Chapter Text
It’s Minimus's first night in Kaon as Ultra Magnus and, though he may have expected to see more of the darkness hidden behind the golden facade than he did as a upper caste Iaconian lawyer, he is still somewhat surprised to come across a corpse lying in a dumpster within his first hour on the streets.
It doesn't take a huge wealth of experience to see that the mech was shot through the chest. The spark chamber is breached and still smoking, the light of the spark bleeding through but likely to extinguish shortly. The mech was a seeker, and the shattered yellow acrylic of its cockpit lies in glittering shards around them, catching in the light from the illuminated bar signs on the street. Shot with a fusion cannon, Minimus deduces from the pattern of the wound and the particulates he can detect in the acrid smoke that curls wistfully through the air. Though he can admit that the fusion canon haphazardly shoved into one of the trash cans is also a fairly large clue. The corpse is young, possibly handsome if one can look beyond the grey plating, streaks of drying energon painting its face and the sizable hole blown through its chest.
It's not a particularly pretty sight, but Minimus has seen worse in his work as a lawyer. He knew when taking up the responsibility of the Magnus armour that he would be expected to come face to face with the darker side of Cybertron, that he would no longer be able to always hide behind sterile crime scenes and courtroom procedure. As of last month, Minimus Ambus is officially missing, and Ultra Magnus returned earlier in the day from an extended trip into deep space scouting for Quintesson activity. Nobody will connect the two events, they would have no reason to, but Minimus found himself somewhat reluctant to return immediately to Iacon upon his arrival on Cybertron. He thought to go somewhere unfamiliar first, and the reputation of Kaon as the centre of all Cybertronian crime made him pick it as an obvious starting place for his new career. He could hardly say that he expected to find something quite this grim quite so soon, though, and the sight shocks him into shameful stillness for several long minutes.
“Are you just going to keep staring at me?”
He startles. The sound of his armour abruptly clamping shut in surprise is jarringly loud in the narrow alleyway, and the corpse sighs loudly in response. It pushes itself slowly up the wall, supporting its weight with both palms, until it’s standing unsteadily. Thick globules of energon drip sickeningly from a deep tear in its wing, and the flickering blue light of its spark shining from the breached chamber reflects from the shards of canopy clinging to its frame. It looks like something straight out of a horror movie.
“You should be dead.” He tells it, but it doesn’t appear to want to listen to sense and makes a disgusted face as it brushes itself down and finds its servos now covered with drying energon. It groans as it looks down and sees the gaping hole that was previously its chest. It sounds more annoyed than pained, an assessment that is backed up by the way it rubs at the scuffs on its thighs with its thumb, as if trying to gauge if they'll wipe off. He thinks back to half remembered stories of sinister sparkeaters, but he is given to believe that they are less concerned with the state of their finish than this mech seems. He makes a half-step towards it, and it glares at him with a frankly unwarranted level of vitriol.
“Where’s my null ray?” It asks. Its voice is unpleasant, to put it mildly. Both a rasp and a screech, with an undercurrent of pained static. As much as Minimus feels out of his depth here, this question, at least, puts him back onto more familiar ground.
“Null rays are prohibited weaponry under section 72 clause B sub clause A2 of the Tyrest Accord, if you are in possession of one then I would be required to confiscate it and issue you with a charge of possession of an illegal firearm - though you would be granted the right to a fair trial, obviously, and-”
The mech cuts him off by raising its arm, an incredulous look on its face.
“I've got a hole through my chest and you're lecturing me about illegal firearms?” It sharply gestures to the remains of its spark chamber.
“I… Apologise.” He will definitely be circling back around to the topic later, but he can concede that allowing a potential criminal to grey out while he informs them of the finer points of law is not the best start to his career as Ultra Magnus. “Do you need me to contact a medic?”
“No.” It replies, and there is a brief stretch of silence where they stare at one another.
“I have not seen any illegal weaponry, aside from the fusion cannon that I assume was used to-” He pauses here, trying to think of how to phrase this delicately.
“Burst my chest open like an energon jelly?” The mech sneers at him. It makes a rather distressingly evocative hand movement to go along with the sentence.
“That is certainly one way to phrase it, yes. As I did state before, you should be dead.” He says, but the mech rudely ignores him again. It crows in victory before stalking over to liberate the fusion cannon from its home among the refuse.
“Well, I would say it was nice to meet you, but-” It lifts the gun in a single smooth, practiced movement and levels the barrel at the face of the Magnus armour, “that would be a lie.”
There’s a click when it pulls the trigger, then several tense moments where neither of them say a word.
“I- I think it’s out of p-” Minimus begins, but he is quickly cut off.
“ I can see that it is out of power, thank you! ” It screams at him, throwing the gun to the ground. It bares its dentae at him in a snarl, expression heightened by the streaks of drying energon across its face and the grey of its plating. Its fists are clenched, and it is positively vibrating with rage.
Minimus, however, has more pressing concerns.
“Fusion canons are also prohibited weaponry. Working or not, I will be confiscating this.” He says, stooping to pick it up from the floor. It is a little disorientating, he is not yet used to how tall he is in the Magnus armour. He subspaces the gun, and levels his best stern glare at the strange mech. It is a glare he perfected on uncooperative clients in the courtroom, and his new face and added bulk only make it more effective. The mech actually takes half a step backwards before rallying with a snarl.
“You can't just steal that. It's my emotional support gun. I've got rights, and you're not even an enforcer.” It tells him.
“I am Ultra Magnus, duly appointed enforcer of the Tyrest Accord.” He intones, proudly. This is the first time he has been able to introduce himself as such. The gravity of the moment, however, is lost on the mech in front of him.
“Yeah, right, and I'm Alpha Trion.” It snorts at its own joke before squinting suspiciously and leaning forward to examine Minimus closer. Minimus keeps his facial expression as blank as possible.
“You're not joking?” It asks
“I never joke.”
“Well. Shit.” There's a grinding sound, as if someone tried to activate a damaged t-cog, and the mech winces. He can see it try to calculate the odds of being able to squeeze past Ultra Magnus to escape the alleyway. They are sufficiently slim to make it slump in defeat.
“You bringing me in then?” It asks.
“I would certainly like to talk to you about what actually happened here, and about your attempt to shoot me, but-” He pauses here, and his mouth twists into a frown. “I can see your spark.”
“Pervert.” It replies, one servo coming up to cover its shattered chest.
“I really must insist on calling a medic or escorting you to a hospital. You should- I mean- You look…”
“I look dead? Yeah, I know.” It sighs loudly. “Look, I'm fine. Honestly. This is just something that happens.”
“Your spark chamber being breached is something that just happens?”
“Yes? Not all of us can live up in the crystal spires, the enforcers couldn't care less about the mechs living down here. You know how many seekers have gone missing just in the last month in-” It makes a disgusted noise, throws its hands in the air in frustration. “Look, either arrest me or just let me go.”
Minimus feels something twisting his spark, a dark and ugly emotion that causes him to clench his fists and take a single heavy step forward. The mech's composure breaks for a split second, and a heavy wave of terror rolls out from its- his- from his EM field.
“Seekers have been going missing? Why hasn't there been any news about this?” He may have been away from Cybertron, but he has been making sure to keep up to date on all of the major, and some of the more minor, journalism networks.
“Because nobody cares about cold con seekers disappearing off the street. Enforcers don't even bother opening a case most of the time. Check the stats for Kaon on seekers marked ‘missing no further action’ or ‘self-deactivated’.” He spits the words like poison, his face twisted with bitterness. Minimus has access to the official database for the enforcers, and he takes a few seconds to do exactly what the mech told him to. It paints a sobering picture. Eighteen seekers in the past month. Seven found dead in alleyways just like this, eleven just vanished with absolutely no follow-up. The previous months were much the same, and almost the entirety of the detective work done on the cases were a few notes on the missing mech files reading ‘probably just went to Vos’ .
It causes the old familiar swell of righteous indignation to rise within Minimus, This wasn't right, enforcers should not be ignoring serious cases just because of functionalist frame bias, the law was fair and impartial. The law should always be fair and impartial. He sent a short range ping with his comm frequency.
“Send all the information you have to that frequency and I will look into this. It is not right that this should have been overlooked.”
“You’re… Serious, aren't you? You actually are planning on looking into this.” The mech seems incredulous.
“It is not right that such an injustice has been ignored.”
“Huh. Well.” He blinks a few times before rallying himself. “Finally, I've been saying this for months, it's about time somebody listened to me.”
“I am more than willing to listen, in fact I require you to make a statement about your attack.” He glances down again at the hole in the mech's chest. The glow of the sparklight is actually brighter than it was before, somehow, and the spilled energon glitters with it. “You are remarkably eloquent for a mech with a hole through their chest.”
“It sure is amazing what a mech can live through, right?” He says, raising his servo to his chest again to try and cover the hole. He affects an air of nonchalance and moves as if to squeeze past Minimus. “Anyway, I just remembered that I really have to be going, so-”
Minimus puts a servo on the mech's shoulder to halt him as he tries to squeeze past, and he immediately swipes at Minimus's arm with his claws. He has never been injured in the armour before, and it hurts a lot more than he expected. The mech ducks when Minimus instinctively retracts his arm, and takes the opportunity to make a break for the mouth of the alleyway. He is surprisingly quick for a mortally wounded mech, and the alleyways here are much too narrow for the bulky alt-mode of the Magnus armour. The mech weaves through the narrow, mazelike streets with an ease born of years running from law enforcers. Minimus has not had much practice chasing guilty mechs down before, it was not a skill particularly called for from Iaconian lawyers, so it takes him less than fifteen minutes to completely lose the trail of the mech. It is unsurprising but infuriating, and the mechs around him give his stern frown and frustrated field a wide berth.
It's not even an hour later that he receives a message from an encrypted frequency.
‘Time to put your money where your mouth is - S’
Inside is a compressed data file, a wealth of information on every missing or dead seeker in Kaon for the last 6 months. Whoever put the file together has an eye for detail and some undoubtedly illegal methods of information gathering. All of the, highly restricted, illegal for civilians to possess, enforcer files are there, most of them tagged ‘FUCKING USELESS’. The files are organised into folders and sub folders, each tagged with name, location and date. The mech has obviously put a lot of time and effort into building this.
It is almost, almost, enough to make Minimus smile.