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Blue optics adjusted, flickered, narrowed. Though the row of incriminating numbers had long been read, their gaze remained largely unmoving on the datapad screen as tacnet chewed hungrily through probability and percentage.
The Decepticon movement was gaining ever more traction, both as disillusioned volunteers joined their ranks, as well as when nearby cities that would not submit were crushed beneath the forces of bombs and soldiers up and down the streets. It was rapidly becoming a case of join and give yourself over to Decepticon authority utterly, or die for daring to oppose them. Neutrals were fleeing Cybertron in droves as it became apparent that the Third Cybertronian Civil War was not to be a brief affair.
Prowl sat in his office in what passed as the Autobot Command Base, reading the truth in recorded troop movements and supply lines. Though Optimus Prime, in all his never-ending hope and naiveté, insisted that the Decepticons could be reasoned with if only their High Command could be made to listen, Prowl knew it was now well beyond that point. Any kind of sympathy he might have once had for an oppressed underclass rising up against the brutalities of the Functionist Senate had long faded with every innocent spark extinguished for the crime of refusing to exchange a new set of oppressors for the ones that had been ousted. The Decepticons wanted nothing less than total control, with themselves at the top of the new command pyramid, and any who opposed them dead and stripped for parts.
It was clear to Prowl that the next target of the Decepticons was to be Polyhex and the surrounding lesser cities. Though as of yet still neutral in the conflict, the material assets and the population who might bolster Decepticon numbers had to be irresistibly appealing. The location - comparatively close to Kaon, their seat of power - and the well-established shipbuilding industry in neighboring Staniz made it obvious to Prowl that this was the logical next step in the Decepticons’ bid for domination. With the ability to build spacecraft of their own, undoubtedly outfitted with weaponry beyond any existing warships under Autobot control, the Decepticon movement could take to the stars. From there, they could make attacks on Autobot controlled cities on the other side of the planet without worrying about moving troops over land, or make a bid for one of the moons, or even set out for other Cybertronian colony planets. Nothing would be able to stand in the way of them reenacting the conquests of Cybertronian history, too, and any sentient species in neighboring star systems, mechanical and organic alike, simply lacked the firepower to turn them away without devastating losses. If- no, when the Decepticons took Staniz, their mobility would grow exponentially to the point that the Autobots as they were now would not be able to contain them.
Prowl had passed this knowledge along to the rest of Autobot Command, impressing the need for conclusive action before it was too late onto his fellow officers. Red Alert had agreed with him at once, though the Security Officer’s tendency toward over-preparation had made his support of lesser impact that it might have been otherwise. Though she had not said so outright, Prowl had the sense that Elita agreed with him on at least some level, and he had quietly noted her as a potential ally. Ironhide and Optimus had said nothing either for a long, long moment, exchanging significant glances, and then Optimus had exvented heavily, folding his servos one over the other just beneath his helm, elbows resting on the desk.
“I do not deny the likelihood of what you have told us,” he had said, in the familiar grave rumbling voice of the Prime making a delcaration to which he expected complete obedience. “The Decepticon War Machine with the kind of mobility you describe would be dire indeed for all free Cybertronians. But we cannot answer atrocity for atrocity. The kind of strike you propose against Decepticon controlled cities would not be limited to the combatants, but to civilian bystanders, as well as the necessary infrastructure to keep those civilians fueled and in good repair. If we were to enact such plans, we would become no better than that which the Decepticons claim we are.”
On some small, inane level, Prowl had been thankful his neutral expression was already considered severe and unapproachable. It had hidden the way his face had wanted to contort into a scowl deep enough to show Optimus what he thought of that rebuke. This was no longer a series of skirmishes or minor conflicts. This was war, against those with greater weaponry and far greater savagery than anything they could bring to combat them. At some point, questions of morality had to have lesser import than ending the war and preventing further loss of life.
But Prowl had long known that he tended toward the ruthless, seeking ends by whatever means necessary. It had made him a favorite of his superiors when he had served as an enforcer in Praxus, and just as equally had made him unpopular among his peers. He knew he had been considered a sycophant and suck-up who took any task without complaint, but at the time he had genuinely and whole-sparkedly believed that the enforcers, and therefore his commanders, had the best in mind for the Cybertronian people. Life had been comfortingly black and white like the paint he still wore- the government knew best, and the criminals he was sent after were selfish malcontents who ought to be removed for the betterment of society.
Ironically, it had been the Decepticons that had first brought to light how ignorant a worldview that had been. In the early days, when proof of sentient rights violations and self-serving financial crime was rampant against the members of the Senate the Decepticons were removing from power, Prowl had felt the first traces of doubt in the inherent righteousness of authority. In fact, once upon a time, he had thought about traveling to Kaon himself to offer his skills to a cause that he had thought just in a way he had once thoughtlessly assumed his enforcer’s job to be. Learning that not everyone felt the same satisfaction in their assigned function as he did had been optic-opening, and he had sought in some way to atone for the oppression he had not only been party to, but had helped enact.
But then a young data clerk, Orion Pax, had been present at the death of Sentinel Prime, and the Matrix of Leadership had chosen him and reforged him into Optimus Prime. Though every optic had been on this new Prime, searching for the same corruption that had plagued several of his predecessors, Optimus had remained unfailingly compassionate and moral, steadily churning through cruel laws to overturn and unethical practices to disband. Punishments like empurata were not only outlawed but began to be reversed, in as much as it was possible to successfully install new faceplates and servos onto a frame that had not been forged with them. The Institute began to be pulled apart piece by resisting piece, and the records of shadowplay its victims had suffered were revealed plainly to the public, in the hopes that no such horrors would slip by in secrecy again.
Prowl, like many Cybertronians, had believed that the return of a true Prime, a just Prime, would mean the end of the conflict between the Decepticons and the Autobots. Surely Decepticon Command would see that Optimus could be reasoned with, and that a peaceful resolution to their very justified grievances could be achieved.
But the Decepticons refused any of Otpimus’s offers to meet, and even went as far as attacking a Primal convoy on the way to the proposed peace talks. It had been readily apparent that the Decepticons were not going to accept any overtures of peace from Optimus’s Primacy, and would instead attempt to take advantage of said gestures as if they were weakness.
This was the moment that Prowl had decided to pledge himself to the Autobots. The Decepticons had gone too far, and were unlikely to stop their slide into further corruption unless they were forced into it. Though the Autobots did not often attract the heavily armed and armored warbuilds that made up the majority of the Decepticon forces, the Autobot aligned cites of Iacon, Protihex, Praxus, and the like were far more wealthy than the cities that had gone Decepticon. Prowl had hope that with powerful enough weapons in decisive enough attacks, the Decepticons could be stopped in their tracks, allowing for Cybertron to rebuild after the long vorn of political upheaval.
Optimus had yet to take any of Prowl’s more definitive plans into action, no matter the percentages of success and the comparatively low casualty rates he shared. What was the purpose of giving him a position as Tactical Commander if he wasn’t going to be listened to?
Prowl was growing steadily more frustrated as, more and more often, the predictions that he made came to pass, worsening the Autobot position time after time. All the while, the solutions he offered to these very problems were dismissed and ignored at best, and denigrated or chastised at worst. But Optimus was Prime, not him, and he was not willing to countermand the one he had chosen as moral leader. He had no choice but to trust that Optimus would pull them out of the darkening situation somehow, though no arrangement of known variables through tacnet offered anything feasible. Prowl had placed himself under Optimus’s command, and he had to accept the orders he had been given.
Though he could not cull the thread from background processing that he was willfully and with full knowledge making a terrible mistake.