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.
Cleaver let Sideswipe sit vigil with his Twin for twenty hours before comm.ing him away from the Medbay and into the spacious rec room, adjoining the control room with only an arch of wall and ceiling supports to demarcate the two areas. This behaviour was not new to her - whenever one of the pair had been slagged enough in a match that they needed an extended unconscious stay in her workshop, the other would lurk as a heavy shadow until they left again.
Sideswipe was worse for it than Sunstreaker, though the more bearable of the two to have underpede. When one brother was in some form of stasis lock, the other was an EM-broiling mess of frustration, irritation and a spectrum of emotions like 'worried' and 'anxious' that a) they wouldn't admit to and b) made them act out to mask or compensate for. Less things got scrapped if it was Sunstreaker on the berth. Sideswipe would sit still and silent, which didn't interfere with the medic.
The prospect of having him sitting there for however many months it could be until Sunstreaker regained consciousness was not, however, a thought she could tolerate.
Sideswipe needed occupying, and Cleaver had an abandoned mine of jobs that needed doing. One in particular struck her as particularly promising as a means to get the red mech away from the Medbay and from sliding into an emotional pit.
Scoring the last outline into the stone floor with a laser, Cleaver took a cube from subspace and rested into her remaining blade as she sipped. ::Sideswipe - could you come out into the atrium? If you're not too busy...::
He rebooted his optics blurrily and raised his head from his arms where he’d folded them as a pillow beneath his helm. The dim light in medical caught bright off the polish edge of Sunstreaker’s armor as he sat up, rubbing his face sleepily. Internal chronometer told him he’d been in recharge for about three hours, the whole span of which had been plagued inordinately by bad defrag and recursive sensor recall. Waking up, his orientation was thrown for a moment, the world spinning wildly around in his head. It took him a long and kind of stunned couple nano-kilks to register what it was that Cleaver had just said to him.
::Oh no, ain’t busy. Y’know just ruminatin’ on the slaggin’ ceiling,:: he grumbled, his head too foggy just then to swap out of a slurred Kaon-dialect of Cybertronian. He exvented and stood up from where he’d been seated, head on his arms beside his brother. “Later, fam,” he said quietly, knocking restlessly on the medical slab his twin had been berth-bound to since they’d moved to the Neutral base. He left medical, hooking his hands behind his neck and stolling out to the main control room where Cleaver was drinking down a cube. “What’s up?”
Cleaver motioned to the black outline scored into the floor with her cube, optics flickering over the notation glyphs of powerlines and energon draw points. It was a loose floorplan design - a curved semicircle facing the recreational space and a solid rectangle backing it, beyond which lay the control room and, further on, the Medbay.
"Not spent much time in DMZs over the vorns, but I know for a fact that a bar is a pre-requisite," she began conversationally, studying the outlines as she overlayed her imagined projection atop it. At 50 feet long, it was not a small construction project, and she rumbled thoughtfully. "Got enough to be doing around here without manufacturing furniture and piping."
Finally, Cleaver looked to Sideswipe, expression carefully neutral. "Was wondering if you wanted to make it a project to build the thing." The barest glimmer of a smile crept out at the emerging thought. "Maybe even run it after, if you wanted."
“This is you tryin’ ta distract me,” said Sideswipe, folding his arms across his chest and grinning.
He was about to berate her for it, or mock her some more, but something about the arrangement of her face dissuaded him from the notion. Though he wouldn’t be quick to admit it, she was giving him an out: Sitting stunned and on/off agonized in medical bay wasn’t exactly his ideal way to deal with his spark-twin getting slagged. In their long and sordid history, the Twins had been subject to all manner of physical atrocity in the gladiatorial rings and the general streets of Kaon. Cleaver had been there for nigh unto all of it. She’d been a permanent scowling fixture of the Undergrid and she knew he needed to distract himself. It would have bugged him that she knew that about him… but it was Cleaver.
It didn’t matter if it was Cleaver for whatever reason.
“Or,” he drawled, pacing over to take a look at her plans, “it’s your way of tellin’ me ta go an’ get started dismantlin’ the POS before it gets discovered by fuckin’ squishies.” He tilted his head at the arrangement. “Th’ galley in th’ raider ship’s got a fully functional ex-gen distillery. I should be able to pull it out an’ convert it for our purposes. Ship’s pretty fuckin’ big though. S’gonna take me a while ta tear it open an’ pull the scrap in. Power core’s still intact. Ground bridge tech. Big salvage job.” He crouched down, optics running back and forth across the floor. “Would be fun ta’ run a bar.”
She'd expected him to see through it - the motivating factor behind taken a breem out of the Medbay to draw a schematic on the Atrium floor was a klaxon of obvious redirection. It did not, however, change the facts, and Cleaver flared her fingers around the cube one by one. "Gets rid of the grounded scrapheap, keeps you out from under my pedes, and makes for one less thing I don't have to do myself. So yeah, have at it. Got enough spare parts to near enough build another still if you want that too."
She downed the rest of the cube, denta gritting as the gestation chamber detected the influx of energy and much-needed particles and kicked up four gears to thoroughly devour it. Cleaver traced the outlines on the floor with a vague motion of the empty vessel. "Grid here gives you power and energon lines, and boundaries. Colour inside the lines."
Turning a step away, she faced Sideswipe fully and arched a thick brow at him. Internally she was relieved, one of the many aches in her spark unknotting to see him smile and accepting focus and purpose that was not Sunstreaker. She subspaced the cube and pointed the blade as it shifted back into its normal configuration at the red mech's chassis to add: "And running a bar will not give you license to be a complete aft. You're supposed to be breaking up brawls, not inciting them, gottit?"
“Running a bar has nothing to do with that license,” drawled Sides, flashing his most winning and completely heinous grin at the ancient medic.
He did not let on the relief that passed through him, winding and treachery in the back of his mind, that said he was glad for the distraction… he did not let on either, the crushing surge that gnawed at him and begged him to go back into med-bay and check one more time on his brother. Four million years he’d had to learn to ignore the spark-deep fraternal drag and function in spite of it. He wondered at that: his constantly fighting to function in spite of his brother.
“I assure you, my being an aft is something I will do regardless of whether I’m running a bar or breaking heads in the name of that bar.”
He leveled a look up at her from where he was squatting, optics bright, on her floor. “You really think neutrality’s gonna work, Cleaver?” He was still smiling, a cold edge suddenly in his tone. “You really think the fragger’s word is worth the air it moved when he said it? If Megatron walked onto this base, the mech who’s killed a million, two million, three million, how many millions of us...” He let that hang. “Am I still gonna sell him an ex-gen?”
She hated when he did that - slid with that same expression of youthful, mischievous pleasure onto a dark and frigid vector with nothing in between. Bothered her because she knew what he was like before he was like this.
"Word in charge is hard to break, Sideswipe," she replied, flat and unflinching. "And I was his medic before I was yours. Had more than an ample chance to offline me when I, went to him and asked for this."
Had had his hand in her internals at a knowing depth and angle, distinguishing expertly between the killing and crippling strike. Slid his hand through her pitifully thin armour like it was a caress and then had her beg for her patch of peace still inside. Then taken what came away on his talons to his mouth.
Her plates twitched with a rattle before clamping tight, her side aching with the ghost pain of the memory. Neural glitch. She twisted a bladetip into the ground, maintaining the red mech's gaze. "Would've been easy for him to get rid of me and my nonsense idea then and there, but he didn't. He's the ranking Decepticon in this sector, and a DMZ has its uses to him. He'll enforce it amongst his, just like Optimus Prime will. And yeah, he'll be entitled to buy a cube out of the still on the one in a trillion chance he comes down here."
Leaning into the blade, Cleaver's tone took on a note of steel. She made it. "You can't suck it up and do that, job ain't yours.
“Then I don’t want ya fuckin’ job,” snapped Sideswipe in fast, nasty English, the twist in his hybrid Anglo accent dipping every syllable in acid. “That mech savaged my brother, straight wrecked Sunstreaker. Ya can play nice. Ya can play up whatever da fuck t’was got Buckethead in yur fuckin’ pocket but I’m not playin’ along, trust. Fact ya can ask it means ya ain’t got no idea. Aint suck it up. Aint choice. Aint a thing you pick. He savaged my twin an’ he don’t get off, Cleaver. Next time I see him I’m straight killin’ him an’ that’s nice. I’m nice as hell. I’m nice cuz what I can do it is leave when ya tell me leave an’ some otherbot who’s got him some choices he can make can choose ‘suck it up’ an’ serve th’ fuckin’ psychopath a drink. Fuck that, fam. Fuck that.”
Sideswipe got us. “Aint got a problem with dem other Cons. They’re whatever. They ain’t nothing. Megatron’s different an’ ya should know that. Should know that already, Cleaver, don’t care if you’re wired all medic-do-no-harm bullshit in your brain, ya should know better’n ask someone play nice with Megatron. Real Kaon-bot would know better’n dat. Guess you got more Tower in ya than I thought or the bitlet stealin’ yur processing power straight out? What?”
Cleaver didn't flinch, hadn't moved throughout the entirity of Sideswipe's tirade. Her systems had stiffened into quiet, though, and it was only the roar of his engine that filled the few beats of silence when he was done.
"'m sorry," she uttered, low and even." That was stupid of me. Thoughtless. Of course you won't, and you shouldn't. Don't know why I said it."
Because gentle didn't work. Because she didn't know what he needed. Because he'd already told her more than once that she'd 'gone soft', and the notion that he was right terrified her. Soft was dead or worse. Lobotomized into a breeder, because soon there'd be a sparkling and there was no way to hide that, the neon sign over her head, with so many millions of years passed since the Last Sparked. Should have gone to ground as soon as it had happened, gone into hiding as soon as it was established. Moved on to safer space like she always had, but her pride wouldn't allow it.
The DMZ had her trapped, and more anchors were turning up all the time. Like Sunstreaker and Sideswipe.
Right then, out of nowhere, Cleaver realised just how little she actually knew what she was doing. The practicalities, definitely, and Primus knew she had the single-minded stubbornness to push it through. Landmines were being laid at every turn, though, and Sideswipe was right that Megatron could still, charge or not, lay the place to waste with whoever inside it.
But she had to believe that he wouldn't, because someone had to. Someone had to stand by the DMZ and maintain that it would work, because that was part of making it work. Even when the doubts crept in and she was feeling her age and coldly, terrifyingly vulnerable. Asking for Pit and the Unmaker both by engineering situations where mecha would be in a space with mecha who'd killed their kin and cohort, friends and comrades, and only hoping that the threat of their commanders would be enough to keep them from killing each other.
Sideswipe was still there, field still searing and snarling, and she didn't blame him. Partitioning the anxities and dreads away to torture herself with later, Cleaver tipped her gaze away in rare concession to him. She felt numb and compressed simultaneously.
Releasing her outer plates back from her frame, she brought her optics back to his again. One of the jabs he'd dealt her she could deal with at least. "And that's the last time you get to call me a Towerling, mech. You don't go there."
Last Edit: Jul 11, 2012 17:40:24 GMT -5 by Deleted
Sideswipe could have pointed out that, as a drop-caste serial-code bot, he really hadn’t been allowed to go there. The Towers. But that was a low blow to a femme who was visibly having her fears eating her. Sideswipe had been sparked raw ugly into the Undergrid of Kaon, bound to the nasty, leering, pit that was living in in the sub-plates and if he knew anything he knew fear. That in mind… yeah he still kind of wanted to hate her for asking him to do what she’d just asked him to do… but the flip side of that was she had a million things running around in her brain while he just had the one: Sunstreaker.
Then she should have known better! part of him snarled, bright yellow burn in his head. Frag her Neut-medic Tower-polished self-gen special feelings. Boo-hoo. She shook hands with Buckethead and suddenly she’s the gate-keeper guardian of peace and snuggles? At what cost? What’s she given? On a whim she’s here and on a whim we could all be blown off the map and there would be zero repercussions. None if the Decepticons broke their word. What would the Autobots and Optimus do to avenge our smoking corpses? Be slightly more righteously indignant tomorrow? Who is a Towerling to tell you, a Kaon-bot, drop-caste, serial-number self-designator that she isn’t a fragging bright-plate? Tell her to fuck off.
“Fine. I won’t go there.”
Soft spark.
“I’ll build your fraggin’ bar,” said Sideswipe, letting it go. Then, because he did feel just a bit bad for the lonely medic with a factory chugging in her chest and a psychopath’s say so for safety, he added, “an’ I’ll still kill any fucker what tries to hurt ya, old femme.” He smirked a bit wryly. “I’m still allowed ta kill fuckers what try ta hurt ya, right?”
Another hard switch around, but less jarring now that she was getting the feel for it back. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker operated on dizzying flips and spins of mood and attitude around each other because they already knew the ephemeral pauses in between. And then assumed that the rest of the 'verse would as well.
Cleaver was out of practice with it, particularly when Sideswipe was torqued off (and Primus help her if it had been Sunstreaker instead of his slightly mellower twin), and couldn't muster the smile she should have done. That dry, unimpressed expression that said 'yeah glitchwit, I get ya' and simply buried the pinpoint accurate barbs of whatever he'd just thrown at her.
"Yeah," she finally replied, straightening enough to bring her blades hanging to her sides. The smile she gave was hollow, but the best she could manage right then. "Primus knows I can't do it myself."
Exventing slowly, Cleaver scanned over the marks on the ground again, suddenly feeling like it had been vorns since she'd mapped them out. It gave her a few kliks before she met his perfectly bright optics again. "'m going out for a bit. Comm. me if you need anything."
Later, Sideswipe might not have been able to explain the impulse but the once-gladiator smirked and said, “Allow it, fam.”
Then he leaned over and looped an arm around the medi-bot’s big shoulders.
Cleaver felt like solid things should, hard unmovable landmark things should – that fixed point that he and Sunstreaker kept tripping over somehow. She persisted when no one else did and that was a feat, in a war like this. You were a lucky mech if you got to keep someone, anyone, even mechs you didn’t like so well but shared a piece of the past with you that the pair of you could hold in your palms and look at, seeing the memory of it reflected in the other bot’s optics.
Sides tipped the side of his helm against hers, tightened his arm a bit. She smelled like chemical cleaner and aged alloy, some over-heated akali tang that he imagined had something to do with the impossible happening in the guts of her massive chassis. Cybertron was dead, but if he stood close enough to Cleaver it was like the streets of Kaon were alive and vicious again and she was safe berth always to fade to when it got too vicious even for a pair of hard-cases like he and his other half.
“I’ll get ta work,” he said, letting her go. “I’ll comm.”