Fundamental Failure to Fly

[redshirtrobot]

WHO: Fracas and YOU! Yes, YOU!
WHERE: All over the Haven
WHEN: Over the course of the next week (7/8 to 7/13)
WHAT: Fracas is practicing flying... unfortunately he's not so good at it yet.
WARNINGS: n/a, to be updated as needed


Fracas had been a car since forever. No, really. It was what he had always been. Wheels were the way he got around; it was why he suggested the roads in the first place. His undercarriage was so sore from rocks and stray junk he had to do something. Besides walking, anyway.

Changing to the body of a flier has... been something of an adjustment.

Okay, it's been a lot of adjustment. One he's still not entirely there with. But practicing combat with Shockwave had helped his fighting abilities. So practicing flying will help with that. At least, he hopes so.

If only it didn't end with him crashing so much.

Wing flaps are more difficult to deal with than he'd expected. If not for those, he'd have the flying part down. The landing not so much. As it is, he's only got down the takeoff. But one out of three ain't bad, right?
... Right?

Beware, Haven. For this week, a certain now-teal Vehicon is going to be in the sky. And nobody will be safe from him unexpectedly dropping out of the sky. Not even if you're in a temple; he might just crash right through your wall, in fact. Hope you were planning some renovations!

Comments

[staresat]

Shockwave is just minding his own business, lurking in the deep recesses of the caves in Liege's quadrant. Doing science in your lair takes up quite a bit of time, you know! It eats into your social activities like you wouldn't believe.

Fortunately, he's been cutting down on travel time with the use of a Space Bridge (one that has a temporarily limited range, mind, but he's working on that.).

In fact, here he is opening up a portal right now. At the other end, a familiar looking green vortex opens up near the Vehicon's flight path.

How good are you at suddenly avoiding portals, Fracas?

[redshirtrobot]

The answer: not very good at all. Fracas reacts to it opening in roughly the same way a student driver might react to a squirrel hopping into the middle of the road - by veering wildly. Except that his veering does not mean he crashes into a tree.

Instead, he ends up spinning right through Shockwave's space bridge with a startled scream, arriving on the other side by bouncing and skidding along the floor. It doesn't stop when he transforms back into base mode, as he somehow manages to trip on his own feet and collide with a table.

Shockwave didn't need any of that stuff Fracas just ran into, right?

[staresat]

Shockwave follows the teal flier with his optic as he careens into his lab, knocking over some (mostly) harmless vials of glowing fluids. A few of the spilled liquids begin to swirl together and react to each other, bubbling fervently.

He probably needed that, but not enough to squeeze any anger out of the Decepticon Scientist. He closes the Bridge and turns to face him, closing the distance between them in a few heavy steps.

There's no hand to help him up, but Fracas does get an intrigued stare.

[dirge]

Unfortunately, Fracas isn't the only teal jet in the skies this morning. There's another, much more possessive flier patrolling the area above the junkyard and its noticed there's someone else nearby. Someone who's not very good at flying.

Time to play. Or is that prey?

Dirge noses up close to Fracas in jet mode, slipping a wing under one of the former vehicon's and tilting it upward.

[redshirtrobot]

Fracas feels like he's finally getting the wing flaps down. A little, anyway. In fact he's starting to get a little less wobbly... when his wing is tilted up suddenly through no fault of his own. Fracas yelps loudly in surprise, overcompensating for the sudden change and going into a spin before he rights himself.

"Oh geeze! Hey!"

Who's this jet with the extremely yellow wings that comes up and scares poor Vehicons?

[dirge]

Dirge cackles in delight as his victim goes into a graceless spin, doing a few barrel rolls of his own just to further mock him. That was fun- how about some sky chicken?

The clone dives under Fracas, engaging his thrusters to speed ahead of the other jet and then cuts him off, just barely avoiding smashing into his playmate's underside.

::Haha! It's been way too long since I've had anyone to do this with.::

He purrs over the comm, wishing he still had some of his siblings around to play violent flight games with.

[deadlydoctor]

[Knock Out knew a lot about bodywork. He made a living out of it, helping Fracas to change his alt mode wasn't the hardest thing he ever did. But he was a busy mech and, believe it or not, he did help with medical problems.

That's why he was at the new Clinic and not helping the mech to practice his flying, doing his own business with his new pet dragon perched on his shoulder. They walked pass one of the huge windows and Knock Out stopped to check his datapad while Breakylizard looked outside.]

[redshirtrobot]

[Fracas wouldn't really expect much help from Knock Out, really; cars vs planes and all of that. Besides, he's hardly going to harass the medic about this.

Unfortunately this doesn't change the fact that he is still terrible at flying. Which is why Knockout and his firelizard get a whole show, wherein the Vehicon goes up and down in the air several times... and careens straight into the window like a huge teal moth that thought its reflection was a new friend.

There's a horrible squeaking noise from the window as he slides down it. Good job.]

[deadlydoctor]

[It was an unforgettable show, Knock Out will give him that. Breakylizard hiss and growls at the sudden noise, both irritated and scared by it. Knock Out stares in silence as Fracas slides down the the window, the situation too absurd and awkward to do anything else but admire the once-a-vehicon fail.

Knock Out puts a hand on his hips and smirks once Fracas reach the bottom. He uses the comm link to communicate with the other Con.]

We have a door, you know.

Drift will tag in next~

[winged_knight]

Wing had taken a few days off after the games: it'd been a lot of work in combination with his regular duties and a little bit of nothing sounded like an excellent thing to put on his calendar. Except it's not really nothing he's doing, not after having his conjunx proposal accepted by Drift. Maybe they've been celebrating a bit.

As of right now? Well, the two swordmechs were supposed to be making plans on their union while waiting to hear back from Perceptor on a dinner invite, but talking turned into doing and now the two are lovingly curled around each other at the end of the berth in their mutual quarters, the red curtain by the open balcony doors lazily shifting in the slight breeze.

If Wing wasn't so entirely focused on kissing Drift, he might notice the sounds of distress off in the distance beyond the balcony doors. As it is though, he's rapt and entirely clueless of the outside world. Oh dear.

also I will remember to track the thread! :D

[sword_redemption]

Drift's still in that fuzzy glow of having everything he could ever want--more than he'd ever dared want--just handed to him. Wing, Perceptor, a world they can actually heal. It's too much happiness and he's been walking around feeling almost a pain of joy in his chassis.

And it's a wonderful way to wake up, with a jet curled up against you. He's pretty sure nothing could ruin this moment.

I would be sorry but this was planned >:D

[redshirtrobot]

Fracas is all for other people's happiness. It great to see that sort of thing! It didn't exactly happen very often among his 'Cons after all, so in his mind it's a very 'hooray!!!' event. Yes, with three exclamation points and everything. Of course, that didn't mean he actually wanted to end up in the middle of it.

Up makes you go down and down makes you go up. This is difficult to remember when starting off. So is course correcting, which is how he ended up barreling in the direction of the balcony in the first place. Unfortunately, he puts his flaps down to go down and hopefully avoid it... forgetting that down goes up.

Fracas smacks into the curtain with a yelp, transforming back to robot mode, and rolls - curtain and all - into The Most Adorable Scene Ever. He flails around with the curtain until he gets mostly free, and... oh.

"... Scrap."

[raceme]

[Blurr's patrolling around, nothing out of the usual. It takes him a bit but he notices the odd patters in that plane in the sky. Almost subconsciously, he starts to think about how the angle should be corrected and how the air resistance should be taken in consideration.

He doesn't realize it at first, because it's an odd occurrence, but Blurr's wheels stop touching the ground. Those keep moving forward and so does him, faster and more specially: up</>.]

[redshirtrobot]

[Oh, it's Blurr! Hi Blurr!

Wait. Fracas is not on the ground and Blurr is a car.

What?

Fracas manages to stop paying so much attention to his flying that he does, in fact, go straight for a while. Unfortunately, that means that he's headed straight for the randomly-flying car. If Blurr doesn't get out of the way, there is going to be a collision, and it's going to be the strangest one ever.]

[raceme]

[Oh ey Fracas, fancy see you here so...close? Okay this is weird. Why is the ground so far away too? Blurr's not so happy when he notices that.

Cue, panicking car going your way really fast, bro.

He's really trying to dodge, or turn, or do something, but his flying car abilities have yet to be trained. He sure didn't mean to run you over.]

[angleofscience]

Jetfire wasn't, unfortunately perhaps, bewaring anything, and so he was taken quite by surprise as he picked up on something coming fast and uncontrolled towards his back. He angled out of the way mostly on instinct and then turned away, catching the sight of a teal...

Well, he wasn't sure if he would call it a jet, or anything like a proper flyer with anything but real generosity, but either way it could - or at least was theoretically capable of flight, despite looking more like a car.

And the flyer was having... problems.

Even startled, Jetfire had the reflexes to, just in time as the Vehicon fell past, reach out and basically catch Fracas against his arm.

"I assume that didn't... er, go as planned?"

[redshirtrobot]

There's only so much to be done with Vehicon frames, unfortunately. At least they removed the wheels before slapping the wings on. That was pretty much all they could do, though; uniform-looking soldiers, blah blah blah. But he didn't want to abandon his people quite so quickly, and this was the one concession left to him.

Now, if he was just any good at it...

Fracas gasps in surprise, shifting back to robot mode as he connects with Jetfire's arm. And then promptly curls himself around said arm. Way too high up, eep.

"Ah... actually this is pretty normal. I'm. Learning. Sorry, I didn't mean to run into you..."

[angleofscience]

Hope you like clinging to the arm of an Autobot who's of comparable size to your reality's Megatron...

Jetfire, slightly bemused but keeping his expression polite instead of letting the smile through like it wanted to, kept his arm out to allow Fracas his anchor point.

"Since neither of us got injured, no harm done." Literally. The comment about still learning, though, got a helmtilt and the upper edge of an optic arching.

"Reformat? Since I believe... you've been here a while, and you weren't a flyer then," Jetfire said as he looked Fracas over. The fact of minimal changes allowed the connection to be made rather easily between Fracas' former appearance and the current one, though the colour threw him off at first.

Placing this tomorrow the 10th - that'll put it long enough after TC's surprise hospital stay. XD

[notyourblueangel]

Thundercracker's taking it kind of easy. He's still on the mend from that humiliating attempt to bury himself 60 feet under landing he had last week. But he wants - no, he NEEDS - to be in the air, so in the air he is. For now, he's just coasting and turning lazy barrel rolls around Alpha Trion's sector, nothing strenuous. Just enjoying the condensation on his fuselage, the rush of air over his wings, the slight drag as his tailfins cut through the currents.

And then he spots another flyer in the air not far from him, someone he doesn't recognize. Huh.

Guess he'll go say HI.

TC why are you getting yourself hospitalized D8

[redshirtrobot]

Thundercracker might not want to get too close since he's on the mend; Fracas is a flying disaster waiting to happen. Actually, he's pretty much been disastering his way around the Haven since he got wings. A Seeker, he is not. At the moment it's a lot of wobbling in the air like that flying toaster screen saver and otherwise unexpected dips, rises, and tweaks to the left and right.

Point in fact, if the flying was giving off any impression, it would be that of a newbie tight rope walker that got onto a rope way too high up.

Didn't you wonder why he wasn't at the air show? *sobs*

[notyourblueangel]

Thundercracker studies the other flyer for a long moment, and finally decides to contact him.  After all, just watching the poor fragger is almost painful.

  ::You seem distressed.  Need a flap?::

  The tone of voice indicates the question is on par with "need a hand?"

Trucks, eh?

[ichooseboth]

This is one truck that shows no inclinations to fly.

Currently oblivious to the goings-on in the sky above, Optimus is simply cruising along in alt mode, heading toward the energon pools in Solus Prime's quadrant. It would be nice to take a quick dip after his committee work of the day, so he certainly isn't expecting an 'attack' of any kind.

Especially the accidental type.

Trucks indeed

[redshirtrobot]

To be fair, Fracas would be terrified of flying trucks. Neverminding that red and blue trucks terrify him anyway.

Oh, Optimus. If only you were going to make it to those energon pools. Or if you noticed the rather wobbly jet in the air that just twitched its flaps in entirely the wrong direction. Flying perpendicular to the ground is totally a thing, right? Well, the good news is that Optimus is not going to get the front end of a teal jet.

But he's probably going to get walloped with a whole wing anyway. Sorry.

I AM THE LATEST OD

[noparachutes]

In the end it wasn't really his choice what Fracas did to deal with his current paranoia about the seeker. Yes, he'd have rathered the vehicon do something a bit more... Well something that wasn't technically hiding. Had to give the little Decepticon more time, and hopefully soon things would get sorted out.

So of course he'd done his best to be supportive, give Fracas time off from training to figure out his wings. Give himself some time to restructure the training program, since new skills would mean many new things to teach. And so when Fracas was flight practicing he was busy doing his own thing.

Doing his own thing and not expecting to hear a panicking vehicon. To not see one pretty much falling out of the sky right towards him.

But no, he doesn't move.

Fashionably so! .D

[redshirtrobot]

The decision was, admittedly, hasty and extreme... and pretty much hiding. Fracas could admit that. But it was better than nothing, as far as he was concerned. At least with Starscream in jail he had the time to get everything sorted out. Maybe calm down a little bit, too.

Of course, most of the time for 'sorting out' was spent trying to figure out flight. Easier said than done when you'd been a car for your entire life. Wheels don't translate well to wing flaps. Which is probably the cause of most of his woes.

Woes such as botching a move and ending up careening right in Shockwave's direction.

Oh no. No no no no no. "INCOMING!"