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.
"Jackhammer, Jackhammer, do you read me?" it said. "I'm broadcasting on two-twenty-two-seventy-five, calling for the Jackhammer. Jackhammer, if you read this, please respond to this message on frequency two-twenty-three-niner-two."
It radiated across the southern half of the United States. It was not a very clear transmission - in fact it was weak, a VHF radio transmission, its range based on line of sight. It crackled with light static.
But it was audible, at least. And oddly, it was not being transmitted from a personal commline, but rather from an external source.
It had been way too long since Wheeljack had hit the open air. Already, he could feel faint traces of tension easing from his frame. No more nosy Autobots, interrupting his day whenever they felt like it. No more rules and regulations over his head, dictating what he could and could not do. No more Optimus freaking Prime.
…
No more Bulkhead.Or Miko.
Well, you couldn't have everything.
Wheeljack comfortably leant back in the Jackhammer's pilot seat. Before he left North America, he figured there were a few last co-ordinates he'd chase up for energon deposits. One last parting gift for the Omega base. Never let it be said that Wheeljack didn't know how to be a semi-decent houseguest at the very least.
All in all, the Wrecker wasn't expecting the call the Jackhammer picked up.
Wheeljack blinked his optics and frowned at his ship's holographic interface as if it was personally responsible for this anomaly. It wasn't the Omega base, he'd recognise the frequency if it was. And it was addressed personally to his ship, addressed to him specifically, so that took the American military off the table. Unless Fowler was calling about that island he's blown up at long last, in which case he'd been dealing with the dulcet tone of the man himself.
So, really, Wheeljack was going to lean on the side of 'probably unfriendly' and 'sounds like a trap.' He didn't think MECH was aware of his ship, though he didn't completely dismiss it out of hand but he doubted they'd have got its name. A Decepticon? Out for revenge maybe, or one far too overconfident?
Honestly, whatever it was, it didn't matter. It had piqued the Wrecker's curiosity and that was enough for him. Trap or not, it made no difference. Wheeljack leant forward and tapped a panel on the interface, patching himself in on the requested frequency.
::I hear you:: he rumbled, an amused tone to his voice. ::Though you better speak fast if you want to keep my attention::
There was a pause over the frequency. Then the voice laughed.
"Fair enough," it said. "I don't want to go into detail on the radio, just in case someone is listening in. But If you're the person I think you are, with the skill set I think you've got, I've got a proposal to run past you that you might be interested in."
The voice grew a little more crisp. "Head south from your current position to La Madra, then veer east. Look for the tallest radio tower on a hilltop you can find. The whole area is open rock and dirt ranges, with some desert scrub. Easy to navigate. Also very empty. Your terrain warning system should highlight the tower for you once you're near. Land there, use the landscape for cover if you need to, and we'll chat. Adios until then, gringo."
He should probably just turn the Jackhammer around and ignore the voice on his comms. Dismiss it from his mind and just keep going. Or, like he was still properly tied to the Autobot forces, he should call for back-up or just let them know what he was doing.
That would be the sensible thing to do.
So of course, Wheeljack didn't do it. His rep as a Wrecker practically demanded it.
Even if his mystery caller was banking exactly on Wrecker recklessness to get Wheeljack where he wanted him.
Or, bizarre and unlikely as it may seem, maybe someone really did have a job for him and had been broadcasting that message in the hopes the Wrecker would receive it. Someone not Autobot or their human allies. Someone else.
A mystery that was asking for him personally.
Wheeljack relaxed his struts against the pilot chair and then banked the Jackhammer in a sharp turn to head south. The starship flew swiftly through the air and it wasn't long before he reached La Madre. He hadn't been too far out from Las Vegas when he'd picked the call so the flight was fast. As instructed, Wheeljack then adjusted the Jackhammer's course east, using his starship's TAWS to identify the tallest radio tower.
His mystery caller hadn't been joking about how empty the place was. Most of the rugged terrain was dirt and scrubs and then more dirt. Pretty boring. Nice and isolated. Perfect sorta place if you were looking to stage an altercation/trap/kidnapping/brutal murder.
Wheeljack brought the Jackhammer in, neatly tucking his ship away halfway down the slope. It was low enough so that the ship didn't poke out above the surrounding hills. Other than that, there wasn't much he could do to disguise his ship.
The Wrecker climbed out of his seat and straightened. One servo absently dropped to his side, checking that he was carrying a grenade. His blades, of course, were stowed on his back. All set, he pinged the door to open.
Wheeljack emerged out on the rocky hillside. He turned his helm towards the radio tower and started a languid pace towards it, in no apparent hurry to get to the meeting point his mystery caller had set. Despite the highly suspicious nature of this venture, the Wrecker showed no concern over what he was getting into.
Wheeljack stood on the slope of a tall, barren hill. Rock and bare yellow dirt poked up through the tufted grass.
The top of the hill was a little ways ahead of him, less than one hundred feet. Even from his vantage point he could see for thousands of miles in all directions, over rolling mountainous foothills all the way to ranged in the distance that were so far away they were blue with atmosphere. Heat rose gently from the sun-baked earth at his feet.
At the top of a hill was a tall radio repeater tower. There was a small grey maintenance shack beside it, protected by a padlocked steel door. A few small scrubby trees had been planted around the base of the tower to serve as a windbreaker.
The breeze hummed through the tower guide wires. A few fluffy white clouds drifted overhead.
"Ehh, nice ride, buddy."
A grey robot stood beside the Jackhammer. He looked up at it approvingly, his wings flattened back and his fists on his hips.
"Very cool," he said. "Always wanted something like this. Though I never could get into the more pure VTOL designs. So much easier to park, yeah, but you don't get the speed while in atmospheric flight you get off a streamlined dart-style planet hopper. The parasitic drag is a bitch in these designs."
He looked over at Wheeljack. He was a tall, lanky robot, scruffy, with a dark scarred face and bright copper optics. He did a double-take at the sight of the Wrecker and grinned.
"Oh yeah, you're definitely Wheeljack," he said. "No mistaking that. Nice to meet you. I'm Deuce."
One very easy way to automatically gets yourself in Wheeljack's good graces was by complimenting his ship. So while he'd been automatically predisposed to think unkindly about whoever had dragged him all the way out here, he revised that opinion at the mech's appreciation of his starship. Slightly.
The Wrecker smirked at the sight of the aerial. "Come complain to me about that drag when you need to land yourself on a post-stamp. The lack of speed up in the air hasn't killed me yet," Wheeljack shrugged. A conventional take off and landing system would have, went unspoken.
His optics darkened briefly in memory of some very close encounters.
Calmly, Wheeljack swept his optics over Deuce. The name didn't ring any bells. Not an Autobot. Not a Decepticon. A Neutral, huh, by the looks of things. Which was not what he was expecting at all. Despite his outsider status with the Autobots, he didn't interact much with Neutrals. He left them alone and they tended to extend the same courtesy towards him.
The Wrecker raised an optic ridge. "Right," he said. "And you called me out here because...?"
He walked around the back of the ship to admire its engines. He folded his arms over his chest and rubbed his chin, his gaze cast up at the nacelles.
"I've got a project I'd like to tackle," he said. "I've got the designs, and I'm working out basic blueprints now. Nothing fancy, because shit, I'm not a technical illustrator. I can work out the physics fine and crunch the math to make this thing work, but I have zero background in mechanical engineering. I can't take things and make them into other things."
He held his hands up in front of him in emphasis, his expression slightly frustrated.
"So, here's where I stand..."
Deuce smiled over at Wheeljack. "Not long ago I got wind that the Autobots have an engineer among their ranks, one with a reputation for jury-rigging things up on the field. I heard he's a bit of a loose cannon who prefers to spend time on his own. I thought to myself, great! There's a guy who might not mind working outside of Autobot regs to get things done, especially if they are highly theoretical things with a slightly unethical bent to them. So I call this engineer up and say, hey chum, you interested? And I figure to myself, if he is, great, I'll give him the details. If not, well - we can both walk away now, no hard feelings. What do you say?"
No, was the automatic response inside Wheeljack's head simply because he was feeling contrary and because Deuce knew a lot more about the Wrecker than he did about the Neutral. And he didn't like that imbalance of knowledge, neutral didn't necessarily equate harmless. However, he curbed that immediate impulse and muled over what the aerial was saying, keeping a close watch on Deuce as he admired the Jackhammer.
Most people, when they called him up and said they had a job for him, often needed him to break something, not build them something.
And that alone was what was making him seriously consider this. Wheeljack was curious, hell he was most definitely interested. That was a side of his life that didn't get called upon all too often.
He narrowed his optics. "Okay, lets go with I'm interested," Wheeljack answered shortly. "But I'm going to need to hear more about these details before I commit myself to anything."
He stepped away from the ship with his hands still lifted in front of him, as if measuring off a length. "The long and short of it is, I believe I've mathed out an upgrade to a personal teleportation unit. Problem is, while my calculations theoretically work out on paper, I need to construct a prototype to be sure of it. I've successfully teleported photon quantum states to various crystals over distances of eh, let's say roughly thirty-five kilometres before via optical fibres, but nothing on a larger scale."
With a lopsided smile, he shrugged. "Like I said, I'm no engineer. I can tinker, but not build. I've a bit of a personal interest-slash-stake in quantum physics, but I run into a wall as soon as need to construct anything sophisticated to test my theories. Which blows. Clearly I went into the wrong field of work."
Deuce laughed and knuckled his fists on his hips.
"Anyway! There you go. This is purely a personal project, and I can't exactly pay you anything or promise your name gets published in any scientific journals, because let's face it: we're nobodies in the greater galactic scheme of things. But it might be an interesting project."
His smile grew crooked. "Providing you don't mind working with a Neutral, one who is not hesitant about getting his - hands dirty to get what he needs to work with."
An upgrade to a personal teleportation device. Okay, so not what he was expecting at all. Wheeljack had expected to get a request about weapons or maybe rig a power generator or something. Depending on what Deuce wanted, he was prepared to refuse, in case it was something that could easily be turned on the Autobot cause.
A personal teleportation device, in all honestly, wasn't something he felt comfortable with sitting in the hands of a neutral. Well, anyone not an Autobot. You could wreck all kinds of havoc with one of then and with the right creativity. They were powerful tools. Did he really want to be responsible for improving one and then leaving in the hands of a mech whose motives were completely unknown to him?
Wheeljack pondered over this and realised that, actually yeah, he was probably going to do this. He'd left the Omega base for a reason and here, he might actually make a little progress on his personal quest.
One optic arched skeptically, Wheeljack shot Deuce a dry look. "Clearly, you don't know enough about who you're asking to work with," he said ironically, half to himself. Wrecker work had been all about getting your hands dirty. It was generally the mecha who didn't have the spark to do it that bothered him, just on principle.
Wheeljack folded his arms across his chassis. "You're asking for my time, expertise and, from the sound of it, probably my materials to build this prototype," he stated bluntly, rubbing his chin as he sized up the situation. "And, since I don't exactly have a lab space tucked away inside my ship, you're probably asking me to head back to the Autobots as well. Unless, you know a place or something. That's still a lot of things you're asking from me for nothing."
The Wrecker paused for a moment, contemplating the situation, contemplating Deuce. The mech was a neutral...but also one unafraid to do what it took to get what he wanted. Maybe Wheeljack should see just how deep that conviction ran. "There's a Con I'm searching for right now. If you're going to drag me away from this, then I'd like you to keep an audial to the ground about this Con in compensation, for however long it takes to build this upgrade. After all, you seem like the kind of mech who hears a lot more than you should."
"I'll supply all materials," he said. "We don't even really need a full lab to build what my schematics have laid out - trust me, I'm used to doing this sorta stuff in the field. It's all part of my métier."
He laughed. "Sort of. If we need space to work, I can provide that too. Look pal - I'm not asking for you to devote your time to this twenty-four-seven, just whenever you've got a moment to spare. You Autobots are busy here on Earth with your own business. I get that. In return, yes, I will help you find whatever Decepticon you'd like. It's Shockwave, isn't it? Of course it's Shockwave. Given enough time, I think I can find him for you. Because yes, you're right: I do hear a lot of things."
The crooked smile widened into a grin. The Neutral's copper optics gleamed as he scratched his chin.
"I've got one other Decepticon we can handily take out on your way to Shockwave. In fact, if I want this teleport upgrade to get off the ground, I'm going to need to get my paws on him anyway. This is where that unethical part I mentioned comes in. Not to mention the rather specific materials I need."
The Wrecker grunted but made no comment when Deuce mentioned that he had the materials taken care off and they wouldn't need a lab for it. That took care of some of his misgivings.
However...Wheeljack shook his head at Deuce. "The way I work," he explained, "If I'm building something, I tend to focus most of my attention on it. I don't like picking at a project in pieces, otherwise I'll be thinking about it when I'm out in the field." And he couldn't afford distractions like that. Best to get whatever he was working on done and out of the processor in one good.
Wheeljack stilled when the neutral brought up Shockwave. His expression remained level but inwardly, questions churned. How the frag did this mech know when the only one aware of Wheeljack's plans was Fortress Maximus? And if he knew who Wheeljack was hunting, then did he know why? Just who exactly was he dealing with?
The Wrecker's optics narrowed in suspicion as he re-evaluated the mech in front of him. A neutral who knew a slag lot more about Wheeljack than he should...and who might be able to find Shockwave for him. As much as the Wrecker was uncomfortable (slagged off) with the depths of Deuce's knowledge, as the mech had just so easily demonstrated, he was good at knowing things that he really shouldn't. And Shockwave was one of the most elusive Decepticons around.
He forced himself to relax. Cracked a dark grin. "You had me at Shockwave. Maybe you should have opened with that."
Wheeljack gave an unbothered shrug when the Deuce mentioned a second Decepticon that they would need to acquire. One with a personal teleportation unit, by the sounds of it. One that was soon going to be relieved of said teleportation device involuntarily, by some very unethical methods. Perhaps, if Wheeljack spared a moment's thought over this, he'd have seen the parallels of what Shockwave had done to him and what they were planning to do against a fellow Cybertronian. And if he'd thought a little about it, he quite possibly would have refused Deuce. But, in part because it was a Con they were planning to target and Wheeljack held no value for their lives, and also because Wheeljack was focused on the promise of finding Shockwave, he lacked the self-awareness to see the hypocrisy in his own actions.
"Right, so we have a Con to find. Who are we hunting?"
"A fellow named Skywarp," said Deuce. "Perhaps you've come across him before?"
He drolly raised one hand above his head.
"Tall black and purple Seeker, maybe this big? Kinda slow, kinda dumb - and all too unfortunate enough to come ready equipped with a warp core that caught my eye. His guts are exactly what I need to get this project off the ground. Like I said: I'll supply you with all of the necessary materials. The unethical part mostly involves where they're harvested from."
He grinned and steepled his fingers. "Bring me the heart of Snow White! Actually, no, seriously, if you'd prefer to sit this one out, I'm fine with that. I can handle this Decepticon solo if needs be. I just figured, hey, you're an Autobot, maybe you'd enjoy taking out another 'Con on the side. But if you'd prefer to concentrate your efforts on Shockwave, that's cool. While Shockwave isn't exactly a warrior, he's historically been very hard to get at."
Deuce scratched the back of his head and regarded Wheeljack curiously.
"Speaking of which: have you made any plans yet on how you're gonna tackle old One Eye? Or are you waiting for more intel before hashing out anything?"
Wheeljack grunted in recognition as Deuce described their target. Big, dumb and purple? That was the mech that had interrupted his fight against the garbage mech. That Con was a teleporter? Then it was fortunate that their fight hadn't lasted long enough for the big Seeker to make using of the ability. "I know the Con," he replied. "Had a run in with him a few weeks ago." Wheeljack pinned a suspicious thoughtful optic on the neutral. "Or did you already know that?"
The question was, who did he feel like expending his efforts on? Going after Shockwave or this new problem that had presented itself? He didn't feel comfortable about Deuce having a teleportation device but he definitely didn't like the idea of a Decepticon walking around with one either. But if the neutral felt confident he could handle the Con…
"My focus is on intel at the moment," Wheeljack answered. Autobot intel on Shockwave was sorely lacking, no one knew what he was up to. And since the mech was probably sequestered deep in the Nemesis, Wheeljack probably needed to find some way to draw him out. Finding out if he had any ground operations that the Wrecker could target was important.
…thing was, finding that intel was going to be difficult. Deuce, on the other hand, seemed rather adept at such a task. And he had access to resources Wheeljack didn't have such as the simple fact a Con might be willing to deal and talk with a neutral. Not that Wheeljack thought one would straight up tell the aerial where Shockwave was but the only conversation Wheeljack was going to have with a Con was probably going to be at sword point.
Perhaps it would be faster if he helped Deuce with the task of hunting down Skywarp, it'd free the neutral to make good on their deal sooner rather than later. Plus it'd give him an opportunity to keep an optic on Deuce, because this little conversation had raised a lot of questions about the mech himself.
Or maybe he was getting side-tracked. Lured by the promise of information about Shockwave, there was no guarantee that Deuce would come through on that. He could waste time going after Skywarp that could be better spent on doing his own info gathering. But still, he really didn't like the idea of a Con teleporter walking around. Decisions, decisions. The Wrecker mulled over his options, weighing up the pros and cons of this little side-quest, trying to decide which was the most efficient use of his time.
Then a thought arose inside Wheeljack's processor. If Skywarp was a teleporter...then there was a very good chance that the garbage mech survived their fight.
That settled the matter instantly.
"Tell you what, it'd be a pleasure taking that Con out. Just name the place and I'll be there."
Last Edit: Feb 10, 2015 20:49:07 GMT -5 by Deleted
Satisfied, he put his fists on his hips. "This is gonna be beautiful. I tangled with that big brute once already, and while he couldn't touch me, I'm not exactly the kind of guy who can mount an epic offence. I mean, look at me! I'm kind of a noodle."
He sardonically waved his hands in the air, like a man on a daytime talk show who has just been told he is not the biological father. You know what I mean.
"Not exactly UFC material here. Which is a shame, because I think that Skywarp was genuinely trying to kill me for psycho Skywarp reasons. He took umbrage to my face immediately upon seeing it, and tried to put his fist through my head. Which is not exactly something I am one hundred percent on board with."
Deuce left the ship and strolled towards the Wrecker. "Anyway, to get to the point - I need someone who can fight toe to toe with that bastard and keep him occupied while I do sneaky Deuce shit that will mess up his day. You Wreckers are kind of infamous for that, right? For taking punishment and dealing it out? Once we find Skywarp, if you can keep that monkey off my back when he inevitably tries to feed me my teeth, maybe snap a few of his limbs while you're at it, then I will put him down hard as soon as I get the shot. And by hard I mean hard."
He grinned again. This time it didn't reach his optics.
"Suffice to say, I'm greatly looking forward to the encounter. Once we've collected Skywarp for his sweet bodily materials, I will gladly put my not insignificant attention towards finding Shockwave. How about we meet... tomorrow, high noon, middle of the Great Basin Desert? Just use your ship scanners to home in on my location. That desert is huge, empty, and thus not a bad place for a space robot showdown. I think I can draw Skywarp to us. Leave that part to me."