Slow editing is slow.
Title: The Theory on TwentyEight
Prompt Number: 25 -- Exhausted
Verse: G1
Rating: G
Summary: Every dog gets his day and it's about time Skids got his. 28 drabbles on the most forgotten member of the Ark.
Notes: YEAH! No more school till next year!
“You’re through. Finished. Burned out. Used up. You’ve been replaced. . . forgotten. That’s a lie!” -- Charles R. Swindoll
Skids’s day was not going well. This, in and of itself, was certainly not new to the theoretician. He was cursed with the knowledge that he was far from the luckiest mech to ever inhabit Cybertron. This day, however, seemed to be trying its darndest to put all of his other Bad Days to shame…and it was succeeding most spectacularly.
The day started off wrong from the get go. Instead of recharging for the entirety of his rest cycle, Skids had had to spend most of it awake finishing up on a battle tactics exercise pushed on him by the rest of his unit. He had barely recharged for a joor after concluding the exercise before something quietly rattling overhead roused him from his berth. It had turned out to be Ravage skulking about in the ventilation shaft and after tearing his hind leg free from the grill that had captured it, the spy turned tail and fled as Skids sounded the alarm. The following questions and answers from his superiors had eaten up his remaining recharge time and the theoretician found himself booted into communications duty before he knew it.
Communications duty itself usually wasn’t too bad…except he had had to spend it with Bluster. The mech enjoyed playing obscure (and usually bad) Cybertronian jingles at absurd volumes whenever he was on duty. Primus knew the higher-ups had tried everything to make him stop but unless his brother, Blaster, was there hovering over his shoulder, the communications expert continued right on playing. By the time his shift finally ended, Skids was sure the rendition of “Meguiar’s: Cybertronian’s Best, Clear Wax!” would forever be playing in the back of his CPU.
Trying in vain to drown out the merciless jingle with thoughts on the theosophical relativity of space and time, Skids trudged down to the rec room to pickup his sorely needed energon ration. He got there with no incidents and was even able to get a cube and sit down before a fight broke out between a minibot and another mech at the other end of the room. Skids managed to ignore the brawling pair and the mechs egging them on until they blindly smashed into his table, knocking his arm holding his half finished energon cube all down his chassis.
Skids forlornly looked down at his messy front wearing the remainder of his cycle’s rations before standing up and walking swiftly away from the oblivious mechs still going at it. By this time all the blue mech wanted to do was collapse into stasis lock before anything else happened but his bad luck still conspired against him. As he was on his way back to his quarters he ran into his unit leader, Blacker. Skids then proceeded to get lectured on proper maintenance and cleaning (for you see, Ravage had clawed up his fore plating as he had been trying to capture the spy and he had yet to clean up the energon caked on his front from the rec room scrap) and oh, by the way, where is that exercise data pad that’s due today?
Skids calmly handed over said pad, managed to get a small ‘good day’ out and changed his direction to that of the wash racks as he felt his leader’s stare burn in between his door wings. The usually mellow mech silently stewed in rather unkind thoughts as he almost stomped his way down the corridor. As absorbed in his angry inner monologue as he was, he ran straight into Smokescreen fresh from the wash racks.
“Primus Skids!” The red and blue mech exclaimed as he helped his friend off his aft. “What the Pit happened to you?”
The heated thoughts that were rocketing back and forth in Skids’s processor suddenly lost their hot air and collapsed upon themselves, leaving the theoretician feeling even more drained than before. His door-wings nearly folded completely down across his back as he slumped wearily in Smokescreen’s concerned grasp and released a long, low sigh from his intakes.
“That bad, huh?” Smokescreen asked even though he already knew the answer. After Skids nodded his confirmation Smokescreen sighed himself before maneuvering one of Skids’s arms around his shoulder, one of his own arms wrapping around Skids’s waist for additional support. “Come on then,” he said and began moving back towards the wash racks, nearly dragging his limp friend along, “I’ll help you clean up you magnet of misfortune.”
Skids grunted out what could have been interpreted as a thanks.
Prompt Number: 25 -- Exhausted
Verse: G1
Rating: G
Summary: Every dog gets his day and it's about time Skids got his. 28 drabbles on the most forgotten member of the Ark.
Notes: YEAH! No more school till next year!
“You’re through. Finished. Burned out. Used up. You’ve been replaced. . . forgotten. That’s a lie!” -- Charles R. Swindoll
Skids’s day was not going well. This, in and of itself, was certainly not new to the theoretician. He was cursed with the knowledge that he was far from the luckiest mech to ever inhabit Cybertron. This day, however, seemed to be trying its darndest to put all of his other Bad Days to shame…and it was succeeding most spectacularly.
The day started off wrong from the get go. Instead of recharging for the entirety of his rest cycle, Skids had had to spend most of it awake finishing up on a battle tactics exercise pushed on him by the rest of his unit. He had barely recharged for a joor after concluding the exercise before something quietly rattling overhead roused him from his berth. It had turned out to be Ravage skulking about in the ventilation shaft and after tearing his hind leg free from the grill that had captured it, the spy turned tail and fled as Skids sounded the alarm. The following questions and answers from his superiors had eaten up his remaining recharge time and the theoretician found himself booted into communications duty before he knew it.
Communications duty itself usually wasn’t too bad…except he had had to spend it with Bluster. The mech enjoyed playing obscure (and usually bad) Cybertronian jingles at absurd volumes whenever he was on duty. Primus knew the higher-ups had tried everything to make him stop but unless his brother, Blaster, was there hovering over his shoulder, the communications expert continued right on playing. By the time his shift finally ended, Skids was sure the rendition of “Meguiar’s: Cybertronian’s Best, Clear Wax!” would forever be playing in the back of his CPU.
Trying in vain to drown out the merciless jingle with thoughts on the theosophical relativity of space and time, Skids trudged down to the rec room to pickup his sorely needed energon ration. He got there with no incidents and was even able to get a cube and sit down before a fight broke out between a minibot and another mech at the other end of the room. Skids managed to ignore the brawling pair and the mechs egging them on until they blindly smashed into his table, knocking his arm holding his half finished energon cube all down his chassis.
Skids forlornly looked down at his messy front wearing the remainder of his cycle’s rations before standing up and walking swiftly away from the oblivious mechs still going at it. By this time all the blue mech wanted to do was collapse into stasis lock before anything else happened but his bad luck still conspired against him. As he was on his way back to his quarters he ran into his unit leader, Blacker. Skids then proceeded to get lectured on proper maintenance and cleaning (for you see, Ravage had clawed up his fore plating as he had been trying to capture the spy and he had yet to clean up the energon caked on his front from the rec room scrap) and oh, by the way, where is that exercise data pad that’s due today?
Skids calmly handed over said pad, managed to get a small ‘good day’ out and changed his direction to that of the wash racks as he felt his leader’s stare burn in between his door wings. The usually mellow mech silently stewed in rather unkind thoughts as he almost stomped his way down the corridor. As absorbed in his angry inner monologue as he was, he ran straight into Smokescreen fresh from the wash racks.
“Primus Skids!” The red and blue mech exclaimed as he helped his friend off his aft. “What the Pit happened to you?”
The heated thoughts that were rocketing back and forth in Skids’s processor suddenly lost their hot air and collapsed upon themselves, leaving the theoretician feeling even more drained than before. His door-wings nearly folded completely down across his back as he slumped wearily in Smokescreen’s concerned grasp and released a long, low sigh from his intakes.
“That bad, huh?” Smokescreen asked even though he already knew the answer. After Skids nodded his confirmation Smokescreen sighed himself before maneuvering one of Skids’s arms around his shoulder, one of his own arms wrapping around Skids’s waist for additional support. “Come on then,” he said and began moving back towards the wash racks, nearly dragging his limp friend along, “I’ll help you clean up you magnet of misfortune.”
Skids grunted out what could have been interpreted as a thanks.