Caro Transmutata Metallo 30

Caro Transmutata Metallo 30

Investigations

A Transformers Prime Fanfiction

    Ultra Magnus was sitting in his office, staring at the datapad in front of him as if his gaze alone could ignite it. He was truly not surprised that the damaged and suffering youngling had managed to complete the report in a third of the time requested. Jack – Daybreaker – had shown levels of competence that had stunned the commander from the very moment he had begun to instruct the youngling , something the old warrior had come to attribute to his Guardians’ influence, both from code and example. Any technical failings were simply a product of inexperience and the teacher had come to take for granted that they would be corrected in due time. The report he was reading now reflected that burgeoning competence in the way a shattered mirror reflected a darkened room. A copy had already been sent to Ratchet, holed up in his office processing the data he had collected, but the medic had not yet bothered to send his analysis to the commander. Still, Ultra Magnus did not need to be a trained medic to recognize the damage to spark and processor that must be behind the errors.
    The format made it painfully obvious where the gaps in the Seeker’s mental processes were. The content had been rendered in standard Cybertronian glyphs of the Kaonite dialect. Ultra Magnus felt his servos clench and fought back what might have been a wave of anger or frustration. He had barely begun to teach the boy Cybertronian, but had started with a basic Iaconian dialect, the same one that the young Orion would have used in the Hall of Records. It was a small thing, but somehow to the former Elite Guardsmech it represented all that Shockwave had tried to take, all that he had succeeded in taking from Daybreaker.
    The discrepancies ranged from the small to the glaringly obvious. Mistakes in glyph choice and placement, mistakes that Jack had not made since before Ultra Magnus had left Earth, showed where certain specific lessons had been lost. Links, both within the document itself and to outside sources, were improperly placed or entirely absent. The few dates that were noted were in a mishmash of Terran and Cybertronian styles. The overall format was indeed correct. The old warrior suspected that could be credited to how many times he had drilled it into the youth’s head. At least one of the lessons was bound to have survived intact. Still, it was painful to consider all that was missing, and that was not even touching on the content. So very much of the mech’s lifetime was simply gone, years of effort and practice on Daybreaker’s part effaced, as if one of the great murals of old had been left exposed to the corrosive rain.
    *Acting Commander Ultra Magnus; North Sector Control Center.*
    The mech paused in his perusal of the document to respond with an ill-concealed flinch of annoyance.  *Ultra Magnus.*
    *Patrol Theta Two was investigating a disturbance in the outer ring when they came under heavy fire from an unknown source. They are currently holding position and request gamma-five level artillery to handle the situation.*
    The commander paused for a moment to consider this. Bringing in that level of enforcer power to a primarily Decepticon-populated section was politically tenuous at best. He briefly wished he knew more of the on-site commander, but shook that useless thought off.  *Approved, code theta-seven-four. Keep me informed of any further escalation.*
    He would simply have to trust that Smokescreen was training his mechs well. The dispatcher confirmed and disconnected, allowing Ultra Magnus to return to his dark reading.
    It was … painful to contemplate , to say the least. As he had taught the youngling, Daybreaker had begun at the first point his memories were clear. The newly fledged Seeker described with emotionless detail his time in the Pit Spawn’s holding cell. Jazz’s interrogation and Tap Out’s care were both given the same even portrayal. Bias had no place in official reports. Ultra Magnus had made sure his student had understood this from the beginning. However, the sheer sterility of the writing made the commander flinch, the only outward reaction to his inner conflict: a warm glow of pride at Daybreaker’s professionalism and the powerful urge to hunt down the saboteur and slam him repeatedly into the nearest wall.
    That portion of the report ended when the old warrior had welcomed his student home. The next section was … sparkbreaking to say the least. The Seeker began by stating that the memories were not in temporal order and that he could not distinguish between the true and the false. He explained that he had listed them in order of the emotional intensity associated with each, as that had been his only method of determining their importance, and had made an effort to link those that felt connected, though he could not say why they felt so in most cases. Also noted was where he clearly remembered being human, where he remembered being Cybertronian, and where the memory was unclear. Magnus pulled up a diagram of the associated linkages and felt a fresh trickle of anguish. It appeared as if a hand grenade had sent shrapnel tearing though one of Airachnid’s webs. There were a few more or less solid clusters of memories, but the majority of those were marked as having a Cybertronian frame of reference. He flicked the display back to the text grimly and forged ahead.
    Some of the descriptions Ultra Magnus recognized. There were moments spent with Optimus between the madness of the last battles of the war, linked to corresponding memories of time as Alchem learning worshipfully at the peds of Megatron.  A few of the training sessions he himself had shared with his Prime’s sparkling were carefully described, and linked to flight lessons with Dreadwing and Skyquake. Playful hours spent racing digital cars with the other children and time with June were linked to scientific experiments with Starscream in the Iacon Halls of Science. Perhaps the older Seeker had used the true memories as templates for the false in these cases, mused the commander. Many of these fragments might have been real, but the commander could not say due to his limited knowledge of Daybreaker’s past before his ship had landed on Earth and the confidential nature of most of the youth’s training after he had left, especially when even obviously pleasant and true memories had been stolen and twisted.
    From what the commander was able to gather of Megatron’s original plan from Knockout’s report, the warlord had been planning on setting up Lord Alchem as his chosen heir. Bitter anger burned in Ultra Magnus’s spark at that. The gladiator from Kaon shared power with no one, gave power to no one willingly. The very concept of an heir would have been anathema to him. And yet he had sought to create one on seeing what Optimus had in Jack. It was an incomprehensible lust for possession, for dominance, that confused the Autobot entirely. While Shockwave had never shown the slightest trace of that particular brand of megalomania, he had no doubt seen the logic of having that mark of favor for the mech they planned to use for their own ends and tasked Starscream with fabricating an appropriate past.
    The old warrior fought down a snarl that tried to build in his engine. The majority of the fabrications were blatantly false and would be easy to refute. Some of these he recognized as true events, atrocities committed long ago and attributed to the mysterious Lord Alchem or one of the other high-ranking Seekers. Daybreaker listed off the devastation of neutral cities, the obscene torture of Cybertronians and other sentient species, and duplicitous manipulations of the Decepticon forces with the same emotionless presentation. The only time that impassive façade cracked was when he began listing what were clearly corrupted memories of his time on Earth. These would be not nearly so easy to dismiss.
    When Ultra Magnus reached the end he stood suddenly and paced to the wall, fury radiating from the set of his every plate. He spun on his peds and paced back the other way until he again met the wall, then paused and fought to still the rapid venting that was shaking his frame. What that last section detailed was a string of horrors committed by Daybreaker on members of Team Prime, human and Cybertronian alike, things that the commander would bet his spark had never happened, but that would be nearly impossible to confirm or deny based on the situation alone:  lies, violations of trust, and sadistic games. Jack described picking cunningly and mercilessly at the open would that was Arcee’s loss of Cliffjumper. Subtly rubbing in Bulkhead’s helplessness when the Wrecker was down. Privately taunting and bullying Raf during school hours and threatening the younger boy into silence. Freely taking whatever he wished from other students and blaming the thefts on Miko. There were darker crimes that the commander barely understood connected with the girl. All through this ran the theme of the youth relying on the trust placed in him to get away with his manipulations. Simply asking the affected parties would no doubt cause distress and revulsion, but leaving the issues unaddressed was not an option, not if the Seeker’s sanity was to be restored.
    Ultra Magnus could clearly see Starscream’s servos in this, though how the twisted Air Commander even knew of and understood some of the human evils he had crafted was beyond the straightforward Autobot. Neither could he understand the purpose of such manipulations. If the goal was to utterly erase the existence of the human psyche, why leave the memories at all, even in such a corrupted form? Perhaps it had been an inadvertent side effect of whatever mysterious process Daybreaker had used to store and retrieve the memories, accidental corruption, and yet the warping was too deliberate, too much like the horrors Starscream had been party to during the War. Had Daybreaker kept these false memories to himself, they might have tortured him unendingly. They probably already had, especially those linked to his sparklings. That he had come forward was a testament to either great moral courage or utter resignation to his fate.
    The lines of glyphs seemed to blur in front of Ultra Magnus’s optics as he reread the statement.
    Therefore in order to establish the safety of the Decepticon forces I suggested to Lord Megatron that the Predacon sparklings be destroyed in such a manner as to leave Predaking with no suspicion of our own involvement. Leaving my own terminally ill young in the blast confirmed the lack of culpability of the High Command.
    This was then linked to what must have been the true memories of losing his sparklings. The commander viciously pushed down another wave of rage that threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted so badly to get his hands on Starscream and Shockwave both; never had he felt such a raw thirst for revenge. That they had used his greatest sin to taint the processor and spark of his Prime’s sparkling –
    Sparklings.
    A surge of familiar self-loathing and agonized guilt swept over him like a fog and the mech violently shook out his plating. He had to remain calm now, for Daybreaker’s sake. That would be dealt with in due time. Still it was a sharp reminder. He could not let his own mistakes taint Daybreaker’s trial. He would have to find some way to distance himself from the Seeker, for the youngling’s own good.  
    His comm chirped politely and the mech answered it gratefully, more than glad to be distracted from his current dark musings.  “Ultra Magnus here.  I see.”  The commander’s faceplates creased into a dark frown as the report progressed, and he shifted his processing threads in accordance with the new priorities. “I will meet you at the spacebridge. Ultra Magnus out.”
O
O
    “Have all the relevant division commanders been informed?” the powerful voice rang out across the arrival platform teeming with security personnel.
        Ultra Magnus resolutely shoved down his irritation at the simple fact he had had to ask the question. When he had commanded the Elite Guard in Iacon before the war, he wouldn’t have had to bother with such mundane tasks. Well-trained underlings attended to the minutia for him. Now, however, despite Smokescreen’s best efforts, he was dealing with a sparse group of mechs and femmes, the survivors of a war. He made do with what and who he had and compensated. This day, however, he was met with a string of brisk affirmatives that were as satisfactory as they were surprising.
    However, it did little to lighten his mood as he approached the spacebridge with furious trepidation building in his spark. There, resting innocuously against the base, was a small device that the officers had carefully highlighted with holo-light and were staying away from, obviously waiting for something. Again it occurred to the large mech that they were all behaving with a higher level of efficiency and professionalism than was strictly normal for them.
    “Report, Tagger,” he barked out to the sergeant who was directing the others.
    “The spacebridge has been sabotaged, sir,” came the rough reply. “Some kind of high-tech subspace disrupter.” He pinged Ultra Magnus’s comm with the technical details the spacebridge technician had provided. “Strikehard is taking a look at them. He knows enough to dismantle them safely and is sending one down to the labs for analysis. We should know more soon.”
    “And the culprit?” Ultra Magnus demanded.
    “Got a few leads,” Tagger gave up grudgingly.
    The dark orange mech had been an enforcer in Tyger Pax before the war and still held onto a few old habits, such as not always being fully willing to cooperate with mechs not directly in his chain of command. Still, he was one of the few true professionals on the current force and the commander did not begrudge him his strict adherence to archaic regulations, much. He was about to press for more details when the distinct squealing of rubber tires on metal plating called his attention away.
    “By the Allspark! What is going on?” Ratchet’s rage was clearly radiating from both his plating and field as he transformed and stormed up to Ultra Magnus.
    “Doctor,” the commander began warningly.
    “Don’t you ‘Doctor’ me,” the medic spat out furiously. “I need that bridge operational now!”
    “There has been an issue –”
    “I can see that.” The medic’s optics narrowed as they fell on the device the enforcers were forming a perimeter around. “No!” he choked out hoarsely, the word accompanied by glyphs for rage and agony.
    Tagger tried to stop the charging mech as he rushed over to snatch up the device, but Ratchet easily out-massed him by several tons and the sergeant was shoved aside. The security mechs glanced at each other nervously, but none was particularly eager to challenge the legend that was the Prime’s personal medic and scientist.
    “Ratchet!” Ultra Magnus stepped forward firmly. “This is a crime scene –”
    “This is a subspace disruptor!” the amber and white mech spat out at the commander as he turned, clutching the device in tight servos. “It generates a localized distortion in the field.”
    The larger mech frowned in irritation but managed to keep his voice respectful.  “So the investigator has informed me. This is pertinent to the situation?”
    “Yes! When properly calibrated and working in synchronization they are what enable the generation of a stable wormhole. Adding even one untuned to the mix ... ”  The medic’s voice dropped off and his engine gave a low whine.
    “It damages the existing disruptors,” Ultra Magnus surmised. “What does this mean practically?”
    “The bridge is useless.” Ratchet spat out.
    “How long will it take to recalibrate the established disruptors?” the larger mech demanded, feeling dread clench his spark.
    “Weeks, months perhaps,” muttered the medic, turning the device listlessly over in his servos.
    “What if we simply removed the current set and replaced them?”
    Ratchet glared up at him, but the distant look in his optics was a clear sign that the medic’s primary thought processes were neither on Ultra Magnus nor the question he had asked. “We do not have nearly enough replacement units. The manufacturing process is incredibly complex and our factories are still decades from being production-ready in any case. The ones in this bridge date back to long before the war. The only other complete set is the one in lunar Earth orbit and unreachable to us for now.”
    Ultra Magnus’s next question was interrupted by the arrival of a flashy silver alt mode. Jazz unfolded and glanced at them each with a slightly hesitant nod.  There was a tenseness about the usually limber frame that both mechs noticed, were expecting really. The commander in particular felt his armor try to flare out in aggression and ruthlessly brought the reaction under control. If Daybreaker thought for a moment he was the cause of any discord between friends, it would only add to his many torments. So the larger mech only returned an equally stiff nod of his own.
    “Hey, Hide told me there was something I probably needed ta see over here.“ Jazz was about to saunter up to the crime scene when the device in Ratchet’s hands caught his optic.  “Well, that’s odd and a half,” the saboteur mused thoughtfully as he approached the medic.
    “What is?” Ratchet growled.
    “I ain’t no expert, o’course, but that looks like Aquatronian engineering ta me. Saw some like it on the planet during the fake energon fiasco. What’s it doing here?”
    “Disrupting the spacebridge,” Ultra Magnus stated flatly.
    “Ya mean we’re cut off?” Jazz stiffened at that.
    “We have a variety of ships at our disposal but the spacebridge is shut to us for now. It might be months before it can be reestablished,” the larger mech confirmed.
    “Wait, didn’t Ratch have ta go off world ta get something important for –”  
    “Yes, I did! I still do!” the medic snarled furiously.
    “Could ya take the Pit Spawn?” Jazz asked.
    “There is not enough time!” Ratchet’s field was nearly raging now. “The spacebridge was the only way!”
    “Regardless,” Ultra Magnus stated calmly. “Unit E has a strict procedure regarding lack of communication. Once the allotted time has passed without word from Cybertron, especially given your absence, they will no doubt open the bridge from their end, reestablishing communications. They have not yet failed to perform the duty promptly.”
    “When was the last check-in?” the medic demanded darkly.
Ultra Magnus quickly connected with the main communications tower and his frown deepened into a scowl.
    “Well?” Ratchet demanded, optics narrowing.
    “This should have been reported,” growled the commander. “The current communications ping is several hours late.”
    A growl of wordless fury and fear came from the medic as the commander’s gaze grew distant, reacting over internal and encrypted comms to this newest development.
    “Hey, mech, steady there,” the silver bot soothed, moving closer to ease his own field against Ratchet’s and dropping his voice so as not to be heard by the milling guardsmechs. “I got some good news for ya at least.”
    That stopped the medic short and he glanced sharply at the saboteur before pulling both him and Ultra Magnus to the side.  “Well?” he demanded, first looking to the commander.
    “All recent communications with Earth have been perfectly routine,” the mech stated flatly. “As I informed you, they failed to make their last contact, but it was not reported to the proper authorities. The mech responsible for the lapse simply states that he did not wish to interrupt the High Command at this point. I have no further data.”
    Ratchet nodded curtly and turned his attention of the saboteur then.
    “Got the first and most dangerous layers of encryption off the data,” Jazz stated shortly. “Like I suspected, it’s one big experiment. Still gotta decrypt the individual files, but just the metadata is telling me a lot.”
    “Like what?” Ratchet pressed.
    “Whatever Shockwave did ta Breaker – ” Jazz felt a bit of smug satisfaction at seeing the annoyed flinch in Ultra Magnus at the nickname, while Ratchet seemed pleased enough that his field noticeably calmed – “the data he’s pulling from predates the war in some cases, and here’s the kicker.” The saboteur glanced around to make sure they were isolated enough. “It was scrap commissioned and blessed by the Senate.”
    Jazz was disappointed by the reaction he got. He had expected rage and high indignation from Ratchet, skepticism and possibly outright denial from the law-abiding and establishment-serving Ultra Magnus. However, the two mechs only glanced at each other meaningfully and seemed to deliberately draw in on themselves at that. Now isn’t that odd, he mused. It looks like they already knew.
    “Were you able to get at any of the raw data itself yet?” Ratchet asked briskly.
    “Just one minor file,” the saboteur admitted. “Binary music. Breaker and Smokey seemed ta know most of the songs when I showed ’em.”
    “Probably the playlist Daybreaker had on him when he was captured,” Ratchet said softly. “He kept it on him at all times after …” The mech’s voice drifted off and his field grew pensive.
    “I see.” Ultra Magnus gave a small, warm smile, the kind that sent a thrill of wrong down Jazz’s struts, but that he was slowly getting used to.
    “Yeah, about that,” Jazz began a bit nervously. “He was really getting inta it. The kid likes his music, but then he just froze up, like he had some painful glitch.”
    “That does sound concerning,” Ratchet replied with a frown, “but First-Aid would have contacted me if anything serious was the matter.” He paused and tilted his helm thoughtfully to the side. “What song was playing?”
    The Special Ops mech obligingly started the two-beat song on his speakers, but cut it off when Ratchet stiffened and barked out, “Stop!”
    Jazz glanced in confusion between the medic and the commander, his shock only growing when the larger truck-former let out a nearly inaudible keen of grief. Both of their fields were pulled close to their frames and flickered with some deep remembered emotion. Ultra Magnus was staring off into the distance with a look of soft pain on his faceplates and Ratchet was glaring at the saboteur fiercely.
     “There is nothing wrong with Daybreaker, well nothing new,” the medic stated gruffly. “It is just – Primus, Jazz – you of all mechs should know how music affects those who hear it sometimes.”
    “So what’s so important ’bout this song ta our Breaker?” the smaller mech pressed.
    Ratchet looked like he was struggling for an answer, but Ultra Magnus cut in.
    “It was a song of particular importance both to Daybreaker and his Guardian,” he began softly. “By the time I arrived they had a tradition of listening to it together whenever his schedule allowed them privacy. I do not know when it started.  It was,” the great mech hesitated a moment, gathering his thoughts before continuing, “a promise, a pledge that they would return, would always find one another. I believe it was titled ‘Roll On.’”
    Jazz nodded, feeling relief surge through his systems. That kind of reaction he understood. Ratchet was right; he knew music.
    “I know when it started.”  The medic gave a wry snort. “It was directly after the Unicron incident, when Optimus had been in the clutches of …” He drifted to a stop and his gaze unfocused for a moment, but his field suddenly tightened and intensified.
    The saboteur glanced over at Ultra Magnus, who had on a familiar scowl and looked as if he wanted to reprimand Ratchet for getting too close to classified details, but the sound of transformation and the roar of an engine cut off any such intention and Jazz snapped his helm around in surprise and confusion after the retreating form of the medic.
    “Where does he think he’s going?” Jazz asked of Ultra Magnus as they watched the red flashing lights depart.
    “I would assume to procure some alternate treatment for Daybreaker,” the commander replied with a frown.
    “Who’s going ta spearhead the investigation?” the saboteur demanded, deciding a change in topic was in order. He jerked his helm over towards where the Elite Guardsmechs were beginning to circle for any new evidence.
    “I have contacted Prowl. His experience will be invaluable.”
    “So who did it?” Jazz pressed.
    Ultra Magnus shot him a perplexed look. “That is what the investigation will attempt to discover.”
    The Special Operations mech gave a low laugh and crossed his arms skeptically.  “Yeah, so who did it?”
    The commander pursed his lip-plates in annoyance but relented after a moment.  “There is a small group of Decepticons led by Dropshot,” he admitted grudgingly. “While they have been responsible for the majority of the terrorist attacks thus far, and this does match their style, we have yet to uncover any evidence connecting them to this crime.”
    “Dropshot?” Jazz pressed. “He was fairly well known during the war.”
    The familiar purr of an approaching engine stopped the discussion and Jazz let the commander corner Prowl first as the saboteur began his own investigation. Dropshot was a dangerous Decepticon, to not two ways about it, but this kind of hit and run terrorism was odd to say the least for a mech who preferred to simply wade in and destroy the enemy, often until his fellow soldiers had to physically pull him away. No, someone was calling the shots behind Dropshot, and the only real question was why Ultra Magnus hadn’t seen it yet. Soon Prowl was directing the officers and Jazz allowed himself to slip away. There was precious little he could do to help here and anything he didn’t already have he could get from the former enforcer later. He set the investigation on the back burner of his processor and headed for the city.
    After a quick stop in the outer ring, where the energon was every bit as good as he’d expected, he snagged his assistants and headed out to the next secluded site. There was work to be done.