[ti]Ep 2[/ti]Between the Lines [Sparkplug]

[Soundwave]

At Sparkplug's praise, the Eradicon's wings flicked up slightly, pleased to get a bit more than a 'good, now go away' response that was typically put into play. Despite this however, he did not directly respond again, or show any other level of being anything but a soldier to order, his helm dipping and fist rising onto his chest into a sort of salute. Once this action was done to the two Cybertronians, he would turn and depart, aiming to get back to his post in the Warship and get back to task.

The work that followed after the trooper's departure was as meticulous as ever, with an air of speed attached to it that did not cross the threshold of becoming sloppy.

That was such an easy thing for individuals to do. To be so caught up in the excitement of the moment, or the fact they know exactly what to do, that they start fumbling over steps because their processor is locked down three steps ahead of their current location. While Sparkplug was surging ahead, and it was a bit tricky to keep tabs on every tiny action with upmost detail, it was apparent she was taking things step by step, the prime evidence being how she took the time to even bundle the cables to manage them and organize it properly in its innards. She worked clean, and efficiently, and would be rather valuable to set to any number of tasks that could be milled up... that is if the final outcome performed according to plan.

As the femme moved back from the gun and started to make her way out to the thin platform, Soundwave eased away from the wall, and stepped out into the path himself so that she did not have to try to squeeze past his larger frame that was blocking her exit. Out into the open air again, he made a couple careful steps forward, before halting in his advance to turn his helm enough to keep a metaphorical eye upon her own advancement. As with previously, he was ready at a moment's notice should she start to lose her balance and fall, though as of yet it didn’t seem to be an immediate concern as she was being rather careful.

At her comments about needing to do a test shot, Soundave turned that much further so that more of the blank visor was directly visible. A short blip, and a 'V' like checkmark appeared in green, to mark that he had indeed heard her over the rushing winds and the growl of the warship, before he turned and continued to walk aside. While he trusted that her work was good, risks were unnecessary and a good clearance was a must should the entire thing simply explode and send shrapnel out from the hole like an oversized shotgun. With this in mind he walked all the way over to the thin ladder, one hand reaching up to grab the far rail before turning about to see what the femme would do next.

Soundwave's black screen immediately lit up. Controls, directions... the warship's main systems tried to communicate with the gun remotely as if it were an actual battle situation. It tested the new connections, working through the fresh keys and doing cursory 'handshakes' as the entire gun started to growl with life again, though did not progress... at least not until Sparkplug was comfortably clear and gave an A-OK.

[Sparkplug]

Another checkmark, one that felt less cursorily sarcastic than the last one. That was progress! She brightened up, only for that surge of contentment to immediately wane as he continued along the walkway, all the way back to the flank of the ship.

Frag.

If he was pulling back that far, he was taking into account catastrophic failure and detonation. It was sensible enough; she was more inclined to just clear the immediate discharge zone, but she was fairly confident it was going to work. Proper safety procedures demanded that she get fully clear. Which then meant, of course, another pump-racing journey along the gantry, followed by yet another to come back and reattach the blast shield, then a fourth to get back to the safety of the interior.

So yes, frag.

She opened up her vents, and let the swirling, rushing wind flood her intakes, cleaning her of a subtle heat build-up she hadn't really noticed, preoccupied as she was. Fine. She could do this. Then, behind her, she heard the gun shift and begin to boot up.

"What in the name of Primus's tiny pink thong?" she blurted - occasional time spent among organic races had really added to her cursing vocabulary - and she glanced down at the pad she held clutched in her free hand. The gun's systems seemed to be booting up under direction of the ship itself. Then, inevitably, she looked up at Soundwave, and saw the complex glyphs of a weapons control system flashing and flickering across his faceplate. Right. Okay. When she'd decided to set up remote access to the emplacement, she'd managed to forget the key fact that Soundwave was effectively a remote control for the entire warship. Oh, well. It'd be useful for her own diagnostics if anything went wrong, at least.

Attaching the pad to her hip to leave her hands free, she very carefully inched along the gantry, trying to keep her mind on the imminent test of the system rather than on the very real prospect of plunging through ten thousand meters of empty air. Still, she'd done it once already, and while she maintained her steadying grip on the panels with fanatical care, she made it over to Soundwave rather quicker than on her tentative journey out to the weapon in the first place.

Coming into the lee of the hull, she braced herself so she could turn her full attention outwards, then called up to him, "I'm ready for test firing, sir!"

Her bright green optics narrowed, and she leaned outwards just a little to get a perfectly clear view of the emitter barrel. The weapon was definitely sensing it was within atmosphere, which ought to trigger the new pre-firing profile, and then there were the dual banks and the overcharging. If everything went well, she was expecting to see the thin, almost subliminal flash of a low-energy bolt as it drilled a tunnel for the primary discharge, followed by a blast with a peak output a good fifteen percent stronger than the weapon had output before, with double the pulse length as the flash capacitors charged and drained again, sustaining the beam. Of course, it'd take correspondingly more power, now, but the warship had power to spare.

On the other hand, as Soundwave's retreat had so eloquently pointed out, the capacitor banks could just detonate. Her grip on the ship's plating tightened, her field rife with anticipation.

[Soundwave]

Soundwave did not seem to respond at all to Sparkplug's colorful choice of words, no matter how out of the norm and absurd they may have been.

There was then a snarl, hydraulic systems pressurizing, cushioning supports locking down and into place... it really only took a few fleeting moments before the entire gun pushed forward out of the hatch once again so that it would have a larger range of fire. Unlike the first time the machine did this however, the systems did not fail and shut down. There was no snap of cables, and there were no fizzle as the thin lights on the side went black. Despite the fact the system looked completely ready to simply fire a round off into the empty sky for a test, it did not, sitting idle for a moment.

The glyphs that furled out across the navy mech's face continued to flicker and lurch, a new wireframe now showing that outlined the gun itself in a three dimensional view. The systems showed some controls that the mounting brackets could move, dotted lines in red and blue that curled with half circles plotting out the needed range of motion. Once one of the directions were tested, a few controls activated beside the imagery on the screen as the gun's nose dipped down.

Swaying movements, pushing to the edge of the gun's limited range of action; it seemed Soundwave was trying to stretch the internals as much as possible, to see if the wires were indeed long enough for the job. It may be a bit insulting to the skilled mechanic's work, to assume such a thing would even need to be tested, but after the recent issues it was a safe thing to look into. As far as he was concerned, it would be better to check such things now, than need the weapon and have it tear itself out of the metaphorical wall socket once again.

Down, left, right...

Strafing movements in a diagonal angle...

Everything seemed to be working perfectly, Soundwave's helm rising a bit almost in tandem with the gun's final rise to point up towards the sky.

Perhaps it was being professional, perhaps it was a little bit of fun to try to work through this otherwise tedious task, whatever the case, the glyphs and wireframes flickered away to reveal a countdown in Cybertronian, the numbers going down steadily as the gun's systems fully started to roar to life.

A flick, a small puff as if the gun failed to discharge...

Followed by a tremendous boom as it fired.

The cannon was not a small weapon. It was not a tiny laser used to combat ground troops as the Nemesis flew over. Sure it COULD be used for that for devastating results, but it was far heavier hitting, and was primarily meant to go up against larger more armored targets like what the Ark had once been. That meant that taking such a powerful weapon and effectively supercharging it to have an even bigger output? Created a massive blast that tore into the sky, cutting through clouds and creating clear voids around the beam where hot air pushed the vapors aside.

The kickback of the weapon was absorbed readily by the shocks on the system, the gun pushed back slightly into the opening once again, before it started to stabilize again as if it were ready to take another shot, though it did not. Instead, Soundwave simply turned his helm to look at Sparkplug, to see her thoughts on it. He did not show any reaction to betray his own conclusions.

[Sparkplug]

Watching with tensed servos for the firing sequence to begin, Sparkplug nodded to herself as the gun nosed further out of its housing instead, moving out to full deployment, and began to move around. That made sense, especially given the failure of the system from over-tensioned wires before. Lifting her remote pad so she could keep an optic on both the display and the weapon itself, she watched it with a satisfied, proprietary air as it smoothly ran through its full range of motion, traversing and shifting back and forth as if tracking imaginary targets.

The weapon came to a stop, angled upwards. Sparkplug glanced at her pad, then over at Soundwave, only to see a countdown flash into life on his fathomlessly dark visor. Finally! Her field pulsed with a flash of delight, and she twisted back towards the gun. She could hear the saw-toothed hum of high voltage current building up, and her hand tensed on the edge of the armour plate, gripping tightly in anticipation.

The tiny flicker of the primer shot drew her optic to the muzzle of the weapon, before the massive crash of the primary discharge thundered through the air. Her flexible faceplate set in a grin that was almost manic, she did a quick, two-step jig of delight on the narrow walkway, then bent over the remote pad again. As far as she could tell, everything was perfect. The recoil baffling had absorbed the shot smoothly and easily, the capacitor banks had reached full discharge potential again almost immediately, and the shot itself had blasted a straight line through the ragged clouds straight through to the upper atmosphere.

Her auditory systems still recovering their equilibrium, she looked up at Soundwave and called a little too loudly, "That was gorgeous! You see that, commander? That was the in-atmosphere profile I've programmed detecting air density and drilling a tunnel with a primer flash, then the main discharge isn't ploughing through white-hot plasma the whole way! Won't do that in vacuum, be a waste of time. And that pulse length! Damn, but the expressed energetic payload in that shot could blow the top straight off a mountain!"

Lowering her voice a notch as her oversaturated audials cleared, she went on, "You'd have to carry out a target firing to be absolutely certain the targeting systems are guiding the bolt straight and clear, but as near as I can tell, it's all calibrated properly. Got the functionality, got significant range increment in atmosphere, and the overall expressed payload is off the chart."

She paused, as her own words echoed back to her, triggering certain concerns. Speaking more slowly, with a fraction less frenetic enthusiasm, she added, "And I reckon this is still valid, in treaty terms. I've not developed a whole new weapons system here. I've repaired a damaged weapon, which as far as I can tell is still totally allowed. It's not exactly the way it was before, but frankly, after the mess that was made of the wiring, I couldn't have told you how the recoil system was configured anyway. And I don't reckon that we're obliged to cripple our gear when we fix it, just in case it ends up being more effective than it was originally. None of this is new development; not for me, anyway. I know energy discharge weapons forwards and backwards. I'm just being efficient."

Casting an admiring glance at the cannon again, she added mostly to herself, "And that weapon is pretty darn efficient too, now. Looking forward to seeing that used."

[Soundwave]

There was something simply infectious in the way that Sparkplug responded as the gun fired, her reactions not at all hidden or subdued in any way. There was the expected joy, pride, a feeling of accomplishment... it bled out and radiated away from her core as pure emotion and nothing more it appeared, the experience almost a bit jarring to the highly sensitive relays Soundwave used to read others actions and emotions.

There were typically layers to everyone on the Nemesis. Sure, someone may feel joy after a job well done, but small synapse would flick and jitter behind the scenes, clues and hints, small emotional suggestions that betray that their joy may not necessarily be for the new achievement alone. Trying to grab for power... trying to snatch and claw for some greater handhold. Many found accomplishment in their rank and status, empowering their ability to lord over others below them, and their tasks were simply stepping stones to reach it.

Sparkplug did not seem to work that way.

Soundwave had clues to this before, he had a good idea that this was true from their limited encounter, the way she simply seemed so honest and earnest, but seeing... no... FEELING it happen so pointedly as the gun's trial was a complete success was something else all together. The raw emotions snapped back to him, and in a way it was a bit infectious, to know that there were still people out there that were capable of having a passion for a cause or a goal, and not just for the power they can obtain in the process.

Granted, it was hard to say how much came down to... certain past events... but that was not worth looking too deeply into. The point was she seemed to like to do her job simply to do her job and help out, and that was similar to Soundwave himself, as he rallied for the Decepticon cause and did not care what rank was applied to his shoulder along the way. But... there was a hiccup then, her enthusiasm clipping a bit as she continued to speak...

...And there was the conclusion he was hoping she would find on her own.

This was not new weapon developments; this was not some kind of fancy new cannon structure they were installing from scratch. This was something that already was a part of the ship, and while they could cross reference the other models on the other flank of the Nemesis to try to mirror it perfectly, there was no need to cripple their own actions in order to follow a rule to an exact letter. Sparkplug did not develop this new firing mechanism specifically for this ship with intent to cause mass destruction; she had done so because she knew how to do it and was not allowed to know any better and what had once been.

Acting between the lines.

A blip, a small flicker of the screen, as Sparkplug reached the proper conclusion and finished her train of thought, a small purple circle appeared in the center of the now illuminated screen, a tiny smile emote scrolled into place. The icon was there for only a brief moment before the screen jittered black once again, and he looked past her to the open weapon hatch, the gun powering down to rest so she could finish attaching the blast shield and cleaning up.

[Sparkplug]

Soundwave was infamously hard to read. Sparkplug felt like she was starting to get the hang of his micro-expressions, in the tilt of his helm and such, but as she looked up at him for confirmation she'd done things to the standard he expected, she wasn't quite sure what to expect from him. A nod, perhaps, or a borderline sassy giant checkmark.

She wasn't expecting a smiley face.

"You smiled!" she exclaimed, levelling a finger at her superior with delighted surprise. "I totally saw it! I'm not gonna tell anyone, because between you and me, no one would believe me, but you totally did. I'll take that. That's better than a checkmark."

Turning to look back down the perilous walkway, some of her excitement leaked out of her, and she added, "Right. Blast shield. 'scuse me." The job wasn't done until it was done, she hadn't refitted the blast shield, and it'd do no good at all if her fancy handiwork got wrecked by a stray shot because the gun wasn't properly armoured. Gritting her denta, she inched back out over the drop, trying to reassure herself that she'd already made the traverse twice, so another couple of times shouldn't be a problem.

The cannon was huge, up close. Wrestling with the sheet of armour plate in the wind, her small body unsuited to coping with the weight of it, it took her several tries to get the slab hooked into place. Venting air rapidly to cool her overstressed actuators, she flicked her left hand in a gesture that reconfigured it, and began welding the shield back into place. Actinic blue light cast harsh shadows across the vast weapon, and the air filled with the stink of burning metal as fast as the wind could whip it away. Battered by the airflow, it seemed to Sparkplug to take considerably longer than her chronometer insisted it was, but eventually, it seemed solidly reattached. She backed away a few steps.

"Alright, you. Up, down, left, right, traverse..." she muttered. Tapping at her pad, she guided the weapon through another set of stretching exercises to make sure the shield didn't foul any of the mechanisms, before nodding with satisfaction and triggering the retraction sequence. The heavy barrel slowly withdrew back into the flank of the ship, bracing structures folding around it like origami, capped by the blast shield. A careful reach upwards, feeling around for the narrow indentation Soundwave had touched, and her fingers touched the right control. The original slab of armour slid out and dropped into place, covering the dormant bombardment cannon.

Whew.

One more traverse of the ship's flank, and without the bulk of the cannon to form a windbreak. Keeping her optics fixed on the distant prospect of the airlock, she carefully worked her way back along the walkway, breaking into a few quick steps as she lurched forward at the very end. Seizing a handhold, slightly high-pitched with accumulated panic, she said a little too quickly, "Repairs complete, request permission to re-enter the ship's interior, sir."

[Soundwave]

Probably about the only one who would believe Sparkplug about the smile, would be Megatron, and whether or not the Third in Command smiled was not traditionally the sort of thing you spoke about with the Lord of the Decepticons. This meant that the femme's assessment was pretty darn accurate all things considered, and while the small graphic was long gone, the amused sort of feeling continued forward at her frantic surprised response. Not that he showed as much readily, the blank faceplate seeming to just stare back at her while she leveled a finger in his direction.

But... the subject matter seemed to shift a moment later, and just as soon as Sparkplug had zeroed in at the anomaly, she had turned about and re-focused in on the cannon once again. A few careful steps to take her back... a series of welds and connectors to re attach the blast shield... followed by a few momentary checks for a final mark of 'all clear'... Really, in no time at all it appeared as if the job was completely done, and the large shielding wall came back down and into place to cover the weapon from prying eyes and the elements.

When Sparkplug approached, Soundwave's helm raised a small amount while he looked down at her, fully expecting for the femme to clamber up the ladder and make a grab for safety since the metaphorical door was open to her. Any normal individual would probably make such a grab, to try to get solid ground with nice even walls on multiple sides that can stop you from careening down to the planet should the ship lurch or move erratically. Instead, she had asked for permission, another show that she was trying to take the job into account.

For all she knew that gun was only one of multiples on the ship's side.

Luckily, that one cannon was the worst out of the others, and was the only one that really needed immediate work for the moment. While he could shuttle her from hatch to hatch to run checks, a lot of those checks could be done internally though digital means. Because of this, Soundwave's helm dipped down slightly while tilting in the direction of the ladder, giving her free reign to climb up first and get within the open hatch that loomed overhead.

Should Sparkplug make her way up, Soundwave would follow, ever on the watch should she lose her grip or balance.

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug was aware that at times, she came off as a little informal for the Decepticon forces - or any armed forces, come to that. She didn't mean anything by it; as a scientist, that had generally been working in research labs far, far away from the front lines, she'd simply never had the formal discipline of active soldiers hammered into her. Still, she didn't want to come across as insubordinate, and after her little slip-up earlier, it was best to err on the side of caution for a little bit.

Unfortunately for her, that entailed standing stiffly in the howling wind, waiting for a) Soundwave to let her in, or b) to be swept from the ship and dashed against the rocks, ten klicks below.

The motion of his visor towards the ladder, as minimal as always, was a benediction.

"Thank you, Commander!" she blurted, making a grab for the ladder. Catching hold of it with her extended reach, she pulled herself in, grabbing with her other hand, then clung to it for a second while she let her racing fuel pump slow a little. Only then, with careful precision, did she begin climbing towards the glowing sanctuary of the airlock.

It was considerably easier to get back into the lock than it had been to clamber out of it, and she climbed in on hands and knees, her helm tilting back and her optics closing in sheer relief as the walls surrounded her once more, cutting off the wind. Getting to her feet, she made room for Soundwave's angular, bladed form to enter after her, then triggered the inner door.

The gloomy, dimly lit corridors had never seemed so welcome before.

"Whew. Thank Primus that's done," she said to herself, checking the pad was still magnetically attached to her waist. Straightening up, she added in Soundwave's direction, "That was actually pretty fun, aside from the bits that were mortally terrifying. What now, sir? Though if we're going outside again somewhere else, I'd take it as a kindness if I could get a safety line and harness first."

[Soundwave]

It did not take long for Soundwave to follow suit once Sparkplug retreated happily into the innards of the ship, his narrow peds placing down solidly into the platform just above the ladder securely a mere moment after she had done so. Easing fully upright from his hunched posture, Soundwave ghosted forward and out of the way, retreating from the howling winds that cut by noisily from outside. The moment that he cleared the entrance to the airlock, there was a snarled noise as the mechanism engaged and the spiraling doors snapped shut abruptly.

From noise to silence, the change in environment was almost deafening, the airlock completely sealing away the wind from outside to land them both into metaphorical audio darkness. A few adjustments to internal systems, a moment to calibrate sensitivities to accept the new change... For Soundwave at least, it was only a fleeting second before the low hum of the ship's distant engines and the echoing ambiance settled into place once again.

Slowing to a halt, Soundwave stood beside Sparkplug as she checked over the datapad to make sure it was still present, his helm crooking down to observe her actions carefully. Thankfully, the tool wasn't lost down below, as that could actually enact a far more immediate response. While a spool of wire could be brushed aside if it was found by a human, even with it being a substantially larger than average spool, a datapad was something else all together. If such technology had been dropped and he didn't notice it, Soundwave knew he would have had to send Laserbeak down into a dive to try to triangulate any minute signals the device may throw out and retrieve it.

Luckily, that was no concern.

When Sparkplug asked him what more there was to be done, Soundwave did not immediately respond, the black visor simply staring down at her intently while he considered the options. There were many tasks that the femme could be appointed to with good results, but the question was what types could actually utilize her skill set, while not breaching the truce. The answer? Not too much. Weaponry was weaponry, and this situation was a good skirt around to repair what had been damaged without 'advancements' intentionally being made... but such loopholes were limited. That said, he could come up with other ways to dance around the system if he TRULY wanted to, but the other Cybertronian had plenty on her plate already in regards to preparing her laboratory for when the REAL work would start.

After a moment, the dark screen illuminated, white text flicking across it.

Concluded.
Return to routine.

[Sparkplug]

Soundwave paused rather than answering her question. As ever, he didn't seem to do anything that wasn't intended to convey some meaning in the most economical way possible. Here, that would seem to imply that he was weighing up her evident skills - and they were evident after the work of art she'd made of the simple repair job, no doubt about that - against a list of tasks, to see where she fitted. In other words, he wasn't just dismissing her without thinking about it first.

When the glyphs flashed up on his faceplate, Sparkplug nodded understandingly. "Thanks for calling on me, Commander. Not like I have to tell you, but I'm happy to throw in whenever I'm needed. Especially with the truce limiting what I can do right now. Still, it won't last forever, so I'd better get back to clearing out the mega-mess while I have the time. Catch you later, okay?"

With a friendly nod, she strolled off down the corridor, resisting the urge to flick her headlights on to leaven the gloom after the brilliance of the outside. Pleasantly basking in the satisfaction of a job well done, she turned her thoughts once more to her half-finished workshop, and her stride quickened. There was always something to be doing.

[Soundwave]

As Sparkplug walked away, Soundwave's helm would lift ever so slightly to observe her departure. As with before, she stepped outside of the norm, and didn’t seem even remotely aware of this fact. She did not slink away scared that she may be called back; she did not rush or hurry to escape his aura. Instead, she was cheery like she was speaking to a companion, and then meandered off at a casual pace with no fear or care to show.

The navy mech did not move, or even seem to react, even after the point the femme was long gone down the hallways and turns of the Warships interior. Her footfalls could no longer even be picked up, the rumbled hum of the ships engines consuming the distant noises like a suffocating blanket. He stood so still during these moments, that he could almost blend into the background of the ship itself, and may have done so entirely if it were not for the magenta lines etching across the black portions of his frame.

So few treat him as another individual.

It was good in many ways, to be an icon, to be something that is spoken of like legend or myth. 'The eyes and ears of the Decepticon cause', or 'The mech who can read minds', or really any number of similar statements and rumors. Fear kept people in line. It kept people from trying things when respect for Megatron and their goals were not enough to stop rebellious actions. It made normal interactions however obsolete, and that was alright. He had his cassettes, and that was plenty. It just however, made situations like these feel off or unnatural.

Live eons with others fearing you, and when someone simply doesn't care? It had a way of throwing you off.

A slow turn, an ease of weight, after a good while Soundwave started to walk in the opposite direction Sparkplug had retreated. Each footfall was a light click of the plastic dampeners in his joints, and nothing more. Soon, he would vanish, returning to task on other assignments he had appointed to himself.

---

Whenever Sparkplug got her computer terminal functional and online in her demolished workshop, she would find that the schematics and access codes to the other lasers and canons on the flank of the ship were now available. It detailed the makeup of the larger cannons like the one she worked on this day, and then it detailed the smaller dome lasers that she did not get shown. What she did with such information and remote approvals would be up to her to decide, as there would be no accompanying directions or orders to go along with it.