[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]All Mine (Closed/Sparkplug))

[Deleted]

Episode 2.5 | Week 2 | Day 2| 4:30 pm

A heavy cloud cover darkened the sky overhead of the Ural mountain range. The distant rumble of thunder threatening rain at any given moment. The very last remnants of snow from the winter prior clung to the very peaks of the rocky landmass the thinner - and thus colder - air keeping the sleet in tact. A deep valley gouged a path out of the ground for several miles at the base of a tall peak.

Hidden between two walls at the base of the canyon a massive cave yawned open. At first glance it appeared to be nothing but a cavern carved into the side of the rock after millions of years of erosion. Perhaps it was an old mining shaft that had long since been abandoned? Left to rot once it yielded nothing that could make one richer beyond their wildest dreams. That would be correct, just not in the way it was usually pictured.

No human had stepped inside - as far as most were aware - and the mineshaft had long since been picked clean of energon. The heavy drilling equipment repositioned to another locale to begin the search for fuel anew. Leaving nothing but an empty hole in the middle of nowhere


It was perfect.

Cutting the silence a ground bridge spiraled outward, throwing shades of blue and green over the base of the mountain and onto the ground below. A large figure stepped forward out of the spiralling portal and onto the gravel below. Vega looked to each side then lifted her gaze upward to the mountain face in front of her.

Then something fell on her, right beside her optic. Flinching slightly she felt another land on her shoulder. Then another. A slow sheet of rain began rolling forward across the mountain top. Vega huffed a soft sigh. It hadn't even been a full hour since she had been buffed.

"Bloody.... Don't really know what I expected." She muttered turning her head to look back over toward the ground bridge.

Sparkplug was going to pitch a fit.

[Sparkplug]

The ground bridge was always so fascinating.

Sparkplug had fallen in love with the romance of the technology, long, long ago, and though her infatuation with the spatial-shifting potential had never fully led to proper technical study - her path had led in a quite different direction - she still found it enchanting. It was a piece of ancient magic, resurrected into the modern day. The fact that it was just another tool of war was neither here nor there.

And then, the swirling vortex collapsed, folding its mysteries into nothingness like a flower blooming in reverse. The sudden absence of the churning light revealed and emphasised the deep, heavy grey of the unforgiving landscape, and the dark clouds overhead. She was used to everything on this world feeling too small for her and her compatriots, but that was a peak that made her tiny in comparison.

"...that is one big hunk of silicates," she murmured mostly to herself, looking up and up the forbidding mountainside. A hail of sudden raindrops struck her white armour, each impact singing out a metallic ring, and she stopped, looking upwards into the falling sleet.

"Huh. You know, I might never get used to that? I mean, after you've spent as long as I have in climate-controlled environments... rain. Actual water, falling from the sky. Fully functioning atmosphere. D'you mind rain?" she glanced up at the big black and purple femme beside her, the flier looming over Sparkplug's diminutive frame. Now there was a comparison that also made her feel small, but in a good way.

Shaking her helm, she turned her attention to the deeper darkness of the tunnel entrance. "Primus's rusty driveshaft, I was just about ready to shoot some mech to get some breathing room back there. Blackridge Hold! A neutron star would say, 'steady on, that's a bit crowded'. Let's get inside, before they change their minds and haul us back to live in a ore box under the stairs."

[Deleted]

The ground bridge snapped shut again, depositing the diminutive grounder beside her before it shut them off from Blackridge hold. Sparkplug murmured something Vega didn't quite catch about the looming mountain before moving to her side. The small drizzle quicky turned into a steady sheet of rain as Sparkplug again spoke. How did she feel about rain? Vega paused for a moment before lifting her head to glace up at the greying skies, a servo lifting to keep the rain away from her.

"It depends I suppose. Like this it isn't awful, but at night it's dreadful. Hard to navigate in, especially when it's heavy enough. You can't see the stars either."

Wordlessly agreeing with her partner Vega walked forward into the cave leaving the rain behind them. Droplets rolled off her digits and wingtips onto the stoney floor. Impulsively her finials flicked twice to remove the water from them. Her optics adjusted to the light after a moment, letting her see into the cave yawning open before them. She lowly chuckled as Sparkplug imitated a neutron star venting it's discourse about the cramped spaces of Blackridge before replying."I agree, this is a much better alternative."

The mine had long since been stripped of any usable fuel and what remained was a small network of pocketed rooms the miners had dug in their search. Vega glanced back to Sparkplug as she slowed to a stop in the middle of the main entrance, keeping her strides slow and small to not lose her smaller companion.

"How much information did you receive about this mineshaft?" Vega was cautious of this place, hoping they wouldn't walk into a sudden drop or the ceiling coming down onto their heads.

[Sparkplug]

Following after Vega, taking one and a half steps for each of the big flier's strides, Sparkplug stepped through a ragged veil of dirty, gritty rainwater spattering down from the mouth of the tunnel, then vaguely tried to swipe it off her plating with brushes of her hands.

Glancing up, she saw Vega's finials flicking, and grinned. That was so cute! A surge of delighted fondness touched the grounder's expressive field. This assignment really was just too much to hope for; no more of the utterly unbearable overcrowding, the direct encouragement of the Lord of the Decepticons to rebuild a lab with as much space as she wanted, and the full-time company of the big, sexy femme that had so recently let Sparkplug get her buffer all over her smooth, dark plating.

No pilfering mecha around to steal her doors in the night, either. Oh yes, things were definitely looking up.

"Information on this mess? Pretty much nothing," Sparkplug replied with a shrug as she abandoned her efforts to wipe the rain away. "Lord Starscream wanted more energon as fast as possible, back when, so a load of these mines got dug in a real hurry. If there were any proper maps saved, they're probably on a solid-state drive sticking out of a lump of ship debris at the bottom of that nasty, salty corrosive filth they call an ocean. Unless you got any schematic information that I missed out on?"

The square, boxy headlights mounted in Sparkplug's shoulderguards snapped into life, casting an actinic white glow that cut through the darkness. Beneath their pedes, the ground was strewn with rocky debris and gravel, all saturated with water flowing into the tunnels from the rain-slick valley outside. It all looked very natural, very uninviting.

"Should be some carved out spaces if we get a bit further inside," Sparkplug offered, thinking aloud. "Probably left some doors in place and such, not knowing that they'd become more precious then energon in pretty short order. Frames, panels... maybe some broken down tech that wasn't worth salvaging before. Fancy going on a shopping trip though this mess?"

[Deleted]

Sparkplug's field wavered with adoration for a brief moment. She made no secrets of her attraction toward the flier. Uncertain as she felt about it at first Vega was not about to snuff her feelings toward her out like little more than a low burning flame. Vega even was feeling receptive, the grounder was a wonder for sure.

It wasn't reassuring to her to hear that Sparkplug had gotten nearly no information about the cavern. Less someone went deep diving to retrieve such comparatively trivial scrap. Vega - for just a moment - cautiously glanced upward, hoping the cave roof wouldn't come crumbling onto them at any given moment.

Vega shuttered her optics quicky as Sparkplug snapped open the headlights on her shoulders not expecting the sudden change in lighting. Adjusting again she slowly looked over the open cave, listening to Sparkplug as she spoke. A small smile crossed her faceplate as she looked over to the smaller.

"I don't see why not. Perhaps they'll have some sort of clearance going on?" Vega rolled forward to stroll slowly deeper in the cave, the loose flecks of gravel skittering across the rocky ground as she stepped. Again she made sure to slow herself to not leave Sparkplug behind.

[Sparkplug]

Smiling up at the big flier, Sparkplug mimed taking hold of an invisible cart and began pushing forward. "Never know, we might pick up a bargain!"

Taking the lead, Sparkplug forged deeper into the cave, noting the occasional scrapes and scuffs along the walls. The vehicons and miner-types hadn't been especially careful about hiding their presence - and why would they? The place was a long, long way from the nearest hint of the native's supposed civilisation, and anyone that miraculously managed to stumble into this particular tunnel network wouldn't have the time to tell anyone. It only took a couple of twists and turns to find the first truly unambiguous evidence of Cybertronian presence.

It was a pressure door. Hulking, massive, it appeared to have been cut from a ship; a thick slab of alien alloys embedded deeply into the walls. Sparkplug let out a squeal of delight as her headlight beams played over it, rushing forward to run her hands over the old, scarred metal. "Gorgeous! Look at this! Oh, I could do such good things with this. Dismount the manual opening mechanism, get some big, heavy electromagnetic bolts in here, maybe install some static weaponry over there and there, to catch visitors in an enfilade - that's got potential. It's a door! A door of our very own!"

Her field vibrant, Sparkplug grabbed hold of the thick wheel that stood proud of the dense metal, and yanked. The mechanism didn't move an inch. Frowning in a piqued sort of way, she latched on with both hands and pulled downwards, then began jumping up and down to get more leverage. "Oh, don't you make me get my cutting torch out, you stupid, stubborn slab of two-credit scrap!" she threatened it.

Threats proved ineffective. Vega's grip, on the other hand, worked fine. The wheel ground against the dust and grit that had seeped into the mechanism, then began to turn more freely. After a couple of rotations, the heavy bolts that secured the door to the frame withdrew, and it hinged outwards to reveal a deeper darkness beyond. As Sparkplug's headlights cast beams of light through the doorway, the sudden illumination picked out several derelict mining carts, narrow rails, and even some sort of big, shrouded machinery, sloppily covered under oil-stained polythene sheeting.

"Oh me, oh my," Sparkplug breathed, rubbing her hands together and grinning gleefully. "Presents."

[Deleted]

The flier followed behind Sparkplug, keeping just a pace behind her so to benefit from her partner's light source as well. Vega too took notice of the gashes left by their miners, not a care given if some unfortunate humanoid found the remnants of this place. At first glance most might believe it was erosion at work...

Until they reached the back wall of the cavern.

A heavy metal plate was fixed into the wall, and Sparkplug - with a delighted squeal - rushed toward to fawn over it. The flier stepped closer she herself pleased with the prospect of a door of their own - Blackridge having a devastating lack of them. Vega swiftly glanced to Sparkplug as she yanked at the heavy opening mechanism...then did it again. Vega's laugh echoed softly off the cavern walls as her partner began bouncing up and down swearing to take a torch to the misbehaving door.

The flier promptly reached over with one hand and gave a firm tug, finally opening the door. Sparkplug leaned inside her headlights casting over a small collection of abandoned mining gear - or "presents" as the smaller femme aptly put it.

"It would seem so, how very generous. After you then." Vega motioned forward into the darkened room for Sparkplug to take the lead. Once the smaller stepped into the room Vega followed immediately behind, her gaze shifting from mine carts to the tarp covered machinery.

"I can't imagine what you could do with all this, I look forward to finding out."

[Sparkplug]

Stepping into the darkened chamber, Sparkplug looked this way and that, the beams of her headlights sweeping over the enclosed space. The roof of the tunnel was higher here, opening up into a narrow, puckered fissure above their helms; probably why the staging area had been made there. Amongst the irregular cranies and shadows of the cave roof, metal and glass glittered.

"Lights, too. That would be a lot better. Let's see..." Casting around for a switch, Sparkplug's headlight beams settled on a grey junction box, half-obscured by the tarpaulin-shrouded bulk of the abandoned machine beside her. Reaching out, she flicked a couple of switches on the wall box; the overhead lights flickered for a moment, trying to come on, then died completely.

"Scraplet-screwing little tin-plated glitches. Generator's dead. For all I know, generator might be gone, and that little spike was all that's left in the capacitors." Sparkplug drummed her fingers against the box thoughtfully, then her bright green optics turned to the looming bulk of the shrouded machine. "Hmm. Help me get this off, would you?"

Between them, the two tugged the oil-smeared, all-concealing sheet off the bulky mechanism. The thick material pooled on the ground, revealing the dented, excessively spiky shape of an old-model Energon driller. The massive, cone-shaped drilling head was dull and unlit, without the crackling violet illumination that would have once shimmered along the cutting surfaces. The heavy tracks sat motionless.

"Aren't you pretty," Sparkplug murmured to herself. Scrambling up the side of the machine into the driver's seat, she experimentally flicked a few toggles, on the somewhat optimistic basis that they could always be flicked back again. Dim lights awakened on the control panel. Nevertheless, waggling the control levers achieved a grand total of nothing at all.

"Looks like there's a problem in the energy transmission system somewhere. There's power left in the onboard generator, but it's just not getting to the main motors. Think they might have cracked an axle trying to force it to move, too. Guess they just left it behind after that. But... but, but, but..."

There was a look on her faceplate that any mecha who knew her would recognise, perhaps with a shade of apprehensiveness: an expression that denoted full-fledged problem-solving mode. Sparkplug leapt down from the control seat, her left arm already reconfiguring into an electric wrench. A few seconds at the junction box and the front fell loose into her hand, exposing a nest of cabling. "Here we go," she muttered to herself. "Trunk system here, so the electrical feed system is..."

Tugging the end of a thick bundle of wires loose, Sparkplug dragged it over to the silent digging machine, trailing the black cable behind her across the floor like a fat snake. Her wrench whirred again, bolts spinning loose into her hand, and a side panel clunked heavily as it thunked to the rocky floor with a rich metallic clang. Bending forward, Sparkplug half-disappeared into the guts of the machinery, taking much of her light with her.

Low, muttered comments and half-heard swears floated out of the open panel, followed by the sound of an electrical crackle and a mild yelp. A few seconds later, Sparkplug pulled herself back out of the machine, shaking her hand as if she'd touched something hot. Swinging up into the seat again, Sparkplug flicked a couple of toggles.

Clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk. All along the tunnel roof, lights snapped on, one by one. The shadows retreated, chased deeper and deeper into the mountain with every lamp that lit up. "That's more like it," Sparkplug announced with satisfaction.

[Deleted]

The light given off by her partner cast in every direction as she looked all about the darkened cavern. They swept over the roof casting a faint glimmer as they swept over the over head lights fixed into the rocky ceiling. Vega followed her partner's light as the smaller femme looked around for the switch. Finding it she quickly flipped it, the lights above flickering for just a hopeful moment before dimming once again. "I would assume it to be dead, yes." Vega replied as Sparkplug guessed the generator either being dead or missing all together. Left in these conditions to more or less rot had no doubt taken a heavy toll on it.

Sparkplug paused for a moment then asked the flier for her assistance, Vega promptly grabbing hold of the tarnished tarp to pull it away. A derelict mining driller, damaged most likely from overuse and left in the carcass of the mine shaft. Sparkplug - proclaiming how 'pretty' the old driller was - lifted herself up into the drivers seat. The machine still held enough power to activate but was stuck in place, that however did not seem to deter the enthusiastic femme. Vega had not been around Sparkplug for very long - in the grand scheme of it all - but she knew one thing about her. She made a certain face when she was running an idea through her head.

The face she was making right now.

In a blur of movement she leaped from the cockpit, Vega having little more to do than watch as she pried open first the power box to the lights then the side of the driller. The cavern dimmed drastically again as Sparkplug and he headlights vanished behind the driller. The sudden yelp made Vega quickly turn her head but before she could ask if she was alright Sparkplug stood again, seemingly not phased and simply waving her hand to remedy herself.

It wasn't a moment later that in single file fashion the overhead lights snapped on, illuminating the cavern in stark yet welcome light. "Well done." Vega quickly commented before stepping over the abandoned tarp to face the back of the cave.

"Shall we press onward?" She swept her arm out inviting Sparkplug forward, Vega herself curious just what else they would find now that they could properly see. She had no doubts the smaller would find use for it all as well.

[Sparkplug]

"Heck, sure," Sparkplug chirruped at the larger femme, her field bright with satisfaction. There was nothing like problem solving to boost her mood, and she was already fascinated by the labyrinth of tunnels.

"Let's see... what do we want to check out from here?" she asked herself. The harsh light had completely transformed the place, bringing out the subtle variations of colour in the rock and erasing the darkness to reveal the existing infrastructure. Whatever this space had once been, it had been dug out at the edges, considerably larger than it would have naturally been, the floor patterned with the scars of heavy tracks and machinery.

Turning slowly, she surveyed the broad, roughly oval space. "Okay, we've got... big sliding panel doors over there; that's probably gonna be storage and maintenance for the drilling machines. Now that's got potential. Door over there looks blast reinforced, and there's inset rails to it; should be the energon store. Empty as Antilla by now, bet your aft, but the space could be useful for parts and volatiles. That door... dunno. Offices? Coordination space? Worth checking out. Then there's the main excavation tunnel... not sure where they've hidden the generator bay. Should be more equipment lockers and accommodation for the tinheads around here someplace. Might be deeper in."

She trailed off, thoughtful. After a moment, she added, "Y'know what I don't see? Any other mecha around here. Not a pede, not an inquisitive optic, not a hint of a field, not a door-stealing screwhead in sight. All this space! Lord Starscream is just the best, you know?"

Skipping over to the wide sliding doors, the white-plated femme ran her fingers over the inset controls in the metal-shod archway. "Got power in the basic systems now, courtesy of our big friend there, so..." She tapped the control. The wide doors shuddered, one side sliding back a little with a crunching sound, then jammed. The other door rocked in its track, but didn't move at all. "...well, not that surprising," Sparkplug concluded with a shrug.

Wriggling between the slightly parted door panels, Sparkplug emerged into the unlit space on the other side, clicking her headlights back on. Several broad, inset pits lined the floor, shallow ramps leading down into each, with carved trenches leading under them. Chains and primitive suspension rigs hung from the ceiling, like torture implements. "Oh, yeah. Definite potential," she called back.

[Deleted]

Vega followed behind Sparkplug deeper into the cavern, which looked drastically different now that it was properly lit. The smoothed out walls of the mine had jagged cuts of colorful minerals throughout the dull sediment. As Sparkplug spoke motioning to each of the doors Vega glanced around to each in turn, nodding softly as Sparkplug made educated guesses on the contents behind them. Then she paused and after a moment she erupted in joy over the fact that they were well and truly alone, not another mecha for miles around. None to crowd their living space or steal their doors in the middle of the night. Vega chuckled softly once she ended with heralding Lord Starscream as 'the best'. "He has certainly been very generous to us yes." Vega was herself obscenely grateful he had granted them permission to do as they saw fit with the mine shaft. She couldn't stand the shoulder to shoulder conditions at Black Ridge for any longer.

Vega watched as Sparkplug scampered over to the sliding doors off to one side of the cave - guessed by the smaller to house the maintenance bay and excess storage - fiddling with the controls to the doors in her usual glee. The doors attempted to trundle open but jammed in their tracks not a moment after. Not to be deterred so easily Sparkplug side stepped through the thin gap to the room beyond, Vega able to just hear her claim it having great potential. Vega unlike Sparkplug was a large femme and rather than further damage the already breaking door found it best for them to investigate individually at this point. "I will see to another room." She called to the smaller before turning towards the back of the cavern once again.

Settling on the 'office' Vega ran her clawed digits over the control panel, this door giving a pained screech as it slowly pulled back against it's track. It stalled a moment but then opened fully to the room inside. Vega squinted into the darkened room as she stepped inside feeling along the inside of the doorway to find the power switch from the overhead lights. Her fingers brushed it and promptly flipped it up the lights giving a momentary flicker before snapping on. The room beyond was not very large, with a small alcove tucked away to the right hand side. The walls had uniform sized gaps carved out of them all roughly the same height as one another, small clumps of leftover wiring left in some. Monitors had been mounted here once.

Stepping inside further Vega quickly glanced to one wall to her left, something had been written there in the rock... Oh...oh well that was rude, she was sure calling their supervisor that wasn't called for. She made a quick note to request remover. Stepping around the abandoned chair in the middle of the room she poked her head into the small alcove to the right hand side of the office. A small living space had been made there, with a long since unused wash rack tucked into the back corner. The alcove was easily half of the size of the main office, Vega could stand in the middle and touch the walls without moving her pedes. No doubt the previous head of this mine had taken their claim here not wanting to be among the vehicons running the operation. Vega quickly commed Sparkplug.

::Seems you were right, this is an office. And I'd like to make it a point to request paint remover, seems a disgruntled worker saw fit to write a...less than formal complaint.::

[Sparkplug]

"Sure thing!" Sparkplug called back through the narrowly-parted doors, as Vega moved off towards the probably-office. Let's see now, light switch should be by the doors...

A small box jutting from the stone cast a distinct shadow in the beam of her headlights. Strolling over to it, she flicked the nearest switch, and with a dull hum, one of the chain harnesses began to descend from the roof.

"Whoops. Electric motor still here? Nice. Useful. Can definitely use that for something." Chains clattered as they began to pile up on the floor, and Sparkplug flicked the switch back up. Which did nothing. "Uh... okay." She flicked a couple of other switches; more humming and grinding sounds came from overhead, tarnished chains shivering and swaying.

"Stop, blast your cross-wired copper hide!" she swore, swatting at the control panel. A recessed button slid inwards under her fingertips, and a sudden silence fell. Peering closer, Sparkplug made out the sloppily scratched glyphs for 'Don't touch, doesn't work' on the control box. Heaving a deep vented sigh, she muttered, "Figures."

The light switch was a foot to the left. The overhead floodlights snapped on with a clunk of high-voltage current, searingly bright. The wide space had obviously been drilled out of the native stone, with whatever native dimensions it had once possessed lost to the renovations. Four vehicle bays took the form of shallow pits in the ground, with deep maintenance trenches scored into the rock to give access to the undersides of the mechanisms. A few loose metal panels had been half-heartedly stacked up against the walls, apparently from the other drillers that had been successfully removed from the mine when it was declared played out.

And that was about all. The walls were marked by the scars of removed equipment, with just a few surviving shelves and a couple of rusting, empty barrels tucked into a surviving alcove. Strolling over to the barrels, Sparkplug crouched and read the stencilled glyphs, half-obscured by scratches and wear. "Lubricant oil. All used up, too. Hmf. And... yeah, that would have been a welding kit there. Shame that's gone."

There was, at least, a little wheeled backboard for sliding under the machines. Putting her foot on it and rolling it back and forth thoughtfully, Sparkplug looked around again. Never mind what wasn't there anymore; there was a lot of chiselled out space, good strong lighting, and a nice wide set of doors once she get them working again. It had potential.

::Seems you were right, this is an office. And I'd like to make it a point to request paint remover, seems a disgruntled worker saw fit to write a...less than formal complaint.::

Sparkplug grinned, shaking her helm as she wriggled out through the broken doors into the main space. "If there are any good swears in there, you better note them down before you scrub it off!" she called. "Any good for quarters? Is there room for two sets?"

Absently patting the big drilling machine as she passed it, Sparkplug wandered over to the blast door that presumably guarded the energon store, and prodded the controls. Nothing. Was there a trick to it? Was there some combination of inputs she needed to give, or was it just dead?

[Deleted]

Vega gave a soft chuckle as Spark hollered over to her to make note of any good swears in the scribbles on the wall before removing it. "Very noted, though you will undoubtedly see for yourself." Vega said making her way back into the main cavern to meet Sparkplug. At the question of the potential for personal quarter space she softly shook her head. "Certainly good for quarters but not room for two. I could touch the walls standing in the middle of the room. Perhaps we'll have to see into a different room...or share." A small upturn at the corners of her mouth.

That would certainly get a reaction out of the grounder.

Vega followed behind her as the smaller skipped her merry way to the opposite side of the cave toward the reinforced blast doors. The smaller poked at the controls for the door but it yielded no results. The thick black metal doors remained firmly shut. Vega softly hummed in thought wondering herself if the door required a more intricate method to open. Perhaps returning to it later would be best? They had the entire digging cave to explore still, and this would also give them a chance to contact someone about it.

"It might be best to look elsewhere for now, perhaps later we could contact someone about this? Unless you feel like giving it another go?"

Vega was almost positive Sparkplug would choose the latter, wanting to satiate her curiosity of what was behind the reinforced black metal. There was this tenacity about her that both puzzled and amazed the flier. A curt snort of laughter escaped her as she offhandedly added:

"Or we could just spend the next few hours trying to brute force our way through. It is not like we lack time and you're a walking toolbox."

Vega doubted highly Spark would want to waste the raw materials and potential the blast door and the room it kept away from the rest of the cave had to offer.

[Sparkplug]

The keypad wasn't responding. Or was it?

Sparkplug frowned at the device. It was set at waist height for the standardised miner chassis, which meant that it was almost directly in front of the diminutive femme's faceplate. It looked like a standard base-16 keypad of Cybertronian number-glyphs, ruggedised for use in a rough, dusty environment like a mine. The trouble was, it wasn't illuminated. Key presses did nothing that she could discern.

Is this thing meant to be illuminated at all? Status light? Surely there's got to be some kind of indicator as to whether you've entered the entry code correctly... unless it's built to be obscure, as well as tough.

She prodded a key again, then glanced at the door. Had it quivered?

Back to basics. It wouldn't be hard to dust-seal a status light, but there isn't an obvious one picked out in the housing. Could be an audio signal, and the speaker's broken... or it could be dead. Should be powered, though. Cable run passes overhead... looks a little stressed where it enters the box. Did someone try to remove this when they were clearing out?

Staring at the mechanism as if daring it to do anything, Sparkplug half-heard Vega speak as she emerged from the office. "Bit cramped, is it? That's a shame," she said absently. "Guess they could only spare so much effort for the ego of whoever was running this place."

Glancing over at the door, Sparkplug frowned in thought. If she was designing a system like this, it wouldn't be easy to override the locking pad. Run a power cable through a finger-width tunnel in the rock to keep it nice and obscure, have the opening mechanisms completely on the inside, and another narrow channel out beside the door to the keypad. No way to bypass the box listening for the right sequence on the inside. If there was a break in the conduit inside the room, there'd be nothing for it but to cut. Had they been that smart though?

"Hm? No, no point in asking about this. If there was a code left behind, we're back to thumb drive at the bottom of the ocean. Thought about cutting, but that is thick metal. Also depends who they were trying to keep out. If they were trying to stop bored miners gorging on the supplies, it won't be too secure. If they were trying to deny the supply to Autobots if the place got taken, then I'd have put demolition charges in there. And that's the sort of stuff that the tinheads would've left behind, rather than risk messing with. Maybe if I dismount the front of this..."

The part of Sparkplug's processor that had actually listened to Vega stopped knocking politely, pulled on its boots, and kicked hard.

Her hands stopped moving.

"Uh. Share?" she asked, a slightly incredulous flicker in her field, then she twisted around and nodded rapidly. "Share! That's a good plan. You see this space here? Very convenient. Barracks would be way too big for just the two of us. Rattle around in there like a loose nut in a gear housing. Not like I take up much room in a recharge rack that'd fit you, anyway, you're tall, and I'm not. Could modify something to fit nicely. And - wash racks! Same! It's much more efficient to share wash racks, that just stands to reason. There's dust, too, dust everywhere, can't have that. You need someone to give you a good polish and buffing. Often. So - sure! You persuaded me. Let's. Do that."

[Deleted]

Preoccupied with glowering at the unresponsive keypad Sparkplug only half paid attention to Vega. The flier simply brushed it off, knowing once the grounder had her mind set on something she could burn a hole in it with how laser focused she was. The flier moved to the side of the smaller femme as she spoke. Most of any loose "unimportant" data was assuredly at the bottom of the ocean with the Nemesis true. And even if any small drives were salvaged no doubt they were of no use, the icker of this planets ocean was no doubt responsible for that.


Cutting was off the table as well. The door was either left just secure enough to keep idle and peckish workers out, or heavily fortified with explosives in the event of an Autobot take over. Either way cutting would take ages. The smaller muttered she could take the faceplate off the key pad off...

...Then she stilled.

Seemed she had finally caught on to Vegas words.

Vega stiffled a laugh as the grounder whirled around, nodding her head and spouting justifications for the prospect of them sharing personal quarters. Vega smiled down at Sparkplug as she finished with an (adorably) awkward mutter.

"I am so very glad we could reach a compromise. I do not recharge much anyway, a few hours every so often is enough "

Perhaps it was her tone, or maybe the small crook in her smile but it read something along the lines of: 'though perhaps that should change'. She turned again to the door, returning to the business at hand.

"You were saying something about seeing to removing the faceplate?" Followed by a gesture of a single clawed digit to the keypad.