Have I ever recorded the time that my brother Vulkan became aware of the Earth holidays surrounding the harvest and insisted that we celebrate them together?
Bird bot (Lantana) posting hours!! Scout who is short and full of rage. She really dislikes Sentinel specifically. Her reputation is horrible and most of the higher-ups despise her, but she’s really good at her job unfortunately. (And UM adopting her makes it basically impossible to get rid of her.)
Also. Lantana’s never properly seen a medic despite fighting in a good portion of the war and Kitsch has no idea what she’s got herself into by meeting this bot lmao.
Now post yours. @teletraantwo (<- Made Kitsch, enabler of me making ocs.)
Talons clicked against tile floor as she made her way down the hall. Although it might have looked like she did from an outside perspective, she had no set destination in mind. 'Think of this reassignment as an opportunity to work with some bots you'll find more tolerable.' What kind of excuse was that?!
She knew exactly why they really wanted her gone— who cared if she made the right call when she didn't blindly follow orders and stroke their massive egos. Some of those bots acted more like Decepticons than the cons did themselves.
Now she was stuck working with Sentinel for the foreseeable future. Fantastic. She'd prefer torture, thank you very much. At least the younger bots were less- and that was someone else's plating. Lantana jumped to the side just before her face met metal, flapping her wings to steady herself. The other bot seemed surprised to see her, in the middle of closing a door with one servo and holding a datapad with the other. Primus, how hard was it to look where you were going?
"You might not want to be looking down at a datapad while you open a door." She snapped, trying and failing to force her wings to settle after the surprise. The other bot raised an optical ridge at her before,
"Oh you must be the little birdie who keeps sending Sentinel to my medbay. I've been having to fix him up more than usual because of you." Who was this bot again? It didn't really matter.
"That fragger doesn't understand what the word 'no' means, don't blame me. If he minded his own business we wouldn't have a problem."
"Just don't forget, there's another bot on the other side who has to clean up your mess." Lantana cycled her optics before turning to walk off with a wave,
"Say what you want, you aren't the one dealing with him following you around." Sentinel was annoying on his best days, so really these people were lucky she hadn't sent the smug fragger to the scrap heap. Yet.
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Flying. If anyone tried to take it from her she'd probably lose the last bits of sanity she had left. It was probably the only time she was relaxed, especially when she didn't have to think about where she was going. There was no risk of running into Decepticon ships anymore. Gliding low over buildings let her watch other bots going about their days while keeping disdainful stares away.
It was funny how quickly she caught on to the schedules of certain bots. The little yellow one would be… yep, running late. Again. They'd have to break that habit eventually. Multiple bots stopped to yell after them when they just barely avoided running into their frames. At least they were fast. Maybe she'd help them out one of these days, but being grabbed suddenly didn't tend to please most bots.
Only a moment after she'd had that thought, Lantana caught the sound of something flying through the air. She didn't get a chance to do anything, a mass of wire hitting her and forcing her wing closed before she could react. A terrified screech left her and then she was plummeting towards the ground. Using her talons to free herself was useless with them also tangled in the wires, so the best she could do was yank at it with her beak.
Lantana squeezed her optics shut as the ground grew closer, except she crashed into- metal? She was able to right herself with the minimal amount of flailing she could still manage and found herself in the lap of a pale blue bot. A very familiar bot, at that. Fantastic. Thankfully the medic's immediate reaction wasn't to yell at her this time. Her relief was in no way related to how hard she was shaking.
A data pad—that same stupid data pad from before— was quickly set aside. "Hang on, Birdie, let me get this off of you. Now how'd you end up like this?" Some bot thought ‘this’ was funny, probably. Fun fact: it wasn't. If she hadn’t been flying so low some bot could have offlined her. She’d have to track them down before she started flying around base again.
The bot she’d landed on had found a starting point to untangle the wires and was muttering to herself as she worked. Lantana had to agree with the cursing, but she couldn’t really talk, so she settled in to wait for some kind of progress.
It took a couple of minutes until Lantana’s wing was finally freed, and she immediately proceeded to do a… graceful, definitely graceful, flop off of the other bot. She was ignoring the soft laugh entirely.
A bit more maneuvering and she could get at the wire wrapped around her talons. Yanking at the mess until something snapped probably wasn’t the most advisable approach, but it worked well enough. It also let her take her frustration out on an inanimate object, so.
Now entirely free, she was able to scramble away from the cursed trap and transform into her root mode, “When I find out who pulled this I’m making them regret being forged. Been here for a week and some bot’s already trying to mess with me. Slagger… oh, right, thanks for the help.”
“It’s what I do, Birdie. Now do me a favor and try not to make more work for me.” She was trying. Lantana had to fight the intense urge to roll her optics,
“If other bots stopped trying their best to offline me it would be a bit easier. I prefer being functional. Anyway, I have a bot to track down now, bye.” She grabbed the pile of mangled wires and walked off, at a normal pace mind you, before the other bot could keep talking. She was stuck on the ground until she made sure there wouldn’t be a repeat of this incident. Scrap.
Avoiding Sentinel cost her several strange looks, but she managed to make it "home" without another fight. Lantana tossed the wires onto her desk and began what she knew could be a long night of flipping through security cameras.
It was a long night of flipping through security cameras. At least she was left alone for the most part. Ultra Magnus had checked on her when he'd returned—unnecessarily, really. The mech seemed more concerned about what had happened than she was. As if she wouldn't hunt this bot down herself if she needed to.
She’d managed to track down the mech that had taken her out of the air, and it didn’t seem like they had any connection to Sentinel. They also weren’t a bot she’d spoken to before. A dangerous prank or something else? At least the so-called jet twins weren’t beastformers, so if this person tried to target anyone other than her they’d need a more solid plan.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to be able to stay on the ground for the whole day. Hopefully these two fliers were easy to work with. She needed a break.
Good news: the kids actually seemed to like her.
Bad news: she almost got shot out of the sky again.
Multiple bots ducked out of her way in the halls, and she could understand why— she was absolutely fuming and it showed. She’d been much further in the air this time, and falling would have caused some real damage. Scared the kids, too. Security camera footage and the photo she’d managed to take should be more than enough to prove it was the same bot multiple times. They would be facing consequences.
It wasn’t particularly difficult to slip into Ultra Magnus’ office unseen. A good thing too considering the attention the alternative would attract. Her adoptive father noticed her immediately, frowning when he saw what she was holding, “That is not the same one as yesterday.”
“Nope. I nearly got hit again while the kids were with me. Maybe this bot thinks they’re funny, I don’t know, but I got a picture. I compared it to the security camera footage and it’s the same bot as the other day.”
“Send me the picture and the footage. Leave the wire here. I’ll find the bot’s file and handle it as soon as I can.” Lantana nodded, a strong sense of relief washing over her,
“Thank you.”
“Go get some rest. I see no reason for you to hover around at base when it seems like someone may be targeting you.”
Returning home brought her exhaustion back into focus. By the time she shut the door behind her she was struggling to keep her optics open. A few hours of recharge it was. She’d only just settled onto the couch when, on track for her luck, she heard a ping. Change of plans— she’d recharge after she checked those notifications. Slag.
There were multiple asking for someone to step in and substitute for a pilot that hadn’t been able to come in, and all responses so far were that they had other work. Slag.
Lantana groaned, helm falling to rest in one servo. She could go; she’d flown on far less sleep before. That didn’t mean she enjoyed it. Still, some of those bots actually liked her… so. Decision made, Lantana pushed herself back onto her pedes. It’d be harder to recharge that night if she took a nap now anyway.
At least she could bring Shiver with her for this. The little lizard robot skittered right up her arm to settle on her shoulder when she reached for it. Its calming em field was something she wished she could have with her on base, but the risk of something breaking the creature was too high.
The hangar was pure chaos, as usual. The place was a hazard even on slow days. She ended up having to take a detour when another bot nearly dropped the boxes they were carrying and she caught one that fell off the top of the stack. The ‘in training’ badge explained why they looked so stressed. They thanked her several more times than necessary for the help.
After that it was back to dodging other bots until she spotted the one she was looking for. He waved her over and proceeded to start chattering before she said a word, “You have no idea how glad I am to see you, I thought no-one was going to pick this up! I swear it’s always the important deliveries that someone calls out on. Anyway, it shouldn’t take long, it’s just that it’s medical supplies so it needs to be dropped off on time.”
Lantana raised an optical ridge as the other bot passed her a data pad, “Do I want to know why it looks like you’re actually vibrating?” The mech rested his servos on her shoulders with pleading optics. Oh Primus.
“There are so many new bots here that don’t know what they’re doing yet and I am so close to losing it. Never leave me. Please. I think my processor stopped working. I've been asked so many questions.” Lantana laughed,
“This is why you should be careful what you wish for. Now let me go, I have work.” The other bot made a show of pouting about her response, but let go of her shoulders and waved her off,
“Ugh, fine, go do the fun stuff.”
“I will.” She double checked where she needed to go before diving back into the horde, “At least he wasn’t kidding about this being quick… looks like it’s only one place. Hopefully I’ll get some actual recharge time tonight.” The ship was easy enough to locate— it really helped when the things were in the correct place. Some bots never seemed to get that memo. She did not like those bots.
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[“Hey! Hey, Lantana! Got a question for you.” Lantana huffed as a bot draped herself over her back and snatched the datapad from her servos,
“Yeah?”
“Do you have any plans for when the war ends, yet? If you don’t I have an idea~.”
“I don’t. What’s this idea of yours?” The other bot spun her chair around and settled onto her lap, pastel yellow wings fluttering in excitement,
“We should go flying! Not like we do for a mission or some fresh air, but a whole trip. We’ll just pick a direction and go. I bet we could find some place that hasn’t been touched by the war to hang out for a while. We could take some high grade and do whatever we wanted.” Lantana laughed,
“Yeah because there’d be so much to do out there.”
“I’m sure we could think of something.” The other chirped, undeterred, “It’d be fun out there all by ourselves.”
“So what, you’re going to try and get me drunk? You’d offline before you managed it.”
“One, your tolerance is stupid and unfair. Two, I can think of a few things to do even without getting any high grade involved.”
“Mm, I won’t make any promises, but I’ll think about it.”]
[Lantana let her humming trail off as the other bot plopped down beside her on the edge of the building, “I wish you’d sing more often, your voice is so pretty.”
“It’s not even an actual song, Mars.”
“Still! Apparently some bots used to sing for their careers. I bet you could have done it. I guess I wouldn’t get to keep you to myself then, though.” Lantana shook her head,
“Not a fan of sharing your toys?”
“Nope! Gotta keep my birdie all to myself~.”]
Weary yellow optics flickered and the projection on the ceiling disappeared, “If I’d promised, maybe you’d still… I never did take that trip. It wouldn’t have meant much.” Lantana rolled over to stare out the window. So many lights were on— bots awake just because they could be,
Trying to do anything for the first time is like, yeah, this is gonna suck- but at least it might be fun, and at the end of the day, you’ll know how to fix it if you want to try again
