[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Ten Seconds To Midnight (Neon)

[Thundercloud]

For a guy who, by his own admission, had never done much in his life or had any kind of real wartime experience, Neon sure was skittish. Usually Thundercloud would've chalked it up to ptsd, maybe some kinda brain-quirk - after millions of years of this bullshit, just about everyone had some sort of weird shit going on with their heads. It was just a fact of life, one of those things everyone acknowledged but never talked about because nobody needed a reminder of how depressing and hopeless their reality was. Hell, even Thunder had his issues, though he couldn't tell you what they were. He just knew that sometimes he would do stuff or say things or bring up something that would make people look at him weird, which was the easiest way to tell you were screwed up somehow.

Neon, though - Thundercloud had no idea what made him so nervous. For a second, he thought maybe it was the fact he was cozied up to a convict, but that didn't seem right. If the guy was nervous 'cause of him, he wouldn't be so eager to keep the conversation going. Maybe he was just desperate to make a good first impression, on account of him being a shut in nerd who had apparently been locked up with some old lady all his life - and wasn't that a strange thought, someone trying to make a good impression on Thundercloud. It wasn't often people wanted to impress giant trashfires.

Thundercloud smiled slightly and shook his head, charmed by the novelty of the idea, even if it was kind of stupid. Someone wanting him to think well of them? Hilarious.

"How 'bout we play question tag? You ask me somethin', I'll ask somethin' back. Game keeps goin' till somebody asks a question the other guy don't wanna answer."

It was a simple but entertaining game, one that typically only lasted thirty seconds back in Garrus 'cause those motherfraggers went hard and asked the most invasive, offensive questions they could straight off the bat. From what little he knew of Neon, Thunder didn't think he'd jump at the chance to ask something Thunder would rather rip his wings off than admit to.

[Deleted]

This was nice. They were finally getting somewhere with Thunder. Sure, the Tomcat might've not thought of the gesture in a very genuine way, but that didn't bother Neon. He was finally doing something that's ever been a problem for him: making small talk—and without hogging the entire conversation for himself in a drawn-out monologue about flux capacitors and the ethical implications of thought warfare. But credit where credit is due, it wasn't like Neon got a lot of opportunities for self-expression. As a scientist who rarely wandered outside of his laboratory, much less to socialize among the rest. There was so much he wanted to ask, so many thoughts buzzing and jumping around in his excitable, productive mind.

"That sounds like a great game! Here—uh, lemme think!"

Neon perked up, tapping the bottom of his chinplate with a thumb and an index finger. He was trying to think of a good question for Thunder. Something easy to start with, nothing controversial or overtly obscene. Being ever a worrier, poor Neon struggled to think about a question that his big brain didn't twist into some possibly offensive form, seeing as Thunder was from a completely different background. Most of it, of course, worked under the assumption that the convict could even be offended by the same questions as Neon would be.

There, he had something.

"What are you gonna do after the war?"

Okay, that might not have been the best question in hindsight, but to Neon, it seemed straight-forward enough. Everybody had plans, right? They were gonna survive, right? They were gonna win this, right? Neon will come back to Cybertron, explore a whole new world, carve out his own path as an expert scientist. There was no way he was just being naive. No way in hell. Nope.

Except he was.

Some bots didn't see a future, who had no plans, or whose fates were so steeped in the eternal conflict of their dying species that they could scarce fathom a life outside of it. While the war was an abstract concept to Neon, having to deal with only a few of its consequences, to many, saying that it's ever gonna end was like saying that the sky wasn't blue or that gravity stopped working. Perhaps Thunder was like that—or he wasn't.

Neon fired a shot in the dark and hoped that he didn't completely miss his mark.

[Thundercloud]

Back in Garrus, you had to be careful who you laughed at. Some folks knew how to take it on the chin, how to accept getting roasted for saying something stupid, but they were few and far between. Most mecha, they'd clock you just for looking at 'em funny, so unless you were prepared for a potential scrap, you had to watch yourself. Thunder, he was never one to police himself over dumb slag like sparing people's feelings. If someone wanted to throw down with him just 'cause he had a sense of humor, he was happy to oblige.

Course, the climate in Garrus was a lot different than the armed services. Folks were a lot more chill, a lot less likely to throw hands and go off the rails. It had taken him a while to get used to it, the disparity, but after a few hundred years of people responding all civilized to slag that he would've gotten his head kicked in for back in Garrus, Thunder had learned how to lower his guard a little. He was still prepared to fight anybody at any time, without warning, that wasn't something that was ever gonna go away, but somewhere along the line he had stopped expecting people to lower themselves to his level. Most Autobots, they had thicker skins, less to prove, no reason to think being publicly disrespected would drop them down to dangerous levels on the social hierarchy. It was kinda nice, honestly, just existing around people whose reputations and quality of life weren't intrinsically tied. It made everyday interactions a whole lot less stressful, less high-stakes. Not everything had to be this huge deal.

Unfortunately for Neon, Thundercloud had gotten real comfy with this new status quo over the past few centuries, and so he got the full brunt of the ex-con's laughter. He didn't try to stifle it in the slightest, or even hide it behind his hand. He just barked out a sharp, sardonic HA! and rolled his eyes, demonstrating his open disregard for the other mech's question.

"After the war? Pfft, shit, I 'unno man - rust, probably?"

He stretched out his legs, propping them up on the makeshift table before them and crossing one over the other, heedless of how unsanitary it was to put his goddamn boots where people placed their food.

"Ain't like I'm gonna be alive by the time this shitshow's over."

[Deleted]

This felt awful. Thunder had so little faith in the future whereas Neon had so much. Not even a full day on Earth, and he's already clashing so bad with one of the local powerhouses. Fantastic, just fine! Well, at least he could still—probably—turn it around now. He would be a really bad Autobot if he gave up on something so simple as talking to another person, right? He had to make some friends anyways. Even though Thunder was not the best role model, he was at least approachable. Or rather, he approached himself right into Neon's room without any regard for privacy...But that's basically the same thing, no?

"Why wouldn't you be? You seem pretty strong. Now, I've never squared off with a 'Con but they're just people, like us, right? That means you can beat them."

Neon almost tripped over his vocalizer and said "kill them" but he wanted to think better of Thundercloud, innocently naive as the notion was. In fact, it was so sweet that Neon himself knew better than to presume there was a gallant spirit sitting next to him—but hope disappears last, as the saying goes.

[Thundercloud]

Thundercloud couldn't help it - Neon was so blindly optimistic he just had to laugh. Not loudly, not at the other mech's expense; just at the sheer absurdity of his line of thought. It was so far from realistic that, if he hadn't known better, he would've thought it was a joke. Coming from anyone else, that's what it would've been - a dark joke highlighting just how fucked everyone was by facetiously implying everything was just fine despite all evidence to the contrary. Coming from Neon, it was a genuine sentiment. He honestly believed every word he had said.

Thunder didn't particularly want to be the one to have to burst his bubble, but somebody had to. The kid needed a reality check, he needed to be disabused of his optimistic notions before Life happened and bitch-slapped them right out of his head.

"Dude. Buddy."

He shook his head, still a little baffled that he even needed to point something like this out.

"I'm a frontliner. You know what that means?"

It was a rhetorical question, which is why he didn't wait for Neon to respond before continuing.

"Guys like me, we're a dime a dozen. We ain't like you or the Doc, we don't got any skills worth keepin' us around for. All we're good for is fightin', so when shit goes sideways we get sent out first and called back last."

At one point he might have sounded bitter about that, but by now it was less a point of contention and more of a fact of life. Getting heated about it would be like being angry with the weather, or with gravity. There was no sense in getting upset about the inherent unfairness of something that you had absolutely no control over.

"Frontliner's just a nice way of saying acceptable loss. Only reason I've made it this long is 'cause I've had somebody watchin' my back."

It was no exaggeration that he owed his life to Carbine - without the other mech, Thundercloud had no doubt he would have died a million times over. The chain of command might not have given a shit, and the entire military structure might have been designed to actively screw him over, but at least he could always count on at least one person caring whether or not he lived or died.

[Deleted]

Neon furrowed his brow at Thunder, dipping his head dejectedly. He was an honest, kind soul. He could not stand to see a fellow Autobot talk like this.

"Don't say that," he talked back. "You matter. And—and it's not because of what you can do for other people. It's because you are you. I'm not more important than you and you aren't less important than me."

Neon was not the kind of person to assign worth based on how useful somebody was or how many people like that person were there. All life was equal and precious. Only a select few he considered beyond redemption. Thunder was not one of them. Even though he knew the mech for only a short time, Neon could already infer that he wasn't talking to a person like that. The young scientist may have been naive and terribly optimistic, but he was not stupid.

"Maybe you didn't matter to the Senate. Maybe you didn't matter to your superiors. Maybe you don't even matter to yourself. But that's okay. It's okay because—"

He sighed, lifting his head to make direct eye contact with the blue jet. Neon did not like doing this. He did not like when eyes were on him—but he wanted to be honest, he wanted to show he cared.

"—because you did matter to somebody. They looked out for you."

Then he paused, contemplating, still maintaining eye contact with the other Autobot whether he liked it or not. For being Neon, he was oddly assertive in this regard, his tone full of hope and positivity despite its underlying insecurity.

Finally, he let out a single sentence: "Isn't that enough?"

The question was meant to be rhetorical and it very likely would have been for somebody with more self-worth than Thunder. Neon worried that the other mech would still think the answer was 'no.' In the end, he could not force him to be better to himself—but he wanted Thunder to be.

[Thundercloud]

Thundercloud would be lying if he wasn't surprised by the sudden urgency in Neon's tone – he didn't have the kid figured for someone who knew how to stand their ground, how to speak with any kind of firmness or authority. He drew back a bit, as though a few centimeters of distance would help him get a better look at the other mech, see him more clearly in the new light he had cast himself in. What Neon actually had to say didn't matter so much as the tone he use to say it with – there was conviction there, conviction and something bordering on heat, like the guy was offended on his behalf.

That was another thing he hadn't been expecting, the mech to take his offhand remark so personally. It wasn't like he had revealed some sort of deep dark conspiracy – it was just a fact, a morbid one sure, but that was war for you. Some mecha were more expendable than others, that's just how it was. Sure, it was a raw deal, it wasn't right or decent or fair, but it wasn't something anyone could change, so there was no point in getting all worked up about it. Reality sucked worse for some people than others; sometimes people just got a raw deal. He wasn't gonna pretend like hadn't gotten dealt a bad hand, and he sure as hell wasn't gonna delude himself into thinking everybody's life had equal value. That wasn't an accurate reflection of reality, it was just wishful thinking – aka sugar-coated bullshit.

“Man, you get that from a Hallmark movie?”

He scoffed, shaking his head a little as he glanced around the room, instinctively searching for a familiar set of yellow optics to share a knowing glance with. He quickly remembered Carbine wasn't around, that there was no one he could say “can you believe this guy?” to with his eyebrows, so he turned his attention back to Neon, the corner of his mouth quirked upwards in a half-grimace.

“I get what you're tryin' to do, my guy, but save the pep-talk for somebody that gives a shit, huh?”

He leaned back, resting his arms against the back of the makeshift couch to illustrate just how chill he was about the subject at hand, hoping it might reset the mood and encourage Neon to take things a little less seriously.

“It don't matter that I don't matter 'cause when Death finally comes knockin' on my door, I'm gonna be too dead to care if anybody's tore up about it.”

[Deleted]

“It don't matter that I don't matter 'cause when Death finally comes knockin' on my door, I'm gonna be too dead to care if anybody's tore up about it.”

Neon did not want to admit Thunder was right. Maybe that's what life had taught him, but it went against every fiber of Neon's being. He always believed that those who are still alive should remember those who came and died before them; to carry on their legacy and to respect their sacrifice. While the big blue mech might've not cared a whit for what happens when he dies, his by comparison pocket-sized companion couldn't echo the sentiment. He'd be here to remember.

But at the very least, the engineer did not seem too fussed to be met with mockery and insults. Neon might've not known what a "Hallmark movie" was, but a guy like him didn't need much context to put two and two together. It wasn't anything good for sure. Probably something sappy and upbeat with a vaguely-defined message that was about as deep as a puddle. But that wasn't Neon. He well and truly believed what he said. Every. Last. Word.

Now, He could be a big baby about this or he could take it in stride and let it slide.

"Well, for all it's worth, I hope that you're a long way from your deathbed."

Let it slide, then. But that was okay. Neon couldn't force Thunder to love himself or somehow gain a sense of personal worth over one saccharine speech. It was a process that took years, sometimes centuries. And even after so much time trying to find it, Neon wasn't quite there himself yet. There were days when he felt the same. Days when Neon saw or thought about the sheer randomness and chaos of the universe. Nothing made sense, everything was worthless. What reason does one have to live then? How is a scientist to make science in a place that has no system of values? No rhyme or reason?

Those were the worst days. He wouldn't let today be one of them.

"Anyways, it's your turn to ask," Neon changed the subject. Even though it seemed like they abandoned the initial idea by now, he did not mind going back to the question tag thing if it meant prying some semblance of normality from Thundercloud. Disclosing his crippling nihilistic worldviews wasn't exactly "normal," even though it might've seemed that way to a person who has lived like that for a hundred thousand human lifetimes.

[Thundercloud]

If the kid really hoped he wasn't anywhere near his deathbed, then he would cut it out with all that namby-pamby sentiment shit, 'cause that was gonna be the death of Thunder, hand to god. There was only so much good-will he could be on the receiving end of before he started feeling all kinds of uncomfortable and out of his depth, and Neon had already pushed him well past his usual limitations. If Thundercloud didn't know better - which he supposed he didn't, since he had only just met the guy - he'd say Neon was trying to pull one over on him, trying to get on his good side because he wanted something from him and he thought laying it on thick was the best way to get it. Had it been nearly anyone else he was dealing with, that probably would have been Thundercloud's first thought, but he sincerely doubted Neon had the guile required to be anything less than sincere, let alone deliberately duplicitous.

Honestly, it kind of bothered Thundercloud that the little twerp wasn't trying to pull some kind of endearing little brother shtick on him, that he was just like that. It made it a lot harder to be a dick to him, made Thundercloud feel like he had to ease up off the gas a little and stop being so provocative and confrontational. He didn't like that he felt obligated to censor himself, modify his behavior because some sheltered little know-nothing was too pure for this goddamn world and his sensibilities and world-view were as fragile as spun glass. Thundercloud had a built a solid reputation for himself as someone who had never given a single fuck before in his life and wasn't about to start anytime soon, and he didn't wanna have all that undermined by a pair of sweet optics.

So, Thundercloud did what anyone in his position would do - he decided to double down on the dickery so nobody would get any ideas about him being soft, or reasonable, or decent.

"Yeah, a'ight. Gimme a sec." He leaned back a bit, his optics cutting to the ceiling as he thought of a suitably inappropriate question to ask. After a moment or two he looked back to Neon, at his dumb innocent face and his stupid naive expression, and he only hesitated for a few seconds before firing off this little gem:

"If you could kill anybody an' get away with it, who'd you choose and how'd you do it?"

That was technically two questions, but Thunder wasn't interested in playing by the rules. Besides, the point wasn't to get an answer, but to put the kid on the spot, shove him out of his comfort zone just like he had (unknowingly) done to Thunder with all that kindness and empathy and all that other shit he didn't know how to deal with.

[Deleted]

Thunder might've wanted to shove Neon outside of his comfort zone just now, but the truth is that it ended the moment his new acquaintance barged into the newbie's room full-tilt in the middle of the night. Now he was just shoving Neon outside of the comfort zone of every normal person ever. Then again, normal was a bit of a useless word these days. Hardly anybody alive was still normal. The war left behind mostly damaged goods and freaks with the odd exception here and there.

But rules were the rules and Neon had to answer because that's just how he was. It didn't even cross him that Thunder just broke them to put pressure on him, and if he did, he was just way too damn insistent of being nice to bring it up. Maybe Thunder just forgot, right? Yeah. He must have!

Still, the nature of that question. It formed a tightness in Neon's throat. It didn't feel okay to ask that of anyone, least of all a non-combatant. He didn't even have a clear answer to it. But now that he had to think of it, Neon just couldn't stop. And being his pure, unfiltered self, he aired every idea as it came to him.

"Well, if I really had to—and I hope I never do—I think it'd have to be Megatron. It's simply the most logical choice, not that I do wish him death. Prison, more like. A nice, cold cell with no windows and a few bars, good old stasis cuffs. You know?"

He asked as if Thunder didn't know exactly what prison was like.

"As for the how...I think, well, I'm not sure, but it'd need a lot of work and planning considering the logistics of such an assassination. I suppose that first I'd need to remove his lieutenants from the picture to ensure that he was alone, maybe lure him out in the open under one pretense or another. I'm sure there are people here who know enough about Megatron to tell me what exactly would I need to do to get the old Warlord by his lonesome."

Neon then paused for a split second, tapping his chin to formulate the next move on the spot. Very few people could just spitball plans like this without any prep, least of all shut-in nerds but Neon was the exception. He was hyper-aware of logistics, possibilities, and his surroundings. While Thunder might've expected him to say something among the lines of "Shove a grenade down Starscream's throat," this was the answer he was getting now and he had to deal with it.

"Ah, yes!" He exclaimed happily. "Then I'd make sure to prepare a jamming device so that he couldn't call for reinforcements and an EMP projectile I could deliver at a distance. Would probably need some additional tweaking to make sure he doesn't suffer, though. As I'm sure you know, electromagnetic pulses can be quite excruciating before they shut down your neural netting. But I suppose once I have that figured out, it would be a simple matter of using a lethal weapon of my choice while Megatron is disabled."

The scientist crossed his legs enthusiastically and placed his hands on top, blinking at Thunder with a smile. He was too happy about finding an answer to realize just how ruthlessly uncompromising and scary such a plan could be had Neon only the resources to set it into motion, not to mention how deeply contrary to most of his tenets it was.

And as a final note of blissful ignorance, he dared ask: "Does that satisfy your query?"

[Thundercloud]

Not for the first time, Thundercloud found himself staring at Neon like he was some sort of strange, exotic animal - an undiscovered alien species that couldn't be classified by any Cybertronain science. The whole time Neon spoke, he just sat and stared, growing increasingly baffled as the smaller mech created a detailed assassination plan on the spot. It would have almost been impressive, if not for the fact that it was completely besides the point of the question it was meant to be answering.

When Neon finally finished speaking, he looked so damn pleased with himself that Thundercloud almost didn't have the heart to burst his sheltered little bubble.

Almost.

"...My guy."

His tone was flat, vaguely incredulous.

"That wasn't like, a tactical question."

He tilted his head to the side, his optics narrowing slightly as he squinted at Neon, like that might somehow help him puzzle the other mech out, figure out how things worked in his big, shiny brain.

"Ain't you ever hated anybody so bad you wanted 'em dead? Even a little?"

[Deleted]

Neon waited for a while, thinking. Did he really hate anybody that much? Sure, Megatron was a terrible person, but his deeds were so abstract. Somewhere along the line, when violence became quantifiable and the deaths became numbers, it made it difficult to comprehend how much hatred Neon should rightly feel for such a person.

Eventually, he shook his head resolutely.

"Nope. You?"

The embarrassment felt at his response—both now and when approached from that godforsaken tactical angle a few moments earlier—faded into the background. Perhaps a sign of Neon's growing comfort around the former criminal. He softly nurtured a glimmer of hope within his Spark that he and Thunder can find common ground. Somewhere. Perhaps not here, not over such grim subjects as the war and death, but the thought of it was nice. Comforting, in a way.

In the end, living a life where one hated nothing and nobody was almost idyllic...

Were that statement as truthful as Neon thought it was.

[Thundercloud]

Thundercloud stared at the inexplicable mech across from him for a solid minute, his brows furrowed in abject confusion, as though Neon were a modern art piece and he had been tasked with interpreting its meaning. He was pretty sure the guy had to be screwing with him - nobody was so high up on their moral horse that they didn't want somebody dead. Even priests and medics had at least one or two people on their hit list. It wasn't even an issue of morality or conscience, it was just part of being a sentient being forced to share existence with other sentient beings. Thundercloud would even argue it was a fundamental part of the Cybertronian condition, but he wasn't a philosopher, or a sociologist or any of that nerd shit, so he didn't trust himself to be able to make a good argument for his case.

Instead, he just sat there and stared at Neon in a way that he hope conveyed all the skepticism of someone who was just told the earth is flat.

Then, abruptly, he scoffed and shook his head, the corner of his mouth quirking upward slightly as he fought off the beginnings of a wry smile.

"You serious, dude? I got a fuckin' list."

He leaned back a bit, quietly regarding Neon for a moment to see how he would react to that information, before allowing a small, sharp smile to cut across his face. He leaned forward again, his elbows resting on his knees as he inserted himself into Neon's personal space. He looked darkly amused, his teeth flashing briefly as his smile grew into something just shy of unkind. When he spoke his voice was pitched low, like he was trying to share a fun little secret that he didn't want getting around.

"It ain't as long as it used to be. You wanna guess why that is?"

[Deleted]

Neon registered quite well the disbelief in Thunder's expression. It wasn't the first time somebody asked him a question and was stumped to find out that Neon's conception of relationships, the world around him, and the universe, in general, differed from what they imagined it to be.

In Thunder's case, Neon truly did not ever meet a person that he'd want to murder. Whereas that might've been a common practice in the blue jet's circle, the dweeby scientist lived in a sphere where such measures were not necessary. It was even something of a community thing for him to admire scientific rivals, rather than wish them ill, or worse yet, death. In his opinion, even villains like Megatron deserved to stand a just and fair trial with due process.

That was a frighteningly naïve opinion, given the near-extinct status of their species at his iron hand.

But there was no time to pause and think on the dull look Neon returned to Thunder's own confuzzled expression. The chit-chat went one despite yet another faux pas for the collection of awkward moments they've been stacking up together since midnight.

And then there came something unexpected. After Thundercloud attempted to menace Neon, or perhaps to flex in his face with how violent he could be, the scientist's expression grew stern and grim for the first time. He did not look scared nor offended.

Instead, Neon looked the part of somebody who was about to say some uncomfortable things. And that, exactly, was his intention. He turned towards Thunder, no more displaying any weak smiles or awkward sighs, and for the first time, shifted away from him. Up until this point, he felt something of a mild attraction towards this no-boundaries guy. That was quickly gone the moment Thunder thought a psychotic streak might be fun to show off.

"You killed them," he replied flatly without any emotion.

"As do a lot of bots in our day and age."

The façade of innocence was crumbling. Thunder dug at something that seemed almost too different from where their dynamic was up until now.

"I'm not stupid. I know people kill people, often with little reason. But I'm not that kind of person. I don't enjoy suffering or inflicting it, and I think you know that."

While he was further from Thunder now than before, Neon leaned forward and supported his chin with his hands, arms resting against knees. An analytic glint flashed in his eyes.

"So why did you say that? That last part about shortening the list. Did you think I'd be afraid of you? That I'd be impressed by you for sharing dirty little "secrets" to build up your reputation?"

His eyebrows narrowed, his antennae perked up, a slight hint of anger permeating his calm demeanor.

"I'm not."

Cold words. Ice cold. Perhaps they could even be a bit intimidating, were they not coming from a pink-black sedan with baby blue eyes. Or maybe they were intimidating precisely because of that.

"I thought you might've been different from my initial impressions...I suppose I was wrong."

Neon hoped that Thunder was more than the sum of his parts, that this dreadful show of companionship was simply a failed defense mechanism, a holdover from the old days. He wanted to encourage him to be honest and to explain that Thunder did not need posturing or threats to get ahead with him.