The Path Down
Canon: G1 Marvel Transformers
Title: The Path Down
Rating: PG for robotic cussing, offscreen naughty robots, and some violence
Word Count: 6,254
Summary: The gilded politician Emirate Xaaron didn't always have such an illustrious career. (If you ever wanted to see Repugnus used in a fic, he's in here.)
The chair was wobbly and ill-made. If Xaaron leaned back much more, he knew that the piece of furniture would fall apart, and he would be on the floor, which was quite possibly corrosive. The full-stasis table on which his forearms rested was caked over with enough grime that there was a mark on his arms when he moved them. He put his arms behind his head, spreading the smear to the back of his head, and looked up at the low-hung ceiling. When Xaaron gazed imploringly at the ceiling to just cave in on them and end this tedium, it showed perhaps more stains than the table did.
An officer so fresh that Xaaron could still smell the fumes on the new, regulation-issue paint job that he sported sat down on the other side of the full-stasis table. Full of nothing but disdain touched with pity and pompous self-importance, he declared, "I'll play you, little tank, although it hardly seems fair."
Xaaron let his head roll down to get a better look at his erstwhile opponent, beyond his stack of energon chips Xaaron kept on the table and his bigger stack of empty energon cubes he had burned through this cycle. The mint fresh officer had a cadre of his buddies scattered throughout the bar. Then he remembered that it was graduation day, a day marked by what else than the consumption of impure fuel products. This group must have been exceptionally adventuresome, to come out here. Making his irritation clear, he snarled, "You had better not be infantry, because that's a light tank to you." Still, he pushed the stack of energon chips to the middle of the table.
His opponent tittered, even covered his mouth, and replied sadly, "And what would your kind know of military regulations? Nothing at all. Perhaps you are a challenge to the local clientele, but I doubt you want to risk that many of your filthy little energon chips now, when you are so certain to lose them."
"If they're calling us little tanks now, maybe that's why you won't see me in the army," Xaaron muttered. He had gone through the better part of an energon barrel and a bottle of anti-freeze. He should have been twitching on the floor by now. Energon, impure as the day he rolled out of the factory, never did its job on him, and yet he kept pounding it back. Xaaron was sure he looked like an easy mark, if he was but half as smashed as he should have been. Besides, tanks couldn't think. Everyone knew that. Shoving the straw on his latest cube through his stitches, he gestured with a hand and demanded, "What, sure you're going to win? Then put your chips on the table or get out." He slammed his hands down flat on the table, sending a few of his empty cubes scattering the floor. Xaaron didn't pay any attention to those. They would be ground under foot soon enough.
Sneering, the officer plopped down a few of those fancy thousand-credit chips and pushed them over, careful not to actually touch the table. He offered, "I'll make it quarter-stasis, just to ease your inevitable humiliation."
Full-stasis was the most difficult and satisfying form of the game. Half-stasis and quarter-stasis were more dumbed down versions in turn, but it was just as well, because the patrons had long since eaten the pieces needed to play a proper game of full-stasis. Xaaron raked the chips off to the side and popped out the mismatched pieces from the table's side compartment. He set them out and watched his foolish foe blanch at the look of The Spy piece. What? A machine had to get his information somehow. Slurring his speech, Xaaron offered, "Why dun you go first?" He was offering and advantage there, but everyone he ever played got so excited over that quick initial boost that they forgot the long game. More importantly, they immediately put aside all thoughts in their mind, insidious little thoughts, that Xaaron might actually be able to play the game.
The officer leapt at the chance, cheekily advancing an infantry man. The game progressed as it usually did. His opponent, at all times, thought he had the upper hand, that he was doing Xaaron such a favour by gracing Xaaron with his presence, and he made it known in patronising insults aplenty. He never saw it coming when, several cubes later, Xaaron finally announced, "Full-stasis."
The officer sputtered, staring at the board, "What? You must be mad. You can't - we're playing quarter-stasis."
Xaaron wiggled the fingers of one hand and pointed out the trap he had laid around his opponent's full officer squad, the Overlord included. He reminded, "A full-stasis win is just as valid in a game of quarter-stasis." His opponent didn't look for a full-stasis win, not out of him. It was painfully easy to orchestrate, time and again.
"You cheated!" he seethed.
Xaaron rubbed his chin and said slowly but with all the logic of Commander Prowl of the Iacon Police, who had some very fine prison cells, Xaaron did have to admit, "Look, you're, what? A thousand times smarter than an under-clocked piece of sewer dregs like, me, right? That's what you said. So you're saying that I could actually slip one past you? Sharding smelt-slag, that don't make any sense at all, do it?"
Perhaps there was a flash of something better in the officer that a few trips face-down in a puddle of his energon would bring out, because he narrowed his optics and grumbled, "You're not as dumb as you look."
"No. I am not," Xaaron agreed, still as sober as the day he was forged and despising every moment of it.
Then he ruined everything by adding, "I let my guard down. You wouldn't stand a chance if I had been playing for real." In disgust, he stood and walked away, running off to cry in his cube to his cronies, doubtless.
He was right about one thing. Xaaron could have never have made it in the army. He would have gone insane, seeing those ponces tarted up as leaders while he was told to kill his mind and obey blindly. He picked up the energy chips and bit one of the thousand credit marks, just to see how it tasted. Mostly, it just tasted clean, and odd feeling. He then tossed the credit to Maccadam, as dapper as ever, despite his clientele. Genuinely curious, he hollered, "What's that buy?"
Maccadam mimed turning around to look at the menu scratched into the wall, but he didn't need to. Xaaron was sure the items were etched into the insides of his optics. Maccadam suggested, "You could actually try the high-grade, for once. Y'know, something that's been filtered."
It should have been funny, but Xaaron snarled in reply, "Oh, Primus's auxiliary tank, you know that if won't rot me out from the inside, I won't touch it."
Maccadam snorted and said, "Then I'll just get you a keg of the radionuclide special."
"That's what I wanted to hear," Xaaron replied. He snatched the keg up and slung it over a shoulder, working a straw back over to his mouth. Idly, he ticked off the drinks he'd had. Bother, Xaaron really needed to head back so that he could pass out on top of his passed-out flatmates, instead of Maccadam's floor. He took himself out of the bar and despaired over the thought of returning back to his place. Maybe Maccadam's floor would have been preferable.
Xaaron didn't trip down the open manhole. He let himself fall. He'd tell anyone that, for all that the streetlights were out, and it was blacker than the tar the street surgeon had scraped out of his lines. Looking up and seeing the lid quite gone, he grumbled to himself about thieves who would sell even a manhole cover. Still, he'd claim that he dropped down on purpose, and he wasn't sure that he'd be lying. He was an excellent liar, but he was never quite so good as to be able to lie to himself. Xaaron saw through himself too easily. He felt a sort of pull to the underground, and it generally made him want to punch someone, because he had no idea why.
There was nothing down here but monsters, after all. Picking up the keg again, he wondered if that wasn't why he felt so home down in the tunnels. Whose idea of a practical joke was it to build him? There were factory standards to prevent anyone too substandard from ever seeing the light of day, although he was not quite sure he believed it, based off some of the abject stupidity he had seen. Sometimes, he wished that the outliers went the other way. A mind was a terrible curse to bear.
Xaaron wandered aimlessly in the tunnels. It never did any good to try to keep track of what path he had taken. The underground changed it behind him, he swore on slagging little capacitors. The keg was dry when he pitched it, and the noise it made before it splintered was about as hollow as he felt. Xaaron kept on walking and crossed the keg's corpse more than once. He had left it long behind him for a third time when he thought he heard something in the tunnel behind him. Xaaron hoped the noise was no more than the sound of his optics burning out in his head.
Xaaron awoke in an area of the underground that was as unfamiliar to him as the taste of filtered high grade. For one thing, the place was spotless and immaculate, so he was not quite sure if he was underground anymore. The chamber was spacious, but the thing that really caught his attention was the horn-honkin' huge face on one of the walls. Xaaron punched himself in the arm, wondering if he was dreaming. The dents proved him wrong, and Xaaron swore, "You're so leaking brilliant, aren't you, Xaaron? A real wire-wicking golden child! Oi, I'll just take a la-te-da trip through the smelting underground. Wicked, ain't it? Especially when I'm one sharding step away from passing my clinker-filled head out colder than a corpse in Maccadam's back room. And after that bonzer plan, I am jolly well going to tread-snapping wake up in some loopy old temple, where I can get bent over and have a ramrod shoved up my oil-burning exhaust for my sins. Fist-fragging Primus, I'm a moron."
You know better than that, My child.
The only way Xaaron could explain what happened was that he heard the voice, clarion and pure, in his head. There wasn't a peep from his security circuits. Nothing invasive had happened. It was just there, as if it had always been, as if it was his own thought. Only, he never sounded that leaking loud. Xaaron stood up and rubbed his head. Squinting, he demanded of the face, "That you?"
After a manner of speaking. You called, and I answered.
Xaaron's arm dropped to his side faster than he could drop a shot, and he gaped. He put up his hands and protested, "Nuh uh. You're some trick. Blackguard's gang is screwing with me. Facecruncher's got that gear-grinding God-awful sense of humour. Then a piano's going to hit me on the head."
I am have been known to pull a fast one, in My time, but you may have My word that I am I.
Xaaron gurgled up something unmentionable. After wiping his mouth, he waved his sticky-fingered hand and snapped, "And your word is worth about as much as mine, I bet."
You would be correct in ways you cannot yet understand, Xaaron got the impression he was being played here, and not in the way he had originally thought. But please, sit down, My child. Be My guest. I have not had one who can talk to Me so in a long, long time.
Xaaron found himself sitting down, and he blinked a few time, confused by his easy compliance. He muttered, "Can? What's so hard about it?"
My unfiltered words burn out mortal minds, and even the mightiest of My children have difficultly defying My will.
Xaaron wanted to reply, to make some ill-advised sarcastic remark, but his mind's eye took him to a picture. The scene looked like it was happening here, but it couldn't be now. There was just him and the face, not an entourage of old-fashioned priests. He watched the priest fall on their knees. He couldn't really make out their words, but what was happening was clear enough. The one in the middle stiffened, his optics went white, and he fell over, clawing at nothing.
The voice was perhaps sad, but only in the way of someone who was mildly inconvenienced, His mind could not hold My word, but he demanded it and paid the price. He died quickly.
"Thank below for small mercies, eh?" Xaaron managed to get out. "Guess that's why you don't get much company anymore."
Then you believe?
"I can't really call it belief if I don't have choice, can I?" Xaaron licked his stitches, thinking. "I could be crazy, but I've packed back enough tankrot, that if it was going to happen, it would have happened millennia ago. Someone could be pulling a trick, but I know I'm not that important. So I have leaking Primus talking to me. Glitching lovely."
You are a clever boy, Primus resonated, perhaps implying that Xaaron was not half so clever as he thought he was.
Xaaron looked up at the massive face, seeking out its optics with his own, and grumbled, "I'm clever enough to know that you have to want something out of me. All my life, I've felt a pull down to the underground. It's gone. I've arrived. What do you want with someone so faithless, even the heretics spit on him? I know it can't just be conversation. You're scrapping Primus. You could make yourself a playmate if you were that bleeping bored."
I sleep. It is My dreaming with which you speak. However, you have a calling.
"As what, a bouncer who gets tossed out because he started a fight instead of stopping one? I have a problem with how I see the world, is what it is. That's why you haven't blown out my head, isn't it? I don't have any false illusions or expectations, no built-up rote faith. It's the contradictions that kill them. Just can't handle it. I can deal with what I'm really seeing because I always have. I don't have any choice." The worst energon didn't dull out how dirty and sharp-edged his world was. "Just like now, I'm not really seeing a full-stasis board in front of me." Xaaron reached out to snatch up an unfamiliar piece and opined, "This one's always been missing on every set I've ever seen. What is it?"
The Emirate. It is the one piece that makes full-stasis truly a game of skill. With the addition of the Emirate's unique moves, the game no longer has a calculable solution and becomes a game of reading your opponent.
So Primus wanted to play games with Xaaron, did he? Xaaron muttered, "You're making this a bit obvious." He squinted at the Emirate. It was a spare little piece, lacking in detail and looking perhaps like it was wearing a crown. Looking again, the Emirate looked a bit like Xaaron, if he took a dousing in solvent and shed the kibble. He doubted that he could ever match that featureless serenity on the piece, however. The codger looked entirely too satisfied, like he had a secret he wasn't about to tell. Looking up again, Xaaron declared, "Then tell me his moves, and let's play."
Xaaron looked through the library's selection of texts on full-stasis. He had never been to the library before, and he wondered why. The blasted place was free, in the real sense of the word, but without a single catch to it. Perhaps the only catch was that he had seen at least a hundred different things that he wanted to read, and that was just walking to the section on full-stasis. He read:
The Emirate is a little-used piece in the game of full-stasis. Players dislike the complexity and ambiguity that it adds to the game, and many feel that it makes the game too hard. However, the mark of a proper set of full-stasis is that it contains the Emirate, and many full-stasis grandmasters swear both by and at the Emirate.
Xaaron pulled out the little Emirate that he had nicked off Primus and ran the piece through fingers. That much of the game had been real. He continued reading about the theory and usage of the Emirate. It was apparently a devilishly hard piece to learn how to play correctly, but once mastered, it was devastating to an opponent.
Out of the corner of his optics, he saw the librarian gesturing at him to a security guard. Xaaron tensed. If things went the way he thought they were going to, he wasn't going to be very happy in a moment. The guard stalked over and grabbed him by the elbow. He said gruffly, "I'm afraid I have to escort you out."
Xaaron protested, too loudly, "What? I haven't done anything!"
The guard said, "You are disturbing the peace with your noise," and started to haul him down the aisle.
Optics an angry yellow blaze, Xaaron forced his voice down to a low hiss, "I hadn't said a word until you grabbed me."
Perhaps feeling a little guilty, the guard admitted, "You worry the other patrons." Summarily, he tossed Xaaron out on the street. More loudly, he commanded, "And stay out."
Xaaron fidgeted in the shackles. The chair wasn't falling apart, so that was a change, but it didn't really accommodate his turret. In fact, the chair was probably designed to be uncomfortable on purpose.
His parole officer, Repugnus, had his hand over his optics. Xaaron was usually glad that he had Repugnus to handle his case. Repugnus was by no means a good man, not that Xaaron would trust one, but he understood how things really worked. He sounded rather tired as he asked, "Do I want to know why you got into fisticuffs with a security guard at an intake-ramming library?"
Xaaron looked away and mumbled, "I'm not really sure. He threw me out, and somehow, my fist ended up in his faceplate."
"I see," Repugnus muttered, "and what were you even doing at a library, Xaaron?"
"I was reading!" Xaaron blurted.
"What, a circuit-mag in the factory-fresh section?" Repugnus snarled, leaning over the desk to loom on Xaaron's face.
Xaaron didn't allow himself to be intimidated and griped, "Full-stasis. I was reading about fragging full-stasis."
"That useless game's the only decent thing in your slagging life. Were you being noisy or something? Maybe cussed out a librarian?"
"No! I was just reading, and the security guard threw me out," Xaaron explained. He could spin a lie fine enough to clothe a priest. Why was the truth so hard to swallow?
Regugnus groaned and leaned back in his chair. He confided, "Xaaron, there are places that people like you and me just don't go. It doesn't matter if you're sitting there with your nose in a datapad, minding your own business. You look like trouble walking, and soon enough, looks are going to become reality, whether you want it to or not. Besides, I bet the librarian called up a background check on you."
"Speaking of that," Xaaron squirmed and got his hands out in front of him. He dropped off a pile of credits on Repugnus's desk. "I want my record cleared."
Repugnus stared at the pile with obvious longing. His words, however, were both jaded and concerned, "Xaaron, did you kill someone?"
"Only the Overlord and his officers in a dozen games of full-stasis," Xaaron replied with a fierce smile on his face.
Repugnus grunted, looked left, and looked right. He leaned in again and whispered, "You've got a deal. Now get out of here before I remember who you are."
Xaaron leaned back in the same broken chair, staring at the ceiling after another skill-less victory. He watched the other fellow sulk away. Sighing, Xaaron collected his chips and stood. He passed by the bar, where Maccadam inquired, "Another keg of radionuclide special?"
His feet feeling oddly heavy, Xaaron replied, "Not today, Maccadam. Perhaps not ever again. I'm saving, now."
Maccadam chuckled, doubtless thinking that Xaaron would be back, and asked conspiratorially, "What is it, then? Syk? A new cannon? One of those painted beauties down the road?"
Forcing himself into a straighter posture than his usual slouch, Xaaron explained, "Actually, I was thinking about getting some body-work done. Know a good place?"
Xaaron once again questioned if he really was as smart as Primus seemed to think he was. He was going to entrust his life into the hand of a chop-shop artist that he knew dealt in corpses and had caused a few of them. On the other hand, he was sure that the fancy surgeons killed, too. They just wouldn't hand out the statistics. He was definitely not putting all the credit up front today. The mechanic could have them when Xaaron was sure he wasn't dead.
The mechanic asked, "So what are you in for? Detailing? Maybe you spikes to impress your friends? Turret enlargement?"
Xaaron held up the Emirate and said, "I'd like to look a bit like this. Make my turret fold away and have my treads stow inside my legs, rather than so visible."
The mechanic held his middle and burst out laughing. When he was finally done, he looked at Xaaron like he was crazy and exclaimed, "You'll get killed if you walk around looking like that down here."
"Perhaps I do not intend to be down here very long," Xaaron replied levelly.
"Suit yourself. I get dibs on your body when you conk it?" the mechanic asked eagerly.
Xaaron shook his head. Such a deal was only asking for trouble. He thought down to Primus below and said hesitantly, "I... I think I'm already spoken for. Just do the modifications, and I'll give you your credits.
Xaaron waltzed into the local library again. No one gave him a second look. The feeling was so queer and peculiar. Not a single distrusting glare met his golden form. Not a gaze questioned his right to be here. Even the security guard who had thrown him out ignored him. Xaaron noted that he'd had the dents beaten out. Instead of heading directly for the full-stasis section, Xaaron went right for the first shelf of the first aisle. He sat down with a fistful of datapads, and the chair back found no turret to bang against. He would call himself comfortable if he wasn't expecting each and everyone to see through him, and he'd find himself face down in a gutter again. However, they couldn't see him as he did. They had no idea what he really was, and if Xaaron had any say, they never would.
He was reading for a very long time. However, there was no law against reading every single text in the library, and he was quiet and unobtrusive. Xaaron tripped the security guard on the way out. Even the security guard blamed it on a crack in the stairs, but Xaaron counted himself lucky that he couldn't see his vicious, triumphant grin.
Xaaron moved out of the little place with his multitude of roommates into a different little place and a plethora of different roommates. It was, perhaps, in a slightly better area of town, as he really would be shot if he spent too much time back where he used to belong, but he had even less space than he did before. Xaaron didn't belong here, and he kept it in his mind. He was merely pausing here, one step in a vast staircase. Retyping reports for a living was just trading one sort of drudgery for another. He could not and would not be content here, not when his core seethed with rage.
For now, he waited for his test scores to turn. Xaaron squinted at the report and resisted the urge to edit. They weren't paying him to edit. They'd be angry at him if he edited. He finished the section and backup his chair, hitting the wall behind him. He badly needed a break from this insipid drivel. Xaaron paced out to the courier drop-box for his flat. It would probably be empty. Material transit of information was still used, although rarely. He typed in the key code for the box and peered inside. A package addressed to him greeted Xaaron. He snatched it up with trembling fingers and retreated back to his chair in the corner open it, tearing open the plastic wrap with his teeth.
Xaaron shut off his optics for a moment. As long as they were good enough to get him into Yuss's Junior College, he'd be fine. Xaaron could transfer into somewhere else later. If he'd completely bombed, he could retake the test, if need be. He had all the time in the world to change it. Xaaron spat out the plastic scraps that stuck in his mouth and turned his optics online.
Iacon wanted him. Iacon. His actual scores were good enough, more than solid leaning towards excellent in the essay section, but they needed the diversity. The cynic in Xaaron knew that was the main and, in the end, the only reason Iacon wanted him. The scores were just a qualifier. He'd be trotted with the cast of token outsiders out for all the photo-ops to show how open-minded and accepting they were. Xaaron chewed on his stitches. Iacon's Academy of Science and Technology wanted him, to be specific. Between the lines, he read that his opinions were too radical for a political or journalistic education. Primus forbid, he might write an editorial. Officially, Tarn was going to be paying for his education there, too, as one of their sponsored students of the year. Lord Shockwave favoured scientific backgrounds.
Xaaron backed his chair, hitting the wall again. The next-door neighbour screamed something incoherent. Xaaron decided that he was packing today before he put a hole through the wall more intentionally than not.
The first year into his education proper, as the records would have it, Xaaron and the other sponsored students from Tarn were summoned to meet their Lord, who was quite interested to see his investment. The actual dinner was boring as hell. As Xaaron was given to understand, there wasn't any such thing as hell, but he still assumed that, if there had been a hell, it was boring like this dinner was boring. The only interesting thing was the people. He watched the other students fall over themselves, all trying to impress the Lord Shockwave as they introduced themselves. Shockwave betrayed no reaction to the students. Xaaron was, of course, last. At his turn, he readily stood, bowed, and introduced, "My Lord Shockwave, I am Xaaron, currently studying science with a physics emphasis. I have been known to play a mean game of full-stasis, if my Lord is interested."
Those few words said, he sat down and took a sip of his energon. It was light-chain hydrocarbons, bubbly and sweet. The smallest of the students already looked a bit tipsy from his sipping. Even he hushed at Xaaron's brazen offer. All optics were upon him and then furtively flicked away, all save for Shockwave's steady gaze, yellow as his own. The worst that could happen was quite bad, and Shockwave was known to lack a sense of humour. Shockwave turned his head and gestured with his one hand to a staffer. He bid him to fetch a full-stasis set. "Move," Shockwave ordered the student closest to him, a fellow by the name of Flame, and then directed to Xaaron with his cannon arm, "Sit."
Flame shot a savage look at Xaaron, and behind Flame's back and away from the watchful optics of the dinner guests and the security cameras, Xaaron made an extremely rude gesture at Flame that called into question the processes and materials used to manufacture him. Flame was such a whiner, treating every question he got wrong like the professor was personally insulting him. The fellow seemed to think he was some unsung and wrongly maligned genius. Xaaron felt more hard work and less ranting would do him a load of good.
Xaaron smoothly settled himself into the chair next to Shockwave and smiled warmly to those gathered. Shortly, a staffer arrived with a full-stasis set. It was finely crafted and sturdy, containing all the advanced pieces, but overall, it was plain and barren of detail. The set suited Shockwave's overall decor. Shockwave intoned, "Your move."
Xaaron let his hand hover over the pieces, considering. Taking the first move was not per se an advantage, although it was generally thought one. In fact, it could be quite crippling. Still, he nodded gratefully and enthused, "You honour me, my Lord." Xaaron made a conservative first move, one that would feel out the opponent but lose him little if it proved a mistake. It was a very logical first move, and it implied that he was going to play the rest of the game similarly logically. Few things were farther from the truth.
Shockwave bought it hook, line, and sinker. As the game wore on, Xaaron varied his style, making what looked like beginner mistakes. He heard the sniggers from the others at the dinner. They must have thought him horribly arrogant. Shockwave eagerly capitalised on the apparent weaknesses. Soon, Xaaron had Shockwave's key pieces encircled and his own best offensive units blocking Shockwave's army from any rescue. He declared, "Full-stasis, my Lord."
Xaaron watched Shockwave sit there in silence, and he fancied that he could hear Shockwave compute. He glanced over at his barely touched cube as he waited for Shockwave to reach a verdict. Finally, Shockwave acquiesced, "Correct. You have achieved full-stasis. What is your full-stasis algorithm?"
Xaaron explained, "I don't have one, my Lord. There are two ways to play full-stasis. The first is brute force mathematical attack to calculate the optimal move. I have nothing but the greatest of respect for those who play in such a fashion, but it's too much for my processors. I play the second way. I don't play full-stasis at all. I play my opponents."
Centuries later, Xaaron found Repugnus much where he expected to find Repugnus. The centuries might have been millennia if he counted all the committees he had sat on at the Academy, as committee time passed much more slowly than actual time. The bar had been razed to the ground at least three times and had changed management more often than a Triple-Changer changed modes, but in the end, it was the same place at had always been, The Lazy Lizard, no matter what the flickering neon sign said. Xaaron was painfully aware how out of place he seemed, looking for all the world like a respectable citizen. The world of seedy dives was his world no longer, despite how comfortable, how right he felt here.
He could still walk like he belonged here, with an insouciant slouch, and he sidled over to Repugnus, who protested hazily, "Chaplain? Wasn't me with the nightstick. Prisoner broke his own arms... and knees. Yeah."
Xaaron upped his mental estimate of how many drinks Repugnus had consumed. He waved the bartender over, slid over a few chips, and directed, "Get Repugnus here another cube of what's having."
Repugnus squinted at Xaaron, and his optics snapped into focus. He said slowly, "You're not the chaplain. Slag my optics, it's you, Xaaron!" He lowered his voice and whispered, "Did you kill someone?"
Xaaron sighed and titled his head upwards. Another in his place might have uttered, 'Primus, give me strength,' but Xaaron knew that his own was quite sufficient. He hissed back at Repugnus, "No. Repugnus, you know that I'm running for office, right?"
Repugnus eyed the cube suspiciously when it arrived. He tapped it with a finger, shaking from his own addled state, and said, "So you need to shut me up?"
"Only after a fashion." Xaaron smiled thinly. "I wish you offer you a position on my campaign. Your talents are wasted where you are, and I know you've been passed over for enough promotions due to your, ah, record to know that you'll never get the responsibility that you deserve."
"I'm guessing that I don't have much choice in this," Repugnus replied, slitting open the top of the cube. He knocked it back easily and sighed happily over the contents.
"No one does around me, not in the end," Xaaron replied with quiet certainty. Brightly, he added, "Another cube?"
Repugnus looked at Xaaron askew and muttered, "You've changed, Xaaron. I thought maybe you'd gone soft, but blanking hell, you've just gone scary. Another cube."
Xaaron patted Repugnus on the shoulder fondly and inquired, "I will take that as a, 'Yes', then."
Repugnus grunted and reached for the next cube.
A short while into his campaign, Xaaron found Repugnus on top of him. Repugnus screamed as he took the hit meant for Xaaron and promptly launched into a stream of invective. Xaaron found the creativity somewhat lacking, but he had to admire the sheer, unbridled crudity of it. Repugnus got to his feet, transformed, and launched himself onto the assailant. A few moments later, the Monsterbot stood with dripping claws over the twitching body of someone who was not the reporter he appeared to be.
Xaaron got to his feet, remarkably unshaken. He felt detached, numb even. So that's what an assassination attempt was like. Funny, he had expected something a little more exciting than this. Welcome to politics in Tarn. He turned to a horrified staffer and remarked calmly, "Now do you see why I keep Repugnus on retainer?" He turned and barked to Repugnus, "Be sure to question our murderous friend down there before your old comrades arrive. They will merely make a mess of things."
Repugnus flicked the energon off his scythe-like talons and snarled, "Before or after I get this shot in my side looked at, boss?" he snapped at one of the other staffers, "What are you blinking looking at? Never seen a Monsterbot? Hnn." Repugnus transformed, clearly sulking that his robot mode was so preferable to his alternate form.
Looking around to make sure that there were not more assassins waiting in the wings, Xaaron paced to Repugnus's side and placed a hand on his arm. He offered in thanks, "Very kind of you to take the shot for me, but you understand that the blues and twos will be on the scene swiftly enough."
"Yeah, whatever," Repugnus grumbled. "Look, I'll look out for you, you know that, but you need to hire a real bodyguard. This ain't my job." It wasn't. Xaaron kept Repugnus to keep tabs on his opponents and on the down-low scuttlebutt about himself. Repugnus knelt and touched a few wires together, bringing the assassin back to wakefulness. He hauled the hired gun up by his neck and threw him over his shoulder. At the squirming, he growled, "C'mon, you. We're going to have some fun before the coppers get here."
Knowing that he needed to take the staffer's minds off the debacle that had just unfolded and in specific that the fact that Repugnus had just added, "And if you're lucky, you won't even be alive when they arrive," Xaaron turned to one of his aides and directed, "Get me Impactor."
The aide blinked a few times and stuttered, "Impactor, as in Impactor and the Wreckers?"
Another piped, "Those mercenaries?" He made it sound like a dirty word. "Why would you want a bunch of mercenaries?"
"Perhaps I like having a proven track record of effectiveness," Xaaron replied levelly.
"It's traditional to hire a reserve squad," said the first, as if the military actually had active squads.
Xaaron countered, "It is also traditional to pay far too much on a group that has only had theory instruction and no practical experience. When I'm elected, I can cheerily inform my loyal tax-payers how I am saving them just a few more of their precious tax credits. How's that for an edge?"
The ceremonial robes chafed. At least Xaaron only had to wear them for this ceremony and a few infrequent others. The rest of the time, he would be out of this pompous get-up. The lights were painfully bright as he was ushered out onto the grand stage, but he kept his composure. He didn't want to look like a blinking idiot in public. Arrayed all around were the various leaders of city-states and their corresponding council members. High Councillor Traachon stood in for the Overlord, who was ailing even then and could not be bothered to haul himself out for such a trivial event. Traachon, whose regalia definitively outshined any in the room for absurdity, announced, "I am pleased to announce the newest member of the Council, the representative from Tarn, Emirate Xaaron!"
The End
Afterword: This was all inspired by a chat about how certain characters act when drunk. It occurred to me that it is a bad idea for Emirate Xaaron to try to get drunk because he doesn't actually get drunk. He just passes out after drinking more drinks than a normal Transformer should consume in one sitting, sometimes in ditches. From there, a plot developed. I know it's a bit odd to peg Xaaron as Tarnish as opposed to Iaconian, but it's not like we have evidence either way, and I personally put Traachon as the representative from Iacon. Most of the stuff about Cybertronian pre-war politics, law, culture, and education has been fabricated from whole cloth, but if you see any non-canon idea you'd like to borrow, just tell me. I'd be tickled to hear it.
Title: The Path Down
Rating: PG for robotic cussing, offscreen naughty robots, and some violence
Word Count: 6,254
Summary: The gilded politician Emirate Xaaron didn't always have such an illustrious career. (If you ever wanted to see Repugnus used in a fic, he's in here.)
The chair was wobbly and ill-made. If Xaaron leaned back much more, he knew that the piece of furniture would fall apart, and he would be on the floor, which was quite possibly corrosive. The full-stasis table on which his forearms rested was caked over with enough grime that there was a mark on his arms when he moved them. He put his arms behind his head, spreading the smear to the back of his head, and looked up at the low-hung ceiling. When Xaaron gazed imploringly at the ceiling to just cave in on them and end this tedium, it showed perhaps more stains than the table did.
An officer so fresh that Xaaron could still smell the fumes on the new, regulation-issue paint job that he sported sat down on the other side of the full-stasis table. Full of nothing but disdain touched with pity and pompous self-importance, he declared, "I'll play you, little tank, although it hardly seems fair."
Xaaron let his head roll down to get a better look at his erstwhile opponent, beyond his stack of energon chips Xaaron kept on the table and his bigger stack of empty energon cubes he had burned through this cycle. The mint fresh officer had a cadre of his buddies scattered throughout the bar. Then he remembered that it was graduation day, a day marked by what else than the consumption of impure fuel products. This group must have been exceptionally adventuresome, to come out here. Making his irritation clear, he snarled, "You had better not be infantry, because that's a light tank to you." Still, he pushed the stack of energon chips to the middle of the table.
His opponent tittered, even covered his mouth, and replied sadly, "And what would your kind know of military regulations? Nothing at all. Perhaps you are a challenge to the local clientele, but I doubt you want to risk that many of your filthy little energon chips now, when you are so certain to lose them."
"If they're calling us little tanks now, maybe that's why you won't see me in the army," Xaaron muttered. He had gone through the better part of an energon barrel and a bottle of anti-freeze. He should have been twitching on the floor by now. Energon, impure as the day he rolled out of the factory, never did its job on him, and yet he kept pounding it back. Xaaron was sure he looked like an easy mark, if he was but half as smashed as he should have been. Besides, tanks couldn't think. Everyone knew that. Shoving the straw on his latest cube through his stitches, he gestured with a hand and demanded, "What, sure you're going to win? Then put your chips on the table or get out." He slammed his hands down flat on the table, sending a few of his empty cubes scattering the floor. Xaaron didn't pay any attention to those. They would be ground under foot soon enough.
Sneering, the officer plopped down a few of those fancy thousand-credit chips and pushed them over, careful not to actually touch the table. He offered, "I'll make it quarter-stasis, just to ease your inevitable humiliation."
Full-stasis was the most difficult and satisfying form of the game. Half-stasis and quarter-stasis were more dumbed down versions in turn, but it was just as well, because the patrons had long since eaten the pieces needed to play a proper game of full-stasis. Xaaron raked the chips off to the side and popped out the mismatched pieces from the table's side compartment. He set them out and watched his foolish foe blanch at the look of The Spy piece. What? A machine had to get his information somehow. Slurring his speech, Xaaron offered, "Why dun you go first?" He was offering and advantage there, but everyone he ever played got so excited over that quick initial boost that they forgot the long game. More importantly, they immediately put aside all thoughts in their mind, insidious little thoughts, that Xaaron might actually be able to play the game.
The officer leapt at the chance, cheekily advancing an infantry man. The game progressed as it usually did. His opponent, at all times, thought he had the upper hand, that he was doing Xaaron such a favour by gracing Xaaron with his presence, and he made it known in patronising insults aplenty. He never saw it coming when, several cubes later, Xaaron finally announced, "Full-stasis."
The officer sputtered, staring at the board, "What? You must be mad. You can't - we're playing quarter-stasis."
Xaaron wiggled the fingers of one hand and pointed out the trap he had laid around his opponent's full officer squad, the Overlord included. He reminded, "A full-stasis win is just as valid in a game of quarter-stasis." His opponent didn't look for a full-stasis win, not out of him. It was painfully easy to orchestrate, time and again.
"You cheated!" he seethed.
Xaaron rubbed his chin and said slowly but with all the logic of Commander Prowl of the Iacon Police, who had some very fine prison cells, Xaaron did have to admit, "Look, you're, what? A thousand times smarter than an under-clocked piece of sewer dregs like, me, right? That's what you said. So you're saying that I could actually slip one past you? Sharding smelt-slag, that don't make any sense at all, do it?"
Perhaps there was a flash of something better in the officer that a few trips face-down in a puddle of his energon would bring out, because he narrowed his optics and grumbled, "You're not as dumb as you look."
"No. I am not," Xaaron agreed, still as sober as the day he was forged and despising every moment of it.
Then he ruined everything by adding, "I let my guard down. You wouldn't stand a chance if I had been playing for real." In disgust, he stood and walked away, running off to cry in his cube to his cronies, doubtless.
He was right about one thing. Xaaron could have never have made it in the army. He would have gone insane, seeing those ponces tarted up as leaders while he was told to kill his mind and obey blindly. He picked up the energy chips and bit one of the thousand credit marks, just to see how it tasted. Mostly, it just tasted clean, and odd feeling. He then tossed the credit to Maccadam, as dapper as ever, despite his clientele. Genuinely curious, he hollered, "What's that buy?"
Maccadam mimed turning around to look at the menu scratched into the wall, but he didn't need to. Xaaron was sure the items were etched into the insides of his optics. Maccadam suggested, "You could actually try the high-grade, for once. Y'know, something that's been filtered."
It should have been funny, but Xaaron snarled in reply, "Oh, Primus's auxiliary tank, you know that if won't rot me out from the inside, I won't touch it."
Maccadam snorted and said, "Then I'll just get you a keg of the radionuclide special."
"That's what I wanted to hear," Xaaron replied. He snatched the keg up and slung it over a shoulder, working a straw back over to his mouth. Idly, he ticked off the drinks he'd had. Bother, Xaaron really needed to head back so that he could pass out on top of his passed-out flatmates, instead of Maccadam's floor. He took himself out of the bar and despaired over the thought of returning back to his place. Maybe Maccadam's floor would have been preferable.
Xaaron didn't trip down the open manhole. He let himself fall. He'd tell anyone that, for all that the streetlights were out, and it was blacker than the tar the street surgeon had scraped out of his lines. Looking up and seeing the lid quite gone, he grumbled to himself about thieves who would sell even a manhole cover. Still, he'd claim that he dropped down on purpose, and he wasn't sure that he'd be lying. He was an excellent liar, but he was never quite so good as to be able to lie to himself. Xaaron saw through himself too easily. He felt a sort of pull to the underground, and it generally made him want to punch someone, because he had no idea why.
There was nothing down here but monsters, after all. Picking up the keg again, he wondered if that wasn't why he felt so home down in the tunnels. Whose idea of a practical joke was it to build him? There were factory standards to prevent anyone too substandard from ever seeing the light of day, although he was not quite sure he believed it, based off some of the abject stupidity he had seen. Sometimes, he wished that the outliers went the other way. A mind was a terrible curse to bear.
Xaaron wandered aimlessly in the tunnels. It never did any good to try to keep track of what path he had taken. The underground changed it behind him, he swore on slagging little capacitors. The keg was dry when he pitched it, and the noise it made before it splintered was about as hollow as he felt. Xaaron kept on walking and crossed the keg's corpse more than once. He had left it long behind him for a third time when he thought he heard something in the tunnel behind him. Xaaron hoped the noise was no more than the sound of his optics burning out in his head.
Xaaron awoke in an area of the underground that was as unfamiliar to him as the taste of filtered high grade. For one thing, the place was spotless and immaculate, so he was not quite sure if he was underground anymore. The chamber was spacious, but the thing that really caught his attention was the horn-honkin' huge face on one of the walls. Xaaron punched himself in the arm, wondering if he was dreaming. The dents proved him wrong, and Xaaron swore, "You're so leaking brilliant, aren't you, Xaaron? A real wire-wicking golden child! Oi, I'll just take a la-te-da trip through the smelting underground. Wicked, ain't it? Especially when I'm one sharding step away from passing my clinker-filled head out colder than a corpse in Maccadam's back room. And after that bonzer plan, I am jolly well going to tread-snapping wake up in some loopy old temple, where I can get bent over and have a ramrod shoved up my oil-burning exhaust for my sins. Fist-fragging Primus, I'm a moron."
You know better than that, My child.
The only way Xaaron could explain what happened was that he heard the voice, clarion and pure, in his head. There wasn't a peep from his security circuits. Nothing invasive had happened. It was just there, as if it had always been, as if it was his own thought. Only, he never sounded that leaking loud. Xaaron stood up and rubbed his head. Squinting, he demanded of the face, "That you?"
After a manner of speaking. You called, and I answered.
Xaaron's arm dropped to his side faster than he could drop a shot, and he gaped. He put up his hands and protested, "Nuh uh. You're some trick. Blackguard's gang is screwing with me. Facecruncher's got that gear-grinding God-awful sense of humour. Then a piano's going to hit me on the head."
I am have been known to pull a fast one, in My time, but you may have My word that I am I.
Xaaron gurgled up something unmentionable. After wiping his mouth, he waved his sticky-fingered hand and snapped, "And your word is worth about as much as mine, I bet."
You would be correct in ways you cannot yet understand, Xaaron got the impression he was being played here, and not in the way he had originally thought. But please, sit down, My child. Be My guest. I have not had one who can talk to Me so in a long, long time.
Xaaron found himself sitting down, and he blinked a few time, confused by his easy compliance. He muttered, "Can? What's so hard about it?"
My unfiltered words burn out mortal minds, and even the mightiest of My children have difficultly defying My will.
Xaaron wanted to reply, to make some ill-advised sarcastic remark, but his mind's eye took him to a picture. The scene looked like it was happening here, but it couldn't be now. There was just him and the face, not an entourage of old-fashioned priests. He watched the priest fall on their knees. He couldn't really make out their words, but what was happening was clear enough. The one in the middle stiffened, his optics went white, and he fell over, clawing at nothing.
The voice was perhaps sad, but only in the way of someone who was mildly inconvenienced, His mind could not hold My word, but he demanded it and paid the price. He died quickly.
"Thank below for small mercies, eh?" Xaaron managed to get out. "Guess that's why you don't get much company anymore."
Then you believe?
"I can't really call it belief if I don't have choice, can I?" Xaaron licked his stitches, thinking. "I could be crazy, but I've packed back enough tankrot, that if it was going to happen, it would have happened millennia ago. Someone could be pulling a trick, but I know I'm not that important. So I have leaking Primus talking to me. Glitching lovely."
You are a clever boy, Primus resonated, perhaps implying that Xaaron was not half so clever as he thought he was.
Xaaron looked up at the massive face, seeking out its optics with his own, and grumbled, "I'm clever enough to know that you have to want something out of me. All my life, I've felt a pull down to the underground. It's gone. I've arrived. What do you want with someone so faithless, even the heretics spit on him? I know it can't just be conversation. You're scrapping Primus. You could make yourself a playmate if you were that bleeping bored."
I sleep. It is My dreaming with which you speak. However, you have a calling.
"As what, a bouncer who gets tossed out because he started a fight instead of stopping one? I have a problem with how I see the world, is what it is. That's why you haven't blown out my head, isn't it? I don't have any false illusions or expectations, no built-up rote faith. It's the contradictions that kill them. Just can't handle it. I can deal with what I'm really seeing because I always have. I don't have any choice." The worst energon didn't dull out how dirty and sharp-edged his world was. "Just like now, I'm not really seeing a full-stasis board in front of me." Xaaron reached out to snatch up an unfamiliar piece and opined, "This one's always been missing on every set I've ever seen. What is it?"
The Emirate. It is the one piece that makes full-stasis truly a game of skill. With the addition of the Emirate's unique moves, the game no longer has a calculable solution and becomes a game of reading your opponent.
So Primus wanted to play games with Xaaron, did he? Xaaron muttered, "You're making this a bit obvious." He squinted at the Emirate. It was a spare little piece, lacking in detail and looking perhaps like it was wearing a crown. Looking again, the Emirate looked a bit like Xaaron, if he took a dousing in solvent and shed the kibble. He doubted that he could ever match that featureless serenity on the piece, however. The codger looked entirely too satisfied, like he had a secret he wasn't about to tell. Looking up again, Xaaron declared, "Then tell me his moves, and let's play."
Xaaron looked through the library's selection of texts on full-stasis. He had never been to the library before, and he wondered why. The blasted place was free, in the real sense of the word, but without a single catch to it. Perhaps the only catch was that he had seen at least a hundred different things that he wanted to read, and that was just walking to the section on full-stasis. He read:
The Emirate is a little-used piece in the game of full-stasis. Players dislike the complexity and ambiguity that it adds to the game, and many feel that it makes the game too hard. However, the mark of a proper set of full-stasis is that it contains the Emirate, and many full-stasis grandmasters swear both by and at the Emirate.
Xaaron pulled out the little Emirate that he had nicked off Primus and ran the piece through fingers. That much of the game had been real. He continued reading about the theory and usage of the Emirate. It was apparently a devilishly hard piece to learn how to play correctly, but once mastered, it was devastating to an opponent.
Out of the corner of his optics, he saw the librarian gesturing at him to a security guard. Xaaron tensed. If things went the way he thought they were going to, he wasn't going to be very happy in a moment. The guard stalked over and grabbed him by the elbow. He said gruffly, "I'm afraid I have to escort you out."
Xaaron protested, too loudly, "What? I haven't done anything!"
The guard said, "You are disturbing the peace with your noise," and started to haul him down the aisle.
Optics an angry yellow blaze, Xaaron forced his voice down to a low hiss, "I hadn't said a word until you grabbed me."
Perhaps feeling a little guilty, the guard admitted, "You worry the other patrons." Summarily, he tossed Xaaron out on the street. More loudly, he commanded, "And stay out."
Xaaron fidgeted in the shackles. The chair wasn't falling apart, so that was a change, but it didn't really accommodate his turret. In fact, the chair was probably designed to be uncomfortable on purpose.
His parole officer, Repugnus, had his hand over his optics. Xaaron was usually glad that he had Repugnus to handle his case. Repugnus was by no means a good man, not that Xaaron would trust one, but he understood how things really worked. He sounded rather tired as he asked, "Do I want to know why you got into fisticuffs with a security guard at an intake-ramming library?"
Xaaron looked away and mumbled, "I'm not really sure. He threw me out, and somehow, my fist ended up in his faceplate."
"I see," Repugnus muttered, "and what were you even doing at a library, Xaaron?"
"I was reading!" Xaaron blurted.
"What, a circuit-mag in the factory-fresh section?" Repugnus snarled, leaning over the desk to loom on Xaaron's face.
Xaaron didn't allow himself to be intimidated and griped, "Full-stasis. I was reading about fragging full-stasis."
"That useless game's the only decent thing in your slagging life. Were you being noisy or something? Maybe cussed out a librarian?"
"No! I was just reading, and the security guard threw me out," Xaaron explained. He could spin a lie fine enough to clothe a priest. Why was the truth so hard to swallow?
Regugnus groaned and leaned back in his chair. He confided, "Xaaron, there are places that people like you and me just don't go. It doesn't matter if you're sitting there with your nose in a datapad, minding your own business. You look like trouble walking, and soon enough, looks are going to become reality, whether you want it to or not. Besides, I bet the librarian called up a background check on you."
"Speaking of that," Xaaron squirmed and got his hands out in front of him. He dropped off a pile of credits on Repugnus's desk. "I want my record cleared."
Repugnus stared at the pile with obvious longing. His words, however, were both jaded and concerned, "Xaaron, did you kill someone?"
"Only the Overlord and his officers in a dozen games of full-stasis," Xaaron replied with a fierce smile on his face.
Repugnus grunted, looked left, and looked right. He leaned in again and whispered, "You've got a deal. Now get out of here before I remember who you are."
Xaaron leaned back in the same broken chair, staring at the ceiling after another skill-less victory. He watched the other fellow sulk away. Sighing, Xaaron collected his chips and stood. He passed by the bar, where Maccadam inquired, "Another keg of radionuclide special?"
His feet feeling oddly heavy, Xaaron replied, "Not today, Maccadam. Perhaps not ever again. I'm saving, now."
Maccadam chuckled, doubtless thinking that Xaaron would be back, and asked conspiratorially, "What is it, then? Syk? A new cannon? One of those painted beauties down the road?"
Forcing himself into a straighter posture than his usual slouch, Xaaron explained, "Actually, I was thinking about getting some body-work done. Know a good place?"
Xaaron once again questioned if he really was as smart as Primus seemed to think he was. He was going to entrust his life into the hand of a chop-shop artist that he knew dealt in corpses and had caused a few of them. On the other hand, he was sure that the fancy surgeons killed, too. They just wouldn't hand out the statistics. He was definitely not putting all the credit up front today. The mechanic could have them when Xaaron was sure he wasn't dead.
The mechanic asked, "So what are you in for? Detailing? Maybe you spikes to impress your friends? Turret enlargement?"
Xaaron held up the Emirate and said, "I'd like to look a bit like this. Make my turret fold away and have my treads stow inside my legs, rather than so visible."
The mechanic held his middle and burst out laughing. When he was finally done, he looked at Xaaron like he was crazy and exclaimed, "You'll get killed if you walk around looking like that down here."
"Perhaps I do not intend to be down here very long," Xaaron replied levelly.
"Suit yourself. I get dibs on your body when you conk it?" the mechanic asked eagerly.
Xaaron shook his head. Such a deal was only asking for trouble. He thought down to Primus below and said hesitantly, "I... I think I'm already spoken for. Just do the modifications, and I'll give you your credits.
Xaaron waltzed into the local library again. No one gave him a second look. The feeling was so queer and peculiar. Not a single distrusting glare met his golden form. Not a gaze questioned his right to be here. Even the security guard who had thrown him out ignored him. Xaaron noted that he'd had the dents beaten out. Instead of heading directly for the full-stasis section, Xaaron went right for the first shelf of the first aisle. He sat down with a fistful of datapads, and the chair back found no turret to bang against. He would call himself comfortable if he wasn't expecting each and everyone to see through him, and he'd find himself face down in a gutter again. However, they couldn't see him as he did. They had no idea what he really was, and if Xaaron had any say, they never would.
He was reading for a very long time. However, there was no law against reading every single text in the library, and he was quiet and unobtrusive. Xaaron tripped the security guard on the way out. Even the security guard blamed it on a crack in the stairs, but Xaaron counted himself lucky that he couldn't see his vicious, triumphant grin.
Xaaron moved out of the little place with his multitude of roommates into a different little place and a plethora of different roommates. It was, perhaps, in a slightly better area of town, as he really would be shot if he spent too much time back where he used to belong, but he had even less space than he did before. Xaaron didn't belong here, and he kept it in his mind. He was merely pausing here, one step in a vast staircase. Retyping reports for a living was just trading one sort of drudgery for another. He could not and would not be content here, not when his core seethed with rage.
For now, he waited for his test scores to turn. Xaaron squinted at the report and resisted the urge to edit. They weren't paying him to edit. They'd be angry at him if he edited. He finished the section and backup his chair, hitting the wall behind him. He badly needed a break from this insipid drivel. Xaaron paced out to the courier drop-box for his flat. It would probably be empty. Material transit of information was still used, although rarely. He typed in the key code for the box and peered inside. A package addressed to him greeted Xaaron. He snatched it up with trembling fingers and retreated back to his chair in the corner open it, tearing open the plastic wrap with his teeth.
Xaaron shut off his optics for a moment. As long as they were good enough to get him into Yuss's Junior College, he'd be fine. Xaaron could transfer into somewhere else later. If he'd completely bombed, he could retake the test, if need be. He had all the time in the world to change it. Xaaron spat out the plastic scraps that stuck in his mouth and turned his optics online.
Iacon wanted him. Iacon. His actual scores were good enough, more than solid leaning towards excellent in the essay section, but they needed the diversity. The cynic in Xaaron knew that was the main and, in the end, the only reason Iacon wanted him. The scores were just a qualifier. He'd be trotted with the cast of token outsiders out for all the photo-ops to show how open-minded and accepting they were. Xaaron chewed on his stitches. Iacon's Academy of Science and Technology wanted him, to be specific. Between the lines, he read that his opinions were too radical for a political or journalistic education. Primus forbid, he might write an editorial. Officially, Tarn was going to be paying for his education there, too, as one of their sponsored students of the year. Lord Shockwave favoured scientific backgrounds.
Xaaron backed his chair, hitting the wall again. The next-door neighbour screamed something incoherent. Xaaron decided that he was packing today before he put a hole through the wall more intentionally than not.
The first year into his education proper, as the records would have it, Xaaron and the other sponsored students from Tarn were summoned to meet their Lord, who was quite interested to see his investment. The actual dinner was boring as hell. As Xaaron was given to understand, there wasn't any such thing as hell, but he still assumed that, if there had been a hell, it was boring like this dinner was boring. The only interesting thing was the people. He watched the other students fall over themselves, all trying to impress the Lord Shockwave as they introduced themselves. Shockwave betrayed no reaction to the students. Xaaron was, of course, last. At his turn, he readily stood, bowed, and introduced, "My Lord Shockwave, I am Xaaron, currently studying science with a physics emphasis. I have been known to play a mean game of full-stasis, if my Lord is interested."
Those few words said, he sat down and took a sip of his energon. It was light-chain hydrocarbons, bubbly and sweet. The smallest of the students already looked a bit tipsy from his sipping. Even he hushed at Xaaron's brazen offer. All optics were upon him and then furtively flicked away, all save for Shockwave's steady gaze, yellow as his own. The worst that could happen was quite bad, and Shockwave was known to lack a sense of humour. Shockwave turned his head and gestured with his one hand to a staffer. He bid him to fetch a full-stasis set. "Move," Shockwave ordered the student closest to him, a fellow by the name of Flame, and then directed to Xaaron with his cannon arm, "Sit."
Flame shot a savage look at Xaaron, and behind Flame's back and away from the watchful optics of the dinner guests and the security cameras, Xaaron made an extremely rude gesture at Flame that called into question the processes and materials used to manufacture him. Flame was such a whiner, treating every question he got wrong like the professor was personally insulting him. The fellow seemed to think he was some unsung and wrongly maligned genius. Xaaron felt more hard work and less ranting would do him a load of good.
Xaaron smoothly settled himself into the chair next to Shockwave and smiled warmly to those gathered. Shortly, a staffer arrived with a full-stasis set. It was finely crafted and sturdy, containing all the advanced pieces, but overall, it was plain and barren of detail. The set suited Shockwave's overall decor. Shockwave intoned, "Your move."
Xaaron let his hand hover over the pieces, considering. Taking the first move was not per se an advantage, although it was generally thought one. In fact, it could be quite crippling. Still, he nodded gratefully and enthused, "You honour me, my Lord." Xaaron made a conservative first move, one that would feel out the opponent but lose him little if it proved a mistake. It was a very logical first move, and it implied that he was going to play the rest of the game similarly logically. Few things were farther from the truth.
Shockwave bought it hook, line, and sinker. As the game wore on, Xaaron varied his style, making what looked like beginner mistakes. He heard the sniggers from the others at the dinner. They must have thought him horribly arrogant. Shockwave eagerly capitalised on the apparent weaknesses. Soon, Xaaron had Shockwave's key pieces encircled and his own best offensive units blocking Shockwave's army from any rescue. He declared, "Full-stasis, my Lord."
Xaaron watched Shockwave sit there in silence, and he fancied that he could hear Shockwave compute. He glanced over at his barely touched cube as he waited for Shockwave to reach a verdict. Finally, Shockwave acquiesced, "Correct. You have achieved full-stasis. What is your full-stasis algorithm?"
Xaaron explained, "I don't have one, my Lord. There are two ways to play full-stasis. The first is brute force mathematical attack to calculate the optimal move. I have nothing but the greatest of respect for those who play in such a fashion, but it's too much for my processors. I play the second way. I don't play full-stasis at all. I play my opponents."
Centuries later, Xaaron found Repugnus much where he expected to find Repugnus. The centuries might have been millennia if he counted all the committees he had sat on at the Academy, as committee time passed much more slowly than actual time. The bar had been razed to the ground at least three times and had changed management more often than a Triple-Changer changed modes, but in the end, it was the same place at had always been, The Lazy Lizard, no matter what the flickering neon sign said. Xaaron was painfully aware how out of place he seemed, looking for all the world like a respectable citizen. The world of seedy dives was his world no longer, despite how comfortable, how right he felt here.
He could still walk like he belonged here, with an insouciant slouch, and he sidled over to Repugnus, who protested hazily, "Chaplain? Wasn't me with the nightstick. Prisoner broke his own arms... and knees. Yeah."
Xaaron upped his mental estimate of how many drinks Repugnus had consumed. He waved the bartender over, slid over a few chips, and directed, "Get Repugnus here another cube of what's having."
Repugnus squinted at Xaaron, and his optics snapped into focus. He said slowly, "You're not the chaplain. Slag my optics, it's you, Xaaron!" He lowered his voice and whispered, "Did you kill someone?"
Xaaron sighed and titled his head upwards. Another in his place might have uttered, 'Primus, give me strength,' but Xaaron knew that his own was quite sufficient. He hissed back at Repugnus, "No. Repugnus, you know that I'm running for office, right?"
Repugnus eyed the cube suspiciously when it arrived. He tapped it with a finger, shaking from his own addled state, and said, "So you need to shut me up?"
"Only after a fashion." Xaaron smiled thinly. "I wish you offer you a position on my campaign. Your talents are wasted where you are, and I know you've been passed over for enough promotions due to your, ah, record to know that you'll never get the responsibility that you deserve."
"I'm guessing that I don't have much choice in this," Repugnus replied, slitting open the top of the cube. He knocked it back easily and sighed happily over the contents.
"No one does around me, not in the end," Xaaron replied with quiet certainty. Brightly, he added, "Another cube?"
Repugnus looked at Xaaron askew and muttered, "You've changed, Xaaron. I thought maybe you'd gone soft, but blanking hell, you've just gone scary. Another cube."
Xaaron patted Repugnus on the shoulder fondly and inquired, "I will take that as a, 'Yes', then."
Repugnus grunted and reached for the next cube.
A short while into his campaign, Xaaron found Repugnus on top of him. Repugnus screamed as he took the hit meant for Xaaron and promptly launched into a stream of invective. Xaaron found the creativity somewhat lacking, but he had to admire the sheer, unbridled crudity of it. Repugnus got to his feet, transformed, and launched himself onto the assailant. A few moments later, the Monsterbot stood with dripping claws over the twitching body of someone who was not the reporter he appeared to be.
Xaaron got to his feet, remarkably unshaken. He felt detached, numb even. So that's what an assassination attempt was like. Funny, he had expected something a little more exciting than this. Welcome to politics in Tarn. He turned to a horrified staffer and remarked calmly, "Now do you see why I keep Repugnus on retainer?" He turned and barked to Repugnus, "Be sure to question our murderous friend down there before your old comrades arrive. They will merely make a mess of things."
Repugnus flicked the energon off his scythe-like talons and snarled, "Before or after I get this shot in my side looked at, boss?" he snapped at one of the other staffers, "What are you blinking looking at? Never seen a Monsterbot? Hnn." Repugnus transformed, clearly sulking that his robot mode was so preferable to his alternate form.
Looking around to make sure that there were not more assassins waiting in the wings, Xaaron paced to Repugnus's side and placed a hand on his arm. He offered in thanks, "Very kind of you to take the shot for me, but you understand that the blues and twos will be on the scene swiftly enough."
"Yeah, whatever," Repugnus grumbled. "Look, I'll look out for you, you know that, but you need to hire a real bodyguard. This ain't my job." It wasn't. Xaaron kept Repugnus to keep tabs on his opponents and on the down-low scuttlebutt about himself. Repugnus knelt and touched a few wires together, bringing the assassin back to wakefulness. He hauled the hired gun up by his neck and threw him over his shoulder. At the squirming, he growled, "C'mon, you. We're going to have some fun before the coppers get here."
Knowing that he needed to take the staffer's minds off the debacle that had just unfolded and in specific that the fact that Repugnus had just added, "And if you're lucky, you won't even be alive when they arrive," Xaaron turned to one of his aides and directed, "Get me Impactor."
The aide blinked a few times and stuttered, "Impactor, as in Impactor and the Wreckers?"
Another piped, "Those mercenaries?" He made it sound like a dirty word. "Why would you want a bunch of mercenaries?"
"Perhaps I like having a proven track record of effectiveness," Xaaron replied levelly.
"It's traditional to hire a reserve squad," said the first, as if the military actually had active squads.
Xaaron countered, "It is also traditional to pay far too much on a group that has only had theory instruction and no practical experience. When I'm elected, I can cheerily inform my loyal tax-payers how I am saving them just a few more of their precious tax credits. How's that for an edge?"
The ceremonial robes chafed. At least Xaaron only had to wear them for this ceremony and a few infrequent others. The rest of the time, he would be out of this pompous get-up. The lights were painfully bright as he was ushered out onto the grand stage, but he kept his composure. He didn't want to look like a blinking idiot in public. Arrayed all around were the various leaders of city-states and their corresponding council members. High Councillor Traachon stood in for the Overlord, who was ailing even then and could not be bothered to haul himself out for such a trivial event. Traachon, whose regalia definitively outshined any in the room for absurdity, announced, "I am pleased to announce the newest member of the Council, the representative from Tarn, Emirate Xaaron!"
The End
Afterword: This was all inspired by a chat about how certain characters act when drunk. It occurred to me that it is a bad idea for Emirate Xaaron to try to get drunk because he doesn't actually get drunk. He just passes out after drinking more drinks than a normal Transformer should consume in one sitting, sometimes in ditches. From there, a plot developed. I know it's a bit odd to peg Xaaron as Tarnish as opposed to Iaconian, but it's not like we have evidence either way, and I personally put Traachon as the representative from Iacon. Most of the stuff about Cybertronian pre-war politics, law, culture, and education has been fabricated from whole cloth, but if you see any non-canon idea you'd like to borrow, just tell me. I'd be tickled to hear it.