[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]Water Damage [Open]

[Sparkplug]

Episode 2.5 | Week 1 | Day 1

The room gleamed, the bright, clean colour of freshly polished metal. Bright, pure white lights shone down, evenly illuminating workbenches bolted to the walls and the equipment that dotted the floor in precise areas devoted to individual functions. It was completely unrecognisable from the murky, rusty mess that it had languished as for so long.

At one end of the chamber sat a broad chair, surrounded by plenty of space to move around in. The chair itself had obviously been made by hand, but lovingly so, constructed from a sequence of hinged panels and small linear activators that allowed it to enlarge and contract according to the framesize of whoever might sit in it, or lift them up to waist height, flattening out into an inspection bed. Ranked tools hung on the nearby wall in descending order of size, all within easy reach of someone standing beside the chair.

Further down the room, workbenches and tools were ranked neatly along one wall, in what was designated by neat white script as the assembly area. One workbench was completely bare, while the rearmost portions of others were occupied by neat storage units filled with screws, bolts and other miscellaneous parts in tiny drawers, flanking an oscilloscope and a couple of pieces of more esoteric diagnostic equipment. On the opposite wall, the fabrication area consisted of larger, floor mounted tools, such as a lathe, a pillar drill and a large circular saw, together with a vacuum-sealed, glass-encased box with a pair of waldo arms inside for working on microcircuitry.

At the furthest end, the room was occupied by a compact test-firing range. The three walls were plated in thick armour, as well as the ceiling and floor, marked with neat black and white calibration grids as-yet unscored by weapons fire. The firing point was a U-shaped opening in the enclosing barrier that sealed the firing box, crafted from thick transparent aluminium to give an uninterrupted view of the insides. A pair of cameras fed a nearby monitor, allowing recording and playback of test firings.

All around the room, at a height just above the workbench surfaces, a broad band of white traced the walls, giving the wandering optic relief from the gleam of silver metal everywhere. Along the same wall as the door, two large monitors were set into small recesses in the bulkhead and fixed to a continuous feed from the Nemesis's hull mounted cameras, to give the illusion of a view out onto the blue sky, clouds and distant ground drifting by below. They gave the already substantial chamber the impression of being rather larger and more airy than it was, belying the fact that the room was deep inside the vessel. Sparkplug was quietly proud of that touch.

The smooth wall behind the chair folded back, sliding along railings set in the ceiling and floor, to expose a small alcove fitted with a sleeping rack. It would be a bit claustrophobic to try to rest in there with the concealing wall sealed, but with the rack pivoted to the vertical, it could be hidden neatly away during the day. Sparkplug stepped out of the small space, stretching her arms and rolling her shoulders to work the stiffness out of her bearings.

"Perfect," she congratulated herself happily, venting a small sigh of satisfaction. Sure, the tools she'd scavenged were a bit old, and she'd ending up building most of the workbenches and the like from discarded metal sheet and suchlike that had been bound for the recycler, but everything was oiled, buffed, and in perfect working order. The smell of fresh lubricating oil permeated the space, a pleasant, welcoming scent that made her feel far more at home.

"Think I'll reward myself with a bit of music," she decided. She'd been saving that as her prize for finishing all the clean-up, and now, she could finally kick back and relax. She hadn't really rested for a couple of days, and she felt pretty tired, now that everything had been settled to her satisfaction. Her digits danced over the wall-mounted console inputs - she still hadn't gotten wireless access sorted out - and with a ceremonious push of a final key, she cocked her helm to listen to her new speakers.

Dead silence.

"...huh," she murmured, frowning. Pages of information flashed past as she dug into the audio subroutines, looking for the problem. "Oh, gotcha. Address conflict, no wonder they weren't working. Here y'go."

Sound burst from the speakers, but not the music she expected. Dozens of overlapping, panicked voices, with conflicting reports of fighting all over the ship. Sparkplug jerked in surprise, backing away from the panel as she tried to make sense of the sudden, deafening rush of noise. Obviously, some kind of attack was underway, and she was missing it! While she was fussing with interior decoration!

Caught between conflicting urges to run out of the door and help repel the whatever it was, and needing to stay so she could figure out where to run to, she hesitated. Then the decision was taken from her hands. Without warning, the Nemesis nosed down sharply.

"Wargh!" she yelped as the floor dropped away under her, and she went skidding backwards to slam into the transparent barrier shielding the firing range. The ship quivered and jerked, curving to the side hard enough to toss her across the room and slap her into the gap between the pillar drill and the lathe. Small boxes of screws, bolts and circuit components slid loose one after the other from their housing on the opposite wall, each dropping sideways across the room and smacking her in the faceplate.

"Ow! Ow! Stop it - ow! - already!" she protested, trying to fend off the falling boxes with one hand. Another jerk of the vast ship and she found herself rolling upwards, crashing into the ceiling and shattering a light. "I just fixed that!" she wailed, then threw herself to one side as a heavy crate came loose from its bolts and slammed into the ceiling where she'd just been.

"A sneak attack in the middle of the truce?!" she panted, grabbing at the edge of the broken light fitting to stop herself sliding across the ceiling. "I thought only we were that sneaky!" She winced as another hail of bolts clattered across the room, banging off the blast shield, and added indignantly, "Don't those underhanded, lying, two-bit, scum-ridden, rusty, salt-drinking pocket calculators know how long it's going to clean up this mess? I just- not the circuit components! It took hours to sort the-"

The drawer of circuit components rattled loose, releasing a shower of chips and microcircuits like a brief, expensive rain.

"I'm going to stuff a frag grenade right up your afts, you inconsiderate, slag-faced jerks!" she howled. Clouds were whipping past the pseudo-windows, and as the dive steepened, she lost her grip on the light fitting and rolled down the sloping ceiling, smacking into the edge of the folding wall-section and pulling the end out of its track. Before she had time to protest this fresh indignity, the ship slammed into the ocean, all-but stopping dead in a few crowded instants. The deceleration plastered Sparkplug against the end wall with a resounding clang, pinning her there briefly before she slowly slid into a crumpled pile in the angle between wall and ceiling.

Creaks and booms of stressed metal thrummed through the body of the ship. Somewhere in the confusion, her speakers had cut out, leaving her with only the distant sound of metal twisting and the dull, far-off roar of water eagerly finding its way through broken seals. Sparkplug slowly sat up as the lights flickered and died, leaving the dim glow of the monitors as the only illumination. The pseudo-windows showed murky glimpses of deep blue water, foaming with bubbles as air escaped the fallen hulk and rose towards the surface above.

"Seriously, though, ow," she muttered.

With the care of an invalid, she slowly stood up, and banged her head on the chair, now hanging from the ceiling like a misshapen chandelier. Hissing in exasperation, she stumbled over to the wall monitors, and stared in display at the deep, foaming water. "We're in the sea? The horrible, corrosive, saltwater big wet thing. That's just - that's great."

Turning towards the door, she peered through the blue-tinged gloom, then switched on her headlights. Only the right-hand one turned on; the other was riven by a wide crack, and remained dull. Gritting her denta, she scrambled over the detritus littering the ceiling to the doorway, the top of which was now at waist height for her, and reached up to poke the door control.

Nothing happened.

"Stupid, stubborn, intransigent, intractable slab of scrap iron," she cursed at it, and pried open the emergency panel by stretching up with her elongated arm. With a bit of prying, she managed to pull the cover off, and began cranking the manual release. Little by little, the door moved back, revealing a dark corridor beyond.

"I'm going to find who did this," she promised herself as she began clambering over the lip of the doorframe, "and I'm going to cut off their legs, melt the legs down, craft them into a brand, heat it up red hot, and brand across their stupid faceplate 'This was very inconvenient!'"

With a thump, she dropped into the corridor. It was entirely dark, other than the cone of light from her rectangular headlamp. She could hear far-off noises of metal banging and movement, echoing down the hallway. Muttering dire imprecations to herself as she struggled over the ceiling ribs that blocked her way, she set off towards them.

[Zercon]

The second Sparkplug entered into the hallway, she would be greeted with an environment that honestly... differed little from the norm. Other than the fact the floor had structured ribs along its surface that were once supports for the ceiling, and was angled down, and the fact all the lights were off, it was exactly the same. Quiet, isolated, the Science Wing was plenty separate from other areas, giving it the solitude its workers tended to cherish to accomplish their work.

There were some noises, as to be expected however.

In normal times you may hear directions or a call to arms for some Vehicons to report to duty in the distance, or a few bangs of individuals transporting wares to this portion of the ship. As of now, this was a muddled hum of yelled words that were sourced from the deeper regions, laced with plenty of thrumming of running around and scrabbling to accomplish something. There were heavy booming pops that could be heard, the sound of escape pods being launched in the undersea environment. Each one that popped free caused a tiny quake that was nearly impossible to be felt to tremble past.

As the femme continued along towards the chaos, she would pass by a hallway that was perpendicular to the main channel, where movement could be found a short hop and a skip away. It is here that she would see some Vehicons, all struggling with a large IBS container. The container was immense, a white solid molded piece of industrial plastic that had been framed and braced with chunks of metal to help keep the sides from bowing or the corners from blowing out. It was used to haul large quantities of granular material, or chemicals through the warship to other stations securely. It seemed that as the ship had flipped over, the container had decided to plow over them, and Sparkplug was laying witness to the direct aftermath.

Energon smeared across the ground in long swaths, blue streaking like a luminous splatter of paint, that was streaked with trails of green and black from coolant and oil that spurted out from the damaged Vehicons. Grooves where ripped into the floor((ceiling?)) panels, leaving behind broken shrapnel and shredded chunks of body parts. It wasn't readily apparent how many were damaged... the broken pieces were so pulverized even trying to count limbs could be tricky, but it was obvious that there were at least two.

The first Vehicon had a very bad day. Out of the five containers, two had bashed hard into his chest, pinning him from his chest down against the wall so soundly that there was no room to even accommodate any of the internal functions. The trooper was lurching, a lot of its movements automatic and not really thought out for the moment, more running off of automation. One of its clawed hands raked over the top of the container, while its helm rolled backwards to smear against the side wall.

The second Vehicon fared far better, it was crouched down beside the two containers that had crushed his comrade. While his torso remained intact, his right leg was pulled back and trapped between the wall and containers. He strained and pulled, trying to wrench his limb free, which was starting to cause metal to buckle, and cables that were normally internalized to be exposed with spurts of fuel.

The second he heard movement and looked up, he saw Sparkplug in the adjoining hallway.

"Hey!"

The cry was simple, trying to get her attention before she ran off, his mind too jumbled and confused to really coherently put anything else together. While he yelled this, the breached IBS containers started to leak industrial coolant, the thick material oozing out like slime from its storage.

[Sparkplug]

It would be very silly to fret about dying just because the ship had crashed, Sparkplug told herself as she sped through the upside-down corridor, engine snarling in the confined space. Why, this was a giant warship! Armoured, air-tight, virtually indestructible. Where could be safer than that? Besides, she hadn't travelled countless light-years just to die in some kind of petty oceanic collision! That would be ridiculous.

All those hollow booms that made the armoured hull ring like a bell definitely weren't compartments collapsing under the weight of water pressure. And there had to be some part of the ship above water, so she could leave in safety, didn't there? Or the space bridge would still be working. Whatever; there'd be some way out. Just because she didn't know her way around, or where to go in an emergency evacuation situation - pff! Merely an opportunity to show off how smart, and agile, and quick to respond to changing circumstances she was.

"Oh frak, oh frak, oh frak," she muttered over the squeal of her tyres against the ceiling plates. Spinning up into her bipedal form, she vaulted lithely over the next ceiling buttress as it flashed up out of the darkness, and hit the ground on the other side on her wheels again, changing between modes over and over with dizzying rapidity. She hadn't given her transformation cog a work-out like this for a long time, and her systems were beginning to protest as she sped onwards into a better-lit section with a haste that definitely didn't verge on panic.

Then, as she flashed past a junction, a vehicon cried out to her.

Her wheels locked immediately as she braked hard, scribing lines of black rubber across the smooth metal in a barely-controlled skid. Coming to a stop facing the other corridor, Sparkplug transformed once more, then staggered as she got her legs under her, air rushing through her vents to cool her engine. "Oh-kay. Brakes are really effective. Noted. Useful. Okay," she panted. Her optics settled on the scene of carnage before her, and she added more softly to herself, "Oh, frak me backwards in a small lift."

Two damaged vehicons, crushed by transport containers. One pretty damaged; she wasn't an expert medic, but if he didn't get the pressure released, any tiny chance his internal repair mechanisms might have was dead in the water. The other one was a lot less damaged, but his efforts to escape were only mangling his crushed limb even more. Which implied that he was pretty certain things were going to get worse, a lot worse, if he stayed where he was.

Slag on a scrap sandwich.

She walked slowly towards them, her optic ridges drawing together in a frown of concentration. "Stop moving. I'll get you out, but you need to stop pulling," she ordered the second vehicon distractedly, barely glancing at him. "Okay. Heavy containers. Too heavy to move, and pressure is causing acute chassis damage. Breech the containers, containers get lighter, containers can be moved. Problem: containers could contain anything. Breech might make things worse."

With quick, light steps, she darted forward and stroked the digits of her right hand through the material bleeding sluggishly from the cracked containers. Rubbing her finger and thumb together, she held them up before her optics, then inhaled through the vents mounted either side of her helm structure.

"Lubricant. No; too thick. Coolant. Industrial, non-conductive, non-harmful. Survivable in large quantities. That's good." She took a step back, narrowing her optics. "Breech options, okay. Cannon; no good. Too much debris, too enclosed a space. Micro missiles; explosion might push the containers harder against the wall. Transitory pressure wave not helpful. Gatlings; plausible. Smaller scale damage, fast breech. Saw; slower, more controlled, no pressure wave, no debris. Good enough."

Raising her left hand, it collapsed and restructured into a silver circular saw with a sigh-hiss of hydraulics. It spun up with a rapid whine, then sparks began to fly as she brought it down hard on the metal frame enclosing the container that was crushing the most damaged vehicon, intending to cut a triangular hole near the bottom of the container for the fluid within to pour out of. As the spray of sparks flew past her faceplate, she deployed her small, octagonal optic shields, and shouted above the noise, "I sure hope you know a way out of here, because I've not got the first idea where to go next!"

[Zercon]

"Can I not? I mean, I kind of had a bad day..."

The Vehicon responded to her rather odd commentary with a level of confusion and disorientation for the situation. He didn't understand what her request even meant or how you frak someone, let alone backwards, but he was tired, and stressed, and he wasn't sure he even had much of a foot anymore, and he was fairly certain his friends were dead. Well, that last one wasn’t a new experience, he was used to that one... Vehicons and all. Thankfully though, maybe there was some silver lining, as the scientist femme had stopped and made her way fully over to him, and didn’t just make a request only to abandon when he couldn't help.

As Sparkplug approached and gave directions, the Vehicon halted in his actions, visor turning up to watch her curiously. His small field seemed to radiate a bit of hope, really thinking that things may end up ok for him! That is, before she started to ramble. She seemed to be going through all the options and speaking out her thought process, which wasn’t really helping him any. When she mentioned some sort of canon however, he reeled a bit, forearm raised in preparation to try to protect himself.

Or not.

Wait.

Micro missiles!?

New level of fear, only for that to fade as well... he didn’t recognize the other options that followed, the words not really clicking in his processor, that is until she mentioned a saw. Saws were good! As long as she wasn’t going to saw off his leg to get him free! A bit of hope bubbled up again, watching silently to let her work unobstructed, pleased that when the saw was produced, it was put against the container and not him.

"Yeah! As long as they aren't all gone there are a few pods we could use!"

He screamed over the sound of the saw, his voice rattling while he tried to be heard.

"If they are all gone, there are a few airlock hatches and other stuff!"

The Vehicon looked down and away from the situation behind him, peering at his hands where some streaks lay on the black floor below. Taloned fingers lightly raised and drummed against the liquid coated surface, trying to think and occupy himself. He knew better than to look back at the other trooper, knowing damn well that survival probably wasn’t an option for him, as the mech's lurches and thrashes stilled and it fell immobile while Sparkplug worked.

"Thank you for stopping!"

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug laughed involuntarily at the Vehicon's dazed response to her cursing, her saw biting into the container's metal framework with a screech of tortured alloys and a spray of sparks. The industrial container was built to hold up to pressure, but not a determined assault with a large spinning blade, and the metal strands gave way one after another, letting her sawblade bite into the plastic body itself. The blade made short work of the polymer, gouging a wide slash across the container that blue-dyed coolant immediately began to bleed through.

"Escape pods sound great!" she yelled back over the noise of the saw. "I'll take an airlock, but it's really wet out there, and I seriously do not want that foul, salty, corrosive nastiness sloshing around inside me. Why couldn't we crash into a nice radioactive crater like a regular spaceship?"

She lifted the sawblade, having completed the second cut of the three that'd form the triangular opening she was after. Blue fluid was trickling steadily from the cuts, spreading across the floor and coating her peds, but the stiff plastic wasn't giving up its contents without a fight. "It'll be fine!" she reassured the more badly crushed vehicon, then hesitated as she saw his visor was dim, and he'd stopped struggling.

"Oh, Unicron's giant black slag-coated teeth," she swore, and jammed the sawblade roughly into the side of the container again, dragging it diagonally to join the previous two cuts with unseemly haste. It wasn't good for her integrated saw for her to be this rough with it, but she was in a hurry. The severed section of framework clattered loose, followed a moment later by a frayed triangle of plastic, shoved outwards by the pressure within the container. A gush of coolant followed it, flooding across the corridor as the container emptied abruptly.

"Leverage," she panted, dragging air through her vents to cool her internal systems after the abuse of her saw. "Brace yourself, I'm gonna move it." Reaching across the corridor with her elongated arm, hand re-emerging, she grabbed hold of a strut on the far side, then seized the container with her other hand and pulled hard. The container was a lot lighter now there was no more than a dribble left in it, but she was a small femme, and she struggled for a moment before the container began to move. Once in motion, the coolant coating the floor helped it stay in motion, and it crashed into the corridor wall, barely giving her time to dodge aside.

She was too late; for the first vehicon at least. Walking carefully on the slippery metal, she crossed back to him and crouched down, but it was obviously a lost cause. Without the pressure of the container, crushed mechanisms had spilled out of his fissured chestplate, entirely motionless. Perhaps if she was a medic, she'd have known some clever way to kick him back into life long enough to patch up his most vital systems, but that kind of repair work was completely beyond her. Building a body from scratch was nothing like fixing one that was badly damaged, let alone having to keep it operating the whole time.

"No good," she said regretfully. Shaking her helm, she turned to the second vehicon and offered a hand. "'Course I stopped. You needed help, you know? How bad's your leg? Can you stand if you lean on me? I can saw a bit off that frame and weld it to your leg if you need a brace, but if we can get out of here right now, we should."

[Zercon]

Dirt, water, and its combo form of mud... most Vehicons were well acquainted with such things, even more so those that actively worked hard labor and didn’t get those cushy data jobs within the Control Room. It is because of this, the Vehicon seemed a bit confused on why Sparkplug would potentially shun an escape because of some water? True, it was not fun, it left things behind, and salt water left a nice powdery crusty crunch once it all dried out, but hey! Better than living in a dark pit for the rest of their lives until the ship got back upright! It was the silver linings right?

The scientist had cussed again then, and it was more confusing than the first one, though it was apparent what exactly she was cussing over. The Vehicon seemed to dip his helm a bit, glancing back to see that the other trooper had not really made it. He wasn't too heartbroken about it however, clawed fingertips drumming on the floor a moment in thought.

Peering down at the ground, he only got to see a glimmer of what may have been a chunk of the third Vehicon under there, before the container was breached and coolant burst out into a thick stream. As if repulsed, the Vehicon reeled away a bit, lifting his hand which did little to keep his knee and the other hand clean from the slimy substance that flowed out readily. He was not really thrilled to have it pooling around him, but hey... he couldn’t complain right? He was going to get free! He was being helped! Sure it was by the crazy femme that had a weird chipper attitude and didn’t fear high command like she rightfully should... but beggars can't be choosers.

At her demand, the Vehicon braced himself down solidly to try to keep steady, the container slowly pulled back. At first it was relieving, a sort of pressure taken away from his leg that felt amazing. However, this joy ended abruptly, as real feeling suddenly started to return a moment after. With a hard thunk, the trapped leg fell down behind the trooper, his form wrenching forward to try to get clear, while the remains of the pinned Vehicon kept locked against the wall from shrapnel formed from his own torso. Looking back, he heard Sparkplugs grievances over this.

"That was just Mark, he was an aft."

He was not too caring over MKK-277's demise, while also trying to make her feel better over the event. In a way the statement was cheery and almost happy, as if the fact that trooper had died was more of a blessing than a curse to the one remainder.

"Kind of sad about Josh though..."

He glanced back to the pool of liquid; knowing beneath there somewhere was the not-so-bad Vehicon.

Ah well...

Reaching up to grab hold of the side of the wall, the Vehicon wrenched and forced himself upright as best he could. The lower leg was bent at an unnatural angle from the impact, and all of the flares and spikes along its surface were hammered flat, giving the limb a very streamlined look. The foot itself was partly crushed lengthwise, not allowing it to sit flat against the ground. Despite this, he tried to muscle through it, wobbling.

"I can probably do it with help..."

Meek, as if terrified to make such a request to someone so much higher in the hierarchy than him. He did not look up to make eye contact while speaking.

[Sparkplug]

The flood of coolant spread rapidly, finally corralled by the roof ribs that trapped it in one section. It splashed around Sparkplug's peds as crossed the floor, her green gaze searching the floor. There'd been another vehicon? She'd assumed the few sad parts visible on the floor were detached parts of the crushed vehicon, but apparently they'd belonged to a third, ground flat by the weight of the container.

Nasty, nasty way to go. Slightly guiltily, she tried to see any trace of its remains, but the opaque fluid covered the floor, leaving just a few oddly shaped bits and pieces above the surface. Of the dead mech's silver mask, there was no sign.

A sharp bang, followed by a series of groaning creaks, harshly reminded her that she had better things to do than poke around after scrapped chassis remnants. She looked up to see the survivor carefully pushing himself upright, lifting his leg out of the pooled fluid to examine it. All the surface detail was mashed, and the foot was properly crushed. If he tried to transform, he'd probably lose the leg, she decided, and even if he managed to get into vehicle mode, he'd likely end up stuck in it without serious medical help.

That left walking.

"Sorry about your friend. Both of them, really, aft or not. Not a lot we can do for them now, though. Gonna be slow going to get over the roof ribs with your leg all banged up like that, so we'd better get on with it." Moving over to stand on his injured side, she pulled his arm across her shoulders without hesitation, wrapping her long, oddly structured left arm around his waist. Holding his right hand in hers to keep his arm across her, untroubled by the intimacy of hanging on to him, she looked up and added, "Right then - back towards the main corridor?"

Helping him limp along, she went on, "D'you know what happened here? I was in my workshop, no active comms to the rest of the ship. Everything's fine, just finished setting everything up the way I like it, so I enable communications and the whole ship's compliment seems to be shouting down the channel at the same time. Then all the crashing around and banging, being thrown around like a loose nut in a drop pod, and now we're under the darn sea. I'm guessing we got attacked, but heck, the treaty, you know?"

Pausing, she added, "I'm Sparkplug, from research. What's your designation?"

[Zercon]

Why was she apologizing? Individuals don't apologize for a Vehicon dying; only the swarm of fellow Vehicons that were capable of feeling that ever seemed to. Oh well... that wasn’t really a conversation to be had right now, as it didn't matter. It only had the result of producing another moment where the injured Vehicon just felt... awkward over it... making him unsure what to do. However, this weirdness hardly compared to what followed after when she moved over to actually support him.

Sparkplug was not a very tall mech compared to most on the fleet. She was small, and only came up to the troopers 'sternum' when standing upright. It made the entire ordeal extra awkward then, not only for the psychological concept of it, but from the weird clash in heights. To try to counter it, the Vehicon's arm that was meant to drape over her, lifted a bit, fingers twitching in uncertainly, before he planted his elbow down atop her far shoulder, having the bridge of his upper arm act as a stilt for the height difference.

When they started walking, the Vehicon seemed to struggle a bit at first, unable to find a rhythm, unable to counter his balance and coordinate with her very well. It left some of his movements jerky and abnormal, his damaged leg scraping some when the tip of his ped didn’t lift as high as it needed to in order to progress. The femme would then speak freely while he tried to figure things out, his visor rising to look ahead at the darkened corridors.

"Yeah, the main path should be fastest."

He inputted quickly, before addressing her larger question.

"I... I am not sure. I heard a lot of conflicting data being thrown at once. An attack, an escaped prisoner I didn't know we had, there were engine malfunctions and a massacre... But stuff was wrong, like, Logan called for assistance from two different parts of the ship, about different things, so... Mark, Josh and I, we decided to stay put to try to figure it out. Stopped our cargo haul. But then the ship dove and well..."

His red lined visor tilted to peer back over his shoulder one last time at the container that was left behind, before turning to focus ahead at where they were going. He would gingerly try to pull them towards the left side of the path if she would allow, so that his free hand could grab onto the wall for some added stability.

"My designation? Ah, I am John, or... err... JNN-702."

To try to make up for the lack of formality to someone of such a higher rank, his free arm lifted to give a wrong handed salute, sharp claws clicking against the top ridge of his faceplate.

[Sparkplug]

"Disinformation attack?" she guessed aloud. "I mean, if you can mess up the ability of the enemy to communicate, even a small force could make a mess of the place, because they don't know where to focus their superior numbers. If it made no sense, it makes more sense as a trick, right?"

Helping the vehicon along was definitely one of the more awkward manoeuvres she'd carried out, but under the circumstances, there wasn't a lot else she could do. She considered transforming and letting him rest his mangled foot on the flat bed at the rear of her vehicle form, but he was considerably taller than she was, and that'd probably just damage her suspension without helping him progress. Instead, she let him guide them towards the wall so he could grasp the protruding pipework, doing her best to contain the little song of panic at the edge of her thoughts.

All the same, despite her tense attentiveness to every creak and groan of the ship, she noticed his final glance over his shoulder and felt a stab of sympathy. Over the endless vorns, all of them had gotten acquainted with losing friends abruptly, and the strange sting of surviving when others didn't, but even by their jaded standards, it had to be difficult for 'John'.

The weird, weird names these mass produced models chose for themselves. But if they hadn't been given any when they were constructed, just serial numbers, she supposed that picking their names from the culture of their current host planet made as much sense as anything else.

Still, it couldn't be that hard to have chosen proper Cybertronian names.

Unless - and this was more plausible, now she thought about it - they either resented the individualistic chassis of their superiors in rank and didn't want names like theirs, or simply felt like they weren't entitled to that kind of name. That would be pretty sad.

She was busily distracting herself from the collapsing ship, she knew. That was perhaps for the best. It wasn't like fretting over it was going to move the vehicon - John - any faster. "Doesn't really matter how the attack worked now, I guess," she continued, "whatever was going on, anyone that attacked the ship should be trying to get out of it, the same as we are."

Her own words echoed back to her, and she winced. That was not a thought that filled her with warm, fuzzy emotions. Hurriedly, she changed the topic, adding, "Got to admit, I've not spent a whole bunch of time with you guys up to now. Mass produced chassis, obviously, but that doesn't really account for the way some of you seem kind of - more alert than others. What's going on there, John?"

She considered remarking on how many of them there were, but killed the thought quickly before it reached her vocal processor. The last thing she wanted to do was remind John of how several of that number were now greasy smears beneath heavy equipment, and it wouldn't really help to confess that if it weren't for the leg damage, she couldn't have told John apart from any other member of his cohort.

[Zercon]

A trick of some kind was probably right, John tinting his helm down a bit at the thought. If he had brows, they would most likely have been furrowed, trying to consider who would want to attack them like that. The Autobots were a good first pick, and a very safe one that the majority would point to first, but there was a truce. The chances of the 'goodie goodies' breaking something like that was so slim... but maybe that was the trick? Maybe that was what they counted upon?

"They could'a bridged out."

He offered, figuring if it was some infiltration, and they intentionally crashed the ship, than getting a quick safe escape was most logical. The chances the Autobots or whatever Neutral group would scrabble and run for the very same escape pods that the entire Decepticon fleet would run to... well that would have been silly! His thoughts were locked down onto this, until she asked a question he seemed a bit uncomfortable to talk about.

"Ah, erm... I don't understand..."

He didn't look over at her, instead peering at the left side where he used the wall for added support. The ability to claw and scrabble with the added grip his talons provided, actually helped him keep a faster pace, it adding up nicely with the newfound rhythm that was being formed. The longer they walked, the more he streamlined his limped gate, which would assist them a good deal if they hoped to make any progress anytime soon.

"Waking up... I don't know... I don't think I know words for it?"

He looked over, uncertain and nervous because he couldn’t articulate his thoughts. It wasn't out of a want to be difficult; it just was something the trooper never had to actually explain at all. The area was so gray and so amorphic and weird, and no one understood the 'how' of it, they were just grateful it happened. At that, he looked ahead, where the path was forking.

"You want to hook right to enter the main fairway thing."

John's hand lifted off of the wall long enough to point with a sharp claw to further emphasize the direction they needed to go. The new hallway was significantly larger than the smaller channel they had been on previously, a series of large orb like lights now nestled on the floor that were aiming up towards the old flooring turned ceiling. Branched lengthwise between each portion of inbuilt lighting, were numerous channels and pipes that fed through the central passageway as a main conduit, tones of purple lacing between them.

John seemed to deflate a bit when he saw the obstacles he would have to walk over.

[Sparkplug]

Oh, of course. If the enemy had attacked them within the Nemesis, they'd have bridged out. Almost had to, considering it was so far up in the air, and the Autobots were primarily based on vehicular chassis. That was a serious relief. It was bad enough that they were stuck at the bottom of a salt ocean in a collapsing battleship - she frankly didn't want to borrow trouble in the form of further enemies competing for whatever escape pods were still intact and attached to the docking ports.

That relief was short-lived.

Circling the corner onto the main fairway, Sparkplug vented an audible sigh. "Y'know, for how dark this darn ship is, there sure are a lot of lights and junk on the ceiling. Well, come on then." Eyeing the tangle of metal and wondering if lavish use of her cannon to carve a path through it might be faster, she helped John onwards. "If you see any struts I can chop off and make a crutch for you, sing out. Might be helpful if you can't reach the wall."

The vehicon did seem to know what she was talking about when she referenced their differing levels of self-awareness, but certainly didn't seem interested in talking about it. Hm. That was interesting. She should probably lay off the subject, but if she got out of the Nemesis intact and actually ended up in a situation where she could pursue interests not related to her immediate survival, she could ask someone else.

Instead, she went on, "Didn't think of the attackers bridging out because I've been off in real backwaters for a long time. No bridge technology around. Frankly, I was pretty darn surprised when I slammed into the ground and the rescue party came out of one. Guess the technology has gotten a bit more widespread since I was off the grid; we didn't hear much out in the middle of nowhere that wasn't directly related to the work. Think it's been good for me to get out of there and back into the company of other mecha; spend too long in the same place and your thinking starts going in circles, you stop coming up with new ideas."

Distant banging, and the even more worrying sound of the thunder of moving water, itched at the edge of her hearing. They really, really needed to move faster. Kicking one of the broad lights with a flash of irritation, she added, "You know what? This ship's upside down in the ocean already. If we run into anything you can't get over, I'm just going to blast it out of the way. Got any idea how far we are from a way out of here?"

[Zercon]

'You know what? This ship's upside down in the ocean already-'

John seemed to freeze when this very obvious fact was stated openly by the femme. Sure, he knew that the ship was upside down, how could they not? Lights on the floor, the floor on the ceiling, the fact they had been thrown around while the ship made its grand swan dive into the sea... but something about what she said seemed to click something else into place inside the trooper's processor, and he was struggling really hard to try to piece it together in his little noggin.

Stopping immediately at this, the Vehicon peered back where they had came from, before looking down the hallway where they had been going. He seemed confused momentarily, frozen in place. Under it all, there was a level of fear to be held, nervous energy that buzzed and radiated tight against his frame.

"I- uh... upside down... ok yeah... uhmm... that is- I mean..."

Fumbling, words not forming into anything articulate or of any particular value, yet he refused to move from the current point he had rooted himself upon.

"It is... it is the other way, I-I got confused with it upside down..."

Scared. He was wasting time; he had lead them the wrong way. This wasn’t acceptable on a good day, and even less so during a time of crisis when their ability to escape at all was being challenged. The amount of pods could be vanishing by the second... that is... if there were any even left after this time. Chances are, they may already all be gone.

"It- it is just back that way I think, not far. I mean... kind'a far for me, but not far!"

He tried to sound assured and confident, but it was difficult for him to have now.

Navigating an upside down ship was difficult!

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug paused as the vehicon stopped, peering around them as if abruptly lost. Which was, it quickly became apparent, because yes, he was lost. The inverting of the ship had switched the direction of the corridors, and only now had John actually noticed.

In the silence following his sheepish confession, the ship groaned aloud, like a living thing. It was a long, drawn out groan of metal under intolerable strain, punctuated by shorter, sharper creaks like the ticks of a mechanical watch measuring out the final moments of the vessel. For a moment, Sparkplug was frozen by the sound, optics wide, even her fuel pump hesitating.

"Oh frak, oh frak, oh frak," she breathed to herself, barely aware she'd spoken. "This is not good. Not good at all. No idea how deep the water is, but fluid gets heavy with depth fast, and this thing is not built to endure compressive forces like that forever. Unicorn's aft, we are screwed down here." She didn't have nearly enough information to accurately assess how the Nemesis was dealing with the ocean's pressure, but in the absence of hard facts, all her instincts were telling her that it was time to leave.

In short, it was past time she took the peril she was in seriously, and did what was necessary to get out of there.

Ducking out from beneath the vehicon's arm, Sparkplug stepped away to the side. "Step away, John. You need to get clear of me," she said more calmly, turning to face the way they'd just come. Broad, triangular ribs blocked their path, more than chest high. Lifting her chin, she braced herself, straightening her intricate left arm to point straight ahead of her.

A flare of energy burnt brightly though the limb, radiating a tangible EM field, and down the glittering length of it, green tracery flashed into life, outlining panels from within. The rear of her left shoulder unfurled, five panels like squared-off fingers parting to expose a black, conical nozzle. The slim hand folded away, the end of her unnaturally long arm splitting smoothly into three tapering pylons that opened outwards like a flower, exposing a round central emitter. With an electrical crack of displaced air, three bars of coruscating green light snapped into being, joining the tips of the pylons in an upended triangle, and a radiant green-white glow bloomed within the central node, bleeding the tang of ozone. A slowly rising whine filled the air, the age-old song of imminent bad news.

She shifted her aim slightly, emerald light casting shadows across her faceplate, and narrowed her optics.

A starkly brilliant beam of energy lanced outwards from the primary emitter, argent white fringed with emerald, momentarily carving a straight line through the air. An unfocused blast of counter-balancing green fire erupted from the back of her shoulder like a rocket booster, holding her against the cannon's tremendous recoil as she swept the beam downwards, around, and up again in a 'U' shape.

The return of the dimness as the beam died seemed like darkness by comparison. The edges of the cut glowing dull orange, a segment of the bracing barrier fell forward with a resounding clang, breaking the sudden echoing silence like a full stop. Small clinks and ticks sounded as the metal cooled.

Dragging air into her cooling systems with a few deep vents, Sparkplug gestured at the gap in the ceiling strut with the end of her weapon arm, the emitters dark while her internal capacitors recharged. "Alright then, John, give me your arm, and let's go."

[Zercon]

Sparkplug's less than reassuring words, did little to quell the panic that was forming in the trooper. In fact? It did the opposite, and he seemed to bounce and wobble in a jittery want to RUN but not having the ability to do so. Impending doom, the ships collapse, them being screwed ((whatever that meant fully)), he didn't like the idea of any of it, and a whiney sort of squeak started to form as anxiety levels were picked up to a new platform and left to plunk in place.

Made even worse when she pulled away.

John's first thought was that she was going to abandon him. Who wouldn’t? He was slow; he pointed them the wrong way, and was only going to keep her held back. He was a liability, and it scared him. Most would abandon a trooper in such a state to fend for themselves down here, this idea making him bounce a bit in place. A single clawed hand reached out momentarily as he left him, wanting to grab her and pull her back to support him and force her to take him with her, but she had raised her arm and it started to change, his hand pulling away abruptly in alarm.

Weaponry was always so cool. To see how each true INDIVIDUAL Cybertronian could transform and do stuff unique to their own frames. It fascinated him on days he wasn't struggling for survival, and yet, still fascinated him now despite this fear. The bright colors, the flared panels, the weird little reverse thruster thingy he didn’t fully know why it was there... before he knew what was what, a beam of energy had propelled out, and his forearm hooked up to shield his visor from the blasting flare of light.

Once the illumination had stopped, the Vehicon turned and looked back, gawking at the carved 'U' that was now missing from the ship's structure. His first thought honestly, was 'Oh crap, Megatron is going to kill her', but he realized soon that a bit of structural damage to a hallway was probably the least of his concerns for the moment. It still made him nervous however, then again, what didn't? After a wary moment of shock, John would grab Sparkplug's arm, and limp forward to try to keep pace.

"Whoa that was cool! You wouldn’t expect- I mean, that was awesome for someone so tiny!"

He exclaimed, fumbling his words a bit still.

He didn't know how much time it would save them considering how many of the things blocked their path, but hot damn was that a neat lightshow!

[Sparkplug]

Trying her best to give him any kind of support, Sparkplug wedged herself under his arm and wrapped her gun arm around his back, not bothering to transform it back. Underneath the urgency and genuine fear that the entire ship was going to collapse in on top of them, his reaction lit a bright glow of happy satisfaction that drew a smile onto her faceplate.

"Been working on it for a long time," she remarked chirpily as she helped him limp towards the barrier, slipping through the opening and helping him follow her. "My energon converter is a work of art, and I've done a lot of restructuring to make room. I'm absolutely riddled with capacitor banks and energy reservoirs. And if you get it just right, you can chain collimators to keep narrowing the beam, 'til you end up with something that cuts like a knife. Ended up having to put in the second elbow and remapping my internal motion model to account for it just so the arm wasn't totally unwieldy."

She shook her helm in remembrance. "That was hard. Turns out that when you have two joints in the middle of a limb, it can be hard to know which to trigger to move the limb so it guides the endpoint to the desired location efficiently. Had to incorporate a predictive model into the motion controllers before it stopped freaking out. Then all I had to do was stop the recoil blowing me off my peds, because when you ram a plasma beam at those kind of accelerated velocities, the kickback is non-trivial. Fun work though, some of my best. Always trying to wring a couple more percent in range or kilowatts out of it."

The effort required to boost the crippled vehicon over the next barrier, even at its lowest point, distracted her from talking for a moment while she did her best to get under him and help push. Only when he'd tumbled over the hefty rib did she take a few steps back, then launch herself up in a running jump, swinging over the top of it lithely. Getting into position under his arm again, she added, "Figure I'll take out every other rib as we go. Don't want to leave this section without any kind of supports at all, but the heck with it, we'll still be here in a solar cycle's time if we try climbing all of them, and given the ship's crashed into the salt-corrosive-awfulness-ocean, whatever damage I do here isn't gonna matter much overall."

It would be wrong to say that the notion of leaving the crippled vehicon hadn't occurred to her; of course it had. She knew roughly the right direction to go now, and if she made judicious use of her vehicle mode, she could be there far quicker than the two of them together. Nonetheless, abandoning a mecha on her own side without doing all she could to help them was entirely alien to her nature, and even her exposure to the institutional selfishness of the Decepticon ranks since her change of factions hadn't worn away that essential conviction that they were all on the same side.

John was part of her team, and in the pool of mecha ready to help him, she was the only one still standing. That made him her responsibility.

Ducking aside from him to shield him from the back-blast of her primary weapon, she paused as they came up on another rib and began cutting again.