NCC Medical Ward

The Crystal City repair bay is far larger than previous versions in Imperial Headquarters or Trypticon himself. Clearly it was designed by a medic, for a medic. The entire room is rectangular in nature with medical beds arranged in a neat grid pattern. The beds themselves vary, with some being precious little more than metal slabs, and others having full scanners and tools attached, as well as everything in between. In total, there are about twenty beds. There is room for more in an emergency situation. The cabinets line the walls, spaced out between medical terminals. Everything has a place, and organization is key. With battle mode being initiated, the huge windows are covered up as the bay is encased in metal for its own protection. Access can still be gained with the right codes, however. Red warning lights flash on and off.

Contents:

Arachnae

Scrapper's Art <SA> - Fourteen Pieces

MSE CO OFFICE (Earth)

Gumby Medic <NCC>

Obvious exits:

South <S> leads to NCC Central Command.

Southeast <SE> leads to NCC Central Hub.

East <E> leads to Mount R'Lyeh.

Arachnae is seated at her out of office desk, working on making modifications to what looks like a standard laser rifle.

Fleet steps skittishly into the Medical Ward, looking around as he does. His demeanor has returned to its normal, fluttering, butterfly-ish behavior. However, his expression remains perhaps a little more... intense than it normally is. He scans the room, looking for one person in particular, and when he finds her heads for her, ducking and weaving through various obstacles to arrive at his destination.

Arachnae's wings give an absent flick as she pries open a side panel, carefully removing an energy emmiter to set aside. A small brush is picked out of a took tray and she starts cleaning out errant detrius, carbonized bits of overheated componants being scrubbed away. A slight pause in the cleaning as she looks to see who has entered. Optics flicker and a smile crosses her face, "Can I help you, Fleet?"

Fleet does not smile in return, which might be considered kind of odd. Instead he glances about the room a touch worridly at all the gumbies present, and answers quietly, "I... need to speak to you about something, Arachnae, if you've got some time. But... I'm not sure... well, I don't care, really, but it probably shouldn't be overheard."

Arachnae headtilts, peering at the Seeker before her for a moment. Then she sets her small scrub brush aside and stands, wings tilting behind her neatly. "I have time to speak with you, yes." A wave of a hand to direct the handful of techs out of her area. "What can I do for you?"

Fleet places the fingertips of both hands on the desk and looks down at them for a moment, giving them far more apparent interest than the nail-less digits really call for. Finally he emits an electronic sigh and asks softly, without looking up, "Are you trying to give the Autobots wings, Arachnae?"

Arachnae headtilts, studying Fleets carriage, demenor, the rather solemn air to the seeker. Her optics dim and narrow to slits behind her visor, wings not even rustling as a question is posed. A whisper of a sigh as she vents air through a series of recessed intakes before speaking in a papery whisper, "Interesting question, Fleet. And no."

Fleet relaxes noticeably, like a rubber-band that has just been cut, and his optics dim almost to blackness. "Ah. Thank Primus." He chuckles very softly. "It was just... between the scans, and the frames, and where you had the... 'test subject' deposited..." He pauses again. "I suppose I have an active imagination at times, but the form that the pieces I had seemed to take..." He stops looking down, and instead looks up. Anywhere. Anywhere but Arachnae. "I've had a long time to accept the fact that I am fodder, but when what I am comes to be considered so... throw-away that it can just be granted to the enemy..." He trails off again and smiles very slightly. "I'm glad I'm wrong."

Arachnae's optics dim slighty as she steps out from behind her desk, wings only now flicking with absent movement, panels rubbing against panels. Her whisper takes on a very faint, almost lecturing tone, "Medical protocol when a seeker reaches termination point is to remove any systems deemed classified. If retrieval of the frame is not possible during battle and or combat, field medical teams are authorized to scuttle the entire frame." She looks over her shoulder, face shadowed by a wingtip, "We endevor not to let any of our flight systems, no matter how antiqutated, fall into Autobot clutches. Reverse engineering from fragments is time consuming and tedious." She turns to continue studying Fleet, "But not impossible. The simple fact of the matter as I've been able to ascertain, is that our warriors, our citizens and our members of the empire are all baseline designed for the systems. It is in our core programming to have some ability to reach for the skies. Perhaps a bit poetic, but I like to think that the desire for flight is something that is etched into our very atomic makeup. Even those without a flight alternate mode still possess the capability to head aloft." She pads closer to Fleet, "So, to completly answer your question, no, my intention is not to let fall into Autobot hands the gift of our flight. Even if they were to get a full system, I doubt that they could use it like the created-flighted could or understand its mysteries."

As Arachnae moves from behind her desk Fleet lowers his gaze, staring off absently at the spot where she had been. Poetic? Perhaps, but Fleet has a bit of art in his core, and the concept that Decepticons are made for the skies is certainly not new for him. Flight and fight, wind and conquest, things that the seeker has always been convinced reside at the core of every Decepticon. As Arachnae pads closer he tilts his head slightly in her direction, meeting her gaze for the first time this conversation. He considers what she is saying a bit longer... 'even if', 'doubt'... and she seems a creature fueled by curiosity. "A hypothesis?" he asks.

Arachnae gives an absent shrug of shoulders, "One of many actually. But not one I care to pursue. The proper facilities are not available for that kind of behavioral research." She smiles a wry smile.

Fleet frowns at the 'wryness' of the smile, but shrugs it off. He was wrong in his guess, and that's all that is important. Arachnae is attempting to put Autobot sparks into Seeker frames. This, of course, made whatever it is she /was/ up to all the more baffling, but hey, who can figure those sciency-types at times? He nods slightly and smiles a bit, looking up at the semi-sweep. "All right, and thank you for entertaining my... overly active imagination. Unless, erm, you have anything else, or have anything for me, I suppose it's time I got back to my duties."

Arachnae picks up the parted out riflestock off of her desk, turning it over in her hands, "Not at all a problem, Fleet. Curiosity in what is going on around you is a rather good survival technique."

Fleet grins. Full out grins. "Oh, that I know, Arachnae. Survival is something of an operational specialty of mine."

Arachnae laughs, smile crossing her face, the sound like churchbells in the distence, chiming softly. "Mine as well, Fleet. Mine as well."

"Well, I should be off," the yellow seeker says, then makes another sighing noise as he slips his hand next to his intake and rubs the back of his head. "And later, I suppose I need to track down Geist." He makes a face, then does a brief-static-snort of amusement. "Because, you know, tracking down /Sweeps/ is something of a specialty of Seekers." He pauses, and then laughs again at the pure... weirdness of Geist's parting non-order to him (because, you know, Sweeps can't actually issue orders to Seekers and all... they can only give /suggestions/).

Arachnae sits on the edge of her desk and while hands absently work on putting the rifle together she inquires, "And why are you looking for my less than visible wingsib, if I may ask?"

Fleet shrugs both shoulders and his left wing, palms of both hands upturned as he looked at Arachnae. "Because he /asked/ me to," he answers, the tone of his voice making it obvious that no, he doesn't know what's going on, either. "He noticed that I was distracted the other night when the rest of you were in here discussing further test subjects and asked why. I told him that what few pieces I had of your project seemed to fit together in a way that disturbed me, so he told me to work out why it bothered me and to seek him out and tell him." Yes! A Sweep expressing concern for the emotional state of a Seeker! And if your feet are cold, it's because Hell has frozen over!

Arachnae frowns, consideres and ponders vocally, "Wonder what it is he's up to..." Wings flick, one panel scraping along her desk. "I wonder if I've infected them with my own curiosity." Odd smile croses her face, both at once wistful and amused.

"I couldn't tell you," adds the Seeker unhelpfully. "After that night of... overindulgence when he found me on the floor by your desk," he points to the exact spot where he had been, "when he threatened to, erm, tear my laser core out and feed it to a sharkticon if I thought about allowing you to be hurt... since then we've had a couple of conversations that were just. Strange. That's the only word I have for it at the moment. Well, puzzling works well, too. But he seems to have increased his interest in me." This last obviously does not thrill the Seeker, whose survival strategy for quite a long time revolved around being not particularly interesting to his superiors. Obviously, it was time he began working on a new strategy.

Arachnae hnns, popping a side covering back onto the rifle before hoisting it up, sighting at a wall with absent interest. "And here I thought they had all ceased with the overprotectiveness. It is rather unbecoming of fearsome hunters to display such things." laughter in her voice, moreso flattered than snide. "I'm afraid that I do not know Geist as well as I know.. have known.. others of the pack." Voice shades flat, smile fades, optics dim.

Fleet does not pry. He had been told by Geist himself that the pack has hunted and killed their own kind in the past while following orders, and certainly others could have died from other means. If Arachnae decides she wants to talk about it, she will, but as it is the yellow seeker already worries a bit that he seems somehow to be in the process of being drawn too much into the business of the Sweeps. "I suppose I can understand the protectiveness in this case. You've expressed fondness for me, and there are few pains as bad as the pain those you allow yourself to care for can inflict." In other words, perhaps Geist was concerned that Fleet is now in a unique position to hurt the semi-sweep on a non-physical level? But the statement can be applied to more then just Arachnae, and now, perhaps, the yellow seeker has said too much. "I, ehm, I have to go. May the random factors favor your project, or, well, you know." He shrugs, hoping she gets the point, and begins heading for the door, skittering around obstacles as he makes his way through the medical ward.