robothell | [ INTRO LOG ]

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[ INTRO LOG ]

You don't know how you got here. One minute you were walking, sleeping, maybe dead -- then you're here, your feet suddenly carrying you down an empty street. Where's here?

Any Cybertronian would recognize this as their home planet, Cybertron, but it's not a Cybertron they've ever known. It has all the familiar hallmarks, but none of the specifics -- the city isn't one anyone here could identify, and even at a glance it's obvious that no one's set foot on the planet's surface in hundreds of years. The city and its surrounding areas all bear the marks of devastating war, of dust and rust collected over centuries. With no one in sight -- right at first, anyway -- there's plenty to explore. In fact, if you start walking, you'll find that your feet may just carry you in one particular direction.

A) The crater.
On one edge of the city is a massive crater left by some wartime weapon that seems to have taken out a large chunk of the surrounding metropolitan area. At the center of the crater it's broken through the surface of the terrain to reveal what looks like it might be a promising energon deposit. There is some strange but native vegetation growing around the edges, too, that no Cybertronian would be able to identify -- small, metallic, brittle-looking sprouts that bear a curiously organic-looking fruit of some kind that doesn't look like it's intended for consumption by any natives of the planet. In one rocky nook of the crater, light catches on the surface of a pool of water, which seems strangely out of place on Cybertron. On closer inspection, it seems that somehow an underground water source has formed a spring in the crater.

B) The center of the city.
If you follow where your feet seem to want to carry you, you'll find yourself in the middle of the ruined city. It seems that the center of the city was once home to a massive forum, and some of the pillars and structures still stand. At the very center of the forum is a massive, elaborately constructed fountain, although it has now long since run dry of whatever used to fill it. One of the low, inner walls of the forum has a terminal embedded in its surface, although it looks curiously ancient, out of place with the rest of the city, and unlike the rest of the technology still left around, there doesn't seem to be any way to power it on or operate it. There are a few scattered pools of water and a few of the strange metallic plants in the city, too, but they're not quite as plentiful as in the crater.

The planet was obviously once home to a massive network of communication relays, but those have all been long since destroyed. However, with the bits and pieces left behind and a few determined minds, it wouldn't be too hard to build a working, if rudimentary, one...

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"I--yeah." No point in denying it just to be nice. Megatron of all people didn't need to be reassured about his society. "We have our problems back home, but I'm not sorry we missed out on yours."

Anyway. Nautica straightened up. They had practical matters to worry about.

"It should be somewhere in the city, I guess, but I haven't explored any of it yet. You don't have on-board?" She tapped the base of the antenna on the right side of her helm to indicate her built-in radio. Prior planning wasn't as important if you could just pick up the phone, and it wasn't like they were going to have their comms tapped and need to be hiding from the police. Optimus was Prime now, and he was pretty relaxed about Megatron, she'd noticed.

There's an uncertain pause from him at the question. Even for manual class, not being equipped with at least a basic radio would be considered wholly under equipped. Yet -

"It's limited. And hasn't seen maintenance in a long time. I'm not sure how reliable any connection would be."

Keeping a contingency in case whatever failing device had finally sputtered out was something of a habit.

Nautica hadn't wanted for maintenance a day in her life, and as awful as she knew, intellectually, that the Senate and its enforcers had been, it hadn't occurred to her that the pre-War rulers would let an entire class of people go to scrap simply because of their alt modes. Granted, Megatron was one of the most troublesome members of his class and they'd probably stuck him in a hole somewhere and hoped a tunnel would collapse on him, but still. Lousy way to run a government, if you asked her.

"Oh." Though she was taken aback for a second, Nautica shifted mental gears readily enough. It wasn't Megatron's fault his society withheld basic medical care, after all. "Well, if gain's a problem on your end, I can pump out a lot of power--radio attenuates fast underwater--but we can still pick out a meeting place as a backup."

She was thinking a park bench, or maybe something near a nice conspicuous landmark. When Megatron tried to pick a drainage pipe or something they were going to have to do some negotiating.

Edited 2014-12-25 08:35 (UTC)

Fortunately, Megatron only likes to lurk around in drainage pipes when necessary. The city seemed utterly devoid of life save for them, so finding an empty building was sufficiently cautious for him.

As they get closer to the city, he attempts to run power to his own internal comm unit. It's been a while since he's used it (external ones were much easier to come by), but it managed to sputter to life and begin to feed back diagnostic results.

He stops though, at a rather familiar looking, if decrepit oil house. Looks like this Cybertron and theirs had similar tastes in energon brews. A hand reaches to stop Nautica from continuing onward so she can take a look.

In the brief time he'd been running his diagnostics, Nautica had managed to bury her nose in her wrench again and was muttering something about atmospheric oxygen concentration. When Megatron stopped her she looked around to see what had attracted his attention, realizing it had been several blocks since she'd noticed any of their surroundings.

"Hmm?" She followed his gaze to the storefront and perked up. "Oh! I've heard about Maccadam's! I never had a chance to visit before the Lost Light set off, though."

"Seems like a good spot to use as a backup," he adds.

He'd never had any particularly good memories associated with the place (in fact, one could argue that given this was where he'd had his most infamous arrest, he'd want to avoid it), but it was the first familiar spot between the two dimensions.

And hey, it wasn't a drainage pipe.

"Radio's online. What's your frequency?"

Nautica didn't answer aloud; she ran a scan to see what frequency he was receiving on--ah, there it was.

Reading me? Her voice came through loud and clear over radio, though at this range it would be hard to miss.

Let's go see what they've got on tap, she joked as she tried the door. Even assuming there was engex left in the bar, it might not be a great idea to drink it. Doubly so given Nautica's rarefied taste in intoxicants. Ha, unlocked. My new career in burglary is going swimmingly.

Sounds good enough on this end. is the reply back. At this distance, his own radio functioned just as it was intended.

He follows her inside, into the dusty remains of the bar. Whether or not they actually had any fuel left might actually be a good thing to know, since the raw energon at the bottom of the crater still needed to be refined.

Megatron goes behind the counter, running a hand over the dust and leaving a clean streak where he did so. A cloud hovered in the air of the disturbed particles. Well, there were certainly plenty of empty glasses, tubes, and canisters back here.

Radio communications established, Nautica switched back to talking. "No one's been in here for a while, huh?"

She pressed a button on her wrench and it lit up like a torch, casting a bluish glow around the empty room as she turned in a slow circle. "It's morbid, I know, but I wonder why there are no corpses." Given how tough Cybertronians were as a species, if the buildings hadn't worn away to rust yet, there should still be traces of the population somewhere. "What leaves a city mostly intact but no bodies at all? Did everyone just up and abandon it?"

"Even if the city was evacuated beforehand," he follows the counter to meet her at its other end, feeling the glass of a broken cup crunch underneath.

"It is rather devoid of bodies for an abandoned battlefield."

He quietly watches her run the scans on her wrench, figuring that might be better in giving them information rather than more blind speculation.

"Not that I want to be tripping over bodies, mind y--hmm." Nautica stopped her survey facing the bar and double-checked the reading on the wrench. Faint, but present.

She set down the briefcase and leaned all the way over the counter, feet in the air in a less-than-dignified manner, while she dug around in the shelves under the bar. After a brief search, she gave a triumphant exclamation and slid back to the floor, now with a bottle of faintly glowing pink liquid in one hand.

"Ha, still sealed." She brandished the bottle at him. "Want to try it?"

A questionably ancient bottle found in the dusty remains of a Maccadam's? Honestly doesn't sound too bad to him. It's not like energon went bad so quickly. He inspects it curiously and brushes off some of the dust.

"Don't recognize the brand."

Not too unusual given this might not be their Cybertron.

"Me either, but I wouldn't, would I?" While Megatron was dusting off the bottle, Nautica was already digging out glasses and squinting into them to make sure they were clean.

"Copper-aged isn't my absolute favorite, but it's only a 10-year so the sour notes shouldn't be too pronounced." She paused and got roughly the same expression on her face as when she was trying to figure out deeper mysteries like 'where the hell are we' and 'why is Megatron a baby,' and started rifling through bar supplies again. "I wonder if there's any benzene left back here. A few drops ought to open up the flavor nicely."

"Does that wrench of yours have a heating function?"

He twists the top off with little effort as she sets out two glasses, a little surprised she'd expect him to be interested at all in the finer points of fuel distillery. Caminus must have been a drastically different place to Cybertron.

As for him? He had a simple rule when it came to enjoying specialty energon - the closer to boiling, the better.

Nautica popped back up behind the bar, holding another small bottle, presumably the benzene she'd been looking for.

"...Probably? Stormy did hang on to it for ages when he was upgrading it. Why?" The thought that he might want to ruin his drink by heating it up did not immediately occur to her because why would anyone do that.

"To heat this up?" The bottle gets a little jostle.

He isn't sure why Nautica wouldn't consider the fact that it's room temperature. Just about everyone he was familiar with at least preferred their engex hot. It made a nice contrast to the stale energon rations they got for refueling.

"If you heat it much above body temperature you're going to drive off all the volatiles and change the flavor profile." Puzzled--and somewhat dismayed--though Nautica was, it was Megatron's drink, and if he wanted to wreck it that was his problem. She flipped open a panel on her wrench and started looking to see if there was an infrared laser or a thermoacoustic setting or something.

"...Stormy, why would you even think I would need an 'ennui' setting?"

He sets it down next to their glasses, giving her an intrigued look,"How do they prepare this on Caminus?"

Megatron is willing to try something new. It's not like he's particularly stubborn or proud about the way he drinks his engex, and Nautica seemed to have a bit of a passion for it.

"Oh, just a few fingers at a time. You don't have to add any hydrocarbons, but I like the effect it has on anything that's been aged with transition metals--they all end up with a sharper finish than I really prefer. You should probably try yours straight first and see if you like it."

As she spoke, she was pouring about three fingers of engex into each glass--proportionally speaking; Megatron got a bigger serving than she did, what with being almost twice her size. She added several sweet-smelling drops from the smaller bottle to her own drink and swirled the mixture around in the glass.

"Body heat volatizes some of the aromatic compounds, meaning that the bouquet hits your nose before you taste anything, making the flavor more complex." Nautica was in fact holding the glass just under her nose and quite noticeably not drinking out of it. "Getting it too hot will catalyze the breakdown of any hydrocarbons or esters. At best it'll flatten out the flavors, and at worst create some nasty-tasting byproducts."

Who knew getting drunk was so complicated.

Megatron finds himself silently watching her hands as she explains, perhaps taking mental notes but more likely satisfying his own more paranoid habits. As pleasant as he found her company, it had been only a few hours that they've been together.

He looks at his own serving and repeats her action, holding it near his nose to get a curious whiff.

"Doesn't smell like anything I've had before."

You got her, Megatron. She was totally poisoning his drink. With friendship. He would never be able to hate all Autobots now.

"That's all the light aromatics that overheating breaks down, or drives off before the drink even gets to the table. Cheers." Nautica saluted him with her glass before at last taking a sip, her eyes going distant as she swirled the drink around her mouth concentrating on the flavors.

"Hmm." Not wanting to prejudice what seemed to be Megatron's first quality drinking experience, she didn't say anything more than that.

There's a clink as her glass bumps into his.

Megatron takes a sip of Nautica's fiendishly friendly mix, following her lead and taking a small sip from his own glass. There's an inquisitive look, then a little glimpse of pleasant surprise.

He takes another, focusing on the intriguing little concoction of flavors Nautica handed him. He was quiet for the most part until he was nearly finished, a couple of larger-than-reccommended samples later.

"Interesting."

More used to a leisurely evening of high-end engex and academic conversation than drinking with miners, Nautica had only made it about halfway through her drink by the time he was nearing the bottom of his.

"'Interesting' good, or 'interesting' I'm-too-polite-to-say-what-I-really-think?" she teased. She did not actually believe Megatron had a problem with bluntness.

He sets the glass down, cycling air as the aftertaste hovers a little while after she asks. Was he interested enough to ask her more about how the drink acquired the taste? Probably not.

But it was certainly intriguing enough to the palate to stop and consider what he thought of it, exactly.

"It's good," he begins to screw the cap back on,"We should save the rest."

Could have been the last bottle of this stuff on this Cybertron, for all they knew. May as well reserve a little thing like this for when they have a reason to celebrate.

"I hadn't been planning to make it through the whole bottle in one sitting." Nautica took another measured sip, then gestured around the dusty room with her glass. "This is all a little too serious to be wandering around buzzed."

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aminerproblem - 2015-01-03 02:34 (UTC) - Expand

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