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.
Deep within the Mount Charleston Wilderness Area, a signal pulsed.
A small cave sheltered it. The cave itself was sheltered in the lee of a tall stone outcropping nearly eight thousand feet up the slope of the mountain. Moss grew in thick patches on the rock, and climbed the trunks of the mingled pines and firs that densely forested the surrounding area. Through the gaps in the dark branches overhead the noon-day sky was a clear and brilliant blue.
The cave was deep and dark. It had a low ceiling and a scuffed dirt and pebble floor. The air was much cooler inside than it was out, and carried a lingering touch of moisture from a storm that had passed through the mountain range a few days earlier.
Little sunlight penetrated the back of the cave, where the signal rang out beneath a tumble of loose rock. It was not human in origin.
It sang out on a private channel, intended for the comm of one recipient only. Its lonely message had repeated itself patiently for days, through rock, through thunder and lightning, invisible waves reaching imploringly into the vast wilderness that surrounded it.
It said:
Woman, you want me, give me a sign, And catch my breathing even closer behind. Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo.
There was dirt and more dirt that seemed to stretch the length of blue sky overhead. There were old hills, worn and jagged by weather and erosion, dotting the landscape from horizon to horizon.
Sitting silently on one of the outcrops of red sandstone, her toes hanging over the edge, was something out of place among the natural fauna and flora of Earth. It was a large alien robot.
Dart was peering down at the data pad in her hands. It was an old, worn device, as scratched by its hard-working life as the courier herself. Once it had been one of the top of the line gadgets; perhaps picked out of an expensive store for all the bells and whistles it had. Or maybe it had been a custom order, right down to the hand-finished sleek black case with the bright neon lizard logo on it.
Now the device's dark edges had been rubbed to a smooth silver, burnished by a thousand years or more of metal fingers picking it up, putting it down, writing on it, and putting it down again. The logo was faded by sun and weather and use. There was a chip and a tiny crack in the transparasteel that coated the screen; it had been dropped more than once.
(It had also likely been thrown once at an oncoming angry dog, but managed to survive that just fine.)
The courier's own hands didn't quite fit into the worn finger-grooves on the edges; but it was close enough. Absentmindedly, she brushed her thumb along the sun-warmed metal. She lifted her nose up towards the sky, watching a hawk circle up on the rising thermals and then drew in a long intake of warm air. When she glanced back down, her optics focused on a damaged part of her wrist; a deep, new gouge on one of the dark bands.
The memory of that encounter with the pair of Autobots still rattled her. Dart knew she should be grateful, she had her life. It had been a stupid mistake on her part, a misstep that had could have easily killed her then and there.
Her hand reached up. Dart gingerly ran a finger around the inside of her throat guard. The tiny strip of antenna was gone, the cable torn out. She winced.
Instead of the intermittent silence and restarts from her glitchy comm, it was... well, it was blank silence. Not even a hiss of static or a faint hum.
She at least had that excuse. It had always been a problem, since she was rebuilt. Some things just didn't seem to mesh right, work right. It wasn't uncommon for Dart's comm systems to go down when she was wet or in remote areas. Which was good because she didn't dare tell Pyrotech what had happened the other night; it might not take him long to figure out she'd been out of range of her normal wide-patrol area. If he did, there was a chance it didn't matter what excuse she offered; no, I went to check out a scent, I thought I saw lights out where there shouldn't have been any...
Her Commander might not believe one word she said. Not after Australia. That was a mis-step that she couldn't afford right now. Too much depended on her not messing up.
Yet, what if. What if someone tried to get through. They couldn't. Her one friend right now couldn't but far worse was that she'd miss that one call that she'd been waiting so hopefully for--
Wait. She'd never thought about it. The datapad. Sure, she played Tetris on it. Read books. Downloaded stuff on the internet. Checked her Facebook. No, really on the last one. She liked keeping in touch with those people from the Canyon. It was neat to sort of be on those friends lists and see what they were all doing. They were fascinating and she was lonely sometimes; okay, a lot of the time. It gave her a chance to peek at the day to day lives of ordinary humans and gosh she really should mention to Maximus he should really think about -
Oh. Wow. All this time she'd had this thing and she'd never realized it could connect to frequencies. Well, gosh, didn't she feel dumb. Of course it doubled as a phone, er, transmission pad. Something. She flicked the icons on it for a moment, unsure where to start and then finally found one that seemed like it might work. Right, now all she had to do was plug in the frequency code. There. Got it.
Woman, you want me, give me a sign, And catch my breathing even closer behind. Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo.
The courier's blue optics went wide.
She had expected to hear nothing. It was what she had heard since her arrival back here in America. Absolutely nothing. Yet here- it was something. Her frame went totally still. The tips of her spoiler pricked over her shoulders, quivering as the message drifted out of the datapad's old speaker. It didn't have much base to it; she'd never quite figured how to adjust that.
A long moment passed as Dart sat, staring at the pad in her hands. It wasn't a please leave a beep at the message joke, nor it was a voice announcing to step right up to Pepperland for the Magical Mystery Tour.
It was Duran Duran.
She knew the song. Oh she knew the song. The way she knew an old battered tape picked out from a damp box in a carport. Memories, the smell of wet oak leaves underfoot. The way the white paint was peeling on the support beams after years of no maintenance. There had been other things in that box; ancient plastic horses, the acetate yellowed and worn around their ears and white feet. Books that were so damp the pages stuck together in clumps. Sweaters and socks that still held achingly familiar smells, and the courier had crouched down with and searched through it frantically and awkwardly, fearing discovery in that middle class neighborhood with the Toyota's and Minivans parked neatly in every driveway but this one.
Originally, she'd been so delighted to place that tiny tape into her tape player; singing along for the empty miles to herself. Every word she knew by heart. Then not so delighted that evening when she realized that the old tape had been warped and would't eject from her dashboard. So for years it had stuck there; reflecting the time period of her alt mode perfectly with the dulcet tones of an 80's pop band. She didn't dare go to a medic and ask; not because she was afraid of being laughed at - that was no big deal, she was used to that. No, it was because the tape meant something to her. A little piece of someone long gone from her life. A Decepticon medic would have got it out and tossed it down the incinerator without a second thought.
Yet, he'd never laughed when she told him the story. Not once. Well, maybe a little but it had been with her, not at her. Even if it wasn't his personal taste in music. It was okay, they both liked Aerosmith.
When she got the avatar though one of the first things she'd done was to find a small screwdriver and finally get it out without harm. Problem was now it had been in there so long it was like part of her. Or maybe she was just superstitious- after the tape and her had survived through so much together it seemed asking for bad luck to throw it in solitary confinement within her glove box. So now it just sat half in the tape player, adding to her disguise. 80's car. 80's band.
This song. This song. On this channel that had been silent for months and months.
Give me a sign.
Wait, wait, it looped and repeated, it was like a pager. Like her, really, but how would she find where it was maybe trying to tell her to go? If that's what it was. Maybe the pad had - oh, there - drag and drop, thank you thank you datapad - it gave her coordinates. Gosh, okay, the data pad was smarter than her. Well it sure was probably more advanced technology.
A bit of surprise caught her as she realized where they were. Nevada? Wow. Nevada seemed to be the place to be? Well that made sense, lots of Cybertronian activity. There was an Area 51 joke in all this.
It was not close though. On the far side of the state. Hours at a good quick lope, but that was okay, it was fine - she could do it, yes. Pyrotech had been gone off and on lately. He vanished sometimes, often for days, collecting materials. Plus, he did not like the truce. He hated it. He actually took the time to talk at her about it; which was not like him at all. Usually he didn't talk to her about anything except did she smell anything dangerous. No? Then take point and keep searching.
Right now though, it didn't matter. Only one thing did and it was close and she'd been so afraid something had happened, that she'd never see --
The courier scrabbled suddenly. A whirl of dust and pebbles as she practically leapt into the air, all leg. She landed on her feet, the data pad in her hands. A joyous sound bubbled out of her throat as she hugged the pad to her scarred chest. A dancing sidestep, a toss of her head, she pranced on the dirt.
"In touch with the ground,"she murmured, her accent burring her words in some places and clipping others. "I'm on the hunt I'm after you. Smell like I sound, I'm lost in a crowd..."
Which was true. All of it. Except that weird little line about smell like I sound, which she'd never quite been able to understand. You didn't smell like you sound- wait, huh. You know, you kind of did. Big heavy mechs carried heavy smells of oil and machinery with them; the lighter ones held less.
Wow. What do you know. It does kind of make sense! Simon Le Bon is a genius.
With a laugh, the courier dropped her hand, flicked open her hip carrier and stuffed the datapad back inside. Locking it down, she turned her nose, sniffed the air, orientating herself with landmarks. That direction, right. She should be able to make it there before nightfall. Maybe.
Then she took one step, two, tucked her knees up like a steeplechaser and leapt-
The signal led her to a trailhead at the base of a great stone mountain. High above her the rock was cool and pale beneath the afternoon sun, which glowed off its peaks. Scattered firs climbed the shale slopes, growing wherever their shallow roots could find purchase.
At the base of the mountain the forest was dense and scrubby. Trembling birch and aspens mingled amount the pines. The footing was mostly pebbly rock and moss. Dead branches littered the forest floor.
A broad trail wound upwards. Here there was hard-packed dirt, dry and dusty in the summer heat. It was evidently a walking trail and, judging by the small footprints in the dirt, the rutted tire tracks, and the lingering scent of sweat and suntan lotion in the air, it was a well-used hiking trail at that. In fact, Dart stood at the bottom of Trail Canyon. If she listened, her sharp audials might even detect the distant happy shouts of hikers from further up the mountain. It sounded like they were a half-mile ahead, obscured by the brush.
But the woods were open enough for a robot of her size to slip through, and there was enough brush that, with care, she would likely be able to quietly climb undetected.
The signal sang its song all the way to the foot of the mountain. Whenever it ended it simple looped back and started again from the beginning, over and over. Darken the city, night is a wire, steam in the subway, earth is afire…
But, well, Dart was probably used to that.
Last Edit: Apr 23, 2016 15:28:22 GMT -5 by Deleted
By the time her toes touched the first scattering of shale, the song was so stuck in the courier's head again that she'd been humming it for the last hundred miles. Dart loved Duran Duran, sure, but somewhere around Warm Springs when she'd been in touch with the ground for the umpteenth time, she'd really missed her dang antenna. No way to dig through the local radio stations for something else to help shake it out.
She'd paused at the base of the mountain. The courier was at home in places like this; steep climbs and pines. It didn't have the density of Oregon forests; nor the large, spreading oaks and Douglas Fir that threw deep shadows along narrow gaps between them. Dart had learned to use to her advantage. They helped hide you from discovery both above and below; sometimes they were so thick and the duff muffled sound so thoroughly that she'd watched people less than a hundred yards from her hike on by and never notice she was there.
Laughter drifted; and her spoiler pricked up; she inclined her head to listen. Someone was having fun up there.
It was still safe passage though; the aspens broke up heavy outlines with their clusters of heart-shaped leaves. A sniff and the sweet smell of their sap mingled with the scents of the hikers on the trail. Dart drew in another gulp of air; yes, to help rebalance her cooling systems after a long run, but mostly because the touches of humans painted a picture of their day that she always had to stop and explore. Coconut sunscreen smelled awesome like this; artificial, of course, but it didn't have the cloying odor of banana or mango.
She had no idea why, but she would have cheerfully buried her nose in a bottle of it, given half a chance.
A smile caught the corner of Dart's mouth before she shook herself a bit and looked up at the mountain. Then with a quick shake that flicked stray pine needles and road dust back into the forest, the courier slipped back into the brush.
Carefully, she began to pick her path through the pines, heading towards the broadcast's signal.
It was an easy climb. The slope was not perilously steep, though the dead branches underfoot would make picking a path difficult. A loud snap would echo here, with few ambient sounds to drown it out. It was good that the courier was sure-footed; a bigger robot would find such a cautious trek arduous.
Before long the forest floor gave was to outcrops of rock. Tall boulders and crags loomed between the trees. The air cooled, losing the dry heat of the foothills. The sun remained bright overhead, and it dappled the earth and rock beneath her feet in shadows. Birds warbled in the fir boughs and flitted through the underbrush. The sounds of human chatter fell behind her the higher she climbed. Evidently the trail had wandered off to more picturesque locations than these cool, calm woods.
The signal lead upwards, to a place where the old mountain rock made sharp overhangs and tall, eroded cliffs. In the distance other peaks could be seen, blue with atmosphere. The trees were shorter here, more gnarled. Many were dead, but still clung stubbornly to the thin soil. Fallen trees lay across Dart's path like driftwood, weathered by sun and rain and stripped of their branches.
Eventually she would come across a small cave. It sat at the base of a mossy outcrop. A pebbled clearing marked the mouth of the cave, which lead back into a shallow den perhaps thirty or forty feet deep. It smelt empty.
The back wall of the cave was faintly visible. It was mostly collapsed rock, as if the cave had once been a part of a deeper system before the ceiling had come down. Luckily the ceiling did not appear to be unstable now. It was low, but tall enough to admit Dart if she crawled.
Scruff marks marred the dirt floor. The signal chimed gently from the fallen rock at the back.
Dart enjoyed the climb. A few times she couldn't avoid the fact of weight coming down on one of the branches; she was sure-footed and light, but in the end, she was a huge metal alien machine, not an agile goat or silent cougar. When it happened and the sound cracked out into the natural silence, the courier would instantly freeze; her nose lifting to test the air warily around her before she carefully picked her way up. Even though everything in her just wanted nothing more to fling herself back into motion and bound as fast as she could the rest of the way, in an attempt to somehow expend the emotions that made her shift from foot to foot, to paw at the bare stones; giddy glee, delight, relief...
Yet there was some other feeling that was winding its way into Dart's thoughts.
Trepidation.
It brushed against everything, sniffing and lurking, waiting to slink forward, like the wolf, er, a wolf- oh geeze, song, get out of my head, well, I guess you never left. It wasn't the fact that she was so far from the base in a state that had more robots that turned into cars than a toy store in Japan.
Nor was it the fear about getting caught on this excursion by her Commander. Honestly, that was always there. Someday Dart expected to get crushed into a tiny cube and used as a doorstop for some of the things she'd done. At least now she'd go out having seen the mighty Hoover Dam from a very high bridge.
This anxiety was something different. It was long days and longer nights spent having time to think. Time to wonder. Miles of running alone in the wilderness where she replayed a thousand moments in her head, places, conversation. They had been with her since Australia, from the salt flats to the rain-soaked harbor. Holding tight to a borrowed datapad.
Dart had been terrified that someone might find out and take it from her. More so than any other of the memories she carried with her from place to place, because...
Well, because borrowing something meant you'd have the chance to give it back someday.
Picking her way lightly over the last of the fallen trees, the courier gently nosed her way through the last of the scrubby trees. Briefly, she hesitated; her last experience with a cave in the middle of Nevada hadn't quite been one of those fun moments. The courier padded around the perimeter, sniffing; searching for any scent out of place and did not find one. She hestiated and shifted back and forth from foot to foot.
Sure, someone else might have pried out this frequency. It was always of course possible, if terrible things had happened. However, there was no way any other Cybertronian would know this particular song. Or consider it at all an effective way to draw her to it.
Her spoiler pricked forward as she eased towards the mouth of the cave one careful, quiet step at a time. At the mouth of the cave the courier squatted back on her haunches and rested her weight on her fingertips. A soft whuffling noise escaped her as her spoiler flicked forward. On seeing the collapse within, she eyed the roof of the cave, checking automatically for water fractures. They were very common in places like this, where water melt ran through the surrounding stone, then iced up fast in winter and sheared apart. It caused serious, dangerous collapses.
However, it appeared as if that the damage had not happened recently, and that the remaining area was solid and safe.
One final look behind and above her to reassure herself that she was truly alone and then Dart edged forward on her hands and toes. Another mech might have found it a bit awkward, but she'd had to scramble through so much terrain over the years, and had spent many a night in places like this. Thick rock helped disguise your signal from anyone who wanted to find it, and it also kept off the worst of the weather.
The courier lowered her head to sniff at the scuffs on the dirt floor, trying to process any scent from them before she eased her way towards the pile of rock and the signal singing from underneath it.
The dirt floor beneath her hands was dry and mostly smooth. Something had disturbed it in places: a scuff mark here, a rut there. No obvious clues indicated what might have left them behind. The poor light within the cave didn't help.
But they were small marks, left by something no bigger than a shoe or a paw. Hopefully not by a bear. Bears were bad news.
Above her the ceiling was slightly damp where moisture had seeped through the soil above and wormed down cracks in the rock. But they appeared old, a natural result of pressure and erosion. Perhaps in a hundred years the stone would give way and the cave would be filled with rubble. But not today.
A few scents had pooled in the still, shady cave. They clung to the moist walls. A whiff of soil and pine, of course. The light but persistent odour of damp rock. Lichen and moss. A few human scents lingered in the air - sweat, lotion, synthetic fibres - but they were old and slowly breaking down. A week old maybe? The cave was only a mile or two off the main trail. Perhaps a hiker had discovered it and poked around inside.
Oddly, an arid trace of cigarette smoke was present. Stranger still, it appeared to be only a day old. Sniff, sniff, and- sniff. Coffee?
They were strongest at the back of the cave, where the signal rang out from beneath the pile of rock.
Moose were downright mean. The courier had a healthy respect for wildlife after living in Alaska. Bears at least had the decency not to go after a car creeping carefully by them on the roadway but moose? No way. Either they walked imperiously down the middle of the road as if they were some sort of long legged, barrel chested, flappy-necked royalty... Or they decided they frankly just didn't like how you happened to look at them today and had no problems attempting to stomp you into the ground like a pancake.
Dart crept forward along the dirt. Her chest nearly touched the ground as she moved, her spoiler pressed gently to the back of her shoulders, betraying her concentration. As her olfactory sensors sifted through the scents the courier lifted one hand; curling it under her as she paused to snuffle at one particularly interesting patch. The forest scents were normal, they were always present and in the background of this place. Yet she was so fine-tuned she was able to sort of set them aside like they were something tangible and physical, gather up one particular smell as if it was something she picked up in her hand and studied from all angles.
Sweat was always there. Humans sweated all the time. Scurf floated off of them every step they took; skin cells that gave off odors that were as specific as a fingerprint. All the things that surrounded them, the clothes they wore, their pets, if they'd wiped chicken grease off on their pants that afternoon after a quick run through a drive-thru.
This was old though. Of course this cave had been explored. It was a pretty place to take a picture. That thought relaxed her a bit for some reason as she set her hand down and continued towards the rockfall.
Yet-- wait, cigarettes? Yes. There was that sharp smell of burned tobacco. Cigarettes had weird smells; not like any other sort of natural smoke. At times it smelled of mothballs and something that she could only equate to nail polish remover. Or weirdly, rubber cement and roadway tar, mixed and swirled together.
The courier gave a short little snort to clear her sensors before she drew another pull of air into her systems.
Oh! Coffee!
That smell caused her spoiler tips to perk and her optics to half-close for just a second. She loved the smell of coffee, weirdly enough. One of her favorite things to do was to sniff garbage cans outside of the Starbucks and let herself focus on the smell of coffee grounds. It allowed her sensors to reset themselves; cleared out the information that was hammering her constantly from all sides, every moment of every day.
Weird that the cigarettes and coffee were newer than the other scents. That struck her immediately as strange and then-- maybe it wasn't so strange after all. She knew that well, an avatar only carried with them what they had been in contact with that day. So it was entirely possible that an avatar had been used here lately.
You know, that would have been a lot easier to get in here like that, she realized, feeling very silly all of a sudden. Gosh, she used it all the time, why hadn't she thought to use it here? Then again, if someone had hiked up and seen a Trans-Am parked up here, it might have been on Facebook before the day was up. Mysteries of the great Nevada back-country!
Well, no, she needed her nose in here too. The avatar didn't have that capability. Plus, now that she was inside the cave, she wouldn't get spotted from the air. Better to be safe.
Belly low, Dart finished creeping towards that rock pile in the back of the cave. Once there, she reached out a hand and then hesitated. Quickly she examined the rocks and how they were sitting concerned all of a sudden that she might accidentally move something and crush what was beneath it purely by accident. Maybe the avatar would be better now...?
The rear wall had collapsed a long time ago. That was easy to determine by the wear on each chunk of stone that blocked it up; time had gently eroded all sharp cracks and edges. A thin layer of muck lay over them here and there, having dripped from the ceiling in damp weather like drizzled wax.
But it was rubbed off in places too, as if someone had recently moved some of the stones. Most of the larger ones had fallen to the side or else lay at the bottom of the pile. Some of them were as big as a chest. They would be cumbersome for a human to move, and sure enough they were the ones that looked the least disturbed.
A handful of smaller stones sat in a neat mound in one corner. Each could easily be picked up and held by a human hand. They looked as if they had been carefully stacked.
As if over a little cache.
The mound was maybe two feet high, and not much wider at its base. A sweep of her hand could knock it over - but might also damage whatever lay sheltered beneath it. This did seem a task more suited to the dexterous fingers of a human. Or an avatar.
After a careful moment of observation, Dart decided that there was a good chance that she might accidentally move the wrong stone and crush what was carefully set underneath it. There was a tiny bit of delight and humor when she spotted the cache. All these things were adding up quickly; there were very few mechs out there that knew she had the avatar. Actually, there were only two.
She wasn't supposed to have it. It had never been built into her originally. Dart was careful never, ever to let Pyrotech know. If he found out it would have been ripped out of her in thirty seconds.
The femme paused and set her hand back down. She braced herself, and concentrated. Weirdly, this wasn't as difficult to do when she was in her alt-mode for her for some reason. When she was a car, it was easy to use that as a base point. In robot mode there was always this odd disconnect, like she was trying not to look at two different levels at once.
A moment later, there was a slight shimmer, a flicker of light that materialized in front of her. It hissed and crackled. A weird flicker warped it, as if it was trying to manifest two places at once. The crouching femme rumbled out a little noise of frustration. Come on. Come on, don't do this, not now please work-
The light solidified into form. The lean college student shook herself in the same way the robot usually did; a full body shake from nose to toes. She brought up a hand and smoothed down her black T-shirt, and shifted her weight back and forth, as if testing the way she was standing on the floor of the cave.
The rip in the knee of her jeans gaped and exposed a flash of pink band-aid. Automatically, the avatar reached up and brushed her scruffy bangs out of her eyes and tucked a strand of loose hair that had fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear. Then she rocked back on her worn sneakers. Both the robot and avatar turned their heads at the same time as if taking one last look around. The dark femme stilled, the only sound coming from her the soft whuffle of intakes.
The avatar moved; it trotted towards the rockpile. In less than a moment, the girl knelt, and began to carefully lift off the stones, one at a time.
The rocks lifted easily in her hands. In her steady and careful way the young avatar would be able to clear the small mound and lay it aside. In the dark, quiet cave there was no one to see if she glitched.
Stone by stone, what lay beneath was slowly revealed.
The signal faded.
At the bottom of the rockpile was a small metal box. It would fit in the palm of her hand were she to pick it up. The outer casing was finely welded, crafted by some unseen engineer's hand. It was scuffed and battered, as if it had been through hard times.
There was a little switch on one side of it. No writing indicated if it was in the 'on' or 'off' position, or what the switch even did.
As the rock exposed the box to air and light it gave a friendly little ping of interrogation. Whether it received an answer or not it was evidently satisfied by what it had learned, because it went dead shortly after.
The cave floor tilted.
Light swam. The glimpse of green forest outside the cave gently irised out as the world went dark.
Dart's personal universe switched off.
----
It was dark. All was quiet.
Dart… did not dream.
----
It would be the friendly jingle of the bell over the glass door that would wake her up.
She sat in a booth next to the window. It offered her a slightly dusty view out over the parking lot, where a row of cars baked under the bright morning sun. Beyond them was a lonely two-lane highway, and beyond that the desert stretched for as far as the eye could see, the horizon broken only by distant mountain ranges and cactuses.
There were quite a lot of cars in the parking lot already, and quite a number of patrons inside the diner. Chattering voices rang out over the clatter of cutlery on plates, of cups and saucers, over the spit and hiss of bacon and pancakes griddling in the kitchen behind the counter. Bums shuffled on stools as the line of old men sitting at the counter ate their breakfasts and drank their coffees and talked about the recent storm and the rising price of grain.
The diner was bright and airy. Behind the counter were glass fridges stocked with milk and pies, rows of toasters, and shelves of clean cups and mugs. A cash register sat at one end, next to a handheld phone. Every table had its own pair of salt and pepper shakers, and a little holder full of napkins.
If Dart looked down at herself, she would see… well, herself. She still wore the same black T-shirt, the same ripped and faded jeans with the hole in the knees. There was a menu on the table in front of her.
There was another menu on the other side of the table, where a man in a loud red and white flower-patterned Hawaiian shirt sat on the opposite side of the booth. He lounged back and watched her with an air of amusement. A cigarette smoked in his hand, which he rested on the window sill.
"Before you say anything, shut up, I like this aesthetic," he said. "The sort of retro fifties, sixties thing. I like it. It's nice. Got a good style. Or I'm just a sucker for old kitsch. Now. Secondly."
He took a drag off his cigarette and breathed smoke. He waved through it, gesturing to himself.
"Do you know who I am?" he said. "If you do, don't say my name out loud. Just nod or say yes if you recognise me."
He gave her an up and down look and added, "Kiddo."
The little box settled softly in her hand. The courier looked down at it and then her fingers slowly, carefully curled around it, holding it protectively as if it might vanish or break, now that she'd uncovered it. Oh, a gadget, a tiny gadget, scratched and worn. Her thumb came up to lightly brush against the surface ever so softly, fleeting and light, and with that, a memory from over eight thousand miles of ocean. A crooked smile.
Crooked like the desert and--
Dart was used to being woke up by the snap of voices over a comm. Exasperated, cultured voices that always held a thin-veiled threat; where are you, I want you here now. Now meant yesterday, and she'd heave herself on to her feet and be hurrying somewhere, even before her processor had fully come to grips with the whole on line thing.
Sometimes though, the courier woke for other reasons. Four smooth walls with no windows, no doors, no light. A box with lack of smell, sound, and sight, every sense deprived from her. Endless circles in her dreams; pacing exactly ten steps from one memorized corner to the next. She turned right before her nose hit the wall, over and over in a pattern that had gone on for so long that even when she stopped, Dart could not remember how to stand still. Instead, the courier rocked her weight from one foot to another, swinging her head back and forth, her mind desperate to find some air current, some scent, something to focus on. Find that chink she'd somehow overlooked for eternity in this prison. Let there be one, because she would run as far and as fast as she could and not look back, don't ever look back- just run, flat out. At speed, nothing could catch her. No one could catch her.
Yet they did. Every time.
Those were the dreams that rattled her so badly that all she could do was bury her nose into her hands and let her intakes heave until she regained herself enough that she was able to get up and run. It didn't matter the direction. Only that she had one she could go.
So the soft, cheerful jingle of bells didn't bring her back immediately from whatever absolutely quiet place she'd been in. In fact, all she did was bury herself a little farther into that kind bliss of pure silence but that only lasted a second before --
Dart sat bolt upright in the booth. Her avatar's Band-Aided knee hit the bottom of the table. The perfectly balanced white dish of coffee creamers was right front of her, and the courier gave a little gasp and automatically made a grab for them with the same sort of frantic panic she got whenever she was inside any human place and afraid of drawing attention to herself...
Hands extended, she froze like a deer in oncoming headlights.
This was so not Starbucks. This was not a soft, dim decor with overstuffed chairs and a billion places to plug in your computer to write the next great American novel. It didn't have booths made of recycled wood from local, sustainable sources. The table here was veneer, the whorls all printed into it, shiny and gleaming melamine. The walls were painted red, the tile behind the eating counter just a slightly different shade of bold. The booths and seats were warm chestnut brown that almost but didn't quite clash; it somehow worked perfectly together.
People. Humans. Not a single one of them looked over at her. They were absorbed in their morning; hunched over breakfast, their focus entirely on their plates of food and their steaming cups of black coffee and their own conversations. Oh, the weather. Talking about the weather was one universal constant that anyone could add their feelings on. Even Cybertronians talked about the weather day in and out. Rain today? Yep. Rain tomorrow? Yep. Still raining. It's Oregon, does it do anything else? Nope.
Dart couldn't remember ever being here in her life.
In fact, she had no idea where this place was. The courier lifted her eyes to the records lining the space over the counter and thought she recognized Elvis. Maybe. Hard to say. Confused, she turned to stare out the window next to her. The sky outside was blue and bold, and clear. Cars parked, resting faithfully and patiently in the parking lot with their interiors baking, waiting for their owners to return. She looked for her own sloped hood- because that would make sense in some weird way. An avatar glitch. Heck, just her normal glitchy self, right?
Automatically, she raised her nose and tried to sniff the air before she foolishly realized she was totally using the avatar, and no, she couldn't scent anything like this. Use your eyes and your ears, remember how those work, come --
Then she spooked again. This time she came nearly out of her seat and honestly did smack her knee hard into the table. She hadn't even realized the man was here. The courier stared at the bearded fellow comfortably ensconced in the booth across from her. What? Wait, wait, had he been here this whole time? The amusement throughout his body language told her he had, and Dart was absolutely baffled. A little scared too, but right now she couldn't see anything about his body language that said he was dangerous, so she allowed herself to warily squish back into the seat utterly, obviously thrown and confused.
Also, she'd apparently somehow insulted his favorite breakfast place.
"Huh? Oh, gosh no, no," Dart apologized instantly, the words blurting out of her. "I'm so sorry, no, I think it's really neat actually- er, the diner, I just-"
Don't remember how I got here?
Erk. Dart cut herself off mid word because that wasn't at all the sort of thing you said if you were a sane human. It was the sort of thing you said if you'd been roofied in a bar in a TV movie. At least this guy didn't have the slick suit and combed back hair like an over the top cheesy villain. Actually he looked like - okay, sorry, he kind of was dressed as if the world had decided it needed a Magnum PI reboot. Oh geeze, that was also probably super also insulting, no Dart, no don't say that aloud.
By the time she stuffed that thought into the nearest do not say that space the man was gesturing to himself. Dart was really trying her best to not look like she was going to make a a snatch and grab for her purse (wait, where was her purse, anyway) and attempt to dash into the bathroom. There had to be a window she could crawl out of. Oh, that was also so 80's. Wow, Duran Duran was really stuck this time.
At the last word he said though, she forgot all about her purse. Also about running.
Such an utterly human thing to call something like her, and weirdly, the courier delighted in it. The man in front of her said it with the offhanded casualness of someone who totally understood the nuances of Earth slang, too. That was a rare thing in her corner of the world.
"Kiddo..?" she echoed.
The courier inclined her head, peering out from under her scruffy, wind-tangled bangs. She lifted her hands off the menu and set them down on the wood-grain formica, folding one oh so carefully over the other as if she was afraid to touch anything in front of her. The courier hesitated before she stretched out her nose towards the man across from her as if she was trying to place him - not by sight, but by the one sense she trusted her very life to day in and day out.
Then Dart's jaw dropped slightly. The avatar seemed to suck in an intake of breath. Dawning understanding slipped across her features, her blue eyes were wide. The pupil within them slightly expanded as she took the man in again. Bold and bright Hawaiian shirt, the way he casually settled back against the chestnut pleather seat behind him. His body language was calm, still amused, and comfortable; completely relaxed right down to where he was resting his lit cigarette nonchalantly between his forefingers.
Smoke twirled up towards the slope of white ceiling tiles.
A blink, and then Dart's shoulders lifted up into a well-taught, military level line. The courier's long fingers raised off the table and were halfway to the small of her back before she realized that just wasn't happening the way she was seated. A second passed with her looking a bit caught out before she settled them back onto the table. The neatly rolled napkin with the silverware inside of it slid under her fingers. Dart instantly straightened it.
Then she offered the man across from her a shy, lopsided smile.
He laid his arm on the table, the cigarette burning between his fingers. He was a middle-aged man, with dark, windblown hair and a well-trimmed beard. Dirt and dust from the road discoloured his red and white shirt, which was rolled up at the elbows to reveal tanned, weather-worn forearms. A walky-talky was clipped to the breast pocket. His blue eyes were fixed upon Dart.
"How about you call me Marco for now?" he said. "At the risk of sounding corny, I'm going to have to refer to you as Polo for the time being. I suspect both our names are keywords in the system, and the last thing I need is for anyone to look this way because red flags sprang up on their interface. I can keep other users from jumping into this session if they discover it, but not from listening in, alas. Or, god forbid, just hitting a switch and recording all data."
Marco rolled his eyes. The cash register let out a cheery jingle-jangle in the background as someone paid for their meal.
"Anyway, I'm sorry our first face to face meeting had to be under these circumstances, kiddo. To a certain degree of 'face to face', that is." He hooked his fingers around the quotation marks. "I needed to talk to you in a hurry, and this was the fastest way to do it. Also, I just like coming here. Mostly for the waffles. You want a cup of coffee before we get down to brass tacks? They serve good coffee here. I should know, I make it."
Without waiting a reply he twisted in his seat, his arm flung over the back. "Hey there, Miss? Could we have two coffees, por favor?"
One of the waitresses behind the counter smiled and waved at him.
"Yes, s- er, Marco," Dart repeated carefully, just so, like she did with any message she'd been told to hold tight and carry. Don't forget.
Every moment that passed, even more familiar things were falling into place. Dust on his red and white flashy Hawaiian shirt. Blue eyes that stood out against his tan, a few shades lighter than her own. His voice, rough and gravelly, held that undertone of a person who had seen the entire world ten times over and truly appreciated the times it stopped trying to kill him.
It was so strange to hear it directly from him and not from something that looked like a Run-About Ball for hamsters with a speaker on it.
Polo?
The courier looked down at herself again, and her eyes rested on the logo on her shirt. There was a tiny little smile that briefly quirked up the corner of her mouth. Polo's perfect, it's not corny, she wanted to reassure him, but certainly didn't want to interrupt him. In fact it was-- well she'd take a nickname like that in a heartbeat, since it wasn't Red Rover, or Kick the Can.
Dart inclined her head the other way and watched at the man in front of her as if she was trying to take everything in at once that he was saying. Around them, things were happening; the people were moving, the diner felt as real and solid and alive as any place she had ever been in her life. The sort of place where everyone went to discuss how many perfect wedges of cherry pie on gleaming little plates in the cases they'd eaten over the last two years.
Out of all the scenarios she had been thinking on her several hour lope across the desert she truly had not been expecting Marco. It had not once even crossed her mind that that particular signal, that private, personal connection would lead her to him. Oh. Er, wait, does he know about the whole tape cassette stuck in the dashboard story? He has to. Oh boy, that's embarrassing...
Dart been in quite a few weird situations since coming on line, but this one was right up there with old ladies chasing her out of the yard with a broom. The courier could admit to herself though that she sort of expected this strange place to abruptly to fall out from under her, that any moment now she might be thrashing out of a bad glitch and waking up on a shipping container in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Or on Candy Mountain and missing a kidney. Not that she had kidneys, thank goodness. It was hard enough to camp out on patrol in a parking lot spot for six hours without that becoming a problem.
I suspect both our names are keywords in the system...
A lot of times you didn't need a full sniff of some situation to know it was incredibly dangerous. This wasn't even a whiff, this was was a reek as powerful as a poor skunk flattened in the middle of the road. A slight shiver ran up her back. The courier's shoulders twitched; echoes of her spoiler pricking forward, then settling back and down. Dart was good at doing her job, keeping quiet, staying out of the way. Mechs forgot about you then, let you be, and a lot of the time they didn't even address you by name. Having your name be known was never truly safe among the might of the Decepticon army.
Red flags on what? Other users? Jumping into a session? Someone recording all data was not good, though. Unless you were the one maybe the one doing it. It was confusing, and the courier struggled with just how to process all this. Dart just focused on Marco and every word he spoke caused a growing, insistent worry that was growing stronger by the minute. This was nothing she would have come up with on her own. There was no way her brain could have made up something like this, even after watching Tron. This was as solid as a scent for some reason, it told her no, it's not you. This is real. This is him.
Yet when he turned and gestured to the waitress, Dart blinked.
"Coffee? You... make coffee?" she echoed, even as she carefully slid her fingers to touch the menu in front of her. She couldn't help but skim through the choices on it. There was more than one kind of waffle. Neat. Everything in her wanted to ask how he was making coffee but no, she had caught his warning. Dart had no idea what might catch someone's attention right now, but she was pretty darn sure it was attention neither Marco or her wanted.
"Yes please," the courier said gratefully. In the face of a whole lot of things she couldn't understand, a coffee cup was familiar. Something she could hold in her hands and settle herself with. "I'd love some. and- ah, gosh, no no don't apologize, it's all right. It's really nice to finally put a face with the voice, too, promise. I like your shirt."
Then she looked back up at Marco. Concern etched at the corners of her mouth. "My-" No, don't say comm, you have no idea what might make someone hear you, but that's certainly a word to avoid just in case. "My phone's been out, it got broken. Bad. I'm so sorry, I don't know how long you've been trying to call me, I only realized I had a backup just today..."
"You needed to talk to me? Are you all right? Is he--"
She cut herself off and looked down at the menu again in her fingers, because she wasn't sure what was a safe question to ask right now. For reasons. Lots of reasons.
"Yes, and no," he said. "I'm fine, but I don't know what the hell is going on with him, and that makes me grumpy. It's actually one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. And thank you, Polo. Did you hear that, Candice?"
He yelled the last bit over his shoulder. "She likes my shirts!"
"She's just being nice!" yelled back an elderly waitress, who then winked at Dart.
Marco scoffed and turned back.
"I wondered why I'd been having trouble getting you on the horn," he said. "Phone is out, eh? I must have gotten through on the old- er, iPad. That's good. I didn't want to send you a direct radio call because I'm not entirely sure how secure my transmissions are or who is listening in. I know the DIA is getting curious about me, which is funny because I've been contracting for the NRO for about eight months now. I don't one-hundred percent trust my encryptions with any sensitive information yet. But I figured Duran Duran was a code that you'd figure out in a hurry."
He took a puff on his cigarette. The tip glowed red and then withered into ash. It dragged a thin line of smoke behind it when he reached over and tapped the cigarette over an ashtray. A tiny detail. Like the windex streaks on the windows, the boot prints on the floor, the pin in a waitress's hair. Little details.
A young woman with ginger hair pulled up in a bun approached their table with two cups of coffee. They even steamed.
"Black for you, Doc," she said. "Sugar and creamers are on the table if you'd like some."
She smiled at Dart as she set a cup of coffee in front of her. It did smell good. If Dart touched the cup she would even feel the heat though the ceramic.
As the woman walked off Marco grinned at Dart. He waggled his eyebrows at her.
"Try it," he said. "It's not every day you get to do something like this, is it?"
Last Edit: Apr 29, 2016 10:33:22 GMT -5 by Deleted