[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Gilding the Thunder [Sparkplug/Thundercracker]

[Sparkplug]

Episode Three | Week Three | Day Six

There were pluses and minuses to being based out in her own little place in the middle of nowhere. On the plus side - oh, too many things to count. Space to work, the ability to customise her work space with whatever she could scrounge, freedom from the smothering crowding at Blackridge, and lots of alone time with Vega, a big, classy femme with whom her relationship had advanced rather past 'it's complicated'. On the negative side...

Well, she'd had a lot of isolation back when she was working on Antilla 4, rattling around in a facility designed for hundreds that contained so few they could be counted on the digits of a standard manipulator. There had to be some balance between Blackridge and Antilla, but this wasn't it. There were no mecha around to excitedly show off to, or to persuade to take on an experimental upgrade or two, and it was a lot harder to get out into the open and just drive. Not that her chassis couldn't deal with rough ground, but the wilderness around her was pretty much undeveloped, and she'd stand out if she was seen.

There was an irony to the fact that she had a fresh new vehicle form, barely used, and she had had so few chances to enjoy it. Spacebridge travel wasn't to be used frivolously, and bridging out because she was bored and wanted to lay some rubber on a road somewhere - well, that was harder to excuse.

All things taken together, then, a visitor was just what she needed. A visitor that wanted their weapons looked over - now that was enough to positively make her clap her hands with delight. And so, with tools and potential ordinance laid out waiting in the lab, she paced back and forth with impatient anticipation in the central chamber of the old mining shaft, waiting for his arrival.

The space had definitely improved under her and Vega's care. The principal chamber was a long, rough oval, whose walls were a mixture of raw cave rock and fused stone where energon drillers had widened it out. A fissure overhead lead upwards into darkness, surrounded by strip lights bolted amidst the stalactites hanging from the roof. Opposite the painted alcove designated as the bridge ingress point, a couple of doors were set into the rocky walls, and branching rails partially inset into the ground made footing a little uneven.

Further along the same wall as the bridge alcove, the stone gave way to a long metal set of shutters that had once held the drilling machines. They stood partially open, giving a doorway-sized gap into the brightly lit space beyond, and beside them, the skeleton of a partially dismantled energon drill stood. The main drill and much of the bodywork had been hoisted up and off it, hanging from chains above, leaving a thick tracked platform with welded rails around it. A thick umbilical cable led from the chassis powerplant into the wall.

Sparkplug's large green optics brightened at the clang of a knock upon the pressure seal that barred the mine from the more natural tunnels the led to the world outside. Thundercracker had chosen - the first arrival who'd done so - to make his way up the winding tunnel from the cliffs rather than bridge in. The novelty was pleasant, and she couldn't help but wonder if he had a dislike of the space-warping technology in general.

Strolling over to the hatch, she spun the central wheel easily, the bolts withdrawing from the frame, then pulled it inwards. The hatch opened with ponderous slowness on its hinges, and she stepped back to make room. Her field radiating cheery welcome, mind already leaping forward to what his systems might look like under close examination, she greeted, "Hey! Good to see you, welcome to the labs. I'm Sparkplug."

[Thundercracker]

It wasn’t that he hated the idea of spacebridges...

Afterall, one could make the case that Skywarp’s unique ability was merely a shrunk down version of spacebridging. But Thundercracker enjoyed those quiet moments of soaring through the sky with only the sound of the wind and the roar of engines. It allowed him to think freely, without fear of Soundwave overhearing potentially traitorous thoughts.

And he really needed to think freely. His last encounter with an Autobot flier had unsettled him. He was one of the best fliers on Cybertron, second perhaps only to Starscream, Winglord of Vos himself. And while he had won that engagement, the time it had taken and the skill of his opponent had made him take pause. Was he starting to lose his touch as he got older? No, that was something he wasn’t going to admit just yet. So when he had found out there was a weapon’s expert at the base, (well, more like on Earth since her shop was somewhere in what was called the “Ural Mountains”), he figured it was time for an upgrade.

As he transformed and landed, the entrance was a bit difficult to spot even though he knew what to look for. He was less than thrilled when he essentially had to crawl his way into the cave, but he figured this engineer must be about half his size or something like that. He managed to make his way to the door and knocked once on the door. The femme who opened the door came up to about his mid-section, though she seemed to have enough cheery exuberance of a bot twice her size.

“Thundercracker. Good to meet you.”

It honestly felt like going to the doctor, just before the war...

[Sparkplug]

"Come in, come in! Make yourself at home."

Sparkplug stepped back into the central cavern, where - mercifully for Thundercracker - the ceiling became much, much taller. He had an interesting frame, taller and bulkier than the standard-issue seeker, with rounded curves and a broad wingspan that must have been pretty inconvenient to navigate through the winding tunnels to access the lab.

Letting him in, she shut the door behind him and spun the wheel easily, thick bolts extruding to lock it solidly into the frame. "Had any trouble getting in? The ground access is decent for keeping this place off the map, but it's not exactly convenient. Still, you're here now. Follow me."

Turning, the white-plated femme strolled across the uneven cavern floor, stepping over the embedded rails of the old hovercart system. Reaching out to give the partially dismantled energon drill an amiable pat as she passed it, she made her way through the partially open shutters into what had once been the driller maintenance bay, and was now her little development lab.

It was, frankly, a mess, but the kind of orderly mess that spoke of a mind that was working on a half-dozen things at the same time. The walls and floor were stone; mostly smoothed out by energon drills, with just a couple of little nooks and crannies that betrayed that there'd once been some kind of natural cave here, and three broad metal sheets set into the floor that covered former driller maintenance pits. Tables and benches made of any old scrap metal (and even wood) were set up along the walls, with a scavenger's tangle of drills, lathes and other machinery that had been recovered, borrowed or partly remanufactured. Several shipping containers full of rocks fenced off a shooting range at the far end of the chamber, and bright white fairylights spelled out 'Sparklabs' up on one wall.

There was a hint of cosiness to it; two hand-built chairs of differing sizes gave away Sparkplug and Vega's dimensions, and the clutter was somehow homely. It was definitely a far cry from the chilly, sterile cleanliness of anything Shockwave had ever touched.

Pausing in the middle of the open floor, Sparkplug looked up at Thundercracker and clapped her hands together, her oddly structured left arm making the gesture a little lopsided. "Okay! You're here to talk about weapons, and I'm your femme. What do you want me to take a look at?"

[Thundercracker]

“Thank you.”

Thundercracker followed Sparkplug through the door and into the interior of the lab, thankful that he was able to finally stand up despite being inside a former energon mine. He looked around with both a combination of wonder and nervousness, as any flier right in the head would not like being unable to see the sky. Fortunately for Thundercracker, he hopefully would not be here for longer than necessary.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle, ma’am. What’s life without a little challenge now and then?”

As he answered, Thundercracker got a better look at the lab as Sparkplug led him though her laboratory. Well, it wasn’t necessarily the cleanest place or the most organized place around, kinda reminding him of some places he had been during the war on Cybertron, he supposed that not all geniuses had that clean and sterile rule like that creep Shockwave. As he saw the two different sized chairs, Thundercracker arched his eyebrow in thought.

Yeah, Shockwave wouldn’t have had that.

At her question, Thundercracker brought himself back to the present conversation.

“I was hoping you could increase my missile carrying capacity while in vehicular form. Think that is something you can handle?”

[Sparkplug]

Ma'am?

Sparkplug grinned, her expressive field swirling with good-natured amusement at the term of address. "Kinda formal, aren't you?" she teased. "No need to stand on ceremony around me. I'm not even sure which of us has higher rank. Research officer, for what it's worth."

Head cocked, expression attentive, she listened to his request with the kind of excited anticipation that would be more appropriate to a mecha about to open a present. At his question - his challenge - she broke into a wider smile, green optics bright.

"More ammunition space, huh? Well, that's not going to shatter the world asunder with exciting new revolutions in warfare, but you'd have to be pretty damned tightly optimised in there to stop me finding the room. So here's what we're gonna do."

She began ticking off points on her fingers.

"First, I'm going to open you up and have a little poke around your mechanisms, see what's what, do some scans of your ammo bays and loading mechanisms. Second, I'll whip together a modified design that's a bit more space efficient than what Primus or whoever gave you, and third, we'll have to ship back over to Blackridge and do the installation in the medical room. If we were still on the Nemesis, I'd have my own space for that sort of thing, but with as few medical devices as we salvaged, Knock Out's got them all. Sound good, hm?"

Without really pausing for him to answer, she turned away and heaved a half-built smoothbore cannon of some odd design off a wide bench, then pulled out a couple of nested smaller benches from underneath it, forming a slightly stepped examination table. Humming cheerily to herself, the small femme cleared a bit of space to the sides to make room for his wings, shoving a couple more benches back and to the sides.

"Oh, what fun we'll have together," she said happily to herself. Turning to look up at the tall mech, Sparkplug added cheerily, "Right! On the slab and point to your ammunition intakes so I can start there."

[Thundercracker]

Thundercracker never really gave a scrap about rank, at least not anymore. It used to mean something to him, back when in Vos Seekers were awarded their places due to their skills. Nowadays it was whoever sucked up to Megatron the best. But he made an effort to always be polite and respectful, because it was always best to make friends rather than enemies if he could help it.

“Sorry. What shall I call you then? Doc?”

When she listed off what she was going to do, Thundercracker took an intake of breath about to say something when suddenly Sparkplug turned and busied herself about clearing room for him on the table. He just about jumped when she just shoved that fusion cannon off the table, but slowly he calmed himself down and walked over to the table. He didn’t make it a habit to pop the hood with company present, even with qualified medical personnel.

He was honestly surprised when he had been told that he would have to fly out here to get this done instead of the base. Guess with resources like they were...well, something had to give.

“Sounds good to me I guess.”

Thundercracker heaved himself up onto the table she indicated and laid back, then pointed with left finger to the outer plate over his right forearm which parted to show a waiting receptacle.

“It works either way, this is just the one I use more often than not.”

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug giggled, rather delighted by the term of address. "Doc, huh? Had a few nicknames over the years, but I can't say that's been one of them. Not a doctor, you know? I guess you could think of me as doctor adjacent. Knock Out would probably get huffy if he heard you call me that. Sparkplug, or Spark, that's fine."

She bent down a little to get a better look at the loading mechanism, humming thoughtfully. "In the arm. Well, well. That's interesting."

Any ammunition that entered the arm would have to be racked into place there; it wasn't like there'd be an ammunition transfer system that ran right through the shoulder joint. Presumably he had the tendency to fire his starboard missile first when opening fire, so he used the right ammunition loader more often than the other. Or did it have space for a full ammunition load, and the ammunition was shuffled through the fuselage when he transformed?

Interesting!

Sparkplug held her hand against her chestplate. A small panel opened at the side of it, deploying a little mechanism into her palm; there was just enough time to see a glinting spindle of silvery machinery before a holo fizzled into existence around it. The figure of a human girl stood on her palm, a slight figure with forest green hair coiled into two messy buns and brilliantly green eyes. Knee-length, many-laced black boots almost met the ends of her loose black shorts, while her torso was covered in a white t-shirt with a prominent Decepticon logo splashed across it. Her left sleeve was wrist-length and made of gauzy grey material, reflecting her true form's asymmetry.

The holo avatar clung onto Sparkplug's fingers as the engineer lowered her smaller self to Thundercracker's arm. Remarking absently, "Stay still, okay?" Sparkplug split her attention, her small body moving to the edge of Thundercracker's open plating. From human perspective, the mechanisms were huge, far easier for her to stick her head into and look around.

Sparkplug stepped away, a distracted, preoccupied look on her faceplate as her avatar leant into the mechanism, getting a sense of where everything lay. Opening a drawer, she took out a precious scanner, one she'd had to fix after water damage had messed up the screen, and paced slowly back to Thundercracker's side. Slim fingers danced over the controls, and a thing, wide beam of blue light began playing over the flier's forearm, recording the substructure's dimensions.

[Thundercracker]

“I’ve heard Knockout get’s huffy over more than a few things...”

Thundercracker chuckled slightly, visibly beginning to relax a bit despite being underground, or in other words being in one of the worst locations imaginable to a Seeker. Knockout’s reputation for vanity was something that had managed to spread across the Decepticon ranks like the cosmic rust plague.

“What’s interesting?”

Thundercracker arched his optic ridge at Sparkplug’s statement, a bit confused. While he had visited medical personal in the past, and a few of them had poked around in his innards due to an injury of some kind, this was the first time he had visited someone like Sparkplug who had a mind for weaponry. She would be correct in that he fired from his starboard side first, just a force of habit drilled into him when he was in training and hence he would always handle ammo with his left hand.

However Thundercracker’s optics got wider as he saw Sparkplug seem to fizzle a human into existence, then remembered that it was most likely a holoform. Thundercracker had created one as a matter of formality when he had joined up with Starscream on Earth, but he hadn’t much time to actually examine one of the natives of this planet up close and personal, even if this one was just a hologram conjured up by Sparkplug.

He obediently did as he was told and laid still, a red optic watching with interest as Sparkplug’s holo avatar began poking around in his arm, then as she pulled out the scanner and began scanning his forearm.

“You using your holoavatar to just get an idea of my innards?”

[Sparkplug]

Her attention split between the scanner screen and clambering around inside Thundercracker's arm as her avatar, tracking the exact configuration visually to confirm and add detail to the scanner's report, it took a couple of seconds for Sparkplug to respond. Absent-mindedly, Sparkplug's voice came from her avatar rather than her main chassis, slightly muffled from within the flier's loading mechanism.

"He's got the primary responsibility for tending to the Warlord's medical needs. Now that's a responsibility that'd make any mecha jumpy and short-tempered, me included." She paused, then grinned and added, "He does have the most gorgeous voice, though. Whoever built that vocoder was an artist."

She fell quiet for a moment, tapping at the medical scanner, then finally murmured with her primary chassis's lips, "Well, you've got some wear in here. Nothing unexpected; just what you get from cycling a mechanism a lot. I think I can sharpen that up again with a little re-machining, shift the posts here, add another rack cradle..." Sparkplug trailed off, her avatar shifting position as the small figure scrambled around to check the state of a mounting post. "I can reuse most of what you've got, short version. Alright."

Setting the pad down, she reached out to Thundercracker's arm. Her small avatar reached up to take hold of Sparkplug's fingers, pulling herself onto the femme's palm. "You can close up the mechanism for now, but stay where you are. Going to do some quick modelling with the scan."

Stepping away to her monitors, no two of which were the same design, she set her avatar down on the desk and busied herself plugging the scanner into the compact data processing unit. "Interesting that your ammo load mechanisms are in your arms; not a seeker design I know. And yep, a holo is useful when poking around the small places. A scanner gets you the structure and any components reporting error codes, but there's no substitute for getting your optics in there and seeing the wear for yourself."

A three dimensional model of Thundercracker's arm appeared on several monitors from different angles. Highlighting the loading system, causing it to glow through the rest of the model, Sparkplug shifted it out of the hazy arm's model and began editing it with swift, efficient movements of her hands across the controls.

"So are you new to this world? Haven't seen you around."

[Thundercracker]

“I suppose so...”

Thundercracker didn’t say anymore on that subject, a habit he had picked up being so close to the center of power that hadn’t managed to go away, even after those millenia. Though he did a sort of chuckle snort at the mention of Knockout’s voice being “gorgeous”. He wasn’t one to judge what anyone else thought. Well, everyone except Starscream...

When Sparkplug began to list off what was exactly inside him, Thundercracker just nodded along like he understood everything, even though he really didn’t, and closed up the ordinance hatch as he was instructed to do so. At her comment about it being “odd”, he just shrugged and leaned back a bit, arms supporting himself on the slab to keep upright.

“I never really thought about it too much. Not the oddest thing about me if I’m being truthful.”

Being an outlier, Thundercracker was always different from most other bots. It was something that had always been complicated back on Cybertron. For one, his outlier had essentially shunted him off into a militaristic role in a Seeker trine without so much as any word about it from his end. That’s how he had met Starscream and Skywarp after all. And while he continually debated within himself how well that had turned out regarding one of them, he did consider it one of the better things that had happened to him throughout his life cycle.

“Yeah I’m pretty new. Honestly I haven’t been part of the main Decepticon force for a few melania at least...it’s a strange feeling at times having so many big names in one place. Is that why you prefer somewhere out here in the middle of nowhere?”

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug grinned at Thundercracker's carefully neutral response. Oh ho. Not a fan of the medic, but careful not to say so in front of someone that seemed to favour him? Well, that made sense. Honestly, she hadn't had the chance to spend much time with Knock Out since her first examination on the Nemesis - that sure felt like cycles ago - but he'd seemed professional and considerate at the time.

And yes, there was that voice. She wasn't usually drawn to mechs in that way, but oh, he'd have been an exception if it'd been on the table.

Her gaze fixed on the monitors in front of her, she copied struts and edited the curve of the underlying mounting plate, generating several different variations of the machinery she'd need to install. Software she'd brought with her in her own internal datastorage began churning through the models, simulating wear and usage cycles to see which one would break down first.

A few millennia at least. Now that brought her up short, and she turned to give him a curious look as the models in front of her flickered through their testing phases.

"So you've been, what, neutral for a while? I'm surprised they let you back in. From what I've seen since I arrived here, the local forces don't like neutrals very much." She hadn't seen what had become of Haven, but she'd heard about it, and what she'd heard was pretty devastating.

"Now me, I've been on a research base - oh, seems like forever. Micro-moon; more of an asteroid really. Complex meant for hundreds, and there were hundreds to start with, but the big names moved out after a while and took most of the researchers with them. Just a handful of us left by the end, rattling around in this complex, churning out weapon designs and explosive specifications and getting resupply whenever they remembered we existed."

Fortunately, the same sputtering military machinery that kept forgetting the base existed had also forgotten just how few mecha were still stationed there, and those infrequent supply drops contained enough material to keep the handful of remaining staff going for a good long time.

"Going from that to the Nemesis, well. That was a shock, but I didn't mind it. Nice to be able to stretch my axles, get out on the roads, remind myself I have an altmode. Meet new mecha. Ending up in Blackridge hold, though, that was too much. Beautiful work Pyrotech did, but there's just too many mecha in too small a place. Not sorry to be out here, with just Vee for company." Affection blossomed tangibly in her field at the mention of the big flier.

A bleep from the console drew her attention; one of the models had begun to fail, a worn bracket causing the expanded loading mechanism to catch when cycling through the third ammunition slot. She murmured an irked sound and quarantined it with a flick of her finger, leaving the others to keep cycling.

"As a seeker, you're directly under Lord Starscream, right? Could be a lot worse." As near as could be taken from her field, which was expansive and expressive, she seemed to genuinely like the Air Commander.

[Thundercracker]

“Not neutral. Just not around the big bots. If that makes any sense.”

There was another guarded response, a practiced reply that Thundercracker had probably given billions of times. A long time ago, before the war, he had been proud of his association with Starscream, Winglord of Vos and leader of the Seekers, wore it like a badge of honor (and maybe tossed it around with the femmes he was trying to impress). Nowadays...

Well...things had changed. Now Starscream was a megalomaniac with ambition that made Nova Prime look mild-mannered. Now Thundercracker preferred anonymity, it was less complicated than being associated with Starscream.

Hence why he had run all those eons ago.

He stayed quiet during Sparkplug’s exposition, merely content at nodding and offering the occasional grunt to indicate that he was still listening. He just wanted to soak up the information, learn as much as he could from what appeared to be as unbiased a source as he could get. The mention of Vee caused him to perk his optic ridge in a confused look.

“Vee?”

Thundercracker was still unfamiliar with names, but he had to guess that one of the chairs, probably the larger one if he was a betting bot, belonged to Vee.

“Are they your...conjunx endura?”

The question trailed off in his mind after Sparkplug’s question. He looked away as he tried to compose himself.

“Yeah, I report to Lord Starscream...”

[Sparkplug]

Making a soft clicking sound to herself of mild irritation, Sparkplug’s hands danced over the date inputs, recalibrating the failed design and setting it into a new series of simulated wear patterns along with the others. The screens dotted around her lap were a messy tangle, few the same dimensions, their colour gradients mismatched, a couple with visible water damage on the housings.

“Ahh, makes sense, makes sense,” she agreed cheerfully enough as she worked. “More important the mech, the bigger the ego. Usually. Not always. Met some mecha with minds that’d blow away the processing capacity of an institute server farm, and some of them have been decent to work with. The others, though... ugh, don’t get me started on Highbeam. The mecha around here... Soundwave’s nicer than he looks. Got a sense of humour. I wouldn’t put a pede out of place around the Warlord, though.”

Tweaking the adaptive algorithm as it ran, nudging it back towards more plausible wear patterns when the random factor seemed to be getting out of hand, she listened with one audial as he spoke. A fondness entered her vivid green optics at the mention of Vee. “Vega. She’s – we’re more than conjunx amica, that’s for sure. Endura? Not sure yet. That’s a big step; taking that side of things slow. Not like we’re in a race.”

She drummed her fingers on the edge of the desk as she watched the designs corrode under the simulated wear of ages. Some of the job was this; watching models, balancing their randomness, making predictions. Some of the job was more intuitive; which design felt right, based on factors she wasn’t fully conscious of, with a little concession to personal engineering style and flair. One by one, she eliminated options, before finally erasing the simulated wear upon the last design, a neat, compact ammunition feed mechanism rotating on the screen with hollow, hexagonal struts that minimised weight-to-strength.

“That’ll do just fine,” she remarked to herself. Turning, she grinned at him, her expressive field swirling brightly around her. “Ahh, new weapons! Improvements! You’ve lit up my day, Thundercracker, by Primus’s shiny silver denta, you have.”

Crossing the lab, she picked out a long section of flat metal plate. “One of these cycles, I’ll get a fully automated system-controlled fabricator in here. Assuming we ever get the Nemesis out of that muddy, briny muck that it’s upside down in. Until then, it’s the hard way.” Clamping the section to a bench, her left hand splits and retracts, a circular saw spinning up in its place that bites into the metal with a high-pitched whine.

[Thundercracker]

“You’re telling me...”

Primus if she ever truly had any idea. To be fair, Starscream had been forged as a dreamer who had places to be, and that ambition had taken him far. Though if Thundercracker was being honest, it had gotten annoying some of those nights hearing Scream go on and on...if only he had known how it would get worse once things went the way they did. He kept his opinion to himself regarding Soundwave...that mech scared Thundercracker more than Megatron did.

Thundercracker’s expression softened somewhat as he thought about what Sparkplug was saying. He never had someone like that, hell he was ninety percent sure that not even Starscream or Skywarp had anyone like that...must be nice. He had always been scared of being tied down to someone other than his trine...but now?

“I suppose you’re right.”

He felt the pang of jealousy, knowing that it was only his fault too.

He quickly put on a somewhat happy expression as Sparkplug proceeded to literally light up with joy at the thought of building a new weapon. Well...to each their own...

“Glad I could help out.”

When she mentioned the Nemesis, Thundercracker perked up his audio receptors. Starscream had mentioned something about that...usually accompanied by how it wasn’t fair he was being blamed for it.

“I heard that it was at the bottom of the ocean. What exactly happened?”

Sparkplug seemed like a decent neutral observer.

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug hummed loudly as she worked, her left arm transforming and reshaping over and over in a blur of reconfiguration as she switched between drills, saws, cutting torch and welder. She grinned at his ‘glad I could help’, nodding to herself. Of course the work she was doing would ultimately benefit Thundercracker, but it took at least a bit of trust to lay his open mechanisms in her hands, and she appreciated that. If only more mecha were like him, a bit more trusting and willing to indulge some of her more exciting ideas...

She was drawn from her brief weapon-laden reverie by the question, pulling a face. Her optics remained on her work, flicking often between the mechanism she was working on and the small screen mounted above the bench – a human-built flatscreen, and not a new one – as she raised her vocoder output to be heard over the sound of her tools at work.

“Long story! Messy story. But – okay, let’s start at the beginning. Ages ago – don’t know when – someone was screwing around with nanites. Big old mess of programming in there, hard to follow what they were trying for. Some kind of body modification, maybe enhanced healing. Whatever; they didn't work right, and sat dormant somewhere."

“So,” a flare of a blue-white cutting torch, “-we don't know what happened, but something got them loose and active. Maybe a sealed container, maybe contaminated energon, maybe they were in some mecha - hard to tell. But the modified nanites woke up, and began reproducing wildly, converting all the unaffected nanites they encountered to their own coding. Unicron’s rusty aft, what a mess. If I met the mecha who put them together, I’d drill a hole in their head, slowly, to see if there was an actual brain unit in there. They didn’t work as intended; started producing mutant pseudo-organs inside infected chassis.

“Best thing – well, worst thing, I mean – is that once the nanites got going, they spread and they spread. Through physical contamination, through energon supplies. Only takes one nanite introduced into a container and exponential conversion happens, soon the entire energon supply is filled with them. Mecha were going insane. The stuff being produced inside them, aside from mutant half-mechanisms? Really nasty psychotic chemicals. The Nemesis was full of crazy mecha, blank white eyes, attacking each other and everything that moved.”

She paused, the rapid-fire transformations of her hand slowing for a moment. She was almost certain that Soundwave had purposefully crashed the ship, and kept everyone running around through comms manipulation while he did it. But – it didn’t seem like a good idea to say that out loud. And he must have had some reason... probably. Maybe. Aside from being infected and mad.

Her angle grinder descended again, throwing out sparks. “I’m not sure what happened, but I think one of the Command staff might have ditched the ship on purpose. You know. Because it was full of madness and it was only a matter of time before someone had a messy fit of psychosis in the reactor room. I made it out. Some did. Some didn’t.” There was a cheery fatalism in her voice at that, a blithe recognition that everybody dies.