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.
Post by Thundercracker on Dec 31, 2022 23:27:32 GMT -5
While one might normally write off such a mistake as simply a mistake, the fact that it related to his own history caused Thundercracker to pause mentally.
There was the chance that it was what it appeared to be, a simple mistake by one who hadn’t combed the archives as diligently as he should have. However, given what Thundercracker had learned about this mech he was with, it seemed right to assume that Nokta was very serious and studious. And given what he knew about Megatron and the Decepticons, mainly Soundwave...that left two more likely conclusions in Thundercracker’s mind.
First one was that Megatron had ordered a rewriting of the history. While he probably wouldn’t care too much about how others remembered things, if he did win Megatron would probably want to sanitize some of the more nasty parts of his rise to power. Bombing neutral cities and forcing their allegiance seemed like something that he might want to cover up. The next one though...
It was completely possible that Starscream had changed things so that if he tried to vye for Megatron’s throne he had a better position to make his claim. And Thundercracker didn’t know which version was worse.
So he said nothing, merely offering a wordless grunt.
As to Nokta’s next statement, he had some more to say.
::Respectfully Lieutenant, I find officers tend to screw things up more often than they fix things. I’d rather be a part of the solution than the problem.::
Had Nokta’s recollection of the war and the events leading up to it been skewed by the rhetoric that had been pumped into him even before joining the Decepticons? Undoubtedly. Could there have been tamperings in certain historical records? Not unlikely. But given his occupation, he was not the expert on record tampering, and therefore could not speak to the frequency of their occurrence.
Having lived in a neutral city-state that remained neutral until the bitter end, Nokta had been a latecomer to the war in those early days, before the civil war had devolved into a genocidal crusade. Still, any sense of 'from the beginning' for Nokta would have been during or sometime after the fall of Vos, and the subsequent arrival of Starscream and his seeker army to the Decepticon ranks. The likelihood was that this mistake was merely a subconscious conflation of his own experiences with stories he’d been told or read about those like Thundercracker– certainly not helped by propaganda that sugarcoated or glossed over the grim fate of Vos– or worse, had used it for recruiting purposes.
Or perhaps this mistake was the signifier of something worse.
Nokta would listen to Thundercracker’s next, and then produce a soft vent of air, clearly amused by the statement.
::And how do you find that?:: The scout asked flatly, with no hint just yet as to whether or not he shared Thundercracker’s sentiment. Regardless, the seeker was bold for so effortlessly voicing his contempt for those who outranked him.
Post by Thundercracker on Jan 7, 2023 19:23:24 GMT -5
::Centuries of experience.::
Thundercracker paused slightly, realizing that where he was going was a very touchy subject to say the least, especially in a culture like the Decepticon military. A culture where one could criticize everything except one’s own chain of command or culture. Sure, you could scream and rant about the Autobots, Earth, the weather even. But one word against a superior or the power structure, and you were scrapped for life.
But Thundercracker had played that game for centuries, and if he was being honest he was sick of playing it. Still, he’d try to tread lightly in places if his processor stayed ahead of the game.
::Look, Lieutenant, I’m sure not all officers are like this. But in my experience, some officers either lose the big picture and get too caught up in the minute details or get too focused on the future and ignore the present situation. And when that happens, good soldiers get killed for nothing.::
He took an intake before proceeding.
::I’m not afraid to die, and I’m pretty sure none of those who died were afraid either. But I lost some good mechs, some I would call friends, because some officer got an idea in his processor in an attempt to score points with his superiors. And for me, sir, personally I’d rather not die because some officer was trying to pad his career. If I die, it’s going to be doing my job because it’s the right thing to do.::
Last Edit: Jan 7, 2023 19:24:01 GMT -5 by Thundercracker
Nokta almost chuckled. Instead, a light smirk crept onto his faceplates for a brief moment. Because he’d used that exact line more times than he could count by now with uppity young recruits eager to question orders for one reason or another.
As for the rest of Thundercracker’s words of wisdom? Nokta could see some reason in them. But he could also see the potential danger that rooted itself in that attitude, if gone unchecked. He was sure Thundercracker wouldn’t go as far as to insinuate that Nokta himself was one of these reckless officers simply seeking promotion or glory, having only just met him, but it still made the lieutenant look inward for a fleeting moment.
Had Nokta sent other mecha under his command to the Pit before? Certainly. But decisions like those had been far from reckless. The deaths served a purpose, a strictly utilitarian decision in the rare event these things happened. Nokta never sent a single mech to their demise if there was even a percent of a percent’s chance that their sacrifice would be a wasted one.
Was he one of the ones that made themselves “feel every death?” No. There was simply no time or room for sentiment like that in war. Not with what was on the line. But he’d come to understand that, if a superior were to send him to the same fate, he would not hesitate to answer that call.
Where he really disagreed with Thundercracker was on the nature of fear as it related to death. They all knew what they’d signed up for, sure. But that didn’t mean most of them weren’t afraid of death when it came down to those last few grueling moments. It didn’t take seeing the light leave their optics more times than any mech ever should to understand that.
::Death or not, everyone is afraid of something, seeker.:: Nokta would respond, again, with no real indicator as to his true opinion of Thundercracker’s words. And perhaps, a bit more ominous than he’d really meant it to sound.
He stayed quiet for a long time after that. Not because he was still considering Thundercracker’s words, nor because he was allowing the “touchy subject” to remain thick in the air between them.
But because he was now staring at something that was decidedly not energon jutting out of the mountainside for all eyes to see. Something that all but confirmed the suspicions he’d had about these energon “deposits” from the start.
::Standby.:: He would simply relay, admittedly very distracted from the entire conversation at this point.
Post by Thundercracker on Jan 15, 2023 21:34:30 GMT -5
Thundercracker didn’t say anything for a long moment before he let out what could be approximated as a sigh into the commlink.
::Indeed.::
He was glad for the silence after that, as he realized he might have overextended himself.
However, hearing Nokta say standby caused Thundercracker to be instantly pulled back into the present, almost completely forgetting about their previous conversation. He instantly flipped his scanners from energon to combat mode while his mental finger poised on the trigger that would unleash six missiles and hundreds of rounds of 20mm cannon ammo, ready to back up Nokta should the scrap hit the fan as it was wont to do in situations such as these.
::Problem?::
His scanners weren’t picking up any incoming hostiles, so he figured the issue must be on Nokta’s end. If that was the case, then it was more likely that instead of needing the weapons he would need speed in case the lieutenant lost his grip and needed a catch. But there was always the possibility that the Autobots or the humans had developed something invisible to Cybertronian scanners, so he kept his scanners active and watching.
A rectangular object, not naturally formed in the slightest. A container. Clearly cybertronian made. That was what had caught his attention. Jutting partway out of the rockface, dozens of hundreds of feet above the ground, was a container full of Primus’ knows what.
For a moment, Nokta simply stared at it, attempting the mental gymnastics in his head as to figuring how such an object could have arrived here, where it was now. He had a few different hypotheses, none of which could be tested without Thundercracker there to help him– and even then, it could potentially require more tools than they possessed at present.
A quicker solution would be to simply open the container, which, after a moment of calculation– Nokta did.
Padding along the sides of the container, feeling for an opening until he found something that could easily pass for one, the scout would finally speak once more. ::Do you remember when I called this a 'routine scouting mission?'::
::I lied.:: And it was not so much a lie as it was a withholding of a potential truth– Nokta had his suspicions from the beginning, but had he voiced them and been wrong? Well, it would have been a waste of both of their time certainly.
Inside the container was dark, he found, once he’d discovered a tiny slit that could become widened by flipping a latch on the edge of the container. Nokta flashed on his high beams, maneuvering himself around the container so that the headlights on his chest would peer inward, illuminating the contents of the mysterious box.
Inside: A slew of what appeared to be dozens of tiny, metallic spheres. They looked inanimate. At least, until they began shifting. One at a time, the tiny spheres gyrated, growing what looked to be tinier, more spindly appendages each. Nokta squinted, the sight not yet registering in his processor until shortly after a few of the spheres began to exhibit a dull, purplish glow, almost as though something had come alive within them.
Were those…eyes? He realized too late.
Oh no.
The first Scraplet came waltzing out of the container before Nokta could get a comm out to warn Thundercracker. He didn’t move as the tiny creature came out of the box, outside light illuminating the creature like the pit-spawn it was as it crawled outside and atop the container, rubbing its groggy eyes, blinking out at the new environment it had come to find itself in. Nokta stared at the creature, wide-optics, frozen in place
The most important thing right now was that it hadn’t seen Nokta yet. But there were easily a dozen more inside that could change that.
And so he took those extra few seconds to engage his silent-running, vents purging themselves of hot air, in a silently grotesque wheeze that could barely be heard over the howling winds dominating rockface this high up. From Thundercracker’s perspective, he would see Nokta’s spark signature inexplicably disappear from his scanners, as though Nokta had left this plane of existence altogether, even the chest-mounted headlights of his alt-mode powering down as he did so.
The scraplet did not seem to have noticed him yet, in fact, its optics looked to be malfunctioning altogether as it continued rubbing the lenses on its face and squinting intermittently as it shuffled along the box, looking around in vain. It gave Nokta just enough time to slowly shut the lid on the container before any more could get out. Then, he slowly began reaching out for the creature…
And snatched one of its limbs, wasting no time in tossing it off the side of the cliff to its certain demise.
Nokta wiped coolant from his brow with an exhaled vent of relief, ready to comm Thundercracker back once more when a light drilling sound began emanating from the container. Knowing the thickness of the container wouldn’t stop the scraplets for long, Nokta wasted no time in beginning his climb. Looking above himself, the clouds were low still but he could just make out the top of the mountain another hundred meters or so above him. His onboard routing system instantly began showing him the fastest route to the peak.
::I need a missile fired on my previous location in 20 seconds!:: He would command through their comm channel with no further context as he climbed as fast as he could, leaping and jumping for every handhold he could find, shimmying and twirling around obstacles to the best of his ability.
Post by Thundercracker on Jan 22, 2023 21:48:03 GMT -5
::Do you remember when I called this a ‘routine scouting mission?’::
That phrase caused Thundercracker to pause slightly in hesitation, a worried feeling beginning to flow over him as he was starting to put everything together. But before he could make a reply of any kind, Nokta confirmed what he had been dreading.
::I lied.::
Well, that was small comfort.
::What’s going on?::
Nokta wasn’t moving, which was worrying to Thundercracker. A list of what could go wrong was flashing through his processor only to be interrupted by what he thought was movement from where Nokta was. It was incredibly small, but Thundercracker hadn’t picked up any activity from Earth’s large avian variety in the area. Plus it seemed to be metallic...
Suddenly Nokta was just gone. Not like he had dropped out of sight but was just gone.
::LT, what just happened?::
His quest for answers was interrupted by Nokta calling for fire where his last reported position had been. Any questions that Thundercracker had been thinking of asking suddenly vanished from his processor as he locked onto the target and began a mental countdown.
::Copy, weapon release in fifteen seconds!::
If Nokta was wanting fire on that position, Thundercracker would oblige him. He didn’t know why Nokta was calling for fire, but he had a guess and none of them were because there was an energon mine right there. If he had to guess, judging by Nokta’s behavior, it was probably the worst thing a Cybertronian could stumble across.
After the full twenty seconds finished counting down, Thundercracker fired a single missile at where Nokta had been twenty seconds ago.
::Missile away, missile away!::
Last Edit: Jan 29, 2023 22:20:56 GMT -5 by Thundercracker
The payload hit the mountainside and in an instant inundated it with hot fire and black smoke, erupting against the rock and utterly obliterating anything that had been in the general vicinity upon impact. For a moment after this, there would be nothing at the other end of Thundercracker’s comm line.
Silence. Dreadful, numbing silence.
Until finally, a crackle of static:
::Much obliged.::
Standing on a precipice 3,000 feet above where his climb had begun, Nokta’s body would come into view out of the clouds of smoke as he tilted his helm downward. His optics scanned the mountainside below where a crater was now billowing out smoke from the impact site of Thundercracker’s assault, looking for any signs of movement.
::Still with me, seeker?::
Nokta’s voice was calm over their comm-link, despite the fact that he had just scaled hundreds of feet in twenty seconds, having narrowly avoided a grim fate at the hands of either scraplets– or gravity.
Before him now spread a large crevasse in the mountain, as though the mountain had cracked down the middle to create a passageway just wide enough for a Cybertronian to fit through– though it would be a tight fit. On Nokta’s scanner, further 'energon signals' beckoned ahead, through this narrow chasm.
Danger may certainly lay ahead, but so too could answers for all the events of the day thus far.
Post by Thundercracker on Jan 29, 2023 22:25:42 GMT -5
Dead accurate, just like Thundercracker liked it.
And just as he was about to check in with Nokta, the scout’s voice finally broke over the commlink with a thank you.
::Don’t mention it.::
Despite not always agreeing on everything and sometimes trading blows when off duty, Thundercracker knew that deep down there was a mutual respect between grounders and fliers who served in combat together. There were many obstacles that grounders needed a fliers help overcoming, but at the same time there were problems that grounders could solve better than fliers. So despite his pride in being a seeker, Thundercracker had some respect for grounders.
::Ready with another one if needed.::
Sometimes it took more than one. But now it was time for the big question.
::Yes.:: Nokta answered, simple and calm. For all the climbing for his life he’d just done, he didn’t sound too winded. Perks of the speedster stamina he’d been taking advantage of for his entire military career.
He didn’t elaborate further, at this point, he wasn’t entirely too sure himself exactly why a container of scraplets was lodged in the side of the mountain so high up– but he sure had his theories. Only theories at this point. but ones that could potentially be answered in the mountain passageway ahead.
As for why they were really there in the first place, he knew Thundercracker likely had mounting questions, not that the scout would have definitive answers for all of them yet. It was a mystery that was still unraveling. But one thing was for certain, he wasn’t leaving without getting to the bottom of it.
The scanner in his hand was telling him that those answers lay ahead, and with Thundercracker still providing overwatch, he didn’t quite figure he’d be outnumbered against more of those things yet.
::Watch my six. I’m still tracking more signals up ahead.::
Hopefully there wouldn’t be anymore climbing just yet.
Post by Thundercracker on Feb 12, 2023 20:45:42 GMT -5
Well...scrap...
There were a lot of beings that Thundercracker wished would go offline for various reasons, and from a variety of means, but death by scraplets was something he wouldn’t even wish on his worst enemy. The idea of being eaten alive by those bugs, unable to do anything, slowly falling apart, was enough to send shivers through to his spark. He’d seen the results of their handiwork many times, especially after he left Starscream’s side for the front lines, and usually the only thing they could do was incinerate the area from afar and pray that they killed every last one of the buggers.
But the question remained...how did a pod full of scraplets get all the way here to Earth? Who in their right mind would think ‘hey, let’s just box these little devils up and shoot them into the galaxy? What could possibly go wrong?’
Well...if Thundercracker ever found an answer to that question he was going to give them a piece of his mind at the very least.
Keeping an eye on the area where the pod had been reported in case any of the buggers had survived, Thundercracker reoriented his nose to better cover Nokta in his new position.
::Copy. Standby.::
Thundercracker sent out a short scanner pulse of the area ahead, hoping to get a good look at whatever else it was that they would come across today.
With no knowing what lay ahead for the lieutenant, and well aware of what had just transpired down below– he pushed onward into the rocky crevasse. The potential risk was clear, but few things about his job came without risk, and he was unfettered by it all this far into war.
Scraplets were bad, but there were worse ways to die. Not many, mind you. But there were.
::I suppose by now you have some questions.:: Nokta’s voice clipped through his and the seeker’s comm channel, rather wanting to focus on something other than at this point. He didn’t seem any more startled than he had been, save for the brief shout at Thundercracker earlier when he’d ordered the seeker to fire upon the mountain, having expertly brought his focus back to the task at hand. Thinking about how close he’d been to a certain death was something he could do later, within the relatively safe confines of Blackridge.
::Ask away while I’m unoccupied.:: Nokta offered, and it still came out sounding like an order. He didn’t like keeping his soldiers in the dark, not when it could potentially jeopardize a mission. But he didn’t like riling them up either with speculation if he himself did not exactly know the extent of a situation. Missions like these were always a balancing act between the two, and he typically defaulted to the latter option of remaining quiet and hoping the subordinates in question would stay in line. In this particular case, Thundercracker had not yet given him a reason to believe he’d fly off the rails at any point. His unquestioning help with the scraplets had revealed that much.
Last Edit: Feb 16, 2023 17:13:48 GMT -5 by Nokta: muh format
Post by Thundercracker on Feb 19, 2023 22:34:20 GMT -5
Oh so now he could ask questions...
Not like Thundercracker really had any questions on the situation. Nokta had more or less confirmed the fact that what he had Thundercracker fire on had been a pod of scraplets, which was perfectly fine with Thundercracker. But...if this was a chance to get Nokta to open up a bit and talk, Thundercracker was going to take advantage of it. As much as he liked the silence, he’d had silence for the last twenty thousand years. So he was going to take advantage of the opportunity to talk to someone.
::How do you think it got there?::
He was sure that Nokta had been considering the question himself. The situation wasn’t a normal one to say the least.
::And more importantly, who in their right mind would load up a pod of scraplets and shoot it into space?::
Whoever it was, Thundercracker wanted to have serious words with that individual. Talk about irresponsible behavior. Even Skywarp would know not to do something as foolish as that.
::I know exactly how it got there.:: Nokta responded, all but certain that his suspicions were correct after that debacle. ::Some time ago a cargo ship on a routine supply run was ambushed just before entering the system. Something jammed their signal and we couldn’t track their trajectory planetside, if they even made it to Earth at all.::
::Like I said, this was never a 'scouting mission really.':: Nokta spoke, calling back to his earlier point before he’d been so rudely interrupted by the mechanical vermin that were scraplets. ::It was an investigation.:: From the moment he’d reviewed the request for 'energon scouting' back at Blackridge and the survey of the region it had been paired with, he knew there was something up. Energon stashes were far more carefully planned than to be left somewhere as taxing to mine as a mountain range.
::We’re tracking the detritus of a ship’s crash, not energon deposits.:: Nokta spoke aloud, as if finishing that thought. As for who would be carrying cargo like scraplets aboard their ship? That did nothing to ease his conscious.
Nokta glanced down at his scanner once more, watching as the screen artifacted and buzzed with signal interference with a grim look on his faceplates.
Post by Thundercracker on Feb 26, 2023 20:50:02 GMT -5
Well that information was...enlightening.
Would have been helpful for Thundercracker to know ahead of time.
Was he going to say anything about it, call out Nokta for hiding the truth of their mission from him? No...at least not yet. In all honesty, Thundercracker should have probably figured out the truth before this point. Perhaps he was just too focused on the task at hand to look at the bigger picture and realize the clues didn’t fully add up. Or was it that despite his constant suspicion of others, he was still too naive to recognize the realities of life...
::Understood.::
Nokta’s next transmission was garbled somewhat, though he was able to make out the majority of it. If they were getting interference, either they were close to a bigger piece of ship debris...or they were being jammed.
::I can make you out barely.::
Thundercracker dropped altitude and subsequently decreased the range between him and Nokta before trying again.