Split nods and clambers off the walker.
“On the instructions.”
“What happened?” Redstocker said, approaching the medics.
“Really? Whatever it is, I’ve heard much worse.”
“Of what?” Delta asked, not paying attention.
“That devious look on her face. I’m not sure I like it.”
“Whose face?”
“Salvo? Geez, you were out of it, weren’t you?”
“What’s wrong with Salvo?” she said, her level of attention of his and Salvo’s conversation switching from 0 to 100 in a few seconds.
GC sighs. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. The humor of the moment was lost.”
“OK…” Delta said, still not able to understand what she just lost.
“I see your attention span is not the best.”
“Why would I care about small chit-chat that does not involve me?”
“You shouldn’t, but the fact that we were stand right next to you should have garnered some attention.”
Three of Facelift’s assistants follow:
-Red, the Decepticon with the red right forearm.
-Clip, the woman with the single wing on her back.
-Drone, a tall, brawny insecticon with a jagged mouth overstuffed with teeth, two pairs of arms, and a myriad of varicolored eyes clustered on his forehead.
“Usual rules, I take it?” Clip asks nobody in particular.
“No intentional killings and keep the maiming to a minimum?” Red replies. “Yeah, sure.”
Drone only growls deeply, rolling his bulky shoulders to loosen himself up.
Facelift reaches for the canister, wanting to see this for himself.
“He got a bomb dropped on him, is what,” one of the medics replies. “He’s lucky to be alive.”
Salvo takes the glaive from Gatecrasher and drags it onto a workbench. The minicon then hops down onto the floor and sprints into the armory. A rustling sound is heard as Salvo rummages through various weapons, before she returns to view a moment later, dragging an axe with dual energy blades behind her from over her shoulder.
“Hey, could you get that spear with the recall jets from the top shelf?” she asks one of her colleagues, who obliges, grabbing a spear with a long, pointed tip and tiny jets built into its shaft.
The spaceport’s docking cradle pulls away from Salvation, releasing the Fleetcarrier and allowing her to hover freely above the ground. She rumbles as her pilot begins to guide her between the cliffs, angling her nose upward as he did so.
“You really haven’t,” the female guard says, shaking her head.
“Now come on. Let’s get outta here before Mutt finds us.”
“Okay, I should definitely be worried.”
“Don’t be!” Salvo assures him as she tosses the axe onto the workbench. The weapon clatters next to the glaive, and she jumps onto the table after it.
“I know what I’m doing.”
The gunsmith then begins to dismantle the three weapons, reducing the glaive, axe, and spear to loosely-separated jumbles of parts for her to sort through.
“I’ll need this… and that… and maybe another one of those…”
“Granted…”
Gronius waited.
“Oh… Primus help him. Did any of you saw his assistant? I think she was called… Juliana or something?”
“Who?”
Gatecrasher stands and watches with his arms crossed, a growing sense of worry apparent on his face.
“Well, let’s head to one of the training rooms.”
Facelift inspects the instructions encoded in the canister. Sure enough, they were specifically addressed to him.
“Huh,” he reacts, humored. “I’ll be. So I just stick this thing in your gut and you can combine with that traitor sister of yours, then?”
The Butcher of Tetrahex then sighs. Looking toward the ground, he laments:
“You all get to fight the bad guys and save the universe, while I get to pick up the scraps…”
Then, he appears to cheer himself up, and adds:
“But, that is how I’ve chosen to make my livelihood, after all, so who am I to complain?”
Clip shrugs.
“If ye want,” she says indifferently.
The medic shakes his head. Neither of them had seen her.
Salvo momentarily pauses in her work and looks at Gatecrasher.
“Okay, quit looking at me like that,” she requests. “I’m not Thrift, you know.”
“Brainpan’s ‘pet’,” the female guard answers.
Gronius gives Facelift a serious glance.
“If you call my sister traitor one more time I’ll reap your arms off and I will impale you with them in places that not even yourself ever touched.” he said, dead serious.
He nodded, thanked, before starting to ask the ones in the bar if they’ve seen Juliana.
“Why do I feel that it isn’t exactly a conventional pet?”