[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]

That'd be Column B, pardner. She blinked up at Sixshot, taken aback.

"...Why?" She needed a second to process his calm acknowledgement of what seemed to her to be remarkably antisocial behavior. Nautica was still having trouble dealing with people who weren't operating under the same social contract she was.

[phase6kindofbot]

Anyone who knew what Sixshot did would never have asked him that question.

The fact that it was asked at all throws the mech off; you didn't stick around and ask why a huge, destructive, dog-former wanted to destroy a building, after all. Sensible people would have high tailed it out of there and left the destroyer be.

It was asked however.

Sitting down on his haunches, Sixshot peers down at the diminutive purple being who'd dared to question him.

"It was something to do."

[quantumechanic]

Sufficiently perfect ignorance looked a lot like courage, it turned out. Nautica continued to look waaaaay up at Sixshot, calm and quite unaware of how frightened she really ought to be.

"I can understand the boredom," she said, spreading her hands in a conciliatory gesture, "but maybe you could limit the destruction to buildings that are already beyond repair? We don't have a lot of intact structures to work with."

[phase6kindofbot]

He hadn't been bored. That didn't seem terribly important to mention though, so Sixshot doesn't bother to.

He stares at the little stranger impassively for a few moments longer before answering.

"I will."

Obedience was nothing new for Sixshot.

[quantumechanic]

"Great, thank you!" Nautica smiled, and managed not to pat one of his enormous claws. He seemed a bit standoffish.

"My name's Nautica, by the way."

Totally trying to make friends with the giant Decepticon dog.

[phase6kindofbot]

Petting his paws would have garnered Nautica a rather confused and possibly rather displeased look.

Admittedly, not a terribly big change from the current state of things.

"Sixshot," he offers in return. She could well try and befriend him, but he's not going to do much to help her along with that, unfortunately.

[quantumechanic]

Nautica was only mostly oblivious, thank you very much, hence no touching.

"Nice to meet you, Sixshot." Even after he'd provided his name, her smile didn't so much as flicker. His hypothesis that she had no idea who she was talking to continued to gather experimental support.

[phase6kindofbot]

There hasn't been a person in the history of ever who had told him it was 'nice' to meet him. It was such a peculiar thing that Sixshot could do little more than stare some more.

After a moment, he abruptly decides this was a little too surreal for his tastes and stands.

"You should probably ask your friends about Phase Sixers," he says over his shoulders as he turns to leave. "They should have warned you about that a bit after you got the badge."

[quantumechanic]

Well, that was. Sudden.

"Um, all right..." she said to his retreating back, uncertain of what had just happened. It didn't stop her from waving, though. "'Bye."