We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
Bandit gave her a smile. “Anywhere I can stretch my legs and not be shot with missiles by a human paramilitary group would be super. You said this is your patrol route, you must know a few secluded spots with a nice view?”
He dug in his pockets for some human money -- he knew gratuity was expected at these eateries, so he pulled out some change and a wad of paper money of various denominations and plopped it on the counter by the barista as the two holograms made their way out. In that mass of money the barista would find three KFC coupons for a $20 Family Meal Deal (two expired) seventeen Australian dollars, various international change and bottlecaps, and a dog-eared fifty dollar US bill.
He opened the door for Dart and flashed the barista a smile and a wink before heading outside before she could say anything -- he knew he either gave her too much, or too little, and didn’t want to dither over it.
Outside, Bandit habitually cast a glance around the parking lot and judging it sufficiently quiet, generated a motorcycle helmet over his avatar’s head and started his engine. The avatar threw a leg over the bike’s saddle just as the bike moved into position, and leaned on the bars waiting for Dart to get situated.
The barista had cast a flat glance at the box. It was obvious the woman had a long day on her feet, and a longer day serving cups of coffee to random strangers who expected her to produce no less than an iced half-caf Venti mocha with only thirteen ice cubes, no whipped cream, and eight pumps of mocha.
Her eyes widened slightly though as she realized at what Bandit had placed within. A glance of confusion turned to a surprised, friendly smile. She raised her hand as the door jangled shut behind them.
Perhaps she was really into KFC. Wasn't everyone?
Outside, Dart's avatar reached for the Trans AM's door handle. The door popped and swung open even before her fingers touched it, and she carefully caught it with the edge of her palm. A weird flicker of blue light shimmered outwards as if she'd dipped her hand in glow paint, and then quickly was gone.
"Aw, this isn't really part of my patrol route," she admitted as she delicately placed the cup of coffee on her roof. "I seriously was going to Vegas."
With a small dip of her shoulder, Dart's avatar slipped her small, strappy purse off her shoulder and tossed it driver's side seat. It landed on top of a book or two.
"I have something I wanted to buy that I keep looking at there, but it'll be there next week, it's all good, I needed more money anyway. I don't really like going into Vegas by myself anyway. It's a bit overwhelming."
The car snorted as the girl's avatar puffed the wind-tangle of her bangs over her eye. She leaned against the door and gazed at the pink haze of lights from the small strip mall.
"I think I know a place though," she offered. She grabbed her coffee cup and quickly slid into the car. The window rolled down and she leaned out of it to talk to him, even as she drew the old grey webbing of her seatbelt across her shoulder. "It's not a bad hike, promise."
* * * *
Apparently, what Dart's jittery brain considered a bad hike was downright horrible.
It probably involved goat trails, glaciers, driving blizzards, and waterfalls with dangerous sharp rocks at the bottom.
At first, it hadn't been too bad. She'd led him quickly off the main highway and started heading up the winding, empty pavement into the hills. After a while she'd politely used her blinker and turned off where a sign indicated Sunrise Mountain Park.
It was partially a lie.
The mountain part was correct, but the road part? That was a downright lie.
To even call it a path would have been a wilderness ego-booster. It was a sharp, narrow incline that felt as if it angled straight up into the red Nevada landscape. Potholes had been filled, but only by notoriously larger potholes. Bandit would find himself having to dodge areas that if he'd fallen into (or off of) would have been like those moments on the Titanic. They'd probably just find the tattered remains of his cloak a hundred years later, along with a furious unscathed Furby.
Luckily it didn't last too long before the two Cybertronians found themselves nearly to the top of a ridge. There was a small turnoff, barely big enough for two cars, and the low-slung car pulled into it. Her engine roughly idled, skipped a few times, and then turned off. The only sound then was the soft pings and ticks of cooldown.
"It's not far to the top," Dart murmured. The low-slung sports car scruffed a front tire into the red dirt beneath her. Her side mirrors flicked back and forth and then stilled.
"I didn't smell anyone out hiking on the way up, either, so-- it's safe."
The green motorcycle eased the rider up the rough terrain and to the vantage point he had let Dart pick out. Once he reached it and took a moment to look around, his avatar nodded approvingly, leaning down to pull a dead branch from where it was wedged near Bandit’s steering column.
“Good enough for me!” Bandit’s avatar fizzled out into holographic sparkles and the bike eagerly sprang up, alien servos and gears under the thin shell of a terrestrial vehicle sliding around improbably as the small two-wheeler morphed into a small mech, with a metallic hooded grey-blue cloak apparating out of nowhere to stylishly drape over his shoulders and head.
“Ah, you have no idea how good it feels to stretch a bit. I’ve been in my alt-mode for days now.”
Bandit hopped lightly from one foot to the other. His cloak, reacting to the surroundings, darkened to match the green-blue-black night sky slightly. “Alright, Chauncey Pilkington. You’re on your best behavior and she’s about to be much bigger than you, so watch the mouth-beak-thing.”
He fished the now-much-smaller-seeming Furby improbably out of the folds of his cloak and it on a rock facing the view.
“Bloodoolpoop,” Chauncey Pilkington said, though for whom the statement (?) was intended was a mystery best left ignored. It was probably profanity.
Chauncey Pilkington and Bandit would be be treated to an absolutely gorgeous view.
Above them stretched the wide open sky, clear and dark. The moon hung low on the horizon, and a few bright stars flickered overhead.
In the distance, there was the warm glow of Las Vegas. Like most desert cities, it appeared as a pool of concentrated light, surrounded by a vast and empty darkness. Places built where there was limited water and resources did that; they did expand outward over time, but they only grew so far. Without an easy way to get water and power, there was no reason to build houses, and without houses, there was no need for the infrastructure to support them. No roads for a dry, rugged landscape that baked under the relentless sun.
Even at this distance you could still see iconic parts of the city. There was the bright spire of the Stratosphere off to the far right, the tower set away from the visual cacophony of the downtown corridor. The massive ferris wheel stood out, a circled loop of pink light surrounded by the massive gold gleams of the resorts and hotels as they jumbled for the best space on the Strip. If you squinted, it was possible to make out the turrets on the Excalibur Hotel, almost overshadowed by the shining blue light of the Luxor Sky-Beam.
"Aw, I understand," Dart replied. Her voice drifted out from under the car's hood. "I understand totally..."
She did. Her alt mode wasn't her favored mode, not by any means. Being forced to remain in it for days, without being able to jog, move, trot, run- it would have been downright uncomfortable, and absolutely at the bottom of her list.
The familiar sounds of transformation once again filled the high ridge. They were not as smooth or as silent as Bandit's, not by any means.
Like most Cybertronians, Dart's form-shift was all mechanical origami. Things folded, slid, tucked, bent, lengthened, adjusted. A snort of air escaped her intakes as the long, low-slung sports car became into a long-legged, tall, and lanky femme. Unlike Bandit, she didn't finish her sequence with a light, athletic bounce up onto her feet.
Her transformation sequence left her crouched in the dirt, one knee folded under herself, one leg behind. Her weight was braced partially on her spread fingertips; a sprinter ready to settle into into the blocks. She huffed out a long stream of air from her nose and cleared her olfactory sensors.
Automatically, warily, Dart lifted her chin and snuffled to test the air again before she rose to her feet. A small, full-bodied shake sent a smattering of dust into the air, but it didn't do much good. Dart was terribly scratched and scuffed, her black and grey plating dulled and dim. Even the silver lightning bolt she wore on her chest-plate had faded with the years of grit and rain along with thousands of encounters such as angry fir trees, deep gullies full of thorny blackberries and brush, and random sharp rocks.
Her Decepticon sigil still remained though, centered along the lightning bolt. It too had seen better days, marred with four nasty gouges in the metal.
Dart's slanted blue gaze rested on Bandit. She tilted her head- oh wow. He was certainly... er, shorter. Well, okay, he wasn't a car any more, so that was probably a lot of where his mass and height had gone, but for some weird reason she hadn't expected it to be quite like this. He looked mostly the same, but reminded her of an expensive wool sweater someone accidentally put in the dryer. Oh gosh, that was a terrible Earth analogy. Oops.
She quickly stuffed that thought aside and focused on-
"Oh!" she exclaimed and cocked her head again. Her grey ponytail nearly brushed her shoulder before she ducked her helm, optics bright.
"You have a cape? That's new, isn't it?"
"Neat," she said, and watched in honest fascination as it finished fading from grey-blue to the tones of the sky behind him.
"I've never seen anything like that before - er, on one of us, I mean. Where did you get it?"
Bandit ceased his stretching to look at Dart with green optics. She seemed… taller, for some reason. And she was a mess. If he thought her alt-mode was a bit scruffy, that has nothing on her current root-mode appearance, which could be charitably described as ‘rugged’. He was about to comment on it, but he shut himself up -- surely she knew.
“Oh, this old thing?” He did a bit of a flourish with the edge of the fabric. “I got this in a cave guarded by a wily cyber-Sphinx, who I seduced after I couldn’t successfully win her game of riddles, then I had to scale Mount Perdition, plumb the depths of the Firepits of Apokalips, then -- no, of course, I stole it from a guy.”
“In my defense, he was a dick, and it was just sitting in his vault and not being used.”
Bandit gave a grin, and adjusted the clasp of his cloak, pulling the hood down and revealing his helm, the slender off-center finial at the top of his head sliding up. “It looks a *lot* better on me than it would have on him.”
“To answer the unasked question burning in your optics, yes, I had a refit so I’m smaller now. I mean, I’m smaller by Cybertronian standards. By the standards of the dominant species of the Rift of Kruul, I’m an average height."
Bandit looked out over the city -- lovely from this distance, the mass of lights reminded him of the Iacon Merchant Ward, back before the war turned it into a battleground.
Whoops! The memory and associated wistful, regretful nostalgia came dangerously close to introspection. Let's just not do that.
Bandit smiled over his shoulder at Dart. "It was great, I wasn’t too tall for all the doors, I wasn’t too small for all the doors. Barely needed to use the holo-avatar. Tons of aliens in the Rift. I wasn't even the only cybernetic life-form. And also, this cloak fits great now.”
Bandit's smile became a grin. “Worth it, I think.”
Dart padded a few steps forward over the dry, rocky ground. Small puffs of dust curled at her heels before she stopped politely to watch her friend show off his newest stolen prize like a bowerbird. Even the finial on the side of his head flicked with a jaunty satisfaction as he adjusted his hood and smoothed the softly shimmering cloth over his shoulders.
It didn't act like any cloth she'd ever seen; here and there it picked up the violet tones of the shadows, or smudged with the pale tan of the road. Was it blending? She was pretty sure it was, and no one stuffed their clothing in a vault unless it was valuable.
"Worth it," Dart agreed.
Then she laughed and held up her hand, grey fingers spread. The duct tape strips wrapped around her forearm and wrist were frayed and worn, smeared and stained with dried clay and dirt.
"You almost had me," she admitted. "Well, about the riddles, anyway."
David Tennant was absolutely her favorite Doctor though. There had been more chances to sneak a peek at television shows here and there in Australia. They'd just had more resources then they did here, by far. Also, it always delighted her when Cybertronians used Earth slang. Some of them swore but had no actual clue to what the word meant and would use it in the weirdest ways.
Nope, not Bandit. He knew exactly what to call a guy he didn't like.
His comment about the doors was interesting though. It was absolutely one of those things Dart tended to get thrown about. Some doors were tall, some were small, some had stupid buttons with Cybertronian glyphs all over them and you never knew what was going to happen if you pushed one. Would the door shut, or would you call someone's private quarters and have them stomp out and yell at you.
It had taken her a good few months before she'd stopped ducking involuntarily on entering a place when she was using her avatar. Human doors were small. Even their carports and garages were places that she wouldn't have dared transform inside of; even if there weren't people about, the last thing that her mostly-empty brain needed was to be smacked hard on a concrete roof.
That- that would be neat. Er, not smacking the brain part. That was never fun. Seeing places where there were these different races and the door actually fit you for who you were? It had to be incredible.
She eyed the softly shifting fabric. "I figured," she nodded. "About the refit, but wow, wouldn't that kind of thing be pretty expensive? I don't know enough about how it's done, I guess. honest. Tons of aliens sounds really amazing but..."
Dart trailed off. The points of metal behind her shoulders twitched as she looked out over the pool of lights in the valley below and then back at Bandit.
"I thought that--er, Cybertronians weren't welcome a lot of places?" she asked curiously. "At least that's what I've been told. Is the Rift different?"
“The refit wasn’t bad. I know a guy and at the time, money wasn’t really an object. Sometimes the stuff I steal is worth quite a bit. Go figure!” Bandit smiled at her. “You know, if you ever need anything done in that regard, let me know. Maybe even an upgrade to the avatar. I’m still on somewhat good terms with him. I think.”
He gave a shrug at her next comment, expression sobering a little. “Well, we certainly haven’t done any favors for our reputation out in the ‘verse, that’s for sure. The Rift is… well, not terribly wholesome in the first place. Lots of crime and crooked officials and whatnot. As long as you’re not looking to make the Rift into another battlefield, they lose interest in you pretty quickly.”
Bandit patted himself down, and withdrew a disk from an inner pocket on the cloak. He pressed a control on the side and it began projecting still holos in the space over it. In the holo, Bandit posed in front of some alien monolith with what can only be described as an attractive insectoid humanoid alien woman wearing a wide-brimmed crimson hat. The woman held the holo-capturing device at arms length with one of her four arms.
Even with the antennae, armored exoskeleton, and extra limbs, she *did* look a lot like Carmen Sandiego.
“I promised you pictures. That’s me and V’raavi in front of the Monolith of Eitiggr, right before we stole it.”
He clicked through a few more pictures, all fairly similar. “This is us in front of the Golden Space Frog statue on Braxis Prime. We stole it.”
“This is us at the Grittic Religious Festival, where they parade out the sacred documents of their faith. We stole them.”
Bandit sighed wistfully at the holos. “Ah, good times.”
He handed the device over to Dart for her own perusal.
Well, that made sense. Keep your garbage out of the Rift. Crime stuff, we're all for it. War stuff? Get lost.
The offer that he knew a guy, though? Bandit was shrewd, he was observant, but- honestly, he was just a good person. Yes, he did steal a lot of things. A whole lot of things. So, so many things. However, in the entire time she'd known him, Dart had never heard the mech brag once that he'd taken from someone who was down on their luck and then gloat over their misfortune. That wasn't his style, and it had been one of those things that she'd so appreciated back in Australia.
Just talking to folks like they were people. Not as if they were a defunct piece of equipment or a junker left to rust in the yard.
As it was, Bandit could have said a thousand things about her dirty and scruffed plating, or pointed out the damage, but- he hadn't. His polite sidestep of it was kind and gratefully appreciated. So was his offer to upgrade the holo generator, because oh... oh, yes, a thousand times yes, she would love that. Well, it really didn't need an upgrade. It just would be great if someone could fix things so she could use it without the fear of having a problem with it at the worst possible time.
Dart didn't need anything fancy, like changing clothes or other things she'd seen mechs do with theirs.
Of course, this would require her to get into space, first and... well, there was no way to do that without getting into a ship, and flying. That was a tough thing for her to even think about, so she gently slid that note aside for now.
As the holographic projector shimmered into life, Dart's optics widened. She inclined her head to one side and then back, before stretching out her neck ever so slightly to draw in air past her olfactory sensors.
Oh hey, he also apparently took snapshots of himself about to take things with his ex-girlfriend.
"Aw, that's neat," she murmured, and took a step towards where he was showing it to her. A look of surprise as he extended it out to her turned into awe and delight. Carefully, Dart stretched out her hand to take the device. Her grimy grey fingers cradled around it, balancing it flat in her palm as if she was afraid it might break.
Alien. As alien as Cybertronians were on a world full of humans. Dart had seen pictures of some other worlds, but it was rare. She remembered them though; a vast world of water, with islands on the back of animals that reminded her of turtles. Shots of hotels, of places, of forests and amazing cities. An entire galaxy living day by day.
Wait a second... Huh, she'd learned one more thing to add to her understanding about the great wide galaxy out there. Selfies were apparently universal.
Dart inclined her head and let out a small laugh. "I'm sensing a theme in this," she offered. "Not only the whole idea of where you went on dates and then stole the places you went, but gosh, V’raavi does look like Carmen Sandiego, wow."
"You totally do have a type. Well, I guess everyone does, don't they."
A lopsided smile caught the corner of her mouth.
"She's beautiful," the courier said. Her thumb cautiously touched the side of the device as she carefully tried to figure out how to advance to the next picture.
"You look so happy together." Her voice drifted thoughtfully before she caught herself. Her spoiler flicked, twitched, and then pricked up with a small rattle of metal as she glanced over Bandit.
"Er, I'm sorry she's trying to kill you and then eat your remains, I really am. Not the slightest chance you could work it out somehow? Maybe?"
“Ah, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Bandit sighed, wistfully as he leaned over and touched a control that advanced the slideshow for Dart. “Gotta admit, she really got under my skin. Heck, even the ‘trying to kill me’ thing is a bit of a turn-on.”
No one ever said Bandit was a mech of good sense. He liked danger, he liked challenges, and he liked overcoming said danger and challenges; it's why he was a criminal at all. A good heist was like a puzzle to solve, and a bold snatch-and-grab and narrow escape was its own reward. In addition to whatever was being stolen, of course.
“Maybe if I can dodge her enough she’ll calm down to the point where we can talk things out out like reasonable crooks. She’s rich, though, and has no end of contacts to find people to try and murder me.” Bandit grinned.
“A few of them might track me here, but at this point I’m pretty good at not leaving a trail. Or, you know, leaving too many trails. Earth’s not my only bolthole.”
Looking around, Bandit plopped onto the ground, cross-legged, and pulled out a small metal magnalock-breaking device that his long dexterous fingers could start fiddling with. “So. I heard Megatron is back. That’s pretty much horrible, isn’t it? How are you holding up?”
Once again absorbed into the pictures, Dart was holding the projector as if she was scared she would drop it and break it. At Bandit's admission though, she glanced over at him and then let out a small laugh. Bandit certainly was the type of guy who rode rickety carnival rides without looking back. He was totally throwing his tickets at the ancient, rusting Zipper once a man with a mullet, overalls, and no teeth told him it was completely safe.
Even if they didn't tell him that, he would have been there.
"Well that's good," she told him. "I mean- that you appreciate her for who she is."
Which was true. That was an important part of a relationship.
So, maybe he was right, given time and space she would calm down, but the way he was talking that didn't sound like something that would happen anytime soon. Maybe he could send flowers. Stolen flowers to go with his stolen Space Frogs and monuments.
As he settled comfortably onto the ground, Dart took a few steps closer to him. She turned slightly in place, then carefully folded her knees, lowering herself politely to sit as well. At first she seemed awkward, as if she wasn't used to sitting as much as she was settling herself into a position she could bolt upright from in a hurry.
Then she looked at him and blew out a sigh of air that rattled the spoiler behind her shoulders. Dart quickly eased herself onto her hip. Her long legs tucked themselves to one side. She scruffled into the patch of bare dirt, the photo device still cradled in one hand.
"You did?"
Dart shook her head and then glanced over at him. "To be honest, I- I didn't even realize he was gone for a while, isn't that awful? I mean, I knew he was gone, but not that he'd been er..."
She lifted her free hand and gestured to the sky. "Gone gone."
There was a slight flick from behind her shoulders. "Lord Megatron is intense," she said carefully. "He asked me to sniff some awful stuff out for him a long time ago, and..."
Dart trailed off and winced slightly.
"Really though, I'm okay. It's been both sort of stressful and then better since there's more folks stationed at where I am now. You know how it is. More bodies, other people responsible for things."
"My Commander has his hands full," she offered. "He's been awfully busy and has more actual people to talk to lately instead of waiting for someone under him to screw up."
Bandit grinned at her. "Gone gone is usually the most permanent form of gone, so I can't blame you for being taken off guard.”
He turned, wandering over toward the edge, and looking out over the vista. Las Vegas looked a lot more impressive from this vantage point – when you got close, that’s where you saw all the grime, but from up here, at night? It could have been a Cybertronian city. Of course, Cybertronian cities weren’t exactly pristine even up close. Grime was universal.
“So, there’s a lot of activity out here, I’ve noticed. Run into a few folks in Nevada. I’m not gonna put you on the spot by asking for tactical details, don’t worry. But if you have a patrol that sends you into Nevada, I might be a bit closer to the front lines than I normally prefer.”
Bandit hesitated, helmet finial perking a bit as he pondered how to phrase what might be a sensitive question. “Without giving too much away, with what you know, are there any places you can suggest I not wander so I can avoid getting blown up?”
In all honesty, Dart wasn't sure what was better for Earth itself, Lord Megatron or Starscream. It was easy to look at it all and assume a lot of things, but Dart knew Starscream well. So many folks discounted him on some level or another, which to her was strange. He was smart, he was cunning, and in her rather limited opinion, he was more dangerous on many levels. Not on the sheer force of personality and strength Lord Megatron had, no.
He just had put things into hard motion when he was able to do them. He'd had the Autobots nearly down to the point where he'd won on Earth before Megatron returned.
Dart watched him finish fiddling with his item and stand up, walking to look out over the city. Dart continued to sit tucked in the dirt, his holo-projector cupped gently in her hand. The picture of an alien world gleamed in the air, as bright and glittery as the lights on the horizon.
"You're not putting me on the spot," Dart replied firmly. "Except maybe to tell you I'm off my patrol path by a lot, but you already know I've got a bad, bad habit of doing that already."
"So, since I don't want you blown up either...."
Dart cocked her head and flashed him a grin.
"I'm answering as a friend.
"Nevada's where you're going to run across both factions and likely some other folks who just want to keep their heads down. Be careful near here. Vegas they wander through, but not often."
"Portland's still safe," she told him. "I sneak there when I get chances. Actually most of the Coastal states are okay, both sides of the States."
The idea of taking Bandit to Powell's tickled her for some silly reason. Not that she thought he was much of a book guy, but you never knew, she'd been surprised many times before.
Then a soft puff of air escaped her. "The big cities are fairly quiet here. It's not concentrated up like Australia was for us."
He nodded, thoughtfully. "Well, that's good. It was hard to do anything in Australia without tripping over at least three alliances or conspiracies or secret plans."
He laughed. "Would you believe I chose Las Vegas as my destination randomly? I tried to figure out a good place to go, with plenty of lucrative opportunities. And crime." He turned around toward Dart again, his cloak flaring dramatically, as cloaks are predisposed to flare. "Apparently there was a neutral base here I only found out about after I had gotten here. And it was on an entirely different continent."
"That's about my luck, right there."
He laughed mirthlessly, and shook his head, looking over at Dart. "I'll keep my eyes open. What do you know about these humans hunting us down? Any run-ins yet? Do they work for the Earth governments, or are they just free agents?"
Bandit was right. It had been incredibly difficult in Australia for all the reasons he'd mentioned. Conspiracies. Alliances. You never knew who was with whom or what, or where they were headed towards.
Ducking her helm slightly, Dart glanced down at the projector still resting in her hand. She'd been absentmindedly repeating a few of the images, and it had paused on Bandit and V’raavi standing in front of some other rather large and obviously expensive touristy thing. Ever so gently, she rubbed her thumb against the worn corner of the device; it had obviously traveled some hard and long roads out there among the stars.
The datapad tucked in her hip carrier was like that too.
It's not the years, it's the mileage. Indiana Jones knew his stuff.
Her spoiler pricked up at his laugh though, and she turned her attention fully back to him and his cape.
"Well, it's a good random place to choose for money," she said after he'd finished speaking. "I mean, I don't know about the crime, but I guess the slot machines certainly rob you. Although, my friend totally made over seventy dollars on one of them when I was there a bit ago. It was a Ghostbusters one. Fun to watch him play it, it had clips from the movie and everything..."
An immediate head shake followed.
"I- no, no run ins for me," Dart replied, and blew out a small puff of relieved air. Starscream said humans would likely be the death of her someday, but she certainly didn't want to have it be MECH. "Not personally, but I've seen what they can do. Commander Starscream sent me in to sniff out a place where they captured a Decepticon soldier. It was pretty bad."
Dart couldn't forget how bad. Dried fuel spattered on the walls. That tight, dark cavern where they'd held Breakdown had reeked of injury and pain.
"Dunno who they work for," she admitted to Bandit. "I don't think they're involved with a government. I think they're private, maybe. Besides, you know how it is. It's so hard to say sometimes what all the involvement is somewhere. Heck, it could be all run by a Cybertronian, for all we know."
She winced.
"I do know they have killed a few folks, and not just the faction mechs. Did experiments on them, to see what makes us tick."
Dart looked up at him with confusion. "Neutral base? Oh, you mean the place where Lord Megatron and The Prime signed the truce?"
Bandit shrugged helplessly. "I guess? The Autobot lady I talked to mentioned that. They're really called 'MECH', though? That seems pretty on the nose." Bandit made a face of displeasure. "Frightfully unimaginative, too. Why not something like 'the Society of Shadows'? 'The Velvet Blade'? 'The Brotherhood of the Sisterhood?' Something like that."
Unprompted, Chauncey Pilkington muttered a comment with the one of someone trying to sulk on the outside of conversation but who can't resist listening in and making comments despite themselves.
Bandit's finial flicked as he cast a glance over at the Furby. "No, I don't know if they're a cult. And if they are I don't think they're looking for a new idol."
He looked back at Dart. "They're not a cult, right?" He shook his head, nodding toward Chauncey Pilkington. "Tell me they're not. This one is always looking for cults to join. I don't want another situation where I have to rescue him from a cult, like with the Fellowship of the Fang or the Keppler Seven Homeowners Association."