Ep 1 - Damsel in Distress (closed)

[Deleted]

((In anticipation of the Jeff and Shadow staredown. If that doesn't happen, just consider this a brief reaction interlude.))

((Also, Ebon: I've taken a few liberties with Starscream here. If any of that seems OOC to you, feel free to kick me in the head and I'll edit.))

With one hand, Soledad was writing down her next shopping list for whichever Eradicon felt like helping her out. With the other, she held her only spare shirt to the bleeding gash across the top of her left thigh. Her hand was shaking a little as she wrote - she hoped her handwriting would still be legible.

First Aid Kit, read the top of the page. Band-aids, gauze, burn cream, alcohol - would kill for alcohol. Oh god please don't let this get infected.

Who knew why Starscream had wanted a sample of her blood? Who knew why Starscream wanted anything, really. He'd just grabbed her without explanation, and she'd cursed and struggled but he'd managed to cut her anyway, and collect the resultant spill while making pleased noises. Five minutes on Google, as Soledad had yelled at him, could have told him that that wasn't how you get a blood sample, but as usual, Starscream wasn't interested. He seemed only interested in how Soledad reacted under different kinds of stress, making him more of a behaviorist mad scientist than a biologist mad scientist.

Who am I kidding. He's not a scientist, he's an idiot kid with a magnifying glass standing over an anthill.

The air boomed and rumbled. Soledad dropped her pencil and clapped her hands over her ears, thinking someone was tapping on her enclosure again. "Hey, asshole," she yelled, whirling around and oh dammit that hurt - but there was no one in the lab, and as she stared around her, the booming noise came again, vibrating the walls of her cage.

A - battle?

The Eradicons had spoken of battles, when she could coax them to. An enemy they had to fight. Vicious, savage creatures who tore through their ranks like wet paper, led by an implacable foe with no face. Soledad was suddenly seized by the mental picture of the warship itself being damaged or destroyed, blowing up in a massive fireball like in Star Wars with her still trapped inside it, or just the hull rupturing and all the air being sucked into space, leaving her to die breathless and cold-

Soledad limped as fast as she could to the shelter Georgia and Sharon had so proudly built for her, and huddled inside, bloody shirt clutched to her leg and breath coming far too fast.

[starscream]

[[ooc: lol looks like it works to me XD]]

[jefferson]

The claxons were a bit too loud. He realized the purpose - they needed to be audible from anywhere in the ship - but the Nemesis was built for space, and the Vehicon was certain the things could be heard all the way back on Cybertron. The sound ripped through his frame and pulsed through his mind, but he couldn't complain much less submit a request to lower the volume. The ship was being attacked, suddenly, no intel to warn them, and Jeff was still in his quarters.

He needed to be up in Starscream's lab.

Weeks ago, he'd taken charge of guarding Starscream's labs from intruders, and several of his fellows had volunteered to help. Having a human aboard had been so exciting, and, over time, equally stressful. At least, to Jeff it was. He avoided speaking to her for too long due to the revelation that he'd be obligated to kill her should she escape, and he couldn't quite look her in the eye since she found out. Still, she was becoming more of a person to him, and that forced him to confront walls in his psyche he'd never known were there. His processor just...wasn't built for that. He did know one thing, though - he felt responsible, for everything that happened to her since her capture, including whatever it was Starscream subjected her to. He felt so responsible, it hurt, and kept him up on rest shifts. Indecision was eatign at him, infecting eons of ingrained Decepticon dogma and causing doubt to pool around his spark chamber. Doing the right thing? It was a foreign concept to him, only introduced to him on Earth through fictional works, but somewhere in the back of his mind many quotes and words echoed to him small shards of kindly advice in Morgan Freeman's voice.

Truthfully, Jefferson never had the words 'Do the right thing' cross his mind, not a single time. He was far too indoctrinated for that. But that subtle undercurrent was what was giving him such a hard time in the face of Starscream's cruelty and Soledad's miserable imprisonment. It was hard to ignore, and yet he didn't know what he was ignoring. Instead, he exited his quarters in a flurry, not so much because it was his duty to give his life ASAP on Starscream's orders, but because if something happened to the human during the battle, it would mean Jeff had run out of time to figure himself out.

Rushing, weaving around charging drones and surprised officers, he passed through a corridor, narrowly avoiding getting shot, and made his way to the science deck. He passed Shockwave on the way in, who looked hurried but otherwise unfazed, and sprinted to his most recent war time post, forgetting to lock down the entryway.

When he got there, no one was in the room and for a moment he thought Soledad had managed to disappear in the panic. A closer look, though, and a scan, revealed blood spilled on the substrate, a small trail trickling towards the girl's newish shelter.

"Hello? Soledad? You in there?" Jeff asked in a puff. He waited a distressed moment before continuing. "Why are you bleeding? What did he do this time? Did you hurt yourself?"

He resisted the urge to lift the little house..

[Deleted]

The booms were quickly followed by ear-piercing alarm klaxons - sounding remarkably like the alarms they used in movies, and Soledad would have time to wonder at two very different species finding the same kinds of sounds, er, alarming some time later. For now she huddled in the back of her shelter, shoulders hunched up, hands over her ears and the bloody T-shirt pinned to her leg by one bony elbow. I guess we really are under attack. Or - they're under attack. I wonder if I should be hoping for rescue.

Pounding metal feet rang outside her enclosure, but before Soledad's heart could decide whether to leap in hope or quail in terror, Jeff's voice called her name.

Jeff. A lot of the faceless robots - Eradicons, they called themselves, and wasn't that a cheerful name - had taken an interest in her, but Jeff was the one who came around most often, who brought her the things she asked for and answered her questions about their culture. He still acted like he couldn't hear her when Starscream was around (she made it her mission sometimes to get him to laugh, those times, like tourists teasing the guards at Buckingham Palace. It took her mind off what was happening to her), and never stayed long, but when it was just them...

...well. When it was just them, Soledad had to try hard to remember that she was just another job to Jeff, and that he'd kill her if she tried to escape. Certainly not a... friend.

Soledad hissed a little as she scooted forward to the entrance, her leg throbbing. "He just did what he always does," she said, shouting to make herself heard over the alarms. "What's going on? The ship's not being blown up, is it?"

Please don't let the ship blow up, she thought, but at least she could be pretty sure Jeff would be honest if that was the case. He always was.

[jefferson]

It was harder to hear the little organic over the alarm system, but Jeff managed to catch most of it. His visor was fixated on her leg, and he knew a wound there was usually a bad thing. In war movies, injuries to legs had a similar effect to injuries to major fuel lines, except even less forgiving. He was more than a bit terrified, but he barely managed to keep his cool - somewhat.

"Well - wha - Uh. I don't know if the whole thing's gonna go or not, but the Autobots are sure doing a lot of damage. Some of the others are already knocked out of the fight and lotsa the drones are gonna go down, I just know it. " He stared off for a moment in wonder. "...And they only just got here..."

He snapped back to focus as an explosion rocked the room so hard the labs tilted.

"Um, well, any way this pans out, Soledad, I'll make sure no harm comes to you." He blinked. " I'll try anyway." He could just imagine the lines of disappointment and fear crossing her face as he finished, so he made a preemptive attempt at his defense, "The Autobots tend to tear right through us like we're nothing!"

Realizing that that was the last thing he would want to hear in her position, he expelled a windy sigh, slumped, and added seriously, "I-I'll do my best, and if worse comes to worst, one of the others will protect you, too."

At the thought that he could get killed, he shivered... but an idea began to form in the very bottom of his being. Like somewhere near his ankle. It wasn't fully processed yet, but as the seconds ticked past and the red of the blood burned like acid into his spark, all he knew at the moment was that he might do something crazy. He just didn't know what.

[Deleted]

Soledad tilted her head to the side, expression flat. "If you were aiming for comforting? You missed."

Soledad did not want to be hurt in the middle of a war she had nothing to do with. She did not want to escape Starscream's lab only to fall into the clutches of the monsters the Eradicons described. And she definitely did not want to stand there helplessly and watch Jeff be torn through like he was nothing.

"......Thanks, anyway," she added grudgingly, and peeked gingerly under her makeshift bandage. Her jeans were a lost cause, blood staining the denim below the cut, but she thought the bleeding had stopped. Better not to move for a while, though, and test fate. "Listen... if you need to run away, though, I won't make fun of you or anything. I don't want to see you get hurt." She grinned, a touch pale and a lot pained. "I'm just a human, right? Why would the Autobots bother with me?"

Maybe the Autobots wouldn't even come in here. It was just a lab, after all. Surely they'd go after more strategic targets. The bridge. The weapons systems. The engines. (Oh please not the engines.)

[jefferson]

As the klaxons dulled to a tolerable level for functionality's sake, Jeffs helm swiveled around to gawp at the human girl.

How well did it speak of him that she was even giving him an option to run? No very well at all. It was almost insulting, except Jeff knew her expectations weren't based on false observation. He would have sulked at that if not for her next statement. That then made him uncomfortable, that she cared whether he got hurt or not. The other Vehicons didn't like seeing their own broken and twisted, no, but she was...She had no obligation to care, and considering her circumstances, he was amazed she felt she could afford to be so considerate of him. If not for the tiny grain of hope fostered by a few years of Disney movies, he would have been suspicious of foul play and taken her comment as sarcastic. How far had he progressed? Where was he progressing??

Before he could retaliate with something aimed to keep his mind from imploding at the sight of her excrutiatingly heart wrenching smile (she was trying so hard!), her last words registered and echoed into the holes of his accepted Decepticon-induced paradigm. Suddenly, the ankle-thought was in his throat.

"Well, the Autobots...humans! They kinda - Um..."

He fumbled for words, but they wouldn't come out. His head was buzzing, and his chestplates felt too well fit. Was the room swirling? He felt like his head was going to explode! Primus, this felt just like the time he realized IHOP was an acronym for International House of Pancakes, not just a silly brand name!

...And just like that, the feeling was gone, and unlike the time with the pancake house, he wasn't left with an epiphany that could be worded. Instead, he was left just as clueless as before, just more reassured that he had a way out of predicament.

He hated when that happened. Epiphanies were supposed to leave him with answers, not questions!

When he spoke again, he sounded more certain of himself, despite his inner turmoil, "No. I'm staying right here. Just stay low, and wait."

Wait for what?!! he asked himself with apprehension, but his subconscious was having a very important chat with his conscience without him and he was left frustrated in the dark. He couldn't mean wait for the fight to come to them, could he? To wait for the glass to break? To wait to be spotted by the blue eyed enemy? No, he couldn't. Thinking those things were very very very bad.

[Deleted]

......it was really, really hard to think of Jeff as a jailer rather than a friend when he went and said things like that.

"...Okay," Soledad answered quietly, addressing her knees rather than Jeff himself. "...Thanks." Not that Jeff would be much help if there was a hull breach and she strangled on vacuum, but at least she wouldn't be alone. She shifted painfully, hooking her uninjured leg under her injured one to give it someplace to rest, and looked up at Jeff. "Is everyone else okay? If you can hear them over your radio, I mean." At least she could talk without screaming now.

((Good place for Shadow to barge in?))

[Deleted]

Starscream’s lab was a lower priority target, one which Shadow could have easily justified skipping, given the delay caused by the rustplated glitchwit she’d run into. Or at least, she could have if justifying things to herself were half as easy as justifying them to Jazz.

Acutely aware of just how tight her timeframe was (her own fault, for being overconfident in picking her targets, for letting herself get caught up in the fight with the Con), and of the error messages coming from her left side weaponry (damage to the energy feeds to both her nano assemblies and her blaster, and that was entirely the Con’s fault), she entered the lab with less caution than she should have...but then, with the ship under attack, the lab was one of the last places she expected to find guarded.

Her weapons came up before her processor finished registering the Eradicon’s presence. She didn’t immediately open fire, though whether that was more because of the anomaly of a guard in a seemingly empty lab, or something else pinging at the edge of her sensors, she couldn’t say.

[jefferson]

When the Autobot flew in, Jeff found himself flailing between two options - leap to cover, or staunchly decide to stay right where he was, blocking the human from the invader. His spark was bouncing off the walls of his chest the moment his red visor locked onto blue optics and it was so hard for him not to flinch. To his great surprise, however, his battle systems were sharper than they'd ever been, although the recent full system repair and recalibration courtesy of Knockout explained that. His arms had flown up the moment the doors had moved and now he stood, slightly hunched, as both arms were fully extended with maximum deadliness at each end.

Well...as deadly as an Eradicon's weapons could get, considering Autobot armor seemed to repel blast fire like magic.

Still, he could shoot, and probably would have shot the bot already, except that he hadn't mentally released the command. And oh, how he wanted to. She'd ambushed him, but she looked as shocked to see him as he was her. It was a perfect opportunity. He could have fired the moment he saw her, maybe even taken her out or at least stunned her for long enough he could have finished her off. And then what would have happened? Maybe he'd get some recognition! He'd be a hero! He'd be the first Vehicon on Earth who slayed an Autobot himself; maybe he'd get a promotion!

But no, there was a problem with that. A promotion meant responsibility he probably couldn't handle, leadership skills he had none of, and a fearlessness he was the first to admit he didn't have. Killing her would have been a fluke, and with a promotion it was possible he'd be put in charge of killing more and he wouldn't be able to deliver. But all that wasn't it, either, was it?

He was well aware of the small warm body hidden behind him, the pained smile that tried to accept and comfort him in his fear when she was far more helpless than he.

His metallic guts twisted as his thoughts raced. What to do, what to do?

...He had an idea.

[Deleted]

Soledad had been paying attention during her time on the ship. People who looked like Jeff came in and out of the lab all the time, mostly to talk to her, and every single one of them described their position in the Decepticon army with words like "low rank," "grunt," "cog," and "cannon fodder." The few Decepticons Soledad had seen who didn't look like Jeff (who never, ever bothered to talk to her) were more highly ranked. The Eradicons treated them with deference, and Soledad with silence when they were around. In a way it was an advantageous system: Soledad could tell who would treat her with at least a minimum of decency just by looking at them. Jeff-alikes good, everyone else bad.

The newcomer looked nothing like Jeff. And even if Jeff's jumping a mile and whipping out his weapons didn't tell the story well enough, the glow of blue eyes, the color that haunted her Eradicon friends' nightmares, marked him definitively as an Autobot, the Decepticons' savage enemy, the ones who tore through their ranks without breaking a sweat. Or whatever robots did.

Suddenly, Soledad felt like all the atmosphere had been vented out of the room, without the necessity of a hull breach. She scrambled backwards into her little house, heedless of the pain as her wound re-opened a little, and - though she knew she'd be ashamed of herself later - prayed the Autobot would take as little notice of her as the non-Eradicon Decepticons ever did.

[Deleted]

Sounds from the...terrarium? what the frag has Starscream been doing?...behind the Eradicon finally made the faint sensor readings which had been nagging Shadow click into place. Organic life signs. Human life signs, and there was no way short of direct orders she was going to start a fight while a human was trapped in the room with them.

::Jazz? Situation in Starscream's lab,:: she commed, prepared to send a databurst summary, but there was no response. Jazz was dealing with his own problems, then, which wasn't unexpected but did send the slightest flicker of worry through her.

Her orders had been to strip the computers for what she could and then trash the lab. She couldn't do the second part without risking the human (though if they successfully brought the Nemesis down the human was probably as good as dead anyway, but she couldn't think about that right now), but since the drone hadn't fired on her yet, it might let her get away with the first.

At the very least, she might be able to get into a position where she could take it out without firing directly toward the human's enclosure.

"I'm not here for trouble," she said, weapons still trained on the Eradicon as she shifted carefully sideways, toward the main computer bank. It ocurred to her that she had no real idea what, beyond basic orders, they understood. "Don't do anything stupid, and I won't have to shoot you. Deal?"

[jefferson]

Something in the Autobot's determined face changed and Jeff thought he knew what it was.

Well, his plan just flew out the window, and maybe it wasn't really a good plan anyway. He was going to shift slightly so the Autobot could see Soledad, maybe rush forward in a heroic leap, but now that Jeff thought about it, the moment he moved out of the way, the Autobot just might shoot him and then grab Soledad. So, once again he was stuck, only this time deciding if he was willing to take a bullet for the human behind him or not.

Then the Autobot spoke and Jeff froze up for a klik, mind racing for something to say. Dare he say anything? he wondered. Well, whatever he did say, it couldn't be 'Please take the human and make it look like you made me hand her over.' That was unacceptable and extremely unlikely to succeed without his being truly getting clobbered.

His small opportunity to speak was almost over. He had to say something now or be that awkward Vehicon who lagged in inter-faction battle banter. Megatron and pretty much every other Decepticon under the Sun had quick come backs and witty lines - oh, Primus, Breakdown's puns were the best, in his opinion - but Jeff? He was awful at this stuff. He usually just waited until he could get away with looking injured and fell to the ground to wait them out. Talking to an Autobot hadn't been attempted before, and it was hard to start because the way those optics were narrowed at him was really quite terrifying.

He could do this. He could do this!

"You can't open fire in here without hurting anyone important, Autobot," Jefferson said, his voice venomous, but shaking. Secretly, he was proud of himself. His line wasn't terrible, and it was true. He shook his weapons so anyone watching the feeds in here might think he was being menacing. "I'd say the only one at risk of being stupid would be you. Put them up and no has to get hurt."

Yes! Yes! It wasn't brilliant, but it was zippy! Chris would be so proud! Now, all the Autobot had to do was put her weapons away and be all 'I'll be good, just don't harm the human!' and then Jeff would 'stupidly' move away from the cage and make her stand near it. Then the bot would likely punch him in the face, grab the human, and run out the door!

Or something like that...

Maybe he should take Soledad out, like a hostage, but he would actually be making it easier for the enemy to grab her. But no! The girl was hurt, he couldn't hurt her worse! Or maybe he'd circle around the room in a stand off until the Autobot was near the human, and then he'd 'accidentally' let them escape! No, that wouldn't work, because if he moved, he'd get shot. Scrap, scrap...What would Bruce Willis do!?

[Deleted]

A laugh vibrated in Soledad's chest, but all that could emerge from her dry, swollen throat was a weak hiccup. Oh, Jeff... He was a terrible actor. Soledad could hear his voice shaking.

Not that she could have done any better.

And she had no intention of trying, either. Drawing the attention of the stranger waving guns around was a great way to get yourself killed, and Soledad had already promised herself she wouldn't die. Still, she found herself peeking out of her shelter, one hand pressed against her aching leg. If Jeff was going to put himself between the Autobot and her, the least she could do was watch whatever happened.

Mostly, all she could see was Jeff's back. Which was fine. As long as he was still standing.

[Deleted]

It talks.

Shadow's optics widened a little in surprise at that revelation, filing it away to report on later. Definitely not what she'd expected, any more than she'd expected the faint quaver in the 'Con's voice and field.

"I've been shot by your function class before." And it hurt like pit slag. Now that she knew she was dealing with a thinking being with at least some sense of self-preservation, she cycled her right arm blaster over to solid state, just for the psychological effect of the transition, and took a few more steps toward the computer. "I'll take my chances."