[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Freshening Up [Closed]

[Avalanche]

Avalanche’s holo caught at the skin of her palm with two fingers, pinching it, then remarked, “Everything the avatar feels, I feel. Some avatars can smell. Some taste. Some can pretend to eat. It’s hard to focus on your chassis and holo at the same time. Mostly you focus on the holo while it’s out, and just keep a half-awareness of what’s going on with the rest of you.”

The towering femme’s main chasiss shrugged, her shoulderguards rising and falling, the holo cocking her head. “Smash the projector when it’s on, you get violent, conflicting things fed back. Bursts of light and colour, deafening sounds, impossible sensations. Pain. Get unlucky and the whole processor-“ she tapped the side of her head, “-shuts down to avoid damage.”

She leant back a little in her chair, watching Butch work for a few moments. There was a fair bit of debris coming out of her joints, enough that a chorus of her old medics rang at the back of her processor, chiding her for letting it get that bad.

A bass chuckle escaped Avalanche, from both her chassis and her avatar’s lips, the flick of the pebble taking her by surprise enough that she let the reaction slip. “I’m sorry that happened,” she said after a moment, not wanting the human to be hurt in the process of working on her.

How long has it been...

The holo sighed, moving over to lean against the foot of Avalanche’s chair and crossing her arms. There was a lot she could say about that, and why. She wasn’t usually that talkative. But on the other hand, none of it was a secret, and Butch seemed like she’d understand.

“...last world I was deployed on, before here, was Canyon. Difficult place. Tangle of mesas, chasms, blade rock, pits. Caves. Big Decepticon mining operation. My people were there to sabotage and steal. Hugely outnumbered. We dug tunnels.” Her glowing orange optics shifted downwards, gazing at the hand Butch was working on. “I dug, too. A lot. It worked for a while. We did some good work. Then – it went bad, like it was always going to. Most of us got out. Some didn’t. I had to turn over my troops to Commander Forgelight, for them to get supplies and medical parts. Came here, on my own. Wasn’t time in any of that to get looked at.”

She grunted, looking down at the debris on the floor, and her holo picked up a pebble, her expression complicated. Her thumb smoothed over the stone. “Most of what you’re digging out is Canyon rock.”

[Cassandra Cassidy]

"I'm sorry that happened."

"Don't worry about it," Butch said. "It's part of the job."

As Avalanche talked, Butch continued to work. She was deep in-between the seams of Avalanche's thumb and first two fingers now. She wished she had her switchblade, which sat in a drawer back at her apartment so it didn't end up on base. Butch didn't want to carry a knife in a military installation and cause some sort of misunderstanding. She could ask the Prime or Agent Fowler if she was permitted to have it, but something about the request felt.... Wrong.

But none of that mattered as she listened to Avalanche. The cleaner stopped for a minute, picking up a shard of rock to admire it. Stone that came from another planet? Butch, ever awestruck by nature and space, was tempted to pocket a piece and take it home. Avalanche's tone gave her pause, and she put the rock back down slowly.

"It sounds like it was brutal," Butch said. She glanced at Ava's avatar, frowning gently. "And like you did all you could. Dark, dirty work, was it?"

[Avalanche]

“Mrm. It was.” It was her main chassis that spoke, a deep, heavy weight to the simple words. Avalanche vented a quiet sigh; she could really use some more energon, and her tanks were still nowhere near topped off.

The holo took over relating the story, her lips pressing together for a moment before she spoke. “We were badly outnumbered, from the beginning. Knew we would be. No bridge-“ she gestured vaguely in the direction of the control room,”-that’s been lost technology for a long time before I came here. We landed. Dug in deep. Most of us were able to mine as well as fight. Drillbit, my second, he oversaw the tunnelling.”

Memories unfolded around her as she spoke, the heat and darkness of the underground tunnels, rock dust suffocating the vents and making every mecha run too hot, the sharp tang of Canyon’s dust in the air. “Once we made a couple of sabotage raids, they found us. Finding us wasn’t the same as fighting us, though. The tunnels were nasty and cramped, set up for defence. Most of the ‘cons were fliers. Big wings; made it hard for them to move. On the defensive, those tunnels were a grinder that tore mecha apart.”

She shrugged. “They tried a couple of times, realised they were losing way too many for every one of ours. Tried bombing the entrance closed. We’d dig out a new one somewhere else, they’d bomb it shut, we’d dig another- it was a game we played. Main tunnels were too deep for aerial explosives to crack. Mostly.” The holo grimaced, her muscular arms tightening where they lay crossed over her chest. Yes indeed, mostly. Every exception meant more losses.

“We kept sneaking out. Sometimes we’d make it to one of their refinery plants, do some damage, before we had to retreat. Sometimes they’d spot us coming, drive us back, try to seal the tunnels shut before we could get underground. We did good work. Steep odds. But it couldn’t go on forever, and it didn’t.”

There was more she could say, of course. Far more. But perhaps the look in her glowing orange optics, in her dark brown eyes, said the rest. The story was what it was. Nothing to be done about it now.

After a moment, she nodded to the rocks on the ground. “Take whatever piece you want. Drillbit, he’d have liked that you were interested. Big guy, talked like a professor. He’d be telling you... oh, that the rock thereabouts was laced with iridium. Liked to say Canyon was ‘a classic example of widespread chaotic terrain’. Served together a long time.”

She missed him. It wasn’t hard to see. She missed all of them, living and gone to the Well. Solus Prime’s grace be with you, she thought quietly, far from for the first time.

[Cassandra Cassidy]

Butch worked and listened, not interrupting Avalanche as she told her tale. The cleaner was working on Ava's first knuckles now, scrubbing hard with her brush. Foamy soap bubbles were turning reddish-brown, and Cassandra surmised the dirt was full of iron. (Then again, it could be iridium like Avalanche said, and iridium just happened to be rust-colored.) She wondered if Canyon looked like Mars from a distance, or was more like the Mojave all over. She imagined looking down from a spaceship, seeing a vast, cavernous planet laid out in front of her. In her mind's eye, it was all sharp angles and jagged mountains, goblin-stones and jutting ledges.

That look in Avalanche's eye didn't go unnoticed, however. Butch looked up long enough to catch it in the she-robot's holo. The cleaner frowned softly, slowing down the scrubbing for a moment to put the brush aside. She looked up at Avalanche, considering something for a moment as she spoke of Drillbit. The frown turned to a little smile as Ava spoke of the other's scholarly inclinations.

"I would've liked to meet him," Butch said. "I could spend hours talking to you, or another one of your kind. Once you're off duty, we should go for a drive; see a bit of local Nevada."

As an afterthought, she reached over and pocketed a small, banded shard of rock with her bad hand. That was going somewhere special in her apartment later. It probably would end up next to a couple of Chia Pets Cassandra had been growing for a while. A small collection of stones and the odd fossil sat there - a little monument to her love of nature.

[Avalanche]

“Yeah. I’d have liked seeing you two together, too.” Avalanche’s avatar exhaled. Getting maudlin over those she’d lost was a trap, and a bottomless one at that. When you started grieving what the war had taken from you, there was no end to it.

Most of her life had been the war. For many, it was all of it. No point pining after a world that was figuratively and literally long gone.

“Anytime you want to talk, we’ll talk,” she remarked, taking the change of subject for the better. “Seen a lot of things out there.” The hive that she’d bartered with for passage to Earth was still fresh in her memory, though far from the worst thing she’d run into.

“The drive around town with Ms. Ava Larch, that was nice.” Avalanche grunted, and added, “Those little punks. I’d have mashed their bicycles like I threatened, but I was in no state to draw attention. Obviously. My first run in with humans, and it was them. You’re a lot better first impression. First human I had in my cab, too. Only human in there, so far.”

She was pretty sure she’d have given herself away, if Butch had had the slightest inkling that there were giant mechanical aliens sneaking around. As it was, that wouldn’t have been the first assumption to leap to. “Pick some places to go,” she went on. “We’ll go for a drive out of town. I could use the exercise. Spending too much time indoors, not enough running my engine. What did you think I was, back then? Criminal or something?”

[Cassandra Cassidy]

"They'll learn," Butch said, reaching between where Ava's knuckles met her fingers to yank out a shard of rock. Brushing it had loosened it only so much. "They were lucky you weren't a Decepticon. I can only imagine the mess one would've made had those kids tried to tag one of them."

Her brow furrowed as she spoke of the 'Cons. The jet's chase was still fresh in her memory, and just thinking about it made Cassandra grumpy. She'd probably be squashed like a bug if she tried, but oh how she'd like to have a word with the sentient plane that nearly ripped Kup's roof off....

"How about somewhere we could pick up a few things?" Cassandra suggested. "I'm not sure if you even need anything, but there's a hardware store in town. A dump, too, not too far from Jasper. Then there's Craigslist, and you can find all sorts of things on there.... Are you familiar with our Internet?"

She had finished the third finger on Ava's hand now, and was busy brushing the fourth when she stopped. She poked at something too shiny and gray to be a stone - something that looked tinged with rust. Butch frowned, wondering if it was a piece of Ava's finger broken off. She flipped the toothbrush around and began to lever it out.

[Avalanche]

Avalanche grimaced. While the Decepticons seemed to be at least partially concealing their activities, if some immature humans tried painting obscenities on one, that would cross a line that no one wanted crossed. At least as it stood, they seemed to find the natives largely under their notice... not flattering, but the best for them.

It was nice, feeling Butch work. All the small bits of rubble and debris that had gotten into her hands made them a little stiff, and it had been too long since she’d had that taken care of. Always something more important to do. That was the mantra that had caused her to ignore several nasty problems that had slowly worsened with time, including her left shoulder partially breaking down and the dent in her chassis that pressed against her fuel pump. She really was very grateful to Patch for fixing her shoulder; she felt eons younger with the full range of movement restored.

“I’m familiar with the native datanet,” Avalanche’s holo responded. “Something I had to use when I arrived – still have to use, often – to get a better understanding of your civilisation and geographical power groupings.” Admittedly, most of her reading had led back to the online encyclopedias; trying to follow their news had proved bewildering, and the more informal kinds of nodes where everyone spoke all at once about their own opinions – that was a cacophony that she’d left well alone.

Avalanche cocked her helm. She didn’t know what basic necessities the base was lacking, but in her experience, every garrison needed a hundred small things no one had had the time to beg, scavenge or requisition. With a real, actual human to do the talking, the risks of using the native businesses was far lower, and as a dump truck, she could haul back whatever they purchased without drawing attention. Even a heavy load of sheet metal from this junkyard would doubtless end up being useful.

“Sounds good,” her avatar concluded aloud. “I’ll ask around, see what we’re short of, and we can go scavenging together. Find a scrapyard, maybe.” The fact that she’d have to ask around, rather than knowing who was responsible for the base’s supply needs... that didn’t delight her, but she’d resigned herself to the garrison’s absence of formal organisation. Butch’s body language changed, seeming more attentive to her work, and as she dug about with the toothbrush, Avalanche asked casually, “Something stuck in there good?”

[Cassandra Cassidy]

"Good, then we can look at Craigslist together," Butch said. "It's an online advertisement site for all sorts of goods, both new and second-hand. Depending on what you want, the Nevada classifieds can be a bit sparse, but I found some goods deals there. Maybe I'll show you the Chia Pets I grow that I bought."

At the mention of something being stuck, Butch said, "Yeah.... Something like broken metal. It's wedged pretty good between a couple of your joints here. If I can just - mmf - leverage it out a little...."

The woman gave a few experimental pushes, then reached in with her fingers. Digging her right pointer finger's nail into a small groove on the metal shard, she leaned back and pulled. When that didn't work, she stuck the toothbrush in as far as she could, then pushed up as hard as she could. The metal shard wiggled, then stuck in place, and then - ping! Off it went, flying over Butch's shoulder. The cleaner turned, stood, and jogged off to where she heard it land, returning after a few moments. To Ava's holotar, she handed a steely splinter a few inches long.

"This is it," Butch said, frowning. "I'm surprised you didn't feel that. It's not part of your hand, is it?"

The splinter wasn't any color that Avalanche was. It was less than an inch thick, and had traces of purple paint on it. The tip, though sharp, had dulled from grinding against the insides of where it was trapped. There were little chips in it, the small grooves thinning the piece at points. It was a testament to its sturdiness - or perhaps a result of where it'd been stuck - that the movement of Ava's fingers hadn't warped its shape.

[Avalanche]

Chia pets. Avalanche cocked her helm. Some kind of native animal? She hadn’t come across any mention of the species that she remembered, but the native datanet was utterly awash with information, some important, most deeply, deeply pointless, and picking out any coherent picture of anything was a fraught exercise at best.

Dismissing the slightly puzzling mention, the heavy femme looked down at her own hand, her avatar craning her neck to see better. “Not that surprising,” the seemingly-human woman remarked. “I don’t fight with energy cannons, or missiles. I fight with my fists. Not much to go wrong, never runs out of ammunition.”

She’d been nudged, now and then, to add some ranged capacity to her chassis. Retune her transformation sequence, reroute energon flows, make her more of a weapons platform. She’d never gone for it. She liked the blunt, brutal simplicity of her chassis design, little to go wrong and tuned for armour load and raw strength. As sure as Solus Prime, most mecha couldn’t have gotten away with as little maintenance as she’d had, over the megacycles.

Her gaze flicked across the room as a shard of metal suddenly pinged free, and as Butch jogged after it, Avalanche took the opportunity to flex her hand. Yes, that was better. Her fingers moved more easily and smoothly; she balled her fist a couple of times, then lay it down flat again.

Avalanche’s avatar took the fragment from Butch, examining it with mild interest. A chuckle escaped her. “Decepticon insignia purple. Not that they don’t paint purple elsewhere, but nice to think that’s a chunk of some glitch’s badge.” She turned it over in her fingers, feeling the sharper edges, and where the end had been abraded flat, then nodded at Butch with a shrug.

“Sure, I could feel debris in my hands. That one-“ she nodded at her right hand, resting on the floor, “-feels a lot better. Works smoother. But with time, things just go wrong. Some things just hurt, not so bad you have to do something about it right then, and you get to live with it. Patch did some good work repairing my shoulder when I hit Earth. Couldn’t lift the arm properly before that.”

Admittedly, she was still adjusting to a situation where she could seek a little medical attention for non-urgent things without it taking away time and resources from mecha who needed it more. Her hide was battered, and the mechanisms underneath had taken no less of a pounding. After a moment, she added, “Could use some lubricant in the joints, when you’re done clearing them out.” Something of a concession from the stubborn femme.

[Cassandra Cassidy]

"Sure, I can get you some lubricant," Butch said. "I'll see if I have anything that works in my bag. If not, I'll run into town and get you something. That store I bought the paint cleaner from sells all sorts of brands of that stuff."

There was something perkier about Butch now, something prideful. The mention of Ava managing to move her hand better now seemed to inspire the cleaner. She went and began to inspect the rest of her fingers, but paused and looked up at the femme's holo.

"Did you want to make a trophy out of it?" Butch asked from where she knelt. "I mean, humans hang things from their car mirrors all the time. Wouldn't be hard to get a piece of twine and wrap it around the shard to make it dangle."

Butch shrugged, then resumed work on the last of the right hand's fingers. Thankfully, these didn't seem as littered with debris as the others. The toothbrush, with more soap applied, loosened up several small pieces around Ava's last knuckle.

"Who's Patch?" Butch asked after a moment. "One of the, uh...the repair-Autobots on base?"

[Avalanche]

"Better to drill a hole in it." Though it would take a good drill to chew through insignia plating. They'd have something around the base that could do it, but it would be tricky. Butch could do it, or Avalanche's own holo, if there was a sufficiently strong pillar drill at an appropriate scale. Some corrosion proof woven cable would do to suspend it-

-at which point, her train of thought ran off a cliff. She'd mentioned Path so glibly, but at Butch's question, the reality of the situation hit her again. Hard.

Avalanche's holo turned the fragment of violet metal over and over in her fingers, the towering femme's primary chassis above them as silent and unmoving as some great piece of unpowered industrial machinery. "The main base surgeon was attacked. Badly damaged, in here." She tapped the side of her head. "Few days after I arrived. Patch is a medic. She stepped up. Primary carer for this place. Kidnapped by the 'cons, recently. Defector from their ranks turned out fake."

The words came tersely. She'd seen what happened to captives taken on the battlefield, many times. Sometimes they were killed without ceremony. More often, tortured for information, then killed. If they were ransomed back, it was always at extortionate cost, counting on their Autobot adversaries to care more about their soldiers than the Decepticons ever did for their own. Sometimes they were returned broken in ways that no medic could fix. Rarest, but most devastating of all, they might come back turned, their minds rebuilt, bleak, hateful treachery coursing behind familiar faceplates.

The longer she was gone, the less likely it was they'd ever see her again. Let alone intact. "...we don't know where they are," she concluded quietly. "Have to wait for them to make a move. It's a bad business." And made all the worse knowing that Patch was a friend, one of the few she'd come to confide in and care about as an individual since she landed. Avalanche's faceplate remained unmoving, a stoic mask, but her avatar's expression, her gritted teeth, betrayed the ache in her spark.

[Cassandra Cassidy]

Butch had no words. The gravity of the situation described was enough to make her pause and listen with rapt attention, a frown crossing her face. Their main surgeon had some sort of...robot brain injury, and their backup had been kidnapped. No one knew where. Butch looked at Ava's avatar, then back at her fingers. The toothbrush went back to work.

"Bad business indeed," said the redhead. "You have any leads on her? Any at all?" By the sounds of it, Butch doubted this was so. Perhaps it hurt to ask, digging at a potential sore spot that Avalanche had. Butch could sometimes be too curious for her own good, and it had come back to bite her more than once. In her youth, especially, she had experienced many lessons - not all of them sticking - about sticking her nose into someone else's business.

"I'm not surprised you can't find her. If the Decepticons have one of those ground bridges, then that would make it hard to follow them, wouldn't it?" Butch said.

[Avalanche]

They didn't. Butch knew that, it was plain on her face and in her tone, but Avalanche confirmed heavily, "No." Silence settled for a few moments, broken by the steady brushing of otherworld grit from her finger joints. Her right hand was more or less cleaned out, and though she didn't dare move it much for fear of colliding with Butch as she worked, it felt... better. A long-standing irritation fading that she only noticed in its absence.

"Have to try a prisoner swap. Negotiate." She spoke the last word as though a mouthful of gravel, hating the thought and hating the necessity. "They don't care about their own like we do. Gives them the upper hand." An Earth saying, but one that matched up to something in Cybertronian well enough for the translation not to feel awkward on her holo's tongue.

Avalanche's main chassis vented a deep sigh, the underslung pistons in her forearms shifting a little in unspoken frustration. After a moment, she went on, "You're right. About the groundbridge. Rewrites half the rules of war. More than half." Lines of defensive fortifications were doubly useless; it was better to hide, with the complete lack of traceable path the bridge offered, and even if you were discovered, a bridge could be adjusted forward to bypass any conceivable static defences.

"All you can do is defence in depth. Awkward layouts. S-shaped corridors. Break up line of sight, give cover. Annoying, but better than giving a clean run from a bridge to all your vital facilities."

Which, she was painfully aware, was exactly what the Garrison offered. A clean, simple layout, with key locations place at intuitive ends of primary corridors. "With Bridges in play, it's all or nothing. You stay hidden or you get overrun."

[Cassandra Cassidy]

Butch felt a shiver crawl up her spine as Avalanche mentioned how easy it was for groundbridges to penetrate their defenses. A road to somewhere else, far away and unknown to someone on the other side, could spring to life in an instant. Someone could be going about their day and, before they knew it, hell was breaking loose in front of them as the enemy swarmed from a hole in the world. It filled her with a sense of dread, and Butch scrubbed a little harder at what remained of the grit. It wasn't a pleasant thought to dwell on.

"Well, you're safe and sound here, right?" she asked. "They haven't found you yet. I'd say that's one thing in your guys' favor." She reached for her bag, going in and pulling out a small terrycloth and spray bottle of water. The cleaner reached for Avalanche's hand, beginning to wipe away the soap after spraying her knuckles. Little bits of foam cascaded out onto the ground from between the crevices.

"This should be about done," Butch said. "Did you want me to do your other hand as well? With all the dirt we got out of this one, I'm sure the other would benefit from a scrub. It's up to you, Comm - Avalanche."

[Avalanche]

Avalanche nodded, her holo and main chassis moving in an odd moment of synchronisation as she forgot to exclusively focus on one or the other. Narrowing her focus to the holo, a low laugh escaped her and the seemingly human woman remarked, "Better. Take care of my other hand. You're doing good work. Silicone lubricant, after."

The huge femme lifted her right hand with care, opening and closing her fist a few times and feeling the smoother response of her blunt, armour-plated fingers. "Definitely better." Resting her right hand on her knee, she leant down and planted the other heavy mechanical hand on the ground for Butch to access.

"I'm working on plans for improved base defence. Sensible fallback plans. Secondary fortified location. Have to talk to your government again, see what they can offer, see what concessions they'll ask. If the Prime agrees with me."

That was something she found hard to judge. There was a sense of awe, at being in his presence, even down in the depths of her fortified, iron-clad spark, but it had been dented a little by reality. The evident frustration with his own troops, and – to her mind – the lack of discipline and structure to the base. He'd led a war for aeons; you didn't accomplish that, or even survive that, without excellent tactical acumen. And yet, their defence plans seemed to hinge on never being found... she'd plead her case, when she could.

She found that, through her holo, she was fiddling with the broken shard of Decepticon insignia metal. "Once this is strung on a chain," she remarked after a moment, "you could have it. A little piece of one of those bastards. Otherwise, I'll do what you said. Hang it off the mirror." In a way, it was a gesture of kinship. That Butch was putting herself in harm's way, now.