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.
And with that Reflector plugged into the side of the larger mech's head, feeling s short jolt through his systems before everything went black on his end. Now Reflector hadn't done a whole lot of this thing before, mostly he just hacked in by force, planted a bug and then got the slag out of there. However this time he was being used to store and monitor data, even if it was just briefly, it still had the minicon worried sick over the whole mess.
So far so good - after three minutes of mapping out dark zones, anomalies and glitches, Cleaver began to relax marginally. The damage was extensive, painting a very clear picture of a very brutal hack. It would take two solar cycles to repair the processor damage alone, quite aside from reconnecting the neural circuitry back up to recently-destroyed systems.
The coordinates surprised Ironhide enough that he almost fumbled the cube he was filling; he caught it and checked himself, then continued. ::One breem,:: he shot back. ::Ah'll be there.::
He hadn't been expecting that - should have, maybe, but hadn't. Most Neutrals were cagy around either faction, for good reason, and despite how self assured, capable, and friendly Cleaver had seemed, he had subconsciously assumed that she would be the same when it came to betraying any of her own doings, especially location.
It sent a small flush of warmth through him, that she trusted him that much. Trust among strangers had become a rare commodity over the vorns.
Yeah, keep tellin' yerself that, or grow a fraggin' backstrut an' admit t' whatever this thing is with that femme. He snorted, subspaced the first cube, and began to draw off the second. Ten cubes would deplete their store somewhat - not critically, so long as no one was planning a party or a binge in the immediate future, and Ironhide had put well over ten cubes in himself. He could always claim 'medicinal purposes', which was the traditional excuse for suddenly missing amounts of high grade, and would, in this case, be more true than most - medics tended to use it for other things than just drinking.
The 'thing', whatever it was, was based on little more than an afternoon trading small talk while digging in the Australian outback dirt. Oh, he liked Cleaver, to be sure - she had a strength and a bluntly rough edge to her that he enjoyed. It startled him to think that the sentiment might be returned.
Well... stranger things had happened, he supposed. And he wasn't going to let a little thing like brevity stand as an obstruction to the real flush of warmth that was circling through him. Friends and family were entirely different from comrades in arms, and friends, no matter how new, deserved a little extra effort.
Which left him with eight more cubes to fill and a breem to figure out how to get around whoever was on monitor duty and bridge out without it being logged. Just because Cleaver trusted him with her coordinates didn't make it open intel for the base at large.
What Reflector saw and felt was very much akin to probing around in a dark room with only a tiny night-light to id you. At times he would nearly blunder into something, barely avoiding it as he tried to keep everything from ending poorly. So far so good. However on his return trip he bumped into a shapeless form as he tried to duck under another. This caused a sudden feedback to the little 'Con, jolting him out of the mech's body with a few minor sparks.
"I need high-grade now...three, no five, no a hundred times my mass and then after I've killed myself with it I need you to burn the remains and stomp on the ashes. Primus be dammed! I have no idea how Soundwave deals with these things!"
Reflector ranted a bit as he blinked his optic before closing it again and holding his servos over the lens, making sure it stayed shut for a good long while. As it happened, Reflector had bumbled into a rather disturbing memory, at least it would be disturbing to any being who had even heard the name 'Megatron' before.
Unknowingly releasing a low churr - an instinctive response to calming a sparkling - Cleaver disconnected the hardline and cradled her hands around the little mech. "Steady, Ref - are you alright? Dare I ask what you dived in on?"
All of a sudden Reflector found himself cuddled, combined with the memory he had been forced to live it was enough to cause the minicon to have a short. However Cleaver's soft words and surprisingly gentle touch kept the small mech from spouting more overwhelmed anger.
"I hit a memory, a very disturbing one. I didn't mean to, but when a bot is completely shut down like that, it's like trying to find your own servo in a snowstorm...after it's been torn off and tossed somewhere."
Reflector's hard-coded training kept him from just blurting out what he saw, he was a secret keeper after all and he did a peerless job of it. On top of this he suddenly felt like a naughty sparkling that had bumbled into something it shouldn't have. Reflector didn't have any parents, at least in the human meaning of the word, he was a mech built and manufactured, not brought online through the love, or lust, of other Cybertronians. Being held like this was starting to make his spark ache, not that he could really display the tornado of emotions whipping through his body, thankfully his single opticed design kept much of this hidden.
"You may ask, but I don't think it's for me to tell you... It was a very private, very frightening memory, one that could put you in a lot of danger if you knew it."
Cleaver's tipped her helm a little, her tone frank. "Well then I have to ask. I'm the one who put you in a situation to see it, so I'm resposible for the burden as well. As for disturbing, ain't a lot left these old optics haven't seen, Ref." She thumbed the microparts on his back without thinking to, tucking Reflector closer to her chassis. "Out with it, then. You never know - it might help me with Dasal in some way."
Reflector's massive optic blinked as he stared up at her, such feelings exploded in him that the little mech thought his optic might burst. No one had ever quite held him before, not like this in any case. The little mech closed his optic and vented out some extra heat, which was quickly building in his internal systems as they tried to deal with several powerful emotions all at once. Reflector had never been tortured, hacked or threatened for the information he held, the little mech was normally far too careful to wind up in such situations. Cleaver was working hard to pry that info from him and it was working, only one little fact stood in her way, that Reflector wanted to protect her.
"I know much about this mech. His name, his faction and a secret shared between him and only one other. One that could get me melted to scrap and you to. After all you've done for me, I can't expose you to a threat like that."
Though the possibility was extremely slim that anyone would find out from Reflector, or even catch on that he knew, but in the far off chance a bot did Cleaver would not be put in danger because of it. It was foolish and more then a little stupid, but Reflector couldn't bare the thought of being the reason behind any hurt that falls to Cleaver.
"Please try and understand...I think you would do the same in my place if someone you cared about could be put in harm's way."
Cleaver was silent for a moment, her spark thick with concern and a fistful of other emotions she wasn't used to. Reflector being paranoid wasn't unusual, but being paranoid over someone else's safety and not just his own was exceptionally uncommon. Holding the little mech a little closer, she released a quiet ex-vent and nodded grudging assent. "Alright - I'll trust you on this one. But don't think I can't handle it if you change your mind, alright? Or that it'd ever go beyond the two of us knowing."
Thank you for caring about me this much couldn't come out of her vocaliser, and it would have sounded forced to try. However, her field and expression communicated the sentiment as clearly as words.
Reflector stretched his cord like arms to their limits before giving the giant robot a hug of sorts. He could sense Cleaver's feelings through her field, he knew that she cared for him and it was plain as day that he returned these feelings in full. If reflector were an organic he would have been crying like a newborn babe, however the only sign of this was some static that played across his optic as he found himself nearly crushed against the larger bot.
"Thank you..."
Perhaps it was soaking up too much Earth TV into his databanks or the wealth of emotion just trying to burst from him, or the fact that he had never had a being fill the parental role, or perhaps even a mix of all three . But it took everything he had not to tack on 'mama' to what he just said. Still, Reflector knew he would at least send her something on this planet's holiday that centered around honoring their creators.
Cleaver sank into the moment for longer than her reputation would suggest, withdrawing again with a rough sound through her vocaliser before setting the mech back down on the berth, hands and arms transforming back into blades at her sides. Getting too old to let those protocols run, femme.
"Alright then," she murmured with a touch of grit, settling back into something closer to usual operation. "How about a cube of that good, refined energon and a few breems of television? You had some stuff lined up on TiVo, right? Think you deserve the break."
Reflector gave a small nod as he managed to settle down and turn on his TV, flipping through some of the recorded programs. He also needed time to fully understand his own conflicting emotions, perhaps the answer would be found in some human shows, though Reflector rather doubted it would be that easy.
After seeing Reflector into the main living area of the ship, Cleaver withdrew back into her repairbay and sealed the door. Dasal still laid motionless on the berth, optics dark and body covered in a litany of welds and patches. His autorepair sequences were running effectively, at last, and the medic adjusted the energon line running from an elevated cube into the mech's central seam.
She placed her hand over his helm, absorbing the quiet of the room. Never before had she hoped a patient would be worth the pains of the repairs, but the thought hedged at the edges of her processor now. Before the traitorous could set root, Cleaver locked the place down and made for the exit to meet Ironhide.