[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Rock Me [Closed, Neon]

[Sparkplug]

Episode 3 | Week 1 | Day 5
Placilla de Caracoles, Sierra Gorda, Chile

The distant sound of dripping water echoed from the rocky walls, bouncing and reverberating unpredictably through the complex, roughly irregular tunnels. The stygian gloom of the deep earth cloaked everything, far beyond the reach of daylight. This was no place for the touch of the far-off sun.

Nevertheless, a chink of light appeared around a twist in the corridor, sudden, startlingly bright. Twin, boxy headlights flared with brilliant white light, sending strange, twisted shadows dancing and flickering with every movement. Broken, half-sheared planes of fractured rock glittered briefly as the beams caught them.

"Oh, come on," sighed Sparkplug, as her headlights focused on a set of rusty brackets set deep into the rock. Stepping closer, she probed the metal with her fingertips, as if she might suddenly find a hidden button to reveal an unsuspected treasure amongst the tumbled rocks.

The small femme was a short, curvy mecha, her frame painted a clean, fresh white picked out with forest green accents. Six off-road wheels with chunky black tyres gave away her nature as a grounder, two half-buried in her back, two piercing her thighs, and the final two forming the bulk of her foot-ankle complex. Brilliant green optics glowed in the darkness, twin headlights set into her shoulderguards casting powerful beams of light that shifted as she turned. She looked, overall, pretty harmless, and only two things belied that impression.

The first was the incongruous purple sigil mounted in the centre of her chest that betrayed her allegiance. The second was the odd construction of her left arm, long enough to hang down to knee-level, with a pair of elbows giving it more flexibility. The matt-silver, unpainted limb gave her a slightly odd, lopsided look. It was with this hand that she was stroking the ragged metal brackets, staring as if daring them to become something they weren't.

"Faugh. Slag-eating rust-ridden snap-geared little glitches! Where's the equipment?!" she demanded in exasperation, slapping the wall. Turning away, she stomped off down the tunnel, navigating around the larger stalagmites that had been left in place. A cable paid out behind her as she walked, a reel rattling at her hip.

"Fat lot of use it was being given permission to salvage all the left-overs from this twisty, drippy, gritty, festering stretch of Unicorn's intestinal tract! I mean, sure, they said the place was all worked out, but they must have left some stuff behind. A drill! Several drills! Lots of drills! Primus's can of pristine aft-polish, I'd take a winch at this point. Raw metal, even! I can't build when I don't have anything to build with!"

Emerging into a tall, strangely arched cave, she glared up at the distant, spike-laden ceiling, then arbitrarily picked another tight, twisting tunnel to forge down, her reel squeaking as it turned. There didn't seem to be any energon left down here, which was a shame because even a snack would have helped her feel like this wasn't a total waste of time. There again, according to the records, the mining crew had left in a hurry. They'd reported that the mine was all played out, and they'd recovered everything useful. But the real reason was-

A low, heavy rumble thrummed through the stone, a soundwave in the deep subsonic that only slowly rose into audibility. The twisting, unpleasantly organic-looking rock shuddered and groaned under the stress as the vibration peaked, then faded away. Somewhere behind her, the clattering of loose pebbles sounded as they fell to the tunnel floor.

"Don't you get uppity with me," Sparkplug said firmly, waving a finger omnidirectionally at the fractured tunnel walls. "I'm stuck in this stupid hole finding the crazy, inexplicable, utterly unbelievable evidence that a bunch of vehicons might have actually taken all their gear with them when they skipped on out of here, and I'm in no mood to be chastised by a bunch of dumb silicates!"

[Deleted]

This was going to be easy, no? A modest mission to check in on an abandoned Decepticon mine. It was so simple that even a techy without any experience in combat could take it on. Decepticons were famous for leaving their dig sites and quarries unattended after everything had been stripped and taken from the location. The only dangerous thing here was the earth itself. An unstable environment made worse by the enemy's profiteering. Neon had nothing to worry about. This was going to be a breeze.

He trodded through the tunnels in relative silence, admiring the asymmetry and beauty of this place. Earth was still quite fascinating. It was Neon's first experience with an organic landscape and he could not help but wonder about all the factors that went into the birth of such a colorful locale. Tectonic activity fascinated him so much. The concept was fresh and enticing. He wondered if some of Cybertron's colonies could have had a similar topology before their species terraformed them.

But his wild theories about the thrilling world of geology were interrupted when he heard a voice in one of the distant shafts. He wasn't alone. And was that...swearing? He heard somebody get angry and uppity, at the very least. Despite his better judgment, and in a stroke of genius that he was sure to regret later, Neon decided to investigate and struck out through the coiling mineshaft towards the mysterious, agitated voice.

Suddenly, a deep rumble echoed through the cave. Ah, so there was the instability that Neon was so religiously warned about by pretty much everybody at Omega who tried to object his little solo jaunt. But hey, it wasn't like a little bit of natural hazard could deter a scientist from making his rounds. Besides, Neon was great at problem-solving. Surely, if he had found himself in a pinch, he could also find a way out of it.

...Maybe.

Descending deeper into the maze, Neon traced the voice like a trail of breadcrumbs. He must've been getting close because by now he could recognize some few words as the echo carried them through the mine. He added a bit more tempo and before you know it...

He found her. A scrappy, little femme digging through the refuse and being particularly vocal about it. He couldn't immediately identify her as a Decepticon, but what little he heard didn't give him much hope that Sparkplug was an Autobot. Well, either way, it couldn't hurt to introduce yourself, right? Maybe she was one of the friendly ones or even a neutral bot scouting for scraps.

"Hello there! Having trouble with the place? Can I help?" He tried to be cheerful and casual about it, approaching Sparkplug from behind slowly and carefully. Maybe if she turned around, Neon could finally see that he wasn't dealing with a friend. But why take away from him that comfort just yet?

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug had found something. As things go, it wasn't much of something; in fact, it was a something that was bordering on nothing. But with nothing else around, something would have to do.

To be specific, it was a tangle of old winching gear. The bolts had rusted into the rock pretty solidly, and the drum had seized, but there was a decent quantity of high-tensile cable left on the winch, a fixable gearbox, and most useful of all, two large, high-torque electric motors amidst the rat's nest of old wiring. Bent over it, considering whether to drill out the bolts or start cutting the housing into pieces as the most efficient way to extract it, she didn't notice the approaching steps behind her. Not until a cheery voice rang out, breaking the quiet.

"Hello there! Having trouble with the place? Can I help?"

The small femme jerked in surprise, glancing over her shoulder. A dark shape loomed in the dimness, about vehicon-sized, but not quite the right silhouette to be one of the mass-produced troops. Black paint, and blue optics. Not a mech she'd met before, but then, new mecha were turning up all the time, so...

"Oh hey! Didn't know any other mecha was coming down here to help," she greeted conversationally, her green optics bright in her pale faceplate. Radiating a mixture of friendliness and good-natured exasperation through her expressive field, she went on, "Looks like those cross-wired, tin-helmed furnace rejects stripped the place bare. Not a waft of energon, not a stray bolt, not so much as a scraplet's worth of decent alloy. What's the galaxy come to when you can't rely on unreliable mecha to be unreliable?"

Gesturing at the corroded hulk of the winch, she went on, "Any other day, most folk would leave this rusty lump of Titan-spit to rot in highly-deserved obscurity, but faced with nothing else? Oh, well. If I start cutting, you can help prise it loose; it's like being in Trypticon with the hiccups down here, and the sooner we get out, the better. I'm Sparkplug, by the way." Straightening up, she turned around, the beams of her headlights sweeping with her.

And saw, for the first time, the Autobot logo on his chassis.

Her optics widened in blank surprise. "...whoops."

New tactical situation! She was trapped in a narrow cave with a much bigger mech, he was an enemy, and if he got hold of her, it'd be a bad day for everyone. Time for Active Pursuit Discouragement! Her chassis began transforming before she even finished the thought; ports at her waist irised open and hexagonally symmetrical gatling blasters slid out. Her strange, over-long left arm locked straight and split open at the end down a third of its length, a trio of pylons opening like a flower around a central emitter that crackled into deeply-threatening life. And, in a gloriously misjudged moment of instinct, her headlights flicked up and retracted to bare the missile racks in her shoulders, immediately extinguishing the lights.

"Slag on a scraplet spike! Design flaw!" she cursed, her optics struggling to adjust to the sudden change in lighting level. "I'd duck if I were you!"

Aiming slightly above where she remembered his helm to be, Sparkplug's particle lance ignited. A coruscating beam of white tinged with emerald lashed out from the trifold emitter, intense and blinding, as an unfocused blast of green fire burst from the back of her shoulder to counterbalance the recoil. The beam seared along the rock, carving a smouldering orange scar through the ancient strata.

The tunnels barely needed the excuse. Another massive rumble shook the rock beneath the feet, like Primus clearing his throat, and a rush of rocks plunged downwards. Sparkplug barely had time to gasp, "Aw, Unicron's fat aft-" before they smote her to the ground, taking the intolerable brightness of her beam output with her.

[Deleted]

"I'm Sparkplug, by the way."

Sparkplug? That sounded like a nice name. In fact, Neon seemed bloody sure that he knew somebody who went by it at some point. But that person died so it couldn't possibly have been that Sparkplug. After all, no Cybertronian name was wholly unique. There were many Prowls, Blurs, Neons, and Thunders running around. What's one more Sparkplug? He was probably wrong.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Neon."

Well, regardless...

It was only when Spark turned around that he realized just how screwed he was. Of course, a slaggin' Decepticon, what else? He picked out an abandoned mine in an unstable location where nobody had any business mucking about—except somehow this one Con did. Just his luck. Maybe Neon could still play it cool. He was pretty Decepticon-coded as far as colors went, just maybe if she didn't look down on the logo—oh, frag, she looked down.

And there it was, the "whoops," the immediate unfolding of numerous weapon systems. Before Neon got the chance to defend himself, he was threatened to duck.

"No, wait! I'm not gonna—"

The little twerp didn't even get to finish his sentence as a flamboyant green flame illuminated the entire tunnel. What the hell was Sparkplug doing?! Her weapon was humongous and looked powerful. Such a gruesome firearm was practically artillery grade. She couldn't possibly mean to fire that thing in here.

Well, she did; blazing a path of destruction across the jasper ceiling with her horrifying particle blast. The two bots were left with precious little time to react as the entire shaft started to crumble around them without any need for further encouragement. Neon panicked, trying to look for an avenue of escape, but it was too late. A pile of rubble caved in above the two Cybertronians.

At least that infuriating, toxic light and swirling noises were gone now, replaced with relative silence bar some dripping water and crumbling stones. He couldn't see much with his headlights now firmly contained between hefty boulders. But being ever the problem-solver, Neon was quick to devise a way of removing himself from the predicament.

First, he tried to feel his arms. They were still there. Good. Now to see if his en-blades worked too. He flicked his wrist as far as the rocky prison would allow. Nothing. He tried again. Nope, nothing yet. If he could just...move them a bit more, the blades would come right out to slash through the rock like butter.

One last time, he pushed at his servos with every ounce of strength left in his body.

A satisfying woosh.

And there they were! A pair of slick magenta swords curved out at a slight angle from his forearms. Without wasting any time, Neon diced the rock trapping his arms into slag, allowing the mech to wrench them free and to work his way from there, freeing his torso and legs in no time.

After crawling out of his mess, Neon stood up in the rearranged corridor, venting in and out a few times as his body caught up to him. The damage done to the mine was extensive, blending several layers of tunnels into one, giant, destabilized mess. One step in the wrong direction meant certain death and there was seemingly no way out.

He tried to look at the positives. It wasn't a total collapse, which meant he still had his life to work with. But that could change at any moment all thanks to that blasted Decepticon. Neon could not even begin to describe how irresponsible everything Sparkplug had done with her weapons was.

Speaking of Sparkplug, he looked towards the direction where she previously stood in relation to him. Neon wasn't sure if she was capable of forcing her way out like he did, and he wasn't doubly sure if he should help her at all. Something about that struck him as wrong and selfish, but at the same time, she was the one responsible for all of this—not to mention a Decepticon.

But she was still a person.

"Sparkplug?!" He barked with a strong echo to keep him company, seeing if he could get a reaction from the assailant. Any idea of where she might've gone would be enough. He was concerned. Spark seemed small and fragile in comparison. Not that Neon was a powerhouse, but he could still take a hit. Not everybody could.

It made him anxious.

[Sparkplug]

Blackness. Silence, textured by the subsonic rumble of distant movement, more felt than heard.

Sluggishly, Sparkplug's central processing unit began to run its booting sequence. A blur of status readouts, fed directly into her optical processing centres, all for nothing as her conscious mind had yet to fully restart. Sectors of her processing mesh lit up one by one as they dumped the garbage data that had been scrambled by the impact and cycled into operation.

Someone called her name, a muted, muffled sound.

Her pain sensors came back online.

"Oww..." she groaned, trying to stir. One leg moved; the other was trapped. Her weapon arm was pinned beneath her, diagnostics signalling uncertain structural integrity in the dense chain of collimators and focusing arrays that made up the end of the limb. She tried to turn on her headlights. Nothing. Then she remembered, and muttering, "Design flaw," she retracted her missile racks. One headlight clicked on as it slid into place; the other remained stubbornly dark.

She couldn't see much. She seemed to be faceplate down in a mass of small, jagged rocks. A distinct sense of pressure across her back suggested that more lay atop her, but the lack of crushing weight probably meant there weren't too many. It was a survivable situation. Definitely.

Probably.

Releasing the locks on her dual elbows, she tried to lever herself up on her weapon arm. The weight atop her shifted, just a little, and she felt rubble sliding into the hollow beneath her. Tugging at her other arm, she wormed it out of a cocoon of loose stones, and managed to get it underneath her to push with. "This - was not - one of my best plans-" she managed, mostly to herself.

Supporting herself with her right hand, she flailed vaguely with the other arm. A mini-avalanche pattered down the heap of rocks she was under, and her arm broke out into clear air. Thankfully, she allowed the pylons of her potentially-damaged weapon to close, restructuring the end of her arm into a slim hand once more. That was a start. Her legs still felt pinned, but if she could just twist far enough to clear the rocks-

She lifted her helm. The black-painted Autobot - Neon? - was standing over the heap of stones that enveloped her, with a pair of truly gorgeous energy blades unsheathed. "...ah. Right. Can we try that again?"

[Deleted]

Ah, so there she was. Without much foreplay, Neon approached closer towards her rocky prison and for a while just stood there, watching Sparkplug struggle on her own. There were many Autobots and Decepticons who, when faced with such an opportunity, would make good on a swift and clean, killing blow. It would not be hard. A rend through the brain module would suffice.

Fortunately, Neon was not like those people and when he readied his weapons, it was not to strike at Sparkplug but the mass of rocks and rubble trapping her lower section. That he just extended kindness to her, however, did not serve to make him any less judgemental—as was plain from his rather disdainful and stoic expression. He helped her because Sparkplug was a fellow Cybertronian and he valued life, not because she wouldn't deserve to pay for the consequences of her actions.

"Depends...Are you gonna fire that thing again?"

His blades fizzled out in a shower of violet sparks and disappeared into thin air. Neon then extended a hand towards Sparkplug to help her wrangle free. This was meant to not-so-subtly hint towards the fact that his question had been a rhetorical one, simultaneously giving Sparkplug enough credit to assume she understood how insane setting off another cave-in would be.

Still, Neon couldn't give rest to the thought that he might've just made another mistake. The Decepticons were a bloodthirsty, scary lot, often without regard for personal well-being, right? What if Sparkplug jumped him as soon as she could stand up on her own two feet again? That was a scary, scary possibility.

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug's bright optics flickered upwards as Neon's swords danced, and with blessed relief, she felt the sudden absence of pressure as loose stones cascaded down to the cavern's shattered floor in pieces. Releasing a gusty vent that huffed a little dust into the air, she took his hand, pulling on it to help tow herself out of the remnants of the rubble.

Her field blossomed, no longer dampened by the heap of stone, vibrant and expressive. Humour colouring her EM emissions, she laughed and shook her helm. "Primus's pristine, glittering teeth, no. If I so much as sneeze loudly, this whole place is gonna come down on top of both of us, so I guess that puts us in a pretty neat stalemate. Not sure I caught your name - Neon? Nice to meet you, anyway. Sorry about the artillery, but you're big, I'm small, and we're not exactly on friendly terms right now."

Straightening up, she stretched out her limbs experimentally, twisting and rotating all her joints in a smooth, methodical pattern recognisable as a self-test routine often used by frame designers. Her left knee caught and ground a little, with an awkward crunching sound, and her plating was battered and dented from helm to pede, her clean white paint scratched. One headlight was shattered, the alloy-glass spiderwebbed around an obvious impact point. Absently rubbing her left wrist, where a noticeable dent marred the smooth lines of the oddly structured limb, she added mostly to herself, "Ouch. Probably need to be a bit careful with that."

The glow of her surviving headlight cut through the dusty gloom, catching the floating motes kicked up by the sudden, violent movement of the earth. In every direction, massive lumps of rock were heaped in jagged, crumpled heaps, the former walls difficult to distinguish from the original tunnel openings. She winced, shaking her helm again. "Okay. This doesn't look great, but it's alright. I've got a signal booster up near the surface, where I got in. All I need to do is signal for a bridge, I can go, then you can use the booster and signal your lot to get out of here. Not like I'm going to invite any other mecha into this silicon death trap. So, just hang on-"

Resting her right hand on the cable reel at her waist, Sparkplug booted up her signalling protocols, and opened a comms port via the cable socket plugged into her flank. Or at least, she tried to. For all the response she got, she might as well have been sending system signals into a rock. "...ah. Right. No carrier wave. Cable's been cut somewhere."

Looking down at the ground, she picked up the cable and ran it through her fingers as she followed it across the cave floor, kicking loose stones off it. Within a few scarce meters, it vanished into an opaque wall of stone, rough and shattered, with a small dribble of water leaking through that leant a glistening glitter to the freshly broken edges.

For just a moment, her good cheer dipped, then buoyed up again determinedly. "Not to worry. We just have to clear some of this mess, and push through. It's only... what, a kilometre? Something like that. No more than two, at the outside. Gives us time to talk! Time to talk about those really impressive blades, for one thing. Gorgeous bit of work there. Haven't really gotten to talk to you guys since the truce; shame, really. How's Skystone getting on? Now there's a flier with an aft."

It could so easily have been an act. For any other Decepticon, it probably would have been. But for Sparkplug, her emotional openness was as trivial to read as it was unfeigned; she bore him no particular ill-will, and despite opening fire on sight, she seemed to expect he'd be just as happy to deal with the situation as it now was.

[Deleted]

Neon, equally, felt relieved when Sparkplug eased into the situation with an air of gratefulness and a rather friendly mindset. He was glad that things didn't turn ugly again. After all, they were in enough of a mess already. There was no point in making it any bigger and he felt a passing twinge of confidence when Sparkplug echoed the sentiment right back at him. For a Decepticon, she didn't seem all that bad. Besides, he understood being the smaller bot in a situation and he could hardly fault somebody for being panicky and defensive in good conscience.

"Yes, it's Neon," he reaffirmed his name to Sparkplug. He eyed her up and down as she stretched and assessed the damage. While Neon was a bit scuffed and dented as well, it wasn't anything a few poundings to the mesh and good buffer couldn't fix. Sparkplug seemed less fortunate in this regard and he flinched slightly as she let out an audible ouch. That couldn't have been good. Here's hoping the Decepticon medic was competent enough to fix her aches later.

But all that besides, he was a little puzzled when Sparkplug went on to check her connection and much to his chagrin found out that her cable's been severed. Nothing seemed to go their way so far, so why would this? Oh well, best not to dwell on the negatives. They were alive and in pretty decent shape, all things considered. It's with this mindset that Neon immediately relit his weaponry to start clearing the monstrous amount of unsettled earth between the two Cybertronians and freedom, letting Sparkplug chat away for a while.

When asked about said armaments, Neon interjected to explain.

"...Thanks, I made them. Thought to create a tool, ended up with a weapon. Shame that, really."

Neon liked his blades, sure enough. He was glad when people appreciated them, too. But more often than not, they were erroneously assumed to be weapons first and foremost. While that was the result, it was not the intention. The war simply caught up with Neon and he was forced to alter the specifications to work as an effective combat tool, a decision he couldn't quite regret as much as he wanted to. A part of that translated to the way he spoke about them. At first, he seemed excited—then his voice trailed off into a low ramble with a tinge of melancholy.

That aside, Sparkplug had more questions to ask. At first, Neon assumed ill intent, perhaps due to his prejudice against Decepticons, and thought she tried at tricking him into divulging Autobot secrets. Luckily, he had enough foresight to understand that the way she asked was personal and earnest. Her field only supported that theory, and Neon was rarely wrong about a person's emotions. This gave him an edge on telling who is lying and who is telling the truth—unless they were bloody good at the former.

"Skystone—large but not in charge, green optics? I hardly know her. But you should be glad to know that she's okay. Even after you brought down a mountain on her head. And on Prime's, and Bluestreak's, and Javelin's, and...You get the point."

Neon started with a neutral tone but got frustrated the more he went on until finally snapping, letting his voice trickle into exasperated disapproval. He went silent then, at least for a while, slashing away at the rocks. And before you knew it, jackpot! He managed to cut through the silicone wall into another collapsed chamber. Less spacious than their last. Nonetheless, it was progress towards sweet, sweet freedom.

[Sparkplug]

There sure was an interesting set of emotions in Neon's voice when talking about those energy blades. First, the surging enthusiasm - some mecha noticed his work, and liked it! Appreciated it! - shifting back down to a sort of morose sigh as he recognised they weren't being used at all in the way he'd originally intended.

It was a familiar set of emotions, really. The pacifist Sparkplug had been could once have empathised. Nevertheless, far more pressing now was the itch of her curiosity to know how he'd contained the energy projection so smoothly and beautifully. And he'd made them himself! Really, he was the best Autobot to be trapped in a collapsed mine with. The way they cut through the stone was just poetry, it really was.

And then he mentioned Haven.

The surge of conflicted emotion could have been picked up by a satellite in orbit. To one as sensitive to EM emissions as he was, her field was positively shouting.

"She was there, huh. Shame. Would have been a waste. Don't know about this Bluestreak, or Javelin, though either of them might be Mister Grumpy. Met me in a bar, wouldn't tell me his name. Really suspicious of me. Terrible dancer. Took an electro-missile in the spine courtesy of MECH, same day I met Skystone. Whatever. Yeah, no, that was no way to die. Not for the rest of them, anyway."

There was a glassy calmness to Sparkplug's tone that utterly failed to reflect the roiling emotion beneath. "Not what I would have expected. Not the way I expected the truce would end, I mean. The higher-ups were pretty set on enforcing every provision of it. Of course, when you're working for an atrocity-factory like the Warlord, you don't really have the right to be surprised at anything, but the Air Commander seems decent enough. I guess it comes down to doing whatever it takes."

She ducked under the ragged fringe of stone, edging her way into the newly-revealed pocket of air and casting her headlight on the rubble that barred their way, reeling in the cable a little with a soft click-click of the ratchet. It was strangely, uneasily silent, as though the earth was taking a deep breath in readiness for more to come.

"Glad to help out pulling rocks out of the way," she added, gesturing loosely at the cave-in, "but I don't want to get a hand taken off at the wrist. That'd really spoil my day. So let me know if there's a way I can help, else I'll just keep on shining this light and reeling us in."

Stepping to the side to aim the light carefully, she went on, "So. Yeah. Nice to hear she's alright. We actually got on okay for a little bit, even if it took MECH turning up and trying to blow all of us into scraplet snacks to get past the tedious suspicion phase. Even Mister Grumpy can hold a conversation. Not what I'd have done. But then, He was there."

A clean, simple emotion sheared through the tangled static of her field; a pulse of pure, achingly intense, absolutely crystalline hatred.

"As far as He goes, nothing's off the table," she said softly, a chill radiating from the flat sincerity of her words.

[Deleted]

"Just keep your hands where they are. Wouldn't want you messing up again. Done enough damage for one lifetime, I think," Neon replied bluntly as they continued on their little excavation project. Well, it wasn't so little considering their lives depended on it. But that wasn't really the point. Ah, yes, the point. The point was that Neon echoed the same emotion right back at Sparkplug—anger. He was so...frustrated.

With an annoyed grunt, Neon cut into another piece of rock, hopefully proceeding along the correct path. He didn't know if Sparkplug could truly be depended on to lead them the right way. Had it not been for the physical evidence of her cable, Neon would probably think twice about following in the other scientist's footsteps.

But this was all they had to go on, and so Neon took out his anger on the stones and boulders instead, eventually calming down and pausing for a moment to get some respite and ease his taxed servos.

"Sorry, I... I don't mean to be rude. It's just. I don't get it," he added after a good few seconds of complete and utter silence. The timbre of his voice was soft and apologetic, if not downright pleasant.

But then, just as quickly, he spiked back into confused irritation: "How can you just be okay with all of this? Everything Megatron and Starscream have you people do...It's awful."

Shaking his head, Neon resumed his work at once but did not interrupt the dialogue. Committed to multitasking, he was now clearing a path and talking to Sparkplug at the same time once more. Admittedly, the subject was pretty hard and so was the task, so it probably wouldn't take long until they had to take another break.

"I know not every Autobot is exactly a model Cybertronian—but we don't deserve what they want with us. Nobody deserves that."

With emphasis so heavily put on "nobody," Neon cut through yet more rubble, adding force to his statements with action. It was a method of coping but also a mighty industrious way to advance their objective at the same time. Neon did not always know how to handle emotions, but this was healthy enough.

Then he continued.

"And you seem to genuinely care about people. Or you're bloody good at pretending you do, but I somehow doubt that."

Boom! Another wall came crashing down, revealing a completely intact corridor ahead. They were in luck. Neon could take a break from slashing and trashing plus they'd both get to walk towards the exit in a more...leisurely pace. Mind, the whole place was still pretty much a death trap, but at least one that allowed them some time to talk—and Neon in particular to ask a million shanix question.

"It makes no sense. There is no logic. How can you let them do this?"

[Sparkplug]

A surge of irritation radiated from Sparkplug as the mech aimed a passive-aggressive jab at her. She wasn't totally thrilled to be buried under a million tons of brainless silicate rubble either, and even the mention of the Prime had tensed her whole chassis, wheels shifting in their wells restlessly.

"Right. That's how you want it, you keep digging," she retorted bluntly, and took another step back. Aiming the single beam of her surviving headlight at the rocks he was slicing at, she reached up to finger the shattered armour-glass of the other gently with her fingertips. That was going to be an annoyance to fix. All the dents and scrapes were sore, but it was the shards of rock and dust that'd have slipped between plating gaps that could do real damage to her internals. Definitely had to spend some quality time with Knock Out, when he could spare the space in his schedule.

Okay, spending a little time with the velvet-voiced mech wasn't the worst outcome, but it wasn't the way she'd have liked things to have gone.

No, said a little internal voice at the back of her processor, the worst outcome would be if the tunnels collapse on you and kill you. And they still might.

The thought was sobering, and it drew the teeth of her anger. Her field ebbed, less vivid, more withdrawn. And then he spoke again; apologising, for a nanoklik, only to immediately go back onto the offensive. She could have surged right back into her own anger, and laid into him; the temptation was strong. But there was a quality of frustration in his tone, a near-desperation to understand, that stayed her hand.

The rock wall crumbled, clearing the way. Maybe, just maybe, they weren't going to die down here. Picking up the cable, Sparkplug ran it through her hands, following it carefully and methodically.

"You're wrong. There is logic. Or at least, there's reasons. Every mecha has their reasons," she said in a low tone, quite unlike the bouncy cheer she usually radiated. "So if you actually want an answer, I'll genuinely try to give you one, and you'll listen.

"First. What Decepticons want out of Autobots is for them to just die. All the elaborate stuff, the flourishes and atrocities, that's for lunatics and psychos. And yeah, we started off with more of them than you. But most of them have died by now, because when it comes right down to it, if you spend your time messing about instead of killing the other guy, you get killed. And what the Autobots want out of the Decepticons, equally, is for them to just die. I'm sure there's some like you, or some like me, that won't blow some mecha's helm off the instant it shows, but they're the outliers. Everyone else; they want the other guy to die. It's simple, straightforward, and the sides aren't any different on that."

Sparkplug held up a hand to indicate a pause, unearthing the cable from where a slew of sharp-edged rocks had crashed from the ceiling atop it. The outer covering was severed, baring the inner wires. Working with deft efficient movements of her fingers, she stripped the coating back and began splicing the inner wires into the housing strapped to her hip.

"The tactics are different. Sometimes. Your side have their share of energon-drenched fanatics, and I know you know it. But you're right about the Warlord. He's a threshing machine, an unkillable monster that's clawed his way through our civilisation and left it in ruins. Where you go wrong is failing to ask what that experience has done to your leader."

Holding a bare wire against a terminal with a fingertip, she sent a few interrogatory signals into the cable. Still nothing. "Another break further on," she sighed, then began walking again.

She could feel the bleakly toxic hatred swirling up within her as she tried to speak in a level tone, crushing the anger out of her voice and leaving it bleached and colourless. "I believed in Him," she said, her tone distant. "And then He killed us. All of us. Rather than lose the All-Spark to Megatron, He buried it in deep space. All the sparks that would have ever been forged, snuffed out. Genocide of the present, and the future. Our whole race. All the ones that could have come after us, ones untouched by the roots of the war, rebuilding Cybertron, living for something more than this. There will never be another child of Primus. Not ever."

Her vocoder strained under the stress of conflicting demands from her processor, her voice dwindling. "We're dying," she said quietly. "All of us. Every day-cycle, across the galaxy, we dwindle. He did that. I think He wants us gone. We've proved too dangerous. Too many civilisations caught in the crossfire. Don't tell me that the All-Spark could be found again; space is too big, and we've searched for millions of vorns. We're out of bodies. Out of time. And I hate Him for it." The flash of venom was too potent to be denied, the edge in her voice too sharp. Even if her tone remained almost level, almost conversational, her field burned with an unnatural hatred that shadowplay had amplified into something all-consuming.

"He will never even acknowledge the scale of His desecration. Far worse than anything Megatron can achieve. He can't think like that, because He isn't the bad guy. So I turned on Him. And I'll prop up any mech, anything, that can end Him. You ask me how I can let the Warlord do what he does? It doesn't matter. Because your leader is the one that murdered the future, for all of us. All that's left is the vendetta."

[Deleted]

"So, instead of looking for a way to fix his mistake—Instead of hoping for a better tomorrow—you just gave up?" Neon asked after a good few moments of silence. He did not understand a thing Sparkplug said. Sure, he listened, but try as he might, he still did not get it. The way she spoke implied that she had once been an Autobot or at the very least associated with Optimus in some way, but how could she just hate him so much? As much as Megatron—more than Megatron—who murdered scores of billions of Cybertronians, organics, and brought destruction to countless worlds. How could a flawed but good-natured leader seem to be a worse option than a genocidal maniac? It did not seem right—it wasn't right.

"Gave up and joined the Decepticons. That's—it's irrational. I mean, I'm not always completely logical myself—but I trust in science and I look for solutions. What kind of solution is throwing yourself under the command of a raving madman, exactly?"

His EMF and voice buzzed with irritation. Sparkplug's own emotions had an impact on Neon's and it was only bound to escalate from there as his questions grew less friendly and more urgent. Still, beneath all that mimicked behavior, he had only the best of intentions, genuinely wanting to understand what made Sparkplug the person she was today. He had never met a Decepticon under more convenient circumstances and he wanted to learn about the way his supposed enemy reasoned.

But despite their disagreement, Neon continued to walk with Sparkplug, clearing any barriers in their way. Seeing as there was yet another break in her cable, Neon guessed that they would still have a good few minutes to themselves before reaching more agreeable conditions.

"I can't pretend I'll ever understand the way you think—but I've had this hunch since you introduced yourself. You wouldn't happen to be -that- Sparkplug? The Autobot engineer. Chassis design, if I remember correctly. Energon pump morphology, right?"

Neon did not even wait for an answer. Being an avid follower of all things engineering and science, Sparkplug was a name he was loosely familiar with, mentioned in passing and credited for quite a wealthy stash of research.

"We all thought you died."

Maybe it should've stayed that way, Neon thought to himself for a split second. He did not know how to feel about it. If he would rather go on knowing that the Autobot Sparkplug died or that she became...this. He did not know Sparkplug in person, no, but he was almost certain that no well-meaning Autobot scientist would approve of what she had become.

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug's optics narrowed, a coldly luminous green in the darkness of the cave. Quiet anger burning in her field, she replied in a low, venomous tone, "Do you think I gave up and turned over my badge the day-cycle after he did it? I kept working, doing my appointed tasks, and waited. Because the All-Spark is the end game, the victory condition. Whoever holds it can manufacture new soldiers, and win by attrition. It's that simple. But despite it being the most significant artefact in the war, no one ever found it. It's been several million vorns!

"I am a grounder. I can't go looking for it myself. The two mightiest war machines the galaxy has ever seen spent the majority of the war searching, and came up dry. It is gone. Space is too big, there aren't enough of us left, and if you think it's ever going to be seen again, I advise you to be a scientist and run the probabilities, because they say we're all going to die without setting optic on a new spark ever again."

She walked beside the black-painted mech through the dank, dripping darkness, casting the beam of her solitary surviving headlight ahead of them as he slashed with his swords. She thought that perhaps he was just done, and so was their conversation. So when he spoke again, a flash of frustrated wariness lit her field, expecting a resumption of their verbal battle.

Instead, he recognised her.

She blinked. Hostility ebbed away from her EM readings in a wash of surprise, and she responded, "You remember the energon pump research I did? I'll be paint-stripped. Yeah, that was mine. Some damn good work there, back before the wheels came off the world for good. And the frames I built... well, that was back when there were new sparks to build frames for. Unarmed ones. Not that they weren't being gunned up in the next bay over, but if I wasn't doing it myself, I was still a pacifist, still technically not building weapons..."

Her gaze dimmed for a moment as she reached back into the deep past, then finally she shook her helm. "No. Didn't die when we got overrun. Just got tossed into a cell with time to think." A touch of tiredness entering her tone, she added, "Look, what we've got here is an irreducible difference in values. I think what your boss did is the actual worst thing that anyone can do, and I can't work for such a mech. You think the Warlord's fully-filled-out atrocity card trumps that; makes sense, but I don't agree. We're not going to persuade each other of anything by yelling. May as well try talking about something else."

She skirted a rough, jagged boulder, stroking her damaged left elbow with her other hand and feeling the subtle grinding of stone shards in the joint as it moved. "We're kinda stuck down here either way."

[Deleted]

Instead of continuing the debate or getting a final word in on the subject, Neon remained silent for now, processing, thinking, and clearing their path at the same time. He had so much to think about, so many scatterbrained thoughts firing off in one direction or the other. But eventually, one won out over the rest. Regret. Regret for everything that has happened, everything that could have been prevented.

He stopped digging again.

"I am sorry nobody came back for you," the Autobot wearily mentioned. He wanted—with all his Spark—for the Decepticon to simply confess that she has been lying the whole time and that she had not been an Autobot once. But that was the truth and it was difficult to live with. For Neon, who so lovingly believed in the cause, it meant a lot that the Autobots didn't look for Sparkplug, or if they did, that they did not look hard enough. What would happen if he was in her situation? Would they look for him? Would they even care? It gave Neon a whole new perspective that he had not considered until now.

For the first time, he felt ashamed of being an Autobot.

"We should have..."

Neon's voice trailed off into the wet caverns. He resumed his task, inching closer towards the break in the cable mentioned by Sparkplug. They should be there soon. Caves were difficult to navigate, and nothing was ever certain. The same corridors and directions could look completely different depending on the light and angle of approach, but they were two intelligent and methodical individuals. It would be a miracle if they did not know what to do in this situation.

[Sparkplug]

Carefully running the cable through her fingers and trying to ignore the slowly growing pain from her dented plating, Sparkplug occupied herself with stripping the insulation from the cable and pressing it against the terminals in the hub at her hip, checking for signal connectivity. Still nothing. Venting a small sigh, and gloomily noting the puff of rock dust that came out with it, she walked carefully over the uneven floor after Neon.

She really wanted to know how those energy blades were made, but wasn't oblivious enough to think he'd tell her, not with the uneasy hostility still hanging in the air from an argument abandoned but not resolved. At least he was efficient with them.

But then he stopped cutting, and spoke, an aching weariness in his tone. Something she didn't expect to hear. Something no mecha had ever said to her before.

Sparkplug frowned, taken slightly aback by the sentiment. "It's... okay," she allowed after a moment. "Big war. We were losing ground on every side. Didn't have the resources to go around rescuing scientists; had to prioritise where the soldiers went best. Besides, it wasn't that... bad."

It hadn't been that bad. They'd given her a new lab, and put her in with several pretty good researchers. New colleagues. New challenges. She'd had some really interesting theories about burst-capacitor focused systems that she'd just been itching to try out.

Except... that had been after she'd turned in her badge, or turned over her badge, or whatever you did with badges.

It hadn't been fun being captured. They'd been... yeah, the lab was warned of a Decepticon incursion, so they'd EMP'd the system memory, taken what data they could with them, made for the fall-back tunnels... except the incursion had actually come in behind the lines, cut them off, and they'd run straight into the enemy. Nowhere to go, tight tunnel confines. She wasn't equipped for fighting.

Foregone conclusion, really.

After, there'd been... tests of her processor capacity? Questions about her research?

A strange dread rose in her very spark chamber. No words, no concepts, but a powerful, powerful feeling that she was thinking the wrong things, and should not be thinking about this. Instinctively, she shoved the train of thought aside.

And just like that, she felt better.

Her field had contracted almost to nothingness, virtually unreadable to any normal mecha. And the cable had slipped from her hand. Shaking her helm, she bent down and picked it back up again. "That was a long time ago, for everyone. No point in worrying about ancient history."