[ti]Ep 3.5[/ti]How To Buff A Truck For Complete Beginners [ Avalanche ]

[Sunstreaker]

Episode 3.5 | Week 1 | Day 3

Sunny was in a good mood today.

Her week had started off atrociously, as naturally it involved both Prowl and Carbine. While neither mech was honestly that unbearable on their own, the perfect storm of having to fake-throw one of them into jail on the others' orders before being rammed into a wall by the aforementioned one was, admittedly, not great. Hadn't been her favorite time at Omega, she couldn't lie. During the brief scuffle with Carbine, she'd managed to somehow preserve her immaculate glossy coat, although it was certainly not enough to smother the subsequent unconscious urge to furiously go over every inch of her frame in search of a scratch.

Some might have called it an obsession, but Sunstreaker felt she was more than justified in being neurotic about how her body looked. Besides, it was self-care for her. Sunny didn't get much of that. Her usual definition of taking time for herself was getting lost and driving somewhere far away, as fast as she could. Couldn't do that these days.

What she could do however, was buff. Only this time, she wished to impart it as a gift.

For whatever reason, Sunny couldn't say for certain, she'd felt awfully scrutinized during formation earlier in the week. She certainly wasn't in any trouble, and yet something about the experience harkened back to some less than fond memories, memories involving Prowl, a lot of yelling, and a desk. So, her optics wandered -- wandered right into none other than her former commanding officer, Avalanche.

Primus, when's the last time that femme had a wash? Sunny had thought. It was easier to process than the voice of an angry Prime. Similarly, she couldn't remember the last time she'd actually spoken to Ava. Too long, a part of her answered.

Earlier that morning, she'd resolved to fix both of her problems.

It was the same drill as with Carbine, only Sunners wasn't already half washed and in need of a massive favor. Nobody was getting thrown into a cell at the end of this. Hopefully. Avalanche was her de jure superior, although at this point Sunny was taking orders directly from Prowl of all people. That was enough to smooth over any potential weirdness, wasn't it? Hopefully it was.

She absolved herself of having to think up some cheesy greeting or justification for her showing up to her old boss's door unannounced. Hi. What up. You look real bad, lemme do you a favor. See? Terrible.

Sunstreaker's knuckle rapped against the metal hide of the door to Avalanche's quarters, clutching her trusty buffer and a bottle or two of wax and sealant in her other hand. Damn, this was a tall door...

[Avalanche]

Work was the universal cure. Whenever concerns raised their heads – work. Worries, regrets – work. And if work didn’t actually do the trick, there was always More Work. But in this case, Avalanche was actually feeling in a fairly good mood. After what had only been weeks by the native calendar, yet had seemed like forever, it seemed like Omega was turning in a better direction.

Admittedly, all kinds of change required coordination, all kinds of alterations to the base required rough blueprints, materials, personnel allocation, invasion drills needed scheduling, mecha corralled into useful tasks – in other words, More Work. But it was good work. Work that was going somewhere. Avalanche’s hefty energon tanks were mostly filled, and her hands were in better condition than they had been in a long time after Butch’s careful cleaning out of the joints. She hummed to herself as she drafted plans.

All in all, a lucky time for someone to bang on the door, which now happened.

“Hrm.” Avalanche broke off her humming, barely aware she’d been doing it to start with, and rose from her reinforced chair. Her footsteps thrumming through the concrete, she slapped her palm against the door control, she sheet of metal sliding aside.

And there stood... an unexpected figure.

Sunstreaker.

Avalanche was fully aware of her presence in the base, of course. Seeing her at the base turnout a couple of days before had underlined it. And yet, neither had found the time to seek out the other. Until now. There was a touch of fondness to Avalanche’s surprise, something she kept out of her field. It had been a long time since they’d served together, but Sunstreaker was a good femme, as long as her ego was checked a little every so often.

The massive femme’s ember-orange gaze moved down to the buffing and polishing supplies in Sunstreaker’s hands. Odd. Still, a half-smile shaped one side of Avalanche’s lips, and she remarked in a rumble that carried a bit of humour, “No backflip?”

[Sunstreaker]

“No backflip?”

An innocuous tease, and yet the blast wave was enough to propel Sunstreaker backward through time. She couldn't feasibly construct any sort of meaningful retort that was not a rant, one which had been quietly self-recorded right after Avalanche had chastised her for showboating. Any attempt to turn back time and justify her heinous crime of kinesthetic self-expression would have painted her as the pettiest of turbo-nerds. And Sunny wasn't having it.

One flip...

A quiet, sigh-like shift of air passed through Sunny's vents. Her gently optimistic expression flattened like paper going under a door, having been dealt a critical blow from such a cutting remark. If it had been from anyone else, especially Prowl, they would have gotten as good as they'd given, and then some. But not here. There were precisely two individuals alive who had witnessed what Sunstreaker truly was beneath the gold-encrusted, ego-driven exterior. One of them was towering over her, currently. Her lips somehow managed to bend themselves into the smallest of smiles, however. Sunny couldn't deny to herself that it was comforting to be around someone like Avalanche -- someone who had seen her.

"Frag off." She tinted her words with a jest, grinning at maximum allowable volume, which was not very much by any metric. Still, she wasn't firing off expletives for her health. There was a message that she wanted to convey to Avalanche, and it needed to be sent in a plain, yet indirect medium.

War buddies, not superior and subordinate.

They were by no means close friends, and yet their remained a sort of proximity and understanding between them that only something great and traumatic could forge. A war, for example. There was no one else at Omega who held that level of connection to her, not even Prowl. Prowl gave her orders; Avalanche lead her.

Sunny tried to push out more words, some sort of follow-up to her polite greeting. But, nothing. Ava had effectively derailed her already loosely defined strategy for reawakening a friendship. To an untrained optic, it appeared as though she'd been flustered. Her smile widened, despite how she tried to fight it.

Then, she cleared her vocal chamber, and tried again. "Hey Boss." Boss came with a warmth to it, coloring Sunstreaker's voice as such. She'd given Avalanche plenty of nicknames over the course of their association. Ava. Big Blue. Overdozer. Dustkicker. There was a simple purity to Boss however, one that asked Sunstreaker to keep it close to her.

[Avalanche]

"Frag off."

Avalanche laughed, a bass sound that thrummed deep in her chest. As Sunstreaker had intended, it set the tone between them; whatever this was, it wasn’t official business. The little smile on the smaller femme’s faceplate seemed like it was there despite herself, one which widened moment by moment.

All told, she was a far cry from the miserable, self-hating bot that had once washed up on Avalanche’s doorstep. It was good to see. Sunstreaker spoke again, and the casual ‘boss’ plucked a chord that resonated in the big femme. Out of all the mecha within Omega, at least here was one that knew her well, that had forged a bond of trust with her through war.

She’d missed that.

“Come on in,” Avalanche invited her, stepping back into her quarters. As spaces went, it wasn’t particularly big, or particularly impressive for that matter. A large rack took up about a third of it, alongside a storage unit, a simple table for a desk and a pair of chairs, one larger than the other and reinforced to deal with her colossal weight. Several large pads lay on it, their input schema configured for thick, blunt fingers, the topmost active and showing a rough draft for an exit camouflaged by a sheet of rock.

Avalanche leaned against the wall, idly crossing her heavy arms over her chestplate. In a way, it was a response to ‘frag off’, an acceptance that in this moment, they were off the clock and free to be more casual. “Good to see you, Sunstreaker. How are you finding it?” The it, whether Earth, Omega, or anything else, went unspecified. “Something on your mind?”

[Sunstreaker]

There was nothing about Avalanche that was not big, including her laughter. As she belted one out, it echoed through Sunstreaker's form as though she were a large, golden bell. But, it was also an adequate sign that her message had been communicated correctly. They were good about reading one another, if nothing else. As soon as her generous host cleared the doorframe, Sunny slipped inside, eyeing the decor for a short moment.

Sure was a room, alright.

But she was in, at last. Of course, Avalanche went and did what Sunny's instincts told her to do -- find a nice slab of wall, then lean up against that shit. The rule of cool dictated that she herself could not lean up against an adjacent wall now, given that Ava was absorbing most of the cool factor. There was still hope, however. Thankfully there was a little sparkling-sized chair nestled in one corner of the room, which Sunny happily appropriated. She grabbed it, positioned it around where she'd been standing, flipped it around with the back to Ava, then promptly sat herself down. Cool factor: salvaged.

"Earth?" She interpreted, one brow raising sharply. "Planet's a mudball." Not an inaccurate assessment. "Just about everything, from the land, to the sky, to the humans, seems to want nothing more than to screw up my paintjob..."

Mud on her rims...

Rain eating away her sheen...

Humans, shedding whatever it was that was stretched over their frames all over her nice seats...

If Sunny were to dwell on it any longer, she would have fainted from the sheer tragedy of it all. To segue into her real mission, she outstretched the hand clutching her myriad selection of beauty products, extending her pinkie digit towards her host. "Which is why I'm here, actually. Not to presume anything... but you look like you could use a buffin', boss." There was a slight hitch in her tone, a brief pause as if to communicate a secondary message of -- You don't look like complete aft, boss, but you kinda could use a touch-up.

[Avalanche]

Avalanche grinned as she watched Sunstreaker go for the smaller chair, flipping it around to straddle it dramatically. A touch of fond amusement leaked into her field; the smaller femme was always finding a way to pose as though about to be captured for a holo.

“We’ve been on worse,” Avalanche remarked mildly at the condemnation of Earth. “Seen the reports on the neighbour worlds? Sol two is nothing but heat, pressure and acid.” As a matter of course, Avalanche had read up on the other major celestial bodies in the system. Where energon had been found once, it might be found again, and she was grimly accustomed to thinking in terms of multi-planetary war.

And then, Sunstreaker revealed her purpose. She’d come to offer a buffing.

Avalanche blinked.

Of course, a buffing could be a friendly, communal thing, or a way to relax with some self-care, like a good hot wash in the shower racks. But in her room, the two of them alone... there was something verging on flirtatious in that.

So... what if it was?

If Avalanche had still been Sunstreaker’s commanding officer, she’d have refused immediately. She’d seen too many superior officers break the rules and get involved with those below them, those they had to command. It wasn’t fair, and it was always trouble. But... she was Sunstreaker’s superior in rank, but she wasn’t giving her commanding officer. There didn’t even seem to be a strict chain of command.

The justification felt... flimsy. Very flimsy. And yet...

She gazed down at Sunstreaker, fast, bright, flashy, everything Avalanche wasn’t... a touchstone of cycles long gone. It had been so very long since she’d been touched by a hand that wasn’t a medic. The sole commander of her regiment for megacycles, she’d walled herself off from anything like that. Was she reading too much into this?

Avalanche had never been one to bury herself in excessive introspection. More often than not, what mattered was making a decision, based on the best knowledge you had, and committing to it. Her browplates relaxed a little as her slight frown cleared. A wry smile tugged at her black lips.

“Been thinking I need a good buffing and you’re the one to do it, have you?” she asked, a touch of teasing humour in her voice. “Alright.” She surprised herself a little with the acceptance, but nodded towards her heavy-duty rack. “Want me on my back or my front to start with?”

[Sunstreaker]

There were no impure intentions within Sunstreaker's spark, although what she defined as "pure" or "impure" was largely connected with her own material perception. Would she look fine as hell while doing it? It had to be pure, then. No question. Beauty was one of her favorite past times, judging by how resplendent and sumptuous she'd managed to keep her coat after a few million cycles of brutal conflict. In a similar vein, it was also one of the few things Sunny liked to share with other people, when it was appropriate. Or, just convenient, as was the case with Carbine.

Sunny didn't have many friends, here at Omega, or in general. Her twin was Primus-knows-where, her squad was dead, and she'd been stuck on the longest one-way flight in galactic history. Avalanche was a gem in a sea of slag, to her. When her optics had fallen upon her earlier in the week, she'd felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn't approached her sooner.

She really did need the extra care, however. Ava's specialties were combat and construction, IE: nothing that lent itself well to an aesthetique. In hindsight, neither did Sunny's. She was a cop, and then a commando. One would think there'd be little time or incentive to beautify herself. One would be wrong, so perhaps it was more about the person than the profession.

Her little mental back and forth was enough to overcome the reservations about having to buff a dump truck of all things. Not everyone could have such a sporty, sleek alt-mode as her, of course.

Front or back?

She diverted her optics to the ceiling as she pondered, momentarily. Sunny didn't have a preference, really. She shrugged. "Feel free to do whatever you like. You got a lot of surface area, so we might be here a while..." An effort was made to deliver that line as flatteringly as possible, hence the teeny smile that followed.

[Avalanche]

Avalanche gazed at Sunstreaker, taking in the smile on the other femme’s faceplate. Some internal conflict remained; long habit wasn’t set aside easily. Best to shunt aside the speculation, and just deal with things as they stood.

“Guess we will be,” Avalanche agreed, a slightly ambiguous tone in the big femme’s rumble. “I don’t mind. It needs doing.”

She crossed the room in a few strides, then settled down full-length on her recharge rack, facing downwards. She shifted a little, making herself comfortable, then vented a little breath. Her whole chassis was clearly built for hard, heavy labour; her shoulders were wide, heavy rotator cuffs half-concealed beneath thick white shoulder guards, deeply treaded tyres half-embedded in them. Her broad forearms were marked on the underside by white chevrons, thick, gleaming pistons bared on the inside of her forearm where the pile-driver weight rested in its groove. Twin smokestacks traced up her back, the metal rather dingy and in need of polish. Her lower legs were bulky boot-like structures, three wheels buried in the back of each and cradled by solid metal bands. Her hands were large, oversized even for a mecha of her size, spiked knuckledusters resting where her armoured fingers hinged.

In short, there was nothing delicate or complicated about the towering femme. She was bulky, solid, very strong, and that was that. Traits which had led many mecha to underestimate her over the years, to assume she was stupid.

“Good to spend time with you again,” she remarked, waiting for the first touch on her back. “Been a long time since Cybertron. Not surprised you made it through.” She’d always been quick, competent. A survivor.

[Sunstreaker]

Where should she start?

Sunstreaker always looked for long, flat surfaces to treat first whenever she was buffing either herself, or someone that was not herself. Things like doors, hoods, and other similarly shaped components were easiest to work on. At a glance, her old boss displayed almost none of those things in her standard mode. Avalanche was a veritable mountain compared to her old subordinate, but she was exceptionally well-proportioned despite her size. Everything was tight, sleek, and kept close to her core form. No kibble, like the door wings that adorned Sunners' back.

No easy place for her to start, in other words. Everything would have to get a little attention, she felt. Hell, everything was already slated to get a little attention, but Ava's form wouldn't let her do it quickly. In plain terms, Avalanche was going to enjoy her trip to the spa quite a lot, while the staff member was going to have to bust out her industrial-sized tub of elbow grease.

But like the boss said, it really needed doing.

Sunny was up to the task. She rocked her weight back, easing herself up out of the seat she'd briefly procured for herself. As she approached, her optics finally settled on the twin smokestacks jutting out of Avalanche's back. Shiny... but could be shinier. Yes. That would do. With a hiked leg, Sunny planted her pede on the side of Ava's berth, taking good care not to accidentally scrape the poor femme before she started. She really needed to lean hard in order to reach it all, of course.

She'd just managed to apply a good coating of wax to the buffer, absentmindedly spinning it up into a quiet whir after Ava suddenly spoke up. In all her cycles, Sunny couldn't really remember many instances where people wanted to spend more time with her. Admittedly she used to be a notorious jerk, so she had to concede. That Ava was happy to see her at all was a victory, in her optics.

Not wanting to continue to let the buffer spin idly, Sunny reached forwards and finally let the soft wax-coated pad make landfall on the closest smokestack. "Not to sound like a total loser or anything, but... thanks..." A lot had been encoded there. There was never a point where Sunstreaker of Kalis had been a professional friend-maker. In fact, for much of her life, she'd been a professional friend-preventer; a master of warding off potential shows of warmth and friendship with her planet-sized ego.

Then, she squeaked out quietly, "...good to know you haven't bought it yet, either." Very diplomatic. Sunny continued to muse as she carefully pushed the buffer up the length of the smokestack, giving it a slight incline to ensure that everything on the pad got to Ava. "So. How'd you get off Cybertron? My escape's pretty boring, so I hope you got a good one."

[Avalanche]

The room fell quiet for a moment. There was the almost subliminal hum of the air circulation system, but the rocky walls were a decent insulator from sounds unless they were right on top of you, and only the sound of Sunstreaker’s approaching footsteps interrupted the hush. The heavy-duty rack creaked softly as Avalanche shifted her weight a little, suddenly lost beneath the whir of the buffer spinning up. Face down, Avalanche’s orange optics slid closed, waiting the first brush of it on her plating.

Sunstreaker’s voice was barely loud enough to be heard over the buffer’s hum as it touched her left smoketack, but Avalanche heard clear enough.

The big femme wasn’t naturally good with other mecha. She’d been forged gruff, blunt and with the level of social adaptation necessary to punch rocks and metal really hard. But that wasn’t good enough for someone that led. She’d learned. Slowly, and painstakingly, but she’d learned. That was the sound of someone not used to finding a warm reception.

It surprised Avalanche, a little. Sunstreaker might be vain and proud of her chassis to the point of being infuriating at times, but she had a charm, too. She’d led a squad who’d fought to the death for her, and that didn’t come for nothing. It was strange to think that the yellow femme might be as adrift in Omega as she was.

“They tried hard enough to scrap me,” Avalanche murmured. “Still here, though.”

Typical bravado. She knew as well as any bot how easily you could find yourself a twisted ruin, fit only to gutter out fast if you were lucky, and slow if you weren’t. But a commander, a leader, didn’t talk about that. And it wasn’t like anyone that had lived this long hadn’t learned the same lessons.

...the buffer did feel good. She shifted slightly, angling her chassis a little against the brush of it.

“Didn’t escape,” Avalance replied after a moment. “I got sent offworld while the core war was still going. Planet after planet, garrisons, sabotage, trench wars. Colonies, mines... elsewhere.” It wasn’t necessarily a sign of having displeased someone to have gotten assigned to the outer theatre, but she’d never been popular, and that had probably made it easier. Avalanche vented a sigh, then went on more quietly, “I wasn’t around to see the lights go out. Haven’t been back since.”

[Sunstreaker]

Avalanche had been run through the whole gamut, not that Sunstreaker was jealous at all. Frankly it sounded like complete hell, and a hell she felt somewhat lucky to have avoided. Of course, Sunny still went through her own hell, albeit one more stationary that Ava's. There was never a single moment where everything went wrong, looking back at the war. She remembered the end of it, however. One day, Avalanche was just gone, and Sunny found herself shuffled around and around, endlessly. The death throes of the Autobot logistical system, desperately trying to pull itself out of the grave it was sinking into.

"I stayed," Sunny added. Staying behind wasn't her choice, of course. "Missed the Ark when it launched... chased around a few 'Con holdouts, then... everything just started to get real dark, and real quiet..." In those final cycles, it was like being trapped inside a rotting corpse. The sound of that eerie, gaunt quiet would be something that echoed in the deep recesses of Sunstreaker's mind for all eternity. How fortunate that Ava was spared such an experience. Further still, fortunate that Sunny was able to escape it at all.

Her servos busied themselves while her mind wandered. Not only was Sunny thorough with a buffer, she was just as quick with it too. It was almost like she'd done this an unhealthy number of times. Through masterful swirling strokes of the whirring buffer, she'd produced a mirror shine upon the surface of the first smokestack, indicating it was time to move on to its twin. Away the tool went, on its way to give big blue the most enviable pair of smokestacks in all Omega.

"All good so far?"

[Avalanche]

Avalanche didn’t envy Sunstreaker her experiences either. When the big femme had been sent off-world, the war’s outcome looked grim, but still possibly winnable. Millions of cycles of Cybertron’s development were being churned into rubble, sure enough, and rebuilding would be the task of a lifetime to even begin making a dent, but – the planet wasn’t dead.

She considered it a weakness in herself, but Avalanche had never viewed images of Cybertron after its final collapse. Better that she remembered it as it was; she suspected the sight of it as a broken, empty husk would replace every memory with ash and darkness. It had long ceased to be the homeworld.

It was only a gravestone, now.

Those kind of thoughts had a way of eating at you like scraplets if you let them; she resolutely turned her attention to more immediate things. She was long practised at using the direct physical sensations she felt to ground herself, and in this moment, those sensations were – pleasant. The smokestacks were a new addition to her anatomy, since she’d taken on her Earth-mode, and they’d never felt the rub of a buffer before.

“...yeah,” she murmured, her voice a deep, soft rumble, like a fifteen ton cat. “You’ve got a way with that thing.” She’d thought about teasing Sunstreaker a little, connecting her vanity about her paint to her undoubted skill in buffing and waxing, but the words never left her vocoder. Sunstreaker would have heard the same kind of jokes-as-veiled-criticism a thousand times; she didn’t need to hear them again.

Avalanche shifted slightly against the rack, making herself more comfortable. It did feel nice. “Never thought you’d be waxing me, did you.” Touched with humour, an acknowledgement that they were crossing some lines they’d never have while together in an active unit. “Seen much of the planet?”

[Sunstreaker]

Anything that could pull her out of her thoughts of home was welcome to Sunny. There were very few memories of Cybertron that she'd still call pleasant, these days. Better to leave it in the past for now, especially when the present had a high demand for her skills, both for killin' and for buffin'. The low rumble below her resonated softly through her plating, an extremely potent sign that her work was being truly appreciated. A good noise, she felt.

Like an invisible hook had been stuck into her, Sunstreaker's lips were suddenly hitched up into a smile, with one brow held above the other. "Mmm," she amusedly hummed. "What can I say? Takes a lot of patience and dedication to keep gold paint scratch-free in a combat zone..." A sane femme would have repainted themselves the instant they were forced into a war. Gold was incredibly eye-catching, unsubtle, and quite frankly very dangerous on the battlefield. The thing was though, that Sunstreaker had in fact repainted herself as the civil war began.

Only, she'd repainted herself gold. She'd been blue and black with gold highlights when she was SRT. The instant things were turned upside down, the gold had been Sunny's way of stating "Fuck it all" to the world, something that had perfectly encapsulated her personality at the time. That was less of the reason she was still gold today however. She just thought it looked sweet.

A near-mirror shine had been given to Avalanche's smokestacks, so much so that Sunny could now admire a comically warped image of herself in them.

Nice.

Now, it was time to move on to everything that was not a pair of smokestacks. Sunny shifted her efforts, moving the buffer down along the length of Ava's back, between and around both of her chromed ornaments. Hearing Ava's tease, Sunny wasn't the least bit hesitant to reply. "Back in the day, I wouldn't have." It would have been weird back in the day. Totally wasn't weird, today. "You won't hear me complaining, though. I wager this is therapeutic for both of us."

If there was ever anything that Sunny had that was remotely close to meditation, this was probably it. Bonus points if it made a friend of hers feel nice and pretty, too.

She grumbled at the mere mention of Earth. "Mmrr. Like I said: mudball. Took an orbital bounce down to the surface a whole continent away from here. Started driving west until I found Bots. Planet's boring for sure, but I guess there are worse planets to be stranded on."

[Avalanche]

Sunstreaker always stood out, for better or worse. Stealth? No. Distraction? Yes. Open warfare, it didn’t matter quite as much what colour your chassis was, but shimmering gold still drew the hostile optic. The fact that she’d lived this long was a testament to her agility and talent in combat despite making herself a target. It seemed to be a point of pride that she was near-impossible to conceal.

Of course, Avalanche could have ordered her to repaint herself some neutral, easily missed colour, back when they’d first served together. Some of her own subordinates had suggested exactly that. But the big femme knew better; if Sunstreaker had done as ordered, she’d have never trusted another word from Avalanche’s vocoder. They’d all lost too much; sometimes, you had to leave a mecha something to cling to.

She idly wondered if any of Sunstreaker’s later commanders had tried it, and how that had played out.

A chuckle escaped Avalanche; back in the day, neither of them would have even thought of something like this. But times changed, even if the war didn’t. “Mm,” she agreed, “it’s good.” Therapeutic, though perhaps not in the way Sunstreaker was thinking. The simple fact was that she missed this kind of closeness, and even if she was bending some of her inner rules (as she knew she was), it felt worth it.

The buffer ran up the centre of Avalanche’s back, between her freshly gleaming smokestacks and the heavy plating of her shoulderblades; a little shiver ran up her spinal struts, and a low little sound escaped her.

“Landed in the middle of a city. Bartered for a space bridge connection from the Cythidian Hive, and it opened in midair. Drove out, dropped. Crater. Had to scan a new alt and get out of there fast. But at least it was on this continent.”

[Sunstreaker]

Sunstreaker chuckled as she drew the buffer around in wide circles. "Hm. That sounds quick, at least." And enviable, too. She was missing a few of the finer details without a doubt, but the way Sunny heard it, it sounded like Avalanche had arrived on Earth like one, two, three. Her own trip was not nearly so mercifully short. "Got out on a salvage barge, scavvin' the ruins. Course, thing was automated, so I couldn't give it a destination, just change the route."

To ask Sunstreaker what she believed hell to look like, she would have described it as a salvage barge. In particular, it was a room where one could not escape, doomed for all eternity to watch all of existence pass them by. Forgetting about them. There were moments on that damned transport that Sunny was not proud of, moments she'd hold close to her spark until her dying moments. There was always clarity in pain, at least.

Air shifted from her vents. She hoped her old chariot had been blasted apart by pirates, by now.

Leaning in to afford herself greater reach, Sunny hiked both knees up to the edge of the berth. It wasn't her fault she was so short of stature, while her client was most decidedly not. Admittedly, she'd forced herself into a more awkward position; closer to Ava yes, but also without much balance. To remedy this, she pressed a servo down on the small of Avalanche's back, using the added stability to bring a brilliant shine to the sides of her trunk.

She slipped into silence for a short while, mind fully occupied with scrutinizing the details of Avalanche's form for any spot of lacking luster. The buffer would only fall silent occasionally, when Sunny was due to apply a fresh dollop of wax. "You know I'm glad I found you again, Ava." It was true, and she wanted Big Blue to hear it. The way she spoke, her voice could have been confused for a distant melody. "I dunno if you realized it, but you were the one who pulled me outta the pit I was in, after what happened."

Prowl had barked at her for an hour or two afterwards, and then that was that. Nobody else had spared the fuck-up of the hour a second glance after what happened. "We were just subordinate and superior, but you mean a lot to me." Despite the weight of the topic, Sunny could not help but grin.