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.
Airazor snagged the candy and patted Steeljaw on the shoulder as she went past him, returning to the ground bridge controls. The coordinates, not so very far from the location Prime and Smokescreen had just bridged in from, were quickly set, the green vortex spiraling open to admit Prime's alt mode and snapping shut behind him.
"Busy night," she said, returning to the symbiont and the new mech. "I imagine you can handle things from here, Steeljaw? I'd like to witness Rattrap lying through his dente about whatever he got caught doing. It's something of a tradition for us." She smiled at Smokescreen, "If you'll excuse me?"
<<and that's Airazor out of thread; feel free to puppet her actual departure>>
His audials burning, Smokescreen thought, "Qansani! That Neutral dock! He's a Neutral! Now, isn't that interesting."
Mental notes filed themselves away very quickly.
But when Optimus spoke up he found himself startled out of his thoughts. He turned to watch the Autobot commander stride through the ground bridge, which sealed itself neatly behind him. No need for an apology; he was glad to hear that fresh troops were arriving to bolster the forces here on Earth. It was good news, not unexpected. But Fort Max? Hadn't thought that one would be fit for reassignment for a long time. Not a kind thing to say, but Smokescreen was not unfamiliar with regarding his teammates in a clinical manner.
Then, realising he was holding something, he absently popped the gummy into his mouth. Hey. These weren't half bad.
"Not at all," he said, returning Airazor's smile. "It was good to meet you. And- Steeljaw, was it...?"
He looked around at the cat, still smiling wryly. "I hate to impose upon your hospitality, but if you're not busy I don't suppose you could direct me towards any spare quarters that might be available? I would like to see Jazz, but I'll admit, I'm dead on my feet. I'd best get settled in before I try exploring and only get myself lost."
Two arrivals in one night, and neither together as a group or requiring rescue from crashing. Interesting. Steeljaw waved an assured pulse at Airazor as she left - regardless of who was technically on duty at the monitors he rarely stopped routing the feeds through his own receptors except when he was in recharge. He was certain Blaster did the same, and the only reason Jazz didn't was because the two of them already were. A brief nanoklik saw the groundbridge controls routed to him as well as remote control was the only way to go - it wasn't as though he could operate the controls for a full sized mech even if he were standing on them.
Another nanoklik found an empty set of quarters on the basic public available base map, which Steeljaw annotated as belonging to the newly arrived Smokescreen before pinging the other mech with the data. "The first thing you'll want is a map," he assured the other wryly. "The indigenous species has a depressing tendency to build all of their dwellings very plainly and exactly the same, and this base belonged to them before it came to us."
One last nanoklik of hesitation and then Steeljaw jumped down to the floor, skirting neatly around Smokescreen's pedes as he made for the corridor that lead to the base proper. "This way," he called, pausing only long enough to make sure the mech was following him before reaching the corridor and promptly climbing up the wall to hang much closer to the bot's optic level. "I'll show you where it is."
Smokescreen followed the cat politely, his hands clasped together behind his back. The location data arrived a moment later and he tucked it away with satisfaction. Excellent. A place to stay. No more bunking down in underground lots, dodging parking officers and petty criminals trying to break into him in search of his stereo system. At least, for now.
He grinned at the mention of a map. That was a damned good idea. This base, it looked military in origin. Like a bunker. That meant lots of uniformity and lots of grey. Easy to get lost in. No matter where in the universe you travelled, that seemed to be a constant.
Questions stirred in the back of his mind.
"Thank you," he said, gazing about himself as they reached the corridor. His voice echoed slightly off the walls. "I appreciate the escort. It will be good to get settled in. Have you been stationed here for very long? You and the Autobots, I mean."
Steeljaw's audial twitched, the only sign he noticed the Autobot's self correction. Polite, he thought to himself, which was more than most of them bothered to remember when he was more or less a stable fixture around the base. Pacing along at optic level, he eyed the newest arrival curiously.
"I crash landed a few months back," he told the other as they walked. "Injured in the crash, not a lot of options. The Autobots rescued me. I've been earning my room and board here ever since." It was the driest of summaries, not counting any of the wet months spent in the rainforest or the utter horror of organic micro life.
Slanting a sidelong glance at Smokescreen, he gave the mech a small grin. "And you - what? Came in safe and sound under your own power, nice textbook landing? That's unusual. The track record around here tends to skew towards flaming crash landings with debris everywhere."
Smokescreen met his glance with an incredulous stare and wondered if the cat was pulling his leg.
But no, Steeljaw looked both amused and serious. Oh, he couldn't help it. Smokescreen laughed.
"Really?" he said, grinning back. "Fiery wreckage and everything? Boy, I wish I could claim my arrival was half as exciting. No sir, I touched down nice and safe on the east coast. Boring as ditchwater. You can even fly the ship again and everything. My superiors were very clear: I keep a valuable dropship pristine, or they skin my blue aft. I might have paraphrased that slightly."
Chuckling, he rubbed a finger beneath his nose. "You know, I have to admit - when I first realised that you're a Neutral, I wondered why you were here. At the base. Have the Autobots been treating you well?"
Steeljaw's steady pace hitched a step, tail tip tapping a stuttered sound against his hind pede for a moment, optics sliding a flicker of blue sidelong at Smokescreen. "You're very polite," he remarked, his tone deadpan. "You're also one of only three or so Autobots who have bothered to ask me that, so full points for you."
Continuing to walk, the symbiont lead the way down a turn in the corridor. "Yes," he continued blandly, "I'm fine, and the Autobots have, as a whole - barring a few unfortunate tendencies to not check where their pedes are - been perfectly agreeable."
He skirted up across the top of one door, down the other side, and continued on to the next, finally pausing at the third, where he sat down against the wall, tail curled around his pedes. His expression was inscrutable, not least because of his quadrupede facial plates, but his gaze was steady. "Technically I am a Neutral security consultant, currently under work contract to this base. I report to Jazz and - sometimes - to Blaster." One claw extended at the second name, screeching slightly against the wall plating before Steeljaw shook himself and tucked it away once more. "The Autobot communication officer, Blaster, is a carrier. He is not my carrier and if you want to retain that record for politeness you can start by never bringing that up to either of us, ever."
One audial cocked back, flicking. "This is your room, by the way," Steeljaw added dryly, tail tip indicating the door. "It's a bit bare, but they all are."
A security consultant. A few more things clicked in Smokescreen's mind. A Neutral with access to an Autobot base - a hidden Autobot base - had immediately struck him as odd, if not alarming. He had met too many Neutrals to subscribe to the belief that neutrality automatically meant that one had no personal investment in the war, particularly after his own investigations had dug up tangled credit trails of evidence indicating otherwise.
But a consultant under contract - suddenly the cat's security clearances made sense.
As Smokescreen activated the door he silently added another note to the mental Steeljaw dossier, with an asterisk next to the excellent suggestion to keep Blaster's name firmly within its own folder. Claws hurt! Not to mention the fact that it did not seem very smart to risk insulting a mech who could hack into door locks, security cameras, or anything that involved the words 'auto-guns'.
"This is perfect," he said, peering inside the darkened room. "Thank you. Hey. Do you mind if I ask you something...?"
The tactician stood in the doorway and looked back at Steeljaw. "I'm just trying to get a feel for the situation here before I get to work, and I'd appreciate the candid opinion of someone who operates outside of the Autobot chain of command. How do you feel security is being handled here on the base, given that it appears a mishmash of Cybertronian and human technology? Do you feel that we, the Autobots, are tackling it sufficiently? I apologise if the question seems random. I guess I'm still trying to form a big picture of what I've been assigned to."
Steeljaw deliberately shuttered and unshuttered his optics in a blink, letting the micro apertures refocus on Smokescreen. "When I got here," he replied after a beat, "the physical security was first tier. By civillian standards." He did not, quite, roll his optics, but it was a near thing. "Jazz explained the error of my ways to me and we've since improved matters dramatically."
Climbing back to his feet, the symbiont cocked his head at Smokescreen, surveying the other mech. "The mix of local technology is problematic, but not really fixable short of cannibalizing every ship that comes in - and then you're just dealing with mis matched Cybertronian systems, so it's really all the same thing. We've reinforced what we can. As to the current state of security... well." He let his audials arch forward, tail curling, though he wasn't sure if the other mech would recognize a native quadrupede smirk when he saw one. "I'm sure if you ask very nicely Jazz might pull out a copy of the testing video. I'll just be... hiding in the vents."
It was a step up that he could joke about it, at least, that day of testing being marked out as rather infamous in his processor. Steeljaw took that for improvement and let the twitch of it carry down his backplates. "Let me know if you need anything else," he added, pinging the other mech with his comm frequency. "I'm usually on or around the monitors."
Last Edit: Sept 5, 2012 17:05:50 GMT -5 by Deleted
In the doorway, Smokescreen stood back and regarded him with an expression of puzzled good-humour. The unspoken ellipses hung heavy in the air. He swore that Steeljaw was smirking. The testing video?
Oh, this he was going to have to see.
Hmm.
"I will - thank you," he said with a laugh, as he filed the frequency along with the other bits of data he collected from the Autobots he encountered. As he did so he half-turned, giving the empty room behind him an admiring look. "For now, I think this will do excellently. And... thanks for the information. I appreciate it. If nothing else, I'll at least rest easier knowing that the chances of me coming online one night with the business end of a Decepticon blaster stuck in my face are fortunately slim."
Steeljaw huffed a derisive vent. "Any Decepticon that can sneak into the base will be too small to properly lift a blaster," he assured the mech. "Breaking down the front doors is another matter, I suppose, but THAT part of security isn't my problem." He shrugged one shoulder, audial flicking. "I'm under orders to run for cover in that event, until such time as their weapon specialist devises some means of actually packing weaponry on me." One forepaw indicated his own frame. "I'm apparently something of a pet project for him now."
Standing back up, Steeljaw stretched parallel to the wall. "I should get back to the monitors. It was nice to meet you - if you're up to it, I think there's still some high grade circulating around the rec room, along with whoever hasn't passed out or crawled off to a duty shift yet." Inclining his head politely, the symbiont turned away to duck neatly into a ventilation shaft near the ceiling, slithering under and through the loosened grate with a flick of golden tail tip.
<< ooc - I figured this sounded like it was winding down to a good stopping point? If not, let me know and I'll edit! ^_^ >>