Ep1.5 - 'Out of Place, Out of Time' - Closed (for now)

[Deleted]

<<Set Week 2, Day 3>>

Megatron had ordered her off the ship. Specifically, Megatron had ordered her to not wait outside the Medbay whilst Knock Out ran a full systems check and performed further repairs around his optic, and to 'go out' and do something 'fun'. Fairwinds hadn't quite determined what Megatron had meant by 'fun', given his current condition, but she didn't imagine it included waiting around the corner from the Medbay playing Sudoku on the bulkhead.

Being told that there was no point in her 'waiting for news' had led her to wondering what was on the gossip vine over in the DMZ. It was highly unlikely that word of their Lord's condition had left their faction, but one could never be too careful even with Soundwave monitoring the pattern of the Vehicons' exvents for signs of Morse Code.

She imagined.

She wasn't actually sure just how deep Soundwave's surveillance went, but the degree to which she did know about left her to speculate that is was uncomfortably so.

Fairwinds had comm.ed Haven and requested entry from outside the groundbridge, nodding for the Eradicon on duty to dial up as soon as Layby's affirmative and the usual DMZ spiel came back. After being scanned, welcomed and turning down the offer of a cube, Fairwinds had left the stocky mech to return to the bar and flown towards the modest Cybertronian sitting area at the far end of the Atrium.

Haven was quiet, its inhabitants all occupied in their own neutral pursuits. And whatever the pet squishie was doing. Settling down on the back of the metal-mesh sofa, Fairwinds picked out the wireless frequency for the oversized television and began scrolling through the channels.

Typical. Nothing was on, and no one was around to talk to. Leaving the channel on a 'Powerpuff Girls' episode she'd already seen, Fairwinds tucked her wings down and folded her neck to her chassis, resigned to wait: either for a comm. call from Knock Out or Megatron; or for someone to 'bridge into Haven.

[Deleted]

A flash of green light danced across the African landscape. A GroundBridge portal had just ripped open not far from the entrance to Haven. A small bot strode out in a very casual manner. Tailgate had made it a habit to frequent Haven when work was slow. His nonchalant walk into the cavern showed his familiarity with the area.

Again, to his dismay, it appeared that Haven was at low capacity. It always seemed that when Tailgate had time nobody else did. At the Autobot base, he was always "getting in the way" and could not help out much since he was not officially an Autobot. He knew that Fortress Maximus would flay him alive if he tried to meddle in Autobot affairs without the proper identification codes. And Decepticons would turn him inside out if he came knocking on their doors, wherever that may be. And by the way Haven was consistently looking, being a Neutral is boring.

Tailgate could hear the distant echoing of strange sounds. They sounded like cartoon sound effects. Which excited him tremendously. He had discovered the wonder that is cartoons at the Autobot base when a couple of bots had gathered around the TV to watch some. Unfortunately he had not been able to watch any since. Not with everyone breathing down his back strut all the time.

The bot slithered into the room as quietly as he could. The main atrium had a wonderfully large TV screen. Tailgate would not have to squint or vie for best seating to see the screen. There were large metallic couches scattered through the atrium, all pointing to the screen. Yet Tailgate could not see anyone else. Odd. He tip toed to nearest couch.

It was strange. He knew he was allowed to be there and he certainly had not broken any rules, but every time he was at Haven he felt like he was doing something wrong. Or, at worst, being watched. Perhaps it was lingering guilt following the Pine Sol incident. To this day the small bot still can't remember exactly everything that happened that fateful day.

Tailgate reached the couch. To his surprise he spotted what appeared to be a cassette bot sitting on the couch. No wonder he had not seen anyone. The small avian cassette was hidden behind these metallic couch cushions. Tailgate was about to say something when bright, flashing lights emanated from the TV and caught his attention. The three small superpower female humans had just defeated a monster with a combined laser eye attack.

"Woah!" Tailgate gasped in awe, "That was AWESOME!"

Squatting behind the couch with his hands grasping the couch and head peeking up from behind, Tailate stared mesmerizingly at the screen with wide optics.

"What is this?" He whispered excitedly.

[Deleted]

Fairwinds had tracked the minibot's approach in an absent sort of way, figuring that they had nothing like the heavy tread of anyone important and thus didn't warrant too much attention. Not enough to turn her head, anyway. She'd pinged a status request to Knock Out and received a curt Wait in response just as he'd reached the sofa.

His question, and specifically the tone of his question, snapped her dull mood right back up to its usual perky plateau. She scanned over the little mech, not seeing a brand but quite certain this wasn't some wayward Decepticon who hadn't hooked up with the Nemesis yet.

"It's awesome, is what it is," she declared, straightening in her perch on the sofa to be that little bit taller. "Not as awesome as 'Cyber Ninjas', but then what show after season eleven ever could be?"

Farwinds sat back to point one foot forward at the screen. "It's about these cranially-deformed flying squishies who fight other deformed organics, and their cool scientist dad thing. Buttercup and Bubbles are like my 2D spirit animals."

The cassette wobbled to her feet on the sofa, splaying her wings for balance as the mesh cushions shifted about beneath her weight. She turned to look down at the shiny visor, took in the 'bomb disposal' printed across one arm, decided that mecha who knew how to un-make bombs probably knew a lot about making them too, and smiled with her whole beak.

"You coming up, short stuff, or what?"

[Deleted]

"Cyber Ninjas."

Tailgate breathed the words as his optics widened even more. As if cartoons could not get any better. Obviously the cassette had much more experience with this sort of stuff than him. All the better.

The wicked grin that grew upon the cassette's beak only excited Tailgate more. This cassette had already hatched a plan, and Tailgate could it was going to be a fun. Though the bot did do a little grunt of annoyance at the bird's short comment.

"Short stuff? Says, you bird brain. My foot's bigger than you." He joked in a calm tone to signify he truly meant no insult. Tailgate scuttled around the couch to the front and plopped down on the cushions hard, sending a shock wave rippling through the cushions. For a moment he was only concentrated on the cartoon; white faceplate reflecting the rainbow of colors. And then, abruptly, the episode's credits rolled. It was over.

"Aww, that sucks." Tailgate moaned. "Guess I missed it..." He began, when suddenly, the intro for another carton started! There were more!

"There's more?!" He squealed with excitement. Back at base, the fun ended when one episode did since everyone had to go back to work. At Haven, apparently not.

[Deleted]

"Pfft - course there's more! This whole channel's dedicated to cartoons!" Fairwinds trilled, absolutely delighted to indoctrinate another into 'Cartoon Network'.

She side-waddled along the back of the sofa until she was next to the new mech, watching the screen from above his shoulder. "I don't get to watch it much back home, cuz Master says it's contaminating my brain with foolishness, but here, you can totally just kick back, hide the remote and watch for hours and hours. At least until Layby kicks you off to watch sports or wildlife or something."

The cassette sniffed, giving the mech another once-over in search of a brand. He seemed friendly, harmless and kind of dorky, which Fairwinds liked. And he liked cartoons. Clearly, from these ten seconds of interaction, they were going to get along famously forever.

"'m Windy," she said. Then, squinting one optic and peering her angled helm at him, she asked, "You a Neutie, a 'bot or a pretty rubbish 'con who hasn't piped up, yet?"

[Deleted]

"Name's Tailgate," He offered.

And there was that looming question. Tailgate had recently discovered that even in the supposed safety of neutrality these warring factions still hated each other here. The pointy looking face decal on the small cassette declared her a Decepticon.

"Uhm, well see I'm not really anything. I'm a little...out of the loop." Tailgate said in a hesitant tone. Though he did spend most of his time with the Autobots, they didn't consider him one officially as he didn't have a proper brand or codes. He hoped this little Decepticon would not insist on trying to convert him. While he truly enjoyed the time he spent with Buffalo Dump, he had heard far too many bad things about the Decepticons from the Autobots. However, he decided that might just be some bias working its way in there. Buffalo Dump never told him about Autobot atrocities, maybe out of kindness or a want to preserve their friendship. Either way he didn't want to feel conflicted. He just wanted both sides to quit this insistent fighting.

"I hang out with the Autobots most of the time. They're pretty cool guys." Tailgate said calmly as he didn't want to make it seem like he was trying to brag.

"Wait, did you say 'Master'?" He asked, a little skeptically.

[Deleted]

Fairwinds regarded Tailgate with a suddenly heightened degree of interest, tempered down to present as a digitized churr and a fanning of her helm crest. She engaged her vocaliser independent of her processor, busily running his specs against her database and that of the Nemesis.

"Yeah, my carrier," she replied, seemingly delighted by this choice of topic. "He's totally cool and awesome, and we've been together since forever. Or since my first carrier got deaded, anyway."

She pointed to the television, but did not shift her hawk-like gaze from Tailgate's optical band. "For all his awesomeness, Master's not into cartoons, so I can't marathon them and squee and be all noisily excited at home like I can here. No body's perfect."

Tailgate wasn't coming up on any known register. Interesting...

One did not 'hang out' with any faction as innocuously as Tailgate seemed to be suggesting. Unless you were an agent and the 'hanging out' was merely faking friendships, gathering data and plotting your eventual murderous spree through a sea of shocked! and betrayed! faceplates.

If you were within a faction's base, you were either a recruit, a potential recruit, an undercover agent, one of Soundwave's cassettes in the ventilation system, or a prisoner.

Tailgate, it seemed, was one of those assumed-extinct mecha who had not fully formed an opinion on who he wished to be ideologically lumped with in even the most general sense. He was, apparently, being courted by the Autobots. Inside their base. With all their personnel and equipment. And they'd let him come out to the Neutral DMZ where there were Decepticons who would be interested in knowing who and what was at the secret 'bot base. And, most importantly, where the damn thing was.

Which raised a few promising questions: How gullible was this guy? How committed to Optimus Prime and the Autobots was he already? How much might he, at some point, be interested in taking a stroll the radius of the DMZ zone and then a step more? And was Tailgate likely to keep coming back to Haven, thus giving an opportunistic cassette ample opportunity to milk him for information?

Fairwinds settled on the cushion as if she never intended to move again, close enough to Tailgate that their exvents were mingling warm air and dust motes. All friendly, like.

"So," she began, optics clicking to the opening sequence of 'The Powerpuff Girls' to give the impression that this was a super-innocent-friendly conversation. Not a sparkless tactic to use him like a disposable datachip. "You say you're just hanging out with the 'bots. Does that mean you're not living with them? Have you got your own ship planet-side you're kicking back in?"

[Deleted]

"Hm?" Tailgate answered dreamily. He had tried to pay attention to the little cassette but those Powder girls were currently fighting a sentient chimpanzee with an abnormally large brain. Tailgate was so fascinated and engrossed that it took a while for him to digest what the avian had said.

"Oh, um, yeah I hang out with them. They gave me a recharge slab to stasis nap on, which was really nice of them. So uh, yeah, I guess I do live with them."

The bird bot's question made Tailgate think. Why did the Autobots let him hang around? The Minibot had always assumed it was out the kindness in their sparks. Here was a poor, downtrodden and unlucky bot who had met a tragic fate. Forcefully removed from his proper time in history, thrust into this uncertain future. What kind of bot would just leave him out in that desert? Tailgate believed that they did it as fellow Cybertronians. At the time, at least. Tailgate had been blissfully unaware of the warring factions at the time. Being as naive as he was though, the Minibot still believed the Autobots rescued him out of goodwill. Yet there was still a small, nagging doubt hidden somewhere in his thoughts that they keep him around for more sinister reasons.

But that thought was dug quite deep. He barely thought about it. The Autobots were awfully nice to him and he shouldn't be so suspicious of such nice bots. After all they were the nicest group of bots he'd ever encountered.

"How come your master doesn't like cartoons?" Tailgate pondered, his optics firmly glued to the screen. "They're so awesome." He breathed.

[Deleted]

"I dunno. He works a lot, and he prefers reading," Fairwinds replied, sliding down the backrest until she was sat companionably next to Tailgate. "But hey, I don't gotta share the screen if he doesn't wanna watch anything, y'know?"

They lapsed into a relaxed silence punctuated by the cartoon's soundtrack of quips and explosions. Tailgate seemed utterly enthralled, as if he'd never seen cartoons before. Fairwinds was barely paying attention, mentally picking apart the mech beside her. She couldn't work out if he was genuinely stupid, grossly naive or something else behind door number 3. The first two seemed the least likely purely in terms of survival, and the latter could cover a multitude of sins. Mind-wipe; chronic processor disorder; super-deep special ops...

Things would be so much simpler, Fairwinds decided, if she could just shove her datacables through his intake and have a little snoop around his brain module. Failing that level of immediate access, a more tedious investigation was going to be required.

Bomb Disposal.

She tapped a claw against the flat plate of his arm, just beneath the boldly written typeface. "Hey neat! I do bomb disposal, too! Only as an amateur, though. Just as a hobbyist."

Fairwinds stared owlishly at the mech before elaborating: "I shoot at them and they explode. I guess you have a tool kit."

[Deleted]

"Nah, I just use my hands." Tailgate said with a wiggling of his fingers. "Tools slow me down, y'know?"

It wasn't a total lie. Using tools would mot likely slow him down because he would have no idea what to do with him. The only thing he knew about bombs was to cut the blue wire. Or was it the red one? Eh, didn't matter at the moment.

"You shoot at bombs? Neat. Good way to dispose of them at a distance, but not so much if there are people around. That tends to put a smudge in your record, y'know?"

"'s a shame you don't get to watch with your carrier. Back at base, we only got this tiny little TV. Always gotta cram around cuz everyone else is always hogging it. This is the best view I've gotten!" The Minibot exclaimed in joy, bringing his arms to rest behind his head.

[Deleted]

Fairwinds' expression was one of genuine awe at Tailgate's wiggly fingers, the Autobot raising a micron in her esteem at the cool reveal of his coolness.

Then he was bitching about the tiny television screen at Omega One, which was some of the crappiest intelligence she'd ever heard. It may be a way in to some good intelligence, though. A roundabout way. Forgotten goat path sort of way...

"I'd have thought with all the meatsa-charming humans hanging around that you'd be pretty set up with entertainment systems. Netflix, X-Box, super-sized plasma screen or straight-up projection system."

The cassette would have stuck out her bottom lip if she had lips. Failing that, Fairwinds flooded her field with sympathy/pity and touched a foot to Tailgate's thigh. "Or does Prime frown in his no-fun-allowed sorta way on military installations having native downtime stuff in them?"

It would likely have been more effective if he wasn't staring quite so intently at Powerpuff Girls.

[Deleted]

Tailgate was dimly aware that the cassette had spoken again. Tearing his optics away from the screen, he tried to remember what she said. The fact that she appeared to be generally impressed helped jar his memory. No one was ever impressed by Tailgate.

"Oh, I wouldn't know. I've never met him. I just kinda do what everyone else is doing. But they don't let me do much. I'm not "official"." As he spoke the last word, he made air quotations with his hands. It truly did bother the Minibot that he was unable to do much around base. They kept saying he could be a liability if they divulged Autobot secrets to him because he didn't have the proper codes. Somehow they were under the impression he was a blabbermouth. Or a spy. Or something. He still didn't understand the total scale of destruction and agony the war had caused the Cybertronians.

"But one day I'll show 'em I'm not some blundering bot. Then maybe they'll actually let me do something."

"I bet you do a bunch of cool stuff. Your Master seems like that kinda bot."

[Deleted]

"Yeah, I go on a lot of solo missions cuz I'm small and I've got all these cool mods. I'm a pretty finely tuned femme, really." She raised her chin, optics flashing with pride. "I earn my energon."

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes, watching the cartoon until it finished and the next ad break came on. Fairwinds honestly didn't understand the Autobot army sometimes. Optimus Prime made a point of protecting and defending the 'innocent bystanders' of the war, usually at cost, and they let useless humans (and apparently guys like Tailgate) just hang around in their bases contributing nothing but a stepping hazard. The Decepticons were an army of killers free from any hindrances surrounding collateral damage, and every soldier could be depended upon to fight and work when called upon.

Fairwinds rocked sideways to nudge Tailgate's arm, getting his attention.

"So what do you have to do to be an official Autobot? Do you have exams? Do you need to capture a Decepticon? Have you gotta, like, prove your Autobot-ness? Cuz that's what Decepticons have to do. They'll give you a shot, like, an opportunity to prove your dedication to the cause, and then you're on your way! I don't get why they're letting you have nap-time at their base if they're not watching you really closely, or working out what to do with you."

Her voice had dropped to a serious pitch, the intensity of her question reflected in her stare. She sounded concerned, worried, and deeply puzzled "Like you said, they don't let you do much. How're you gonna prove yourself if you don't do anything?"

Which an opportunistic little cassette such as the one on this sofa could totally help with in a fiendishly manipulative sort of way...

[Deleted]

TV screen ablaze, the pair enjoyed a moment of silence as they watched the cartoon. It was some odd show about a blue cat and a walking fish that made utterly no sense to Tailgate but he enjoyed watching it anyway. Earth culture was just so fascinating. He could never imagine a Cybertronian thinking up this form of entertainment for bitlets. Not that most bitlets got any form of entertainment. Only the upper crust of Cybertronian society had the money and time to give their young anything remotely close to a childhood. Tailgate, being a disposable low caste bot, had no such privilege. He liked to think such cartoon forays were...making up for lost time, so to speak.

"So what do you have to do to be an official Autobot? Do you have exams? Do you need to capture a Decepticon? Have you gotta, like, prove your Autobot-ness? Cuz that's what Decepticons have to do. They'll give you a shot, like, an opportunity to prove your dedication to the cause, and then you're on your way! I don't get why they're letting you have nap-time at their base if they're not watching you really closely, or working out what to do with you."

The cassette had nudged him to draw his attention away from the cartoons before asking her question. The question did make him ponder on it. Why did the Autobots let him cavort at base without having, or being allowed to, do much of anything? A lingering feeling on his spark reminded him he had a sneaking suspicion why, but did he trust Fairwinds enough to tell her why?

The Minibot sighed.

"Well, if I had to guess, it's probably 'cuz they feel bad for me," He squirmed a little. He didn't exactly like the idea of him being the local charity case. He was his own bot, darn it all! Tailgate was more than certain he could take care of himself without anyone's help if he had to.

"And I guess they're sorta right. I owe them for saving my life but they still treat me like a...protoform." The Minibot's spark clenched. He basically was. Still, he was older than most there. Age has to count for something.

"If I need to prove myself to stay, they haven't told me yet. Maybe they're working up to it." Tailgate joked in an effort to counteract the sudden serious tone the bird bot had adopted.

[Deleted]

She wondered what Tailgate had done to warrant the benevolent Optimus Prime himself, believer of the well-meaning of scraplets and the spirit of Christmas, to need to have this dolt prove himself to become an Autobot.

Fairwinds hummed to herself, wiggling her claws against the sofa. It made a deep scratchy sound, and she scritched a little melody to herself. Another advert break came on, and she turned to Tailgate under the pretence that she was only really interested in this conversation outside of the cartoons.

“Maybe there’s a suggestion box and they’re waiting for everyone to pitch in,” she shrugged, pitching it as reassuring optimism. “Y’know, Bulkhead. Arcee. Prowl.”

Enough of even the smallest energon crystals made a meal.

And so much about this mech just didn’t add up. It didn’t seem like Tailgate was actually lying (if he was, he was really good at it and was playing the ‘harmless idiot’ card as well as she could); his situation was really this unusual.

“Where did you even come from? Ooh!” She stood up suddenly, leaning over the white mech with bright excitement. Were she any bigger, it may have been looming.

“Were you like on a prison ship for ammunitions and explosives experts and they busted you out?”