[ti]Ep 3.5[/ti]Calculus, for Dashing Rogues [Blitzwing, Nokta]

[Blitzwing]

Week 2 | Day 6

Office of General B. Wing...

Warm, familiar sounds.

The hum of terminals. The marching of pedes, distant and rhythmic. No bombs. Not anymore. No gunfire, either. Perhaps there would be more, soon. A fateful meeting was upon both parties, as the message had been sent. Perhaps one of them would die from it. Seize the moment and steal glory for yourself. Very juicy, and very cutting observations would be dispensed behind backs. It was going to be very, very rude of them to talk about the others like that. The tall one, with the wings and the annoyingly-large cannon, did not care.

[GENERAL BLITZWING]

The admittedly tiny placard read.

He'd had it made very small on purpose. Part of him had thought it was funny. Another part had not.

Blitzwing sat motionlessly at the rear of his office. It hadn't always been his office. He had made it his. It was lined with rows of terminals molded into the walls. A holoprojector obscured the view from behind the desk to the door, but only just. The room itself was long, tall, and imposing. Much like its occupant.

A stack of datapads marked one side of the desk. The rest of it lay barren and empty. Two chairs sat beside one another across from the general. Left and right. Twins, standing before their large father.

The mech of the hour had been summoned to the general's quarters but moments ago. Blitzwing had not forgotten his assignment. Ever the hand, dutiful and swift.

He counted the seconds obsessively and silently.

[Nokta]

He was used to standing before taller mechs. Short, thin, negligible in stature and in presence. He’d done so in countless instances before, he likely would many times more before the war was out. In some ways, he’d grown more used to it since joining the Decepticons those many long moons ago.

Used to answering their calls, in private, in secret, during the dead of night or in the early hours of the morning. Answering their questions, planning ahead, aiding them where he could, even lending an attentive audio receptor in many cases. Easing the burdens of old mecha who’d given their service to the cause in every conceivable way as the years went on– it was the least he could do, when the time called for it.

He was used to it. In some ways.

In other ways, not so much.

The Office of General B. Wing

It’s where he was standing now, a room which had been newly anointed to a certain mech of rank within Blackridge Hold. Nokta held his posture, rigid and formulaic as it had ever been, as he stood in a salute, a single pace apart from the doorway he’d entered the space through.

He had, of course, just entered a mere moment ago. Silently, obscured in shadow, as he was oft to do. If– like many other rooms in the bleak outpost– the office had not a door, it would have been unlikely for the intelligence officer’s entrance to be noticed at all, until:

"General Blitzwing."

He stood there, a mote in the dark, ashen gray, and matte black. Two piercing crimson optics stared calmly at the general, one arm raised, the other at his side. A slight sheen to the black paint on his outermost armor flattered his impossibly slender frame in a way that was usually more understated. He’d yet to return to the grit and grime of the field since his last, long visit to the wash racks. The one visit he’d taken for himself, when he was certain death was soon on the horizon. Call him old fashioned, but he wouldn’t return to the Allspark looking unkempt.

That abrupt end had not yet passed, but Flatline’s surgery had. And there were more than a few changes he’d been growing accustomed to since, residual aches and pains aside.

But that was not now. Now was a summons from a warmech he did not know, outside of what rank he held and the function he had served for Lord Megatron and the Decepticons in the past.

Lieutenant Nokta didn’t know why he was here, but he never did, not really. Not until they began talking. Then, he could begin to piece it together. Based on what information was given, what formalities were expected, which were not. What information he suspected was being withheld.

Just what was this sudden meeting about?

[Blitzwing]

Infinity stretched out before Blitzwing. Millions of cycles stretched out behind him. A point in time, the embodiment of military discipline and respect. A living event, veritably. Nokta looked so small, and his superior officer was not even standing up yet. It was not a new observation. Barring the large ones, all were small beside the living, singular battalion. Though in reality, it as as though there were three of him. But not really. Some assumed there were three, when there had only ever been one.

Two large and very capable hands gripped the sides of the general's table, pressing down as he hoisted his bulk up out of the chair. It was a slow ascent, like an era passing through time. The general rivaled Megatron in both dimensions, one could perceive through an unobstructed view. Warborn and purpose-built. Purpose-built for killing. There were two optics, but the one larger one pierced across the length of the room as though it were a stylus stabbing through parchment. 

One arm, the right one, shot out to Blitzwing's side and then back in, sharply returning the rather crisp and respectful salute Nokta had just provided. It always warmed his spark to see that discipline was not a thing of the past. An effortlessly commanding, icy tone greeted the mech across from it. "At ease, lieutenant."

He suppressed an urge, forcibly divorcing the silicochemical marriage that was about to compel him to say something both unfunny and unsavory.

Blitzwing sat.

"Sit."

No distinction was given to either of the chairs on the Not a commissioned general side of the table. It was the most inane test possible, if it was a test at all. Right or left. Adhere or innovate. He truly didn't care, but he was curious.

"We have much to discuss."

[Nokta]

Blitzwing spoke, and a less common accented tone of one of the human languages came out. If Nokta had a shanix for every time he’d met another Decepticon at this post who’d adopted that strange Earthen dialect, he’d have two shanix. But it was strange that it had happened twice already.

A verbal command was given, and Nokta lowered his servo from its salute.

Nokta was not massive, nor warborn like the mech that towered before him. He was not standing there, even under the thin and malleable layers of all his military armor, in a protoform that had been tailor-made for combat and death. He had been a civilian once, one with a life, with hopes, dreams, and aspirations of becoming something more than the lowly job he’d been assigned upon creation. Someone who had been innocent once, and by all means would have maintained that innocence, had things gone differently.

Instead, Nokta’s optics of burning crimson spoke a different tale. One of wrath and murder and sin. A sharply honed body housing a soul that had been beaten in with hammers, nip-tucked by scalpels, and run through by red hot irons to form the monster sitting before the commissioned general today.

His optics finally departed from Blitzwing’s form as they flickered down towards one of the chairs set before the general’s desk. As much as having two chairs on the side of the desk only requiring one mech irked the lieutenant, he moved forth without protest. Calm, calculated. The chair on the right had seemed good enough, he supposed. Even if the room suddenly felt off balance. There was no hint of any hidden wrath or barbaric proclivities in the lieutenant’s movements. Slinking through the room with nary a sound to his step, he more floated than walked, until reaching his destination.

Blitzwing had sat back down, Nokta followed the mech’s lead with poise. Even after years of abuse and a shuffling social hierarchy, one did not take the prim and proper out of one whose major purpose had once been to placate and put at ease, to serve and be happy doing so. To be nothing more than wrapping. Understated, unassuming, tightly wound wrapping. Obscuring all hints that he was a mech meant for anything other than subservience.

But if he were nothing more than that after all this time, Lieutenant Nokta would not be sitting in the office of a general today.

Nokta crossed one slender, sleek leg over the other, and still sat upright so as not to disrespect the weight of the meeting that had been called. He was quiet, until servos that had been neatly clasped over his midsection splayed out, motioning outwards as if physically gesturing to the proverbial elephant in the room.

"Enlighten me then, if you would, General?"

[Blitzwing]

Blitzwing was no civilian. He was the antithesis of one. There had never been anything quite like a civilian in him at any point in his history. From the moment he awoke, he was declared guilty of achieving his purpose. He was built for war, and wars he would wage. Never had there been anything else. No yearning against the bindings of another's purpose. In an odd, macabre sort of way, this had endowed the old Blitzer with a sense of peace and purpose. This was his groove. His niche. He had identified it as his own, and everything was right in the universe.

The heavy end of the hammer.

Nokta was in front of him now. Blitzwing's optics twitched to his new position, his left optic burning a small hole into the lieutenant's forehead. The stack of datapads off to the side weighed heavily upon the desk. He fought not to scream some obscenity at the mech across from him.

It was... difficult.

An index servo pressed lightly against the surface of the top-most datapad while a thumb gingerly pushed the second forward. He slipped the top pad off its stack and onto the desk, rotating it carefully such that it was readable by the Lieutenant. It was a dossier, obviously. The individual's name had been clearly plastered across the top of the screen in bright lettering.

[COLDWIND]

Alright, it could have been a dating profile too. Hopefully it was not. Beneath the name lay a personnel file containing biographical data, personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, and current duties. It stretched on long enough for there to be a little scroll bar set to the right of the main body. So far, Blitzwing had not so much as tilted his gaze down at the contents of the screen. Instead, he had been studying Nokta's reactions intently. There had been a stark lack of instructions given thus far. The general seemed keen on keeping context out of this, for now. That too was part of the test.

"Study this document."

"Assess her, predict how she would function within a small team of non-Seekers." Would she fit? Would she blow up her teammates? Those sorts of things. But, Blitzwing did not say as much aloud.

"Then, you will devise a plan to terminate her."

[Nokta]

Crimson optics attached to a motionless frame flickered downwards to the desk as a datapad was presented for him to read. Coldwind. He knew of her. Another lieutenant, and a seeker– one who worked very directly with Commander Starscream. A bodyguard of sorts, as far as he knew currently. Aside from her obvious intimidating stature, how she’d managed such a comfortable position was unknown to him, but he figured the pair of seekers must have had some fairly significant history together to make it so. Any mech of her rank would have been a sizable target on their own, but this femme’s relationship to the Decepticon second in command added an entirely new layer to this.

The younger mech’s gaze flickered back up to Blitzwing, inquisitive. Attempting to read the general’s expression. No clarification was asked for yet. Not until he’d read the dossier in its entirety. Lieutenant Nokta picked up the datapad. And so the officer sat, a scalpel before a hammer’s heavy end, and prepared to potentially sign away the life of someone he’d never even met.

A few immediate observations would be made upon brisking through the profile. Antisocial, utterly incapable of growth, disagreeable, despicable. The perfect war machine whose purpose could only be one thing: death. Or, your prototypical Decepticon brute. Nokta had met many in his time. He’d seen many go in his time, too.

On the surface, it was a wonder Coldwind had lasted this long. There was no question that her fighting capabilities would have been the sole thing keeping any opposition at bay and secured her survival. A story he’d seen time and time again. But upon digging deeper into the seeker’s profile a more disturbing disposition began to reveal itself. This was not just an individual who secured survival through sheer will alone, but rather through ego, contempt, arrogance, and a perverse marriage to death that almost bordered on worship. That there existed a soldier as heinous as Coldwind in their army did not surprise him in the slightest, but that one so utterly incapable of existing outside of their own self-interest was still alive and kicking was even more of a comment on her ruthlessness.

It prompted momentary distaste that did not show on his faceplates. And not just because the seeker’s proclivities reminded him of a particular bounty hunter– the mere idea of whom inspired thorough disgust within the scout.

It was the fact that soldiers like her would stand in direct opposition to the “ideal” society Megatron wished to create, once the Autobots had been exterminated. That all the Coldwind’s and Lockdown’s of the universe would still be there to pose a threat to the natural order of things afterward. That their mere existence would insist upon more violence and strife and an unneeded epilogue to a war that had already gone on for so long. That even after all of their efforts, there would still be those who wished to make things even worse than they already were, for no good reason other than because they simply could.

But something about her bothered him more than the average slag-stirring chaos agent of a Decepticon would have. It was the fact that Nokta saw a frightening amount of himself in the seeker. Because he knew more than most that violence was a muscle that once trained and flexed, some could never relax.

Still he would scramble to draw a line between himself and her. There was no sense to Coldwind’s violence, Nokta’s efforts had meaning. Efforts that only had to last the war, and then he could stop. She would not, she was not someone who could be satiated. Clear as day, this had been the only reason she remained useful to the Decepticons. People like her were not fit for civilian life, never had been. But Nokta was, had been. He knew what he was fighting to preserve, even if he also had selfish, personal reasons inspiring him. He could still return someday. Until then he would have to be just as uncompromisingly brutal as those like Coldwind to achieve his goals. It would all be worth it in the end.

A thought crossed his mind then. How many other agents had sat in chairs like this, across from generals like Blitzwing, and been tasked with the very same thing as him? How many had been told to pan Nokta’s performance, assess his strengths and weaknesses, and formulate plans to terminate him, should his performance ever fall below par? How many of those mecha were still alive now?

Nokta had survived this long. And he had a hell of a lot more respect for himself than he did most other soldiers by now. He had the will to keep going, and the conviction to back it up. And yet something told him that if it came to it, Coldwind would not go as swiftly as all the other brutes who’d crossed his path.

"I struggle to imagine Lord Megatron had you send for me on this matter." He remained calm, but any lasting leisure in his expression or tone of voice had faded. Replaced by a more familiar apathy.

Devise a plan to terminate her. He'd offered services like this to Megatron himself, not long ago at all. He'd been firmly turned down.

Megatron had not ordered this surveillance, nor did he need a plan to terminate Coldwind at present. If Megatron wanted the seeker dead, he’d made it explicitly clear to Nokta that he would have found someone else. Which meant General Blitzwing had plans of his own.

The scout narrowed his optics, the upper and lowermost ridges of soft metal squinting just slightly that Nokta’s suspicions as to Blitzwing’s true intentions would show. He did not know what he’d been called here for, but he was smart enough to know that there was an angle being played.

Blitzwing had to know what Nokta’s answer would be. 16 tons of bigoted bloodlust surrounded by a ‘small team’ of non-Seekers– presumably grounders who were typically the target of scorn from the flight-capable anyways? The femme was a fragging time bomb.

And all that aside, Coldwind was too high profile of a target for this to be routine. Something else was up. A test of some sort? Probably, but for what or whose machinations? Only then did the faint words of their great leader echo in the back of his mind.

“There will be no room for uncertainty…dire consequences…those who would threaten our unity…Autobot…or Decepticon."

Once, not long ago, he would have abided such a request from a high ranking superior without question. He’d dutifully study the document, picking apart every minute detail of the target in question before swiftly and intricately crafting a plan to exterminate her. Without question.

A low buzz of electricity arced up his spinal strut, into the newly constructed antennae jutting out of his shoulder blades, and then down again– the beacon acting up, rogue, distant signals catching in a feedback loop along the various neurode clusters along each section of the device grafted to his spine.

Nokta’s upper derma threatened to curl into a sneer. ‘Without question.’

No more. The Nokta that blindly followed orders was the Nokta who’d lost his entire squadron to betrayal back on Cybertron. He would be no patsy. Yes, he was a soldier, but he was also an intelligence officer. An intelligence officer who didn’t know Blitzwing, had never reported to him, and would not divulge sensitive information at the drop of a hat without all of the facts laid out first. Especially when there was no evidence of any other chain of command being involved. And with the amount of backstabbing and in-fighting the Decepticons had fallen prone to, Megatron’s dire warning aside? Every precaution was warranted.

Nokta placed the dossier face down on Blitzwing’s desk. He’d already read the document top to bottom, of course, but what he’d garnered from all that information would remain to be seen.

Only then would he pose a question of his own. Perhaps even the most important one, a direct response to the order he’d been given.

"To what end?"

[Blitzwing]

Blitzwing watched the invisible signals swimming behind Nokta's faceplate, utterly unknowable to him. For now, the General himself was managing to remain calm. Perhaps a better term, in control. Blitzwing was always calm, but occasionally, the invisible hand of chaotic circumstance played Unicron's game with his volume sliders. Blitzwing's own countenance was mute, cold, and detached. He offered no subtle hints, no easy clues to Nokta as the two of them sat opposite each other in total silence. Eons passed. He had seen whole armies die in the time it was taking Nokta to compute the best way to shoot someone in the head.

The mech's first response had not been an answer or tactical assessment. It was a bit of color. Some commentary. Idle chatter. It... vexed him. Too much to not jam the poor volume slider all the way up. "This exercise has been authorized by MEGATRON PERSONALLY, YOU SECOND-GUESSING CIRCUIT SNAKE!!"

Blitzwing's face had shattered into a broken mosaic of blind anger in less than an instant. The mech across from him could have just shot his conjunx in the back at close range, as it was so full of vitriol. To compound matters, at PERSONALLY, the General slammed both fists into the table. Hard enough to rock it, spilling the small pile of datapads adjacent to them.

Then, a pause. The freight train of rage that had been crossing Blitzwing's face was suddenly halted in place, and then taken off the track entirely. A stolid, calm expression quickly returned to greet Nokta, as though it had never left. Blitzwing's posture softened once more, too.

"Apologies."

Nokta did not need to know the details and peculiarities of the General's brain, at the moment. Blitzwing opted to skip the explanatory discussion for now, in favor of returning to the business that had just been interrupted. There was no harm in offering greater clarity as to the purpose of this test, however. Nokta did not need to think that this was to some shady, ignoble end.

"What you see before you is a roster consisting of our most capable warriors. Each of them will be personally evaluated on different criteria for placement in a team which Lord Megatron has charged me with leading."

A pause.

"You have my assurances that you are not signing their death warrants, lieutenant. This is your test."

[Nokta]

As moving as it tended to be to see a mech of Blitzwing’s size lunge forward and slam his impressive weight down upon his desk, Nokta managed not to flinch. Instead, he merely leaned back in his chair just a smidge more eagerly than could have been considered casual.

Circuit…snake…? That was certainly a new one.

The look in Nokta’s optics remained as violently unreadable as ever, though more of his optics were revealed as his finely cut brow ridges did raise upwards about as high as they could feasibly go. It was a rare mech that could force the lieutenant’s expression into anything other than abject stoicism. It was a look half between bewilderment and amusement, the corner of the officer’s mouth even threatening to curl upwards into a demented grin at the utter non sequitur. What the frag.

An unfamiliar sensation welled in the pit of his sparkchamber, then, as the initial shock waned. An urge, one that relished in things like this, working up another to the point of senseless blind rage, watching them unravel. It was unknown to him, and yet it felt so good to indulge in, to watch all of his efforts unfold. The lack of efficiency, the release that posed for him. He wanted more of it. He wanted to laugh, jeer at the general’s lack of control, encourage more of whatever…that was. Like a true Decepticon, that little voice in the back of his head whispered. Be the straw that breaks all, it cooed. You know you want to.

He didn’t.

Blitzwing kept talking as though nothing had happened. It made it easier to focus on anything other than what had just happened. That this was indeed a test made the most sense in the end. It was, after all, the only explanation for Megatron’s involvement.

"How quaint," the lieutenant would bookend both that unspoken thought, as well as (unavoidably) whatever remained of his erstwhile unspoken reaction to the General’s outburst. A polite smile– half-attempted, and nowhere near half as convincing as someone with his bloodlusting optics could manage– followed that statement. It quickly dropped off his face as he returned his attention to the datapad, not wanting to stare at Blitzwing’s visage any longer, lest he begin an attempt to parse whatever the frag was wrong with him.

And truly, all else had been well and routine– up until that last sentence, his tanks sinking as Blitzwing pressed on towards his point. A point that the lieutenant had been dreading. "This is your test."

Well wasn't he the lucky little soldier?

Nokta pressed his denta together. Now, this was not good. These tests were what usually followed consideration for new postings. Promotions, transfers to high-value squadrons. Nokta knew what this was now. He was being considered for this squadron too. His first since Cybertron.

Some forgotten part of himself, sheltered away beneath his conscious being, shuddered in ecstasy upon remembering the fate of his last squadron. The civilized part of his mind fought to force away a seemingly random urge to regurgitate his morning rations over the General’s desk. He pushed on nonetheless.

"These are our most capable warriors?" The mech spoke through still gritted denta, only just glancing down at the handful of mecha populating the desk.

How underwhelming.

[Blitzwing]

Though it had been phrased and spoken with a derisive slant towards the candidates arrayed before the both of them, Blitzwing took it straight and earnest. Wait, was Nokta also taking a jab at himself as well? He was on the list too. The general blinked. But not really. He winked, as only one of his optics still performed that function. Either the lieutenant had some buried self-deprecation streak, or he was being brutally honest about the candidates which also happened to included himself. Regardless, the general took it only one way.

"Our most capable warriors are either long dead or on assignment in deep space."

A merciless form of honesty. Though he was loud and occasionally crass, Blitzwing was very much a realist, albeit an impassioned one. This was not Cybertron. They were not in the halls of Kaon or Tarn. The armies he had once commanded were gone and buried. This was a hole, veritably. Hardly two dozen or so Decepticons still functioned on this miserable rock. The best of two dozen was hardly the same as the best of several million. It was a simple yet cruel fact of statistics. Those that remained were lucky, cowardly, or durable enough to tough out the war.

Unless of course they fell into the second category Blitzwing had mentioned.

The Phase Sixers, to Blitzwing's knowledge, continued their calculated galactic rampage elsewhere. He had avoided voicing the very tempting idea to petition Megatron to relocate them to Earth. They were needed to prime new worlds for the cause. That, and Blitzwing had a sneaking suspicion that the moment any Phaser Sixer was deployed on Earth, those daredevil Autobots would devise some sort of Anti-Phase Sixer countermeasure, or some other such improbable nonsense.

He blinked (winked) again.

"Regardless, we are here to discuss the material facts of these candidates."

The old mech then went dead silent, letting it flow into the room as if from a burst dam. There was no better way to grab someone's attention than dead silence.

So get to it, Lieutenant, his eyes spoke.