1.5 - Week 2, Day 6: 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall (Closed)

[Deleted]

For a rare time in his life, Ghost Wind was so far out of his element it had gone beyond not-funny and into downright-surreal, and yet he was following the good kind of orders.

Ghost did not really have any contact with the command staff of the ship, junior or senior. His job was, at its core, routine. He usually got automated messages from the ship's mainframe directing him to go here, come there, clean this, repair that, pick up supplies elsewhere if he were lucky.

This time, however, his orders were to go up. Ghost did not normally do up. Up did not have a lot of maintenance conduits, and the vents went through regular upkeep. Problems were rare, and yet here he was.

Past a certain point Ghost had been left to grab directions from the mainframe, which he followed blindly. The hallways had grown to what was (to him) cave-like levels and the dim lighting was brighter by just enough for his optics to notice. Everything was clean, everything hummed in perfect pitch as he walked towards his destination. Basically, he had no idea where he was going, and he had no idea why he was going there.

I've got to be awful close to the command levels, he thought, peering around and blissfully unaware of just how high up the command levels he really was. He would have been concerned but he had logged orders which he was following to the letter; he wasn't about to ask command, if he happened to run into someone, for directions, but they couldn't fault him for doing his job.

Ghost kinda figured someone on junior command had broken something or another on their conduits. Not for him to ask how, but hey, he'd be the first one to know a vent made for an awful convenient in-a-pinch-pocket; he'd brought his bare-struts repair kit and his best poker face just for that situation. Problem was, other than demanding his presence at the door he was now staring at, and pointing out that he needed to fix things, his orders were even skimpier than usual. Get to point X. Fix the issue that would be present. Issue was large and unmistakable.

So the two-wheeler stared at the Massively Large Door in front of him and clicked his mouthplates thoughtfully. Usually before he'd gotten this far someone would charge out of their quarters screaming imprecations at him; he didn't know what to do with himself when that didn't happen, and it felt wrong to just... just up and knock on such an important-looking door.

He sent a brief, open ping to any local ears, in the hope the one that had actually requested his presence would do the whole charging out and berating him. If not, he'd have to do the knocking thing. Sigh.

[Deleted]

Megatron had extracted Fairwinds' foot from the ceiling vent with significantly more force than had been necessary. It had't mattered, really - her appendage had been repaired, and she was going to be getting 'new, awesome, even better toes' from Flatline at some point in the near future, anyway.

In performing the swift extraction, however, Megatron had removed part of the vent cover and warped the rest of it. Much as he preferred not having random mecha in his quarters, particularly now as almost everyone on the Nemesis was simultaneously familiar and a stranger, he'd conceded to notifying the maintenance crew.

Fairwinds had shut herself in her cupboard an hour before the repair mech arrived. Megatron had no clue as to what she was doing in there, but the television screens were involved and the volume was getting steadily louder. It had gone down a few decibels after he'd thumped the door, but it was still an obnoxious volume for what sounded like a very stupid, very fast native program.

He barked for her to turn it down again before answering the ping, and was satisfied by her compliance. The commander didn't much know what to do with a sulking cassette when telling her to stop it had failed, so he was ignoring her and leaving her to work through this mood on her own. He'd broken her foot accidentally, apologised for doing so, fetched the parts and repaired her himself - he had no reason to feel guilty.

Leaving Fairwinds' cupboard, Megatron palmed open the door and played the odds by looking down for the repair mech. He assumed this was a repair mech, at least. The small Decepticon wasn't remotely familiar.

He inclined his helm.

"Are you here to repair the vent?"

[Deleted]

Well, Primus and his rusty ball-bearings on a sludge pit.

Ghost tilted his head up, and up, and up some more, and had to eventually take a step back. It was not a belated fear response; he just didn't have any more neck to crane back.

In a way, it was an even more unique situation: the Tomahawk was so very far down the chain of command that the senior command didn't even register as mecha in his mind, no more than an ant is aware of the sun around which its planet spins. They were there, yes, of course they were there; their orders sifted down slowly through the rank and file, and by the time they reached Ghost they bore no mark of their source.

As such, to be standing before the mech to whom he'd (technically) sworn allegiance left Ghost with literally no pre-established reaction to fall back on beyond trying to get him into his field of view. That was kinda hard enough as it was, and it took another step before he managed.

"Are you here to repair the vent?"

... A vent seemed to hardly qualify as 'large and unmistakable', but then again Ghost's definition of 'large' had just undergone a solid rewrite. 'Large and unmistakable', though, was a real good definition of the mech in front of him. He'd gotten the ship-wide report, like everyone else, temporarily relieving Lord Megatron of command while he recovered from... uh, something or another.

He looked recovered, but Ghost was no medic. If the boss was on medical leave, then he was on medical leave. He was looking, and feeling, a little prickly, but this was Lord Megatron, having to call a repair-bot into his sanctum sanctorum.

Ghost considered his last few cycles on the 'Nemesis' swiftly: ... nope, he'd done every job, fished out and corrected every issue. His schedule was up-to-date, he had no complains and he'd joined no motion to betray anyone lately. Or at all, really, since his arrival.

It was this, along with his utter lack of association between the mech before him and who he actually was, that left Ghost to stand at easy attention before his Liege Lord, tone and field even but for a touch of surprise. "If that's the problem, that'd be me, yes sir." He leaned back a bit at the volume of noise coming from behind the monolithic behemoth in front of him, but otherwise said or did nothing. "Just need you to point it out, sir."

[Deleted]

Megatron stepped backwards and sideways, clearing the doorway and indicating the mech to enter. His quarters were spartan, neat and spacious, though, despite the Air Commander's declarations to the contrary, no larger than Starscream's. The main room bore a small seating area littered with datapads, a desk of equal size to that in his primary office with an accompanying vid screen, and two closed doors. One led to his recharge area, and the other was the source of the musical-cartoon racket.

He nodded to the ceiling as he crossed the living space, trusting that the mangled vent was evident enough to be identified.

On the far side of the room, Megatron slammed his hand against the cupboard door with just enough force to rattle the metal without denting it. A second passed, and then the volume on the other side crept down to something more tolerable. The commander would have preferred silence whilst the repair mech was here, but he elected to leave Fairwinds alone. Better she be out of the way with her shows than out here trying to make a scene.

The warlord's visage was one of weary frustration when he returned to Ghost Wind. It had been a long, very strange week. Having a warped vent whistling on the edge of his hearing would not have bothered him so much if he weren't so mentally and physical worn down. As it was, the sound was annoying to an irrational degree.

Megatron glanced to the ceiling and then back down to the repair mech - his height, specifically. He arched a brow.

"Do you need something to stand on, or were you expecting a boost?"

[Deleted]

The Lord Commander might as well have asked Ghost Wind to step into a separate universe. Instinct programmed into him had him obeying the gesture before he'd consciously registered it.

His first impression was of space. For someone who (almost literally) got little more than a cupboard as his private space, the palatial severity of the warlord's quarters seemed all the more vast by the lack of clutter. The tidy organization and businesslike setup was, in its own way, wholly expected: Ghost had had it drilled into him to keep his workspace tidy least either tool or part went missing when it was most critically needed, and this was more of the same writ large.

Seven steps into the quarters, five of which had been spent just getting past the boss, the Tomahawk slowed down, his head tilting sideways. He was a middling fighter, hampered by size; he was hard-pressed to climb the ranks, being mouthy at the worst of times. But he could pinpoint both the awkward rasping and the lopsided current of the damaged vent as if they were neon lights pointed to the issue. When Megatron gestured towards the ceiling it was only confirmation of what his audials had told him.

Ghost looked at the vent, walking up to it until he was directly below it. He started slightly at the sudden pounding of fist on metal, with a nervous moment of puzzlement that one vent should cause so much irritation... and then the noise coming from wherever-in-a-cupboard dropped down. Sort of.

Lord Megatron's expression seemed to agree entirely with that "sort of" sentiment, and Ghost had a moment to wonder just how long the boss had been stuck in his quarters with that level of cacophony.

"Do you need something to stand on, or were you expecting a boost?"

Before he could help it, a startled half-chuckle had escaped Ghost. He caught himself and cleared his vox roughly, one hand rubbing at his helm. "No boost, no, sir." The Tomahawk dragged his hand over his optics, his vents taking in air on one side of his frame and venting it off the other like a man might blow air out of one corner of his mouth as he seeks to regain command of his thoughts. He couldn't help it; it was deeply surreal, being in Lord Megatron's quarters, in the presence of the single most... Decepticon that had ever been.

To fix a vent.

"... Not meaning to make an aft out of myself, sir, I swear."

Perhaps it was the fact that his liege looked, much like any normally active mech, plain grumpy after enforced bed rest. Perhaps it was the vast dissociation between who Megatron was and the fact Ghost had never expected to be anywhere near that vast and distant sun of command. Or maybe a mixture of the whole scrapping bag of weirdness.

Regardless, Ghost Wind shrugged and gave his boss a level look, setting down his toolbox and pulling from it the folding ladder. He was short, not stupid. "Most anyone who needs these covers fixed has broken them to pieces trying to hide what-all contraband in here. But you still got most of it in place, sir." He hopped nimbly up to examine the damage. "You were poking something out, not in."

And then, as he began cutting the warped cover out, his mouth ran out with him. "Looking for a distraction from the noise, sir?"

Ghost froze. He whacked his forehead, though gently, with the battered tool in his hand (it wasn't his). His field, humble thing that it was and still too bemused to be fearful, flickered with flat-out embarrassment. "You know, I'll just shut up now."

[Deleted]

Of course the maintenance crew would carry ladders, Megatron conceded with a huff. What he'd seen of the Decepticons these last two weeks had been efficiency, pride and competence. Largely. That disastrous training session and that weird smelling room of junk aside...

Megatron went to the seating area to watch as the little mech ascended the ladder, resting his elbows on his thighs. He half expected Fairwinds to trill out a little remark that it had been her foot being pulled out of the vent, but no such comment came.

Instead, the volume of whatever inane scrap she was watching began to creep back up.

The warlord, already nursing a headache and the residual discomfort of a very trying fortnight, pressed his claws into his temples. He ignored the mech's apologetic dismissive, focusing on the unexpectedly informal query.

"Perpetually," he rumbled, optics narrowing on the cupboard. He glyphed a warning at his cassette on a closed channel, and enclosed an illustration of what he'd do to her scrawny little neck if she didn't knock it off. The volume remained steady, but no less irritating.

Sitting back on the sofa, Megatron tapped his claws on the metalmesh arm. "However, after the many little disasters that medically-enforced social engagement with the crew has brought about, I feel that the less footage I have to expunge when I am whole again, the better. Soundwave has also seen fit to elevate his surveillance from casual to intensive, and the only place I am spared is here."

[Deleted]

Ghost Wind stopped mid-stride. It was not a gesture he could disguise as anything else, and he was really so thunderstruck dissembling didn't even cross his processor.

He'd known, as did the whole ship, that their Liege Lord and Leader had been recovering by medical dictate. Why, or how, or really any questioning at all regarding the matter had remained a matter of gossip that Ghost had not indulged - that way lay dangerous, dangerous territory.

But it had never occurred to him that yes, that kind of healthful blockade could and did chafe, all the more so when you were the top of the Decepticon pile and used to doing... well, whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted, however you wanted. And any other -evers that might apply.

He finished the step and found a small laser cutter; the vent would have to be removed and replaced, and the bolts were likely warped in their housings. However, given the degree of, ah, cacophony the boss was already being put through, Ghost figured he wouldn't object to a quieter operation. The cutter was well up to the task of melting the bolts and a catch tray could be improvised easily. No drip, no noise, and he had the vent out in no time.

The thought that the boss might be snooped on by his Head Snoop had never passed Ghost's processor, either. He'd thought... well, he was sure what he'd thought, other than surely at the top of the heap there was no need to snoop. Megatron couldn't... betray Megatron, after all.

He put the grate aside and brought out the replacement. Under those circumstances -locked in with Cupboard Cacophony over there, and constantly having your every twitch, cuss and sideways glance observed and examined, Ghost couldn't fault anyone, even his Supreme Commander. He'd have felt sorry for any other mech in that situation; he just wasn't sure it was alright, or allowed, to feel that for the Boss. He rummaged for the bolts; well, either he didn't, and he should scuttle off. Or he did, and he... Really, he ought to just scuttle off. Boss. Megatron. Decepticon Warlord. Several times his size. Largely dangerous, even on medical leave.

But... the Tomahawk would not have left any other mech at his level behind. He turned and gave Megatron a very level look (and a discreet size and volume appraisal). Barring his breaking out a measuring tape what he was doing couldn't have been more blatant.

He put the tool away and tested the grate. "... Not necessarily true, boss."

[Deleted]

Megatron had been rather staring into space whilst the Tomahawk worked, listening to the auditory disaster coming from Fairwinds' cupboard and picking through errant thought threads. As such, he was quite oblivious to the visual assessment he was undergoing.

When the repair mech spoke up again, his gaze and attention refocused.

He chuffed a rough sigh, and the look he leveled on the mech up the ladder was utterly withering. "Suffering disconnection from my memory core does not particularly inspire me to see if I can remember how to fly," he rumbled dryly.

There was however a significant degree of weariness in his bearing and tone that suggested that the thought had, at least, occurred to him...

Megatron curled one hand into a fist and drew it to his jaw, scratching his chin with his thumb. His optics narrowed, trying to determine if he had any familiarity with this Decepticon whom seemed... uncharacteristically normal in his presence.

Not coming up with even an inkling of recognition from his make-shift subroutines, he settled on simply asking: "What is your name?"

[Deleted]

"What is your name?"

"Ghost Wind, sir. Conduit maintenance and line repair. You wouldn't have heard of me, sir." It was said with the casual equanimity of someone who knows he's so far at the bottom of the hierarchic ladder that he's unlikely to have even been noticed by the underlings of the underlings of the senior command's underlings. "You'd have to go waaay down to have heard of me."

Ghost couldn't help a faint rippling sound; the thought of flying, of all that empty space between him and his pedes, or his tires, made something at the bottom of his spinal strut twitch uncomfortably, and it translated as some of his armor plates shifting audibly against one another. He could hope the Cupboard Cacophony was covering it up, but who knew.

"No, no flying, scr-- I mean, I didn't mean flying, sir." Ghost cleared his vox; surely he hadn't almost cussed in front of his highest command officer. "I meant in the warship, sir. Kind of literally in the warship, if you... you know." Ghost meticulously put away the tools and the broken grate, giving his commander a discreet look as he stepped down the folding ladder.

"This is surreal..." It was a mutter, meant for no one but Ghost himself. "I... I don't guess you get a lot of actual medical rest with the, ah, noise over there, sir." Ghost tilted his head towards the cupboard, then shrugged a bit. "I'm just saying, there's quiet places everywhere, if you're looking from the other side of the grate. Even for someone your size." He tapped the side of his helm with the last bit of the grate before putting it in the toolbox. "If you got the right guide."

[Deleted]

Megatron's smile spread like oil through water, slick and dark on the surface though his field held a different frequency.

The shaped dente and scars pitting his mouth did little to lighten his visage, twisting every expression into something rough. Predatory. As the battlefields had numbered into the hundreds and his command had become even more savage, so he himself had grown more savage. What tenderness he had was long buried in the mines, and Megatron had embraced the hardening of his spirit and mind as fortification to fight.

These last two weeks, however, had been spent missing the coarsest parts of his psyche eased or absent. Megatron's smile was one of genuine relief and intrigue,

Ghost Wind's careful speech was a clear reminder that Soundwave could have eyes and ears everywhere, despite Megatron's orders that his quarters be exempt from surveillance equipment. Soundwave had been taking great liberties in overseeing his Lord's wellbeing, however, and Megatron was not confident that his orders would be obeyed.

He rose to his feet in one smooth movement, stepping forward with a clearly broadcast interest. The ventilation system hadn't occurred to him as a refuge, primarily because it was a ridiculous idea. It was no more ridiculous than sitting here brooding and suffering Fairwinds' poor cultural tastes, however, and being actively invited to partake in a venture made crawling through the vents a fraction more acceptable.

"Ghost Wind, is it?" he uttered, nodding to the vent with an arched brow.

[Deleted]

Well, scrap. In an incredibly clear part of his processor, Ghost Wind was deeply aware that he was sorta kinda possibly kidnapping his High Commander. What really blew his mind was that said High Commander was all game for it, too.

Lord Megatron was showing the first signs of any emotion not grounded on torqued-off, though, and to Ghost this meant his commander was in serious need of that kidnapping. And so the proverbial deer-in-headlights look the two-wheeler had shown flickered away into a lopsided grin.

"That'd be me, sir." Ghost knew, with absolute certainty, that when he got caught after this little bit of rule-breaking, he was going to be in the sort of trouble he'd always worked to avoid. It did nothing to deter him from the fact that he was already mapping their route, lifting his hands and holding up two talons to better take the measure of Lord Megatron's shoulders. He was going to get caught, that was just a given. But while Ghost couldn't help the 'who', he really wanted to keep the 'how' a mystery.

Just in case the boss had to get out all unseen at some other point in time.

Ghost opened the toolbox again and pulled out the multi-tool again. He could've gotten Lord Megatron out through the vent, but they'd get as far as the next filter system before it told Someone Important that something very large was traipsing about in there. No, what he needed was the primary coolant conduits, where sensors were set into the pipes and cables foremost. That, and his lordship wouldn't have to elbow-crawl his way around. He locked the toolbox and secured it at his back, a bit awkwardly but not too badly, and dropped to one knee.

"The vents, the conduits, the pipes of the warship can take a mech anywhere, sir. Even someone your size, though that takes some doing."

A quick glance around found the secondary access panel-and-vent combo Ghost was looking for. He glanced at the Cupboard of Noise; it ought to be just enough ruckus to cover his easing the bolts loose and opening up a space big enough to admit Lord Megatron, if he did not mind crouching down a fair bit. It was a blue-lit, chilly little hallway, lined on the far side and the top with insulated pipes and heavy braided lines, beating to the steady pulse of the ship's energon.

"With the right guide, you don't even have to duck your head for very long, sir. And with the right tool," Ghost tapped the multi-tool against the side of his helm and grinned cheekily, "you don't even have to own up to how you went and got places without tripping sensors and cameras and all that stuff if you just put the panel back in place from the inside. After you, boss."

[Deleted]

Megatron crouched to peer into the gap, and the narrow space that he hadn't been aware was behind the wall. It was dim inside, and he could see thin strips of light from the softly glowing energon and electrical channels running through the Nemesis like veins.

If they were as un-monitored as Ghost Wind implied, the maintenance conduits were a calculated risk for the warship. Or perhaps they were simply more discretely fitted with sensors for detecting presence and movement, rather than full audio or video surveillance. Either way, Soundwave would be... perturbed, if his self-appointed charge absconded off the grid.

Good, Megatron thought to himself with a smirk. After the 3iC's entirely too smug behaviour following the debacle with Roulette in the training room, it would do for his screen to be knocked a bit out of joint.

Ghost Wind had said for him to enter first, likely to close the panel up behind them. The larger mech paused just before going inside, however.

If he was going to torque Soundwave off by foraging out some much needed peace, he may as well make the most of it and enjoy himself. Likely he wouldn't get another opportunity afterwards...

Holding a long claw up to Ghost Wind to wait, Megatron went to his private energon store behind his desk. Subspacing a few cubes of good High Grade, he returned to the hatch and ducked inside with a wink to his guide.

Backing up in the conduit took some maneuvering to keep the spikes of his pauldrons clear, but Megatron made enough space for Ghost to get inside and cover their tracks.

"There can't be entirely blind zones," he remarked quietly, gazing into the long narrow passage behind Ghost. "It would compromise the ship."

[Deleted]

Ghost Wind had the sort of respect for Lord Megatron that most any entry-level 'Con did: he was the Decepticon leader, the one fighting for freedom from so many levels of oppression that it was wasted time to try and list them all. It was, if one were to try and describe it, 'work' respect - you may respect your boss, but that doesn't mean you know him. Or respect him outside the workplace.

Watching the huge mech snatch the hi-grade painted pleased, obvious surprise on Ghost's faceplates and his field, and a faint smile flickered for a moment before the Tomahawk reminded himself that this was still The Boss. Nonetheless he tapped a light, still respectful but equally complicit salute in return to the wink.

Whom, yup, he was actually and merrily kidnapping. He followed Megatron into the conduit, pulling up the vent cover behind them with such practiced ease that it made not even a whisper of a sound coming into place. A light mag-charge on the multitool, and he could secure the bolts blind from the other side. Unless maintenance got involved, Lord Megatron was to be found still in his quarters with Cupboard Cacophony. Or vanished into thin air.

"There can't be entirely blind zones. It would compromise the ship."

"Oh, scr- uh, no. No, sir. There's a... like a solid blanket of multi-layered sensors built into the hull and the insulation and shielding layers just beneath it. Dedicated maintenance to those, but we're not actually... you know. Leaving the ship. There's also a lot of atmospheric and particulate detection to anything connecting the outside and the inside, down to this size - " The maintenance mech held up his hands, first and second digits together to form a circle. " - which is kind of why we're not using the ventilation system until the very end."

Ghost turned around and looked at both ends of the conduit, one corner of his mouthplates clicking soundlessly. Eventually he squeezed past Lord Megatron with the kind of indecent ease that only a small mech used to even smaller spaces could muster, and led the way down the conduit, past two T-junctions; at each one he stopped them until some unseen signal prompted him to get them both moving again - it was actually the carefully randomized flushing and resetting of the density and particulate filters, impossible to predict unless you were standing right next to them. Like they were. He pointed them out to the boss, humble-looking little built-in tiles. "Random timers. Gotta listen for the reset click."

Eventually he reached a large grate set on the floor, and set to opening it. There was the sound of something slushy moving sluggishly beneath them, and dim yellow light appeared when Ghost tilted the grate up with a grunt of effort.

"Slush cooling system. Mostly dormant right now, it's kind of a combat thing. Coolant goes in, does the job, and goes back to get recycled. Closed system. No access anywhere unless you're inside the ship and the pipes already." He smiled wryly at the warlord. "And one of the few systems that's going to fit you, boss. At least without me jumping through hoops to reset or trick things. It, ah, it only goes to the back of the ship, though. But that's where the best seats in the house are, if you want me to make the suggestion...?"

[Deleted]

Megatron had been listening for the click that Ghost Wind was navigating by, but couldn't pick out the specific sound against the backdrop of the ship's thrumming systems. His optics spiraled back into focus on the grate at the mech's gently framed query.

"Whatever you think best," he replied, fidgeting his helm and one shoulder down lower in their cramp confines. A flash of humour rippled through his field, and Megatron peered down into the cooling system below. "I'm rather at your mercy here, navigation-ally speaking."

It was a humbling thing; to live on an immensely powerful warship, trusting that its engines would fire and the atmosphere would be comfortable whilst the day-to-day duties of the war effort took place within, and be unaware of the systems and mechanisms buried inside the bulkheads. Certainly he'd had no idea of how much space there was in the walls, the extent of the conduits that powered and supported the vessel, and he felt no significant familiarity in here as he did towards the crew.

Megatron had presumed that, as Commander, he would have knowledge of every system onboard his flagship. But likely he'd had no need for such knowledge, and with his size and the tight confines taken into consideration, it made no sense for the Decepticon Lord to force his bulk into the walls just for the sake of looking.

A mech of Ghost Wind's size could get almost anywhere, especially with his intimate knowledge of the Nemesis's systems.

"So this is how the cassettes move about at such speed," he remarked as he obligingly followed the mechanic's lead. "I had half suspected that Fairwinds was using 'bridges."

[Deleted]

"I'm rather at your mercy here, navigation-ally speaking."

Ghost Wind rubbed at his helm, making a sort of strangled sound that wanted to be a laugh but didn't dare. His field see-sawed through amusement, concern and puzzlement; every astro-second, more or less, that tiny voice that did its best to keep the bike-bot alive was screaming at him that he was for all intents and purposes kidnapping his Highest Commanding Officer, which was very much the sort of offense that got a mech's head blown clean off at best. Said Highest Commanding Officer noticing the same thing was only adding to the verbal flailing of that little voice.

However, Lord Megatron was not snarling, was not banging things, was not pacing like a prisoner in his own warship. He was... amused. He was enjoying himself; Ghost was more than willing to risk life and limb for that; Pit, what else had he joined the 'Cons, if not to serve the mech in whatever capacity offered?

At the mention of cassettes, the Tomahawk whuffled amusement. "Oh, sl-" He reset his vox a bit, unable to think of a way to cover it on the fly. "The ship's practically a highway if you're on the small side of things, sir. Especially while not engaged in ship-to-ship warfare."

Ghost had come to realize something very quickly since he'd begun his post on board the 'Nemesis': though on a smaller scale, the warship was basically a micro-city, with all the attending systems of one. No one had had to explain to him, or teach him, what sort of attention the ventilation and electric and energy conduits needed because it was the same old scrap he'd been doing all his life. The recycling and reclamation pipelines had taken a bit of finesse because he was not as familiar with closed systems of the type - their contents and byproducts were so often caustic and lethal that they'd usually been left to the loving care of better armored members of his cohort.

The only systems Ghost had been unfamiliar with had been dormant: they were the warship's battlefield systems. The 'Nemesis' was what it was, and the bike-bot was pretty sure that engaged in ship-to-ship combat it could lay out a wholly unsurpassed amount of misery in an absurdly short time. But on Earth, alone, it made no sense to keep those systems active. Primed for action, yes. But not active. Ghost had still learned them as best he could in the idealistic hope that he'd live long enough to be needed in their maintenance, but there was only so much you could learn when nothing was giving you more than a passive stand-by response when you poked it with a sonic screwdriver.

He wrestled the heavy grate upwards until a basic pneumatic mechanism caught and locked it upright, and kicked on his headlights before jumping down. Originally there had been just enough sludge on the bottom of the pipe to cover a pede, but even that had been scrubbed away, sifted and reclaimed into vast, pressurized tanks; Ghost had been one of the mechs wielding a scoop. The pipe was large enough to accommodate even Lord Megatron, upright, with perhaps a handspan or two to spare. Dim track lighting ran along both sides of it, though most of it had been shut off. It stretched away in smooth curves, looking less like a mechanism and more like something to be found in a living frame. While in combat, the massive pipe ran slush coolant at high-speed through the warship, ensuring that overheating would not take the 'Nemesis' out of a fight.

"Just make sure to close the gate after you're in, sir. And if you come this way again, wouldn't hurt to have something to clean your pedes so you don't, you know. Leave tracks for someone else to find."

Ghost didn't want to spell out that he was, indeed, offering a means for the Boss-bot to sneak out at his leisure. It was not the sort of thing you ought to spell out. But then again, one oughtn't to be finding said Boss-bot exiled to his quarters, even under medical leave. He crouched down to find the infinitesimal downward slope of the pipe, and prudently moved away from the grate a bit. Forgetting that he was speaking to someone who might not be fluent in Maintenance-ese, he asked, "Can you feel the slope, sir?"