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

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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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"...put the wind up them," Waterlog growls at his shipmate as they return from a very brief visit to the outside world. The hovercraft sounds almost scolding as he tramps through the back door, one hand clamped on Stormcloud's arm.

"Yeeeah," Stormcloud drawls. "That's why we do it."

Waterlog snorts, cocking his head and listening for any stragglers who might tell on them to Oceanglide. "You remember our captain's words, matey. Stir the bottom-feeders in this city..."

"And we'll get the admiralty coming down on our heads," Stormcloud finishes gloomily, pushing away from the other Minicon and tramping down toward the common room. "Fragging stupid planet, all slagging city and nothing worth slagging going outside for..."

Ironhide lets air out of his fuel lines in a rather resounding burp, then flips his first cube into nothingness and considers whether he wants to mix another, or to have some green. Remembering how long it's been since he's had the green, he reaches for a cube of that, then adds the proper minerals to sweeten the rather raw tasting product before taking a deep pull.

Yes, this is supposed to be sipped. No, he's never gone by that tradition.

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.

"I don't usually think much at all," rumbles Ironhide flatly. "You want carbon if you're going to mix those two. They reek otherwise."

And carbon+energon=sweet.

That gets him a disbelieving look solely in the name of 'did he really say that?'

But Stormcloud's not taking his word drinkwise, either. The Minicon forgoes the carbon - though not without a second's hesitation as he glances at it. But instead he chucks a couple of handfuls from both his chosen packets into a smallish cube and kicks it hard enough to send the additives swirling through the liquid - far from an even mixture, but it's how he's used to doing it.

That done, he tries out the result... and doesn't quite wince. "I thought you said it was bad," he says, looking up and trying to clear the taste from his fuel lines.

He's not actually faking, which says something about what the team's had to survive on in the past.

"I said it reeked." Ironhide finishes his cube, then pauses to let out a truly impressive air bubble and contemplate it for a moment before reaching for another green cube and some of the dull coloured powder. To this he adds just a bit of the crystal, and then small bits of three other packets before a sprinkling of carbon goes on top. His expression is intent as he measures and mixes, and then resumes its usual blank cast as he tastes his creation and finds it very good.

That energon is fizzing out of the cube.

"Whatever."

Waterlog cocks his head, watching Ironhide work, then glances at Stormcloud as the other Minicon goes back for carbon. He gives a mocking snigger. "Can't stomach your pick after all?"

Stormcloud draws up to his full height to glare at his brother properly. "You want to make me?" Neither of them has Oceanglide's facility with language, and frankly he hasn't got a proper rejoinder. Fortunately the words aren't as important to the conversation as the sentiment behind them. It's his energon, and he can do what he likes with it.

This time, Waterlog defers with a neutral grunt. He's still watching the other two closely, though... and that curiously fizzing drink. A bot's tempted to think 'Joe's' corrosion was self-inflicted...

The big black mech's lifeless optics are absent as he focuses on his drink and on his sensors. He's checking for the shadow, and listening for the telltale sound of Nightscream.

Which reminds him. He's got to get that gag out of the kid's vocalizer.

A blob of foam from the cube slips down his hand, and he frowns at it, and then rubs it in a little.

The shadow is absent as it has been since they settled into the building. Even more ominously, so is Nightscream. How he's communicating out in the wider world, nobody wants to know.

Waterlog watches as Stormcloud adds the carbon to his drink, kicks it until it's mixed, and tastes - watches, and waits, and picks his moment.

He activates his vocaliser again when his team-mate starts to drink properly. "I heard once Smeltship's crew liked to wreck their grog with carbon. Used to scoop the ash off the battlefield for it..."

Stormcloud all but slices through his own fuel siphon.

"I've done that." Ironhide regards the gleaming finish left by the foam, then takes another deep pull at his cube.

Well, that just makes it better - to judge by Waterlog's guffaws, that is. Stormcloud backs away from the offending energon, his horrified attention swinging to Ironhide. "You could've told me that, you half-clocked freak!"

Seems there are some things even this crew don't like contemplating... although without knowing that the people Waterlog just referred tended to use flamethrowers on their enemies, it mightn't be clear what the issue is.

"That's from oak trees on Earth." Ironhide regards the Minicons impassively as he points to the packet of carbon.

Waterlog's laughter quietens as he strains to think back. "They be the timbers those scurvy humans used to build their scows-"

"Ah, stow it," Stormcloud snaps at him. "Now I know you're laying shadows."

"'Twas Oceanglide said it."

"Give me a break. No-one on this planet carries bits of old human ships." Stormcloud snorts and turns back to Ironhide. "And sure, there's some slagging tools round here dumb enough to believe that's really from Earth. I'm not one of them."

"Several of these minerals aren't native to Cybertron." Ironhide shrugs impassively. "And if that carbon's not from Earth it's still from oak. I recognize the scent. Mech carbon has a different tang when it's dry."

"Yeah, sure, and I bet you've been to Earth too, huh?" The boat-con folds his arms, brown armour gleaming with the motion (which just shows he needs to get out more). He might well buy that the carbon's from an offworld source, maybe picked up on whatever dead-end colony this Autobot hails from. It's just that particular name that stretches it too far.

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

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