Work Text:
The chronometer screaming bright red digits into the early morning darkness of Prowl’s office tried to tell him he had stayed up far too late.
Another night of unpaid overtime.
Prowl’s level of seniority in the slowly demilitarizing Autobot-Neutral coalition government on New Cybertron meant he no longer qualified for it; his level of responsibility was too great for his time alone to affect the budgets beyond a baseline salary.
None of that stopped him from working more than the schedule strictly demanded. There was too much to do and none of it would get done if he didn’t personally do it or dictate to someone else exactly how it needed to be accomplished. That would be the only way anything would get done and get done right.
Setting down one of the datapads he had been transcribing report data from, Prowl took a routine look at the fuel mug on his desk. Given the thin film of stimulant-laced fuel glowing sadly at the bottom of the mug, it was time to top it up. Another cup of adulterated fuel would give him the boost he needed to make it to sunrise.
The brewing machine was, of course, waiting faithfully on the other side of his office, stationed on a shelf over a cabinet full of supplies. Cubes of plain fuel were stacked neatly in the cabinet, but that was the only tidy aspect of the set up.
Other accouterments were scattered about the cabinet and shelf in disarray. Half-open stimulant syrup packets leaked onto surfaces until they had dehydrated into a glue-like adhesive. Flecks of other additives were sprinkled here and there, in some places stuck in the stimulant-glue and in others forming a tacky dust.
Prowl had, once upon a time, tried to keep his stimulant preparation area in some semblance of order, but, as everything had worn on over the years, it had become… lower priority.
With a sigh, he brushed aside some of the clutter that had tried to attach to the brewer’s carafe. One of the gluey remained adhered until he picked it off. A blob of residue lingered on the glass.
It was fine.
A problem for another time.
Or the cleaning staff if he ever felt comfortable letting them in here. Who knew what alternative motives they could have had? Who knew who they were really working for?
A small amount of fuel remained in the carafe, long cold and scorched.
Prowl simply poured that minuscule remainder into his mouth before setting the carafe up for a fresh brewing cycle. The brewer’s additives and syrup holders were refilled to meet his specifications. The brewing cycle’s settings were dialed. Everything would be just like it was supposed to be every other time.
However, when Prowl pressed the power button… nothing happened. Again and again, he tried the button, in case it was just faulty. Something was deeply wrong.
This brewer had served him faithfully for many years now. There was no reason it would simply give up now. There was no other explanation but the obvious.
Sabotage.
Standing in front of the quiet, dark brewer, Prowl could feel the impending embrace of exhaustion pulling at the edges of his consciousness.
Without this brewer and its products, Prowl’s energy levels would never get him to sunrise in several hours. Someone had clearly managed to bypass all of the security measures on his office to interfere with his work, someone who would benefit from even the slightest interruption in the review of incoming data.
The situation had to be rectified immediately . Before he could even begin to search for the infiltrator responsible for this unabashed assault on his professional competency.
It was too late at night to submit a proper requisition request through the appropriate official channels. Emergency measures were required.
Only one viable option was left remaining to him.
Vagueslist, a gray market Extranet network of independent “vendors” selling various goods and services with minimal audit trails, was Prowl’s only recourse.
Of course, he knew the risks; there were many. They ran the gambit from a defective product to minor scams to inexperienced money laundering fronts to bait for trafficking. There was also the more personally applicable chance that there wasn’t someone selling what he was looking for in the immediate area. Unlikely, given the website’s vast, morally flexible userbase.
Prowl rushed back to his desk, frantically tapping the necessary commands into his console with more strokes to rectify hastily mistyped keys than he would have ever admitted to in a court of law.
Typically, this website was a tool his department used for investigative purposes, sometimes even setting up fake offers or requests to bait criminals or suspects or otherwise chasing down leads. Tonight, however, Prowl looked through the ugly bulletin board in earnest, cycling through various keywords in the search function.
Very few results popped up, at least within Iacon’s city limits. Sure, he could drive farther but time before the inescapable exhaustion kicked in was steadily ticking away. He only had so much time and he couldn’t afford to drive for an hour or two round trip, let alone one way.
One result, however, stood out to him.
“Free Stimulant Brewr, Good cOndition, As Is”
The typos and shanix symbols plastered throughout the title were typical of offers on this platform. Allegedly, they had just gotten a newer, better one to replace the freebie. Critically, the location was a precious few neighborhoods away. The item was left out on the “seller’s” balcony for pick up by whomever wanted it whenever was convenient.
Including the middle of the night.
Prowl didn’t even bother responding to the ad. It wouldn’t matter. It was free and out there for the grabbing anyway.
It didn’t even matter was model it was, only that it would work .
His wheels protested as he tore through the darkened streets, following his GPS to the coordinates in the ad.
He could only hope that some other desperate mech hadn’t also seen the ad and already swiped up the machine. This was his only chance, the one shot he had to defeat the impending exhaustion brought upon him by the sabotage of his own brewer.
There was no time left for any alternatives.
Prowl skidded to a stop around a corner. The address should have been the building in front of him, so close….
Up upon a balcony four levels up, lit only by a flickering, undervolting lantern, sat what looked to be his prize: a free, “gently used” brewer.
It would be faster to scale the structure rather than go around to try and find public access stairs. Time was ticking and exhaustion was still creeping into his mind.
Hand over hand, Prowl awkwardly pulled himself up onto the first railing to reach for lower edge of the balcony just overhead.
He could do this. He had to do this.
Clenching his jaw shut, he climbed, disregarding the fact that he could easily be mistaken for some kind of degenerate prowler, bent on either thievery or mischief.
After a few minutes of struggling, he was nearly in reach of the brewer. He stretched his hand out towards his prize, the cheap material of the brewer’s casing gleaming in the light of the weak lantern. It would be his—
Just as his hand closed on the far side of the brewer, a loud sniffing noise came from nearby, like a creature snuffling about in the garbage looking for choice refuse. He paused, barely hanging onto the balcony by one shaking arm.
What appeared to be a rotund mechanimal, about the size of small cassetticon and variegated gray and black in color, sat on the balcony’s ledge, near the brewer as it preened dust and debris from the articulated plating of its banded tail. Its paws were more like hands, meant clearly for climbing and committing all manner of crimes.
The glint in its optics as it stared at Prowl promised hijinks .
“No,” he told the creature, certain in his exhaustion that it cared for whatever he had to say. “That’s mine.”
As though to spite him, the creature put its terrible little hands on the sides of the brewer, pulling it away.
“Stop! Thief!”
Prowl scrabbled with his already extended hand to yank the brewer back from the creature.
It hissed at him.
Seeing no other option, Prowl threw himself upward, grabbing the brewer with both arms.
The creature relented, releasing the brewer and clambering away.
However, he could not celebrate his victory.
Prowl found air rushing up around him… before he and the brewer collided with the road below the balcony.
It had taken an act of iron will to not fall asleep in a heap after his… gravity-induced setback.
Thankfully, his new brewer had survived impact, having been cradled safely under Prowl’s bumper.
Slapping the access codes to his office into the panel next to the door, Prowl himself had been grateful to escape the encounter with just scrapes and dents… and sore struts.
Exhaustion continued to creep into his processor. Automated alerts requesting that he recharge were dismissed with a self-executing macro that he had set up ages ago, but even now Prowl couldn’t deny that his processing speed was suffering from the lack of recharge, the lack of stimulant-laced fuel. The focal rings in his optics kept spiraling out, making his vision intermittently fuzzy while his processor struggled to adjust the calculations to resolve the feed.
When the door finally opened after several tries of the code, he staggered across towards where his old, sabotaged brewer waited.
With a wave of his arm, he knocked items off the shelf, clearing space for the new brewer. Accouterments and paraphernalia clattered to the floor as he set his prize down.
Prowl grabbed the old brewer, lifting it up as he prepared to sacrifice it to the floor. One thing, however, caught his eye.
The power cable of the old brewer dangled down, disconnected from the wall socket.
Prowl squinted, taking the cable and plugging its jack back into the wall.
With a cheerful beep, the brewer powered on, telling Prowl it was ready to make him however much warm stimulant he wanted.
It wasn’t the upending of Prowl’s desk that summoned the security guards, but the echoing howl that accompanied it.