Ep 1.5 - Infiniminer (Closed)

[Deleted]

((OOC: Set right before Micecraft, with Wheeljack.))

Was it possible to sulk for weeks at a time? Because Miko might have been going for the record. Ever since the snag in the tunnels (not so much an actual tangle and more a drive by of near death), Miko had been laying low and trying to actually be a valuable asset. But being quiet and low key wasn't her thing and it was starting to chafe awful bad. Even with the strong words and quiet judging from Bulkhead.

She had screwed up. She knew that. But they were all ok and that's what counted in the end. But why didn't she feel that everything was just great now? Bulk still treated her the same and she didn't give much thought to what the stupid Cons might have been thinking. Maybe it was because, deep down, Miko kept remembering that helpless twist in her gut. She wasn't a target, darnit! She was a wrecker! Well, she wanted to be one. Unfortunately she was still limited by her size and squishy frame. Asking anyone around the base for help in that regard would only get her weird looks.

Well...all except for one...if the Autobots weren't going to help her, she would go to an outside source that just happened to be inside the base. And she didn't even have to wheedle for his whereabouts from anyone. She just followed the trail of cranky mechs. Jackie, whether he meant to or not, disrupted the flow of the base like a fork cleaving a road in two.

Hey, that's kinda fitting. Maybe I'll tell him that one. He'll like that.

Miko padded through the hallways as quiet as a mouse and just as large in comparison to everyone else. She didn't quite like the mental comparison but it was hard not to feel so small in the base full of giant space and giant mechs. It was cool when Bulk was much bigger than her. He was larger than life! But after awhile, so many of the Bots started to actually seem like they were looking down on her in more ways than one.

She peeked around the doorframe, her poof of pigtails bobbing behind her as she looked around for the telltale mech. "Ey, Wheeljack?"

[Deleted]

The room Miko stepped into was full. To her immediate left were a row of lockers full of human safety gear. Beyond, lay the rest of Wheeljack's workshop. Once a hangar meant for human vehicles, it was currently occupied by two Cybertronian starships, Rocket's podship and Halocene's shuttle. Both wrecks, both half-way through disassembly. The mech responsible for their eventual deconstruction was currently standing on an upper walkway. The original walkway had been meant for servicing aircraft and would never had a hope of supporting a mech's weight but the engineer had stripped it down and rebuilt it during his renovations of the hangar. It now protruded further into the room than it normally should, in case Wheeljack needed it to work on odd angles on a wreck.

The work for the cycle had been finished, all tools had been set away and the room cleaned up as much as possible. Had there still been a hint of hazardous chemicals in the air, the door would have remained locked and shut at Miko's approach. Wheeljack had retreated to the upper walkway, lost in thought. Quite frankly, he'd have preferred to have gone outside and for a long drive to clear his processor but that meant dealing with Red Alert to clear him from the base. So, up it had been, to brood in silence and in solitude.

Or at least until now.

Wheeljack's gaze dropped down to the door at the call of his name. There were, probably, a grand total of three individuals on base who could walk into his workshop and not cause his mood to instantly darken. Miko was one of them.

"Hey Miko," Wheeljack placed one pede on the railing, then used it to launch himself off and over it.

And -just because he could and he had an appreciative audience- he did one lazy front flip before landing. Had it been Prime or any other of the Omega base bots, Wheeliack would have likely remained up above on the platform, forcing them to look up at him. But the Wrecker wouldn't do that to Miko, they'd talk on equal footing.

"You here to play with some real toys? Or did you get bored of Team Prime?"

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Miko's eyes lit up as Wheeljack made his own way down to meet her. Not only did he skip the stairs or even a stupid ladder, he did a flip! The hero worship was alive and well like a tangible entity in the young teenagers body. She bounced in place once as he landed, and not necessarily from the impact.

"That was so cool. I should try that. I did a flip once by accident but that was because my feet got tangled up on the monkey bars and some kid pushed me." She eyed the nearby ladder but decided, for now, that flipping courses would have to wait. At least until she could find a softer area to wipe out on. Miko knew her limitations well. She needed a few fails before she succeeded.

"You here to play with some real toys? Or did you get bored of Team Prime?"

At the mention of "Team Prime" Miko ducked her head and jutted out her lower lip. It wasn't like she could blame them for being a little upset with her. Yeah, she got into trouble a lot, but trouble liked to follow her around! And besides, she'd never gotten anyone hurt. All this concern over her well being was really constrictive. Why couldn't they just let her worry about herself?

"Eh...I don't think they're rocking Team Miko right now." She sidestepped Wheeljack and moved closer to one of the ships, well aware of safety lines and where she shouldn't put her feet. When dealing with large machines, it was generally good advice not to overstep yellow or red caution lines.

"Whatcha doing with these things?"

[Deleted]

Wheeljack listened to Miko's exuberance with a rare air of patience and slight bemusement. He wasn't certain what 'monkey bars' were or why she'd be on them, from what he understood, wild animals and humans were generally not encouraged to occupy the same space. Then again, this was Miko, so she'd probably crawled inside an animal enclosure or something.

Then, she wilted and admitted to a falling out with the Omega base bots. Wheeljack frowned and followed her as she started to head over the starships. He hadn't paid all that much attention to base gossip and while there was an incident Bulkhead had mentioned in passing, not a lot of details were clear to him.

"Really, what did you do to? Convinced the on duty bot to go on an unauthorised energon raid? I hear those really grind Red Alert's gears. Or maybe that's Team Wheeljack in general," the Wrecker shot her a smug grin. "Team Miko can always come rolling with me if the Omega base isn't up for it."

He followed her gaze up to Rocket's podship. Huge gashes had been ripped in the side of the starship during the crash and Wheeljack had stripped most of its plating already. "These? I'm tearing them down into spare parts. The Bots who crashed them crashed them hard. We don't have the parts to fix them but I can sure turn them into something a bit more interesting." Wheeljack's tone ran dry and dour as his optics travelled over the small room attached to the side of the hangar which was were he actually built new machines. "Apparently, fancy new microscopes, and new parts for Tweedle Dumb, Tweedle Dumber and K9 5000 are what counts as interesting around this joint. I was thinking of building a fusion bomb but Optimus wouldn't hear anything about it, for some reason. At this rate, my processor is gonna rust in sheer boredom."

[Deleted]

"Team Miko can always come rolling with me if the Omega base isn't up for it."

"Could I?" Miko's eyes couldn't get wider if she tried. No one ever offered to take her with them! Bulk would after Miko pleaded and begged, and possibly bribed, but he was always a little hesitant. And the others wouldn't even entertain the idea of taking her with them.

You know why, a no-nonsense voice sounded in her head. It sounded suspiciously like Ms. Darby. You could have gotten hurt. You're too small and you get in the way.

Miko looked away from Wheeljack, the excitement tampered by the thought. She squinted at the ship, not seeing it while she listened to his plans for the mess. But her thoughts were elsewhere. Sure, she was small and sure she didn't have much to offer in a fight (except for her fantastic battle strategies) but that didn't mean she had to miss out on everything. That also meant she didn't have to selfishly rely on the Bots to always protect her like she was a small porcelain doll.

"...I dunno...the fusion bomb sounds cool, though." She offered a tiny grin that didn't last too long. "I mean, about the energon raid. I told Bulk I wouldn't get into anymore trouble and I'm..." she signed and crossed her arms, slouching forward in the typical teenager power sulk. "I just wish I was as tough as you guys! It's not my fault I'm small and made of squishy, breaky parts. Then I could go do all kinds of cool stuff. Not really fair..."

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As a free spirit accustomed to making his own way, frag the consequences, Wheeljack didn't think twice before he agreed. "Sure," he replied easily. If Miko wanted to tag along on her own free will, the Wrecker didn't see a reason to stop her.

"Yeah, well Optimus wasn't all that comfortable about the idea of having a personal nuke here. Me, I thought a fusion bomb would be an excellent present to leave in a Decepticon warship. You know, make use of all those spooks they've got round base."

"I just wish I was as tough as you guys! It's not my fault I'm small and made of squishy, breaky parts. Then I could go do all kinds of cool stuff. Not really fair..."

Wheeljack listened to Miko vent with half an audial.

Bulkhead said she had a Wrecker's spark. Wheeljack trusted his old partner's judgement. If Bulk thought she was good enough for the Wreckers, then she was a Wrecker, simple as that. His coding and processor even recognised and identified the human as such. What Wheeljack did wonder though was what kind of Wrecker Bulkhead thought she was. The crew wasn't something sane individuals looked up to and aspired to be. Bulkhead, with his gentleness and kindness, was actually an oddity amongst their ranks. They were strong, yes, but they were also brutal spark cold killers.

Not exactly something a young human should be looking up to, if Wheeljack understood their species correctly. Optimus seemed to view them as new sparks caught in the crossfire of their war, civilians who had no place on the battlefield and whose innocence should be preserved. Bulk took his guardian duties just as seriously as well. Which made it all the more curious that neither thought twice about Bulk's assessment that the girl had the spark and spirit to match the toughest of Autobot soldiers. Did they simply view Miko as a Bulkhead 2.0, clumsy and destructive or did they see in her the potential wreck devastation and death on her enemies? She certainly had no qualms about following the Autobots into combat despite all attempts to dissuade her otherwise. Something told Wheeljack that the only thing that was keeping her back from the fight was the lack of a hard frame to put her on even grounds.

Wheeljack was in the personal opinion that there was absolutely no point in sheltering a being from the realities of the war around them. Teach them how to shoot, teach them how to protect themselves, what they did with that was up to them but better than you divide up your resources trying to protect them. Two pairs of servos armed with guns were better than one after all. Reduce your weakspots and take as much load as you can off your own forces. They weren't doing humanity any favours keeping them ignorant but seeing as the Decepticons were also content to keep the fight hidden, there didn't seem much point in forcing the issue.

Optimus had made it more than clear the terms with which they were to deal with humans. But Optimus wasn't a Wrecker, Miko was and Wreckers looked after their own. Wheeljack studied the human curiously, both the Wrecker and engineer inside him equally intrigued by the quandary Miko presented. Something had to be done. It was cutting into Bulkhead's combat capabilities, keeping an optic out on his charge, who didn't want that protection anyway. Wreckers relied on their own strength after all, they were equals, partners when it came to the battlefield. Right now, the relationship between the two were unbalanced, uneven.

Wheeljack had an entire workshop and plenty of parts pulled from shattered starships. If he couldn't figure out something, he'd have to give up his credentials from Crystal City in sheer shame.

"About that squishy thing…" Wheeljack's processor was thoroughly preoccupied with figuring out a solution and he spoke almost without conscious thought, a faint smile tugging at those scarred lip-plates. "I think I have a few ideas."

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Now that she thought about it, wouldn't a nuke be bad business for whoever happened to be under the Con ship? Even if it happened up high, the fall out would go for miles at least. Raf was better with this type of thinking, but Miko grew up on an island that relied on nuclear energy. The warnings were everywhere and one would have to be blind to avoid them.

"...maaaaaybe a nuclear weapon isn't the best approach. They're a little...messy." Was messy the correct term? Radiation wasn't really all that clean. Optimus Prime probably thought along the same lines and for once, Miko had to agree with him. Radiation was no joke. It probably couldn't hurt the Bots but the humans were at an unfair advantage. Just like everything else, she lamented to herself.

"About that squishy thing…" Wheeljack's processor was thoroughly preoccupied with figuring out a solution and he spoke almost without conscious thought, a faint smile tugging at those scarred lip-plates. "I think I have a few ideas."

That distracted her from her thoughts and she turned to look at him, forgetting about tactical nukes and ship parts. "Wait, what?"

[Deleted]

Messy was an understatement.

"Oh, I know that. I also know how to contain 'em so they aren't," Wheeljack replied, unphased. "The number of times those fusion cores went off in my face while I was building 'em... That's not the point, actually. Scarlet and Optimus want me to file paperwork every time I lift a screwdriver in this place and get to choose whether or not to veto any projects I have planned. So, I figure, I'll play their game. I'll fill in their fragging paperwork. Keep sending them requests for big things they ain't never going to approve and I don't really intend on building. That way, the small stuff I actually need is more likely to slip through the cracks since they'll be staring hard at the big stuff."

Screwing with the brass was one of his favourite past times and he was waiting to see how long it'd take before someone caught on. Red Alert might be using the paperwork as some form of punishment but he'd picked the wrong target for this tactic. Wheeljack hated paperwork, he despised it to the core of his spark. But he was also a grant writing veteran from Crystal City. It took a lot of skill to wheedle money out of the government to fund research, so Wheeljack knew how to write a proposal that was, for intent and purposes, genuine. The real trick was to ensure that every attempt had practical purpose and to keep it mixed up, so that some got through and some didn't.

Miko was transfixed by the mention of 'ideas.' Wheeljack decided to elaborate. "Cybertronian protective gear," he shrugged. "Pretty sure I could adapt something to fit your size. In fact-" the Wrecker knelt down, bringing his head to her level. "With your permission, if you hold still for a moment, I can scan you. I'll need your frame's parameters."

Ratchet, of course, would have the proper medical equipment to get all the readings he needed. But that would raise questions that would shut this little venture down quicker than you could blink. Wheeljack instead was going to use his transcanners, meant for acquiring alt modes. It wouldn't be precise, it wasn't meant for biological systems but it'd give him some references to start off with.

"I don't think I have to tell you that any word to anyone else is gonna make this little project of ours just a little bit harder to pull off."

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"The number of times those fusion cores went off in my face while I was building 'em...-"

Miko reaaaaally wanted to address that. She really did, but Wheeljack continued on and she was polite enough not to interrupt someone when they were talking. She'd just have to make a mental note to come back to that at some point. (And mental note she was more than likely to forget before the end of the day.)

As for the tiff with Optimus and the rest of the Autobots, Miko wasn't unware of the tension. All the griping she did about Ratchet and Optimus aside, they did treat her like an adult more than the adults on this actual planet. They didn't sugar coat or hide anything from her or Jack or even Raf. Which was good, because they didn't need to. They were old enough to take it when tempers were running high. (Even if Miko didn't always understand why the Bots bickered amongst themselves.) Some days she just winged it.

"Pretty sure I could adapt something to fit your size. In fact-" the Wrecker knelt down, bringing his head to her level. "With your permission, if you hold still for a moment, I can scan you. I'll need your frame's parameters."

"Wait...you want to make me something to protect myself with?" This time she wasn't about to let the subject drop. This was the COOLEST thing to ever happen to her, second only to meeting Bulkhead. Because, awesome tech aside, Bulkhead still trumped everything. Her mom's squish face cat was third on the list.

"You can do that?! How would it work? Could I fight a Decepticon? I want to kick some major tail!" She bounced in place before realizing that he couldn't get her measurements if she kept trying to vibrate into another dimension. "Sorry, sorry."

[Deleted]

In regards to the experimental fusion cores he'd built during his time as an engineer at Crystal City, the Wrecker was referring to the time when he had a fully equipped lab, armed with the finest technology Cybertron had to offer. A time when they didn't have to think twice about playing with radiation because they had all the equipment they needed to contain it. That was a time long gone, though Wheeljack didn't exactly miss them. It was hard to, with his memory core fragged eight ways to the Pits and back.

Wheeljack arched an optic at Miko's excitement. Yeah, girl got a Wrecker spark for sure. New tech was always great and one of Wheeljack's favourite thing was testing out experimental gear in the field. Nothing quite matched the thrill of getting a new toy for reducing your enemies to scrap.

"We used to have a variety of standard protective gear troops could use in the field back on Cybertron. Personal shielding, target-lock disruptors, the works. Doesn't look like any of it made it here, though. I'll see what I can do to reduce your squish factor. As for kicking Con tail-pipe," Wheeljack gave a one arm shrug, "As much as I would love to build you a miniaturized photon burst rifle; that would probably get me kicked out here on my aft. And I don't feel like giving up this workshop just yet."

The Wrecker did mean those words. He'd watched too many friends fall in battle. He maintained no illusions about the situation on earth. Miko and the other humans on base were fully embroiled in the war, no matter how Optimus might try to frame it otherwise. Non-combatants were always the first to fall.

A beam of light emitted from Wheeljack's blue optics. It swept over Miko's form from head to toe, sending a slight tingle through her skin. As soon as it reached her feet, the beam flicked off. The Wrecker straightened up again, returning to his full height as he mulled over the scan results. Height, weight, Miko's exact dimensions, her internal bone structure...all this data and more began to build a digital model of her. Once the project was done, he'd delete her schematic from his processor. Humans tended to be weird about having such information hanging about though Wheeljack wasn't quite sure why. Mentally shrugging, he partitioned the rendering of the 3D model to the back of his processor as he focused again on the human in front of him.

That however was something to be done in the future. Wheeljack felt the need to do something productive now, which didn't involve staring at the ceiling.

"Want to come with while I test out some grenades? Made myself a new batch, mixed around the components a bit. Want to see if it'll give an extra kick to them."

[Deleted]

Miko shrugged and held still. As much bravado as she slung around, like a braggart gunslinger, she was well aware of how squishy she was. But if they only knew how frustrating it was to watch them fight and not be able to help. If they could only feel a tiny bit of that sour feeling, they wouldn't be so quick to hold her back. She was small, but she could help!

"That's ok. I don't think June would let me keep a gun anyway." She started at the scan but didn't shy away for even make a face at the tingling. It wasn't unpleasant. And she was used to being around Ratchet and his overly fussy self. Between him and June fussing over bruises, she was used to being looked over with a fine tooth comb. One measly little scan wasn't going to bother her.

At the mention of grenades, Miko's mouth dropped open for a moment before she grinned. "Um yeah! Of course I want to go blow up something! Who would turn that down?" Well, Raf probably would. He wasn't as adventurous if it didn't involve a boring computer screen and lines of code. Blech. He didn't know how to live. "Can I help detonate one of them??"

[Deleted]

There were probably some rules somewhere that governed what the Bots could and could not do with their human companions. There were also probably some more about letting humans handle their tech. Wheeljack hadn't bothered reading either, he'd read the one regarding humans and his lab and not a paragraph further. So he didn't think twice when Miko asked if she could help detonate one of his grenades. The enthusiasm she had was 100% Wrecker and something that he fully got behind.

"Sure, why not?"

Might come a situation one cycle when she had to use one for real. At least this way the kid would learn under safe circumstances. (Or at least as safe as Wheeljack operates on, which normally took several pointed reminders before he adjusted to human standards). Really, if Optimus was so insistent about keeping humans around, they might as well educate them so that they knew what to do in an emergency.

Wheeljack disappeared briefly into the little side room attached to the hangar and returned with a box full of his new stock. He regarded Miko thoughtfully and the box in his servos.

"There's a spot about 30 kilometres out. Little empty gully, got a couple of boulders we could detonate from a distance." Wheeljack subspaced the box, walked out of his lab then collapsed forward into his alt-mode. He'd ping the lab door to shut once Miko was out. Wheeljack opened up his own passenger door invitingly. "Hop on in."

~Fin?