robothell | (no subject)

(no subject)

Who: Brainstorm & Spin
What: Brainstorm works on a horny bow
When: Over time after sex pollen
Where: HIS WORKSHOP
Warnings: regrets and a cupid's bow

Never teach Brainstorm that something can be an effective distraction or deterrant, because he'll find a way to turn it into a weapon.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened in the aftermath of the pollen. After seeing half the planet incompacitated by their own interface protocols, it gave him a few ideas for a new concept.

Brainstorm hangs upside down from the ceiling of his workshop, gently running his fingers over the lightstring connecting one limb of the bow in his hands to the other, testing to make sure it responded to his touch. That part was easy -- it's not like he hasn't used lightstring before -- but the actually affects of the ammo was still a work in progress.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The only warning Brainstorm gets is a quiet little 'clink' from somewhere within the depths of the lab and then-

A very large hand plants itself squarely on the inventor's shoulders and pushes.

Normally, Brainstorm was pretty attentive of his lab. He knew well enough when someone was sneaking him in.

Exactly why he squawks when Spinister pushes him. He flails in surprise, just barely keeping his grip on the bow as his arms wave and his wings flap. He curls slightly up mainly by reflex as he swings, but the suspensions keep him secure and his legs and waist firmly trapped in place.

"Hello!" Spinister greets cheerfully, watching his friend flail around, looking extremely pleased with himself. When Brainstorm comes back into reach, he casually pushes the smaller fellow up and away once again.

"You didn't tell you had a swing... thing!" There you go Brainstorm, sailing beautifully through the lab. "You should really tell your friends when you have swings things. They're neat!"

"Spinisterrrrr!" Brainstorm shouts indignantly, his voice wavering as he swings farther away.

While he's sailing through the air like this he cant curl up to free his legs and try and get down. That would probably be a terrible response anyway. For now, the restraints are keeping him from plummeting face first. There is, of course, the strain it was putting on the ceiling. It groans slightly as he swings.

He knew he should have cranked himself up higher.

"It's not--" he says, swinging away. "A swing!"

"Oh."

Spinister reaches out and catches Brainstorm as the inventor flies by, gently slowing him to a stop, hands on the inventor's hips.

"... So if it's not a swing," he begins, face scrunching in confusing. "Then why are you upside down in a harness that swings?"

Brainstorm's plating fluffs as Spinister reaches out and stops him. He's grateful for that at least. Too much more swinging and he probably would have puked his breakfast through his mask slits.

How rude.

Brainstorm takes a moment to vent and calm his tank.

"It's not meant to swing. And it helps me think. Different perspective." He taps the side of his head.

"Oh." It's said with the calm acceptance of someone who didn't understand and would never understand and probably didn't care too much about it in the end.

"You should make it a swing," Spinister adds anyways because swings are pretty neat.

"So what are you making?" he continues, peering around Brainstorm's legs to see the bow thing.

"Maybe."

A swing was easy. Too easy. That's something for bored engineers. Nothing for a genius of his caliber, unless the swing did something special like fuse your exoskeleton to your endoskeleton.

Hmm.

"A bow." He fiddles with a setting on it for a moment. "Mind if you walk over there?"

Brainstorm makes a motion to a few paces in front of him.

"Sure!"

Spin lets go of Brainstorm's waist and does at directed, walking to the spot his friend had motioned him to.

"... Wait." The heli narrows his optics as realization dawns on him, looking between the bow and Brainstorm. "You're not going to shoot that at me are y-"

Twack!

Too late. A small dart smacks Spinister in the chest. Brainstorm immediately lowers the bow, optics widening with an eager little glee.

"So? How do you feel? Any different?"

Brainstorm doesn't really get much of an answer because Spinister's suddenly disappeared. At least, he doesn't get much of an answer until the heli makes some decidedly ticked sounding hisses from somewhere above him.

When the inventor looks up, he'll see the heli clinging to the rafters, armor puffed up so much he almost looked floofy, rotor blade so tense it was trembling and red optics round with angry terror.

It's the last he sees of Spin for a bit because he kind of just vanishes into the shadows.

Well. That was weird.

It slips Brainstorm's mind eventually though, since he didn't have much of a mental retention for all the times he's offended or pissed someone else. Mostly he finds himself anticipating Spinister returning so he can test it again. Last time gave him inconclusive results.

This time he was 95% certain that it wouldn't result in circuit frying or pressurization lasting more than 8 hours.

His lab was in worst shape though. It was a total mess of scrap and just... stuff he's pulled apart, but that was fine because he only needed enough work space to work on his current project. He has a magnifying lens fixed over his eye this time as he works on the bow's circuitry.

Fortunately for Brainstorm's lab work, Spinister's ability to retain grudges was also pretty poor, especially when there wasn't any kind of actual pain involved.

This time, his arrival was decidedly a little less subtle. In fact, he kind of just faceplants into and through Brainstorm's abused door looking like he'd lost a fight with a dust monster.

"Being someone's exile buddy sucks," he declares, voice muffled by the door. He lays there for a good few minutes before eventually dragging himself towards Brainstorm's shower rack and locking himself in.

He'll put the door back in after he's cleansed.

That's not the first time Spinister has busted his door down, but he's great at startling Brainstorm repeatedly. He almost jumps out of his plating.

When Spinister gets out of the shower he'd find Brainstorm looking down at the mess of his door and the large frowny face he'd painted upon it to deter people from these things. What was so hard about knocking? He really needed a better door.

"That guy sucks. I don't know why you followed him out there," he decides to comment as soon as Spin shows his face again.

"Oh, you know, blackmail and stuff," Spinister answers far more cheerful now that he wasn't quite so dusty. It was going to be a short affair since he'll have to roll around a bit before meeting up with Tarn again, but he'll enjoy the heck out of being clean for a little while.

He carefully makes his way over to Brainstorm through the mess on the floor, draping the towel over his neck. Once he's there, he picks up the door and goes to work putting it back up.

"He's kind of super bad at this whole survival thing. I mean, gosh, I know officers were pretty pampered but he should've gotten some training on the stuff."

Boy, does he know that feeling. A bit trapped sometimes. He's fairly certain that his handler and the DJD have been having some misgivings about his allegiances for a bit.

"Who'd be brave enough to give them that training though?"

Brainstorm was trying to imagine Tarn or Helex or one of those other sadists as oppressed. He wasn't coming up with much imagination on that.

Still, he goes to fetch some engex for Spinister while he puts his door in place. Consider it compensation for being such a good sport about the testing and stuff. He did talk to him about that, right?

Oh well, he forgets.

"HC could've ordered it, but I think HC just didn't want to deal with them," the heli shrugs, bending the door hinges back into their proper places. "So I'm walking their freaking commander through basic survival stuff now. Guess that makes me the brave one, huh?"

He tests the door, opening and closing it once before turning back to Brainstorm.

"I keep thinking it'd just be super easy to snuff him out, but then Helex would find me and more of his buddies might appear and then I'd be in some real good trouble." And being in trouble would be bad if the other Scavengers ever showed up. "'Sides, the guy's kinda sad now and I don't really like killing sad things."

Brainstorm grimaces through that explanation. Sad or not, Tarn was still a sociopathic murderer and not someone he would like to see at any point. He sort of figures it would be inevitable though, especially since he wanted to keep his allegiance quiet. He'd chickened out of telling Megatron.

"Might put him out of his misery," he grumbles, pouring a glass, and then goes back over to offer it to Spin.

"There you go, Black Label. Well-- as close to a Black Label as you get out here. I kept it sealed in a vacuum sealed time acceleration chamber for a few weeks and it really brings out the flavor."

Edited 2015-12-27 06:24 (UTC)

"Black Label?" Spin blinks, accepting the glass and peering at it curiously. "I haven't had Black Label since that one time me and my teammies broke into our CO's safe and stole the stash."

Before that? The fanciest drinks Spin's ever had was the illicit stuff laced with circuit speeders. It got him through some rough work days at least, even if it was just barely.

"You know, if your CO's Razorclaw, you should never, ever steal his booze," he remarks, swirling the engex in the glass before letting his mask split so that he could take a tentative sip.

"Haha, wow," the heli rasps as it burns down his fuel intake. "Okay, that's good."

Edited 2015-12-27 06:51 (UTC)

"Well, that's one thing I never have to worry about."

Being a spy meant that your command structure was a bit interesting. Nothing like the common foot soldier grunt like Spinister. He had his handler to answer to, and a few other mechs, but besides that he was left to his own devices.

The way he liked it.

"It's not real Black Label but you know-- I tried. Go ahead and sit and enjoy your engex."

Brainstorm squints at Spinister to make sure he was sufficiently distracted, then goes to drift back over to his work bench.

"Yeah? Figures you science-y sorts wouldn't need to deal with the grunt wranglers so much," Spinister remarks in amusement, leaning against the edge of a crowded table as he takes another sip.

"Well, it doesn't have to be real Black Label to be yummy." Honestly, Spin was happy with anything that wasn't the lead laden soup that'd become his normal diet once again. Man, they didn't have corpses to siphon from in the wastes. At least corpse juice had less heavy metals to gunk up their filters with.

He's enamored enough with having decent energon he actually doesn't notice Brainstorm edging towards his work bench.

"We've got our own types of bosses, and then there's all these committees and reviews... I had to put up with Prowl for a bit."

Ah, fond memories. Prowl had put him in charge of the pretender research with Perceptor. That's when he had first met the other mech-- his match in intellect. If only Perceptor loosened up a bit he'd be just as talented as he is.

Brainstorm slides the bow into his hands and activates the lightstring, checking it before loading it. He squints one optic, aiming, then shoots Spinister in the chest again.

"Oooh, yeah, I wouldn't wanna put up with Prowl-" Spin stops abruptly at the sound of a bow being loaded, helm snapping up. Between his trust for Brainstorm and the growing warmth from the engex however, his reaction time was slow. By the second he's worked out what was going on, there was already an energy dart embedded in his chest, sending sparks of pretty light through the air.

"..."

Silence for a moment. Spinister was a little distracted by the pretty lights. Then he drags his attention back to Brainstorm and levels a thoroughly offended look at guy.

"Stop shooting that thing at me."

Brainstorm ignores the look and puts the bow down, instead steepling his fingers together with barely restrained curiosity and excitement.

"Do you feel any different? Is it working?"

"No," Spin grumbles immediately, rotor twitching with irritation. After a moment however, he adds, "Kinda tingly? But I think that's mostly just the engex."

He gives Brainstorm another good second of glowering before going back to nursing the cup of engex. Honestly now, the things he puts up with.