry! It has been, so long since we’ve finally got to this point, now who wants some grub? My treat!
When your wives are besties and the hubbies are kinda eh with each other.
They can be friends but with dudes is just business.
On a more serious note, I thought it would be cool if Optimus and Prowl had a strained relationship because of Megatron joining sides with the autobots. Prowl thinks Megatron has to pay, Optimus trusts him, that sort of thing. The two of them probably had a falling out and now they treat each other like colleges rather than the close friends they used to be. Prime has a hard time telling what prowl is thinking, especially cause he wears that visor around him all the time. Prowl has the resting bitch face and cold attitude down.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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Jazz had noticed it was getting steadily colder. He wasn’t too concerned at first. It’s how the day cycles went: they started cold in the mornings, heated up slightly by midday, then cooled off again at night. But that cycle it never warmed up. It kept getting colder.
Thicker clouds rolled in. They were so dark it was difficult to tell what time of day it was.
Jazz swore when he saw dark clouds gather more and more on the horizon. One of the major downsides of the planet's lack of any presence was the absence of weather prediction systems. Or any other satellite.
Jazz could only assume there was a storm coming. He couldn’t even be sure that it was going to hit them. But it was always best to prepare for the worst. This planet had severe weather. It was just unfortunate that what looked like a serious storm was rolling in while they were visiting.
Jazz pinged Chromedome’s short-range comms. He sent a quick message off telling the other mech to head back to camp soon. Chromedome responded with a short confirmation.
Jazz headed down to the shore. He wanted to get his time-lapse cameras. They only had so many of those, and he didn’t want to lose them to a storm. The winds were starting to blow harder, and he pressed his plating in tightly. He revved his engine in an attempt to get heat to circulate better.
It worked, but the biting cold was uncomfortable.
He grabbed their remaining seaside equipment and started to leave. The waves crashed harshly against the shore. The sky was starting to grow darker as the planet's sun was covered with thick dark clouds.
He could practically feel the cold burrowing into his plating.
Jazz looked out toward the water. In the distance, he could see the storm getting closer and closer. The clouds were moving aggressively toward the direction of their camp. Jazz frowned.
He saw a flash of blue-grey. It was the larger mer. Jazz let himself stay still for a second as he watched the creature dip its head out of the water. Instead of hopping onto the rock, like it and the other Mer normally did, it turned around to look out at the open ocean. It seemed to look out towards the clouds. It ducked back under the water quickly. It never came back up.
“You got the right idea, buddy,” Jazz whispered to himself, “Hope to see you again soon.”
Jazz turned to leave.
He climbed back to camp. He walked quickly and carefully. It was starting to snow. It was making the stony outcropping even slicker than it normally was. Jazz’s climb was slow and careful. He didn’t want to slip on his way back to camp. He pushed himself up and over the ledge.
The air around him was dropping rapidly in temperature. The snowfall was picking up and falling heavier. The dark clouds were pushing inland. The sky was growing darker and darker. He walked through the fresh snowfall back towards the remains of the settlement.
He made it back to their little claimed building. He faintly saw a light shine through the small window. It flickered as something crossed its path. Jazz vented in relief.
Chromedome had been wandering off more and more. Or it had seemed like he had. Jazz had caught the mech staring off at nothing for small periods of time. Chromedome definitely seemed distracted by something, but Jazz had no idea what it was.
Jazz wanted to find out.
He hoped the mystery was going to be something to keep him busy. At least it was something to keep him entertained while they waited the storm out in the tiny building. Jazz fought off the dread at not knowing how long the snowfall would last.
There was a chance it could last for the rest of their time on this planet. He just hoped that wasn’t going to be the case. It would make their extraction horrible. It would delay their pickup window. If that happened, they would have to start rationing fuel. Not to mention how short the documentary would be.
Jazz winced and just hoped for the best.
The door to the building they had claimed resisted as Jazz pushed it open. The fresh snow was already making the mechanism lock up again. Jazz felt the slightly warmer air rush over his frame as he managed to push the door open. Jazz entered quickly and shut the door behind him. Bits of water dripped off his frame as the ice and snow that had clung to it rapidly melted.
“That storm looks pretty nasty,” Chromedome said.
The other mech stood up and greeted Jazz at the door.
“Felt pretty nasty too,” Jazz joked.
Chromedome’s visor dimmed for a split second, “Any idea on how long it’s going to last?”
“No way to really know,” Jazz admitted. “No satellites, and no way to predict the weather pattern.”
Chromedome vented harshly. He slowly walked over to their small pile of supplies and sat down next to the heater. Jazz followed suit. The inside of the building was warmer. But not nearly enough for it to be anything close to comfortable. Jazz was already starting to feel the cold again.
The silence was already starting to drag on.
Jazz reached into one of the boxes and pulled out an Energon ration.
“You find anything interesting in that abandoned comms building?” Jazz asked. “Before I came in?”
Chromedome tapped a digit against his forearm. The other mech looked like he was deep in thought.
“That's a no?” Jazz asked.
Jazz sat down on the ground and pushed himself close to the heater. He slowly and casually sipped on his ration. He made himself look cool and collected. He didn’t want Chromedome to think he would have a negative reaction if the other mech did find something.
Jazz was just too curious. He had to know.
Chromedome’s shoulder armor dipped down.
“No, I might have found something,” He admitted.
Jazz was just excited to hopefully have something to talk about. He had only just met Chromedome. He hardly knew anything about the mech outside of what he had put in his bare resume. Jazz knew he worked as an enforcer, but that was the limit of it.
Chromedome reached into his subspace and slowly pulled out a data pad.
Jazz widened his optics underneath his visor. He had only seen a few models that old. All of them were in the central archive in Iacon, and were fiercely protected by the archivists there.
“That thing is ancient. Does it still work?” Jazz asked.
“It turns on, but I haven’t been able to get through the encryption on it; whoever owned it made their own algorithms.”
Jazz’s systems were itching with excitement. He was going to tear into that thing and find out what exactly was on it. It was probably something boring, maybe city plans or communication logs. But even that would be such an exciting glimpse into the elusive history of Gelu.
“Can I?” Jazz asked, “I have a buddy who shared a few things with me on this type of thing.”
Chromedome hesitated before offering the data pad to Jazz.
“Just be careful; it’s a miracle this thing still boots,” Chromedome said.
Jazz nodded. He gently wrapped his digits around the data pad. He traced along the seams and found a connector port. Jazz carefully relaxed a seam in his arm and pulled out a cable. He connected to the device.
Jazz still had some less-than-legal algorithms installed in his systems. Even some Orion had made before he was prime. They were useless to him. He never worked with data like Orion did. But he kept them around as a reminder. Whenever he missed Orion, he just thumbed through every little program his friend had ever shared with him.
Jazz tilted his helm as he got through the first screen. The login page used old, outdated algorithms that were easy to bypass. After that, though. There were more complicated custom programs.
Jazz was impressed. If the mech who owned it wasn’t already dead, he would have loved to hear about how such a complicated algorithm was running on such a simple piece of hardware.
The thing was, it was simple hardware. Ancient. It could only encrypt something so well. Even with the impressive custom encryption, it would have a hard limit on what it was capable of. It would have been amazing to see what this colonist could have done with more modern systems.
Jazz worked through the encryption slowly. Trying a few different programs. He started with lower-level, simpler scripts. Jazz was familiar with cracking some impressive encryption for the work he did for the primacy. He wasn’t able to bypass it.
Jazz switched to some of his more aggressive programs. Lines and lines of code that were created to dig up encrypted dirt on the Senate. Jazz let some of those programs attack the device. It was still holding out pretty well. But he was happy to see it making progress.
The lock screen disappeared. Jazz smiled. Files started to fill up the screen.
“You cracked it?”
“Yeah, impressive for an ancient piece of hardware,” Jazz said.
Chromedome looked impressed, but he mostly looked curious. Jazz was eager to dig into the files. It wasn’t Jazz’s find, though. He could wait a bit to dig into it. He offered the data pad back.
“You want to take the first look at the files?”
Chromedome stared down with a brightened visor at the offered data pad. He slowly moved his servos to grab it, and Jazz let him.
Jazz watched eagerly as Chromedome scrolled through the files. Chromedome was silent as he slowly scrolled down. Jazz leaned back against the wall and waited.
“I think this was a journal,” Chromedome said. “Some data logs are running back before the colony; the earliest entry is definitely reading like a journal of some sort.”
“What’s it say?”
“Talks about how he was assigned to the colony without his partner. At least initially, he talks about starting an appeal process.”
“Sad,” Jazz muttered, “Wonder if the mech ever got here before the colony fell?”
Jazz looked up at the ceiling. He finished his Energon ration and placed the empty cube at his side.
Chromedome looked slowly over to Jazz. The motion was unnerving. Jazz pretended not to notice.
“I don’t know what would have been worse,” Chromedome said, “I think if it was me I would have wanted to be here. Even if I knew what was going to happen.”
Jazz’s face pulled into a slight frown. It was a dark thought he didn’t want to linger on.
“Anything else in the first entry that was interesting?” Jazz asked.
Chromedome tilted his helm as he read.
“Sounds like it was a bit more of a relationship than work partners, officially; that’s what he’s calling him, but it seems like it was more than that.”
“Must have been different castes,” Jazz said sadly, “Colony was established right around when the caste system was starting. They might have been afraid to rock the boat. Easier just to say they were work partners.”
“Maybe,” Chromedome said.
“You got anyone waiting for you back home?” Jazz asked.
Chromedome was still reading through the data pad. He didn’t pause in his scrolling.
“Not really. I don’t really remember anything from my last vorn. I was in a work accident. I tried reaching out to old coworkers, but they said I transferred out, wasn’t particularly close to anyone there, but if I had someone I got close to in the last Vorn, they haven’t reached out.”
Chromedome didn’t sound very bothered by it. Or at least he didn’t on the surface. He was a strange mech to read. Sometimes his emotions were easy to pick out, but he had noticed times where he just went completely numb in his inflection and actions.
“That’s rough, mech,” Jazz said sadly. It was mostly genuine.
He stopped himself from digging deeper. As much as he wanted to. He wanted to know more about whatever Chromedome was reading.
“What about you?” Chromedome asked.
“Me?”
“Yeah? What? You asked first.”
Jazz frowned. Chromedome looked up from the data pad.
“I’ve got a few mechs I’m close with, not a Conjunx or anything though. I was too busy to really ever think about even finding someone.”
“Same,” Chromedome said, “If the right mech came around, though, I don’t think I’d mind.”
Jazz had been too busy fighting behind the scenes with Orion for so long. He never really had time to think about stuff like that. He was always more concerned about his allies' safety. It wasn’t something he needed to worry as much about anymore.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’d mind either.”
The two of them lapsed into an awkward silence for a while. Chromedome was wrapped up in whatever the data pad was telling him. Jazz was curious to hear about what the mech was reading. But he was willing to be patient. He at least trusted Chromedome to bring up anything he deemed interesting.
Jazz privately hoped to get his own turn digging through the old files.
Maybe if he were lucky, the last owner stored some photos to show his partner. It would be interesting to see what the colony looked like when it was still standing.
Chromedome’s vents kicked into higher gear. He leaned forward. “Interesting,” He muttered.
“Find something good?” Jazz said eagerly.
“Maybe,” Chromedome said.
“He’s talking about how a mech went missing,” Chromedome said quietly. He adjusted his hold on the data pad and placed a servo on the underside of his helm.
“How’s that interesting? It’s sad, but the conditions here are pretty harsh. Easy enough for one mech to slip into the ocean.”
“The data pad’s owner said the mech was acting strange, muttering to himself. One morning, he just never showed up to complete his assigned tasks.”
“Does it say what happened to him?”
“I’m looking for that,” Chromedome said.
Chromedome started to scroll faster.
“This is bizarre,” Chromedome said, baffled.
“How so?”
“He just starts casually mentioning the missing mech again. Three cycles later, no mention between then and this entry about them finding him. If anything, he complains about a pile-up of work even though they had all been working overtime.”
Jazz tilted his helm. That didn’t sound normal.
“Huh.”
“Weird,” Chromedome muttered, “It’s almost like he forgot he was gone.”
“Maybe he wasn’t missing for that long?”
“No, he mentions him explicitly going missing; Rewind even mentioned being concerned about it. Then it shifts a few logs later to the mech being back like nothing happened. If he was that concerned, I would have assumed he would have left a note about him being found. He even mentions the same mech getting a virus the next cycle and missing his shift.”
“Freaky,” Jazz said.
It rang true of rumors he had heard from Optimus. About some of the shadier Senate activities. Rumors about bots having things done to their processors. The strange behavior some poor bot who crossed the Senate would have after mandatory therapy. It was a horrible thought to think some of that might have come from here.
Jazz already knew strange things happened here. The technorganics alone made it easy to assume other experiments could have been run even on the bots living in the colony at the time.
“These entries just get more bizarre the further along I go,” Chromedome muttered.
The storm raged outside. The sky had long since gone dark. The wind howled, and he could hear the snow and ice pelt the side of the building. The only light source they had was the data pad and a few scattered lanterns. That and the biting cold left the atmosphere of their little shelter feeling grim.
If Jazz was a weaker mech, he might have even been scared. But he was more interested in what could have happened. Anything that was done to the bots that were here couldn’t happen to them. The ones messing with the colonists had gone offline when the rest of the colonists vanished.
“The mech used images initially, but sometime after the third week, they started getting sparse before disappearing altogether. Then the logs kept getting shorter and shorter. At the start, they were multiple pages; where I am now, it's maybe a few paragraphs.”
“Could have just gotten busier, maybe,” Jazz suggested. “Always lots of work to do for a small colony like this one was,” Jazz wasn’t completely sold on his own theory yet.
Privately, he thought this was bizarre. He was going to report this back to Orion for one of his contacts to look deeper into.
Chromedome tapped a digit against the data pad’s screen, “Something about it just doesn’t seem right to me.”
Jazz wasn’t sure either. It sounded weird to him. If one of his old buddies had started acting like that, it would have been suspicious no matter the workload.
“I mean, it’s already pretty well known this colony was doing some shady science; who knows what they could have been doing to the mechs that lived here. Could have even messed with their processors.”
Chromedome was silent. He kept his visor so firmly on the data pad that Jazz wondered if there was something wrong with him.
“Chromedome?”
The mech remained silent. His visor dimmed. Jazz slowly stood up and walked over.
“Chromedome? You alright?”
Jazz pushed himself up. Chromedome still didn’t move. Jazz took a few steps until he stood over the other mech. He remained still. He remained silent. The only sound Jazz could hear coming from his frame was the quiet running of fans.
Jazz slowly reached a servo out.
“You alright?” Jazz asked.
Still no reaction. Chromedome was still stiffly staring down. Unmoving.
Jazz placed a hand on Chromedome’s shoulder armor and gently shook him.
“Hmm?” Chromedome snapped his helm up toward Jazz. “Sorry, I don’t’-”
Chromedome used a free servo to gently scratch at the back of his helm.
“I must have gotten a little lost in the reading,” Chromedome said flatly.
“You must have gotten really lost in it; I don’t even think I’ve seen my archivist friend zone out that hard at a data pad,” Jazz said.
“Do you want to take a look at it?” Chromedome asked.
“Are you at the end already?”
“No, but I think I need to take a break from it for a bit; I might try to recharge.”
Jazz took the data pad from Chromedome.
“I’ll give it back to you after you come out of recharge,” Jazz promised.
“Okay,” Chromedome still sounded flat.
There wasn’t any emotion or variation in his vocalizations. Jazz decided to just assume he was strange for now.
Chromedome adjusted his position against the wall, and his visor dimmed. His frame sagged against the wall as Chromedome entered a recharge cycle.
Jazz sat back down in his own little corner. The space was small, cramped, and dark. It brought up memories of harsher cycles for him on Cybertron.
Jazz flicked his gaze down at the data pad. The last entry Chromedome was looking at was a short one. The owner of the data pad, a bot that called himself Rewind, left a short message. He had gotten communications from Cybertron that the next transport to the planet would have his partner on it. But it was Deca-cycles away from even leaving for Gelu.
There were sparse records publicly available for this planet. But Jazz knew it didn’t last very long.
“Dominus, I don’t know if you were lucky or not,” Jazz mumbled to himself.
He didn’t think Rewind ever got to see his partner before he went offline.
Ch18 doodles of Third Wheel (by @bibliotecaria-d on ao3) (I’m sorry for constantly tagging you author I’ll compile all this into an ao3 post one day for easier access ..eventually) that turned into a full-out comic adaptation of a couple paragraphs at the end of this chapter lmao
