Long Haul arrives from the IHQ Central Chamber to the west.

Long Haul has arrived.

Scrapper is rifling through a cabinet, looking a bit cross. He wanted to get going quite a while ago! While Charr wouldn't make the top ten vacation spots of any sane mechanism, Scrapper is aware of the vague deadline looming over his head, and he'd rather avoid the dead part.

Long Haul limps into the room. His tires have been flattened - AGAIN - and his front grill is badly warped thanks to a missile impact. Other than that, he's got a lot of dents and dings all over, but nothing particularly notable beyond the absence of the driver's cab that normally resides on his left shoulder. No, he's carrying /that/ in his left hand. In his right hand he has what look's to be a car door. A white car door. With a racing stripe. And a big '4' on it. Scrapper /knows/ this car door. "Oy! Scrapper!" he shouts as he spots his brother. "Got something for you!"

Scrapper pauses in ransacking the cabinet. Yeah, like there's no room-temperature superconducting wire in Charr's stores. He glances over at Long Haul, a roll of electrical tape caught on his back shovel. Before the automatic groan about having to repair his brother yet again can form on his vocaliser, Scrapper's optic band is drawn to what Long Haul's holding. Could that be? Oh, it is! His shovel perks up, flicking off the roll of electrical tape, whereupon it rolls around on the floor for a while. Scrapper clasps his hands together greedily and intones, "Why Long Haul, your excuse for being late is wholly accepted."

Long Haul nods rather enthusiastically. "That's what I thought!" he booms happily. Why is he so unusually cheerful? He just got to hit an Autobot! He just tore off an Autobot's door! That's enough to put THIS little dump truck into a good mood! "Jus... hold onna moment, willya?" he says before heading over to the nearest terminal, leaning forward, and hitting the 'record' button with the finger of the hand that holds his driver's cab. He speaks to the terminal.

 "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm on my out. But anyway, was taking one last spin around the area before I hadda leave, an' ran into an Autobot onna reconi- recon- a spy awfully close to the sensor post, in the area between that anna Warrens. I chased him off, but managed to grab /this/ from 'im first!" Then Long Haul lifts the door up so that it can be seen by anyone viewing the report. He finishes with, "Anyway, yeah, I know, I'm off. Just figgered you guys mighta wanted to know about that."

He hits the button and then turns back to Scrapper. "Yeah, you can have it now." Then he hesitates a moment and hands over his driver's cab as well. "Might as well take that, too, since yer gonna have to replace it anyway."

Yeah, give Scrapper body parts, and he'll agree to just about anything. Looking more cheerful than he has in weeks, he fairly bounces over to Long Haul to take the parts off his hands. Shovel help high, Scrapper looks at Long Haul appraisingly and suggests, "Better get you fixed up before we do the trip over."

Long Haul nods, and then sighs. Scrapper cheered, Long Haul now depressed. "Yeah," he mutters. "Gonna need my tires in-tact so I can carry whatever we need over, aren't I?" Of course, even after the repairs he won't be at full strength, but he doesn't have to be for things to be loaded into his truck bed and really, he didn't take near the beating this time as he did last time.

Scrapper doesn't seem to notice his brother's turn towards the downcast. Eh, he's got fresh art supplies, which is a perfectly valid excuse to be an insensitive jerk! Not that Scrapper ever needs an excuse to be an insensitive jerk, of course. Beaming like a gun nut in a stockade, Scrapper gestures over to a medical table. "Hop over there. I'll get you fixed in a jiff."

Long Haul nods and limps over to the table. "Yeah, yeah. I'm goin'," he grumbles. After all, if he doesn't get repaired, he doesn't get to go beat up Autobots later on. That, and he'll have to listen to his brothers bitch about Devastator having a sore ass. He pulls himself up on the table - no hopping, thanks, he's injured - and waits for his brother to get to work.

Scrapper had all his tools packed up and ready to go. So he has to open up a crate to retrieve them, but once that's done, he sees to Long Haul's injuries, first running a cursory scan and then starting on replacing Long Haul's cabin. One wonders why he bothered with the scan at all, given how obvious most of the damage is.

Scrapper begins work on Long Haul's injuries.

Your repair attempt is successful, and Long Haul's self-repair systems can handle the remaining damage.

Probably because Long Haul was kicked in the head a few times. You know, loose circuit cards and all that. The transporter sits there and watches his brother work, learning NOTHING. Fortunately, he's not prodding open, naked pain sensors, the Long Haul's good to go. This is normal repairing pain, which isn't even as bad as fighting pain.

In fact, here we have another example of Long Haul being kind of rewarded for doing what he's not supposed to be doing. Instead of getting ready to go, he was out wandering around Cuprahex. In reward, he got to fight an Autobot, stole a door, and his brother's in a better mood than he's been in weeks. At the rate things are going, Long Haul's going to just end up doing the opposite of whatever it is he's supposed to be doing ALL THE TIME.

Oh noes!

Scrapper continues to fix up Long Haul and finishes up grafting on the new cabin. That done, he retrieves a new set of tyres and set to fitting those onto Long Haul. Scrapper's actually humming! Something that might just be, 'Dum dee dee dum dee dee shiny scalpel! Dum dee dee dum dee dee gonna cut you up!'

Scrapper is humming? That /is/ scary!

But Long Haul has faced scarier. Long Haul has faced Mixmaster's trumpeting. Long Haul has even faced /glue/. So by comparison, funny Terran humming isn't really that bad at all. Long Haul actually swings his legs a little, like a child - he took one minor shot on one of his knees, hence the limp earlier - and continues to watch his downright /bouncy/ brother work. "Good t'see you finally inna decent mood again," he observes. And you know what? He's being honest!

Scrapper looks a little startled by Long Haul's comment. It's a good thing he's got pretty steady hands, or else he might have botched putting that last tyre on, and the Decepticons don't exactly keep a lot of dump truck tyres in stock. Scrapper moves on to Long Haul's knee and finally comments, shrugging, "Well... that was a nice surprise. I can finally start thinking about some new works to replace what was lost."

Long Haul nods his head. And hey, you know, if Scrapper can't replace Long Haul's tires, they'll just have to find someone else to carry stuff. No biggy. "Yuh. Well, good." Now Long Haul gets to be a work of art! Isn't that a scary idea?

Scrapper is just full of scary ideas! He picks up a laser cutter to remove Long Haul's grill, as drilling out the fastenings is just going to take too slaggin' long. That done, the engineer moves to affix a shiny new one. He sighs, "Yeah. Of course, I'm not going to have any time to work on a new piece for a while." Stupid job, actually making him work!

Stupid working so you don't get blown away. Darn it! And now Scrapper's making off with Long Haul's old grill as well? Well, as long as Long Haul gets a new one. The transporter shrugs. "Well, that's the way it goes sometimes. You'll have time eventually, though." It's about time another one of his brothers realized just how /annoying/ their jobs were, though.

Nah, nah. The warped grill's going in the recycling, along with all the other random broken Long Haul bits, except for that cabin. Scrapper finishes up with the last of the big stuff and sets into the dents, beating them out with a hammer in time-honoured fashion. And Scrapper likes his job! He just doesn't like time-crunches. "Indeed. We had better get this task done quickly, however."

"Yeah, yeah, right," grumbles Long Haul showing exactly the same amount of enthusiasm for this job as he does for all the others. But he'll do it, of course. Because he knows it needs to be done. Once Scrapper finishes, Long Haul pushes himself off the table. "I've just gotta go an' get m'stuff. Then I'll meat you out in the corri- cor- the hall way, okay?" Because, unlike medical, the elevator and hallways are big enough to handle the passage of a big old dump truck. They have to be, after all, in order to allow Long Haul to transport some of his larger items over the space bridge. With that final comment, he heads out, pausing at the door one last time. "If you wanna bring the door an' stuff, you can go ahead and load that in with the rest of the stuff, okay?" And without waiting for an answer he trudges out.

Long Haul has disconnected.