Ep1 - 'The Fellowship' - Closed

Barricade, who had not – it was very notable to make mention – killed Fairwinds out of sheer psychotic irritation, immediately snatched the little cassette up in his fist and flung her with all the force he could muster in the general direction of the sun. The mini-con rocketed up into the sky like a tiny surface-to-air missile and while she was so pre-occupied, the infiltrator was allotted precisely forty-five seconds to think in exquisite silence and solitude. It would take the little glitch-frag about that long to get her wings under her and circle round.

The African heat was welcome, running yellow warmth across the lean planes of his framework while he waited, sunshine evaporating the liquid nitogen hatred that poisoned the cloud of his EMF and slowly, inch by inch, clarity resolved itself in the calculating fore of his focus. As the data drained and his systems recovered from the physical shock of Soundwave’s force-load, the narrow, razor-fine line of his thoughts turned to the singularity that was his mission.

Megatron.

“I didn’t literally come back from the dead so you could frag off, you Kaon-frak spawn of a glitch.”

Cade sat back on his haunches and waited impatiently for the air to open up and disgorge the last member of their rag-tag team. Arma never needed much prompting to hit things in most circumstances and Megatron going missing in action had likely set the massive frontliner on some kind of honor-bound mission to recover command to the rightful and only Decepticon leader. Barricade sympathized with the rightful Decepticon leader bit and he sympathized somewhat with the need to punch others through walls from time to time, but mostly Barricade imagined that Arma had sulked creepily over her Megatron shrine while mechs of substance got null-rayed and brigged.

“Where the hell are you?” he muttered, blue optics roving the still empty plains.



((OOC: Windy can tag but, but the next tag is also open to Arma to come through the groundbridge after she escapes from the Eradicons. Note, in her fighting with the Eradicons in Big Distraction, she needs to make it to a groundbridge to get off the Nemesis. We are assuming in this thread that she successfully made it.))

Barricade shot Fairwinds a look that suggested he was not in any kind of mood but homicidal and the cassette thwapping into his helm was not helping.

“Do I look like a Pit-frakking dowsing rod to you, idiot?” There was something of an accent in his words, low fidelity, crackling Cybertronian, inflected with glyphs that brooked no illusions about his state of mind. “I share a quantum bond with him. Stop messing around. This is not a holo-flick and I am not a glitch-fragging media bot so the next instance you want to ask me if I’m going to follow my spark to our glitch-fragged commander, reassessed that thought and cram it up your narrow tailpipe.” He resumed watching the plains for any sign of groundbridge activity, scanners cast wide.

“Soundwave’s data block confirms Ravage’s intell: Megatron is currently running dark in the Neutral DMZ, which is why neither the Nemesis nor Soundwave nor any other spark-frakked Con with his life-signature ident could track him. Auto-assembly code is compiling a repair patch cleared by our CMO to get our fearless frakking leader up and running again. Once he is, we return to the Nemesis to relieve Starscream of his idiotic command and I own him for the next millennia, provided – of course – that Megatron doesn’t do the Decepticon cause a massive favor and tear his spark out once and for all. Where the frag is Arma? I’m giving her five kliks then we leave without her useless aft.”

Barricade was completely unhazarded by the African dust cloud, the grit against his plating going largely ignored as he sat there, glaring into the distance, scanners still cast wide and waiting for the disruption in the natural magnetics of the world that signaled the groundbridge activations. Maybe Arma was dead – he supposed she was the kind of zealot who might find her beautiful death in such a cause as this, though part of him was immediately enraged that the front-liner might be killing Decepticon troopers in the name of a basic distraction. He wondered if that’s what she was doing: mowing down drone techs and Eradicons – the only class of mech on the ship who had actually done nothing, even in Barricade’s unfavorable sight, wrong.

That the field lieutenant liked, in general, most of the Vehicons was doing nothing to assuage his degrading mood.

“I will handle the situation at the DMZ and you will sit outside and not interfere while I do so.” He was audibly gritting his dentals. “And what kind of distraction, exactly, is Arma engaging in?” Though he already suspected the answer, given this was Arma who had the subtlety of missile strike.

“Because you don’t immediately lose all authority or credibility as a Decepticon LT the moment you walk through the door with a fragging shrieky, throttled cassette chittering at your shoulder. Maybe if you were Laserbeak, capable of actually being silent and actually threatening I might bring you around, but you’re you, so I’m not.” Barricade ‘s gaze did not for a moment waver from the non-specific point of sand some distance away.

“This isn’t about how important he is to any of us, it is about how important he is to the Decepticon cause and our survival as a faction at all. More to the point, this is about how I managed to single-handedly drive our commander and chief insane by engaging in a practice that I myself regularly exploit as a weakness in my enemies and it’s about fixing my frag up. So no, Fairwinds, you don’t get o come along. This is between me, Megatron, and whatever unfortunate glitch-frakker gets in my way.”

He finally looked at Fairwinds.

“Radio ahead to Ravage and ask for a status report. I want to know who I’m dealing with before I walk in there.”

Oblivious to Arma's arrival in her indignation, Fairwinds arranged her wings in a peacock fan behind her helm and put her back to the sitting mech, waddling away as she rolled her optics. "Oh look at me - I'm Laserbeak, and I'm all silent and deadly and no one's seen me in vorns so I must be hardcore right. Pfft."

Sitting back down in a huff, Fairwinds folded her neck back so that her helm rested almost atop her chassis. Short of transforming to dock with Megatron, it was the smallest her frame could make itself. The breeze slowly gathered sand against her side as she turned over Barricade's words. His angry regret over what, in her mind at least, should have been nothing but a wonderful thing. It had been Barricade to keep his distance and avoid 'getting serious' like rust rash for eons, though Fairwinds was not so myopic to understand that her Master wasn't overly inclined towards romantic commitments. Despite the circumstances it had happened under (that being Barricade being ordered to kill Megatron if the spark splitter that was sharing Decepticon secrets with Bumblebee didn't work), their becoming alligned had been one of the happiest events Fairwinds could recall. It made them a family. A horrible, passive-aggressive little family.

And Barricade was dismissing it as a 'frag up'. Fairwinds conceded that their bond had caused some issues lately, but really that was the Autobots' fault for attacking him like that and unknowingly taking a few more fries out of the Decepticon Commander's Happy Meal.

She shot Barricade a dirty look over her 'shoulder'. "Sorry - no can do, Sir. I left my comm. in Chernobyl." A less petulent glance to Arma. "Hey Arma. We were just waiting for you before we get going."

Arma nodded for Fairwinds, before returning her gaze back to Cade, who now kept explaining about how it would take him half of the required time, if he would ditch her. "Don't push your luck. I won't let you mess things any worse than you already have. If i'm not looking after you, you'll just end up getting caught again, or offlined. Which though would be fine by me." Last one she said more to herself than for him, but didn't actually know how offlining him would affect to Lord Megatron.
"Do not worry about slowing down, when the terrain gets worse, don't expect me to help you out of the trouble." She growled, before turning to her alt mode, heavy leopard's engine roaring as she took off, after Cade.

As soon as Cade hit his brakes, and blocked her path, Arma stopped, and got back into her bipedal mode, facing clearly annoyed Cade. If he thought Arma would've not noticed, that changes in her master's behavior, and Cade's been gone, would be connected. She saw more than many ones, and her processor worked many times harder infiltrator could ever thought she would.

After all that blabbering about being her superior, and about thinking her blind and unrequited "obsession" towards their leader had won her enough points to join this fellowship. Arma couldn't care less about superiors and ranks at all. Who was firing towards her, was her enemy, who was on her way to destroy the target, was her enemy. The superior, that tried to stop her from fulfilling her mission, was her enemy, and Cade wasn't the exception, normally.
"All this talk about you outranking me... Have you forgotten those unlucky ones who ever tried to order me around on cybertron. Only one i bow, and take orders, is Lord Megatron." After that, she stepped one step forward, her engine growling low, but threating tone. "But since you want to know so badly, what i think is your fault, i'll tell you very gladly." She growled, keeping her emotions hidden under her armor starting to be quite challenging. "You, got caught by bots, something any real decepticon would allow happening to themselves... not that i would've cared, but since our master's behavior changed drastically, it didn't take too much to realize what had happened. It is because of you and your bond, he got weaker." Her tone was already breaking from the cold neutral tone she usually spoke. "It is because of you, that Starscream got his chance to act! IT IS BECAUSE OF YOU, THAT OUR LORD WAS TAKEN FROM US!!" First she just spoke a bit louder, last sentences just shouted, before stretching her left arm towards his head, but left some distance, clenching her hand into fist, biting her teeth, pulling her arm away. "You have no idea, what kind of pain it has been, to see him in that state... it's something you cannot cause by any kind of torturing." It had been eons she had let her emotions on surface, but enough pressure, and it was unavoidable.

She stepped back once, still clenching her hand into fist, venting roughly, trying to keep from shouting. "I'll be there, you like it or not, and if you mess anything, anything. I'll come after you, and tear you apart, limb by limb. I may be executed for that, but it's worth it." She pointed her finger at him, along with her murderous tone, which would've scared lessen ones to offline, before calming a bit. Letting pressures to flow would've been good thing now and then, but since she had very rarely let her emotions get best of her, this had been quite releasing.

"Now, get going, i'll stay on your trails, want it or not." Saying that, she got back into her alt mode, being ready to follow infiltrator.

//OOC: Soooo sorry if i Messed things up somehow. Just remembered there was some talk about Arma snapping at Cade in Cbox at some time, blaming him from everything, i thought this was the best time for that. You have full rights to tell me if anything needs to be edited.//