Cosmos Fic!
Off of a bunny at TF bunny farm!
Cosmos shifted on his bunk in the brig, uncomfortable, humiliated, and mildly itchy. Not that he could do much about that last one at the moment. His left arm was currently numb thanks to a lucky shot from Starscream. Perceptor had checked it briefly before he was dumped into the brig and stated that the effect just needed to wear off. And speaking of wearing off, Cosmos couldn’t wait for what happened to his right arm to wear off, in fact, too much more of this, and he would be willing to take it off… anything for a respite from the smell.
The day had started off so well. There was a summit in Moscow, involving most of the nations of earth, to discuss the responsible use of the stratosphere surrounding the earth. The scope of the summit was immense, from pollutants to military defense (these days mostly the humans efforts to unite against the decepticons) to natural phenomena. Space was limited and attendance by individuals other than foreign leaders and presenters was done by lottery. The autobots themselves had several presenters, but they had also won a slot for an observer to attend as well. Prowl had been assigned the responsibility of determining the user of this slot and in a truly logical manner had awarded to the autobot with the most experience on the topic of the day.
Cosmos had not held much hope for winning the slot for a day. Most of the winners were members of the science team or bots with diplomatic ties and while Cosmos felt that he was a smart and friendly bot, he knew that not everyone else felt that way. Cosmos knew that this was not intentional disrespect, but truly a side effect of most of the bots not knowing him very well. His job was as always the cause, but in this instance, it was also the cause of joy. The topic for the next to last date was efforts to maximize usage of stable orbits around earth, reducing orbital debris which had grown exponentially after the arrival of the decepticons, and possible defensive measures for satellites. A topic that Prowl decided that Cosmos had the most experience with due to his surveillance duties. Cosmos could hardly disagree, barely holding his shout of glee inside when he was commed with the news. His trail over the next few days was a bit erratic though, leading to a few more “Alien” sightings, but fortunately, Prowl did not use this as a grounds to pull the permission.
Cosmos had really tried hard. The security for the event was extremely high, as so many high level politicians and scientist in one place was almost an irresistible target for the decepticons. All of the autobots were on high alert and Cosmos was continuously scanning the Earth for signs of decepticon activity, but he still managed to find small instances of time to practice reentry and landing, not wanting to have an accident in front of so many personages. It was bad enough that he had crashed so many times in battle after being hit by one decepticon or another, but it would be truly humiliating to crash simply because he had been on duty in space for so long that he had become clumsy with landing.
The early morning light was beautiful in the chill air over the sleeping as Cosmos slowly spiraled downward toward the open lot that was his designated landing area. Wheeljack had given him a mini disruptor field generator, one of his newest devices based off of research of Mirage’s special ability. The generator was not strong enough to fool the decepticons, so they were not much use for spying or on the battlefield, but they were sufficient against the human eye, so Cosmos was not worried about being spotted by the city inhabitants and causing a panic.
But what Cosmos had forgotten was that while the generator did prevent the humans from seeing him, it did not prevent sounds from issuing. The autobots had long ago noted an issue with the species known as Canis lupus familiaris and the subsonic tones that were emitted by the autobot frequency of radar scanner, so as a matter of common courtesy did not employ that scanner within city limits, but as with a number of important pieces of information, it had been discovered through experience with local humans, experience that Cosmos didn’t have.
By the time Cosmos approached the field, every dog in Moscow was awake and howling, and so were the people anywhere near them. A quick commed message from Wheeljack and Cosmos was frantically transmitting apologies while shutting off the scanner, but the damage had already been done. So it was probably no surprise that when Cosmos reached the open lot, he did not notice the family of native animals that had fled to this area when the noise from the dogs began. Or rather, he didn’t notice until it was too late and the unfortunate animals met a very unfortunate ending as he landed.
It was also unfortunate that the family of animals that Cosmos landed on was a rather pungent set of animals. Hound would later inform him that the animal was in the same genus as the Skunk, but regardless of the actual name of the beast, Cosmos did learn to his immediate dismay, that despite the large amount of water he used to clean off the remains, the smell would linger for the rest of the day. As would the smell of vomit, which was added to the smell when the diplomatic attaché that was sent to guide him in had an undiplomatic moment all over Cosmos other pede.
Olfactory issues however were soon forgotten in the give and flow of the meeting. The presentations had been varied and during the roundtable in the afternoon, when the panel had learned of Cosmos’ experience had invited him to join them and several hours of hard work with Hound had allowed him to project an image that was suitably appropriate for the pedestal. Unfortunately, projecting such an image took so much concentration from Cosmos that it wasn’t until the floor gave a final long groan and shattered underneath Cosmos pedes and dumping him into a dusty basement filled with what appeared to be old pans and antique porcelain. It was a very loud, very noisy rescue.
At this point, Cosmos was still in control of himself and while very embarrassed, still hopeful that he could somehow rescue this day and escape to his lonely, but still more dignified than prying an old fork out of his vents. He was exquisitely careful and managed to not step, trip, or otherwise misplace his pedes for the rest of the day. No it was his flying abilities, the one area that he felt fairly confident with, that betrayed him. He had finally removed all of the cutlery and talked Wheeljack into giving him a quick scan before he took off. Wanting to put the scene of his embarrassment behind him, he took off swiftly. Which was a mistake…
The old cold war missiles were crude and poorly maintained and Cosmos had no problems dodging them. However the damage had been done and most of Russia was treated to the view of an alien ship taking off amid a cloud of exploding bursts of light like fireworks. Cosmos no sooner reached orbit than he was bombarded by a deluge of new conspiracy theories mixed with com messages filled with entirely unfunny commentary, mostly from the Twins…
So it was no wonder that he almost didn’t notice sStarscream flying right underneath him. But the fact that Starscream had noticed him and had dismissed him as not even worth making a gesture at was truly the last straw. Cosmos was not the worlds strongest mech and definitely not the most agile, but he was fighting in his home territory, amidst a sea of metal debris that he had spent several hours debating how best to knock out of orbit, and a handy supermagnet that Wheeljack had used to remove a few stray spoons and had left with him in case any were missed.
Starscream had managed to get one shot off, but had fallen to earth after a rain of space debris ranging in size from tiny circuit pieces to an entire leg that looked like it was from Astrotrain impacted with his wings and shredded them. Cosmos did not stop there, but followed the seeker down, trailed by a larger contrail like a comet of more debris that was attracted to the magnet that he was still clinging to with his one working arm. With a maneuver that he did not even remember pulling, Cosmos neatly dropped the magnet into the mess of decepticons that had converged on where the seeker had fallen and had single handedly heavily damaged 8 of megatrons best fighters.
This would not have been enough to escape heavy damage, but the rest of the autobots had also seen Starscreams fall and came to Cosmos rescue, driving back the decepticons. Several of the autobots had been impressed by Cosmos’ attack and had come up to congratulate him, but Cosmos didn’t really feel the impression sink in. No, what had led to him being locked in the brig after a truly impressive temper tantrum was the fact that when Cosmos had landed, he had landed with his right hand outstretched, onto a typical, North American Skunk.
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