prompt fill - all six

Aug 07, 2014 22:15

Title:  Is it stealing if no one knows?
Characters: Hook
Rating: Teen
T-Series: Generation 1, pre-earth fall
Summary: Disposing of the dead is a task no one wants to contemplate - some mechs take advantage of the opportunity to find hard-to-repair parts.
Prompt #1 An unsolved mystery

“Who were you?”  Hook asked.

The still, grey mech gave no answer.

Hook was not bothered by the lack of response.  Indeed, he would have been more astounded if the deactivated had spoken.

“Processor’s been fried,” he examined the melted cranial unit.  “Distinctive features eradicated.”

“I am sorry,” Hook removed important inner parts - the black-market paid well for every useable bit of scrap that could be extracted before the frame was smelted.  “Your identity will forever be known only to Primus.”

Stepping into the wash-racks, Hook found himself no longer bothered by desecrating the dead - and that realization failed to trouble him.

Title: Beauty is more than skin deep
Characters: Sunstreaker, Hoist
Rating: K+
T-Series: Generation 1
Summary: There are a few health related-issues that Sunstreaker will never suffer from, due to his obsessive-compulsive need to maintain his appearance.  Like gummed up gears.
Prompt #2 Stripping back the layers

“Is all this really necessary, Sunstreaker?”

Sunstreaker dipped the corner of a cleaning rag into the paint stripping solvent.  “Yes.”

Hoist suffered the indignity of having someone else help him remove the last bit of stubborn color he could not reach on his own.  “A visit to the wash-racks would have removed all the grime just fine.”

“Keep scrubbing.” Sunstreaker ordered, meticulously cleaning down to the protometal.

“All I really needed was a regular touch-up.”  Hoist complied even while he didn’t quite complain.  “Nobody else would care if I simply filled in the scratch before painting over.”

“New paint sticks best to bare metal.”  The dirty, wet rag dropped to the ground.  Sunstreaker took one long step back, pleased with the results.  “Now we can proceed.”

Hoist tossed his twelfth cleaning cloth into the corner.  “Good.”  He was a bit surprised at how smoothly his movements felt.

“Didn’t you know, Hoist, that piling on additional layers of paint can inhibit movement?”  Sunstreaker asked.  “Even Ratchet knows not to let paint-build up get into servos and joints - and twelve separate coats is putting it on pretty thick.”

Title: Subjective outlook
Characters: Perceptor, Carly
Rating: K+
T-Series: Generation 1
Summary: There are many ways to look into the past.  Perceptor invites Carly to a dig so she can experience one way through looking at long-buried evidence of people’s passing.
Prompt #3 An Archaeological Dig

“Pass me the brush.”  Red fingers were outstretched.

“Sure, Perceptor.”  Carly Witwicky handed over the requested tool.  “Did you find something interesting?”

“Indubitably.”   The Autobot scientist replied, carefully sweeping every speck of dust, every grain of rock, into a bucket for later analysis.

“Any hypothesis?”  Carly asked, watching as something petrified was slowly exposed to the sun for the first time in a hundred years.

“Just one.”  Perceptor focused his lens on the microscopic lines.  “Your world is young.”

Carly blinked.  “You can tell that by annualizing a fossilized tree?”

“My dear, the evidence is all around you - it’s even evident in currently thriving cultures.”  Perceptor picked the bucket full of gravel up.  “The pace of change today might be faster than all of your yesterdays, but, in my experience, any society that is stagnant and refuses to change, disintegrates in less than a generation.”  The bucket of featureless rock fragments was shaken.  “This site was a thriving metropolis of its time, before it was buried under a lava-flow.”

Carly shook her head.

Title: A medic’s work is never done.
Characters: Hook, Astrotrain
Rating: K
T-Series: Generation 1
Summary: Hook wishes other mechs would learn to do basic maintenance instead of always demanding he fix their problems.  Oh well, the injured can (should) learn to deal with minor issues on their own.
Prompt #4 Random Phrase Generator: (Troubled Keel)

“I don’t like this.”  Hook slid underneath to more closely examine the keel of the shuttlecraft.  “I really don’t like this.”

“What’s wrong?”  Astrotrain demanded to know.  “Can’t you just bang the dent out?”

“I could - if you wanted to forever remain in your shuttle form.”

“The reason I called you down here is because I AM STUCK!”

“Then let me do my job to find the underlying problem.”

Silence returned to the docking bay.  It might have been total silence, except for the hiss of cooling engines, the constant drip-drip of water from a stalactite (who’s water source a.k.a. leak, the Constructicons hadn’t found), and occasional mutterings from the green medic as he examined the shielded underbelly of the triple changer.

At last!  “Found the problem.”

Astrotrain yelped as something pinched, tugged, then released.  He jumped back from the reaching servos, rubbing the strained leg-cable.  “Give a mech some warning next time.”

Hook wiped his hands clean.  “You’re fixed.”  He departed for the Decepticon med-bay.

Astrotrain looked down, somewhat astonished to see hands and feet instead of his space-faring alt-mode.  From his standing position, he took a huge step -

And promptly fell to the ground.

“Stupid gyroscope.”  The triple-changer cursed, using the wall to pull himself upright once again.  “Why else would a troubled keel interfere with my balance?”  He had to use the wall as support, walking to his quarters - not that his hugging one side made him stand out from the rest of the scurrying crew.

Title:  One last appeal.
Characters: Ratchet, Optimus Prime
Rating: K
T-Series: Generation 1
Summary: No one, absolutely no one at all, was satisfied with the compromise between security (as demanded by the security director), and privacy (as sought after by everyone else).
Prompt #5 Surveillance Cameras

“I demand to have the cameras removed from med bay!”

“Ratchet.”  Optimus Prime vented.  “I agreed to let Red Alert install surveillance devices in all public areas of the ark.”

“Surveillance devices are not the same thing as surveillance cameras.”  Ratchet hissed, pacing back and forth.  “Besides, no one is going to attack a medic -“

“Are you certain?”  Optimus rumbled, remembering all the times the CMO had been carried away from the battlefield, injured.

Ratchet glared, undaunted.  “No one in their right processor attacks a medic in his own domain.”  He reiterated.

“Prowl feels the same about his office.”  Optimus crossed his arms.  “I’ve lost track of the number of fights - not caused by Autobots - that occur in his office.  The cameras stay.”

“Prime!”  Ratchet wasn’t through.  “I promise all my patents patent-doctor confidentiality!  How can I keep it if there are cameras everywhere?”

“The cameras in med-bay have no audio-sensing or recording components.”  Optimus remained firm.

Title: Fun times
Characters: Jazz, Cliffjumper
Rating: K+
T-Series: Generation 1
Summary: It’s storytelling-time, and every interested bot can tell whatever falsehood he likes - as long as it’s entertaining and totally plausible.
Prompt #6 A character telling a story/fairytale.

“So there I stood, watching the countdown continue, no time to loose.  I randomly picked a wire and with my trusty clippers cut.

“The timer shut down, and the count-down wad deactivated.”

“Load o’ hogwash,” Jazz muttered from behind his energon ration.

Cliffjumper turned to Jazz.  “Are any of the times you saved the day unclassified?”

“Nope.”  Jazz put down his cube.  “Fact is, I’m not supposed to know ‘bout the time Soundwave download a stasis-virus.”

Cliffjumper wasn’t the only mech who’s vents stopped working.  “Soundwave downloaded a virus?”  Cliffjumper squeaked.

“A stasis-inducing one.” Jazz nodded knowingly.

“There’s no such thing.”  Cliffjumper insisted.

“Got another reason Sounder’s would let me hack the computer and download everything?”

“No, tell us Jazz.”  Hot Rod urged, no longer interested in telling his tall-tale.

“See, Ol sounders knows a lot ‘bout maintaining proper firewalls, but he’s more power than finesse.”   Jazz began telling a highly edited version of the one time Soundwave had been incapacitated.  “What I had to do was infect one of his cassettes with a dormant version of the virus and wait for it to infiltrate them all - took a little bit o’ time, but when it works, it works beautifully.”

character: perceptor, author: rose0mary, character: cliffjumper, character: sunstreaker, character: jazz, character: optimus prime, character: hoist, character: ratchet, character: astrotrain, character: hook

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