dracoqueen22 | [One Wish] Enchanted

Series: One Wish
Characters: Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Prowl
Rated: K+
Description: Prowl keeps his word and maintains his distance from Sunstreaker, but that doesn't mean he's stopped thinking about the pretty artist.

Enchanted – Part Three

Prowl stayed away.

Or as much as his investigation allowed, at any rate.

Sunstreaker was clearly not interested, or even interested in having a conversation for that matter. It was a shame, but Prowl was not one to push. He knew when he was unwanted.

He kept his distance. He was polite, the few times he did stop by the cafe, and he took his meals to go. Sideswipe managed to be civilized, in such a way that Prowl understood the underlying threat.

Stay away from my twin.

Noted.

Prowl was many things, but a fool was not one of them.

He was here to do a job in Uraya, after all, not chase after another mech, no matter how lovely he was. Especially one, he soon learned, who was connected to the Regent.

“Fights for ‘im sometimes,” said one mech, multiple optics darting in multiple directions and making Prowl dizzy to try and maintain eye contact. He stopped bothering. His jittery informant was a miasma of anxiety and paranoia. “He sends ‘em to Kaon or Slaughter City as his… uh… you know? Face mechs?”

“Representatives?” Prowl supplied.

The mech nodded exuberantly. Something clattered and clunked in his lower half. “They always win. Come back with loads of creds.”

“And yet, they are still here,” Prowl said.

The mech shrugged. “Ain’t their creds.”

Hm.

“What business does the Regent have in those cities?” Prowl asked.

There the optics went, skittering in all directions, and the mech’s field turned chaotic and bristly. “Uh.”

Prowl sighed, if only to himself, and dug into his subspace, producing another fistful of energon bars. Pure, compacted energy. Not much for taste, but there was enough energon packed in one bar to keep a single mech going for a week. Here, in a place like Uraya where too many people were starving, these energon bars were almost better than creds.

The handful of bars was all but snatched out of his hands.

“Now,” the mech said as he shoved one into his mouth, and spoke around his raucous chewing, “ya ain’t heard it from me, but I hear that the Regent’s got contacts. Suppliers. Y’know. Mechs interested in the kindsa things he’s interested in, yeah?”

“What type of items?”

The mech chewed and swallowed, patting his rounded abdomen with a satisfied clang of metal on metal. “Equipment. Medical things. Cuffs. Lots of ‘em.”

Why on Cybertron would Starscream want a lot of restraining devices? Prowl shuddered to think of the possibilities.

“Do you know why?”

The mech shook his head, optics darting in all directions, as he suddenly backed up, back hitting the wall of the alley behind him. “Frag, no. I don’t know nothin’ about what the Regent does in that basement ‘o his. A’right? Nothin!”

Basement. Hm. Decent, legal things rarely occurred in basements.

“But whatever it is, you think Sunstreaker and Sideswipe are involved?”

“Ya ain’t that deep in the Regent’s subspace without knowin’ what vermin he keep in there.” The mech slid along the length of the alley, his armor clamped tight, the energon bars vanished, perhaps to his own subspace. “And that’s all I know. I dunno nothin’ more.”

Prowl shifted his weight. “Including, I assume, this entire conversation.”

The informer grinned, showing off the fact he was missing several denta, and a few of those that remained were rusted. “What convo, mech?” He melted into the dark, creaky ventilations the last evidence he existed at all.

Well. That was that then.

Prowl eased out of the alley, sliding into the darkness of the night. Uraya was so poor it could not afford street lamps save for the occasional few which were easy enough to avoid.

So. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe fought in the gladiating pits. That explained how they were able to maintain their business in a city slowly suffocating on its own waste. It also explained the thick armor and the confidence with which they carried themselves.

The extent of their involvement, however, remained a mystery. Sideswipe was apparently some kind of supplier for Starscream, but did that mean he knew why Starscream wanted those items? How deep was he in the Seeker’s clutches? Was Prowl only offering him the benefit of the doubt because of his attraction to Sunstreaker?

Prowl needed more information, but he’d reached something of a dead end. Short of asking the twins outright, which he refused to do. He’d tried subtly questioning some of the more frequent visitors to Color and Conversation, but the minute he’d steered the conversation toward Sunstreaker or Sideswipe’s connection to the Regent, said customers clamped up tighter than an oil drum.

Loyal, they were. Maybe not to the twins in particular, but against Elite mechs from large, flourishing cities? Most definitely.

Or worse, Starscream had a stranglehold on Uraya and only the desperate – like his informant – or the stupid, dared cross the mercurial Seeker.

Prowl had reached the end of what he could do by speaking. He supposed the only recourse left was to get his hands dirty. He was not as talented as Jazz when it came to the stealthy arts, but he was not unskilled. He would have to poke around in places no one wanted him to be.

Places like the storage room for Color and Conversation, or the apartment the twins shared. Places like the depot at the end of Salvage Lane, guarded by a rotating staff of mercenaries, all without badges but their demeanor clearly suggesting they belonged to the Regent.

Prowl had attempted to play dumb and wander inside by accident, and he’d been all but marched off the property, a not-at-all civilian blaster pointed at the base of his spinal strut. Whatever Starscream had stored there, it was something no one was allowed to see.

Though Sideswipe, he’d noticed, was granted unfettered access. Sunstreaker he’d never seen around the place, but he had spotted Sideswipe in multiple furtive conversations with mechs who worked for Starscream. He wondered how much, if anything, Sunstreaker knew.

Prowl snuck through the night, back toward the room he rented. Though calling it a room was generous. It had four walls, a door that only locked because Prowl installed his own manual fastener, and a plank of steel loosely called a berth. It cost a ridiculous amount of credits for the fact it was not luxurious, but it was on the edge of the worst part of Uraya and therefore, closest to the information Prowl needed.

Prowl’s biolights were all he had to light the room, not that he needed much to see or that there was anything to see. Everything important he kept on his person, in his subspace. There was no safe place to leave it otherwise.

He climbed onto the berth, grimacing at the discomfort, and longing for the soft plush of what he had back home. He was still confused why this particular task had been given to him when there were multiple others better suited, including his own brother, but Prowl had ran out of favors on questioning his orders. What his Prime demanded, Prowl obliged.

He set his sensors to alert him to anything, which meant he would only recharge in the lightest of dozes, but it was all he afforded himself here. There was no safety to be found in Uraya, and only Primus knew what Pit Prowl had stirred. He would not be caught with his gun unloaded.

Tomorrow was a new day. A new attempt to divulge more information from the local populace before he was forced to resort to methods which would make Jazz proud.

Prowl cycled a ventilation. He offlined his optics and prepared to recharge, but while his last thoughts were usually a revisit of the day’s events, a quick search of all his gathered intel to see if anything struck him with a revelation, that was not the case this time. Instead, Sunstreaker’s face popped into mind, angry, scowling, aggressive. Overly so, one might say.

Living in a place like Uraya, could Prowl even be surprised? Given how protective Sideswipe was, and Sideswipe seemed to be the less naive of the two, Prowl wondered what that aggression hid. There was a sensitive spark in Sunstreaker, he knew this much by the beautiful art he’d seen. He’d done his research, too.

Sunstreaker had sold a few pieces, mostly out of Uraya, and under a pseudonym, most likely in a bid to hide their origin. But there was no mistaking that style. It was clearly Sunstreaker’s. The sharp, bold lines and colors were quite distinctive. No doubt the few sales helped keep him and Sideswipe afloat.

Sunstreaker had talent. He was a gem in this ruin of a town. He belonged elsewhere. A place with glitz and glamor, a place that would appreciate him for the talent he was. For the beauty he was.

Prowl’s spark glowed with warmth at the thought. He imagined taking Sunstreaker from here, imagined his paint gleaming in the spotlights of his own art gallery. He imagined actually earning a smile from the mech.

Sunstreaker, no doubt, was beautiful when he smiled.

Not that he would ever smile for Prowl. He was too guarded, no doubt burned by the pain life had brought him. There was no getting beyond his walls. It was a pointless thought.

Prowl cycled a ventilation and buried the brief moment of hope. He was here to do a task. He would have to resupply tomorrow and contact headquarters for his weekly check-in as well. With any luck, he could find some good information on Starscream as well.

Prowl did not belong here in Uraya. That was becoming more painfully obvious by the day. And the sooner he could leave, the sooner he could forget about the romance that was not to be, and inappropriate as well.

To that end, Prowl shuttered his optics and initiated a manual recharge sequence, if only to ensure he’d achieve some rest before tomorrow.

After all, he had work to do.

****
a/n: Two more parts to go! :)