Ep0.5 – “All The Games” – Closed

Despite what some had supposed over the vorn, Steeljaw did not, in fact, have optics on the back of his head (or hidden in the tip of his tail, or tucked into the revolving base of his audio arrays). Accusations to that effect invariably garnered the accusing party a blankly disinterested stare and summary ignoring.

What Steeljaw did have was a high tuned sensor suite, including in his tail tip and audio arrays, which was more than acute enough to pick up micro organics crawling across the floor fifteen some odd meters away (and oh, dear Primus, it must have been tracked in on one of the human children's shoes and he was never stepping paw onto the floor again regardless of the danger of being stepped on himself), never mind a mass as large as a scout class looming in the doorway.

Finishing his task - which was nothing more complex than a quick system check of the newly installed cameras and sensors around base - he curled onto his haunches and settled in for another shift of monitor duty. A casual flick of a glance between his paws confirmed a flash of yellow - his erstwhile rescuer from the Amazon. "Yes? Bumblebee?"

Too late it occurred to him that the yellow scout was the Raf boy's guardian. Steeljaw sighed to himself - he should, he thought resignedly, have stuck with his initial idea of bribing Miko. She knew less about the finer points of electronics, but would have concerned herself with the legalities of what he was asking much less than the conscientious Raf would. Disgruntled, Steeljaw twisted to look over his shoulder at the scout properly. "Did you need something?

Steeljaw blinked, physically, optics cycling tight and then spiraling wide as he focused on the scout. A part of his processor scrubbed, replayed, and deciphered the jumbled mass of basic, compared it to the scout's near quivering field of excited glee, and came up with...

...with...

Steeljaw wasn't entirely sure, really. Though it sounded... promising.

Sitting up, he turned fully to face the Autobot, curling his tail around his paws. "....Yes?" he replied cautiously. "It's just a bit of code writing on the side. A hobby."

Steeljaw blinked again and found himself mentally downgrading the scout from... well. Formidable Autobot scout and warrior, to something closer to youngling.

Now that... That had promise. It had been some time, and several ships prior to crashing on Earth, since he had last had an actual youngling or sparkling to test the attraction and entertainment value of his games on. Intrigued, Steeljaw arched his audio arrays forward, tail tapping a restrained flick of excitement against his paws. "I could use a beta tester," he allowed. "I've written a number of games - it's something to do in downtime, and you have more of that on ships." He didn't want the Autobots to think he was slacking, by any means, but it hardly took the entirety of his processor to man the simple duty shifts he was physically capable of doing around the base.

"I've been converting them for human use, mostly as apps for their mobile devices. Do you like puzzles? Or action?"

Steeljaw considered, quickly mentally flicking through the files he had on hand. Choosing several, he packaged them up and transmitted them to Bumblebee.

"Those are sparkling games," he clarified aloud. "There was a ship I traveled on awhile back that counted a newspark in the crew roster... well," he amended, giving his audios a quick shake, "never mind that. In any case, they shouldn't be any trouble for you, but I can at least guarantee you haven't seen them before. The native versions are, naturally, written for us - the app versions you'll find in the subdirectory. They have to be run in an Apple OS shell; it's perfectly safe, I've been running it for weeks."

Extending one claw, Steeljaw pointed it directly at the yellow scout. "Your mission," he intoned at his deepest register, "should you choose to accept it - is to test run both. The native version will show you what it's supposed to run like. The OS shell should slow the adaptations down to human speeds, but if it crashes, locks, loops, or otherwise doesn't function properly during gameplay then I need an error code report. Solve the levels every way you can think of and let me know. Please."

Sitting back on his haunches, Steeljaw gave the scout a drop jawed 'grin', audio arrays perked upright. "If you can see clear to do that for me, inbetween your duties, then I have a few unreleased levels of Orbital Nasxed that you might enjoy." If the scout had played games on Cybertron then chances were that he had known of or played the game - while really nothing more than an 'app' itself, in Cybertronian terms, it had been on par with the human popularity of 'Angry Birds' as a quick, mobile, action puzzler that could be played on the go. Uplink and Steeljaw's designations had never been associated with it, the entire thing released through proxies and the funds from it channeled into dummy accounts, but it had been one of their last steady fund streams before the war had broken out. Uplink had done the base coding of the game engine, but Steeljaw had designed and coded a number of the levels and it had been one of the fonder things he had taken with him after Uplink's deactivation.

Steeljaw didn't - quite - preen. If asked, he would have said he did no such thing, but a little trill of pleased satisfaction and no small bit of pride flickered through his field and he sat up a little straighter. The scout's enthusiasm was infectious, as well as flattering, and Steeljaw rumbled softly deep in his engine.

Of course, when he said 'a few', the actual meaning was more like 'sixteen complete sequels' and he was well on his way through the seventeenth before the human app project had started to take priority. Steeljaw had never shared them. The only ones he might have shared them with were the temporary hosts he had sometimes kept company with, but as he preferred to choose mecha who were content to let him 'borrow' from them without asking too many questions the subject of leisure activities had never come up. He had coded them purely for his own enjoyment and as a nostalgic comfort during long orns alone.

[Doesn't do much good locked up in your own processor, Jaws,] Uplink whispered. [Think they've maybe been in testing long enough, don't you?]

Steeljaw twitched minutely, plates ruffling along his neck and shoulders before he could smooth them out again. It was true, but the idea of actually handing the codes over to a relative stranger felt a little like an unwelcome intrusion into something private. Glitch, he berated himself. Honestly. You would think he'd never released anything for public consumption before.

He hadn't touched the files in awhile, not since crashing on Earth. Orbital Nasxed was a game made for mature Cybertronians - as such, it was utterly unsuitable for porting to human preferences and thought patterns, not to mention that he would have to gut the game engine just to simplify it to a state that wouldn't fry current human entertainment systems. One audio array twitched thoughtfully as he unpacked the files, turning them over in his processor, and then carefully packed up the first and transmitted it.

"I have the entire released suite of Orbital Nasxed," he assured Bumblebee, "as well as several... authorized but unreleased sequels. That's the first one there. If you can help me with the human based apps - it's tedious at their speeds, but I really do need to double check them thoroughly before submitting them - then I'll be glad to share the rest with you."

Nonplussed, Steeljaw rebooted optics and sensor suite in the wake of the snatched hug, audio arrays twitching. "You're... welcome?" he managed. It seemed a bit weak in the face of the scout's gratitude, and THAT seemed a bit extravagant merely for the exchange of a few games, most of which were still in need to testing.

Then again, it didn't seem like the Autobots made much time for games or other 'frivolous' things, too focused on their war. It made Steeljaw want to shudder - what did it say for the remaining Cybertronian culture that this was supposedly the better choice? Warriors, all of them, with precious little 'culture' left, so much so that what might be their youngest was ridiculously over excited about something as simple as a few old games.

It made him want to claw at his own plates in frustration, but instead he just leaned forward, bumping the youngling's shoulder lightly with his own head. "Let me know when you've finished it," he suggested gently. "I have a lot of them - not just Orbital, but a lot of what was popular before the cores went dark. Some of them are multi player; if you want to network, let me know. I haven't played anyone since..." he shrugged slightly, uncomfortably, "my host."

Well. If you were going to bet one credit you may as well throw in the whole round. Steeljaw nodded his assent but shrugged a shoulder and a flick of his tail at the monitors. "I have this shift, but if you wanted to meet up afterwards...?" He left it a trailing question but it didn't really need to be - Bumblebee was enthusiastically agreeing before he'd even finished.

He really was - well, he wasn't being paid, per se, but he was being kept in energon and a mostly organic free environment in exchange for working, so work came first. Steeljaw promised - several times - to meet Bumblebee after shift and then spent the rest of his monitor shift idly watching the monitors and dusting off a few archived game files in the depths of his processor.

And listening to Uplink laugh at him, which his former host did, at length, in detail, and with more hilarity for every game file Steeljaw unpacked. [You're going to play... you're going to PLAY him... Jaws, Steeljaw, sweetspark, there are bottom feeding slag suckers who play games better than you do! You're the best coder I know but oh Primus, this is going to be priceless. Better tell him to spot you a concession!]

"Shut up," Steeljaw muttered to himself, tail flicking irritation as he worked. "Shut up. Just... oh, do be quiet. Eat slag, you glitch. Shut up."

It left him in a somewhat conflicted mood, half irritated beyond belief and half looking forward to a little bit of down time normalcy that didn't involved skulking through the ventilation ducts, by the time he came off shift. Reports wrapped, he jumped down from the console and skirted to the nearest wall, bounding halfway up it, and went in search of a game hungry youngling scout.