“You’d be surprised.” GC broke. “Alright, sorry.”
Juliana, after saying farewell to Blight, tracked down Thrift’s ship, and entered it.
Split nods and leads the way to the nearest training room.
“No, it’s fine, go on ahead!” Blight assured. “See you after?”
Pixel leapt from his seat and grasped at Juliana’s heel.
“Of course! The Sunrise?”
“Sure,” he nodded, yawning. “I should probably get some shuteye, power down for a bit. See you!”
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“Bye!!” She called after him.
“Will you, now?” Facelift reacts, seeming unbothered by the threat. “That would be a detriment to us both, you know. And the entire crew.”
The nearest training room could be found in a bay just outside Little Iacon. It was a circular arena that lacked the drones and variable terrain of the more advanced training rooms on Salvation; this arena was simply a place where crew members could spar against each other.
“Never been here before,” Red remarks. “Although I can’t exactly go anywhere I please.”
Redstocker was not in the bar; he’d run into the medics as they’d been running down a corridor leading to Little Iacon.
Salvo returns to work, taking select pieces of the three weapons and using them to construct a new polearm. The tip of the spear adorned the seventeen-foot shaft, with a rectangular emitter from the axe protruding from the shaft’s side, just below the spike.
“Ta-da!” Salvo exclaims, gesturing dramatically toward the weapon. “A MacGyver-ed cybertronian halberd, by yours truly.”
Salvo presses a button on the shaft, and the emitter hisses as it projects a single, crescent-shaped energy blade jutting outward from the black metal.
“Why settle for just a blade on a stick when you’re a hyper-advanced robotic organism, eh?” the gunsmith quips with a friendly smirk.
Thrift sat at the edge of the refueling platform on which he’d set the Gambler down, the rim of the pad adorned with tangled Christmas lights. The junkion watched as the island beneath Salvation grew smaller and smaller as the Fleetcarrier rose into the sky.
Beneath the refueling pad, the wreckage of the two dropships that Gatecrasher had helped steal- and Sprocket and Drag-race had subsequently crashed- could be seen burning away. Several bots with fire engine alt-modes were working to quell the flames around the wrecks, however.
" 'Cause it isn’t," the female guard says. “It’s… actually, I don’t know what it is.”
“Thrift!” Juliana called. “Are you open?”
“Impressive.” GC observes, “But don’t you think that might be a bit much? I do have a limited budget.”
Thrift shoots to his feet and spins around, nearly slipping on a puddle of oil.
“I sure am, my dear!” he exclaims. “I came right here after our dear Salvation was rebuilt, and you could imagine my delight at finding that the Omega Key left my ship untouched!”
The junkion looks down at the burning dropships below him.
“Alas,” he sighs, “it seems as though its meddling would have been appreciated in other areas…”
“Please,” Salvo scoffs. “This isn’t a foldspace warhead. Hold on though; I’m not finished.”
“Maybe. I wanted to aak, do you have a ‘Rubix cube’?” She asked, struggleing with the name a bit.
“What else could you possibly put on it?”
“I most certainly do!” Thrift replies. The junkion waltzes over to the Gambler and pulls out a shelf stuffed with the varicolored blocks, all of varying size and condition. Some looked centuries old, while others bore dirt and grime from a hundred different worlds.
“I’ve got terran ones, cybertronian ones, nebulan ones, quintesson- yeah, the quintessons had their own versions of these, it turns out. Granted, those require a plasma dynamic thruster and a mastery of quantum physics to solve, so they weren’t really a hit with kids, as you might’ve guessed…”
Salvo presses another button on the halberd. The energy blade dissipates, and the shaft retracts into itself, reducing its length and deploying four tiny jets.
“You can throw it,” Salvo explains with a touch of pride in her tone, “and, if you’ve got it synced with your internal weapons systems, you can activate the jets to summon it back to you.”
“Well… um…” Juliana stammered, taken aback by the multitude of options, “Do you have any of the ones with 9 squares on each side?”
“Usefull.” GC says, appreciative. “How much?”
“Plenty!” Thrift replies, producing one from behind his back.
“You’d be surprised how many of these things you find just drifting around in space! One time, when I was hiding out in the Kuiper belt for a short spell after running afoul of Cannonball the Fourth- you’ve heard of him, right?- this one right here flew right through the Gambler’s cockpit. Took a chunk outta my side, too. And as I was blown out into vacuum and taken by stasis lock, the only thing I can remember being on my mind was: where in the Pit did that thing come from?!”
Thrift laughs. Obviously, that story had ended well for him, and he considered it an amusing misadventure more than a harrowing brush with death.
Salvo casts a glance back toward the halberd.
“Well, considering the custom nature of the weapon…” she calculates. “And its features…I’d say 900.”
OOC: Just smile and nod y’all.
IC: Juliana smiled like she knew what he was talking about.
“Seems… reasonable” GC said, fishing out the deignated Shanix.
Thrift seems to fall for it.
“Ah, but I digress,” he sighs.
“Considering the artifact’s age, condition, and sentimental value-”
The junkion places a hand over his right hip.
“-I’d put this little fella at ten shanix, or the equivalent.”
Salvo shrugs.
“I gotta make a living,” she says. “Even with threat of extinction looming above us all.”
“Five” Juliana counters.
“Fair enough. Don’t apend it all in one space” GC says, laying the shanix on the table.
Zepar was searching Salvation for Wildsong while was getting familiar with its new layout as he carried a vial of fine gold sand in his internal storage.
Epsilon was also looking for someone, he was looking for Facelift so the cyclops could make him into a triple changer using the schematics Corona gave him and to get some trustworthy folks to watch the procedure to ensure that nothing important was removed, omitted or sabotaged in any way during the operation.
Split chuckled.
“That’ll happen, if you’re running illegal operations.”
He stepped into the room, looking around.
“Perfect. I won’t go too hard on you guys.” He chuckles.
“I don’t care.”
OOC: Oh. Sorry.
IC: Then he continued asking the people on the corridors if they saw Juliana.
“Let me guess: you can’t tell me that either?”
Thrift narrows his optics.
“…Fair enough,” the junkion concedes, tossing the cube to Juliana.
Salvo accepts the payment.
Facelift could be found in the maintenance tunnels.
“I’m sure you don’t,” Facelift replies. “But anyway…”
The mad doctor sets the canister down on a table and peers through the glass at the combination spark inside.
Zepar wouldn’t be able to find Wildsong, unfortunately. However, Sprocket, Grommet, or Shockwave might be able to help determine the value of the Emberstone dust.
“Gee, thanks,” Clip deadpans.
Drone growls as he scratches at the chitin covering his organic components…
One bot, who knew of Juliana from one of her performances, said that she might’ve seen her making her way to Hangar Thirty.
“I mean, I can try,” the female guard says. “But only Brainpan knows for sure what Mutt is. She made it.”