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insecwrites · 7 years ago

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Undeserved Loyalties chapter 2

> READ CHAPTER 2 ON AO3 < Summary: Jetfire and Jetstorm are very loyal soldiers, but thinking is not their strongest point. When Longarm begins to give them secret missions, they enthusiastically agree, thinking they are going to be drafted into Spec Ops. When Autobot command puts a bounty on their heads for the assassination of vital Autobot agents, they are left on their own. How do two ex-Autobots survive when they are unwilling to join the Decepticons, but banned from the Autobots? Chapter 2: Red Alert inspects Project Safeguard and learns something unexpected.

There were days that Red Alert wished there were more medics of her skill. With her right hand still aching from a long operation, and driving over an annoyingly busy road, the last thing she wanted to do was check in on Perceptor and Wheeljack with their ‘project’. As far as she was concerned, both parts of ‘operation Safeguard’ were healthy, and no longer in need of medical assistance. Perceptor disagreed. Perceptor was in the Council, and Perceptor felt no shame in using his influence for his own gain. So, every day, around the time when most mecha would be having their midday refuel, Red Alert had to leave Iacon hospital to check the same unchanging charts over and over again.

Back when Wheeljack and Perceptor had been constantly ‘updating’ the twins and reloading modded version of Decepticon code into their brainmodules, her expertise had been necessary. The both of them were more scientist than they were medical experts, and their original drafts for Project Safeguard would have killed any mech stupid enough to volunteer. What kind of things were misfiring in Wheeljack’s brain to come up with a concept like combining two mecha into one? Who mentioned the idea of then adding Decepticon coding into them on top of that?!

The two scientists had proven their skill though – Project Safeguard had been finished, and it was doing better than anyone had expected. Red Alert had thought that the twins would perhaps need some form of councelling after their near-death experience, but the two mecha fell into their new role as if it had been forged for them. Perhaps that was why Perceptor was so intent on keeping her tied to the project? Maybe he was still expecting it to go wrong somehow, and he wanted her to keep an eye her parts of the project.

Red Alert would have found his trust in her endearing, if he also trusted her when she told him that NOTHING was wrong! These solar cycles the check ups were mundane enough that nurses could do them with their eyes closed, but Perceptor refused to let her step off the project. His iron will had become an Ununtrium will after his little ‘self-improvement’.

The only silver lining to that acid stormcloud was that Red Alert no longer had to keep a check on her words around him. There was no longer anything that could be said to hurt him.

She rolled to a stop outside of Perceptor’s lab, and marched her way to the entrance. Perceptor’s lab was probably the best-funded building on Cybertron to unofficially belong to a singular mech, and it showed. A frame scan and a deeper protoform-scan washed over her before the entrance doors opened, and a single commlink message dropped into her queue to inform her about everything that Perceptor felt she needed to know.

// Duties expected from [RED ALERT] on this date (SolC 65, Q 13, StelC 3.002.89 ) in order; // //Common health check-up on compartments J1 and J2 of Pr. Safeguard. – Room 23 // //Reviewing request of patient [PERCEPTOR] to change prognosis and treatment – Room 3/Commlink communication //

Business as usual. Red Alert offlined her optics and walked towards Room 23, already deleting the second message. She was fairly certain that at least half of her deleted files were just from Perceptor, and his attempts to weasel out of his therapy. After what Perceptor had knowingly done to himself it was going to take more than a simple request before Red Alert would let him ditch therapy, but that was evidently not stopping him from trying. It probably wouldn’t be long before he succeeded. His therapist, or rather his third therapist, was reporting a dead end in the treatment.

There was simply nothing to work with – not even a starting point. Perceptor didn’t have a problem. The Perceptor that had had a deep psychological problem had forcibly deleted parts of his personality, and now there was just this blank slate of a mech borrowing his life and face.

Already feeling weary, Red Alert sighed and entered the first of three protective layers around room 23. The tingle of an ID scan opened the first door, giving access to a small recording-office where carefully picked and edited footage of the ‘project Safeguard’ was stored. The second door had a size/shape/weight assessment tied to it, matching Red Alert’s ID to her frame with decimal precision. A security measure made necessary by war and paranoia. Rumours of Decepticon triple changers taking a second root mode instead of a second alt.

With a ping, the second set of doors opened. The third door, made out of heavy duty steel and more layers than any Autobot could break through, opened automatically. In the early days of the project, it had been programmed to be impossible to open from the inside. Just in case the Decepticon coding in the twins took a turn for the worst.

These days, only thing keeping the twins here instead of at the Elite Guard barracks was Perceptor and whatever plan he had for the project.

Red Alert reached the last door, and braced herself. The twins had a tendency of trying to cheer her up if she appeared too haggard, and she did not feel like wasting her time.

The heavy blast doors slid open, and Red Alert entered the twin’s living space. An immediate scent of heated paint and slag assaulted her senses, and her feet kicked through a thin layer of discarded toys and garbage as she marched into the room. The twins themselves were wrestling with each other in the middle of the room, their flight engines ( or simply Jetstorm’s added abilities ) kicking up a lacklustre whirlwind of garbage around the room.

“Jetstorm, Jetfire. At attention! It is time for your bi-solar check up.” Red Alert barked.

“AH! It is being good morning, Alert of Red!” Jetstorm said. He was currently on top in battling his twin, muffling Jetfire’s greeting in a cushion. “No need for check up is what me is thinking- I am being in top of the condition wi-” An orange hand cut him off midsentence, and in a flurry of movement Jetfire had reversed their positions.

“-being my turn to say hello’s to the Red of Alert!” Jetfire admonished his brother, and he threw a cheerful smile in Red Alert’s direction, before immediately going back to subduing his struggling split spark. “I does -oomfp!- agree that, conditioning has been being okay for us! And testing always being so boring.”

“Whe Sstronk-.” Jetstorm added, even as he tried to spit out his twin’s fingers. “Dhon’t be nheeding sscheck-ahp.”

If these had been regular Autobot younglings, Red Alert would have intervened by simply grabbing them by the scruff of their backplating and giving them a quick scodling, but the Jettwins were nothing like regular younglings. Whether it was just the way they had come online, or the way that the Decepticon coding had nestled into their brainmodules, the twins simply couldn’t seem to listen to orders until someone brought in some manner of physical punishment.

Well, that was not completely fair. They listened to Sentinel Prime of all mecha, but if Red Alert had to call in Sentinel Prime for every time the twins ignored her, she was going to drive herself into an early offlining. At the very least, the twins made her feel better about her choice to keep her left arm as an EMP gun.

With an ominous snap of electricity she fired it up, preparing herself to jab it at the wrestling twins. “At attention, NOW!” She barked out, and the two mecha immediately scrambled into a salute. “I am just as tired of these check-ups as you are but they WILL be performed and you will not waste time.

“Yes, sir Red Alert sir.” They said in unison.

Red Alert watched them for a moment, and then let the energy from her EMP gun disperse. “Now then, take your positions and copy your self-diagnostic results onto these datapads. And if I catch you throwing the datapads I will both shock you AND bring in Sentinel Prime for your punishment!”

“Red Alert sir is beings in bad moods.” Jetfire jibed, even as he took the datapad she offered him and plugged himself in. “Me and brother are always the behaving!”

Jetstorm bit off a chuckle.

Red Alert didn’t deign to reply to them, and instead focused on running through the routine she had built up. The faster she was done, the faster she could return to her midday fuel and dealing with Perceptor. As she had expected, there were no changes of any significance. Their reprogrammed coding looked stable, just as it had looked in the last three decacycles, and all of their new body parts had integrated a long time ago. She had them combine into Safeguard, who was similarly unchanged and in perfect shape. Well, as perfect as an amalgamation of two mecha could be, she supposed. For how loud and noisy Jetfire and Jetstorm were, Safeguard was mostly antsy and quiet. Red Alert always felt like the combiner was having an injoke with the way he giggled to himself, but he was healthy and coherent.

If it wasn’t for the lack of knowledge surrounding Decepticon coding, the twins likely would have been brought to the public already. At a glance they passed very well for regular Autobots, but they were impossible to keep out of the air – with or without the use of heavy weaponry.

“Does Red Alert knowings if we will be having a mission again soon?” Jetstorm asked. “This place is being boring to be in for long times.”

Red Alert frowned, and met Jetstorm’s visor. “I was not aware that you had gone on any missions, outside of accompanying Sentinel Prime.”

“Oh yes!” Jetstorm beamed. “Longarm Prime be requesting our help for the spyinks and Secret things! Sentinel Prime has been doing busy – and he no longer being answering to his commlinks.”

“Mission was not being very fun.” Jetfire added sullenly. “Very boring, too much talkings and walkings and waiting…. But me and brother could fly back to base all the way! Very fun, and I won race!”

“Brother is lying, I won race very easily.” Jetstorm said. “And mission was better than staying in room. We was being helpful Autobots for Cybertron!”

“Is that what he said?” Red Alert mumbled to herself. She had no dislike or like for Longarm Prime, but she did have a history with his department. The mecha that were chosen to work in Spec Ops were either damaged in their empathy modules, or had it forcibly trained into them. Unless Longarm was thinking to make the twins into literal weapons or part of his division, there was no reason for him to get his servos on the,

“Did he mention wanting you to work for his department more?”

“He be very vague. It is being a spy thing.” Jetstorm said. “Important job was done, that is all that ‘publical mecha’ need to know.”

“It is said as ‘the generalistic public’, stupid.” Jetfire replied. “And Longarm is not tell us because Brother cannot keep secrets.”

“Oh? I cannot be keeping secrets?” Jetstorm grinned. “I guess I cannot be helping but tell Red of the Alert about the thing you is keeping un-“

“SUSSH!” Jetfire jumped on top of Jetstorm in the blink of an eye, and Red Alert watched tiredly as the two continued their wrestling.

Would it be worth interrupting them again to pry a little more information from them…? She knew better than to start asking Longarm what kind of mission he’d sent them on. Spec Ops had an annoying habit of supplying very convincing fibs whenever someone asked them what they were up to. Secret missions were ‘patrols’. Assasinations were ‘tests’. And, of course, the only person that his department answered to was the Magnus.

Distractedly she sent a redacted copy of the test results to the twins for their safekeeping, and headed out of the room. The distracted and well-meant goodbye of the twins was cut off halfway as the door slid shut behind her.

Did Perceptor know that the twins had been sent out on a Spec Ops mission? If he did, she doubted that Longarm let him know exactly what the mission was about. And if it had been a regular training mission, why would Longarm Prime have gotten the lead? What was his stake in testing the abilities of the twins? Why would Perceptor agree? It just didn’t fit – there was something wrong, something off-… She had to dig to the bottom of this. Contact Perceptor, Wheeljack, the Magnus- she would have to pick the right order to assure the least amounts of suspicion from Longarm, while also keeping an optic out for possible reprogramming on Perceptor-…

She paused in the hallway, and carefully massaged her forehead with the unwieldy bulk of her EMP gun. It was trembling. “No.” She said softly to herself. “It’s not my job nor my responsibility to conduct intense research. I have my responsibilities, and my colleagues have their responsibilities. I can trust them to do their job.”

She took a long invent, and then let it seep out of her. Continuing her trek down the hallway, she shortened the length of her ‘dig-to-the-bottom’ plan. She would talk to Percy, and see what he knew about Longarm’s little ‘borrowing’ of Project Safeguard. If that conversation rang some alarm bells, she would contact the Magnus, and further discuss things with Wheeljack and Perceptor. If she was still worried after that, she would contact her therapist Analyse, and ask her for the next step.

A few more calming invents later, Red Alert felt calm enough to continue on her way out. She had her patients waiting on her back at the hospital, and she had to hurry if she wanted to grab a quick cube before the first appointment. Nobody was going to be helped if she ran herself into the ground looking into some slightly suspicios happenings.

Most likely, there was nothing to be worried about.

#transformers fanfic #poll winner #undeserved loyalties #jetstorm #jettwins #jetfire #Red alert #Transformers animated

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