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.
"Urgh, that's slag," Fairwinds replied with a corresponding facial expression. She rolled her optics with a huff. "Then it figures that Soundwave would go for such a massive fragging backtrack for a core block, though. He'll be your operative on this one. He's on the Nemesis, most probably. If you let me patch into your comm.s I can get us a 'bridge back there."
A beat and then the cassette waddled forward again with a chirp, wings flared gently as she approached the mech's pede. Fairwinds nuzzle his ankle with a contented hum, optics shuttering in relief. "'m glad you're not dead, 'Cade. Master'll be really happy to see you, too."
Another frisson of urgency shot through his spark, diffusing across his whole frame in a minute frequency of query. He could feel Reflector somewhere in the region of his upper right chest, the keen secondary hum of his partner’s attention within his primary sensor grid. The police infiltrator kept a strong hold on his physical responses, not allowing the corroded bond-frequency in his spark chamber to resonate in any way Reflector might pick up on. (Just one more link in life he did't recall.)
Cade shifted his weight slightly, sliding back from where the cassette was… nuzzling him. His head tilted slightly, the moon light catching off the black backsweep of his helm, optics glowing blue in the dark as he changed his mind about the question.
“Never mind. What is the Decepticon comm frequency?” The infiltrator glared. "My questions will be answered well enough when I remember them myself."
Just along for the ride, Reflector was starting to wonder if the small femme was making an impact or if it was just her words, which ever it was Barricade was not acting like his normal cutthroat self. He almost seemed stunned or overwhelmed, somewhat understandable, but even so Reflector did not expect the larger Decepticon to ignore being hugged and rubbed all over in this fashion. Reflector was of course patched through Barricade's sensors and taping the entire exchange, less it come in handy sometime down the road or perhaps a gift for this crazy avian-bot to try and worm some information out of her.
Fairwinds scuttled back from Barricade's pede just far enough to look up and see his optics. Then she scoffed at him. "Authorisation codes aren't one of the four million years worth of slag that's been locked out, hn? Pft. Comm.s - gimme. Believe it or not I have boosted through your comm.s before, and I really don't want to see Soundwave obliterate your processor now that I've found you again."
She wasn't particularly surprised that Barricade wasn't firing questions at her - he had been an enforcer before he'd been an infiltrator. He'd been trained to deal with core lock, even if it did nothing for his personality. The cassette was also relieved that he wasn't asking her many questions, certain that she'd answer them wrong through simple ommission and understating complexities of a lifetime of history and events.
Certainly she didn't want to try to explain his relationship with her Master.
Waiting for him to yield and allow her to do her job, Fairwinds cocked her head with bright optics.
The very last thing Barricade wanted to do was let the weird little bird-bot boost her signal through his comm relay. In fact, the very last thing the off-roader wanted was another fragging cassette anywhere near his systems in any capacity on the grounds that he wasn’t having a very good experience with cassettes or other mechanoids in general getting into his networks. He didn’t say anything for a moment, the pitch of his V8 engine a low, throaty thunder in the dark shadow of his framework, menacing and uncertain. It was a very, very tiny concession really, barely a scratch at the surface of the police cruiser’s defensive programs.
It was just the notion… reactionary and purely physical, the ghost of the mech who gutted him still lingering in the neural lines of his body. His systems bristled inwardly, but the infiltrator acknowledged it was just feedback, residual. Rumbling irritably, Cade pinged Reflector silently to be alert and sent Fairwind’s an open short wave and axillary comm. access.
Reflector got the message and was quickly creating a digital ton of blocks, firewalls and defenses around anything not related to the comms. If the little femme so much as stepped a milometer out of line, Reflector was ready to crash his fellow minicon so hard she would be seeing stars every time she shut off her optics. It seemed that his paranoia was aiding Barricade's one of the few things that both bots agreed on and right now neither could afford having their minders further screwed up.
Fairwinds fidgeted her weight across her pedes on the ground, talons curling furrows as she stared longingly up at Barricade's forearm. He always let her perch there, or on his shoulder, for these sorts of things, and she didn't enjoy the feeling of being deprived that familiarity. It would return, she assured herself, pinging the Saleen's systems a notifcation before she patched in.
The cassette didn't miss the touches of another's coding, sending the authorisation codes and a standard pick-up request before turning her attention to the new defenses. It wasn't Frenzy, though the standard of work was just as high, and she withdrew carefully so as not to disturb any particularly paranoid defenses.
"Done. The Nemesis'll open a 'bridge to our location in a klik." Optic's brightening in scrutiny, Fairwinds looked over Barricade's chassis for the area where the other mechanism was integrated. "You pick up a new cassette whilst you were away? Is it shy?"
Barricade offered nothing beyond that, simply allowing Fairwinds her perfunctory access to his transmission systems. Reflector’s choice remain integrated within the safety of his carrier’s tough armoring was a right every cassette to a combat-unit had. Mini-bots assigned to enforcer partners had worked much the same way. Barricade wouldn’t be ordering Reflector out any time soon if the little hacker-bot did not feel like introducing himself… not that he would anyway at this point in their extremely hostile new partnership which was, let’s be honest, based on the fact the neither of them wanted endure the ugly feedback resultant from murdering each other.
“And ‘pick up’ isn’t the turn of phrase I’d pick either. Where is Frenzy?” If he still had a reliable cassette then they could, at the very least, keep Reflector from breaking every cassette-link taboo out of sheer ignorance and frustration. To Reflector he said, silently, ::Well? I know she is fearsome, so I’ll understand if you’re not feeling… social.::
Reflector watched and listened, instantly throwing up more walls to barricade himself inside of Barricade, worried that the other minicon might try to drag him out. He would be perfectly happy to stay locked inside the larger robot, but of course the Decepticon had to push things, rousing Reflector's smoldering ire enough for him to take a massive gamble on his part.
Splitting himself, the minicon left his body behind and let his head skitter out between the armor joints of Barricade to sit on his shoulder, looking like a box shaped fly. With a small buzz he fired up his insect shaped wings and flew down to the ground, hovering just out of reach of the avian robot, ready to dash away at the first hint of trouble.
Fairwinds gave an excited hop as movement came from inside Barricade's amour, optics fixed eagerly on the possible emergence point even as she answered the waiting mech. "Frenzy's been missing for a long while, but there's not been any sign that he's hurt or nuthin'. Slagger's as ore-headed as you when it comes to dying."
When the mystery cassette finally emerged, Fairwinds quirked her helm at his size, though quickly determined that this was a part of him, not the whole. Supremely cool. She watched him flutter down towards her, field awash with anxiety that was not shyness. Rather, he seemed to be expecting to be eaten or something. Poor guy. 'Cade's probably scared him half to death already. Aft.
"Sorry you've met 'Cade with his cranky axel on... Well. He's kinda a cranky aft with all his pistons firing, anyway, but not as... " She glanced up to Barricade's smouldering optics, though couldn't discern exactly how murderous he was running compared to his baseline in this instant.
Abandoning that tactic, she fluffed her exoplates at the hovering mech. "Hi, I'm Fairwinds! It's gonna be so nice having another cassette around. I mean, Soundwave's are 'around' but you don't see them much, and they're all Serious Business and never want to just hang out and watch movies or anything."
She smiled brightly, straightening with a wiggle that ran from helm to tail-tip, awaiting his designation and a list of his hobbies and interests. Surely her winning personality would immediately make him her friend!
This was possibly the most unbearable moment of his life since waking up with half his life sheared out of his head – watching cassettes socialize. Fairwinds was possibly the most fuzzy, happy, sparkling-brained little ball of cheerful that he’d encountered in his long life and he was having some trouble reconciling her, apparently, close association with him and the fact she appeared to have all the unmitigated glee of a sparkling with energon gummies. That said… her brand of enthusiasm could be a welcome distraction for Reflector, who’d had the extreme misfortune of being link-bound to a core-locked infiltrator. Infiltrators never being the most cheerful or sane of mechanoids, they were even less tolerable when stripped for half of their memories.
Baseline: Reflector could do with a peer, even if that peer was a shrieky, over-excited, metal parrot. Barricade just waited for the groundbridge, wondering what the hell kind of a mech he’d become during the war… who he was going to become again.
Fairwinds did not leave the best first impression on her fellow mini, Reflector was far too paranoid to see all of this as just a happy attempt to make friends. He just sort of hovered there for a while, his massive optic trained on the little flier before coming to ground, standing on his little insect like legs. "I am Reflector..." He greeted carefully, not sounding quite as shaky as he originally imagined. He wasn't sure how to handle all that Fairwinds brought up, but he figured that a name was the best start.
Taking Reflector's hestitance into account, Fairwinds drew her field into a friendly bubble just outside of the other cassette's and settled her wings tight to her chassis. She bobbed her head in acknowledgement, optics as bright as her longwave. "It's nice to meet you, Reflector."
A beat, and Fairwinds dipped her head with a frown and backwards look to where she'd requested the 'bridge be established. "I think something's wrong," she uttered softly, helm tipping upwards towards the stars. "They should have sent a 'bridge down for us by now."
<<OOC: Either of you folk can open the swirly vortex into a damagef Nemesis.>>
“I’m imbued with massive amounts of confidence,” said Barricade perfectly flatly, which was precisely when the familiar buffet of strange electromagnetics hit his sensor array from his right side and about ten meters off the air sparked green and white and the empty space peeled itself open in a whirling funnel of neon. He pinged both Fairwinds and Reflector with a perfunctory kind of ‘get up here’ glyph, which Fairwinds took with great enthusiasm. She immediately leapt into the air and took a perch on his right shoulder with a practiced familiarity that made the infiltrator twitch slightly. He waited briefly for Reflector to pick his perch, then proceeded through the strange drag of physics and space that was the groundbridge.
Barricade had been prepared to receive the interior of a warship of somekind, a military-grade transport at least. He had not, however, been prepared to walk into such an interior while it was actively on fire. And it was on fire. There were massive blast scars, electricity fires flaring up from breached walls while spindly purple mechs yelled at each other and ran about dousing the fires with emergency carbon-dioxide jets and foam. For a moment the infiltrator just stared. Then he glanced at Fairwinds.
Reflector was of course quick to buzz back up to Barricade before intigrating with the larger bot, at the first sign of trouble he wanted as much metal between him and everything else as possible. Boosting Barricade's sensors with his own, Reflector began to scan about, keeping on high alert just in case everything went nuts... As it turned out, Reflector's instincts were right on the credits, as soon as they exited the portal, the minicon's sensors picked up massive amounts of heat everywhere, the Decepticon base was in flames...normally a good thing, but of course standing in the middle of said fire wasn't anywhere close to where Reflector would have liked to watch the Decepticons burn from.