Ep1 - China - Cassettes' Grand Adventure - Closed

"No, he's not anywhere near here," came the unhappy reply, the avian cassette landing alongside Ravage on a breached tree root. Huffing with a perplexed scowl, Fairwinds took back to the air and, through unspoken consensus, flew above Ravage as they followed the tracks to a relative clearing and the site of far more activity.

Fairwinds landed in a sizeable impression in the mossy ground, dipping her helm down to scrutinize the flora. The moss had been burnt in circular patches, and the area as a whole was dry and dead. "Master knelt here, and there was either a welding arc or a cutting torch. I c'n tell."

She straightened with flared crests to look across to Ravage, currently prowling the ground a short distance away. "What you got?"

Fairwinds left the other cassette to ruminate, tail apendage twitching and swaying in the moss and vines. She flew at a low height around the tracks he'd pointed out, then came to land over a strip of dried foliage where her scanners highlighted lingering traces of familiar energy.

"Master comm.ed someone, and they bridged in." She hopped a foot off the ground, optics still directed downwards. "Here in fact."

Scanning over their surroundings again, Fairwinds sighed heavily through her collar vents and looked back to Ravage. "I dunno about any other medics planetside than Ratchet, and I think Master's processor would have to actually be on fire for him to comm. an Autoslag medic for help, no matter how glitched he was."

Her wings sagged dramatically, optics flashing with childish frustration. "This is such scrap."

The elation following the databurst from the other cassette (because Megatron had mentioned Cleaver before, and it had been positive glyphs that had gone with her designation) abruptly diminished with a cold stab through Fairwind's chassis at that additional comment, and she shuttered her optics in a kind of cringe. "Barricade's really not going to co-operate with Starscream lording it up as the new CO. And they've never liked each other." "Starscream might go for executing him for not shifting loyalties. Or for just being Barricade."

And if Barricade's spark was snuffed...

Fairwind's helm crests pressed so tightly that they became perfectly streamline, optics overly bright with a sudden, nauseating dread. She looked to Ravage, wondering if he knew about the sparkbond between Megatron and his Infiltrator, then decided that of course he knew - he was Soundwave's cassette, and Soundwave knew pretty much everything. Ravage would understand the seriousness of the situation.

She shook her helm rapidly, crests flashing loose again, and paced forward towards the feline cassette. "One of us needs to go back and bust Cade out before he gets killed."

With an effort to go against the spark-deep impulse to just go to her carrier, Fairwinds rocked her weight from pede to pede and really thought about the situation.

They needed to split up and get to both mechs as quickly as possible, and as they'd managed to sneak off the Nemesis solely because they hadn't used a groundbridge, it would have to be her to fly back to the ship. It would be easy to order a drone to do a planetside groundbridge, not including the crippled Nemesis in the equation, which would put Ravage at the DMZ with both a working comm. and a cassette-link with Soundwave back on the ship.

He could also use a sympathetic medic who didn't have a post-battle queue to deal with, and the DMZ was a legitimate go-to point for such a thing.

"You go to Megatron, find out what's going on, get fixed up and get Soundwave updated. I'll go back to the Nemesis and put an optic on Cade. If Reflector survived the Autobot attack, I can talk to Cade through him and we can work out a plan."

Fairwinds butted the flat of her helm into Ravage's neck with a grateful chirr as she absorbed the specs, optics flicking over the tools before taking up the codecrackers, charges and one of the picks that her versatile tongue couldn't emulate. She couldn't decide what was more likely to succeed: a low-key breakout using lockpicks and misdirection, or throwing Arma at the brig door and running like Unicron was after them. Preferably into a groundbridge that put them at Megatron's pedes.

Tucking the equipment into her own subspace, she conceded that until she got back to the Nemesis and made a bead on the situation, there was no way of knowing what degree of force, if any, would be necessary to get Barricade out and off the ship.

"Thanks Ravage." Taking resolve in his sturdy assurance, Fairwinds glanced about the jungle clearing again. Her optics lingered on the dry strip of vegetation where Megatron had stepped through a groundbridge perhaps only hours ago. "M'sure it'll be fine. Maybe you'll be able to 'bridge him straight out of the Neut base onto Starscream's stupid face."

She rocked sideways, wings tightening as her helm dipped. An exvent, and because Ravage was a cassette he would get it, she added quietly: "Can't lose another Carrier, y'know."