Work Text:
"It is a new alloy of my own creation," Perceptor says in his smooth, emotionless voice as he works. "Gold and ununtrium. The highly conductive nature of the gold will facilitate the remainder of Agent Blurr's healing and augment his already-considerable speed, while the near-indestructible nature of the ununtrium will reinforce his armature to mitigate future applications of crushing force and other extreme damage."
Alpha Trion frowns. "Do you anticipate such a thing being a concern in the future?"
Neither Perceptor nor Flatline lift their eyes from their work, fitting together the shattered pieces of Blurr's frame and securing them with white-hot lines of alloy as his spark shivers in a containment unit nearby. "Ideally no," Flatline says, holding a reconstructed shoulder joint steady while Perceptor works on reattaching it, "but it never hurts to be prepared. If these repairs take—"
"If they take?"
"There is a fifty-nine point seven seven eight chance of failure." Perceptor finishes on the shoulder joint and moves on to join an already-repaired upper arm to it via a heavily-reinforced peg. "While Agent Blurr's brain core has retained a statistically-improbable amount of integrity, his protoform also sustained severe trauma and is in the process of being regrown using experimental methods. Only once we have seen the outcome of this experiment will we know if these techniques and components can be used to repair Ultra Magnus."
"I see."
Flatline's eyes crinkle in a smile above his mask, a sharp contrast to Perceptor's absolute lack of expression. "On the upside, though," as he runs his fingertips over already-cooled weld lines, testing their integrity as they glitter golden in the light of the operating room, "if everything goes as planned he's going to look very pretty when he's up and about again."
Blurr comes online screaming, spark in his mouth, legs in his mouth, the walls very literally closing in on him as he has always, in his least sensible moments, suspected that they might, and out there somewhere watching it is Longarm Prime, who is not Longarm, who is the Decepticon spy Shockwave, who is—
Not here. Not in this place, which is not the space bridge nexus, he is in a medical or scientific facility with white walls and ticking-clicking-pinging function-support machines and several people are looking down at him, most notably Perceptor of the Ministry of Science and least explicably Optimus Prime's small human friend Sari Sumdac, who appears to have developed—
The first thing he says, once he has fully woken and ceased to scream, is, "Were you always a mechanoid or did I severely misunderstand the functioning of the people of Earth? I doubt it was the latter I was on the planet for some time and spent a good deal of that time observing Earthian lifeforms but your frame suggests that my observations were in some way lacking given that you now possess some variety of primitive flight kibble."
"It's, uh, it's kinda complicated." Sari Sumdac turns to Perceptor and says, in tones that are distinctly inappropriate for use when addressing a highly-placed government official and respected academic, "See, I told you it'd work."
"The utility of your device is noted," Perceptor says flatly, "but will require further testing before I will allow you to use it on Ultra Magnus."
"Come on, you just saw how it—"
"C'mon, kiddo," and that's Ratchet, the medic assigned to Optimus Prime's team, whom Blurr would not have expected to see here, but then he wouldn't have expected to see Sari Sumdac either. Ratchet scoops Sari Sumdac up from the floor and begins to head for the door. "Why don't we let the brass handle things now."
Sari Sumdac waves to Blurr as Ratchet carries her away. "Bye, Blurr! I'm glad you're not dead!"
This leaves Blurr alone with Perceptor and Cliffjumper, and he's still not entirely sure why Cliffjumper would be here but definitely recalls Cliffjumper throwing him into a garbage disposal chute. Cliffjumper resets his vocalizer awkwardly as Perceptor is saying, "Agent Blurr. It is satisfying to see that you are functioning at acceptable parameters. Cliffjumper Prime will brief you on the events which you have missed while you were incapacitated."
Cliffjumper shifts uncomfortably. "Hey, uh. Agent. Glad you're awake. Kinda missed a lot. So—"
Blurr accepts the briefing with as much patience as he can muster, which is at least made easier when an employee of whatever facility he is in enters to bring him a cube of thick, heavily-fortified medical grade energon which fills his tank satisfyingly and causes all of his extremities to begin tingling. They are also glittering, he notes, and when Cliffjumper is done speaking he nods and says, "Thank you Cliffjumper Prime I appreciate the information am I able to stand yet and if so may I have a mirror?"
He can stand, and another facility employee brings him a mirror, and once it's in front of him he spends what is for him a very long time staring at himself, all his familiar blue and black now seamed with jagged, unfamiliar lines of gold. Perceptor explains to him what it is and why, what purpose it serves, and he does listen but he doesn't respond. The Autobot in the mirror is someone unfamiliar to him, someone glittering and alien.
"Thank you," he says again, "I do appreciate the explanation it is helpful to have a clear understanding of the alterations made to my frame especially as I now look considerably different than I did before. Cliffjumper Prime sir is it my understanding that you have now been promoted to Head of Intelligence in advance of the trial of Megatron and his Decepticon accomplices?"
Cliffjumper nods. "S'what I said, yeah."
"Noted thank you." Blurr stares at himself in the mirror for another very long moment. "In that case it is very convenient that you are here as I would hate to have to spend an excess amount of time tracking down the correct person to whom I can submit my resignation."
Perceptor also turns to look at him, optics actually widening slightly, probably not in shock given his lack of emotional subroutines but mostly likely in academic interest, which Blurr understands he has retained because it supports his work. "Explain, Agent Blurr."
"I quit."
Normally Swindle wouldn't be pushing it by coming into Autobot space this soon after escaping an arrest, but Vespa II is right on the edge of it, nearly in neutral territory and, even better, barely three deca-cycles' flight from New Kaon. There's a lot you can get away with on Vespa II as long as you stay out of view of the peacekeepers. Right now he's in a bar with his usual paintjob carefully camouflaged, meeting with one of his closer associates regarding the movement of certain large assets through a heavily-patrolled area of space, when his eye is caught by something….bright.
A glitter.
A gleam.
Gold.
He looks past his associate's shoulder, sharpens his optics to get a better look, and then abruptly has to cut his engines before they roar to life and attract excess attention.
Onslaught, more attuned than most to the sounds and rhythms of Swindle's engine, catches the cut-off sound immediately, and his visor retracts for a moment just so that he can give Swindle an unimpressed look. "See something interesting?"
Swindle grins at him, optics still following the gold-traced form of the mech who just entered the bar. "So sorry, Ons, you'll have to forgive me the distraction, but someone very interesting just walked into the room. No, don't turn too much, from what I understand this one's jumpy."
Onslaught shifts slightly, carefully, to look where Swindle's indicating. "Huh. And what's that supposed to be when it's at home?"
"Well, if I'm right, and you know me, Ons, I'm always right," calculating, estimating, scanning for elemental makeup, and he comes up with, "that's about a billion shanix on the hoof, as they say on some of the organic worlds I've visited."
"Oh, you're always right?" Onslaught's visor gleams. "So what makes this Autobot worth so much?"
Swindle tears his gaze away from the newest, shiniest prize of all his wildest recharge fluxes, "Why don't I answer your question with a couple of other questions, Ons? How much do you think Shockwave would pay for one of his own former agents? And how much do you think Pharma would pay for the tech to make his pet project invincible?"