Doing some plotting and worldbuilding this evening with a fun drink and cheese crackers. Thought I put up some ramblings.
I may have mentioned that I love LOVE retellings. I loved getting into the Sherlock Holmes fandom with so many iterations and variations.
It's so fun, seeing how much you can change while still keeping a story and characters recognizable.
For Sherlock Holmes, I think the core parts that make it a Sherlock Holmes story are:
Holmes must solve the cases based on his intellect and background knowledge
Watson must be an active participant in cases, either with medical skills or by documenting them
They may cross paths with the police, but they are NOT part of the police force and do not use police resources to excess
The cases are unusual or nonsensical in ways that set them apart from typical police procedural cases. This does not rely on excessive violence, gore, or horror.
Then, a while ago I read a post where the gist of it was "If you could change one thing about Batman, what would it be?" None of the responses, for me, quite hit the mark. All the changes were too small or didn't affect the basic plot and premise.
I think you could totally do poor Batman. Bruce grew up in a shabby apartment building, being babysat by Alfred the handyman. After his parents are murdered, he uses his brains and brawn to protect the people of Gotham. He rebuilds a motorcycle instead of the batmobile. Hacks college classes on robotics and finds his way into odd jobs at big tech places to learn more. The batcave becomes a basement room that everyone has forgotten about. Maybe he even gets a rundown house in the outskirts instead of the manor. Instead of Airhead Billionaire, he hides himself as Village Idiot, dumb, poor, and harmless.
Batman in different countries would be amazing. You could absolutely keep the core aspects of Bruce Wayne and transplant him into other cultures and each one would yield a different version.
I'm sure there's dozens of Batman AUs that play with this idea! Same with Superman or King Arthur and Merlin. I just love all the variety and flavors that story retellings can give.
before i say anything it should stated that I write soppy, fanon soup robot romances and included a "hexagonheghog" without shame. I delight in ridiculousness. Corny puns, just-like-us aliens, energon made into gummy candy - I'm here for all of it.
I also really enjoy all aspects of worldbuilding and I was pondering what things I value in good worldbuilding.
These thoughts only apply to fics/stories where the worldbuilding is a focus - not a coffeeshop au meetcute where Optimus and Elita bond over a love of cobalt cupcakes or an alien world where the main character falls in love with a half-bug woman and the story is half biology puns.
One of the things that pulls me out of a story is when human/earth/modern concepts are transferred without altering them. For example, why are your robots sleeping under sheets? Is it for thermal regulation? Protection from dust particles? Radiation shield? Do rich bots use sheets or do they have better heating/cooling systems? Are the sheets utilitarian or decorated? Why?
What are animals like on Cybertron? Do they have sparks? Do they join the Well like cybertronians? Do cybertronians eat animals? Why? Do they have a concept of being vegetarian? How do different animals adapt to their environment when they're robotic? Do animals have vehicle modes?
More generally, what about other sci-fi worlds?
What are the beauty standards on this alien planet? I see too many stories where the beauty standards are "morally good" because they're based on health instead of wealth, as if money is independent of health. Or they reflect what the author thinks is the "right" beauty standard.
If you're going to make your aliens morally similar (yay kindness, boo murder, use money) to humans you can't just ignore all the petty human bits that cause us to buy self-tanner, spend all night in 'heat-less curlers' or loudly declare that this or that woman is 'curvy' not fat and therefore worthy of our benevolent youtube comments.
If your aliens find fatness beautiful because they are descended from leopard geckos then someone better be selling secret padding and every cookbook better have "gain 20 pound guaranteed" on the cover. News channels should have segments on how egg color or humidity or first meal will determine how fat your baby is. Someone needs to have a bag with a pin that says "thinness can be beautiful!" and someone's grandparent should preface their insult with "of course some people have an illness that keeps them from getting fat, I'm not talking about them."
And that's still just surface stuff! What are the core values of your gecko people? Do value safety above all else? Do they think humanity is batshit for having organized sports? "You mean you run around, getting hurt and permanently injured for fun? People look up to these weirdos? You have merch?"
Would their art be visual? Textural? Would they have music?
Do they need supermarkets or can they just go into their yards and be their own pest control? Would having ornamental plants be a status symbol because they don't attract bugs and you're wasting space, water, and time on something that can't feed you. Would it be seen as eccentric even by rich geckos? Does your main character make the mistake of talking about bonsai trees?
Do they even need houses? Could they live communally? Do they have the concept of privacy? Of work?
How would you explain the 40 hour work week to a humanoid lizard that goes outside when she's hungry, goes into the mines when she feels like it to dig up some diamonds to trade with Earth, spends her afternoons secretly taking weight-gain supplements and listening to bug sounds instead of music?
Pouring my all my annoyance into fic. I ask for one hour a week to work on my silly stories. It has been the same day, same time for five years. It's the ONLY time I ask for. I shouldn't have to ask over and over again for other people to take care of things during my ONE HOUR. ONE!
Might work on 'Wash' my I-love-them-but-they-are-so-inconsiderate-I want-my-alone-time fic with Hound and Mirage. If you are sleeping over at someone's house 4-5 times a week, eating their food, using up their toilet paper, tracking your dirty work boots and work clothes through the house, but neither of you can put your dirty dishes in the dishwasher or clean the bathroom sink or take out the trash you are not an adult-adult, you are a college student. That might be an insult to college students, actually.
Pouring my all my annoyance into fic. I ask for one hour a week to work on my silly stories. It has been the same day, same time for five years. It's the ONLY time I ask for. I shouldn't have to ask over and over again for other people to take care of things during my ONE HOUR. ONE!
Hi! So I've been trying to finish things before posting them so I can edit them and make them perfect which has led to stagnation! I'm trying some thing new to get myself writing in large quantities again. I'll be posting the pieces of Space Academy Final Chapter (from my AU August on AO3) as I write/complete them for the validation on Tumblr and then posting the entire finished work on AO3. If you have the time or inclination to leave a nice comment that would be awesome! Suggestions or very gentle constructive criticism - preferably sandwiched between paragraphs of compliments - is also welcome. Just remember, this is a very rough draft and my ego is fragile.
First Part is below the cut.
“We’re here,” Skyfire whispered. Jazz leaned against Prowl’s thin shoulder and braced him as the landing gear gently tapped the tarmac before starting to coast. Clouds of red silica swirled past the windows so that the dark hold was now a muted ruby. Skyfire rolled a few extra kliks into a silky smooth landing.
“Thanks, mech,” Jazz whispered back, pushing himself up with a groan.
First Aid took his place next to the still recharging Prowl, disconnecting the monitors. “Ratchet’s on his way,” he said as he rolled up the cables and closed each minute hatch on his torso.
“Old Slagger ‘s probably waitin’ outside the door,” Jazz groused. He stretched and cycled his optics, hoping to cover some of the static. Using his field as a blanket for so long had given him a splitting helmache – he didn’t need Ratchet’s grumbling on top of that.
“Probably,” ‘Aid agreed, standing up and –
-immediately tipping backwards.
“Whoa, bitlet!” Jazz rushed forwards as Skyfire flung one of his seats out from the wall to catch him. Jazz eased ‘Aid down. “You okay?” If it wasn’t one youngling it was another.
“Fine!” First Aid squeaked. “I’m fine!” He stayed where he was, servos gripping the armrests. “Hooking him directly into my monitoring system must have been…a bit more than I could do.”
“If it’s that drainin’ why’d you do it?”
“It was the only way to get the real-time alerts as we flew!” First Aid defended, taking out and popping open an energy gel packet.
“Open up already!” came a muffled shout from outside.
Jazz and First Aid shared a look.
“Don’t…perhaps don’t tell him?” he pleaded. “I’m not exactly cleared to do long term monitoring without external components and…”
“I saw nothin’.” Like mentor, like student.
“Nor did I,” Skyfire agreed. “Should I let him in?”
Jazz looked over at First Aid, who was getting to his pedes more steadily now.
“I don’t know. Didja tell him to be on his best behavior?”
First Aid snorted and unbuckled Prowl. The mech barely grumbled, too deep in recharge to really be aware as First Aid slipped the straps out from under him.
Frag, he was so light ‘Aid was lifting him with a single servo.
Someone was banging on the door.
“This is best behavior for Ratchet.”
“So should I…?”
“Let ‘em in, Skyfire. Ratchet‘ll want to look him over before movin’ him.”
Like a sniper on assignment, Ratchet has optics only for his target, snapping out cords and scanners even as he climbed in.
“He’s okay to move. He’s malnourished, injured, suffering from processor damage and probably some severe wire degradation, and frankly I’ve seen less stressed corpses, but he is okay to move.”
“Some of that is long term,” Jazz added. “If you got the file –“
“I’ve read the file, I’ve extrapolated everything you didn’t say in the file.” He lifted Prowl from the fold-down as smooth and gentle as if they were in zero-g. The hatch sprung back open for Ratchet and First Aid, who rested a servo on Prowl as they descended.
“You have to be nice ta him, Ratchet,” Jazz said, trying to subtly open the gel packet First Aid had palmed him when Ratchet was distracted.
“Yeah, yeah.” He was already nearly to the bottom. For someone who complained about his joints so much, the famed Medic was surprisingly nimble when he wanted to be.
Jazz took two steps down the ramp and hissed as every grain of silica jabbed into the acid-thinned rivets in his plating.
“This fraggin’ planet.”
0-0-0
Jazz was banished to one of the waiting chairs just outside medbay. Ratchet had taken one quick scan of him and shoved a cube of medical grade into his servos.
“Drink and rest,” he’d ordered, picking Cadet Prowl up from the gurney to transfer into a proper medical berth. “I’ll let you know when I need you.”
Now there was nothing to do but wait and put the finishing touches on his report.
Usually, given his instinctive hatred of paperwork, Jazz would put off a report until someone hounded him. Usually Optimus. This time, Jazz took pleasure in outlining, in loving detail, all the ways the superiors had failed at that station.
They’d ignored warning signs.
They’d neglected a student in their care.
They’d belittled one of their own.
The only good thing Jazz could say about them was that they’d called for help.
He was less than impressed.
A hushed, “Jazz?” pulled his attention away from transcribing the entire conversation with Cadet Prowl’s superiors.
“Hey, Optimus.” Jazz smiled and the bossbot ducked his helm in return.
“I read your initial report. Can you tell me more about this cadet?” Optimus took a few steps and settled on the floor next to him without even scuffing the linoleum, shedding a layer of red sand.
“He’s brilliant OP. Did you get the software samples I sent over? He programed those to better map the terrain on their hikes. If you look at the timestamps he programed them while on the hikes. His early scores in all the academic subjects are off the charts. Top in Tactics, Hacking, Military Law – never got the hang of Diplomacy, but neither did Mia or ‘Hide – and I asked Ratchet to check if anything was up with his frame since he’s failed all the physical tests.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to…cope with our mission here?”
Jazz considered it. Most of what Jazz “knew” was finely tuned predictions and suspicions.
“I think,” he said slowly, rubbing at one sore, acid pit in his armor, remembering the Cadet’s words out in the rain, “that if anyone is gonna understand being scared of beings bigger and stronger, it’s gonna be him. He knows what it’s like to look up at somebot and be afraid.”
Optimus had let slip a smile when Jazz mentioned Ironhide and diplomacy. Now he bent his helm, his field shot through with determination and hope. It settled something in Jazz.
He enjoyed rattling bots – his cover was Internal Affairs for a reason – but sometimes it wore on him. His record as an independent agent spoke for itself and he knew he had earned his rank, knew that he’d proven himslef. Still, nice to be back where he knew the moral authority smuggled glitchmice into his habsuite and cried during The Little Merformer.
Ratchet poked his helm around the doorframe, frowned at them both and said, “He’s stable. Come inside so I can check those acid pits.” He looked Optimus up and down. “And where have you been? You’re purple! Get in the decontamination tank.”
Optimus rose to his pedes, helm bent soothingly. “I’ve been helping with the construction –“
“Ha! ‘Helping.’” He disappeared back into the medbay.
Optimus looked at him.
“Mmhmm.”
Inside the sat, it was sedate sterility. The only activity beside the beeping machines around Prowl was First Aid who was slumped, face first, on a berth. Two other students were fluttering around him, scanning and –
“-all the way back! What was it like? Did you treat the acid with –“
-eagerly interrogating him about his outing.
Well, Prime had specifically requested new recruits for this venture. He’d ended up with a batch of baby medics, half a dozen soldiers with their pede in retirement and the other half with a pede still in the school room, and an uptight, chip on his shoulder, about to be let go Special Operations agent.
Former, uptight, chip on his should Ops agent, Jazz correct himself. Trapped on this alien planet had softened all of his edges, slaggit.
Maybe it was just the right place for a half-broken, brilliant, Tactical Cadet?
Ratchet waved them closer to Cadet Prowl’s berth.
“Don’t worry, he’s so heavily sedated if our neighbors dropped a bomb on us Primus would have to shake him awake in the Well.”
Optimus grumbled. “I’m not sure that is entirely appropriate.” His servos fluttered slightly before gripping the berth rail and lean closer. Jazz found himself also taking a step closer – just a bit closer than Optimus.
Ratchet ignored him and swiped through the chart hanging over the berth.
“The Base medics report is trite, badly formatted, and missing most of the information, but it does mention the most important parts: long term severe malnutrition – probably started when he was still a sparkling - poorly repaired injuries, and a chronic processor condition. The processor fault is Spark-based, not a wiring problem, so it wouldn’t have shown up on his intake exam.”
“The effects of the malnutrition?” Optimus asked. Now he was straightening the thin plastic sheet that covered the Cadet from pede to chestplate. Jazz’s servos itched – strangely – to do the same.
“Every bot is different. We’ll work on what we can see first – the thin cables in his hips and the poor energy usage should be easy fixes. A lot of his scanning equipment has been cracked for awhile – vorns probably – and the acid damage to his pedes and armor should be an easy fix.”
“That’s good.”
“Slagging acid rain.”
“The processor fault will take more time,” Ratchet continued, flicking Optimus’s servos away from where he was straightening the foam supports. “And I’m going to consult with a couple of experts before we start talking a treatment plan. This damage has been accumulating since he was sparked.”
“Poor mechling,” Optimus rumbled, his servos now contritely by his sides. “I’m glad he’s here now.” He straightened the sheet again.
Ratchet rolled his optics skyward.
“Go ahead - he’s out cold.”
“I wouldn’t want to –“
“It won’t mess with my equipment and you’re the fragging Prime – he’s not going to mind.”
“You’re probably right. Thank you.”
Optimus lifted a gentle servo and rested it on Prowl’s arm. Oh. He’d been waiting for permission.
0-0-0
Sometime later, after Optimus had had his period of melancholy brooding and Ratchet had chased him out to recharge, Ratchet was allowing the other medics to work on some of Cadet Prowl’s more minor damage. Jazz was starting to zone out as they whispered and welded and grappled with the unique horror that was long term damage.
“Cracked lens”
“We have to do this very, very gently.”
“What do you think would be the best heat setting for –“
Jazz had just sent his report when the door to the medbay burst open.
“Read the report - WHO THE FRAG DO I SHOOT?!”
The medics - sensibly - dived behind Ratchet.
Jazz snapped to his pedes and held out a quieting servo, even as he strode forwards. He’d been trying to avoid this.
Prowl vented slowly and onlined his optics at just 20% to avoid waking his barracks. He’d gotten yelled at more than once for his restlessness –
The barracks ceiling wasn’t blue.
Something was beeping.
Why was he seeing blue?
He was sore, but the spark-aching pain in his tank and chest was gone.
“Well?” came a gruff voice, “are you actually awake this time? Or do you want to argue color theory again?”
He should be afraid, shouldn’t he? Uneasy at least.
He felt nothing.
“Am I in trouble?” he asked dully, turning towards the speaker. He flexed his servos – so numb – and cycled his optics again. Still unclear.
“Should you be?” came an equally flat answer from the vague shape to his left. “What do you remember? Not much I’m guessing. Your fuel levels were so low I’m surprised you didn’t take more processor damage.”
“More?” That was…bad. Prowl waited for the ever present sickness to flutter in his chest, but it never came. His spark just spun lazily in its sparkcase.
“Nothing that won’t fix itself,” the speaker said in that same even, unhurried tone. “Can you tell me your name, rank, number, and base camp?”
“Prowl, Cadet,” he started out of habit, rattling off his string of identification numbers, “base camp…”
Oh. He remembered now.
“No base camp.”
No base camp. Thank Primus. He offlined his optics. It didn’t matter anymore. The familiar sensation of floating, of giddiness, spread through his frame. It was over.
“Hmph.” His unseen guard was moving around him now. Prowl tracked the minute vibrations of the berth beneath him and the shifting in the air around them. This base had a slight atmosphere. Where were they?
“Well for now you can consider yourself in Base Camp Medical Bay. Get comfortable.”
“What planet are we on now? It’s not any of the ones close to Cybertron or my former base.”
“And how do you know that? Maybe we’re on a moon.” The voice was teasing now as the mech clanked and clattered around his berth.
“Both of Cyberton’s moons are used for gasless manufacturing. This planet has a slight atmosphere. All of the planets within shuttle distance of Cybertron – except for three – do not have atmospheres. Of those three, one is too cold to host cybertronians, one has much weaker gravity, and the third is forbidden.”
The mech chortled.
“Jazz said you were smart! Very clever. You’re actually quite a bit farther. They took you through a space bridge outside of Lex Region.
“Oh.” Lex Region. “Why?”
There were thing he was supposed to be thinking about, things that were supposed to worry him. He just…couldn’t.
“I’ll let Lieutenant Jazz explain the minutia of his backwards processor later, but for now, you needed someplace safe to recover and we’re on the aft-end of the known universe here. The biggest danger here is silica dust and the occasional storms.”
“Oh.” Jazz…a soft face came to him, slightly fuzzy with acid-etched grooves where the rain had gotten into his optics.
“Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
The snort from his watcher made him jump.
“When you’re less out of it, I’m going to explain all my medical plans to get you back in order, but by no stretch of the imagination – certainly not /mine/ - are you fine. Step one is to recharge until you’re sick of it.”
“Recharging to excess is a bad habit. SA cadets are expected to train and work under all conditions.”
“You’re not training or working. You’re in Medbay.”
“We’re supposed to push through –“
“Nah. Bots that say that are a load of slag. Be like chopping off your pedes before battle. Recharge is just one more weapon in your arsenal against injury and illness. ‘Charge, cadet, we’ll fix it all in the morning.”
Then, the tall medic laid his servo on Prowl’s helm and used one digit to stroke the thin plating above his optics. The warmth and weight was soothing. The slow, steady rhythm of his thumb was like being rocked.
He remembered things like this from stories. Television shows. He’d half thought it was something they made up, like superheroes and sparkeaters.
“I offered to head back and bust in your Drill Sergeant’s face plates, but Jazz said no.”
This was the very first thing the Captain Chromia said to him. She had shaken one disproportionally large fist in the direction of his former base and then grinned at him, all fangs and flashing optics.
“Um,” Prowl started, how was he supposed to respond to that? “Thank you?”
“Not a problem! Say the word and I’ll go anyways, and slag Jazz and OP!” She walked over to the closet and started hauling out thick floor mats that were three times her weight.
She was not what he’d been expecting.
Captain Chromia had asked him to come to one of the training rooms on the base when it was her turn to train him. He knew she was an expert in servo to servo combat from Ironhide, but he’d been expecting a brawler, a huge tankformer that crushed mechs with a single blow. Ironhide had made her sound like a behemoth of a femme.
He watched her unroll one huge mat with a swift kick that would have sent most bots flying across the room.
In reality, the Captain was smaller than himself, her servos unusually large and her helm heavily plated, half covering her optics. She was a vibrant powder blue with silver and black accents that even Prowl recognized as ‘on trend’ from the holozines. She had a Crystal City frame, a Kaon accent, and a cityformer’s attitude - Captain Chromia was certain that she was bigger than everyone else.
“Let’s get your stance sorted out, Shortstuff, and then we can work on the fun parts!”
Prowl stood in the middle of the now heavily padded room and realized that they had a very different definition of ‘fun.’
If cybertronians are functionally immortal (barring accidents or murders) then how would language develop? Would it remain stagnant and unchanging? Would the lexicon get so big one day that they have to rely on outside dictionaries? Would language evolve with each new generation, slowly changing until the oldest bots needed interpreters? Would deep space explorers come back and not be able to communicate?
So Primus is the planet and he's putting up shrines/hotspots/temples on his surface so he can talk with his people. However, enterprising bots keep building /churches/ to control who gets to talk to Robo-God. So Primus has to make more little openings and holy places, very confused why his people aren't jumping at the chance to talk to him.
If bots are made up of recycled or hand-me-down parts, would it be like when people receive organs from donors? "Can't drink high grade ever since I got my left arm replaced. Bot was a teetotaler." "Had my spark case repaired with donated cybertillium and now I keep wanting an all chrome paint job."
Working on smaller things today. I've been chipping away at some of the bigger stories and I'm a bit drained. Hopefully actually finishing some stuff - even if it's small - will give me a bit of energy to get back to the longer stuff.
I really wanted to finish at least one of my Halloween stories before Halloween and I've been trying to finish AUAugust for years. *sigh* Maybe I'll finish it before Christmas.
Worked on three fics inspired by fanarts and typed out a bit more on my spur of the moment Hound/Mirage fic.
After so many years of easily killing the critic in my head, it has risen, zombie-like, ready to wreak havoc. Dun-dun-dun.
I've been bouncing around from fic to fic trying to convince myself of the whole "make it exist, then make it good" concept.
But, I can see some of these scenes so clearly and the second I try to put them into a word processor, I sidestep it. I find myself thinking - wait, let me find a fic that isn't as important, one that I can't mess up - whenever I get the urge to scribble.
Gonna get a cup of coffee and a slice of pie and attempt it again.
Working on smaller things today. I've been chipping away at some of the bigger stories and I'm a bit drained. Hopefully actually finishing some stuff - even if it's small - will give me a bit of energy to get back to the longer stuff.
I really wanted to finish at least one of my Halloween stories before Halloween and I've been trying to finish AUAugust for years. *sigh* Maybe I'll finish it before Christmas.
Trick-or-Treat! I have come knocking on your Tumblr door asking for a treat ^^
Here's your treat! I don't know why the date says October 2025 since it's clearly October 31st 2024, only hours after you came trick-or-treating. It can't have been a year.
Have a little glimpse into Jazz and Prowl's future from "The Night of the Storm." It was supposed to be a lot sillier, but I think it works okay. :)
The 'incident' alluded to is no where in any of the stories. It's just offscreen trauma for poor Prowl.
Prowl turned another corner.
“Scrap,” he whispered, backing away. If he was really quiet - four pairs of malicious optics turned towards him.
He swore vividly and broke into a run in the opposite direction.
“I want to see the world, I said, I want to travel,” he cursed, skidding on worn treads as he rounded a corner. “I want to put more than Ultra Magnus’s creation on my resume – fragging idiot.”
Spending his last year of formal schooling as an exchange student was not working out as he’d expected.
Oh the food was excellent. His teachers were all brilliant – geniuses in their fields of infrastructure and space bridge construction and physics – and he was enjoying his internship with Professor Bulkhead.
Some of his classmates and some of the locals hadn’t been as excited to see an Iacon based Praxian student. Dual prejudices meant they got to pick why they hated him – sometimes he was accused of supporting Praxian isolationist practices and Iaconain cultural theft in the same sentence!
Prowl banged though a door to the botany department – they had to have a hatch or something to move the plants in and out -
Their enmity wouldn’t have been pushed to actual violence if he hadn’t brought out the present Wheeljack and Brainstorm had sent him.
“HE’S HERE!”
It was their invention – it wasn’t like they’d paid the two million for the pocket substance analyzer!
A few shouted insults about how he’d gotten it, a few insults back about their entire ancestral line being a string of Primus’s mistakes and it had gone to blows.
Then the scraplets had called a few friends and now Prowl was ducking in and out of the basement classrooms trying not to get his helm bashed in.
He stumbled through two more connected rooms – one full of faintly glowing tendrils that reached out for him and another completely black except for the outline of the door behind him.
Prowl stopped and vented – maybe he could push open the next door and then hid in the darkness and –
Nope. Nopenopenope – he could hear things moving.
He slammed through the next door.
It was a room full of gourds growing in the shape of servos.
Why the frag did the botany department have so many classrooms full of terrifying plants?
Then he opened a door and it was a dead end – just a closet full of sacks and shovels.
Behind him he could hear them knocking over tables. There had to be more than ten of them now – and mostly local bots with a grudge and too much high grade.
He had no faith that the local enforcers would be able to solve his murder and was that embarrassing. Law Enforcment student’s on-campus murder goes unsolved –
They were in the next room. He couldn’t hide, he couldn’t run – he couldn’t fight either, but there weren’t any options left so he planted his pedes like how Kup showed him and raised his fists.
What a humiliating way to die after everything that had happened last year. At least those records were sealed – local law enforcement student survives certain death and dies in a back alley beat-down – that would have been mortifying.
Well he wouldn’t go down without a fight! He –
Six mech shoved their way through the arch – all of them more than double his size – and –
Prowl stumbled back and fell, smacking against the back wall, frag he’d definitely snapped one of his digits – scrap scrap scrap fragitalltothepit –
“Well, well no where to run?” slurred the biggest, shuffling forwards, raising clouds of metallic dust.
“You –“ Prowl started. His vocalizer cut out.
“Wanna know what we do to bots from Praxus here?”
“Not –not actually – “ frag he was actually going to die. He didn’t remember it being this terrifying. His chest hurt – his legs were shaking out of control as he scooted back – his servo throbbed – he remembered a lot less pain – this couldn’t be –
The group pressed forwards in a sloppy huddle.
“Now –“
“Get him, Razerwire!”
“Hey! My turn!”
He was actually going to –
The sacks to his left were moving.
Prowl’s processor noted this fact, categloged it, and continued to spin uselessly.
Why were the sacks moving?
“No!” one fo the mechs was arguing, “I wanted to go first! All these Iaconians are the same and I wanna bust his helm –“
The sacks were shifting and falling –
“If you get to –“
“Don’t –“
An unsettling, low moan rolled through the room.
The bots turned towards the sack in unison.
Prowl slumped against the wall.
Something was rising from the corner, sacks slumping over and shovels clattering as it expanded.
It moaned again and Prowl felt all the micro-mechanisms in his helm rattle. Oh, frag him.
“We – we – we” someone was gibbering.
“Out – we need to.”
“Move!”
They cleared the room in seconds and Prowl could hear the doors slamming as they raced back through the botany labs.
The dark blob in the corner expanded. Two clawed servos popped out form the top – the moan shook the room again – the darkness shrunk as –
-as Jazz folded his wings back and stretched. He cycled his optics and rubbed them like a sparkling, yawning, each of his four fangs popping out.
“What’s goin’ on? Who’re – “ Jazz froze as he opened his optics fully.
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
“Um.”
Prowl didn’t trust his pedes, but he pushed himself upright.
“Jazz. You are supposed to be in Polyhex with Ricochet.”
“Yeah, about that –“
“You are not in Polyhex with Ricochet.”
The idiotic-bane of his life-interfering energon seeker shrunk down. He dug at the filthy floor with an equally filthy pede. He was covered in the metallic dust.
“No?”
“Why are you not in Polyhex?”
“I – um – can you give me a second?” he asked, smilingly weakly. His electric green optics were dulled.
“So you can comm someone to help you come up with a better lie? Jazz how long have you been here?”
The idiot-made-metal actually perked up at that and floated up so his pedes barely brushed the ground.
“This morning! I came in –“
“How long have you been in Kaon?”
He thudded back to the ground.
“Um – two – maybe – not more than – ah six weeks?”
Prowl offlined his optics.
Six weeks. A quarter of the time that Prowl had been here.
“I stayed away!” he protested and Prowl didn’t need to see him to see his expression – sad, faintly scolded, pleading. “Carrier and Ultra Magnus said you had to do this by yourself – which I think it stupid, but that’s what they said – and so I stayed with some of Rico’s friends just outside the city and I made sure no one saw me!” He paused. “Please don’t be mad!”
The room sunk into silence.
Prowl vented.
Was he mad? Not that Jazz had saved him from a beating that could have been too easily fatal. He wasn’t even that mad that Jazz was sleeping in a backroom at his university.
If he was honest, when he searched his spark, he couldn’t drum up more than annoyance that Jazz had followed him. He’d been doing it since they were sparklings.
“No, I’m not mad.” A rush of warm air was all the warning he had before Jazz was plastered to his side.
“Oh, good. I missed you.” His face was already tucked into the crook of Prowl’s neck, his servos magnetized in place, one leg tanged in Prowl’s.
“Me too.” Prowl turned and wrapped his arms around Jazz, resting his helm against the top of Jazz’s.
“If you need to get away again, can I just come too? I was lonely without you.”
“Same.”
Prowl vented deeply. He pushed down the new and alien urge to kiss the top of Jazz’s helm. His therapist had warned him about the affect everything would have on his friendships. He wasn’t about to drive away his oldest friend because his processor kept mixing things up and telling he wanted to kiss Jazz.
“Sorry, Jazz, everything was too much.”
It had felt like his processor was running on dry cogs and his spark was shrinking into nothingness behind his chestplate. Everything was tangled up in everything else – Jazz, the attacks, his recovery.
Jazz snuggled closer, smearing the dust over Prowl now too. They were going to look like reanimated frames at this rate.
“I know. I’m sorry. I wish…” he fell silent. “I wish I’d been there when – when everything happened.”
“I’m glad that you weren’t,” Prowl said without hesitation. “I’m glad you were safe with Rico and Ultra Magnus.” For those terrible three days last vorn, knowing that the people he loved were safe was all that kept Prowl going.
“Wish you’d been safe too.”
“Yeah.”
They fell silent again. That always surprised him – how well Jazz knew how to be silent when he needed to be. They could sit in silence for hours at home and be perfectly content.
“So…” He was going to regret this. “So, where do you want to go?”
“Go?”
“When I want to ‘get away again.’ Where do you want to go?”
Jazz cackled and squeezed Prowl hard enough to drive a squeak out of his vocalizer.
“Everywhere.”
0-0-0
“First things first – you need a shower.”
“It’s not that bad down here! I’m only a little dusty.”
“We look like the Ambling Animated Frames from that horror vid.”
I'd love more information/continuation for a few of your fics. Warring houses, or secret baby or scandal induced marriage from the fluff bingo a while back, there's a few more in there that I can't think of right now. Whatever you're up for sharing, doing, I'd just love to hear more of your thoughts for where the stories are headed.
I hope I didn't misinterpret what you're asking just now.
So sorry to get back to you so late! This was so welcome during my dreary holidays.
Thank you so much!
I'm really looking forward to finished and posting Warring Houses. It's one of those fics where everything just kind of clicked and the plot was easy to figure out. I've got Jazz's characterization and past done, but I was torn on Prowl. I try to vary his family and backstory in my stories since "neglected genius finally finds a friend" is a major comfort trope of mine. Like, Secret Baby, he was raised in a cult and had to cut his parents off completely or risk getting dragged back in. In this one, he has a large and somewhat supportive family, but they hold the same prejudices as him about bots from other cities.
One of the turning points in the fic is when Prowl realizes that putting Red Alert first means working with Jazz and going against his family.
I have Warring Houses all planned out and so many scenes waiting.
Here's one!
The Prax frowned.
“I have extensive experience with civilians and I have several younger cousins.” He seemed to come back to himself. He shook his helm. “Furthermore, I do not have to explain myself to you. Red Alert may find excess emotiveness difficult.”
“Or – “ the mech was so /stupid/ and his helm was so far up his own tail pipe – “he might be sittin’ alone in that room, runnin’ through watching Rico and Smokescreen be gunned down.”
Oh. Fuck. The words had been intended as a jab at Prowl, but his own spark stuttered. He could see the feeling echoed on the enforcer’s faceplates.
That knife had gone a little too deep.
Jazz spun around on his heel, feeling the dip and sway of his own weight as he balanced, like a tightrope walker, on a single point of contact.
“But, what do I know? I’m sure big bad enforcer is better at this. I bet all your friends talk about how nice and friendly you are. Didn’t they have a nickname for you?”
He tipped, wavering.
“Drone, wasn’t it?”
Jazz put his other pede down with a soft, definite, thud.
“I’m going to see if Red’s okay. You stay here and reboot or something. Maybe that computer will be working again in the morning.”
Prowl didn’t say anything and Jazz didn’t look back. The last thing he was going to do was feel /anything/ for a jumped up brute like Commander Prowl.
0-0-0
/Drone./
It had been vorns.
The door to Red Alert’s room slid softly shut and Prowl only caught the thief saying, “Hey, bitlet, you doing okay?” before the living room was drenched in silence again.
Someone Makes a Bet - Prowl is sent to a small seaside town in order to help them create a formal police force. Rewriting chapter 1 and started chapter 2
Secret Identify - working on his new team! I have scenes from two and three stories ahead written out that I really want to share.
Secret Baby - Plugging away. This one is my white whale.
Warring Houses - Another one I've written many later chapters of and have a beautiful outline for
Holiday stories - last chapter of Regret (2/4 written?) and a short Optimus-is-Santa story inspired by (but not similar to) Klaus.
AUAugust - One chapter left. I know what's going to happen. It's 1/2 written. I just have to finish the damn thing!
Spooky SpecOps Story - Five SpecOps agents are clearing an old military building for habitation post-war. They realize something else is in the building with them.
Ancient Curse - A group of students accidentally release a sparkeater from a book. Luckily they also release the sparkeater hunter - he's just a bit crotchety.
Grimlock Eats a Teacher - I work out my frustrations with the education system. Grimlock stumbles upon a school exclusively for disabled students and discovers he likes teaching.
Heat Fic Deconstructed - I fully understand that the idea of 'heat' and 'rut' and 'sex pollen' are vehicles for kink. I just can't stop the questions popping into my head like "How is this beneficial to increasing the species if half the suitors fight to the death and yet this species has one offspring at a time?"
Late night bitching turned into fanfic. I might start to clean it up and post it on AO3 someday. I've never posted anything for this pairing, but they are a background pair in the unpublished Halloween fic, the second half of Secret Baby (not abandoned!), and one of the one-shots I started for AUAugust last year.
Hound flinched. Frag. He loved his cousin. He was thrilled - beyond thrilled! - that Tracker had found love. He liked Mudslide a lot, which was a first for any of Tracker’s partners. She was considerate and funny (she was still in the trying-too-hard stage where she tried to make everything a compliment or joke) and she respected Tracker, which was the most important thing.
All he wanted to do was really really scrub down in the washracks and spend half an hour waxing the stains off his shoulders. He wanted to pop open a junkie sweetened cube and watch his favorite commentator break down the most recent off-road races that he’d missed.
And. He. Just. Couldn’t.
He was a social bot! He loved going out and spending time with his friends! He went on week long road trips and hiked through some of the more treacherous wild-lands with his Iacon Adventurers Group.
You would think that a bot like Tracker would understand, but no one in the family had sensors as strong as Hound’s. Tracker’s sensors were all visually focused. Hound’s sensors were visual, audio, vibration, chemical-scents and chemical-compositions, and electro-field. Every anomaly had to be noted and cataloged before he could shut off his processor. It was pit-slagging horrible when his favorite wax n’ wash was discontinued and he had to find a new one.
What it also meant was that he couldn’t stop tracking Mudslide through their habsuite. He couldn’t relax and all he could think was how much he wanted to wash and how he couldn’t wash with Mudslide there. It wouldn’t be a problem, but Tracker kept letting Mudslide recharge at their habsuite and it wasn’t like Hound could barge out there and tell Mudslide to go home.
They’d even agreed on one night a week! Tracker had promised that Mudslide would only stay over once a week and only if Hound didn’t have work the next day.
It was going on three days now where Mudslide kept coming over after work and wow, the drive was so long and look at the time and also, let’s make dinner last an hour and a half. Hound was exhausted.
Mudslide crossed the room again and Hound’s sensors buzzed from across the habsuite and through two closed doors.
Frag.
He scrolled through the news again. Another thing he hated. There was some block that kept him from getting anything done, when Mudslide was over. He knew in his processor that he didn’t have to be a host, that Mudslide and Tracker wouldn’t care if he dragged a project into the front room, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t even get into the new mystery from his favorite author. So he scrolled. Endlessly. Wasting time. He had work in the morning and he was not looking forward to waking up early so he could get in the washracks before the other two.
An ad bloomed over the screen and Hound paused before closing it .
ALL NIGHT WASHRACKS! Come down to the Steel Frame washracks, the highest quality private wash and wax facilities in Iacon! Time away from the bonded and sparklings? Need a spa cycle? Affordable prices!
It was in a much more trendy section of Iacon, nearly an hour’s drive away. It was also much more expensive than what Hound could afford.
The thermal sensors across his entire left side buzz and happily reported exactly what Mudslide and Tracker were doing.
Pit, he’d take it out of the rent and Tracker could make it up. Not like any money was being spent taking Mudslide out on dates.
0-0-0
The place was stupidly fancy and Hound was afraid he’d stand out for all of ten kliks before two bots walked by and complimented his choice on the metal-shaving mud mask for his armor.
Apparently the mineralizations lifted years from your frame. Six hours climbing out of a gorge accomplished something that would cost him two month’s pay to have done by ‘professionals.’
So, he agreed to kick it in the front room - sorry, grand foyer - while the staff got him the wash kit and high grade he’d splurged on. Watching rich bots was surprisingly entertaining, if only a little bit disheartening.
He’d been saving up for two vorns for his own place - nothing fancy, just enough to say that he didn’t still have a roommate at his age. With the addition of Tracker’s new sweetspark, Hound had been putting away just that much more with every paycheck.
Idly he pulled up Murder on the Praxus Express by Optics and skimmed the first chapter. Typical of Optics, it was exceedingly dry and focused on each tiny detail.
Primus, sitting in boiling solvent, sipping high grade and reading it would be perfection. Primus, when did he get so old?
And just as he was musing over what old bot things he’d do, his sensors did something they hadn’t since he was a much younger bot, half out of his processor on fuel deprivation in University.
In size, it was nothing special. The Polar Ocean dwarfed it. With no rivers, it couldn’t be used for shipping or ports. Even the land around it was mostly empty except for a cluster of hotels and restaurants on the shallow edge. The old towns and villages that dotted the rest of the coast were kept alive by the tourists and the dwindling energon wells.
What set the Glass Sea apart from every other liquid body on the planet – the oil oceans, the mercury ponds, the energon rivers in the countryside – was that it was completely transparent. Tourists flocked from all over the planet to watch the strange, alien inhabitants of the Sea and relax on the soft tin and copper beaches.
Prowl had spent all his life in the center of the very – very – landlocked city of Praxus complaining about the smog and the feeble acid rain with his fellow officers. The concept of beaches, tides, and storms were as foreign to him as the stars would be to a deep miner.
Then a forward thinking and rather murderous entrepreneur had tried to put him at the bottom of a mercury well. He’d been dragged out - to be precise, only 78% of him made it into the well and only 74% made it out – and set on the trail of his attacker still limping on a pair of temp-legs and a patch over one empty socket. A heroic arrest, half a vorn of rehab, six off-duty altercations, therapy, a very public meltdown, and a lot of arguing with Captain Chase later, Prowl was sitting in a ship, about to cross the Glass Sea.
