Ep 1.5 - State of Mind (Closed)

[Deleted]

Megatron's brow plates were drawn together in concentration, processing everything she'd said and attempting to formulate a common ground of understanding.

He could, vaguely, see a similarity between her detailed map of an unseen world developed through smell and his own, largely-dormant ability to sense out energon crystals down to their purity level. That mining skill had been a combination of passive electromagentic resonance scans, sonar and a 'gut instinct' that had never been successfully quantified. The sensitive, fan-like plates beneath his miner's helmet had been dedicated to finding energon, now safely locked away. He guessed that her olfactory systems were equally specialised.

"Somewhat," Megatron ultimately replied, his hands coming to fold behind his back. "If I'm understanding correctly, and I may well not be, it is just remarkable to me that you can differentiate between individual mechanical parts."

He glanced over the tops of the shelves, recognizing a wide array of welding and soldering equipment, metal sheets of patch-quality armour and a coil of high-strain cabling. No containers of smaller parts, yet, and he idly hoped that they wouldn't be buried on an upper shelf, else Dart would need to accept a boost up to dig them out.

Dart's footsteps slowed to match his as his attention wandered. Megatron refocused upon the much smaller femme, glancing down at her to demonstrate as much and adding, "You must be a valuable asset to your field commander."

[Dart]

"Some I can, sir. Kind of," Dart said softly as they walked past a huge tower of things stacked from a large crate on the bottom to the smallest on top. A few weird shaped boxes were tucked in, like a Jenga tower. "But it's not-- I can't differentiate between parts too often like this. What I can do is mostly dismiss the things we aren't looking for. Like okay, I know that the struts and bolts and tape have nothing do do with fuel. Or acid. Or cleaning solutions."

Her hands came up; the courier continued to explain. Her shoulders had shifted a bit, her voice was quiet and earnest. She was speaking now as much with the small motions of her fingers and shoulders as her actual words. "I know that there's a good chance they do have some joint lubricant perhaps, and that the bolts may be with others that have been used. Nanite tape is the easiest, it's got... well, it smells very different. Adhesives."

"I can narrow it down," she murmured as she padded quietly alongside of the massive mech. "Fuel... fuel stuff is the easiest to me, sir. For tracking that is." Her head was constantly moving; a slight shift of her jaw, back and forth. Her intakes huffed quietly, in, out, in again, drawing air past those sensors to analyze. She paused at one spot, her spoiler lifting over her shoulders. It pricked forward as she suddenly proceeded to dig through it.

The bolts she found were not the sort he needed though; mismatched parts in this one. A junk box, then. She lifted her head and sniffed again. "Once I do that, I just- I have to go by visual to clarify. It's... well, I can tell individual mechs after I've met them once, sir, but this is more difficult."

Her grey fingers had settled on the container, everything she'd sorted through she'd nudged back perfectly into place, just so, trying to leave it exactly as she'd found it.

That was a loaded question, and an uncomfortable one. At least it was to Dart. There were many things that ran deep, but they were personal. Nothing Lord Megatron was asking about, or needed to hear.

Also, there was no way anything was getting back to Pyrotech that could have any chance to reflect back on her. She'd simply rather not be noticed, or be an object of frustration or contempt.

As far as being valuable, no. She knew that. Her value was minimal to Pyrotech, but that's because- well, she knew exactly why. Another thing so personal, so private that she buried it deep. That would never, ever see the light of day, because when she thought about it...

She'd survived everything he'd thrown at her. So far. Yet.

That was the key word. Yet.

Dart merely looked up at Lord Megatron and nodded. "Yes sir," she replied. "I keep on task, sir. He's very serious about that."

[Deleted]

Megatron made a thoughtful sound as Dart explained the deductive reasoning involved, interested in the breakdown of what had initially seemed a quasi-mystical ability. She seemed to relax into topic, too, though tensed up immediately at the mention of her handler.

He made a mental note of that to look into later, just out of curiosity. She was... an unusual femme, seemingly composed of nervousness and quirks, and he struggled to imagine her working under someone who sounded as though they kept their plating ratcheted too tight. But then, Roulette reported directly to Shockwave, so perhaps borderline antagonistic pair-ups was just the way things were done on this ship.

Dart was being diligent in her search now, however, and Megatron found himself doing little other than watching. After she'd abandoned this shelf and moved on to the next, he took a moment to scan over the crates of miscellaneous parts on the levels that she couldn't immediately reach.

A hum of surprise when he saw that one actually contained bolts of the right sort of shape Fairwinds required, though they were all of widely ranging sizes. "I may have something," he said, taking the crate down in both hands so as not to tilt and unwittingly tip the overflowing contents.

He knelt to set it down on the floor between them, and ran the claws of one hand through the tiny objects. A dozen bolts, all the wrong size, spilled out onto the decking. Megatron curled his hand back with a rumble of irritation, resigned to needing Dart's more suitably sized hands to paw through the box for him.

"When I return to active duty, punishment detail is going to be sorting and labeling in here," he grumbled, bracing his forearm across his knee.

Though, he supposed he'd ordinarily have sent someone (perhaps who actually knew where things were) to fetch things from the repair bay for him.

[Dart]

Dart had finished putting her rifled through box back up on the shelf. She'd had to stand on her tiptoes to nudge it fully into place. The courier was a fairly tall and lanky build considering she folded into a sports car. Folded was the key word; everything on Dart was streamlined, tucked, slid under each other. Rounded pauldrons, sleek flanks, her helm had a brim that both shadowed her optics from bright sun and also doubled as a protector when she shoved her way through tight forests at good speeds.

"You do, sir?" she asked, even as he pulled the crate down out of the mess of boxes. A soft huff cleared her intakes, and her spoiler quirked up slightly to one side, betraying her interest. Immediately she turned and moved back to the box and the bulk of the mech.

It was the irritated grumble that sent her immediately to work. Dart hurried to catch all the escaping bolts making a cheerful little getaway across the metal floor. When she'd caught all of the runaways, she carefully dropped down to look at what he'd found.

The courier didn't go to her knees though. Instead, she settled into a crouch, tucking herself on a lean on the tips of her feet. The stance meant she could lunge up at a moment's notice and sprint away, no having to take that one extra second to heave herself to her feet. Carefully, she began to search through the box; at first she ran her fingers through as if she was scratching a hole in the dirt, unsure and careful.

Then she seemed to settle down and hunt in earnest. Those bolts had been a size she remembered. Dart searched out every one of those that were close and set them out in front of Lord Megatron on the floor so that he could compare them to what he needed.

At his comment though, the tips of Dart's spoiler pricked forward. She tilted her head to one side, and then paused to look at the stacks towering over them.

Finally, a chuckle escaped her. An honest, soft bit of mirth. "Oh," she echoed. "I think this mess would remind anyone to stay on track and do their job, sir."

A little grin, sloping and amused. "Triplicate forms done by hand and all that as well...?" she wondered.

Then she caught herself. Dart had never really thought about what sort of humor Lord Megatron found amusing or acceptable... well, all right, she had never envisioned him as the sort that found humor in pushing someone down the stairs, unlike some others in the ranks.

[Deleted]

Megatron's reciprocal smile was dry and thin, his attention focused on the bolts laid out before him on the floor. He touched a claw over one, determined it to be a size too large, and settled on the one alongside it with a decisive tap. Two bolts of the correct size vanished into his subspace.

He decided not to remark that punishment that generated more paperwork cut both ways. It was a safe bet that, in his whole state, he disliked superfluous paperwork and the associated tedium. From what he'd read of the ship's reports, most of that went through Starscream primarily and Soundwave after that. Megatron himself signed off on the 'big' orders on the warship, and spent more time processing figures and feedback from his generals and commanders elsewhere in the galaxy.

Being taken off active duty, away from paperwork, was perhaps more of a holiday (as Fairwinds had described it) than he'd initially thought. And appreciated.

"One down," he murmured, watching Dart neatly refill the box before pushing up onto his pedes. "What do you suppose next? Strut, or tape?"

[Dart]

Dart's cautious attempt at humor had been nudged out between them. She recognized in an instant it had gone unanswered. The courier withdrew, ever cautious of boundaries, of space, of rank and file.

Immediately, she drew herself up, that tiny bit of relaxation that had settled into the tip of her shoulders melted away as if it was snow on a stove. Dart reset herself back to that line instantly, one that you did not cross around a superior officer.

Mistake made. Lord Megatron may have not been himself on some level, but he was on others. Or maybe she was simply so over-careful about every little thing that she bounded back immediately and welcomed that safe space of order and response.

Quickly she put everything back into the box, her hands sorting, flying over the little bits and pieces. Large to small, neater than they'd found it. Leave it neater than she found it. Then she lifted it up. Then she realized she couldn't quite put it back to where he had retrieved it from. There was an unsure look that crossed her face, the spoiler across her shoulders clicked down a notch.

"Yes sir. One down. I think... strut, sir," she said, and lifted her nose into the air currents. "I would think that if the bolts are here, sir, that the struts will be close. Tape probably is farther in or somewhere else. I mean, I would put it not in this same section because... ah, er..."

Dart struggled for a second with a concept. Her toe lifted slightly and there was a slight paw, a scrape against the floor. The metal scuffed and she immediately put her foot down, utterly unnerved once again by the environment. The courier's helm lowered, she pulled in a bit of air past her intakes and forced herself to refocus.

"Parts versus things to put parts back together, sir. Maybe?"

[Deleted]

Megatron shrugged, and the exaggerated spikes of his pauldrons exaggerated the rather small movement to a catastrophic extreme. His left shoulder armour upended a small box of ribbony things and sent them crashing to the decking.

Stupid parts bay. Stupid cassette. Stupid sparkly tape.

"You're seeking to apply logic to a place which apparently uses none," he growled, gathering up the slippery-shiny clump of stuff from the floor and jamming it back into the box with more force than was really necessary. They were nothing like bolts or screws, and thus nonsensically placed in this section.

It looked rather like the black ribbon that Fairwinds enjoyed extracting and winding back into her 'VHS tapes', whatever they were. Utterly obsolete as storage devices, from what he could tell, and kept as toys only on one of the upper shelves of her cupboard.

Megatron shifted away from the shelving and then folded his arms, clawtips clacking in a short wave on his armour. "Strut." He uttered the word decisively, determinedly, and motioned for her to lead on.

As soon as she'd turned, he murmured as an afterthought, "Triple shifts of sorting..."

[Dart]

Dart had lifted the box and slid it back as close to its original place as she could. The courier was on her tip-toes; stretched out. Her dull plating didn't reflect the overhead lights, however the cool toned artificial lighting accentuated her scratches and scuffs. There were also two deeply rubbed lines set between her shoulders and throat guard that hadn't been obvious from other angles.

The courier paused at his comment. It struck a chord in her in so many ways; it was true about so many things. Logic to a place that apparently uses none.

Unbidden, Lord Megatron's words sparked memory. Words spoken with conviction. They came from the places she reached for when it was silent and quiet and there was just her and the trees and no one else to intrude.

For a race who's warring sides both love to claim they're doing it all in the name of their beloved home planet, we've certainly done a splendid job of turning Cybertron into a burnt and impotent slagheap that is looked down upon and patronised by half the galaxy...

The courier shook herself with a little clatter of plating. There was frustration in the way he held himself and for a second she wondered if he was thinking something along the same lines she was. Probably not, but she had a feeling it related. Being on the absolute top of things was in some ways far more difficult than being on the absolute bottom. Dart knew, she'd been around enough officers to understand they were held to a near impossible standard of behavior.

Being in charge meant you couldn't even voice a fleeting, casual thought without having to think about how everyone else might see it. That had to just wear you down, weigh heavy, throw you always on the offensive.

Immediately she set back on task, chased down a stray bit of tangled tape and tucked it back into the box on the only clean corner she could find in it.

"Yes sir," she agreed as she turned immediately to hunt for the next bit in earnest. Once again she started to swing out, hesitated, and then drifted back to that place she seemed to have been trained to go to; just right off his shoulder.

At his comment though, her spoiler pricked up a notch or two. He'd heard her. He had listened. He was making a quiet comment in perhaps the only way he could right now.

"Triple shifts," she agreed and then sniffed at the air. She paused at an intersection and then led them down a different aisle. Overhead, the systems of the ship hummed and whirred. "It's- it's funny, sir. I notice that mechs tend to get more upset about being set on this sort of work than a patrol."

[Deleted]

Were his memories unimpeded, and should he have been inclined to speak, Megatron would have said something about it being the movement in patrolling that held appeal. With the exception of the Eradicons, the vast majority of the Decepticons held origins in labour and servant castes. On Cybertron, their movements had been restricted in bands that narrowed with every stellar cycle until they could barely deviate from the path between home and work. Often, as for the miners, this path was very short.

Patrols across a world as alien as this were small adventures. The possibility of contact with the enemy was always present, but otherwise they were peaceful periods of driving and flight. Mecha could talk between themselves, survey the innumerable curiosities and mysteries of the organic planet, and warm their engines and struts with exertion that living inside a spaceship didn't allow.

The patrols were not necessary to protect the warship; they didn't need to scout across the same hundred routes across land and sky on the lookout for Autobot activity. Rather, the patrols were for morale and the psychological wellbeing of the crew.

No one got extra patrols as punishment - they lost them to monitor duty, cleaning or filing.

As it was, Megatron had no connection with millennia of leading an army. No experience of how performance waxed and waned dependent on such seemingly trivial things as access to entertainment media and regularity of excursions from base.

Dart's observation made sense, but he didn't understand it in the context of leadership. Just as a mech surrounded by a chaotic jumble.

"Likely because of the tedium," he replied, concentrating to follow her without stepping on her. It was difficult when she stopped suddenly, with his pedes so broad and long for stability. "Patrols at least have some variation in scenery. Performing some menial, repetitive task over and over..."

He trailed off shaking his head, something cold prickling up the back of his helm.

[Dart]

The courier caught the motion of his head. Immediately she sidestepped, giving him room to right himself. Overhead, the pale lights shone down from the vaulted ceiling; the shadows of the crates and racks around them were harsh. It was as much a tunnel of sorts as the type that Lord Megatron had worked his way through. In this case it was a mine of spare parts and sundry, where digging among the debris for hours might not produce anything useful or needed.

"Yes," she agreed, even as she headed down the next aisle, taking them deeper into the maze of storage. Her nose was up into the air currents again; a light sniff as she tried to key in on the next thing they were searching for. Dart tried to recall the sticky scent of nanite tape; snuffling at the areas they passed for a whiff of adhesive.

"Yes sir, that's it, I believe," she agreed, realizing she needed to offer more than a simple 'yes' to the conversation. It was difficult for her; she tried to say as little as possible around superior officers, and this was the most superior one out there. The less you said, the less there was to stumble over. Dart knew she often didn't quite have some important points of context among her fellow Cybertronians, and each time that happened it- it just left her feeling even more caught out.

"I mean, on a patrol, you can do things, see things." Her fingers shifted to curl over her hip carriers, her thumb fiddling at the tiny latch there "It makes you have to listen and think to the spaces around you, and--"

Dart hesitated for a second, unsure. Her spoiler flicked upwards, then settled back down.

"Is-- is that something you remember, sir?" she asked quietly.

She understood and empathized if that was the case. At least about the memories part. Well, the menial task thing too; she'd remembered Pyrotech swearing and snarling, and her in the makeshift traces of a hastily slapped together sled. Alaska had times it was too dangerous to fly safely, no matter if you were a giant alien robot. Thermal wouldn't go up on those days, and it was the only way they could haul large amounts of cargo. Sometimes the runners iced over; she'd learned the trick by watching musher's dogs. Gee to the left, haw to the right, break them free and drive forward. If you could keep it moving, it didn't ice up...

"A task?" Her head tilted, the blue eyes soft and thoughtful.

[Deleted]

The mines. Megatron nodded fractionally, distracted and thoughtful. His frame certainly remembered, his powerful neck and shoulders perpetually stooped as if dragging and pulling great weights in long, confined spaces.

Dart's spoiler twitched again, a highly communicative component that he found fascinating in its delicacy and mobility. Her whole process of sifting through scent particles and dust motes was generally fascinating, really. Everything about her was bent to a specialism that, to him, seemed semi-mystical in the application. And her quietly-conversational company was relaxing, despite the reasons for his visit to this chaotic room.

"It's... difficult to explain what I remember, exactly," he replied, uncertainty hedging his words. "I remember hunger. Pain. Fatigue. I can remember how to operate machinery, but not when or how I learnt. I have physical memory, and everything else is like... accessing a written record of an event I wasn't present for. But I was."

The thick hydraulics running through the warlord's arms tightened, flexed and slacked again. Frustration bleeding off. He met her optics again, his stare lacking any of the usual hardness that his features defaulted to. "Does that make sense?"

[Dart]

Dart looked up at him, and her spoiler quirked to one side. Her nose had lifted to the air, and she lifted a foot slightly, as if caught up in some far off scent. She did understand what he was saying; again it was like scent, a whiff of something you knew, you should place, you didn't know if it was dangerous or not but somehow you knew it and your systems struggled to place it in time. In motion. In your empty thoughts.

His body language said it fell on him. It lay in his plating, settling across him like a massive beast shackled to his burden, hauling it forward, one step at a time. The weight of memories past, the weight of his place among them - maybe not in his head, but in his frame, his body, even his scent was heavy and thick.

"Yes," she said quietly, lowering her chin and cutting her careful way through the stacks of boxes. Her nose turned left, right, she followed the air currents. Something nudged her sensors; sticky - yes, that smell. Immediately she turned to follow it down towards one of the stacks.

"It does, sir," she continued. "Very much so. Everything that is there is-- well, it just is. You know it has to be there. It's just like looking at someone else's life on a screen, I think. A holovid, right? A story that someone else tells about an action and it takes you a moment to realize it's about you. Only you're doing it to yourself."

Across her shoulders the metal tips fell slightly. "I guess that sounds awkward, sir. But... I understand. I think a lot of those around you here would too. Honest."

With that, she paused by a tower of boxes. "I think- I think that one has tape in it," she said, stepping forward to point at a box square in the middle of the tower. "I'm pretty sure, sir."

A shake of her head as she observed the line of crates towering over the both of them. Her spoiler tips rattled, then stilled. It was a silent but obvious motion of confusion, as plain as if she'd said, 'now what, sir?'

[Deleted]

The potential discovery of the location of the crate was a welcome interruption.

Megatron was getting used to being held at an awkward distance in conversation with the rank and file of the ship. Dart's response to his awkward, poorly-articulated description of his current state was exceptionally close to perfect understanding, and it lay down a point of connection between them.

One that Megatron, and he suspected Dart, too, wasn't quite prepared to pick up just now.

He looked up a the stack of crates, balanced on top of the top shelf, and gave a heavy ex-vent. Of course it wasn't going to be at hand-height.

"There must be ladders or something," he suggested, glancing up and down the aisle for anything of the sort. The Eradicons who worked in here were significantly smaller than him, and they managed.

The aisle was deserted but for them, however, and Megatron couldn't recall seeing anything useful during their meandering walk to this point. And he wasn't quite ready to go and seek help just yet.

He looked back down to Dart, noting her height.

"I could, perhaps..."

Clearing his vocaliser softly, Megatron made a conscious effort to gild his field and voice as undemanding as possible.

He brought his claws together in a cupping-boosting motion, suggesting her elevation by his hands.

[Dart]

The courier was busy eyeing those crates. She was on her toes, neck stretched out slightly as she rocked back on her heels and looked upwards at the tower of storage systems. There was the soft whuff of her intakes pulling in air, as if she was attempting to verify that yes, that's where that nanite tape likely was, smack in the middle of that mess.

Dart was a fairly good climber, having to rely on that skill out there on Earth. Something about mountain ranges and big gullies being a bit more difficult when you couldn't just pull a Superman and leap into the air like a bird. Or a plane.

If you had to get technical about it, the only leaping a Trans-Am tended to do was when some human punched a turbo boost button and crashed into low overpasses. At least according to eighties television.

They went through an awful lot of cars that way. Dart tried not to think about that too much. The threat of being a paperweight hung over her head enough lately.

"I'm sure there's a ladder," the scruffy femme agreed, still focused on finding a way up those crates. The spoiler across her shoulders shifted, twitching slightly. Her weight shifted nervously from one foot to the other as she contemplated handholds and footholds. Right, there, there- ah maybe if she didn't keep much weight on that point. The last thing she'd want was to knock the stack over. Pyrotech was still in here somewhere, and if she did that and was to hit Lord Megatron with a crate, oh.

Then the Warlord cleared his throat. For a femme whose entire function was one of hurry up and get there, she knew that sound. The universal noise of stop dawdling. Go and find him a ladder, get the tape down. There's got to be a ladder in here somewhere, sure, there has to be a supply closet. There's supply closets everywhere on this ship, right?

She glanced over her shoulder hurriedly.

"I'll go see if I can find one, sir, if you want, wait here and just please give me a-"

Dart blinked as motion caught her attention. Immediately, she jammed her heels into the floor and stared at Lord Megatron's outstretched hands. A gesture. Like- like someone offering a hand to help someone else into the saddle of a very tall horse.

The curl of the mech's massive talons caught the overhead lighting and gleamed; they were polished to sleek, sharp, dangerous tips.

"...buh- boost?"

At least it was supposed to be that word. It yipped out of the courier's vocalizer sounding like someone had given a dingo a hit off of a helium tank. The thin strip of metal across her shoulders chattered once and then she clamped it down hard and tried to dig deep, staring at her toes in an effort to regain herself.

Her optic was drawn to the dried mud spatter, splashed up on her ankles and calves. She was filthy. His hand was absolutely pristine. Not a good choice earlier to lope patrol through the river and then up through the mud flats. Then again, she hadn't been expecting this to ever happen.

Protocol. Oh there had to be protocol for this. What was the protocol? What did you do when the absolute lord and leader of your faction offered to boost you up to a crate instead of using a ladder. Was this in a manual? A memo? Anything? Bueller? Not helping, brain.

"Like-like up there?" she stuttered. "Like you- uh, um, you lifting me? Up there. Crate. Er- ah, tape?"

[Deleted]

The femme's reaction was rather more extreme than he'd been anticipating, and Megatron could only stare as she stuttered and fidgeted with surprised unease bordering on genuine distress.

He could have lowered his hands, aborted the suggestion completely, but to do so would have done nothing for her nervousness. The mark would have been made and left, untended and uncommented, which was in some ways worse. Tracking the shift of her optics, he noted that she was keenly aware of the dirtied state of her legs more than impropriety.

Which was entirely unnecessary. He'd been a miner, after all.

Keeping his hands together, Megatron gave a short nod. He made a conscious effort to school his features - to indicate that this was nothing exceptional, nothing expected of her nor being used to judge. It was purely practical.

"It would be quicker than trying to find a ladder," he replied. Then his mouth twitched, one corner lifting. "Unless you can scent one out, of course. Either way, it is only a suggestion."