Pursuant to my previous post, fic.
Title: Advance, Retreat: By Consent of the Governed.
Author: Kyra Neko-Rei
Rating: PG
Characters: Optimus, Prowl, Jazz, Red Alert, ensemble.
Warnings: Entrapment.
Summary: Prowl attempts to enforce an on-the-books ban on high grade. It goes over with the troops about as well as can be expected. Optimus should have known better.
Thursday:
It had all started when Prowl and Red Alert made the case for enforcing the on-the-books ban of high-grade in the Ark, outside of officially approved functions, and Optimus cursed himself soundly for listening to them.
Oh, they had had good points---battle readiness, a history of mechs being overcharged on duty, the tendency of certain brewers to throw in whatever came to hand with sometimes catastrophic results, but really, those things could easily be managed without an across-the-board ban, and Optimus expanded his cursing to include Prowl and Red Alert, who, he reasoned, should have known better themselves.
Prowl glowered at him from across the room.
"It was a meritous idea," he told his Prime stiffly.
Optimus responded with a Cybertronian proverb. "Practice does not fly on Theory's wings."
-------------------------------------
The previous Monday:
-------------------------------------
Sideswipe gave Optimus the sort of hateful look he was accustomed to receiving from Decepticons as Prowl handed over the cubes of highgrade they'd uncovered in Sideswipe's quarters.
"Cease looking at us like that, Sideswipe," Prowl told him. "You will be able to consume it at parties and other celebratory functions, and Jazz throws one of those practically every orn."
"Is there a regulation against looking?" Sideswipe asked bitterly, obviously in no mood to be charitable. He couldn't slam the door in their faces, as it was automatic, but somehow he managed to give that impression.
Prowl sighed. "I swear, that mech lives to make my processor ache."
Optimus said, "You do outrank him, and as such he has little other recourse against you."
"I've been overlooking his high-grade brewing since the war began, Optimus, at your directive. Is it too much to ask that we try it my way for awhile?"
Optimus was silent for a moment. "No," he said. "I appreciate your issues with him, and with many others. We have his high-grade, and you have leave to punish him if he makes more. We'll give this a shot."
"Thank you."
"I suspect Sideswipe will be in malicious obedience mode for awhile."
Prowl winced. "Joy."
"Indeed." A beat. "He's probably not the only one."
Prowl nodded. "Unfortunate. But they will settle down once they realize it's not the end of the world. We've been without high-grade for long periods before, when energon has been rationed. It's not been a problem."
Optimus eyed him, thinking that there was something wrong with that statement but unable to identify it.
Prowl looked back, a hint defensively, Optimus thought. "It will work."
------------------------------------------
"Slagging I-beam-humping dust-fragger," Sideswipe grumbled, flopping into a seat in the rec room next to a sulking Jazz and a mutinous-looking Air Raid.
The Aerialbot looked up. "Who? Prowl?"
"Prowl, Prime, Red Alert---why is Prime letting them do this, anyway?"
Jazz scowled. "Prowl said it's been illegal since forever and he's been overlooking it since the war began, and why can't Prime let him try enforcing it for once," he explained, having had the tactician explain himself to him earlier.
Sideswipe sneered. "That rule was made up in peacetime, people could just wander a few blocks to the bars and get their high-grade."
"That's what I said," grumbled Jazz. "But no, he wants a fair experimental trail run of this, and if it succeeds, he'll request to make it permanant."
Air Raid cocked an optic ridge. "So . . . why aren't we plotting to make sure it doesn't succeed?"
Jazz smiled. "What makes you think we're not all thinking up ideas to make it not succeed?"
Air Raid met his grin, and Sideswipe said, "I suppose 'working to rule' would work on anyone but Prowl," as though contemplating a beloved master plan for loopholes to escape its fatal flaw.
"Working to rule?" Jazz and Air Raid asked together.
"It's a human thing," Sideswipe explained. "When human workers have a problem with their bosses but don't want to strike, they follow every rule perfectly. And since humans make all these stupid unnecessary rules that get ignored all the time, when they follow them, pretty much nothing gets done but nobody can complain because they can't tell them to just break the rules."
Jazz and Air Raid turned to stare at him. Jazz said, "Where did you learn so much about humans, Sideswipe?"
"TVTropes."
"Oh." Jet and Porsche exchanged identical knowing looks.
"Yeah," said Air Raid. "Prowl would love it if we followed all the rules."
"We could pretend to be overcharged all the time," suggested Sideswipe.
Jazz giggled, but shook his head. "Mech, I've had a long run of experience trying to annoy Prowl out of something. It just makes him more determined. We need to attack this from some other way."
"Get busted on purpose all the time?" Air Raid suggested. "Get everybody else to do the same? They can't fit all of us in the brig, and we need to fight Decepticons anyway."
"Maybe," mused Jazz. "Dunno how many mechs care quite that much, though. What we really need to do is discredit the whole concept somehow . . . oh."
Sideswipe and Air Raid leaned closer. "Oh?"
Jazz met their optics with a grin. It was delighted and wicked and sharp enough to cut. "Oh," he said again.
-----------------------------------
Wednesday:
-----------------------------------
"Well," said Optimus, sitting down in his office with his second-in-command and his security director, "I'm surprised. This is actually working out quite well." He removed cubes of mid-grade from his subspace and placed them on the table.
"Too well," said Red Alert, sitting down next to him. "Sideswipe hasn't done anything more than give me dirty looks every time he sees me. I'm warning you, Prime, he's planning something."
"It does seem a bit out of character for him," Optimus agreed. "And I would have expected something from Air Raid as well."
"Most likely they're distilling it out in the mountains somewhere," Prowl pointed out. "Sideswipe has never been one for nature appreciation, but he's accompanied Hound twice in the past few days."
"Maybe he's one for Hound appreciation?" Optimus felt himself obligated to consider possible legitimate explanations, especially when dealing with Red Alert, who would accuse the red warrior of interfering with the laws of physics if he thought it could be done.
"Perhaps. But Air Raid has often flown in that direction as well."
"Well, let's check it out!" Red Alert jumped up. "What are we waiting for?"
-------------------------------------
"Here," Optimus edged his way through the trees in a small valley a couple miles from the Ark. "The readings indicate that there is energon right up . . . ahead." He trailed off.
"Move, please, Optimus? You're blocking the---oh." Red Alert squeezed past him, and Optimus moved forward so Prowl could join them.
"Ahh. Well, they are very enterprising," said Prowl coolly. "Now if only they could devote that to more productive pursuits."
In the clearing, covered with camoflage netting and some sensor blockers that had slipped in places, was an energon still, carefully crafted and humming merrily away. Nearby in a pile were cubes of distilled high-grade, and next to them were---"Oh," Optimus said. "So that's why we didn't find as much as we expected in mechs' quarters."
Prowl examined the pile, picking up cubes and subspacing them. "These are older," he said. "I remember this vintage from the Xixby asteroid field campaign; they passed it around as a victory celebration, and this one here is what Sideswipe cooked up last Halloween. And---" he stared, stunned out of his processors, at the cube he'd uncovered, smaller than standard, a brilliant, understated shade of green, the glyphs on its edges written in an almost archaic calligraphy that had been the height of fashion when it was inscribed.
Optimus turned and boggled. Red Alert turned and asked, "What's that?"
"Sanctum Primae Reserve Limited," Prowl announced faintly. "It was produced by a line of Towers mechs, starting even before the Towers were first built. Arguably the best high-grade producers in the history of Cybertron. Sanctum Primae was their best, and this cube would have cost me a year's salary before I joined the Autobots."
Optimus looked at it as if he'd stumbled upon a priceless work of art---which, really, he had. "We can't destroy this," he said. "It would be almost sacrilege."
Red Alert scowled. "What do we do with it then? It is against regulations, and even possessing it is worth a day in the brig!"
"I know, Red Alert, I wrote the order myself. But we could drink it---we three, here and now." He saw Red opening his mouth to object, and raised a hand. "Some things, Red Alert, call for a bending of the rules. This---the universe will never see this again; its creators are rust and ash, the world that produced it reduced to ruins." He looked wistful for a long moment. "It should be savored."
Prowl nodded. "I feel somewhat bad about depriving some bot of something like this, but I would feel worse about simply pouring it out as if it were garbage."
Red Alert huffed and sighed. "Very well," he said, not quite disguising his own curiosity. Prowl, with a whisper of reverence that might have been a prayer to Primus or a benediction to the dead distillers, opened the cube, and fluttered his wings with pure delight at the mere aroma of it. "Oh Primus. Come---" he beckoned them with a doorwing.
Optimus and Red Alert clustered around him. "Oh, Primus, indeed," said Optimus faintly. Red Alert said nothing, but shivered and dipped his head closer. "Who goes first?"
"Here," Prowl offered it to Red Alert, holding it for him as he drank and swooned. Optimus took it next, and shuttered his optics as the flavor burst on his glossa. Fiery hints of mercury, little bursts of chromium, hints of copper oxide swirling with something carbonate which was almost bitter and entirely perfect against the balance of flavors. Then the energy hit his tanks like a punch, bursting into fire and making him feel like he was warmed by a small internal volcano. "Oh Primus," he said again, and offered it to Prowl, who drank, doorwings fluttering in utter bliss.
Optimus carefully sat down on the floor before handing it to Red Alert again, and the other two joined him.
----------------------------------------
"Ohhh, Primussss," Optimus said for about the twelfth time; each new sip was still good enough to merit the exclamation, even though his vocalizer was misfunctioning. He made a mental note to see Ratchet about having it repaired, and watched the thought slip away into nothingness. He waved at it. Then Prowl was drinking, and Optimus watched to make sure he didn't drop the cube.
Red Alert lay next to him, passed out; the security director didn't drink much high-grade and half a dozen sips had encouraged him to take a nap. "More for us," Prowl had said with an uncharacteristic giggle.
Right now Prowl was drinking, and his doorwings were fluttering a bit more slowly and unevenly than before. Optimus watched them, hypnotized, and held out his hands for the cube again.
-----------------------------------
Prowl held the cube up for a long moment, waiting patiently to capture the very last drop of the high-grade. Optimus watched him, savoring the aftertaste of the high-grade and deciding he wasn't going to consume anything that could compete with it for about a week.
Finally it dropped, and Prowl shivered and set the cube down, flopping forward to slump over his crossed legs and plant his chevron in the dirt, doorwings waving unevenly. Optimus watched, thinking the movement endearing, and lay back himself, pondering the tarps above him. It took him a long moment to realized that one of them looked a lot like Jazz.
He blinked.
"Well, well, well," the saboteur said, trying to keep a straight face and grinning a mile wide all at once. "Looks like somebody's having fun with banned energon."
Optimus blinked up at him. "Sssanctum Primae," he said, by way of explanation, waving at the cube.
Jazz's expression didn't change, and Optimus noted that there was someone behind him. Several someones, in fact: Sideswipe, Air Raid, Hound, Mirage, Bluestreak, Sunstreaker, Tracks . . . Tracks in the woods? He giggled. "Tracks," he chuckled, watching the mech turn to look at him. "Tracks in the woods." He giggled. "Jazz, call yourself a saboteur, you left Tracks in the woods!"
"Oh, yeah," said Air Raid, smirking. "He's cratered."
"Caught red-handed is more like it," Jazz said, and Prowl onlined his optics at that, frowning.
"Oh dear."
"Oh dear indeed, my fine fellow officer," Jazz purred. "So that's . . . let me see. Storage, hiding and hoarding of illegal high-grade . . . consumption of illegal high-grade . . . overcharge while on duty . . . and look, you even have a still."
Sobriety slammed into Optimus like a wrecking ball as he realized how thoroughly he'd been played. How thoroughly they'd been played, rather, as Prowl was looking up at Jazz and saying, "It isn't our---" before stopping, realizing, doubtless, that none of them had documented the finding of the still. "Slag."
Optimus wasn't sure how it was possible for Jazz to grin wider, but he did. "Well look at that. Not even the people in favor of the ban on high-grade can be bothered to follow it."
Prowl frowned. "Jazz, this is blatant entrapment."
Jazz waved his hands, smiling. "I know, mechs. It's not your still, it's not your high-grade, it's various people's that we hid out here to keep you from confiscating it. You're just overcharged against orders, that's all." He shrugged. "Still worth a few days in the brig, on your own orders."
Optimus met Prowl's optics, and smiled wryly. //At least such clever mechs are on our side.//
Prowl frowned at him. //I want Decepticonsh.//
---------------------------------------
Thursday:
---------------------------------------
In the brig, Prowl faced Optimus across two banks of energy bars. "Practice flies not on Theory's wings," he said, giving it the Praxian grammatical cadence. "Good to remember."
Optimus slumped back into his berth. "At least," he observed at length, "It can't get any worse."
Author: Kyra Neko-Rei
Rating: PG
Characters: Optimus, Prowl, Jazz, Red Alert, ensemble.
Warnings: Entrapment.
Summary: Prowl attempts to enforce an on-the-books ban on high grade. It goes over with the troops about as well as can be expected. Optimus should have known better.
Thursday:
It had all started when Prowl and Red Alert made the case for enforcing the on-the-books ban of high-grade in the Ark, outside of officially approved functions, and Optimus cursed himself soundly for listening to them.
Oh, they had had good points---battle readiness, a history of mechs being overcharged on duty, the tendency of certain brewers to throw in whatever came to hand with sometimes catastrophic results, but really, those things could easily be managed without an across-the-board ban, and Optimus expanded his cursing to include Prowl and Red Alert, who, he reasoned, should have known better themselves.
Prowl glowered at him from across the room.
"It was a meritous idea," he told his Prime stiffly.
Optimus responded with a Cybertronian proverb. "Practice does not fly on Theory's wings."
-------------------------------------
The previous Monday:
-------------------------------------
Sideswipe gave Optimus the sort of hateful look he was accustomed to receiving from Decepticons as Prowl handed over the cubes of highgrade they'd uncovered in Sideswipe's quarters.
"Cease looking at us like that, Sideswipe," Prowl told him. "You will be able to consume it at parties and other celebratory functions, and Jazz throws one of those practically every orn."
"Is there a regulation against looking?" Sideswipe asked bitterly, obviously in no mood to be charitable. He couldn't slam the door in their faces, as it was automatic, but somehow he managed to give that impression.
Prowl sighed. "I swear, that mech lives to make my processor ache."
Optimus said, "You do outrank him, and as such he has little other recourse against you."
"I've been overlooking his high-grade brewing since the war began, Optimus, at your directive. Is it too much to ask that we try it my way for awhile?"
Optimus was silent for a moment. "No," he said. "I appreciate your issues with him, and with many others. We have his high-grade, and you have leave to punish him if he makes more. We'll give this a shot."
"Thank you."
"I suspect Sideswipe will be in malicious obedience mode for awhile."
Prowl winced. "Joy."
"Indeed." A beat. "He's probably not the only one."
Prowl nodded. "Unfortunate. But they will settle down once they realize it's not the end of the world. We've been without high-grade for long periods before, when energon has been rationed. It's not been a problem."
Optimus eyed him, thinking that there was something wrong with that statement but unable to identify it.
Prowl looked back, a hint defensively, Optimus thought. "It will work."
------------------------------------------
"Slagging I-beam-humping dust-fragger," Sideswipe grumbled, flopping into a seat in the rec room next to a sulking Jazz and a mutinous-looking Air Raid.
The Aerialbot looked up. "Who? Prowl?"
"Prowl, Prime, Red Alert---why is Prime letting them do this, anyway?"
Jazz scowled. "Prowl said it's been illegal since forever and he's been overlooking it since the war began, and why can't Prime let him try enforcing it for once," he explained, having had the tactician explain himself to him earlier.
Sideswipe sneered. "That rule was made up in peacetime, people could just wander a few blocks to the bars and get their high-grade."
"That's what I said," grumbled Jazz. "But no, he wants a fair experimental trail run of this, and if it succeeds, he'll request to make it permanant."
Air Raid cocked an optic ridge. "So . . . why aren't we plotting to make sure it doesn't succeed?"
Jazz smiled. "What makes you think we're not all thinking up ideas to make it not succeed?"
Air Raid met his grin, and Sideswipe said, "I suppose 'working to rule' would work on anyone but Prowl," as though contemplating a beloved master plan for loopholes to escape its fatal flaw.
"Working to rule?" Jazz and Air Raid asked together.
"It's a human thing," Sideswipe explained. "When human workers have a problem with their bosses but don't want to strike, they follow every rule perfectly. And since humans make all these stupid unnecessary rules that get ignored all the time, when they follow them, pretty much nothing gets done but nobody can complain because they can't tell them to just break the rules."
Jazz and Air Raid turned to stare at him. Jazz said, "Where did you learn so much about humans, Sideswipe?"
"TVTropes."
"Oh." Jet and Porsche exchanged identical knowing looks.
"Yeah," said Air Raid. "Prowl would love it if we followed all the rules."
"We could pretend to be overcharged all the time," suggested Sideswipe.
Jazz giggled, but shook his head. "Mech, I've had a long run of experience trying to annoy Prowl out of something. It just makes him more determined. We need to attack this from some other way."
"Get busted on purpose all the time?" Air Raid suggested. "Get everybody else to do the same? They can't fit all of us in the brig, and we need to fight Decepticons anyway."
"Maybe," mused Jazz. "Dunno how many mechs care quite that much, though. What we really need to do is discredit the whole concept somehow . . . oh."
Sideswipe and Air Raid leaned closer. "Oh?"
Jazz met their optics with a grin. It was delighted and wicked and sharp enough to cut. "Oh," he said again.
-----------------------------------
Wednesday:
-----------------------------------
"Well," said Optimus, sitting down in his office with his second-in-command and his security director, "I'm surprised. This is actually working out quite well." He removed cubes of mid-grade from his subspace and placed them on the table.
"Too well," said Red Alert, sitting down next to him. "Sideswipe hasn't done anything more than give me dirty looks every time he sees me. I'm warning you, Prime, he's planning something."
"It does seem a bit out of character for him," Optimus agreed. "And I would have expected something from Air Raid as well."
"Most likely they're distilling it out in the mountains somewhere," Prowl pointed out. "Sideswipe has never been one for nature appreciation, but he's accompanied Hound twice in the past few days."
"Maybe he's one for Hound appreciation?" Optimus felt himself obligated to consider possible legitimate explanations, especially when dealing with Red Alert, who would accuse the red warrior of interfering with the laws of physics if he thought it could be done.
"Perhaps. But Air Raid has often flown in that direction as well."
"Well, let's check it out!" Red Alert jumped up. "What are we waiting for?"
-------------------------------------
"Here," Optimus edged his way through the trees in a small valley a couple miles from the Ark. "The readings indicate that there is energon right up . . . ahead." He trailed off.
"Move, please, Optimus? You're blocking the---oh." Red Alert squeezed past him, and Optimus moved forward so Prowl could join them.
"Ahh. Well, they are very enterprising," said Prowl coolly. "Now if only they could devote that to more productive pursuits."
In the clearing, covered with camoflage netting and some sensor blockers that had slipped in places, was an energon still, carefully crafted and humming merrily away. Nearby in a pile were cubes of distilled high-grade, and next to them were---"Oh," Optimus said. "So that's why we didn't find as much as we expected in mechs' quarters."
Prowl examined the pile, picking up cubes and subspacing them. "These are older," he said. "I remember this vintage from the Xixby asteroid field campaign; they passed it around as a victory celebration, and this one here is what Sideswipe cooked up last Halloween. And---" he stared, stunned out of his processors, at the cube he'd uncovered, smaller than standard, a brilliant, understated shade of green, the glyphs on its edges written in an almost archaic calligraphy that had been the height of fashion when it was inscribed.
Optimus turned and boggled. Red Alert turned and asked, "What's that?"
"Sanctum Primae Reserve Limited," Prowl announced faintly. "It was produced by a line of Towers mechs, starting even before the Towers were first built. Arguably the best high-grade producers in the history of Cybertron. Sanctum Primae was their best, and this cube would have cost me a year's salary before I joined the Autobots."
Optimus looked at it as if he'd stumbled upon a priceless work of art---which, really, he had. "We can't destroy this," he said. "It would be almost sacrilege."
Red Alert scowled. "What do we do with it then? It is against regulations, and even possessing it is worth a day in the brig!"
"I know, Red Alert, I wrote the order myself. But we could drink it---we three, here and now." He saw Red opening his mouth to object, and raised a hand. "Some things, Red Alert, call for a bending of the rules. This---the universe will never see this again; its creators are rust and ash, the world that produced it reduced to ruins." He looked wistful for a long moment. "It should be savored."
Prowl nodded. "I feel somewhat bad about depriving some bot of something like this, but I would feel worse about simply pouring it out as if it were garbage."
Red Alert huffed and sighed. "Very well," he said, not quite disguising his own curiosity. Prowl, with a whisper of reverence that might have been a prayer to Primus or a benediction to the dead distillers, opened the cube, and fluttered his wings with pure delight at the mere aroma of it. "Oh Primus. Come---" he beckoned them with a doorwing.
Optimus and Red Alert clustered around him. "Oh, Primus, indeed," said Optimus faintly. Red Alert said nothing, but shivered and dipped his head closer. "Who goes first?"
"Here," Prowl offered it to Red Alert, holding it for him as he drank and swooned. Optimus took it next, and shuttered his optics as the flavor burst on his glossa. Fiery hints of mercury, little bursts of chromium, hints of copper oxide swirling with something carbonate which was almost bitter and entirely perfect against the balance of flavors. Then the energy hit his tanks like a punch, bursting into fire and making him feel like he was warmed by a small internal volcano. "Oh Primus," he said again, and offered it to Prowl, who drank, doorwings fluttering in utter bliss.
Optimus carefully sat down on the floor before handing it to Red Alert again, and the other two joined him.
----------------------------------------
"Ohhh, Primussss," Optimus said for about the twelfth time; each new sip was still good enough to merit the exclamation, even though his vocalizer was misfunctioning. He made a mental note to see Ratchet about having it repaired, and watched the thought slip away into nothingness. He waved at it. Then Prowl was drinking, and Optimus watched to make sure he didn't drop the cube.
Red Alert lay next to him, passed out; the security director didn't drink much high-grade and half a dozen sips had encouraged him to take a nap. "More for us," Prowl had said with an uncharacteristic giggle.
Right now Prowl was drinking, and his doorwings were fluttering a bit more slowly and unevenly than before. Optimus watched them, hypnotized, and held out his hands for the cube again.
-----------------------------------
Prowl held the cube up for a long moment, waiting patiently to capture the very last drop of the high-grade. Optimus watched him, savoring the aftertaste of the high-grade and deciding he wasn't going to consume anything that could compete with it for about a week.
Finally it dropped, and Prowl shivered and set the cube down, flopping forward to slump over his crossed legs and plant his chevron in the dirt, doorwings waving unevenly. Optimus watched, thinking the movement endearing, and lay back himself, pondering the tarps above him. It took him a long moment to realized that one of them looked a lot like Jazz.
He blinked.
"Well, well, well," the saboteur said, trying to keep a straight face and grinning a mile wide all at once. "Looks like somebody's having fun with banned energon."
Optimus blinked up at him. "Sssanctum Primae," he said, by way of explanation, waving at the cube.
Jazz's expression didn't change, and Optimus noted that there was someone behind him. Several someones, in fact: Sideswipe, Air Raid, Hound, Mirage, Bluestreak, Sunstreaker, Tracks . . . Tracks in the woods? He giggled. "Tracks," he chuckled, watching the mech turn to look at him. "Tracks in the woods." He giggled. "Jazz, call yourself a saboteur, you left Tracks in the woods!"
"Oh, yeah," said Air Raid, smirking. "He's cratered."
"Caught red-handed is more like it," Jazz said, and Prowl onlined his optics at that, frowning.
"Oh dear."
"Oh dear indeed, my fine fellow officer," Jazz purred. "So that's . . . let me see. Storage, hiding and hoarding of illegal high-grade . . . consumption of illegal high-grade . . . overcharge while on duty . . . and look, you even have a still."
Sobriety slammed into Optimus like a wrecking ball as he realized how thoroughly he'd been played. How thoroughly they'd been played, rather, as Prowl was looking up at Jazz and saying, "It isn't our---" before stopping, realizing, doubtless, that none of them had documented the finding of the still. "Slag."
Optimus wasn't sure how it was possible for Jazz to grin wider, but he did. "Well look at that. Not even the people in favor of the ban on high-grade can be bothered to follow it."
Prowl frowned. "Jazz, this is blatant entrapment."
Jazz waved his hands, smiling. "I know, mechs. It's not your still, it's not your high-grade, it's various people's that we hid out here to keep you from confiscating it. You're just overcharged against orders, that's all." He shrugged. "Still worth a few days in the brig, on your own orders."
Optimus met Prowl's optics, and smiled wryly. //At least such clever mechs are on our side.//
Prowl frowned at him. //I want Decepticonsh.//
---------------------------------------
Thursday:
---------------------------------------
In the brig, Prowl faced Optimus across two banks of energy bars. "Practice flies not on Theory's wings," he said, giving it the Praxian grammatical cadence. "Good to remember."
Optimus slumped back into his berth. "At least," he observed at length, "It can't get any worse."