[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]Independent Together (Dart/Bandit)

[Dart]

Bandit's genuine love of Carmen Sandiego was one of the things Dart had always quietly adored, not that she'd ever tell him that. He'd mentioned it the first time in what had felt like an idle aside while they had been stationed in Australia.

She's amazing, he'd said, from his rocky vantage point as they sat, both of them looking out over the silvered desert. His accent touched every word, elegant and light. He'd also been a lot taller at the time but that was sidetracking a bit, whoops.

Even with Dart's incredibly obscure Earth knowledge, it had taken her a moment to understand exactly who Bandit was talking about.

A thief. He'd managed to take time and watch a television show about a cartoon thief. No, a human cartoon thief, and that was what was so incredible to Dart. It wasn't the thief part. Dart absolutely could see how Bandit (with his borrowing habits) would totally love a show about someone who traipsed around stealing absolutely impossible items with flare and style. That was understandable. A lot of Transformers did that sort of thing; media was the one thing that they tapped into. They watched the news for interesting salvage. Watched shows on cars and flipped through them looking for better alt-modes.

Many Cybertronians used it purely as a resource, to find things they could take and things they could use for themselves, and not once did they consider humans useful for anything besides the means to an end.

Bandit loved Carmen Sandiego for who she was. She was just his type of soul. Spark. Whatever they decided to call it today. It didn't matter that the source of his crush was human, not one bit, in fact, that was totally fine.

That made Dart happy. She loved Earth, and anyone who loved it in some way like she did...?

Yep. They were good people. Even if they filched your wallet on the way out of the room.

Dart inclined her head, and tried not to smile at Bandit's description of V'raavi. Oh yeah, she sounded like his type. Right down to the hat. Also crime, but that was kind of a given. A quick flash of disappointment lit  her avatar's gaze as he said photos would have to wait. Darnit. She loved seeing photos of other worlds, other places, and other species. The exo-skeleton statement she found interesting. The part of her that had studied dinosaurs and rock formations was incredibly intrigued.

And then he casually dropped the other half of the situation.

The young woman's eyes went as wide as saucers.

Out in the lot, the Trans Am let out a sharp snort of air from under the front of her hood. The car's side mirrors pinned back against her windows as her headlights popped up.

"Eat-eat your remains?" Dart stammered. "Uh, I don't think there's any way anyone would take that well. Mostly the person being eaten. Well, and killed first."

At least eating came after killing...

Dart picked up her coffee and pretended to sip at it, gathering her thoughts up. The avatar's nose scrunched up and twitched back and forth as she shifted her weight in the chair and pawed absentmindedly with a foot against the dark tile floor.

"Yeah. I could see how she wouldn't take it well," she murmured. She spent a few moments playing with her paper cup. The courier wasn't good with questions. Dart didn't tend to ask personal questions of others because she knew that it only invited personal questions back, and she would rather not draw attention to herself if at all possible.

She fidgeted. Moved to tapping the lid of her coffee cup. Observed Bandit as he sipped at his straw. Oh hey, he could actually drink. Neat. Not surprising, his avatar looked pretty solid, and nope, that question in the back of her mind just was not going away, no matter how she struggled to ignore it.

It lurked, it poked, it pranced around Dart's electronic brain like a magnificent Lipizzaner.

"Er, I- I have a question," the Decepticon blurted, her own odd accent now noticeable on every word. "So you started dating before you knew that about her species? Am I understanding that right? Because if so, erk, that maybe kinda seems like a pretty big cultural difference to have um- well, missed."

[Bandit]

Bandit regarded his skittish land bear of a friend, watching her holoform glitch out in practically imperceptible ways as she worked up the nerve and did the mental gymnastics required to ask a simple personal question.

Inwardly, he sighed. Dart was practically hardwired to avoid drawing attention to herself. He liked her, but timidity was not one of his favorite traits in anyone, let alone someone he liked.

“Well, when we started, you know. Getting involved,” he said, his avatar’s eyebrows moving up and down involuntarily. He reached up and touched his eyebrows with a holomatter hand. “...huh, why’d they do that? Anyway. It’s not like I was issued a relationship manual. Her species was the dominant sapient species in the Rift of Kruul, so there are some certain assumptions that are made in social situations that an outsider might not know.”

Bandit’s avatar fidgeted a bit, lightly tossing the slumbering Chauncey Pilkington from one hand to another before setting it on top of a napkin dispenser. “It’s like with humans and how a visitor to this world might not know that punching them directly in their face is a violent gesture.  I've been on worlds where that sort of thing is just how you greet each other.”

“So I didn’t know about the eating-your-mates thing being a huge part of their culture.”

Bandit sat back in his chair, thinking.  She was not going to like this line of questioning, but he hoped that he had given her enough time for her skittish mind to brace herself for a fiendish personal interrogation.  

"How about you, then?  How's it been since Australia?"

[Dart]

As Bandit hiked his eyebrow and touched it, Dart inclined her head. A lopsided little smile touched the corner of her mouth, but she didn't say anything.

"No, guess there isn't a relationship manual," she admitted. She settled her hands back around the paper cup in front of her. A small wisp of steam curled up and out of the lid. "Be nice sometimes if there was one, though."

Personally she would have said that dueling to the death and then eating your mate thing needed to be right on page one. For both parties involved. Underlined so that you realized it was a very important thing to read, and not just skip over and get to the good parts of the choose your own adventure.

It was hard for Dart to wrap her head around the idea of loving someone, spending that amount of time with them, and then possibly killing them. Totally alien thought, and she accepted it as one she simply couldn't fathom.

A thoughtful look as she turned over her previous words in her head. "Well, maybe not. I mean, the best part of it all is that each relationship is amazing and different, and a manual would make it so maybe nobody ever took the risks and followed their heart."

Bandit did bring up a good point, though. Like there was a lot about humanity and what it entailed that she simply took for granted, and her understanding of Cybertronian culture at times was at best pretty slim. Some of it translated easily and beautifully, and sure, body language among both species was absolutely similar in many regards. Not all, but some. However, she was always finding that a lot of things did not.

Regardless, Dart made a mental note that if she ever made it off the planet, one of the places she'd pass on as a tourist was a world where punching someone in the face was a cheerful greeting.

At the mech's question, Dart hesitated.

"Better," she said finally, with open, honest conviction. "Different. But better."

"Being home is... it's wonderful," she murmured. "I missed the Pacific Northwest. Like, I know where all my favorite places to go are, and all the trails and the parks and how the wilderness connects.  I can duck out a bit more and do it a whole lot safer. The holo is great, it's perfect. My commander is still the same, unfortunately..."

Dart trailed off. "But- hey, he's had a lot on his mind and a lot of work going on that he has better folks to help with, you know? And I have friends here."

The young woman lifted her hand. Her gesture to the world around them became animated; on the right corner of her worn black shirt, the faded, galloping lavender horse rippled with the motion. The cursive script underneath the animal's hooves was barely legible. Dart's shoulders tilted as she shifted her weight forward on her chair. Her dirty-blonde bangs flopped over her eye.

"I can add one more here that I didn't know if I'd ever see again."

Which was true. She simply hadn't been expecting this. At all. It was a nice surprise, unlike some of the other surprises she'd encountered in the last year.

"But aw- hey, wait, you left, you went to space, and- and then you came back to Earth. So...um, are you stationed here, in the States now?"

A hopeful look.

[Bandit]

Dart's last question stopped him from slurping on the straw to his container of whipped sugar and caffeine.  

"Oh, right.  Right, the last time we met I was still with the Autobots.  That's... not really the case anymore.  I'm a free agent now.  A filthy Neutral as they like to say."

He sighed and set his cup down, glancing idly around, noting absently that Chauncey Pilkington had apparently fallen off its perch on the napkin holder to the floor beneath the table.  Bandit leaned forward, resting his holomatter chin on his holomatter hand.   "You know how bad things were in Australia.  It got ugly, the cell got sent to reinforce another cell on another world, and I just had it.  Told Tachyon where to stick it and walked.  Also I swiped Thermal's stupid axe on the way out, tell me he noticed."

He shrugged, and finished his sugary concoction.  "I've been hanging around Vegas since I got back.  Just, you know.  Crime."

There was a clattering under the table, and Bandit peeked down, finding Chauncey Pilkington sitting amongst a few discarded plastic knives and one fork, all pointed at the feet of Dart's avatar.  "Broooooop-eeeeruu," Chauncey Pilkington said.

Bandit sighed at the broken Furby.

"Chauncey Pilkington, mate, this is why you're not married anymore."

[Dart]

From across the table, the courier blinked.

He had been with the Autobots. Last she'd seen of Bandit, he was an Autobot.

A frantic scrabble of her mind. Dart's thoughts scrabbled and pinwheeled like a dog on a slick linoleum floor. Did I see a sigil? Wait, did I even look for one? I didn't, I just assumed it was subtle, he never had a big decal slapped onto him like a lot of them did down there. But I didn't, I just- wow, I didn't look. I assumed that he was an Autobot still...

Bandit was a lot of things. He was also good at taking a lot of things. To be good at taking a lot of things, his body language and his words were tempered beautifully to the situation he found himself in. Sure, he was flamboyant at times, he was showy and dashing and could charm a vending machine into giving him both his dollar back and a cola for the road.

Yet, here he was, leaning forward, glancing around, tucking his chin into his hand. His body language to her said he'd gently nudged away that persona. Just like he had, back in Australia. When he'd come across someone so down on their luck that to him, it hadn't mattered what faction they were. She knew how bad things had been then, and his to the point conversational moment here told her it had only gotten worse.

He'd had it.

Bandit was a lot of things. He was also no longer an Autobot. He was telling the absolute truth.

A sound escaped the courier, as if something within her had been wound so tight that she'd forgotten how to breathe and suddenly remembered how it worked.

Her fingers relaxed on the sides of the coffee cup, letting the warm cardboard curve slide between them.

Then the girl's smile completely lit up. The expression on her face was absolutely both delighted and gobsmacked at the same time. She opened her mouth to say something, closed it. Her shoulders tilted, she scootched forward with the chair. The legs scraped and scuffed against the tile floor as Dart once again struggled to find the right words. So many things to say. So many things she wanted to say. She turned over a hundred ways to say it.

Her hands lifted off the coffee cup in front of her. Dart's avatar leaned forward with her fingers spread wide, her chin ducked, talking as much with her body language and gesture as her voice.

"I'm all about filthy neutrals," she laughed, her expression pure, honest joy. "You're in wonderful company. The best, actually. Join the Island of Misfit toys, we have good coffee and pie."

Then she shook herself. "Oh gosh, I'd say I'm happy for you, but that sounds weird, I guess. I am, though, minus the whole ex-girlfriend going to duel and eat you after thing, because that's rough no matter what. Also uh, well, Thermal's pretty dead, so I don't think he'll miss it. I hope you sold it for a good amount, though."

As Bandit looked down at the floor, she automatically glanced down as well and spied Chauncey among all the stabby forky knifey things. Had those been there? Er, they must have, but apparently the last people at this table made a mess.

Her toes edged back a smidge. That was a lot of sharp eating objects pointed in her general direction. At least all of them were probably biodegradable plastic. Good for the environment, and Dart was all about that sort of thing.

"Wait, why is this the reason he's not married anymore?"

Then she settled back in her chair with a baffled expression as her words caught up to her brain.

"Wait a moment- whoa, uh, he was married? The Furby. Was married? To- to what?

"Oh gosh sorry," she quickly corrected herself. "To- to who?" 

[Bandit]

Bandit peered up over at Dart. It was a weird thing -- as clearly subpar as her avatar was, she seemed comfortable in it. Maybe for the first time since he’s known her, she was comfortable in her own skin.

“Well, Chauncey Pilkington was just supposed to distract the guard,” he said, as he scooped the Furby off the floor and put it on the table again. “Went a bit rogue, though, didn’t you, Chauncey Pilkington.”

The Furby blinked its googly eyes asynchronously. “Vroopruuuu.”

“No one told you to seduce the guard,” Bandit admonished.

“Vriiiiikreeon-luup,” came the obvious retort.

“Well, now you’re divorced at-however-old-you-are. Mind who you make fall in love with you.”

“Booobeladoop.”

Bandit shook his head and looked at Dart. “Can you believe the mouth on this one?”

He looked down at his empty cup. “‘We have good coffee and pie’? You’re still with your lot, aren’t you? Or are you a secret Neutral spy?” Bandit narrowed his avatar’s green eyes dramatically.  

"Ah, don't answer that --  I rather like the idea that you are, so I don't want confirmation or denial.  Let me live in my world. Have to say, though..."

"You make a pretty good human.  Who knew?"

[Dart]

Dart was impressed with the fact that Bandit's avatar was able to actually- well, drink. That was one of the reasons Dart always asked for a hot coffee. Paper cups weren't see-through. No one had any idea how much was actually left in it.

Shifting her weight a little in the hard plastic chair, Dart watched the exchange between Bandit and his toy. Her head cocked to one side, a scruffy sweep of bangs falling over her eye. Then her nose twitched if she was attempting to sniff at the battered toy without actually being rude and poking her nose too close Chauncey's glorious patchwork mess. It wouldn't have mattered that much because the avatar couldn't smell anyway. So she caught herself and lifted up her coffee cup, pretending to drink a sip before she put it back down.

So many questions went through her head at Bandit's story. They were incredibly important ones.

Did they run off and elope? How did you... huh, maybe Earth-toy and alien weddings had to be officiated by a space pope just to be sure both parties were of sound mind. Do you throw rice or Double A batteries?

Was- was there a tiny cake?

Dart turned this over in her thoughts for a moment and then promptly tucked it in the 'things to ask Bandit later up the road' category.

"All of it sounds a bit suspect," she said, politely sidestepping around bits of the conversation. "So it's probably a good thing I only mostly understand English, right? I'll take your word for it that he needs to watch his language."

Truth. Dart did know a smattering of words in other human languages, but not much. Also, she knew how to count to ten in Spanish, courtesy of Sesame Street, but she sure as heck couldn't read or understand anything in Cybertronian. Which was a tough thing to live with, and she was very grateful that she had been stationed on Earth and mostly in the States.

At his questions, she lifted her hand and rubbed at the side of her nose. She looked down at the table and then back up at Bandit's avatar.

"Still with my commander, yeah," she said with a small wince, but quickly smiled at his overly dramatic squint. "Also, aw. Thanks. Me too. Er, about the human part."

She glanced down at herself. "I admit, it's kinda easier for me, since it's all I know. I don't have a head crammed full of life choices like everyone else does. This holo-projector? I adore it. I still can't believe it's mine, it was the best gift."

Dart's gaze softened even more; wistful and adoring.

"It's nice, you know... to just go and walk into somewhere and buy a book, sit down, and read. Or go to a museum to learn and wander and take it all in, or find someone who can geek out with you on fossils and dinosaurs. People smile at you. Just random people, they say hi. How cool is that?"

She lifted her hand in an encompassing gesture towards the windows and the world beyond them. An obvious touch of awe touched her words. "Earth is amazing. All this space to run. I love it. It's my home."

"Speaking of which, I- I have to ask... All the places in the galaxy you are free to go and you pack up everything and come back here? I dunno, I would have thought it wasn't quite up to the par for a space heist. Or where you wanted to be, based on all the folks that are here."

[Bandit]

Bandit listened while Dart waxed wistful about this weird little planet. He had never been able to figure her out -- not that he pried too deeply. He supposed she was as she appeared -- a Cybertronian whose memory had been damaged or wiped, rebuilt on Earth and repurposed into what had to be one of the worst Decepticons ever. She was really just terrible at being an oppressive force of evil. Almost as bad as Bandit had been at being a righteous Autobot champion.

Bandit knew there was more to the story, but he hadn’t pried -- she was either keeping the secret tightly or literally didn’t remember, and in either case poking for more information would be fruitless.

“I came back for the KFC Double Down, believe it or not. They’re basically as good as gold in space. But apparently they don’t make them anymore. So I’m kind of at square one and taking stock. You know, brainstorming. Reassessing the paradigms. Formulating the stratagems.” Bandit moved his avatar’s hands in a way that he clearly thought indicated ‘stratagem’.

“So where’d you get the projector? Did your boss finally spring for an upgrade or two?”

[Dart]

Sometimes words or phrases didn't parse quite right for Dart. Once in a while there were weird translation from Cybertronian to English. When that happened it was awkward as heck, and she had to scramble and struggle a bit to try and figure it out.

Apparently this was one of those times, so she backtracked to Bandit's question to give herself a second.

"Oh heck no. Not my boss. If he knew I had it, I wouldn't have it for long."

Dart lifted her coffee cup, absentmindedly giving the contents inside a little swirl.

"My- a friend gave it to me. Back in Australia, before we had to leave," she explained and then hesitated. Darnit, those questions had been easy to answer, and now she had to go back and figure this out.

Okay, think, Dart. Think. There has to be some massive priceless gemstone or a cursed golden idol that just strangely has the same name as a fried fast food mashup.

Nope. No, he truly apparently was talking about-

"You came back to Earth for a chicken sandwich?"

[Bandit]

"Well, when you say it like that, it sounds silly, but..."

Bandit's avatar stared blankly across the table. "Wait, sandwich? I thought a sandwich needed, what do you call it, bread? There's no bread in that mess. Just a wad of meat and goo. A wad of meat that scores a pretty price in the Rift of Kruul."

He slumped over the table in despair. "But, they don't make them anymore. And when you insist that they have all the stuff, and you only need a couple hundred, they get indignant and exile you from the KFC."

"So now, I need to figure out a new score. I have some assassins I probably need to buy off."

[Dart]

"I- you know, I actually don't know the answer to that," Dart admitted. "I uh, I thought it was a sandwich, but I guess not. I think they advertise it like a-- oh."

Well, that was sort of the most unappetizing yet truthful thing that someone could possibly say. A wad of meat and goo. Yuck.

That was worth money. In space.

With anyone else she knew, she'd probably sort of figure they were absolutely teasing her about the entire situation. However, this was Bandit. Sure, he had a whole lot of stories, but he usually told them with a breezy sort of hand-wave at the end. Stories like, I stole this expensive thing, jumped a fence and left the snarling pack of hounds behind, haha!

Not a story where he was willing to pay for a couple hundred not-really-sandwiches and then got thrown out of a KFC. With a worried expression, Dart looked at Bandit. Then she glanced over at where Chauncey was on the table.

Hopefully still on the table, the toy had been awfully quiet for a bit.

"Oh geeze, Bandit," she said as she quickly focused back on the slumped man in front of her. "Do you have any leads on anything you can do? Like- maybe Taco Bell has something..."

She trailed off. There was nothing on that ninety-nine cent menu to rival the Double Down, no way.

"How much money do you think you need?"

[Bandit]

Chauncey Pilkington was currently faced away from the conversation, anachronistically blinking eyes staring out the plate glass into the night, a night made darker by the relative brightness of the interior of the shop and the reflectiveness of the glass. Maybe Chancey Pilkington was regarding its own reflection in the glass?

Bandit didn't like it when there were two of them, even if one of them was just reflected light. He moved the Furby to the other end of the table, well away from its reflection and any attempts Chauncey Pilkington might make to conspire with it.

"Depends on how good the assassins are. I have a tentative plan. .... a notion. Half of an idea that I'll turn into something brilliant and continue to live, spiting everyone." He sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. "Money is not an issue, not really. I can get by with what I brought, and what I can nab here. Immediate survival isn't an issue, it's the long-term variety that is, as ever, the tricky bit."

Bandit watched Dart's holoform fiddle with her cup. "... haven't gotten the hang of consuming things with your holoform, have you?"

[Dart]

Concern shadowed the young woman's gaze.

Okay, money wasn't the issue. Which was good, she probably only had a couple hundred dollars to her name right now. There were only so many pop cans she could pick up and turn in, and certainly it would take a few Costco's worth to even make a dent in the cost of anyone who got paid to track someone across a galaxy and kill them.

For Bandit, though, she would totally go dig into all the recycling bins she could find. Even the ones that were in those areas with locks on them. They kept folks from throwing their trash into them, but they really didn't do much when you could oh, step over a fence.

"It's always the tricky bit," she agreed quietly. It was, and he was right. Day to day you managed, it was thinking about how it was all going to hold together for years up the road that was daunting. 

"My- oh. No. Mine doesn't work like that. It's a bit gli-"

Dart started to say the word and immediately caught herself with a small, embarrassed grin. She'd been good about not saying it lately, and wanted to keep it that way. Her hand lifted off of her coffee cup and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. It only stayed there a second before sliding over her ear and falling right back into the place she'd pushed it out of.

"A bit touchy," she offered instead. "I think it's an older model, but I'm not entirely sure. Sometimes it's okay and solid and works like I see everyone else's working, and sometimes it doesn't and completely goes on the fritz and does some not so good things. It's been okay lately, but I try not to push it too much."

She lifted her paper cup again as if in a small salute. "It could be me though. I mean, you know- like my comm systems and stuff." Which was true. Dart's systems weren't always the best about that sort of thing. "Maybe it's like that, or a combination of me and that it was never built in before?" 

"Or it could be because it's probably being held in there by two paperclips and a pinecone," Dart admitted with a laugh. Underneath the table, her worn sneaker scuffed at the terracotta tile floor.

"Hey, though," she said suddenly, the words tumbling out of her in a rush. "I don't know what I can do, but I'll do it. Whatever I can do to help you, I will. Somehow. Promise.  Besides, I know you. Your notions and tentative plans are usually better than a lot of people's novels."

[Bandit]

Bandit’s avatar cocked his holographic head at Dart. That was the thing about the jittery courier -- she was generous beyond good sense, once she liked you. “Once I’ve worked out a brilliant plan, or at least a plan, or at least some optimistic ideas loosely strung together, I’ll let you know.”

He eyed his empty cup, and his gaze moved across the table to where Chauncey Pilkington sat. The Furby opened its eyes and looked at Bandit, then Dart, then Bandit again, and began spewing a stream of filthy swear-words from the fifth moon of Shadox that transliterated into human English as adorable babytalk.

“Getting so I can’t take you anywhere, Chauncey Pilkington.” He ignobly grabbed the Furby’s giant head and stashed him in his jacket pocket. Chauncey Pilkington hadn't been the same since the vault job on the Krikaluk Throneworld -- a nixhound had chewed on Chauncey Pilkington for a good half an hour. Nixhounds were best described as a 'dog' combined with a 'wasp' combined with a 'nightmare', and the Throneworld Royalty used them as guard beasts. Bandit had repaired the Furby, but you don't want to meet the person who can survive getting chewed on by a nixhound for that long unchanged.

Bandit turned his gaze back to Dart. “You want to go for a drive?”

[Dart]

Dart turned her paper cup gently around in her fingers. "Okay," she said. "I'll take any of the above and run with them, really."

She set her cup down on the table just in time to watch the Furby click and whirr back into life and chatter out a bunch of bubbly nonsense. The toy's eyes went back and forth.

"I guess he agrees," Dart chuckled, right before Bandit whisked the toy off the table and stuffed it into his inside pocket.

To Dart, it was amazing how natural the gesture appeared; there was no flicker, no weird bend of light that telegraphed to anyone that the pocket didn't actually exist. She had absolutely no idea where he'd tucked away the Furby, but it was gone without a final beep. Hopefully not in the same holographic empty space that he'd sucked up an entire Frappuccino into. Scrubbing it out of what was left of the scraggly toy's fur and electronics would require an awful lot of patience.

She glanced up again, steadily meeting the hologram's bright green eyes.

"Yes," she said firmly, with obvious delight. "Absolutely."

It- it was nice to talk to a friend that wasn't inside of her head. Dart could admit to herself that no matter how hard she'd tried since Australia, she'd often found herself in an awkward place she hadn't expected.

Before that time, her driving goal had always been to get far, far away from her fellow Cybertronians. Bound out into the wilderness and appreciate the silence and the scenery.

Sure, there were times she'd been lonely, but it hadn't settled in places and curled up to stay. 

A shift of her weight and she carefully eased her small purse off of the chair and over her shoulder.

"Where do you want to go? I'm pretty much- well, I'm free for a bit."

She lifted the green and white cup in a silly salute. "I just have to be back on the route I'm supposed to be patrolling before sunrise, that's all."