--Written By: Reality Obscured--

--Chapter II: Inferno Gone Wild!--

AN: I had written a completely different one earlier this morning during a boring period at work. Then two energy drinks and a pot of coffee later, I was buzzing and had to go to the gym for two hours to work it off! I came home tired, sore, and wanting only to sleep. This is the result. All I could think about when I woke up was completely rewriting it to suit the dream I just had! Please forgive me! cringes

Red Alert was beyond any shadow of any doubt on this. He was positively sure that the two 'bots in the central computer hub were up to something. Jazz was seated at Teletran-1, working intently at the controls while Sideswipe stood at his back. The Lambo was grinning like a madmech possessed, purposefuly blocking the view of the console from the SD's view. It left Red in the dark. None of it was showing on Teletran-1's screen. What set Red's innate paranoia to predictable and almost circuitry aching life was what Sideswipe was grinning at.

At the camera's location. More importantly, at him! Red tried to focus on any one of the other monitors to no advail. He couldn't shake the feeling of those optics on him. He couldn't go to Prowl with this yet. He had to have proof that they were breaking some sort of regulation before Prowl would consider doing anything but ignore him. Right now, he had to watch and -he shuddered- be watched.
What happened next had Red Alert sitting back rigid in his seat, his optics bright in stunned surprise and mouth agape. Each adn every vidscreen blanked out into darkness before, one by one, reactivating. Something was loading on to them and taken it's good, sweet time in doing so. Red just knew Jazz and that twin had to be doing this. He could've sworn he'd seen Sideswipe wave just before everything had gone black. Only morbit facination at what he was about to see kept him to his seat.

The file came up. Video footage, he realized. He also realized he was looking at a downward angle into the security room. The very same security room he was in! On the video, he, as usual, was in his seat. Looking vaguely bored, actualy. The Red Alert of the present day and time, however, was gripping the armrests of his seat hard enough to create finger-shaped dents in the metal.
What the slag?! There was a camera in HERE?

The signals fired like lightning across his cerebo circuitry. In barely two astroseconds he had jumped from the chair and was backed up against the door, scanners assaulting the room mercilessly for anything either sending or receiving data. The recording had been looking down at him, which meant that the camera or recording device had to be somewhere near the ceiling. While he scanned for the device or devices, his CPU continued the search for the memory files from that recorded night. The information made itself known automatically. It was only when all the information was laid out before him that he recalled exactly what ELSE had happened that orn. In fact, it had happened not too long after.

Oh, Primus... The monitors were already showing it. He hoped he was the only one seeing this right now. With the Ark's two resident pranksters at the helm of this- Nope. His processor couldn't generate anything good out of it.

1792.8 astroseconds later (30 Earth minutes)--

He'd given up trying to find the recording device within the first few minutes. Disrupting the feed to the monitors didn't work, either. The doors to the control room had been locked, all communications were being blocked, and nobody seemed to have cared that he had screamed his vocalizer's wiring raw. For half an Earth hour, Red Alert stayed at the back of the room in a spot he judged to be relatively out of surveillance range. That was if it was even here anymore. How someone could sneak something like that in here, he didn't know, much less install it this well hidden. The recording of him overloading himself had been looped to play over and over. Embarrassment and anger both fought for dominance over his emotional protocols...not that it mattered. There was no way he could get Jazz and Sideswipe in trouble for this one. Not without telling Prowl the details. Especially since some of the videos he did have were of Prowl.

As for those videos, he'd already deleted them. There was no way he was keeping around the evidence after THIS.

The sound of the doors opening had him looking up. The mech at the door practically filled the entire doorway. "...Inferno?"

The larger red and white Transformer half grinned at the way Red had moved to the vidscreens, trying desperately to block them from view with his body. "Well, Red? Have yeh learnt yer lesson?"

The Lamborghini stared -no, gaped- at Inferno for a few astroseconds as everything suddenly clicked into place. Inferno had been the only one other than himself who had been in the control room in orns! "I-Inferno... You did this?!"

The taller mech seemed unabashed. "Ain't nuthin' to it, Red. Here yeh think Ah don't pay attention when yer messin' with yah cameras." He stepped forward, the door closing behind him. "Jazz and Sideswipe. What about them?" Red Alert asked. He already had the feeling Sideswipe was the one who told Inferno about his "habits".

"The prob'bly won' be tellin' anyone." He was assured. What wasn't assuring was when Red noticed how he'd been all but backed right up against the console, the larger form close to almost the point of crowding. "Not if yeh stop."

Blackmail. That's what this was. Pure blackmail. Inferno had been the only avenue of being discovered he hadn't previously covered. He never would have believed the fire truck capable of something this devious. But...was it him, or was Inferno occasionally glancing over to the monitors where the loop was still playing. Were his optics darkening? "I'll stop! Where are the recorders, Inferno? They need to go first. There is absolutely no way I'm staying in here any longer with those THINGS around!" The other leaned in, and Red yelped when he felt a nozzle hand slide up a sensitive seam along the inside of a thigh. "Inferno!"

The grin he was given was unrepentant. "Nah. Ah wanna leave 'em fer a few more breems, don't yeh think? Yeh got plenty of me, Red, but not one of us?"

-FIN-