Ep. 0.5 - Cat's space - [Closed]

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Nothing was quite as appreciated as the day after a long spell of working, an entire schedule cleared just to do absolutely nothing productive.
Well, Cleaver had finally told them to stop. So today, usual chores aside (chores that were usually finished quickly were now finished in RECORD time after that little incident), she'd let herself ease into her little shuttle, and close out the buzz by closing her doors.

The space was large (for her), and surprisingly cozy for what little work she's done to it herself the past few months. A bed, some fashioned chairs, monitors and her own mix humming and whirring constantly off to the side. Simple. Not for lack of cash or ability to go shopping, but preference. Whenever she wanted something new, she liked to make it. Liked the process, liked mapping it out, liked putting it together.

And at the moment, she had two projects. One for a rainy day (she'd forgotten how long the frame for that couch had been sitting there…), the other new. In rolled sweat pants and a tank she sat cross legged on the floor, looking over the amount of pictures covering the spaces from where she sat to her bed, of varying sizes and subject matter. New York. Italy. Family. Faces she hadn't seen in a while, some she wouldn't see for a while longer.

Phone calls couldn't cut it sometimes. Especially when half the things said were lies, if said at all.

Sighing she rested her chin on her knee, focusing on the light cast around the dim room from her screens, the music courtesy of Moonshot. 'Couch time.' She didn't feel like slowing down; not right now. Pressing a small remote tucked into the band of her pants, the music changed-- faster paced, springy, groove-inspiring.

"Now." She said aloud to the frame, head tilted and foot tapping to the beat. "How do I make your big ass comfy?"

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"Ya need t'clean th' fuck up on here, Kit-Cat. S' a fuckin' mess'n a half," said a voice from the door, sounding perfectly drawling and bored and very, very close behind Catherine.

With very little warning what so ever, someone was standing inside the shuttle with the human, shoulder propped against the door frame, hands in pockets, a pair of keen brown eyes staring out at her from beneath the brim of a wide sweatshirt hoodie. His smile, teeth almost too white in the dark complexion of his face, spread in a wide, crooked arc and before the girl could react he laughed - a perfectly human, non-mechanical sound.

"What?" The young man in her shuttle flickered, suddenly, like a bad television projection. His eyes flashed energon blue. "Don't play. Cleaver told me 'bout your encounter with HER hardlight projection. This one's mine. Whatcha think? I fool ya or what?"

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He had at first-- hearing his voice, his same tone turned throaty and human, having turned fully expecting to see the big red mech crouching through the doorway. To the point she had to actually lower her gaze from where she thought he'd be to where he… or at least his projection… was.

For a moment her face got caught in a look of confusion, before she turned it into something a bit more suitable. Narrowed eyes looking him up and down, effect ruined by her tugging grin. "You wish."
The remote plucked from her waist band, the volume turned to something more suitable for conversation before she raised it and playfully chucked it at the holo.

"Suits you, though! Like the hoodie." She said, stepping from the back of the couch back to the floor, around a pile of pictures on the balls of her feet. "And you can walk your holo-ass in here, just don't step on anything." A pause, studying his holo's face and considering. "Or, y'want something?"

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“Nah, just lookin’. I’m in the other room with Sunny. Ya know, can’t get th’ fuckin’ hair right on any of th’ faces I pick.” Sideswipe, or rather Sideswipe’s projection, pushed off the wall and wandered around the shuttle, inspecting things. “Solid light avatars. S’necessary for when we gotta fake native drivers for vehicle mode, but remote projection like this ain’t real popular. Energy intensive, takes all yur fuckin’ concentration an’ they aint even managed ta get it ta look quite right.” Sideswipe squinted at pictures. “Aint ever asked a human for an opinion on mine though.”

The avatar suddenly and adroitly hopped the back of her couch, vaulting it and bouncing, with visible weight, on the cushions before nabbing one of her magazine and flipping it open. He grinned up at her, the iris of his holo’s eyes paling again, briefly electric blue, before fading back to dark.

“Convincing? Ya believe I am what I look like?”

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"Sure, it's not bad." Smirking, allowing this bit of praise. "And by not bad, pretty damn good." She paced away from the couch, avoiding being whacked by the bulk of flopping Sides. "Cleaver sends hers grocery shopping sometimes, so... I think you're fine."

Not but a few feet away, where the photos were sprawled (some near open scrap books, some near poster board), she plopped herself down and spread out her feet. Time to switch to project number two. As she stretched over to pick up and inspect a few printed images, she glanced over. Pretty damn good that he could walk around, practically solid as herself, and it only be a projection. "So you pick that one to avoid bad hair days? How quick can you change?"
As quick as he pleased, she wagered-- as soon as he had an image to copy of something he liked.

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“Grocery shoppin’? Ugh. How? Takes concentration enough as is just holdin’ somethin’ semi-solid,” said Sideswipe, tone suggesting he could think of few things more deplorable than grocery shopping.

He huffed, tossing the magazine and promptly flopping so he could lie on the couch and watch Cat inspect the posters she had laid out on the floor. His projection’s face reflected the lazy curiosity, one hand falling from the side of the cushions to hang over the side, the empty cloth of his hoodie sagging in convincingly toward the side of his head. It was the little thinks, physics and light and hard light. Human eyes were hard to fool because they were accustomed to seeing their own shape so regularly that the slightest idiosyncrasy was all it took…

“An’ I can switch whenever I want ta,[/i]” drawled Sides. “I just this face. Ya know. I picked it cuz I liked it.”

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She snickered, letting it trail off as she smoothed a picture onto the page of the open book. "Guess not so much for her. She likes the cooking process, I think. The tools and ways to prep it."
They both did... if the morning television specials and various meals together were anything to go by. 'Note to self: don't forget about the brick oven.'

It was when she picked herself back up that she fully noticed that lazy look; interested probably because it was one of the few things going on on base and it happened to be in direct (somewhat) line of sight. She smiled, picking her way clear across the field of stuff to her bed, sifting, and taking a few photos in hand. "Walls in here were kind of barren, so seemed about the right time to put up some color. Something interesting." As she stepped her way back over, she would pause to pick up one or two along the way, pointing as she went. "That one over there's going to be Italian coast line." Meant to be big and take up space. "This one's going to be a winery. This one's some family stuff. Aaand, a scrap book." She plopped herself back down. "Kinda helps take up space, ya know."

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“My room aint big enough for all my an’ Sunstreaker’s junk, ‘specially since I stripped out the POS for the hab suite tech. Got a whole cave in th’ back for all th’ extra,” said Sideswipe.

The holo remained looking at Cat but Sideswipe’s thought turned immediately to the Starry Night painting, how long he’d spent painstakingly tearing the plating out of the walls just to keep the painting intact. The commando elected to stop thinking about this however and his holo-form shifted slightly, arms moving up behind his head. The trick with holoform was not letting anyone get too close a look for too long if you HAD to take it in public. Most species didn’t pay attention to a passing stranger or their slight errors, but face to face for long enough the façade would begin to show. It took a lot of practice to pass organic.

“You got any family that’s gonna want ta know where you are? Come lookin’ for ya?”

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She let the silence drag out a moment, looking incredibly interested in the placement of the image in her hand before placing it, taking her time to smooth it out. "Yes." She said finally, examining her work in this particular page. Tony and a couple of her cousins and herself at a festival. "A few, but, they're used to me dropping off now and again. Not really knowing everything."

She shrugged, ends of her lips turning downward in an expression that seemed a bit too casual. "And only a couple who would know where to look. But, he wouldn't anyway. Unless I completely fell off the face of the Earth."
She turned the page, flipping through other images (some looked like they were just ripped from magazines lying around older than she was) to fit onto the space, and once satisfied with the content took a chance to look up, shrug a shoulder and smile. "So you guys got a lot of stuff, huh?"

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“Three decades of fuckin’ ‘bout on earth an’ figurin’ out how your commerce systems work will do that,” said Sideswipe, his holo inspecting his nails and mock polishing them on his very over-large hoodie. “Funny ‘nough, Sunstreaker’s fuckin’ doodles sell pretty slaggin’ well on Etsy an’ I used ta run a pretty lucrative delivery service when we had a ground bridge ta use. Stock market’s interestin’ too, ‘specially if yur willin’ ta wait on all yur investments. Lemme tell ya, that whole Microsoft thing…”

His holo-form whistled appreciatively.

“Saw that one comin’, I did. Should see the junk we brought.” He looked over at Cat again.

“Funny thing. I’m th’ most alien illegal alien there ever was, but I’m still contributin’ t' several economies. Wonder how that would go over, if yur governments knew what we can really do. How easy it is for us. Prime an’ his team are all livin’ under Uncle Sam’s dollar like refugees, but they’re th' Sparked immortals of Cybertron.” His holo smirked. “Gotta wonder sometimes, when it’s gonna dawn on yur people that they’re a blink of an eye to us an’ earth’ll be a footnote in a war that’s not like t’ end for a few more million years.”

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"Well you're just a fucking ball of sunshine, aren't you?" She said dryly, flashing him a raised brow and smirk that didn't quite reach her eyes.

She wasn't about to spend this small day off with enjoyable projects and (mostly) enjoyable company being depressed about the disturbingly accurate similarities of human lives to that of a fruit fly. Was not about to spend the day thinking about how, in a matter of decades, she'd be gone from Cleaver's life, their world, as quickly as she came. Was not going to let those comments, for reasons she couldn't entirely put a finger on right now, get under her skin.

Today at least.

They were from two different worlds after all. 'No biggie.'

"Prob'ly shit a few bricks." A quick comment on that subject, punctuated with a short upturn of her lips. "You said Sunstreaker doodles. He an artist?" And by raising her brow, seemed to add on wordlessly Are you?

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“‘Artist’ might be the word. Applies to him, but I couldn’t draw if my Spark-given life depended on it,” drawled Sideswipe, promptly diverging from the uncomfortable subject of mortality to the also uncomfortable subject of his comatose twin brother. He did not, despite his inclination, voice his opinion that their human government was going to run right the hell up against the Tyrest Accord and in a hard way. Always happened when Cybertronians crossed paths with organics dumb or desperate enough to take sides in their perpetual conflict – eventually their squishie allies try to get what they can’t have.

“Sunstreaker got all that noise during th’ split an’ I got all th’ charm. You’ll see it when he wakes up; if he isn’t being ‘artistic’ with someone’s facial-plates, then he’ll prolly show you. Maybe. Hard to say. Either can’t shut up about his stuff or he won’t show it ta anyone. I’ve got one of his paintings in my hab suite bolted to the ceiling. Moonie saw it.”

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That caused her to look up sharply, face pulling into a grin that was equal parts pleased and giddy. "So you met Moonshot!" She was excited, apparently, to hear that the little white mech (who sometimes seemed younger than herself) had come out of his nest to introduce himself. Exciting because it meant that maybe, he was getting more comfortable.

She couldn't quite put a finger on it, but something usually seemed twitchy, nervous, about him, unless he was either cleaning his guns or listening to music, or sometimes, around her. 'Probably because I'm the only thing smaller than his peed.' She figured.

So of course, this was cause for grinning.

"He tell you about the rave cave yet?" Maybe, maybe not… but she couldn't pass up this opportunity for possible hang-out bond time between them. And Sides sounded like a mech who liked his tunes, which meant more common ground.

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Sideswipe, back in the medical bay with his brother, grinned and in Cat’s shuttle his holoform flickered lazy and shrugged. He wasn’t really concentrating. A real sustain hardlight avatar required more focus and drained a lot of energy. Sideswipe didn’t feel like burning it if he didn’t have to put on a convincing show.

“I’ve heard rumor and tall tale of this cave. Ain’t seen it in action yet on account of Moonshot’s got a case of performance anxiety, but that mech’s got a tweak in his neural net for it. You know, creativity matrix wired just right, Spark spun the right way. Reminds me of my brother if my brother were a total wuss. So means, ‘ventually he’ll have to show someone whatever th’ hell he’s workin’ on. S’in his programming. Not sure if he knows it yet though, spendin’ so much time runnin’, freakin’ out, blowin’ gaskets ‘bout stayin’ alive I’m not ever sure he’s ever gone outta his way ta actually live a little.”

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"He's not a wuss." She said with the same tones she would use speaking to her cousins, defending one of the younger against the older. 'Just…' Had a lot more going on under that helm than he was admitting, maybe.

"Y'know he might enjoy some company." And with a couple more pages done to her taste, she looked up, smiling. So much time running and freaking out, never having lived a little. Well he was calm around her, calm around his music, and damn proud of his new project… seemed like a perfect place to her to introduce him to that practice. "We should give 'im a hand sometime." Peeked out at him from the tops of her frames. "If you're interested in loud music, glowy lights an' all that jazz, that is."
She'd already made plans for it, but now that Sides was here, for better or worse, those plans now included one more.