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.

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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.

"Oh." Brainstorm doesn't try and hide his disappointment. "Probably the engex."

Had he skewed his results by offering him the engex? No, he had been certain that this was the right adjustment. A normal mech would have probably been heating up but Spinister-- he had some sort of special powers or something. He'd assume he's asexual if he hadn't had a personal demonstration that was not the case.

The jet practically flops back to his workspace, dramatically disappointed, and starts working on the bow again.

Rolling his eyes, Spin makes his way over to casually flick the tip of one of Brainstorm's wings. Then he wanders away to start clearing a decent path through the piles of stuff his friend had left haphazardly scattered about, nursing his energon all the while. He spends a good twenty minutes doing that before quietly disappearing once again.

It's a good week before the heli returns, even dustier this time.

"I," he declares, grabbing the nearest dusting brush and finding a corner with the least amount of sensitive electronics around. "Am going to steal this."

The door stays intact this time, somehow.

Wow, Spinister looks like he rolled around in an underground pit for fun and Brainstorm was definitely glad he was staying over there because he didn't want to suck dust into his vents.

Brainstorm makes a face and gets up, picking up a tarp, and then drops it on the floor and pushes it closer to the large heli with a pole.

"It can't be that dirty. What did you do? Dig a hole and roll in it?"

"Ugh no, we just keep getting dust blown in everywhere. No big buildings to block them out in the wastes," Spinister gripes, kicking the tarp out flat on the floor before going back to dusting. It takes a good five minutes and back cycling his vents out several times to get the majority off.

He quickly opens the door and shakes the excess dust off the tarp before rolling it up and making his way to the shower once again.

"I'm going to take some of the cleansing solution with me before I leave!" he shouts before shutting the door. "Tarn's downright filthy!"

At this point, Brainstorm was pretty used to Spinister taking a shower at his workshop if just because he didn't have his own shower in the wastes. He tries to imagine what that's like, then decides it's too horrible. Even as a MTO, he's had access to cleanliness his entire life.

Spinister's arrival was quite convenient though. He'd finished the most recent adjustment to the bow the day before. Brainstorm goes to dig out the weapon while the heli was in the shower. He'd could probably shoot the mech as soon as he left the room.

There's a long stream of grumbling and cursing and aggressive scrubbing from the shower that eventually fades away into silence and the static sound of liquid pattering. Spin stays in for a couple minutes longer than usual but he does come out eventually, clean and steaming from the shower.

"I do not miss having no showers," he sighs, kicking the cleanser off his feet and spinning up his rotors a little to shake more off before reaching over to grab a towel. "Have you got any kind of canister I can borrow? I was going to bring my own but all the big ones went off tumbling in the wind while I was sleeping."

Edited 2015-12-27 23:38 (UTC)

Brainstorm had the bowstring pulled back and all ready to shoot when Spinister comes out and asks that question. It makes him hesitate, which means he loses the element of surprise, so he gently stops aiming and sighs.

"Am I going to get them back?" No, probably not, but he goes to find some canisters for the heli anyway.

"Do NOT. Shoot that thing at me," Spin warns the moment he catches sight of the bow. After a good moment of glaring, he eventually adds, "I'll keep them secured but Tarn'll get suspicious if they only appear whenever I've got cleanser."

"I'll trade something for it?" he offers, tucking his towel under and arm before he steps out of the stall and pops one of his hip compartments open, taking out a jar with some kind of luminescent, crystalline plant inside it. "I found this thing in the corners of the building we're camping out it. Figured you might like it."

"It doesn't hurt though, does it?"

Gosh, don't be so dramatic, Spin. It's not like you're actually getting injured when he shoots you.

Still, Brainstorm stops searching for those canisters in favor of going over to look at the jar. The taps his finger against it, squinting.

"Does it do anything?"

"How about I point it at you and see how much fun you have," Spinister snipes back, making a rude face.

"They explode into flames if you pop them." Holding up the jar so that Brainstorm could see it better, the heli grins. "Pretty good alternative to energon for fire fuel, but you gotta keep a bit of a ways away, otherwise you end up with scorch marks."

"I didn't make it for me," he huffs.

Brainstorm wraps his hand around the lid of the jar and pulls it towards him, tugging it out of Spinister's hands.

"I could probably find a use for it. There are more out there?"

"They pop out of the ground by the hundreds when we hit a dark cycle." Spinister relinquishes his hold on the jar easily enough, watching Brainstorm examine the specimen.

"I can pick more if you want? Tarn'll notice if I bring armfuls of them over, but I can hide some jars just fine from him."

"More's better."

One little specimen would be enough to study but for practical use, one probably wasn't enough. Brainstorm was already considering the possibility of flamethrowers and firebombs.

He goes and squirrels the jar away before returning to fishing out the canisters, dragging them over to complete the trade.

"You're so worried about Tarn noticing. Where does he think you're going?"

"Where else?" Spinister huffs, accepting the canisters and tucking them away next to the shower so that he could fill them before he left. He still had some time.

"I'm a Scavenger. I scavenge." Despite the tiredness in his tone, there's still a good amount of pride. "The fragger knows we need a lot of stuff to make that scrap pile of campsite some place liveable."

That's a point. Brainstorm thought for a moment Spinister told Tarn he was going somewhere specific though. Truthfully, he's pretty glad that the scavenger was taking precautions. Best not to draw attention to his workshop.

"What's he even do all day?" Brainstorm can't imagine Tarn actually being useful for any sort of chores. His experience with high ranking mechs that actually did any grunt work was lacking.

Still, as he puts the jar down in his workspace, he takes the moment to pick up the bow again, turn around, and fire off a dart before Spinister has the chance to protest again.

"Well, his knee's still messed up from ticking off the baby Megatron so he kind of limps around and angsts about how he doesn't get to bang Sixshot any- OY!"

Spinister's indignant yelp precedes some crashing and banging as he reflexively jumps at the strange not-pain of the dart hitting his chest and topples over a work bench.

"YOU!" he growls, leveling the most deathly glower on the smaller flier, armor plates flaring. "ARE IN SO MUCHNNNGh...!"

Hot.

It felt like a supernova had gone off in his spark chamber and Spinister's back arches into an almost impossible curve, hands denting the edge of the table.

Brainstorm, being the coward he is, ducks and covers as soon as Spinister's voice took that murderous tone. He watches the heli from beneath the table, cautiously observing his flailing and arching.

That's different.

Maybe bad different?

Brainstorm becomes suddenly anxious that he's accidentally killed Spinister. He certainly doesn't want his first -- and only -- kill to be one from some stupid miscalculations. That worry isn't enough to draw him out from under the table though. Nope, he has enough sense to keep hiding.

"It's okay, Spin! What are you feeling?" he calls out, peeking out around the table siding.