Cassandra

It's a good thing Nautica has never really needed that much downtime for recharging; she spent part of her off-duty cycle back in Iacon tinkering on a personal project -- and installing it -- and checking in with the delegation's leader before returning to Nova Cronum. It's technically not time for her next duty cycle yet, but that doesn't mean she's not willing to get an early start. Might as well make a good impression, if she's about to get a promotion, after all. And so she makes her way across the plaza towards the entrance to the Institute, humming cheerfully to herself with her wrench in hand.
There's a familiar growl of engine from not too far away as a two-wheeler squeals across surface from a prior vantage point that apparently gave her a pretty good view of the square. Chromia reverts to root mode on the tail end of momentum, knee down to the gleaming bronze matte underfoot only to push back upright. "Thought you'd turn up," remarks one Camien to another. The engine growl is echoed in her voice, like a dry, sardonic rattle of sound that forms her words.
Nautica's humming ends abruptly as her two-wheeled friend cuts off her march towards work. But she offers the blue femme a warm smile, and reaches out to clasp her forearms for a moment in greeting. "Chromia! I looked for you at the embassy, but you weren't in." Because apparently the other Camien was staking out her workplace.
"Well, first I was working with some heavy assault trainees. Then I was here," Chromia states. Her feet plant wide, her glow-bright eyes narrowing faintly with the sidelong slide of a smile across her features. Her hands close behind her with the square of her shoulders, pauldrons lifting with the tilted angle of her head. "Did you think I was kidding? I mean, I know I have a great sense of humor, but. Not about that."
Nautica opens her mouth, as if about to comment on her friend's sense of humor. Then she thinks better of it, and just closes it once again. "Well, I thought you might stay in the area. I didn't realize you meant /right/ here." She glances at her workplace, across the plaza, and then back to Chromia. "I think I got myself transferred to a new project."
Chromia makes a noise, a sound like a soft huff of air escaping. The wide plant of her feet a hard brace against the ground, she leans back slightly on her heels and narrows a particularly expectant look at Nautica. "I'm on hand," she says. Like someone who is subtle. Really subtle. "Just in case." She looks over her shoulder toward the building she has been intermittently scowling at, and then returns her attention to her friend. "A new project, huh."
"Well, an old project. The one I had an /interest/ in," Nautica assures Chromia, very quietly. "The lead researcher wasn't really interested, at first, but then when he realized the number of fields I've studied, he got this kind of kind of creepy look -- like I was a new tool to add to his toolbox -- and said he'd be having me move to the more important projects on my next duty cycle."
Chromia frowns at Nautica warily. She doesn't say anything for a very long moment. As her silence extends, there's an awkwardness that almost bespeaks a storm waiting to break. Then she sighs and touches her knuckles against her faceplate, mouth tight closed and optics staring at Nautica in visible frustration. "I don't like this, Nautica," she says, in one of the more obvious statements she has made in the course of their time on Cybertron.
"I don't really like it either. But it's broken, Chromia. It's broken and it needs to be fixed..." Nautica looks down at the quantum wrench she holds in one hand, then lifts it up into Chromia's line of sight. "...and that's what I do. And right now, I'm the only one in the right place to do it. So I have to stay the course." Letting her tone lighten, she offers Chromia a smile as she tries to make a joke out of it. "Besides... you risk yourself all the time. I shouldn't let you have /all/ the fun, right?"
"I'm not even sure I would do what you're doing," Chromia mutters on a distinctly sour note, giving Nautica a beady look. Her arms cross over her chassis as her weight shifts forward onto her toes; she angles a step closer to her friend, optic ridges weighted with seriousness. "You're going where I can't go. And you're not even going in /armed/," she says with fierce intensity, bringing a glare into the firmness of her expression, the directness of her gaze. "You just said this mech wants to use you look a tool. Everything you've told us-- you need guns, my axe, my brace shield, not a /wrench/."
"I can't take an /axe/ into a lab, Chromia," Nautica remarks, with a sort of fond exasperation for her friend, shaking her head. "There would be /questions/. Many awkward ones." She then pauses, considering this for a moment, and amends her comment to, "Unless it was one of the weapons testing labs. Or if I was Brainstorm; I'm fairly sure he doesn't actually keep /files/ in his filing cabinets, just random weaponry and explosives he's forgotten about. But that's his job."
Since there is no fruit on Cybertron, it is difficult to say what a bot's face would look like on biting into a lemon, but Chromia's facial expression, just at the present moment, certainly suggests a model for what it might be. She says, "I'm spinning my wheels here and I know it. We haven't had time to train you--"
"We'll start training as soon as I'm off my next duty cycle, all right?" Nautica reaches out to rest a hand on Chromia's arm again. "I promise. It's not like anything's going to happen right this cycle, after all. I'm going to play it safe my first few days in the new role. No poking around or anything."
Chromia flings out both arms in a gesture far too animated for discretion: her hands go up in the air, and then drop again as she grinds one heel hard against the bronze plating underfoot. She controls her volume to a low burn, and yet it's still very, very possible to hear her exclamation points. "Nothing you are saying qualifies as playing it safe! You aren't in the same galaxy as playing it safe!" She pauses, her expression changing to one momentarily arrested: "How far away from where you're working are these filing cabinets full of explosives?"
"I don't know which lab they'll have me in, but I was working as Brainstorm's assistant last duty cycle; half of his overflow was in my workspace," Nautica admits. Her tone suggests she's perhaps had one or two experiences of looking for a heterodyne socket wrench and discovering she'd actually pulled out something that fired an impression of dizziness directly into her motor core. Or incinerated half of her notes. "Why? You aren't suggesting I should take some of those, are you? Half of them aren't labeled!"
Chromia starts to look pleased, and then mildly crestfallen as Nautica goes on. "Oh. Well. Maybe as a contingency plan?" she tries. "I mean, just because you don't know what they are doesn't mean they wouldn't be effective threat potential. Honestly, it could be even better /not/ to know. If you need to defend yourself." Here is Chromia. Here is Chromia, helping.
"I think that would be more likely to destroy /me/," Nautica notes to Chromia, almost gently. "But alright, I'll keep it in mind as a contingency plan." Here is Nautica. Here is Nautica, reassuring her friend. Possibly unsuccessfully.
What, you don't think 'I got this from Brainstorm and I have no idea what it might do' is scary? Chromia does not make this argument. Instead, she looks tense and blows air past her mouth in a noise too sharp for a sigh. She says, halfway to a growl, "I'd much prefer the kind of contingency where you aren't alone in there."
"I would too," Nautica admits, her tone sobering slightly. Glancing over her friend, she tries to mimic Chromia's more confident and assertive stance. This will be reassuring, right? (No, Nautica.) "But unless you've recently picked up a science degree or two, or are volunteering yourself as a research subject, I can't think of any way to get you inside. Maybe we can find someone else to bring in soon, though. I'm sure they don't plan to leave me in there alone indefinitely."
"Who--" Chromia starts to snap and then bites off the question in her frustration. She shakes her head instead. "Fine," she says. "I'm clearly not a believable scientist and," her mouth quirks a little "--I may think with my fists but that's still not stupid enough to volunteer as a subject."
That, at least, earns a wry smile from Nautica. "I'm not sure /anyone/ would volunteer, especially if they know half of what's going on there. /I'm/ certainly not going to walk up and raise my hand to be tinkered with."
"Good," Chromia says a little crisply and as if this possibly had actually been something to doubt. She sidesteps, and lifts her hand to close fingers across Nautica's upper arm in a firm grip. "I can protect you and Windblade and the others from a lot of things, but not yourselves," she says. Maybe one day, she'll even understand this enough to believe it, as well as say it. That day is clearly not today.
After a moment, Nautica nods. "I'll be fine, Chromia. Pharma -- the lead researcher -- he's kind of creepy, yeah. He's a sort of 'ends justify the means' guy when it comes to tackling global problems," Nautica admits. That smirk from the previous night... it still sends a chill through her spark. "And if I cross him, I'm pretty sure it'll go badly. But as long as I look like a useful tool for his toolbox, I suspect I'm safe. A good engineer -- a good scientist -- doesn't break their tools." She grasps Chromia's forearm in return, offering a reassuring smile. "So give me a few duty cycles to judge. If it feels really off -- if I don't think I can handle it -- I'll do my best to back out."
"Okay," Chromia says quietly, not like she 100% agrees, but like she knows there's not going to be any persuasion that will talk Nautica out of this, short of murdering a bystander and somehow pinning it on Pharma. So she goes, "Okay," a second time, and tips her head in a slight nod.
"And I promise, if something goes wrong, I'll call for you on our private frequency." Never mind that the lower levels of the Institute might very well be underground enough that Nautica can't actually get a signal through, were something to happen down there. It's the thought that counts.
Nodding again, Chromia says, "Good." She stands back a pace, giving Nautica more room to maneuver as she drops her hands to fall in a loose frame at the metal curves that slant her chassis at her hips.
"Anyway, I better get in," Nautica notes, with a nod towards the Institute beyond. "I have a cycle or two before I'm actually on-duty, but I figure I should clean up my workspace in case they want me to move everything down a few levels."
Chromia looks a little like she might be about to try and marshal another argument, but something, as her gaze slides over Nautica's features, makes her stop. "All right," she says. "I'll be around, at least for a little while.""
"Thank you." Nautica rests a hand on her friend's shoulder. "After I'm done, we can go to Maccadam's, and you'll see I'm fine. Promise!" And then, with a wave of her wrench, the Camien engineer sets off towards the Institute. It's another fine day for science; what could /possibly/ go wrong?
Category:NC Institute