Ep. 1 - A patrol with Prime (Closed)

The rumble of an engine noise came quickly from down the entry-tunnel to the outside, the noise followed shortly by the glow of headlights swinging against the wall, and more immediately by massive front-fender of a Peterbilt 379. The semi came up the last of the turn before stopping just before entering the control room, the parked truck quickly and fluidly coming apart at the seams and standing up into Optimus Prime’s root mode. Bright blue optics flickered, focusing on the sullen figure of Sniper waiting for him and looking perfectly ready to give him a good long silent treatment for the duration of their patrol.

Being unpopular with the troops was, actually, something Optimus was familiar with. Not now so much, as during the opening salvos of the war – while politics were still in the way of people’s opinions, and he’d yet to prove himself as anything but an orator or a political figure. More to the point, being a leader did not necessitate that everyone liked you – it was a more critical question of whether, despite their opinions, they would follow you. Shadowrunner, for example, whom he’d just left on her patrol, didn’t like him. She, however, would still follow him; the machinations of her logic still tying her loyalties to this cause.

Sniper… he was looking out for himself and, oddly enough, that was more likely to ensure his loyalties to the Autobots in this instance. After all, this mech had experienced firsthand what Megatron and his upper command did to traitors. After the attack on the Nemesis, Sniper had thoroughly burned his bridges to the Decepticons cause. Regardless of whether he was in attendance for the fight or not… something they probably needed to discuss.

“If you are ready, Sniper. Then we should go,” said Optimus.

Ignoring Sniper’s general distemper, Optimus transformed into his alt mode and followed the irritable lambo-bot outside, passing the parked mechanoid at a leisurely pace onto the road. He didn’t exactly expect to hold a steady conversation with the mech, who was putting off a foul EM field a good ten meters out. He was clearly still incredibly angry about not being allowed to participate in the raid of the Decepticon flagship. Optimus was not going to point out that, had Sniper come along, he would not have been permitted to seek out the specific mechanoids he’d wronged any way… and more to the point, if he had been allowed to, he would have met with an extreme and gory end.

They had been on the road for a little bit when Optimus broke his quiet.

“Sniper, I know it has already been said, but we do owe our victory on the Nemesis to you.” There was a curve in the road, curling around the side of a sandstone butte, gauzy moonlight lighting the road. “No one was hurt yesterday. Because of the accuracy and immediacy of the data you provided, we completed our objectives and everyone came home.” Optimus let that hang a moment. “For that you have my gratitude.”

“Starscream is the subject of your anger?”

Optimus didn’t slow down or give any sign of being perturbed by the Decepticon’s violent rebuttal. In four million years of war, the Prime has long since learned that the line between ‘Autobot’ and ‘Decepticon’ behavior was thinner than some – himself included – would like to admit. The truth was he’d simply heard far worse from mechanoids under his own command, linkages locked, hydraulics hot with the heat of their hatred. Sniper had some of that. It burned off him clear enough, that stark vapor of loathing that Optimus readily identified. Most Autobots carried that rage in them at some level or another, jammed in the wiring around their spark, between their teeth, lodged in their throats and in their heads to saw new wounds into their still-living generations.

“Why him,” asked Optimus, “and not the rest of the Decepticon High Command?”

“That isn’t how Autobots do things,” said Optimus very simply.

He didn’t say anything else because when someone was this angry it was seldom useful to lecture them on the nature of right and wrong within a war-time setting. There were certainly times, desperate and dark hours when the Autobots were pushed to the brink of their morality and they were afforded no ‘right’ answers. Optimus was used to having no ‘right’ answers. There was what was necessary and only what was absolutely necessary and having held to that very thin line of morality in the abyss that had been this war… revenge was something Optimus understand but had no time for.

“The path you choose is your own, Sniper, but the Autobots will not help you settle a personal vendetta built on the foundation of your pride.” Optimus didn’t say anything for a moment, then, “Starscream has killed countless Autobots in front of me. My friends and soldiers, subordinates and civilians. It is plausible that he deserves to die and that he is not just a CO following the orders of madmech inn a time of war… but that does not give me the right to kill him.” Optimus sped up a little bit. “But as I said, your choices are your own, Sniper."

Optimus ‘glanced’ behind him, in so much as a semi-truck could do so. Sniper was kind of lagging a little bit, not in a fashion that suggested he would fall behind so much as he might have been trying to put space between himself and the Prime. Optimus had rather expected the hostility, but he was drawing a line in the stand. It was one thing to compromise your ethics because the moment made a purely ethical choice almost impossible… it was another to sanction vengeance.

Sniper seemed to be lashing out… rather for the sake of it. Even his insults seemed a bit… well Optimus would say he’d heard better from Bumblebee in a temple, but Sniper clearly wasn’t as angry with Optimus has he would have liked to be. Or maybe he was just bad at comebacks. Mostly he seemed distracted. Optimus gauged that perhaps Sniper’s distemper might have more to do with that fact that, robbed of a chance to exact revenge, he was having to examine his motives for it more closely.

Or he was thinking how he could shoot out Optimus’ tires and make a break for it. One of those extremes. He was hung up rather on... Sniper opening calling himself 'bad' though and with himself as a contrast. Hmm...

“Good is subjective,” said Optimus quietly. “Ask most Decepticons and they would tell you I am evil, my Autobots dogmatic oppressors and my methods those of a monster. You don’t share this perspective?”

To the admittance of loss, Optimus only emitted a silent glyph-flicker of sorrow, signed with regret, that signal of understanding because in a war loss was a given. The degree of loss was the question and it still lay therein: the teammates that Sniper lost – how had he lost them? Who were they to him in actuality, not fuction, and what in that death had set Sniper on the peculiar course he was on. Treachery among Decepticon was common enough in terms of in fighting… but actual true treachery, like Sniper had done, a full signia switch this deeply into the war was rare.

There was more at stake for an ex-Con. Megatron had his monsters out there, roving the universe for traitors. And though they were likely occupied at the opposite end of the universe, there was still always that persistent lingering fear of the Decepticon Justice Division. More so, sometimes, than Megatron himself, who didn’t have time to do much beyond what’s he’d already done with Sniper. Megatron was a warlord, but true sadism wasn’t… natural to him. It was something he affected when it would gain him something.

Not so with his murder squad.

“Information brokers tend to keep their neutrality in a war,” said Optimus. “Or they did in the beginning, until – as you said – they could not afford to.” There was a pause. “Why did you join the Decepticons?”

Not a believer then. Not even one of the reactionaries of the revolution. It did not appear that Sniper’s alliance with the Decepticons had anything to do with his belief system so much as his aptitude for survival. At the time, the Decepticons had simply promised him more, apparently, than the Autobots had. An alliance of convienance, as the Autobots seemed to be now. It was not the more stable of alliances, but as it stood Sniper stood lose everything if he betrayed them. Sniper was directly responsible for the loss of Megatron’s weapon, the Fallen warship. There would be no doubling back for him. He’d laid down his hand with the Autobots now.

There was a certain courage in that.

From the tone of Sniper’s voice, the price paid sounded deeply personal. Optimus wasn’t so certain that prying into that part of the Decepticon’s past would be permissible, not given their current level of familiarity. But there was some real regret there, a rawness there suggestive of something he clearly still carried with him. Much like many Autobots carried their wounds and their long-dead, Sniper too seemed to carry this regret.

“The war has cost all of us a price. Even those who do not openly say so, we do carry these things with us through the eons.” A pause. “Whatever it cost you to side with Megatron, Sniper, it is past. You have helped my team, helped bring them home safely. Whatever happened before… that is a story for you to tell, when you are ready.”