(Untitled)

[due_caution]

Red Alert had briefly considered tagging along with Kitten Prime and Company, if only to make sure Rodimus stayed safe and out of trouble, but thought better of it after contemplation. Right now, at a glance, who would even know that the small orange Terran cat is the Autobot Prime, unless someone draws undue attention to him

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[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing actually came by to see Daniel, but the new faces around Autobot City are quite distracting. As are the kitten, the horse and the floating fish.

This red and white Autobot is a new face, and he's as fascinated with poking around computer files as Echoshift was. He seems more enthusiastic about it, though certain entries make him twitch. A few make him cringe outright, and others, make him wince.

Duskwing stands invisibly behind Red Alert, watching him curiously. What's he going to do next, and what's so bad about those files?

The lights gradually dim....

[due_caution]

Red's engrossed in the logs enough that he doesn't notice anything amiss, at first, other than a vague sense of unease. That, however, he attributes to the logs themselves, as the information contained therein goes well beyond insanity.

For example, when, exactly, did Ratchet and Wheeljack rise from the dead? And, speaking of rising from the dead... is that... Starscream? In the Medical Bay?

And why in Primus's name is his own secure login being used to access the system from-

Red Alert yelps out loud as he compares the data logs to the security logs and realizes that the aforementioned dead Decepticon had gained access to all the most secure files in the entire Autobot system. Had had access to everything for... for...

"DAYS! Ratchet, I certainly hope you aren't dead, because I am going to kill you," Red Alert whimpers to himself as he fires up another console.

The rest of the logs can wait. He needs to get to work now if he stands even the faintest chance of ferretting all of Starscream's little surprises out of all the various

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing stares hard at the red and white Lamborghini Autobot. What is he yelling about? And why is he threatening Ratchet? Duskwing frowns; he doesn't like that. Ratchet's one of the good ones.

"Hey! Whaddaya mean, you'll kill Ratchet?" Duskwing says from just behind Red Alert. "I don' like the sound of that," he growls, showing himself in all his dark blue and purple Decepticon Seeker glory. For right now, he looks solid enough--this guy doesn't know him, and Duskwing doesn't know this guy. There's a soft whine as of guns charging.

[due_caution]

Having been seated behind his desk, which incidentally faced the only door into his office, Red Alert had been pretty damned confident that he was a) alone in his office, and b) would BE alone in his office. At least he was pretty damned confident that no one would be able to sneak in, since he'd taken care of all the usual means of ingress, and even a few of the more... unconventional means.

Thus, having a mech the size and shape of a Decepticon Seeker literally pop out of thin air behind him, especially after having apparently been listening to him to know that he'd just made a possibly-not-entirely-in-jest smartaft remark about doing the former CMO extreme bodily harm does more than just surprise Red Alert. It freezes the energon in his lines and scares the Infernal Pit out of him.

The whimper of dread that had just very recently escaped him is no match for the yelp of mingled outrage and fear that bursts from him now. Caught between the Seeker behind him and the desk in front of him, Red Alert almost tumbles to the floor as he

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing favors Red Alert with a blank stare for a long moment. Then he graduates to a puzzled frown. "Huh? I walked in, whaddaya think?"

[due_caution]

"Through the wall?" Red Alert asks, incredulously. He's quite certain that no one walked in with him.

He thinks.

Maybe.

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing turns and looks around the room, frowning. "Uh, maybe it was the floor."

He turns back to Red Alert, scowling. "Anyway, you're distractin' me! Whaddaya mean, threatening Ratchet? You never answered that!"

[due_caution]

"The... floor?" Red Alert echoes weakly. They can randomly wander through walls and floors now? It's enough - almost - to make him want to throw his hands up and quietly get very overcharged.

But not quite.

"I was making an offhand comment disparaging Ratchet's apparent attempts to turn what used to be a finely tuned and carefully maintained security system into the laughingstock of the Decepticon army," he replies stiffly, optics narrowing. "Now, you answer me. What were you doing eavedropping on me?"

[stupidityinblue]

Really long blank stare.

"Huh? When'd he do that?" Duskwing looks suspiciously at Red Alert; he's not too sure about this 'disparaging' thing. This guy is talking too much like one of those slagging officers that used to push Duskwing around and get him assigned to slagpit assignments.

"Ain't seen you before. Was looking for Daniel, only dere was dis cat and horse and the floating fish..." Duskwing waves his hand in the general direction of the hall, and looks more than a little confused. "An' you was here, and I never seen youse before."

[due_caution]

Red Alert stares at the perplexed Decepticon for a long moment, himself, a faint suspicion starting to dawn in his CPU.

"I was on an errand on Cybertron for the city commander. Normally, though, I'm here in Autobot City. If I had been, then maybe I could have stopped Ratchet from giving too many people too much access to our systems. That's what I was grumbling at Ratchet about," he explains warily. "As angry as I am at him right now, I would never really hurt him. He's my friend. One I had thought was gone."

Red Alert swings his weaponry offline, adopting a slightly more relaxed posture. "Why do you care what happens to Ratchet?"

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing looks at Red Alert like he's an idiot.

"Because I like him. He listens when I tell him something important. He don't get a slagging crankshaft up his afterburner and start telling me what I'm s'posed to be tellin' him. He don't tell me to shut up 'cause I'm a dumb grunt that don't know nothin' about nothin. And he don't ask me a bunch a stupid dis-dis--what's the slagging word?--distracting questions like an underclocked ground-crawler when I ask him a question!"

[due_caution]

Red ignores the "underclocked ground-crawler" insult, refusing to rise to the bait and let the Seeker distract him.

"Fair enough. Why were you looking for Daniel?" he asks, wondering how much he'll be able to get out of this Seeker before he finally gets irritated or bored enough to vanish out the way he vanished in.

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing looks slightly less petulant.

"Because he was bad sick when I left? Medics said he'd get better, but who knows about squishies?" Duskwing looks away, and says in a low voice, "Wanted to make sure he was okay."

He looks back at Red Alert and scowls angrily. "Had enough trouble getting the kid rescued before he died of something! Makin' sure you Bots didn't screw up and waste all that trouble!"

He glares at Red Alert, almost daring him to say something.

[due_caution]

Red Alert nods, his expression calmly accepting, as if he's expected such an answer. In reality, he's stunned speechless by a Decepticon who seems to care about a human, an Autobot ally, enough to be this beligerant about him. But stunned disbelief won't keep the information coming, he would imagine.

"That happened while I was on Cybertron. I was trying to catch up with the logs about everything that happened while I was gone when you appeared. I hadn't gotten very far," he explains.

"Maybe you could tell me more of what went on, since you were here? You helped rescue Daniel?"

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing's expression brightens, and he nods.

"I found 'em in the slave market, and kept that stupid bush from selling the whole lot of them to who knows where! Well, actually, I found the kid in Drath's place when I was tryin' to figure out what they did with Galvatron, and I was going to take him to try and get help from you Bots 'cause I figured he was important to youse guys and you'd listen to him. Only I lost him when I had to take out the security center, and they suckered me by sending Galvatron and Cyclonus and Scourge off seperately on a one-way shuttle flight, if you get my meaning, see? So I had to go rescue them, and then Drath slipped the rest of 'em and the kid offworld. An' it took me a while to find the kid. They had him in the market on Tau Ceti III, only I didn't know where that was, see, so I had to look up the navigation coordinates on some passing freighter and pop back to Earth and get Breaker to look 'em up so I'd know the human name of the place. Smart of me, huh? Then I had ta keep Scrub from selling 'em

[due_caution]

Red Alert is following along fairly well, actually, right up to the point that Duskwing starts to lose his concentration on his appearance. Red doesn't quite freeze, but he can't quite stifle the look of surprise on his features as he watches Duskwing slowly fade.

"Yes, very smart," he agrees absently as he stares at Duskwing with wide optics.

No radar signature, able to walk through walls and/or floors at will, not setting off his sensors, and now... transparent. When, Red Alert wonders to himself, did he wander into one of Kup's stories? Ghosts really are more Kup's purview than his own.

Wait... when last he checked, Ratchet had been rather dead. This presumably dead Seeker likes Ratchet. Could the Ratchet he's been seeing in all the log footage actually be another ghost, too? And Wheeljack? Maybe Starscream too?

All this conjecture is making his CPU ache fiercely.