Prompt: 043. Square

“Prowl, stop shooting me! I’m on your side, remember?”

Prowl sighed in exasperation and looked down at his thumbs. “I thought the square button was run?”

Yellow hands were soon on his, readjusting his grip on the game controller. “Circle is run, and square is shoot.”

After a quick mishap with a hand-grenade rebounding off the passage wall, Prowl managed to set his character running through the narrow corridor and towards the stone staircase. These he navigated without much trouble and he soon found himself running blindly through the game’s terrain. Right, left, down the stairs, two more lefts, and…what?

Prowl gawked at the strange blob that was occupying the otherwise empty room. He carefully nudged his character to the right, hoping a different angle would show him what exactly he was looking at. The movement brought him closer to the unknown object, prompting a name to pop up above it.

Oh! It was another player! After a quick glance down at the controller, Prowl began to mash the square button and pepper his enemy with artillery fire.

Beside him, Sunstreaker yelped and jumped in his seat. “Prowl! What the slag, that’s me again! Stop!”

The tactician lifted his thumb from the square button and looked back at the screen. Sure enough, the other player was labeled “Sunstreaker”, and his health meter had dropped to a few notches above “dead”.

“Look, you have to read the names before you shoot, okay?”

Prowl nodded and looked back up at the screen just in time to catch Sideswipe streaking across it. He had been about to reposition his thumb over the “shoot” button when a hand grenade came flying towards them. The controlled vibrated in Prowl’s hands as his character was sent flying backwards and into a wall.

“Slag it! You killed me Sides!”

Sure enough, Sunstreaker’s portion of the screen was darkened, the words “Game Over” flashing in bold letters across it.

“It’s just you now Prowl, you have to kill him.”

Determined to prove that, yes, he was able to play video games, Prowl began edging out of the room, wary of another grenade attack. With Sideswipe nowhere in sight, he set his character to a run and began searching for the elusive twin.

It seemed that Sideswipe was quite good at this game. Several times, Prowl saw the other player bolt through his line of vision, only to disappear around a corner before he managed to shoot. It was immensely frustrating, as was Sideswipe’s uncanny ability to know exactly where the teleport pods were.

It was with stunned surprise that Prowl reacted to finding Sideswipe cornered in a dead end. The other player stood, staring at him for a moment before Sideswipe cackled maniacally and begun mashing the controller.

Click.

Both Prowl and Sideswipe cocked their heads at the sound. The red twin had his gun pointed at Prowl, and was still hitting the “shoot” button, but all that came of it was the annoying, dull, click.

A slow smile spread across Sunstreaker’s face as he realized what was going on. At this range, a hand grenade would kill both players, and Sideswipe appeared to be out of ammo.

“He’s out of ammo, Prowl he’s out of ammo!”

Prowl stared dumbly at the screen for a moment before grinning in understanding. He began thumbing the controller, only to have his camera angle swerve wildly around his character.

“Prowl, shoot!”

Panicked, Prowl switched buttons and stared in confusion as his player began to jump on the spot.

Sunstreaker, in near hysterics now, was screeching frantically in Prowl’s audio.

“Shoot Prowl! SHOOT!”

Again, Prowl rearranged his thumbs only to have his character drop into a crouch.

Sideswipe watched in amazement as Prowl’s character began a strange erratic dance in front of him, jumping, kicking and bouncing around on the spot. The narrow passages were too narrow to let him move around the tactician, and he was forced to wait for him to figure out how to shoot.

“The square button, SQUARE!!”

Click.

Sunstreaker slapped his forehead with a howl of frustration, tossing his own controller onto the table and marching out of the room.

Word Count: 682

A/N: Prowl’s battle computer doesn’t like working out the lack of logic in video games, and, he’s pretty useless without it :D