I'm getting Nightmare Before Christmas vibes, here.

[heroindisguise]

Characters: Optimus Prime, anyone who's around. (Open)
Content: A lonely cruise leads Optimus to the center of Iacon, where a bizarre sight awaits.
Location: Iacon center
Time of day: Late night
Warnings: None yet.
Status: Active.

Comments

[yougotthekeys]

Staying in one place for a long period of time wasn't something that Hot Rod liked doing. He liked to be out, moving around, doing something but everyone else seemed content to just stay at base for right now; content to just work on establishing everything, blah blah blah. All stuff that Hot Rod really didn't want to be involved in at the moment. He'd leave that to the others

[heroindisguise]

The signal - as well as the voice - was familiar, but on this planet it could mean everything as well as nothing.
Regardless, Optimus had caught a glimpse of a mech that very much resembled Hot Rod back at the base, so chances were that the young bot had snuck out too.

He almost contemplated commenting on the fact as he approached the familiar signal, but he rememebered he'd done the very same.
Chuckling lightly to himself, he replied to the communication.

/Hot Rod? Why out here? I guess I'm not the only one who could not recharge tonight./

He lowered his rifle, ready to subspace it as soon as the identity of the other was confirmed.

The orange mech - made even more orange in places by traces of what appeared to be pumpkin - was indeed the one he'd seen earlier that orn.

[yougotthekeys]

//Something like that.\\ How was he supposed to tell Optimus Prime that he was bored and didn't want to do all technical 'getting everything squared away' stuff back at the base? //Just wanted to get out and scout around some more. This place is still kinda weird to me.\\

Wiping off more of the pumpkin guts with a grimace, he started to wander over towards the Prime, carefully stepping over and around the orange vegetables to avoid adding any more to his collection.

//Mind if I ask what's keeping you up sir?\\ Hot Rod was fairly certain, considering the way the other bots had seemed to gravitate towards him, that this Prime wasn't his Prime but a Prime was a Prime right? //Or is that being a little too nosy because I'd completely understand.\\

[heroindisguise]

Optimus shrugged dismissively, walking close enough to chuckle at a few pumpkin seeds falling off the other's plating while he tried to clean it off.

"Nothing important," he cautiously said, "I just had my future laid out in front of me by Perceptor, and it was... surprising." To put it mildly. But there was no need to be overdramatic.

The Prime took the chance to observe the younger mech more carefully. He could tell there was something off - but whether this Hot Rod was the one he knew or not, he was most certainly an ally.

[see_my_cannons]

As unsettling as being transported against his will and without his knowledge to the Cybertron was, Ironhide had surprisingly few complaints at the moment. As far as he was concerned, all was right with the world for the moment

[chromefatale]

Chromia was quite enjoying herself here. She had come to accept that not everything was what it seemed, and there really wasn't anything she could do to undo her situation, seeing as she was dead. So the usually uptight femme decided to make the best of it.

And right now, the best of it was riding on her mate towards who knew what. She knelt, in her own fashion, in the bed of his alt mode, elbows propped on the roof of his cab as she watched ahead of them casually, rather than tensed as she usually would. The Decepticons here seemed harmless, or inactive, even though some of the other strange Autobots at the base reported being attacked.

She instinctively tensed a bit when Ironhide announced their approach, her back straightening just a bit so she could see further, her body alert. But what they saw...

"What are those?" she asked when the first pumpkin came into sight, her head cocked to one side as she looked at the brightly colored oddities.

[whichpocket]

"Those are pumpkins," Will spoke up over their comm line as he peered out the windshield, confusion plastered all over his face. "Vegetables that we grow back on Earth. What the hell are they doing here?"

Of all the crazy things Will had seen thus far on the planet, this took the cake. It was pretty obvious that organic things could not grow normally on Cybertron but yet here were tons of pumpkins growing like there was nothing to hinder them.

"'Hide slow down, I want to hop out," he said, absently tapping the steering wheel as he slid over closer to the passenger side door, slinging his gun strap over his shoulders. "I want to see if they're real pumpkins or not."

[see_my_cannons]

"Pumpkins." Of course. Why not. First random Bots and Cons, then a human or two, now, random human vegetables. Why, the slag, not. "Probably the same thing we're doing here," he mused with a wary snort. "Their travel agent fragged up, too."

Why did he suddenly have a bad feeling that his nice, fresh polish was going to end up slagged before the night was over? And not in a fun, blow-the-crap-outta-something-fun way, but a covered-in-annoying-organic-goo way?

Vegetables meant food, though, and so, with little more than a suspicious grumble, he obeyed Will's direction, rolling to a stop far enough back that Chromia could cover Lennox if needed, but not so far as to leave the major dangling if it all went to slag. "Anything out there, Chromia?"

No sense taking any stupid chances, though.