Ep1 – Conference – Open

Jefferson started at Barricade's rough voice and did as he was told, disconnecting the required line as requested.

He'd been hiding in the corner doing one-man repairs opposite the others. He really did not want to get in the way. Steve was grumping it up with Bruce and Barricade gave him the creeps. now, suddenly, they mixed together and Jeff couldn't tell what Barricade thought of them, them being Vehicons. He'd never met the mech before, though he'd heard of him.

He really didn't know why he was here, his wings didn't exactly allow him to squeeze anywhere important, but he supposed someone thought his standard programming skills could help get the operating systems back online and while he didn't excel in the area, he was at least useful.

Next to him, Chris was also working quietly, equally intent on keeping out of the way. But the ground mech was a sucker for arguments. He seemed to think they were funny if he got the other participant to lose his cool, so Jeff wasn't entirely sure gluing himself to the other Vehicon was a good idea. Inserting himself between Steve and Bruce seemed like something Chris would do, and Jeff could only hope he didn't try anything stupid with the present officer, though Chris didn't seem that put off by him.

After handling that business with the door, he retreated back to his original spot, only speaking to report that he'd done what was asked. Except the 'get the wrench' part. He'd rather not hand a potential weapon to a mech who could kill him with his bare servos. That was just superfluous.

“Who the frak are you?” said Bruce, staring at the big old wreck of a Seeker.

“That’s not a welder,” said Steve, picking up the tool Jetfire had just indicated and activating it, the tool immediately unfolded into a four-prong claw and a massive arc of electricity sparked across the space. He deactivated it. “And, yeah, who the frag are you?”

What the hell is going on out there? Barricade gritted his dentals as hot transfluid sizzled down the alloy of his armguards and sparks sputtered blindingly from the underside of the wiring hub. Blue optics flicked from where he was holding the coupler by hand in place to just beyond the hub where he could see pedes stomping about in a confused gaggle. The burning ssssssssssssssssss of boiling chemicals melting down his arms while he waiting for someone to hand him a damn welding gun was, perhaps, unsurprising to the young infiltrator who had just then resigned himself to hating his life for the next five minutes.

“What the frag are you doing?” Barricade snarled from beneath the hub, kicking Bruce’s ankle with enough force to make the Con yelp. “Who the frag is babbling up there? Shut up, whoever you are and stop trying to help! You!” He kicked at the other Eradicon this time, the one who’d done as he asked and disconnected the link up over the door. “Get the slagging Primus-damned welder from them and give it to me before this fragging thing fries! NOW! If this thing blows I will use your spare parts to repair it! You hear me!?”

Jetfire recoiled when the drone activated the tool, changing it into… well it certainly wasn’t a welding gun, that was for sure. True enough, the tools he was familiar with were mostly associated with excavation, not warship repair… But tools were tools... As far as he remembered, a wrench was still a wrench, no matter what sort of whistles were on it. Not for the first time since reactivating- or even in a simple breem- his EM field wavered with a depressed irritation.

He grunted, seeming to scowl at the gratuitous profanity, but he was more upset at the fool he’d made of himself. Fortunately, he was saved from further embarrassment by a one of the worker’s own fumblings. The muffled shouting from the depths of the engine has set the commotion off, and the Seeker couldn’t help but chuckle at the Vaudevillian antics of the particular Eradicon that seemed to be the only one making himself useful. Jetfire had even forgotten his own slip up in the face of a performance like that. He didn’t even take time to check what a welding gun actually looked like in this day and age.

That is, until the performance was over and the slackers swung their optics back around to the Seeker. They could have at least pretended that they were being useful. With all the noise and sparks coming from the power hub, he was surprised the ship was running as smoothly as it was. Still, he could feel the smallest incline to starboard- the ship would probably take another joor of repairs to get that completely fixed, if he had to guess. “What are you looking at?” he growled aggressively. “If only one in five of you has sense enough to be useful, no wonder the Autobots were so successful here.” He jerked his head at the damaged power hub, fingering his jackhammer/support/cane. ”Go on,”[/b] he projected, the speaker of his vocabulator chirping with feedback at the abrupt change in volume.

As the tall old mech growled loudly, Jeff found himself stiffly cowering away from two different directions until Bruce nudged him. He nearly sighed explosively at the other Vehicon's flippancy but instead seemed to shrink on himself at the comment. Barricade liked him!? In his experience, if an officer 'liked' a Vehicon, it meant Bad Things.

Example. Shockwave spoke to most Vehicons on board who could speak as part of some research project not too long ago. He didn't like or not like anyone. Jeff got a Growlithe toy for answering a few easy questions and telling the scary scientist all about Golden Girls and its relevance to Jeff's daily life. As a bonus, Shockwave allowed him to pick another collectible, any one he wanted, in exchange for his opinions on Starscream and Megatron's leadership and what he thought should improve on the ship - something Jefferson had been very reluctant to even consider talking about. He got a Polywhirl out of that difficult question, and Shockwave promised he wouldn't tell anyone (the mech had assured him of the 'confidentiality' of the interview). All in all, it was a standard bribery situation for an exchange of information the other party found valuable. Shockwave did it to everyone he could get to volunteer, no one was special.

Major Fulltilt, on the other hand, liked Jeff. A lot. He told him so, many a time. Fulltilt was the commander of his last post, a falsely appreciative mech with a possessed personality and a penchant for chuckling to himself creepily all alone in his dark command room. One shift, after doing his absolute best at polishing the command room windows, and after getting them to shine spotless in the light of the stars, Jeff found himself with a particularly attentive audience. Fulltilt was impressed, and said he considered him a good soldier, even too good. And for all the mech's compliments about Jefferson's work, the Vehicon found himself saddled with the hardest jobs and a creepy officer watching his every move. It was weird and uncomfortable. It was a Bad Thing. The only good that came out of it was that Fulltilt was paying too much attention to Jeff when an Autobot had sneaked into the base and stabbed the Major from behind. Jeff had been polishing the windows then too. He'd seen it happen, blinked, and then went right back to work until the intruder alarms went off.

So. Bad Things. And Jeff considered threats about face-to-aft transplants almost as Bad as the real thing.

Seeing his duties were done, and hearing the barking elderly officer nearby, he slinked backwards, executed a perfect about-face, and wormed his way to his previous post, working more hurriedly than before. It sounded like Steve was challenging the new guy and Jeff wanted no part of it.

Ratbat winged around the large energon conduits, inspecting them with visual and other senses, dimly feeling the pulse of the energon throughout the ship. Fluttery. Not ideal. On backup circulation. But holding, and other than the two reported already he could sense no further critical leaks. Dropping down, he slowed to a leisurely hover to consult with the supervising engineer.

Many of the internal diagnostic sensors Engineering would normally rely upon were blind at the moment, fried like everything else. They needed data. Ratbat, with his finely tuned energon sensors, could supply it. Ratbat critically needed information on the Nemesis's current fuel situation and burn rate. That was supplied in turn. The holoprojections of damaged areas were a courtesy - in turn, the engineers did him the courtesy of updating the list of needed parts they'd been previously guessing on to more reflect their real requirements.

Some of what was broken they still had parts for. Some requests were impossible. Some... hm. Shockwave's lab had requested similar parts before. He would have to send someone to request them back.

Casualty reports were still coming in. Medbay would be a major draw on the ration pool. They critically needed to refuel soon, and it was unclear whether the groundbridge was working. Headcount was down, which was somewhat mollifying, but the needless damage to their most major capital asset was infuriating. Had they even killed a single Autobot?

He scanned the room to find an idle Vehicon if he could, and zeroed in on a few of them providing ineffectual assistance to Barricade. When had he returned, anyway? No time to investigate now. Given what he was seeing, at least one of the Vehicons could likely be spared.

Then he saw the other mech. He backwinged suddenly to keep behind him.

Received him properly...? Kaon?

It was his duty to know every crew member on the ship and their current security authorization. This was not crew. Decepticon insignia. That... meant nothing. He had some Kaon archives in his memory core, but most of his older memories were hypercompressed to fractionally reduce his fuel consumption.

"Do you need medical attention, Seeker?" he asked, winging into view to hover somewhat below eye level. His tone was neither hostile nor suspicious, which took an effort. The last thing they wanted was weapons fire in this room. If this was an Autobot saboteur, which under the circumstances was actually more likely than not...

Barricade's task was too critical to interrupt in any way (Hopefully he wasn't sabotaging things... where had he been, anyway?). It was unclear how intelligently the Vehicons would react. Everyone else here was working. He sent a very brief message to Soundwave to apprise him of the situation and studied the interloper mech. He needed to lure him out of here. Somehow.

Jetfire was relieved to finally be asked about medical care, but was distracted a moment by the swearing mechanic. The Seeker was somewhat insulted that the Eradicon he’d been arguing with gave Barricade more respect with an astro-klick than he’d even considered for Jetfire himself. The older ‘Con was about to give the mechanic a piece of his mind before his optics defocused and he recognized the minicon hovering in front of him.

“Ratbat?” the rhetorical question hung in the air with a stale note. Jetfire had trouble being relieved at the sight of him. He was… well... he was Ratbat.

It was surprising to see a mech he had been so familiar with addressing him here, as if no time had passed at all. The gap in time was surreal enough for Jetfire- this was not helping. But this was inconsequential to the fact that Jetfire generally disliked Ratbat.

It wasn’t the almost maniacal organization skills and militant techniques to keep them that way. Jetfire rather appreciated that. The Seeker had spent a long enough time being a high-ranking, independent Seeker that he appreciated mechs like Ratbat to keep the lesser life forms in order. Jetfire had been the scout for many a mining expedition, and he could always rely on Ratbat to hold the tightest of excursions. Unfortunately… the tight ship also applied to him.

Jetfire was a data collector. Collecting data took time. But efficiency didn’t take time. Work is inefficient to the bureaucrat. Only results were acceptable. Bureaucrats always got in the way of research. Jetfire remembered a time when he felt that if he received just one more passive-aggressive comm.-link reminder to keep his altitude to a specific level (to about the sixth decimal place) for optimum energon preservation, his higher functions would have shut down and he would have lost all control of his weapons functions in front of the little gear grinder. Several hundred reminders later, he was back at his checkpoint and sorting through the reports he was being forced to file for disregarding ‘important mission notifications’.

The day Jetfire was approved for deep space travel, the initial celebration came because it removed him as far from Ratbat’s post-mission reports as he could have possibly managed to place himself.

Jetfire was a scientist, and bureaucracy and science did not mix.

Still, it’s not like the mincon was a particularly bad mech… they just too often did not see eye-to-eye, pun not intended. It took Jetfire a klik to come to his senses, and some extra effort not to shrink away and mutter something about getting the reports in on time, for Primus’ sake, you don’t have to send a formal request for it again. “Ratbat. Y-yes. I’ve been waiting to be tended to for some time now… “ He hadn’t called him by his name… though Jetfire did remember him being rather formal. But there was something in the minicon’s tone… It had been some time, after all. “I… ah… I understand the importance of the integrity of the ship… it takes priority” he was using the formal voice. Ratbat liked the formal voice (he was fairly sure). “…but I would have expected more organization from the Lord Commander’s own ship.” While Jetfire didn’t want to incite the wrath of Ratbat, he did intend to hit him in the soft spot if it would help him get a tune up.


OOC: Long story short. Jets has been crash landed in the Arctic for a while, and recently was reactivated by an Autobot. He was ‘saved’ by another con (who is yet to be decided as that thread is still being played out : p), who led him to the Nemesis, but before he could find a welcoming committee, the Autobots attacked and he found himself wandering around and making stupid mistakes (of which are another story for another time). I assume that there will at least be a blurb about Jets in the database somewhere, if not about his arrival on the Nemesis, at least on his pickup, so take it from there. Do whatever you like. Jets is always up for some trouble anyway.

Also, made a LOT of assumptions on Ratbat. I’m willing to change anything to make things truer to the character.

OOC: Posting order crazy, what to do?!

IC:
Jetfire’s face fell. He had not been expecting that. Then again, he couldn’t imagine why he’d thought he could get anything that even had the semblance of reason from Ratbat anyway.

Re… Re-Admission Into Decepticon Service-? Jetfire shuddered, discarding the forms clouding his optic HUD with a gruff shake of his head. “What are you implying?!” he roared, losing control of himself. “I’ve been in a stasis lock all this time, and you-!” Jetfire vented fiercely, the sound rivaling that of the failing engine beside them.

“Perhaps if you had assigned a better handler on my deep-space mission, the calculations for my descent wouldn’t have kept me from turning in my reports to you,” getfire growled, matching Ratbat’s chilly tone.

“You want my reports? The data I’ve collected for this planet?” He sent a flood of data to the minicon. The transmission was hasty, and quite rude, but the Seeker was quite at the end of his patience to even consider giving the nasty little scrapling a break. Jetfire’s reports on this planet were pristine- only incomplete because he hadn’t had the time to examine the planet past the initial orbiting stage required for planetary exploration. Still, this planet was extraordinary even back when he had first discovered it, and he felt he could have received at least some credit for singling it out. Instead he was being treated like a deserter for having been stranded on it for Primus knew how long.

In a way, he blamed Ratbat for his misfortune. It was unfair, but the Seeker had been through quite enough not to blame someone, and the rage at the situation surged through his frame as if the energon flowing through him was at a boiling point. Ratbat has assigned the archivists and mission control that guided Jetfire’s deep-space Seeking missions, and while none of them were here, Ratbat was.

“You’ve cost me deca-cycles of my life, Ratbat. Do you have any forms explaining that?!” Jetfire regretted the question immediately. It had been said with pure rhetoric- more of an insult than an honest question, but he knew that Ratbat had the capability to turn that around on him. Before the minicon could take it the wrong way, he charged on. “I demand compensation for my work, and if that is at the very least, medical attention and a decent energon ration… I would appreciate even that.”