Chapter 3
"Seriously, Lawgirl, " the Wolftiseeker began, (for the fifth time in a fragging row! Strongarm thought bitterly, she wasn't this femme's biggest fan) "Can you go any slower? I mean, seriously! How the frag does a cop expect to catch some crook when they can't even keep up with a Wolfticon Seeker who's been walking backwards for the past mile!?"
The young femme took in a deep intake to calm herself before she spoke, "I'm not built for speed alone, an officer of the law doesn't have to be fast if they're smart enough, and you have not been walking backwards for an entire mile. Only a few thousand feet, but not a whole mile."
"Oh, bite me, Lawgirl," the wolfish flyer said with a twitch of her wings and a roll of her eyes. The flame-decaled jet turned on a playlist of songs, quietly at first, but steadily rising in volume.
"Some legends are told, some turn to dust or to gold. You will remember me. Remember me for centuries," she sang with the song, which agitated Strongarm to no end.
"Turn down that music and stop singing!" The officer commanded. This got very little positive reaction out of the wolfish flyer. She switched to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk and turned the volume up LOUDER. She danced with the techno beat once it actually started, her tail swaying with the beat.
Airwolf smirked as she saw the shorter femme's optic twitch. She turned up the volume to the song louder, the lyrics clearly audible for anyone to hear, and danced as she walked, her frame swaying with the fast pace and strong lyrics. Strongarm had nearly had a spark attack when the lupine seeker had played Rise by Skillet full blast and sang along as loud as she could and not be screaming.
The wolf-like jet stopped dancing and winced when she caught a strong smell. Yes, it had a great deal of Bumblebee's scent in it, but she could smell a big, somehow familiar DinoBot, at least one minicon, and the Lawgirl, among a plethora of others. Her wings shot down and her audials pressed themselves against the side of her helm as they approached a wall to what looked, sounded, and smelled like a scrapyard.
"Is something wrong? Do you not like where we are based? Because I can cuff you and shove you in stasis," Strongarm said to her when she noticed her current position.
"Not that," Airwolf started, "I can hear someone arguing about something stupid and the way the sound echoes off its surroundings tells me it's a scrapyard and I smell so many people and I can't turn my audials down like you and I can tell that there's at least one minicon, and a DinoBot who really fragging smells fragging familiar. So if I cringe at the sudden influx of sensory input don't go and do something stupid like get offended!"
Strongarm was silent for a moment, then asked slowly, "You can tell all that just by sound and smell alone?"
The seeker nodded. Her music was still loud, but way quieter than it had been, so as to not give herself a headache. Evacuate The Dance Floor by Cascada. She loved that song. They jumped over the wall and she tripped over some old pile of junk and let out a loud wolfish yelp, a sound that would remind most of a kicked puppy. The argument stopped and everyone who was in the scrapyard came running. Fixit had thought that maybe Airwolf had thrown Strongarm and gotten dragged down with her, Denny and Russell had no idea what was going on, and when Bumblebee saw her he just facepalmed.
"Wolfie," the yellow mech muttered with a shake of his helm as he and Strongarm helped her up. Grimlock had just been staring at her the whole time. He knew he knew her. He just couldn't remember quite how he knew her.
"DECEPTICON! And she's not in cuffs!?!" Denny shouted, scared and worried for his son's safety.
"She's a Con? But her logo over here says she's an Autobot," Russell said, he was on her left, his dad on her right.
"Actually," the Wolftiseeker started, "I'm neutral. I don't belong to either faction. But I have ties to both. Oh, and FYI, I can hear something in your groundbridge not working right and I smell something burning. If you want I can help fix it."
"How would you know cow-pow-HOW to fix a groundbridge?" Fixit asked.
"Are you alright?" Airwolf asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
"Yes, I'm fine," the orange minicon answered, then prompted her to explain her knowledge of groundbridges.
"Oh, I'm actually a first-class engineer. Soundwave taught me most of it when I was little, and I learned more later," the lupine flier said with a one-armed shrug.
"If you're such a great engineer, " Strongarm said to her, still untrusting of her, "Then why are you willing to take on so many illegal mercenary jobs?"
The Wolftiseeker's audials flattened against her helm in anger, her wings flaring up and a small growl escaping her vocalizor, "Would you be willing to hire me as an engineer? Me? The femme who's killed hundreds of bots in their sleep just because someone paid her to?"
They all fell silent. The only ones wearing looks of shock were the humans and Strongarm. Bumblebee, Grimlock, and Fixit simply had looks of sympathy on their faceplates. Bumblebee was the only one of the three mechs who remembered every bit of the war. He, like Airwolf, had no freedom from his past crimes, but his faction was what kept him from sharing her fate.
"That's what I thought. Anyway, I'd rather not get blown to bits by a groundbridge malfunction, so I'm just gonna go fix the fragging thing," the lupine femme said, then turned towards the sound of a malfunctioning groundbridge.
The flame-decaled jet wiped her hands in an old rag. Melanie Martinez music played with the volume hiked up to maximum. Driving the only other femme in the area to insanity. Airwolf smiled.
"Could you please turn that morbid music off!?" Strongarm shouted, her servos over her audials.
"Where, is my prescription? Doctor, Doctor, please listen; my brain, is scattered, you can be Alice I'll be the Mad Hatter," Airwolf sang, pointing at the other femme when she said "Alice" and at herself when she said "Mad Hatter". Bumblebee just shook his head and sighed. It got worse when the merc grabbed a few novelty giant hats, the kind that people put on top of cars, and placed all of them in a stack on top of her helm, and started dancing crazy circles around Strongarm.
"Airwolf! Stop driving Strongarm crazy!" Bumblebee growled as he grabbed the femme with extremely questionable sanity and spun her around to face him, gripping her shoulder. "I can only handle ONE head case at a time!"
Airwolf whimpered as she removed the stack of hats from her helm, keeping the bottom one in her servos (it was fuzzy and purple), letting the rest fall to the ground, her audials down and giving him her best kicked sad puppy look.
"I'm immune to your puppy-dog eyes, Airwolf. We've been over this," he said, his glare intensifying each time she put on a more hurt look. As they argued, Strongarm was trying to figure out how a cold, seemingly sparkless, insane mercenary could even accomplish that face. Meanwhile Grimlock just watched her, trying hard to figure out why he felt like he knew her, why she seemed so familiar, and why he remembered her sent so well.