A Walk in the Park (Maddie/Open)

[Twister & Blackfire]

"Great! Let's get going then!" Twister said with a fair bit of cheer in her voice, turning around and motioning them to follow with a wave of her right hand. "I had to land out of sight because I didn't want to cause a scene." Twister said, walking swiftly down to the parking lot and hanging a right which led them down a long sidewalk towards an unused gravel/sand storage lot that was not being used by construction workers currently.

Twister led them through one of the gates near one of the big flat dirt roads that lay between two very large gravel piles to a clearing where the large vehicles weaved into to collect large truck loads of gravel and other composite materials to make cement and other types of pavement. Her black and gold alternate mode was the only thing there currently, the rotors swinging slightly in the wind, though less so since the rotor brake was engaged.

She started up the rotors, her holoform sticking near Maddie to escort her to the left seat, and helped her strap herself in since she probably wasn't used to the types of buckles aircraft had. Once she ensured they were both settled, her holoform phased out off of Lopez's right side once the door on both sides were locked shut firmly. Normally if there was just one passenger she would keep her holoform present so as to not freak them out, but her voice would have to do the works this time, though there were three other seats plus some extra storage space behind them. If Maddie seemed nervous, she would reactivate her holoform.

"I guess this is a first time flight in helicopters for both of you guys, I promise I won't do anything to scare you. Don't hesitate to ask questions."

[Madeline Flynn-Morgan]

Maddie let out a happy sound and quickly followed after Twister's holoform. She reached out and gently grabbed onto the holoform's hand, or at least attempted to. She did not think that Mr. Lopez would be too pleased with her grabbing onto his hand and clinging to him. However, she did turn around and smile at Lopez before she focused forward, keeping up with the holoform.

As they neared the construction site, Maddie almost seemed to perk up slightly upon seeing the big black and gold helicopter. As the rotors started up, Maddie immediately threw up her arm to cover her face, trying to turn away from the dust kick up. She wasn't even thinking about buckling in, so it was a very good thing. She squeaked a little as she felt like the dust was no longer trying to coat her entire being and blinked her eyes open.

She giggled a little and bounced, without thinking about it, when she saw she was in a helicopter. "Yep, yep! I've never been in a helicopter before! This is so cool! And I never hesitate to ask questions!" she answered happily and then leaned over a bit to stare out the window.

This was gonna be fun!

[Lopez]

Having taken a seat in her alt mode, he watched the outside, having never flown. He hadn't ever expected to fly. He usually preferred the ground - he worked with it more often. Besides that, any jet pack, unless modified, would have a bit more trouble picking him up, and he hadn't worked much with flying vehicles, with them being relatively rare and all. So he sat back, relatively quietly, and watched.

That little girl, though, she seemed so different, so strangely unique, and yet she was still so much like any other little girl. He couldn't explain why he felt attached to her all of a sudden, he just did. She was friendly to him, tried to understand, when others just mocked him, making up his statements, shoving their mistake in his face as though it were his fault. And, besides that, she was smarter than the other people - even the scientist. She just lacked the experience.

He said nothing else, yet.

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[Twister & Blackfire]

"Winds are from almost due East, no potential wind shears forecasted for some time. It should be a smooth flight." Twister's rotors were operating at full speed sound, and since she was her own intelligent being, she had no need to do a routine safety check on various equipment. If something was wrong, she would already know what it is! A notable pitch change in sound occurred as the rotors started spinning at their full speed instead of the maximum idling speed. "Fun fact, rotors spin at over a 1000 feet per second, that means they creat mini sonic booms with each rotation. That's why you hear that heavy thumping everytime they approach."

Being a skilled flier, since it was oh so natural for the flying Cybertronians, when the helicopter picked up into a hover, they wouldn't really notice a change in motion of the alternate mode until they could visibly see they were slowy rising up. It would become noticeable they were actually hovering when she was hovering at about a foot, and then she steadily rised from there, nosing her alternate mode as directly into the wind as possible so the rotors could get maximum airflow. She fell quiet then, and performed a vertical take off out of the area, going high enough to clear the largest gravel pile near her off to her right. She moved straight ahead into the wind, going over the top of said pile, nosing forward slightly to shift into forward flight. The alternate mode would notably shudder ever so slightly as it gained a little more efficiency in lift. This was not turbulence, but it was just an effect known as Effective Translational Lift. Once clear, she accelerated quickly to about 65 knots, the Flight Information and Moving Map showing her location, altitude, flight path information and more. A third screen was used for communication management. All warning lights were off, all gages were green, so the two had nothing to fret over.

Now to find the nearest junk yard. She did some searching via the internet as they flew along, climbing to about 1500 feet Above Ground Level, and accelerated to a cruise speed of 75 knots. The interior of the alternate mode gave off a light hum, which could still be heard even in Maddie's headsets. She was sure Maddie would tell her she was uncomfortable with the altitude if she began to get airsick or nervous.

((I figure one or both of yall might like to post before i have the transition completed, i have something in mind for that part of the flight))

[Madeline Flynn-Morgan]

Maddie let out a happy sound and continued to stare out the window, bouncing a little in her seat, again without thinking. Her head twitched to the side slightly as she listened to what Twister was saying. She grinned a bit at that and responded, "I always wondered why they made that sound. So...how do they make stealth helicopters or is that something still in the works? Or is it just something I thought up on my own?" she asked, deciding to not ask anything that had to do with the situation. She looked around the cockpit again, smiling at it and then focused on the instruments in front of her.

"What do all of these mean?" she inquired, staring at the various gauges, lights, and other things. She bounced again, without thinking, and she continues to look around, obviously overly excited about being up here.

And the height thing?

She didn't even notice it. She was just excited to be flying! And she also didn't think about whoever was supposed to watching her, most likely, back at the park. She actually wasn't sure about that part so much as she was excited about flying.

"This is so COOL!" she squealed out, staring out the side window again.

[Lopez]

So they were off the ground, and, between the little girl and the bot flying them, he could tell that this could be a long ride. He chose, instead, to focus on the outside, watch the ground drop out from under them... If he were to fall out, he would, again, be facing something as close to death as was possible for him. Maybe he shouldn't think about that. Neither of these two had any reason to do that.

Of course, his 'allies' hadn't had much reason to try to run him over, either. So, yeah, maybe he was a nervous flier when somebody else was piloting. He didn't try to show it, though, merely riding, another passenger, thankful that he didn't have that horrible human trait, being able to be read like a book. His body language was limited, and he was thankful.

So he listened to the other two go back and forth, waiting until he could get back in his element.

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[Twister & Blackfire]

Twister maintained her airspeed and pitch altitude as they flew along. "Describing what all these are to you could take longer than the duration of this flight depending on the location of the junk yard. But I will describe their general functions to you. Several of these gauges monitor aircraft performance, such as the altimeter, aircraft attitude/turn and slip indicator - which also shows your bank angle, rotor RPM, warning lights - very important, communication control panel, GPS, airspeed, rate of climb, and those two screens you see there show similar information on each. The one on the right shows a moving map of my location, it can orient the map to face North or the position relative to my flight path of choice." her holoform temporarily appeared in the rear seats to show the little girl what each and every instrument was. As time moved on, she showed specifics about the digital screens and their features. She told them about how the one on the right showed other aircraft location, her approach patterns when going to active airports, etc.

Time passed on. Twister made several turns and descents now and then to get a closer look at things on the ground.

"Found a junk yard, up ahead, you can see the vehicle piles." She was within the distance of a two mile/extended final approach from the junk yard, but she would circle around the place to double check for shifts in the wind. The femme would also circle the area to pick a proper landing sight that was safe.

Unfortunately, she didn't have time for that in the end. A group of birds were nearby, and sadly, one strayed towards her form a little too close for comfort. BIRD BIRD BIRD! She inwardly freaked out and suddenly her frame began to shudder as she banked away, trying to avoid the poor little bird, but the thing had gotten sucked right into her rotor hub. The rotor hub made an audible whine and violent shudder separate from the shudder of the fuselage as she leveled out. She was about a thousand and three hundred feet in the air, and now losing control without the proper torque and lift from the rotors to sustain her straight and level flight so she could descend normally. The only power she had was in her tail rotor now.

"Sorry you guys, this landing is going to be very rough. I will transform to protect you two when the time comes." Slagging birds! Twister's rotors were whining loudly as they tried to slow down. She had absolutely no lateral control, and no way to auto-rotate safely to the ground. The tail rotor provided very little thrust to sustain flight. Luckily, Twister's empty weight and ability to carry heavy loads allowed her to protect Lopez with little struggle should she have to transform. Her holoform now shielded Maddie between the seats and the control panel protectively.

Twister hadn't spazzed out yet, but she would soon enough. She had passengers on board, and she was not in the mood to jeopardize their safety. After all, if she wanted to be with the Autobots again, she had to prove herself, didn't she? It took a lot of effort to not freak out like she normally would with her rotors being disengaged, especially from this altitude. Her rotors were starting to cause her excruciating pain from her old scars underneath as some of the main hinges and parts of the swash plate got twisted up from the high speed rotational impacts. Then the main rotor lines that went all the way down to the main rotor and tail rotor shaft got dinged as well. In a fully-articulated rotor system such as hers, maintenance would be a little more difficult. It was easier to repair dual blades than three or four, because everything was connected as usual.

At the last few hundred feet during the sharp drop, Twister prepared to force herself to transform. Every second felt like it was going by in slow motion, just like it would for a human. She held onto Maddie as best as she could, and without hurting her. She had actually undone the seat belt so she could do so properly. She waited for the last fifty feet before she bothered transforming, using every bit of rotor RPM from both blades she could muster, and the engines were obviously growling with each foot lost. "I HATE BIRDS!" she was unable to avoid shouting this out as she transformed and got closer to the ground, the rotors behind her completely stopped. Changes of survival seemed slim. With her holoform still active to protect Maddie, her larger robotic arms transformed around both of them firmly as the last fifty feet popped up fast. She was well used to judging that distance from when she made abrupt landings in either form, so they would be okay at this point, but with all the extra speed they had, the landing would be much more uncomfortable for Twister.

Landing near a dangerously large pile of scrap metal and car parts, Twister landed feet first with a heavy duty crash into a high speed roll. She curled her body up into a ball like usual, trying to not hurt either of them as she went, which she did so remarkably well since her feet and head went first in the roll. Shifting into a roll on her sides instead of going head first wouldn't be good to do because it would be less safe for the two passengers, and either way it still hurt her rotorhub.

[Madeline Flynn-Morgan]

Maddie perked forward as Twister's holoform activated again to show her things. She leaned forward slightly to look closer at all the screens, completely ignoring the outside. She loved learning and new experiences allowed for her to learn new things, just not in the way she preferred to learn things. Usually, she loved to learn by pushing things and finding out what they did. She shifted slightly in her seat, eyes dashing to each thing Twister pointed out. Upon the reappearance of the holoform, however, Maddie's mind went back to her thoughts from before, even as she forced her mind to focus on this new thing.

However, Maddie was starting to think that, for once, that human wish to have what was lost was going to end up hurting her more then the original loss was. As such, being lost in thought, she was not payig attention to the window. In not looking out the window, Maddie missed the birds, and the junkyard announcement.

In missing the birds, Maddie shrieked like the small child she was when the helicopter she was riding in suddenly shuddered. Her automatic reaction, aside from the shriek, was to cover her head, despite the fact it would not help.

At all.

And she knew it.

Which didn't help her from trying not to scream like the small child she was, again.

She managed however.

Maddie reacted when Twister's holoform held onto her and she reacted accordingly; clinging tightly in return. Her fingers shuddered a little against the holoform and Maddie squeezed her eyes shut. While it felt like forever, she briefly wondered if crashing into the ground would be worse then having a car accident.

She whimpered softly as she felt Twister transforming around them and, when they hit, even if Maddie was expecting it, and didn't take the brunt of it, she felt as if the air was knocked out of her. She actually felt bruised and it didn't get better as they rolled.

Well, at least Maddie knew who to blame.

Bad word birds.

When they finally came to a stop, the first things out of Maddie's mouth was, "What's hurt?"

[Lopez]

Lopez held on, yes, but he was more worried about the girl than he was himself. He'd been blown up a couple of times. He could be rebuild. The girl could not be rebuilt, and he was glad that Twister had taken preference over guarding her for that reason and many more. He made little noise as they fell, only bracing himself as well as he could.

When Twister transformed around them, though, he kind of freaked out a bit. He was curious, but he didn't want to be inside the moving metal pieces. He could say what Maddie couldn't: Damn birds. The jolt from hitting the ground tossed him very slightly, just enough to make the roll potentially damaging. His head cracked hard against something, possibly the seat, until they finally came to a stop. With that said and done, he didn't believe himself to be highly damaged. Maybe just a bit of damaged circuitry. Memory, likely. That could be fixed. Instead he looked around, not yet answering Maddie, waiting to hear something from both of them. Ladies first, right?

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[Twister & Blackfire]

"Um...this is going to be a problem guys..." Twister announced once she set them down carefully. "No damage came to either of you, yes?" Once she set them down in front of her, her rotors twitching violently as she stepped back, she crouched down and inspected them closely with her bright red optics. They looked fine, but she was sure the little one must be terrified. "I'm sorry, bad case of bird strike...my rotors are out for the count...I'm going to have to inspect them, and if too much damage came to the hub, they're officially useless." she shook her head. "Too many rotating parts."

She transformed into her alternate mode and there stood her holoform...on top of her fuselage right over the hub of the four-bladed fully articulated rotor system, cleaning out what she could and inspecting it as she did so.

Today was not a good day anymore.

[Madeline Flynn-Morgan]

Maddie considered the question as she stood, feeling a little woozy. Oh, she was gonna be in soooo much trouble when she got back to Dad. She could visualize it now. Groundings as far as the eye could see. It wouldn't really be a punishment; she could find a way to just read her school textbooks until all was done. Unless Dad did something silly, like ban her from TV, which she didn't watch anyway. She considered something and then answered, "Nothing's broken."

She turned to Lopez and slowly made her way over to him. "You okay?" she asked the human-sized robot. She wanted to make sure he was okay and she was worried for him. She already knew that Twister wasn't so okay as she was. Maybe. She was really feeling a little funny, but it was probably nothing.

[Lopez]

So they were both, for the most part, okay. Lopez stood on the ground firmly, glancing around the junkyard a moment. There was a lot of broken stuff here. A good portion of him cringed as his primary directive, "Fix Everything", flashed across his vision. El Diablo himself was manipulating things, it seemed, for they were now stuck here. He chose now to reply to Maddie, ignoring the flashing directive in his vision, but when he started to speak it sounded off, up until he was about halfway done speaking.

"Yo estoy bien, Maddie. Debemos preocuparnos más sobre Twister ahora." He was sure that he could look at the system, but it was a different technology, and he didn't want to risk messing it up worse by forcing the human standards he was programmed with onto it. If worst came to worst, he'd offer, but he was tentative now.

He wondered if they'd ever get to what they actually came here, for, too....

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[Twister & Blackfire]

"I'll be okay, I just can't um, fly...and I'll have to ask for a Ground bridge to a secure, quieter area once we're done here since we're not supposed to be seen unless we can't avoid it." Twister replied with a disgruntled sigh, her holoform cleaning up the mess the best she could with a rag and some pliers to get into the cracks she had trouble accessing. Oh how she hated birds...she just hated not being able to fly out in a pinch. It rather sucked being a grounder. "If you know anything about rotorcraft, you can show her how the parts work before you move onto other things, it's no different than any other main rotor hub of a fully articulated system - which is a rotor system that has three or more blades and have certain performance characteristics that differ from dual rotor blade systems which are called semi-rigid rotor systems."

[Madeline Flynn-Morgan]

Maddie's head twitched to the side as she tried to translate, for herself, what Lopez had said. She then turned and nodded. "I thought Lady Twister was okay," she answered softly and then looked at Twister, who went on to explain the situation. She also used a few new words, which naturally peeked Maddie's already insatiable curiosity.

She paused and then turned back around to face Lopez. "Are you going to come back home with me Lopez? I don't think anybody would mind too much," she questioned, knowing that sometimes, people's minds changed.

Why would it be different for robots, even if they looked human?

Once she had his answer, and translated it the best she could, Maddie nodded in acceptance of the answer and turned to Twister.

"What's a 'ground bridge'?" she asked.

[Lopez]

Lopez listened to both of the women in the area, answering each hesitantly in turn. It seemed as though today was just his lucky day. He'd have to see what he could do about that flashing directives thing, too - it was very distracting. "Puedo echar un vistazo. Que se ha programado con el conocimiento del sistema, pero nunca he tenido que usar ese conocimiento, por lo que si me equivoco pido disculpas."

He looked to Maddie now, hesitating again. Would it really be appropriate to follow a young child home? He was a robot, but most people didn't catch onto that immediately, and as such, normal social graces had to apply until that knowledge was common amongst the people. After a moment of thought, he gave a curt nod. It wasn't like he could just ditch her, anyway, and he had promised to teach her. "Yo le acompañará, Maddie. Vamos a hacer nuestro trabajo aquí, en primer lugar sin embargo. ¿Lo haremos?"

He was being unusually pleasant, but what could he say? The ladies had impressed him. He could be a gent when he wanted. He gestured toward Twister, prepared to give aid and still not certain just how much of his speech Maddie could or could not understand. He didn't want to underestimate her, but at the same time, there was a bit of a language barrier, thanks to the idiot who'd put him together.

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