@despicable-ruler Started Following Stxr-bxster

@despicable-ruler​ started following stxr-bxster

Space was an incredibly vast concept.

Functionally, it was a whole lot of empty NOTHING, filled with rocks and bits of rare elements floating about. Pockets of somewhat interesting things were few and inconcievably far in-between.

...And yet, paradoxically, that’s how Krigg found herself always back at her own little cobbled map of the galaxy, writing away in the vast margins of empty space, blotting out large swathes of the known world in a red overlay that her personnal color chart coded as “no-go zone”.

Because as soon as a race, ANY race, became space-faring, they usually worked to make the distance mean a whole lot less by any means necessary. Auspex arrays, deep space scans - freakin’ space bridges, to name a couple. Once there was danger in one concentrated point, it spread as far as their metaphorical eyes and ears could percieve, because their hands would soon follow that reach.

If being a free flying element with no allegiances other than her own had taught Krigg anything, it was that knowing which places to skirt carefully, or cross at one’s own peril, was the best way not to be caught with your pants down.

And as far as she could tell, Cybertronian space was one of those hard no-go zones. She didn’t know that much about them - most other sapients observed them from a stone throw away, and what they did have were spotty reports on a lenghty history of internal conflicts, making colonies almost exclusively for mining purposes, and a STRONG distaste for organic life.

Ah, and them being giant autonomous technological life forms. That was pretty important.

Didn’t stop them from occasionally puttering off away from their usual stomping grounds for whatever reason, though. Krigg would’ve lied if she said she wasn’t *slightly* curious about the sporadic change of habits, but she wasn’t going to risk her behind for it. Which was why she was sitting in complete engine darkness, her Revenger dead as a rock to scans and signals, filtering through distant radio chatter to jot down new travel routes to keep away from.

“Hey, I know what gets people in a good mood! Let me sing you all the song of my people! AHEM-!”

As Krigg takes a proud step forwards, puffing out her chest and lifting her chin... she fails to notice the somewhat large rock her boot manages to land on at a weird angle, twisting her ankle. The diminutive extraterrestrial’s whole body follows suit, arms windmilling furiously as she takes a nosedive.

“SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-”

bagofcanons​:

@stxr-bxster​

    “Maps aren’t really my thing. Mind helping me really quick?      I can’t make heads or tails on what way I need to go.”

“...Fwhat?”

Krigg found herself stopping mid-chew, the hand not grabbing the edge of the travel-sized bag of pretzels stilling before she could toss one more handful of the dry, slightly stale snacks into her mouth.

She looked over at the moving, talking object into the periphery of her vision, and her expression shifted from a neutral pout, to a complex mixture of confusion, surprise, and... something else indecipherable.

It took precisely ONE instance of her stopping at a stellar gas station in the middle of the space boonies to stretch her legs, buy old snacks, and staring off into space with a vacant expression for her to get interrupted by...

What even WAS that?!

It took a couple more seconds for Krigg to remember about the mouthful, that she’d been staring at the... bunny... guy... thing with a vaguely open mouth, and for her to swallow. On the plus side, and it was not something that happened often, she could comfortably eyeball the creature from her three-foot-nothing height, antennae and hat included, without craning her neck.

Also you didn’t ask what the heck people were while in space. That was a lesson she was not learning again.

Rather comically, Krigg briskly shook her head as though to evacuate all the weird, somewhat invasive questions bubbling up in her mind, the motion sending her antennae flapping furiously with the movement. She only stopped when the curled ends managed, after a sharp head shake, to thwack across her own face, pulling a monotone “Ow.” from her.

“... A’ight, sure. I got nothing but time.” She eventually huffed, her usual, nonchalant smile back on her face like a bad cold.

5mind​:

“Well, yes. How else are we supposed to refer to an item?” replied the red android. It wasn’t like they thought poorly of the ship. If anything they were impressed by it. Obviously, so impressed that they want a lil peek at its inner workings even on a chemical level.

They did understand where the little green being was coming from. Sure, the machine enjoyed tinkering but maintenance tend to be tedious more often than not. Not to mention the need for parts at times.

“What.” Somehow the blue android managed to sound even flatter than she normally did. “We do not chew on them…we do not have mouths.”

“As nice as it would be,” continued Red. Chewing on metal did not sound appealing at all but being able to bite on things did. “Where are those spare bits from? What metals are they made from? Can we have some from wherever you came from?”

“We can even trade. If there is anything you require,” said the android in blue. Not that they themselves have much aside from the same junk one could probably find in the scrapyard they were in.  “ And if there is anything we wish to keep.”

There was a bit of a moment of silent disbelief as the two androids took what was originally a lazy quip more litterally than she could have expected, henceforth somewhat ruining the punchline of it. Krigg’s mouth opened and closed a few times without so much as a sputter, with her wide-eyed and looking almost vexed that her joke didn’t land before shaking it off with a grumbble.

“...Okay, you two are definitely AI-controlled.” She shot back, her tone somehow managing to emulate fairly well the flat monotone of the blue unit’s text-to-speech function, though with a hint more controlled annoyance. The little alien reached out to her face before slowly dragging her hands from her forehead to her chin, not caring about the somewhat exaggerated look it gave her. Only that it helped evacuate some stress.

And helped brace her for the fact she was talking to a being with a possibly limited grasp on the art of sarcasm.

“I don’t know what I have on the spare bin from the top of my head, but I can figure it out fairly quickly. Pretty sure I have a lot of heat-resistant ceramic panes, superconductor sheets... Just keep a lid on your expectations.” She nodded to herself knowingly, crossing her arms onto her chest. The offer of a trade though, did get her attention. “Though, I guess I could use some pre-stripped materials to feed into the fabricator machine. There’s a lot of specialist stuff in the bin, but I still need raw components like copper and junk. At least I wouldn’t have to trudge through garbage to find it.”

And to be honest, that was a neat positive of a nature to put a small smile back on her face.

“...Can I actually go back to look without one of you scratching at the paintjob while I have my back turned?” Ah- there was that familiar squint, back again.

“Hell yeah! I’ve picked up all the loose dossiers, updated my weapons folder- even given ol’ Revenger a deep clean! All my stuff is in order!”

“Now, I’ve just got to deal with the REST of adulting life! Like meet new people and stuff!”

“...Maybe later though.”

To be fair, all she wants to do is nest inside of her blankets for the next few hours.

chancestander​:

Rex was legitimately about to answer the question about spare parts– the thermic panels he could have done something about. Fusion cores, a little trickier. But like this sector of space being the ‘Monster Belt’ or Earth being a den of super powers and rule-bending physics, did have some surprises on occasion.

“Maybe we could– oh. Oh! Haha. Okay, sure: I think I can do with something like that. I do love a good bit of fruit… sweet, full of vitamins…”

Rex laughed a bit before following Krigg to retrieve the foodstuffs. Whatever bounty hunters or other trouble came around, at least now he’d have some idea who, what, and where to look when he heard a commotion.

“Monster belt, huh? I guess there are a lot out here. Whether bred or drawn this way from deeper space. Earth’s always been a hotspot for wild stuff. I mean, a Space Kraken! I gotta go up there and see one of those for myself.”

“Y’know, sweetness in fruits is not that common. Not every planet’s biosphere figured that sticking some sweet goodness into a seed dispersal method worked. Sometimes they’re just... fat. And they taste like it too.” Krigg let out a small snort of amusement as Rex rebounded from her joke without missing a beat, a chipper smile quirking the corners of her mouth. She could appreciate someone who rolled with the punches. The small alien trotted back to the entrance hatch of her ship and casually crossed her arms over her chest, shooting a short look over her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to watch you bite into a butterfruit without telling you which is what.” She let out a mischievous cackle, eyes shining with a light twinkle of amusement. Lips briefly pulled back in a proper grin, exposing two rows of shining, needle-like fangs that would have made a deepsea fish flush in modesty. Their owner didn’t show off for very long, and without further ceremony, she gave a short hop and dropped down the access shaft to her ship’s interior.

And for once, Krigg was ever-so-glad that the Revenger had once been a standardized ship - Rex could fit down the chute without squeezing, and stand up on the command deck without banging his head. As opposed to the vivid racecar red and gold of the Revenger’s hull, the living space was a semi-circular room painted in a decidedly muted mix of off-white and grey, as properly un-bombastic as it got. It felt a little too big considering the semi-circular console covered in keypads and screens sitting in front of the cockpit window was Krigg-sized, complete with a captain’s seat just right for her.

“Well, guess I’ll be seeing plenty of weird nonsense while I’m around. If you’re living there though, I guess I don’t have to worry TOO much about the curious sciencey types that wanna’ see people’s insides to get to know them!” Krigg chuffed, making a quick mental note of the fact that Rex seemed to mention quite casually his ability to achieve space-borne flight. Good to know for later, she supposed. “Seriously though, bred? Are people keeping lizards of unusual size in their backyards around here? Is it like - a cultural thing? “Welp, honey, I’m gonna’ walk the lizard!” Pfffffff-”

Krigg’s spitballing was interrupted in a light snort at her own joke. She finished trotting over to a closed room, and slapped the opening interruptor. Which given the lighter square of material surrounded by weld marks right above it, had been moved ever-so-slightly downwards at some point. The door’s pannels slid open from a seam in their center, revealing what looked like a pantry, complete with well-stacked shelves of unknown products, and a freezer with a sliding door at the top...

Which was not short person-friendly, given that when Krigg made a beeline for it, she had to climb over the edge to slide the door open and stick her upper body in to rummage through it.

“What you feeling for, anyways? Sweet, sour, slightly acidic, or something real weird?” She called out, over the noise of boxes being moved about.