Ep. 1 - Crossing Paths With a Black Cat - (Closed) - Finis

[Deleted]

Takes place anywhere between "Where the Pavement Ends" and "Close Encounters!"

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He was playing a dangerous game.

The wind tugged at his wings, teased drifts of snow around his legs. Starscream tensely stood upon the outcrop with his feet braced against the rock. At his back reared the glacial slopes of Mount Rainer, steep and mantled in white. The wind flowed down them, sucked into the green valleys below as their daytime heat was shed into the starry night.

It was cold. The bitter air stung in his joints and spread a sandpaper thin layer of frost across his plating. Mist drifted in clouds over his head whenever he exhaled. But he was alone. No Vehicons nearby to overhear him. No eye of Soundwave turned silently upon him. Here in the shadow of the mountain he could stand beneath the midnight sky and be assured that no one knew where he was. That no one would ever know he was there. That no one would ever hear what he was about to say, and from it divine the depths of his scheme.

Except for one mech.

Starscream leaned forward and cast a glance look down. Hundreds of feet below his perch the snow trailed off, weaving downwards through only the toothiest gullies. Further beneath the snow line a thick forest of pines blanketed the foot of the mountain range, for as far as he could see. The sky was clear and dark.

With a dismissive harumph he stepped back.

"An adequate view, I suppose," he grumbled. He rested his hands on his hips, his talons rattling an agitated tempo against his plating. "Still, it is a familiar place where I can be assured that we won't be interrupted. I suppose I owe you my thanks for accompanying me to such an inhospitable place."

[Ravage]

Seated nearby on an icy column of black basalt, Ravage was looking down on the valley below them. The fridgid wind had glossed icy patches along his shoulders, and silvered the tips of his ears, but if he was bothered by the cold he showed no sign. His muzzle was lifted; allowing the driving wind to curl across his olfactory sensors.

Nothing touched the mech's systems except the smooth scents of glacier and snow. Not that he expected to find anything; he had murmured his quiet approval earlier once Starscream had banked in the direction of the mountain. This peak was a treacherous one. It was not a climb for the unprepared or a challenge that humans attempted lightly. Even the most experienced of climbers lost their lives on Rainier's slopes. Some of them never were retrieved from the depths of the fissures.

It was a place where nothing would see or know of this meeting except the far off gleam of stars. Ravage turned his optics upwards, searching the sky. His tail was the only part of him that moved; a slow, thoughtful twitch.

Cybertron. It was out there. So far away from this primitive organic planet. Every step he took was one on the path towards home.

"No need to thank me," he assured Starscream. His jaws never moved; his voice rolled softly out of the depths of his chest. "You would not have requested my company tonight if this was not important. Nor would we be here in this place."

The cat moved his head, ears rotating to frame the silver-grey mech between them.

"However, as we both unfortunately know, there is only so much time either of us can remain here without interruption, Commander."

[Deleted]

Starscream grimaced. The cat was right. If Soundwave wasn't already looking for them, then it would be one of his Vehicons bearing a report from a patrol.

"This will only take a moment," he said.

He paced along the edge of the rock, his optics cast down as he groped for words. His feet crunched through the light dusting of snow. He folded his arms and tapped his chin with one talon. The problem was he simply couldn't order Ravage to do his bidding as he would another Decepticon soldier. Though Ravage was not part of the command element, he was Soundwave's partner, and that lent his presence aboard the Nemesis a certain gravitas. Moreover, it was widely acknowledged that the spy was best left to conduct his work as he saw fit, with occasional direction from higher up.

More importantly - he was Soundwave's partner. Starscream could never be sure of exactly where the inscrutable spy's true loyalties lay.

He stopped.

"I have a mission for you," he said. He frowned. "It would require you to travel with me for a short period of time. Upon reaching the target you will be free to achieve your objectives alone."

Starscream gave the spy a warning glance. "Though this is official Decepticon business, it must not be spoken of with anyone. And that includes Soundwave!"

[Ravage]

There was a barely audible rasping noise; the tip of Ravage's tail skimming over the rough stone surface he was seated on. He was quietly observing the tall mech pace back and forth in the snow. The weight of Starscream's strides broke through the icy crust and left sharp, circular divots behind him. Dry snow swirled up, caught in the downdrafts of the mountain; obscuring the prints as fast as he made them.

Ravage's attention did not linger on them. It was focused on other things, measuring all of them, searching for patterns. That was so ingrained in him he could never stop, watching the sky for navigation lights, listening to the silence of the comm lines; but right now his attention was mostly on another pattern.

On the way Starscream moved, the tip of his wings, the lift of his talon up to his chin. It was not the haughty bearing he directed the Vehicons with, nor was it the fawning obsequiousness he resorted to at times to avoid Lord Megatron's wrath.

Contrary to what some of the Decepticons believed and gossipped about in the dark halls of the Nemesis when they thought no one was listening, Starscream did not rise to his position through stupidity or a fear of hard work. He ran the day to day workings of their ship, oversaw the repairs, catalogued every single bolt that was used and why it had done so. He was incredibly intelligent- cunning, yes, ambitious, of course. Since rising to his position as the second in command, he had made some grevious errors of judgment personally...

However, he was asking. Not demanding, not ordering. It was a question. Ravage knew then without a doubt that if he said he was not interested in this mission, that would be that. They would step their seperate ways, set on their own tasks.

"I see," he mused. He set his paws just so, and gazed upward again, thinking.

Patterns. Always patterns. Ravage had to follow them. For the cause. For himself. They were the things he held onto. They may not seem important right at the moment, but they would come back to touch you later. It was always the case, and he wanted to be ready when it did.

"You further the cause," he said. It wasn't a question, and held no snide tone, no laugh of bafflement. Simply a statement of the truth, with respectful understanding.

His ears tipped. "I accept your mission and your terms, Commander. This, however, may not be the best location to finish a briefing."

[Deleted]

Starscream nodded.

"I agree," he said. He turned his gaze warily upwards. "I picked this waypoint merely to confound any who may be watching. Pah! Eyes in the sky, always."

His optics flitted back and forth as he stood on the edge of the rock and eyed the night sky. He was well aware that there were those who might call him paranoid, but ever since Kamchatka as far as he was concerned you could not be paranoid enough. The mountain at least would deflect any ground-based radar nearby as well. It was part of the reason he had chosen this location for this brief talk.

With his wings flattened back he rubbed his hands together uneasily, claws scraping. He did not lower his gaze until he had turned back to the patiently waiting cassette.

"I'll give you a full briefing when we are on our way to the target," he said. "In the meantime... have you had an opportunity yet to familiarize yourself with the data networks of this planet? They are primitive next to ours, but in their lack of refinement they offer their own challenges."

[Ravage]

Ravage dipped his chin again. "Everywhere," he agreed. His jaws opened an inch or two, to draw more of the in the air around them and let it flow easier across his olfactory sensors and systems. Still nothing, only barren places. Not even the animals ventured often here; the expenditure of energy was not worth the gain they got stripping the lichen from the stones.

"Understood," the cat murmured. He shifted his weight and flattened his ears against the gust of frigid wind. It drove a sheen of snow against his chest and immediately on touching his warmth, it glazed over into an instant gleam of ice. "The less we discuss here about that, the less chance there is of accidental disclosure. Or purposeful."

He trusted, though, that Soundwave would leave him alone to do as he wished. They were gestalt, yes, but it was an unspoken rule between them; both of them trusted the other’s motives, and would share situations as it was needed. Ravage was not a drone. Information wasn’t one of those things that was always in a hacked system; it was also in spoken words, in situations, in quiet hours of observing the world and the interactions emotionally of those around you. That was Ravage’s skill.

"I have," Ravage said. "They are primitive, yes, but you are absolutely correct, they can be challenging just for that reason alone. The worst part is picking through all the extraneous information. The humans dump so much into their data streams that you have to...”

Sort through a hundred thousand gifs of dancing monkeys. Or cats. The humans had a fascination with all sorts of cats. Apparently the grumpy ones were the most appreciated.

The spy didn’t bring that up though, that was common knowledge. “Learn to work around it. It can be difficult because of that. Once you understand that, though, it starts to fall into place. Some of their information is protected well, though. For example, take their military security coding; that so far has proven difficult on many levels. The sheer amount of threats being pushed at it; they adapt and change constantly to keep from being breached."

[Deleted]

His answer appeared to satisfy Starscream.

"Excellent," he said.

He paced back and forth, musing, his arms folded and his chin clasped in one hand. A gust of wind blew snow in a long plume from a crevasse above them and powered both of their plating in white powder.

"We will be after a very specific kind of data," said Starscream. He gestured, tracing the air with his claws. "About a very specific subject. We must take a copy of it for ourselves, and then destroy it in a way that ensures it cannot be recovered again. Whether that involves obliterating it on the servers or else physically destroying the hardware itself, I leave up to you. You need not be discreet in this case, merely thorough."

He came to a halt, his back to Ravage. After a pause he glanced back at the spy from over his shoulder. One red optic gleamed.

"The security will likely be military grade," he said. "You will need to expect opposition. Is this acceptable to you?"

[Ravage]

The snow came to rest along the cat's dark shoulders, his back, his haunches. It drifted along the icy surface of the stone and swirled around his paws. He could have passed for modern art, or a statue at a very progressive and grand library before he shut his mouth again. The tips of his fangs gleamed.

Ravage's ears rotated forward, once again focusing on the Air Commander's pace. He did not interrupt. He took in every word, sorting, layering, understanding. His muzzle lifted, nose in the air as if he was searching for a scent that would indicate the trail to him. His tail uncurled from around his forefeet and swished over the stone before returning to layer just so over his paws.

Below them, the lights of the valley shimmered. Back on Cybertron, this concentration of light would have been considered a desolate stretch of burned out land. Here, it was a metropolis, cities and towns linked together in the dark by razor-thin ribbons of road.

"I see," Ravage murmured. He did. The fact alone that he was being asked not to just hack into a system but to sabotage it told him that he was no doubt correct in his instincts as to where this path might lie.

“I find it utterly acceptable. Oppositions will be dealt with. It has been a long while since I have been told that discretion is not necessary for me."

As Starscream looked over his shoulder, Ravage’s jaws opened slightly in what passed for a catlike, inscrutable smile.

“Interesting times," he said after a moment.

[Deleted]

A rumbling chuckle rose from Starscream's chest.

"Aren't they, though?" he said.

He narrowed his optics and slanted his wings back, staring into space. A smile curled at the corner of his lip. An instant later the spell was broken, and the Seeker shifted uneasily on his feet. He fretted at the rocky brink, rubbed his thin hands together, and cast an uneasy glance into the night sky. Thousands of cold and brilliant stars winked back at him.

"At any rate, yes, welcome on board, you have my thanks," he said hurriedly. "Now, let's put this mountain behind us. I've loitered here far too long."

Starscream kicked upwards, his feet dragging a line of snow behind him. In mid-air he transformed, snapping into his sleek jet form before lowering himself to hover at the edge of the cliff. His canopy hissed open.

"Come along," he said, his voice reverberating from somewhere behind the glowing screens of his instrument panel. "And I will fill you in on the rest of the details as we fly. We've still some time yet before necessity demands that we act."

[Ravage]

Ravage waited patiently up on his cold perch. His ears cupped forward; the only motion he made as Starscream moved his weight from one foot to the other. He quietly watched the twitch of the seeker's wings, heard the rasp of his fingers- all part of the whole.

The cat simply nodded his head at the thanks, knowing that Starscream needed no more than that. He was glad to put the mountain behind them as well - no, he was glad to be on the move once more, before anything discovered them on this high, barren corner of Rainier.

As soon as the mech shifted his form and the canopy lifted, the cat bounded down off of the stone he'd been sitting on. He landed easily and silently on all four feet in the scattering of snow. A quick shake; ice flicked off of his ebony shoulders and flanks.

Three more quick leaps across the ground; an effortless spring upwards, and the cat came to easily seat himself.

Once again he lowered his haunches and tucked his paws in just so; sitting upright, his tail curled over his paws. He glanced out of the side of the jet. That was one thing he appreciated, being allowed to sit and watch out the windows as they flew. Ravage would wholly admit that he thoroughly enjoyed observing the world sweep itself beneath when flying.

"I do appreciate having time to work out the details," he agreed, and settled in for the briefing.

[Deleted]

Once Ravage was seated, Starscream sealed his canopy shut with a sense of relief. It was good that the cat preferred to fly rather than dock. He did not understand how those like Soundwave could stand such an intrusive contact, frankly.

And yet if this plan of his was to work...

His anti-grav thrusters whipped the snow up into a white haze as he slowly rose aloft. The mountain dwindled beneath his wings, until Starscream pointed his nose upwards and blasted for altitude at full afterburner. The wind shrieked over his wings as he climbed, rising steadily into the cold, thin air aloft.

"Perfecting them will be critical," he said moodily. "I'm afraid that once we are committed to this course of action, there will be little margin for error."

The jet vanished into the night sky, leaving nothing but drifts in the snow behind it.




And fin!