[open] There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members...

[quantumechanic]

Who: Nautica, various TFP Decepticons, anyone else
Where: Around the city
When: Anytime after people are more or less settled
What: The planet's only appropriately-scaled engineer fixes things, makes friends with Decepticons
Warnings: My tendency to technobabble but probably no blood nvm megatron threw her into a wall

Nautica was keeping busy. Cybertronians were tough species, sure, but even they needed to power up sometimes--oftentimes, in the case of certain mechs who couldn't seem to stop punching each other--and that energon from the crater, while blessedly plentiful, wasn't going to refine itself. The process was a little outside her area of expertise, but the theory was straightforward, and her phenomenal breadth of reading and memory (with the occasional call to Brainstorm or Shockwave to double check the finer points) were up to the challenge.

Between that and the various side trips to assist the less technically adept (or the more technically adept, in the case of Brainstorm's communications network project) she didn't have a lot of downtime--and Nautica was fine with that. She preferred not to think too much about the extremely depressing larger picture. Optimus and Megatron would want answers soon enough, but she didn't have any to give them, so she threw herself into doing what she could. She was easy to run into around the city, working on getting a small energon refining facility up and running, repairing vital infrastructure, or just making less vital infrastructure more livable. And certainly not worrying about never seeing her friends again.

Comments

[quantumechanic]

Nautica had a lot of threatening friends, but she herself wasn't what anyone would call imposing.

Or perceptive. Intent as she was on her tasks, if Starscream hadn't spoken, she might not have noticed him lurking in the shadows. He had spoken, however, so she stopped, looked him up and down, and shrugged. "I don't know. Are you any good with power systems?"

Yes, she'd taken the question literally, though even Nautica wasn't clueless enough to miss the (entirely unwarranted, gosh!) hostility in his tone.

[starscheme]

Starscream vents out with an agitated huff, wings sagging and rising again along with it. Upon closer inspection, he notes, she seems to be an Autobot, but certainly not one that he recognizes. That probably means she isn't likely to recognize him either.

For his part he definitely isn't interested in antagonizing her, and hopefully that comes off. Since running into that other Megatron and realizing that everyone else here is just as clueless as he is, he's been a little bit less prone to hostile engagement. He just seems weary, and warily defensive. "Allow me to phrase that differently: What are you doing here?" he growls, clenching and unclenching both hands into fists.

[quantumechanic]

Nautica certainly had no idea who he was, though her reaction to finding out his name would be less...extreme than he was used to, since as far as she was concerned, former Commander Starscream was the democratically-elected leader of Cybertron, and her experience with Megatron had led her to conclude that former Decepticons really weren't that bad.

"Fixing things." Nautica held up her precious wrench and waggled it around to demonstrate her engineering bona fides. Would someone underqualified have a wrench this sweet? Heck no. "It's looking like we're stuck for a while, and I'd rather have the lights turned on."

Cybertronians as a species didn't need much to simply survive, but who wouldn't rather be comfortable?

[starscheme]

Starscream's frown deepens, optics narrowing suspiciously. He's not really mad at her so much as the string of bad luck that he's been having that just does not seem to want to let up.

"Well that's just fantastic, I have to go and find a new hideout because a maintenance bot stumbled upon my lair." One shiny, razor sharp talon lifts up to jab in Nautica's direction. "Who are you working for, anyway? Because if you are with Dreadwing or any of his ilk, we are going to have a serious problem."

[quantumechanic]

At Starscream's theatrical overreaction, Nautica got a skeptical look, one of her nonexistent eyebrows going up. "You call your house a lair?"

Because that was clearly the important part of what he said.

[starscheme]

Well that throws him. He's literally so taken aback that he has to take a step backwards.

"I-- Well it's not my house-- my house-- I've just been hiding here--" she's really got him good and flustered. He can't remember the last time he had a conversation this informal and downright ridiculous, at least with someone of his own kind. He flexes his claws unhappily. "Well what would you call it!?"

[quantumechanic]

Was that a rhetorical question intended to put her as off-balance as she'd made him? Nautica missed the memo. Her HUD springing to life, she glanced around the room, then squinted up at the ceiling.

"Structurally unsound. Looks like a couple of the tie bolts supporting the joist there have sheared." She pointed at the offending spot with her wrench. "I can weld 'em if you want."

[starscheme]

He glances up to where she points, contemplates it for a split second, and turns back to her with a shake of his head and a twitch of his wings. "As much as I appreciate the offer, as I already said, I don't actually live here. You can do what you like with the place, I honestly could not possibly give less of a scrap. Besides..." He glances away and crosses his arms, scowling. "I'll have to relocate myself now that this area has been discovered," the seeker grumbles sulkily to himself.

[quantumechanic]

Nautica switched her HUD back off and wondered if anyone had ever told this guy he was kind of difficult. He'd blown his own cover and now he was acting like she'd come looking for him. She didn't even recognize him!

"Suit yourself," she said with a shrug, resting her wrench over one shoulder, "but you are going to read as a life sign no matter where you go."

That would surely help his paranoia, good job Nautica.

[starscheme]

'Difficult' doesn't even scratch the surface of the things that Starscream has been called, Nautica.

It looks like he wants to start telling her off, or rant at her about who-knows-what sort of thing that certainly isn't actually her fault (just because he feels like yelling at someone at the moment), but he cuts off before any words leave his mouth, face freezing in a dismayed expression. The ghost of that dropped sentence cracks into an awkward, high pitched whine of alarm.

His whole frame seems to sag, and then shrink, like he's hoping that if he makes himself small he can escape from his problems. Evidently his exhaustion and the fact that he apparently doesn't see Nautica as much of a threat make such a combination that he isn't concerned about showing off his emotional vulnerabilities in front of her.

"Scrap!" he groans, throwing his head back and dragging a hand down it while he makes highly distressed sounds. Then his gaze levels with Nautica, although when he speaks it's like he's not really addressing her so much as himself. "I was a fool to think I could make it out here on my own... but what else am I to do!?"

[quantumechanic]

"You could...try making friends?" she ventured after a second, when it became clear he wasn't going to launch into a monologue. Nautica was kind of getting the feeling she didn't even need to be here for him to be having this conversation. A pile of scrap metal that looked vaguely like a person would probably do it. Still, he seemed genuinely upset, and like he hadn't even considered what was to her the most obvious possibility.

And yes, she'd just suggested that Starscream do something that didn't involve being a weaselly traitor. The really weird part was that she was not in any way mocking him.

[starscheme]

"Don't be ridiculous I don't have friends," Starscream growls icily. If she meant allies that would... well, it'd still be pretty damn hard to accomplish, but certainly more feasible than the other thing.

Maybe it's sincere, maybe it's just that he's desperate and is falling back on his old habits of manipulation without even realizing it, but his wings and eyebrows both droop, expression softening into the most pathetic sad puppy face he can muster. "I don't exactly have the freedom to run around and play meet and greet. There are individuals on the loose who are literally actively seeking to kill me!"

[quantumechanic]

Everyone had friends, Starscream, come on. She wrote that off as exaggeration, since he seemed prone to it.

Likewise, even Nautica didn't entirely buy his poor-little-me act, but she made a better audience for it than most, and she nodded in sympathy. "Yeah, I've noticed that people here are really confrontational. We're all understandably jumpy, but everyone I've talked to has been fine once they calmed down."

Her altmode was not, in fact, a Care Bear, but possibly only because Hasbro doesn't have that license.

[starscheme]

"Well that's all well and good for most bots I'm sure, but I hardly believe jumpiness is what is causing Dreadwing to behave in such a violent manner. " he says rather waspishly, then pauses before whimpering pathetically, giving Nautica the woobie eyes: "He's sworn a solemn oath to tear out my spark with his bare hands if he ever gets the chance! For no good reason either, if you ask me! Megatron has long since forgiven me, I don't understand why he can't just bury the hatchet too!"

A brief tirade too late, he suddenly picks up on something that she said just before. "Wait! Wait…" Starscream levels a finger at her, waggling it a bit while he tries to articulate his latest idea. "You… The way you spoke before. It sounded as if you are with a group…?"

Okay she didn't really but he's just full of wishful thinking right now.

[quantumechanic]

Resurrecting his brother as a zombie was kinda personal, Starscream.

"Uh." Starscream's abrupt shift from monologuing about his miserable existence to an actual relevant question caught her by surprise and it took her a moment to catch up to the topic change as she reviewed whether she'd said anything that implied she was with a group.

Nope.

"I didn't say anything like that, but some of my crewmates are here, and the Autobots as a whole could count as a group, I guess." She tapped the Autobrand at the base of her throat. "Are you looking to defect?"

It seemed to be the done thing for Decepticon High Command lately.

[starscheme]

Look okay maybe it was but it wasn't personal towards Dreadwing it was personal towards Skyquake and his stupid insubordinate corpse.

He seems to puff up with offense at her query, lip curling with mild disgust. "Defect? Primus no. I was assuming that given the dire circumstances in which we have all found ourselves, factions would be something of a non-issue."

Not that he's much for rubbing shoulders with Autobots, or particularly hopeful for the chance to make nice. He's just willing to do whatever it takes to save his own chassis.