Chapter Text
“Did you get any stasis last night?” Glitch almost jumped out of her shell at the sound of her commander’s voice, having been in a deep data-trance, as she privately termed one of her research modes. She would have also jumped to her stabilising servos and saluted, but Optimus Prime already had a servo on her shoulder, reminding her not to stand on ceremony. He knew she was still a bit skittish around the senior members of Team Detroit, even decacycles after arriving on Earth.
“It’s morning?” She had really lost track of time.
“I’ll take that as a “no.”” Optimus sat down beside her, a bit exasperated by his youngest ‘bot’s bad habits, but not – as far as she could tell – angry. She liked him a lot. Unlike some Primes she could name – but wouldn’t – he managed to be kind and patient without sacrificing his authority, tolerating her… differences… and even suggesting some new coping mechanisms but not letting either of them entirely forget that he was an officer and she under his command. He praised her when she did well, and gently but firmly corrected her when she made mistakes – usually. The “great machine” culture into which they had both been protoformed didn’t make that easy for either party, but they were both improving. It probably helped that he wasn’t really all that much older than her, and had made some spectacular mistakes of his own under severe stress. “What were you researching?”
“Initially, I was acquainting myself with some of your case files. I wasn’t expecting my first solo patrol to involve a sparkling riding a mythical animal and creating some pretty bizarre explosions.” For logistical reasons, Glitch had taken her predecessor Prowl’s slot on the patrol rota, but for the first few decacycles one of the other members of the team – Optimus, Ratchet, Bumblebee or, if he could spare the time, Jazz – had accompanied her to make sure she knew what she was doing and where she was going. The previous solar-cycle, however, she had gone alone for the first time, and found herself almost in over her head.
“Yes, Professor Princess can be quite surprising. You handled her well, though.”
Glitch flapped a dismissive servo even as she smiled back to acknowledge the compliment. “I worked on enough sparklings’ wards on Cybertron. One gets the hang of it.” She grimaced as certain memories resurfaced. “Eventually. Anyway, that led me to this… Society of Ultimate Villainy.” She gave Optimus a seriously? look, to which he responded with a what can you do? shrug. “The Angry Archer turned out to be something of an historical processor-ache. His MO and aesthetic clearly reference the legendary figure Robin Hood, who’s said to have lived around the beginning of the thirteenth century, but his speech patterns are probably a parody of the works of the sixteenth-century playwright William Shakespeare. A bad parody. There are also suggestions of eighteenth-century highwaymen and early-twentieth-century aristocrats somewhere in there. It’s a mess.” She sighed. “One would think humans would know their own history better. There’s so little of it, compared to ours. It’s dense, though. Say what you like about them; they make their lives matter.”
Glitch was fascinated by humans – not just by their history, but by their cultures, their architecture, their religions, even their biology. They achieved more in under a hundred stellar-cycles than a Cybertronian typically did in a thousand, despite being so fragile. They were brilliantly creative, yet suicidally destructive; brutal and compassionate in equal measure. Not so long previously, the same humans who rightly campaigned against social injustice and for a cleaner planet might defend the killing of sparked protoforms as a matter of “women’s rights” or, worse, “healthcare”. Glitch was glad that practice had been outlawed. Even Cybertron at its worst hadn’t stooped that low (yet); if it had, she might not have survived.
“They certainly do,” Optimus agreed. “And from there, you just kept finding new topics to research?” She nodded. “I know the feeling. I did the same a few times, back in the Academy.” He was still a little reluctant to admit to that part of his life, though he knew she’d read his file before joining his team. “All the same, why don’t you get your head down for a few megacycles?”
“Because I have training all morning and a patrol this afternoon.” She regretted that as soon as she said it. Taking others’ words at face value was her immediate reaction, but she’d known what he meant. That game was all right to play against, say, Sentinel, but unfair on Optimus.
Thankfully, he only laughed ruefully (was that the word?) “I walked right into that one, didn’t I? OK, I’ll make it an order. Go and get some stasis. At least three megacycles, unless there’s an emergency. I’ll sort out your training and patrol.” Well, now she couldn’t refuse. And he had a point. She was swaying on her stabilising servos as she made her way towards her bedroom, and even walked into a doorframe as she left the sitting room. Stars, she was tired.
About two megacycles later, she was roused by Bumblebee knocking on her door. (From their cadet days, he knew better than to invade her personal space, although when she’d first moved to the Plant he’d been a bit too eager to help her settle in. It was kindly meant, but she’d been on the verge of losing her temper when Jazz told him to cool it, brother.) “Sorry to wake you, but there’s a call from Cybertron and Prime wants us all in the comms centre as soon as possible.” Glitch had, as the laid-back cyber-ninja would say, a vibe that told her who the caller was. Sure enough, when she and her old friend returned to the monitors they were confronted with the face – and chin – of their former drill sergeant, Sentinel, now acting Magnus.
“Ah, there are the stragglers.” Power hadn’t changed Sentinel – not for the better, anyhow. Jazz, also calling from Cybertron – he went back and forth between Detroit and the cyber-ninjas’ dojo where he was working on refounding the ancient corps – merely smiled and waved, knowing better than to challenge “SP” unnecessarily. “Now we can get started. We’ve just received intelligence that there are more Decepticons on Earth – out of range of your scanners, but ours can give an approximate location.” A partial map of Earth appeared in a box on the screen, a red dot on a smallish island marking the said location. Glitch recognised it instantly; she’d spent most of the night reading about that island. Her optics flickered as she retrieved the relevant data, unable to stop herself sharing it with the others. “London. Capital city of England, of Great Britain, which also includes Scotland and Wales, and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Population around twelve million. There has been a settlement on the site for about two thousand stellar-cycles, although it was abandoned for-,”
“Yes, yes, all very interesting,” Sentinel interrupted, “but what interests me is that it seems to be home to these two.” Two images replaced the map; Glitch identified the one on the left before Sentinel named her. “Strika, known as the General of-,”
“Destruction.” Glitch’s motor-voicebox ran away with her again, and she decided to enjoy the ride. “Megatron’s best tactician and a formidable fighter with a long list of victories to her name. Most recently, led Team Chaar in a battle against Team Athenia, resulting in the capture of space-bridge 687-030.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” Jazz put in, apparently unaware that his Magnus was not best pleased with being sidelined in his own briefing. “We were on our way to help Athenia, but the party was already over by the time we got there, and the ‘Cons turned tailpipe just as we arrived. I don’t think that was because of us – retreat isn’t Strika’s scene. How’d you know all this?”
“I went through boot camp with one of Team Athenia – Ironhide,” Glitch added for Bumblebee’s benefit. “I have a personal interest in the matter. And Rodimus Prime, their leader, was in the infirmary where I was working at the time for decacycles after Oil Slick dosed him with Cosmic Rust.”
“Oil Slick,” Ratchet muttered as Optimus warned Sentinel and Jazz not to ask exactly where Glitch found her information. If they got an answer, they probably wouldn’t like it. “I shouldn’t have saved his sorry skidplate all those stellar-cycles ago.”
“If you hadn’t found the antidote, Rodimus may well not have survived,” Glitch reminded him. “You did what was right at the time, and Oil Slick’s choices since then are all his own.” Ratchet didn’t bother to ask how she knew what he meant. He knew all too well that she’d memorised his file long before.
“The other one is Mindwipe.” Sentinel tried to get the briefing back on track, and largely succeeded. “We don’t know much about him, unless the walking datapad has access to more sources than us.” Glitch didn’t, not on that score. “He’s said to be a hypnotist and claims to be able to talk to dead Decepticons.” If that were true, Glitch would love to know how it worked, and whether dead Autobots could also be contacted. But she managed to stay quiet – that time.
“What do you need from us?,” Optimus asked.
“You and your team know that – planet better than any other ‘bots. I need you to send a small unit to scout the area and locate the Decepticons more precisely. We can’t get an accurate fix under the current weather conditions.”
“The British climate appears to be a standing joke,” Glitch noted. “As does British people’s habit of talking about the weather. I suppose it’s a safe subject.” She held back a budding monologue forming around the line, “Stick to two subjects: the weather and everybody’s health,” from the musical My Fair Lady. It would have meant explaining everything from the concept of a musical onwards.
“We can spare two people,” Optimus told Sentinel. “Glitch and Bumblebee would be the best choices, I believe.” Ratchet raised his optic-brows, but said nothing; Glitch kept her face carefully neutral as Bumblebee threw an arm around her. For several reasons.
“Your rookie and Bumblebee? Are you sure?” Sentinel didn’t bother to hide his lack of faith in his former cadets. Assuming he remembered that they’d been his cadets.
“Bumblebee’s undertaken tougher assignments on his own, and he and Glitch go back a long way. Glitch knows more than anyone else here about both London and Strika, and it’s about time she started going on missions. She’s a good field-tech and a competent fighter, especially as she’s been training with all of us.” She certainly had. Optimus was her primary instructor in servo-to-servo combat, but Jazz had carved out time to teach her some basic cyber-ninja techniques. Bumblebee frequently challenged her to races, both straight sprints and timed obstacle courses, and while Ratchet mostly tutored her in the medical arts, he also made sure she could use her mods for self-defence and defence of others. “Besides, their vehicle modes will stand out the least in a foreign country. Every nation here seems to have different designs for their emergency vehicles, but cars and motorcycles are less variable.” How did he know that? Had he been planning for such an occasion?
Sentinel admitted defeat, and only Ratchet had a question. “How are they going to get there? There’s no space-bridge in this London, and they can hardly take one of those aero-plane things, ‘cept as cargo.”
“Already sorted,” Jazz assured him. “Glitch, you haven’t met Jetfire and Jetstorm yet, have you?”