Ye Olde Halloween Challenge - Orange
I posted this challenge up over at transficsation last year, but I, myself, never got a chance to finish all the prompts. Shamefully, I was only able to complete 4 of them.
This year, I'm going to try and tackle a few more, but in the meantime, let me just post the 4 that were completed, starting with:
Orange
First Aid stared down the length of orange hallway within the walls of the under-construction Autobot City. It was his first night at the new Autobot base, and it was late and all he wanted to do was curl up and sleep till morning. That depended of course on whether he could find his way to his quarters, because to his tired mind, all of the orange hallways looked the same.
He could have asked for help, he supposed, but most of the Autobots were gathered in the large and spacious lounge celebrating the human holiday of Halloween, which was where he’d been, listening to all the various ghost stories some of the others had been contributing till he’d finally been too tired to pay attention.
Now, as he stood looking down the empty corridor, he wished he hadn’t paid so much attention to them. The many scenarios played on his imagination and he supressed a shiver, telling himself to get a grip. They were only stories after all - or were they.
“No,” First Aid murmured to himself. “Not going there. Where I am going is to my room to sleep.”
Steeling himself, he forced his legs to move, and started down the empty corridor, trying not to tense. One of the other things he’d learned from his time with his Autobot family was that most of them had a liking for practical jokes, especially on holidays like this. So he kept a wary optic out for anything that might look like it would leap out at him.
Thus, so pre-occupied was he on watching his immediate surroundings that he never noticed Red Alert coming out of one of the monitoring stations after his shift until he walked right into him. Both of them let out a yell of surprised and back-peddled, First Aid tripping over his own feet and falling on his aft with a clang.
Red Alert saw who it was in time and only just managed to stop himself from sounding an alarm. “First Aid, are you alright?”. He stretched a hand out to the young medic.
“Y-yeah… I am… I just didn’t see you there.” He took hold of the hand and pulled himself up. “I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Seems to me that you’re the one who’s more scared,” the security director replied, though not unkindly. “Feeling the effects of the holiday?”
“Ef-effects?”
“The fear of ghost stories and the fear of pranks. I don’t blame you.”
“Maybe a little.” First Aid shifted a little. “I was actually trying to find my room. Its my first night here, and I think I’m a bit lost.”
“Well that makes two of us. I only got here this morning and havent had time to memorize the plans, I’ve been so busy going over all the alarms.” He regarded the other. “Tell you what, why don’t we go together, that way it’ll be less frightening.”
First Aid nodded. “That would be nice.”
Together they continued down the hallway, passing orange wall-panel after orange wall-panel, everything seeming fine as they exchanged light-hearted conversation about their day until suddenly, without warning, the power failed.
The hallway plunged into darkness for a moment just before the emergency lights kicked in, bathing the corridor in an eerie, dim, orange glow that reflected off the orange surfaces and made it seem even smaller and closed in. First Aid looked around nervously, willing himself to keep it together. He’d been warned about this - the power failing now and then as the kinks in the system were worked out. As had been explained to him, Autobot City was not a fully-functional Transformer yet, and therefore still relied on manual and artifical programs to work most of the systems.
What surprised the medic though, was the lack of panicked outburst from Red Alert.
“Incase you’re wondering, I was informed about the breaks in power, too,” the mech said. “As such I programed the system to transfer all remaining power to keep the security net up till the main power comes back, that way we’ll still be able to detect any Decepticons if they come within a certain radius.”
“I hope you’re right, Red Alert,” First Aid replied. “Think we can still find our way?”
“I don’t see why not. Let’s continue.”
They walked a while longer, First Aid trying to fight off the proverbial cold fingers he felt creeping up his back-bone infrastructure, though at this point, he wondered if they were really proverbial.
Then Red Alert stopped in a patch of orange and frowned.
“Strange. There’s a draught coming in through here. I wonder if there’s an air vent I missed when I was setting up the security net.”
First Aid felt the slight shift in temperature and couldn’t supress a shiver that rippled his frame this time. According to human folklore, changes in temperature meant there were ghosts around. He shook his head. He had to stop thinking of that, and anyway, even if there were ghosts, they were probably human and had no reason to affect him.
He looked at Red Alert and noticed that the other Autobot was looking considerably nervous, too, though for different reasons. What if the power failure was not a systems glitch but had been permanently sabotaged by a Decepticon that may have sneaked in before he got the security net up? In that case, there could be a Decepticon in the air vent right now, waiting to pounce on them both…
They heard footsteps approach and First Aid immediately moved closer to Red Alert. The echoes made it hard to pin-point which direction they were coming from and both mechs glanced around nervously.
“What are you two doing?” a voice asked.
The mechs nearly jumped out of their plating as Sunstreaker stepped into the corridor, having rounded a darkened corner. He looked as calm as a lake on a clear summer’s day. The two let out breaths of relief as he approached.
“N-nothing,” First Aid replied. “We were trying to find our quarters when the power went off.”
Sunstreaker nodded, the orange lighting making his own paint glow a warm yellow that was somehow comforting. First Aid thought of angels.
“Wind blew a branch into one of the power lines, we’ve got mechs on it, so the power should be back on in a moment,” the warrior said. “In the meantime, follow me, I’ll show you the way.”
He started down the hall and the other two hurried to keep up with him, not wanting to lose sight of that bright yellow form that broke the monotony of the orange around them. He led them through a few more passages, then down a level and stopped. At that moment, the power came back on
“The residency level’s down here. Shouldn’t be too hard to find your quarters now that the power’s on.”
“Uh… thank you, Sunstreaker,” Red Alert said. “And be sure to let me know what caused the outage this time.”
“Yeah yeah.” He turned to go, then paused. “By the way, you might wanna change the color of the emergency lights. All that orange’s messing with my sensory receivers. I actually thought I heard footsteps, guess it was only you two.”
Red Alert and First Aid looked at each other.
“But we were standing,” said First Aid.
“I’ll have them changed first thing,” Red Alert said. “Maybe to a nice yellow.”
Sunstreaker smirked. “That’d be nice.”
First Aid and Red Alert get stuck in the dark down a hallway in newly-built Autobot City, and cant seem to find their way around since all the hallways are in that same shade of orange. Their only hope is to wait and see if someone finds them.