[ti]Ep 2[/ti]Between the Lines [Sparkplug]

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug's mouth opened as she watched Soundwave flick into the air, for an instant forgetting her perilous position perched over a not-quite-infinite drop. Though she didn't make a sound, a mecha skilled in the art of reading lips could have picked out, quite clearly, the instinctive words 'Oh, you lousy show-off' before the impact of his peds striking the platform sent a tremor through the thin metal under her feet, snapping her attention back to her precarious handholds.

She clung to the ladder like a lover on the verge of leaving, recovering her nerve. Still, comforting as it was, it wasn't going to come with her, and Soundwave was being as clear as he ever made himself; she had to keep going. Very carefully letting go of the ladder, she reached out with her elongated left arm, incredibly grateful for the longer reach the unusual design gave her, and wedged her slim fingers into the gap between two slabs of battle-scarred armour.

Okay. This could work.

Very carefully, wary of making Soundwave impatient through excess caution but far more immediately terrified of falling, she took a few steps forward, stopped, shifted her grip along the top of the armour slab, then began moving again. The buffeting gusts repeatedly sent jerks of terror through her frame that kept her fuel pump whining in her chest, but it was a strategy that allowed her to make steady progress towards the dark navy mech with a relatively acceptable risk of terrifyingly immediate death.

As she approached, she began speaking, as much to distract herself as to answer his recorded question. "Many regrets? Got a few. No one gets to our age without collecting a few. Not so many as some people I've met, though. Trick is not to wallow in them so much you can't think clearly. Which is a trick I am working real hard on right now, because at this nanoklik, most of my regrets are of the 'can't fly' persuasion."

She glanced down as she shifted her grip again, then shuddered and fixed her eyes on the side of the ship again. "Never minded heights much before, but that was before this merry little excursion. Still, there's a seriously impressive view down there, if you don't mind the plummeting. All that blue. Water vapour clouds, too. Been a while since I was on a planet with water vapour clouds. They do make a nice white."

Her terror was slowly subsiding to manageable levels, every step that didn't end up plunging her into the abyss building her confidence. She sped up a little, walking her fingers along the upper ridge of the segmented armour plates to keep pace with her as she advanced more steadily. "That was actually a pretty neat bit of flying, right there. Precision, that's the thing," she added conversationally, carefully keeping her gaze away from the drop below. As long as she focused on the ship, and the walkway, and Soundwave, she could pretend she wasn't hanging over all those klicks of blue nothing. "I like precision myself. No room for sloppy work in internal mechanisms. It works perfectly or it doesn't work."

[Soundwave]

The wind, while not particularly violent, cut past Soundwave with an erratic pattern, catching onto the other Cybertronian's words to modulate and change them. It grabbed awkwardly at the sentences, making portions sound faded, while others for brief moments were choked and almost erased entirely. The majority of what was being said came through however and crossed the shortening distance between them, and what was missing could easily be filled in by even the most juvenile amount of common sense.

Soundwave once more did not seem to immediately react or respond to what the femme had to say, but that would most likely not be much of a surprise. Instead, he seemed to turn away somewhat, almost disinterested. The tilt of the helm was subtle, but there, allowing him to keep a metaphorical eye on the femme incase she were to stumble, while also glancing to the side. He did not look down upon the drop though, instead peering at the flat panel of metal that was a bit scratched and worn from use.

Once Sparkplug drew near enough, Soundwave's helm raised and he turned fully to face the warship, reaching up with slender arms to press a small narrow indentation that was nestled above the replaceable plates, almost unseen if one were not looking for them specifically.

The flat armor panel pulled back sharply at the touch, as if shying away instantly at whatever the navy mech had done to it. It was a jerking motion, abrupt, before the entire slab of metal swung up like a hatchet to tuck away inside the ship itself, no longer visible other than a few seams that outlined the sealed channel. This motion revealed an opening that held a myriad of conduits and pipes along the back wall, with other electrical relays and assorted wires that were gathered into a junction box on the left hand side. The box was open, missing its covering plate, revealing a tangle of wires that had been half hazard patched together. Blue were spliced into red, red were split into multiple grays, some orange was thrown in here or there, and a bit of green was tucked in... it was a mess, and whoever had worked on it last had not color coded anything on any level.

While this box would be of interest, what would be more immediately of value would be the large apparatus that was stationed in the middle of this small cove, consuming the majority of the space to allow only a rather narrow work area in a 'U' shape around it.

It was a cannon.

The complex piece of weaponry was tightly folded up within the enclosure, its barrel pointed downward to allow it to fit inside the compact area as neatly as possible. It was larger than the narrower laser guns that flanked the ship, most likely used for greater moments of combat with other ships or structures that required more oomph compared to the domed turrets that were used for clearing ground troops. Large hydraulics and hinges were positioned underneath the weapon, able to be folded out to aim with a reasonably high range of fire. As complex as it was however, it seemed to have some kind of issue with it, for there were clashing wires spliced in here or there, somewhat vaguely correlating with the side box and the poor workmanship there, and some welding lines that framed out replacement parts to try to rectify some damage that had been obtained. The blast shield that collared the weapon, was removed and sat to the right side, where a hole was bored through it from whatever had damaged the weapon.

As the door to the maintenance area opened fully, what appeared to be a spool of wire rolled out instantly, having been maneuvered by the ship's past turns and banks to allow it a sudden getaway when opportunity arose. It rocketed off the edge for a bite at freedom, flicking off into the abyss.

Sparkplug's own words would then be repeated back to her.

/̛/̢No room for sloppy work-/̸/́

[Sparkplug]

The retraction of the armour plate was like a conjuring trick. One moment it was there, another unremarkable slab of hull metal, the next it had vanished into its own channel into the ship's interior, exposing all sorts of mechanical guts to the open air and prying wind.

The chief feature of which was, oh yes, an enormous barrel.

Sparkplug worked her way up to the sudden opening in the warship's armoured hide, no longer really paying attention to the dizzying drop lurking beneath the platform as the terror of height and depth was shoved aside by fascination.

"Oh, you gorgeous giant doom machine," she murmured, her words caught by the wind and yanked away. Her head snapped around as the coil of wire flew past, and she gestured after it, adding more audibly in a distracted tone of voice, "Could you grab that? Going to need some fresh wire to make a job of sorting out this mess." The fact that she was speaking to a superior - a generally intimidating superior - didn't seem to register to her at that moment.

Her helm turned back to the cannon, and she reached around the barrel with both hands, pressed up against the flank of the warship as she teased apart the wires. "Whoever touched this last was a Primus-cursed vandal. Sloppy? This is one step up from deliberate sabotage, and not a big step at that..." she trailed off, then added indignantly, "By Unicron's planet-crushing aft, if I saw some mech in the middle of doing all this, I'd shoot them myself!"

Her left hand folded away, intricate panels raising and settling as tools stored further up her forearm shifted downwards into place. A slender circuit probe emerged, a slim column with a tip that glowed faintly violet, shading into the UV, and she began tracing the mismatched lines that straggled through the unshielded junction box. "Alright, this gauge of wire is no good, here, you can't just braid in something half the diameter and expect it to stand up to any decent current... I refuse to believe all this mess is still fully connected. Five'll get you ten that there's a break here somewhere, a bit of solder that's come loose..."

Her green optics were focused on the complex mechanisms, her right hand tracing the tangled wiring as she tested it with her circuit probe. Talking mostly to herself, she added in an irritated tone, "Can't believe they didn't even reattach the blast shield. So it's got a puncture, so what. That's just one hole. The rest of it still has decent coverage. Unicron's giant rusty teeth, the mess of this welding..."

Her left arm became a blur of transformation as her focus narrowed on a poorly-repaired wire cluster that had been routed over the top of a section of strut instead of through the hole it would have once passed through. Different tools flashed in and out; a soldering iron to redo the shoddy solder that had mostly dripped away before it set, a sealing gun to coat the join, a circular saw that tore away the crusted mess of a half-finished weld, then, as her right hand pushed the wiring back into its proper channel, the left became a welding torch that sealed the tear shut once more. Sparks flashed against the small octagonal lenses protesting her optics.

"Getting the sense of this control circuitry, I reckon. Apply a few volts up here, and it should deploy outwards on the mount. If there aren't any breaks, mind you, which there are. This weld is shot. And this one. For Primus's sweet and forgiving nature, this wiring. Nope. Needs doing from scratch." She held out her left hand - for a moment a deactivated welding torch, before she remembered herself enough to deploy her fingers instead - and asked without looking over, "Did you catch that wire?"

[Soundwave]

The wire was long gone before Soundwave even finished playing the recording from Sparkplug, and was even more so gone by the time Sparkplug had finished ogling and maneuvering into the new gap in the side of the ship long enough to request the spool. It was a request that was going to be completely ignored all things considered, as flying off the warship through the clouds to scout out and try to find a small spool of salvaged wire was not in his job description. If it had been Megatron who requested such a thing, he would have tilted backwards and dove right off the ship himself or just sent Laserbeak to task, but this person was no Megatron.

This slight was cast aside, like many other small taboos she has made through their limited encounters. Soundwave simply staring back flatly while he sent a silent request to the Control Room, where one of the troopers working there could find who would be best suited to bring down a variety of wires and drop them off. This would gift more than just one type, and more color varieties to organize it so that if it should get damaged again the sometimes incompetent workers could pick through the mess easier.

Instantaneously Sparkplug set to work, displaying a level of dedication that was potentially borderline obsessive when it came to the gun. It seemed that all of the fear of falling, all of the annoyance of being pushed down into such a dangerous area... it was cast aside once the knowledge of a large weapon was slid into the picture. This trait was good in some regards, it meant that if under a distressing situation she could still focus in on the issue at hand, and seek a resolution to get their technology up and running again. However this fixation could also paint a picture of ignorance, for she had not even questioned a very obnoxious and very big red flag pertaining to this situation.

The Truce.

Soundwave could pick up a lot of cues off of an individual as long as they were in range. He could tell when they were lying, or when stress levels were elevated. He could pick up on emotions as if they were listed out across the other Cybertronian's forehead, and gleam insight through such clues. However, he could not truly read the actual words running through an individual's processor, and he did not know if she simply did not consider the Truce on any level and dove in, or if she came to the same conclusion as him regarding it.

These questions were cast aside, as she held out her hand expectancy.

Soundwave had taken a bit of amusement with the femme. He let some of her commentary fling to the sidelines, and he had found himself indifferent with some things that others would find downright insulting. All things considered, the slender mech had been incredibly lenient, but everything had its line, and not just being asked to fetch something, but being treated like a simple helper drone was another thing. She had seemed to expect him to do a task for her beck and call without so much as a humble approach to show she knew her rank but simply needed help... No. She spoke to him like he was nothing more than a Vehicon.

No response. Nothing. Soundwave stared back at her, completely ignoring her outstretched hand. Wind buffeted and sliced along his back, hissing and whirling across seams and sharp edges at his wake, his frame standing at the opening to the enclosure almost like a doorway, letting light only cut through at his outline which plunged his navy frame into black tones. He did not move, he did not formulate a reply. No recordings were played, and no graphics showed on his visor. He was counting on a moment of recollection and insight on her part to wake her up to her slight, before he had to paint it out to her as clear as day like he had Blackframe.

[Sparkplug]

No response. For a moment she didn't notice, then she glanced around, and her innocently wide-eyed gaze met the obsidian plate of Soundwave's visor. As ever, it was impossible to read emotional reactions into that blank darkness, but there was something about his complete motionless and slightly angled helm that gave the impression he was staring at her outstretched hand.

Which she snatched backwards, with an appalled yelp.

Apply an analogy; she might as well have told Megatron himself to run off and fetch her some spare parts from the stores. Without so much as a please, either. If anything could have snapped her out of her focused, problem-solving mode, it was the sudden, crashing realisation of how much slag she had just dropped herself into.

Oh, scraplets on a hot slag sandwich...

She snapped to attention, forgetting the cannon for a moment. Raising her voice to be heard over the wind, she blurted, "Sir! I am so sorry for the way I addressed you. No disrespect was intended, I have the utmost respect for your rank and position, sir. I'm honoured that you have chosen to accompany me on this repair work, sir."

Her fuel pump whined within her chest, forcing energon through her lines at an accelerated rate and pressure that strained her seals. The octagonal lenses over her optics withdrew, under some vague impression that keeping them deployed might be seen as rude, and the thick wheels partly indented into her back twitched in a display of controlled nervousness. He was so hard to read, and right at that moment, even knowing he was openly scowling at her would have been better than trying to imagine what he'd do next.

After a moment's silence, she added awkwardly, "For quite a few deca-cycles, the Antilla lab ran very informally. It's no excuse, sir, but I wished to emphasise that the way I spoke was in no way related to lack of respect for your station."

A thicker billow of wind rolled along the flank of the warship as the prow cut through a streamer of air, and Sparkplug wobbled on her feet dramatically, having stopped bracing herself against the airflow as she addressed Soundwave. Her right hand jerked out to grab at the plating to steady herself, but stopped half-way to the tangle of metal and mountings, and snapped back to her side, holding parade-ground attention.

The large tyres that were embedded in her ankles pushed back and down a little, increasing the grip of her small peds, and she widened her stance just a little to brace herself, but it was evident that despite her renewed terror of the drop, she wasn't going to break her pose and turn her back on Soundwave to resume her work until he indicated she should do so. Which, if he did, was going to have to be the best work of her whole life, if she was going to expunge the black mark she'd no doubt just earned herself.

[Soundwave]

Sharp realization.

Sudden alarm.

Soundwave instantly knew his silence was all that was needed to wake her to her slight.

The pulse of frazzled emotions bled out of the femme like wildfire, polluting the air between them into a clouded mess of tangled stress. They burned at the edges of Soundwave's heightened senses, the emotion unhindered and pure in its formation. That said, one didn’t need such skills to know what was going on in her processor, for her tightened posture and newfound formal stance was plenty of evidence to the shift in her attention. She was an open book, and it made it easy to assume that she truly had not intended anything wrong by her actions even before she spoke up and clarified as much.

Unlike others.

The navy mech was happy that the momentary pause actually woke her to the situation fully, and that she did not press her luck or continue to try to treat him as a butler of some kind. Most in the ship tended to know their place quite well, but at the same time some of the recent newcomers liked to try to confront these boarders and walls. While challenging things could be beneficial, some lines simply were not meant to be crossed, and Sparkplug was wise enough to backpedal and not push things.

As the silence continued between them, Soundwave noted the way she dared not even remove herself from the formal stance, even when winds shifted and cut somewhat into the alcove they stood within. The buffet of shifting currents was so erratic and strong, it even pushed his stoic frame subtly from side to side as tensile cables in his limbs twitched and pulled to try to compensate from the warping currents. He managed to remain mostly stable however, helm rising a bit from the downward angle it had been held at before, softening the top edge of the 'V' on his helm somewhat.

Soundwave was very mindful on an individual's height, and how they were able to view his faceplate. This situational awareness, and the curved shape of the visor, meant that he could, and often would, angle the helm in ways to imply the most subtle of expression changes. By dipping it down before, it had accented the angular 'expression' to relay what he wanted, but now; it was eased back, from her perspective the 'frown' no longer in play, a gleam of the outside light flicking over its slicked surface.

A white cursor then blinked on the black screen, flicking on and off momentarily, before text scrawled out in bold and easy to read Cybertronian.

Wire in Transit.

[Sparkplug]

It had to be a trick of perspective, but she could have sworn his visor changed shape with his expression. Where a moment ago, his stare was enough to chill her circuits in a way that was deeply unpleasant, now he seemed more... neutral again.

She smiled, nervously, uncertain if something as subtle as that could be construed as permission to continue her work. Then, to her enormous relief, the words, 'Wire in Transit' appeared on the otherwise fathomless blackness of his visor. That was more than clear enough, for a mech as taciturn as Soundwave.

"Right! Thank you, sir, that's really helpful. That other wire was probably the wrong gauge anyway," she added unnecessarily. Turning back to the panel, she carefully reached out to take hold of a couple of the thicker brackets, then simply clung to them for a moment, letting herself work through the terror of falling that she'd been so urgently repressing. The surge of panic peaked, then receded, and she opened her optics again.

Okay.

Uncurling her fingers from the support, she flicked her left hand out. With a blur of smooth transformation, it restructured itself into an angle grinder, and the small octagonal lenses slid over her optics once more. Rather than vocalise her stream of consciousness, as before, she spoke carefully and precisely. "A lot of these welds are either too rough to allow the mechanisms to slide over each other, or too incomplete to stand up to recoil. I'm going to shave down the burrs, then re-weld where I need to."

Bringing the grinder against the struts, she began carefully shaving off the encrustations where the weld had grown too thick and caterpillar-like, sprays of sparks washing past her as the wind took them. Gripping with her right hand to brace herself, she worked with careful precision, and little by little, some of her self-consciousness bled away once more. The materials she was working with were good enough to stand up to the demands of the emplacement, if used the right way, and with alternating strokes of her grinder and the flare of her arc welder, she smoothed away the worst of the damage marring the weapon's supports.

Or at least, the damage she could reach.

"Right. Think I'm going to need to bring this beauty on out to the fully deployed position, and see what I can see." It was more of a courtesy than a warning, since she was quite sure nothing she could do would take him by surprise, but it did no harm to be sure. Pulling the holed shield plate out of the mechanism, she carefully pinned it to the side of the walkway where it couldn't blow away, then reached into the junction box.

If she'd understood the circuitry correctly, spiking a little voltage here ought to trigger the system to unfurl to the active position, but as to whether the whole thing was in good enough condition to respond without new wiring... well. She shrugged a shoulder, and applied the voltage.

[Soundwave]

The work that Sparkplug was doing was fascinating in its own way. While it was just basic cleanup work, it was done cleanly and swiftly, it a benchmark that needed to be hit before the more challenging portions of the repair could be touched. That was part of why Soundwave even was bothering to remain here. While he was acting as a safety net to assure that they would not lose a valuable worker to an avoidable fall ((a task he would not trust with a common Eradicon)), he also wanted to see just what could be diagnosed here and if they could get the long damaged systems going once again.

Despite the small clash that had occurred before, Soundwave seemed a bit passive and calm through her work, watching with some interest on what was going to happen next. His stance was at ease, his arms looped at his sides, helm crooked forward into the borderline vulture like posture that he naturally took on an everyday basis... but the second the voltage applied to the gun he seemed to perk up instantly.

A rise of the helm, a crook back of the shoulders, the tall finials of metal that continued from his upper arm past the shoulder joint and into the air, fanned back and apart sharply, while the small needle like protrusions that marked the satellite array upon his back seemed to eek up a slight amount. It was almost as if a small current had gone through him, jolting him awake a fraction of a second before the gun itself roared to life and the systems engaged. There was only a brief klick that separated Soundwave's action from the gun's movements, both seeming to occur in tandem.

Fluidly, Soundwave's right leg slid back across the metal of the platform they stood upon, the sharp pointed tip of the ped not even lifting fully while he relocated his heel behind him so that he could pivot his weight. This permitted the slender mech to twist away sharply, angling his back to the far wall instead of allowing it to face the open air of the world beyond their cubby, thus slimming out the space he actually took up to permit the weapon to lurch and slam forward into its engaged position.

The entire apparatus surged up in its housing when electrical currents were put through it, the hydraulics snarling in anger, before hatcheting forward aggressively to protrude out from the side of the warship. Despite the damage applied to the gun, it actually seemed to move smoothly as it was engaged, a few plates of metal snapping down and into place to help lock the system so that it didn't fold back and away from recoil, while a few dampeners and shock absorbers pressurized to help further take the pushback. Everything actually looked to work beautifully! Until it was fully engaged...

The second the gun reached its full extension to a neutral state, there was a loud snapping sound as a few wires that an incompetent worker had spliced in, were pulled taunt and severed from the pull. It seemed whoever had attempted to re-wire the systems, hadn't given enough slack to the conduits. Just as fast as the gun started to roar to life and attempt to ready, it had abruptly snarled out to darkness and silence, the hissing of the recoil protection systems, now sputtering out as pressure was lost, and the entire weapon went black as it hung outside the ship with a bit of a sag, clogging up a lot of the opening where the third in command had been a moment prior.

Despite nearly being clipped by the gun's extension, Soundwave did not seem to particularly mind, his heels and lower frame pressed close to the side wall, while his upper body crooked forward at the hips slightly to look over the damage that had occurred, and see if he could spot exactly where the wires were severed. Something about his posture screamed of some interest and curiosity still, noting how the damage to the exterior indeed seemed pretty superficial, but it was the wiring that took a beating and probably needed to be gutted and just re-done by someone with some competence.

Luckily they had someone competent.

Casually, the navy mech's helm crooked back at Sparkplug, new words scrolling over the screen. It showed a series of checkmarks of 'tasks' that needed to be done to the weapon before the job was concluded, from re-wiring to test firing, a checkmark now etched beside the 'Deploy Cannon Test' in a borderline sarcastic manor. How exactly text and a checkmark could be sarcastic was difficult to discern, if even that was what was happening here... but the lax posture and blank lack of features tried its best while electricity snapped and crackled occasionally from the cannon.

[Sparkplug]

Her warning prompted no movement at all from Soundwave, which - she supposed - indicated his level of confidence that nothing was actually going to happen. She was wrong; the very instant her circuit probe sparked against the contact, he swung out of the way with almost balletic precision. In another mech, it would have been showing off, but she was beginning to understand his habit of making only those movements and sounds that he deemed absolutely necessary.

Though, at that moment, she had optics only for the unfurling cannon. A squeak of delight escaped her as she watched the barrel surge forward, avidly drinking in the details of every mechanism as they unfurled and locked into bracing position. "Yes!" she burst out as the pumps and pressurised bracing systems engaged, bringing the weapon up to full readiness, her field broadcasting her delight, only to equally obviously flare with dismay as the wires wrenched free, snapping and ripping apart at the soldered joints.

"What? No, no, no!" she protested, but it was quite too late. The barrel sagged, every burning status indicator dying at once. In the sudden stillness, Soundwave's slight movement drew her gaze, and she blinked with a snap of spiral shutters as she took in the checklist. Oh. It was a test, then. "...right, got you. Yeah, cannon deployed. Check. I'm actually kind of impressed. Whoever 'fixed' this managed to do it in such a way that the wiring would have read intact on remote diagnostics, but was totally nonviable when it was triggered, which is way worse than just failing to fix it. Like I said, this mess is darn near sabotage-grade incompetence..."

Her voice trailed off as she turned back to the damaged weapon, her annoyance cooling into focused determination. What she had now was a complex puzzle, with a big, shiny, Capital-grade weapon at the end of it; exactly the sort of thing designed to trigger her most obsessive tendencies. Pressing her small frame up against the mechanism, she slid partially into the assemblage of struts and pistons.

First task: kill the power.

An energy conduit capable of driving a weapon of this magnitude could also flood her chassis with enough energy to fry every circuit in her body. Compared to that risk, the chance of the retraction mechanism engaging and crushing her was an almost secondary concern. Her long arm with its complex double joints snaked around the main barrel housing and gripped a hexagonal interlock, rotated it ninety degrees, then pulled it out with a solid clunk.

"Alright. Main power out; this thing isn't doing a darn thing until I want it to. Figure we've got four sets of wiring in here," she remarked, as much to herself as to Soundwave. "First, you've got the major trunk, the dumb conduit that's providing the weapon's main power. That seems fine, the only system in there's a set of relays to cut the power in and out to begin the firing sequence. Second, you've got the actual weapon's capacitor banks and charge couplings. Capacitors seem fine, but it's been repaired with shoddy wiring that can't take that kind of current; that's burnt out. Proper gauge wire's on the way, so I'll wait for that before I sort out the couplings."

Lifting the torn wiring with an expression of irritation, she went on, "Third, there's this mess. That's the control circuitry for the hydraulics and recoil bafflers. Autonomous unit, pretty much, just has to handle the punch-back of each shot, no external coordination of a function like that. Only input you really need is a binary retracted/deployed signal. This is just wrecked, I'll pretty much have to start over. Worked on stuff like this before, though, so I don't need to spend too long trying to figure out what the circuit layout was before all this happened. Then fourth and last, there's the target acquisition and aiming systems, where all the real command and control links are. Looks like the trunk conduit from the ship is okay - just as well, that'd be a real son of a glitch to redo - but I'll need to test the linear motors then recalibrate the targeting module. Maybe a couple of test shots."

She set to work. The wire gauge that had been used to patch the charge capacitors was hopelessly inadequate, but such of it that had survived the burnout was still perfectly adequate for the re-wiring of the recoil bafflers. Rather than try to fix the already horribly botched patch job, she began cutting, severing and polishing contacts, looping thick bundles of wire around her arm as she collected them so she could start from a blank slate. The Nemesis was an old ship, and she'd be slagged if she couldn't do a better job working from scratch than replacing things the way they were to start with. In fact, she was just itching to get her hands on the capacitor banks and wire in a few of her multi-stage charging tricks; that was going to be the real fun. But for now, losing all sense of time passing as she worked, Sparkplug wove a new loom of wires, cables and updated microcontrollers around the hydraulics system, beginning to hum as she worked.

[Soundwave]

Sabotage Grade incompetence could almost be the Vehicon's motto.

They try, they really do. The soldiers could do good work, and performed to the best of their abilities. However, the sad fact of the matter was, many of them were routinely being pushed into situations that they were not properly trained for, and slapped outside of their comfort zones while being expected to produce functional responses. While the individuals who tried to fix this cannon probably tried their best, things were obviously overlooked, and small print in the guides were missed, creating flaws and errors a trained eye with a natural instinct for such things would need to track down.

Because of these facts, while Soundwave should probably be rather upset at the pure damage that had been done to their own machinery, he was far more understanding than others may be. His patience was also bolstered by the fact this was merely one of many that lay on the flank of the warship, and if they were attacked by something that required the weapons, there would still be plenty of defenses. So there was no true RUSH...

As long as it was eventually fixed.

Soundwave's form became another shape on the side of the ship. He did not directly respond to Sparkplug's words or conclusions, and he did not move to hover and observe exactly what she was doing to the cannon. While he listened and was keeping some attention, he just was staying out of the way, more likely than not working on a side project remotely so that he still was accomplishing something while being positioned out here. It was this that aloud time to slide away long enough until the supplies were to be delivered by a single Eradicon.

Even though the individual was a flyer, and would be fine if he were to fall off of the ledge during this excursion, it did not mean it was particularly easy for him to maneuver around on the narrow platform. He stood with a rather ridged posture, wings pulled flush against one another along his back into a single mass to try to cut down on the amount of surface area there was for the winds to grab onto. He was going out of his way to keep near the ship, form wobbling to and fro a bit as a slicing gust swung in at an unexpected angle. Despite this dilemma, he did manage to make it to the gapped opening in a rather timely fashion considering how long ago the call for supplies was made.

A clawed hand clamped over the edge to the opening for a firm grip, nails digging down slightly as the trooper turned and pulled into the opening. For a brief moment he seemed distracted, double visored gaze sliding over to peer at the weapon that hung awkwardly out from the ships side. His helm crooked a bit to the side at this, attention shifting up it to then look into the opening and see Soundwave who was standing right in front of him.

A small lurch, a moment of surprise, the Eradicon stood upright and swung a hand up in salute for formality, before holding out his other hand were a tool chest like box was presented. The container looked a bit battered and worn, but it was solid, most likely holding the contents Sparkplug would require to start work, or... at least the wires that were needed. If something else were to come up, it could be requested at a later time. With this, Soundwave grabbed onto the handle of the box quietly, since there was not ample room to maneuver around one another in the confined space.

"Is there anything else you require, Commander?"

A slightly rasped voice, a gravely tone that was serious and to the point. Soundwave stared at the trooper a moment, before his helm slickly turned to look at Sparkplug, as if offering her chance to make any requests for the moment. So long as they weren't too out of line.

[Sparkplug]

Under most circumstances, Sparkplug would hardly have noticed the eradicon's arrival; she was literally up to her optic ridges in machinery, and fully occupied in feeding stored copies of her personally developed control programs into the recoil system's microcontrollers. There again, in most circumstances, she wouldn't be standing on a thin metal ledge over certain doom - the tremor that ran through it as the mass-produced model landed snagged her attention instantly.

Leaning out of the gun structure, she watched the trooper briefly struggle with the tangled air flows before stabilising. Her optics turned to the tool chest, and she grinned with anticipation, her field coloured by immediate happiness. Oh, and Soundwave's title was commander, that was worth knowing.

The faceless mech looked straight at her. She wasn't yet an expert in Soundwave-ese, but this particular look seemed to her to be #6: Specify Request. Well, she certainly wasn't going to turn that down. What could she ask for that she didn't already have in front of her?

Well, she hadn't got anything to work on the pressure system with. Did she need to? Glancing at the hydraulic cabling, she frowned thoughtfully. The fittings were immovable with age, and while the hoses were old, they weren't showing any signs of perishing. If there'd been any leaks or pressure losses in the system, it would have been very obvious when the pressure came up - probably best to leave that alone.

The capacitor banks, though... she didn't need any more, but with just one or two type sevens, she could rig up a cascade. Hm. Though if she was going down that route, it'd be more robust if she could wire in something to manage the surge, too. It wasn't strictly necessary, but...

"Thanks for coming out here," Sparkplug addressed the eradicon mildly, though having to raise her voice over the dull roar of the wind. "I can see it's not fun, even if you've got wings to work with. There's a few things I could use, if you can make another trip to the stores. Two heavy duty surge capacitors - the XXL jobs - and a couple of SR-400 series microcontrollers. No, make that three on the controllers. Shouldn't be too hard to find. Oh, and if you can find me an RX-TX pair of authenticated remote pad and receiver, that'd be amazing. I'm gonna have to test-fire this thing soon, and I'd like to not be standing underneath it pulling on the wires when I do. If that's alright, Commander?"

Turning to the wordlessly watching mech, Sparkplug cocked her helm slightly. He probably didn't mind if she tweaked the design as she repaired it, and he wouldn't have invited her to ask for other equipment if he didn't intend for her to have it. All the same, she hadn't quite got the nerve to ask for a safety line - that seemed like part of whatever test or game he was playing here. "Oh, and if I can have that toolbox, sir? Thank you very much," she added, reaching out with her long arm for it.

[Soundwave]

The Eradicon seemed a bit confused while Sparkplug started to rattle out some new requests, his wings flicking back a bit, while helm crooked down slightly to look down upon her. While she spoke about all the needed parts, the trooper simply made a mental list of what was being asked, while not really having a clue what on Cybertron the objects even were. Oh, he could guess by the names, any novice could say a surge capacitor must help manage the currents of electricity, while a microcontroller controlled things on... er... a micro level... but that didn't mean he knew what they looked like or where they would be stored since he was a soldier with wings that happened to be free at the moment.

This was going to be a bit obnoxious really, he already knew he would need to go to a computer terminal and hope these terms she was giving could pull up the products and where they were located. If she was using generic terminology and they were actually under a far more detailed term? He would be lost. He would probably ask one of the Vehicons located in that part of the ship to help him gather it, acting simply as delivery means to transport it back.

After a moment's hesitation, the Eradicon dipped his helm slowly to show he understood, before his weight rolled back and he turned around the corner to start walking back to the open hatch on the side of the ship. Meanwhile, Soundwave simply held onto the toolbox, mentally picking through the list of objects requested. What caught his attention more however was the idea she believed she would be test firing the cannon soon?

The damage looked extensive, if she could get to a phase for test fire 'soon' that would be impressive. Unless she simply meant she would test fire the CONTROLS or other smaller things. Whatever the case, his mass turned again to angle back towards the Femme. With a careful movement, Soundwave's flat paneled arm loped forward, thin fingers uncurling from the toolbox's handle ONLY after Sparkplug had the object firmly supported. Last thing any of them needed was for the box to fall, pop open, and have all of the contents roll off somehow into the grand void below them to join their lost companion.

If Sparkplug were to open the container, she would see that it was a series of trays that each held a variety of wires. From spindly thin lines meant to carry low voltages for indicator lights, to insulated conductors that could carry a real charge, each tray held a color so that things could be organized clearly. The only thing that didn’t seem to be there, were primary conduits that could carry the full voltage of the canon without melting, but those portions of wiring that sat before the surge protector and splitter seemed to be ok, if the initial power-up had anything to show for it.

[Sparkplug]

As far as Sparkplug was concerned, the terms she used were simple and commonplace enough that the trooper shouldn't have any trouble finding them. For a mech that wasn't knowledgeable in the field of electronics, they were a little more opaque, but entering them into an inventory management system should pull up suitable hardware without much effort; they weren't obscure items. Her use of 'soon' was looser; it would have been much more accurate for her to say that she expected to test fire the thing sometime in the next couple of breems. Certainly she didn't intend to fight her way back along the railing to the ship's interior before she was finished.

Accepting the toolbox from Soundwave, she cracked it open to reveal reel after reel of wire of different gauges, together with connectors and small, useful fittings. Perfect. Finding a jutting hook of machinery within the weapon's guts, Sparkplug hung the toolbox from it, then threw herself back into rebuilding the recoil dampening system. Even with the weapon's primary power circuit open at the breaker, the ancillary systems were still running on their own secondary power supplies, and having mostly finished braiding the new wiring into the recoil management hardware, she began sending test signals from the primary controllers.

Linear motors hummed softly as they moved up and down, and the main pressurisation pump started up for a moment before she shut it off again. Tweaking her controller code as she ran into little oddities of the existing structure - doubtless repaired many times before - she adjusted and optimised it. One of the pumps seemed to have a greater throughput pressure than the symmetrical twin on the opposite side, and she tweaked the software's dampening profile to account for it. With a bit of clever software, which she'd developed long before she came to Earth, the system could adjust dynamically to further impairments in hardware performance as long as it had an accurately calibrated picture of its starting conditions.

She was a relatively fast worker, but painstaking, losing herself in the task with the thoroughness of a professional craftswoman. Her field hummed with contented happiness, spiked with anticipation when she concluded she'd done all she could for the system she was working on, and it was time to play with the heavy-duty capacitor bank. Now there was the opportunity for real changes. The mount and control system was important for accuracy and longevity, but it wasn't exciting stuff. When it came to energy output optimisation, though... a huge grin shaped her flexible lips as she wriggled further into the tangle of machinery, and peered up at the thick, uniform ranks of energy accumulator modules.

"Oh dear, oh dear," she murmured to herself as she traced the fried wiring. "This is just one big blob of parallel capacitors, isn't it? That is criminal." Actinic blue light flared from within the housing as she severed the remaining wiring, hanging a reel of heavy wire off one finger and pulling from it as she began restructuring the weapon's guts. For one thing, it had never been designed for use in atmosphere, so even if it detected it was surrounded by air, the firing profile didn't change. What it needed was to flicker a low-energy beam through the air, flash heat the air and rarify it, get all the particulate matter out of the way, then follow up with the primary discharge. The computation of air density verses timing between primer and main firing could be handed off to a microcontroller, once the mass-produced trooper showed up with them.

Of course, that efficiency gain only applied to weapons fire within an appreciable atmosphere, more of a bonus than anything. No, she could do better than that. Splitting the capacitor bank into sub-banks, each with their own unified power supply and output, she began restructuring the weapon's firing sequence. Shift an accumulator into the middle of the sequence, and you could flash-charge the initial bank while the secondary bank was still flooding the output. The firing assembly itself was only rated for a certain energy throughput, but with the extra components bolted onto the weapon's power systems, she could make better use of the available power and stretch out the discharge. Although, with her expert optic, she was pretty sure the lensing assembly could take more power than the formal rating on it - probably low-balled, to account for manufacturing variances. She nudged up the peak output current a bit. The calculations were exactly the same as the ones that applied to her own cannon, just on a vastly larger scale.

Time for the surge capacitors. They'd smooth out the spikes and troughs in the weapon's output, make a nice consistent discharge profile. Sticking her helm out of the assembly, she looked around curiously for any sign of the eradicon.

[Soundwave]

While Sparkplug busied herself and worked diligently on the machine, Soundwave seemed to slip back into a far more inert state than he was previously.

This was, like most things with the navy mech, a very subtle difference all things considered. With a casual step and twist, he had angled himself to be flush up against the wall in a relaxed state, halting the subtle sway and movements his body made while the wind cut past his lean form by allowing the back edge of the flat panels of his arms to touch the walls surface. It is here his helm crooked forward a bit to stare flatly at the cannon, though it was impossible to say if he was truly looking upon it or his gaze was focused upon something else. Given his helm did not move though, even as things were tested, chances are he wasn't paying full heed, or his field of vision covered all he cared to see.

The curved nature of his helm meant that it was not entirely certain where his field of vision ended and began. Was the edge of the glass the defining line, or if it was defined by a set of optics that lay beyond, or was it a different camera like apparatus behind that had its own range. It was unclear to the viewer, but what was true, was the fact he could see her, and could observe the way the cannon reacted as things were flicked through it for testing.

He did not need to directly hover, or sit behind her, to see that the femme was skilled and was making good progress. For every minute that passed, she did ten times more than most others who would need to pause and look at the schematics or a manual of some kind to figure things out. It was an innate fluid knowledge, and it was interesting to observe be put into motion. But, he couldn't only focus on that however, his time far too valuable to be a 'nosy nanny' out here. As such, unseen data flicked on the inside of his visor unable to be viewed from the outside, dealing with reports and sorting entry's made by users into their proper fields, passing requests on to the appropriate subsections of the Nemesis. It was only when Sparkplug spoke, that Soundwave moved, a slight turn of the helm in her direction.

She was speaking herself, which brought up an interesting observation. It seemed that when she spoke absently to none in particular, she got to the point far more directly and simply made statements, but when speaking to others, her phrases were pieced up into multiple chunks, dragging out the point far further. Was her prattle a nervous reaction of speaking directly to someone? It probably was nothing, and having an audience inspired more senseless jabber than none. Whatever the case, Soundwave slipped back into being inert, until the trooper returned a short time after.

Just like before, the Eradicon's clawed hand reached around and grasped onto the corner of the opening where they were tucked away, his wings folded back and pushed down as much as possible to lessen the wind's impact against him. He was holding onto a sort of supply box that looked rather similar to the one provided for the wires, though chances are he did not simply get more of the same, stepping just enough into the alcove to try to avoid a bit of the wind, while not cutting in front of Soundwave who took up a lot of the narrow channel.

With a salute, he spoke.

"Is there anything else you require?"

Getting the parts had been surprisingly easy, if not a bit of a hike to do so.

Soundwave took hold of the box, and held it out to the Femme, waiting for her to get a firm grip before he would let go.

[Sparkplug]

Out of all the sights that could have met Sparkplug, as she leant out of the gun's innards, the best one would have been finding that a nice solid floor had been mysteriously constructed along the side of the ship. That being fairly unlikely, however, she was more than happy to settle for second best: the eradicon returning with another toolbox full of components.

Reaching out to take it from Soundwave, with an appreciative nod to the senior mech, she cracked it open and checked the contents with brisk efficiency. Exactly what she'd asked for! That was efficiency, right there. Snapping the lid closed, she looked up at the mass-produced trooper with a big smile, her field bright with the customary mix of friendliness and enthusiasm that never seemed to go away for long. "Now that's perfect. Nope, I don't need a single other thing, and well done on securing this so quick. Thanks again for bringing it out here; it's going to do some great work, I guarantee."

She'd almost forgotten Soundwave was there, as she'd worked. He had the gift of being so still that when he wasn't actively focused on her - or rather, actively showing himself to be focused on her - he kind of melted into the background. He was presumably judging her on her work out here. But in a way, it didn't matter to her so much that he must be assessing her. She had her hands on a puzzle, a mechanical challenge, and at this point, it would have taken a direct, forceful order to make her stop working on it.

Retreating into the mechanism, Sparkplug hung the second toolbox beside the first, then eased the lid open and withdrew one of the massive, fist-sized surge capacitors, cradling it in her slim fingers. "Oh, you're such a pretty thing," she cooed at it. "We're going to do such wonderful things."

Her nimble, dextrous hand flicking back and forth between forms, she drilled a new mounting bracket for the two surge capacitors, then welded a couple of struts to it to support it. After all, she'd die of shame if after all her ranting about shoddy repair work, her own modifications caused the weapon to later fail under load. Bending open some wire rings intended for use as connectors, she gathered up the loose cables in bundles, making the interior of the weapon neater, and set about connecting up the surge capacitors across the twin capacitor banks she'd set up.

The work was methodical, and didn't take long; working on such a large scale weapon made it considerably easier to make good, clean connections and to arrange the wiring to her satisfaction. With the primary weapon feed set up, it didn't take much longer for Sparkplug to braid in the microcontrollers to manage the weapon's charge/discharge profile, and the specialised in-atmosphere pre-firing pulse. Humming more loudly, her helm bobbing in time with a tune from long past, she fetched the transmitter-receiver pair out of the near-empty toolbox and begin splicing it into the firing system. It was important that no unauthorised system could access the gun, and so she set up a heavy, long-form encryption key with a timed, rotating salt that was paired with the remote control pad, and only then began making hard connections to the receiver unit.

In the most obvious sign that she was nearly finished, she leant back and began fiddling with the pad, watching signals flicker through the gun's control systems. It seemed solid. Reaching around the barrel, she grabbed the hexagonal interlock and twisted it back into the armed position, shoving it inwards. There. Now the weapon was live again, and a lot more dangerous. Very carefully, she extricated herself from the thicket of machinery, hanging the considerably emptier toolboxes off her arm, and emerged into the rushing airflow.

"Oh, dang," she muttered as she stepped back from the gun, reaching out to grip the edges of the nearest armour plate with nervous intensity. She'd half-forgotten just how scary it was on the narrow metallic gangway, without the comforting bulk of the machinery to shelter behind. Still, she wasn't finished, and she had a job to do. Raising her voice, she shouted, "Commander! I think we're set for some test shots! If they go well, I'll sort out the blast shield, and then we'll be done!"