| abstract
| - Monday, August 08, 2011, 10:33 PM First Aid, Swivel. Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Prowl Standing just outside of the dome is a slight figure, covered cranium to pedes in rust. Although pacing over a small stretch of the road in front, the steps are slow and staggerd and there is much dragging of the feet. The sentries posted there are keeping a passive optic on her, but do not seem eager to get too close. On the spot where Swivel had been pacing is a dusting of brownish red flakes and miscellaneous sediments. The only colour that can be found aside from the previously mentioned rust are two purple optics. Upon seeing First Aid and hearing her name called, she stops in her tracks and waves to First Aid. "Over here." "Swivel! What happened?" First Aid starts towards the gate. One of the guards moves to block him. "Orders from Prowl, kid- you're not supposed to leave the city." First Aid vents air. "I'll stay in the causeway? Please?" Or let Swivel in here, just the gatehouse?" The guard rolls his optics and gestures Swivel forward. "That's not contagious or nothing, right?" He asks her. Swivel shakes her head furiously 'no' to the guard's question, and then looks pleadingly at them, then dismally over at First Aid. First Aid says, "What happened?" Aid looks her up and down. "You're a /mess/? How deep is that rust, your armor could be wasting away right here..." Swivel shakes her head, and then coughs a few times as some sediments of rust spatter out. "Actually, I'm having a hard time getting the stuff off. I , uh, took a leisurely dive into the Rust Sea." First Aid looks concerned. "Are you okay? What happened? What have you tried so far? Maybe we should go to the medbay?" Swivel dusts some of the loose flakes off of her armour, a fair amount fluttered to the ground right then and there. "Well... I was at the shore of the rust sea." Swivel is quiet for a moment, looking down. She idly reaches up and rubs the back of her neck, then she looks up at First Aid again, her face screwed into a look of apprehension and guilt. "I'm so sorry, First Aid... I did something really stupid, and I... I..." First Aid says automatically, "Don't scratch, it's bad for you. What are you talking about?" He puts a hand on her arm and tugs gently in the direction of the medbay. "C'mon, we can see if we can clean this up while we talk." Swivel shakes her head. "No, I am not going into that medbay! No way! Ratchet will have a fit if he so much as sees a speck of rust in there!" She inhales deeply, only to sputter and cough out more rust. "The thing is..." she goes quiet and leans in closer to First Aid, speaking quietly. "You trusted me with... information... and I'm afraid I... um... well... you see I keep a personal diary... I shouldn't have written it in there! Decepticons chased me into the rust sea, and I dropped it! I'm so sorry!" First Aid freezes in place. "Dropped it? Where? What was in it?" Swivel frowns deeply. "Things connecting you and Streetwise, you and Blades... you and Groove... you told me not to talk about it. I had security and everything on my diary in case a random person found it... but I know that it was picked up by a Decepticon... and they have resources, and I am in such a fix over this and feel terrible and I try so hard to be trustworthy but then I always make mistakes. I know eveyrone makes them... but mine always hurt someone else more than myself." "Groove? And Streetwise? /EVERYONE/ is in there? We need to go, now, and talk to Ratchet. You're going to tell him what you just told me." First Aid pulls harder on her arm, careful of the rust." You say, "Repair bay. :P We can break in on the end of the meeting." Swivel does not resist or protest this time, other than letting out a soft whimper. First Aid hurries into the medbay, very nearly dragging a rust-covered and completely filthy Swivel behind him as he heads straight for Ratchet's office. He knocks on the closed door- it's never closed. What's going on? Swivel has no choice but to follow along at First Aid's brisk pace, but she is dragging her feet some and her head is bowed, and her free arm fidgety, causing rust flakes to fall off. Following behind her is a cinnabar trail of filth. When First Aid knocks, she shudders and looks almost as if she's ready to bolt. Ratchet starts and jumps up to open the door. "What the --?!" Optimus Prime looks up, optics brightening. He almost frowns under the faceplate at the interruption, starting to stand from where he sat. First Aid tugs Swivel a little further forward. "Swivel, tell him what you just told me. Ratchet, we have a problem." First Aid looks scared. Swivel picks up the dicebag and rolls against her courage . Swivel's roll fails! Prowl glances sharply over his shoulder before rising, wings flaring out behind him. He doesn't say anything yet, waiting to hear what the femme has to say. Swivel peering in, and seeing not just Ratchet within, but others too, she straightens up, going rigid, and just stares at those in the room with extreme fear. It appears the femme, for a change, has been struck dumb. First Aid gives Swivel's arm a little shake. "Please, Swivel, this is really important." At the shake, more flakes of rust fall off. She still seems in a stupor, and then she flicks off her optics, looking as though she were about to faint. But instead comes out a dribble, like some sort of verbal diarrhea, words tumbling over each other in quick succession. "The Decepticons probably know about First Aid and Blades and Streetwize and Groove and stuff like that that I know they shouldn't know!" Ratchet's face becomes thunderous. "What do you *mean* they know?" Optimus PRime falls silent as well. He guestures to the door, without a word moving to close it himself behind all of them, locking it securely. And standing there. "What?" Prowl's voice is sharp, doorwings rising high behind him. "How many details do they know?" He demands, snapping the comm to Red Alert open again as he looks at Prime. "We need a secure line to Crystal City /immediately./" Swivel fidgets, not sure if she is intimidated more by the presence of a factional leader, whom she'd never laid optics on before, or Ratchet. She isn't even sure about the other person in the room. She looks faint and her knees shake. "They... got hold... um... of.. a datapad... that had some information connecting First Aid, Blades, Groove, and Streetwise... brothers is the term used in the datapad. And mention of them carrying encrypted data..." She glances nervously at First Aid, then looks at the ground. "I know you didn't mean it, but ... that was secret for a reason, Swivel." First Aid says. "I asked you to be careful with it." Just as the words "I know you didn't..." come out of First Aid's mouth, Swivel quickly steps on his foot as hard as she can, also trying to work an elbow into his side, anything to get him to not finish his sentence. To cover up this strange behaviour she yells, "I CAN'T TAKE IT!" Optimus PRime remains by the door at this and as the youth shouts, he drops to a knee, moving to place a large, firm hand on her shoulder and try to whirl her about "Swivel!" it was That Voice, the voice that few could not pay attention to Prowl tilts his head slightly, comm buzzing. He listens to whoever's on the other end before cutting the connect. "Slag." He mutters, pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead. "Protofire has just arrived to escort Groove back to Crystal City." His attention snaps back to the femme. "What was on that pad? And I do not mean a vague outline, I need every possible detail, down to a tiny /smudge/ on someone's paint you mentioned." First Aid's vocalizer clicks as he resets it. "Streetwise is in Cubricon. He doesn't have the secure comm yet. We have to let him know, it's not safe, he's got to come back here-" He barely seems to notice Swivel stepping on his foot, or the elbow. When she is seized, she is so off balance and it takes little effort on Optimus' part to spin her, not that she could have really resisted much if she was trying. Hearing his voice she flinches, looking guilty and penitent. She goes quiet for a moment, and then vents in deeply to steady herself, then glances over at First Aid with narrowed optics, as if trying to tell him to say nothing. Whether he gets the hint or not... well... "Every detail? Every detail? Give me a moment." She is quiet for a spell, then finally begins. "Alright. The first mention of Streetwise in connection to First Aid is logged because I always keep a log of my jobs, and I was hired to run a message to him. The job went smoothly and discretely itself." She pauses a moment. "An entry mentions that time Ratchet had a bounty on his head for mistreating Streetwise, but that doesn't really link to First Aid. I was the one who informed Ratchet of this, though. It is also mentioned around this time First Aid was confined to Iacon." She pauses, ready to share more, but seems to need a moment to arrange her memories into coherent sentences. Ratchet begins to snarl. "All right. First -- your aft gets stuffed into the washrack to get all that slag off. And then? You're Prowl's. Nothing I can say that he can't say better," he growls. Prime stared into those optics, but it was not anger or strictness. Merely peace, and concern. HE held her until she was calmer, then released her to let her speak to Prowl. He remained kneeling behind her for now, quietly listening. During her pause, Swivel glares at Ratchet, in contrast to her quibbling, shaky demeanor before. Perhaps the calmness from the leader has given her some confidence back, but this is not for the best. "It isn't First Aid's fault! I... I just overheard a lot of things and guessed the rest! I hear a lot, it's part of my job!" She turns back to Prowl to continue filling him in on the information on the datapad. "Later the connection between First Aid and Blades and Streetwise was mentioned as them being brothers. The entry gushes about how happy First Aid seemed around that time. The mention of encrypted data in all of them references back to the events that lead up to Ratchet angering the mob. Finally, in the last entry, it talks about me meeting First Aid and him introducing Groove as just a friend, but the way they were together..." she trails off for a moment, "Groove had never been mentioned before that, but already I saw a sort of.... kinship between them that doesn't happen with new acquaintences. The entry also details that Groove mainly resides in a monastery in Crystal City. It mentions that Blades is from Cubicron... and of course speaks of Streetwise's affiliation with Don Vespa, but I think that's pretty common knowledge for anyone who spends time there." Prime shifts uneasily. This is Not Good. "How well encrypted is that datapad?” Swivel allows her shoulders to sag. "It has a password lock and only some basic encryption. I am afraid that it wasn't a very sophisticated datapad. How it came to be in Decepticon possession was that while I was trying to fix a minor glitching in the program some Decepticons came upon me. They chased me, and I lost it during the pursuit. I know one of them must have grabbed it. I'm not a fighter, and there were multiple of them! Please, they are warriors and I'm not! All I could do is dive into all that rust and stay under there, hidden, until I was sure they were gone, and even then, I still waited! I came here right away after that to tell First Aid." "You are not in trouble. I am sorry that WE were not there to protect you when you needed it." remarks PRime soothingly to Swivel. Prowl is about to speak when his comm goes off again. He pauses to listen to it, visibly annoyed. "Send him to the Red Guardian Inn. To my knowledge, that is Groove's current location." He says stiffly to whoever's on the other end before cutting the connection. Looking at Swivel, he crosses his arms over his chest, heaving air out his vents. "Get yourself cleaned up, Swivel." He glances up at Prime, though he's still addressing the femme. "Once that has been dealt with, I would like for Ratchet and First Aid to escort you to the War Room. If I may, Prime?" First Aid absently pats Swivel on the arm- he's looking from Ratchet to Prowl. "Please, we need to find a way to get a message to Streetwise right away." He says urgently. First Aid asks, obviously just having thought of it- "Wait, can I comm him? Maybe he can just come here? It's not the encrypted ones, he doesn't have his yet." Ratchet's message directly to Prowl -- "We need Jazz. Ten breems ago." Swivel looks directly at Prowl, then when he glances at Optimus, she cranes her neck to look back at him. Finally she risks a glance over to Ratchet, and then glances apologetically at First Aid. She stands there, once again silent. Then she slowly turns around fully, looking at the way out of the office, tapping her foot lightly. Prime is still standing there in front of the door. He nods at her "In a few moments." he promises, and looks to the others "Make the call, First Aid. I think this is more important. But try to be Subtle. First Aid nods. There's no answer. First Aid keeps trying the comm, looking more and more upset. Finally there's a CLICK on the radio, and muffled, somewhat upsetting voices "This is NOT a good time First Aid!" whispered Streetwise. You have to come back to Iacon, as soon as you can, please be careful. First Aid sends all in one rushed burst. There's more irritated voices in the background, and a clatter like STreetwise was trying to muffle the comm "I'll talk to you later! I-Hey!" CLATTER, whoosh, then a brawny voice "Whozz dis?" asks an unfamiliar voice. "I am well aware." Prowl answers Ratchet back over the radio, doorwings twitching in his otherwise well-contained anger. "Prime, we need to get that datapad back. If even that sort of data falls into Decepticon hands, with what they already know? Unfortunately, they are not entirely incompetent. Someone will figure it out." He says urgently, stepping toward his leader. "HEllo? Hello?" the voice calls again, sounding irritated. Then another whoosh as it was moved "You know what yer dad said about talking to those Bots. Up to no good they are." Streetwise sighs as he takes the comm back "I know what he said. But I also am my own mech you know. " "Yer still a kid, you dont know enough yet. Its fer yer own safety. That an' its rude to have your comm on in a meeting with Don Fiasco. He dun like interruptions." "Yes I know, I'll apologise I promise. " Then a whisper into the comm "Talk to you later. " *CLICK* Swivel fidgets. First Aid looks up. "He's in a meeting- something about Don Fiasco, he didn't listen to me." Optimus nods "I agree. Swivel, do you think you can identify the Decepticons who were there?" Swivel nods her head sullenly. "I can identify one without trouble. Psykeout. Another was a shiny white Decepticon seeker and... I didn't get a very good look at the last one... there may even had been more about that I didn't see in my panic." PRime dismisses Swivel to rest and recoup, and looks at the others in the room. Swivel scurries off to get cleaned up and await further instructions, only looking over her shoulder once sorrowfully at First Aid. Prowl frowns slightly but allows this. Something First Aid said clicks into place, however, and he looks sharply over at the young medic. "Did you say Don Fiasco?" He asks, optic ridges drawing down as one wing twitches again. First Aid nods. "That's what the other mech said- I just overheard it." Prowl immediately runs the name through his database, doorwings hitching up even higher as the results come back. Don Fiasco, mob boss in Cubicron. Ruthless, dangerous, and with an intense dislike of interruptions. Prowl immediately runs the name through his database, doorwings hitching up even higher as the results come back. Don Fiasco, mob boss in Cubicron. Ruthless, dangerous, and with an intense dislike of interruptions. "Prime." He says slowly, processing all the possibilities in that. "I highly recommend sending a small, incognito detachment to Cubicron to fetch Streetwise for his own safety." PRime tilts his head at that, folding his arms as he considers "A Dons' son will be very well protected... " he remarks, but his optics flickered with concern. He lookeda t First Aid "Didnt you once try to infiltrate the Dons' base of operations?" First Aid nods, still upset. "We didn't try, we did it- well, really, they let us in, that time. I've been there three times." "If they believe there to be a good enough reason, do you honestly believe the Decepticons will not find a way to get to him?" Prowl presses. "Cubicron is not a safe city in the best of times- and these are /not/ the best of times." "Very true Prowl, however I do think that Streetwises' 'Father', Don Vespa, may have very great objections to us taking custody of his son even for his own protection. We're not exactly on his favourites list." admits Prime "For now, keep in touch with him First Aid, and when he has time warn him. If we dont hear back we'll act then." Ratchet rumbles his displeasure. "There's no way this could possibly stay subtle," he says. Prowl bristles slightly, but abandons the line of processing for the moment. "What are we going to do about Protofire and Groove? Even if Crystal City itself is safe, the journey there will not be." He asks instead, doorwings still twitching erratically as he struggles to keep his emotions under control. Shooting off a rapid comm to Red Alert about this new development, he pauses for a moment at the response. "...Ratchet, your presence may be needed at the Security Complex." He says finally, heaving air out of his vents again. Ratchet rolls his optics, muttering profanity and shouldering past the other mechs to grab a field kit and head to the Security Complex, cursing overwrought circuitry and inadequate cooling mechanisms. "Lock my office, Prowl," he throws over his shoulder as an afterthought.
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