Hangover

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Goa Torque
The next cycle had finally rolled around, sparce holes in Cubicron's 'ceiling' allowing the soft starlight to mix with the flickering streetlamps outside as they pour into the nearby window where Goa rests. When the mech wakes up he'd see he was in some sort of bedroom. It's not the prettiest, but it's well maintained with the occasional piece of furniture, though the most optic catching things were the detailed paintings upon the walls of various scenes, objects, and people, the other interesting thing in the room being the vanity mirror with paints, spray cans, and minor accessories on the little table part. Clearly this was a femme's room. Goa didn't quite /realize/ he was online until he just was -- sitting up, feeling the back of his helmet for dents, his fuel tanks churned and snapped whatever half-fried circuit commanded that epiphany shut. One of his optic lids hung lazily, but it took him some time to notice what with his optics refusing to focus ... clicking and whirring and glowing every shade of fire's spectrum, but refusing to get a solid bead on where he was just yet. Slag -- too confused to even try to analyze everything. Good thing, too, because as his last memories come into focus, those nervous tendencies would have him upturning and scanning every single ... huh. A mirror? Goa starts to amble over, his legs still completely unstable and false-starting many, many times, producing various manner of klutzy falls and clangs. When he does finally pull himself to the vanity, he tries to figure out when he got such a good wash...
Movement can be heard beyond the bedroom door after Goa nearly alerts the whole apartment building that he's up. The door slides open to reveal Torque poking her head in and looking around until she spots him, making her smile brightly, "About time yah came outta stasis. C'mon, let's get some fuel in yah." And just as quickly she was gone, moving past the living room area and into the tiny kitchen.
Wait, Torque...? What. Why is... the mech just stands there, jaw agape and optics flickering from bad power transfer every now and then. He doesn't externally notice Torque's departure. Goa is too busy, now that he's been smacked halfway out of his haze, wondering /what the slag he missed/. He runs through a few worse-case-scenarios in a separate processor thread. Well. If he was going to catch pits fire when he went top side ... so be it. It was just next door anyway; he could dive right in. Even considering the /best/ cases, there was the issue of not remembering anything... Goa's fingers appear before the rest of him, clawing around the door frame and getting a good, cautious grip in before stumbling through. He leans out and sluggishly looks around, one optic still lazy and both wildly out of sync, trying to get a feeling for the layout of the ... well, this must be where Torque lives. Huh. "How... long was I out?" The speech drains him and sets his tanks churning again.
Torque opens up a storage cabinet in the kitchen area, pulling out two cubes of liquid energon, though one was a peculiar lime green color which she places a straw into and hands it to Goa once she moves over to him. "For the whole end of the cycle. You gonked out at El Sleazo so I decided to bring you back to my place. You would've been an easy target for thieves if I'd have left yah there." She shoves the drink into his hands, talking over her shoulder as she turns and walks over to the couch, sitting and turning on the busted up looking TV. "That stuff'll clear out your sensors like a sonic scrubber, heh. Try not to drink it too fast." The odd colored energon did seem intimidating, and with good reason since one mouthful would make you feel a weird cooling sensation run through your whole head, like a chilly wind was clearing out the cobwebs so to speak. It's a sure thing to wake you up.
Goa, otherwise unmoving, scans the chemical that's suddenly right under his optics ... he'd run into this stuff before, but ... oooooh. So that's what it all was. He takes a sip, taking a dim-eyed moment for it to course over his sensor net. He stays here in the doorway a few clicks longer, shifting to lean the softer surface of his tire against the wall, and continues to chip away at the drink as he practices focusing his optics. He lands on the TV, and wonders how long it's been since a studio has produced any new vids of merit to put on the airwaves, now that the war ... ugh. Goa rattles his helmet violently, squinting and purposefully taking a large gulp of the energon that nearly knocks him off balance, save the friction of rubber on doorframe. "... thanks." He's in-sorts enough to sigh, after that last blast to his systems. "I ... do not typically... let myself go. Like that."
The signal on the TV is rather weak, allowing several skips and static to break up the picture, but that was more the station's fault than her set. "Ugh, same slag all the time. People gettin' robbed, the police hardly doing anything, more street gangs. Feh." Torque huffs, tossing the remote to one side of the couch before looking to Goa and patting the area beside her for him to sit. "It's no problem. Can't have yah waking up in an alley with no armor on, now can I?" She smiles softly and continues, "So what made yah go all out last cycle?"
... ooogh. He wasn't sure he'd be able to make that step across to the living room. But he flings himself at it regardless, face planting a moment into the far wall before clambering around onto the couch. His long limbs stabilize himself only awkwardly, and when he collapses, they're ... pretty much all over the map. One arm drapes across the back of the couch, the other ... flopped like a piece of garbage out somewhere, and his legs both turn at the knees in different directions. Yep. Drink's still intact. Good times. Goa takes a swig, and uses the momentary de-fuzzing of his neural net to think ... if it can be called that, in his state of function. Nope... nothing there. "... huuuh?" His arms withdraw to himself, the Decepticon's self-consciousness centers apparently finally online -- he clutches his drink in his lap, the other hand rubbing at his helmet's temple. "Last I remember was you talking to that Autobot fella at the shop. I mean, if I knew, I'd say so. I wanna meet the me that thought that was a good idea and stuff 'im in a closet somewhere." Goa clenches his teeth, fighting back another wave of unease.
Torque blinks as she watches him awkwardly make his way to the couch, biting on her lip to hold back a bout of laughter. "Oh yeah.. him.." She gazes down a moment with a half smile teasing her lips, a hand moving up to rub the spot on her neck covered in scuffs and scrapes. "Hm, well anyway, you're welcome to stay as long as yah want. I don't get much company." She looks back to Goa and shrugs, taking a few sips of her own normal drink.
Charity is the sort of thing that sets a mech like Goa off-balance. He has a few distinct modes of programming at this point, one for his brokering, one for his ... stranding ... and most of them were telling him, screaming, that a free lunch is never free. He already had dues in Cubicron, and at this point, he was weirded out by the whole thing and just wanted to step back in line ... ... and ironically, the same set of subroutines telling him to do that was reassuring him that, in spite of all that, it was probably best /not/ to reappear in Polyhex so wabby-legged. "Grmmmmh." Goa rolls his head around on his neck, taking another long swig. "I won't keep you, but I can't well do much good 'til I'm not stumbling around just tryn'a stand up." Ah, there it goes. Crushing processor ache. The mech sets his drink down on the arm of his seat, occupying both hands to press at his optics. Not much else he can do, ugh-- ... click? Huh. Goa's yellow optics flicker as he looks, a click utterly confused, at the red lenses in his hands. Of course he'd forget about that at the least convenient time.
"You're not keepin' me. Shop's closed today anyways, than Primus. So don't worry about it." She waves her hand in dismissal at his thoughts of being a bother. Dispite what Goa's programming told him, Torque was actually the genuine article, no strings attached which was very hard to come by in this city. "Huh? Hey, what're those?" Her antennae twitch at the sound of the click, optics shifting to the pair of ruby lenses in his palms as her head tilted a bit in curiosity.
Goa's ventilation fans are locked in a long whirr. He's awake enough to realize, relatively instantly, that he wouldn't be able to hide a mod from Torque for long anyway ... but this is not an attribute of his chassis he attributes any fondness to. He shakes his head, now chuckling quietly -- almost behind his vocalizer, more than any external noise -- and looks over at her, shutting one optic off to replace the red light filter with an decidedly undextrous touch. Once he pops it back in and brightens that optic back online, he looks even more off-level than before, with one yellow and one orange eye... his long pause, seemingly to consider what to say, only compounds that image. "... a symbol," he mutters, then pipes up, "Just a filter mod. A little ancient, actually ..." A lens is what you install for a temporary change before getting a new eye installed, slag it, not a permanent fashion piece. Even so, he just sits there with the other one in his hand. "Sorry, it's been a long decacycle."
Torque leans in surprisingly close once he puts one lens back in, curiously examining the color change. "Huh, that's pretty cool. Didn't know they made external lenses. Been thinkin' about puting in an internal mod so I can change mine by thought. Fancy, hm?" She smiles, leaning back away from him. "I've already made a few changes on myself. Like my goggles and antennae, as well as this.." A few releasing clicks sound off as her hat shifts slightly from being unlocked, the femme taking it off with the goggles connected to show the mass of choppy chords sprouting from her head to form the strands that usually stuck out, her headphone-looking ears still attached where they should be.
Goa's expression goes blank on further examination, be it from the dullness his headache is contributing to his enthusiasm or otherwise. As Torque withdraws, he rapidly takes another long gulp of energon... and it turns out to be a disappointingly short swig from a nearly-empty cube. He tilts his helmet back to get the last bits of it, peering over through his golden eye to see what kind of changes she's talking about. A creaking noise emanates from the Decepticon's frame as he locks up on sight of those cables-- ... no, couldn't be. No way. Wrong accent... wrong build. But this was Cubicron, and ... "This is good stuff," he says, squeakily pointing at the upside-down energon cube in front of his face, all the while staring and flinching. "We used to use it on long shifts." He chuckles, lets off the nervous steam, and seems to relax again. "... what do those do? Are they just decorative?" He almost moves to touch a strand, but stops himself, grabbing his own hand awkwardly.
Torque lifts a hand to run through and ruffle up the short chords, loosening up a few tangled bits. "Heh, yeah. I use 'em when I'm gettin' ready for work. Wouldn't wanna cut off a finger or something 'cause I was half in stasis." She chuckles softly before sitting upright. "For the most part, but the top ones connect to my helmet and let me work the mask and goggles. I figured these were more unique compared to most bots with just plain helmets. No offense." She smirks, reaching over to playfully thumb one of the wingtips of his helmet.
"None taken..." Goa freezes again as Torque touches him, though it's only for a moment. He briefly wonders whether he'll ever get used to others touching him at all... He tilts his helmet to one side and furrows his ridges. There's something more familiar about those strands ... beyond his run-in with Tempo, it felt like it wasn't the first time he'd seen scaled hair, though then he hadn't had the time to put in much thought. Now he did, and it was frustrating him that he couldn't place it -- the mental strain was bringing his last, laggiest systems online, at least. Oh, slag, what if he was getting what Firestorm had... or maybe he was just getting rusty. "I look more 'unique' with my antennae in place twitching everywhere like an idiot." Goa brings his hands to his face, laying a finger in each groove to demonstrate. "Kind of..." he crosses his optics upward, "all orange angry-eyebrows. Hey, how long have you been in Cubicron?" His hands stay at his brow, but Goa's optics are locked squarely on Torque's now, as he seems invested in this curiosity.
Torque giggles softly, retracting her hand. "You wouldn't look like an idiot. I've got the same deal, albeit set further back." She swivels her antennae back and forth, even independently in a playful manner. But his question makes her pause, a finger tapping against her cheek in thought while optics drift off to the side. "Hm... My whole life, really. Sometimes outside of the city, but still in the general area for the most part. What about you? Where'd you come from?"
Goa points in a cardinal direction, his geographical bearings apparently quite strong, even in the nonlinear paths, magnetic interference, and no present geopositioning of the underground. "Not far from here. Just ... further out from Cubi." He looks intensely somber. If he sobers in a reverse pattern from that displayed when he gets overcharged, that may be a good sign, but his sadness continues genuinely. "I went out lookin' for my old ... place, you know, where I grew up." A smirk appears on Goa's dull face, but he can't hide the expression in his optics. "Nothing. I mean, I couldn't find it, but I guess that's a good thing, probably." Goa points in a cardinal direction, his geographical bearings apparently quite strong, even in the nonlinear paths, magnetic interference, and nonpresent geopositioning of the underground. "That way, if you live near the bar. Just ... further out from Cubi." He looks intensely somber. If he sobers in a reverse pattern from that displayed when he gets overcharged, that may be a good sign, but his sadness continues genuinely. "I went out lookin' for my old ... place, you know, where I grew up." A smirk appears on Goa's dull face, but he can't hide the expression in his optics. "Nothing. I mean, I couldn't find it, but I guess that's a good thing, probably."
A light frown creases her face at the news, Torque placing a hand on his shoulder in reassurance, "...I'm sorry to hear that, Goa. But who knows, maybe your folks just moved out, yah know? Folks tend to move a lot in this city, even around outside the walls."
Goa shrugs lightly. "Nah, nah, I don't doubt it. They didn't seem like the type to get in the gang wars." He turns to look back at the TV, or straight ahead in general, flopping his helmet back against whatever's behind it. "Ever felt like you had the wrong alt mode, Torque?" Goa laces his fingers across his lap, mind apparently racing about something.
Torque watches him a few moments, an expression of sentiment upon her features. "No, not really. ...But if I did I wouldn't worry about it and just be thankful to be here. Though I did hear an interesting saying 'You are what you make of yourself'. Kinda deep if you ask me."
Goa lids his eyes down to glowing slats, nearly shielded over. "... no, I don't think so..." He shuts his optics completely. "There was no control, no self-making in what I am. I come home, to Cybertron, the Decepticons are practically handing me a blank check ... and I'm down here, apparently so upset, flippant, /ungrateful/ about it, or Primus knows what it was, that I get myself blackout overcharged and dragged off by a femme I barely know." He flips his optics back open and online, suddenly looking over at Torque apologetically. "... not that that bothers me." Goa's vocalizer buzzes like he's going to chuckle, but nothing happens, and he just looks at his hands in his lap.
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Category:2010 Logs