Ep 0.5 - Of Hosts and Symbionts - Closed

Steeljaw locked his internal systems before they could exvent any heavier than normal at the sound of Blaster's voice. Oh yes. Lest 'ye forget, oh 'ye of little faith, clean, dry, fixed, and fueled did not, in fact, negate Primus' universal punching bag. Of course.

Of course, out of every possible bot in the Autobot base - and there were a number of them, Steeljaw had met a handful and recorded the audio impression of a handful more as they passed through the nearby central room - and of course, out of any possible choices of potential visitors, it was the carrier host.

[Look alive, sunshine,] Uplink's voice drawled, because Steeljaw had had very little to do for the last week beyond work on lines of code - when he had the processor space for it, which had been rare - or tune in to the local short wave music stations, which had been the majority of the time and had cluttered his processor with any number of annoying human lyrics that it could now throw back at him at random. Venting inaudibly, Steeljaw twisted his head to focus on Blaster.

"I have a tail," he noted with forced brightness, the appendage in question lifting in a fluid curve from the berth. "This is, I think you can agree, infinitely better than the alternative."

Steeljaw kept his audio arrays upright, his tail curled in a sinuous fluid arc, claws sheathed and optics focused steadily, unflinching, on the other mech.

"Didn't I hear you say that you'd found my records?" he replied. And then, patiently, "Uplink. Communications and security. We signed on out of Crystal City. I'm certain the records should still be available." He dropped his jaw, displaying teeth in what bipedal frames usually read as a smile but wasn't. "My carrier was Uplink."

It was tempting to curl his hindquarters around and dig into his rear claws with his teeth - it was a perfectly functional maneuver, serving for cleaning and sharpening, but the side effect was a metal scraping on metal sound that most mecha found wince producing. Other than cringe worthy sound, however, the eloquent nuances of the gesture would be lost on a symbiont-less host who had probably never had much dealing with quadruped frames.

He settled for just barely flexing his forepaws instead, claw tips ghosting across the surface of the berth in a tiny cascade of taps. [Look at you,] Uplink's echo whispered approvingly, [being all diplomatic and slag! Who'd've thought?]

Bite me, Steeljaw thought back. And then mute it.

"Uplink," he told Blaster evenly, without an optic, audio or plate twitch, "was deactivated during the attack that lost you" he underscored the pronoun with the glyph for Autobots, "outpost base gamma zed six. I barely escaped myself but Uplink created me to survive." He couldn't help straightening just a little, head up, spine curved. "I've survived quite well since then. I am not looking for, nor do I have any need for a host."

Not entirely true, but the few temporary arrangements he had subsisted on had been far from a full symbiont merge and had not obligated him or his temporary hosts to stay together. Despite injuries, too long on his own in the black, and a recent history of little except horrible luck, the jump charge from his last temporary host still lingered.

Even if it hadn't, if this pseudo-interrogation was the host mech's idea of how to court an unattached symbiont then the mech was glitched. Primus willing, it really was just an interrogation. Steeljaw had a somewhat fuzzy memory file of the host saying he preferred to operate alone and clung to that as reassurance.

Reporting. Oh yes. The militarized factions were rather fond of that. Steeljaw exvented, flicked his plates into order, and crossed one forepaw primly over the other. Sitting straight through the shoulders, he let his optics go slightly hazy and unrolled the report in crisp, terse glyphs and Iaconian flavored Cybertronian.

"The escape pod was launched from the Neutral cruiser 'Apoapsis' after critical hull breach was sustained during confrontation with unidentified Decepticon shock cruiser, approximately 5.26 orn ago, Cybertronian universal chrono." He paused, one audio array flicking slightly. "Prior to that, the Apoapsis had suffered intermittent engine failure due to insufficient repairs. The Decepticons did not offer terms of surrender."

He vented again, relaxing the rigidness of formal report pose, slipping back into the local language. "Those pods are only made for one standard framed mech each, but Lunarstrike and I fit with room to spare. She got us launched but she'd taken damage from the initial hull breach; more than I could fix, even in ideal circumstances, and the pod wasn't equipped for repairs." His audio arrays flattened back against his helm, optics dimming. "I didn't know her well. She was a parts scavenger, repair crew. I kept our ship's computers limping along. I was only down in the engine compartment when the attack happened because they needed someone small enough to get under some of the conduits and try to patch them. If I had been on the bridge, I wouldn't be here now."

Steeljaw shook himself slightly. "Was there anything else you wanted to know?" he asked, arching his audio arrays forward attentively. "I have a full roster of the Apoapsis in my files - there was one former Autobot on board, and two former Decepticons, if you would like that for your records. Or a list of the non-Neutral places we refueled and resupplied at, if that's of interest."

Steeljaw methodically packaged up the Apoapsis records, deleting out the logs of purely Neutral ports of call, highlighted the crew roster (one former Autobot salvaged from near deactivation, one former Decepticon also salvaged from near deactivation, one former Decepticon low level officer with a heightened sense of self preservation who had defected due to anywhere being safer than in his own ranks) and shot it to Blaster in a compact burst.

"Disregarding the properties of mud and organic infestation," Steeljaw replied dryly, "you're right. There are any number of far less agreeable places to crash land. Gas giants, suns, and smashed to bits in asteroid belts rank high on the list." Venting, he lowered his chin to his paws.

"As I am currently sans ship, sans resources, sans other Neutrals, this planet has no interstellar capability, and I don't have anything to do about any of the above, I am currently here by the Prime's good will until such time as anyone not involved in your war wanders by for me to hitch a ride with." A small beat of a pause. "As soon as the good medic lets me up, I won't be a charity case." Another beat. "I also will not be an Autobot."

Steeljaw flicked one audio at the mech's tone, tilted his head slightly, and cycled his optics in a slow blink. He wasn't sure if it was standard Autobot social protocols - and goodness knew it had been a long time since he'd had dealings with them en masse for any length of time - or just this one mech's peculiarity that made a statement of clear boundaries something offensive.

[Ix-nay on biting the hand that feeds you!]

Steeljaw vented quietly, giving himself a small shake. Primus, he needed to stop allowing the local popular culture to bleed over into his backups, no matter how much Uplink would have loved it.

"My apologies," he said aloud. "You'll have to forgive me if my experience with Autobots - in general, not yourself in particular - is a certain pressure to assimilate any unaffiliated warm frame that happens to not be shooting at them. Especially if said frame owes them something. I simply wanted to make my personal stance clear."

He shrugged slightly, confining the rippling movement to above the weld line of his back. "I've also met more than a few people who think that lone symbionts are fair game at one extreme, or sparkless drones on the other."

He flicked his audios into a more genuine smile, for all that it was a bit forced through the linkages. "So, if we've correctly ascertained that I am none of the above, and you are nothing like those dim-sparked glitches that I've been obliged to correct in the past, perhaps we should start over." Optics bright, he let very real amusement flicker through his field, tail arching. "Hullo. I'm Steeljaw. I'm fairly certain your name is Blaster, but what exactly do you do? Because if we had a proper introduction when I was brought in, or during the last however long Ratchet has been keeping me drugged up to my optics, I'm afraid I really don't remember it."