Ep 1.5 - I've Been Waiting to Smile (Open to one and all!)

[Deleted]

((OOC: This thread's theme song. Smile, damn you! Set in week two so we can all, hopefully, end on a high note. The main idea is to be messy, fling paintballs about, and generally have a few laughs.))

Roulette honestly didn't think Decepticon morale could sink. It wasn't like they were a functioning family unit. Recent events, however, had thrown a pall over the ship and everyone in it. Shadows felt sharper in the hallways and the lighting seemed to flicker in pulse with everymech's growing ire. Tempers were running tight in the medbay and the drones were edgy as flock of hens left out of their coop.

The femme had her own inner demons to contend with, but the more she looked at them, the less she wanted to deal with them. It was easier to fixate on the decidedly prickly currents running through the ship and scheme on ways to throw the shroud off of them. But how?

We need to vent. But we don't have any targets to attack and really, that would just be stupid right now. So we need a patsy. But who would be stupid enough to draw the attention of the bulk of the ship?

Sitting on Shockwave's lab table, having carefully shoved his things out of her way, Roulette mentally chewed on the answer to her own conundrum. And realized that the best answer to the likely suicidal plan was easy. She was the patsy. No one else was going to volunteer and frankly, she didn't trust anyone not to make situations worse or stage a freakin coup on the ship. And, to some point, they were used to eccentricities coming from the femme.

Slag it. If anything, I get to shoot everyone like I've always wanted to. I may end up in the brig until the next iceage hits this planet, but it'll be worth it.

Next came the hard part: convincing Shockwave to make her the weaponry. Which, actually turned out to be the easiest. Who would have thought the price of one week's peace and on time reports would have gained her what she wanted? Now she regretted putting that crayfish in his sea monkey tank. But only a little.

Suitably armed with a plethora of "Air Propelled Prismatic Projectile Delivery System" weapons. Or "slagging paintballs" as Roulette had snapped at Shockwave. (He could drain the fun out of anything like a sharp knife to an abscess.) Casually she carried a small crate full of the munitions and left them at one of the busier intersections of the ship with a glyph on it that said arm yourself. That done, she continued placing the munitions throughout the ship until she was left with naught but her own supply of modded bullets.

Nodding to herself, she headed for the first common room closest to her and sent a message to Windy. ::You are gonna wanna see this.:: And with that, she casually entered the room, smiled at everyone about, snapped both guns out of the holsters and opened fire. Paintballs careened through the air to paint their targets her signature color: red.

[Flatline]

Whelp. These few weeks he had been reinstated into active duty had been the most action filled chaos of the majority of his time serving combined...

...and it was only going to get worse.

Flatline was not sure how to feel about what had happened. His Lord, the one who gifted him a full functioning lab, as well as scared the ever-loving slag out of him, had been injured badly. He wanted to help; he wanted to see if he could do anything to aid, but... It was not his place and he didn't have a firm enough footing within the ranks to even be seen as worthy enough to try to help. His medical skills seemed to mean nothing, and he was curious how that peacock of a doctor was doing. This left him frustrated, wondering just what had happened, how bad the wounds were, and just... he wanted to do something!

This left the Medic simply working on his own tasks with the Eradicons, and tinkering on re-building his secondary arm when off duty. But alas, as much as he wanted to tuck away and just remain in his lab all the time? As much as he wanted to just live in his dark den of tools and his newly acquired fondness of human music? He still had to breach out into the rest of the ship to seek fuel. It was upon one of these endeavors? He saw the crate sitting in the hallway.

Arm yourself?... The slag did that mean?...

Oh no, he was not stupid, he knew what it MEANT he just didn't understand the significance behind it. Was there some infestation he didn't know about? Was there some breach of security? Though... if someone broke in, leaving weapons out meant they could arm themselves too... As such, Flatline looked in the crate itself, not recognizing the weapons at all. Really? If there was some emergency? The speakers would have declared as such no? As such, he abandoned it to continue to the main Common Room. If there were any on his way back? He would take one to tinker with in his lab.

-----

Flatline was standing across the Common Room away from others, his left primary folded loosely across his abdomen, while the right was idly holding a cube of Energon that had been half emptied already. He seemed annoyed, as if the raucous of all of the others chatting was some horrible affront to his audios and that he really didn't want to be there any longer. In fact? He was planning to try to hammer back the rest of the Energon like a damn cube of High Grade just to get out of there sooner when the doors opened up. Red optics slid over, looking upon the Femme with an uninterested gaze.

That was until she pulled weaponry.

Flatline had never been faced with artificial fighting before, so for all point and case? He thought this was some real life representation of 'going postal' he heard on one of the human songs. As such, his frame stooped down violently in a hunkered lurch, going into panic and self defense mode which caused the cube he had been holding to drop and shatter. This didn't matter though, as immediately he lunged forward, and the gyros in his shoulders whirred into full motion.

The medic's frame transformed partly. This was not a full alt-mode transformation, but more an alteration to his general shape, as his head stooped down and forward, causing his lunge? To have him land on the back of his neck. The plates of his back, and the swoop of his shoulders curled and just a moment later? He was essentially in the shape of a wheel, hurling with full momentum from his lunge, and the added input of the internals whirring in full speed. This caused him to roll violently forward, ramming literally into, and downing, an Eradicon on his speedy transfer to his intended goal. The wheeled edge of his frame, hit onto one of the tables, causing him to get lurched up and 'pop' into to the air at its edge with a bang.

Once he was airborne, still channeling the forward momentum, he uncoiled enough for this right primary to swoop out and grab the tables edge closest Roulette. This caused him to lurch, but mostly? Made the table topple and slam down towards him, creating a variable wall of a shield by its broad side. With this bunker made, Flatline cowered behind it, his normally calm and collected voice shrieking in anger and dismay.

"The Frag is wrong with you!?"

...he was bad at understanding games...

[Deleted]

Arm yourself.

Ghost Wind stared at the box. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and stared some more.

He'd been staring a while, honestly. He'd been on his way to try and wheedle supplies for a solid cleaning of a few exhaust vents when he'd run into the Mystery Box and its glyph. The box didn't worry him nearly as much as the glyph did.

Had the 'Butts got on board? Was it a trap? ... Well, it was always a trap, but was it a trap-trap or had he just run himself into someone else's trap? Had the box got misplaced, dropped and unseen while being carried to storage? The possibilities were endless, and none of them were good. Wary, he circled the box. It looked indeed box-like; this did not reassure him one bit.

He hmphed to himself, crossed his arms, and stared at the box some more. Common sense and self-preservation were advicing him to leave it alone. Walk away. He had work to do. Curiosity got mechs killed a little too often to be indulged.

Staying as far as he bodily could, he leaned over to look at the contents of the box. He did not recognize the weaponry there at all, but that was nothing new - it was not like the fancy new stuff ever trickled so far down the rank and file as to make it to him.

"Arm myself. Oooo-kay..." Gingerly, fully expecting the thing to either blow up in his hand or shriek an alarm of his unworthiness to the shiny new toy, Ghost picked up a gun. It felt surprisingly light. It did not judge him. It was, in fact, very plainly gun-like and not at all booby-trapped. That he could tell. He flipped it from hand to hand, then investigated the loading mechanism. Thing looked to be solid ammunition, which was always a fiddle and a half, and the chamber was nothing he'd ever seen. "How d'you even open th-"

The gun went off with a low snap, and Ghost damn near dropped it, flinching away and going into half a dead bug curl. Immediately his mind was running through the scenarios likely to be inflicted on the half-glitched moron that shot up the inside of the 'Nemesis', until he realized he'd heard no impact, or explosion, or any sort of impressive and hard-to-explain damage. He straightened up warily, looking for the impact site.

... Nothing. Nothing but a splatter of vitriolic green.

Ghost stared at the paint for a long moment. He stared at the gun for a longer moment. He was not a stupid mech, by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a deeply paranoid one, and some ruts are hard to get out of. Nonetheless his expression shifted the very instant his mental paradigm did. "Ohhhhh..."

It was a matter of grabbing as many of the weird little ammunition packs as he could hold, before jogging back down the hallway to a ventilation grate. Ghost popped it one-handed, slid it and replaced it with the kind of ease only long practice gives you.

In the conduits, sounds dragged and echoed, and Ghost could hear some sort of mayhem building up very slowly in one of the nearby messes. He scooted himself that-a-way, peering through a grate only when he was sure of his location; he knew the guts of the 'Nemesis', to be honest, better than he knew the actual hallways.

A forest of ankle joints greeted him. The room was apparently popular, and someone was shouting indignantly.

"Sounds like the right place", he told himself far more evenly than a mech armed with angry green paint ought to sound. Without further ado he popped out of the grate like a deranged mole, firing at any ankle in the vicinity. Just in case there were friendlies nearby, he also shouted, "Hey, Brad, heads up!"

[Deleted]

Fairwinds had to tuck her wings in to get through the still-opening doors without reducing her speed, bursting into the room as a hyperactive missile. She was chanting Master Master Master Master! before the doors to their quarters shut again, winging around the ceiling above where Megatron was sat with his pedes up on the table, reading.

Megatron watched the display with mounting incredulity, quickly ascertaining that there was no emergency; the cassette wasn't injured; and that she had no intention of stopping this ridiculous, noisy display until he responded. Not taking his optics off her rapidly moving little body, he set the datapad aside.

"What, Fairwinds?" he barked, raising his voice just enough to break through her chanting.

Unperturbed by his sharp tone, Fairwinds swept down to alight on his knee. Once landed she couldn't keep still, bouncing and vibrating. Roulette's message had sent her into an excited fit, and the scouting flight through the Nemesis had brought her unparalleled delight.

"Argh, it's so cool! 'Cons are getting shot in the face and there're colours everywhere and Flatline was a bowling ball!" She stopped vibrating long enough to raise one foot and point a toe at the warlord. "You've totally gotta scare him on top of a slope, Master, so we can see how far he'll roll."

Megatron touched a claw to his forehelm as if he had a headache. He'd been doing that a lot lately, in part because manually accessing his memory bank was actually painful whilst his autorepair was still working.

Shaking his head, he scowled at the tiny cassette "What are you talking about?"

"Paintballing!" Fairwinds cheered, stretching to her full height with wings extended. "Roulette made up a ton of ammo and left it around the ship, and now everyone's getting in on it!"

He knew the term, but he ran a check on it just to be sure he remembered it correctly, because Fairwinds could not be seriously reporting that the crew were firing capsules of brightly-coloured fluid at each other. Unfortunately, she was. "Paintballing."

"She needs a commendation," Fairwinds replied by way of confirmation. "Or a promotion! Can you make her Second in Command? I know Commander Starscream's got that spot, but you don't remember right now how you send him on dent-vacation every few months, and you'd never have to do that with Rou."

Megatron shuttered his optics and raised a hand to her, with every intention of pinching her beak shut if she didn't take the gesture to be quiet. Thankfully she did, and after a moment he considered her again. Quite seriously, he asked, "the Decepticons are firing paintballs at each other?"

Fairwinds grinned so hard it looked deformed. "Indeedy-do!"

The older mech rumbled a sigh at her thoroughly unhelpful reply. "Why?"

"Um, target practice?" she replied, squinting one optic to him. She kept guessing, hoping to strike upon an answer that would appease him, if not make him understand. "War games? Morale? Fun?"

"Fun," Megatron deadpanned.

"Yeah, you remember fun, right?" She hissed, pinching her beakplates together, and held up a foot in apology. "Sorry, that was insensitive of me. But no, it's totally good for the crew."

Megatron could sort of see where she was coming from. The war had been long, and she'd remarked to him how much the ongoing conflict had worn and hardened his personality. Reprieves from the business of death and destruction were necessary for the spark.

"Paintballing." His claw pressed at his temple again. "Have they done this before?"

Fairwinds' optics narrowed to slits. "Mmmm... Yes."

"Really?"

She canted her head. "Would you know if they hadn't?"

A restrained growl. "That's a circular argument, Fairwinds."

His darkening field did nothing to dampen Fairwinds' energy, and she began bouncing again. Now, however, her field was pulsating with impatience rather than plate-rattling exictement. "Argh, come'on, Master! We're wasting time talking when we could be spending time shooting Knock Out in the face and bowling Flatline into Shockwave!"

Megatron said nothing for a moment, the debate made internal. Finally he murmured, "I'm not sure about this."

"Okay, fine," Fairwinds replied, swinging her head back as she rolled her optics. She extended her wings and warmed her thrusters, preparing to take off. "You stay here and be all serious and boring, and I'll go spray the good fight."

"Fine." Megatron flicked two fingers against her undercarriage to give her a boost into the air. "Go on. Have your fun."

Fairwinds made a short loop of the living area to gain altitude, then paused to hover by the door. She looked back to her carrier, her helm crests flat and expression pensive.

"Master, you're not our acting Commander right now. You're on holiday, and holidays mean relaxing and having fun. And I can't remember the last time before these last two weeks when you actually relaxed." She opened her beak to say something else but seemed to think better of it. Chirping a goodbye, she zipped back out through the opening door with intent to find a paintball gun she could hold.

Failing that, she was going to carpet bomb the Rec. room.

*

Megatron spent half an hour pawing through the colourful mass of stuff stored in the back of Fairwind's cupboard. He set aside several bags of confetti, multiple vials of the dye Fairwinds used in her energon gummies, and two hundred of the foil bags she used to package her sweets. Leaving the supplies on the floor of their quarters, he made his way to the closest maintenance supply cupboard for the necessary components for an air cannon.

Holiday, indeed.

[Deleted]

((OOC: Gonna go ahead and post again since it seems to be free for all territory here.))

With satisfaction, Roulette drained both clips into the room and actually hit the targets she was aiming at. It felt good to have her targeting back online and functioning at a perfect percentile. The heady euphoria of locking onto a moving target, in this case a drone's faceplate, and managing to calculate and hit him when he twitched down to avoid the line of fire. Not all of her shots were so spectacular. She took what she could get in the crowded room and painted a lot of torsos and hands as the collected whole first panicked then flinched out of the way.

She could tell the exact moment they realized the ammunition wasn't real. There was a, well, a fluttering movement was the best term she could come up with that seemed to go from one drone to the next. When one figured out something, the next did and the next. More than likely it was close set comms rapidly firing to one another to assess damage of their fellow mech but they also possessed a cohesiveness that many ranking Cons on the ship didn't have. They just worked better as a whole. And that whole stopped dodging the paint and stood up from behind their perspective shields (tables) to watch her with a gaze that could only be categorized as predatory.

She was about to get her aft handed to her by a mob.

"The Frag is wrong with you!?"

That was really too much and she started laughing hard enough to nearly drop her weapons. She clutched them to herself and doubled over, giggling like sparkling. Gods, their faces! They all looked so surprised! Even as the first drone casually wiped the paint off of his face, Roulette slipped the guns back into her holsters and tried to taper off the cackling. She was starting to sound unhinged.

"Oh man, you guys should have see-" The telltale plap of a shot and the surprised squeal of one of the drones signaled enemy fire. So someone had found her weapons and heeded the advice! Ha! She knew it would work! Half of the drones turned to her, running at her in part confusion thinking she was part of the second round of attack, while the other half scattered before the vents like mice sensing a cat.

Embarrassingly Roulette gave her own little squeak of surprise and turned aft to flee from the room at a dead run. More than a few drones took up the chase and followed her through the hallways. Well, her plan was sort of going correctly. Unfortunately she hadn't planned beyond "shoot all the things."

[Flatline]

Flatline was not happy in the slightest. He cowered behind the toppled table as if that would save him from everything cast his way, long arms hooked up and over him in some vain attempt to protect his head. If this person really was decimating the room? Chances are she would have a grenade of some sort that would rip apart those that were out of line of sight. This made the Medic hyper aware in his panic, listening for a clank and clatter of something being thrown.

He was not a combat mech, he was no fighter. Oh sure, he could fight, he had the technical capability, but he didn't have training or any outright skill. He was best with mind games and tricks to get a victory; hence what had landed him his survival against the Autobot Red Alert a couple weeks prior. But this? This was... if he recalled... a trained fighter unloading round after round into a gaggle of Eradicons.

But no bodies hit the floor?...

When the shooting halted and some that were cowering were popping up like those animals humans called 'meercats'. Flatline was wary, he didn't WANT to look and have his head blasted off, but no more shots were being unloaded, and there was... laughing? She was cackling with some sort of mirth and joy more so than a psychotic madness? As such, he warily eased up to look over the edge of his shield, red optics squinted in dismay. What he saw? Was not what he expected.

Instead of Eradicons lying on the ground ripped apart by bullets, they were all alive, but with splatters of red paint marking where each impact had been. Now, Flatline was no idiot, and the sight made it click to him instantly. It then made him realize what the crate was, and what those guns must have been... This was a game, this was a fragging GAME and she had them all believing they were going to die!? What kind of scrap for brained idea was this!?

With a clatter, Flatline wrenched up to his full height, his field radiating anger and aggression, lapping out violently so that anyone near him? Would almost feel the bite of it. He opened his maw to yell, he was about to scream at her, only for that now familiar 'pap' sound to pop out once more. This time? He was actually hit. There was a sharp sting as a vibrant green splattered across his left foot, easily covering that side of the tiny ped. Flatline lurched, his digitigrade leg lifting and kicking out, hoof like toes flared a moment as he struggled, acting as if the stuff was about to start eating into his mesh. When no more pain came? He growled, momentary pain and panic twisting into rage and aggression, turning on the source of the sound. Any colored paint on his frame would show painfully bright against the black backdrop.

Reeling, the medic turned against Ghost Wind with so much hate and malice that if Roulette wasn't the postal worker mauling everyone? Flatline was going to happily pick up that role.

Grabbing a nearby chair with his right primary, the somewhat large mech spun about to hurl the chair at Ghost Wind as hard as he could manage with his minimal strength capabilities. It wasn't a particularly hard throw, since despite Flatline looking like he'd have upper body strength? He was pitifully weak... However once this assault was launched? He turned on the instigator, pointing at her accusingly.

"YOU! You started this! You-"

She was running, and that just triggered his own hand. The medic kicked off the ground with his spindly feet, launching over the table to once more land on the back of his neck with the partial transformation. He had aimed at the door, and as such? The wheeled frame spun violently as he was hurled forward to close that distance quickly. When he reached the end of his roll, when he thought he should have been nearer, he uncoiled and landed upon all fours.

Momentum continued to drag Flatline forward out into the hallway, hands and feet placed to the ground and squealing as metal against metal rang out in a chorus. By the time he slid to a near halt, he was already aiming down the hall where the femme had fled, and his harpoons? Had both snapped down with loud clicking pops as they were activated. Before he even came to a complete stop? Both of them fired with loud bangs, sensing the violently sharp posts out at fast speeds, the chains whipping behind them with unmistakable rattles.

Flatline once more? Was not combat oriented, and it showed with his hasty aim as one Harpoon slammed down at Roulette's feet just in front of her, while the other? Wrenched into the wall nearby at her side. The sound of the impacts were screeching, the posts piercing into the metal floor and wall easily with how much power had been behind them. He shrieked while the chains started to whir and rewind into his harpoons.

"Dead Femme running!"

[Deleted]

Ghost continued firing, simply pressing down on the gun's trigger. By the time the first clip ran out, the room was stampeding satisfyingly.

And a chair was flying his way.

"Oooph." Like the mole in the familiar human game the two-wheeler ducked sharply back into the conduit. He felt almost detached from himself, oddly calm. Perhaps that elusive concept called 'fun' had been absent from his processor for so long that, in encountered, most of it had merely thrown its metaphorical hands up and shut down.

He heard the chair crash and bounce, and the squall of a Vehicon tripped by the impromptu (and entirely accidental) trap, followed by exactly what you'd expect would happen when a Vehicon goes down in the middle of a Vehicon stampede. By the level of noise alone he thought maybe six or seven of them had gone down in a heap.

Oh well. Ghost was already moving down the conduit with absurd ease, flicking a fresh clip into his gun. More often than not this was his world, his berth and his office, his mess hall and his sanctuary and just about everything else. He could move down conduits like these like... like... like Megatron strolling down the warship's hallways.

There was, however, an awful lot of yelling going on out there. Ghost popped out of one of the hallway vents in time to see two things: firstly, and far more critical, the Vehicons were falling on the weapon case like hungry scraplets, and colors were beginning to spray every which way but safe.

Secondly, there was a broad, curving back turned to him; a real weapon had fired, a double-concussive report followed by high-speed chattering of metal on metal. While Ghost wasn't exactly in the know when it came to anything remotely officer-like on the 'Nemesis', he did recognize the mech before him (well, the mech's back before him), if only because the Vehicons talked about him. Flat... Flat... something. Medic.

As far as Ghost was concerned, though, at the moment he was the target with the vast and ample back turned towards him. He called out at about the same time he opened fire from his vent, the ammunition the same vitriolic green and his aim firmly set on Flatline's backside. Ghost didn't know it, but he had a slightly deranged grin on his faceplate.

"Hey, Doc! Think fast!"

[Deleted]

Buffalo Dump, as newcomers to anywhere were prone to do, was wandering around lost when the paintball game started. He had been humming to himself, carrying a cube laced with Pine-Sol back to berth to enjoy before a quick nap. There was talk of a large Energon operation being undertaken in the next cycle, so he wanted to rest and give his bad optic a break. The dim lighting of the Nemesis could make it hard to see, and the strain it put on his sight sometimes agitated his old wound.

The sounds of yelling attracted his attention, and B-Dump stopped before an entryway to a busy intersection. He caught sight of the strange crate, and lumbered over to it with eyebrows raised. He had to get down on one knee to read the glyphs, taking a sip of his cube before squinting his optics tight. The words scrawled there made him jerk back in surprise, and he quickly downed his ration before popping open his chest-space. Tossing in the empty cube — you didn't need subspace when your trunk space became a massive hopper — the 'Con grabbed a weapon, standing up and turning around as footfalls approached him. A feeling of dread had wrapped around his fuel tank.

"What — "

"FIIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEEE!"

In a matter of seconds, the surprised Decepticon was holding up his hands, trying to cover his optics and face from a sudden barrage of soft, splattering ammunition. The Vehicons in front of him cackled with glee, the gentle giant sprayed with all the colours imaginable of the rainbow. He took a step back, turning his head as he spat yellow, pink and green from his mouth.

Ten seconds later, several Vehicons went screaming and flying as Buffalo Dump barreled through them. Like bowling pins scattered, they rolled and lay dazed on the floor, the massive mech's fork-tentacles raised and the talons snapping. With a vicious battle cry, he skidded to a stop in front of a common room, a bull-like snort coming from his vents. Bits of paint shot away from the force of the exvent.

Several Vehicons took the chance to duck behind B-Dump, using the mech as living cover.

[Deleted]

On the outskirts of the expanding paintball warzone, Megatron strode out of a workshop with an air of purpose and menace.

The Vehicons who knew of the ridiculous, colourful sprays steadily littering the Nemesis' hallways were taking greats pains to avoid him, though for the wrong reasons. They thought their Lord would be incensed at the antics, was perhaps already infuriated and presently hunting down the instigators to mete out swift and brutal punishment. They had failed to see the new, roughly welded cannon attached to the monstrous fusion weapon on Megatron's forearm. It was piped to a gas canister strapped to his pauldron, from which hung a large bag of extra ammunition.

Megatron did not enter into a knife fight with anything less than a broadsword. The workshop he'd left was a multicoloured, glittering mess that would see the maintenance crew occupied for several days, but the air-cannon was perfect.

His first target - a lone green-streaked Eradicon with a paintgun held up to his visor - had ended up pasted to the bulkhead. He'd dialed back the pressure of the cannon after that. And the rapid-fire setting.

Now he was hunting. Roulette, specifically, but anyone in the game who crossed his path was going to be sticky-glittery slag.

[Deleted]

Sunspot was amongst the first under the table when the renegade opened fire upon the room. He dived with such speed that the cards he had been clutching were still in the air long after he was covering his optic in fear. Long moments passed where the room burst into a frantic rush of panic. The expected impact of bullets in chassis never happened, instead only a hail of splats. He looked up from his hiding spot, littered with the mad legs of flighty Vehicons, to see splotches of paint on bodies and walls. Slow in processor speed, Sunspot may have been, but he recognised a paintball battle when he saw one. Slow in processor but not in reaction. He moved very fast

He fully intended to get himself equipped as fast as physically possible, there were targets to paint. Putting small size and not small strength to good use, Sunspot squeezed and pushed around the rush got his hands into the box of goodies. With a gun in one hand and another grasped in one foot, he loaded clips with his free hand. Because Sunspot was a greedy little goblin, he pocketed in sub-space some spare clips. The sense of power dual wielding paint guns and everybody a target was almost euphoric for Sunspot. He squeezed and pushed back out of the rush.

Two triggers were repeatedly depressed and Sunspot sprayed everybody and nearly every surface too with Yellow and Blue paint. He giggled maniacally as he did so. Only when he had emptied both clips did he rush down the nearest corridor and around the corner. Quickly his simple hands swapped empty paint ball canisters for full ones. With much more care for efficient use of ammo, he cleaned around the corner and picked his shot one by one.

The silver Bike-former targeting the much darker Medical-Mech looked to be a good unsuspecting target. What were their names again? Sunspot could not remember right away, but it did not matter right away either. Sunspot unleashed a good half dozen shots.

[Deleted]

Skywarp stood over the crate of paintball supplies, examining it curiously. He'd picked up two guns and then loaded the hell out of his subspace with the brightly coloured ammo. Most Vehicons had vacated the space nearby so he currently was uninterrupted. He also had no one nearby the test whatever ammunitions these things were loaded with, so he casually lifted one gun up and fired at the wall.

The splash of blue paint wasn't what he was expecting. But oh, hey that was neat.

Not as satisfying of course as actually straight up shooting a mech with his own cannons and laying waste to them. Skywarp didn't really understand why you'd build a non-lethal weapon but he could appreciate something that caused loads of mess. At the very least, he realized that could, without impunity or too much fear from Command, shoot up most their forces, which Skywarp probably was always one step away from doing. Sure, he'd get yelled at, but hey, no one would be dead.

However, as he stood there, musing over the crate he'd found, one bold and possibly suicidal Vehicon peered round a corner and shot him. Yellow paint splashed against his arm before Skywarp whirled round, activating his actual assault cannons in alarm. The Vehicon meeped and vanished behind the corner. Skywarp was in half a mind to chase after it, indeed he'd taken the first couple of steps before it registered that he hadn't been shot with a real weapon. He glanced down at the paint in confusion before it slowly clicked.

Everyone had these things. It wasn't just him.

Some sort of game…?

Hmmm….

The Seeker mulled over this for a few moments before brightening. There were some Cons he'd love to shoot up with these paint guns. Most of the Command staff actually. Oh, it would be brilliant ruining Starscream's paintjob. No-not the Air Commander. Knockout. He could almost hear the shrieks already. And there were other targets that he'd love to get. Soundwave. Or Shockwave. Ha yeah. The untouchable ones, supposedly. Not for long though.

As Skywarp stood there, plotting over who he'd like to shoot, it occurred to him that for once that this was a fight his large bulk was really not suited for. He was used to simply powering his way through gunfire simply because his armor could take it. But here, the aim was to not get shot. He needed to be smaller.

Or…

Failing that, he needed someone smaller.

::Windy:: he cooed over a comm line. ::Windy, Windy! I need a spotter. How much would you like to ruin doc Knock's finish? Or maybe even Shockwave. Ol' one optic needs a bit more color than just plain purple in his paintjob::

[Deleted]

Well, of course she expected retaliation of some kind. Most definitely of the violent sort. Perhaps a blaster or a well thrown knife. Not the harpoon slamming into the ground in front of her. That, yeah, that came out of friggin nowhere and startled the fragging pit out of her. With a shriek of surprise, she hauled up short and ended up rolling into a flip over the weapon before it could trip her. Which was just as well, it had a friend that missed by a small margin and got the wall instead.

Crouched in the hallway, she spared the time to twist and look behind her at the wielder of the damned weapon. Ohh, that one. Admittedly, she didn't know much about him other than that he looked a bit stressed and wasn't adjusted to the ship just yet. The nervous jangle of him was a telltale. That and he wasn't screeching her name. No doubt he'd be cursing her soundly if he'd known. Good, let him guess.

She gave him a jaunty salute and lunged off of the floor before a vehicon could paint her. Luckily, they were giving the harpoon wielding one a wide berth and gave her a clear run of the hallway. Hunched over, she put some speed on to put some distance from the chasers and skidded into an intersection far faster than was wise. Knowing her luck, she'd run straight into someone and not have the chance to shoot them. If she could just make it to a quiet hallway, maybe she could set up a defensible area and not get utterly destroyed by the rallying Vehicons.

Or Ahab back there.

[Flatline]

((Made a slight assumption with Ghost Wind, if you need me to edit? Please let me know!))

The chains on the harpoons went taunt moments after their impact, the long posts lurching in place from this pull as the internal mechanics ground to a temporary halt. Flatline sent a command to the weaponry not a split second after this, as the barbed edges of the harpoons? Folded down flush with the posts in reply. This permitted them to slip free from the floor and wall metal as if they were merely javelins, the chains rolling and spooling within the turrets once again, to drag the mechanics back within their barrels. While they didn’t fully lock internally? The two posts still visible on either side of his head? They were primed and ready to fire moments after with a hissing clank.

Right after the weaponry had been loaded, the medic that had been standing upon all fours? Pushed his hands down with a forceful shove, throwing himself up onto spindly hind legs a moment after. He arched upright with a pronounced hunch to his spine, attention still latched forward upon the femme as she made her retreat.

She swiftly had gotten out of his range for the harpoons, and he didn't know if he really WANTED to go on a chase through the Nemesis. That just sounded like an awful lot of effort to put into it, when he could just quietly hunt for revenge at a later date. Make her worried about his presence, try to catch her off guard so he didn't need to actually put that much physical effort in.

Flatline was just mulling over this idea, seeing the femme hook around a corner, when he heard a voice call behind him. Instinctively, he started to turn, his head raising a bit as if trying to peer over his shoulder before he rounded about entirely. His turn? Was far too late though, his reaction time not that snappy, as the shot from Ghost Wind hit its mark and enacted an instantaneous response from him.

Angled hips shot forward as if trying to get away from the sharp sting of the paintball's impact, which threw his center of gravity way off from what it was just a moment prior. His arms? Lifted up a bit on either side to counter this, the gyros in his frame whirring and accommodating through the motion. While it looked like he should stumble forward to catch his balance? He did not need to, recovering quickly despite the splatter of green paint now on his backside.

A roar of anger sounded out, as Flatline began to turn fully once more, only to be ONCE AGAIN rudely interrupted by another barrage of paint balls. The yellow and blue splattered in an angle from his right hip, across his bicep wheel, and to the right side of his chest as he turned, squaring off with whoever had assaulted him.

Ghost Wind wasn’t the first one he saw, the mech likely having tucked back inside the vent as shielding, and instead? His attention latched down onto Sunspot who he then blamed for both the aft shot and the spray of paint after. He couldn’t see behind himself to note the paint colors were different, thusly? Dooming the flyer.

A slow gradual stride carried Flatline towards him, optics blazing in CHALLENGE to dare shoot him once more. If he was permitted to get near enough? He would hold out his hand expectedly. The motion being a silent demand for the other mech to hand over one of his guns immediately. There would be no negotiations from Flatline.

[Deleted]

Internally, Ghost was humming to himself. Ohhh an' a handwrench here an' a cutter there an' the bolts go in an' the creds go out doot dee dumdumdeetdum...

Outwardly, he'd fired and ducked, letting the grate snap shut above him because that was just common sense. In the firing-rich environment of the hallway above it would have been suicide to try and stand one's ground.

Down here, however, it was lovely. One had, figuratively speaking, lots of time to reload and shift clips this way and that, so no pellet would go to waste. Yes, there were thundering footsteps going this way and that and all over the place, but Ghost had worked through worse. Nothing beat that one time near the fusion furnaces at what's-its-name...

"An' the creds go out an' out an' out." The doc was kinda torqued off, it sounded like; miraculously, he did not seem to be torqued off at Ghost. The Tomahawk wasn't sure who was the brunt of that homicidal sound up there, but at least the gun, whatever it was, wasn't going off again. Anything else, welp, it wasn't for him to cope with.

Ghost scuttled onwards through the pipes, trying to pick out by sound the notable differences in the Vehicon mob out there. Someone was bellowing, and he wandering riiiight past that, because that might as well be every sort of neon sign for all the shooting ever and he didn't want no part of that. A wriggle, a scoot and a scooch later he heard heavy treads above him.

"An' the bolts go in an' the creds go out..." He popped out of a side vent, gun leading. "Hello!", he called out merrily, not even stopping to check if whoever might be going by was involved in the game to begin with, and opened fire for a full two seconds before ducking back down again.

[Deleted]

OH SLAG! Sunspot was being challenged, that’s not how things were supposed to go in paint ball war. For a brief moment he was perplexed. But realisation quickly resumed control, he was armed, the other wasn’t, he had speed, he wasn’t sure he had ever seen the doc even run.

Challenge accepted! With a grin as wide as grins go, Sunspot raised both paint guns with slow deliberation, aimed and fired off six spheres filled with prismatic goo. And then because he was cowardly moreso than stupid, he bolted around the corner and out of view.

Down the far end of the corridor Sunny spotted a very distinctive mech, one whose name he never forgot. With the visual clarity afforded to seekers, he was quick to also notice the additional gun and the extra large paint ball ammo. OH SLAG!

Sunspot sprinted back around the corner stopping momentarily in front of the Doc. He offered one of the guns and once, and when that hand as free, he clapped Flatline on the shoulder as though he was a friend. “Good luck chief”. Heedless of whatever Mr Grump Doc might say or do, the yellow streaked flier bolted down the hall the other, away from immediate splattering, and looked for new hunting grounds. Some noice friendly Vehicons would make lovely targets right now.