#tips from a cmo

[hoiststowline]

_first aid x reader hc's

to First Aid, his love language is little more difficult to pigeonhole. if you were to ask him, he'd probably say he's inclined to all of them, but over time it becomes glaringly obvious that actions speak a lot louder than words with him. his love language is definitely acts of service, because he has a natural tendency not only to assist, but desire to make his s/o's life a little easier. uses phrases such as: "here, allow me," or "please, let me help." but he isn't hovering over your shoulder or overbearing regarding it, he can detect and notice when you need an extra hand or need a break from something. but it's an action that goes both ways, when his s/o does a thoughtful action or a favor for him, he feels the most loved.

picks up little things you do/say. you joke that he's been around you too long when he starts quoting things you've said or adopting habits of yours. he's an observer, he finds comfort in the familiar but isn't opposed to the unknown. First Aid just likes to learn, and based off that, he can't get enough of the media you consume either. tv, music or books- he's fascinated and wants to know more. in contrast of just reading or watching it himself, he prefers your analyzation or retelling, just because he knows your version has a lot more passion and excitement in it.

naps, naps naps. being Chief Medical Officer (CMO), he's likely got a busy schedule and falls into a habit of taking short naps rather than getting a good nights rest, undisturbed. it's an small break that he's actively seeking you out for, and even if both of you are sleeping or you’re wide awake, he still wants you there. sure, he knows he’s bad company in this instance, but it’s the sleepy before and after that makes it worth it. if First Aid can have a moment to catch up with you once throughout the hours it’s much better than waiting until the end of the day, or even the next day. he just wants to see you, and mismatched schedules and sleep hours sometimes prohibits that. more than he’d like to admit.

he is hilarious but doesn’t realize it. he’s partial to say something in a deadpan or mumble sentences under his breath. these airless sentences are uttered mostly for only you to hear, just his own commentary to a movie or conversation. he always finds himself surprised and confused as to why you erupt in a fit of laughter, because he wasn’t his intention to make a joke there. but you must’ve found something funny mixed in his words, and he can't even remember what he said as he watches you laugh so hard your cheeks become rosy. when you praise him to others, you include how funny he is, but to him, it’s more of a “if you say so,” situation. said with a smile and short laugh of his own, not really so sure but willing to humor you, always.

if he has one complaint in your relationship, it’s schedule conflicts. every so often there’s long periods of time where the both of you are apart, and the hours you’re asleep overlap with the hours he’s working. you have responsibilities too- work, school, etc, and in this case scenario I think he'd probably be big on text messages. it's not the ideal way to catch up with you, but for the circumstances permitting, it's the best way to speak to you when he only has moments here and there. one thing is concrete in this relationship, is that he's never too busy for you, and will do everything he can to make it work in the healthiest way possible. First Aid has a relatively sturdy work/life balance, but there's always situations beyond his control that cause some variance. his s/o is understanding of that, and it provides him utmost solace, working continuously to ensure that the balance is never tipped.

[brandwhorestarscream]

my heart breaks seeing optimus cry, he's such a big lovey teddy bear 😭 what did jazz find? plz i need to know ive been rotating this story in my head like a rubiks cube i can't stop thinking about it

I'm glad to hear it anon! 🥰 I hope you've been enjoying all the Reports I've been putting out, those tie in with this story! We're only at the tip of the iceberg now :) so, without further ado:

...

Jazz sounds troubled as he relays the very limited information. The company responsible for manufacturing those dolls in their likeness, and who's logo matched the marking on the unfortunate victim, had shut down seven earth years ago. There was very little readily available information about it: the humans had only started universally sharing global information a couple decades ago, and it was still a very primitive, underused tool. Mentions of the company on the internet and in publicly available texts were plentiful, as they had been a giant in the industry during their time, but there is very little to be said about it's sudden closure. There had been a quiet, formal statement issued by the CMO about slipping profits and an unsustainable business model. A few news articles and interviews had been dug up, but they were full of speculation about what their factory's closing meant for their otherwise-unremarkable town.

"They shut their doors, most everyone cleared outta there within a couple years. Nothin' else."

For all the world, it looked like a standard, unfortunate case of a business struggling to stay afloat amid economic shifts and a fickle target audience. Perhaps it had been. But, regardless, it was evident that something utilizing their logo had committed unspeakable atrocities on a human child, and it warranted immediate investigation.

Ratchet tries his hardest to keep Optimus from joining them. His face still sagged heavily with grief, and his optics were hollow, but he presented a steely resolve. Insisting that he had to go, he owed it to the poor thing that had perished because of him. How could he delegate the difficult work to others, rather than forge ahead? He wanted to excavate the truth, bring it to light, and hopefully, in having their story told, the child could rest peacefully.

"I need to know how and why this happened, Ratchet," he had said, voice softly rasping. "I need to know by who's hand... and I need to ensure it never happens again."

And that was that. They departed with Ironhide, Jazz, and Bumblebee to investigate, with Skyfire making what would've been a several hour drive less than 45 minutes by flight. It was once a very charming little human town, Ratchet thought as they descend low over the city limits. Neat little houses lined up in rows made up abandoned neighborhoods, their roof tiles bleached and weathered from years without maintanence, with a central busy district with all manner of little shops and businesses. At the west side of the city and stretching from border to border, towering above everything beneath it, was the factory. The sheer size was impressive, given that it was operated by humans: it was compromised of many smaller, interconnected buildings in a variety of shapes, towers and smokestacks alike stretching into the air. The colors are faded, but widespread: in it's peak, the factory had been splashed bright yellow and red, green and blue, with stripes in some places and polka dots in others.

Skyfire let's them out nearly a half mile from the factory, but it can still be seen plain as day. They send him off with promises to comm when they needed an extraction, before turning their attention to the massive building. The setting sun is sinking behind it, setting a blazing orange backlight and the illusion that many of the windows are lit.

On approach, it looks normal. Wide sparse fields on either side of the central road leading up to the central building. Dust kicks up beneath their tires, and there's quite a bit of tenacious vegetation growing in the numerous cracks in the asphalt. All fine and dandy for a road that hadn't been cared for in years, but the sign.

It's a massive sign, comparatively, nearly eight feet long and half as tall, staked into the ground with two metal beams. It looks like it should light up, but the image is plenty clear without any. It's the company's name displayed in big, bright letters in simple, child-friendly font. But leaning against the first letter and raising one hand in greeting is Optimus Prime's perfect likeness. Beside him, there's Ironhide, smiling in a very un-Ironhide-like fashion and giving a cheerful thumbs up. There's Hound, Blaster, Arcee, and even Bumblebee too, all of them posed happily around the letters and looking to be greeting incoming guests.

"...I'm not the only one that thinks that's weird, right?" Bee aounds distinctly uncomfortable. "I can't be the only one."

"Definitely weird, Bee." Jazz is audibly frowning. "

That sign definitely hadn't been present the last time they were here. Or, if it had, it had been knocked over or destroyed because of the decepticons, and Ratchet hadn't seen it. He'd remember seeing something like that. Had they really been this heavily featured in human marketing and never noticed?

It gets even worse when they arrive at the main doors. The building is tall, and the automated double doors are more than thrice the height of the average human. They creak and screech unpleasantly on their tracks, rusty from sitting dormant for so long, but they're able to fanagle their way inside with moderate crouching. It's definitely cramped with the five of them, and Optimus is hunching a little bit, but they do manage to make it inside. The ceilings look to be about 20 feet, so the likes of Jazz and Bumblebee are able to move around with relative ease.

Without warning, the lights suddenly come on. Bumblebee yelps and utters a startled swear, backpedalling away from-

"OH! Oh Primus, that's uncanny-"

There's another Bumblebee.

Standing off to the side, between a central desk and a glass door that leads into a darkened room, there is another Bumblebee. He stands at exactly the same height as theirs. He's painted bright yellow with the exact same proportions, the same facial structure, everything. Their scout looks shaken, optics wide and leaning away from it.

The other Bumblebee remains completely motionless. Ratchet swallows.

"S'it... alive?"

The medic steps toward it. It doesn't move. It gives off no heat signature when he scans it, and when he bends down to get a look at it's face, there's no eyes. Just a film of blue-tinted plastic.

"No. No, it's just a-"

"HI!"

Ratchet will deny the shrill noise that rips from his vocalizer as he stumbles back, already reaching for his blaster as it suddenly shouts at him. It's arm creaks and raises at a 90° angle from It's body.

"I'm Bumblebee! Welcome to Playco! Make sure to check in with our Welcome Ambassador to be assigned to your tour guide! And don't forget to stop by the toyshop, because every child deserves a toy!"

They all remain frozen. It's mouth doesn't move, the sound projecting from somewhere in it's torso.

"I don't sound like that, do I?!" The real Bumblebee asks, sounding despaired. "I don't- do I really look like that?!"

Ironhide pats at him absent-mindedly. "Ya sure it's not alive, Ratch?"

The medic gulps. Primus, look at him, jumping at the slightest thing like a timid newspark. The autopsy is still heavy in his mind, it has him on edge. "Yes, I'm sure," he grumbles. "It... must be motion-activated. It's not-"

"HI! I'm Bumblebee! Welcome to Playco! Make sure to-"

It continued to play it's recorded greeting, and Ratchet sighs. "On a timer, it looks like."

Great.

...

Gonna cut it here cuz my fingers are tired. They've officially arrived on scene... wonder what they'll find next 🤭

[stevebattle]

Cosmo Klein (1978) by Jeff Duntemann AKA "Captain Cosmo", Rochester, NY. Cosmo Klein is based on the COSMAC Elf RCA 1802 microcomputer and features a robot arm, and a CRT face separately controlled by a COSMAC VIP, an 1802 based microcomputer with a supplementary video display chip.

"For all its flaws, the VIP is probably worth the money… The worst thing about the VIP is something that can be said of the ELF-II from Netronics or Quest's Super ELF: If you don't wire wrap it yourself, you won't learn as much. What are you doing this for? If you want to learn microcomputer hardware and software without going broke, the Popular Electronics ELF has no equal. …

COSMO'S FACE -- I take that back; there is something that the VIP is good at: Giving my robot a face. For a while I've been tinkering with a clanking heap of surplus submarine parts and wheelchair motors named Cosmo Klein. The Klein is an obscure mathematical allusion to the Klein Bottle, whos insides are identical to its outsides. Cosmo is a little like that, especially when he tips over and sends his insides spilling out onto the floor. Well, I got the notion that a COSMAC-generated face would be a marvelously humanizing touch. And so it is. If you want to see a good color picture of Cosmo and my VIP (with my own idiotically grinning mug in the background) check out Look Magazine dated April 30, 1979; it's the one with Jane Fonda on the cover. Maybe your library has it. The program which generates the face is included in this book, so I won't describe it here. Though you can't see it, my ELF is also inside, vainly trying to keep the monster from falling on his face. A CMOS robot is an old dream of mine, and I'm working on it, but for now I must pronounce his control circuitry (save for his face) a failure. Now you know who Captain Cosmo is. Yes indeed, that cute cartoon on the cover has a real model." – Captain Cosmo's Whizbang, by Jeff Duntemann, 1980.

“In addition to the VIP on his chest (which managed his face video and nothing else) he had a wire-wrapped machine inside his body, and a built-in OAE paper tape reader for getting his software up and running. (I punched the tapes on a DEC PDP11 system at Loyola University, where a friend worked at that time. The code was all written in binary, by hand.)” – Jeff Duntemann, Meet Cosmo Klein, COSMAC ELF.

"Cosmo Klein, a 4' tall robot with a TV-screen face, is a mutt bred from "junque" and computer chips. Cosmo has a World War II navy sonar-console body which was bought at a rummage sale for 25 cents and houses a homemade computer that monitors internal functions, like voltage regulation, speed, motion, and Arm and hand action. Cosmo lives with Jeff and Carol Duntemann. Jeff is a Xerox engineer, science-fiction writer, and member of a group of "techies" who build futuristic gadgets. He has grander inspirations than Cosmo. "What I'm looking toward in maybe 40 years is a robot that will act as a companion to the emotionally disturbed and the severely retarded. The patience of machines is marvellous. They'll sit there and listen and talk back." " – A Robot for Every Home, by Lauren Freudmann, Look Magazine, April 30, 1979.

[anony-man]

Chubformers drabble #109!

Characters: Cyclonus & Tailgate (IDW)

Word count: 1.4k

There was nothing better than a good round of relaxing yoga after a long hour of strenuous exercise, said no one ever. Except maybe Drift, or even Cyclonus, who had become rather obsessed with getting himself back into working order as of late. Tailgate wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about, but he had to admit, he was starting to like it… the nice fat aft poised inches from his face, that is.

He wasn’t much for exercise regimens when the only things he was built to do were limited to his core uses, and that wasn’t a can of ener-worms the minibot was about to pop open. Still, he hadn’t passed on the chance to join his conjux in reaching out to their old CMO’s beloved partner after their not-so-pleasant annual trip to the medibay.

They were at peace now, which meant settling in for the long haul. Of course they were going to gain a bit of weight! Tailgate had expressed this countless times to Cyclonus, who had merely glowered at the reflection in the mirror while pinching at the fat on his frame with rough fingers every time.

This wasn’t like him, he’d say, picking at the piled up plate of food during their shared refueling sessions. He wasn’t built to carry all of this excess weight. Autobot or no, he had still been something bigger, something more powerful, a time before. He could hardly stand to look at himself anymore and witness the major damage just a few months of rest had done to his slim frame.

If you asked Tailgate, all that talk was nothing more than a pile of scrap. What was there to criticize? Cyclonus was finally settling in for a life of peace, and Tailgate was right there with him. So what if they gained a little here and softened a little there?

Cyclonus cared, though, and cared deeply. If getting back into shape is what he wanted, then Tailgate would do anything everything to make it happen—all while loving on that perfectly plump frame of his, of course.

A bit of intel from First Aid meant reaching out to Ratchet who talked with his conjux, and from there, the two bots found themselves the private members of workout sessions with Drift. Tailgate did what he could to join in, but it was almost impossible to focus on straining his small body when Cyclonus was bent over in front of him.

Stretching was just as much of a struggle as the exercising had been, given their long hiatus from running for their lives or clinging to the tendrils of existence. With years of experience in stony fronts under his belt, the condensation covering Cyclonus’ frame and the tremble of jiggling thighs almost went unnoticed… but not by Tailgate—not by a long shot.

“Focus on aligning your intakes with the rhythm of your spark,” Drift was explaining, his arms thrown up in a gentle arc over his helm. “Breathe in… and breathe out. Try to touch the tips of your pedes, then relax…”

Tailgate didn’t have to be told twice, as the air left his chest all at once in a startled wheeze when that perfect pear shape bent in half. Sculpted thighs had grown twice their size in their off-time, and with every jerky movement of his conjux’s frame, those fat masses of metal and mesh scraped together, the constant chafe producing the slightest of sounds.

He was happy to support Cyclonus’ journey towards regaining his strength and endurance. Really, he was. However, Tailgate would have been lying if he said he wasn’t secretly dreaming of slotting his helm between the negative space between those legs and begging Cyclonus to squeeze.

Drift was leading them into downward dog now, and Tailgate tried to copy their movements. He watched Cyclonus carefully, his intake catching in his throat as the plump mech bent low and stuck his aft to the sky.

Primus, what Tailgate wouldn’t give to call it a day and drag them both off to their quarters. He was practically famished now, starved of those thighs locked around his face. Popping his interface array open in the middle of their exercising was probably frowned upon, but he almost couldn’t take it.

He wanted—no, needed—to bury his face in the fatty buildup of that soft pouch on the ex-Con’s belly. Proper mouth be damned, he wanted to drown himself in the lubricants of that valve while his helm was crushed between those thighs.

He needed… yes, he needed Cyclonus to bury him under the weight of his frame. He wanted to feel those plump aft cheeks against his face, and he wanted to run his servos over the soft mesh of those thighs, and he wanted to nuzzle his helm into to rolls of that belly.

It was all he could do to not outright ogle that aft. Tailgate tried to catch a peek of Drift from over his conjux’s shoulder, but the longer he stared, the harder it became not to give up and go back to admiring the jiggle of those fat aft cheeks as he struggled to hold his pose.

“Remember to breathe,” Drift chimed in again, his voice gentle. “Relax into the pose and breathe… in—“

He could hear Cyclonus’ shaky intake, the tremble of his frame drawing Tailgate’s attention right back to that aft and those thighs.

“—and out—“

Click!

…frag. Ohhh, frag.

Tailgate fell to his mat with a squeal, his concentration broken by the sound of his array. In an attempt to save face, he rushed to cover up the exposed mess of the built up tension behind previously closed panels he’d tried so hard to hide. Unfortunately for Tailgate, there was only so much that scrambling to his pedes and holding both servos in front of the dribbling tip of his spike could do to hide the fact that he had most definitely been eyeing his conjux’s fat aft instead of joining in on the exercising.

“Sorry!” he managed to say in the middle of snatching up his towel and scurrying for the door. “Sorry, so sorry!”

While Drift sat in place with a confused frown, Cyclonus was already reaching for his own towel and glaring over his shoulder at the poor minibot with a poorly concealed blush. He didn’t dare speak, especially not when Tailgate was running this way and that, an incoherent blabber of apologies following his attempts at cleaning up and hauling his aft out the door at the speed of light.

Tailgate, at least, had enough sense left in him to head straight for their quarters to deal with… well, this. He’d leave Cyclonus to do the talking with Drift over their next scheduled exercise session, or yoga session, or whatever the hell it was they had planned with his conjux that got him so wound up.

He really couldn’t help himself, especially when Cyclonus looked so fragging hot. How could he not admire a frame like that, especially when it was perched mere inches from his face?

As he stumbled out the door, his towel hanging limply from his servos and only partially covering the embarrassment of popped panels poking up from underneath, he could hear Drift’s hesitation following him in a tentative request at their next possible meetup.

“Um…” the swordsmech began, sounding as though he were trying very hard not to bring up what had just happened. “Same time tomorrow?”

He didn’t stick around long enough to hear Cyclonus’ response, but really, he didn’t need to. Another round of intensive yoga meant getting a front row seat to the beauty of that mech’s stretched frame, and despite his little oopsie today, Tailgate wasn’t about to pass up on that opportunity.

Another round with Drift sounded promising, and the minibot was already figuring out just what he would say to convince Cyclonus to let him join again. First things first, though, as he still had to figure out how to take care of his current predicament, too. The solution to that was a simple one, though, and one involving a little bit of private time in their habsuite and a lot of that perfectly jiggly aft settling down onto his face.

If Cyclonus wanted to strengthen up and get back into shape, Tailgate was all for helping him get there. Still, that didn’t come without its own conditions… and the horny little minibot was more than happy to make sure they came to an agreement.

[star-farer]

no door

Summary: Sick ARC Troopers make for stubborn ARC Troopers. Tagged: @margindoodles2407

Author's note: I saw prompts 5 and 12 from this prompt list and I thought of this interaction and I just had to write something. Margin, also, considering your present state, I dedicate this to you, ner vod <3 Hope you get better soon!

“Kix?”

“Yeah?”

“Why is he on the floor?”

Reluctance was obvious in the way Kix pulled his eyes from his datapad. “Hm?”

With a roll of his eyes, Rex inclined his head pointedly at the shivering lump half atop Fives’ lap, bundled in layers on layers of blankets. “Why is Echo on the floor?”

“Oh,” said Kix, tipping his head back down to his datapad, “He forgot the barracks have a door.”

Rex blinked. Turned his head to take a good long look at his twins. Turned his head to take a good long look at his medic. Blinked once more.

“What?”

A loud sigh brought his attention back to where Fives was stroking back sweaty curls from a flushed face. “He’s running a fever,” explained the ARC, “Currently more delusional than a sentient on spice. Or as I like to say—”

“Shuddup,” sniffled the bundle, sneezing hard enough to make Rex wince.

“—more tubie than vod’ika.” Fives grin was as cheeky as it was charming.

“Hate you.”

“Aww, love you too, Ech’ika.”

“Stob id.”

“Maybe once you’re well enough to see five fingers instead of sixteen, I’ll think about shutting up.”

If he didn’t put an end to this, Rex was certain it could escalate into a brawl. Not that Fives was aiming for it, but that glint in Echo’s watery eyes betrayed his stirred ire.

A sick Ech’ika was bad enough. A sick and injured Ech’ika was something Rex just didn’t have the energy for.

“Okay, that’s enough out of both of you,” said Rex definitively, taking a few steps up to the boys, “Echo, come on, vod, let’s get you to bed.”

Unexpectedly, Echo’s eyes took on a new shine, features suddenly a trembling mess. “I cad’t.”

“What do you—”

“The barrags,” he sniffed, “Hab no door.”

Rex, he, well. He eyed the, the, well, the door, just a couple of steps away. Turned his gaze back in time to catch Fives smothering a snort behind Echo’s head.

“I’m—I’m pretty sure it does, kid.”

“No it doesn’t!” Echo’s eyes were wide now, and sure enough, there were those treacherous tears piling in their lower lids. “I searched eb’rywhere! There’s no door. There is no door.”

And with that nasally declaration, Echo broke down into heaving sobs in Fives arms, tears pouring down his face as he blew his nose in a handkerchief he pulled from somewhere amongst the blanket’s folds. Fives, of course, shushed him and rubbed his back accordingly, his grin smooshed where his cheek sat atop the blanket-hooded head.

Pinching his nose-bridge between forefinger and thumb, Rex resigned himself to his fate.

He took a deep breath in, silently begging the Force for patience. Crouching down, he placed a hand on Echo’s shaking shoulder and said, “Vod’ika, you need to rest. You — and Fives, of course — can’t stay on the floor like this. We need to get you warm.”

“I am warm,” frowned Echo petulantly, burrowing deeper into Fives’ embrace. His traitor of an elder twin did nothing to aid Rex’s cause, except muffle a laugh into his palm.

I’m taking away your dessert privileges, signed Rex with narrowed eyes.

Fives jaw dropped open. You wouldn’t.

I would.

You wouldn’t.

“Echo, how about I get you a gurney instead?”

Rex scowled over his pauldron at the clear attempt to draw a ceasefire between ARC Captain and ARC Trooper. With wide eyes, Echo peered up along with Rex to where Kix was sat kneading a thumb into his temple, his datapad abandoned on his lap.

“You’d do ‘at?”

Kix gave him a deadpanned stare. “I’m literally the CMO. It’s part of my job description.”

Echo looked like he was ready for a second round of heavy crying, so Rex quickly cleared his throat: “That’s perfect, Kix. Send for a gurney.”

“Ad thabk you,” wailed Echo, sniffling and wiping his face.

Kix, the little osik, walked over, patted Echo’s blanketed head, ruffled Fives’ perfect hair, and shot Rex one of his smug but lazy I-can-get-away-with-osik-that-you-can’t salutes. Clicking a sharp about-face, he strode out the room, presumably after the required gurney.

Fives yelled insults after his disappearing form while Echo sobbed like he'd been offered the entire galaxy.

Rex sighed, head falling to his chest.

This was gonna be a long day.

[existentialcrisistime]

Nic's AOS McKirk fic recs part 1:

longer (mostly 10k+ and/or multi-chapter), more plot-focused works

There are SO MANY excellent McKirk fics out there, and I'm only scratching the tip of the iceberg with these ones, but these are ten of my top favourites (you know, the sort of fics where you have to either yell in the group chat or stare into space for a bit afterwards, then think of it constantly for the following week?), so I hope some of the ones in here become your favourites too.

And remember, be kind, leave kudos/comments where you can, and enjoy!

In no particular order, we have:

jim kirk's guide to starship management: how to work with people you don't like by espressohno (E, 23k)

Jim has an anonymous hookup (read: the best sex of his life) with who else but the one and only Leonard McCoy, who's scheduled to start as the Enterprise's CMO the next day. Hijinks (emotions and miscommunication) ensue. A great exploration of Leonard and Jim's relationship, based around the question of: what if they met under slightly different circumstances?

unscrew the stars by espressohno (E, <10k)

Jim, lamenting his inability to pursue personal relationships due to being Captain of the Enterprise and under Starfleet's fraternisation rules, believes he's found a loophole that allows him to sleep with his CMO. Leonard, however, wants something more. Another one by espressohno, and honestly I'd recommend pretty much anything by this author.

Ask me again in the morning by @torsamors (G, 26k)

Time loop fic: Bones is stuck in a time loop. This fact upsets Jim every time he finds out, but Bones definitely isn't having a fun time either. An excellent getting-together fic told from the perspective of Jim outside the loop, with plenty of hurt and comfort.

One Little White Lie by laughter_now (M, 71k)

Jim lies about being married to Leonard after an accident which leads Leonard to losing his memory, which quickly spirals out of control. An incredible, emotional exploration of the fake marriage and amnesia tropes, becoming so much more than the sum of its tags. Another one for the fellow fans of Bones Having a Real Bad Time, with plenty of Jim angst in there too.

A Wish in the Dark (for a bulletproof heart) by drmcbones (T, 18k)

Without giving too much away: one close call too many for Jim has Leonard at the end of his tether. Somehow, a mysterious medical/magical ailment links the two of them together - how long can they keep it secret from even each other? I say this about every fic on the list, but this one is absolutely excellent - a really interesting plot I hadn't read much like before.

Catching Fire (The Firehouse AU) by kel_1970 (E, 46k)

21st Century fire department AU. Paramedic Leonard McCoy flees a disastrous break-up in Savannah and ends up working at a fire department in Iowa where he meets Jim Kirk. I know this one is on pretty much every McKirk rec list, but for good reason! A beautifully-written, emotional rollercoaster of a fic with rich settings and side characters. Will rip your heart out and stamp on it, then carefully piece it back together again. I read this one over a year ago and still I think of it on a regular basis, it hurts so good.

I Will Hold As Long As You Like by @excavatinglizard (T, 18k)

The Lighthouse fic. Set post-Into Darkness, Leonard takes Jim to a lighthouse to convalesce. Together they learn to weather the storm. A beautiful, emotional character study with rich settings that paint such a picture in the mind. Also comes with (beautiful) art and a playlist to really set the scene. Another one that I read over a year ago, as it was being published, and still think of on a regular basis.

Take a Bite of My Heart Tonight by EntreNous (T, 26k)

Vetenarian Bones AU. Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy get off on the wrong foot as soon as they meet. So if Jim wants another shot with that gorgeous but grumpy veterinarian, he had better get his hands on some pets who need vet appointments, right? Such a fun, sweet, mostly fluffy fic of Jim getting up to some absolute (mostly unsuccessful) antics to win Leonard's heart

three sundays by espressohno

The fight club AU. Not Fight Club the film so much as a literal fight club: Leonard goes to fight club to get his anger out. Jim goes to fight club to get hurt. Leonard realizes this, and decides he doesn't want to hurt Jim anymore, but he doesn't want to stop seeing him, either. Plenty of hurt/comfort, and a whole lot of aftercare.

palimpsest by @fireinmywoods (E, 61k)

What can I say about this one that hasn't already been said? Such an incredible story, even if the final chapter did make me yell out loud the first time around (and I mean that in the most affectionate way). I've read this one twice now and got something completely different out of it each time - an enjoyable read the first time but even richer with hindsight, so cleverly constructed. As for the plot - the Enterprise is sent to negitiate readmission to the Federation with an isolationist religious group known as the Kindred. While there, Jim notices that some of the children seem to be gravely ill. The Kindred do not allow a doctor to be brought in, and so Jim... well, he improvises. + 9 (so far) further, shorter works to flesh out the whole Palimpsest verse, which I enjoyed just as much as the original story - especially aganorisis (E, 15k), which I guarantee you'll want to read right after. Can mostly be read out of order, but you gotta read Palimpsest first, I promise!

And that's it for now! Thank you for reading, please tell me which ones you enjoyed the most (or your own favourite longer/plotty McKirk fics), and keep your eyes peeled for part 2

[lord-squiggletits]

I was wondering, how would Pharma be pressured in the Penpal au if the relationship got leak?

I can see why Tarn might be pressured to use their relationship for political optic or to act a certain way since he's an activist/influncer for the Decepticon, not to mention, his relationship with both faction leaders, but what about Pharma?

So I don't have screencaps for this at the moment, but something to bear in mind in canon (which I draw on heavily for all of my fics) is that on post-war Cybertron, it's explicitly said that neutrals hate both Autobots and Decepticons, but they hate Decepticons even more (because any Decepticon who turned traitor obviously got murdered by the DJD, so there's not much if any Decepticon representation or advocacy among neutrals). Also, it's a canonical fact that Decepticons remaining on Cybertron were literally living in slums outside of the city proper and being mostly homeless/unemployed because no one wants to hire them also getting serially murdered at one point, so... taking cues from canon, PPAU being a post-war scenario means that society is in a state where not only are the Autobots and Decepticons struggling to mend relationships with each other, there's also the neutral presence tipping things against the Decepticons.

So, with the Decepticons already being unpopular in general, and the DJD being unpopular even among Decepticons (given their role as fanatical torturer-murderers)...

And with Pharma being CMO + eventually some sort of minister of public health (aka federal/international level political position), it's easy to assume that there's a shitload of public scrutiny of all times, especially given that he's 1. following on Ratchet's term, who seems to be more or less universally loved and respected and 2. was apparently "famous for being forged" (whatever that means/is up to interpretation) even before the war happened.

So on the one hand, Pharma might be pressured to be open/proud about his relationship with Tarn and to make it a political point to remain partners with him to reinforce the reconciliation/reform movements going on (that Decepticons are capable of change + Autobots and Decepticons are capable of uniting with each other).

On the other hand (or in addition), Pharma could and would absolutely be subjected to nasty levels of public ire from people in pretty much every social group. Decepticons judging him for dating someone whose job it was to persecute them, Autobots judging him for dating a Decepticon murderer and one of Megatron's top enforcers, neutrals hating him for a mix of the previous two reasons. Plus Pharma is a doctor, which means he's already kind of held on a pedestal of "productive, noble, essential worker of society" so the planet's best doctor shacking up with the planet's best murderer would certainly cause a stir.

Maybe not a stir in the sense that it'd be horrible and unforgivable and would ruin Pharma's career. I mean, Decepticon-Autobot reintegration is literally the major political movement on the planet and it's precisely the point that Pharma and Tarn wouldn't be legally punished in any way for being together. (And if anything, Megatron and Optimus-- possibly being in a public relationship themselves-- would support Tarn/Pharma and deliberately throw their support behind them). The problem is just that socially, people aren't so quick to forgive or forget their grievances/prejudices, and there are ways to punish people beyond the reach of the law.

So, picture the sorts of things that happen in the real world to celebrities, politicians, and other famous figures who attract mass hate (even from a niche/minority of society): the harassment, stalking and cyberstalking, death threats, libel and slander, being constantly subjected to unwanted press attention, being filmed/photographed without consent, having people close to them being threatened/hurt as a way to hurt the person being Cancelled TM. Multiple things on that list can and do happen to Pharma, with the explicit intention that Pharma deserves to be punished/shamed for associating so closely with Tarn.

Plus, in Pharma's job, it figures that people he works with would have strong emotions about their boss being associated with an infamous killer, no? How would Decepticons trained to fear the DJD in every capacity feel safe, perhaps wondering if Pharma is one whisper away from telling his lover to kill someone? What would anyone, regardless of faction alignment, assume about Pharma's personal character that he's willing to not merely be coworkers with Tarn (professional torturer, sadist, murderer, fanatic) but to literally be his lover and canoodle with him? It's not fair (or perhaps it is), but Tarn can't outrun his reputation no matter how hard he works to reform, and people will project Tarn's crimes onto Pharma because Pharma committed the crime of loving Tarn. It's not like the common public knows about all the things Tarn and Pharma talked about in their pen pal letters, it's not like they would believe Pharma when he says that the Tarn he loves isn't the Tarn the public knows.

Basically, even though this is a post-war romance AU (and was originally intended to be romance-focused), I decided to lean more into the post-war elements and explore how Tarn and Pharma are such (in)famous public figures that they are essentially not allowed to love each other as just "Tarn and Pharma" (or Glitch/Damus and Pharma). They aren't quite the "arranged/political marriage" fanfic trope, but they suffer from the same publicity element where their relationship will forever be tied to some sort of political statement or social action. They can never be two regular people in a romantic relationship who can exist publicly without harassment.

It does actually become a point of contention in their relationship (before and after it's leaked) that they simultaneously want to keep their relationship private to not be shamed for it and so that their love isn't tokenized/turned into a political statement. Yet simultaneously, keeping their relationship secret only adds to the feelings of shame/fear they have; sure, they love each other and want to be together forever, but they're still hiding their relationship's existence from the public for the sake of their reputation, so does that mean their love isn't actually as strong as they want it to be? The shame is especially great on Tarn's end, because at least Pharma is respected and revered as the planet's best doctor. He's literally just an ex-enforcer who did some of the worst shit the Decepticons ever did because he followed and worshipped Megatron absolutely. He feels like he's dooming Pharma just by being near him; Pharma would have been okay if only he hadn't loved Tarn. If only Tarn had had the strength to keep their relationship to letters only, or to break up with Pharma and tell him he deserves to be with someone he can actually live a normal life with. Many issues all around

[acuvate-updates]

Revolutionizing Enterprises: CXO’s GenAI Transformation

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AI adoption, embraced by 70% of executives, promises enhanced customer experiences despite challenges. Understanding and integrating AI into business operations is essential. Explore our guide for actionable insights, ensuring businesses not only survive but thrive in the AI-driven era.

Learn more about Artificial Intelligence impact in 2025

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Generative AI, like GPT, simplifies business processes. It transforms decision-making with its user-friendly interfaces, self-learning capabilities, and efficient sorting.

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C-Suite Roles Transformed by AI

Strategic AI Adoption Tips for Leaders

To successfully adopt AI, prioritize it for strategic goals, use tailored features, and embrace multilingual capabilities. Ensure secure deployment for data integrity. Offices that adopt AI enjoy streamlined processes, ongoing innovation, and secure frameworks.

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Explore the Power of Generative AI for enhancing CX — Marketing and Customer support/ Engagement

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Also, read our other blogs on the AI revolution on Medium

9 Must-Watch Webinars of 2025 for Tech Enthusiasts | Medium

- AI-Driven Transformation: A CXO's Guide to Generative AI Success | Medium

GPT Revolution in AI - A Strategic Guide for CXO | Medium

Emerging Energy Technologies: Data, AI & Digital Solutions in 2025 | Medium

[meyhmeyh]

I just had my first vampire round as barkeep

So we need blood so I used the guise or more rather my role play of making blood mead. but I made a bunch of blood mead and drank the rest. Blood meads recipe is 1 enzyme 1 sugar 2 blood. After that, people come order Cuba Libre(2 cola 1 rum) and i get tipped blood for good service. One drank a whole vodkas bottle, one drank sulfuric acid the other, injected vodkas and a lot tried using a water gun. I made some doctors delight which is 1 tricordazine, 1 lime juice, 1 orange juice, 1 tomato juice, and 2 cream. Doctors delight heals 2 of all but gene damage, so healing drinks were on tap. You can get trico from a med kit or make it with 1 carbon 1 sugar 1 oxygen for inaprovaline, then 1 silicon 1 nitrogen and 1 potassium for dylovene. None of this matters I needed to go cryo but instead when the cmo let me in for trico, I grabbed potassium and asked a sec officer if they like living. They said everyone does and I proved them wrong as I mixed 100 water and 100 potassium along side the extra 60 of each in containers. We were atomized immediately. And I went to my friends house while I technically got 1 green text.

[weyrwolfen]

Caveat Emptor: Chapter 4 - Mala Fide

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Commanders Fox, Thorn, Thire, and Stone, Quinlan Vos, Coruscant Guard

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm and suicidal thoughts, injuries, loss of autonomy

Previous chapters can be found here on Tumblr or here on Ao3

[X] Request for Repairs Costing Over 10,000 GSC

Affected Facility:

[X] Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center

Specific Location Within Facility: Jenth Block, Cells 02:118 – 02:132

Nature of Requested Repairs: Replacement of facility’s security cameras and reprogramming of security network.

“I need access to the side of your neck,” Scav said brusquely, pulling Fox’s attention away from the datapad in his hands. His CMO was holding a jar of pale green gel in his hands.

Fox refrained from sighing in irritation and instead just tipped his head to the side. Scav smeared a generous glob of the gel on Fox’s neck, just below and behind his ear. It was cold and left behind a faint tingling sensation.

“Don’t move,” Scav said, reaching for the medical monitor he’d obtained… somewhere. The thing had a bulky design and a truly excessive number of lights, strongly suggesting it was civilian in origin.

Then again, they were safely hidden away in the base’s covert investigation room, so perhaps there were some questions Fox could stand to ask.

“What is the point of this?” he asked as Scav pressed the device’s baseplate into the side of Fox’s neck. The thing beeped once and then earned a slight wince as it tightened down against his skin with, from the feel of it, a combination of suction and a ring of multiple fine needles.

“Something about your lapses is triggering uncontrolled spikes in your blood pressure,” Scav replied with a distracted scowl, plugging a cord from his datapad into the monitor. “I intend to track down what before you have a stroke.”

Great. Something else for Fox to worry about.

He had an itemized list, most of which he was actively avoiding thinking about at the moment, and speaking of which…

Have Repairs Been Attempted by On-Site Maintenance Teams? Yes [ ], No [X]

***Attempt Repairs Before Completing This Form***

Fox swore under his breath, backed up, and wiped his previous answer.

Have Repairs Been Attempted by On-Site Maintenance Teams? Yes [X], No [ ]

Describe Attempted Repairs: During previous outages related to this system, CG personnel were instructed that all security cameras and networked systems in the central detention facility contain proprietary technologies owned by Livion Insights (LI) GRC. Repair attempts made by anyone other than approved service providers represent violations of LI GRC intellectual property rights under the terms of the original contract with this vendor. CG personnel assessed the affected cameras, determined them to be LI GRC property, and ceased any further attempts at repair, as per those standing orders.

Select The Type of Area or Item to be Repaired from the Following List (If Unknown, Select Unknown): [Electronic/Non-Droid -> Computer/Computational System -> Networked, >10 Nodes]

Is The Vendor for the Computer/Computational System known? Yes [X], No [ ].

Select The Vendor from the Following List (If Unknown, Select Unknown): [Livion Insights GRC]

***Vendor Has Negotiated Exclusive Service Contracts, Cease All Repair Attempts***

***File Request Has Been Forwarded to Contract Enforcement***

Do You Want to Archive a Copy of This Request? Yes [X], No [ ].

If prior experience was any guide, it would take at least two weeks for anyone to actually see that form, and Fox called it roughly even odds whether it would end up forwarded to the correct department after that or not.

In any case, filling out the kriffing thing wasn’t about actually getting the repairs done. It was about making a trail of flimsiwork, demonstrating due diligence in responding to the situation in the event of an investigation into the inmates’ deaths. It wasn’t much, but it might be enough to keep his troopers from becoming convenient scapegoats, if this developed into a public scandal.

This next form, however, was more of a calculated experiment.

[X] Request for Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee Investigation

Nature of Complaint: Repeated outages of the security systems in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center, occurring co-incident with targeted inmate deaths suggest a high probability of sabotage within the facility.

Supporting Documents:

Fox selected the copy of the service request he had just filed, the three inmate autopsy reports he’d signed earlier, and the initial incident report Thire had filed last night. Then he linked the new complaint back to the chain of his previous requests and more than a few files he’d had his slicers exhume of similar incidents that had occurred prior to the clone army’s deployment, just for good measure. Something fiercely anticipatory simmered in his chest when he entered the command to forward the whole thing to the Chancellor’s office for processing.

Of course, the entire reporting process was supposed to be anonymous, and according to Guard and G.A.R. regulations, Fox should have sent the complaint directly to the relevant Senate committee. But some Naval analyst had flagged one of Fox’s early reports as containing potential evidence of Separatist sabotage rather than internal corruption, so the Chancellor had ordered that all future reports related to security irregularities or corruption accusations be routed through his office.

That had smelled faintly of strill osik, but orders were orders, and Fox knew very well the price of overt defiance. So the Chancellor got to screen any Guard requests for external investigations, and Fox got to watch most of his requests disappear into the Republic Office of Naval Intelligence, sealed away under a high security clearance designation on the whims of various natborn admirals.

It was galling, but the few times Fox had raised his concerns about this lack of action with the Chancellor had yielded distracted indifference at best and delicately phrased rebukes at worst, both delivered with a kindly façade over dangerously cold eyes. And maybe the natborns who’d just died on Fox’s watch weren’t particularly upstanding citizens of the Republic, but their continued physical wellbeing was as much a part of the Guard’s duty as preventing their escape. Any failure risked reprimands or worse for his men, and the suspicion that these failures stemmed from someone intentionally sabotaging the Guard for some kind of personal gain made him coldly murderous.

Of course, now Chancellor Palpatine was missing, and it would be valuable to know if Amedda would hold to all of Palpatine’s policies in the man’s absence.

…He would try, but Amedda hadn’t been half as far in his Master’s confidences as he liked to think…

The monitor on Fox’s neck beeped.

“The kriff was that?” Scav asked sharply, looking up from his datapad.

“The kriff was what?” Fox asked dryly, rubbing at his eyes. The combination of low-lighting in the room with the bright datapad screen was starting to get to him.

“Your cortisol levels just spiked.”

Fox squinted up at him. “No idea,” he finally said.

Not that Scav believed him, given the ferocious scowl that answer earned. “Hold still,” he said, rummaging around in his crate of decidedly non-regulation medical equipment that had appeared some time during the last rotation.

“Am I going to have to cover up another burglary report from the Grand Republic Medical Facility?” Fox asked dryly as Scav fished several sensors out of the crate.

Scav stuck the first sensor on Fox’s temple and said, “No” without any further elaboration.

Fox just sighed and pulled up the next form on his to-do list. There was something to be said about maintaining plausible deniability.

Scav had just finished taping down the leads between the sensors and the Sith-damned monitor on his neck when the door to the room hissed and then swept open.

It was Stone, bucket tucked under one arm. His expression was so blank, it had to be intentional.

“What happened?” Fox asked, a sinking sensation setting up shop in his guts.

“Nothing, yet,” Stone said, sliding his helmet onto one of the cluttered tables and then easing down onto the rickety stool across from Fox’s makeshift cot. “But Thorn’s got a developing situation up in the Dome.”

The sick roiling that was hollowing out Fox’s guts only strengthened. “Any reason why he didn’t comm directly?” he asked.

There was a momentary silence, and then Stone finally said, “He’s in a briefing with the Acting Chancellor and the Senate Security Council.”

… What?

“Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?” Fox snapped, even though he was pretty certain he already knew the answer.

Stone didn’t answer, but his eyes slid sideways, over to Scav.

Karking hells.

“You’re grounded, unless it’s an emergency,” Scav said with a glower.

Fox knew that. Of course he knew that. With his current… lapses, it had made the most sense for him to take over administrative tasks from his subordinate commanders today. It freed up his officers to continue their investigation without having to manage Fox’s kriffing issues. It was galling, but he’d agreed with the logic. The last thing any of them needed was Fox having an episode in front of witnesses.

He hadn’t agreed to being wholly blocked out of his own karking command structure. And his comms had been suspiciously quiet all morning.

“Don’t make me make this an order,” Fox snapped, glaring at Scav.

Scav just glared back, but he did enter something into his datapad that must have cleared the medical override, if the way Fox’s vambrace immediately lit up was any indication.

Un-karking-believable.

Fox started to reach for the monitor on his neck, but Scav, who was already on thin ice, still had the temerity to snap, “The monitor stays on.” Scav didn’t back down one centimeter in the face of Fox’s dark glower, but he did add, “You should be able to get your helmet on over everything if you’re careful. I need more readings.”

Fine. Kriffing great. Because that wasn’t going to chafe like a shabuir.

But Fox did manage to get his helmet on, easing it gently over the nest of wires and medical tape until the magnetics finally engaged and his HUD lit up. A whole cascade of previously blocked messages scrolling through Fox’s HUD, including…

“A summons from the Acting Chancellor didn’t constitute an emergency?” he finally asked in a dangerously flat tone all of his officers had learned to recognize. The message had gone out across the Guard’s entire command comm network. He should have been informed, even with the override in place.

“Thorn handled it,” Stone replied.

Scav just went back to whatever he was reading on his datapad, looking utterly unrepentant.

Fox was going to kill his CMO. And then his subordinate commanders. And then probably himself, if only to avoid the ensuing flimsiwork.

“You and I both know that the Chancellor specifically requested me.”

“That is debatable.”

“Stone,” Fox said his subordinate commander’s name with an essay’s worth of scathing rebuke.

“Acting Chancellor Amedda requested the highest-ranking clone on site,” Stone replied, falling into the more elaborately formal language and tone the Guard’s entire command structure defaulted to when dealing with uncooperative natborns. Fox did not appreciate the implications. “Thorn was the highest-ranking officer on Senate rotation.”

“We both know what he meant,” Fox said, not bothering to rein in the iciness in his tone. He was perfectly capable of performing his duties.

He was.

“It is not the Guard’s place to project layers of meaning onto our orders,” Stone continued in the same, blandly polite tone of voice. Shabuir. “We are to carry out the Senate’s commands as stated.”

And Mas Amedda was exactly the kind of politician who rarely used a trooper’s numbers, much less learn their names. Not when he could refer to them by function, like pieces of equipment. The Acting Chancellor had vaguely demanded ‘the ranking clone trooper on site,’ and so he was going to receive ‘the ranking clone trooper on site,’ as broadly interpreted as the Guard found convenient at the time.

Fox knew this script. Fox had karking-well written this script. Malicious compliance could be an exceedingly useful weapon in their political arsenal, but he’d never kriffing intended for his officers to turn it on him. And using it on the Chancellor of the entire kriffing Republic, Acting or not, was just dangerous.

Fox shut his eyes in the privacy of his own helmet to simply breathe and gather his thoughts.

“We will be discussing this later,” Fox finally said, addressing Stone and Scav both.

“Sir, yes sir,” Stone said, reverting back to his usual, clipped delivery. To anyone else, he would have sounded calmly professional.

To Fox, he sounded infuriatingly smug.

And Scav, who had wandered over to the terminal on the workbench, just waved dismissively over his shoulder.

Satisfying as it might have been to explode at the both of them, it looked like Fox had bigger osik to handle.

Thorn had sent a link to a preliminary report, which Fox forwarded to his datapad for easier reading. It was little more than a log of personal notes, and as Fox read, a new line appeared at the bottom, which meant Thorn was still in the thick of the meeting. It was all diplomatically-worded enough to pass an external review of the files, but Fox was well-versed in reading what his officers weren’t reporting.

It didn’t take long to find the first bombshell in the text.

“Any idea why the Jedi were assigned the lead on the investigation?” Fox asked, glancing up at Stone.

“I looked up SB 1468-28 subsection 12.2,” Stone said evenly, referencing one of Thorn’s more opaque notes, but Fox recognized the pause and the long breath Stone took as a concerning show of anxiety from the usually unemotive commander. “Apparently the Jedi have beskar-clad jurisdiction when it comes to cases involving Sith artifacts.”

Karking hells, that wasn’t good. For all that the Jedi Temple was in the Guard’s jurisdiction, Fox didn’t have very much direct experience dealing with Force osik, but he read his brothers’ incident reports.

Fox distinctly remembered the odd, metallic cylinder the Generals had pulled from the Chancellor’s desk, but they had ended up leaving with multiple crates of materials. He hadn’t seen the interiors, and it was possible that each crate held only a single item in isolated containment, but Fox rather doubted it. It had taken the Jedi several hours to pack up whatever had gone into those crates.

How the kark had none of them noticed a treasure trove of Sith artifacts before? Jedi representatives were constantly in and out of the Chancellor’s office. Maybe something new had only just arrived, a gift from some systems representative or another, or perhaps a questionably sourced art piece from one of the high end antiquities dealers on Coruscant.

Was one of those artifacts responsible for whatever had happened to Chancellor Palpatine? Maybe Fox’s concerning lapses weren’t related to the man’s disappearances after all?

That level of cosmic coincidence strained credulity, but a clone could hope.

Fox skimmed further down Thorn’s notes, teasing out the most pertinent points from the tactful, vague text. The Chancellor had protested what he perceived as the Jedi’s overreach, but had no legal grounds to deny their jurisdictional claim. That was interesting. While the Jedi had been steadily falling in public opinion as the war had dragged on, blocking their efforts could be interpreted as impeding the investigation. That was politically dangerous if word got out. and given how unpopular the Acting Chancellor was proving to be with some members of the Senate, it would. Fox didn’t think Amedda would risk that kind of public backlash without a good reason.

…He has a good reason. The Jedi tend to be more perceptive and less susceptible to bribes or threats than the average CSF investigator…

Force. The karking monitor was beeping again. “Can you turn that off?” he asked Scav, annoyed.

“What?” Scav said, thoroughly distracted with whatever he’d been reading on his datapad. “Oh, yes. Here.” The beeping thankfully cut off. “Did you really not notice anything just then?”

“No,” Fox said. He really wanted to rub his eyes again, but that would require taking off his helmet, and he doubted that the nest of wire leads would survive the process unscathed. “Should I have?”

Scav just made a thoughtful, vaguely concerned sound in the back of his throat. “I’m going to need more data to get a better baseline,” he finally said.

Fox waved a hand in vague permission and dismissal. As long as the kriffing thing stopped beeping at him every few minutes, he really didn’t care.

That wasn’t entirely true. He cared a great deal about figuring out what – or who – was hijacking his mind. And he cared about finding out why, at least some of the times when he was being controlled in that way, he had done things he was actively avoiding considering in much detail. And that this somehow involved him disposing of bodies, using the Chancellor’s private hanger and one of his speeders. And that he was almost entirely convinced that he’d had something to do with the Chancellor’s disappearance, and that his men were all actively covering for him, and that the entire Guard might end up decommissioned en masse for treason if half of Fox’s suspicions turned out to be true.

Oh yeah, and he was also curious to know why each time he started to remember anything that might actually help explain the karked-up situation, he was apparently at risk of popping a blood vessel in his already kriffed up brain and dropping dead. Yeah. That too.

But given that he couldn’t avoid thinking about the entire unfolding disaster just then, he might as well get back to Thorn’s preliminary notes.

The CSF representative has protested the Coruscant Guard being placed in direct support of the Jedi, effectively icing them out of the investigation. Which yes, Fox just bet they did. Not that he was complaining, it was convenient, but why had they…?

Oh. Oh hells…

Apparently the Senate Security Council was extremely displeased that the CSF had mishandled key evidence. The CSF representative had blamed the Jedi, who had evicted them from the Chancellor’s office mid-processing, but the fact remained that there were several unlabeled pieces of evidence in holding, a few of which no one on the team could even remember collecting.

And one of those had contained a sample of blood consistent with the Chancellor’s genetic profile.

Osik.

Osik, osik, osik.

It had to be the swab from Fox’s own armor, the one he’d slipped in amongst the CSF’s other samples during the confusion of the Jedi’s decidedly non-regulation appropriation of the crime scene and eviction of all non-Jedi personnel.

Fox looked up at Stone, who’d been waiting in tense, grim anticipation.

Stone didn’t actually say anything, he just nodded slowly.

Fox didn’t say anything either. Not to Stone in the immediate aftermath of the realization. Not when he finally received Thorn’s call for backup securing an emergency session of the Senate. Not until he was forced to, upon arriving at the Dome and having to pull on the mantle of Marshall Commander of the Coruscant Guard.

What was there to say? Fox wasn’t sure there even was a word for how karked he and his brothers were.

“Fox, anything from your vantage?” Thorn asked over the open comm line.

Fox was standing at attention at the rear of the pod, a careful distance behind the natborns he had been tasked with guarding. He held himself rigidly still, but his eyes were roving over the Senate chamber, looking for… something. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Well, something else. Something here. He couldn’t pinpoint what exactly, he just knew.

“No,” he said, eyes landing on the vacant, powered down pod which was reserved for members of the Senate press corps. This was a closed session, Fox had overseen clearing and sealing of the vast chamber himself, but something about that empty pod was making him feel unaccountably uneasy.

One of the natborns in the front of the pod, some kind of legal scholar from the Republic Judicial Archives named Dr. Pen Prima, turned slightly to give Fox a questioning, slightly accusatory look.

Fox pretended not to notice. The medical monitor on his neck was throwing off his helmet’s magnetics. Normally, his current settings would have allowed him to speak freely in the confines of his bucket without being overheard, but apparently the misalignment was enough to kriff up his seals. Given the flashing red light in the upper right of his HUD, his environmental systems weren’t able to fully engage either. That was currently of lesser concern, but if anyone decided to gas the Senate chamber, and with Fox’s luck he wouldn’t bet against that happening today, he was going to rip the monitor off of his neck and deal with Scav’s displeasure after the fact.

He did, however, type a short, private message to Thorn, explaining the problem.

“The investigation into Chancellor Palpatine’s disappearance has been mismanaged from the start!” Senator Agrael was shouting from his pod, directly across the chamber from Fox’s current position. “The Senate has received hardly any updates on the process, and now we hear that the Jedi have been given control of the investigation over the rightful, civilian authorities!”

“Only after those authorities mishandled key evidence!” another Senator yelled out from somewhere several tiers of pods higher in the chamber. From the gurgling sound of the voice, Fox guessed that it was probably Senator Saal.

So basically, the Security Council’s report to the entire Senate body was going about as well as Thorn had predicted. At least this was a closed session. Once this news broke to the general public, the Guard would most likely be facing protests and worse.

And the news would get out, sooner rather than later. Acting Chancellor Amedda could plead for discretion all he liked. This scandal was too politically unstable to stay under wraps for long, and the Senate leaked sensitive intelligence like a sieve on its best days.

At least the Guard was being spared the worst of the current political fallout.

At least Fox and his commanders were the only ones who knew or even suspected the real cause of the apparent mismanagement of the investigation by the CSF.

He should probably feel a little guiltier about his role in the whole cascading fiasco, but frankly, the CSF had been making his troopers’ lives as difficult as possible from the very moment the clones had been assigned to this osik posting. The current dragging the CSF was unfairly receiving for this case didn’t even begin to rebalance the scales for all of the other investigations they’d actually bungled and then passed the public blame onto the Coruscant Guard.

Honestly, this couldn’t be happening to a nicer group of shabuire. Seeing Captain Axion fuming from the guest pod that had been assigned to the CSF for this hearing was a memory Fox was going to cherish for a good long while.

However, he really shouldn’t be lingering about any of that right now, especially given the pod full of Jedi Generals to Fox’s immediate left.

“Please, Senators. The transition of certain aspects of the investigation to the Jedi has nothing to do with the performance of the brave civil servants within the CSF,” said Senator Amidala in a placating tone of voice clearly meant to deescalate the situation. “It is my understanding that their role is confined to investigating a number of potentially dangerous Force artifacts recovered from the Chancellor’s office.”

“Cultural artifacts!” Senator Deechi protested, joining the argument for the first time. “Artistic relics! What evidence have the Jedi provided that these pieces are in any way related to the Force?”

It hadn’t escaped anyone’s notice, Fox’s included, that Palpatine’s Umbaran Administrative Aide, Sly Moore, was positioned in the pod alongside Senator Deechi, standing in symbolic solidarity with her home world and conspicuously leaving Acting Chancellor Amedda to face this unfolding scandal in his central pod, alone.

It was almost definitely a play for power of some kind, but whether her primary target was Mas Amedda, the Jedi, both together, or someone else entirely was anyone’s guess.

“Most moderately powerful Force artifacts emit a kind of low-level radiation that is visible with a standard spectral analysis,” Chief Jedi Archivist, General Jocasta Nu answered from the Jedi Order’s pod, sharp tone sounding terribly dry. General Windu, standing at her side, looked like he very badly wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose, if the dignity of his position would allow it, while General Vos, who was sprawled casually in one of the pod’s rear seats, just seemed to find the proceedings to be deeply entertaining. “Of course, unshielded exposure to Sith artifacts has also been known to result in possession, evisceration, temporal displacement, and any number of other, unpleasant side effects. However, I am sure that we can draft up the proper legal waivers for any Senators who feel dutybound to verify our identification of artifacts in person.”

That earned scattered laughter from a few Senators and an almost comedic widening of Senator Deechi’s pale eyes at the rather bluntly delivered, mildly threatening rebuke from a rather frail-looking, exceedingly elderly Jedi General.

“’Chief Archivist means she’s stationed on Coruscant all the time, right?” Cooper said over the open comm channel. “So why wasn’t she assigned as our General?”

Fox didn’t disagree with his trooper’s thought in principle, but…

“Keep the comms clear,” Thorn said, sounding more exasperated than anything.

Yes. That.

But then, because Thorn was just as bad as the rest of their brothers despite his rarefied rank, he proceeded to ignore his own order by shifting over to a private channel with Fox and saying, “Kind of makes you understand why they recalled the 212th the second all of this started.”

Fox refrained from snorting. Much. Cody’s general was always being called in, whenever there was a political disaster for the Order to navigate on Coruscant. Fox couldn’t find it in himself to complain much, not when it meant he got to see Cody far more frequently than his other batchmates ever seemed to manage.

Not that the 212th and General Kenobi were going to arrive in time to avert this particular fiasco. They were still at least a day out, having just engaged a small Separatist fleet which had been harassing Republic supply lines all along the Pfaresian hyperspace lane.

Senator Agrael and Senator Laothru had started shouting over one another, making it nearly impossible to tell what either one of them were saying.

Acting Chancellor Amedda, bereft of a vice chair to do him the honors, banged the Speaker’s Staff against the floor of his own pod in a bid for order.

He was resoundingly ignored.

In the clamor, Fox found his gaze subconsciously drifting back towards the empty press box. His fingers twitched almost subconsciously towards his twin, holstered blasters, but there was no one there. It was almost as if he was expecting someone, some threat, to appear in the empty pod.

Trying to focus on what was bothering him left Fox with a faintly disorienting sense of nausea and a sneaking suspicion that somewhere back at Guard headquarters, Scav’s datapad was lighting up with all sorts of concerning data. He refrained from reaching for the monitor under the high collar of his blacks, as if poking the Sith-damned thing might give him any kind of answers.

Any potentially clarifying memories remained frustratingly out of reach, beyond the bone deep knowledge that CC-1010 was involved somehow. Was something about to happen to one of the members of the press corps? Was CC-1010 about to ‘happen’ to one of them? Or had he already? Probably not. The dedicated pool of reporters assigned full time to the Senate did not change much, and Fox would have received a report if any of them had mysteriously disappeared.

But he wasn’t entirely sure, and that uncertainty was eating at him.

Deeming any action better than simply standing here like an ornamental plant, watching over two scholars quietly debate the galactic ramifications of the ongoing unhinged Senatorial shouting match, Fox pulled up the text function on his vambrace and typed out another message for Thorn.

‘Tell Hound to take Grizzer on a perimeter walk. Check the press pod, make it look routine.’

The reply was a simple, terse, ‘Understood.’

“I say the root of the problem lies with the sentient who has been giving the orders since Chancellor Palpatine’s disappearance,” said Senator Agrael, when the shouting seemed to be dying down to just a dull roar. “A sentient who we never elected to office, and one who is most likely sabotaging this investigation to prop up his unearned position of power!”

That set off a new wave of shouting, as several more Senators pulled their pods away from their docks and demanded to be recognized amidst the chaos. Acting Chancellor Amedda looked murderous as he continued banging his staff against the floor of his platform to no net effect.

Fox sighed quietly to himself. This was developing along a wholly predictable path, even if he hadn’t expected the speed of Mas Amedda’s political fall from grace.

Chancellor Palpatine’s staunch supporters saw the lack of progress in investigating the man’s disappearance as a political and moral betrayal.

The anti-war voting block was already unhappy with Palpatine’s policies and saw this as a convenient opportunity to oust his politically weaker proxy.

The more xenophobic of human Senators despised the Chagrian Acting Chancellor on principle.

The Senators who were more focused on their own personal power and comfort were watching their investments shrink in value during the ongoing instability.

Given all of that, the next words out of Agrael’s mouth weren’t all that surprising.

“I call for a vote of no confidence,” he said, gravelly voice amplified across the vast Senate chamber.

That resulted in a new eruption of shouts. Fox scanned his immediate surroundings again, an instinctive threat assessment even if he did not truly expect any of the Senators to physically assault one another. His eyes soon landed on the Jedi Order’s pod.

General Vos was watching him, expression thoroughly unreadable.

Fairly caught and quietly desperate to not seem concerned by that fact, Fox just nodded slightly in acknowledgement.

One of General Vos’s eyebrows rose at that, but he did nod in return.

Fox pointedly looked away, out over the assembled Senate body. He could feel the General’s gaze still on him, and it made his skin crawl.

“He is only the Acting Chancellor,” said Senator Miri-Dolith was saying scornfully. “Is a vote of no confidence even applicable?”

Thousands of sets of eyes turned to Fox’s pod and the two natborns he had been specifically tasked with guarding.

“Oh,” the one on the left, Dr. Shinzel, said in a very small voice, apparently realizing exactly why he and his colleague had been summoned to the Senate Dome. “Oh my.”

Sith-hells, they were going to be here all night at this rate.

The two legal scholars tried, with many interruptions, pauses to pull up specific passages of law from their respective institutions’ databases, and verbal detours into completely tangential details of Republic policy, to explain the general problem. That Acting Chancellor Amedda could not be removed by a vote of no confidence, since legally, he was simply a temporary stand-in for Chancellor Palpatine. That Chancellor Palpatine could be removed with a vote of no confidence, which would trigger a new election, thereby removing the Acting Chancellor from power. Or that alternatively, they could declare Chancellor Palpatine dead, which would also trigger a new election, yielding the same net result. Granted, if it turned out that Chancellor Palpatine wasn’t dead, well, that would generate a whole new suite of legal problems.

The word ‘unprecedented’ was thrown around a lot.

So was the phrase ‘constitutional crisis.’

It was almost a relief, when Fox finally spotted Hound and Grizzer casually walking into the empty press pod. At least it gave Fox a worthwhile distraction from the flustered, frustrated exclamations of the two academics who, while probably on the largest stage of either of their respective careers, found themselves trying to explain an esoteric facet of Republic legal doctrine to thousands of sentients who 1) clearly thought they were already perfectly well-informed on the topic, and 2) only wanted to hear the details that supported their specific stances.

Except then the spikes down Grizzer’s back bristled up and he opened his jaws and barked in a trained signal Fox recognized, even if he was too far away to actually hear the massiff over the din.

Osik.

Hound knelt down, looking at something under the lip of one of the pod’s padded seats. Thankfully, his body language did not appear to be particularly alarmed when he rose, gloved hand held carefully flat, like he was supporting something small and fragile in the palm of his hand.

Finally, when Fox was about to lose his patience and comm the ARF trooper directly, Hound closed his fist around whatever it was and rolled his arm over to enter something into his vambrace.

‘Datachip. Possible dead drop. Advise?’ popped up in Fox’s HUD, tagged with Hound’s designation number.

‘Log it on Guard internal record. Bring it to Thorn,’ Fox sent to Hound, and then he shifted to the channel he’d opened with Thorn and sent, ‘Hound incoming with datachip. Copy and wipe contents. Return to previous location before session ends.’

…Zara Salaveda of the HoloNet News network would be disappointed to find the files corrupted, but it would not be the first time promises from an anonymous source didn’t pan out. And while CC-1010’s Master had clearly wanted the security leak handled, he had not been terribly specific with his final orders.

And as satisfying as that had turned out to be, it was somewhat unclear if he was still obligated to tie up these final loose ends…

The stray thought crystallized in Fox’s mind, clear and complete and thoroughly damning. He breathed through the pain that bloomed behind his eyes, trying to conjure up specific memories that would make those thoughts make sense. Nothing came to him, except a pulse of dizziness.

‘And then set a watch?’ Thorn asked, completely unaware of Fox’s ongoing, internal crisis.

‘And then set a watch.’ Fox sent, trying to keep up appearances, even though his hands were shaking faintly with the effort.

He didn’t look over to see if General Vos or any of the other generals had sensed this lapse. Fox was fairly certain he already knew the answer, and he was afraid that taking any course of action to confirm it one way or the other also risked giving too much away.

Charger, who was a credit to Kamino’s cloning program and was clearly due for some kind of commendation, formed up his squad around the Generals as an honor guard and escort to guide the Jedi out of the Senate Dome. It was all very respectful, very proper.

It was also just enough of a distraction that it allowed Fox to escape without being too obvious about it. General Vos had continued to watch him, off and on for the several additional hours it took for the Senate to get bored with their stalemate and call for a recess.

Fox’s skin had been crawling, under the thoroughly unwelcome scrutiny.

While most of the Guardsmen cycling off shift from the Dome had piled into several larger transports, Thorn had pointedly herded Fox to one of the two-person speeders. He’d also shucked off his helmet and then dropped in the floorboards before climbing into the pilot’s seat and flashing a quick hand signal for Fox to do the same.

Getting out of his helmet was a bit trickier than getting into it had been, and Fox ended up pulling two of Scav’s sensors free in the process. He couldn’t seem to summon up the motivation to try to fix them and instead started pulling them more completely free, to hang unceremoniously from the high collar of his blacks.

Thorn waited until Fox had pulled the last line free and let his hands drop into his lap before asking, “Scav’s handiwork?”

Fox nodded slowly, leaning back against the speeder’s hard headrest and shutting his eyes.

With their helmets off, there weren’t any comm lines to be compromised, and the Guard swept their vehicles for listening and tracking devices daily. They could speak freely here, and yet it still took Thorn a few minutes to work up to asking the question Fox had been expecting.

“How did you know about that datachip?” he finally asked.

“I remembered some things,” Fox admitted, without further elaboration. It wasn’t like he had much more of an explanation to offer. “What was on it?”

With his eyes still shut, Fox heard the rub of plastoid against the hard, synthetic lining of Thorn’s seat. A shrug, most likely.

“The files are encrypted, but there are a lot of them,” Thorn said.

“They were meant for the HNN reporter. Salaveda.”

Thorn didn’t ask more details, for which Fox was inordinately grateful. He didn’t have them to share, or he would have already offered them.

They were maybe halfway back to headquarters before Fox convinced himself to just ask his own burning question, the one he’d been trying to suppress all rotation.

He thought he’d been starting to see the outline of the pattern here. The fragments of memories, the pieces of disjointed evidence, the covert interactions between Fox’s brothers he’d tried so hard not to notice. They fit together. Mostly. He’d tried to not think about any of it, and speaking his suspicions into existence seemed to risk somehow making them more real. But Fox had always preferred dealing in facts, and the facts had been painting a picture he did not like.

CC-1010 had been the last sentient on record as having seen Chancellor Palpatine.

CC-1010 had the access codes to the Chancellor’s private hanger bay and turbolift, which meant that Fox could not point to their later use as an alibi.

CC-1010 had killed sentients. A lot of sentients. And he had used the Chancellor’s hanger and speeder to dispose of at least some of the bodies.

The chances that he had been doing all of that without the Chancellor’s knowledge or consent seemed slim. And that suggested that if he wasn’t the one pulling CC-1010’s strings, then he almost certainly knew who was.

And Fox’s men knew it too, or at least they suspected a great deal of it. They’d figured out a way to track his movements, and they were using that information to actively cover up CC-1010’s actions.

It explained some of their silence, their seeming lack of concern that helping Fox was risking fatal repercussions. If CC-1010 had been acting against the Republic’s best interests, then that would be treason, and the Guard had made itself complicit in it. But following the Chancellor’s orders, even if they were ones Fox couldn’t remember? That was just what they had been made to do. There was some safety for them all, in Fox just being a product, performing to its design specifications.

But CC-1010 had also come back to base with Chancellor Palpatine’s blood on his armor.

And that last part didn’t fit with the rest of the pattern. Fox was sorely afraid of making it fit.

But he needed to know. He needed to understand the extent of the risk he was posing to the rest of the Guard, and if his suspicions were correct, then keeping him in the dark about CC-1010’s actions wasn’t necessary anymore.

“Thorn,” Fox finally said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. But he could say this here; it was safe. They wouldn’t be overheard. “Did I kill the Chancellor?”

Thorn’s silence was already damning enough, but when he did speak, his words were almost worse. “If you did,” he said slowly, clearly picking out each word carefully. He cleared his throat and tried again, “If you did, then he deserved it.”

AN: If anyone else wants me to tag them as this gets updated, please just let me know. @tazmbc1

[xxkitsuneknightxx]

Feather-she/her pronouns. Fell in love with how each feather is unique. She keeps a couple in her braids sometimes mixing beads with them. She works in surveillance and security.

Fowl-he/they pronouns. They have an interest in raising/training birds. They’re also have a side job of slicing into stuff their not supposed to be in.

Peck-he/him pronouns. Got his name from pecking at anyone who got to close to his brothers. He looks mean but is an actual softy. He’s also good at hand to hand and knife throwing.

Swan- she/her pronouns. She’s as graceful as a swan when fighting. She has a mean eyeliner and always have great tip’s for undercover work.

Ducky-he/him pronouns. Started collecting random rubber ducky’s. Started training under CMO fracture after expressing interest in medicine.

Goose-he/him pronouns. He can be as loud and persistent as a silly goose. He loves parkour and free falling off buildings.

They all have different interests and personalities, but what they all agree on is that commander fox is buir.

[mwolf0epsilon]

The Umbaran Pathogen - Day 16: Hospital

Summary: Loath as he was to admit it, Coric had to do just as Cani had suggested and leave the 212th to stall the infected long enough that they'd be able to escape the base. At least if they got to the medical facility and found a cure, the other battalion's efforts would not be in vain...

Warning: N/A

Here’s what Tup currently looks like!

Twitch belongs to @gaeasun Pitch and Tacet belong to @lost-on-kamino

Prev / Next

[In which the events on Umbara are worsened by an unknown pathogen taking hold of both the 501st and 212th. These series of drabbles will follow a non-linear timeline based on the AI-less Whumptober prompt list for 2023.]

THIS STORY IS ALSO ON AO3

---

"SCATTER!!!"

All hell had broken loose the moment Tup had quite literally bashed down the doors to the medbay. His razor sharp pincers and startlingly bulky and powerful body, making short work of the doorway's integrity with terrifying ease.

All who stood who were uninfected by the parasitic menace, had been frozen stiff from shock at the brutal transformation the tear-drop tattooed clone had undergone. Only to be forced to act when the now beyond monstrous kih'vod roared at them.

Malicious intent more than a little clear.

Reacting on instinct alone, Coric had immediately called for the huddled up group of medics to separate. All four of them aarrowly avoiding getting violently crushed to death by the ferocious beast's sudden charge towards them.

Pitch, Sponge and Twitch luckily did as ordered, moving out of harm's way as quickly as physically possible. But it came with an unexpected consequence (although, to be fair, the medbay's size greatly contributed to the unfortunate outcome). All cots that were in Tup's path were completely ripped out from where they were bolted to the floor, and sent flying all about as the specialist collided with them.

Unable to stop himself due to his four clawed feet slipping on the tiles like a clumsy fawn skidding on ice.

The aggro'd patients that had been strapped to said cots managing to then free themselves from their now damaged restraints, and quickly get up onto unsteady feet. Adding even more problems to the huge one they already had at hand, since the partially transformed men were clearly readying themselves to aid their leader in this assault against the healthy troopers.

"Coric! It's you and the rest of your medical team he wants!" Canivete called out in warning, recalling Cody's promise of bodily harm. Aimed directly at the 501st's primary caregivers. "Get yourself and your team out of here, and get to that damn medical facility! We'll try to hold them off for as long as possible!"

"We can't just leave you to deal with this on your own!" Coric shook his head, looking towards the monstrous form of Tup that was back to charging at the medics. Trying to grab at them with his two large mantis-like pincers, kick with all four of his insectoid legs, or lash out at them with a long prehensile tail tipped with a sharp looking cerci.

None of which were options any of them wanted to experience.

"So you'd rather be ripped apart and then have your insides eaten, 'Dusk of the Undead' style?!" Cani cried out in disbelief as she ran to help her General pin down Commander Cody, who was now very much trying to fight off the Jedi's grip to join in on the full on brawl that had broken out. "Very smart choice! 11/10 stars, genius!!!"

SCREEEEAAAAH!!!!!!!!

The 501st's CMO screamed in fright as he just about managed to avoid getting rammed into a wall and turned to human paste by Tup. The latter staggering himself from the harsh collision, while the former ducked under his whipping tail before getting as far away from him as possible.

The Umbaran base's medbay was far too small for all the action going on within it. Sooner or later one of them would end up cornered and unable to get away in time, and then their tip-yip would definitely be cooked.

Loath as he was to admit it, Coric had to do just as Cani had suggested and leave the 212th to stall the infected long enough that they'd be able to escape the base. At least if they got to the medical facility and found a cure, the other battalion's efforts would not be in vain...

"Sponge, Twitch, Pitch! Move out!!!" The senior medic hollered for the rest of his medical team to retreat. Ducking yet again under Tup's lashing tail and knocking down one of the infected vode who had tried to sneak up on him to grapple him to the floor.

"But what about Kix?!" Twitch asked as he was pulled behind Pitch who was back to wielding improvised weapons, using one of the damaged cot legs as a makeshift baton to beat back Lich's relentless attacks. Earning himself quite a few scratches for his troubles before Pretty Boy intervened, headbutting his older batcher hard enough that even Sponge winced at the resulting crack that ended with both troopers on the floor looking dazed.

"We'll find a way to contact him! Go!" General Kenobi ordered as he let go of Cody, trusting Canivete to kept a hold of his second in command while the Jedi used the Force to keep Tup where he was, so as to allow the four medics an easier escape from the ongoing battle.

Reluctantly, they all bolted for the exit. Forcing themselves not to look back so as to not waste any of the precious seconds that they had been granted. The enraged roars and screeches of the infected ringing in their ears as they did so.

---

Tacet liked to consider themselves a very pragmatic and practical sort. They saw a problem, they fixed it. Then they moved onto the next problem and fixed that too. So on and so forth. No dilly-dallying.

When comms had begun to act up, they and the rest of the 212th's top Slicers had done their very best to try to combat the issue. Something the 501st had also no doubt attempted, before they'd become overwhelmed with whatever had crippled their efforts so terribly.

That said, Tacet couldn't help but wonder why no one had discovered that the communications tower itself was the source of their signal problems. Because from the moment they set foot inside the building, they immediately figured out that someone had purposefully put a jammer inside the main console.

Now, it wasn't like the 501st were in any way incompetent or remotely gullible. Far from it, actually! But it just felt awfully strange that no one had even considered the possibility of sabotage, when nothing they did cleared up the signal issues they'd been having. Then again, after the incident with Sargeant Slick, perhaps suspicions of such treasonous acts just came more naturally to the 212th specifically...

As loathsome as it was to suspect their own siblings, it was not an impossibility. Negative sentiment towards the war and the Republic did occasionally crop up among the vode who'd suffered through the worst campaigns. Most never acted upon those thoughts, instead becoming more cynical and contrary. The ones who did, however, either deserted or resorted to this sort of tactic.

If just to feel like they'd at least made their point.

That said, all suspicions of dissent aside, Tacet did have their doubts that this was done by a jaded vod. Not when things had already been so out of hand for everyone involved. It didn't rule out sabotage completely, as the late Krell had a certain reputation that was hard for them to ignore (they'd heard about the Venator that had gone missing on his watch, as well as Beat's experiences with the two traumatized ARCs that General Koon had brought into the 104th on request of one of his natborn engineers). Unfortunately with the Besalisk dead, they didn't really think they'd ever find enough proof to point the finger...

So instead of any further speculating on their end, they decided to focus entirely on getting rid of the jammer and send the all clear to their superior officers. And no sooner did they do so, did they immediately receive an emergency call from their General.

And it seemed like things had only gotten worse in their absence.

But of course there was really no time to consider the whims of the universe when they had a job to do, so they simply listened to the Jedi, nodded quietly, and went on to pass the message to the intended party. Hopefully Captain Rex, ARC Fives and Medic Kix wouldn't be too busy to check their comms...

---

Dogma's desperate screams and garbled words were still painfully loud, despite the trio of Rex, Kix and Fives having run out of the brig and into the lift to go inspect the commotion they had heard coming from the other side of the base.

On the long way down they had all gotten an emergency call from one of the 212th's men, Tacet, informing them to get out of the base and to get to the nearest medical facility ASAP, where the other four 501st medics were already headed to.

As it turned out, Dogma hadn't been lying. He wasn't the one in charge of the insectoid hierarchy he now belonged to. A brief shaky holo of what Tup had turned into making their stomachs plummet as they realized everyone was still very much in danger.

Especially now that they had pissed off the 'Queen' of the hive.

"If memory serves right, the nearest hospital is six clicks north." Fives brought up the map he and the rest of the recon squads had made on their intel gathering missions. "It's where most of the initial enemy patrols were spotted."

"And here we thought they were just germophobes..." Rex bitterly remarked as he pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "No wonder they all had hazmat gear incorporated in their armor...This whole planet's trying to kill anything in sight, even from the inside out..."

"I'll bet you they must have expected us all to get sick while we were out here..." Kix murmured to himself. "And then when they saw we were still advancing to the capitol despite being worse for wear, they started throwing everything our way..."

"Or, they saw some of the men were sick with this, and decided they'd rather go nuclear on our shebs than allow us anywhere where we could get medical treatment for this crap..." Fives offered.

"Both plausible theories." Rex conceded "But not what we should be focusing on. Right now we either reach that facility and find a way to put an end to whatever has done this to the men, or give the others enough time to do it themselves."

"And if neither group gets there in the end?" Kix reluctantly asked.

"...I haven't thought that far ahead, but none of what comes to mind is... Ideal for any of our long-term survival." The blond Captain said as he looked down at his boots, unable to meet their eyes.

He needn't explain himself.

If this nightmarish mess couldn't be fixed, then there was no way they could allow it to spread to the in-orbit venators or the Republic itself. A disease like this would wreck havoc all across the galaxy if left unchecked, and not a singular clone or Jedi would ever allow something so catastrophic to happen on their watch.

But that would have to be their final resort.

Right now they had one little tiny chance to make things right, so long as there really was a way to cure this horrific blight...

[elendiliel]

Taking Flight

Just a bit of sliver-of-life nonsense that happened after a recent re-read of With a Side of Rust by @blueskyscribe (which I highly recommend, by the way).

---

“What have you been doing to these?” Knock Out shook his head in exasperation. He knew he was excellent at his job – he wouldn’t have survived as Megatron’s CMO if he weren’t – but the task in front of him was proving more challenging than anticipated. Still, he wasn’t ready to admit defeat yet.

“Using them,” Glitch said infuriatingly calmly. “General wear and tear mounts up over the centuries.”

“Especially if you don’t bother with proper maintenance.” Knock Out could admit to himself that that was a little unfair on his young colleague. The Autobot “field-tech” and visitor from another universe took as good care of almost all her equipment as anyone in their shared profession, better than some, but her most important tools – her hands – were scratched and scuffed perhaps beyond even his considerable ability to restore to prime condition. The damage was purely cosmetic; whether she were working on a patient or flying a ship, her hands moved as fluidly as any forged medic’s. But they were still painful to look at, and Knock Out had offered to do something about them during a lull in the Autobots’ (and Predacons’) battle with Unicron, an offer she had accepted. Following through on that seemed to be the Autobot thing to do, so he was dutifully doing it.

As he moved on to another scratch in her bronze plating, it struck him that she was almost literally putting her livelihood – and, in a sense, her life – in his hands. A medic’s career was often dependent on their manual dexterity; the best equipment in the universe was useless if its operator couldn’t control it properly. Being a field-tech clearly meant a great deal to Glitch, and yet she had entrusted the key tools of her trade to a former enemy who had tortured and tried to kill her, harmed or threatened a number of her friends, and been quite open about his selfish reasons for changing sides. Before he knew it, he was asking her, “Why are you letting me do this?”

She studied him for a long, unsettling moment, giving the distinct impression she was trying to figure out exactly what he meant by his question, then waved her free hand dismissively, channelling her inner Ratchet (his universe’s Ratchet, at least). “Per-lease. We’ve been inside each other’s heads. I know you’ve managed to hang on to some integrity, which is pretty impressive in the circumstances. And I can look after myself.” Despite appearances, Knock Out thought. Strange though it seemed to him, the young ‘bot had “come online” many centuries after the end of her reality’s last major Autobot-Decepticon war. Scars notwithstanding, she seemed to be a civilian to the tips of her delicate-looking fingers and upswept winglets (more like a car’s door-wings than those of her fellow two-wheelers from Knock Out’s home universe). But the ex-‘Con medic had treated too many Vehicons damaged by her inbuilt electromagnets and other medical tools to believe that.

Even before, as he wished she hadn’t reminded him, he had used a cortical psychic patch – on Lord Megatron’s orders – to gain access to her memories, and seen the Cybertron where she had grown up – a war-damaged world always prepared for the next conflict. And not much more before she somehow reversed the process, gaining access to his memories – including some he didn’t like to acknowledge, let alone share. He’d tried not to flinch as she alluded to that particular episode, but her sharp eyes – adapted for scouting – missed very little. And she seemed to have about as much control over her voicebox. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

“Not really, no,” Knock Out agreed. “But,” the newspark’s honesty seemed to be contagious, “it’s about time one of us mentioned the – rhinoceros in the room, is that the phrase?”

“Elephant,” she corrected him automatically. “No idea why. Elephants are bigger, but generally less aggressive, especially when unprovoked. Or so I gather. It’s often said that they never forget; I’ll have to look up whether that’s ever been verified.” Belatedly, she registered Knock Out’s be-quiet-and-let-me-concentrate expression, and obeyed it. He might not have known her for very long, but he knew a budding monologue when he heard it, and preferred not to have to listen to one when he was trying to work. Especially one about organic lifeforms, of which he had never been very fond.

But as it turned out, he couldn’t stay silent, either. “Where did these come from?” He indicated one of a number of shallow scratches on her left palm and fingers, distinguished by an unusual V-shaped depth profile both end-to-end and side-to-side, according to the scanner he was using to monitor the ultrafine procedure. (His eyes were good, but not quite that good.)

“Birds,” was her initial, baffling answer. His blank expression must have prompted her to explain further. “The ones that nest in or visit the tree that grows in our base in Detroit. Prowl used to feed them, and now it’s my job – or it was.” Concern and homesickness flickered across her face, very briefly. She must be at least as aware as he was that no Autobot worth their brand would let any being go hungry if they could help it, even an organic. “A few trust me enough to eat out of my servo, which is – quite something.” A soft smile lit up her whole face. “And well worth a few scratches. Last winter, one of them turned up with a broken wing. I don’t know how it happened, or how far he had to walk, but he came to me for help, so of course I took care of him.”

“Put him out of his misery?” Knock Out regretted his automatic, callous reaction even before the expected expression of shock and horror formed on Glitch’s features. He was dealing with an Autobot, not a Decepticon. “No! Set the fracture and fed and housed him until he recovered, of course. Which was quite a circuit-shredding experience at first. Bird bones are strong, but they’re hollow, to reduce the mass the wings have to lift, so they feel fragile. Especially if you’re my size, let alone yours.” Glitch was tiny for a Cybertronian who wasn’t a Mini-Con, not much more than half Knock Out’s height and skinny with it. “The whole time I was splinting his wing, I was terrified I was going to do more harm than good. Managed it, though.” That soft smile was back. “When he was able to fly again – you know that feeling when you know a patient’s going to make it?” He did, very well; there had been times when it was one of the few things that kept him going. “Like that, but more so.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Knock Out returned his attention to the task at hand – pun not intended. Less than a minute later, his tools must have found a sensor cluster by accident, because she burst out laughing, her winglets fluttering as though she herself were a bird. Some delicate but dangerous creature, whose elegant plumage and enchanting song distracted others from her sharp beak and sharper claws. (Come to think of it, he hadn’t known her winglets could move like that – they were usually folded as flat as possible against her back in the field, and held stiffly behind her shoulders the rest of the time, ready to form the sides of her vehicle mode at a moment’s notice.) “That tickles!”

“Sorry.” The word felt oddly rusty in his voicebox. Though he’d mollified plenty of disgruntled superiors in his time as a Decepticon, straightforward apologies weren’t his usual method. Glitch really was rubbing off on him already.

“It’s fine. I wasn’t prepared, that’s all.” She brought herself under control, winglets returning to their normal position. It was quite impressive, the way she could just switch off her naturally expressive body language like that. Impressive, and a little worrying. “To return to the subject of birds – there are a few breeding pairs that nest in Prowl’s tree. The same ones, year after year, he thinks.” The present tense perplexed Knock Out for a second. Wasn’t Prowl the one who sacrificed himself to reconstruct a shattered Allspark? Then he remembered she had mentioned that his ghost put in occasional appearances still. (Was that possible in his universe, and were there limits on who could come back? Better not drive down that road.) “One batch of fledglings made their first flights the day before I arrived in this reality. I was on Cybertron, but Bee sent me a vid. Would you like to see?”

Usually, Knock Out’s automatic, instant response would have been, “no.” While he admired Earth’s automobiles (some of them, at any rate), the same could not be said for its inhabitants. He’d barely tolerated humans even before Breakdown’s… encounter… with MECH, and at least with them one could hold a semblance of an intelligent conversation. Other organics… eesh. But while he’d weathered Megatron’s wrath, Starscream’s rudeness and Soundwave’s sheer creepiness perfectly well for aeons, as it turned out, he was not immune to wide dark-blue eyes and an open, earnest expression. (More open than even most Autobots’ in Knock Out’s universe, let alone any Decepticon’s. Glitch’s world had been shaped by war, but she hadn’t lived and vented it for anywhere near as long as any other Cybertronian he knew, and, Primus, it showed.) Besides, he’d done as much as he could in one session for her left hand, and could use a break. “All right.”

Her delighted grin shone like a tiny sun as she unfolded a miniature datapad concealed in her right arm (honestly, how many mods did one ‘bot need?) and called up the file she wanted, projecting the vid above the small screen so that Knock Out could see it more easily. Judging by the quality, it had been taken directly from someone’s visual cache, probably “Bee’s”. (The other universe’s Bumblebee, most likely. It didn’t escape Knock Out’s notice that Glitch had a band of yellow paint on her right wrist, interrupted by a black stripe, which looked to have been worn away, repainted and damaged again in the previous few months.)

The focus of the recording was a tree that seemed to have grown through both the floor and the roof of an Autobot-scaled building, and specifically a branch on which perched a family of birds Knock Out didn’t care to identify – two adults, their colour schemes indicating that they were of different genders (he’d somehow managed to learn that much), and a motley assortment of scrawny little ones of the same species, their feathery plating barely complete. The excited but otherwise unintelligible chatter that had been in the background faded away as first the caregiver birds demonstrated the takeoff, flight and landing procedures they wanted to teach their fledglings, and then, one by one, the bitlets – birdlets? – tried to copy them. A few managed it straight away; others couldn’t quite stay airborne at first, and by the sounds of it at least one ‘bot had to be prevented from attempting to help them. But before long, all the tiny aerials were swooping around as though they’d been doing it all their short, perilous lives, much to the delight of the watching Autobots, including the one next to Knock Out, cooing over the display like an overgrown pigeon. (He could identify that species, if only because one couldn’t escape it on much of Earth.)

Not that he really minded, he realised. A few times, before the war, he’d seen newly sparked fliers being taught such basic techniques by their mentors, and, diehard grounder though he was, the sight had never failed to fill him with hope for the future, however short-lived. It still had the same effect, even aeons later, on a wrecked planet that could only create new lives because of a devastating sacrifice, watching another world’s non-sapient fauna teaching their young ones. Life, robotic or organic, would always persist, no matter what.

“Breakdown would have liked to see that,” he heard himself comment as the recording finished. He wasn’t sure why he’d let that slip, but he couldn’t take the words back. And he needed to talk to someone about his late partner at some time; who better than someone who already knew what had happened to him (up to a point), who understood even a little of what it was like to lose a partner, and who had been trained to be discreet? (He was aware she’d told the other Autobots about Breakdown’s… ending, and found he couldn’t be too angry with her for that. Life might be easier if they knew, and he didn’t want to discuss it himself.) “He may have acted the brute, but he could be surprisingly gentle with people and things that didn’t pose a threat.”

“So I gather,” Glitch said, a comfortable level of sympathy colouring her voice. She paused for a moment, then asked, “Do all Decepticons wear masks, or is it just you two?” Judging by the flash of annoyance in her eyes, that had just slipped out, too, but she didn’t try to retract the question.

“It wasn’t exactly a mask,” he corrected her. “He did love to fight, but – it wasn’t the only thing he loved.” It still hurt too much to dive too deeply into that topic, he discovered, so he redirected the conversation a little. “And what do you mean, you two?”

“Takes one to know one,” she answered with a sly smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you’re what humans at this point in time call a precious cinnamon roll – don’t ask me why – under everything else, but there’s more to you than meets the optic. And you don’t have to take the mask off right away, but – you don’t have to keep wearing it all the time, either, not any more.”

Takes one to know one? “But… you’re an Autobot.” A stupid response, but his brain module was still short-circuiting as he tried to figure out why an Autobot would have to pretend to be anything they weren’t. They were supposed to be all about honour and honesty and talking about one’s feelings – weren’t they? (He filed the rest of her reply away to be parsed later. One thing at a time.)

“I’m also what’s known on Earth as “autistic”.” He’d heard the term before, never in any helpful context. She didn’t provide much context, either. “I don’t really have all the right words to describe it, but the short version is that my processor’s wired differently from those of most ‘bots. Not better or worse – just different. Sometimes too different to allow me to fit in in the “great Autobot machine”.” She rolled her eyes at that last phrase, almost concealing a flare of pain. Knock Out wondered idly who had coined it, and whether they were still available for dissection. Or vivisection. He didn’t really mind one way or the other. “I learned centuries ago to wear just enough of a mask that I could pass for nearly normal, but that comes with its own problems. Mostly the effort it takes to keep up the illusion of sanity. If I’d stayed on my Cybertron much longer – it wouldn’t’ve ended well. Being posted to Earth, though, gave me a chance to spread my winglets a bit.” She suited her actions to her words, winglets fanning out to their fullest extent. “I recommend.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he assured her. “But in the meantime, I still need to fix up that other hand of yours.” She held it out, and remained mercifully silent as he worked. She’d given him a lot to think about, but their conversation had made one thing clear. Grounders though they were, like the fledgling birds, they had both taken flight in recent months or years – she to Earth, he to the Autobots – and both were, or would be, all the better for doing so.

[anony-man]

Chubformers drabble #160!

Characters: Pharma (& First Aid & Ambulon - IDW)

Word count: 1.3k

It had started out innocently enough. Pharma was an outright chubby chaser (or so he claimed), but he sure as hell liked to see bots with a bit of fat on their frames, especially when they were stuck with him in a place as cold, dark, and dreary as Delphi. 

So maybe he had a thing for slipping his two most valuable—and only other—medics a bit of extra strength here and there through the ever-reliable form of small, sweet snacks. The bags of snacks were endless, all thanks to the useless care packages sent up to them every other cycle when they were lucky, and the amount of energy intake from eating a pack a day compared to going without was little. Food was food, and when it packed on a few extra pounds to otherwise underweight and underfed medics, Pharma was going to make sure it happened. 

He definitely did not have any ulterior motives for ensuring both of the medics under his supervision never went a day without a little bit of snacking in between shifts… because truly, that would have bordered on interfering with professional work relations. Not that anyone would ever care, of course, especially when the three of them were on the outskirts of nowhere and more often than not left to their own devices, but the point still stood. It was an act of leadership, plain and simple, which meant once the two doctors began retaliating in return, Pharma knew he was in trouble. 

Just like all the nasty and infectious diseases that lingered under the surface until they were discovered far too late for change, Delphi’s CMO remained completely oblivious to his own fattening frame as he continued on his not-so-discreet journey to fatten up the frames of the other two bots under his supervision. Knowing the three of them, though, his blissful ignorance and smug satisfaction weren’t long lasting.

Both First Aid and Ambulon had become accustomed to telling when their CMO was dropping in for a quick visit; the windows always shook ever so slightly, and the floor rumbled with each thunderous step. Glass vials of precious fluids and the occasional datapad left untouched and offline usually trembled and rattled, too, and the pair of medics often found themselves sharing a knowing look between steadying their supplies and watching for the door to swing open. 

Pharma’s presence always entered the room before his frame did, given the way half the floor anticipated his arrival from the way his heavy footsteps rang through the halls, and the boxes of goodies he brought along were always kicked through the doorway before the rest of his bulging frame could follow. It was a tight fit nowadays, and despite nudging his cargo through with the tip of his pede before attempting to go through sideways with his gut sucked in and his breath bated, the head doctor always managed to get at least a little bit stuck.

“Aid,” he said with a nod between bracing his servos against the door frame and squeezing through with a grunt. “Ambulon—nngh!… sorry I didn’t come sooner. I swear the pile of reports on my desk grows bigger and bigger by the day.

It was the same routine they followed every morning, thanks to the excessive supply of cheap, tasteless snacks packed in boxes upon boxes and delivered to the clinic’s doorstep every once in a great while. Pharma would act as though he hadn’t just come into the break room huffing and puffing and out of breath, and he would lift the fresh box of snacks up onto the small table with a great big, satisfied sound. Neither Ambulon nor First Aid could focus long on the opened boxes of snacks they were expected to finish, especially not when the fat gut of a medic in denial of his own gains hung from behind. Pharma towered over the two seated bots in more ways than one, and despite the fact that all three bots had begun packing on a healthy amount of weight from the enforced habit of eating between shifts, the CMO’s intent never wavered. 

It was like the best kind of karma for the two, especially when Pharma’s own shielded interest in their growing bellies and chafing thighs grew more and more clear with every day that passed. There wasn’t much else to do in the wintery wasteland of a clinic, they supposed. It was almost amusing how devoted he’d become to fattening them up and remaining blind to his own increasing habit of mimicking their new intake expectations. 

“More junk?” Ambulon asked, choosing to be the first to break the silence as he—very pointedly—glanced overtop the box of snacks and stared at the soft belly hanging at optic-level. “I thought you said we burned through most of this last week.”

We meaning he, of course, and he meaning Pharma. Ambulon wasn’t sure how much of a shipment they got at once, but he knew from experience that neither he nor First Aid could have polished off the massive amounts of empty calories delivered to them on their own. Not when Pharma was the one handing them out, at least. 

“New shipment,” First Aid explained as he rose from his seat and searched for a blade. “The council has started sending stuff more often now. Fluids, blankets…”

“And these wonderfully addictive snacks,” Pharma cut in. “Lucky us. I was starting to worry I might have to find other ways of feeding you two.”

As if they needed anything more than the carefully rationed cubes they each received every morning, but that was no fun. Pharma was enjoying this new game, and he enjoyed seeing his fellow medics walking around bearing more than bare plating on their frame. 

“Eat up,” the CMO continued as he snatched up a blade from First Aid and slid it across the box’s top. “There’s plenty more where this came from. I expect you all to get your fill for the week and no less, understood?”

The assertive tone over topics such as stuffing themselves silly didn’t quite suite him… not when his own frame bore the brunt of his own indulgent tendencies. Nevertheless, Ambulon made a point of silently shutting down First Aid’s sidelong and intense look with a straight face and a firm nod. 

“You got it,” he said, busying himself with tearing open a bag of the crunchy, airy snacks and tossing it over to First Aid. “Thanks, Pharma.”

Pharma gave a nod of approval, his face already splitting into a pleased smile. As per usual, his plan worked perfectly. It was a success that deserved a reward, and for the trip back to his office, he grabbed one of the small bags for himself. The two medics were left alone to their devices, then, and with the box of snacks he expected to be emptied by the end of the week. The room shook with every step, and as it was coming in, the doorway remained going out—and this time, it took everything in him to squeeze his fat aft and hanging belly through the slim opening. 

What a perfect scheme he’d concocted, Pharma thought to himself between bites as he waddled his way down the hall. Not a single word of protest met his deliveries, and both First Aid and Ambulon seemed all the better for it. Both medics were fattening up nicely, and he could sit back and enjoy the product of his genius without much to complain about. 

Another doorway squeezed through and Pharma was back to slouching down into his chair behind his desk. The seat was a bit snug, and it took some maneuvering to get himself comfortable, but so long as he ignored the groans of protest from his furniture and wedged his belly far beneath the lip of his desk, he was just fine. The extra pile of unopened snacks he’d snagged for himself before his daily check-in sat waiting for him, and as he grabbed for his first report of the day, Pharma reached for a bag.

Ahhh… the feeling of satisfaction from a job well done. Pharma savored it. He really was quite the clever mech. 

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Troubleshooting Common Laptop Hardware Problems: Expert Tips from Magnus Institute

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Faulty power adapter or DC jack

Dead motherboard or short circuit

RAM or CMOS battery issues

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Remove battery and hold the power button for 30 seconds.

Try booting with external monitor or without RAM.

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2. Overheating and Auto Shut Down Causes:

Dust buildup in fans or vents

Thermal paste dried out

Failing heat sink or fan

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Reapply thermal paste on the CPU/GPU.

Replace faulty fans or update BIOS settings.

Covered in our computer laptop repair course, ideal for students seeking practical skills.

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RAM not seated properly

GPU or motherboard failure

Backlight or inverter issues

Steps:

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Test external monitor output (VGA/HDMI).

Perform chip-level diagnostics (taught at Magnus chip level laptop repairing institute).

4. No Sound or Audio Device Not Detected Reasons:

Audio driver failure

Sound card or speaker damage

BIOS audio disabled

Fixes:

Reinstall drivers or update OS.

Use external sound card to test.

Check internal speaker connections via motherboard test points.

5. Charging Port Issues A very common problem among student laptops, especially with rough usage.

Fixes Include:

Checking voltage at the DC jack

Replacing or re-soldering loose DC jack

Inspecting charging IC during chip level repair training

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