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.
Scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap, Primus-on-a-piston-fragging-scrap. What was he doing? Why was he being so...so...like himself? He was supposed to be formal. They were on a scouting mission and Dart was meant to show him around. She had no field whatsoever, couldn't speak their own language — what kind of glitch did she have? How could she have lasted so long if she was so disabled? Was she some sort of repurposed Vehicon?
"I understand."
That was the best he could come up with, and it took him a few tries in his head to come up with the words. "I didn't mean t'get so informal, Miss Dart. Please forget about anythin' I said. I really don't care whether you paw at the dirt or not."
He was bluntly sincere now, trying to forge ahead without hesitation. He couldn't have Dart thinking he was looking down on her — he had glitches himself, he saw her as just another Decepticon. Unlike many of his side, he didn't have the petty biases that seemed to pop up like tunnel worms. (Unless someone counted his hatred of the higher caste, that is.)
"Keep showing what you need to show me," said Buffalo Dump. "I'm sorry for interruptin' what you do best, ma'am. Lead the way."
She had come up slightly on her toes, as if she was gathering herself to dodge any more questions. Underneath the shaded brim of her helm, her blue optics held a wariness that she simply wasn't able to conceal.
Dart didn't like those sorts of questions the big mech had posed. She really didn't. If it had been up to her, she was happy just being left alone to do her job, to go un-noticed except for a point or a snap of the fingers. You go there you do this and you report. Socializing wasn't something she was used to after all these years working for the Decepticons. It was difficult sometimes to know when someone was truly being social and friendly, or if they were testing the air between you to see just how vulnerable you could be.
However, this mech - his words just weren't sincere, or his tone. His body language was tipped in, the shift of his shoulders, the way he just put his nose down and nudged the comment before him and apologized. That in itself was surprising, and Dart's spoiler pricked up a notch.
Then she felt bad. He was dumped on them, out of place, out of that environment he knew. Obviously he'd had a bad run in with someone - be it Autobot or Decepticon. He hadn't even recovered before he'd been added to Pyrotech's crew.
"It's okay," she apologized. "Honest, it's okay. You're- you're fine, sir. No one briefs anyone sometimes about who they're working with. I know how that goes."
The courier took a few steps and waited for him to follow her. She again kept her pace slow, not trotting or loping, just a quiet walk. Her strides were long and light; Dart seemed incredibly comfortable on the uneven ground, rocks and all.
"The perimeter's about eight miles, the short loop," she said to him after a moment. "It's mostly on the flat. A wash or two you have to go through, sir. Usually the only planes out here are BLM ones - well, the ones that could see us from the air. We usually - well, you do your best to duck out of sight if that happens. Better to transform and sit low in one of the gullies if you can, sir."
A faint shake of her head and she looked back at him again. "I can- try to answer any questions you might have, sir. About anything. I can't say I have all the answers, but I can try."
A faint shake of her head and she looked back at him again. "I can- try to answer any questions you might have, sir. About anything. I can't say I have all the answers, but I can try."
"What's a B-L-M?" asked Buffalo Dump, managing to keep his voicebox from crackling as he slowly said each letter. "Are they some sort of human air support, Miss?"
The waste-worker looked enviously to Dart's pedes. She stepped with such grace over the stones and cracks, B-Dump wondered if she had heel-thrusters. Her soles barely touched the ground, sharply different from the heavy, clanking footfalls that left hoof-like prints behind her. B-Dump frowned thoughtfully, trying to match the light, dainty movement that the courier possessed.
He ended up walking on his tiptoes, managing to move a few feet forward, and then tripping over a rock through the split of his right foot. With a half-restrained yelp, the giant mech flailed and fell face-first into the dirt, whacking his forehead off another rock with a loud CLANG. The sound echoed throughout the hills and valleys, and a small cloud of dirt rose from his body as he swore in Neocybex. His voicebox clicked back to English after a few seconds, incomprehensible static before his translation software kicked in.
He slowly got to his feet, ex-venting heavily. Bits of grit fell out of his ventilation as B-Dump coughed, leaning heavily on his one leg as he shook his injured one.
"Next question..." the giant mech said with a hack, pointing at Dart's feet with one, huge digit, his other servo busy clutching his still-healing knee. His bad optic held was firmly shut now, a grimace on his faceplates as they twitched from the ache in it. "How do ya move like that?"
Last Edit: Nov 17, 2014 18:16:16 GMT -5 by Deleted
"No, sir," Dart replied. "The BLM is the Bureau of Land Management. They're a human agency that's tasked with ah, managing public lands on a national level. They sort of overlook wildnerness areas, energy leases, and they manage uh, minerals and mining located underneath federal, state, and private lands. They're out here usually patrolling for poachers and stray range cattle."
Her tone changed a bit when she spoke. It was almost as if she was reciting something, word for word, letter for letter.
Grass brushed against the edges of the mech's big feet and flattened under his heavy stride. Once he'd moved on, it slowly uncrumpled back up into the sun; mostly non-plussed by giant robot footfalls. The rock that he tripped over on the other hand was completely unphased and didn't budge a single centimeter.
As he lost his footing and pitched forward, the courier- well, she moved. Actually Dart went straight up into the air as he flailed. Her instinctive response was to get clear; she was moving before there was really any sense of why he was falling. It was simply that he he was, which usually meant that there was someone on a grassy knoll with a rifle. Or someone else strafing you from the air with laser fire. These were not her favorite things.
Instead there was simply a whole lot of beeping and static, followed by some thrashing from the big mech, that clicked over into swearing.
Once Dart realized Buffalo simply lost his footing and they were not under attack, she shook herself with a quick rattle of plating and trotted quickly back to him.
Also, she had to wondered if those words were supposed to translate like that, or if he even knew what those meant in English. Hey, she knew what they meant. One didn't sneak around college campuses without being exposed to the best four letter words that Earth had to offer. You didn't even need the internet to get the gist of them either. Sort of like uh, the one on the piston. She didn't need to think real hard to get the gist of that either.
She winced as he clambered to his feet. His one optic was shut tight and the look on his face said something was hurt.
"Are you all right?" she asked. "You- have you even had time to repair, sir?"
A pause. "Move like..." she wondered, looking baffled. Her spoiler pricked up over her shoulders as she tried to understand what he was asking. "Move like - oh. Oh, it's just- I've had a lot of practice in places like this."
Her whole life, really, if she thought about it.
"Okay," she said. "The biggest thing is... you just... well, don't catch the edge of your foot on the rocks and the packed bits. If you're at all unsteady you'll roll an ankle or slide out from under you. Watch where you put your feet a bit, after a while you'll just learn to adjust, promise. We're going to stick to the flat, sir. You tell me if you're sore or you need to stop, you... are you going to be all right?"
"Yeah, yeah," said Buffalo Dump, a large servo waving off Dart's concerns. It was a practised move, something done so often it was as natural as the courier's footsteps over the landscape. The tone he used was also of something recited, just like Dart's little speech on the BLM. "Bumped my head last fight, and bumped it on a rock now. Things happen, you know?"
He brushed himself off, then gave Dart an awkward look.
"Um...s-sorry for the language, Miss. I, ah...I'm too used t'my old folk. They swore a lot, and, um, so did I."
He stuck the hooflike pede of his good foot, rolling it. "So," he picked up, his faceplates easing up a little, "I move my foot like this if gets caught, right? Or is it like this, ma'am?"
The garbage mech slid the same foot a little, trying to mimic what Dart was saying. "Or am I completely off? To be honest, I usually drive through this kind o' thing. More used to roads and long, flat places. Can even be good on that stuff called 'grass', but um...rocks trip me up. Literally."
He laughed at his own bad joke. He involuntarily flinched at a new, sharp pain in his face, and it was good Dart couldn't read his field — a spike went through it, edged like a knife.
Last Edit: Nov 17, 2014 23:57:21 GMT -5 by Deleted
The courier inclined her head. Her optics held a bit of concern. She honestly knew that tone, understood the gentle brushoff. Nothing's wrong with me, I'm okay, drop it, let's move on. Ever sensitive to that sort of behavior, Dart nodded and looked away as he resettled himself. She could hear his fingers scruffing off the dirt.
"S'okay," she reassured him. "I mean, the swearing thing, it's fine. I've heard way worse."
Which was true. Also more creative swears. The sort that just made you pause in mid-step, look over, and try to figure out if it was actually possible in theory. Then again, all you had to do was look at the internet for a few minutes, and you'd probably find out the hard way it was possible.
Dart watched as he picked up his foot. No wonder he was having a tougher time; that was an interesting design to his feet. She'd never seen anything quite like it. Which was rather funny considering how much she stared down at other mech's feet. Then again, she still couldn't quite figure out how Starscream was so stable and downright quick on those heels of his. Not a design she could have pulled off, for sure. All she could think would happen was that she'd plow into the ground nose first. Owch.
Quietly she settled back onto dirt, relaxing just a touch. "Either way," she encouraged him. "It's going to be a lot of trial and error to see what works best for you, sir."
A nod. "Grass is easier," she agreed, and glanced out over the landscape. "I think that's the difference. I'm usually on foot in places like this. I understand though, if your alt mode is more suited to driving in it..?"
Shaded under the brim of her helmet, her optics flickered a bit at his flinch.
"So, we'll just walk," she offered again, and took a few steps to let him gather himself and follow. "Taking it slow and steady, sir."
Trial and error. Error would probably involve a lot of stumbling, tripping and general making an aft of himself, but he could manage. Buffalo Dump had never been one to be brought down by pain for long — he was no frontliner, but he was hardy. So long as someone didn't shear off his kneecap again, he'd be able to walk, patrol and do as was asked as him as fine as Dart could. He nodded at the courier, picking up his pace again.
"Slow walk it is," he said. "How abouts large is the perimeter we're going around, Miss Dart? I know ya said it's short, but I like making a map in my head for things and places. Helps me, uh, remember things like landmarks, and that."
He was about to say something else, but stopped short. Something crunched beneath his feet; he glanced down, and his optical ridges lifted a little in surprise. A snag in the rock had caught a variable pack of tumbleweeds, the bouncing balls of sticks jammed in the groove like turbofox cubs to a den. Buffalo Dump took a step back, shaking off one foot and walking around the pile, glancing backwards nervously.
"...They do that, right?" he sheepishly asked the courier.
"Yes, they do, sir," Dart reassured him again. "They're just blown by wind. They sort of go to ground in all the places that catch them, and then blow off when they're hit another direction. Harmless." Dart padded forward and waited for him, then settled into a quiet, steady walk. The sunshine stretched their shadows behind them as she paced forward. Automatically, she picked them the easiest path; keeping him away from large dips or uneven ground. A greenfly looped lazily around the big mech's helm and then droned away into the distance.
"About six miles," she said. "Give or take. It's got a few little areas that are broken ground, but for the most it's passable pretty well, sir. The Vehicons usually take this loop, and I usually take the Wide patrols right now, because that's how we're stationed. We haven't had anyone new for a while, since..."
She trailed off for a moment. "Since Australia," she said finally. "Oh. Yes sir, there are landmarks all over. That's how I usually sort of find my way around a lot of places. Mostly outcrops, and there's actually a water hole on the loop here that I think is fed by a spring. Not sure. It's there year around."
B-Dump turned his head towards the faint buzzing, but didn't possess the current optic-strength to make out its tiny figure. He listened, faceplates thoughtful, until the fly buzzed away and left him alone again. The green-and-white mech started walking, daring to open his bad optic a little bit.
"What kind of spring?" asked B-Dump. "Is it a chemical spring? Energon spring? If it's an oil spring, we could ask Pyrotech if we could use it to bring grub back to the base. Eat things in-between our Energon rations, space out the goods and all that. Unless, um...he said no already, which is fine."
Though he wouldn't know, it would be unlikely that Dart had ever seen an oil spring. He'd seen one or two before, once on Cybertron and a couple others on distant planets. The gunk that flowed out of them could be the Pits to a tank, but if the right spring was found, and the chemicals therein were cleaned up correctly, they made for an amazing drink. B-Dump could really have gone for some oil right then and there, with a side of Pine-Sol and some cyclohexane-flavoured foam on top — disgusting to some, a delight to him.
If asked, he wouldn't be joking if he said he'd tried almost everything inedible under the sun. Fuel was hard to come by in the Dead End, so the 'bots there had to get creative. B-Dump could remember days of his cohort grabbing leftover fuel from bartops, gulping it down and putting the glasses back after the drinks were abandoned by their owners.
A puff of dust drifted out from under their feet. Around them, the rocks and stones shone red in the early morning light. The weight of their footsteps was muffled by the earth; even the big mech's strides were fairly silent. It was just the gentle sound of Dart's intakes as she quietly tested the air every few meters.
"Oh," she echoed. "Um no. Just water, sir. Just a water spring. Not common out here. There's a few more on some of the wider routes too."
There was a faint churn from her internals as she mulled over his words.
Alaska had been miserable. Low supplies and long nights spent struggling to keep your joints from locking up and your vents from icing over.The only thing that had kept them going sometimes was her ability to sniff out old oil storage tanks that had been drained and decomissioned. Dart remembered the smell of the contents, the taste of it, half rotten and foul. She tried not to think of how they'd had to dig them out, rip them open and use their fingers to scrape curls of sludge off the sides.
Somewhere in the back of her head Thermal snarled at Siphon and the two of them shoved each other; in that moment the sunshine just wasn't bright enough. She padded on and pointed to a ridge that had several rocks up and out of it, like a porcupine's quills.
"That's one of the landmarks," she murmured. "You can see it from all sides. It's a good thing to orient on when you're out a ways."
Her spoiler slanted a bit, the tips quirking.
"Not much out here to eat," she said carefully. "Oregon's not got those types of resources. It's pretty... well, you can see. No oil or tar sands or any of that. As for grabbing stuff like that, our Commander doesn't mind it, sir. He's not going to tell you not to bring that back. Just-- don't get caught doing it, that's all. Er, I mean not by the humans or the Autobots, sir. He won't care otherwise."
"Got it," Buffalo Dump said, glancing up at the spiny ridge. "Fuel's okay, just don't bring anything else onto base. I'll remember that."
The waste-worker fell back into silence, no further questions asked. He lumbered along behind Dart, a massive shadow of white, grey and green to her dark, dainty form. His eye eased open a little more, and he turned his head to silently take in the landscape. Left to his own thoughts, there were a couple of moments where he stopped and stared, watching how the red morning's light played across rock and shade.
After several minutes of walking since his last stop, the garbage truck hummed thoughtfully. He paused in mid-stride, bent down, and gently slid his digits underneath something on the ground. Slowly standing back up, whatever was in his servo was held close to the face, and his frown became more pronounced.
"This meant to be out here?"
He held out whatever was in his servo for Dart to see.
//ooc// Felds, feel free to choose whatever he just picked up.
Against Buffalo's fingers, it was rough and rusty. Not much, perhaps, but enough that the old barbs scratched against his finish. The braided wire was just a strand between his massive fingertips, a tiny little curl that was so man-made on the landscape he'd noticed it, mostly buried in the dry dirt.
Dart paused. Automatically, she dipped her head forward. Her intakes gave a small whuffle as they drew in the scent to process. The sharp smell of the rusty metal hit her a second later; it lingered in her sensors. Sometimes Dart had difficulty describing how scents relayed themselves to her. This was like a tin of wet pennies. Well, that was the only way she could have perhaps explained it to the other mech... but then again, then she might have to go through the whole thing on what pennies were and why a tin of them would be wet and... that just made no sense, even to her.
"Not really," she told him. "It's barbed wire. You find it here and there. It's- well, this land used to be used to range cattle before..."
The courier looked thoughtful. "I think ninteen nintety nine. Two thousand? I... I can't remember what they said about it, sir. I just know that a little under half of this place is now designated grazing free. Some of the fencing still is here though. They tore it out and hauled it out, under the designation I think, sir."
Dart looked out over the range. Her helm shadowed her optics against the sun. She lifted her foot, caught herself, and set it back down.
A shake of her head. "Some of it got missed sometimes. Or it got swept out here in a flash flood and buried, sir. Who knows."
Buffalo Dump nodded. "Barbed wire," he said, the barest click of static coming through; the more he used his vocalizer in English, the better he sounded. He gently placed the rough material back where it had been found, and then continued with his slow, lumbering stride. After Dart he would follow, dirt and grass crunching beneath him as the landscape turned from red to beiges and oranges. The sun was coming up quickly, he noticed.
As he and Dart walked, he couldn't help but reminded more and more of a zap-pony by the courier. The long, lanky legs, the pawing at the dirt, the way she sniffed and then flickered her spoiler like a set of antenna-audials — he wondered if she had been a zap-pony. A zap-pony put into the body of a courier, for some reason or another. He had to shake his head a little to get the ridiculous thought out of it.
"Pony...let."
The words were quiet, barely audible as he moved. An amused chuckle was followed by a whuff from the giant mech's vents.
Dart was not the sort to fill empty space with conversation. Well... that wasn't true. The courier genuinely enjoyed listening to others talk. Having limited experiences of her own, other people's were amazing to hear about. Anything that related to Cybertron she gathered close and held tight to. Buffalo's comments on the Rust Sea had been filed away, the offhand mention of oil springs and chemical ones. One more thing about that planet so far away she didn't know; a phrase that she could tuck into the blank places of her mind like she tucked her hands into her hip carriers.
Her own discussions tended to drift back to safe spaces; the weather, the landscape, what she'd spotted on patrol. She knew, the things she knew the most about weren't things that lent themselves to conversation among her fellow Decepticons. Especially not about the organic things that she found so amazing on this planet.
Dart could have talked about how the lights looked down at Christmas time in Portland, strung up the lampoles in the fog. Or how the desert was cold at night, how you could be in the triple digits during the day and fall to where you could vent out steam at night. Ask her how humans trudged in the snow on a college campus, bent by the weight of books, that she knew.
She was picking her way over the ground when Buffalo's voice rumbled into the space between them.
For a second, her main pump nearly stopped. Her spoiler twitched upwards as she nearly put her foot down on an uneven shelf of rock.
Pony.
Logbooks tucked away in Tupperware, in metal boxes high in human spaces. She was so careful, she went when she was on assignment. She never stayed long, or lingered in those places that were off her path. The only place she took the time to sit was in Vantage, high up on the hill, surrounded by the silent herd of iron horses. That name she'd used was a little dig at herself; the Trans AM, the Pony Car wars, the track, a runner, and one more thing that she just smiled at sometimes. A job. A simple job where you got paid for putting it on the line, the intangible badge of the old time couriers of Earth.
Station to station by yourself over hostile territory and dangerous-- wow, that was stupidly obvious, Dart, and so obvious...
Her own fault. All these years, she'd been okay without company. In fact, she'd pulled herself into places to avoid it. On coming back from Australia, she'd been okay for a while. Tried to gather routine close. Don't look behind, just keep going forward, put your nose down and keep surviving, but... those mottos didn't work like they used to. Dart looked behind a lot now. More than she ever had her whole life.
Hard to admit you were lonely when you knew it was one more thing that someone could take and use. It had gotten Dart in a lot of trouble.
Worse though to the courier was to take someone else down with you.
"Er, what?" she asked Buffalo after she'd collected herself and gathered that easy stride once more.
Buffalo Dump looked up, a little startled that Dart had heard him. "Nothin', nothin'," replied the big mech, waving off Dart with a servo — she looked worried. "It's just that...well, you remind me a lot of a zap-pony. See, not many people know 'bout them, but — "
B-Dump gestured, trying to mimic someone walking using two digits over a laid-out servo. "They look like Earth horses, but they're, um...metal. Obviously metal, because they're from Cybertron. People use 'em for carrying really heavy things, and some are so big, they're only a lil' bit smaller than me. An', an' some walk all dainty-like, like they're dancers, and like you do. They twitch their antennas and it's kinda cute, and um, um...."
He snapped two digits, trying to find the right words. One foot tapped idly, crushing a bit of dry bush under it before he found his train of thought again.
"They sometimes have lightning bolts on 'em, like yours!"
He pointed at Dart's chest, smiling a little.
"And it's not meant as offensive or anything, ma'am, it's just...it's adorable. And you can kick me for saying it, but you're like one of the really dainty little ponylets, walkin' along like how a flier flies so nicely and easy-like, and I'm jealous. Me, with the big ol' feet and the clank-clank-clank, sounding like somethin' rising out of a scrapyard...."
Buffalo Dump laughed sheepishly, rubbing the back of his healm. A hawk flew overhead, chittering as it dove into a nearby cleft in the land. A couple more greenflies buzzed by, headed for a dead deer stinking somewhere down below them.