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.
“Oh! Well, okay. A mom’s never going to turn down the chance to brag and embarrass her only begotten son.” She beamed as she dug into her back pocket in search of her smart phone, happily poking the screen to life and pulling up her photos of Jack as pulled from her laptop for the express purpose of showing off. She turned the tiny screen upwards for Bluestreak’s perusal, the picture of a gap-toothed, toddler in the midst of eating carnival cotton candy on a stick.
“He was adorable. Don’t tell him I said that… or showed you this.” She flicked through the next few photos. “This is when he was in fourth grade. Won a school writing contest. Got it published in the school paper and everything.” She was aware she was gushing… to a giant robot, but there was something essentially innocent about Bluestreak. He or she seemed to lack some of that… militant edge the others had. “So… would Ironhide have photos of you as a sparkling or do Cybertronians keep those kind of momentos?”
It was a universal truth that parents will gush over their offspring given a half a chance. Bluestreak didn't mind it at all. Enjoying not on;y seeing Jack as a youngling but seeing June happy and relaxed even for just a little while.
"We have something like that and I'm sure Ironhide has LOTS of images and moments if you ask...." Not that ou really WANTED her to ask. It was all well and good to see some one else's embarrassing childhood pictures but another entirely for some one to see YOURS.
June’s smile was massive enough to be of some worry. She slipped her phone into her pocket, arms akimbo with triumph. “Well,” she said, with the air of someone just informed of Christmas come early, “I’ll just have to confer with my fellow parent on the finer points of embarrassing our progeny. I’m an expert, I’ll have you know. Single-momism. It’s a virulent and infectious way of parenting.” She tilted her head slightly, shrugging as though such things were inevitable. “So, Ironhide is here. Does that mean his… partner is elsewhere?” Flipping pronouns.
Long day. Long night. Long day again, and Ironhide was starting to lose track of the rotations but recharge on a tank full of glitching worry and anger that burned like acid was a long stretch of useless hours he'd chosen to skip. He let his steps slow in the empty corridor and for just a klik he let the weight of it all pull at him, aching in old joints and welds and an older chassis.
Too old for it all. Too slagging tired. He vented a snort, straightening, and pressed ruefully at an ache in his hip joint that was never - short of a factory rebuild in factories that didn't fragging well exist any more - going to leave him alone. "Suck it up, old timer," he growled softly to himself, and shook himself back into motion.
He'd chanced a peek into medbay when he came off monitor shift, prepared to duck, but Ratchet had only waved him off. Blue, thank Primus, was up and had worked his usual tricks to wiggle out from the medic's clutches. Ironhide had swung by the youngster's room, found it unsurprisingly empty, and rolled on to the next likely location.
There were voices coming from the rec room - real ones, not just the televised recordings of the human entertainment. It took him a moment to place one of them, but the other...
Ironhide felt the tightness in his spark ease just a little, letting him put a looser roll into his stride as he entered the room and pull out something almost polite for the little human woman perched on the arm of the couch. "Mrs. Darby." His optics brightened as they lit on Bluestreak, skimming rapidly over the welds of the youngster's frame with a practiced eye. "Blue, if Ah didn't know better Ah'd swear ya had somethin' on Doc, gettin' out that easy. How're ya?"
When Ironhide saunters into the room Bluestreak lit up. The dread of hir youngling-hood embarrassments eclipsed by the simple pleasure of having him here. On this planet, in the same base were u could see him most any time. It had been a long time....
"I'm fine enough I guess. You just have to know how to talk to him Ironhide. He's not so bad when SOME Mechs aren't jumoing on his last wire." Or in Bluestreaks case, Sad Puppy face your way with him. "Mrs. Darby and I were talking about family structures. Ours, theirs what's similar and what's different. We have more in common that I'd have thought. It also seems a parents drive to humiliate their offspring is universal."
There was space on the couch beside Bluestreak but he'd just come off a night shift of sitting on his aft in front of the monitors; Ironhide went for resting his hip against the other arm of the seat, instead, which had the added advantage of not looming over the human. Or hovering over Blue. He couldn't stop himself from visually counting and verifying every weld, but the youngster was more than old enough not to need anyone fussing and pawing over every little scratch.
"Humiliate, eh?" He settled his weight a little more heavily, suppressing a grin that only escaped in the gleam of his optics as he focused on Jack's mother. "So're we pullin' out stories or image files, 'cus Ah got a scrap load 'o both."
June beamed as she always did when two-story tall talking, transforming alien robots advanced on her – as though a perfect hostess smile would make it normal. In the scope of social etiquette it was incredible how fast one got past the ‘giant robot’ part and straight to awkward interspecies miscommunication concerns. The first time she’d run into it had been when trying to pin down the Autobots’ ages and determined through guesstimating and a fluency with bullshitting that Bumblebee was the Cybertronian equivalent of teenager. There were, of course, many things lost in translation and this lead to her inappropriately calling Bee a ‘child-soldier’ in front of Prime and Arcee.
That had not gone over very well… but on the other hand; they had not exactly admitted that there was not some truth to that. The giant red weapon specialist was clearly close to Bluestreak and the very last thing she wanted was another trip up… so right. Pretend Hide, the million year old Cybertronian warrior was just another single dad. She could do this.
“I would love some pictures of baby Bluestreak and stories are always welcome.”
Let it never be said that Bluestreak knew how to keep hir big mouth shut. Hir door wings drooped slightly in well meaning defeat. Knowing that ou was doomed to a veritable parade of pictures and stories. Dear sweet Primus the stories. Still it was hir own fault and to spend some time in the company of both June and Ironhide doing something that a normal family unit would do when it wasn't being torn asunder by war.
"Don't listen to a word he say's Mrs Darby I was the most perfect, innocent, well behaved little bit ever and he's just making things up to make me look bad."
Ou didn't miss Ironhide's once over of all hir welds and repairs nor the nearly but not quite hidden concern in his EMF. Leaning in closer to reassure the larger mech the ou was here and in one piece again.
The low beginnings of a chuckle shook loose deep in Ironhide's engine. "An' what's she supposed t' believe if Ah tell her it's true?" he asked, grinning. He leaned forward and the warm, alive press of Bluestreak's field was balm to all the overstressed systems in his chassis, easing things that no medic's hand could touch.
Resting his arm against the back of the couch, Ironhide opened his hand, palm up, beside June. He nudged Blue's shoulder lightly, amusement and affection underscoring the touch as he activated a holo projection suite. The image, ancient as humans measured it and barely a blink of a span in Ironhide's life, sprang into being above his palm, half life sized, all wide blue optics and tiny fluttering wing nubs on a sparklet frame. "Ya really were the cutest, best little bitlet Ah'd ever seen. Had us all runnin', an' all ya had t' do was flash those optics."
“Oh my God’ said June. “That’s ten times more adorable than the blueprints that Ratchet was showing me. Oh my goodness, Bluestreak. You were so cute.”
June was gushing. She was aware she was gushing but by God, could she stop? No. She decided to blame a latent and untapped part of her ovaries for the unbridled surge of affection she felt for the bright arrangement of light in Ironhide’s palm. She knew it was probably incorrect of her to draw too many parallels between the blue-eyed, big-headed little creature in the hologram and the cuteness of human infants. There was probably something bad about that somewhere but she couldn’t think of that reason.
“So you were spoiled were you?” She grinned at Bluestreak. “Jack used to ask for candy at the check out line in the grocery all the time and I can’t remember a single time I was ever able to say no to a stupid Reeses or KitKat bar or a bloody bag of M&M’s. He just… pouted really well. It was excellent, that pout.”
"Then she know's I was simply telling the truth and not bragging at all."
The image wasn't a new one to Bluestreak it still amazed hir that ou had ever been that small and fragile looking...Not that the sniper had really gotten all that big. Despite young dreams of being built more like Ironhide.
"Well I was a little spoiled...."
A little was putting it lightly. Though the mechs on the bas ou;d been raised on hadn't had much what could be spared was given, and happily so. Some of the soldiers had never seen a sparkling before (Or after) Bluestreak so ou had never been wanting for affection. Especially form Ironhide.
Ironhide vented briefly. "Oh, it ain't braggin'. Ya were perfect, an' as well behaved as anyone who'd ever seen a sparkling would expect. An' ya had all o' us on yer side." He grinned, flicking his fingers as the image changed. "Even," he drawled, deliberately stretching the sounds, "Prahm."
The next holo had been taken by someone else, from an optic level shorter than Ironhide's, and it made the upwards angle all the more dramatic though the mech imagined humans were used to even worse angles, as close to the floor as they stood. Prime's chassis, seen from below, partially obscured the mech's upward tilted head, the holo snapped in the moment as the Autobot leader hastily raised his hands. It did not, however, at all obscure the tiny sparkling that was clinging to the upswept crest of the Autobot leader's helm, blue optics peering back down at the ground in wide amazement.
"Bitlet," Ironhide confided in a sotto stage whisper to June, "liked t' climb. Always findin' hir on toppa doors an' up on shelves, but tha tallest thing around was Mount Optimus."
“Pffffffft!” June burst out laughing and went on laughing for great deal longer than the pictures likely necessitated, but her need for something good, something bright and cute and normal in the glut of that last 40 hours seemed critical. Autobot baby pictures and incriminating evidence against Prime’s unflappable dignity hit a funny bone she’d been trying to whack since Shadowrunner drag her and Jack out of bed in the middle of the night. For a moment, Barricade, Ray, the Decepticons, Fowler, and everything seemed farther away.
“Optimus? Really? oh God, that’s fabulous. I can’t… oh wow that’s…” She giggled, pressing her hands briefly to the warm hyphen of her smile. “Oh, that’s funny.” She sighed a little, wiping at her eyes where. She was an easy joy-cryer. Anything funny enough left her in tears. “Prime’s just so…” She searched for a word. “…distinguished sometimes, its hard to imagine him playing with a sparkling.” A smile. “You must have known him a long time, Ironhide?”
Optic ridges rose and the holo blinked out in a spark pulse as Ironhide unthinkingly closed his fingers. "Suppose ya could say that," he allowed slowly. "Not as long as some, Ah guess, but..." He tipped his head down, optics dimming in thought as he unarchived files older and less well loved than Bluestreak's sparkling images.
When he opened his hand again the holo that took shape was grainier and flatter, lacking the vibrancy of a personal image. All the same, the central figures - one massive and silver, the other slighter and shaded in reds and blues - stood out clearly against the soaring lines of what had once been the Cybertronian Senate floor.
"Old news cast," Ironhide grunted. "Didn't actually know him but it was th' first time Ah heard o' him. Wasn't Prahm back then. First time anybody heard 'o him, he comes outta nowhere, nothin' but a data pusher wit' a head full o' dreams." He let the holo flicker in his hand, optics dimmed in memory. "Guess that ain't changed much."
And now the images were getting incriminating. Soon there would be ones of hir coved in Primus knows what or getting a bath or worse getting upset! Judy's laughter and the warm feel of Ironhide's slowly relaxing EMF was worth any humiliation.
The image of Optimus and the Silver mech was a new one to Bluestreak. The very concept of Optimus before he was Optimus Prime was near impossible to grasp for Bluestreak. Their leader hand just always been, always existed to the sniper.
"Wow, I guess Even Optimus must have been young once..."