Ep. 1.5 - The Fifth Degree - (Closed)

[Deleted]

<< OOC Note: set a day after "The Late Shift"! >>


The Neutral Base was not what he had expected.

Haven, they called it.

'An old energon mine,' the files on the computer had said. According to them the base was built around a large central atrium, from which the other main tunnels branched. There was indeed a medical bay, cobbled together from the gutted salvage of several ships. A warren of personal quarters knit through the mine, worn from use. Minerals gleamed in the deep.

He had studied what information he could find. Dug up a map, taken note of all protocols to be observed while on site. It was good to be prepared. And he did not want to prove Optimus' faith in him misplaced. He was an officer no longer but he would act like no fool.

As instructed, he checked in with the personnel on monitor duty and turned to face the ground bridge as it spiralled into life. It felt odd to be walking into a strange place without his heavy rifle clipped to its familiar place at the small of his back. But he would observe all stated protocols, and that meant no weapons. As he waited for clearance to step into the portal he felt a peculiar sense of disquiet pass through him, like a ghost in his neural net. Irritably, he pushed it down. This was no mission. No crisis. There was no enemy to face. No emergency to oversee. This was not even an official visit. It was an excursion, meant only to answer questions that rumour would not satisfy.

He told himself it was not to be an interrogation.

Calm. Focus.

And yet when Fortress Maximus strode from the droning lights of the Control Room and into a dark and cavernous place that echoed his footsteps back to him in distant chuckles, his feet took him in one direction while his mind went to another.

The big mech stumbled, his steps abruptly uncoordinated. He almost clapped the heel of one palm to his optic before he caught himself. He snatched his hand back and seethed. Damn it.

Maximus forced himself to stand upright and deliberately glared about the cavern. And it was a cavern too; his red optics took in the roughly hewn rock walls, studded with makeshift lights. Wires were strung along them, routing electricity from some power grid humming deeper in the facility. Lights twinkled in dark tunnels.

He inhaled. A cave. Nothing more.

Logic would dictate that a medic would most likely be found in the medical bay. Maximus set out towards it at a brisk pace, his strides long and clipped. As he walked he touched the side of his helm and opened up a comm channel on the common Neutral frequency. "Medical Officer Cleaver?" he said brusquely. "This is Fortress Maximus, from the Autobot base. I apologise for the intrusion at this late an hour. I am inbound to the Medical Bay. Are you there?"

[Deleted]

Though Cat was still absent with Moonshot, Haven's lights were dimmed to suit the human sleep cycle. The mine was painfully empty, with Sideswipe on the other side of the planet having not comm.ed for a bridge after cooling off. Cleaver doubted she'd hear from him again before he'd made his own way back, and she didn't dare imagine how the reunion would go.

She'd not left the Medbay since Ironhide's departure, gone straight to Sunstreaker as soon as Barricade had slithered off and stood uneasy guard thereafter. It was just the two of them and the nauseating mess of her thoughts, lines of errors mounting on top of minor anxiety-induced glitches and failures.

She couldn't cycle down, and had stirred from the workstool at Sunstreaker's side when she'd heard the ground bridge. The time between arrival and the visitor announcing themselves was blessedly short.

There was no point in confirming her presence in the room Fortress Maximus was approaching. Cleaver had time to get to her pedes, one hand gripping the edge of Sunstreaker's berth whilst her left blade hung at her side. The femme was between her patient and the visiting mech.

"Has Shadowrunner come back?" Subordinate to the question was an unprocessed, uncensored string of concerns and fears. Had Barricade gotten to her? Was Ironhide alright? Had anything else, somehow, after a nightmarish thirty-six hours, gone horrendously wrong?

[Deleted]

Maximus received his second jolt of the evening when he stepped into the medical bay. This time at least it was not a rush of bad memories, but rather a sense of sinking deja vu. The cluttered instruments, the sterility, the faint tang of solvents in the air - all that was missing was a view out over the snow fields. Another medbay.

The femme standing at the occupied berth was unknown to him however. Maximus studied her as he drew to a halt. Painted orange, with a helobot's stocky frame, she could only be Cleaver, the resident medic of Haven. It struck him that he did not know the proper way to greet her. Though she was not a formal military officer, she was clearly a leader of some sort to the Neutrals here, and that demanded a certain degree of respect. He settled on his usual fallback: the big mech straightened and stiffly raised his hand in salute. His expression was stony and his voice gruff when he spoke.

"Not yet," he said. Remembering what Optimus had said, he then added, "Though I'm sure that you'll be informed the moment we hear anything new."

He eyed the blade at her side. It was lowered, but still present. Her entire bearing was tense. Distress and a deep-seated anxiety seemed to radiate from her like static. Something about the protective stance she had adopted between him and the off-lined mech on the berth stuck a chord within him, a memory of worried eyes casting watchful glances his way. Maximus was moved enough to frown and add in a tone that was a little less curt, "I am unarmed you know."

He nodded at the blade. "Here on a clearance. Just for an hour, and then I'll be out of your way."

[Deleted]

Cleaver frowned at his frowning, already thrown by the salute, then followed his optics down to her arm. It did look like a brutal sort of club, and with her longwave buzzing as it was...

"No - sorry - natural configuration. And of course you're unarmed." The medic shook the stupor out of the limb and shifted it to match her existing hand.

The movement bought her a precious few seconds to think. Fortress Maximus was unknown to her, and loomed up to every aspect of his designation. More military formality than most of the Autobots she'd ever met, and here on 'clearance.' So the bot base had been locked down, Haven put on a kind of no-go list.

Glancing back to Sunstreaker, Cleaver cycled a ventilation and finally moved away from the berth and towards her visitor.

"What can I do for you?"

[Deleted]

Maximus went silent.

He thought it over. He did not know the real reason why he come here. Couldn't put his finger on it. He hated the place. He hated what it represented. A demilitarized zone - a form of formal truce with the Decepticons. A mutual agreement to do no harm. An agreement of words, both sides held back from their guns by military law. A place where a Decepticon could stand in front of him and look him in the eye and smirk without fear of retaliation, without a thought for the dead. As if the war were a mere form of dramatic entertainment that could be set aside for, what? a bar? A medical bay? Frivolous conversation? Oh, he hated it.

But something had brought him here. Questions. A tremendous desire to violence, held in check only by his promise to Optimus. And by the unpleasant memory that he was a force of authority no longer, and wielded no right or power here.

Maximus set his jaw. He looked at Cleaver squarely, his red optics fixed upon her own.

"I'm not here in any official capacity," he said. "Just to make that clear. I only came because I wanted to hear another side of things. So if you want to tell me to shove off, that's your prerogative. I won't argue it. You're probably sick of fielding questions anyway."

He looked dark. "You repaired Megatron recently. Only because you are a medic, because you are bound by some oath to never turn aside a patient...?"

[Deleted]

To never turn aside a patient...

"I'm a neutral medic," she replied, emphasis placed because, in her history, there had been no formal oath to never turn away a patient. What there had been were many mecha expressly prohibited from even entering the medical centers where she had trained and worked - castes that were untreatable because of their function and tier.

It had only been later that Cleaver had taken a personal oath as Maximus now described it, and fallen into a cycle of scavenging parts and patients for them. That had, it seemed, its own risks of regrets and mistakes.

Though the explosion had passed, the fallout was still to come. Sideswipe wasn't back yet. She'd not spoken to Ironhide or Jazz. And this soldierly Autobot had arrived with all the tension of a hydraulic line breaching its upper limit.

Cleaver held herself firm beneath the intensity of his hooded stare, reiterating, "I'm a neutral medic in a demilitarized zone that Megatron personally sanctioned. When he needed my help, I couldn't turn him away."

Her optics narrowed, trying and failing to read him. Maximus's field was guarded with an intensity that was telling in itself, and the stance of his frame showed signs of discontent and restraint. She didn't know him, and couldn't predict him.

She turned her hands out fractionally, the palm of her right still scorched from where her blade had blocked Sideswipe's killing blow to the warlord. "I'm no Decepticon. I'm a neutral who didn't want the DMZ voided less than a vorn after being established."

[Deleted]

When she turned her hands Maximus studied them without a word. His frown deepened when he saw the dark mark on her right palm. An untold story there, it seemed.

His anger quietly simmered as he turned his gaze aside and silently considered her words. Not that long ago he would have- well, the Warden would have still disapproved of all of this, but he would have observed the basic military law at work where the neutrals were concerned. The only thing delineating a Decepticon - or an Autobot - as an enemy to a neutral was personal choice. No law forced them to engage the Decepticons, much as no law stated they were obliged to forbid them aid. It all came down to a choice in the end, one bound only by personal ethics.

Maximus resisted the impulse to cast a bitter look around the ward. He thought of his discussion with Optimus only a day before. Just another line in the dirt. Without law to pin it in place, just how much could this one be shifted to suit the needs of he who stood on one side.

Cleaver spoke calmly and firmly. Maximus could detect no hesitation in her manner. It had once been his job to detect guilt in a mech, antagonism, remorse. Not to pass judgement - that was for a greater authority than him - but merely to understand what manner of spark he was locking away. She did not speak with resent, or uncertainty - just fact.

Or she was better at hiding it than most.

"What if Megatron had killed before he had come here?" he said. He lowered his red optics back to her face. "What if he had killed an Autobot, right here in Haven? Broken the very truce he once sanctioned. If he had been damaged and come to you then, would you have still helped him? A hypothetical scenario, I know..."

[Deleted]

"If that had been the case," Cleaver began slowly, sensing the escalation and tensing in turn, "then frag him and I'd have a warzone inside this mine."

She couldn't parse his intent, nor his motivation. It was suddenly more troubling that he was here when the Autobot base was on lock-down. The femme fleetingly wondered if Maximus had been sent to get answers on Prime's behalf. On a generous leash.

"What's this really about?" she asked, the step forward making it a demand rather than her tone. "Why are you here? What do you want?"

[Deleted]

It felt as if the tables were turning. The urge to grasp the operating lamp over the berth and direct a harsh flood of white light onto her face was strong. Not an interrogation.

Though Maximus' voice was steady, anger rippled through his field. "What do I want?" he said. "What is this really about? Look around you."

He gestured jerkily, taking in the medbay and the caverns beyond. "Military law defines a demilitarized zone as a boundary where no military activity is permitted. Neither side is allowed to control it. In the past such zones have been used as neutral grounds from which two sides could resolve conflicts diplomatically, even broker peace. Is that what purpose this Haven serves? Is that what it's here for? Because I haven't seen anything close to peace out there."

Maximus jabbed a finger at the floor. "Or is this just a place where a handful of mechs can safely watch the war unfold and criticize both sides without having to fear or commit to either- where a warlord can carry his crimes across a line and never have to worry about justice catching up to him. If you were out there, on the other side of that line, and Megatron came to you for aid, would you still grant it to him then, knowing that without the protection a place like this offers he could blow off your head the moment he was finished with you? If you knew that he would go straight for your unprotected comrades and friends immediately afterwards?"

The big mech glared around the room. When he spoke it was with unmistakable bitterness. "This is what I don't understand. This is what I don't get. This place. Everything that happens here. I had my own mind made up when I first heard about the DMZ. But for once I caught myself and I thought, no, you know what, this time- this time, I want to look for answers. For once, I want to understand the other side of something."

[Deleted]

"Understand," Cleaver scoffed, mouth curling around the word. "I think you can understand neutrality about as well as I can understand spending every vorn perpetuating the extinction of our kind."

It was a risk to give him her back, but she didn't want Maximus in the medbay any more. Not near Sunstreaker after the near-miss with Barricade. Her rotors bunched tight and then flared as she moved around the larger mech, intending to lead him out into the Atrium.

She spoke as she walked, field held defensively close to her plates. "I didn't set this place up as a place to negotiate peace. Wouldn't be my place to even try." The last was added in a mutter, flat and honest. "I risked everything to get this DMZ because for the first time in my fragging existence I wanted to stop running, and wanted to have a chance of being safe in doing it, and maybe even some room for anyone else who wanted to stop as well."

And yet Haven felt far from safe, and the transition from nomadic solitude to being a part of a loosely affiliated group wasn't smooth. Everything was uncertain now, balanced on a knife's edge that was gradually cutting in. Shadowrunner. Jazz. Ironhide.

The medic stood in the cavernous space of the central hub of the DMZ and scanned over the space with bright optics. Something in her chassis hurt.

"Got, something worth fighting for here," she went on quietly, optics shuttering for a moment as Maximus hadn't put a hand on her. The sparkling felt like a dead weight beneath her core, the manufacturing plant disturbingly quiet, though her systems reported life and fair health. Something to look into...

Satisfied with the distance put between them and the Medbay, Cleaver faced Maximus again, helm tipping back to meet his optics. His steady, unrelenting stare was as potent as before, and she cycled an exvent with a sideways, appeasing glance. "Not like you do, no, and it's not as grand a cause as an end to the war or peace for our kind. Got a chance for a new life, new cohort... And maybe a chance meeting in this place might make a mecha hesitate about putting a round into someone's spark chamber later on. Who knows."

Cleaver's hands had shunted back into their natural configuration of their own volition, the multitude of diagnostic and technical tools slotted and folded into the thick peardrop shape of the paddle-like blades. She turned the right one outwards, optics narrowed on the burn mark near the tip that autorepair had largely healed but still needing buffing out.

"As for treating without discrimination..." Cleaver twitched her helm in the negative, mouth slanting downwards. "I can't defend myself beyond bartering my skills - but that and luck's gotten me this far, and I don't plan on taking up a blaster any time soon."

[Deleted]

Maximus followed her from the medbay without a word, his footsteps slow and heavy behind her. The big mech was a staid listener, offering nothing to the debate but his own silence.

When they had returned to the Atrium and Cleaver turned to face him, she would find him frowning. A little of the antagonism had slipped from his field, replaced with a frustration that smouldered like a doused fire.

He did not get it. He could not grasp it. Maximus was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that. Where she spoke of carving out a place in this foreign world where she might find contentment, he could only see a safe harbour for murderers. For warlords who could walk across an unseen border and back again, as if it meant nothing at all. Maximus had never been an officer of the law, but now he found himself sympathizing with their plight. How vexing it must have been for them to watch criminals find such bolt holes as these and twist them into a personal refuge, where all of their crimes would be left at the door.

A pressure seemed to be building up behind his optics. Maximus reached up and pinched between them in an attempt to dispel it. At least they were no longer in the medical bay. No amount of tidiness or sterilization could ever fully scrub out the shades of pain that lingered in such places. Imagining that had only made his agitation worse.

In silence he waited until a little of the pressure had subsided. Only then did he lower his hand and look back down at the medic.

"If you wanted a place to retreat from the war, why make it on the front line?" he said. "Why open it to all Decepticons, to those like Megatron or this Barricade? Or to any obnoxious Autobot who might wander through," he added grudgingly. Though he hated to admit it he knew that not all Neutrals were fond of his side, and that in many cases that derision had been well earned. "Why not shut out the war entirely? Seems to be that'd be the only way to ensure a safe place for you and your own."

[Deleted]

Because Megatron's my fault. I killed his child and set him on a path of insanity, and I can't stop following.

Cleaver didn't falter beneath Maximus's considerable stare, weathering his field as she had countless others with a similar inquiry. A heightened level of anxiety was fixed in her baseline; it subsumed the spike his deliberated query triggered. "Landed here sixty Earth solar cycles ago, and was holed up underground in my ship with a cassette who'd hitched a ride during the exodus."

The medic had never found out for certain where Reflector had gone, assuming that he had decided to maintain his link with Dasal - Barricade. Accepted his note informing her of his departure as inevitable for a cantankerous and strong-willed Neutral. She hoped he was well, and as happy as his spark would permit.

To Maximus, Cleaver gestured towards the tunnel leading off to multiple small caverns turned living quarters. "Suddenly had an influx of Neutrals making landfall and needing some help, too many to cram into my ship, and with Ironhide... Wanted to move into something permanent."

The refracting crystals of her optics angled her gaze away from his, blue shifting from the direct line of narrowed red. Explaining herself to a mech she didn't even know wasn't something she wanted to do right now. Not with so much still up in the air. "Collected Neutrals... Never felt safe to me. Seen them made into a target too many times. One or two unaffiliated mecha near an outpost is a nuisance. A group is somehow a threat." She paused to force some of the bitterness that had crept in back, wondering if Maximus even remotely understood what she was trying to convey.

Cleaver's rotors flared in a sigh of shifting metal, sinking back down at half the speed. "If I was going to settle down with some permanence, then I wanted something more than just living in hope that the Nemesis wouldn't just obliterate us from the sky in passing.

Her expression was dark, the recent perversions of the base's purpose etched into her plates and weighing heavy in her field. "Flimsy as the DMZ might be, it's better than that, at least."

[Deleted]

Maximus glanced over at the tunnel when she gestured towards it. He found himself wondering just how many neutrals had found shelter here. All his sensors could detect was that the network of caverns was extensive. The rock prevented him from picking up anything more than that.

A group of neutrals... she was right. When they banded together they were treated as a potential threat. It was part of standard field procedure. In the past Maximus himself had given the order to have neutrals dispersed if they gathered near a military garrison. It had only taken one bomb at an outpost or aboard a shuttle carrying refugees to justify that precaution in his eyes.

He could hear the anger in Cleaver's tone. Precautionary measures meant little to those neutrals who only wished to find solace in numbers, he supposed. Hm.

"But what guarantee do you have that Megatron and the Nemesis won't fire upon this place and kill everyone gathered here in one blast?" he said. Maximus held out his hand towards the same tunnel. With mounting intensity he said, "What's to stop him from doing exactly that when the time suits him? Sanctions? Who upholds the sanctions? There's no law here. There's no Council, no Senate. There is absolutely no greater power, no superior authority for him to answer to here on Earth if he breaks his word or acts against some paper truce. Or back on Cybertron either, for that matter. If he wanted to blow the DMZ off the face of the planet, what would prevent him from doing so?"

[Deleted]

"Because," Cleaver began quietly, defensiveness giving way to weariness, "as recent events have demonstrated, a DMZ can be of use to him."

It was a painful admission, but the brutal truth of why Megatron would entertain a demilitarized zone on the front line. Cleaver could only hope that, should Optimus Prime ever enter Haven again and the warlord knew of it, that their distant history might stay his hand. Megatron fancied himself as honorable. Hopefully, despite the butchery Dark Energon had done to his systems and psyche, that was still the case.

Like hell, however, was Cleaver going to volunteer having been Megatronus's medic on Cyberton to Maximus right now. She'd told Optimus - if this mech really wanted to dig into it, then he could find his answers within his own faction.

One hand shifted back into a blade, carefully angled downwards, and Cleaver set the tip into the ground and rested some of her weight into the limb. She was tired, torqued up and more anxious than she'd want this visitor to know. The medic drew her field in close, rotors flicking, and drew her remaining hand across her chassis. "Are we done?"

[Deleted]

"Just one more question," said Maximus heavily. "One more question and then we're done."

He knew that he should not be asking this. It was not a very Autobot question. A part of him did not want to ask it. It wanted nothing more than to return to base, to leave this place far behind him. But something else made him step forward. Something that he could not control moved his feet and animated his limbs, stirred his anger until it crackled across his field. It was hate, and it did not attempt to disguise itself as it spurred the big mech forward, closing the final gap between them. His tread rumbled against the floor as he loomed larger and larger against the twilit darkness of the Atrium.

"For an instant, you held Megatron's life in your hands," he breathed. "His life, his spark - yours to save or to snuff out. The great Decepticon warlord himself, offline and unable to defend himself, entirely subject to your whim. I want to know what it was like, to hold the power of life and death over a monster like that. I have to know. What was it like?"

He leaned over her, his red optics burning. "What was it like?"