| abstract | - September 13, 2011, 11:01 PM (Track and Training, Iacon) --- Blades thrashes a drone angrily with a howl, slamming it limbs-first into a wall and allowing sparks to fly. He grinds its back into the immovable barrier, punching his fist into its chest cavity. Finally he hauls off the head with a feral snarl and tosses it downfield. "Well, somebody's in a bad mood." A dark red and gold heliformer is leaning by the entrance, watching Blades tear into the drone with mild interest. "You going to leave anyone else some to practice with?" He asks, stepping towards the other mech slightly warily. He doesn't really want to get attacked, after all. Blades turns to face the newcomer with wild optics and tosses the remains of the corpse his way. "What do you want? Go away!" he hisses. Flashover sidesteps, letting the corpse smash into the wall next to him. "Hey, watch it." He might as well give the kid the benefit of the doubt, and doesn't say anything about him throwing the drone at him purposely. "Calm the slag down, because I'm not going anywhere." The remark isn't lost on Blades, who, while enraged, isn't exactly stupid. "You don't have a slagging reason to be here," he says savagely. "I was here first, and you showed up spouting static," he chokes out as he begins dragging another drone out of the storage shed to continue enacting his aggressions. Sparks and fluids fly as he begins ripping out cables and hoses. "You don't either." Flashover points out, nudging the battered drone with one foot. "You got three brothers here, but you're over here tearing things to pieces instead. And you know slagging well I'm not spouting static, youngling." "What else am I supposed to do?" Blades snaps back as he drives his servos into the drone's cranium. "It's a pit-fragging lockdown, slag it! You expect me to do what, write notes?!" He hauls out a hose and tears at the raw end with his teeth, engine hiccuping as it just can't maintain the violent wrath for much longer at a stretch. Flashover frowns at the sound of Blades' engine, heaving air out of his vents. Oh, fun times. "Blades, stop it. You're going to hurt yourself and that's the last thing any of you need right now." He says, moving forward to try and grab the smaller mech under the arms. Blades squawks in unhappy surprise at the approach behind him and starts spinning his main rotor. When the blades contact metal he startles and tries to pull away. Flashover grunts as the rotors hit his arms, but keeps his grip on Blades, hefting him up until the other mech's feet barely brush the floor. "Stop squirming, youngling." He snaps, shifting his grip so he doesn't drop him. "I'm not going to let you go until you calm the slag down." The smaller heliformer quite literally can't remember the last time he's been lifted off his feet by something other than his own arms while climbing, and the sensation is absolutely not welcome. Blades kicks his feet in a panic, his vents gasping. "Lemme down! Lemme down!" he exclaims, frantically grabbing at Flashover's hands while continuing his rotor spin. "Dear Primus, youngling, calm /down./ I'm not going to hurt you." Flashover mutters, flinching as the blades of the rotors slice into his arms. He lowers Blades back down, though he doesn't release him, only tightening his grip. "Look, it's the ground! Stop freaking out!" Blades begins to settle once he feels his pedes on solid ground, and although he keeps worrying at Flashover's arms. "Wha-- what do you want?!" Blades finally asks. "Who the slag are you?" he inquires, desperately trying to turn himself to face Flashover for a closer look. Flashover changes his grip, physically turning Blades around and holding him in place still. "Name's Flashover. Don't know if you remember me. I was Coruscate's..." He trails off for a second, frowning. "I'm Groove's guardian. I knew you guys before all this slag went down." The smaller mech's struggles slow to a stop as he stares. "I... don't. Who --?" he asks, his optics narrowing while he thinks on this. Shortly thereafter he resumes a halfhearted struggle, a deep frown on his face. Rolling his optics, Flashover lifts Blades up again, shaking the mech slightly for a moment then dropping him back to the ground. "Stop that and I might let you go." He says simply, waiting for Blades to stop struggling. "I'm going to guess you've at least met your brothers, even if you aren't with them. Which is something we'll get to in a bit, by the way. I'm Groove's guardian. All of you were supposed to have one, but obviously that got fragged up." The shake is enough to get another decidedly un-tough squawk out of Blades, who settles down with hitching vents. "Guardian, slag," the youngling finally mutters. "Didn't work out at all." He slumps in Flashover's arms. Flashover eyes Blades consideringly, before letting him go, crossing his arms. The scratches on his arms sting like the Pit, but he ignores them for now. "Yeah. I don't really know what happened." He admits, scowling a little. "One breem everything's perfectly fine, the next Coruscate's dead, the rest of the team following quick, you five were gone, and I couldn't find a single one of the slaggers." Blades looks up at Flashover with narrowed optics after several kliks. "Nobody was too big on retrieving us, either." He suppresses a shudder, then cocks up an optic. "You... knew us when?" Flashover frowns at the remark, rotors clanking together quietly. "I had a job to do, kid. I didn't know back then that all of the others were dead, or else I /would/ have hunted you annoying fraggers down." He pauses for a moment, considering his answer to the question carefully. "...yeah, I knew you guys. Helped raise you. Well, Coruscate did most of the raisin'. I was mostly there to get you out of whatever odd place you decided to mess around in that cycle." Blades frowns and puts his hands on his hip components. "I don't remember you. At all." He huffs softly out of his vents. Flashover shrugs. "Not surprising. They said you wouldn't. Woulda thought that once you were all back together the memories would come back; at least, that's what they said. There's probably something I don't know." Blades snorts. "Oh, they're supposed to come back, all right. Right after I let some slagger jack into the back of my helm," he notes, rattling his rotors in agitation. "How can they *do* that? Why didn't all of you just hide us deep down or something? It was terrible out there!" He doesn't actually notice the change, but his voice rises in volume and pitch until he reaches the end and shouts, arms spread wide. Flashover lets his arms drop to his sides, optic ridges drawing down in confusion. "What? That's... You weren't supposed to need someone to go in your head again. Something musta fragged up somewhere..." His muttering trails off as Blades gets louder, and his expression actually softens a little. "Slag if I know, kid. I don't even know /why/ they split you up. But once First Aid's back, you're all together again. And you got three brothers already here you ain't even gone to see." "Again?" Blades challenges. "Again?! What were they *doing*?" he asks, optics flickering in an (irrational) panic. He's not actually worrying about his brothers at the moment... "Wha- calm the slag /down/, kid." Flashover says, crossing his arms again. "They did it the first time to hide your memories. Didn't hurt you, not as far as I can tell." Slag, he wasn't very good at this whole 'supportive and helpful' thing, was he... Blades is rather disturbed by the whole thing, as evidenced by the barely restrained pumping of his forearms with clenched fists. "They... they didn't..." he mutters, optics losing focus as he considers that exactly what he didn't want is what got him into... well, just about everything, actually. Finally he gives up on paying attention to Flashover altogether and dives back to committing violence back upon the drone. Flashover groans quietly as Blades goes back to attacking the drone. "Aw, slag it, kid." He grumbles, moving to grab the smaller heliformer again. "This isn't a good way to deal with it. It happened, you're /fine/, and you don't even remember it. Can we stop dismembering drones now?" Blades lets out a yawp, but lets himself be pulled, expressing his displeasure with only a low rev in his engine and a tick-tock movement from his rotors. "You have a better idea for how I spend my time?" he asks after a few moments in suspension. "I'm pretty sure anything's better than this, kid." Flashover answers, still holding Blades a kix or two off the ground. "Go see your brothers. Bother somebody in charge for a report on the search. Slag, go paint the entire fragging city optic-melting pink for all I care. You're gonna hurt yourself at this rate, kid." Blades turns up a sour look and braces his arms against Flashover's, as if to push himself up and out of the larger mech's grip. "Do tell," he says unhappily. Flashover frowns, lifting Blades slightly to make it easier to look him in the optics. "I'm not a medic. I just know you can frag yourself up with a lot of strain. And right now? You're pretty slagging strained." He shifts his hold on the smaller mech. "And I don't want to see you get hurt." "I'm glad," Blades allows, although not in one of his friendlier tones. He squirms around in Flashover's grip. "Could you please... ah... not hold there?" he asks, twisting around to get more comfortable. Ah, well. Might as well make the best of this "picking up" thing... Flashover pauses at that, tilting his helm as he tries to figure out how to make this more comfortable. "Er... Slag it." He mumbles, shifting the other mech around to let him wrap one arm around Blades' lower half and pulling him closer to let him rest most of his weight against Flashover. "You done being fragged off at me for no reason?" Blades pushes his arms against Flashover's chest to give him a rough, appraising look -- and a deeply felt grunt -- before relaxing his upper body against the larger heliformer's. "Fine, whatever," he mutters from somewhere in Flashover's shoulder joint. Flashover chuckles at that, the sound rumbling most of his chassis. "Glad we're done with that, then." He says rather cheerfully, reaching up with his free hand to pat Blades on the back lightly. "I'm gonna guess you haven't been rechargin' or refuelin' properly?" Blades wriggles a bit at the touch on his back. He hums softly, more to himself than to Flashover, before he responds. "Better now than I was," he finally allows. Flashover frowns slightly at the implication. He's not really sure he wants to know all the details, but... "The plan got that fragged up, huh." He says quietly, tightening his grip momentarily. "Slag, I'm sorry, kid. I woulda come if I had known." The younger mech snorts a blast of air out of his vents. "Would've been good," he says in a low voice, his optics blinking. "Told 'em we shoulda had some sort of signal. That you got there safely. But no, we had to keep comm silence. Fragging lot of good that did." Flashover mutters, "I would have come for you in a sparkbeat, kid. Groove had the best of the Crystal Guard between him and anyone out there, he didn't really need me. I'm sorry." Blades twists himself around some more in Flashover's arms, until he feels the larger mech's hand below his rotor well. "Right there, please," he says simply with a quiet rev. "Not worth worrying about now, I guess," he tells the older heliformer. "I feel much better now, anyway." Flashover chuckles again at the demand, acquiescing by scratching at the spot gently. "I'm glad. And you never answered my question, kid. Have you been rechargin' or refuelin' at all regularly?" Blades offlines his optics for a few moments before he answers. "Now, yeah," he says slowly. "I need a lot of energon, and First Aid gave me a lot of supplements to take," he says. "I recharge a lot, too. Maybe a little too much," he says, onlining his optics with a yawn. Flashover nods, not pausing in the scratching. "Yeah, you all needed special supplements before too. New systems and all. Didn't always want to take them." He laughs a little at the memories, tightening his grip again. "You refueled recently, kid?" Blades's tank gurgles up the scent of burning rubber. "Umm, kind of," he says. "Energon was a little while ago, though," he finishes quietly. "I've been a little busy." Flashover cocks an optic ridge at the noise-and scent- but lets it slide. "Lil' busy ripping drones apart, I'm guessin'." He responds, nudging a dislodged piece of one of said drones with his foot. "There are more productive things to do with your time, you know." Blades rumbles quietly and drives the tip of his nose back in between Flashover's plates. "S'pose so," he says. "A little harder, please," he finally continues, changing the subject. Chuckling to himself, Flashover does as asked, shifting his grip around to get an easier angle. "Sure, kid." He agrees quietly. "Where do they have you staying around here?" Blades rocks his head happily for a few seconds, then looks up, his optics unfocused. "Oh... hmm? Oh." He purses his lips for a few seconds to get back to Flashover's question. "Oh, the Autobots let me have a bunk in the barracks... with Hot Spot and... oh. First Aid, yeah." He pauses for another second and then buries his face again. Flashover goes silent for a moment, hand stilling in it's movements before starting back up again. "We'll get 'im back, Blades. I'll go get him all on my slagging own if I have to." He mutters, before forcing a small smile and heading toward the door. "I'll take you to your bunk, alright? Get some rest, then go see your brothers." Blades wakes up pretty readily when the scratching stops, and he looks up at Flashover's face. "Oh, yeah, ummm... Yeah, that's fine. Thanks," he says, pointing over the larger heliformer's shoulder. "It's that way," he supplies helpfully. Flashover chuckles again, pausing in the scratching again just long enough to key open the door. "Passed it on my way here, kid. Been trying to memorize the layout of this place anyways." Blades draws up short at that, jamming a few digits in between his elder's plates while he rights himself to express his surprise. "Memorizing? What for?" he asks, optics keen. And then melting out of focus, because that *spot*... Flashover barely even twitches as the fingers dig in, tuning it out with ease. "Bad habit. Spent so long fighting fires, I start preparing for them no matter where I am." "Oh," Blades replies, not really giving it much thought beyond that. He hums softly as the scratching continues, pulling away his digits to hang his arms freely. "Fires," he mutters. "Hot Spot knows about fires," he says, beginning to doze off. "I remember." Flashover responds quietly, not quite able to hide his growing smile at Blades' reaction. "Go ahead and recharge, kid. I got you now."
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