Ep. 1 - Sway - [Closed]

[Deleted]

[Set shortly after "The Best shifts" and "Ice to meet you."]

Officially, Mirage had been out on patrol, scouting the roads and the nearby town of Jasper for for possible Decepticon activity. Unofficially, he had been sightseeing, for what little sights there were to see in such a humdrum little human colony. There were houses, businesses, a few places for recreational activities, and dirt. Lots and lots of dirt. Why the humans decided to settle in such a dusty Primus Forsaken place in the middle of nowhere, Mirage couldn’t fathom. There were no interesting sights, no abundance of natural resources, and no good reason, as far as Mirage could see, for anyone in their right mind to want to be there. Granted, the weather was pleasantly warm and the sunsets were remarkably pleasant (for Earth--they still paled in comparison to those on Cybertron) but still. Nice weather was not enough of a saving grace to make Mirage think highly of the place. He gave it one and a half out of five stars, and only because he was being generous.

While out on patrol, he had tried to familiarize himself with the layout of the streets of Jasper. He passed by a hospital, a bakery, two high schools, a supermarket, and numerous houses that all looked the same to him after five minutes of driving past them. Really, the entire trip had been disappointingly boring and uneventful, save for one notable instance. He had been driving through a shopping district when he came across a store with the unfortunate name “Plug and Play.” Naturally, he had been shocked and horrified by this violation of propriety and decency (there were human CHILDREN running about, for Primus’ sake) but thankfully, he did not feel scandalized for long. It took him a moment, but he quickly remembered that those words meant something entirely different to humans than they did to Cybertronians, as did the context in which they were being used. Despite this, he still found himself embarrassed by proxy for the video-game store’s unfortunate name, before hastily taking his leave of the place.

After that, he had decided to make his return to the base, before he caught the attention of local law enforcement or curious onlookers. While his altmode was indeed street-legal, it didn’t very much look it, and the longer he stayed on the streets the more likely he was to call the wrong sort of attention to himself. The last thing he wanted was to have to deal with human law enforcement questioning him about the legality of his being on the road.

Once he was safely back at base, he pulled to a stop at the entrance of the main room and transformed in a flourish of whirling parts. The moment his frame realigned itself into its bipedal form, he took a moment to roll his shoulders and dust himself off. White plating and dirt did not mix well in the slightest, and Mirage wasn’t keen on looking unkempt.

Distracted as he was with his task, he never once noticed the other occupant of the room, standing in the far corner, out of his line of sight.

[Deleted]

Mirage was on base.

Repeat: Mirage was on base.

Autobot Mirage, spec-ops genius extraordinaire, was on base- and electrodisruptor be slagged, she was going to find him.

Actually, sniffing out the Towerling’s trail proved to be the easy part. Red Alert was more than happy to pass along scheduling information if it kept the base’s newest problem child out of trouble. From there it wasn’t much of a stretch to cross-reference ground-bridge logs and patrol schedules. Mirage’s name, she noticed with amusement, never actually appeared on either. No, his presence was merely alluded to in those sideways, recursive patterns Shot would always associate with special operations mecha. If any Decepticon managed to do the impossible and fool Red Alert’s security measures, they’d never know their likely doom was on-planet just waiting to jump them.

Well, at least her old mentor was keeping his skills polished. Now if they could just convince him to stop sharpening them on his allies...

Not likely, but a femme could dream.

The hard part of Operation: Hunt Down the Spook turned out to be waiting. Raj had apparently exited the base a scant hour before Moonshot had accessed the logs. He had a whole patrol to run through, most of which ranged over territory expressly forbidden to Autobot fliers. The risk of civilian contact was unacceptably high even with stealth systems engaged. Either she had to fly in the upper atmosphere, someplace only the most sensitive of military hardware could pick her up, or she had to go through the rigamarole of requesting air clearance from the Air Force.

End result, a disappointed Seeker sprawled next to the entrance to the base, muttering invective in a steady stream foul enough to choke a sharkticon.

Suffice to say she stopped being a nice jet around hour two.

Shot was all but prepared to abandon her self-appointed task when the distant roar of a high-powered engine broke her reverie. There weren’t many Autobots on Earth period, and the number that had million-dollar sports car alts was even lower. A few moments’ intent listening gave Shot the answer she needed.

Target locked. Engage at will.

She gave her long-lost mentor just long enough to stand up and dust himself off before she bum-rushed him, tackling him in a blur of too-long limbs and incoherently-happy chatter.

[Deleted]

Being the mech that he was, with the job that he had, Mirage spent a great deal of time sneaking about and catching other mecha unawares. Perhaps it was fitting, then, that he received a little taste of his own medicine from time to time - turnabout being fair play, and all, or so the saying went.

Even if being taken by surprise while his guard was down was his due, however, Mirage couldn’t help but wish he had been set upon by his mystery assailant in a slightly less forceful manner. Being tackled to the floor was an unpleasant enough experience without the added vexation of being bodily thrown into the very layer of dust he had just brushed off himself. Honestly, could he not remain clean and presentible for even a klik on this primus-forsaken planet?

Not that being tackled into the dirty floor was the worst of Mirage’s concerns, of course. The moment he heard those footsteps rushing towards him he had been given cause for alarm, his head turning to see what the source of the sound was just in time to catch a glimpse of a white blur barreling towards him, before said blur collided with him and sent them both crashing to the ground in a heap of bright plates and gangly limbs.

Naturally, Mirage’s first instinct was to wonder what the hell just hit him, before promptly releasing his arm-blades in preparation for an attack that would never come. It took six seconds for his processor to catch up with his optics, for him to register the face above his and the field mingling with his own, before he realized his defensive stance was wholly unnecessary.

Of all the faces he never expected to see again...it just had to be hers that actually showed back up in his life. He really shouldn’t have been surprised; Moonshot always had a special way of defying expectations and spitting in the eye of plausibility.

He would have to calculate just how slight the probability of her finding her way to Earth and his company was later on - he couldn’t be bothered to do it right then, not when there was a far more pressing matter for him to attend to. Namely, staring at his once-upon-a-time protege in naked astonishment, before asking her name like a question, as if he needed verbal confirmation from her of her presence before he could believe she was really there.

[Deleted]

Missed/feared-for/lost/loved- those glyphs and more flashed through Moonshot’s field like phasefire, so firmly mashed together she herself couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. It wasn’t graceful, wasn’t even terribly comprehensible, but just this once she let her Towerling polish slide. No one was around to see.

Even if they had been, she likely wouldn’t have cared.

Mirage was alive. Alive, undamaged, on-base, fully functional, blessedly, stupidly whole- and even with her hands against his plating she couldn’t make herself believe it. Once upon a time Moonshot had had delusions of working special operations. She knew the statistics, the fatality rates, the brutal truth of ‘the invisible mecha’. Every last one of those factors pointed towards a dead Towerling stomped into the dust of some alien planet. She knew that too, but she’d never believed it. Raj was too skilled, too good, too- too RAJ to die alone and forsaken with a job unfinished.

And for once in her life, she’d been right.

“‘Course it’s me,” Shot croaked, normally-harmonious voice gone thready and hoarse with a surfeit of emotion. It was a smidge muffled, too. That’s what happened when you mashed your face into someone’s chestplates so hard you risked leaving paint transfers. “Who else is glitched enough to tackle you flat.”

She paused a moment, field wavering from one extreme to another, before adding a tremulous, “‘Bot records say you’re dead, y’know.”

At least the ones she could see. Y’know, the fake ones meant to fool enemy agents.

Maybe there was a reason behind that.

[Deleted]

It was difficult to accept at first, that it well and truly was Moonshot who had so unceremoniously tackled him to the floor in a crushing embrace that threatened to dent his plates. The probability of her being alive, let alone winding up on the same base, on the same planet, in the same backwater corner of the universe, was staggeringly low. Reunions such as this…they simply were not common, outside of the world of theater, film, and television. He knew this all too well; he had acted out on stage more happy reunions than he had ever witnessed during the entire course of the war.

And yet there she was, and there they were, student and mentor, reunited by chance, or fate, or luck or whatever cosmic powers deigned to bend the universe in their favor.

Somehow, despite having committed to memory script after script of scenes not dissimilar to the situation he had been thrust into, Mirage found himself at a complete loss as to how to respond. His silver-tongue seemed to have tied itself in knots, his quick wit had abruptly abandoned him, and his sense of propriety seemed to have been defenestrated by the sudden rush of emotion that swept through him as the realization that Moonshot was in fact alive and well.

What exactly that emotion was, he could not say for certain. It was simply too nuanced, too multi-faceted to words. Within the complex blend was both relief that the femme was still alive, and the added joy of discovering she was (as far as the eye could tell) healthy and whole - as well as the odd, giddy sensation that accompanied the retrieval of something--or in this case, someone--thought long lost.

Given the circumstances, Mirage supposed he could forgive himself for not immediately attempting to pick himself up off the floor and resume a more dignified position, and instead returning Moonshot’s embrace with a huff of incredulous laughter.

Moonshot was alive. Primus, but that was a thought that would keep him smiling the rest of the day.

“Yes, well. The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” He replied with a grin, knowing full well he was misquoting the actual line he was paying tribute to.

He simply had to introduce Moonshot to Mark Twain later on; he was sure she would love his work. Oh, and the music, Primus above, he had to show her the humans’ classical symphonies, she would be over the moon---

These and a hundred other thoughts spiraled through Mirage’s mind before he remembered that planning future activities really ought to be secondary to getting up off the floor and helping Moonshot compose herself before they made a scene. Or, well, more of one than they already had. Clearing his throat, Mirage eased himself onto his elbows and pushed himself semi-upright, though his hands refused to stray from Moonshot’s back quite so soon.

“Or rather, purposely falsified.” He admitted, his tone taking on a wry lit. “Circumstances arose, I was required to drop off the grid a time or two, and...” He trailed off, his good mood deflating slightly as a thought occurred to him.

Favoring Moonshot with a look of concern, he continued. “...I do hope you hadn’t believed anything about those reports to be true.”