Long Haul is leaning back in one of the broken down chairs of the broken down base, grumbling. For once he can't swing his legs, because the chairs in this base are actually proper Constructicon sized. So instead he leans back and complains. Most of his comments are incoherent, but occasionally words like 'Shockwave,' 'Dinobots,' and 'stupid' can be made out.

Scrapper wanders in. Perhaps they ought to fix the place up a bit. It's a bit unbecoming for the Constucticons to have a base in shambles. On the other hand, if anyone ever finds the place, they'll never suspect it as a secret Constructicon lair. Why, there's not even any chair made out of people!

Long Haul looks up from where he's sitting as Scrapper arrives. He picks up a small fragment of rubble that one of them really should clean up (probably Long Haul) and chucks it at his brother, the force only enough to cause a 'ping' without causing damage. "'Ey, Scrapper," the transporter acknowledges. No salutes down here!

Long Haul succeeds in grasping Scrapper, throwing it off-balance.

Scrapper glances at the piece of rubble that Long Haul just threw at him. Well, it wasn't enough to hurt or even chip Scrapper's lime green paint, so he'll let it slide. For now. No salute, either. Hmph. He announces, "So I was thinking that we need to clean this place up." Oh yes, in the Constructicons' vast amounts of spare time.

"That's great, Scrapper," Long Haul answers, shrugging his shoulders. He's certainly not going to volunteer HIS services, but as long as Scrapper wants to THINK about something, that's fine with him.

Scrapper gives Long Haul an odd look, but he'll probably be wanting it back later. He says slowly, "You really think so? I mean, it all looks a bit rubbish. Hardly befitting of our standards. And the chairs are so..." Scrapper trails off. He really needs to build back up his stock of bits. That door Long Haul got him went to Arachnae in the form of a medical kit, and he's got Long Haul's cabin, but that's about it.

+gtalk Fleet, too?

Wait a minute. What did Long Haul just agree with here? He looks up at Scrapper and his optic band dims as he redirects current flow to his cognitive processors. Only so much current to go around, after all. "Uhm... I, uhm... I was talking about it being great that you were thinking and all. Because, you know, that's a big part of your job. Thinking."

Scrapper stares at Long Haul and tilts his optic band upward. He says slowly, to make sure that Long Haul can understand it, "Long Haul, I was just using a manner of speech. I haven't gotten around to doing anything about this mess, so I was just 'thinking' about it." He does the air quotes.

Long Haul looks up at Scrapper, his head canting slightly to the right to demonstrate his bafflement. "Uhm... so you weren't thinking?" he asks, obviously having missed the actual point, if any, entirely.

"Of course I was thinking! I'm always thinking," Scrapper snaps, pacing around the room, careful to pick his way over the rubble. It wouldn't do to trip. "You would do well to do the same. Now, however, I am thinking about cleaning this place up." Actually, that's a lie. Now he's thinking about thinking. Metathinking!

Long Haul did try thinking long ago, and others just made fun of him. He's figured out that thinking is one area he'll never master. "What's there to think about?" he asks. "Jus' gotta be careful about gettin' the supplies in and the debris out. Wouldn't wanna get noticed by the wrong person an' all. Have to do a bit of the paperwork shuffle so what supplies we use don't get tracked that way. Stuff like that." Then he shrugs. "Still, not much to think about. Logistics doan' take much processing power."

Scrapper kicks at a bit of rubble absently. He waves a hand dismissively and explains, "Ah, but what to do with it once it is clean? Now that takes some thought." They could put in a moat and get some Sharkticons with fraggin' laserbeams strapped to their heads! Or not.

"Uhm. Same thing we do with it now?" Long Haul asks, once more confused. "Come out here an' hide out when we don't feel like putting up with the smelt-slag back at base?" He watches Scrapper wander about and kick rubble, as though keeping him in sight would help him better understand how his brother thinks. Hah! Fat chance! Even merging with him for Devastator can't solve THAT little mystery!

Scrapper sweeps an arm grandly and says, "Well, maybe we could set up a lab in here. We could do weapons testing!" Scrapper sounds positively gleeful about the prospect. "Or just a general workshop, where we could work on our project in peace without fear of being disturbed by morons." So long as said morons aren't lime green.

"Then where we gonna go when we don't feel like putting up with the smelt-slag back at base?" Long Haul almost whines. After all, he doesn't have much use for a workshop. "'Sides, the more... elaborate you wanna get, the harder it'll be to move things in and out without getting noticed." He slumps back a little further in his chair, a bit dismayed at the prospect of losing his pouting zone.

"I thought you were the master of being ignored while moving things in and out," Scrapper says, sounding disappointed. Did he just give Long Haul recognition for being ignored while doing his job? Stranger things have happened. "And we could still go here to sulk. We'd just be able to sulk with powertools!"

"Well, it depends on what you wanna get down here, Scrapper," Long Haul explains carefully, leaning forward as he talks. He rests his forearms on his knees and opens up his hands to gesture while he speaks. "If you can fit it in my bed with no part hangin' out, then sure, I can get it down here... just gotta transform and shuffle it all into subspace. Anything weird, though, or certain sensitive equipments or something, and you're outta luck. Jus' like how my subspace in't made to carry people without killing them, there's some equipment it can't handle." Then he pauses, hands going limp as he thinks about something. His right hand balls into a fist and he raises it to pound it against his knee. "An' I don't WANT to be ignored while I'm moving things, dammit!"

+gtalk ...the men and boys of Neverland have some serious issues. Make that subscriptions. The pirates want a mother? Aie.

Scrapper looks down and kicks another piece of rubble. He then looks back up and says, "But it's useful if people ignore you when you're moving things. Especially for secret projects." Speaking of which...

Long Haul crosses his arms and slumps back in his chair. He mutters, "I'd rather not be moving things to begin with." The mild case of over-energization that he had earlier has long since faded to be replaced by normal, grumpy Long Haul.

"Someone has to do it, and you're built for the job," Scrapper notes briskly. He then returns to a previous tangent. "Speaking of secret projects, when was the last time we really had a good one? One that wasn't devised by someone else. One that lasted beyond the first run on the field."

Long Haul lowers his arms, but only so he can bring his right hand up to stroke his chin. "Well, there was that moon business," he mutters thoughtfully. Of course, Long Haul himself never devises secret projects anyway, but this time he realizes that 'someone else' means 'someone not a Constructicon.' "'Course that din't last too long, either, but still..." he trails off, then shrugs. "Dunno."

Scrapper looks melancholy for a moment and asks, not expecting an answer, '"What have we ever made that lasted?" In somewhat better spirits, he chuckles and adds, "Well, besides Devastator." An ungainly creation, to be sure, but also a magnificent one.

Long Haul sinks into his chair once more. It was indeed this very point that lead Long Haul to attack Blades when Blades tried to offer him 'help.' There is nothing the Constructicons ever had which was not taken from them except each other... except Devastator. "Crystal City... the original one... it stood a good long while before-" he stops himself, not wanting to follow that line of thought any farther. "Of what we have now? No, that's it. He's all we've got."

Scrapper raises a hand to his chin thoughtfully. "They can't take Devastator away, either." Not without killing the Constructicons, at least. The engineer has a vague idea that trying to permanently the merge components and binding protocols would probably kill them. Or drive them mad. It doesn't bear contemplating. "I suppose we could try tinkering with him. The old boy hasn't had an upgrade since... since... ah..."

"He ever had one?" Long Haul asks, tilting his head backwards to look up at Scrapper. Tinker with Devastator... that's a scary prospect. Devastator is, in his way, the most right they ever got something. To try to tinker with that... but on the other hand, since his creation he's been outshined by all these newer gestalts, gestalts made up of teams that don't even have the sense to have a matching color scheme - or with so poor a concept of loyalty that they'd think a member of another combiner team would be willing to turn his back on his brothers. The Constructicon rubs the back of his head thoughtfully. That would be one way, wouldn't it? One way to show them newer bastards that Devastator still is tops. The idea starts to seem more and more appealing...

<Constructicons> Long Haul decides he's going to kind of 'mirror' the role Long Haul was listed as having in the news files during the original creaction. Basically, the cheering gallery... and he and Bonecrusher can be the one to kick your guys' asses if you start having second thoughts. :)

"Has he?" Scrapper asks back, voice uncertain. He adds, sounding a bit surer, "I don't believe that he has. It would be tricky, to be certain. You've seen how complex a beast even his wiring diagrams are. Of course, if we screwed this up, there'd be severe complications. Maybe we should just build another really big gun. Big guns are fun, aren't they?" Scrapper is all about being Not Dead at the end of the day, after all.

Long Haul stares at Scrapper. Here his brother has come up with this magnificent new idea, and obviously he has not the guts to follow through. "Wha-? No. No, Scrapper. I mean, well, yes, they are, but you know it'd just get blown up in the end, just like every other big gun we've ever built."

Guts? Scrapper? They don't belong in the same sentence. Unless it is perhaps, 'Scrapper removed the Autobot's guts and made a lovely arrangement out of them.' He looks a little downcast. "What makes Devastator special, then?" Aside from the fact that if Devastator gets blown up, they die, and if a big gun gets blown up, they just get narked. Maybe that is it there.

"'Cos Devastator is US!" Long Haul answers, again leaning forward, his optic band glowing an unusual intensity. "I mean... we're all builders in this team, even the lunkheads like me an' Bonecrusher. So we all know... when you build something, you put a little bit of yerself into it. Then it gets destroyed, and it ain't there anymore. You an' me an' the rest... we've lot so many bits of ourselves, it's sometimes hard to remember that there's anything left. But there is... there's him. There's Devastator. He's... he's more than what the rest of them got. Nonna them other combiners BUILT themselves. Someone else just put the pieces together for them. But Devastator is us not just 'cos we combine into him, but because WE built him. He's more us than any of those other guys are them! The one thing we've built that no one can take from us without takin' EVERYTHING! That's what makes him special!"

Scrapper shudders a little. Yup, can't take Devastator away without killing the Constructicons or leaving them worse mental cases than they already are. That's what he was afraid of. "And so don't you think that we shouldn't toy with him? He's really all we've got, in the end. Some things just aren't worth the risk."

"So you wanna just go back to buildin' guns for 'em and being ignored?" Long Haul snorts derisively. "They use our weapons, they live an' work in our buildings, and then they forget about us until they need us again. You were talkin' earlier about how good I am about moving things and being ignored. Trust me, being ignored is a talent we all got! The big guy's the only weapon we have that they can't ignore us while they're usin' it, and with all those new guys around... new guys they built with the techniques YOU came up with, they can just get away without calling him in at all. But if we was to improve him..." he trails off into silence, watching his brother to gauge a reaction.

Scrapper narrows his optic band, shovel twitching. Ah, yes, ignored. He does not expect to be praised for his work, by and large. It is simply day to day maintenance and construction. It is what must be done. Might as well praise a fuel pump. Scrapper notes, "If Devastator doesn't see battle as much, that's less green paint we need to mix." Well, have Mixmaster whip up.

"Scrapper, that's a stupid reason," Long Haul retorts, voice heavy with irritations. He crosses his arms as he continues. "An' when /I/ gotta call /you/ out for bein' stupid, you know something's wrong!"

"You know what I mean!" Scrapper snaps. He's not big on this getting beat up thing. So if Devastator gets phased out of combat, that's fine by him. However, he is a builder, and he has an intense need to create useful things. A Devastator that is not devastating is a sad, pitiful Devastator. Scrapper mulls over this point.

"Yeah? Well, what do you mean?!" Long Haul shouts angrily, infuriated with the stubborn cowardice of his brother. "That we shouldn't use him anymore? Just let him go the same way as everything ELSE we've ever made? S'at what you wanna see happen?" The transporter pushes himself out of his chair and clenches his fists as he makes ready to stare down his brother. "Devastator was the FIRST, and it's up for us to show 'em all that he is STILL the best."

Scrapper parries back, shovel lowering a little, "I don't want to let him go. I want to safeguard him" Ridiculous words, those. "Primus, Long Haul! This could kill him and us with him. I can't allow that. He can't be the best if he's dead. It was a foolish idea, and I never should have suggested it."

Long Haul speaks quietly now. His arms drop to his sides and his head tilts downward a little. All challenge has gone out of his voice, but his words, however, are another matter. "So what you're sayin' is, you don't think you're up to it? You don't think /we're/ up to it? We've built cities, we've moved planets... an' we can't do this? Is that what you're sayin'?"

Scrapper reminds quietly, "What have we ever made that has lasted? I just don't want to lose that one thing." He admits, having as little pride and faith in his abilities, "Maybe we could do it, but it would be a terrible risk. I just don't think it is worth the price. Besides, we'd need to consult the others, and..."

Long Haul sighs and shakes his head, heading for the door. "Just think about it, Scrapper. 'Kay? Just think about it." That may be enough. That, and telling the others. After all, now that the idea's been had, it won't go away. Not until it's tried. Long Haul is sure he can count on that.