Ep 1 [AR] - The Babysitters Club [Closed]

[Deleted]

Monitor duty.

Zoom-Zoom scowled mentally at the chore list assigned to him like it was aware and could feel the disdain he had for it. The duty roster however remained blissful serene and did not respond.

Most mecha hated monitor duty simply because of the long processor ache that normally accompanied being linked into the base network for extended periods of time. Zoom-Zoom didn't have a problem with it, he'd handled far heavier data-loads within the first vorns of his existence. And that was where his problem lay, paying attention to all the vid-feeds took up a sizeable amount of his attention but he was still left with enough processing power to get bored.

Very bored.

And given that his access to the base network was restricted thanks to his probationary status, that meant there was going to be very little he could do to occupy himself.

Zoom-Zoom scowled some more. He read over the roster again but it hadn't changed since he'd last checked. At least he had some company and it wasn't Red Alert for once. Halocene had been assigned as his shift partner watcher monitor babysitter minder. He didn't always have one, not every task required supervision, but monitor duty was a bit more serious and vital to base security. It must have taken some serious persuasion to get Red Alert to agree to this.

The thought of Red Alert fuming furiously away over the circumstances was the only bright spot in this whole thing. Zoom-Zoom was going to be out from under his optics and in his precious security system and it was all sanctioned by the higher ups. The minibot didn't precisely have any plans to wreck havoc yet but he wouldn't resist should the opportunity arise. Oh, the possibilities were probably giving the security director a fit. The only question was just how much he could get away with before his watcher caught on.

The minibot didn't know Halocene all that well. He'd seen her around on base on occasion after that fiery first meeting but never long enough to learn more about her. Big like Sir Stompers and knew how to crash a damn ship was pretty much the general impression he had of her.

Resigning himself to his fate, Zoom-Zoom scowled one last time to ensure the universe was well aware of his disapproval then he was off, winding his way around base to the security office. The door slid open at his approach and he paused on the threshold before striding determinedly into the room.

This was going to be fun. And if it wasn't fun then he'd would make it fun.

By force, if he had to.

[Deleted]

There was always that one monitor that sat on the security console that never got used, at least when Halocene was on duty. It was Red Alert's thing, but when he wasn't around, the frontliner turned monitor jockey used it for an entirely different purpose.

A footrest would have been a close guess, since she had her heels perched on the edge of the console, large frame settled in her chair in what could only be called a sprawl of epic proportions. But the scramble that only a first person shooter multiplayer could provide was occurring on the large screen in front of her, and, putting it bluntly, she was wiping the floor with her opponents. Having what amounted to a wireless controller in your head was an advantage, and the angry shrieks of "HAX!" from pre-adolescent humans was her reward.

Halocene was remarkably good at making room in her processors for multiple tasks -- something that came with time and practice, and with her...predicament --, so with one proverbial optic on the data feed from the security system, she was able to focus her attention on breaking the rules that Red Alert had so emphatically laid down. Nothing like playing video games to pass the time.

Her peripheral systems registered a flood of hallway light as the door to the security center slid open, and the only thing that registered in Halocene's mind was 'oh prIMUS RED PAINT ABORT ABORT'.

The flurry of motion from the black and yellow femme was nothing short of astounding as she jolted into an upright position, powered down the monitor, and somehow managed to toss the cube of energon she'd been holding in a spectacular arc over her shoulder.

Well, that had been an entirely knee-jerk reaction, but...

"Oh, are you kiddin' me?" Halocene blurted incredulously once she'd faced the intruder dead on. It was only Zoom Zoom. That had been a waste of a good cube.

"Hey, c'mon in. If Red asks, you saw nothin'." She greeted with a crooked grin, slumping back in her chair again as she gestured for the minibot to hurry up and close the door.

[GOD ZZ don't scare H while she's playin' vidya. Hope this is alright. <3]

[Deleted]

[T'is all good xD]

Behind Zoom-Zoom's visor, his optics had widened at the sight of Halocene playing some sort of video game up on the large screen. They'd widened even more during her desperate scramble to hide all evidence of her...distraction. As soon as it was over, Zoom-Zoom composed himself.

"Hey, c'mon in. If Red asks, you saw nothin'."

Zoom-Zoom couldn't help himself, a twisted smirk pulled at his lips in answer to her own crooked grin. Well. That changed everything. The minibot's estimation of Halocene just had skyrocketed and suddenly this monitor shift wasn't looking as dull as before. He swaggered up to an empty chair and dropped himself into it, mimicking her relaxed sprawl.

"I saw nothing," he assured Halocene. His processor was already turning this way and that as he tried to figure out just what he had here. Red Alert would undoubtedly be fragged off if he heard about this though he wasn't certain if that was enough motivation to give him some sort of leverage over the frontliner later down the track. There was also the annoying fact that tattling to Red would probably result in Halocene never being assigned as a monitor to him again and, within the short span of this encounter, she already seemed a much better alternative to Red Alert. For now, he'd keep his silence though he did wonder if Halocene could be persuaded to play some games while on shift.

"What are you playing?" Zoom-Zoom asked curiously. Electrocap had filled him in on a lot of things about humans and video games had been one of the few things that really came to mind as being noteworthy. Digital entertainment was a great way to keep one occupied when they were stuck hundreds of kilometres beneath the crust of a planet in a Decepticon outpost with very little wiggle room. Unfortunately, the few Zoom-Zoom had bothered storing in his processor had been played to completion several times over, so he was in the market for some new ones. Even if they were human-made and about Primus knows what. Viruses. They were probably all full of viruses too.

Lazily, Zoom-Zoom unwound a wrist cable and plugged it into the console in front of him. He inputted his codes and was given access to the live vid feeds monitoring the base. Like a flower opening its petals, Zoom-Zoom's consciousness expanded to accommodate the shift in awareness. His processor went from handling just the visual feed from his optics to the many, many, MANY -Primus, how many cameras did Red Alert have?- feeds from around the base. Zoom-Zoom did flounder a bit initially from the sudden surge of new inputs, he'd been expecting a lot but realized he'd underestimated Red's zeal, however he quickly adapted to the additional information in his system. His optics had turned off at some point during the surge, now the light returned to his optics.

Storeroom? Clear. Med-bay? Looked like Ratchet was puttering around there. The control room was empty, all the patrols for the day were currently out and wouldn't be back for a couple of hours, barring Decepticon attack. The rec-room had a few occupants but those were all off-shift mechs making the most out of their free time to grab some energon, refuel and socialize.

All was as it should be.

Zoom-Zoom's optics were already beginning to glaze over from the tedium.

[Deleted]

Switching her 'I don't give a frag' backward sprawl into an 'okay, I might give a frag, but only a little one' lean on the console, the frontliner bumped the flash drive from one of the ports in the monitor and tossed it to the minibot for him to look at.

"Halo. Keep tryin' to get someone to team with me on multiplayer, but nobody seems to understand the concept of video games, and the little human kids can't keep up." Halocene said, a note of regret creeping into her voice. She shrugged a moment later, tilting her helm as she observed the feed from the rec room; things were getting a little too heated over a game of chance. The big femme huffed from her vents once, fingers twitching the intercom cue switch with practiced deftness.

"Hey, nerds, no fighting. I will bash heads if I have to come down there." The threat of violence from a bot who loomed over nearly everyone in the base was enough to settle the group down into idle chatter once again.

Throwing her large frame back in her seat again, Halocene propped her pedes up again and cast a furtive look at Zoom Zoom.

"So, you never came to my seminar. You're not terribly dedicated to destroying spacecraft, are you?" She feigned disdain, but the fact of the matter was, Red had told her all she needed to know about the minibot, and she had already moved him into the category of 'bro'. He had a special way of ticking the head of security off that, while she wouldn't dare to replicate, she could silently admire. She may not have done her job the way Red Alert would have wanted it done -- and, yes, on several occasions, he'd brought her unprofessional use of base equipment up --, but she did it well, and he couldn't very well chastise her much beyond what he already did.

Moreover to the point, he had found out, and exploited, her one weakness: monitor shifts. Wasn't really much more he could do to her, really; Halocene seemed un-phased by brig time, so he had decided to break her with boredom. It was working.

The promise of promotion to a patrol unit kept her in line, for the most part, but the waiting game had begun to wear on her. Thus why she broke nearly every rule Red Alert had in place for the security center.

"Name's Halocene, by the way. Never got a chance to properly introduce myself."

[Deleted]

"Halo huh? I'll have to check it out sometime." Hopefully, sometime in the very, very near future.

Just about every word coming out of Halocene's vocaliser was already improving Zoom-Zoom's opinion of the front-liner on a exponential scale. He caught the flash-drive easily and plugged it into the console in front of him. He still had enough processing power to pull the thing apart so he could examine every line of code and make sure it was safe. He wasn't just about to go off and install an unknown bit of software without checking it over a couple of times, especially if it had been human made.

While that was running in the background, he watched Halocene out of the corner of his optics as she chewed out a few mecha down in the rec-room. Zoom-Zoom didn't need to keep an eye on the monitors, tiered into the base feeds as he was. Depending on the size of a base and the number of cameras installed, the security centre didn't always have enough space to have a live feed being displayed from each camera and a lot could still be missed even if the displays did switch from camera to camera. To keep an optic on everything, that's when you needed mechs inside the system itself.

Of course, given that Red Alert was in charge of security here, it simply wasn't feasible for every feed to have its own monitor. Did they really need to be able to observe the energon dispenser from eight different angles? Apparently, Red Alert thought so.

"So, you never came to my seminar. You're not terribly dedicated to destroying spacecraft, are you?"

"Must have missed that memo, it wasn't in the weekly bulletin," Zoom-Zoom answered with a pleased smirk. That was an attitude he could admire. "Next time, put up flyers or something."

Their first introduction had been… "Zoom-Zoom," he acknowledged. "I thought you introduced yourself just fine. You know, the whole big, fiery crash-landing due to your amazing piloting. Not to mention literally clawing your way out of the ship, that was pretty damn impressive. You lost points for not getting into a firefight with Sir Stomp-A-Lot though," Zoom-Zoom clicked his vocaliser mockingly at her. Something about her laid-back attitude made him comfortable and he couldn't help but to jest back to her. "But I guess we all can't be that perfect. Meeting him first thing should be like, compulsory, for landing here. For everyone but mostly the Decepticons."

[Deleted]

While Halocene was not hooked up to the system itself, she could become so in a few seconds if it was necessary, however, the load of data was likely turn her into a vegetable for the remaining hours of her shift as her processor expended all of its ability on sorting through every feed from every camera. She had tried a direct jack, once, when she'd first started, and the part of her that had not been wholly consumed by the streams had decided it wasn't worth the uneasy crawling in her neural net, a direct side effect of feeling like she was going to be attacked without warning while her attention was so divided

So, after a discussion with Red Alert, she now utilized battle-sensitive optics to peruse the five-second feed cycles from every camera -- yes, even the eight trained on the dispenser -- on base. Left all her sensors open, and she didn't turn into a slobbering idiot. Easy as pie, as the humans said.

Understandably, when Zoom-Zoom began doing eight other different things -- including talking to her -- while hooked into the system, she spared an incredulous glance, field betraying her bewilderment. Mech must have had a brain module the size of the base.

"Flyers? I invited you personally. C'mon, mech." The frontliner mocked, grinning up at the monitor as a chuff of amusement rippled from her air vents.

"To be fair, Max is a co-worker. Not too wise to bash each other up when we have to live together, yeah? Though, I could always take some pointers from you, seein' how you bested him, n'all." Okay, it was a low blow, but it was in good humor, given away by the crooked smirk on the femme's face. Yes, she had heard all about the fight, the retelling of which had been initiated by Red Alert, and finished by the rest of the crew after some gentle prodding for details. Zoom-Zoom seemed like the kind to roll with the punches, though, and considering she thoroughly enjoyed verbal sparring, she could definitely get on board with a good sense of humor.

Fingers tapping on the digital display that rose above the projectors on the console, Halocene suddenly locked the feed that had just popped up. Static crackled across the image about every two seconds.

"Looks like a wire short. Boss'll lose his mind over that; you wanna' dispatch someone, or should I?" The big femme concluded, turning her helm to look at Zoom-Zoom. She didn't know if he'd been on monitor duty before -- he looked like he knew what he was doing, but she'd been wrong before --, so she'd give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

[Deleted]

[In which House overdoses on the Handwavium and makes up a lot of technobabble that has no basis in reality whatsoever.]

The data-load coming in from the Omega base feeds were heavy but nothing compared to the torrents of data Zoom-Zoom had handled within the first few vorns after onlining. Iacon Freight had been one of the biggest shipping corporations in all of Cybertron and it had made many enterprising ventures into several other industries as well. The mega-corporation had been a vital piece to keeping Cybertron's economy moving at the time and keeping track of all the raw data coming in had taken several large cohorts of data analysts to transform it all into usable information.

Later, Zoom-Zoom had learned, long after he'd been fired from his job, the minimum data-load that they handled skirted on just borderline legal. He recalled only a small number of those shifts and nothing more, the regular ones had been so heavy that even his processor couldn't remember them. And that was a sign in itself of just how much raw data he'd been submerged in, Zoom-Zoom's systems had been specifically designed to handle petabytes of data and his processor just simply wasn't made to forget things. All it took to ruin a calculation or prediction was a missing variable or sample so his processor needed to be able to precisely recall every bit of data to give the best possible answer.

Truthfully, Zoom-Zoom's processor specifications were actually more suited for a role that had heavy number crunching like a tactician rather than a Spec Ops agent but his disposition did not lend itself to such a role. He could do statistical analyses, sift through information, pick up trends, calculate regression lines, figure out whether something was statistically significant or not and make predictions but he didn't care all that much for it. Hacking computers and ripping apart codes, on the other hand, was his preferred use of all that processing power, even back when it was his job to figure out if there was any correlation and/or causation between Praxian energon imports and the increase in price in vid dramas at the Alpha Raxon colony. Which there had been. (There was also the matter of fact that a mech who'd put himself first and didn't look at the much bigger picture would make a lousy tactician). When it came down to it, what he'd been designed to do just wasn't fulfilling and Zoom-Zoom had taken to searching for just about any outlet which is how he'd started on hacking. And from there, one thing had lead to another -getting fired from his job, living out on the streets- to eventually finding his place in Special Operations under Vibes watchful optics.

The sheer amount of raw data he'd handled back in his formative vorns had led Zoom-Zoom to suspect that he'd probably fragged up his processor in some sort of way or the other. The minibot had made a point of keeping regular appointments with a medic once he'd signed on with the Autobots but in the vorns after the Exodus, he'd forcibly hacked many of his own systems to keep himself going. So far he'd been pretty stable -minus the whole issue with his half-fragged neural net that still had a few problems with his internal receptors, even after Ratchet's ministrations- but that didn't mean that everything couldn't come to a crashing halt one orn. It was just one of the many scenarios he'd entertained himself with on the long vorns during the Exodus, he'd made a game of pondering 'Just How Many Ways Can I Die Horribly," and had come up with 234,340 answers to it.

Anyway. Keeping tracking of all the Omega base live feeds by himself? Difficult but not too hard on him. Zoom-Zoom had learned many tricks of the trade and how to use the computers he was plugged into to do most of the thinking for him, so as to free up as much of his own processing power. It did involve getting a lot more up-close and personal with an unsparked machine than most mecha were comfortable with but Zoom-Zoom had long figured that trade-off was worth it. The neural ache was most than acceptable when you were all alone and helm deep in an enemy's base, trying to steal data outta their base network whilst watching your back at the same time. Non-living computer systems had nothing on the vivid complexities of a Cybertronian mind and it was quite disconcerting to have one's perspective altered so thoroughly when they integrated themselves as deeply as Zoom-Zoom had to enhance his own neural capabilities.

Still. He was used to it and he knew how to push himself through that disturbing blankness. Zoom-Zoom flashed Halocene a smug grin. Most mecha usually were impressed when they saw his multi-tasking in action. It had made him a prime candidate for monitor duty at the different outposts he'd been stationed until they eventually wised up and realised just how much trouble he could cause like that. He was then generally banned from handling those shifts ever again.

"Invited me personally, yeah," he replied cheekily. "But no time and place given. Poor planning on your part," the minibot tutted, "Does not make it my fault."

"Though, I could always take some pointers from you, seein' how you bested him, n'all."

Remembering the chase through the jungle was almost enough to make Zoom-Zoom blanch though he didn't show it. Fortress Maximus was damn terrifying when he was angry -actually, just in general- and Zoom-Zoom did thank Primus that he was on their side. "The first rule to dealing with Sir Stomp A Lot is to make sure you are very, very far away from him," Zoom-Zoom imparted wisely. "Like, a neighbouring planet or something sounds like a good starting point. Unless you're so awesome, you can take him on with him standing right behind you with that big gun of his pointed right at your helm," he boasted. Never mind how suicidally insane that was, Zoom-Zoom could not think of a single dumber decision he'd ever made. That he'd made it out all right and relatively intact was a minor miracle.

The minibot was still sorting through the vid feeds, mentally adjusting each of them in place so he could efficiently devote his attention to them. Some locations had fewer cameras, so it didn't make sense to pay equal amounts of attention to, say, the energon dispenser with its eight feeds and then the unused storage closet on the second level with only two. He looked up at the flickering screen Halocene had pointed out then mentally chased it down and brought it up . It took him a few astroseconds to quickly flick through a bunch of different settings but none of them improved the signal, so Zoom-Zoom decided that the fault probably lay with the hardware and agreed with Halocene's assessment.

Zoom-Zoom quickly checked the roster to see who was on base and available. He alighted on one particular that would be well suited for the job. "Send Electrocap" he suggested. The minibot wasn't certain just how much authority he currently held due to his probationary status and was unwilling to test those limits right then lest it got back to Red Alert and caused problems for him later down the line. "She knows quite a lot about the cameras," -she had, much to his delight, told him plenty about them in fact- "And did help Red install them."

The minibot relaxed into his chair. He tried spinning it around to face towards Halocene, a task made somewhat difficult as the chair was meant for a mech of average height and it took much nudging with the uttermost tip of his pede to get it around. "So," he said casually, like he hadn't just made an idiot out of himself. "This Halo game. How long do I have to wait before we can have our first game?"

[Deleted]

[yoooo i wanna' apologize because this is probably the worst tag ever.]

"Electrocap. Don't believe I've met her." Halocene hummed quietly, a thick finger tapping at the console's holographic keypad as she zeroed in on the femme's signal. A friendly, polite ping was sent to her, relaying the location and describing the issue. When the other Autobot appeared in the viewfinder of the camera, the frontliner grinned, focused the image, then let Electrocap know when the problem had been eliminated.

Situation avoided, she sat back for a moment, before pulling a data slate and keying in a quick report to Red Alert's inbox about the situation. Doing her job was one thing, anticipating Red's response was another, so she wrote everything down, and left nothing hanging. Just in case.

It was a classic comparison of "bigger is not better" between Zoom-Zoom and Halocene; where the frontliner lacked severely in CPU power, the minibot made everything look so easy. If she had it in her to have such an intensely negative emotion, Halocene might have been jealous. As it were, the big femme was one of those that was happy to congratulate others on their successes without underlying contempt. It often lead to the impression that she was, well, stupid.

Which was just the way she liked it.

Optics back on the camera feeds, the femme snorted in apparent amusement at Zoom-Zoom's iteration of dealing with a pissed off Fortress Maximus.

"Yeah, it's called not bein' a slaghead," she flashed a grin his way, "but from what I heard, I'm surprised you didn't just mouth off into an early grave." Fort Max seemed like a chill guy -- sure, a little uptight, but who could blame him? Working under Red Alert made everyone uptight. Even her.

Attention shifted, and Halocene watched, silent, as Zoom-Zoom pushed himself around in his chair with some difficulty, and her mouthplates contorted as she tried not to laugh.

"Need some longer legs, yeah?" She jabbed at him, shoving one huge pede off the corner of the console so she could make one whole, effortless spin in her chair, swinging back around to face the minibot with a smug smirk. She probably wouldn't have given up being tall for all the processing power in the world. Probably.

Continuing, she added:

"Halo is a very serious undertaking. That being said, it's perfect for keeping yourself entertained on shift, so," she produced another memory stick from subspace, jacking it into the nearest port on the monitor and initiating the boot procedures, "whenever you're ready."

[Deleted]

Having oh so casually righted himself, Zoom-Zoom straightened up, careful to ensure that his cable still had a bit of slack and was in no danger of accidentally ripping itself out from the computer. Getting torn out so abruptly would be excruciatingly painful with how deep he was currently integrated to the system and no doubt see him off to the med-bay for a few Earth cycles while Ratchet sorted out the resulting scrambled mess of his processor.

"He overreacted," Zoom-Zoom sniffed defensively. So yeah, he'd heard the story about Garrus Nine, everybody had. But that had been ages ago, you'd think a guy wouldn't be so sensitive about it. Of course, Zoom-Zoom was not taking into account that very few mechs were like him, used to using themselves as extensions of a much larger computer system in order to bulk process complex calculations. The unthinking remark he'd made about being a living lockpick meant very little to Zoom-Zoom, it baffled him that it could provoke such a strong response. As someone who'd never been left in enemy hands for an extended period of time or had truly experienced torture, Fortress Maximus's actions were almost completely alien and incomprehensible to him.

"My legs are just fine." He curled them up onto his chair, wrapping his free arm around them. Zoom-Zoom threw a glare over his shoulder at Halocene, daring her to make a short joke. Her next words surprised him however, as she offered to play a game on shift.

Well. That was unexpected. Zoom-Zoom had assumed that any gaming on shift would require much persuasion on his part to get Halocene to even consider it. But for his monitor to so willfully shirk the rules Red Alert had set down...

The minibot shut his slack mouthplates and settled back, letting his frame relax as Zoom-Zoom installed the game onto the console in front of him. "You're on," he said, as it loaded up. It took him a moment to grasp the protocols Halocene had modified to allow her to interact directly with the game instead of using a physical controller. It was tempting to clean them up so they were better suited for Zoom-Zoom's processor but he decided not to so that they were on equal footing. If he started hacking at it now…well then he'd never play the game as it was meant to.

"We adding any stakes to this game? The loser's to blame if Red finds out?"

Let it never be said that Zoom-Zoom couldn't be generous to Bots he potentially could actually like.