15I've seen a couple of these pop up, I decided to go a slightly different direction that I don't think anyone has done yet. And I might be using a couple old headcanons that I once played with a long time ago mixed with some references to other Transformers series. And I might also use some of my limited understanding of how military schools work to rectify something that's been annoying me.
Dumb Luck
It was sheer dumb luck. Optimus knew that. Elita's optics had widened far past what he thought was possible for their specs and her grip on his leg and pede was definitely starting to hurt. "Can you copy my grapple from there?" They were running out of time to escape and he had stopped ascending when Elita had grabbed onto him, the yanking motion temporarily jamming his ascending mechanism.
"I'll try." Elita's voice actually sounded like it was trembling.
Normally, when Elita copied something of his, there was a small electric distortion, that barely tingled his internal systems. This time, perhaps due to her fear, the distortion was much, much worse. He didn't know what exactly happened, other than a brief realization that he was falling and Elita was hanging from another grappling line looking down at him with her mouth open- screaming, he thought. A flash of heat, the feeling of a shockwave hitting him, the impact with the ground, and then the spiders were upon him. The initial bites merely damaged his armor, and for a moment, he thought that would be it, he'd be able to fight them off and escape.
Then one bite hit one of the many lines under his armor, and the resultant burn from the venom mixing with the fluid made him scream. The spiders chattered, and the attacks increased with more and more bites aimed at spots where the armor was weaker. He was burning, and his attempts fight the spiders off weakened. Eventually, mercifully, his systems shutdown.
When Optimus came back on line, it was in bits and stages, his internal self-repair systems were struggling to get his body into a state where he was no longer in danger of permanently offlining. He was lying on a slab, one pede was hanging off the end. Optimus felt several systems shut down and restart, and finally his external sensors came back on line, or at least, some of them.
He struggled to move, the slab was cold, and the sound of cackling was disturbing him. Servos were touching him, prying at his armor. Optimus tried to speak, but only managed a burst of static. His optics and external sensors were no longer calibrated correctly, and the only thing he could see was a blurry outline of a mech with dark green and purple coloring, with what looked like legs coming out of its arms. "Who-zzzt." Optimus managed, and got yet another cackle in response.
"Hmm, I suppose it would be rude not to," The mech cackled again, "introduce myself. My designation is Tarantulas, but you'll call me master." Tarantulas chuckled as Optimus finally got his body to move, though it was only a slight shift in position and caused multiple sensors and receptors to flare in warning. Though those were less of a concern than when Optimus realized that several sections of sensors weren't signaling at all.
"You should be grateful, I was just going to let the spiders offline you for destroying my ship, but your reaction to the venom," another cackle from Tarantulas, Optimus shifted again trying to get away from the still roaming servos that had no sense of propriety, "Don't worry, your contribution to my experiments will further the decepticon cause, little autobot."
Optimus tried to fight back at that, but then the warnings in his CPU suddenly vanished and a warning of immenient stasis lock appeared.
He hoped the others had escaped, and his last thoughts were of Elita and Sentinel, at least they were safe and free.
Lightyears away, Elita finished giving her initial report to the academy board and several Elite Guard. Standard Procedure was to have those involved with rules violations to give their reports separately to try and ferret out any foul play that might have been intended.
"Academy Cadet Elita, you and your fellow Academy Cadet Sentinel will be held under house arrest while the board goes over your reports and your ship records. You may be asked for additional details. Energon will be delivered to your rooms at the usual mess times, and you will be expected to keep up with your studies during this time. Understood, Cadet?"
"Sir, I understand, sir!" Elita saluted, and followed her escort back to her room, she gave a short nod to the escort, and it wasn't until the door slid shut that the entirety of what was happening hit her.
Optimus was dead. They would never have his body to set to rest in the halls of the fallen. And it was her fault.
In general, her copy ability did have a set time limit before it deleted the information about the ability. It had been designed that way so she wouldn't permanently take on an upgrade that would stress her frame and cause permanent damage, like when she had copied a shoulder cannon that drill Sergeant Kup used, and not only did its recoil almost tore her own shoulder off of her frame, but also depleted her internal energon stores to near zero. The auto-deletion was a good safety feature, but she'd never realized that it would do so while she was in the middle of using it! Or, that's what she'd thought had happened at the time. Engineer Wheeljack was in charge of monitoring special mods like her copy ability, and once they had been admitted to Medical for decontamination and their initial statements given, Wheeljack had come in and scanned her systems.
That's when he revealed that the time limit had not been the only limiter placed on her ability. After the incident with the shoulder cannon, he had also added a code that would make sure that the ability would scale to her frame's stress ratio, and make sure that the copied ability would not use up her internal energon stores once they reached a certain point. A failsafe to keep her from using a mod or upgrade that could send her into stasis lock, it would cut off the ability if the stress ratio or the energon ratio was exceeded.
Only, the code had a large flaw that meant since the copied ability was porportionly weaker than the original, the less energy she had would increase the gap ratio. In the wake of the shoulder cannon incident, he had felt the weakness was acceptable. Except that this second limit had activated with the strain of maintaining both the grapple itself and the quick vertical ascent, making the grapple disappear before the time limit had been reached. Sheer dumb luck had Optimus' leg within reach of her flailing arms.
It was easier to copy an ability when her servos were closer to the mod/upgrade in question. In her panic, she had pushed her ability to its limits, intent on copying the grappling hook and not having it disappear on her again. She hadn't realized that in doing so, she would disrupt Optimus's systems. She had tried to catch him, hold onto him, but he had slipped through her servos and all she could do is watch as he fell, the explosion obscuring him. She had run to save Sentinel, hoping to save at least one of her friends, but the memory of Optimus' fall burned into her memory banks.
Now in the safety of her quarters, she stared at her arms, and accessed the grapples programming. Both arms had a section pop up, and before the grappling hooks could be propelled across the room she shut them down. Near as Wheel jack could tell, this copy was now a permanent modification, but they hadn't done extended testing to see what the possible complications of this would be.
Elita already knew what one complication would be. Every single time she used these grappling hooks, she would be reminded of Optimus, and her role in his death.
It took several cycles, the monotony of studying and self recrimination interrupted by the questions of the elite guard and academy board, one of whom she knew was an Academy counselor, as well as daily visits by Wheeljack (who spent more time telling her about the latest science journals than checking her mods), before she and Sentinel were both brought before the board and, to their shock, the Magnus himself.
Elita hadn't thought she could feel even more guilt than she already had, but when Ultra Magnus began by scolding them for their recklessness, she found that yes, there were more levels to her guilt and self-loathing.
"Cadet Elita, because of your direct actions, the academy and the Elite Guard have lost one promising young mech, it is the ruling of the board and this council that you are to be removed from the academy and placed in the general army. After this hearing, you will report to Lio Major for your reassignment." Ultra Magnus gave a soft sigh. "I had high hopes for you, young one." Elita flinched slightly. "Cadet Sentinel, the board and this council have ruled that, while you will remain in the Academy and in the elite guard track, you will do so on restriction, and will report to Nova Major until the board decides to lift your restriction. Report to him immediately after this hearing."
Elita knew that on a file, Sentinel had done much less than her in contributing to the death of Optimus, even though it had been Sentinel's idea in the first place. The fact that her copy ability had disrupted his systems and led to his death was nearly the same as if she'd shot him with a disrupter.
Still, she was not expecting that when she turned to Sentinel to speak to him after they were dismissed- about what, she wasn't quite sure, some mixture of condolences and congratulations that he, at least, would be able to continue their dream- he turned away as if he didn't know her, happily chatting up one of their escorts and walking away without a second glance. She was stunned by his cold shoulder, especially after he had promised on the flight back that they'd be okay and face whatever came together.
"Yeah, it was tough, but I knew they wouldn't throw me out. The council knows when a liability in the field needs to be dealt with before anyone else gets killed." Sentinel boasted as he went through the doors to another hallway. Mercifully, the doors closed just as he spoke up again, but she'd still heard enough. "I mean, her ability's dang-"
She felt stung as she turned away to go down a different hall, and barely managed to compose herself by the time she made it to the office of Lio Major.
"Sir, I-" She felt her vocalize seize up as she beheld the mech that would be reassigning her. He was roughly the same build as Optimus, with a white and gold paint job where Optimus had a red and blue.
"Ah, Elita. Come in." Lio Major smiled at her. "I'm sorry about the loss of your friend." Lio Major's voice was sincere, and Elita managed a weak nod.
"Thank you, Lio Major. I was told to report to you-"
"Yes, I know. I have a few questions for you, before I give you your assignment." He gestured to a chair.
"I see. This is another psych evaluation, then?"
"Of a sort, I usually act as one of the guidance counselors for cadets choosing their specialty." Lio Major sat down on the toher side of his desk. "I'm also one of the ones that usually delivers the news of a death to their loved ones. It's not a job I enjoy."
"I am well aware of Optimus' death, and my specialty is science." Elita retorted, desperate to keep the walls she had just put up.
"Magnus raised a concern that you have not had time to accurately deal with your grief. Looking over the counselor's notes, you were professional, except for when Optimus was brought up, and you would grip your arms where the grapple mods are, like you're doing right now." Lio Major's voice was gentle as he pointed to her arms, where indeed, she was gripping each arm where the mods were, she forced herself to let go. "You've held yourself together remarkably well, but you don't have to do so by yourself, you do have those that will help you."
"I doubt that. Once the sentences were read out, Sentinel turned his back on me! 'Don't worry Elita, we'll get through this together no matter what'. He even bragged about getting a lesser sentence and said I was a dangerous liability as if I wasn't even in the same place as him!" Elita snapped, and Lio Major's expression was one of listening. " I know it's my fault Optimus died, I made a mistake and I couldn't hold onto him! I don't want mercy, I just-" She choked herself off.
"You're grieving, and now more than ever, you need bots to rely on." Lio Major said softly.
"I'm a disgrace, no one will want to deal with me, and it will be stellar cycles before I can work my way back up …" Elita knew what her fate was going to be, a liability that no one would trust, no one would want in command.
"You're wrong about that. Engineer Wheeljack has been worried about you, he had to be restricted to only one visit per cycle. He even offered to take you as a student, but because of his contract with the Academy and the Elite Guard, the board ruled against it." Lio Major chuckled, and handed her a datapad. "Wheeljack wishes for you have his contact information, and mine is there as well. You will not be completely without support, Elita."
Elita gripped the pad in shock, "I don't know what to say." She managed, even as she downloaded the information.
"My first patrol, I wound up in a fight against smugglers, I was hit pretty badly, and one of my teammates moved to cover me. I saw one of the smugglers move into a sniper position and tried to tackle him out of the way. I ended up sending both of us into the path of another shot. I understand much of what you're going through, I will be in touch as much as I can."
"Thank you … You said you had questions?" Elita felt a little better about her future knowing there was somebots she could trust.
"Yes." Lio Major nodded in acknowledgement of her thanks. "What do you want to do, Elita?"
"I haven't thought about it, I guess …" Elita had nothing, absently one hand rested on her arm where the grapple was. Her goal had been to become a science officer, but … that dream now felt hollow, incomplete, what point was there in working towards her dream when Optimus was no longer able to achieve his.
Nothing she could think of would make her feel really happy, and she wanted … she wanted some way to honor Optimus' memory. A thought struck her, and it was perhaps, the worst idea she'd ever had. At the same time, however, it was the only way she felt she could move forward, and the only way she wanted to move forward, when it came down to it.
"I know what I want to do."
Yeah, I had Tarantulas be a member of the decepticon ship that crashed on Arachna 7. The reason why will be revealed next chapter.
That grapple line Elita copied should not have vanished that quickly, not after watching her use the copy of Sentinel's shield, which was frankly a slightly longer sequence. I decided there was a secondary limit to her power that she wasn't aware of, and she over-rode both limits to re-copy the grapple.
I really wanted Sentinel to get some sort of comeuppance, but compared to Elita's punishment, it's a gentle slap on the wrist. The news that Elita's copy abilty was able to disrupt Optimus' systems and cause his friend's fall has him blaming Elita for Optimus' death- she hadn't mentioned that on the flight back, so he's upset with her and we all know Sentinel's a jerk-ass.
Nova Major- Aka, Nova Prime. I wanted him as a nod to the story title, and the comic character's got a similar, uh, xenophobic worldview that Sentinel will later express.
Lio Major- Aka, Lio Convoy from the Beast Wars anime, I wanted a noble character to be the one to give Elita some guidance, and the fact he looks a lot like Optimus was a bonus.
