(Kaon)

 the-scrappy-stinger:

“Where the hell are your papers THIS time?! Did you sell any of them?! At this rate I won’t have any to print TOMORROW!” 

(Blindside would have been red with rage if he hadn’t been dyed black from trying to repair his printer all day. Ink stained his hands, his face, his feet, and the floor where it had all been spilled or crushed underfoot. The printing room was a wreck, and the window was still broken, and Bee was STILL hearing Blindside rail at him.)

But I found something! I followed tracks from the crime scene to this backroom joint that got raided-

“I don’t need YOU to do anything but sell, you little glitchrat! Get out of my office!”

(He just misses the swing at his head, and Bee makes quick for the door…)

(No… he was onto something. This wasn’t going to stop him.)

(He slams the door shut, but transforms onto his clean wheels and rolls into the never-used broom closet. It gives him time for the ink on his feet to dry, for Blindside to clean what he can and leave to buy more ink. Once the office is quiet, Bee slips out of the closet and upstairs to the record room.)

(Blindside knows something, and he pours through the open records on his desk to find out what. The corkboard on the wall paints an interesting picture, threads going from nightclub to sin spot to hotel lobby, with every major break-in and fire marked with a big red pin. Megatron buys a building, building goes up in smoke a week after a big investigation there turns up nothing. Megatron speaks well of a mech, who’s dead in a gutter a month later from a shooting. Every suspect found dead within the next couple of nights. Ethanol floatillas moving in and out of the Kaon Bay, one night after another, but always within a 10 minute flight from a Megatron-owned business in the greater Kaon area.)

(Bee finally sees a picture of the mech, sees that canon on his arm, and knows this is him.)

(But who is he? He has to cross-reference the card catalog, dig into the papers well into the night when Blindside comes in, fixes the printer as best he can, and locks up to go home.) 

(He finds nothing in the criminal records. Nothing in the missing persons, or even in the job applications. This Megatron guy came from nowhere.)

(The breakthrough doesn’t come until he falls asleep on a sports page and wakes up to a full-page spread on up-and-comer Megatronus, heavyweight boxer, and his “future” fight against Onslaught, dated almost a year ago. He’d been working that day, expected to hear the turnout for that fight, but… he didn’t remember a thing.) 

(Sneaking out the window in the morning, Bee heads for the boxing ring. He didn’t have the time or the guts to keep snooping around in Blindside’s office, but maybe the owner of the ring would know.)

Laserbeak perched in the window, scanning the room. A camera flash sounded from his optical band, a sound he didn’t need to make when taking pictures but when no one was around, where was the harm? It was a fun sound. What they’d found here was less fun. Blindside was gathering intel on them, not enough to convict but enough to prompt a full investigation if that goody-six-wheels officer got hold of it. Kicking off from the window, he did a circle around the room before flying through the window, folding neatly back into Soundwave’s chest. His wings flattened against the material of his jacket, forming sharp lapels.

Soundwave went through the photos, the images flitting across his screen. A low static permeated the air that if one was listening closely might resemble a growl. Wait. He flitted back to a shot of the floor. A second set of footprints, smaller than Blindside’s. He didn’t recognize them. They had a problem.

~~~~~~

The old ring was a shell of a warehouse building, in the slums near the docks. A fire had destroyed nearly all but the basic structure, the platform for the boxers in tatters from the flames. Somehow, despite the disaster, the place still smelled faintly of exhaust and ozone.The back wall had fallen down in a heap of bricks, exposing what was left of the building to the open water, where the glimmer of far-off ships could be seen on the horizon. The stars too filtered in, from a few holes in the ceiling that definitely weren’t the result of flames.

A wall that had once contained the portraits and certificates and news trimmings of all the champions remained on the side, in danger of meeting the same fate as the other. Scattered chairs, abandoned medals, broken glass and burnt paper all littered the floor beneath it, and one photo in particular appeared to have been punched into the wall.