NaNo Day Fifteen
Thursday. My first true day off since NaNo started. Time to buckle down and catch up since I'm so hideously behind. Good thing is... I've got all of Prowl's part plotted out and Thundercracker is starting to take shape. Yahoo.
NaNo word count as of 7:16 pm EST: 23,574. (I'm supposed to be at 25,005). My goal? To hit 26,672 by the time I go to bed. *fingers crossed*
Don't forget that I'm going to do Flash Fiction Friday tomorrow. It'll help boost my word count!!
And now for the promised excerpt in it's roughest of the rough draft glory. :) (I can haz Prowl icon? Anyone?)
Sideswipe, Prowl muses, would have made a passable medic once upon a time. It is a pity that circumstances and the war have turned his function into something the complete opposite.
His hands are deft, well-articulated, and steady. His knowledge, at present, is passable, but relocating Prowl's sensory panel and replacing the motor relay in his leg do not require a surgeon's expertise. Were Prowl flexible enough, he could probably fix both issues himself.
“There,” Sideswipe says with a final pat to Prowl's leg before he draws back. “Got any complaints, feel free to report them to management. Not that they give a frag.”
Prowl finds himself having missed Sideswipe's special brand of humor, for all that it is off-color. He reroutes feeling to his limb, restoring the haptic connection, and twitches as all of his sensory lines bombard him. It is an annoying discomfort, however, and nothing has been damaged untoward. The rest his self-repair should be able to handle save for his severed data cable. Nothing can be done for it. The linkages are ruined and only a trained medic is capable of reconstructing them without frying the circuits.
“Thank you, Sideswipe,” Prowl replies, flexing his knee joint before sliding off the medberth in this corner of a large warehouse. This is Ratchet's former work area, Prowl's been informed. “You've done well.”
The warrior arches an orbital ridge. “Repeat that after your panel fully integrates and then I'll be impressed.”
He is right, of course. For the moment, Prowl has disengaged the input from both of his sensory panels and he dreads establishing that connection once again. Ratchet could have fine-tuned the process, set up some sort of reroute to buffer most of the input noise, but such is the way of things.
“Any discomfort I may endure is not your fault,” Prowl assures Sideswipe and rests, for a moment, against the edge of the medberth. He can't help but be appalled by what Prime has termed their base.
For having been stationed on Earth for five years, their living situation is dismaying. No personal quarters, no privacy, no supplies. They might have just arrived for all that they've been given a sense of permanence. Granted, Sentinel did a fair job of destroying their base in Washington, DC but from what images Prowl's seen, their prior accommodations had not been much better.
Sideswipe shrugs. “If you say so. But we both know you wish Ratchet had fixed it.”
Prowl's optics swing toward the warrior, the first to actually mention their missing medic by his designation. No other Autobot had been willing to speak of Ratchet. The Wreckers avoid the topic, Prime changes the subject, Prowl hasn't even seen Bumblebee yet, and Dino is doing a fair job of pretending nothing is amiss, despite the tangible pall of emotion that hangs over the Autobots.
“How long has it been exactly?” Prowl asks, wondering if Sideswipe's penchant for disobeying orders means he'll give Prowl some answers no one else seems eager to provide.
“Three months, give or take.” Sideswipe folds his arms, gaze shifting to the side, his optics cycling down. “I dunno what happened, Prowl. He was acting bothered by something, but I never suspected... I mean, Ironhide was gone so of course he'd be a little bothered.”
Sideswipe ex-vents audibly, his energy field leaking from his control, teeming with conflicting emotions. “The next thing I know, we find some Decepticons, Ratchet's attacking me, Drift's knocking me out and I wake up with no clue what's going on. Ratchet doesn't even tell me, either. Just vanishes with that stupid Seeker and we're all left staring at each other like a couple of glitches, the fragged squishy breathin' down our backstruts demanding answers and Prime...” His faceplate twists with something, Prowl doesn't know what to name it, before Sideswipe shakes his helm again. “Bah. It doesn't matter anyway.”
Except where it does. There's something there, something about Prime, that Sideswipe isn't saying.
“Drift?”
“Used to be Deadlock. I'm sure that name's stored up in your processor somewhere.” Sideswipe's lipplate curls with a dark grin as he lifts his helm and meets Prowl's gaze. “He and Ratch were pretty cozy up until then but I never guessed it would go like this. None of us did.”
Prowl makes a wordless sound of commiseration. “Do you believe Ratchet's been compromised?”
“Isn't it obvious?” Sideswipe drops his hands to his sides, rocking back and forth on his wheeled pedes. “He left willingly. There's nothing they could have threatened him with. What do any of us have to lose anymore, after all?”
a/n: So there's a bit of part two. Next snippet should come from part three. Prowl's story, my friends, is a punch to the chest. New warnings will be added to reflect that, but War Without End gets worse before it gets better. Ah, delicious angst.
Comment as you will. :) And good luck out there to all my fellow NaNo-ers.
This entry was originally posted at http://dracoqueen22.dreamwidth.org/205446.html. Feel free to comment wherever you find most convenient.
NaNo word count as of 7:16 pm EST: 23,574. (I'm supposed to be at 25,005). My goal? To hit 26,672 by the time I go to bed. *fingers crossed*
Don't forget that I'm going to do Flash Fiction Friday tomorrow. It'll help boost my word count!!
And now for the promised excerpt in it's roughest of the rough draft glory. :) (I can haz Prowl icon? Anyone?)
Sideswipe, Prowl muses, would have made a passable medic once upon a time. It is a pity that circumstances and the war have turned his function into something the complete opposite.
His hands are deft, well-articulated, and steady. His knowledge, at present, is passable, but relocating Prowl's sensory panel and replacing the motor relay in his leg do not require a surgeon's expertise. Were Prowl flexible enough, he could probably fix both issues himself.
“There,” Sideswipe says with a final pat to Prowl's leg before he draws back. “Got any complaints, feel free to report them to management. Not that they give a frag.”
Prowl finds himself having missed Sideswipe's special brand of humor, for all that it is off-color. He reroutes feeling to his limb, restoring the haptic connection, and twitches as all of his sensory lines bombard him. It is an annoying discomfort, however, and nothing has been damaged untoward. The rest his self-repair should be able to handle save for his severed data cable. Nothing can be done for it. The linkages are ruined and only a trained medic is capable of reconstructing them without frying the circuits.
“Thank you, Sideswipe,” Prowl replies, flexing his knee joint before sliding off the medberth in this corner of a large warehouse. This is Ratchet's former work area, Prowl's been informed. “You've done well.”
The warrior arches an orbital ridge. “Repeat that after your panel fully integrates and then I'll be impressed.”
He is right, of course. For the moment, Prowl has disengaged the input from both of his sensory panels and he dreads establishing that connection once again. Ratchet could have fine-tuned the process, set up some sort of reroute to buffer most of the input noise, but such is the way of things.
“Any discomfort I may endure is not your fault,” Prowl assures Sideswipe and rests, for a moment, against the edge of the medberth. He can't help but be appalled by what Prime has termed their base.
For having been stationed on Earth for five years, their living situation is dismaying. No personal quarters, no privacy, no supplies. They might have just arrived for all that they've been given a sense of permanence. Granted, Sentinel did a fair job of destroying their base in Washington, DC but from what images Prowl's seen, their prior accommodations had not been much better.
Sideswipe shrugs. “If you say so. But we both know you wish Ratchet had fixed it.”
Prowl's optics swing toward the warrior, the first to actually mention their missing medic by his designation. No other Autobot had been willing to speak of Ratchet. The Wreckers avoid the topic, Prime changes the subject, Prowl hasn't even seen Bumblebee yet, and Dino is doing a fair job of pretending nothing is amiss, despite the tangible pall of emotion that hangs over the Autobots.
“How long has it been exactly?” Prowl asks, wondering if Sideswipe's penchant for disobeying orders means he'll give Prowl some answers no one else seems eager to provide.
“Three months, give or take.” Sideswipe folds his arms, gaze shifting to the side, his optics cycling down. “I dunno what happened, Prowl. He was acting bothered by something, but I never suspected... I mean, Ironhide was gone so of course he'd be a little bothered.”
Sideswipe ex-vents audibly, his energy field leaking from his control, teeming with conflicting emotions. “The next thing I know, we find some Decepticons, Ratchet's attacking me, Drift's knocking me out and I wake up with no clue what's going on. Ratchet doesn't even tell me, either. Just vanishes with that stupid Seeker and we're all left staring at each other like a couple of glitches, the fragged squishy breathin' down our backstruts demanding answers and Prime...” His faceplate twists with something, Prowl doesn't know what to name it, before Sideswipe shakes his helm again. “Bah. It doesn't matter anyway.”
Except where it does. There's something there, something about Prime, that Sideswipe isn't saying.
“Drift?”
“Used to be Deadlock. I'm sure that name's stored up in your processor somewhere.” Sideswipe's lipplate curls with a dark grin as he lifts his helm and meets Prowl's gaze. “He and Ratch were pretty cozy up until then but I never guessed it would go like this. None of us did.”
Prowl makes a wordless sound of commiseration. “Do you believe Ratchet's been compromised?”
“Isn't it obvious?” Sideswipe drops his hands to his sides, rocking back and forth on his wheeled pedes. “He left willingly. There's nothing they could have threatened him with. What do any of us have to lose anymore, after all?”
a/n: So there's a bit of part two. Next snippet should come from part three. Prowl's story, my friends, is a punch to the chest. New warnings will be added to reflect that, but War Without End gets worse before it gets better. Ah, delicious angst.
Comment as you will. :) And good luck out there to all my fellow NaNo-ers.
This entry was originally posted at http://dracoqueen22.dreamwidth.org/205446.html. Feel free to comment wherever you find most convenient.