shadow_vector | Nom de Plume

G
IDW
Ironfist, Perceptor
for

hc_bingo prompt 'secret identity revealed' and wooo this is my second bingo on this card!

They’d taken heavy casualties, were cut off from resupply, and ammunition was running low. The Decepticon front line was advancing, with all its power. It was the time in the battle when lesser mechs would surely falter. But these were the Wreckers. Wreckers didn’t have problems, they didn’t have challenges or any of the other cute labels the Hub might come up with. This was simply How It Was Done.

They wouldn’t be Wreckers if they expected it any other way.

Impactor paused just long enough to scrape his harpoon clean on the armor of the Decepticon he’d just jerked it out of. He knew he didn’t need to make any heroic speeches: action was the Wreckers way, and actions spoke louder than words. He—

The chime on his door startled Ironfist. No one visited him after hours. Like. Ever. He scrambled to the door.

“Perceptor?”

“Ironfist.” The other scientist smiled. “Sorry to bother you, but I had an idea about that cannon you were designing. You needed a higher thermal reactivity rate to withstand the ballistic expansion, yes?”

It took three whole awkward long kliks for Ironfist to cycle over into the conversation: half his attention was still on the Mitteous Plateau, Impactor boldly straddling the body of his defeated foe, an undaunted glint in his orange optics as he faced, stern-jawed, the onrushing enemy.

“Oh! Oh, right. That. Yeah. Sure.” That was his day job. And Ironfist loved his day job, but there was a part of him that ached for the adventure of the Wreckers. Adventure and real heroism, bravery and strength.

“Do you have the specs on you again? I want to run some chemical tests tonight.”

Ah, so at least Perceptor’s night was almost as full of excitement as Ironfist’s. He realized, on one level, how sad it must seem, to sit on the sidelines. Or how much it must seem like not really doing something that mattered, doing enough, with safety and peace and problems like worrying about exactly how you were going to spend all that free time in the evenings. At least Perceptor was still doing something. Ironfist was just…wallowing in the bravery of others.

“All right,” Ironfist said, crossing to his workstation, Perceptor following in his wake. “I’ll just call up the spe—“ Oh frag. He slapped his hand on the keypad, racing to close the window with his latest Declassified on it. “I…errrrrrrr.” His hands, nervous, slipped on the keys, somehow highlighting the text and boosting the font size until it was huge. Frag! NO!! He slapped at the screen, fingers somehow seeming five times their regular size and entirely incapable.

Perceptor reached over, and hit the page-toggle key, and the screen went blissfully to a blank query screen.

Silence. Long silence.

“I. Uh. You….didn’t see that.” Please tell me you didn’t see that.

“I didn’t see anything,” Perceptor said. Ironfist felt air gush from his vents in relief. “…except that half-written Wreckers Declassified.” Anyone else and Ironfist would think he was being teased, but Perceptor was, well, Perceptor was the only one here nerdier than he was.

Still, Ironfist looked up, hoping to see the sign of a joke on Perceptor’s face. Any trace that it was just in fun. Nope. Dead serious.

Ironfist drooped. “I…look. You can’t tell anyone.”

“Why not?”

“I just…look. It’s…,” he wrung his hands, helplessly. “They’ll all make fun of me.”

“Who? Why?”

“Everyone! For writing a silly…thing.”

“Do you think it’s silly?”

The question halted him. Because he did, really, think it was silly. A successful mech like him, with a career that was every scientist’s dream: an unlimited budget, no timetable, any resource he could ask for delivered to him at ruthless speed? It had been all he’d dreamed of, and yet sitting here, day after day in a lab that any scientist would have envied, all he could think about was action, adventure. And the Wreckers.

They were the best. The hardest bitten mechs in the Autobot forces, and yet the most noble, honorable. They were shining examples of willpower and endurance: everything the Autobots stood for.

But sitting here, compiling data, telling their stories, it was the closest he could come. He felt brave writing them, as though he could be right there with them, fearlessly staring down Squadron X, the right, most heroic words springing to his vocalizer, smoke swirling around him like a cloak of heroism. He felt bigger, and braver and more powerful.

Here, he was small, and chunky, and startled by someone chiming on his door after hours, and burning in shame. “Isn’t it?”

Perceptor frowned. “But mechs enjoy your work. You’re like Blaster, in a way. You give us something to believe in.”

“….I do?” His stories were self-indulgence, pure and simple, vicarious living he knew he’d never be able to do in life.

“You do.” A shy, genuine smile. “You show us right and wrong in the middle of war. You make things make sense. Not many mechs can do that.”

Ironfist wanted to protest, but the words seemed blocked by some hot prickle of emotion. Because he didn’t believe that, but…he wanted to. “I-I’m just telling stories.”

“No,” Perceptor said, leaning over to click the console over to the half-written story again. “You tell us what we could be.” He smiled. “And that’s a more important target for us to aim at than anything we make here.”