Round ‘n Round ‘n Circles the Brainstorming Goes
Title: Round ‘n Round ‘n Circles the Brainstorming Goes
Rating: PG
Series: Bayverse/mirrorverse/AU
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Skywarp, Starscream, Thundercracker
Warnings: This is a scene without a story. There is actually a plot…somewhat, but no story. AND its not likely gonna get one from me.
Summary: Starscream and his trine bounce a couple ideas around as they puzzle over what they have discovered after secretly observing the planet earth for a year.
Notes: This is a huge rambling plot bunny/brainstorm/scene/story idea (2000 words worth). The seekers and I have been trying to figure out the Autobots plan or plans for months. We still only have guesses. And I’m done with it. I want it off my desktop. Maybe I’ll use this for a contest in the future, maybe someone else knows what Prowl’s and or Prime’s plan/reasoning really is.
So a little background about the scene here since I don’t have a story to stick it in: The transformers “rage” started back in 1984 with the original G1 cartoon. From there it expanded into multiple forms collecting a huge fandom of followers along the way. Even to this day the popularity of transformers is huge as is easy to see even by the non-fandom especially with the success of the two modern day movies. However; what if the transformers idea did not originally develop by humans? What if the original idea was planted? What if the original idea was given to us by Cybertronians? And then we just ran with it as we are inclined to do? And just for the sake of the non-existent story line, what if the Autobots really are the bad guys and they are responsible for the whole set up in the first place? Because, after all, if you’re going to be stuck hiding from your enemies on a dirty organic planet because your leader needs to R&R his troops and he has plans for said planet and its star system you need something to keep yourself entertained; and what better way to do that than mess with the local indigenous dominant species before your faction destroys them and their planet?
It’s sorta funny, this whole idea came about from a trip to the city earlier this year. Do you know how many vehicles have Autobot or Decepticon faction symbols on them? A lot! I mean it has to be a lot if every time I go to the city I see at least 1, but easily usually two or three vehicles with ‘em. (Either that or Denver Colorado is abnormally transformer happy compared to other cities in the US.) Anyway I got to wondering, ya know, if the transformers were real, sticking their faction symbols on our vehicles is sorta stupid. It would just make us a target for the opposite faction. And the scene that developed here has essentially nothing to do with the original thought about transformer faction symbols on our vehicles except that it came about because looking for a storyline that would include a scene explaining the stupidity of such an action to the humans. Go figure.
Astrosecond : 0.498 Earth seconds
Nano-klik : 1 Earth second
Klik : 1.2 Earth minutes
Breem : 8.3 Earth minutes
Joor : About 6.5 Earth hours
Cycle: About 93 hours
Orn : About 13 Earth days
Deca-cycle : Approx. 3 weeks
Stellar-cycle : 7.5 months
Meta-cycle : 13 months
Vorn : About 83 Earth years
Hic : 1 kilometer
Vun : 1 hectometer
Mechanometer : 1 meter
Megamile : 1 mile
NOT Beta’d - Obviously
“Autobots wage their battle to defeat the evil forces ooof the Decepticons. Transfooorrrmers.”
“Warp!”
“What?” the purple seeker spun from where he was bouncing and singing to face his trine mate. “It’s catchy.” He defended.
“Arrgh.” Starscream groaned in his seat as he dragged his hands across his face.
“Glitch. It supports the Autobots,” answered Thundercracker as he whacked his purple trine mates helm for their Trine Leader.
“yes… it does” grumbled Starscream from where he was seated across the table staring thru the multiple floating holo screens currently displaying information about the relatively small planet they had been observing.
Optimus Prime, the majority of his elite, three Autobot battle cruisers of regulars along with his command ship the Ark had up and vanished from Cybertron four vorns ago, leaving a skeletal - by Autobot standards - but still effective force behind. The Decepticons had been unprepared for the move and it had taken them far too long in both Starscream and Megatron’s opinion to acquire enough energon to get their one and only secreted cruiser the Nemesis along with a few support vehicles launched.
Teams with small scout ships had launched as quickly as the teams were supplied to pursue the Ark and keep tabs on the Autobots while the Nemesis was being readied. It was a tricky high risk job and most of the teams had been lost during the intricate game of hide and seek. Eventually though, the Nemesis had launched and immediately set course for the origin point of a 20 meta-cycles old message carried by the sole survivor of one of the last three pursuit teams a vorn ago. Upon arrival at the point, new teams had been launched. Starscream and his trine were one of those teams.
It had been luck and chance that it was his trine who had found the Autobots again after one and a half vorns of empty searching.
Now much of the information gathered over a mere meta-cycles worth of cautious observation and investigation by his trine floated on screens above the table in front of him. And as with the previous times he had looked it over the information was both puzzling and frustrating.
The white and red seeker leaned back in his chair and mumbled to himself. “Well played Prime, well played indeed. But just what is your game? Manipulating the human governments and general populace makes little sense for you.”
“What?”
“Nothing Warp, nothing.” Starscream waved the purple seeker off.
“Nothing? We have been in this system, watching this planet, gathering all sorts of information for an entire cycle of the planet. You yourself have stared at that very same information for orns upon orns. Slag we all have! Now you say we have nothing?”
“Leave him Warp.” Interrupted Thundercracker.
Starscream continued on mostly voicing his thoughts out loud rather than consciously answering Skywarp. “The Autobots have been on this planet for nearly half a vorn and they’ve been secretly manipulating the humans for half of that if my calculations and our research are correct. They have had plenty of time to prep the humans against us as well as manipulate the humans many governments which all evidence seems to indicate they have.”
“So I shall ask once again. What’s their plan?” Asked Skywarp.
Starscream focused and looked at his trine mates. “Humans have spent the past 25 years believing Autobots are good and Decepticons are bad. What do you think is going to happen when we put in an appearance and give our names? I’ll tell you what is going to happen. They are going to pull out their weapons and target us. This whole plan is no doubt due to that tactician of Primes. But I do not see why he would bother. First, unless I’m missing something, it’s not overly elaborate, and second, our weapons, armor and technology are far above the best this planet has to offer so allies, laughable as that idea is, is not what Prime was seeking from the humans.”
Thundercracker answered. “Well, as we have already discussed, this plan most likely belongs to Prowl. Knowing him as we do, he’s probably finding satisfaction in having manipulated an entire planet, and he’ll no doubt enjoy even more when the humans realize that everything they believe to be true is not. Of course the intricacies of running as many puppets as we think he is amongst the many human governments is probably near paradise for him and his processor.”
Starscream shook his head almost absently. “Unless Primes holding the leash tight, Prowl’s more inclined to destroy a species than manipulate it for a full quarter vorn, paradise or no, and I see little reason for Prime to restrain Prowl here. There is nothing to gain on the usual levels. Why manipulate these tiny self centered organics when they could just destroy them and take the planet for their own?”
“I know we have discussed this before but I am so not following either of your lines of thought here.” Skywarp announced with a shake of his head.
“Were just bouncing the same old ideas around Warp, but the time has come to report back to Nemesis and I was hoping to have something more concrete than what we do have.” Starscream flushed air through his systems in frustration.
“Okay, so pretending I don’t know what’s going on…”
“That’s easy enough.” interrupted Thundercracker.
To which Skywarp paused to nod a sarcastic grimace at his blue mate before continuing. “Tell me what we have.”
Starscream arched an optic ridge and cast an indulging smirk at Skywarp before playing along. “The Autobots plan whatever that may be went active back in the year 1984 as the Humans reckon time on their planet with the introduction of a primitive entertainment series called by the oh so very original name, Transformers. For the following 25 years the Transformers have appeared in some form or another. Now considering some of the variations produced over the time period, I do not think that the Autobots had a huge say in how it played out, or more likely for the most part anyway, didn’t really care what way the Humans ran with it just as long as it stayed active. However it has come full circle with the creation of this much more modern movie once again pushing evil Decepticons and virtuous Autobots to the forefront of the human processors. So much so, that even those who don’t follow Transformers understand that Decepticons are the ‘bad robots.’ And based on what we have learned during our meta-cycle of study, the followers devoted to Transformers is considerable.”
Skywarp nodded “Okay, got that part. So what’s Primes ultimate goal? Prime has never shown any qualms with erasing organics from their planets to harness the energy available, hence Prowl. And with that solar collector the Autobot scientists came up with Prime didn’t even have to mess with the planets for the most part, beyond building it on one. And here in this system he could have used the planets moon just as easily. Why pause now?”
Thundercracker answered “Building on the moon is out due to lack of building resources and...”
“Fine, fine, that explains the planet, but why not eradicate the organics?” Skywarp interrupted.
Thundercracker glared at his trine mate, but continued “We would be foolish to believe the Autobots don’t know we launched our own cruiser and are out searching for them. The Nemesis has clashed with Autobot units in three ruined systems already and as much as I would like to believe we tracked down all the escapees and prevented all communications I know we did not. This system here is nowhere in line with those others making it somewhat hidden. Why employ the solar collector which will most certainly attract our attention as it has in the past when you can set up shop on such an impressively energy rich planet despite what the humans have done to it? We know that the collector has yet to be perfected even with three ruined systems in its wake and the last group of prisoners we captured confirmed that Prime’s forces are in need of energy and desperate for downtime and rebuilding. The Autobots could hole up here, stock piling large amounts of energon, resting their warriors, rebuilding their strength using this planet as a staging base and factory until they reach a point where keeping the planet intact offers less benefit than its destruction. And with it intact, the chances of us just passing it by were much higher. Any of the other teams would have skipped the system when they failed to detect Autobot signals or overt signs of Autobot presence. Because as we all know ‘low profile’ is not the standard Autobot operating procedure. The only reason we even stopped to take a look was because as a scientist Starscream was curious of the developing species and we were indulging him with the promise of some downtime for ourselves.” The blue seeker looked from Skywarp to Starscream seeking confirmation of his theory.
Skywarp spoke before Starscream though “Yeah, yeah, I know. Primus luck we stopped here. So once Prime gets what he can off the planet, that namely being energon and a rested and refortified attack force he’ll still employ a solar collector to suck the star in this system dry. Right?”
Starscream nodded absently “Yes, without the collector, this planet alone could be mined for enough energon to rebuild his forces and begin the resupply and rebuilding of Cybertron. And depending on how careful he is he can probably do it in a vorn. If he wants the full potential of this planet and the maximum rebuild time and he’s patient he should probably stretch the collection period up to as long as two vorns. But as we know patience is not Prime’s strong suite. In fact I suspect much of the planets massive earthquakes, weather issues, anything the humans term natural disasters recorded in the past five, maybe even 10 years are directly or indirectly Autobot caused.”
“Okay, so again, why play with the humans instead of eradicate? I still don’t see why they would bother. Autobot SOP is to obliterate anything that gets in the way. And eliminating the organics wouldn’t effect energy production of the planet and the chances that we would actually find this system were pretty small.” Skywarp questioned
Starscream frowned. “Possibly it serves no purpose unless like TC suggested we show up before they are ready. And while the chances of finding the planet were small, we did find it. Because everything here was still intact we classified this as a low probability system when we entered it. Pit the three of us took bets about it being another false run and the only reason we even paused to survey the planet rather than pass it by was because of my scientific curiosity. And when surprisingly we did find evidence, we were forced to reconnoiter in slower ways than we would have; had no natural sentients existed. Now Megatron will want the impact to the planet, its ecosystems and species to be minimal. We’ll continue to be delayed and hampered and forced to move covertly no matter what strategy we implement. Expose ourselves and who trusts a Decepticon? Remain hidden, and the Autobots can expose us proving us to be the Decepticons that these people already believe in. And yes…while our technology and destructive capabilities are vastly superior to anything the humans have we will not be allowed to turn that tech on the humans while they will be under no such restraint. And like it or not we are not completely indestructible to what they do have.”
Skywarp nodded while at the same time shifting aside floating screens and pulling up a new one which he started the human game called Tetris on.
Starscream watched Skywarp as he pulled up the game. “Actually…perhaps it does serve a specific purpose. Maybe even two specific purposes. You may have been right about Prowl TC” Starscream paused as he thought the idea through a bit more.
“And those would be? Thundercracker prompted.
Starscream shrugged “Hardly significant except that by manipulating the humans, Prime is letting that psychotic CPU with legs he calls a tactician entertain himself. And make no mistake about it, he needs to be kept entertained or even Prime has problems with him. Laying low on a planet, no matter how necessary will not sit well with Prowl if he has nothing to do which in turn causes Prime his problems.”
“So what? Better that Prime have problems with him than us.”
Starscream waved a hand vaguely in frustrated thought. “So purpose number one, Prime benefits whether we show up or not. As we’ve noted, if we show up, before they’ve reached the point of destroying the planet for organic life, Prime knows we will be slowed as Megatron tries to figure out how to protect the planet and the life it developed. The advantage is to Prime and his forces. And purpose number two is merely for Prowl’s twisted amusement which has the added benefit of making ruling the Autobots less of a headache for Prime. If we had never found them, Prime would have had the enjoyment of watching Prowl play the humans like figures on an Angles grid. Prowl may or may not have started the transformers idea which led to this planet wide phenomenon of idolizing us, but I’ll bet you my last cubes of high grade that it is more than a theory. At this point Prowl and consequently Prime has pull and sway if not outright power in every government and powerful civilian organization as well as the numerous mini factions scattered in every country across the planet. It would allow the Autobots to manipulate wars and border squabbles and any other type of internal conflict as needed or desired. And in Prowl’s case, just because he can.”
“But we have found them.”
“Yes. And as repeatedly stated now face the hindrance, albeit temporary, of a planet who believes Decepticons are bad and Autobots are good. Pit, you’ve seen what fans of these series do. They wear the Autobots logo on their clothes, on their vehicles and on their skin. Pit to the 10th power they even write stories about the characters.”
Skywarp looked from his game towards Starscream proving that he was still paying attention even if he had needed to find some entertainment “Oh yeah! Have you read some of them? Some of the ideas these humans come up with about us are pit slagged hilarious.”
“Warp. Focus”
“I am focused.” Skywarp glared at Thundercracker for emphasis before he continued. “Some of the series and stories seem to favor the Decepticons.”
“It’s all fun and games till the monsters appear Warp. And we are already behind in the game.” Thundercracker shook his head.
“Yeah but somewhere… oh where is it” Warp grumbled as he slid the game down and shifted floating screens about, “ah here… Shattered Glass, they have us as being the good guys.”
“Warp, that’s one small little verse compared to the overall situation.” Thundercracker shook his head.
Starscream nodded. We haven’t failed yet. This is only a bump in a battle, not the war. We have plenty of time to figure this out. Shockwave will come up with a countermeasure for this situation.
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