randomplaces | Armada 'verse. Team headquarters in Cyber City. Morale building exercise

Ironhide appears in the room where he and his sister have been taking their recharge since they arrived here, and looks around carefully to make sure that he's reached the right place this time. He'd intended a quick trip to the Nexus, just to see if he couldn't catch some word of Bumblebee. But instead he'd wound up in another, smaller nexus lined with lockers and littered with human clothing. One of the rooms of this place had been stacked to the ceiling with energon.

There was blue energon there. There was green.

Ironhide's arms are full, and he walks carefully as he goes to the empty common room and arranges his armload neatly on the table before vanishing and reappearing with more. This also arranged to his liking, he grabs a cube of the green and walks out the front door to trade for the last thing that every perfect drinking party needs. It takes a little while to find a mech who has what he wants, but if he still had emotions Ironhide would be very pleased as he returns to the laden table with packets of various-coloured minerals in one hand. He hasn't had this much energon additives since before he'd first left his native Cybertron. And the person he'd traded them from seemed to think they were paint pigments!

Rumbling, he settles down and mixes careful doses of several different powders into a cube of blue, then sips appreciatively as he waits for some of his new teammates to show up.

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In spite of his mood, Stormcloud's footsteps are quiet as they are quick by the time he gets to the common room door. Consequently the only warning that he's arrived is the startled exclamation when he turns in the door and is struck with view full of blue and green.

For a nanoclick he thinks he's lost it and started hallucinating water. Then Waterlog finally catches up.

"What in the name o'-" He laughs and moves in on the table. "That's a sight for sore optics, eh me bucko?" The fact that all that energy has an obvious guardian doesn't bother him - or Stormcloud, the speedboat-mech looking from cubes to Ironhide with growing interest.

"Have a seat," says the black Autobot, watching them over the edge of his cube of green. Then he tips it up and drains it in one go before tossing it aside and grabbing another blue one, which he mixes carefully with the contents of several of the packets laying at his elbow. "Help yourself."

To the two Minicons, that's cause to be suspicious. But Waterlog only gives him a slanted look before taking up the offer. He walks over to the low table - at some point over the last couple of days it suffered a mysterious accident that cut its legs down to half-size - and bounds onto it. "Where'd ye turn up real grog in this port, matey?"

Stormcloud hangs back for a minute, looking at the black mech with suspicious curiosity. Then he chuckles lowly and saunters over, speculating on the possibilities here. There's a pile of energon, Ironhide's pet Autobot and no-one else around...

"I have my sources." Ironhide pauses to add a pinch more of one shimmering crystalline mineral powder, then tastes again and rumbles his approval. Absently he notes to himself that he's not even feeling a buzz yet, and thinks it must be because of his sister's careful care and her making sure he's had enough fuel since he got to this reality.

He's aware of the looks that the others are giving him, and he knows something of the two from talking with Ironhide. But he's taken part in drinking contests where the loser got recycled. He's not worried now.

"Sources, aye." Waterlog settles his stocky frame against a blue cube - it's smaller than standard energon cubes, but still as big as the Minicon is - and jams a fuel line in with one hand. He plans to drink all of it. Don't ask about the physics involved. "Strikes me you've a great many sources, if ye can strike water on this Unicron-forsaken headland."

Stormcloud sniggers. "Yeah, you've got a real talent there. How did you rust yourself out on Cybertron?"

"I didn't," says Ironhide shortly. "I came back this way."

Then he points to the packets of additives with his free hand. "You're not going to drink that straight when you can spice it up?"

Whatever Stormcloud was going to say next is cut off at the sight of the packets. He shifts his weight back as if readying to attack. The look he turns on Ironhide hovers between outright contempt and suspicion. "What the slag's that?"

Even Waterlog's attitude seems to have changed as he regards the additives. "That's some rum booty, by my reckoning," he says slowly - again giving the Autobot that slanted look, though something in his tone indicates a question.

They've run across all kinds of high-grade, but at their rank (and as Minicons, though they'd be sore to admit it) getting the good stuff was rare enough. They do have memories associated with letting people 'spice up' your energon. They're not memories to inspire trust.

The black mech points to each packet in turn and names the mineral it contains, then goes over them again and lists the flavors you get from each. Till he reaches the last five packets. About those he just says, "Those will blow the top off your head unless you've got a good fuel system."

Yes, they include that crystal stuff he was just adding to his cube.

Stormcloud watches closely (and suspiciously) as Ironhide runs through them. He knows that what a Bulk's systems can absorb will affect a Minicon much more strongly, though the guy did warn him. Unless that's a ruse... or a challenge.

He shoots a smirk over his shoulder at Waterlog and strides forward. "All right, Autobot, hand them over."

"I meant that literally." Ironhide moves the packets where the others can reach them, then returns his elbow to the table and his focus to the cube in his hand.

"And I got the full-system upgrade the same time as the other Minicons." Stormcloud's confident, and just maybe out to prove a point. He picks over the packets, finally settling on one of the dangerous five (the dullest to look at, which he decides is hardest) and another reddish-yellow mineral. Despite the care he appears to take in choosing it, it's basically chosen at random.

He looks up at the black Autobot, a challenge underlying his mocking tone as he asks, "You think I can't hold a bit of fuel?"

Waterlog gives a rough chuckle but otherwise says nothing, tapping the coil of his fuel line against his cube absently as he watches. Whatever else he thinks of Stormcloud's decision, he knows what his role is if anyone's head in the next few hours.

Armada 'verse. Team headquarters in Cyber City. Morale building exercise

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