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.
“Well, you know slag’s serious when I got CO’s tellin’ me run solo courier all the way back ta Kalis,” said Sideswipe, wiping tacky energon from his face plates the way you might wipe mud or dirt. He was so far past worrying about that sort of thing that he almost forgot that, here on base, he had the option to get to racks for once and actually get this junk off his plates. All at once, the prospect of being clean of a full energon ration, of getting proper repairs, of everything that came with an on-base assignment – all of the above seemed to hit him at once and suddenly he was excited to be alive and not shot down on some inter-state.
“Line’s spread too thin,” said Sideswipe, pulling a circuit booster from his subspace. Worked in a pinch as a poor-mech’s painkiller. He slotted a medical port, injected the chemical-nanite soup and shuddered a bit at the false euphoric rush. “We aint got enough mechanoids to cover the border, spread so thin Cons wandered in through holes in the line trying to hook up with other units. Supply-line’s been cut off for weeks. We steal rations of the Cons but they’re starving too. Our field medic’s been giving us these.” Sides held up then tossed the recreational drug cartridge. ”Whenever we get hurt, stead of nanite boosters.”
Sideswipe’s next look was less friendly, more hungry, calculated.
“Any chance command here can help me out wit’ getting’ somethin’ back for my team? Not many of us left as is.”
Air Raid squinted at the little cartridge pinched between Sideswipe's fingers before it was tossed aside. Was that a- oh lordy!
He could not help but feel aghast. If their medics were so starved for supplies that they had to give their ground troops circuit boosters in lieu of nanites or receptor-freezers for the pain, then they had to be in trouble. Even Air Raid knew that for now, however badly this base on the edge of Kalis-state territory was shelled, he could at least rely on his medics to patch him up in a medbay that was clean and stocked, however sparsely.
It was shocking to consider that just to the south, just past the freeways and sky bridges, there were fellow Autobots with severed supply lines, scraping rations from the Decepticons.
And their only flier was a carbot with a jetpack, flying courier missions through combat airspace! This guy Sideswipe had to be pretty brave, or else pretty crazy. Maybe both.
The question made Air Raid rouse himself from his thoughts.
"Uh, yeah. Yeah!" he said, snapping back to attention. He grinned and stepped up to the terminal doors, which were guarded by a pair of wary looking mechs. Inside the building it was dark, the spacious lobby lit by cobbled strings of scavenged lighting and a grumbly generator. "Yeah, you know... we're still getting supplies coming through here from the main city. Not a lot, but the boss'll work out a way to scrap what you need, I bet. You helped us out big time against those bombers, it's the least we can do. What sorta stuff do you need the most? Energon, medical supplies?"
Sideswipe answered so fast the words rushed together: “Medical supplies.”
The commando’s whole field lit up and almost immediately his mouth took up double its usual turf on his face, a smile like sunshine coming out. He was keeping an even pace with Air Raid’s walking, his limp having vanished with the injection of that circuit booster, even kind hop-skipped so he was walking backward in front of the Aerialbot, digging in his sub-space for something. Already he was mentally categorizing the injured back at post, mechs without knee joints, lost arms, working with blow hydraulics, damage to nerve directories, or just plain working in pain. Take that number, run it against the number of mechs without enough fuel, cutting their rations for the damaged, cutting their energon rations with circuit boosters to take the edge of as their systems started to cannibalize themselves for fuel.
“Field rations if ya got a full delivery. Our last supply drop got… well… they got blown th' frak up, actually. I suppose you lot know that. Sorry. Um…” Sides produced a hard-copy data pad from his subspace, sweeping his thumb down the front to bring the screen active. “Medic-bot got me a list of stuff he needs: standard unit ration of mesh-kits, spare parts (a bunch), energon infusers, nanite and receptor freezers, looks like a request for any type-A7 hydraulic mount refits…” He thumbed down the list, looked at Air Raid a bit haplessly. “Well, he’s got a lot he aint had an’ medics doin’ without are a cranky function-type.”
Someone demanded to know which stupid gearslip was leaking coolant on the floor.
“GIMME A MESH PATCH AN’ I’LL STOP BLEEDIN’ON YOUR FRAGGIN’ PRIMUS-SLOTTING GLITCH-FRAKKING FLOOR!” snarled Sideswipe in completely homicidal-sounded Kaonese. Then he swapped back to Neocybex, perfectly agreeable with Air Raid. “Yeah, the unit would be set ta hold dat post another four orns on that alone. We got rationin’ down ta a science at dis point.”
Last Edit: Oct 10, 2012 19:45:25 GMT -5 by Deleted
Air Raid's optics popped at the snarled exclamation. A moment later he grinned hugely, especially when the mech who had brought the diatribe upon himself started and hastily scurried away. The only Kaonese he spoke were swear words, and from the sound of it Sideswipe had just spat out a mouthful of them.
The words echoed across the dimly lit lobby. It was a big room, with big staircases at either end that gracefully curved up to the mezzanine. At one point it had likely been a bright and airy and sleekly furnished spaceport; the war had knocked out power and coated everything in a layer of dust and grime.
"I think we've got some of the stuff on your list," he said as he led the way across lobby. He looked up and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Like uh, the mesh kits for sure. Boosters, nanite infusers, freezers, we got those too. Dunno about any hydraulic mount fits, but our medics could better tell you about that. Not sure what they carry for spare parts, but I know they've been cobbling together all kinds of stuff from the shuttles that were left over in this aerodrome when my squad took it over. We commandeered them and stripped those suckers right down. I got an altimeter from one of 'em sitting in me as we speak!"
Air Raid pointed at his chest with his thumb and laughed. Then he gestured. "Hey, lemme take you to the medbay first. It's down here on the first floor anyway. It's not much, just an office the medics have taken over, but you can get patched up there and show the medics your list. I'll tell them what's up and I bet they'll try to send you back to your base with a field pack of whatever they can spare. Should help keep you guys at your post a while longer, especially if you ration it."
“Thanks, mech, you’re a real ace,” said Sidewipe, grinning.
In another time, another place, in less peril and less harrowing times, Sideswipe might have found Air Raid obnoxious or at the very least over-eager. The red front-liner would guesstimate he and Raider were in the same build-bracket, age-wise, but by virtue of being a Vos-built model Sides dropped his experience level way down below that which he allotted fellow sub-platers and industrial builds. Misery got you mature faster than most things and if this bot had room to retain his good-nature this deep in the war, he was either a miracle-sparked or a bright-spark of some variety.
Didn’t do a thing to affect the instant camaraderie of taking down a seven-Con aerial unit and single-handedly saving a central transmitter tower. Didn’t for a moment offset Sideswipe’s immediate and instinctive thought of ‘This guy would watch my back in a fight’ which put Air Raid several notches higher on Siders’ social ladder than even some of his unit-mates, who had yet to fight next to him so much as hide behind him and Sunstreaker. Top-platers all. It wasn’t a universal sterotype, just common enough to keep reinforcing it every time Sides was in the burn and white phosphex heat of a fight.
Medical was, really, an office. It looked like there should have been a tank-former sized desk in here instead of half a dozen mid-size medical slabs. He took a seat on the nearest empty berth, three of the far slabs occupied by fliers in various states of disrepair. He handed the data pad to Air Raid.
Medical was worn and a little on the tattered side, the walls deeply cracked in places and the lighting of the same jury-rigged variety found in the main terminal - all wire and bare tubes - but it was clean, and it was tidy. It was small, but full of neatly aligned berths, rolling trays, crates, and patchwork monitoring equipment. The back corner had been partitioned off for emergency repairs, armatures of lights and operating arms poised over the empty slab within it. Space here was a precious commodity, and little of it had been wasted.
A handful of white-plated medics and nurses puttered between the berths. They looked tired and bore the unmistakeable stains of old fluids that would never scrub out completely, but talked briskly among themselves, in low voices. Evidently they were busy enough that, for the moment, Sideswipe's arrival had gone unnoticed.
Air Raid's entry to the room had been odd. The young Aerialbot had lingered at the doorway at first, as if hesitant to step further. Only after glancing back and forth did he hurry inside. He took a seat on the edge of the berth across from Sideswipe, taking care not to budge the unconscious flier already occupying it. He gently patted the poor fellow on one of his legs before turning to face the red warrior.
"For sure," he said, accepting the data pad. He turned it around in his hand and paged through it, his brow furrowing. "I just messaged my CO, and he's on his way down. He wants to meet you. I'll show it to him first, get the all-clear for what on the list can be spared, and then I'll help the medics put together a field pack for you. Uh oh. Speaking of which. Brace yourself."
One of the medics had turned and finally spotted them. A sharp exclamation rippled through his colleagues, who gaped at Sideswipe, the unfamiliar mech smeared in gore and his own injuries. Then, as one, they rushed towards him, all fussy faces and gabbling alarm.
Air Raid grinned at him, his optics bright. "Buddy, you are gonna get the slag patched outta you, ha ha...!"
“Oi. OW! Watch the jet mod! Don’t touch it unless you wanna lose fingers. OW! Primus, like a mech never needed a patch job before…”
If Sideswipe had any further protests they were mostly drown out by questions as to the nature of his injuries, how he’d sustained them, demands for an up-to-date medical dossier and several of them pulling on his arm to see if he had any hard-copy glyphs cut into the inside of his forearm guard. Porting medical data direct from an injuried bot had gotten tricky since the outbreak of that file-share virus that keep killing Autobot medics. A lot of mechs had started laser-cutting important info into plates. Not every field medic had a proxy to jack in with for a data transfer. No one wanted to die because their medic couldn’t risk porting information in the field.
Several solvent scrubs and half a dozen mesh-patches and nanite-infusions later, Sideswipe was sitting across from Air Raid looking more or less like himself and less like he’d crawled out of a scrapheap, covered in motor-oil and energon, looking like he’d just slaughtered someone. One of the nurse-class mechs slapped a color booster in his hand and, minutes later, some of the grayed-out matte-tone to his paintjob had come intensely alive, bright red against dark black, multi-layered, sparkling undergloss and fresh-fuel energized. He sighed, sitting back, bracing his palms against the berth.
One of the doctors was still looking at his jet mod.
“if yur ‘bout to tell me, it’s badly integrated, I already heard it. Was in my medical file.”
“No, I was about to tell you you need a realignment. Leave that open. I’ll be back in a klik.”
Sides shrugged, left the plates on his back flared, and grinned at Air Raid. “Forgot what civilization's like.”
With the red warrior scrubbed and tended to and his jet mod already being inspected, a few of the nurses had begun to turn their critical eye upon Air Raid next. What he lacked in gashes and seeping wounds he made up for in dents where he had been kicked and struck by the Decepticon Seeker. Recognising the threat, he slipped off the berth and held up his hands in a warding gesture.
"I'm fine," he said. He pointed to his own chin and smiled. "Really. I can hold. Would this face lie to you?"
"Park it," said one of the nurses.
"I remember this one," said another. "I'm going to get a beta-receptor blocker."
"I don't know what that is," said Air Raid. He tried to look stern as he wagged a finger at them both. "But I am sure that whatever it is is an excessive practice of medicine!"
The Aerialbot backed away as they bore down on him. He had just gone into a playful crouch with his hands at his hips like a cornered gunslinger when there came a sigh from the doorway.
"Air Raid, sit down." A dark blue and white mech stood there, an expression of stoic exasperation on his face. He was tall, with a broad car-bot frame and a brimmed helm and the unmistakeable air of command about him. In one hand he carried a short glass of violet energon; in the other a slim flask, the kind that could be tucked neatly into an integrated pistol holster with no one the wiser. "I'm only going to tell you once."
His calm gaze turned to Sideswipe. "You must be Sideswipe. From the Seventy-First Ground Division, was it?"
“That’s me. Seventy-First is pinned down in th’ south-west outpost on th’ city’s outer turf.” And before the conversation could, again, turn to his health instead of that of his unit: “Supply line’s been cut since Decepticons brought in dat secondary aerial unit; they runnin’ strafing blockades like they was doin’ in Polyhex durin’ my last posting there. So I’ve seen it before, but worse. Decades long aerial skirmishes out there. Supply drops get cut out of the sky so often the ground units don’t see supplies for months so I ain’t askin’ for any CO out here ta spare another flier out our direction – nice as dat would be – just lookin’ to get whatever I can carry back to my unit.”
The way he looked at the doctor, the way he said it, was all very easy-coming – like he’d said this before to other CMO’s, CO’s, LT’s, and authority figures perhaps questioning a low-rank commando’s authority to take supplies back to his unit, even when the official lines were cut. Walked a perfect line between wry, friendly, and ‘I’m-putting-this-on-you-personally.’
“Really ain’t askin’ much, that. I’m patched. Got a list from my unit medic. You should know him; he was stationed here before they reassigned him so got his authentications an’ seein’ how I got Raider outta a tight spot an’ yur transmitter ain’t broke, maybe th’ Seventy-First is due a speedy re-supply.” His stare threatened to put holes in a wall. “Sir.”
The base commander did not reply right away. He studied the red warrior thoughtfully.
Then he looked at Air Raid and made a gesture. The Aerialbot gave a smart salute and hurried forward, evidently glad for any excuse to dodge the clutches of the medics.
"Got the list right here, sir," he said. "Took a look at it myself and seriously boss, I think there's a lot of it we can spare. We should be able to put together a field pack of supplies to send back with-"
"May I see it, please?" said the commander, and Air Raid jumped guiltily.
They made a trade, flask for datapad. A minute or two of silence passed as the commander paged through the list with his thumb, pausing only to occasionally sip from his glass. Air Raid loitered nearby, anxiously rattling his fingers on the top of the flask.
After a moment the commander hummed and looked at Sideswipe from over the top of the pad.
"First things first," he said. "After I received Air Raid's message I sent a comm to your unit to let them know you are alive and well. I think they were glad to hear it.
"Secondly, while it's true that I cannot spare any fliers for reassignment, I believe that the Seventy-First's current outpost falls near enough to the outer extent of our southern patrol that when my fliers return we may be able to outfit a flight of them with long-range tanks that would extend their range far enough to cover your airspace on a limited rotation. I will have to confirm this with Logistics, but for now consider it a plausible option that we will look into implementing. We have been tasked with the responsibility of defending Kalis' airspace, and that includes the outer turf. If we have been remiss in doing so, I can only offer my apologies. I do not wish to offer excuses, but I'm afraid the simple truth is that we have been as hard-pressed as everyone else in this region.
"And thirdly..."
The commander waved a medic forward and gave him the datapad.
"I will give my medics the authority to put together a field pack of whatever on this list they can spare," he said. He gave Sideswipe a meaningful look, his gaze steady. "I am grateful for the favour you did for us in assisting Air Raid by protecting the transmitter, but please understand: I would have extended the same offer to anyone who approached me with a reasonable request for urgently needed supplies. I cannot spare everything, but I will what I can. Gratitude does not need to be a bartering chip, and frankly what helps your unit will eventually help mine further down the line. And Air Raid, if you do not stop drumming on that I will personally assign you to turborat control duty, and then I will tell Silverbolt."
Looking aghast, the Aerialbot quickly stop rattling his fingers on the flask. "That's cold, boss."
Sideswipe sat unmoving, blue optics fixed on the other mech with an unflinching and unwavering kind of focus, the same focus most mechs might apply to the watching potential enemies in the field or at the very least the kind of soldier’s distrust of any rank that wasn’t just directly above his own. This wary attention he held through the entirety of the CO’s words, as though he suspected after every seemingly helpful thing the other mech said was a ‘but’ or a ‘however’ waiting just around the bend. When the medic wrapped his speechifying with a kind of mild criticism about Sideswipe’s manipulative tactics – because that was precisely what they had been – the commando was relieved.
He was actually going to get help. Actually.
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” said Sideswipe, mentally tossing out the advice almost instantly.
Because it would take more than one base commander acting right to undo what dozens of regular CO’s had taught him at other outposts: that no help was coming unless you made come, that you were largely on your own until the powers that be said otherwise, that being in the army sometimes wasn’t that different from Kaon… except all the ways that it was hundreds and hundreds of times worse than Kaon. Except for that. Sideswipe survived this long by keeping a running tally of who was his friend, who owed him what, and what he owed others and gratitude was always a bargaining chip.
The commander's resigned expression suggested that he did not believe a word of it, but he only studied Sideswipe for a nano-klik longer before turning his attention back to his Aerialbot.
"When your repairs are complete, report to the duty Flight Officer for debriefing," he said. "I'll give you part of the next shift off, but in four hours you'll need to report to Recon to be rigged up for another telemetry flight."
Air Raid sagged at that, looking chagrined. His arms hung and his wings drooped down his back. "More telemetry? Those flights are really boring. Uh. Sir."
"But necessary. And for the moment, you are the only one left who can fly them."
He gave the unconscious mechs slabbed in the medbay a meaningful look before turning back towards the doorway. He pointed at Air Raid and gave him a mild version of the 'don't sass me' squint perfected by officers and the exasperated elderly. "Don't forget to close your flight plan with Operations or else they'll have an electrical aneurysm wondering where you are. No, keep the flask - I brought it for you both to share. Radio me for updated base codes before heading to Recon. Sideswipe, Air Raid, thank you - if you'll now excuse me..."
Air Raid saluted. He waited until the big mech had left the room before he clutched the flask with fiendish glee and strutted back to Sideswipe, brushing aside a nurse who had reached for one of his dented wings as he did so.
"Yesss, free hootch," he said gloatingly as he sat back on the opposite berth. He tapped the flask, which uncapped with a hiss, and almost took a sip before remembering his manners. He passed it to the red warrior instead, grinning. "We know the boss has got a still hidden somewhere on the base, but nobody's been able to find it yet. Hope you're a bit of a drinker, 'cos that home-distilled stuff'll usually take paint off your wings. You could de-grease an engine with it."
“Sounds like my kinda jump-starter,” said Sides, taking the flask and saluting with it.
He took a swig and eyed the ceiling in with an egalitarian mien of someone judging the quality if a ten-times refined high-concentrate instead of someone’s ad hac engine cleaning solution or some such. The flier hadn’t been lying. The stuff had a kick like a Tekkaido master and Sideswipe immediately felt both better and worse for having consumed it which, to Sideswipe, was the hallmark of any truly great home-brew any solider ever cooked up in basement barracks somewhere. He visibly shuddered and handed the flask back.
“Yeah,” said Sides, sitting back again and venting hot air from his side-vents beneath his armor. Feeling more companionable than he’d felt in ages, he allowed himself to relax while one of the previous medics returned to examine his back, frowning and muttering to themselves while they tweaked things and Sideswipe forced himself to not move to snarl at them. “My kinda jump-start. Your base commander’s seems pretty decent for an officer. He a war build or a pre-war cold construct?”
Air Raid accepted the flask eagerly, which was a mistake. The distilled high-grade hit his lines like a laser bolt, ionizing everything in its wake. He coughed and wiped his mouth. God, it was terrible stuff. It was probably eating through his tank at that very moment.
He took another sip. WHY AM I STILL DRINKING THIS?
"He's pre-war, I think," he said, his voice raspy. He sat hunched, his wings stuck back, grinning and squinting painfully as the rush of energon briefly shorted out one of his optics. "You know, that older mech-type - silently disapproving of everything, gives the evil eye to anything upper-caste. Drinks a lot, but keeps stuff organised and doesn't run his fliers into the ground, so I can't complain."
The Aerialbot trailed off as he watched the medics examine Sideswipe's back. He studied them curiously, leaning sideways for a better look.
That jet-mod. It allowed the red Autobot to fly in a way that Air Raid had never seen before. It seemed like thruster technology, only it generated a good deal more thrust - thrusters and anti-grav were not meant to accelerate a bot at those kinds of speeds.
He resisted the urge to reach out and clasp Sideswipe by the shoulder and turn him around for a good look at it, by reminding himself that not all Autobots were as grabby as some of his fellow Aerialbots were. He had lost track of the number of times he had tussled with his wingmates, or been snatched into a headlock and thrown into a door. Good times. Autobots might not think that way, though.
"Speaking of flying, I gotta ask," he said. He handed back the flask and nodded with his chin, his optics bright. "Where in Primus' name did you get that jet-mod? Gotta tell you, I've never seen anything like that before. Hope you don't mind me sayin', but when I first saw you I was like, 'what the hell is that!'"
Sides took the flask and knocked back about half of what remained in the canister which, quite honestly, was probably dangerous and going to get the medics up in a tizzy this slag was so raw. This was, perhaps, a clear indication that he was going to need to be significantly drunker before he did anything like talk about what the hell it was he had set into his godsdamned back. It wasn’t exactly a question a ground trooper could get away from: why the hell a speeder alt had a flight-adapted jet-pack built into their root mode, ‘specially when your twin brother of the same frame-type didn’t share those specs.
“Was on sale,” said Sideswipe, his Neocybex taking on a distinct Kaonese lilt.
“Hold still,” said the medic who seemed to be tightening something in his spine somehow. “This is a terrible design.”
“Nah, really?” said the commando, in the tone of those who’d heard such a thing many times. He downed another mouthful of what he supposed was some engex mix only a few ingredients away from being chemical solvent. It helped his instinct to jerk away whenever the mechanoid at his back twinged something or another. He assumed the disposition of a solider off-duty best as he could manage it under the circumstances and, because Raider had helped him fight his way out of an aerial battle he had no business surviving, he actually didn’t leave it at his previous oneliner. “Prototype,” he said. “Bigwigs at some tech company said they needed someone ta test it. So I tested it an’ they let me keep it.”
Which was lie of such omission as to be criminal… therefore suiting him down to the ground.
“I’m getting something for this nerve connector,” said the medic tensely, clearly not enthused by Sideswipe’s prognosis. At their departure, Sideswipe hopped off the circuit slab and tossed a thumb over his shoulder, grinning huge.