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.
By this point, Airazor was laughing as much at Rhinox as at the scenario they were spinning, although her sense of balance was innately better. "It would be the most open secret on the base, and we'd never get a confession out of him. Then Rattrap would retaliate, probably by teaching the sparkling to pick the lock on Siege's room. At which point we'd have all out war between Siege and Rattrap - again - and Ironhide's cohort would likely ban us all from any further contact with the sparkling."
Of course, if Siege were with them now, the commander would also be with them, and he could negotiate his way out of almost anything. She could, as easily as she could imagine Siege and Rattrap making the sparkling centerpoint in their endless squabbles, picture the commander - or, Primus help her, Tigatron - retrieving the sparkling and returning it as a happy, chirping, and sword-free bundle to its rightful cohort.
Airazor felt a touch of wistfulness at the thought, but this...this was a good way to reminisce about their lost friends and family.
"Speaking of Rattrap and trouble," she added, "if we're going to raid his collection for parts, we should give him something to do to help. Something that won't allow him to install recording devices in the toy when we aren't looking."
Rhinox's glyphs of longing and wistful twined with Airazor's, so it was difficult to tell where their fields meshed. He regained his balance, still chuckling a little at the image of Tigatron cradling a perfectly well-behaved sparkling and the rest of their crew looking on in various levels of disbelief.
...Well, Airazor would probably have not been surprised. But the rest of them would have.
"Mmm," he hummed in agreement of Airazor's suggestion. "He may as well be Official Parts Procurer, then. It's his talent anyway, and we can check all the parts thoroughly for bugs before we use them." Over their long cycles of association, Rhinox had gotten pretty good at finding and disabling Rattrap's bugs. It was almost a shame they were on the same side - their spy versus counterspy games would have been legendary if they were played out for more than entertainment.
"We'll have to bribe him, of course." Because Rattrap was Rattrap, and never mind that most of his stash could easily be re-acquired via a few pleasant - for him - hours at the city dump.
Airazor sighed with fond tolerance. "Local food will probably do it. You can donate one of your cacti to the cause; you know how he loves to try new things, and I imagine it'll make him smell better than those boiled eggs he found in the trash right after we got here." While not precisely offensive to Cybertronian sensors, the aroma produced by the eggs had been strong enough that the humans had refused to be in the same room with Rattrap for days after.
Though, really, that was probably for the best regardless.
"You can check all the parts for bugs of an electronic nature, and Ratty will have an excuse to visit every dump in the state to refill his quarters. And as long as he refrains from bringing back too many snacks," she finished wryly, "a good time will be had by all."
"I am not," Rhinox stated with flat finality, "feeding one of my cacti to Rattrap."
His insistence was futile, of course. If Airazor insisted, he would probably cave. Still, it was the principle of the thing. He liked his cactuses. He was even thinking of naming them. "Local food is fine. The children are usually setting aside food they don't like when they bring their lunches here. I can get something from them. But no cacti. ...Besides, I hear humans make intoxicating beverages out of cacti, and I don't want Rattrap getting any ideas on that front."
Well, it had been a long shot; Rhinox was known for getting attached to living things, sentient or not. (Siege had more than once asserted that Rhinox's tendency to get attached to non-sentients explained his friendship with Rattrap.) "Rattrap raids the children's lunches on a regular basis," she pointed out. "That's how he got ahold of the jalapenos. Miko thought it would be funny."
On the other hand, it probably would be better if Rattrap didn't take to fermenting cactus juice in his tanks. Primus only knew what he'd manage to filter it down to.
The problem was simply that Rattrap was surprisingly difficult to bribe. He wanted, in ascending order of importance, to scrounge for interesting bits of junk, to eat things (including things which were not, by any stretch of the Cybertronian imagination, food), and...well, she didn't plan to touch the third option.
"I'll talk to June," she said. "I'm sure she can come up with some sort of disgusting organic matter Rattrap would love."
((I vote jello salad. Rattrap will love it. Especially when he's told how it's made.))
"And hopefully nothing quite as explosive as the jalapenos," Rhinox observed wryly, calming down now that the threat to his cacti was removed. "Though Rattrap seemed to enjoy that, really."
He surveyed his blueprint thoughtfully. "I suppose we have enough for a preliminary shopping list for him," he mused. "Unless you can think of anything else for the little one."
"Well, you know Rattrap," Airazor sighed. She gave the blueprint another once over. "I imagine we'll come up with more ideas as we work, but as a starting point, that isn't bad. It should be more than enough to keep the sparkling safely occupied, and keep us on hir cohort's good side, without having to, oh, make the base sentient or something."
Rhinox sighed. "It was only a hypothetical suggestion," he complained with a faint bit of Sulk in his field. "I wasn't actually going to spark the base."
"Of course you weren't." Airazor gave him a knowing little smile. "Until you got caught up in making things Bigger and Shinier and Better, and all of a sudden that seemed like the most reasonable idea in the world. And the next thing we know, the base defenses are turned against us and our only hope is Rattrap."
Rhinox's field actually flinched from that memory, and he straightened with a wince. "Well," he said slowly, "I learned my lesson. No sentient bases. And no sentient sparkling toys. Not that the little one won't regard us all as hir toys anyway," he added, trying for humor.
Airazor didn't miss the flinch, and she patted Rhinox's arm, reassurance in her field. "Even the commander thought it was funny, after the fact," she reminded him, "and Rattrap still swears it's the most fun he's had outside of a pleasure house."
She chuckled. "You're right. I can't imagine the sparkling will lack for sentients to boss around, on this base. We'll just have to make sure ou knows that Rattrap isn't a particularly obnoxious plaything."
Rhinox relaxed at the pat, offering a sheepish, wordless apology. The memory of when he'd nearly killed his best friend - for a moment, thought he'd succeeded - was an unpleasant one, but it was one he needed to keep, to remember what could happen if he let himself get carried away.
He saved his blueprint and smoothed a hand over it, clearing the screen. "With our luck, 'Uncle Rattrap' will be hir favorite," he answered, starting to map out the circuit pathways he'd need to make the sparkling-toy come alive. "And for a while at least, ou'll be able to fit in the same maintenance shafts he does. So he'll have no escape."
"Of course Rattrap will be hir favorite. Sparklings are like Terran cats when it comes to picking out the one person they shouldn't be around, and Primus knows that once the sparkling reaches that stage, even Rattrap won't be able to out-climb hir. And," Airazor said dryly, "I repeat that I am not going to be the one to explain to the cohort what the sparkling is doing in Rattrap's presence."
She watched the circuit map taking shape on the screen, and a thought occurred to her. "I know what we can do instead of sound." She spread her hands and activated a holographic image, brilliantly colored crystalline cliffs soaring past. "A holo-projector. I don't know about you and Rattrap, but I have all of my planetary survey records archived. We can give the sparkling all of the planets the Axalon visited before the war."
Rhinox - for the umpteenth time that day - lit up. "That's a perfect idea. It would even be easy to rig up." He smoothed out his circuit diagram and started again. "I lost a few archives along the way," he said as he worked, "yours are probably more complete. But we can compare and see which images we like best. I'll ask Rattrap for his too." Which would likely involve more bribery, but since they were planning to do that anyway, it wouldn't add any extra strain to their workload.
"Rattrap's archives should be fairly complete," Airazor said. "You know he hoards information like he hoards everything else." And for all his complaining, Rattrap had quite often gone places none of the rest of them could fit. "If he's true to form, he may have files of places never seen by another sentient." She grimaced, remembering that they were talking about Rattrap. "Of course, we'll want to screen whatever he gives us, if we don't want the sparkling getting the wrong kind of education."