#a normal update time? what's that?

[kathaynesart]

Oh... so that's how it got up there.

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First and foremost, want to give a big shoutout to @thegunnsara now that I have finally finished their 3rd place prize with the inclusion of their amazing OC, Ibris. I still love their COVER from the Holiday Special Competition dearly! I'll be sure to slip Ibris into a few more scenes in the future. Sorry it took so long to finally get to him! I took some liberty with what his reaction would be to such a scene... hope I did him justice!

Hope you're all ready for some tension in the next update!

[sightseertrespasser]

Sunny Side Screw-Up part 2

Me: Hey, what if Bluestreak was a great sniper because Tacnet enabled him to view the world in slow motion, kinda like bullet time?

Later me: Wait, what if he experienced Bullet Time All the Time and THAT’s why he’s like that?

The mecha AU was spawned by @keferon, go check ‘em out!

———————————————————————

For hours, Prowls processor continued to spiral well after Jazz disconnected the drift bond. The steady crackle from Bluestreaks currently inactive comm lines did little to settle him.

Individually, Prowl curled each of his digits, then released. The fingers Ratchet replaced were still numb. But the phantom pains stayed sharp.

“Hey.” A hoarse whisper at his hip got Prowl to online his optic.

“You should be resting, Jazz.” The Praxian whispered back. If Ratchet saw them both up the doctor would likely make good on some of his threats. Or Deadlock would.

“I’m gonna.” The human leaned against his side, shoulders wrapped in a spare blanket.

“You’re lying.” Prowl stated as flatly as if he’d pointed out Jazz was bipedal.

“Hmm, just getting it out of my system so you know I’m gonna be serious next.” When the pilot moved to climb up Prowl’s thigh, he gave him a slight boost with one servo. Weak as Prowl was, Jazz still weighed basically nothing.

“Ratchet said you already pushed past your limits for the day. I do not think it’d be wise to reconnect right now.” Prowl watched Jazz for every minute tremble, delicately adjusting the plane of his servo to support him as evenly as possible.

“We pushed it today. And s’alright. Wasn’t going for that.” Jazz laid back in Prowls palm, getting comfortable.

Given the pattern of their past interactions, Prowl preemptively readjusted to lay down on as well, before Jazz could begin guilting/bargaining/tricking him into resting properly.

Jazz, knowingly, smiled.

“I know you’re scared for him. But Bluestreak is gonna be fine Prowler. He’s got you, and you’ve got us.”

“I had myself and you and I still got vivisected.” It was a low blow and still a raw wound for the both of them. His missing platting stung.

Jazz closed his eyes. Prowl could still hear the echos of what thoughts that would be racing through his head.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. This is a nightmare scenario and I can’t believe you aren’t completely loosing your shit right now.” A sour note came through his field. “I just don’t want you to fry yourself with worrying.”

Prowl sighed, “I have come to terms with our current limitations. The plan currently underway is definitely the best chance we can possibly give him.”

“I do not have enough information to predict how the Twins will conduct themselves..” Prowl briefly paused to send a scheduled Check In ping to Bluestreak. Continuing once he received the Return ping.

“But I know my brother, and that’s what has me worried.” Despite himself, Prowl felt his face almost twitch a smile when Jazz’s EM field chimed against his palm. He could feel the human silently laugh.

“Little brothers are something else, but have a little faith in him okay? Bluestreak just needs to play it cool until we can debrief the Twins. He doesn’t even have to actually lie. All he needs to do is walk and shoot, and I’ve seen him shoot.”

Jazz rolled onto his side to face Prowl, who still frowned but was coming around.

“Look, it took me nearly two days to figure out I was literally surrounded by aliens who weren’t even trying to hide it.”

“You had a concussion.” Prowl grumbled.

“And I’m a very clever fucker.” Jazz raised a pointed finger.

The human snuggled back into his blanket, “Never in a million years is anyone just gonna guess he’s an alien shaped like a mecha.”

Prowl hummed in assent, choosing to let his systems wind down, save for his Comms.

Yawning, Jazz finished his thought, “The only way they’d find out he’s from space is if Bluestreak straight up told them.”

———————

“And that star cluster is about where Cybertron is!”

The fading red-gold of the sunset had given way to dusty dark blue twilight. This far from any civilization, the stars did not shy from taking the stage early, casting the desert in a cool toned glow.

Sideswipe looked where he was pointing and nodded along. Sunstreaker likewise examined the sky for a moment before continuing their trek.

“You guys are good listeners.” The Praxian smiled.

Bluestreak shifted how he was holding his rifle for the nth time that afternoon. “I wish I could just subspace this but Jazz said that would be too openly weird and you guys might try tearing my hip apart.”

Unsurprisingly, Sunstreaker showed no sudden comprehension of Bluestreak’s native language. The yellow mecha was too preoccupied with digging out a quint fang from his plating. Similarly unaware, Sideswipe had found a small boulder and played an improvised game of how long he could kick it along their path.

Bluestreak checked his Tacnet Dilation: 25%.

“Did you know I taught Prowl and Smokescreen how to use Tacnet to shoot better? Cause I did. They taught me pretty much everything else though about how to function. They’re my brothers by the way, which is kinda funny to think about since you guys are brothers too but ‘organic brothers’ are kinda different from ‘Cybertronian brothers’. We’re all Cold Constructs designed by the same people but that doesn’t actually have anything to do with being brothers.” With family on his processor, the Praxian flicked a ‘Hey guys!’ out of habit without thinking. He didn’t notice the twins simultaneously pause for a second beside him.

“The word translates directly into English but I think the origins are totally different. A literal translation of “Brothers” in Cybertronian would be something like “Those who are most familiar to me.”

He counted the decimal points of each passing click to pace himself. Making sure he was talking at a socially acceptable level. After 4 clicks, his will broke down and the gap of silence was filled.

“Hey want to hear how we met?” Bluestreak looked up at the hulking mechas with wide optics, questioning tone riding through the air.

The twins looked at each other briefly before shrugging.

Aside from his brothers, mechs that knew his particular reputation would take that pause in his chatting as an escape route from the conversation.

Bluestreak understood. It’s why he tried to leave gaps in. He scuffed his peds in the dirt while waiting for a response.

A curled servo came into his peripheral vision. With a little difficulty, Sunstreaker gave him a crude thumbs up, his mecha not really built for fine motor controls.

“Really?” Bluestreak beamed, checking in with Sideswipe as well who was also nodding in the positive.

The Praxian began his tale, “So it happened a little under two million years ago.”

——————

The crowd around the train station moved in a tightly packed slow motion torrent.

“-taken at specified slots-“

“-one hundred and fifty shanix is-“

“-consult the map if she really-“

Words, sentences, broken paragraphs and contradictory orders buzzed across his processor. His internal dictionary pulling up definitions and explanations almost too fast to keep up with.

Tacnet Dilation: Increase to 75%?

Huh?

[Yes]?

Oh!

That’s so much better.

If he picked out one voice at a time, he could decipher each glyph as they came and string it together. Mildly entranced by how they interlocked and changed the information they carried as it dripped into his echoing memory banks.

For example:

“Get out of the way you useless cop!”

An upward swing from behind struck him, jamming his doorwings at the apex of their mobility.

The mech would have fallen forward if the density of the crowd allowed it. They stumbled, struggling to stay upright as the mass of mechs around him pushed inexorably toward the trains.

New information came through. Bright boxes burst across his vision and new words wrote themselves on his processor. This new sensory input was competing with every other piece of stimulus for his immediate attention.

He didn’t like it.

What is it?

[Pain]

Oh, is this a setting that can be changed?

[Pain - Repair - Reset- Doorwing (1)]

[Pain - Repair - Reset - Doorwing (2)]

How? How do I fix them?

[Pain - Repair - Reset]

I don’t understand?

[Pain - Repair - Reset]

The logic branch repeated incessantly, almost as bad as the distraction of the pain itself.

The praxian began asking every mech who passed nearby how to reset his doorwings. Sometimes, they’d kindly tell him they couldn’t help. Other times they’d push him off harshly, fields flashing with hostility. One even told him to go jump on the tracks. Before he could actually consider how that’d help, an orange mech scolded the harsh one and pulled the praxian to where they could speak into his audial.

They told him they couldn’t fix his problem, but if he found other mechs with doorwings like his, they would help him.

“How do I find them?”

The orange mech adjusted a pair of spectacles, smiling, “Just listen to your wings young one, you’ll get there.”

It was then he realized something else was coming through the sensor net of his doorwings. A muffled, irregular pulsing, coming from one of the train cars.

He forgot to thank the skinny mech and pushed through the crowd, past the overwhelmed conductor.

Reduced Sensory Input, Tacnet Dilation: Decrease to 25%?

[Yes]

The inside of the train car was packed, no one would be leaving without numerous scraps and dents by the end of their journey. He tried not to flinch every time a passenger bumped into his back with very little success. Spurred on by pain and desperation, the Praxian pushed rudely past the other passengers who each added new and exciting expletives to his steadily growing lexicon.

He followed the signals like a lifeline to the back of the train.

Two Praxian enforcers sat side by side, doorwings flicking intermittently. Both of them leaned forward with their elbows on their knees, either from the exhaustion clearly written across their faces or simply because the bench they sat on wasn’t made to accommodate the extra limbs on their backs.

One was blue with a yellow chevron, lazily leaking smoke to pool against the ceiling. Seemingly absorbed in people watching.

{ ···· · -·--     ·--· --··--     ··· · ·     - ···· ·     --- -· ·     ·-- ·· - ····     - ···· ·     ···- ·· ··· --- ·-· ··--·· }

The other was monochrome save for a bright red chevron, scanning the crowd with a critical optic, locking onto his approach.

{ ··     ·-· · --· ·-· · -     - · ·-·· ·-·· ·· -· --·     -·-- --- ··-     ·- -· -·-- - ···· ·· -· --· }

{ ·· ’ --     ···· · ·-·· ·--· ·· -· --· }

{ ··- -· -·- -· --- ·-- -·     · -· ··-· --- ·-· -·-· · ·-·     ·- ·--· ·--· ·-· --- ·- ---- ·· -· --· }

The praxians straightened, the blue one offering a casual smile and a welcoming field.

“Hey there! Can we help you?”

He almost crashed to the floor, stumbling to stand before them.

“Yes! Yes! Hello! I need help! I’ve been trying to find someone to help with my doorwings for what feels like forever but everyone I’ve talked to has told me to go away or go frag myself or go ask someone else and then somebody told me to come in here or really they actually told me to follow my doorwings which was actually kinda hard because they hurt a lot and all the warnings I’m getting are making it kinda hard to focus on anything and nobody has let me finish talking the entire time!”

The optics of the black and white praxian got steadily wider as he spoke, taking in the information with an otherwise motionless posture.

The blue one took it in stride, waving him to get closer, “Alright, c’mere and turn around real quick.”

Gratefully, he followed the clear instructions and did just that.

The blue one hummed, “Oh that’s an easy fix.”

His doorwings twinged in their slots at the feeling of the mechs servos on his back. “Sorry, this’ll pinch a little.” And with two practiced twists, the mech braced one servo against his back and popped the hinges back in place.

He hissed at the initial sting but relief immediately flooded his sensor net.

“Is the Doorwing injury related to why you are covered in ash?” The monochrome mech spoke for the first time.

“Hmm? Oh no, someone just ran into me from behind. He was yelling something about useless cops?” He could see the irises of the praxians optics cycling as he spoke. The mechs mouth thinned to a line as his brow furrowed.

The other didn’t seem to notice, laughing heartily, “Oh trust me that’s not the last time you’ll hear that. Next time call your squad in to book the guy for assault on an officer. You new here?”

He smiled, doorwings fluttering involuntarily at being asked a non clinical question for the first time ever. “Yes! I’m very new! Everything is so new! Who are you two?”

Something clicked for the other mech. Doorwings drooping, “Um, Smokescreen?”

The blue mech, Smokescreen, ignored him. Instead, he wrapped an arm around the mechs shoulders and pulled him in, “Well this here is my little brother Prowl, I promise he’s slightly less of a stick in the gears than he first appears. We’d show you around our precinct, but it kinda burnt down this morning.”

“Smokescreen.” Prowl hissed.

“So what’s your designation and your placement new guy?” Smokescreen beamed at him with a sooty grin.

“My designation is P-E 2102. Aaaand the building I was being tested in caught fire, so I have no idea!” He rocked on his peds.

Smokescreen gave him a slightly curious once over.

Meanwhile, Prowl crossed his arms and looked unimpressed with his older brother.

Prowl turned back to him, “A follow up question, if you are able to answer, P-E 2102. When were you constructed?”

He checked his memory banks, “Two cycles ago!”

Smokescreen choked, coughing up a small cloud of exhaust. Prowl automatically thumped a servo against his back to help.

“Right.” The elder Praxian recovered, coughing into his fist and straightening up again. “So you’re two cycles old huh? That explains.. some things.”

Unconsciously, P-E 2102 pulled his doorwings in, not yet knowing what to call the awkward energy that spilled into the train car. The only mech seemingly unaffected was Prowl.

“Typically, once you make it through Quality Control a mech is assigned to act as your mentor to answer questions and bring you up to speed on how to function in society.” Prowl glanced at his brother. “Their designation should be tagged with your factory designation. We’ll assist in contacting them for your retrieval.”

Internally, P-E 2102 pulled his factory designation back up, and did indeed find what Prowl was talking about.

“Oh okay, it looks like I’m assigned to someone named Barricade?” He smiled again, happy to have a clear path forward after so much uncertainty. The two older Praxians immediately, silently looked at each other.

Optics wide, Smokescreen gave him a massive showman style grin, announcing loud enough for the whole train to hear, “Nooope!”

“Um, what?” He new forge looked confused, optics flitting between the two of them.

The eldest praxian nudged Prowl to scoot over. “Nope!” He clapped his servos on his knees for emphasis. “That is not happening. You’re actually going to be my ward now. Last minute update. You know how office work gets.”

“This is a terrible idea.” Prowl grumbled but still moved to make room. “You aren’t qualified to mentor more than one ward. You wouldn’t even be my mentor if the Council hadn’t lowered the age requirement.”

Smokescreen patted the new space between them, “Go ahead and take a seat newbie. And Prowl? C’mon. You haven’t needed me for literal vorns.”

He squeezed into the space between them. It took a bit to figure out how to overlap their doorwings, but once they folded together, the new forge felt more secure than he’d ever been in his life.

Which wasn’t very long but still.

“First things first, you need a proper des.” Smokescreen poked him in the chassis. Briefly frowning at the grime left on his digit. “And a proper paint job.”

“Oh can I be red? I think I like red. And orange. And yellow. I like warm tones in general really. But I think just red for now.” He pointed up at Prowls chevron for reference.

“It is a striking color.” Prowl nodded sagely. “It will suit you fine, though I request you do not completely copy my appearance to avoid future confusion.”

He hummed, already considering the ash grey covering his plating. He didn’t think it looked too bad actually.

“We’ll get the paint sorted later, now how about a proper name? I don’t believe in assigning one over your own choice, so you gotta pick.”Smokescreen leaned back, not giving away any clues of what options laid before him.

“Hmm.” He studied the signage outside the train. “Something with blue in it?”

“Blue?” Prowl raised an eye ridge. “Didn’t you just say you wanted to be painted red?”

“Well yeah. I like the color red but I like the word blue.” He said rationally and sensibly.

Prowl could find no argument and accepted the information for what it was.

Smokescreen tapped his shoulder. “Gonna need something a little more complex than just Blue, buddy. It’s a pretty popular des.”

“Oh how about Blueline!”

A few eavesdroppers snorted at the announcement, a small wave of mirth echoing around the mostly reserved fields of the crowd.

There was a long pause.

“That.. is the name of the train we are currently riding.” Prowl slowly pointed out.

“Ah.”

Voice an octave higher, Smokescreen gave a slightly pained albeit encouraging grin. “Yeeeah. Maybe try one more time?”

The young mech rested his chin on his servos, rapidly tapping his digits. “Is Blue streak taken?”

Prowl and Smokescreen considered the name. Internally, Prowl scanned over something for a moment. “I do not see any other registrations for that designation. It is indeed available.”

“Then Bluestreak it is!” Proclaimed Smokescreen, who clapped a servo around Prowls far shoulder, squishing Bluestreak between them.

Bluestreak whooped, sirens he didn’t know he had briefly going off before Prowl rushed to teach him how to turn them back down.

With a sense of finality, the train at last closed its doors and pulled out of Praxus. Bluestreak watched the skyscrapers dance in streams of gold and red.

Tacnet Dilation: 125%

The sounds of the train car moved treacle slow. Bluestreak turned to his new brothers and in a voice that sounded strangely deep to his own audials, asked them “Why is Praxus burning?”

They glanced at each other again, passing silent communication born of familiarity. When he eventually spoke, Bluestreak could hear the buzz of Smokescreens vocalizer activating the click before the consonants of his words rumbled forward like distant thunder, “There’s a war, a civil war. We’re still deciding where to go.”

“Can I come?” The question came so easily.

A pause that lasted a thousand years crawled by, as the train swept into a long dark tunnel with no clear end.

“Yeah.” Smokescreen said, “You can come.”

——————

“And to make a long story short, we ended up joining the Decepticons because well, the Functionalist Council kinda claimed all surviving CC Praxian Enforcers as ‘Government Property’.” Bluestreak made quotations with his digits.

Not for the first time, Bluestreak glanced at his audience. It was difficult to read the twins, Sunstreaker especially, but Bluestreak thought he was starting to get a hold of their personalities.

He vaguely remembered Jazz saying he had an unusually high affinity for piloting mecha, and hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Now that he was spending time with “regular” pilots, Bluestreak couldn’t help but stare at the stark difference.

Jazz made it work, easily translating laid back body language and a friendly demeanor through several tons of non living machinery.

But the twins? There were times when the Twins reminded him of Empurata victims, their fine movements unnaturally stunted and their incredibly restricted means of self expression coming off as awkward at best. Drone like at worst.

And yet, like clouds passing through an Uncanny Valley, Bluestreak would see bits of their true selves slip out.

For example, the three of them had just come up to a broad shallow stream running across the sandy earth. Sunstreaker stalked right up to the shore, knelt down to dip a cupped hand into water and wasted no time in splashing it across his plating. While his brother attempted to clean himself of the filth they’d accumulated from the day, Sideswipe pointedly looked Bluestreak in the optics and raised a single finger to his visor.

Bluestreak tilted his helm, understanding the meaning of gesture but not the why.

Casually admiring the scenery, Sideswipe tiptoed behind his brothers back, hands clasped in the picture of nonchalant innocence.

And then kicked him square in the back.

Tacnet Dilation: 50%

BLUESTREAK: [Uh Prowl?]

Abruptly flattened face first into the sand, Sunstreaker raised one arm and punched into the earth beneath the stream. He rose with a measured, predatory speed.

BLUESTREAK: [Not an emergency. I think.]

Regardless, the Praxian still backed away from the beach. Tacnet stretching out the clicks for Prowl to answer into wisp thin strands of time.

BLUESTREAK: [But please still respond.]

Sideswipe made a show of pointing a finger at his brother while almost doubled over. Frame absolutely shaking with silent laughter.

PROWL: [I’m here. What is it?]

Whip fast, a clawed hand fisted itself around Sideswipes collar, yanking him off his feet. The red mecha vanished, reappearing on the opposite bank, laying prone in a brand new crater.

BLUESTREAK: [So the twins are fighting.]

Tacnet Dilation: 100%

Bluestreak watched as Sideswipes arms rotated backwards, punching off the earth with explosive momentum and launching himself towards the yellow mecha.

In a clear display of practice, Sunstreaker caught him with a shoulder to the chest, slamming his brother back first into the water with enough force to make it rain.

PROWL: [Each other?]

BLUESTREAK: [Yep.]

Sideswipe twisted his waist around almost 90 degrees and suddenly had the leverage to dig his clawed feet into the ground, flipping Sunstreaker back into the water.

Tacnet held steady at 100% dilation, slowing the fight to a pace that Bluestreak could actually follow. To anyone else, it’d be a blur of red and yellow plating churning through indecipherably dense sprays of water droplets.

Once, back on the Lost Light, Bluestreak had asked Prowl what was it that drew him to Jazz. Prowl, naturally, gave a highly clinical answer, “Jazz is highly competent. Tacnet likes competence.”

Of course, Bluestreak made fun of him at the time for hiding his feelings behind his battle computer.

But uh.

He was kinda getting it now.

Every awkward gesture, every stilted performance at normal body language from before evaporated instantaneously. There wasn’t a hundred feet of separation between their hands and their brains anymore, the pilots filled their mecha out to the very finger tips. Swift and precise and alive.

To Tacnet, these weren’t machines anymore, but men.

Very competent men.

PROWL: [This is apparently normal behavior for them. Keep your distance and wait it out.]

Bluestreak nearly dropped his rifle, juggling it in slow motion as his frame struggled to move as fast as his processor.

BLUESTREAK: [Yep got it.]

BLUESTREAK: [Will be observing closely.]

BLUESTREAK: [From a distance.]

BLUESTREAK: [I’ll be observing closely from a distance I mean.]

BLUESTREAK: [I am completely fine.]

By the time he’d pinned the stock against his chassis, he’d sent Prowl about half a dozen more messages, all following in a continuously self correcting pattern.

PROWL: [Bluestreak. Paragraphs please.]

He reeled Tacnet back to the standard 25% dilation and watched the fight continue at normal speed. Occasionally, Bluestreak noticed one of their visors would turn his way before snapping back to focus on pummeling each other into the ground

Are they watching to make sure I didn’t leave? Or… are they watching to make sure I’m watching?

When they were younger, Smokescreen would sometimes get a hold of fuzzy holovids of old gladiator fights, (or questionably sourced security footage) and drag Prowl and him to his hab suite to watch. On a purely superficial level, he claimed it was for “Tacnet training” and taught them both how to zero in on hundreds of little tells that’d determine who’d the winner of the match would be right from the opening move.

They played a game where whoever correctly guessed the outcome of the match first would be the winner. Bonus points for predicting the correct finishing move. Prowl and Smokescreen would get ridiculously competitive. Or rather, Smokescreen always won and it drove Prowl up the wall. Years later, Smokescreen would whisper what the secret was to him over a bottle of high grade: Prowl never considered not all mechs fight to win.

This was a performance.

Every blow the twins traded landed on the thickest parts of their armor. The flashing exposures of their most delicate components were brief but frequent, always left untouched.

His digits twitched where he held the rifle.

Two targets (moving, distracted) within close firing range. Estimated reaction time: 2.2 clicks. Estimated time between shots: 1.4 clicks.

Tacnet Dilation: 100%

Manual Override, Tacnet Dilation: 25%

Bluestreak turned up his ventilations and stamped down on Tacnet, blocking out anymore suggestions by tunelessly humming some random jingle he’d heard about a million years ago.

Eventually, the fight wound down on its own without a winner. Sunstreaker helped Sideswipe up, and that was that.

Watching the two stomp out of the water, Bluestreak raised a thumbs up, “You guys good?”

The twins responded in the affirmative, each giving the other one last shove before resuming their flanking positions beside the sniper. Setting out once more.

Several hours later, the stars had dimmed as the sky turned powder blue.

The broad flat expanse of the rocky desert begged to be raced across. The variation in the terrain with its short stoney shelves and dried river bed roads would have been fantastic tracks for a spur of the moment race.

If I was allowed to that is.

The sand and grit from the environment was starting to grind uncomfortably in his joints. His peds ached more from the knowledge that he didn’t need to walk than from the physical exertion of the hike itself.

“On a scale of one to ten, how badly would you guys react if I turned into a car right now?” He panted, keeping careful watch of his coolant levels as the sun rose over the horizon. “Like a five maybe? A five seems about right for the situation.”

The twins simultaneously stopped.

Bluestreaks doorwings flicked nervously, “Is this your way of saying it’s a three?”

Steadily, Sideswipe lowered into a low crouch, vents hissing steam and visor going dark. There was a subtle click of joints locking into place.

Sunstreaker picked a rocky shelf and sat, keeping both of them in his line of sight

BLUESTREAK: [The twins are doing something weird and new. Sunstreaker is just watching but Sideswipe is squatting for some reason and it looks like he just went into recharge?]

While Bluestreak worried the inside of his cheek, Sunstreaker waved at him and patted the stone by his side.

Hesitantly and not wanting to potentially offend the alien hunter, Bluestreak took the offered seat. Thankfully, Sunstreaker seemed mollified by this and went back to staring at the horizon.

PROWL: [Ratchet says it sounds like they’re taking shifts resting. Given the length of time you’ve been traveling together, they may expect you to “power down” for a while as well.]

BLUESTREAK: [So what you’re saying is I have to fake being in recharge while sitting upright, outdoors in the sun and in heavily implied to be quint infested territory?]

PROWL: [Yes.]

BLUESTREAK: [Great. Awesome. Thank you. This is totally fine.]

PROWL: [I’m sorry.]

Okay now that was a red flag.

Angry Prowl meant “There is a problem and I will not physically stop until it is obliterated.”

Apologetic Prowl meant even he couldn’t deal with the problem.

The sheer scale of how fucked he was finally set in.

Tacnet Dilation: 125%

Tacnet Dilation: 150%

Tacnet Dilation: 225%

Time curled up into a little ball on the floor.

The only thing that stopped Tacnet from going past 300% was a wedged in bit of coding Bluestreak had forcibly added after a truly nightmarish near death experience at 500% dilation.

Logically, he knew he still had control over his frame, but the sheer delay in response felt like he was paralyzed.

Don’t force it. Don’t force it. Don’t force yourself to move, everything you try to do will add to the queue and it’ll hit all at once.

He wished Sunstreaker could talk, Bluestreak couldn’t deal with silence. Silence was like trying to keep track of passing time by staring at a blank wall. At least when there was noise, the pitch could clue him in and keep his mind semi tethered to the actual rate of things happening around him.

The dinks of his digits curling against his servos finally registered from when he started the motion all the way back when Prowl said he was sorry.

The faint pressure just was enough to start his thought process again.

Manual Override, Tacnet Dilation: 200%

Manual Override, Tacnet Dilation: 150%

Manual Override, Tacnet Dilation: 100%

Feeling spread back into his frame as sensory input raced back to his processor. From Bluestreaks perspective, it felt like he’d just lunched forward, helm between his knees. From the outside it probably just looked like a slow miserable curl.

He tried not to purge.

When his doorwings picked up on movement from Sunstreaker, he froze. Hyperaware of how bizarre his behavior must look.

A heavy hand not designed for anything other than ripping and tearing settled between his doorwings, lightly patting.

Bluestreak chanced a glance at the yellow mecha. Sunstreakers visor was as impassive as ever but with his unoccupied hand he raised an “OK” symbol, tilting his head inquisitively.

Letting his vents run at max, Bluestreak swallowed, raising an “OK” back.

“I’m gonna go ahead and pretend to be unconscious now. Thanks for not killing me so far.”

Bluestreak crossed his arms and dimmed his optics, flaring out his doorwings to compensate for the drop in input.

To execute his performance as an unfeeling empty husk of machinery, Bluestreak clenched his jaw and vowed not to speak or move for the next several hours.

Tacnet Dilation: 50%

Or however long it felt like.

———————————————————————

Jazz: “So if you use Tacnet to crunch the numbers on crazy complicated battle simulations, and Bluestreak uses his Tacnet to pull off insane sniper moves, what does Smokescreen use his for?”

Prowl: “Gambling.”

——————

Cybertronian ages are weird and don’t really align to human developmental rates but I do roughly equate 1 millennia to about a decade in human years.

So Prowl is in his late twenties, Smokescreen is in his thirties and Bluestreak can legally buy alcohol, depending on the country.

Also, Prowl and Smokescreen don’t know about the constant time dilation Bluestreak lives with. It was an experimental feature that got turned on for testing and when Bluestreaks factory got blown up there was nobody around to disable it.

Sometime after they started living together, he asked Smokescreen what Tacnet Dilation actually was, and Smokescreen basically just went “Oh yeah that thing. Yeah just don’t touch it and you’ll be fine.�� Not knowing it was already on.

As far as Bluestreak is aware, 25% is “normal speed” because that’s the lowest setting.

-SSTP

[kineticallyanywhere]

Time & Space pages 1-2 ( This is the start || ao3 (not yet!) || next ) Starts less than 24 hours after the death of Willy Stampler. With the job done, there's finally time to sort some things out. They just need the right amount of space.

[royalarchivist]

[A sad violin song plays over an image of a sad hamster]

Pac: This doesn't have anything to do with me – I wear a blue sweatshirt, you're crazy, this mouse doesn't even have a sweatshirt, this hamster! [Reading chat] Am I a depressed hamster?

[ Transcript continued ↓ ]*

–

Pac: Actually– that's fine! I embrace that idea – of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy? [He hits his desk, then starts counting off people on his fingers] Fit is gone, Richarlyson is gone, Ramon is gone, Bagi and Empanada who were always there when we were there are also gone, I haven't seen them! It's just me and Tubbo, and sometimes Philza shows up.

Pac: I lost Chume Labs, I lost the Favela, I lost Murder Mystery, I lost Ilha Chume Labs, it's crazy! Look at how much I've lost, and I've gained nothing! Of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy?! How am I supposed to be happy?!

Pac: [Reading chat] "You have us Pac," that's true, thank you. No, that's true, sorry.

* NOTE: Please note that this is an incomplete transcript, as I was primarily relying on Aypierre's translation mod at the time and if I am not confident of the translation, I do not include it. As always, please feel free to add on translations or message me corrections.

[triglycercule]

hi Gang its murder time trio back with another Mettaton

haha! i guess you could say they Kist. wait that not the right ship whoops

[bookhobbit]

hypermobility-related pain will make you aware of ligaments you didn't even know you had. got me googling stuff like "elbow nerve map" or "foot anatomy" to figure out which is the problem child because i do not know what that guy is called

[luckyemo]

IN SEARCH OF: KAMUKOMA CHARM

Hi! If anyone is re-selling this kamukoma charm I would love to purchase it! I just found out after waiting for 4 months (after being given an expected 1-4 week processing time on an purchase that wasnt a pre-order...........) that I can't get the one I bought directly from the artist and already paid for 😔☹️😟😢😭 so the next best thing I can do is find a second-hand re-seller unfortunately

[saturnsocoolioyep]

This is what I wrote in the feedback section for the new discord update:

I absolutely hate that the messages like group chats and DMs are in a different tab than servers now. there was absolutely nothing broken about the way that it was laid out and displayed before, so there's no reason to "fix" it!! I also am sorely missing the ability to swipe left to look at all members of a server, the having to click on the top feels clunky and visually unpleasant. I hate being taken to an entirely different screen just to see who's online! it's an entirely unnecessary extra step that helps no one. the idea of "prioritizing messaging" by putting private messages and group chats in a tab seperate from servers is completely asinine when discord as a whole is a messaging service in and of itself! also, it's a small aesthetic change but rounding the corners of the servers when swiping to look at the servers at the side is unnecessary and unwelcome and overall incredibly displeasing to look at. speaking of swiping, making it so swiping left creates a reply to a message is the most unnecessary, confusing, and almost MALICIOUS feeling change yet, especially when swiping left had an entirely different function before. please listen to your user base and stop making so many changes that absolutely NO ONE is actually asking for and actively make the user experience worse. you have a good app, it is not broken, stop trying to fix things that don't need to be changed because you've continually only made things worse.

[kittybroker]

General update post:

Nothing is really changing right now but if posts have been slow due to stuff going on irl. I'm finding myself able to get to less and less tagged posts at the moment. A large chunk are posts I've already seen, and even without that I'm getting them in far faster than I can get posts out.

Likewise, it's getting harder to keep submissions open for longer periods of time as it gets more and more asks quicker than before. I am also very tired with outside stuff ongoing and have been missing scheduled posts fairly regularly.

I'll still try to get to as many as I can but it can take time and I can't get to everything. I'm hoping to sort out the intro post with an FAQ and a few other bits of useful information but it might be a bit before I can get anything sorted there.

It's been suggested before that I get other people on to help, and I haven't really wanted to do that. I stand by that decision but the blog has continued to grow pretty consistent for the last eight months or so, with no real sign of it seeming to slow down. I recall when I started I was somehow getting 20 posts out a day but right now queue is set for 12 and I suspect I'm only getting about 10 out. No idea how I did it then but there's only so many cats I can evaluate before my brain turns to slush.

As a note, please don't tag me into or send in more than about two posts at a time. There's just too many coming in and I'll probably just chose the best if you do (I notice and then forget later anyways).

[heythereneighbor]

In light of a lore update this week and me being on vacation from tomorrow, I decided I would skip ahead and reveal the costumes for the boys.

Will anyone save Princess Barnaby from the vicious Wally-Dragon??

[thatoneluckybee]

Okay don't get me wrong here I ADORE when creators give their characters accents. It's a fun way to distinguish their speech from others, can hint at world building and backstories, and it's just fun too!

But I cannot take this child seriously here I am in tears

[gglitchshit]

Puter parts ordered, now it's time for Anxiety™️

[ninthriven]

not to be sappy on main but man i have some of the coolest clients i’m gonna sob actual angels in my DMs paying me fairly for honest work 😭

[dawnthefluffyduck]

Doodles based on "Yet Another Nightmare" by Catroic on Ao3 (highly recommend reading, its very good)

[francisforever2014]

spill the dyke drama posthaste ~ signed, a messy lesbian who lives through your crap vicariously

omg of COURSE. i don't feel like my life is that interesting but i'm so glad that you're enjoying !

okay so basicallyyyyyy. love triangle is obviously exaggerated also it's more of a rectangle. okay so here are the main players. well first of all there were like 8 of us going out to celebrate my one "straight" (🤨) friends bday and so it was her and literally 7 lesbians. right. so ofc there was gonna be some gay bullshit happening. anyways the main players are me 😁. my friend who we'll call S that i work with and am like... casual friends with but we're mostly friends through our mutual friends and work etc. and she's the one that i've had a lowkey crush on for a while but it's not that serious or anything i just think she's hot and am obsessed with her vibe. and then there's L who none of us know very well (besides the friend who's birthday it is obvs) but we've met a few times and she's cool. and then there's J who is S's roommate and same thing i don't know her super well but i like her and think she's cool.

so those are the characters and here's the dyke dramaaaaa. so we all went to the gay bar/club as our second bar of the night so we're all already drunk and dancing etc. etc. and there's just like.... sometimes a vibe between me and S that's hard to explain. again we're not that close but we always seem to seek each other out (or maybe it's just me) in group settings and especially when we're drunk. like. especially then. and i'm a pretty quiet private person but i get touchy asffff when i'm drunk and it seems like she does too bc we're just kinda handsy in general when we're out together. but like that's a normal friend thing but it just seems like there's a vibe sometimes. so anyways we're dancing and like we're in a group but also just the two of us are dancing and it's you know..... hot. and so we're like grinding and spinning each other and i'm like woahhhhh is there something going on here???? or is this just how friends sometimes do this. who the hell knows. i'm just having fun. and i'm not gonna initiate anything bc we're friends and we work together etc etc like it doesn't need to be messy for no reason. but we're just having fun and at this point i'm convinced theres a vibe.

but THEN we go inside to take a break and then S and her friend start whispering about something and i'm like what's up. and they're like oh S wants to kiss L. and i'm like. what. bc two seconds ago i thought that something was happening and now apparently she wants to kiss this other person???? which is fine i was more just confused bc i didn't pick up on it at all. so anyways from then on everybody's you know trying to get S and L together and i'm going along with it bc what the hell sure . but we go back out to the dance floor and S starts dancing with me again and there's that fucking vibe again and i'm like ????? . but eventually my friends orchestrate L and S dancing together and i'm watching from the bar like a freak and they kiss and everybody's like yay!!! and i'm like. yay.

anyways the THIRD layer to this situation is that the whole night when i wasn't dancing with S or just generally in a group i was dancing with J and i definitelyyyy had the feeling that she was into me. like not the way that i thought that there was a vibe with me and S like she was just being obvious about it. like calling me hot and asking me to dance explicitly etc. etc. so anyways we had been dancing a good amount but after S and L kissed she asked me to dance and so we did and it was.... you knowwww but i was so confused and just kinda drunk and going along with it and it's not that i don't like her but i don't think i like her like that and my mind unfortunately was on S the whole time. sorry.

anywayssss that's most of it. basically just i thought one thing was happening but it could have been wishful thinking but then a thing i wasn't aware of at all was happening and i was confused and then also a different thing was definitely happening but i wasn't the thing that i wanted. and i was drunk and kinda horny. so whatever.

anyways me and S held hands and walked together the entire walk home and just kept being so touchy and stuff even AFTER her and L made out and her and L didn't really talk and it seems kinda awk. so what the hell does that mean.

[hidey-writes]

six sentences sunday

The slack, peaceful expression of Zhao Yunlan asleep, his body curled toward the main room. That instinctive way he reached for Shen Wei, patting along his shoulder for his forearm, for his wrist. Even just earlier that night, sitting in companionable quiet on the couch, Zhao Yunlan’s hand tapping along the leather until it found Shen Wei’s ankle and settled there, skin against skin. As if Zhao Yunlan had gotten used to it too, touching. Their bodies as close as their lives were tangled now. Shen Wei would miss every piece of it.

haha. hurting my own feelings in the down draft of the answer fic! i was initially worried i wouldn't have enough thoughts about that gap between the knife scene and the next scene to write a whole fic about it, but it's starting to seem that the solution is simply: cramming in as much domestic weilan flashback as narratively possible :3