[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]This Ain't a Scene [Skirmisher | Open]

[Deleted]

The light thudding of Xero’s pedes against the metal flooring of the base heralded her entrance into the main room. The overhead lights shone off her black armor, catching the pink stripes that decorated it. As had become the norm, a warning flashed at the top right hand corner of her visuals. Energon readings were low, as they had been for a good while now. It was no secret among them that starvation was a real threat. The bare bit of energon she’d had with her during her crash had sustained her for a few days. Barely. The ration had truly only been meant for one, two at most, not weeks. A few vorns earlier, the morbid irony of the situation would have brought a small smirk to her lips. After millennia of being shot at, blown up, damaged almost to offlining, and somehow surviving despite a literal army attempting to kill every last one of them, they would die here, at an Autobot base, safely surrounded by comrades. During a truce with the Decepticons. Not a single shot fired.

Fate had a cruel sense of humor.

As she neared the command center, she pushed her darker thoughts aside. She had been given patrol duty, something that was becoming increasingly more difficult, but, was still undeniably necessary. Truce or no, the Decepticons were still active, and, if they discovered the base’s location, she had no doubt in her processor that they would seize the opportunity to attack as soon as hostilities resumed. Which they inevitably would. The animosity between the factions ran too deeply for a short ceasefire to deter it. Though, the fact that there was a ceasefire proved that they had made at least a short gain toward peace. Maybe, one day, Megatron would give himself to reason and the war would come to an end.

Unlikely. The war wouldn’t be over until his spark was extinguished.

 
The former commander paused, fully ready to transform but awaiting her designated partner. Skirmisher was not a bot she’d encountered yet, as he had arrived only two days earlier. Not that she had sought him out.  Xero was not the most personable bot. Though she hated to admit it, the vorns of war and lost comrades had made her resistant to the formation of interpersonal relationships. The dark part of her that had come into being with the start of the war asked ‘why bother when it’s only a matter of time before they die too’? Despite this, she had been making an effort to at least behave in an overtly civil manner. She hadn’t thrown Hot Rod through a ground bridge and into Antarctica, yet. Though, in reality, she somehow doubted even that would stop his incessant chattering. He would most likely find a way to communicate with the native creatures there and irritate them until they sent him back.

A small sigh left her in the form of a venting of air. The influx of ‘teenagers’- a human term- had been troublesome indeed. She could only hope that Skirmisher didn’t fall into that age range.

[Skirmisher]

[Episode 2.5: Week 1: Day 6: Location: Earth: North American Continent: United States of America: Nevada, Jasper, Omega Outpost: Ground Bridge Control Room]

Having been in his assigned quarters, Skirmisher had been preoccupied cleaning the components of the Ion Magnum after having carefully and meticulously disassembled it. The maintenance may have seemed unnecessary given the auto-cleaning functions on many of the more modern weaponry or the default programming built into the weapon itself designed to clean the weapon whenever it wasn’t used, but for Skirmisher having known each component of the weapon meant he’d know how it would perform or when it was clogged. As an Enforcer, it had been his responsibility to have known everything about his assigned sidearm, gear or other weaponry. Prior to having lost the standard issued blaster revolver, he’d given that sidearm the same treatment in cleaning each component to where it would fit without an issue or operated with an increased efficiency. Along with every Enforcer he’d served alongside, he’d come to know every aspect of the sidearm that had at times saved his aft-plating. It had been a time-old, time-tested practice, a ritual if one wanted to have called it.

Having taken the time to carefully and meticulously reassemble the Ion Magnum, he’d cleaned up and stored the tools and solutions he’d used while having cleaned it. His quarters had retained that lived-in state, but at the same time he’d insured and even triple checked where each tool and solution had been before having stepped out of his quarters. With the Ion Magnum secured in its holster in the concealed compartment beneath his left arm, he’d locked the hatch behind him using his own personal encryption code. With a power-cell locked into the Ion Magnum with several spare magazines carried in that same compartment and maybe a few others in other hidden areas, the Enforcer mech had proceeded down the corridor. While he’d found many of the old military caste to be counted among the Autobots within the faction, he’d found that the majority had lacked or at least held some rudimentary appreciation for cleaning their own weapons manually. He’d known that many of the commanders within the faction including Ultra Magnus had made it a point for a mech or femme to have known every facet of their weapon that they could have reassembled them even when in a recharge cycle, but he’d also come to a rather sad realization or rather observation that many more of the faction’s members had been civilians or from non-combat professions which had meant they had lacked the very basic understanding or concern about their own equipment.

One of the more growing concerns that had seemed more a peeve of his own rather than an outright issue for the faction had been the influx of teenage mechs or femmes arriving at the Outpost, and become parts of the Garrison. While he’d understood that mechs and femmes varied in ages or had been sparked in different eras, he’d still found them to have been more than annoying. He’d observed human teenagers hadn’t been that annoying, though they had the unusual tendency to have misplaced their pede coverings or to have been preoccupied in tournaments in a digital media while Cybertronian teenagers had enough firepower that if the teenage mech or femme in question had been unable to control their own tempers had the all-too-real risk of reducing a small community into a crater. He’d had his share of rough encounters with teenaged mechs or femmes back before the Great War sparked off, and had at times slammed the restraint fields in place in front of their cells.

While his pedes carried him through the corridor and into the Control Room, Skirmisher’s focus had been on the patrol he’d landed according to the patrol schedule. It had been true, that he hadn’t had much opportunity to have explored the Earth they called home or at least the modern day Earth. He’d been a bit too preoccupied over the last few days since his emergence from stasis by reading up on the modern-day Earth he’d found himself in, and in figuring out the layout of the outpost to have bothered much in exploring beyond the walls yet. As per protocol and also the fact he’d been told they’d needed to blend into the surrounding area, he’d managed to have found a preferred Alt-mode before having scanned the VTOL craft known as a V-22 Osprey into his databanks before having transformed into it. Making his way into the Control Room, his optical visor detected and focused on the black and pink femme present within the center of the outpost itself.

[Deleted]

When it became obvious that she had arrived first, Xero took a moment to run yet another self-diagnostic. Ever since her crash, she had been wary of possible reoccurring malfunctions. Her optic was in the same state it has always been, functional at the moment but undoubtedly ready to glitch at the slightest provocation. At least it was working for now. Nothing else came up, aside from the constant warning at the edge of her HUD. That was a given. Lack of energon aside, she was at optimal performance level. Hopefully, it would be enough to counter anything that lay outside the safety of the base. She was used to going into a situation without knowing the enemy, but, Cybertronians all had the same basic anatomy and gamut of abilities. She had no idea what humans were capable of. She had not been privy to the videos that Javelin had mentioned, videos that apparently depicted MECH’s brutality, but, hearing of it was enough. For the first time in a long time, a spark of something like anticipation shot through her.

The sound of pedes coming down the corridor caused her to turn her head incrementally, just enough for her to view the hall properly and verify who was approaching. The finlike pieces of her audio receptors fanned out and shifted in a miniscule movement, the circular piece at the center rotating. A mech emerged from the hall, moving into her field of vision. Habitually, her optics swept over him from helm to pede in a quick glance, taking in his build, armor, visible weapons, and so on. He was larger than her, which was unsurprising. She had discovered early on that was one of the smaller bots at the Omega outpost. Judging by his heavy armor, he was some sort of enforcer or combat class. His lack of features caused her to lean toward enforcer. Pre-war, which meant he wasn’t a teenager. She felt instant relief.

Xero turned slightly to face the new arrival.

“I assume you’re my patrol partner for this afternoon?” she questioned, voice as neutral as ever.

If so, perhaps this wouldn’t be such a bad patrol after all. She had been dreading that it may be Hot Rod who was going with her. Fortunately, her fears were allayed when her partner’s designation was relayed to her.

 
“I am former Autobot special forces commander, Xero. A pleasure.”

[Skirmisher]

[Episode 2.5: Week 1: Day 6: Location: Earth: North American Continent: United States of America: Nevada, Jasper, Omega Outpost: Ground Bridge Control Room]

“It appears so,” Skirmisher said, responding to Xero’s question about partners. “It’s an honor, Commander. I’m certain my designation codes were already transmitted, but for formality’s sake I am Skirmisher. Officer, and Enforcer. I’m not a stranger to a tour on the streets. I have never been one to brag or boast. I have held that actions speak louder than words,”

As with any Enforcer, he hadn’t been a stranger to a tour among the streets either to insure order had been maintained or to gather information or perpetrators in action. His partners had varied during his time with the Praxis Enforcement Department, but the first partner he’d had after being welcomed into the Department had been an older mech by the designation of Vault. During one of their first tours together, the older mech had explained he’d been sparked in the early cycles of the Golden Age before Zeta Prime had formed the High Council. He’d learned that Vault had been an Enforcer following the implementation of the Caste System, and that he’d chosen to live in the city-state of Praxis. Skirmisher had remembered the older mech, and his first partner fondly for the lessons he’d taught him among many other things, and knew that there wouldn’t be another mech or femme that would replace him in Skirmisher’s mind.

“A former Special Forces operative?” he’d asked, having gathered or rather observed from the femme’s own body language and given Xero’s admitted past as a special forces operative that she'd been able to hold her own at least and among other things hadn’t been a teenager either if she'd been able to obtain the rank of commander formerly. Signing out a medical field kit from the proper station including particular vital information ranging from the time and date to what state the kit had been in, he’d unlatched the case checking visually to see if everything had been present and in place from numbing agents to a handheld plasma torch with adjustable settings and its own power cell. Several small rolls of patches had been present to anti-coagulants that staunched the seepages of oil and energon or at least slowed it enough, and lastly a handheld scanner complete with its own power cell capable of recording the readings of a patient’s vital systems. He hadn’t doubted Ratchet, the Garrison’s physician, hadn’t triple checked the med-kits before having stocked them, but Skirmisher hadn’t been one to have left his own gear unchecked and hadn’t been one to have left provided gear unchecked. Stowing the med-kit in the concealed compartment beneath his left arm, and the upper left flank, he’d made sure to have secured it alongside the Ion Magnum. The panels slid closed leaving a sleek, solid piece of plating in its place.

“I’m ready when you are,” he’d say.

[Deleted]

Primus, how long had it been since she had been addressed by her rank? She was struck by a flood of memories from Cybertron, the last place that she was truly called as such. Long before Earth, it seemed. She inclined her helm to him, something she didn’t do often with the chain of command being so odd on Earth. While there was a hierarchy of sorts, it seemed rather vague to Xero. Optimus was, of course, at the top. But, without Ultra Magnus, who was his second? It was a shame that the old warrior was absent. He had a discipline both as a soldier and a Cybertronian that Xero admired.

 
“Likewise, officer.”

She had received his codes. Over the vorns of endless war, Xero had received many, many codes. Each was unique, but, as they blended into the mass of information that had accumulated over time, they lost what made them unique. She much preferred a face-to-face introduction. That was easier to remember. They had lost so many during the endless conflict, many of whom were faceless identification codes to her. If they were to lose more, and they undoubtedly would, she wanted to remember their faces, voices, and natures rather than heir codes. It was sentimental, yes, but, she had never denied being so on occasion.

It did settle her mind that he was an enforcer. It meant that he was no stranger to combat and could likely hold his own if it came to a fight. It also meant that he had been constructed pre-war, thank Primus. She didn’t think she could function with another teenager about after dealing with Hot Rod.

“Yes,” she replied to his clarification, “I was the commanding officer of a squad that operated in primarily using guerilla tactics against the Decepticons.”

She watched as he retrieved a medkit, a bit surprised. A medical officer as well? A good skill to have, and in short supply these days. Though, even the best medical officers would be obsolete if things continued as they were.

When he vocalized his readiness to leave, Xero gave another nod. With a shifting of gears, she folded into her alternate form. The headlights on the black coup came to life as she peeled out with a brief engine rev. The sound settled into a gentle purr, the lights from the short exit tunnel gleaming on her black paint. Then, she was out in the open air. Finally. She needed some brief time away from base. As she drove, she kept a communications channel open.

Maintaining a moderate pace, unwilling to chance the notice of any unlikely passerby, Xero turned onto one of the desert roads and headed east. The sun was still high in the sky, listing toward the horizon as the afternoon dragged on. It was nearing Xero’s favorite time on this strange, organic planet: evening. The way the sun sank from the sky and disappeared, turning the sky and landscape a myriad of colors, never ceased to fascinate her.

[Skirmisher]

Watching the Femme transform into her alt-mode, a flashy sedan or rather flashy in his opinion, the Enforcer realized that assuming his own alt-mode within the confines of the outpost would have violated at least a few regulations. Following her through the short tunnel, the report from the large pedes changed from a thud on the concrete floor to a muffled one on the asphalt lining of the tunnel and upon reaching the opened door at the far end of the tunnel Skirmisher allowed his optical visor to have swept the vicinity including ground and air while Xero sped off in her alt-mode.

Finding the area had been clear, the Enforcer began his transformation. Shifting the gears throughout his frame including the myriad of panels, conduits and others, the Enforcer’s bipedal form gave way to first the armored frame and hull of a V-22 Osprey VOTL complete with pivoting armored nacelles arrayed at the tips of the wings to the twin-tails. An individual armored hub sprouted from the ventral surface of each of the nacelles before a set of three rotor-blades emanated from the hub or in a more organic sense grew from the central hubs in each nacelle. Back on Cybertron, his armored car alt-mode had provided him both acceleration, and protection, but here on Earth in the modern age he’d opted for a change and had scanned the form of a V-22 Osprey both out of practicality and that he’d be able to utilize some of his programming as an Enforcer -- or as he’d found the human phrase had been an eye in the sky. An holographic hard-light projection of a Major in an appropriate flight suit, with the appropriate insignia formed in the pilot’s seat provided from an armored and concealed series of holo-projectors as a means to throw off unwanted attention, scrutiny and to pass himself off as an Osprey in flight. While he'd been designed on Cybertron as a ground-pounder, having assumed the alt-mode of the Osprey he'd discovered flying had oddly become rather natural or at least as natural as an artificial composite and titanium construct which in this case had been a cybertronian alloyed construct could have handled and even on close scrutiny he would have passed as a normal Osprey in operation.

With the nacelles angled forward similar to a traditional aircraft, the V-22 Osprey VTOL pushed away from the outpost allowing the tunnel door to close behind him flush to the surface of the mesa surrounding the outpost keeping it safe from the outside world and the outside world safe in the knowledge such an outpost hadn’t existed. Angling the nacelles into their vertical positions, Skirmisher opened the throttle gently. With the massive propellers spinning at speeds appropriate for a short VTOL take-off, it hadn’t taken very long for the Osprey to have lift-off from the asphalt road-surface and Skirmisher plotted a course to follow Xero at a discernable altitude of roughly ten thousand feet or so while keeping an eye out for any Decepticons, and MECH though with the uneasy Treaty in place finding an errant Decepticon causing a ruckus had been an extremely limited possibility. Once the determined altitude had been reached, Skirmisher angled the nacelles forward with the propellers aimed ahead in a manner similar to more traditional aircraft. One couldn’t have doubted the Enforcer’s primary programming having been maintaining law and order, but the differences between what constituted law and order on this planet and what constituted law and order on Cybertron had been something Skirmisher had taken the time to have studied on. Having studied information pertaining to his chosen alt-mode, the Enforcer had discovered that the V-22 Osprey’s service ceiling had been twenty-five thousand feet or seven thousand six hundred twenty meters and with that in mind he’d chosen for this patrol to have maintained a healthy altitude of roughly ten thousand feet.

[Deleted]

The last patrol Xero had gone on had ended with the perhaps unfortunate finding of Hot Rod. This time, she was hoping that it would be quiet, routine, if not short. With fuel as low as it was, they wouldn’t be able to be out long. Still, even a little time was better than none at all. And it allowed her to watch how Earth’s sun set below the line of the horizon.

Because time was so short, it meant that staying near the base was necessary. Scouting the immediate area for possible enemy activity took first priority. Then, they could branch out. She turned at the next intersection, beginning what would become a wide circle. Even as she drove, though, it unsettled her not to check the nearby town. The unlikely place had become a sort of hub for Cybertronian activity and, with their odd fleshling allies residing there, the possibility of a threat taking root there was too much to ignore. After all, the Decepticons may use this time of truce to attempt to scout out the Autobot base location, and Jasper would be the logical place to start with so much Autobot activity there. She mulled this over for a moment before speaking through the comm. system.

::Officer, for the sake of efficiency, I suggest that we divide our efforts.::

The black coupe maintained a speed just above the human limits, just in case there was an enforcer who ventured this far outside the town limits. As she came upon one of the red markers the humans called ‘stop signs’, she slowed, rolling to a halt briefly before again setting off. Observing the rules, even the seemingly inconsequential human ones, was the mark of a good soldier. This, she firmly believed.

::I do not believe that we can afford not to check for Decepticon activity within Jasper, despite the ceasefire. Would you be willing to utilize your aerial capabilities to fly over and initiate a scan for Decepticon energy signals?::

It was still odd for her to phrase things as requests. Four million years of giving orders had built habits that were hard to break. Still, break them she must. She was not in command at Omega base, which meant that she and the others were equals and must behave as such.

[Skirmisher]

“We're thinking on the same wavelength,” Skirmisher said, over the same encrypted channel. If he'd been honest with himself, the notion that there hadn't been other Cybertronian craft either hovering off of the highways or soaring the currents above had seemed a little odd to him.

He'd known he'd had to adjust, the same as when he'd been reassigned to Earth with his previous unit. The dull brown and green plateaus, and rock pillars that had been in the surrounding vicinity of the concealed Omega Base had soon given way to green brush and trees along with a few rivers snaking here or there and at least one rock quarry or at least that he'd been able to have determined that rolled more than several miles beneath him. The data PaDD he'd read had labeled this region as the state of Nevada, in the larger country the United States of America and while Nevada had been located in the Southwestern region sharing a border with another state he'd found had been called Arizona it had meant the region had been rather arid. Trees with other plants had grown, dotted the land here or there, along with as he'd passed over the city of Jasper at a relatively normal altitude for a V-22 Osprey he'd noted some manicured lawns and others of a more shaggy nature. Structures of concrete or adobe or even wood and brick lined several main asphalt surface streets while other side streets branched off reaching other sectors of the city, and he'd noted two main highways connected the city to the rest of the state. A single main highway crossed through the center of Jasper from east to west while a second highway ran from another direction from north to south with both vanishing over the horizon.

"Negative on the sensor sweeps. I'm not detecting much of anything at this altitude outside of the normal human activity,” he'd said, having activated his long-range sensors cued to detect Decepticon activity.

Though, he'd found the local humans below had erected their residential and retail structures without having taken into account the heat absorption from the noon-day sun when it crested above the horizon at its highest peak and that the asphalt, concrete and steel though the concrete more so had the nasty habit of reflecting that absorbed heat back skyward and into the atmosphere. As the case had been, Skirmisher had found himself to have come rather close – if you could call about thirty to forty miles out close – and had in turn readjusted his altitude and course. Maintaining the same relative altitude of roughly ten-thousand feet while altering its course to come about before entering a controlled descent to shed roughly three thousand feet for his sensors to have gained a better lock on any Con activity or activity of MECH. He'd kept away from making a fly-over of the city of Jasper, and kept closer to the outskirts before climbing up to an altitude of sixteen thousand feet. He'd read that humans, especially their military, had possessed a type of radar that to Cybertornians had appeared primitive in comparison yet even the most basic detection system had a nasty habit of having picked up someone's presence. He'd known it wouldn't have been a good thing if the human military had picked up on his presence, and with that in mind pushed out some of his external bulkheads lining his frame to become more angular which followed through with the engine nacelles and the turbo-props knowing full well even if it had been through his combat encounters that a craft or vehicle that had possessed angular features had a far better chance of appearing far smaller if detected on a radar system or a Cybertronan sensors. “I'm performing a passive scan. I don't want to trigger any Decepticon systems, or for that matter the human radar I've read about. I'll keep this channel open, and I'll update you on any findings. If you run into trouble, I'll swing by and offer assistance,”

Throughout his discussion over the encrypted channel to the femme on the surface, the hard light holographic projected avatar he'd tailored to his tastes to resemble an air force pilot from the appropriate helmet down to the flight suit and other apparatus had formed in the pilot's seat with its hands gripping the flight yoke even though Skirmisher hadn't needed it to have flown. The hard-light avatar had formed shortly after Skirmisher had taken to the air, and as he hadn't completely known the human naming conventions he'd settled on a shorter version of his own name of Mitch. Having researched the rank and grades of the United States Air Force, he'd assigned the rank of Major to the Avatar and the last name of Howser. He'd opted on the Avatar to have kept any prying eyes from growing suspicious, and that if he'd appeared to be a normal Air Force craft very few would have even questioned it. Even the numbers on his hull to the tail numbers had been as correct as he'd been able to make them, although given the various pictures found on this planet's internet which had been of a slower variety to what his kind had used he'd been able to get the idea of how ordered those tail, flight and squadron numbers had been and how they'd worked.

[Deleted]

This, this was what she was used to. Patrolling, surveying the area, recording nothingness. Blessed nothingness when compared to the war-torn surface of Cybertron. Reconnaissance had been necessary for Squad Zero’s activities during the war, and she had always despised it. She’d hated passing by the empty husks of buildings and the rusting components of the fallen. Oh yes, her processor would tell her, that is where that lovely little café stood. Or, at least that confirms what happened to Hearth. The rocks and sand of the Nevada desert were certainly preferable.
The reports Skirmisher sent her were another relaxing bit. Simply processing a calm tone and listening to an assurance of normality was soothing to her. Particularly after what had happened a few days prior.

::Understood. My initial sweeps are also negative.::

She took another road at an intersection, speeding as much as she dared across the desert.

::That would be wise. I’ll stand by for your report.::

She continued her own sweeps, keeping an eye out for odd human activity as well as Decepticon signals. It the human organization, MECH, came snooping around, she dreaded to think of what may happen. She still did not understand why they did not just bring about a strike operation and whip the organization out. Perhaps there were certain political aspects she was unaware of. Though, she doubted that would stop the Decepticons. Surely, with Soundwave’s abilities, or rumored abilities, rather, they would be able to track the humans down. And Megatron would have no qualms about destroying them…

She came upon one of the red octagonal signs and slowed to a stop. At least…she thought that was what she was supposed to do. It did say “STOP” in large white letters. After a brief pause, she took off again. What odd little things they were to have out here in the desert.

A small strike force may be able to take MECH on if backup were available…And do so without the human government’s involvement. Of course, as the former leader of such a force, it was natural that she think so. Whatever the case, there were a number of poor variables playing against them, and she didn’t like it at all.