NSFW 18+ Dramatis Transformae - How Many Ways Can I Write Robots Crying

"I've got one specimen with a more active hunting style-- it needs to be initially triggered, but once it's alert it can follow prey as long as it doesn't uproot itself-- but the others are entirely reliant on traps. I've got... hm, what did I bring, I think three? Three or four pitcher species, the..." 'Slap-happy' didn't sound nearly impressive enough even if it was true-- "active hunter, one glue-trap, and two lobed species. Honestly I should have probably left the active one, but Cybertron's a bit... far from its native range, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to find someone willing to care for it."

 

He leaned forward a little more, fingers resting against the rim of his cube. "Active? How does that work? Do you happen to know how it tracks its prey?" That was absolutely fascinating and he looked the part, wings up and canted towards Eclipse as if that might help him absorb the information. "I can see how it might be tricky to keep, but it sounds like an amazing specimen and certainly something I can understand taking along if there is nobody else willing or able to handle it well" He was still regretting how much of his garden he'd had to leave behind, and he wouldn't be surprised if Eclipse felt the same about his own.

 

"I don't, actually-- if I didn't know better I'd say it tracks motion, but it's probably something like EM or heat sensitivity. The closest thing I found in the care notes was 'don't get your hands stabbed off while feeding it'." The very tips of his wings flicked, a single silent laugh that wasn't hidden at all by their pleased cant. Updraft was actually interested! In the plants, yes, but the focus in those red optics was... well! No need to linger on that thought, not if he wanted to keep Updraft's attention. "It's a woody plant, lots of thin branches covered in thorns-- anything that touches the plant proper gets snagged and dragged towards the digestive chamber in the center. More a worry for organic caretakers than me, it's not strong enough to pierce plating."

 

He huffed a laugh, wingflaps momentarily fluttering with amusement, eyes flickering up to Eclipse's wings for a moment but only a moment because he didn't want to stare, it'd be rude to stare but he just couldn't help noticing. "That is a very useful care instruction, of course. Though I'm glad to hear that it is less dangerous than wrestling centipedes. I would rather you- errr, nobody else got hurt trying to wrangle organics" That was... not a very smooth safe, admittedly, but 'i don't want you to get hurt' was probably a tiny little bit too concerned? Clearly it was time to just. Focus back on the plants.
"If it tracks heat or EM it would certainly have an easy time tracking any sort of Cybertronian" Ok, bad attempt, but at least it's an attempt?

 

"Well, you shouldn't be hurt wrangling organics either," Eclipse pointed out, but he could spot the redirect clear as day. No need to harp on the point-- Updraft was his own mech, he could decide whether he wanted acid-spitting centipedes in his life. "But yeah-- obviously it hasn't got eyes, but it has some way of detecting prey that manages to escape its grasp. I don't feed live, obviously, too much risk of damaging the plant itself, but there are recorded incidents of branches stretching or growing to recapture something that evades the initial strike, and it certainly gets after me when I have to prune it."

 

"ah, yes I guess" He shrugged, looking away for a moment. Ok maybe he did value other people's wellbeing a little higher than his own. "It sounds really fascinating. I would think that having to fight the flora is a bit of a new experience for most botanists or gardeners but it certainly sounds to be thriving under your care" He paused a moment, looking down at this infusion because he'd only just realized that he'd spent the entire time looking at Eclipse that was... probably too intense, too much? But the topic had been so interesting and Eclipse was so pretty and he wanted to look at him some more which wasn't helping.

 

Oh, he'd-- he'd been staring, and now Updraft was uncomfortable, and that was just great. Eclipse looked back down at his own drink, grip tightening. "I've been trying, anyway," he continued, doing his best to keep his voice even. "It's healthy enough to give taking over the greenhouse a go every few decades, so I suppose I've been doing well enough. Haven't got it to flower yet, but they usually just do runners or root-spread." Maybe if he just kept talking about the thing Updraft actually cared about, things wouldn't get too awkward.

 

Oh no he'd ruined it. Oh frag. "Good to know that i am not the only one who has to occasionally battle his plants back into their confinements" he tried for levity but he could feel it falling flat and Eclipse just... Looked tense? He should apologize. He wasn't sure what exactly the mistake had been but he should apologize. It wasn't like he'd expected to good at this...this.

"Sorry, i- um. I am really not good at this anymore... If i said something upsetting, please let me know? I am so out of practice for social cues" he could feel his wings slipping back and low, unobtrusive, apologetic and Primus why couldn't he do this right? OK, four million years of solitary confinement albeit in a very big cell but still. It was so frustrating to sit here realizing that he'd just misstepped but not knowing /where/. "I suspect it is as frustrating for me as it must be for you"

 

What? That was almost worse; Eclipse's wings dropped, and he looked back up despite himself. "What? No, I-- no, I was staring, you're just--" 'that beautiful' was absolutely the wrong thing to say right now-- "you're fine, I didn't want to make you uncomfortable." Fat lot of good that had done.

 

What?? Oh. Oh ok that was not even remotely what he'd thought had been going on and he couldn't help the surprised look on his face or equally surprised way his wings flared back high. "Wh- oh. Oh. You weren't staring, at least as far as I can tell? I thought I was being to um, too intense? You are so" very very pretty, but he couldn't just say that, "interesting and I thought I had gone and made it awkward" Well it kinda was now, but he also couldn't help a slight amused tremble to his wings as they relaxed down again. "You didn't do anything wrong, at all. It has been... it is very enjoyable, talking to you" Too strong again? But so far Eclipse hadn't said anything and seemed to having a similar problem and so he'd just decided to be honest.

 

He had known that reading up on the entire war would be painful. He'd accepted that and tried to get an unbiased an accounts as possible, and read in small chunks, always as far as he could stomach. It wasn't always very far, but he'd made his way through, right up until the hearing at court. He wasn't sure what he'd expected of it, what sort of speech he'd expected of Megatron...except not That. Certainly not that. He'd closed the file and then just sat in his quarters for a while, staring at nothing while his wings were gently shaking behind him. He could hear the rattle of the platting, but not really feel it. Or much of anything right now. It was just too much to deal with right now, in full. He needed... to do something, anything to blunt the impact at least for a little while and well, there were easy, quick ways to do that, or stupid ones, and he at least tried not to be stupid. Well, not in a way that would kill him, at least, because there was a high likelihood that this was stupid anyways.

[Updraft to Captain Nichrome]: My apologies for interrupting you, but I just saw the court case, and I need to very very drunk right now. And a ship this size surely has at least a moderate stack of engex available as long as nobody gets too rowdy so if you could just let me know where to find it, I will be happy to be from under everyone's plates for a shift or two and rather grateful to you.

He was pretty sure that at worst he'd end up in the brig but he also suspected that he wasn't the only 'Con who'd had a bad reaction to this. Which was precisely why he was contacting Nichrome instead of anyone else.

 

Nichrome had been off duty and catching up with the necessary bureaucratic nonsense the ship required, so of course any and all comms were a welcome distraction. Especially those that came from handsome fliers in desperate need of distraction. Hmm, but what to take, and how to best smuggle it so Sec wouldn't be on his aft for it... Ah. Sometimes bad habits paid off it seemed.

[Nichrome to Updraft]: If you're in your habsuite right now stay right there, I'll be over in a tic.

The datapad with reports was subspaced, a datastick full of equations Reffy wanted him to look over was slotted into a small compartment in his arm, and the heelies were kicked out and he was off, scooting along the hallways as fast as he could reasonably get away with. And a minibot could get away with quite a bit of speed as long as he cited his size as the reason.
All in all it didn't take long for him to slide to a stop in front of Updraft's quarters, rapping knuckles against the door discreetly.

 

Well that wasn't a no, or a reprimand, to his intense relief and he certainly could sit tight for a little bit longer. It was easier than figuring out how to make himself move through the numb feeling, at least until the knock kicked his manners into gear and he got up to open it.

"Captain Nichrome, thank you for coming over." He did, somewhat distantly, note that his wings were still shaking a little, and tried to force them to stillness in a carefully neutral position, as he stepped aside to let him in. No engex visible yet, but for all he knew there was a lot of subspace involved somehow, mods like that were easy enough to achieve if you knew the right people.

 

"Oh no problem. 'Cons stick together no matter what certain people say, right?" he offers lamely, then looks around the room, shifting his weight back and forth a bit, then turns to look at Updraft.
"Also in case of sounding completely nutty, I'm gonna show you something neat you can never ever mention to Sec or there will proooooobably be a Hearing and reports home and all that nonsense." He rolled his optics, then ent to the right hand wall and began counting panels. Three... four... five... kick the lower right hand corner with his heel, knock his elbow against the top right corner of the same panel after, pull the slightly dislodged panel off.
Jackpot.
"Aaaand here we go. Free of charge obviously. Tell medbay if your optics short out, but don't snitch on me, or Life Support will probably put me in captain jail where I have to do ven more of Swiftwing's paperwork than I already do."

 

"Yeah" He replied just as lamely and then just watched fascinated as Nichrome proceed to reveal a stash of...well that absolutely was engex, and a considerable amount of it, too. "Oh absolutely not telling anyone, I am not going to start being a snitch now." And if his optics shortened out he could- alright probably not fix them himself, you needed optics to do that so he would probably have to go see the medbay for that. "I am sure that if anything happens to my optics I can claim overly aggressive plant spores for it." See, he even had a cover story already.

The quarters were a bit stuffed with datapads and plants, so he sat down on the bed and cleared some space for Nichrome on the desk chair, in case he wanted to stay for the 'flier goes sparking drunk' show. Drinking together was usually better than doing it alone. "That said, I do now feel like I should have investigated the walls a little more closely."

 

He winced slightly. "Don't-- don't do that, you'll think horrible things of me. It's just a habit I got into when I was still with the Iaconian Academy. You know, before the war? Working in the chemistry department of course meant I had to apply all of this knowledge I had like a good little citizen." The sarcasm practically dripped off of his words, as he picked a bottle of light blue unassuming liquid and hopped up on the desk chair.
"I forgot about this stash before you reminded me. I don't want to know how many there may be left that I forgot about."

 

"Honestly right now I am thinking very highly of your brewing and stashing abilities. Having resources and using them is not a bad thing" Not something he'd been familiar with before, always well fed and all that, but he understood the sentiment of keeping things for bad times. He'd certainly done it with non-food things.
Updraft picked two empty cups up from his desk and handed one to Nichrome, since he was apparently indeed staying. "I imagine I would have been very surprised if I had managed to open it by accident and found a mystery stash of engex.

 

"At least the booze stashes are a comparatively good surprise. But I do actually have a file of all my uh... other stashes noted down somewhere and I cleaned those out." He shrugged, accepting the cup and pouring himself a good swig of the rather foul smelling engex in his bottle.
"Also you know, technically we're supposed to be a dry ship, but if Lord Starscream expected that rule to be kept he should have chosen literally anyone else as the Decepticon representative."
He raises his cup in a vague approximation of a toast.

 

"If I find gun stashes I will make sure to call you first and not touch anything." Or explosives or anything else he might be finding in here that was less harmless.
He poured some of the engex for himself, and the smell made him a little nostalgic actually. Badly brewed, totally illegal makeshift engex was something he remembered somewhat fondly from around the start of the war, and when he first met his cassettes... the thought made his spark twinge.
"I am not going to tell him if you don't, either. Aside, I don't think I have ever seen a ship that size that actually managed to stay dry no matter sec's best efforts." He raised his drink in a return salute and then took a sip. It made his fans stutter. "oh wow." Either he wasn't used to it anymore or this was really strong stuff.

 

Nichrome vented a small laugh.
"Oh yeah, Oops. Should've warned you. I don't do weak drinks. Going from 'misappropriating teaching materials for making booze' to 'Bars in the very bad part of town' to 'frontline scrapper drinking games' doesn't tend to make for weak tanks. Though I guess that's half the point of this isn't it?" He rolled his shoulders in an awkward shrug, retracting the face mask momentarily to drink. Always awkward to do that around people, but... Updraft would probably end up with access to medbay files sooner rather than later, no point in pretending he didn't get an altmode change during the war.