We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
The tunnelvision was slowly zooming back out. Slowly. Enough that when a frame threw itself at Sideswipe that Jazz's head jerked up.
Velocity. Safe. Fine.
Wait.
Velocity...hugging Sideswipe?
Jazz reset his optics. Then his processor started working again.
Velocity. The Twins.
Velocity, whom he'd deliberately not told that the Twins were alive.
The Twins, who had been bitter enough about their last mission to make him promise he wouldn't ghost a glyph about them to the Autobots.
Jazz's optics went back to prioritizing clamping.
Slag. There was going to be so much slag exploding here, and a good deal of it was going to land on him.
Gotta live long enough to start tossing it, Sunny. Gonna be a good show. Come on, you slagger, you give up I'm gonna LAUGH at you and then get myself KILLED huntin' Megatron....
Sideswipe’s sensor array was fragged so he didn’t see her coming until her arms were around his neck and her EMF snared into his, hitting his energy field with that centuries familiar pitch, vorns with that energy signature in foxholes and hotboxes and lookout posts having made it utterly normal to him. He froze, sitting back against the monitor control panel behind him, too fucking shell-shocked to process what the fuck was happening to him right now. His spark fractured hot and cold – a raw, wounded sector of mass memory prompting him to grip his teammate back because that’s what she was there for when Sunstreaker got himself fragged… but the rest of him remembered.
He reached up and grabbed her wrists, the armor under his fingers buckling under his grip. “You…” he said blankly. Sideswipe pushed her away, but didn’t let go of her, gaze fixed on her face like there was a message written in the spark-light of her optics. “No, you left us.” His voice fritzed with static, Kaonese grammar glyphs spiking his vocalizations. He shoved her, hard. “You don’t get ta come’n find us an’ be happy ‘bout it! Don’t you dare be fraggin’ happy to see me, I should kill you!” Not quite an empty threat, even in his condition. He glared at her, EMF an arabesque of loathing and panic and that thread of dangerous longing that didn’t make sense because… “THIS IS YOUR FAULT!”
The work was hard and Ratchet was worried this time he would not save the twins, this time would be their last. Ratchet gave himself a shake. No Ratchet knew what needed to be done and would do it. The twins would come out of this and then they would get a lecture about who to fight and when.
Seeing Optimus come in was a welcome change. He would help Sideswipe while Steeljaw and Jazz helped Ratchet to get Sunstreaker away from the scrap yard. Some how hearing it was Megaton was no surprise. The twins were one of the best if not the best fighters and to see them damaged so much would mean a heavy hitter.
Hearing Velocity come in was not a welcome change. It would be bad. Knowing her past with the two would make this a dangerous situation.
Ratchet kept his servos moving and working. It was old habit now. Ratchet could keep up with what he needed to see and know and also fix the damage. It was good skill to get being a medic for war. As the last of the energon lines were clamped the scan was done. Primus did Megtron not miss anything? Ratchet went to work first on the spark chamber.
That was when Sideswipe started to yell. “Sideswipe! I find it a bad chose of action but if you want to fight TAKE IT ELSEWHERE. I need to work and not worry about Sunstreaker getting more damaged. And if you do fight I will lecture longer!”
Ratchet kept a medkit and other need for fixing bots on him by way of his subspace just for times like this.
The exchange between Velocity (prickly, aloof and never taken to friendly physical contact in all the time that he'd known her) and Sideswipe (panicking, agonised, and then suddenly possessed of an incredible rage that was not directed at the one who had sought to murder Sunstreaker) caught Optimus wholly offguard, but his large hands moved between them as a barrier as much as to further separate them with a firm press.
"Enough!" he barked, voice clipped and solid. The information that Megatron had attacked the mechs, apparently utterly unawares and unprovoked, had rattled his systems into a state of combat tension. Megatron had truly descended into an animalistic sociopathy to seek out victims outside of battle. A hate-blind razorwolf that had torn the mesh from his arms and torso in Chernobyl had been one thing - this hunting was quite another.
Megatron could wait for now, however, as it seemed that new conflicts had appeared amidst the wounds in their control room. "Velocity, keep back. Sideswipe, stand down. Now is neither the time nor the place for whatever grievance lies between you. Not whilst a grievously injured mech needs the complete focus of our medic."
Her relief was obvious and her field practically melted with it, until things started to turn out a lot different than she had expected. Then there was pain and she knew her wrists were going to need medical attention, the delicate metals in that are bent and pinched against the cabling that allowed them to move so gracefully and freely. Optics went wide and shocked and she was definitely confused. What was going on? Why would he be yelling at her now? Shouldn't he be just as happy to see her alive as she was him? She tried to step back but the grip he had on her wrists didn't allow for that, unless she wanted to pop her servos off and that really wasn't a viable option.
In the background she heard Ratchet shout but that was a normal occurance. Tunnel vision had taken hold of her and all she was really experiencing was the spark wrenching pain of the accusations being flung at her by someone she loved. Someone whom she had thought was dead and had been forced, by nearly being killed herself, to leave behind. Before she could even wrap her mind on his words, really form any type of response, Prime was there. He pulled them away from one another and she looked up to the bigger bot a moment, surprised at his tone but glad to hear it.
"Yes, Prime." Automatic words full of nothing. She felt more dead inside now than when she thought they had been scrapped. Looking over toward Ratchet and Sunstreaker she hoped that the medic could get him back online but suddenly feared what would happen if he succeeded. If Sideswipe was talking about killing her Sunstreaker wouldn't talk, he would just act. Velocity was as good as dead.
Vel's field was an agonizing mass of despair and pain and longing. Optics strayed back to Sideswipe and she made such a pained expression toward him. "I never wanted to leave, I tried to stay, Jettison wouldn't allow it. Later, please let me explain what happened? Please Sideswipe?" Velocity never pleaded, never begged, never really cared. Now however she cared so much about this one thing that if he said no she had no idea what would happen.
Last Edit: Mar 29, 2012 10:50:27 GMT -5 by velocity
“You want me to stand down?! Then get her out of here!”
He jerked back from the Prime’s restrictive hand, turning back to look toward his brother, lying in a pool of his own fuel, all the lights gone out in the bright gold frame of his body. Primus, he didn’t have the strength for this right now. He couldn’t muster the hate he needed to deal with this like he’d always envisioned dealing with it. How many times in the belly of that Decepticon ship had he told himself, promised himself, he would hunt down any members of that Autobot unit that ditched them in radio silence to death and torment. ‘Sorry.’ He remembered that – the one word that got through the radio snow before the Cons broke past their defenses – Velocity tried to get through to them but that didn’t make it okay.
“You’re lucky,” he said, leaning against the monitor station, his optics flickering. “You’re lucky it was Sunstreaker.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “If it was me on the floor, Velocity, he would find the energy to kill you.” And it was torment that he couldn’t find the strength for it. Three decades of loathing and he couldn’t find the willpower to hate her because if Sunstreaker was slagged as bad as he felt he was, then that meant… “Just get away from us. You can try to rationalize at me when Sunstreaker’s not dying.” Then, despite himself, “Just please, back off.”
Because with Sunstreaker down, it was too tempting to just forgive her so he could fall back on her.
Last Edit: Mar 30, 2012 19:27:44 GMT -5 by Deleted
Optimus returned his hand to Sideswipe's shoulder-mount, more as a deterrant now than an actual hold as the mech seemed to have exhausted his last reserves of physical and emotional energy. Nodding for Velocity to remain where she had placed herself (and they could deal with that mess later), the Prime cast his optics to Ratchet.
Sunstreaker's energon was everywhere. Steeljaw was covered, Jazz's knees were leaving clotted furrows in it on the floor, and Ratchet had been sprayed up both arms and along his chassis. It was a disturbing scene even without knowing the mech, and they were deal with split-twins. Sideswipe was already hurt, bleeding his own share of energon against the Prime and across the floor, and if Sunstreaker went to the Well..
"Would it be prudent to contact Cleaver and request that she 'bridge in to assist?"
Sideswipe was having trouble standing upright now, not just because his knee was crushed and he was basically standing on one leg, or because he was losing energon fast and hot from a dozen minor fuel and coolant lines. Pale blue optics flickered up, stunned wide, energon dripping frmo a fracture just above his right eye.
“Cleaver’s here?” he said blankly.
He was too emotionally exhausted to feel the appropriate level of surprised or hopeful or anything but tired and the dread draining him down to the dregs. Then again… that could just be his brother sliding offline and maybe he was just starting to feel it. Not all spark splits died with their other halves, some lived on, a hole in their sparks, enraged and facing the universe as a half creature. Sideswipe knew that he and Sunny were split to close though, too synced up and dependent to survive or at the very least Sideswipe knew he would not want to survive. Perhaps he would be capable but not willing. Maybe spark splits died, not because of any physical dysfunction but terminal failure of will – leaping spark first into the Well after their other half.
Prime’s grip was heavy on him, he couldn’t focus. “She knows us. She’s fixed us before. She could…” Sideswipe wobbled dangerously, held up only by the Prime’s grip shifting to his upper arm and holding. He shook his head. “I’m feeling kinda…cold? What the –?”
Leaning forward in the same movement that his arm curled, Optimus guided the wounded mech back down to the ground, where he ought to have been the entire time. Pure feeling had been keeping him on his unstable pedes, and he sensed from the way Sideswipe's optics cast desperately to Sunstreaker that it was feeling again that was taking that same strength from him.
He sent the comm. request, forwarding on a burst of data from Ratchet that he didn't entirely understand but would be critical information for Cleaver, and received a clipped confirmation that the older medic was on her way. If she was surprised, it hadn't come through. That partitions of a medic in an emergency situation.
Optimus was largely supporting Sideswipe against his chassis now, his attention forcibly kept on the red mech whilst the others worked on his spark-twin. Velocity continued to hover, uncertain and alone at the periphery. The Prime spliced Sideswipe onto a secondary fuel line as much as to share charged energon as to feel like he was doing something for him.
"Cleaver's en-route, and with Ratchet, particularly as she's worked on you before, you and Sunstreaker will be in the best possible hands." He couldn't bring himself to say that it would be alright to Sideswipe - knew better than to throw out that platitude in a high-emotion moment when it could have been latched onto as a truth, making the opposite eventuality that much worse. Sideswipe was a warrior - he knew what this was. The waiting hurt, the trusting other mecha to save a life even moreso, but it was all that could be done.
His sheer hatred was almost too much for her to bear yet she only flinched and rocked back like she had been slapped. If she were a weaker bot she might have left, took off and whined silently to herself. Thankfully for her she was not like this. Velocity stayed and listened and watched and took notes on everything that was going on. No matter how they felt about her she still loved them and that would never go away, no matter how painful this all was for her. She already knew, and had stated to herself, that Sunstreaker would have killed her, or at least tried to. Still hearing Sideswipe confirm it for her was like yet another slap and she wondered just how much of this she could honestly take. The only reason she wasn't firing back things was because Sunny may be dying and Sides wasn't doing too well either.
It wasn't easy to back off, but she did because he said please. It was the simplest of words and one of her biggest weaknesses. Her optics strayed a moment to look around the room, her field trembling and wracked with inner pain as she locked on Sunstreaker a moment before forcing herself to look back to Sides. No reason to stare at Ratchet trying to bring Sunny back to life when she was also dealing with this other drama that had come out of nowhere, to her.
“Cleaver?” The query was quiet but she didn't repeat herself just listened. She knew Cleaver, they had worked together a long time ago, when Velocity had first seen Megatron who was only D-16 at the time. She had sympathized with him then, but there wasn't a chance that Cleaver could connect that with her going to politics out of nowhere and then his sudden access to things, right? A thread of nervousness slivered into her field and she just continued to watch and fret silently.
Watching Prime now she mouthed to him. 'Do you need anything?' It was torture not to be able to help or do much of anything and she was slowly getting fidgety which was not normal for her. Velocity was usually cool and calm under pressure and nigh unflappable. This however was not something she had ever expected to be faced with. The Twins were, mostly, alive...and they hated her.
Cleaver tore through the groundbridge and into the Autobot control room with a squeal of metal as her pedes ran from bare rock to metal, her urgency equal parts Ratchet's databurst and Optimus's communication of these mechs' designations. She made it a practice not to think about where mecha she'd known had ended up, and particularly whether they were still functioning. The Twins were no exception. Brash. Forthright. Impulsive. Powerful and competent, yes, but often too confident for their own good and with a cockiness that fed off one another's nearness. It seemed a natural inevitability that they'd be offline by now.
She noticed Velocity peripherally as she came between the islands of mecha and energon, too tunnel-visioned to acknowledge her or even absorb the impact of her long-ago subordinate being alive as well. Sunstreaker (and she couldn't make out his distinctive yellow paintjob under all the energon and bots working on him) had Ratchet's full focus, leaving Cleaver kneeling in front of Sideswipe and bodily pulling him to the floor in front of her and out of Prime's hands.
Optimus didn't resist her, and after receiving a barely-polite click to back off/give me room/let me work, retreated back towards Velocity's side, offering the femme some comfort through proximity. He watched the scene with a familiar sense of impotency, regretting once again that there were significantly more killers than there were healers left in the universe. Sideswipe's energon weighed heavily on his frame.
Cleaver's hands were quick and knowing on Sideswipe's frame, making short work of sealing off the critial ruptures in his leg to stop the worst leaks before turning to the gouges in his chassis. She spoke without looking up, clipped but with a familiar near-maternal affection. "Figures the first time I laid optics on you you'd be slagged again, 'Sides. You'll be alright, though. You and Sunny, both."
She glanced to the flickering optics, felt her spark ache at the familiarity, before looking up to the other medic. "Ratchet - I want to put an umbilical line on Sunstreaker and keep some damn fluids in his lines. Is he stable enough to connect?"
((OOC: Big framed medics like Cleaver were built to be walking life support units, sharing charged energon through the same cable as regulating and diagnostic lines. She'll just need to move to within about 10 feet of Sunstreaker to hook up.))
Having been working on Sunstreaker Ratchet was pleased Sunstreaker had not off-lined yet. The lines had been taken care of for now. The work on the spark chamber was delicate. Ratchet was working fast but careful.
Hearing Cleaver almost had Ratchet yelling. Only hearing the talk not who or what was said at first. But the second of time to start the lecture was all it took to process the words to full need. “Yes he is.”
There was a moment Ratchet was going to ask Cleaver to take care of Sideswipe before starting on Sunstreaker but a quick glace killed that request.
Ratchet knew he could have no better help. As such the medic let Cleaver start the life line and knew she would not what needed work most next. And after the spark chamber was fixed he could and would move to the next part.
Sideswipe had a dozen things to say in response but his vocoder promptly aborted his attempts at speech in favor of locking hard in his throat, the circuits failing in their function at the sensation of Cleaver’s ancient EMF hitting the roadster like a physical blow. The frequency of her was so steady on, so set in the airwaves around her frame it was like she could push his into calm by sheer presence. Sideswipe had only just enough energy to grip her shoulder plates as she pulled him to the floor and began the familiar process of putting him back together, beginning with his knee and moving up. He just sat there watching her work, his optics dull, the spark light catching in the crystal diaphragms of his stare, the light of reflecting in the dull nanite coat of her plating.
His voice was a staticky whisper, thick with Kaon grammar linkage. “I felt it… like it was me.” He looked up at her, optics flickering. “Megatron got drop on us, tore us up and I felt it when Sunny… I felt it.” A hand curled around his side, over the metal over his T-cog, where Sunstreaker had been run through. There was real fear in his EM field. “I’m not supposed to feel it like that.”
Sideswipe didn’t presume she would react to this, being in medical-bot mode as she was, absorbed wholly in the damage to the younger mech’s systems, the sickly chugging of his internals, the tell-tale sucrose and alkali stink of transfluid and energon as the commando hemorrhaged proto-blood from his old wound freshly split inside his chest. He couldn’t feel it. The world felt like it was two inches farther away than he thought it was and when he reached reflexively for Cleaver’s helm his energon tacky fingers missed her audial by centimeters and dropped back to the floor instead. He sat back, palms flat on the floor behind him, bracing his weight there while Cleaver coaxed his abdominal plates to give in to medical override and split open with a hiss of heat.
Soldier frames, heavy combat models like the Twins’ ate energon furiously in combat, burning through it hot, fast, and needy and when damaged were prone to overheating and putting a spark into prolonged over-drive to compensate. His fans and cooling systems struggled to keep the heat down as he jerked, fingers curling into fists against the floor while she twisted off the bleeders in his abdomen with a feeling like getting stabbed, pain glowing and pulsing from his belly to his brain and he had to fight back a scream to let her finish her work, digging through proto skeletal structures, fishing for wires until she finished at last and he dropped back on his elbows, and dizzily started to reel toward unconsciousness.
But he couldn’t. Not with Sunstreaker hurt… He heard Cleaver moving to his brother, wrapped an arm around his middle and tried to focus on staying fragging conscious.
Cleaver didn't need to remove an armor panel to get at a suitable junction of energon, neural and mech lines on Sunstreaker - Megatron had torn him open to the mesh and Ratchet had had to pull away the rest to clamp the bleeds. The umbilical line scored through and welded to sizeable energon hose, simultaneously weaving into the neural fibres and other key systems. It temporarily linked them, and the medic shuttered her optics at the wave of errors and pain that flooded back.
Instantly, Sunstreaker's systems began to guzzle the energon out of her lines, charged for maximum support of his systems and to compensate for the litres of precious fuel he'd already lost. Living in a mine had the benefit of her having a near-full tank (despite the sparkling's best efforts) for the first time in centuries, and even at this rate it would be some time before the injured mech could bring it down to a threatening level.
She could detect Ratchet's work, his hands quick and efficient in the mech's systems as he made the physical repairs necessary to keep him out of the Well. Confident that he was going to leak out and crash her with him, Cleaver turned her focus to Sunstreaker's processor and began doing what she could there. Existing familiarity made it a lot easier, and when the worst of the impending software disasters had been averted, she partitioned her processor to bring some focus back to the outside world.
Sideswipe, unsurprisingly, appeared to have physically dragged himself the six feet she'd moved to get a line on his Twin and was slumped against her thigh. His energon lay in thick streaks behind him, though he wasn't actively leaking from anything worse than a few minor punctures that she'd skipped over because his autorepair was already sealing them off.
Blades still transformed into hands for the time being, Cleaver continued defragging the yellow Twin's processor whilst putting an arm around the red's shoulders and easing him against her chassis. She felt him grasp her arm and grit her denta, helm bowing briefly to touch his own. "Gonna be alright, I promise. We've got him. Got you both."
Sideswipe was shutting down, crashing, literally. His emergency stasis protocols were pinging his higher order neural networks to drop him into non-critical stasis, suggesting it on the grounds it would optimize repairs. He ignored them to watch Cleaver fix Sunstreaker, dully observing the medic as she dug through his twin’s split open abdomen, the gleam of his brother’s T-cog in the ruin, shredded neural circuitry and the glitter of raw proto-mass and plating – Megatron had fucking destroyed his brother with that hit, cracked him open and bleed him out. Sideswipe had seen his brother hurt like this one other time and Cleaver had told him back then that Sunstreaker would never be fixed. Ever. Not without some desperation, some good old fashioned stupid, and a lot of ill-gotten credits.
Here on this alien world, with no resources…Sideswipe had no idea what he could hope for. He didn’t hope very much anyway. He was pretty poor at it. So he pinned his hopes on Cleaver, as poor a deity as he could ever throw his prayers at but at least she’d done him some good in the past. The ache in his chest was fading finally, burned down to a dull throb and pulse as Sunstreaker’s systems stabilized and that frenetic pain and heat in his spark seemed to fade. Sideswipe ex-vented slowly, felt feeling come back into his systems, his own and nothing else. He caught Cleaver’s shoulder, using it as a brace to pull himself to his feet and sway there briefly.
“You got nicer, Cleaver.” He glanced at the gathered Autobots. “That’s the first time I ever heard you tell me it’s gonna be alright.” A short laugh, so tired he could have dropped dead that next instant. Shook his head as he looked down at his brother, optics unfocused. ”You’re not better liar though.”
((OOC: could wrap here or move Sunny to medical with the next few tags. I think Sides is gonna stand there stunned for a while.))