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.
Steeljaw's tail sagged, dangling limp. "Just me," he admitted sheepishly. "No one else. I've checked for Rattrap and all the others, kept that little slagger's cameras out. I'm the only one who's gone near it."
Near it, in it, and spent more than one recharge cycle curled up on her berth where it seemed inexplicably warmer then his own recently outfitted room with the memory of her frame curled around his. She was going to find that anyways, given what he had left on her ceiling, but it felt wrong to admit it, like he had been caught doing something he shouldn't, entering when she wasn't there to say yes or no.
He didn't have any right. He didn't have any right to try to talk her out of going, either - it was her choice. Which did nothing to explain why the idea of her leaving made his spark spin faster in an unpleasant lurch that stuttered through his systems. The uncertainty of it was flickering through him, making his dismount from her frame and drop back to the floor less than the graceful maneuver it usually was.
"I'll only be a few kliks," he promised her. "Energon and back again, I promise." The air ducts were the fastest way, the ventilation system more familiar to him then the base corridors, but he couldn't help glancing back even as he climbed up the wall to the nearest grate. "Wait for me?"
Unless you give me reason not to, Shadow thought, but the look she gave Jaws was a wry, affectionate smile. "I'll wait."
She watched him vanish into the vents, pulling the grate into place behind him. There was, she reminded herself, nothing suspicious about that; if anything, Steeljaw walking around the corridors might have drawn attention, since the base ventilation system was accepted as his domain.
As he had promised, the corridors were empty, and the door to the room was still locked with her own codes, apparently untampered with. Inside...the room had never held much, but now it felt as foreign and unwelcoming as the rest of the base, except for the signs that Steeljaw had been using it. Fresh scuffs marred the wall by the vent cover, as if a torqued off - or possibly just exhausted - symbiont had used claws in addition to mag clamps in his comings and goings, and the berth pad had a faint, symbiont-sized impression in the spot where Steeljaw normally curled up to recharge. That must have been left recently; the impression of her own frame had long since smoothed out of the dense foam, and she was substantially heavier than Jaws.
Shadow exvented slowly, realized her fingertips were tracing the slight indentation, and sat on the foot of the berth, strangely reluctant to do anything which might erase the evidence that Steeljaw had been staying here. It was from there that she noticed a fair chunk of the ceiling had been covered in glyphs: ornate, intertwining spirals, most etched precisely into the metal, some showing the wilder curves and flourishes Steeljaw used when his temper got the better of him, individual pieces combining into something that was half invocation of safety and half threat against any deities who might allow harm to befall those who were missing.
For long kliks, Shadow merely sat there, too caught up in absorbing the layers of sparkfelt meaning engraved above her to retrieve any of the supplies she had wanted. She was still there when a soft sound behind the grate, followed by the sound of the grate itself being moved, finally made her look away.
She thought Steeljaw looked relieved to see her there.
Shadow was suddenly, achingly tired, but she still rose as Jaws fastened the grate back in place, crossing the room to loop an arm around him in something that was less a hug than an invitation to climb onto her if he wanted. "Thanks," she said, and it had nothing to do with the energon he'd gone to retrieve. "Did you run into any trouble?"
Steeljaw reached her chassis and kept right on going, skimming up her frame to wind himself around her upper torso, mag clamps just strong enough to hold him in place where he could hook his chin agains Shadow's shoulder and press close to her. It helped, a little. He'd been afraid - very afraid - that she wouldn't be here, and it was equal parts relief and ramped anxiety to find her in her room.
He didn't know what to say. He prized himself on being artistic with words, when the mood took him, and for once in a fairly long life he had absolutely no idea where to even begin. He clamped and held tight, trying to let the tactile weight of his frame and the outpouring of concern and relief in his field speak for itself.
"No trouble," he managed at last, vocalizer clicking through a reset. "No one saw."
Moment of truth. He should start unpacking every energon cube he had managed to stuff in his subspace, offer to go back for more - not that he thought, for a moment, that she was going to sit still through another round. He ought, said a half dozen ingrained habits of Neutral lifestyle, to give her the energon and let her go.
Which would be easier, by far, if he could make himself unclamp, but he wasn't sure an enraged triple-changer could have torn him off of pressing as close to her as he could right that moment.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, the glyphs barely tickling her plating. "I didn't say it right earlier. I'm so sorry, and that doesn't help anything, I know, and it's probably not my place but you're my friend and if I could bite someone for you I would. Or... or scratch them, or something." He shifted just barely, enough to bump the flat of his head against her cheek. "No one should have done that to you. Just... no one."
It had been a long time - a very long time - since he had held anything personal higher than survival, and the careful neutrality of not questioning the actions of a safe harbor, or a client, or whatever would provide the next rotation of safety and fuel. It was a dizzying sort of free-fall feeling, swirling through his fuel pumps, to realize that everything he had claimed and demanded while clamped to her chassis in the african savannah was entirely true - he would abandon that safety in a sparkpulse if she asked it, or even if she just allowed it.
Venting raggedly, Steeljaw pressed his helm to her shoulder and held on.
For a klik, Shadow let herself relax under the familiar comfort of Steeljaw's weight clamped to her frame. She probably shouldn't, should probably demand to see the energon rather than taking his word for it. He wasn't cohort - whatever that meant anymore - or even an Autobot; he was a neutral, like Cleaver, with no true loyalty owed anyone but himself.
She couldn't make herself believe that, though, when his magclamps had gone from barely detectable to a force close to the way he'd held on when he first found her. It might not be loyalty, but the tight clamp of his frame was something, like the words spilling out of his vocalizer and his field pressing insistently into hers. Like the glyphs carved into her ceiling and the symbiont-shaped impression on her berth. Gestures, all of them, but not meaningless, and she reached up to curve one hand over Steeljaw's dorsal plates.
"Thank you," she said quietly. It had been her own mistake, and unfair to them both, expecting him to understand. Regret and bittersweet affection seeped into her field. "You're a good friend. And if biting would help anything, I'd let you bite everyone."
She settled back on the berth, half expecting him to flow down her frame and sprawl across her lap in a silent demand for ear rubs and polishing. "I promised you gummies," she added, voice breaking around the edges as she pulled the packet from her subspace. "It's only fair for me to pay up before I ask you to."
Steeljaw had to reboot his vocalizer twice to work past the static and sounds that were clogging his circuits. "Don't need gummies," he managed, the sound only half rough. "Or paying. You don't... you don't ever have to pay me back. That's not what friends do."
He forced himself to unclamp enough to twist around and fish the first of the filled energon cubes from his subspace - he couldn't have transformed right then even if he had wanted to for lack of room (and part of him did want to, to press himself that much closer and more securely to Shadow's frame). He passed it into her hands via manipulator tendril, found the package of gummies had been deposited into his own grasp, and set them aside to press back close to her frame, helm pressed to the warmth of her spark beneath her chassis.
"I missed you," he told her plating, his voice a rough rasp. "And... and I'm sorry about the ceiling. If you don't like it, I mean. I can fill it in, paint it back over. If you want."