The Start of Something Interesting...

[lastonepercent]

The day was calm, with no recent Decepticon attacks, and none suspected to be incoming for some time.  The cons were too busy licking their wounds from the last battle, one that the Autobots had decidedly come out ahead on.  The celebrations had gone on long into the night and the recreation room was already a mess.

Thus, it was the perfect chance for a lone Autobot to slip casually outside.

Mirage had no shift currently scheduled, so he was free to spend his time as he pleased.  He certainly made no move to hide his departure, greeting his comrades in the halls on the way out, but the box in his hands remained unopened despite any passing curiosity.  It was quietly shifted into subspace before long, and  the former noble shifted into alt mode just as smoothly when he reached the doors.  Despite the completely inappropriate earthen race car mode, the mech had little trouble self-adjusting before driving off into the forest covering the mountain, for business unknown...

Comments

[lastonepercent]

"There - they have one use, then," Mirage laughed, not entirely serious.

"We welcome any and all Sonic Canyon residents - so long as you bring your own functional ships!"

He snickered again at Cliffjumper's objections, leaning even further forward pointedly before returning to a not-quite-so-rude position.

"You could be leaning back, though!"

He wouldn't care either way - the warmth was still too precious to waste, and his logic processors felt half-frozen.

[cliffjumper]

"Kinda hard with ya leanin' on me like that," Cliffjumper huffed and then, slowly realising that either Mirage acted a lot differently when they weren't at odds and alone, or...

"Hey..? You okay?" Tilting his helm back now that he could do so without ending up staring right up into the underside of Mirage's jaw, Cliffjumper squinted up at him feeling distinctly slow compared to usual.

Perhaps they should just down the energon they had and go into recharge or something, but given the possibilities of Decepticons outside and that it didn't seem like a good idea to do that in this place either way, Cliffjumper really would rather not.

[lastonepercent]

Mirage's snickers were slow to cut off, but when they did, they did so abruptly.

"Hmm?"

Mirage went silent, pausing to actually think about it. He leaned back some, frowning against Cliffjumper's helm.

"I...Not really, no. Which is terribly amusing to me and I have no idea why."

Mirage giggled, despite the vaguely horrified tone.

"My logic centers stopped giving me warming errors four breems ago."

[cliffjumper]

Waiting for Mirage to think things over was slow torture. Both because he was worried and because his slow processing seemed to affect his sense of time, despite the chronometer right there in the corner of his HUD, was pointing out how much time was passing.

"... Great. I think you should... uh... burn more fuel? So you gotta down some of that energon," Cliffjumper said, squinting at the tarp of the parachute fluttering in the doorway.

It was frustrating how long it took to think.

He also hoped Mirage stopped giggling, because while it sounded nice, it also... was all wrong.

[lastonepercent]

"Oh. Well. I suppose it would be worth an attempt."

The idea of cranking up his already steadily working engines and internals sounded terribly exhausting though. But he still shrugged, before cranking them up another few degrees. His core temperature sluggishly started to climb, but his extremities - and helm - weren't showing much reaction at all.

"Hn."

The urge to giggle was pretty much gone, and that sudden, abrupt switch from giddiness to exhaustion worried him.

Mirage started weakly wiggling around under the tarp, trying to get to his subspaced rations without uncovering them both.

[cliffjumper]

Normally Mirage's wriggling would've annoyed him - or made him flustered. At the moment it sort of hovered between sluggish indifference and concern. Cliffjumper felt slow, and he knew, in a distant sort of way, that that wasn't a good thing, but focusing wasn't happening.

Instead he sat there, helm slightly tilted, and felt Mirage move around. It still took him a bit to come to the thought that might be useful.

"Want me to try and get it?" It, he was pretty sure, would be the energon ratings - since he'd suggested that to Mirage earlier.

He was pretty sure, anyway.

[lastonepercent]

After a few more moments of struggle, Mirage paused with a slump.

"...Yes. That might be. Helpful."

Silently, he slipped his arm around Cliffjumper's waist to his front, presenting the opened subspace pocket in his forearm. (Cliffjumper, should he delve inside, should fit it unexpectedly large for a simple arm-pocket.)

All said, much easier than trying to get into it himself, much to Mirage's dull annoyance.

[cliffjumper]

"Uhh, great. Good. I'll... do that," Cliffjumper said while day there for a few moments, caught between slowly remembering what it was he was supposed to do, and the feel of Mirage's chilly metal against his own. Shaking his helm, Cliffjumper kept the shudder in as he realised how much his processing had slowed down when he aactually remembered what it was he was supposed to do.

"Right, the spare rations..." muttering more to himself, Cliffjumper ran his fingers along the metal - only slightly self-indulgent - until he hit the wavery tension-distortion that was the subspace pocket, and stuck his hand in.

"What'd ya even got in here ya need all this space for..." Shaking his helm and despite the lag between feeling, realising, thinking and doing, he did find what he waslooking for and pulledtwoof the small cubes out.

[lastonepercent]

"Stuff," Mirage huffs, grumbling. While the touch is nice -warm- he decides he doesn't particularly like the feel of someone else rummaging through his 'stuff'. It's letting the cold into his subspace and it makes him shiver.

"Lots of mission...stuff. Things. Very important."

He closes the pocket as soon as Cliffjumper retrieves the cubes, wiggling around to try and get his hands on one.

"Good. We can refuel." Mirage's engine already feels tired. He could use it.

[cliffjumper]

Squinting up at Mirage again as he held the cube up so the mech could more easily get at it, he didn't get what it was that sounded strange at first.

Then he realised that Mirage was sort of talking like he was thinking.

"Yeah, you really, really... Uhm... Need this," Cliffjumper said as he wiggled the cube, vaguely reluctant to hand it over, though whether it was from the faint heat conducted through the cube or because it was energon and he probably needed it.

[lastonepercent]

"Likely."

Closing long fingers around the cube, Mirage reluctantly slid his hand out of the tarp to bring the cube to his lips for a deep draught-

Oh.

Oh.

He tilted his head back, switching from drinking to gulping it down like a starving mech - which he practically was, engine running hard and fast with half-frozen fuel lines. It wasn't real warmth that spread through him as the energy hit his fuel tank, but it was good enough.

[cliffjumper]

Cliffjumper was actually mostly stuck staring at the energon in the remaining cube shift around as he tilted it from side to side. His the valve in his tank is opening and closing, a muted, clicking demand for attention, but he was quite caught by the glittering slide of the liquid, and wasn't exactly sure what it was he was hearing.

Not with the noise of Mirage throwing back energon like he was staring distracting him, as well as the colour of the energon, the noise of the wind outside on the tarp, the faint heat trapped between him and Mirage and the pressure of the rock up against the bottom of his feet...

[lastonepercent]

Mirage didn't stop until he'd drank the entire thing down, going so far as to disperse the cube for the last joule of energy it provided.

Rather crude, and smacking of desperation in the best of circumstances, but Mirage could hardly care at this point.

Optics flush with the renewal of energy, Mirage vented a heavy sigh of relief before slumping back down against Cliffjumper. His engines kicked up a notch, reenergized enough to try pumping out more heat.

[cliffjumper]

"Hey--- don't fraggin'--- here," grumbling and squirming under Mirage's weight, Cliffjumper twisted around to push the second cube at Mirage. That he should probably drink it got lost somewhere in the slower processing of the cold creeping in, even with their little bubble of vague warmth helping stave it off.

How long had they even been sitting here..?

Longer than he'd thought, Cliffjumper noted as he focused on the chronometer on his HUD, which was more terrifying than if it'd been shorter and it just felt like longer.

"Drink that too and sit the slag up straigh---" cutting himself off, Cliffjumper scowled at the covered opening, hand tightening around the gun he'd pulled out far earlier and forgotten about at some point.

Had that been something..?

He was pretty sure it had.

[lastonepercent]

Mirage vented heavily for a moment, simply enjoying the primitive pleasure of being fueled. He slowly sat back up, easing off Cliffjumper while eyeing the offered cube, honestly tempted-

But the sounds of Cliffjumper's system were increasingly obvious, and he nudged the cube back toward the minibot.

"I said get two out for us both, not just for me. Drink it."

[cliffjumper]

The push of the cube against his side almost distracted him, because energon, but he was sure he'd heard something, so instead he pushed it away, optics narrowing.

"Shhhhh! I can fraggin' get... uh, get some later. There's somebody---" Waving his gun towards the opening, enough to start to unravel their "cosy" parachute-blanket cover, Cliffjumper stumbled determinedly to his feet.

[lastonepercent]

"No, Cliffjumper, now," Mirage hissed, only to let out a quiet shriek when Cliffjumper slipped out of the tarp, letting in a wave of cold and chill. He futilely clutched the tarp around him, temperature plummeting.

"C-Cliffjumper Why?" he moaned, utterly betrayed.

"There is nothing out there!"

[cliffjumper]

"Fraggin' scrap, Mirage, I'm pretty slaggin' sure there actually---"

"Is, yeah!"

The tarp was ripped away, and Cliffjumper fired even as the leg Vortex had thrown out caught him in the side, sending the minibot flying across the relatively small cavern and slamming into the wall.

Whatever noise he'd made beyond the clatter as he hit the rocky wall was smothered by the loud clang and the shriek of a second blaster, ending with Cliffjumper on the floor of the cave.

... he needed to... his fingers twitched once in an attempt at reaching his gun, but he was fighting against the angry inexorability of stasis lock - his frame had had enough, and Cliffjumper didn't have enough concentration to understand the damage report flickering at him on the HUD.

He'd just have to hope it wasn't anything bad...

When Breakdown nudged the downed mini from the cave's opening while Vortex aimed for Mirage, Cliffjumper didn't move, and there was a faint trail of energon crawling across the frozen ground before it slowly started to crystallize.

[lastonepercent]

"Cliffjumper!" Mirage jerked under the tarp, watching in a dazed sort of horror as the minibot's senses proved right in the worst way possible.

"Shoulda paid more attention, Autobot," Breakdown huffed smugly, leaving Cliffjumper's downed frame where he lay.

"Don't even move. He's totally scrap."

Mirage groaned, not even the flare of battle-alarms and fear for Cliffjumper was enough to break entirely through the fog the cold had cast over him.

The gun pointing at his center mass didn't help.

[cliffjumper]

Maybe the reason the war had gone on for so long was at least one side's tendency to not check if their kills were actually kills. Though, admittedly, a stasis-locked frame suffering under the effects of low energon and injured to boot probably wasn't the best frame of reference for checking a kill or not.

Which was probably why, when the Autobots that had been on the mission the trip had been for came on the cave a bit later, Bee and Jazz thought they'd had to report a(t least one) casuality at first.

Luckily, Cliffjumper wasn't offlined.

Just very, very cooled down and stasis-locked.

Not that it in any way felt particularly fun coming back online, even if what he was slammed with first thing wasn't a scrolling list of injuries and an angrily blinking fuel gauge warning.

No, just a scrolling list of repaired injuries and a full tank.

It still took over a breem to properly boot up and get everything in order, and he came online in confusion (couldn't figure out why things were fixed) and flailingly ready to attempt to defend himself (both stuck on his last aware moment and 'DECEPTICONS').

"Mirage!" Jolting upright, Cliffjumper almost fell of the berth, barely keeping on it by pure reflex of grabbing the edge and First Aid being close enough to dart up to the circuit slab and pull him back.

"Where's---"

"Not here," First Aid said quietly, voice warm with sympathy as he shook his helm, "there'll be a debriefing later. For now... how do you feel?"

Cliffjumper just stared. How the frag could the slagging medic ask him how he felt?!

[lastonepercent]

Mirage was very, very lucky they wanted him alive.

He couldn't really resist as they hauled him out of the cave and onto the ship - the moment he pulled him outside, his systems began to crash from the sharp increase in cold. He blacked out in the snow, and came back online minutes later, dumped in a cell on board.

It would have been short work to deal with him while he was offline, or while he was still back in the cave, for that matter. For a long while, he didn't even care: it was so warm.

His senses began to come back right about the time they arrived at the Decepticon base; enough so that Mirage could start preparing himself. Dazedly activating the subroutines that Jazz had written himself would hide away and block off vital Autobot intelligence from attempted hacks or Soundwave's probing. For a while, at least. He'd been captured in the past, and would probably be captured again, provided he survived the interrogation.

Decepticon intelligence was aware of both his mod and his status of Special Operations Agent, if not his rank in the special subdivision, after all.

...But as he was quick to learn, it was news to him that they were aware of his previous primary function as well.

And intended to use it.

[cliffjumper]

He should've insisted Mirage shut up. He should've talked with Mirage over the comm. for frag's sake, not talking out loud so the Cons could've easily heard!

It didn't matter that Prowl, Prime and Jazz had all in various ways after the debriefing pointed out that given his cooled-down state it wasn't strange he'd acted and reacted as he that.

Cliffjumper still felt he ought to have done things differently, and better.

If he had, maybe Mirage wouldn't have been captured.

Of course, if he had, he might have actually been dead too - but he might have been able to nail one of the slagging Decepticreeps before they got him, too!

---

Intended to use it, indeed. If nothing else to deprive the Autobots of the sort of help a priest could give, but they'd take advantage of it as much as they could first.

"I would suggest you cooperate, Autobot. It'll keep you alive longer," Megatron said coolly, eying the slim former noble mostly for hints of what he knew the mech had been.

And that "for longer" wasn't "forever". When they were done, or thought they might lose control of the situation, well...

[lastonepercent]

The only thing that could possibly be worse than being shoved in front of Megatron himself, was facing Soundwave and his mental probing.

...Or Vortex, but. Well.

Mirage could work with this. The longer the Warlord had reason to keep him alive, the better.

Blinking golden optics and straightening his struts, gathering as much dignity as a prone and chained mech could, Mirage did what most Autobots would find unthinkable: be inclined his helm in a faint bow.

"While you may have so succinctly pointed out our opposing allegiances, my duty to all Cybertronians remains intact."

He laced the words with accents, formal titles and glyphs of Old Cybertronian, the harmonics of his voice slipping from 'snobbish' Towers to the unconscious regalia of the priesthood. For all appearances, he sounded sincere.

Mirage spread his bound hands as far as he was able, stubbornly determined to wear the energon chains with as much grace as he had once worn the finest of silk mesh.

"What spiritual needs can this humble Priest of Primus assuage for your mechs, Warlord of Kaon?"


If Megatron wanted a Priest, he would get one. And eventually regret it, if Mirage had anything to do with it.

[cliffjumper]

Mirage's changing dialect and choice of words was at first met with simply a little tilt of Megatron's helm, though as Mirage continued to speak, an upper optic ridge arched.

And rose higher with every word, Megatron's expression going from faintly threatening to dryly... amused?

At least there wouldn't be much time spent threatening Mirage to cooperate. For now, anyway.

"Indeed. Your willingness to provide proper care for the children of Cybertron is duly noted, Flame of Cybertron." Megatron's smile wasn't even pretending at the courteousness his words were - it was all teeth, diamond-razor sharp.

"And while we'll discuss a proper rite of sanctuary in due time, for now, given your admirable graciousness, it will be enough for you to tend to the individual needs of the mechs here. You'll be provided accomodations, of course." Another sharp, not-really-amused smile.

Mirage might actually be surprised to find his cell would turn out to have been equipped better than would normally be provided, but it would, indeed, be a cell.

[lastonepercent]

Despite the falsely courteous tone, Mirage kept his expression pleasantly neutral and abiding. The use of one of his (many) proper titles prompted another bow of the helm.

"Of course. I would be glad to oblige any Cybertronians in need."

You may have destroyed the Senate, Megatron, but the High Priest of Primus once had to smile in their faces and work with their often ridiculous demands. Somehow without breaking his vows.

If he could avoid triggering Megatron's temper, he felt he might be able to survive.

"I hope I will be able to accommodate them all."

He'd simply have to be crafty, as he had no intentions of providing Megatron will a full rite of sanctuary. It was what the other Decepticons might ask for that was in question...

Being in a cell was expected; being in a semi-comfortable cell was a pleasant surprise. He'd have to see if he could get away with asking the guards for the barest of religious supplies, since he was sure to be there for a while at least.