Out of Sight, Out of Sound

[Spinister]

Spinister stares up at the sky. Needlenoses! Are they all so hard to please? He suggests lowly, "Butcher the corpse, toss it in a carry net, and tie it to my wheels?"

So he will end up carrying junk, anyway. However, this means that he'll get a chance to sort through the parts on his own, whenever Needlenose goes down for a defragmentation cycle.

[Needlenose]

"Sure!" Needlenose answers chirpily. "Sounds like a plan to me!" He looks around. "We should probably do the same with the others. Here, I'll take apart the dead you. You shouldn't have to dismantle yourself, after all," he observes. With that, he pulls out a cutter from his kit and reaches towards the dead Spinister, ready to get started.

A little eager there, huh?

[Swindle]

Abruptly, there was one more body on the pile. Rather, one that hadn't been noticed before. And it wasn't so much a body, as, well, a khaki vehicle. For all intents and purposes, it /was/ a vehicle, not a Transformer at all. Nothing more than met the eye or optic.

At least until gravity decided to adjust its less-then-steady footing (wheeling?), causing it to shift on one of the bodies it was on - the motion caused metal to grind against metal, a series of small sparks coming with noise that followed. These in turn were followed by a brief 'arc' of electricity that ran up the jeep...

And abruptly, its headlights flashed on, illuminating both Needlenose and Spinster.

[Spinister]

Spinister is about to insist that he can dismantle himself perfectly well, that he is insulted that Needlenose is suggesting that Spinister doesn't have an appropriate professional detachment from how work.

Then, headlights out of nowhere nearly blind him. In an instant, Singe, his flamethrower, is in his hand. At this range, he doesn't need a sniper rifle. He aims the flamethrower at the... tan Humvee?

How did that get there without him noticing? Spinister is really feeling rather disturbed. He's the one who sneaks up on people, not the other way around! In a dull, leaden tone, he commands, "Name, rank, and serial number."

[Needlenose]

Needlenose, in a moment, goes from silly and casual to alert and professional. As the headlights flash over him, he turns and spins, Zigzag leaping and transforming as he does. He catches the Nebulan in his hand and then aims the weapon at the newcomer. Granted, aiming Zigzag may seem to be pointless, but unfortunately it's late enough (and dark enough) that Sunbeam isn't at his most efficient, and generally seeing the results of a miss is enough to convince some people to behave. Even so, Needlenose gives notice to Sunbeam to stand by as well - he may not be at full power out here, damage-wise, but in the lack of light his blinding flash tends to be plenty effective, anyway.

"Yeah!" he agrees. "What he said!" Then, after a beat, he adds, "Oh! And, erm... sparks or brain modules?"

[Swindle]

"Well, sheesh, aren't you two friendly?"

Being frozen in time-locked stasis is none too pleasant; being able to see things but not react? Make deals, bargain, anything? It is indeed its own Pit. But now that said stasis seems to be undone, the humvee wastes no time in transforming, completely unperturbed by the weaponry aimed at him. In fact, he makes a point of wiping some dust off his own armor, straightening a few panels before flashing a smile as bright as his headlights (which have since turned off) at the two mechs before him.

"Swindle's the name, friends. My serial number, well, a businessmech's got to have -some- secrets now doesn't he?"

[Spinister]

Spinister does not look relieved. He does not lower Singe. He does, however, comment in a rather jaded voice, "A Swindle."

That's new. Looks about right for a Swindle, though. Sounds about right for a Swindle, too. Closer than some realities, certainly.

"Don't suppose you combine with four other men to form Bruticus?" That's a really weird question out of the blue, Hairsplitter reflects. Spinister amends, "Nevermind. A brief history of reality as you know it. Now."

[Needlenose]

"Oh, hey, a Swindle," Needlenose adds a bit more cheerfully, although he, too, keeps his weapon trained.

He looks up at Spinister and notes, "That might come in handy, if we actually find a planet with, you know, inhabitants. Especially given my talent for picking up on the up and coming trends..."

Believe it or not, Needlenose does have this talent. He's not just making things up.

[Swindle]

"A Swindle?" Swindle repeats, arching his brow. Well, that's interesting. He didn't know he had clones! Well known, yes, clones, not so much. Still either not noticing or not caring about the weapons trained on him, he stretches his arms over his head...aaaah, yes, there, that's the ticket getting that crink out of his servos...

"Don't know much about this 'Bruticus', buuut last I heard about the history of reality mechs were still arguing about whether we came from cubes or squid people. Which I have to say, those Quintessons are far too nice...if you catch them in the right mood," he amends. "They can be rather two-faced about their deals, but far be it from me to speak ill about a customer!"

He clasps his hands together, grinning as he starts to make his way off the pile of bodies. "On that note, gentlemechs, you seem to be already well endowed so I'll pass on my usual business speech and just get to the point: where in the cosmos am I?"

[Spinister]

Hairsplitter is not busy being Spinister's gun at the moment, since Singe is doing that duty amply. So he transforms, looking rather like a little robot, since he has his armour on. He climbs up to Spinister's shoulder and explains, "It is not so much a matter of where but also a matter of when, you see. This planet is known as Gillanan III, but all of the Transformers on it are both spatially, temporally, and dimensionally displaced. We do not all hail from the same reality, hence my partner's demand to hear a brief history of reality as you know it. The year here might be in the past, from your perspective, or the future, or, very rarely, right about the same time as your relative timeframe. Speaking of, what is the day and year, from your perspective?"

Needlenose and a Swindle teaming up to profit off up and coming trends? Why does Spinister feel like he is going to end up playing damage control, in the end?

[Needlenose]

Partially because Spinister has it covered and partially because Needlenose is confident that he can have Zigzag aimed once more at a moment's notice, Needlenose lowers his gun. In order to 'lower his gun', however, he does not actually lower his arm, at least not at first. He opens up his hand, and seems to let the gun fall out. Except that said gun transforms on the way down and lands on his feet. Like Hairsplitter, like Sunbeam, Zigzag is in full armor, and thus would appear to be a small robot.

Then Needlenose places his right hand on his hip and lifts his left in sort of a casual, shrugging gesture.

"In other words, where we are is a lot less interesting than what's going on, and to us, a lot less interesting than where you've been."

[Swindle]

"That's a neat trick," Swindle mused aloud, watching the smaller robots transform from being guns. He wasn't sure what the good of that was, but, hey, it seemed to work for them so obviously there was a use. He wondered if he could get anything off it...

"Now just hold on a nanosecond," he said, holding up a hand. Temporally displaced? Dimensions? The only thing that folks even conjecture doin' that sort of thing is a spacebridge. A spacebridge on a short circuit," he amended. "Well, and those Vok have all sorts of rumors about them...but what does it matter!"

He threw out his hands. Here was a market ripe for the taking! So long as there were more than just these two - or three, or four, how many mechs were here? - fellows here, he'd be just fine, really. At least until he got back, if it turned out to be less than lucrative here. Just in case, though, he opened his chest, pulling out the drawer section and good, it seemed that he still had a link to his personal dimension.

"Things aren't too interesting, to tell you the truth - well, aside from the whole Megatron-being-back-from-the-dead thing, you have no idea how happy I was when I heard that my favorite customer hadn't bitten the sawdust after all..." Rummage rummage. "'Course, I've been out of the loop since a bit hearing that, what with that silly Allspark shard bouncing back on me...you got any medics around here?" he asked, pausing to look up. "I certainly wouldn't mind a systems diagnosis from a professional, juuuust to make sure nothing was put out of order."

[Spinister]

Allspark? But this guy doesn't look like Barricade's crew. There will plenty of time to grill Swindle for details about his reality later, though.

Swindle wants a check-up? Spinister finally drops Singe, who also transforms, vaguely disappointed that he didn't get to set anything on fire. Spinister points over at Needlenose. "Finest circuit designer on Cybertron. Your lucky day."

And Needlenose gets to check Swindle out for novel and odd technology during the check up, which is of interest to the Mayhems.

Spinister kneels down to gather up his own dead body in his arms.

[Needlenose]

Needlenose narrows just one optic as Swindle gabbles. "In my reality, we had a group of regular future-types who would come back and cause problems, and I'm preeeeeeetty sure it wasn't a spacebridge on short circuit they were using to hop back and forth. Just because there's only one thing people conjecture might do something doesn't mean, well, there's only one thing," he notes.

As Spinister gives Needlenose's (woefully short) sales pitch, he nods. "Like he said - and I can do general medical to, if need be, though..." Needlenose holds one hand flat over his facemask while his other hand is stretched into the air and he makes an exaggerated yawning noise. "Though if I get stuck with that sort of work for two long, I start getting pretty bored. But if you just need a basic check-up, I can do a basic check-up." With that he gathers up his repair tech and approaches the new arrival.

[Swindle]

"Well, I'm due for some luck. And if you're offering..." No reason to pass up a free check-up, huh? Basic just means Needlenose won't get too much a look into what sort of technology he has on him. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.

Swindle shuts the drawer, patting it once. "Not a spacebridge on short circuit, huh?...well, that's not a problem. I'm sure I can find - some- way of entertaining myself while I'm here."