Sucks To Be You (Closed - Ghost Wind, Roulette)

[Deleted]

(Takes place directly between Setting Up Shop and We're All Mad Here. Special guest appearance by Soundwave)

There had to be something wrong.

Soundwave tapped lightly on the controls of the console he was currently occupying. Around him, the control room of the 'Nemesis' hummed and flowed through its usual patterns. The great warship itself moved through cloud cover, dictating its own currents of time and motion. When the 'Nemesis' flight path veered the right way, days and nights could last very long indeed. Inside the ship, no one really cared what the planetary cycles did, anyways. Shifts were dictated regardless of light, regardless of weather, and regardless of much else.

Still, surely he was missing something.

The holo-screen placidly told him (for a third time), that he was not.

Soundwave's helm tilted the barest of fractions. That couldn't be right; there had to be something: unexpected repairs required somewhere, personnel needing to be shuffled around, goods missing from one spot to be found elsewhere, security checks to be run. Nothing in the universe could possibly conspire to run this smoothly --

The holo-screen blinked passively. Nope. His remote feeds into the ship's systems revealed nothing beyond their usual information streams. His ongoing searches were crunching data exactly as they were meant to, and did not need his attention to do so. What problems there were being reported had been already flagged and re-directed to the junior personnel capable of dealing with them. Paperwork had been appropriately shuffled, red tape duly dealt with. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but he had technically been off-shift for the past... Well, for a while.

Well, alright then. Startling though it may be to find himself with actual, honest-to-Primus time off, Soundwave was not one to pass the opportunity for peace, quiet and (relative) solitude. He got little enough of it as it was. Long talons swept over the commands, locking the console, even as he started, for a pure lark, an internal timer.

Just to see how long his so-called off-duty time actually lasted.

[Deleted]

Roulette hadn't even been planet side for a full decacycle before events started to go south. Granted, she'd had a pit of a time on arrival. Crashing a ship wasn't her finest hour but Autobots had this delusion where they always had to have the last say. Finding her new alt had been the only pleasant experience she'd experienced so far. Driving along the rural highways of the dusty ol' west, she'd managed to take cover near what the local life called five and dime. Parked out front had been a car matching her size and color. Pity it was infested with insects.

She'd enjoyed the quiet freedom for as long as it lasted. Which hadn't been that long at all. She doubted Lord Megatron would be forgiving of her traipsing about the countryside as free as the wind on his time. Reluctantly, she'd asked for an escort to the ship even if being on another blasted, treacherous flying object was the last thing she had in mind. She'd rather swim in a smelting pit.

But, she supposed, the ship wasn't too bad. She'd overestimated the size by a far margin. The Nemesis was sizeable and she didn't even have to worry about running into senior officers or the Big M. She even got along with the drones and managed to relax between assigned duties. Compared to her last outpost, this was easy!

Which...was the root of her evils. Her last outpost followed her. Roulette didn't pride herself on being detrimental to the Decepticon cause. She was a small piece that could be replaced easily. Which was how she wanted it. At no point would she ever try and make herself an irreplaceable asset. Assets weren't free. Assets had...restrictions and duties. Duties were heavier than life itself. She wanted no part in that. But circumstances had slid against her.

Being stuck on a dying planet with few enemies and Shockwave hadn't given her many choices. So she'd made herself really fraggin important to the scientist. It had taken time, effort, and overcoming a mountain of fear but she'd managed! Living meant being one of his countless proxies. On a sinking ship, a rat would jump onto anything it deemed solid. Shockwave was like a slaggin rock.

Only being on Cybertron had been depressing and Roulette wanted out. So she'd bargained with Shockwave, pointed out the flaws of her, a sharpshooter, being on a planet with very little enemies to actually shoot. Really, she had been wasting space and precious reserves!

It figured that the aft would listen to her. Actually listen and find reason in her stupid ramblings. She'd only said that stupid slagging stuff so she could flee his side. Now it could have been coincidence he left the planet after she did and not because her words resonated with his stupid mental processes. He could very well have been restless himself. Roulette didn't care.

All she cared about was that a familiar, awful pressing chill had heralded the start of her cycle before she'd managed to catch sight of the behemoth plodding onto the ship. She'd did an about face and fled as fast as she could down the halls and ran (nearly into several drones) until she'd reached the bridge. The door barely opened in time with her skidding stop.

Soundwave, while strange and menacing if you really thought about it, wasn't a threat to the femme. Again, being a grunt had its perks. One of them being not worth the effort to snuff out and/or use for ill gains. Soundwave was also hard to figure out and Roulette gave up trying to tell what he was thinking.

"I need off this ship now! Do the thing!" She gestured to the ground bridge and belatedly realized panic was making her lose her manners. "....please."

[Deleted]

..................... Who the slag was this femme?!

Soundwave came to a stop before the flailing creature ran into him; her field was about as steady as her voice and she was making no sense whatsoever. No one approached him willingly in the lower ranks, no one.

Swift searches found her profile. Roulette, sharpshooter. Recently arrived, brought in from a stolen (and crashed) Autobot shuttle. Had she decided the 'Nemesis' was crashing as well? Developed a fear of heights? Found some unknown hidden threat to the warship? A score of questions ran through his processor in tandem with her profile. His facial screen remained blank, giving her nothing back but her own dim reflection. Remote queries went to the ship's critical systems. He also halted the timer; apparently time off was not something that happened to him.

And then her file scrolled back to her time on Cybertron.

If he'd been able to, the Decepticon 3IC would have laughed. As it was, his field was suddenly differentiated from the ambience of the bridge by a frisson of amusement, come and gone so swiftly no one but the femme before him was likely to know exactly what had passed over it.

So that's why. Someone had found her old boss on board the 'Nemesis' and her vacation, thus, was officially over.

Soundwave had nothing against Shockwave; their interests and fields of operation intersected very rarely. He trusted the big mech's loyalty only slightly more than he did anyone else's, but he also knew anyone's loyalty suffered by comparison. He was not, however, unaware of what it must be like to work with a giant iceberg forever kowtowing at the altar of Science.

And at the moment he could relate to having your supposed time off cut short.

Fortunately, he could help both of them. It never hurt to do such small favors for the lower ranks; they moved the world upon which the senior staff trod, and Soundwave never forgot that. He turned to the console he'd just abandoned and unlocked it, looking briefly back at her and tilting his helm just so to invite her closer. His talons flickered over the control, and information scrolled on the holoscreen: the Decepticons had an operation currently on the ground that would take a day or so to finish and could benefit from (but did not precisely need) some very minor overseeing.

He attached her designation to it atop the fairly limited staff list, his facial screen lighting up with the equations that would open a ground bridge to the site; vivid, spiraling green light yawned opened, and he gestured elegantly towards it with one hand, the ripple of amusement back in his field.

Run free, then.

He might get to his time off after all.

[Deleted]

This close to Soundwave, Roulette had thought she'd made a very large tactical error. What was she thinking, barging into his domain and ordering him about? That was really, really thoughtless. She had zero rank and absolutely no clout to wield in her favor. She could very well be pissing off the one mech that could well and truly make her life a living hell.

Wait...hold a tick...The very mellow (nearly dead) ambiance of the bridge just had a flicker of something that could be described as "tickly." Unless Roulette was mistaken, she had just got a feel of the very illusive and often fabled emotion from the mysterious Soundwave. His field was barely there at all. Which was a good trick, really and not one Roulette was going to master any time ever.

She tilted her head just the slightest but didn't comment on any such thing. She just waited for him to decide her fate. He could send her away, rightfully so, and she could spend the next few cycles playing hide-and-go-seek from Shockwave or Soundwave could find an equally horrible job for her to perform. Which, given her choices, she'd still take the job over being on the ship at the moment. Even after he invited her closer to the console, she shifted from foot to foot, nervousness getting the better of her.

He attached her designation to it atop the fairly limited staff list, his facial screen lighting up with the equations that would open a ground bridge to the site; vivid, spiraling green light yawned opened, and he gestured elegantly towards it with one hand, the ripple of amusement back in his field.

At the sight of the ground bridge, Roulette's face lit up in a very rare, truly felt smile. Like Soundwave's flicker of amusement, the look was checked as soon as it bloomed and she stiffly nodded to the mech before striding for the portal. Thank the stars! She was getting off the ship!

[Deleted]

About the only good thing about the current job was being his own boss. But if Ghost Wind was to be honest about it, the whole thing was making him downright gloomy. He didn't broadcast it, of course. Gloomy did not equal stupid, nossir. If he and the odd buncha Vehicons were sent ground-side to strip a paid-out energon mine of anything and everything that could be reused on the next mining operation, why down they would march their afts to do just that.

Ghost didn't know what the Vehicons thought of the assignment; he hoped they thought something of it, anything at all, rather than blankly follow orders. He wasn't sure what he was going to be doing if one of them decided to develop an existential crisis while the two-wheeler was (however nominally) in charge of them. Then again, maybe all the stories he'd heard of how a Vehicon came to higher and higher awareness were just that: stories. One never knew, and he wasn't about to ask.

In any case, he was pretty much moot down here except as an accounting proxy. All he had to do was mark off the supply crates as the Vehicons piled them at the mouth of the mine in a data slate, standing by himself under a very pretty early sunset that was threatening (though he didn't know it) to drag in weather later on. There was a very strict list of what they were supposed to strip off of the place, and while Ghost wasn't sure what'd happen if they didn't meet quota, he would infinitely prefer not to find out.

Three Vehicons meandered towards him; two were carrying a stack of short support beams, and the other a double pile of crates. He ticked off the beams on the list and tried to discreetly squint at the Vehicon.

"Those the wire spools, Stan?" Why they chose to apply native names to themselves, Ghost could not even begin to fathom. He'd roll with it, as he did everything else, as long as it didn't try to shoot him in the face.

"Yes, sir. Also, there's a problem with one of the pneumatic drills." The Vehic-- ah, Stan pointed towards the guts of the mine.

"Of course there is." Ghost sighed briefly through a couple of vents, but dutifully meandered in that direction. Even before the cool shade received him he could hear the strangled cough of a choked-up drill.

I swear out of the twenty lessons I gave you all about harder-is-not-faster, I don't think one got saved to memory... Maybe, he also thought, this was why he'd been sent down here: to keep the Vehicons from thrashing the equipment in their eagerness to be done with the job. Or to at least repair it when they did.

No one was happy to be planetside these days.

Surprisingly, before he could go too deep into the mine he heard the whooshing whine of the drill being reset; it soon joined the echoing conversations of the other tools being used to remove all traces of Decepticon presence from the cave system. Ghost stopped in his tracks, head cocked lightly; apparently someone had been listening to him after all!

"Sir!" The one word made him all but jump out of his armor, and he pivoted smartly, expecting someone actually deserving of sir-ing to be directly behind him. The Vehicon, however, was walking up to him. "Groundbridge incoming, sir. New orders from the warship."

Ghost received these news equably. He was not an officer; he'd hardly ever been an officer (unless actual officer-like folks got killed and he were the only one left to fill the spot in a firefight). If someone else was coming down here to take over, that was rank's prerogative. He was not, though, entirely unaware of the weird dance that one had to do when such things as command were involved - even this meager, sorta barely worth mentioning command.

"Thanks, Brad." The Vehicon held up an arm, hand closed in a fist and, bemused, Ghost bumped it with his own. He'd learned that one by watching, and it appeared limited to Brad's squad; who knew where they'd picked it up but sure. Whatever.

As he stepped out of the mine, the green vortex of a groundbridge irised open before him. Automatically he checked his weapons; just because he was expecting a 'bridge didn't mean the Autobutts hadn't preempted the 'Nemesis'. As his newly assigned boss stepped out of the light, the first thing Ghost hunted for, and found, was the 'Con sigil on him. Her. It was a her. It was also no 'her' that Ghost recognized from command ranks, which left him at something of a loss...

He straightened up nonetheless, and saluted her evenly. "Ma'am."

[Deleted]

At the moment, life was good! Or at least, life was less irritating for the day of freedom she had managed to glean for herself. She didn't even care if Soundwave had just sent her to oversee ditch digging. She could supervise the pit out of that. Anything but having to sit around on the ship and wait for the purple people eater to find her. And she knew exactly what he would say.

"Ma'am."

That didn't sound right... She looked up from her apparent musings and stared uncomprehending at the mech in front of her for a few awkward seconds. She really should have been paying attention. What if Soundwave had opened a groundbridge next to a cliff? She could have pulled a Wiley Coyote.

"Gonna be a long day if you go the "ma'am" route with me." She hadn't really recalled anyone ever calling her ma'am before. In the bars it had always been "hey you" or some stupid pet name that had earned a shot close enough to nick armor. She'd shot a mech right between his knuckles for grabbing her sister. The bullet had slammed into his hand and furrowed between the servos in what had likely been a painful impact. At least his screeches had suggested some amounts of pain. Fond memory, that. And she hadn't even been aiming at the time. She'd just reacted on pure emotion.

[Deleted]

"Uhhh..."

Unintelligent as the response to her words was, Ghost really couldn't muster up anything else immediately. He didn't know her; he didn't know her rank, her designation, or rust-aft-all about her other than the 'Nemesis' was telling him she was now in nominal command of the operation.

'Nominal' was an awful word, he'd long figured out. 'Nominal' meant the officer in question didn't know a thing about what they were doing, but you were supposed to yessir and nossir as much as if they did. 'Nominal' commanders weren't good for morale. Or survival.

Which kinda left Ghost in a prickly situation. With a mental shrug he talked himself into some (possible) logic: if he didn't recognize her as command, how likely was it that she was someone of vast importance to be offended by his ignorance?

Answer: not very. "... Alright. What do we call you then?" There was not a single note of sarcasm, not a hint that the question was anything but blunt, ground-level obedience. One of the two-wheeler's heavy shoulders lifted in a small shrug, his field and the physical gesture acknowledging his ignorance. "Sir?"

[Deleted]

She studied the mech in front of her and found him to be rather forgettable. And she meant that in the nicest of ways. Perhaps it was in the way he presented himself. There wasn't a flashy presence or overpowering field that arrested one's attention. Of course, she'd just met him and hadn't the chance to make but a quick decision on him, but she had a hunch she was right. As Decepticons went, he was fairly tame.

"Go by the designation Roulette. Unless I'm in trouble. And then you've never seen me." Her glance moved from him to the surrounding operation and busy drones. Yep, she was out of her league here and had little clue as to what was going on. Mining or something, whatever. Seemed sort of dull but she hadn't asked off of the ship for the thrills. If she'd wanted those, she would have stuck around.

"So this is what I'm overseeing? You in charge until I got here?"

[Deleted]

... He was supposed to call her by name?

Ghost rubbed slightly at his helm for a moment, but eventually gave the same even shrug. Welp, if that was how she wanted it, that was how it was going to go. His field was a modest, unbothered thing, much like his posture. "Alright. I can do both." He smiled a bit, turning to look at the mine proper and gesturing inquiringly towards the mouth of it. "I was, yes; Ghost Wind, Maintenance." There was no wounded pride to the words, just a statement of fact and... perhaps a touch of resignation. "We're dismantling and recovering whatever supplies we can from the mine; it's paid out at this point. Do you want the two-credit tour?"

Annnnd nope. He couldn't. He could bite back the 'sir' (or 'ma'am') but calling her by her designation felt... weird, just yet. So he was going to just leave a big ol' gaping hole of silence at the end of that sentence unless something happened otherwise.

[Deleted]

Roulette's field was only noticeable for the humming, buoyant quality. What did she have to worry about right now? They'd really have to slag up bad here for it to reflect on her. And she doubted the drones could manage that. They didn't have the penchant for shenanigans as most of the Decepticons.

"We're dismantling and recovering whatever supplies we can from the mine; it's paid out at this point. Do you want the two-credit tour?"

"Mnn...not really."

Way to sound like a capable supervisor.

"I mean-" she held up her hands in her own defense, too used to being the subordinant to really throw clout around. "Not that a stroll through an empty mine doesn't sound like the bees knees, but you don't want me around that junk. I don't know the first thing about mining and I'd just be in the way. In the unlikely event something goes wrong, I'd be useless. I'm better out of the way and acting like I know what I'm doing."

[Deleted]

Oh, thank Primus, she was one of those.

By Ghost's opinion, the only good boss (beyond, you know, a good boss) was the one who knew they were in over their heads and graciously stepped aside so the mechs who knew the job could do it. They were smart enough to have figured out it made them look good without having to act the part.

A faint bit of humor played over his expression when Roulette tried to backpedal. The automatic response to a chain of command was way too well ingrained in him for any sort of reassurance or denial, though.

"There's not a lot to see, other than the Vehicons. I usually maintain conduits, not dismantle tunnels, but I guess someone thought it worked out to about the same thing. There's nothing much to do beyond making sure the equipment works and everything's out here before we all go home." He tilted his head towards the growing pile of neatly stacked supplies.

It was all true, and basic facts, what Ghost was saying. He was pleased, inasmuch as one could be, that they'd had a sensible overseer sent in from the 'Nemesis'. But everything also added up to his standard paranoia rearing up vaguely: what was she doing there, then?

None of them were worth spying on, right? Or... none of them were likely to be spies. Roulette didn't look like the executioner type, or even the interrogator type, but you never did know. She could be both; her looks could be part of the disguise.

"Uh..." And that was as far as Ghost got in voicing his concerns. Though she did not carry that profound air of command of the higher-ups, she was still... well, a higher-up.

[Deleted]

Right, there really was nothing she could do here. She sure as slag wasn't helping them pack or haul the equipment. She may have been a proxy, but she was a selective one at that and doing grunt work was asking far too much from her. Which left overseeing the overseer. Casually she studied the mech beside her again and had no ground breaking revelations or concerns. He seemed terribly boring, tame even.

"Uh..."

You eloquent bastard, tell me more.

She quirked one eyeridge hidden under her helm and tried to figure out what that one word meant. Either his higher functioning processes developed a glitch or he was at a loss as to what to do with her. Or, she suddenly grinned, he has no idea why I'm here. I'll bet that's driving him crazy. It would me. Operation nearly over with, and Soundwave sends a complete stranger with no rank down to oversee the last day.

"Relax, Stringbean." Yep, new nickname she was going to keep. "I asked to come down here."

Let's let him stew on that a moment and see what he makes of it. This is a fun game!

[Deleted]

"Relax, Stringbean."

.............. Wait, what? Who? Him? What now?

Ghost had to mentally sit on the entirety of Roulette's words, because other than the first one, none of them were making any sense. Who was 'Stringbean'? Him? .... Why? How?

No. No, you know what? If weird names was the worst she could throw at him, Ghost'd live with it. It was no different, as far as he was concerned, from the Vehicons being addicted to local media and picking out names from it. Weirder... but no different.

With that decision, his look of utter processor-lockdown got switched to one of confusion, and not a little suspicion. She'd asked to come down here? To the middle of nowhere, to oversee the last operation on the list of operational needs? About which she knew nothing?

... She didn't even want a look at the mine, or at the Vehicons working to dismantle it. Ghost tried to find some reasonable (or unreasonable) explanation, but in the end he had nothing but even more questions. Maybe she was an interrogator. Or an assassin. Or something even worse.

It did occur to Ghost that he could have soothed his doubts with a simple 'why'. But it also occurred to him that 'why' was the last thing you ever wanted to ask of a superior officer. In the end, all he could come up with was his most popular response of late.

"Uh..."

[Deleted]

"Uh..."

She stared at him a moment, trying to figure out what his malfunction was. Maybe he just really liked the not-quite-a-word affirmation. Whatever the case, Rouelette was already tired of hearing it. She could continue to paint a mystery game of paranoia but in the end, that took too much effort. She wanted to enjoy her last day of freedom before Shockwave figured out where she was.

"Ok, let's see if I can soothe those fears you may have. I'm not here to spy on anyone. I'm not here to sabotage the operation. I'm not here to fulfill some illicit love affair with the enemy." She shifted and put a hand on her hip. "I requested time down here to get away from the ship for a day or two. This is for me, not you guys. And against all odds, Soundwave actually came through. Which, now that I think about it, is really surprising because he doesn't know me from a random light fixture on the ship. That being said, is that a pneumatic drill? You ever have problems with the lines seizing up in the cold?"

[Deleted]

There was always that small voice in Ghost's processor that screamed at the top of its tinny vox all the things he thought but never said out loud, or even the things he didn't want to think about to begin with.

It made life very hard sometimes.

At the moment that voice was telling him that of course, if she were an assassin or a saboteur or or or or something, she wouldn't admit to it! She would try to lull him into a false sense of security so she could then do all sorts of --

Ghost cleared his vox slightly while he mentally stepped on his paranoia. Or, she could be trying to get away from the 'Nemesis' for a day or two. Which sorta led to the obvious, and infinitely safer question.

"It is. There's less ground-side operations going on right now, I guess, so there's more of the right tools to go around." He rubbed at his helm, still not knowing what to stick at the end of the sentence. "Cold's not the problem. Even dust's not the problem. Everyone's so... ah, anxious to get off the ground and back on the ship that they squeeze a little too much pressure into the system sometimes." He squared off a little bit. "I ran them through the reset procedure, so it's not a big iss-- why did you want off the 'Nemesis'? Every Vehicon and really, me as well, can't wait to be back on it. Away from MECH."

So there it was. He scratched at his helm again, truly puzzled, looking slightly up at the femme.