Ep 1.5 Basic Training (closed)

[Deleted]

(Set day 6, in the afternoon)

Wheeljack frowned to himself as he examined his neatly refined bars of Cybertonium or other rare metals he'd pulled from Tailgate's pod. He'd finished his work on the little shuttle, nothing remained of it that hadn't either been scavenged for his spare parts bin or reforged into stock.

And yet, something still bothered him about the whole situation.

The Wrecker wasn't sure what exactly was bothering him, only that something was. He'd given Tailgate a piece of the pod as a momento, so that couldn't be it. He thought he was done here but the nagging sense of incompletion couldn't leave him.

Wheeljack frowned, glanced around his lab, trying to see what he'd missed. But his lab was utterly devoid of anything pod related that required any further work.

Maybe…he was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it wasn't the pod bothering but…

Tailgate.

As soon as he reframed his mindset, the problem became blindingly obvious to Wheeljack. The Wrecker stalked from his lab, heading towards the rec room in a beeline.

::Tailgate:: he commed. ::Where are you and are you busy?::

[Deleted]

"Curse you, Blinky!"


Tailgate mumbled indignantly at the screen as the weeoo-weeoo-wup-wup sound effect played as Pac-Man died for the twelfth time. The human children were kind enough to let the Minibot use the retro arcade game they had installed in the recreation room, but they didn't warn him about how the game got impossibly hard as you progressed in levels. He had been so close to getting that stupid cherry bonus when that nasty red ghost cornered him.

Before he could start the game over, a comm bleeped in


::Tailgate. Where are you and are you busy?::


The sender's ID blipped onto his HUD. It was Wheeljack, the odd mech who had given him the little memorial ingot melted down from his own escape pod.

Tailgate didn't want the imposing mech catching him goofing off. He seemed like the kind of no-nonsense and nobody-shirks-work-around-here mech. And Tailgate wasn't in the mood for getting his audio sensors blown out. Quickly shutting off the game, he swiveled and around and stalked his way out of the rec room to make it look like he was busy. He peeked into the hallway both ways. Nobody to be seen. The sound of footsteps walking in a rather hurried pace was approaching, however. Tailgate made his way into the hallway, adopting a casual pace so it looked as if he was just wandering the halls.

::I just passed the rec room. I'm not up to anything. Did you need me for something?::

[Deleted]

Somehow, Wheeljack wasn't all that surprised to hear that the rec room was where Tailgate was hanging. The mech didn't exactly have an official capacity within the Autobot ranks, so it stood to reason that he wasn't assigned any patrols or chores. There was a small, small part of the Wrecker upon which that waste of resources grated upon, both a remnant of his time as an engineer and the simple fact of surviving the war as long as he had. He disliked thinking of people in terms of resources though, the cold assessment of lives as simple material to achieve goals. That's how command types like Magnus tended to think and Wheeljack fiercely rejected any resemblance between himself and mecha like that.

So, he reframed his thoughts. The fact was that Tailgate was currently a non-combatant in a hostile environment. One taking shelter with Autobot forces but wouldn't be granted their protection forever, just until Command and the mech in question figured out what was going to happen to him.

...Tailgate was also four million years out of time and really had nothing to do with their war. Technically, he wasn't obliged the slightest to get involved even though the obvious thing to was to become an Autobot, since he was living of their own hospitality and using up their resources. But Wheeljack was steadfast in the belief that joining the Autobots should happen because a mech wanted it, not due to obligation. He could remain as he was and take the inevitable conclusion of his current path, becoming an Autobot. Or if Tailgate chose not to join the faction, then he'd probably have to leave and go neutral. In which case he'd be at the mercy of MECH and the Decepticons. Or, if the mech really wanted and managed it somehow, then he could join the Cons.

Honestly, Wheeljack couldn't care less what path Tailgate ended up on (unless he became a Con but the mech really didn't seem like he'd last long in their ranks). What the Wrecker did care about was that there was a mech that no one had thought to give even the slightest bit of basic training so the mech had some survival skills in the middle of a war zone (and Wheeljack hated that he was once again the only mech that seemed to think about this stuff, Primus what the slag was Bot Command doing). Like it came down to it with Miko, Wheeljack operated on the belief of the best defence was not wasting your personnel by assigning a guardian to the non-combatant but actually teaching the non-combatant how to do the job themselves (or develop superior technology to protect them). A guardian couldn't be there every moment of their charge's life and, as Wheeljack well knew, safety could never be completely guaranteed.

::I'm heading to the rec room :: the Wrecker answered. ::I'll meet you there in a few. I'm guessing you've got the rest of the day free, right?::