The Things a Bot Does for Fashion [OPEN]

[dontasktrix]

WHO: Slipstream and OPEN
WHERE: In and between Nexus Temple and Junkpile
WHEN Nowish; some time after Slipstream talks to Teddie.
WHAT: Searching for specific items in order to trade to Teddie, so he will construct the spectacles to make her look smartaccessory Slipstream might just want to have. Possibly also discussion of who might be able to repair sonic cleaning devices.
WARNINGS: Nothing right now.
NOTE: Slipstream is mod-authorized to find (apart from the usual no-permission-needed stuff) 1) Powell Brand Sound Wave toy, without organic-hypnotizing function; 2) sonic cleaning device(s) in parts or "rough condition". She'll also be looking for typical salvage in form of metal and glass to be used to make the glasses/spectacles.


Slipstream kinda wanted those glasses. Oh, she'd done her best to make her interest look casual to Teddie, when he demonstrated his curious ability to make optic-wear appear, but they did seem a useful accessory for a bot to have. Not that she wanted pointless junk, like certain bots. No, she hadn't inherited greed, exactly. She just had the idea that a pair of spectacles made a bot look more scientific. The bots she knew on Earth hadn't worn any, but it seemed a popular mod among humans. Plus, she seemed to have some vague data, transferred from her maker, that indicated there were Decepticon scientists who had optical mods. And, Decepticon science wasn't anything to sneer at; they'd developed cloning, among other things.

Slipstream left her quarters in the temple of Nexus Prime, where she still stayed, despite the bunker-like atmosphere that didn't offer many views of the sky. If humans could hide their aircraft in secret underground hangars, or inside sea vessels, she could manage. If Starscream could deal with close quarters on a warship, between jaunts into space, Slipstream could certainly tolerate rock-hewn chambers. She'd rather suffer with fewer points of egress than she'd like, than be seen as inferior to Starscream!

Outside, there were plenty of views of the sky, and even the occasional, spectacular meteor impact. She walked most of the way, carrying some tiny bear-scaled crates in one hand, then hovering where a crater interrupted the shortest path between temple and junkpile.

Some piles dwarfed even her warrior's stature. Though the items fallen through the Lambda and collected in these stacks weren't necessarily junk, the haphazard piles of discreet, heterogeneous, materials certainly made the area look like scrap awaiting the smelting pit.

Slipstream didn't like this area of the Haven. It reminded her too much of coming online here that first time, and how the small bits of debris had jammed her thruster. Loss of flight ability was never a good thing! Besides, remembering her own arrival made her remember Starscream would have ended his life in a trash heap, if not for that relatively small fragment of the AllSpark that got stuck in his head, and probably by chance. If not for that, she wouldn't have existed. A lowly start for a being seemingly created to rule the skies.

Without conscious command, Slipstream automatically put a hand over her cockpit canopy. As quickly, she realized her action and lowered her arm to her side. She had a mission before her.

There seemed no efficient way to search the piles, not if she wanted the search to also be timely. She hoped she might eventually convince some acolyte to assist, or perhaps find some small human to search the stacks, where Slipstream's own weight would be more likely to cause collapse. Until an opportunity presented itself, the best strategy seemed to start in one spot and search outward from there.

Comments

[dontasktrix]

"How the slag should I know? You could be some beast from a beast planet! What are you, like a space fox or something?"

She hadn't seen a raccoon before. Many Earth animals she knew only from text description or television, and then sometimes they were just puppets or cartoons.

Slipstream vocalized wordlessly, a scratchy, grating sound, which she knew to stem from annoyance. Her wings lifted and fanned outward, to make her look even broader. "Who said anything about gender!?"

[furryfarkinfiend]

What was it with others calling him a fox lately?!

Rocket sneered and clenched his fists, glaring at her as his tail lashed about behind him.

"A fox?! A bloody fox?! How stupid are you farkin' robots that you can't tell the difference between a fox and a raccoon?!" he snapped, throwing his hands up and turning away for a second, muttering curses under his back before whirling around as she made some weird noises at him. His own growl like chitter escaped him and he glared darkly at the flier, jaw clenched as his ears pressed flatter to his head.

"You're a female aren't you? Or is it just normal for the weaker robots to have a slimmer, curvier frame?" Rocket sneered.

[dontasktrix]

"Right, because 'raccoons' are renown throughout the galaxy! Turbofoxes have been known to exist on Cybertron. Retro-raccoons?" She shook her head, slowly; that wasn't even a thing!

Slipstream seethed at the 'female' question. It was bad enough on its own, but worse, now, for the fact she'd discussed the matter with Rung and Elita recently. The shutters about her optics closed in, narrowing the visible lenses to glowing, red, slits.

"What's so female about me?" She demanded, voice graver than usual. "There's nothing fraggin' weaker about this body type. There's none of your fluid glands or weird pins and sockets, or cables that only connect one way, or whatever raccoons have!"

For all that Slipstream thought she knew about organic sex and gender - at least on Earth - she didn't always understand the details very well. And, the data was gleaned mostly from bad romantic comedies she claimed not to like.

"A bot has a few different curves and different canopy tint and you just assume they cook indoors and guard protoforms and complain about not getting promotions?!"

At least one of those things Starscream did, and he got away with being 'He'.

[furryfarkinfiend]

"Maybe not in this galaxy or yours, you farkin' fool, but in mine they are! I travel the galaxy--I'm a Guardian of the Galaxy, thank you very much you bloody wench!" Rocket shot back, taking a half step forward as his paws twitched, going for his pistols like they always did when he was feeling particularly agitated.

As she ranted, Rocket had to resist the urge to roll his eyes, ears pitching forward before flicking and falling back, red eyes narrowed still as he rested his paws on the handles of his guns.

"Feminist to boot. What the fark will you robots throw out next, huh? I didn't say any of that! All I said was that you looked and sounded female you farkin' wench!" the raccoon growled, claws curled around his guns, itching to pull them free in case he needed to.

That and he just kind of liked to.

"If you want me to gender stereotype giant metal beings I gladly will. You're the one jumping to conclusions and looking for a fight!"

[dontasktrix]

Slipstream didn't very much like that twitch toward the pistols. And, she didn't thing 'Gaurdian' was necessarily a good thing. For all she knew Guardians kept their galaxy safe through strict elimination of undesirables or some dystopian thing.

WHirrr-clicK - A panel rose from each of her gauntlets to reveal laser blasters. She didn't go for target lock or anything, but they were there, along with the blasters mounted on her arms.

"It's not feminist, either, because there's nothing female or feminine about it! It's not male, for that matter!" She stomped one thruster heel out of anger. "Robots using 'he' or 'she' isn't the same. There's no sex or gender to stereotype."

[furryfarkinfiend]

As soon as he heard the click, Rocket had his pistols out and aimed, not caring that she hadn't taken aim of her own. It was a protection thing for him, and maybe a bit of a 'I won't stand for your shit' gesture as well.

"How the fark am I supposed to know that?! It's not like I know what the bloody hell you lot are! You don't exist in my universe, not that I've ever seen!" he growled, tail lashing as a claw twitched around each trigger of his laser pistols. "What the fark do you call the differences then, huh? Styles? Is that what it is?"

[dontasktrix]

He was the one who brought-up gender! But, fighting the same point over and over seemed a pretty ineffective way to go about things. So, Slipstream managed to overrride her volatile emotional subroutines and speak more calmly - not that her voice was exactly pleasant in either case.

"Maybe it's fair to say neither of us should have known about alien cultures from another universe." She made a sort of bow, which was all grand and sweeping, because tendency for melodrama and over-acting was something all Starscream's clones probably inherited.

"But, for you future information, Cybertronian bots having different styles of the same body type model, or translating their pronouns into languages that employ gender is like one of those idiot expressions." Was that right? Well, the phrases were idiotic, too. "The concepts are only roughly analogous. You can't make literal translation."

Slipstream wasn't sure whether space raccoons understood Earth analogies, but she didn't think one would be any more likely to understand Cybertronian ones.

"Let's just say some of us ended up with the optional trim package."

[furryfarkinfiend]

"....Right," Rocket muttered, slowly lowering his pistols and tucking them back into their holsters, petting them in a fond like manner. "So, the differences are just outward differences, or whatever. Fair enough I guess."

They were all robots after all.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Rocket eyed the flier up and down a bit, taking in all of the differences now that he wasn't in a fighting match with her, still counting her as a female in his book but whatever. No reason to piss her off any further right?

"Is that the case in all the farkin' universes that you lot come from?"

[dontasktrix]

Slipstream responded in kind by retracting the gauntlet lasers, but she still had the arm-mounted blasters. She wasn't about to go anywhere without them.

After taking a moment to determine for herself whether the raccoon might be any further threat, Slipstream bent to the nearby pile of lambda-spewed oddities. She fully intended to begin a search for the items on her virtual list, but her talons froze in position as she processed that last question.

"No." She said this softly, which wasn't very typical of her, but seeing as how ranting hadn't seemed too effective in this conversation, she chose to under-react. "There's this universe with the boxy, red, 'decent' Starscream." She moved both hands to make quote fingers, expressing her cynicism on how decent any Starscream could be.

"And there's a pink Arcee," And a crazy phychatrist, and a grounder who had arrived covered in rust, and other just weird characters, except Wing seemed all right; but that was beside the point, now. "It's been said she's female."

And she didn't really want to talk about it again, so she attempted to redirect the conversation. "You searching for anything in particular out here?"

[furryfarkinfiend]

Since the seeker was going back to her junk picking, Rocket decided to do the same, gaze lingering for a second more before he was scampering back over a pile of junk to start looking at everything that may be useful to him.

"Gotcha," he mused, figuring she was done with that line of conversation given her reaction to it--which he'd caught before returning to the junk--and the change in topic suddenly. "Nothing in particular, just something that might be farkin' useful I guess."

The raccoon peered at an object then tossed it aside, tail snapping as his foot tapped a bit, the raccoon looking for something else that might catch his eye.

"You?"

[dontasktrix]

Slipstream saw the potential to recruit aid for her own task.

"A lot of this scrap needs some repair or cleaning to be useful." Slipstream picked up a plastic bottle with a scratched label, screwed off the lid, then held it near her face to capture the scent. With a shrug, she decided the contents were good enough, and set it aside, near her little crates.

"I wouldn't mind some devices that use sound waves for cleaning."

[furryfarkinfiend]

"Sound waves?" Rocket repeated, tail twitching in a curious sort of manner as he paused in what he was doing--digging through junk of course like the animal that he was at core--ears flicking then perking a bit. "And I doubt they call this place the junk pile for nothing, flier," he added with a bit of a scoff, straightening up and sliding down the pile a bit with careful skill.

"What are you collecting all this junk for anyway? You can't bloody just be cleaning things," he muttered as he started searching through the pile again...maybe attempting to find some useful looking items to split with the flier.

[dontasktrix]

"The sonic devices don't use large amounts of water," she said. "Not too many buildings were designed with small organics in mind; they don't always have enough plumbing." This was true, but so was the fact that Teddie had agreed to make her glasses, in trade.

Whatever raccoons might be expected to be, this one was light and nimble. He navigated the slope of a scrap pile without any apparent difficulty.

"Salvage doesn't have to be about finding what's useful to you, if you can find what's useful to someone else."

Slipstream plucked a vessel from the pile and turned it about in order to view all its sides. "You know what this is? Is it for beverages?"