AHN 'verse. Tatooine. Scavenger

[random_xtras]

"W... wait, you knew my creator?" Hot Shot winces as something Random's doing to his damaged internal components causes him to twitch, his movement making a soft scratching sound on the worn woven rug that he's laying on on the otherwise bare cave floor.

"I knew the mech who asked Primus for you," counters the massive sand-coloured stranger called Scavenger, not looking up from where he was using a torch to work a bend out of one of the younger mech's struts.

"Well, isn't that the same thing? Ow! Random, do you gotta poke there that many times?"

"No." Scavenger shakes his head and easily bends the metal in his hands back to shape. "Creators are the people who build your shell. Yours came off the assembly line."

"Way to make a guy feel unspecial," grumbles Hot Shot, but then notices that Kia is pouting at him for griping at Random and offers her a grin. "What was his name, Scavenger? What happened to him?"

"Optimus Prime. And he's dead. Nemesis Prime killed him a long long time ago." Scavenger offers the repaired strut to Random, his yellow optics calm but shadowed.

Comments

[astrotechmech]

Having enough standing for one moment, Random moves to move the temporarily conjoined 'bots to have a seat on the floor since that's where everyone else is. "About what?"

"Shhh, Kia," he soothes softly and pulls her closer to him.

[random_xtras]

"That last part you said." Hot Shot watches as Kia snuggles against the astrotech with her head on his legs, his optics showing his curiosity.

[astrotechmech]

Random is distracted with his rubbing for a few moments before answers. "I think it's pretty straight forward: You mess up--either through something being fixed wrong because they won't listen to you, you don't perform up to their high and mighty ignorant standards, etc.--and then something terrible happens to you. . . . No mercy usually."

[random_xtras]

"How do you know that's not just Rebel propaganda?" Hot Shot frowns, though there's no anger in the expression.

Kia, meanwhile, has stopped crying and is fading toward sleep.

[astrotechmech]

"Because there are stories . . . and from fairly reliable sources."

Sleep is better than being sad . . . as long as one's troubles don't come along for the ride.

[random_xtras]

"The storm's over." Scavenger calmly cuts across their conversation, causing Kia to twitch slightly.

[astrotechmech]

"Thank. Goodness."