Ep. 1.5-New Faces (Closed)

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Sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, a rather beat-up looking femme glanced up at the new arrival.

"Lemme guess. Crashed, right?" she asked Crossfire, coughing a splatter of energon up immediately afterwards and wiping it off her chin with the back of her right servo. "From what I gather, that's status quo around here."


Shiftlock looked like she'd seen better days... several vorns ago. A cursory examination with optics alone yielded a picture of extended trauma. She hadn't seen good maintenance in a very long time, and two names had been carved into her shoulder pauldrons, along with multiple tally marks down her sides and arms.

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Shadow followed Crossfire out of the ground bridge, taking careful note of the other new arrival as she did so. As it always did, the inherent threat of outsiders in their base itched under her plating, though she didn't show it.

"Don't worry about it, Crossfire; we aren't going to put you to work before you're properly settled in." And have a more thorough security check, and Ratchet's gone over you for anything you might not know you're carrying. She filed her preliminary report, seemingly oblivious to the look of disgust/horror Steeljaw was sending her way. "I'm going to head back to the swamp and make sure I can't pick up any signal from your ship; with luck, it sunk deep enough we don't have to worry, but better to be safe."

And if that coincidentally kept her off base until the newcomers were settled, well, all the better.

She looked up at Steeljaw with a grin. "Can I get that bridge back open, Jaws? I'm gonna go play in the mud."

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Shiftlock kept her optics focused on Crossfire as he got closer. She made no sudden moves -- likely because she was sorely injured and didn't have the capacity for 'sudden' anymore.

"Yeah, I'm new. If these guys are willing to patch me up I'll be out of their faceplates and on my way." Her glyphs were bristling and unfriendly. She was doing nothing to hide her rage, grief and pain.

At the mention of the names, Shiftlock's right hand went to her left pauldron, digits brushing over the carved letters - cybertronian, barely readable due to some strange accenting. Her face drew into a scowl.

"Yeah. Friends," she hissed bitterly. "Like how we're such good pals with the 'Cons."

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Shiftlock closed her eyes and vented heat in a heavy sigh... Which, unfortunately just splattered a fine mist of energon from internal wounds on the back of the wall. She toned back her glyphs immediately to a guarded neutral, remembering that the mech standing in front of her was not her enemy... just another youngling. Like the kind she used to train.

"I'm a Wrecker, Crossfire. I don't really belong in a place like this. Name's Shiftlock." She handwaved his apology dismissively. "And the names on my pauldrons aren't allies, cohorts or kills." She looked back up at him, crimson optics as serious as a fatal wound. "They were the guys who held me prisoner for a long, long time."

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It never failed. The moment he actually put everything away, or tried to take a bit of down time, or, Primus help him, recharge, that's when everything went wrong. Alarms, or alerts, or incoming Primus knew what... grumbling, Ratchet ran code boosts that would scrub the last sluggish system boots from his processor as he trudged up to the control room. This one, at least, hadn't come with an 'all hands' or 'incoming hostile' alert attached to it, or even a class one medical emergency, but since he was the only medic it didn't much matter if it was class one or class five - it still mean the alert routed straight to Ratchet.

And rightly so as there were two new mecha in the control room when he got there - two new mecha, a trail of organic debris leading out from the bridge, and one vaguely amused or horrified looking symbiont, Ratchet wasn't sure. "What's all this, then?"

"New faces," Steeljaw answered promptly. "They're falling on us in groups, now." The symbiont was perched on the very top of the monitors and tucked his tail tighter about his pedes, as though he would rather be even further up the wall to escape the threat of mud on the floor, only jerking his head towards the two newcomers. "Crossfire, and the femme is Shiftlock. She needs..."

"Yes, yes, I can see that," Ratchet replied testily, scans already unfurling across the two newcomers, optics narrowing as he watched the floor of data coming back from them. "You," he snapped, gesturing to the black mech, "you're not draining out, there's nothing a scrub won't fix on you, and I won't have you in my medbay without it. Take care of that first." He jabbed a finger at the orange and black femme propped up against the wall. "You - medbay. Now, if you please."

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<< OOC And off to the Medbay we all go. Probably the end of this scene! >>

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<<ooc - we could head off to medbay with Shift and Ratchet, start a thread there, and Jaws could stay in this thread and show Crossfire to the washracks >>

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<<OOC Sure! Cross can maybe come in later or with a different thread if that's fine.>>

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Steeljaw eyed the mess on the floor and grimaced. Oh, Primus. Dirt. Organic dirt, and leaves, and... scrap, scrag, was that a BUG?

Trying not to let his own plates bristle, claw tips scraping against the console, he stood up and clamped himself to the wall. A few steps more raised him up above standard optic level, walking along perpendicular to the metal wall as he circled the control room to get to the corridor that lead to the rest of the base. "Well, then. Crossfire? This way. Ratchet's not joking - you really need to scrub that off. Trust me, if you let it dry, it only gets worse."

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Steeljaw paused at optic level, twisting to look behind him at the mech. "I'm Steeljaw," he answered. "Follow me - washracks are this way." So saying, he lead the way down the corridor away from the control room.

"Don't," he added, "worry too much about Ratchet. He's actually perfectly nice - provided you're polite and do what he tells you and don't do stupid scrap which means coming in with damage you could have avoided." He shot another look at the mech, tail tip curling in amusement. "Or covered in organic slag. He's not too keen on organic contaminants in medbay. Believe me, I know - I was infested when I got here, spent several weeks in a tropical ecosphere crawling in organic insects."

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Steeljaw shook his head and climbed up the wall beside the door, crossing the ceiling rather than the mud and suds streaked floor. Reaching the far side, he reversed to climb back down, pedes click-clacking with each magclamped step. Reaching the spray controls - which admittedly looked like any other bit of human engineered metal plumbing - he took the wheel between his teeth and several manipulator cables shaken loose from his mane, and gave it a hard yank to the right. With a grudging squeal of metal on metal, the wheel turned and a spray, weak but still smelling of a mild solvent, burst from the nozzles set three quarters of the way up the high walls.

Quickly flattening himself to the wall, the symbiont shuffled back up above the liquid spray. "Turning it to the right warms it up a little," he told Crossfire. "The pressure isn't great, but it might help soak some of that off if you can loosen up your plates." He rolled his optics towards the ceiling. "No double meaning intended, but you've got things embedded in your seams."

Settling at the junction of the wall and ceiling, Steeljaw hunkered down, tucking his pedes underneath him. "The base has had more than a few new arrivals lately," he added, returning to the question. "It's a little surprising, but I suppose the Prime sent out that call awhile ago. It's just not hitting the first wave of those closest to respond."

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"That would depend on your definition of 'fun'," Steeljaw replied dryly. "Which is to say, you would probably be better off not asking the CMO, Ratchet, if he thinks it's fun. I'm sure you can imagine the answer - which," he added hastily, "is not to put you off seeing Ratchet. Honestly, he's very very good - the Prime's chief medic - and he's more shouting than he is hitting, assuming you're not glitched about it."

Settling on the wall, Steeljaw cocked his head at the mech, curling his tail around his pedes where the tip could tap a gentle rhythm against the metal underneath him. Now for the awkward part, because there was ALWAYS the awkward part, though it helped, in his experience, to get it out of the way quickly. "The incoming are more than just Autobots. We have to assume the Decepticons have probably received reinforcements as well, and there's a de-militarized neutral outpost - sanctioned by both Megatron and the Prime - on the planet as well." He inclined his head slightly, one audial twitching back. "I'm neutral, myself, under contract to work here at the base."

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"Neutrals have to make a living just like any other mecha," Steeljaw answered calmly. "And I'm not precisely made for energon mining." He held up one forepede in demonstration, wiggling his pad joints and lack of actual opposable digit. "I assist with security here - that was my job, before the war - and in return I get room and board. It's a standard work contract."

He shrugged, the motion rippling down his backstruts. "I crash landed in a rather bad way and the Autobots were the ones who responded. I suppose I owe them - I just draw the line at taking on the insignia."