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.
"No, that is not likely," he said. "He has found a place here. He's happy here. He enjoys being part of the team. And he is a valuable member of it."
Ordinarily Ratchet was not so openly complimentary of the Wrecker - or any Wrecker - or anyone, for that matter - but he was also well aware of how Wheeljack felt about his old friend leaving the Wreckers behind to join Team Prime. He had once been wary that Wheeljack might attempt to lure Bulkhead away with him when he left the base to resume his wandering ways; now, it almost seemed like the prudent option. How times had changed.
Aloud, he said thoughtfully, "Though this may be one of the times when even Optimus might agree that you would be better of with him travelling with you. Are you sure about this, Wheeljack? You're certain that heading out on your own is what you want to do right now?"
Wheeljack's already dark mood continued to blacken at Ratchet's reminder that, oh yeah, Wheeljack's best friend? Bulk's moved on and built a life without him. The Wrecker's face tightened, falling into a blank façade as Ratchet listed just how well Bulkhead was fitting in with Team Prime. The medic may have intended to compliment Bulkhead but all it felt like to Wheeljack was that Ratchet was rubbing it in his face that Bulk had moved on completely from the Wreckers. It was hard enough when his friend made that choice in his face, back then in Bulk's direct company, Wheeljack's fondness for him far outweighed his frustration and resentment over the decision made. But right now? Alone in just Ratchet's presence?
The Wrecker's grip tightened on his energon cube so hard it cracked. He drained it forcefully, trying to keep his foul mood from showing. Wheeljack's resolve had hardened at Ratchet's words. No, Bulkhead would not be coming with him. He'd stay here where it was safe, where he'd made a new home for himself. Wheeljack would not pry him away from it. And even if the other Wrecker was willing, even if Optimus Prime would allow it, Wheeljack still wouldn't want Bulkhead along. Shockwave was a personal matter, one that Wheeljack didn't ever intend to allow Bulk to get caught up in. He had no desire to admit to his capture -to his weakness- not to Bulkhead.
"Thanks for the concen doc, but I'll be fine on my own," Wheeljack replied stiffly. He rose to his feet and walked to the door. His gaze darkened, almost as if he could see deeper into the base, could see a certain commanding officer that he wanted nothing to do with. "Don't worry about me."
Wheeljack's sullen mood was not lost on Ratchet. The medic did not rise to acknowledge it however, and only set his empty cube aside and pushed off his station. As far as he was concerned Bulkhead had the right and the intelligence to determine his own path in life. If that path left friends behind, Ratchet would not be the one to judge it.
"I won't," he said calmly. "I'm sure you'll be fine. If you find yourself in need of assistance however, simply contact us here. We will be able to open a ground bridge to your location within a minute."
He eyed Wheeljack curiously. "Have you said your goodbyes already to the rest of the base?"
One servo placed against the doorframe, Wheeljack snorted, recalling the first time he'd called the Omega base and gotten Red Alert on the comms. That had taken more than just a minute to get a groundbridge to his location.
"Just finished packing up my lab," he rumbled. "Now I'm making my rounds to say goodbye and checking that there isn't any business I've left unfinished. I'll catch you around, Ratchet."
In all honesty though, there were not a lot of faces he was actually going to go say goodbye to.
Ratchet tidied the objects that his weight had disturbed on the station and picked up the cube again. Feeling slightly obstreperous himself, he calculated his shot and launched it at a receptacle he had been using lately to collect vials. It clattered in among the empty energon cubes already lying inside.
’Nothing but net’, as Miko might have said.
“Very well,” said Ratchet as he brushed his hands together in satisfaction before planting them on his hips. He baldly sized up the Wrecker with a frown. He did not like Wheeljack, not exactly, but frankly he did not like plenty of people and that did not stop him from having a civil working relationship with them.
And the Wrecker was still an Autobot at heart.
“I shall see you whenever you return,” he said. “In the meantime I’ll ensure that your laboratory is maintained properly and put to good use. You can rely upon that. Try not to get yourself killed out there.”
Upon leaving the med-bay, Wheeljack headed down towards the storage rooms. At this time of day, he figured they'd be empty, ideal for a private conversation. There was no point in heading back to his lab or down to the rec room. He was not yet ready to seek out Bulkhead. But there was a mech he wanted to speak to, though he wasn't quite sure where to find him.
Which, all things considered, was probably for the best. Given how their first encounter had gone, a comm call might be better for this than Wheeljack tracking down the mech in question to talk in person. And, especially considering how that encounter had gone, Wheeljack did not intend to let the mech find out through the grapevine that the Wrecker was leaving. He'd handle this discreetly, by himself, as the other would not doubt prefer.
::Rook:: the Wrecker commed, pulling up a frequency left to him on a tiny data-drive. ::Got a few seconds to talk?::
It wasn't a grand thing, as doors went. Directly on arrival to Omega Base the Aero had realized that space was a rare thing, mainly because the silos were built on a human scale. While the machines that had once occupied the space had been on the larger side, it still made for some oddly cramped quarters here and there and everywhere.
But Rook hadn't been looking to barricade himself, or even to insulate the space; insulation was being added, just in case something... eventful happened while he was fiddling. He just wanted privacy, and that was something he would not get unless there were a semblance of a wall between him and everything else.
He'd asked for nothing from Agent Fowler, either. He knew he could, but to have on record whatever materials and tools and whatnot he might be carrying on his person was to invite someone who shouldn't to find and read that list. To know. To prepare in advance against it.
No. Everything Rook had, the humans had provided... just not through their official liaison. The assassin was well on his way to perfecting the art of dumpster diving and salvage-robbing, at least within a night's drive of the Autobase.
The door, and the wall on which it was mounted, had once belonged to an assortment of armored vehicles. The pieces had been cut in neat patterns and painstakingly welded into a subtly pretty, if plain design. He'd salvaged the bolts and put them all inside. Any Bot who felt the need for it and put some sort of effort forward would likely peel the whole thing off to one side like a heavy curtain. Rook was counting more on manners than on actual defense.
Behind said curtain was a very narrow space, a cul-de-sac that barely accommodated him standing upright, and whose walls he could touch in every direction with his padded fingertips if he stretched his arms to their fullest. Cargo netting from deliveries to the base made tidy shelves along most walls. He could chemically light the place up when he was working but more often than not Rook kept it to the normal dimness of the rest of the base.
When the old comm-freq pinged for his attention, Rook nearly dropped the small case he'd been examining. Hastily constructed, it was every gram of titanium he'd been able to salvage, with an equally painstaking bit of high-resistance ceramic coating the inside. It held the magnetic disk he'd snagged from the MECHs back at Old McCrazy's place, and he'd been wondering if he should surrender the damn thing to Fowler after all, because he had absolutely no idea what else to do with it.
A question for the ages. Or at least, for another time. He'd not expected Wheeljack to contact him... ever, really. He'd been fairly certain he'd not made the most sterling of impressions on the wrecker. And yet, here they were.
In the privacy of his quarters, Rook put the box aside and fell back on bad habits, speaking aloud as he replied. Ironically, out of sight he sounded calmer, far more personable. Detached still, but nowhere near as tense as he'd been on their one face-to-face meeting. And while he sounded polite, he also sounded much like someone who never gets a phone call unless it's to ask for money. ::All the time in the world. What can I do for you, Wheeljack?::
Was it possible for Rook to ever not sound slightly stressed? Wheeljack was beginning to seriously consider that this was the spook's default setting.
::Thought I'd give you a heads up:: the Wrecker's voice was dry over the comms. ::I'm heading out of the Omega base, don't know when I'll be back. I've turned my workshop over into Ratchet's tender care but the offer still stands. You need to use it, feel free. Negotiate it out with him or sneak in, I don't really care::
He paused for a moment. Shrugged even though there was no way for the other mech to see it. ::Would have offered it up to you but figured that you wouldn't have wanted the questions that would have come with it::
If he’d been forced to honesty, Rook would have had to admit he only had two default settings anymore: Business, and More Business. The closest he came to relaxation, and that was only by the most technical of definitions, was on the road, or the quiet moments of fabrication that came to him less and less as the war ground on. There was not a lot of speaking to those times, though.
Rook was fairly certain that he no longer knew peace – not even in his sleep.
Nonetheless, he took in Wheeljack’s message in silence; there was no exclamation of surprise, no expression of emotion at all, for all that both the contact and the message it contained were wholly unexpected.
So the walls had ground into the Wrecker’s patience. And swiftly, too. Given what little he’d learned of the outfit and its member, Rook was not surprised. If Wheeljack had not included further information he’d have been wondering why he was contacted at all.
As it was, he had to forcibly remind himself that Wreckers were not known for a lot of ulterior motives. When he answered his tone remained even; the faint trace of humor might have been a trick of the line for all anyone knew. ::Well, bit unusual to get called, but not called in.:: He let a pause go through the line as he considered what he’d been told. ::I’ll find my way in, and thank you for… the anonymity.:: It didn’t occur to Rook to question Wheeljack’s departure, or motives; they were what they were, and if Ratchet, one of the senior officers, had no objection to it, it was not the assassin’s place to find any such. His tone grew a subtle touch, very delicate. ::Any light I should keep running for you?::
Well, this conversation was certainly going better than the last one.
Probably because the Wrecker and the spook weren't existing anywhere in the same vicinity as the other.
Wheeljack raised an optic ridge, not expecting the question Rook had posed to him. ::No, I've packed up everything I was working on:: he answered. ::Thanks for the offer though::
Although…hmm...Rook had offered...
::Actually, how about a thought exercise?:: the Wrecker added. ::There's a side project I've been working on for Miko. Some personal protective gear. Been keeping it on the quiet. It's finished right now but there's always room for some upgrades. If I sent you the schematics, I'd appreciate having another set of optics looking over them to spots out any flaws or improvements to the design::
Unseen in the dim light, Rook rose gracefully to his pedes and pinched lightly the bridge of his nose between two padded digits.
It had nothing to do with the Wrecker's request. Actually, personal protective gear seemed like a project that should have occurred to someone much earlier on, given how many humans were coming and going all about Omega Base as allies to the Autobots.
No, the problem was the karmic bomb Wheeljack was apparently involving in the project.
::.... for Miko.:: The tone was flawlessly identical to that of any (sane) mech being asked to come near a Wrecker: equal measures wariness, resignation, and a whole lot of cautious paranoia.
Nonetheless, he had asked; he shook his head briefly and sighed the ghost of a laugh into the comm. ::Of course Miko. Though I admit if anyone needs armor, it'd be her. I'm a little bare-bones on the actual tech, but I can always look at the material stress tests if you'd like. Save them for whenever you'd like to pick 'em up, see if I have anything I could throw on the project from my stockpiles.::
If there was a way to buy a human in front of a 'Con the few seconds needed for them not to end up a smear on the pavement, Rook was all for it. Wrecker and karma bomb or not.
Wheeljack recognised the tone Rook's voice took when the Wrecker brought Miko's name into the conversation. Amusement filled the engineer, Miko would undoubtedly be pleased to know that just the mention of her name was enough to cause that wary tone just like any other Wrecker.
::One of the biggest limiting factors is the heat generated by it. It being a holo-emitter I've re-purposed to use the hard-light as protective shielding. The alloy I'm using to house the emitter might be more in your field:: Wheeljack said, preparing to transfer the datafiles. ::Wouldn't complain if you knew of something I could use that didn't heat up as fast ::
The Wrecker pinged Rook his notes and schematics for Miko's gauntlet.
Rook accepted the file, skimming through the pure bits of engineering and focusing instead on alloy parameters wherever the familiar numbers popped up. He couldn't even begin to understand the creativity that would turn a holo-emitter into a human-sized shield of any kind, and he did not try; but metals, materials, raw components - those he could grasp.
His tone had gone a little distracted as he read through, just enough to keep up with the basics of the conversation. ::It's going to heat up on impact no matter what... kinetic transfer's gotta go somewhere... uh.:: He almost audibly caught himself, his tone going a little more formal. ::I've been meaning to test a few oddbits; I don't have enough to do anything with them otherwise, but a human-sized heat-sink's a different animal. I'll keep the results on file for you.::
In the driest, most wry of tone, the assassin added. ::I'm not taking care of the mini-Wrecker for you, though. Not unless it's under orders.::
Last Edit: Jul 31, 2015 21:41:13 GMT -5 by Deleted
One of Wheeljack's optic ridges had lifted at Rook's less formal tone before the spook shifted back to his normal tone. Aaaand there was the brief glimpse of the scientist in the other mech. A pity Wheeljack hadn't really gotten the chance to see more but drawing mecha gently out of whatever defences they'd built themselves wasn't really his thing. Case in point, see: previous encounter between Rook and Wheeljack.
Unless it was actual literal defences, in which case Wheeljack could blast those down just fine.
"If you can figure something out, I'll owe you one."
At Rook's caveat about Miko, the Wrecker let out a quiet laugh. This time, the amusement was clear in Wheeljack's voice when he responded. "Wasn't asking you to," the Wrecker replied dryly. "She looks after herself perfectly fine."
It was probably time to bring the conversation to an end. It had certainly gone a lot better than the Wrecker was expecting. "Well Rook, I'll catch you around."
Rook turned in his limited space. His mind was already wandering through his available materials, and what he might make of them. Or with them.
::Of course she is.:: He offered back in the same tone.
Insulated fingers paused briefly. For most of his life the assassin had never given a thought to speaking out loud whenever he used comms. It had been just a thing one did, like transforming or refueling.
::Let's hope not. Primus knows what that would do to my reputation.:: His tone had the driest of humors attached to it. ::Let's leave it at don't blow too many things up on your part, and don't be seen on mine.::
It had take a while to get rid of that particular bad habit; and yet, it made him keenly aware of those times when he consciously offered the gesture - for all that no one was almost ever aware of it.