We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
This fellow was a trifle odd, but not enough to be off-putting. If he wanted to help, then so be it. No harm in letting someone be helpful, really.
"Oh, the hula girl?", Lukas asked in response to that question, before continuing. "A cheeky gift for my travel partner to grace her dashboard with. Which she will either find some measure of dry amusement in, or will find a way to pitch it out a window when I am not looking. Or she might pitch it out the window when I am looking, I never quite know."
The explanation came with a certain level of amusement, the human thankfully not seeming to find much of anything odd with the question. It was not as if he expected Wildfire to love the trinket with any measure of undying affection or appreciation, after all. He'd settle for a laugh out of it, and not having it thrown at his head.
Still grinning he was as he shouldered out the door, which he paused long enough to hold for Smokescreen before striking off across the lot. Of course, when he noted that Wildfire's hologram appeared to be caught in a round of Awkward Conversation 101 with someone unfamiliar, he picked up the pace from a casual stroll to a bit of a hustle. He wanted to see what was going on, after all.
Zoom-Zoom, as was often in his life, was experiencing a moment of profound regret. He really should have just left this alone. Just stayed the frag away and pretended he hadn't noticed the woman appearing outta nowhere in the parking lot.
Because now he was trapped in this terrible conversation that he'd started and he could feel it going from bad to worse.
His holo arched an eyebrow, from what he knew of humans, they had to live to a certain number of years before they were allowed to operate a vehicle. It seemed unlikely that she'd had it her whole life, but-
Or, it feels that way.
Ah, that seemed a bit more reasonable. If she was a human.
If.
At Wildfire's question, the eyes of Zoom-Zoom's holo widened. In keeping with his position as a spook, his holo was quite advanced and highly expressive though the minibot did not make much use of it. The irony of it all was that while it was quite good at portraying an organic species, capturing minor details and assorted weird tics, Zoom-Zoom himself was just downright terrible at socialising. He could barely manage it with his own species, aliens was beyond him.
"Uh, yeah?" he said, giving Wildfire's holo a confused look. "I don't want anything, honest. I'm a hundred percent sure I have never seen a truck like that in my life, so, yeah. I came over to look. That's not weird. Looking at new things isn't weird at all."
"Right?"
Hula girl. That was the name for the tiny human ornament he was carrying, Smokescreen tucked the name away. He also mentally congratulated himself that he'd picked a normal question to ask. The holo grinned at Lukas's amused answer, a prank gift it sounded like. How cool.
Maybe he should do the same for Zoom-Zoom.
Hmm, but what with.
"That sounds like a cool thing to do," he replied. "Ha, it's given me an idea, what's a good gift for a person who...hmm, you find yourself constantly exasperated with? You just want to annoy them like a tincy, wincy bit."
Smokescreen was sure glad that Lukas held the door open for him because he wasn't sure he could do it himself, while keep tracking of the items in his holo's arms and making sure none dropped to the ground. He was doing incredibly well, considering he'd only fired up his holo for the first time only a couple of days ago, but Smokescreen had always been a quick study.
The holo trotted after Lukas, frowning slightly in concentration. The human's pace had sped up upon exiting the building and it seemed like the man was making directly for that weird truck Smokescreen had noticed earlier.
There were two women in front of it now. Smokescreen's attention was mainly centred on the items he was carrying and it was only when they got close that he actually got a good look at them. The short one looked vaguely familiar, Smokescreen hadn't really taken much notice of Zoom-Zoom's holo from when it was crumpled in his alt mode, something that wasn't helped in that much of its features had been concealed at the time. And he wasn't used to thinking of bots in terms of holos anyway, so he didn't immediately make the connection that the girl wearing the hoodie was actually the red minibot. His thoughts basically amounted to more humans, huh, neat and he unworriedly approached, a small pleased smile on the holo's face at his progress and the lack of dropped items.
In total contrast, Zoom-Zoom was having a quiet panic. He had gotten a good look at Smokescreen's holo, given that it had breached his personal space and actually leant on his window. And then walked through the parking lot. Should he pretend to not know Smokescreen? The minibot couldn't tell whether his patrol partner would recognise his holo, what if he acted like he didn't know Smokescreen and the other mech acted like they knew each other? Furthermore, if this was a Cybertronian they were dealing with, they could have witnessed the interaction between them.
Slag, he couldn't pretend to not know Smokescreen, if he wanted to keep up the act. But the thing was, despite the two of them patrolling together, they'd never actually discussed a cover story for their holos, simply because they'd never used together. Zoom-Zoom didn't even know if Smokescreen had an identity worked out for his holo. The spook did, an extremely basic one, but he'd never shared the information with anyone because he'd never thought it would be needed.
He was definitely regretting this assumption now.
Here's to hoping that the other Autobot would figure things out quickly.
"Hey Smoke-" slag, that wasn't a human name, "Sam!" he corrected himself quickly and loudly, there, that was a human name. "How'd it go inside?"
Smokescreen's holo paused and looked utterly confused to be addressed firstly, by an unknown human, and secondly, who the frag was Sam? Why was she calling him that? At first he looked over to Lukas, thinking that that was the name of the human he'd been following but a moment later, he realised that yes, the short human was talking directly to him.
"Um, that's not my name-"
It occurred to Smokescreen that he didn't have a human name for his holo and that made him start actively thinking about the situation and what he was saying.
The clothes looked vaguely familiar on the human that had addressed him. It took him a moment.
Slag, this was Zoom-Zoom.
What the frag. Why was he here and why hadn't he told Smokescreen what he was up to?
The holo's face went from pleasantly smiling to itself to blank shock. Then he recovered himself and tried to do damage control. "Ahaha, Sam, yes that's totally me. Hey Zoo- Z-" whoops. What was a human name starting with Z? Smokescreen quickly accessed the internet. "Zack!" He had this.
Think, think, think, what else could he say... "Turns out it was pretty boring inside, guess you were right. Didn't find anything I wanted. This guy here thought I dropped a ten dollar note though. Totally wasn't mine! He gave it to the cashier. And when I was leaving, I saw he had quite a lot stuff to carry so I offered to help and heere we are. Um, whatcha doing here, I thought you said you were gonna take a nap?"
Zoom-Zoom's holo had quietly groaned at the name Smokescreen had given him. The minibot had done some research on names and he knew the one Smokescreen has picked was male.
At the question directed at him, the holo tilted its heads towards Wildfire's alt. "Checking out this truck. You ever seen one like this, Sam?"
Adjusting his grip on Lukas's stuff, Smokescreen's holo shot a broad grin at the two humans. "Nope! Looks awesome though, where'd you guys get it from?"
Feeling bewildered and more than a little lost, he pinged Zoom-Zoom at the same time. ::What are we doing and why?::
The minibot's response was a distracted ::I have no idea but it was a mistake. She…kinda appeared out of nowhere. Suspect she might be a holo::
Say whaaaat.
Last Edit: Jul 19, 2016 18:13:51 GMT -5 by Deleted
(I'mma edit my post because LIKE A MORON I just now noticed half of my original post was chopped off. Which makes me wonder when that EVEN HAPPENED. AHA.)
Blast. He had a point. Even by Cybertronian standards her frame was odd. A necessity, but an oddness no less. It wasn't like she enjoyed looking like a bristling abomination. She didn't really care, either way. But it had become a way to deter attacks and maintain safe cargo. Even if the cargo was long gone and the job was basically useless at this point. The only thing she hauled around was her tired self. It wasn't like she had the ability (or the energy) to change her frame to something less garish. There weren't enough parts and she was no doctor. Self modding at this point in the war was a stupid idea.
"She is weird. But I assure you, she has always had her deliveries on time." There was a ring of pride to her words. It was true. No matter what she had to go through (often literally through a mech or mechs) she had had a perfect delivery rate. She'd never lost one supply run. In the darkest reaches of the war, that had been something to hold onto and find some thing worth feeling good over. Like she had been making some bit of difference.
Said truck was debating the merit of just...having her holoform leap into the cab and floor it out of there. True, she wasn't very fast. It took nearly thirty long seconds to reach her top speed and even then, that was having the pedal kissing the floor. But she would be spared this awkward social situation. It was painful. It was never ending. It was-ohsweetprimus there was another one.
Lukas, what are you doing to me?
Once more she wished the human had the ability to receive comms. It would have simplified her life and, in this moment, given her an out. Now she was stuck being introduced to ANOTHER HUMAN. And it wasn't going to swell at the moment to begin with. She had to resist the urge to sink into the cab and hide. And 'she' at the moment was a hardlight projection without real surface tension.
Though she wasn't so wrapped up in her own turmoil to not notice the...weird display between them. For a moment, she thought ZZ's name really was "Susie." But the awkward shift between the two made her suspicious and her form straightened up. What if the approach by the human hadn't been as innocent as curiosity? Or was she being paranoid? But no, even Lukas noticed the oddity.
"Yes, you're both acting strange." Said the 'female' standing beside a garish, odd truck not fitting for a genteel setting. Oh, whatever. If they were Cons in disguise she would deal with them by dragging them away from the human establishment into the nearby field. Sure, it would be in daylight and in clear view but sometimes the Cons made subtlety impossible.
With the confidence of someone who belonged in the situation, Lukas left Smokescreen and his question about gifts behind and trotted up to where the two holograms were having an awkward-off at each other. Casually, he slid up beside Wildfire, shuffling the items and bags in his hold as he went.
"So, what is going on, who is your new friend?", he questioned Wildfire with an a calculatedly casual air, nodding towards Zoom-Zoom's holo. His attention turned back towards his voluntary stuff-carrier when the other young man caught up and seemed to know the unfamiliar face that had approached his travel partner.
He simply watched as the two did some sort of awkward song and dance of their own around each other, fumbling, and floundering over the details and very clearly making them up on the fly. How odd that was.
Well, things were going from arguably normal to arguably ...quirky in a hurry and Lukas was not yet sure what to think of the suspicious situation. This all certainly made him regard Smokescreen differently, The cautious part of him was concerned that this was the set up for some sort of mugging or robbery, with the clearly false details being thrown around. At least they seemed to get their act partly together with an attempt at 'normal' conversation, finally. Though the charade the two were fabricating still felt painfully flimsy.
Lukas just let the two chatter on, expression neutral as he tossed a sideways glance at Wildfire, a look that plainly asked 'what is wrong with these two?'. They wanted something, or were hiding something he guessed.
Clearing his throat, Lukas leveled his gaze on them again and had enough of their blatant peculiarity, "You two are being terrible liars."
Things...weren't going so well. There was another human now, though Zoom-Zoom was unsure whether he really was one or perhaps another Cybertronian was about, since this human knew the woman he'd been talking to.
"Liars," Zoom-Zoom repeated indignantly. "We're not liars. Or acting strange." The holo cast a quick look toward Smokescreen's avatar for support. "Are we?"
::Psst, tell them that we are definitely not lying:: the minibot commed the other.
...was Zoom-Zoom for real?
That's what was on Smokescreen's mind in response to the minibot's latest frantic comm message. He was also reflecting on the possibility that the new human might be a holo. He hadn't paid much attention to her earlier and hadn't formed much of an impression. He decided to roll with Zoom-Zoom's suspicion and labelled Wildfire's holo as 'unknown.'
"Aaare we?" Zoom-Zoom prompted Smokescreen. This wasn't awkward at all, nope, ahahaha…come on, Smokescreen, answer the question...
Smokescreen was already on better mental footing than he had been ten seconds ago. Deciding that you know what, Zoom-Zoom clearly didn't know what he was doing, Smokescreen settled on what was the obvious option to him.
Straight up asking.
"Does the word 'cybertronian' mean anything to either of you?" he asked, ignoring Zoom-Zoom for the moment. "If no, that's fine, we'll be on our way, nice to meet you all, sorry to be a bother. If yes, that's great-"
The minibot's holo whipped around towards him. "You can't-" incredulously the minibot switched over to comms while his holo threw its hands up helplessly in the universal gesture of 'what the fuck.' ::-just going around asking like that!::
Smokescreen's holo shrugged. ::Either they know what we're talking about or they don't. If they don't, that's fine, they'll go on their way and they won't know what to make of it. If they do-::
::What if they're Decepticons?!:: Zoom-Zoom demanded, cutting in again. ::We can take 'em:: was Smokescreen's chipper reply.
It was not a reply that filled the minibot with great confidence.
Leaving the comms alone for the moment, Zoom-Zoom's avatar laughed loudly and sheepishly. "He doesn't know what he's talking about," he said by way of explanation to Lukas and Wildfire. "Time to go Sam! We're leaving."
Now, went unspoken.
It was also soundly ignored.
Zoom-Zoom's holo would turn and start to head back towards his alt form. Smokescreen, on the other hand, would remain, placidly waiting for a response to his question. He had calmly placed Lukas's shopping on the ground and then taken a couple of steps back as if to say, 'Here's your stuff, it's all yours.'