[ti]Ep 3.5[/ti]"The Catharsis of Efficiency" [Nokta/Windshield]

[Windshield]

Raising a sharpened digit, Windshield gently grasped the offered item. Already, his other hand danced across the many interfaces of the device at his disposal, probing at the edges of its infrastructure. His optics remained focused on it, sparing the lieutenant not another glance, but his voice made up for the lack: "Thanks," he said plainly with his characteristic smile, "I will save it for the road."

Without thinking twice about it, his unoccupied hand reached down to his thigh where a small subspace compartment opened. He slid the thin and narrow vice into a slot alongside a cartridge of some kind and, with that very same motion, reached for a data chit which he proceeded to insert into one of the table's many entry ports. A second window suddenly opened by the one he'd been interfacing with thus far, shooting purple lines of standard Decepticon code across a black surface. His optics raced from one line to the next with a preternatural focus.

Perhaps he was comparing something or perhaps he was simply preparing the tools of the trade. After all, he did not have Soundwave's unique biology and had to compensate by using them manually.

"This shouldn't take long. For very legitimate reasons, I'm quite experienced in breaking Decepticon entry codes."

He sounded proud of himself but his expression remained much the same as before. Still, ever so focused—terminally so—Windshield found the time to "entertain" Nokta with his running commentary all the same, spoken in lighthearted words. It could almost seem as if there were two people standing there, one an experienced and dedicated specialist, the other a bundle of psychoses masquerading under a worn-out smile and empty chatter.

He was both of them and so much more. For good or ill, they were inseparable.

[Nokta]

Nokta’s attention remained focused on Windshield as the other mech took the offered cygarette and seemed to inspect it. Sanguine optics scanned Windshield’s face for another moment before he moved. Slipping his leg off the table to stand on both peds once more, he quietly walked around the length of the table until he was standing an arm’s length from Windshield’s side.

"Now," the mech rasped in a lighter tone than his usual sternness. In his left servo he raised the lighter and slid his thumb back to ignite the small flame a short distance from Windshield’s dermas. "I insist." A smile the sight of which was likely the closest to reassuring Nokta could manage spread over his face forthwith.

"You can work with one servo."

He tilted his head after that, optic lenses dilating and constricting a few times over as he read the hacker’s expression. "When was the last time you were permitted to enjoy yourself?"

The question was spoken less as though Nokta were trying to entice Windshield to do something he normally might not in front of a superior, and more as though he himself were actually pondering the answer to that question. As if it were some fleeting, idle attempt at peeling back some layer from the enigma that stood before him, typing away with reckless abandon.

[Windshield]

"No, not now, thanks," he replied without any great effort or even a particular inclination. He didn't seem annoyed by the insistence either, nor by the question, or even the proximity of the flame, its brief light seeming so laughable in comparison to the eternal fire of his own optics. Only his smile flickered in the moment, smaller first, larger then, the same in the end—as if though he recalled a memory.

"I do admit, I had you pegged for a bit of a dry nozzle before. You're—different—today. Still..."

Different or better? Windshield couldn't quite decide.

His fingers moved to and fro, dancing across the keys, under focused amber eyes. He continued without a change in his pace, contrasting, comparing, changing, writing, erasing, all while maintaining the conversation with his superior. He seemingly remained oblivious to his motions, to his body language, to his expression, but by the sound of his voice, it must have been quite opposite in reality.

"I'm my own Decepticon. If I wanted to enjoy myself, I certainly wouldn't be asking anyone's 'permission' to do it."

Not quite the answer one would expect, perhaps.

He took what pleasures he wanted, when he wanted them, and he would answer for them to no one. This singular freedom was his and his alone and no one in this miserable world could take it from him. There was real conviction behind the words—but there was also something else. It was all a bit more...exasperated than Windshield's usual theatrical aplomb. There was none of that grandeur, none of that casual, semi-serious teasing. Perhaps he intended on being more candid between the two of them. But, in truth...

He knew that his response was undisguised simply because he slipped up. Because the real answer to Nokta's question was: Too long ago for me to remember. And that caught him off-guard just long enough to pull back the curtain.

For a moment, he thought of the bottles he so urgently had to hide. It prompted a continuation, hesitant and somewhat sour-voiced: "Besides, my party engine's kind of busted right now, if you get what I mean."

His good cheer did return, of course—eventually. When it did, Windshield was back to his usual friendly self and he could continue playing pretend for some time longer: "So, for the road it is," he grinned back at the lieutenant, briefly clapping his hands together before they returned back to the unfolding tree of windows and branches of code.

Just a little longer...

[Nokta]

Upon Windshield’s refusal of his request, the lieutenant would stare blank-faced at the hacker, the open flame still flickering in front of him, casting dim light onto his neck and chestplates for a moment, before Nokta thumbed the lid back with a soft clapping sound. His stare was either that of disappointment or something else entirely. He couldn’t make up his mind though, and he didn’t really care to expend the energy on something so fleetingly annoying anyways, so he merely shrugged as he took to lighting his own cygarette.

Taking a drag with a softly vented groan, he allowed some semblance of the stress of the past few days to leave him, his shoulders lowering slightly from the taught and tense position they’d been in all week. Leaning back against the desk beside Windshield he brought his thumb and foredigit up to his brow, pinching at the paneling between his optics before lazily looking over at Windshield as he worked.

He supposed he could order Windshield to smoke the cygarette. He could order him to smoke an entire pack out of mere spite. But Nokta wasn't petty. He was striving to be of a caliber markedly higher than those kinds of Decepticon officers.

Still though, it would be amusing.

“I’m my own Decepticon…”

"Hm." He merely hummed in response as he held the cyg between his lips and took to propping his entire weight up on the desk to sit upon some feet away from Windshield so as not to interfere with his work. He leaned backward until he was laying on the desk, drawing one of his legs up as he took the cyg from his mouth and into his foredigits which came to dangle off the end of the desk as he exhaled smoke into the frosty air of the dingy room.

"Dry nozzle. That’s funny." He mused in a bland, unfettered voice at Windshield’s assumption of his overall demeanor as he stared at the ceiling, glistening with millions of tiny little icicles. To claim there was something different about him would imply that Windshield seemed to think he had some understanding of Nokta as a person to begin with.

When he turned his head again it was to take in the sight of a smiling visage that he’d noticed not just a few times from Windshield at this point. It was a look Nokta had seen the hacker use before– one the lieutenant had mistaken for belligerent disregard for their leader in his own flustered state of anger and guilt one week prior.

“...my party engine’s kind of busted right now, if you get what I mean.”

Nokta’s own steely gaze seemed to take in that look for all it was worth before he turned back to face the ceiling. "I don’t believe you." It was a matter of fact statement as he took another drag from his cygarette, one the words of which he let settle between them before speaking again. 

"Since we seem to be implying we understand one another at all: mecha like us don’t just run out of the energy to commit to something. You either have it in abundance or you never had it at all." Nokta glanced back at Windshield once more, some look of sternness in his optics as he felt the tension he’d fought so hard to release begin creeping back. He looked away from Windshield, bringing his servo to gently rub down the length of his faceplates, anticipating more pretend words from the hacker even then.

There was hardly anyone living today that was not a coward or someone the cowards hid behind because they truly had the spirit of a fighter, the latter drawing their strength either from something as primal as their bloodlust or as deep as their conviction. Despite this though, there did seem to be a rare third option.

"You claim not to be asking permission, and yet with every faulty smile you’ve given me, I’ve seen the look of someone begging for it to be given. What reason could you possibly have to hide behind that folly? Are you merely afraid to admit you’re a coward, or have you somehow fooled yourself into believing the strength it's taken you to get this far is something to be ashamed of?"

It may have been easy from Windshield’s perspective to assume the lieutenant’s words as merely patronizing in nature, but this would seemingly be belied by the strain in his tone. In reality, he was speaking to Windshield with more honesty and care than had yet been seen.

[Windshield]

Windshield did not let himself be phased by the lieutenant's behavior, at least not initially. He continued to smile weakly as the mech dramatically splayed himself out across the surface, as he contemplated and wondered in the stark blue light—as he spoke at length, trying to assert his observations upon the agent in much the same way he'd nearly admitted was an error on his part. Much was said, and while he did not even so much as lift a brow at it, Windshield listened to it all regardless.

For the first time since he'd started working, the hacker slowed down, as if his mind had become preoccupied with more than the work. Though he initially gave no true indication of prioritizing the lieutenant's speech over his own servos, he nonetheless did so subconsciously. He left that entire analysis hang in the air for a while, simply making an attempt at returning to the displays as if it were the sole item in the room.

This attempt at finding distractions did not last long. Soon, an upload process from that external drive of his required a rather bothersome amount of time to complete. This gave the agent, much to his own chagrin, more time and room to contemplate the lieutenant's words. The longer he thought about them, the smaller the smile seemed to grow. Every second of the upload became a torturous hour in his processor as he watched the display stall, as his optics were drawn to the obtrusive visage of his superior.

He had half the mind to suggest he remove himself from the room so that he could finally focus and finish this errand as soon as possible. Instead, he did not so much as decide to indulge Nokta's wandering thoughts as his impulses forced him. He looked different, suddenly. Cold, empty—a hollow shell with a blank expression. The liquid honey in his eyes solidified into glassy amber, the definition of his orange limbal rings fading somewhere into their surroundings. He took a step away from the console, letting his sharp digits rest easily by the side of his body.

Something broke...

"Explaining myself to you would be pointless. A mech like you could never understand..."

There was a coldness to him, an absence.

"...But perhaps I should make something clear: I've agreed to lend you my aid because you clearly lack the talents to unlock your past yourself, because I pity you and the holes in your record, because I know what it's like to wake up one day and find that pieces are missing, what it's like to wonder whether you're better off without them."

His words were ice. He wanted to sound emotive, but he couldn't. He spoke every word as if though it were a fact, immutable. He wanted to care about what Nokta had said and assumed, but he couldn't. There was not an iota in Windshield's mind left that had a care for any of it, that could share with him the events, the sacrifices that led him to be who he was.

But still, there was a tug, a fleeting familiarity that kept him anchored in the present.

"What I'm doing here, I'm doing because somewhere deep inside of my miserable Spark, I still have a shriveled mote of empathy left for creatures like yourself, lieutenant. My reasons for aught else are my own and not for you to pick at, so don't go about opening doors you can't close."

Upon the display ahead, the upload process neared its completion, signaled by hexagonal segments that slowly slotted into one-another to form a cohesive shape. Windshield realized that he hadn't been focusing on the screen at all, that he now stared directly ahead at the mech and that he found himself conspicuously without an expression. He had half a mind to smile again or perhaps to even frown in anger, to sulk, and raise his voice, but the thoughts would not leave his processor.

He could not bring himself to be otherwise.

Ah, perhaps he was more like him than Nokta was. Perhaps he had it all figured wrong. He no longer saw the mirrored past in the lieutenant, a mentor long gone, but he did see him in his own reflection. The faraway look in the optic, the flat and distant voice in spite of its contents.

He'd become him somewhere along the way, under the smiles and winks and grins...

And yet, it was not he who said those words that brought back the memories. It was Nokta who repeated that ancient echo. Forward. Forward. Forward. He couldn't go forward like this, broken and hollow. He had to smile. He had to. And again, he forced it—that gentle smile, that friendly, casual tone. It had a bite to it now, a hint of attitude. Gone was the broken thing, back was the mask.

"If that's too hard to accept, perhaps you can ask Soundwave for help. I'm sure he would be very interested in the contents of your little black box," said the mask.

[Nokta]

There Windshield went again, presuming to know him. Presuming to know anything about what he would and wouldn’t understand.

Another refusal was made, and at first, Nokta’s expression faded into the same one that had doused his faceplates when Windshield had declined his offer to enjoy a smoke together. Though, nothing of Windshield’s impromptu lecture had struck a chord with him further than that fleeting disappointment over an opportunity for comradery being lost.

In Nokta’s optics, the outcomes of both of these things held the same value. Because they concerned a mech who was so lost he couldn’t even bring himself to try opening up to another mech fully giving him the opportunity to do so.

So then, slowly, the mech’s face contorted from halfhearted disappointment into amused disbelief, and as a final threat was made by the hacker, Nokta couldn’t help but wheeze, a small bout of laughter escaping him. A horrid sound made all the more uncanny by its rarity, as he shook his helm. 

"So dramatic…" The mech taunted, splaying his fingertips out as if to feign shock and awe at Windshield’s display. "And here I thought I could be touchy." He purred softly, amusement still ever clear in his tone. And then he merely shrugged, not keen to let the hacker interrupt the one fleeting moment of calm respite he’d been able to allow himself after a long and grueling week.

He leaned back then, to resume his enjoyment of his cygarette, turning his gaze to the ceiling once more, the suspended icicles a more interesting sight than Windshield’s false smile and empty threats. Finally, he closed his optics in silence, shutting out any fleeting images of Windshield from his mind entirely.

That silence remained for a long few moments as Windshield stood there with his attention so easily having been pulled from the holoscreen he’d been working away at. Cruelly almost, it seemed Nokta was perfectly willing to drop the conversation there.

"Mm, maybe I was wrong." Nokta finally hummed, as if this were a mere afterthought made to himself. He arced his backstrut to work out the kinks in his frame, vents sucking in harshly thereafter as he enjoyed another pull from the cyg, "though I do have to admire the unit it takes to shamelessly threaten your superior to his face."

Turning on his side to finally face Windshield again, he propped his elbow up to get more comfortable on the sheer tabletop. "Because frankly, less patient mecha in my position would have you scraping the shit off their heels over half of what you’ve just said to me, much less your presumptuous claims that they are something to be pitied." Nokta glanced downward, nonchalantly inspecting the state of his own grimy peds to reinforce his statement. "So maybe it isn’t permission you’re begging for. Maybe you’re just an idiot begging for the swift hand of Mortilus."

The lieutenant tilted his head, his eyebrows folding upwards in mock concern. "Is that what you’d like Windshield? Now, that would certainly be something pitiable." He nodded in agreement with his own words, sugar-sweet and dripping with false sympathy. If he hadn’t been patronizing Windshield before, he certainly was now. The door that had been offered to the hacker and swiftly denied was now firmly shut.

[Windshield]

"Think what you will. At the end of the day, it does little to alter the facts and even less to alter my course," he said, his attention returning naturally to the work at hand. His hands rose back to the console, ignorant of the motions of his superior. The upload had finished by now, letting the hacker continue. With the necessary files prepared, with the infrastructure and inner works of the Infinitum exposed at his fingertips, it was but a simple matter for Windshield to finish the last few steps—a new key...

"You still need me, whether you like me or not, and believe me when I say that I don't care if you do."

As his claws danced upon the interface, he gave form to a new access code—a veritable skeleton key to everything within the ship's systems, overriding even the captain's own permissions and barriers. When at last he was finished and satisfied with his creation, he let his limbs rest once more, smiling brightly at the work in front of him.

"To be honest, I've no desire to prove you wrong," he mentioned offhandedly with a cheeky, over-exaggerated shrug, "You may think yourself a paragon of patience, but you're not."

There was no emphasis in the last three words. In fact, they were spoken in a very short and curt manner, his smile flashing wider for a moment, then seeming more neutral once more as his optics drifted on the screen.

"I've seen how quickly you anger over the most benign things. I wouldn't put it above you to find a new way to make my life a living hell the next time we're out on a mission"

...Just because I have the decency to admit I pity you.

It was difficult to forget their first meeting, how quickly Nokta turned to screaming and punching because he could not hold it together under Megatron's command. He found it rather sad in retrospect. Windshield, of course, said nothing of his own little moment in the warehouse that night. It was not for the lieutenant to know, not for anyone to know, what that tortured night made him feel, especially not now when he had half the mind to simply leave with the code and amuse himself in watching Nokta beg Soundwave for the same courtesy he'd given him so freely.

He didn't, of course.

As much as he wanted to pretend otherwise, what he said before was true—he did pity the mech and he did help him out of empathy, foreign though the concept had become over the years. Perhaps that little Autobot medic had more of an influence than he would like to admit, or perhaps she simply sparked an ancient impulse that he now exercised on the lieutenant's behalf. Better to pity a comrade than the enemy, after all.

Though... he didn't truly know himself whether it was the former or the latter, and so Nokta would not get to know either. He raised one of his hands over the display a final time, then twirled his index finger in the air as if commanding it to hover over to the "relaxing" lieutenant: "But, I digress," he sighed wistfully. "Here's your code. This should open the necessary files—and anything else in this ship that'd need a captain's clearance or above. Knock yourself out, lieutenant."

His voice was casual, friendly. Following his last words, he shot a pair of finger-guns at the mech with a sharp click in his voice. He was one wink away from being exactly the kind of irreverent creature that he seemed. Perhaps another time...

[Nokta]

Nokta did not know what Windshield was expecting of him. Some form of thanks? For doing his job? Was that it? He supposed that was what had become of so many on Earth who could no longer stomach the “bleak” situation the Decepticon cause found itself in. A bunch of hungry, miserable, ingrate mouths all begging for attention. Begging to be praised for doing just what was expected of them.

“To be honest, I’ve no desire to prove you wrong,”

"Oh– that’s good," the wraith cooed. "I was so dreading the waste of ammunition."

Nokta continued to stare, eyebrows lightly raised as Windshield cocked another false, exaggerated smile at him, speaking about a single moment as though that had somehow unlocked a veritable treasure trove of Nokta’s person, at the center of which was some dire, inner secret about the lieutenant that somehow made the hacker…what? Better? Smarter? Stable? Whatever Windshield seemed to think he knew about Nokta’s patience, his anger, or his reasons for doing any of what he had thus far– he simply didn’t. It was laughable for him to think so, plain and simple.

Another half scoff, half laugh of sheer disbelief left the lieutenant’s vocalizer at the gall of Windshield’s words as the codes were finally sent over. "How fortunate, your unbridled hubris was only just beginning to grate on me."

With a wave of his servo, the holoscreen spun back around from Windshield’s side of the table to Nokta’s. The lieutenant sat up on the table, putting his cygarette out on the sheer surface with a final exhale of smoke.

"Just keep following orders and you can steer clear of anything close to what my idea of a living hell is. Dismissed." He slid off his end of the table, turning to face the screen without giving Windshield a second glance. "You can go back to doing whatever it is you do when you’re not boasting of doing the bare minimum your station requires of you."

The amusement bled from his voice the more focused he became on the wealth of new information regarding the ship that was suddenly laid out before him. The time for relaxation was over, just as his passing mockery of Windshield had begun to lose its appeal in favor of a newfound task. He had real work to do now.

[Windshield]

"There's no hubris. I simply know my worth," Windshield answered plainly as he removed the data slug from the terminal and stashed it away, inserting it into the small slot in his hip whence it first came. His manner was still ever-so-friendly and his words seemed to match the lightness, yet in truth, they were anything but light. There was a great, unseen, and unspoken gravity behind the second sentence. It took him a long time to build back up what centuries of slavish servitude ground into nothing, and he would never heel so easily again, never be made to blindly serve a mocking voice, especially not at the command of someone so utterly thankless.

Hmm... Dismissed.

Finally, he let out a soft exhale and stepped away from the console at once.

"I do hope you're ready to make peace with what you find, lieutenant," Windshield shared with him a final moment, one more assumption—not about the sable mech, but about his past. Already, he glanced briefly at the door, then once more at his superior, "Sooner or later, all of us have to."

He almost hoped that Nokta's days aboard this wretched ship were uneventful, but he knew better than to believe in such trite nonsense. Nothing that led to this cold, lonely end could have possibly been benign. Whether it was a tragedy or a reckoning or even a hell of the crew's own making, it certainly had the power to crush the wrong person, break them in worse ways than he himself was broken.

And yet Windshield told himself that it didn't matter, that he did the job he was called in to do, and that the rest was up to Nokta, that he got out of this more than he hoped for, but it was a cold comfort at best. Cold, unlike Nokta, and very much like the person he'd conflated him with. Ah, the error... It served well enough as a distraction from the complicated thoughts about the lieutenant's actions and words, he supposed.

Without saying anything else, Windshield turned back to the door and left the room, gentle footfalls slowly fading in the dark of the Infinitum—until they were no more.

---

Ice, snow... Snowfall... What beautiful sensations, so close were they to the feeling of one's own Spark fading...

Outside of the Infinitum, he stood alone. The Vehicons moving about paid him no mind. So consumed were they by their work. He stared blankly into the palm of his hand, resting in it the small device he'd used to unlock Nokta's past. Were it only so easy to solve his own problems... How could something as small and insignificant as this possibly be the key? He wondered. Ah, but therein came a thought. He could build for himself a bigger key. Sometimes, even he was amused and bewildered by the little miracles of his own technology.

For now, Windshield set aside that idle thought of a future endeavor and chose instead to remain focused on the key he had.

Of course, he knew that it was far more than just a key, more than a mere set of tools for the virtual thief. Cybertronian technology could get remarkably compact—most especially when one had the right connections. Oh, he was truly blessed to have held onto it all these years, because more accurately than it was a key or even a lock pick, it was a receptacle...

Filled to the brim with new information.

Ah, how easily could one disguise a download for an upload when no one paid it any mind, and how much simpler it made covering up all signs of his interference. Windshield was ever his own worst enemy in matters like these—a cold-blooded liar to the last. It almost grieved him that the artistry would go unrecognized, but therein was the beauty of it.

He turned his head skyward, basked in it for a good while before his thoughts chased the fleeting sensation away.

The aid he rendered paled in comparison to the sin he committed—a pure and uncontested betrayal of trust. He almost felt bad for having done so to a fellow Decepticon, but what possible reason would Nokta have to hide his past from his comrades? It was so rude not to share. More than that... If there was even the slightest chance that the events that had transpired aboard the Ad Infinitum could pose a threat to the cause—and there certainly was—Windshield would sacrifice more than just whatever figment of honor and good-will he put on for Nokta's sake.

Raising a finger to the side of his helm, he reached out across vast distances with his communicator.

::Sir,:: he spoke in a calm and collected tone with the slightest hint of self-satisfaction, ::I believe I have information that merits your attention. Might we speak in person?::

If nothing came of it, well, it could stay their little secret. It never hurt him to keep a guard up around strangers before, to investigate about them as much possible, to expand the registry. If Nokta felt that Windshield did not truly know him before, he certainly would after this—as would Soundwave and anyone else the Spymaster deemed necessary.

His work concluded on all accounts, the agent quietly tightened his grip around the device and waited for a pool of green energy to swallow him. He crudely mused about what a delightfully grim irony it would be were the cold to get to him first, for Nokta to find him hours later as a frozen pillar.

Ah, but that would be no fun.

Windshield chased away the bleak thought with a happy whistle, a most relaxing tune.