@midnight-influence [cont.]

She was being slow at gaining altitude because being built like the broadside of the barn as her alt mode came with downsides and the other decided to just go higher. Well shit, she was gonna have to push it a little, even though she was wary of the other bot. Her bio lights flashing a little in a cordial "hello!" But leaving it at that. She soon settled at below the cloud level allowing the other to have the higher air space & distance needed, Lightstrike wasn't one to push into the others space and she didn't know if there were others. Lightstrike soon attempted to get a com line set up but it only cause horrible static. Cutting that off she simply stayed there, letting the other figure out what they preferred to do, hoping they didn't decide to play a game with her.

Well, either the stranger was deliberately slowing themselves down, trying to be cautious maybe, or they weren't packing half the power Skywarp's engines did.

He did catch some kind of signal, briefly - comms? To who? He wasn't being shot at, though, nor was the stranger trying to hide they were now effectively trailing him. He may have been a tiny bit disappointed no fire fight or chase seemed to be forthcoming.

He did get a brief look through a gap in the clouds, and yeah, that was not someone he recognized. And again, mechs could disguise themselves, but the biolights alone, he thought as they were briefly flaring brighter, were distinct. He hadn't thought anyone would still have biolights exposed - his own had disappeared under thick armor plating long since, only the barest hints of them visible exclusively in root mode, at the neck and joints where free range of motion trumped full cover.

Now, he could probably have tried to hail the stranger on comms, just a brief ping on open short range signal, but...

Well. Where was the fun in that?

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎‎ ‎ ‎‎( ✧ ― @midnight-influence ― ✧ )

Onyxstorm has come to check on Steamtrack, pushing through the autobot base ventilation before slowly coming down into her area. Chuffing a little before deciding to roll in her items.

Steamtrack had just been in the middle of arranging some of her belongings when she had heard the commotion coming from the vents. She paused what she was doing, one optic ridge raised, as she watched the Sparkeater come down. A soft chuckle escaped her as she watched Onyxstorm.

what doesn't kill you // accepting @midnight-influence

HIS SPARK CANNOT HELP BUT BREAK. looking at the frightened, shivering thing. it was a sorry sight. there's really no need for all these theatrics... he means no harm. knockout steps back. a peace offering, space for her to breathe. ❝ there's no need for all that. i'm not here to hurt you. ❞ he still speaks sharply, quick && to the point. even if he felt some pity, he had little patience. 

❝ you look lost. kaon's not a place to be wandering around- there's mechs who don't mean well. why don't you tell me where you're trying to go? ❞

@midnight-influence

He makes it back to the Nemesis not entirely undetected, because that would probably be far more suspicious than anything, but he does teleport into his trine's quarters moments after he becomes a blip on the ship's radar. That's not really out of the ordinary for him, so it shouldn't raise any sort of attention.

Technically, he's not supposed to do it, he's giving Soundwave fits about security, but they can't exactly stop him without causing a ship-wide comms and system blackout, so Skywarp considered those objections more of a suggestion than anything.

He flung bits of by now dry algae that clung to his plating toward TC just to hear him yell, and the scene that caused not only warned off anyone who might have hung out nearby, but also meant his trine was too busy being annoyed to really dig into what he'd been up to.

He gets cleaned up and they do help him with the superficial damages in areas he can't easily reach, though especially Starscream is far from gentle popping out dents between berating and threatening him (this is how Screamer shows his -- grudging -- affection though, so it's probably fine!).

When they do ask, Skywarp spins them a vague little tale about running into an Autobot scouting party, gets yelled at because he isn't supposed to engage those, whines back that getting into a good scrap is fun (and it is, that part isn't even a lie, technically!), and gets reprimanded some more. Starscream raps his knuckles across Skywarp's head none too gently, too.

The damage to his wrist and digits turns out to not be so easily repaired, unfortunately. And they aren't exactly flush with spare parts, as Starscream very helpfully tells him, "to waste on your inane antics". So Screamer patches the broken lines and puts his servo in a splint to keep it still until self-repair can restore function, warns him not to expect the fix to be perfect and also very firmly tells him not to transform until the aforementioned splint has come off. By Starscream removing it, not by Skywarp doing something dumb, he can see you think up a loophole.

And so a mostly cleaned up, largely repaired Skywarp eventually left the Command Trine quarters for his shift on the bridge. He still sported scuffed paint, and the splinted hand was kind of hard to miss, but he had a reputation for getting roughed up in stupid ways (and really, whoever he decided to jump usually ended up in much worse shape), so... so no one would think much of it, probably.

Hopefully.

He had done a damn good job not thinking of what he had left behind in that lake so far. He could keep doing it. No one would know. No one would know, and this strange state of affairs, this weird quasi-stalemate where people finally stopped dying all the time would continue to go on.

It's fine. It's all fragging fine.

The door to the bridge slides open smoothly, the lights inside the familiar dim intensity, the consoles blinking as they always do, aaaaand someone else is here.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎‎‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎( ✧ ― @midnight-influence ― ✧ )‎

A wild cardbot has been seen stalking through town on all fours and stealing energy from generators. Whenever someone attempts to take a picture it vanished into the darkness like it was never there. Tonight however there was a sudden power outage as the wild card siphoned energy once more.

It had felt like some time since he and Soleil had been maintaining the presence of the Wild Cardbots on Earth on their own, before they had met and joined up with Blue Cop and Jun. So, to hear that there was another, unknown Wild Cardbot causing some kind of chaos, his attention was immediately on it.

As it stood, Blue Cop had been indisposed due to his civic duties as a police officer of the city, and hadn't been able to join in investigating just who it was that was causing the blackouts.

a lone seeker ... that is unusual to say the least. curiosity gets the best of him when paired with his urge to help someone in need, so drift carefully approaches with his servos open to show that he is unarmed.

at least it's a display. he doesn't want to fight anyone, let alone another unaffiliated mech.