RIFTWALKER

She knew it, she had heard it multiple times. Which is why she was balanced precariously on a chair and peered into the vent. A handful of energon candies were placed into the vent in hopes of coaxing whatever it is out.

"Hey? Hello? I know your in there? Can you stop haunting my vents?"

Something deliberately knocks against the wall of the vent in the dark.

Rap-tap-tap.

Whatever’s coiled in the vents is… it doesn’t seem stupid. A fleshy, flexible tendril slowly emerges from the gloom, curls around a single chunk of candy (which looks rather enormous in comparison) and then yanks it back into the dark.

"Cool, you like the candy! I can... break it up? Or I have scrap chunks I can spare?" She looks back at her messy work station. She needed to clean it it up, but there was plenty of scrap and some left over stuff she could spare.

This is the second ‘Cybertronian’ Nidus has met, and this one is smaller, less dense compared to Springer. He would not go so far as to assume less armed; all of the files he’d managed to glimpse at in Springer’s systems suggested the constructs were also in some sort of forever-war of their own.

But they haven’t run shrieking from him.

So Cybertronians have not had much, or any, contact with them. (That is, Orokin and their bastard progeny.)

Very interesting.

Hmm, but the overhead compartments have been so interesting…

Nidus pokes his head out from the opening he’d crawled into after parkouring his way up the wall, a few clinging tendrils from his back sticking to the shelf as he slips out further and, with a weird sticky ‘shlup’, plops down onto Springer’s shoulder.

He holds up a small dark grey lump.

Alas. He has ego and self-interest instead, which are similar but not the same.

Little clawed hands reach and grab for it out of curiosity and blatant greed as Nidus’ fronds fan out to try and get a better sense of the chunk of raw, dense metal. Mostly ferrus, with some interesting carbide inclusions… trace amounts of phosphorous and nickel.

:: Do you need to yell on the open Comm line? ::

There’s a mad scramble for the HAM radio receiver. It ends with the older girl in the rolly chair, holding the younger back with an untied boot against the kid’s chest, using superior height and limb length to her advantage as she clicks the audio over to ‘personal’ rather than ‘loudspeaker’.

“…Good evening, strange Libertarian voice,” Red drawls, looping the cord around her fingers. “Who are you, exactly, and how did you get access to this signal?”

Oh boy whoever it is on the line sounds fucking young. He frowns around his cygar, brow furrowing.

“YOU. What year is it, right now, for you? Be honest or I’ll triangulate your signal—”

“STOP threatening everyone! For Sol’s sake, what is wrong with you, are you feral? Did the Lotus never teach you manners?”

There’s more scuffling and then the younger girl yells, “He’s an alien and he’s REAL,” which gets spluttered annoyance from the older one, who finally yanks the receiver back. “I am so— you are SO lucky I can’t kill you, you little twat— so sorry about that, haha! Do you mind, uhm, running that by me again? The what? Cybertron?”

It’s not that she didn’t hear him.

:: Lotus is a Flower that's all I know. Why would it teach anything manners? It's like, 2026 or something in Terran Years.::

He picks up his datapad. Resuming his reading.

:: Look If you got the galactic line you can take a private comm. What's your frequency?::

Red grunts as she gets elbowed and drops the receiver again. At least they’re both on the floor now, and not fighting over it as she grabs the brat by her bun to hiss at her. “Don’t just tell them that.”

Cerise elbows her again and yanks at a tangle of fleshy roots sneaking up the back of the desk to socket into the HAM radio set to make her point to the Drifter, who rolls her eyes and drops her.

Awful.

The kid’s fixated, though.

“Nidus is an experimental offshoot of the Helminth organism,” Cerise explains, rather smug about getting to… brag. (Teenagers.) “Cultivated in a laboratory environment after being isolated from a mutated strain discovered by a civilian science team. I grew him in a jar and he’s very fancy.”

Red rubs a hand over her face and groans. “It looks a bit like weird fungus… meat… person? Very fleshy with glowing bits. Mostly pinkish and gray with a thin layer of mucus on top. Frondy bits that can pop out of the body. It can interface with electronics and it can be… overly friendly.”

Grinning just thinking about him.

:: You tell him Springer said hi.i hope ge gets more than a jar now? ::

Cerise tries to smack at her again. “Stop calling him an it.”

Before more fighting can break out, she grabs the receiver to set it back on top of the radio and claims the rolly chair again, leaving Cerise to get up and dust herself off to chatter at… ‘Springer’.

She’ll keep an ear out, but there’s no way this odd fellow is telling the truth, because Red knows what Cybertron is. That’s one of the factions in Amir’s dinky robot shows.

Or something. It’s definitely made up.

:: Do you need to yell on the open Comm line? ::

There’s a mad scramble for the HAM radio receiver. It ends with the older girl in the rolly chair, holding the younger back with an untied boot against the kid’s chest, using superior height and limb length to her advantage as she clicks the audio over to ‘personal’ rather than ‘loudspeaker’.

“…Good evening, strange Libertarian voice,” Red drawls, looping the cord around her fingers. “Who are you, exactly, and how did you get access to this signal?”

Oh boy whoever it is on the line sounds fucking young. He frowns around his cygar, brow furrowing.

“YOU. What year is it, right now, for you? Be honest or I’ll triangulate your signal—”

“STOP threatening everyone! For Sol’s sake, what is wrong with you, are you feral? Did the Lotus never teach you manners?”

There’s more scuffling and then the younger girl yells, “He’s an alien and he’s REAL,” which gets spluttered annoyance from the older one, who finally yanks the receiver back. “I am so— you are SO lucky I can’t kill you, you little twat— so sorry about that, haha! Do you mind, uhm, running that by me again? The what? Cybertron?”

It’s not that she didn’t hear him.

:: Lotus is a Flower that's all I know. Why would it teach anything manners? It's like, 2026 or something in Terran Years.::

He picks up his datapad. Resuming his reading.

:: Look If you got the galactic line you can take a private comm. What's your frequency?::

Red grunts as she gets elbowed and drops the receiver again. At least they’re both on the floor now, and not fighting over it as she grabs the brat by her bun to hiss at her. “Don’t just tell them that.”

Cerise elbows her again and yanks at a tangle of fleshy roots sneaking up the back of the desk to socket into the HAM radio set to make her point to the Drifter, who rolls her eyes and drops her.

Awful.

The kid’s fixated, though.

“Nidus is an experimental offshoot of the Helminth organism,” Cerise explains, rather smug about getting to… brag. (Teenagers.) “Cultivated in a laboratory environment after being isolated from a mutated strain discovered by a civilian science team. I grew him in a jar and he’s very fancy.”

Red rubs a hand over her face and groans. “It looks a bit like weird fungus… meat… person? Very fleshy with glowing bits. Mostly pinkish and gray with a thin layer of mucus on top. Frondy bits that can pop out of the body. It can interface with electronics and it can be… overly friendly.”

:: Do you need to yell on the open Comm line? ::

There’s a mad scramble for the HAM radio receiver. It ends with the older girl in the rolly chair, holding the younger back with an untied boot against the kid’s chest, using superior height and limb length to her advantage as she clicks the audio over to ‘personal’ rather than ‘loudspeaker’.

“…Good evening, strange Libertarian voice,” Red drawls, looping the cord around her fingers. “Who are you, exactly, and how did you get access to this signal?”

Oh boy whoever it is on the line sounds fucking young. He frowns around his cygar, brow furrowing.

“YOU. What year is it, right now, for you? Be honest or I’ll triangulate your signal—”

“STOP threatening everyone! For Sol’s sake, what is wrong with you, are you feral? Did the Lotus never teach you manners?”

There’s more scuffling and then the younger girl yells, “He’s an alien and he’s REAL,” which gets spluttered annoyance from the older one, who finally yanks the receiver back. “I am so— you are SO lucky I can’t kill you, you little twat— so sorry about that, haha! Do you mind, uhm, running that by me again? The what? Cybertron?”

It’s not that she didn’t hear him.

:: Lotus is a Flower that's all I know. Why would it teach anything manners? It's like, 2026 or something in Terran Years.::

He picks up his datapad. Resuming his reading.

:: Look If you got the galactic line you can take a private comm. What's your frequency?::

Red grunts as she gets elbowed and drops the receiver again. At least they’re both on the floor now, and not fighting over it as she grabs the brat by her bun to hiss at her. “Don’t just tell them that.”

Cerise elbows her again and yanks at a tangle of fleshy roots sneaking up the back of the desk to socket into the HAM radio set to make her point to the Drifter, who rolls her eyes and drops her.

Awful.

:: Do you need to yell on the open Comm line? ::

There’s a mad scramble for the HAM radio receiver. It ends with the older girl in the rolly chair, holding the younger back with an untied boot against the kid’s chest, using superior height and limb length to her advantage as she clicks the audio over to ‘personal’ rather than ‘loudspeaker’.

“…Good evening, strange Libertarian voice,” Red drawls, looping the cord around her fingers. “Who are you, exactly, and how did you get access to this signal?”

Oh boy whoever it is on the line sounds fucking young. He frowns around his cygar, brow furrowing.

“YOU. What year is it, right now, for you? Be honest or I’ll triangulate your signal—”

“STOP threatening everyone! For Sol’s sake, what is wrong with you, are you feral? Did the Lotus never teach you manners?”

There’s more scuffling and then the younger girl yells, “He’s an alien and he’s REAL,” which gets spluttered annoyance from the older one, who finally yanks the receiver back. “I am so— you are SO lucky I can’t kill you, you little twat— so sorry about that, haha! Do you mind, uhm, running that by me again? The what? Cybertron?”

It’s not that she didn’t hear him.