Screwdriver
Rookie
The Lady Protector, Her Splendid Primacy, Grand Duchess Screwdriver. The Devout Silencer of Common Sense and Logic
"And *I'll* live happily ever after..."
Posts: 225
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Post by Screwdriver on Dec 27, 2007 20:02:10 GMT -5
Timing Note: This thread runs concurrent to all CtF threads, all Bot Training threads, and the Autobots: All the Way Up thread.
Childe Screwdriver to the Comm Tower came.
The Junkion, one who now sports a somewhat crude painted-on Decepticon sigil, approaches a large and frankly fascinating structure that stands prominently in the mining town. She tilts her head, optics wide, a faint smile settled on her lips, and studies it in silence for a moment. Then she walked around the tower, still examining it. Once her circle is completed she stands once more before it, puts hand to chin, and considers.
"Slug-horn!" she proclaims. It certainly does look like a communications device of some sort. She finally steps near to it, places a hand on it, and looks at the various antennas and protrusions above her. "Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, and blew." With those words, she starts to scramble up the tower.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Dec 27, 2007 22:20:55 GMT -5
It takes Shockwave a short time to make his way to the tower, and by that time, Screwdriver is quite a ways up indeed. It is a bit of a surprise to see the Junkion scaling the structure; what on earth possessed her to do such a thing?
He has not had much personal interaction with Screwdriver since her arrival, but he has picked up an idea of how to communicate with her.
Maybe.
"Toymaker!" he calls out, "What are you about?"
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Screwdriver
Rookie
The Lady Protector, Her Splendid Primacy, Grand Duchess Screwdriver. The Devout Silencer of Common Sense and Logic
"And *I'll* live happily ever after..."
Posts: 225
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Post by Screwdriver on Dec 27, 2007 22:35:11 GMT -5
Screwdriver answers Shockwave in song as she opens up a panel near the antenna on which she is currently dangling.
"If growing up means it will be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow uuuuuup! Not me!" Then, she changes her voice slightly and corrects herself, "Not I." Then she changes her voice back to normal and corrects her correction. "Not me!"1
Really, she's just investigating, but isn't that so much a better answer? The Junkion frowns thoughtfully and leans her head into the open panel.
1 The live-play musical version of Peter Pan, as performed by Mary Martin, among others.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Dec 28, 2007 10:24:07 GMT -5
He just stares up at Screwdriver for several moments. He got absolutely nothing useful form that response; he already knew she considered herself a child. Shockwave shakes his head. That cinches it. When he returns to his proper time he is going to make a point studying that drivel the humans called entertainment, in case these Junkion...things every put in an appearance in his reality. He only hopes he can keep it from lowering his IQ.
"I have already laid claim to this structure, Screwdriver, and my eyes in the tower warned me of your presence." Shockwave starts to order her down, then pauses: fresh eyes, different technologies and all that rot. "What do you make of its function, Toymaker?"
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Screwdriver
Rookie
The Lady Protector, Her Splendid Primacy, Grand Duchess Screwdriver. The Devout Silencer of Common Sense and Logic
"And *I'll* live happily ever after..."
Posts: 225
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Post by Screwdriver on Dec 28, 2007 10:55:27 GMT -5
"Aaaaaah, yes, the Tower has eyes," Screwdriver agrees with Shockwave, even as she does not pull her head out of the panel. "And ears, and a tongue." It should be noted that Junkions, by and large, tend to be very familiar with communications technology, as that's what their culture is built around, more or less. "It's a slug-horn!"
Once more, she does not pull her head out of the access, but does open up a panel on her left forearm using her right hand, and begins to pull a few parts from there. With these, she reaches inside, explaining, "There are forgotten notes caught in the horn's throat." Improperly and incompletely erased media. "I think the proper breath could coax the horn to play once more."
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Post by SceneMod on Dec 28, 2007 20:03:38 GMT -5
It seems that Screwdriver's pokings, proddings, fiddlings, and 'non-standard' adjustments are having an effect. The tower, which has had power applied but has stood inactive since the destruction of the power plant in the desert, now starts to hum as several internal systems come online. One of these systems, though by no means the only one, is a networking system that allows it to communicate to other towers. It sends out a signal now, and across the continent, similar towers begin to come online...
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Post by Victoria Raines on Dec 29, 2007 0:38:25 GMT -5
Play again? She thinks she can make the tower work? Shockwave is at first pleased, then almost immediately concerned. This tower appeared to be one of many on a grid, and starting it up could....
"Hold a moment! We do not know what..."
But the warning comes too late. The tower powers up, starts to hum, and Shockwave can feel heat radiating from it. He starts getting information from the various sensors he had attached at an earlier date.
Well, this might prove more interesting than watching the training after all.
He sends a quick radio message to Spinister, then starts sifting through the data.
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Screwdriver
Rookie
The Lady Protector, Her Splendid Primacy, Grand Duchess Screwdriver. The Devout Silencer of Common Sense and Logic
"And *I'll* live happily ever after..."
Posts: 225
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Post by Screwdriver on Dec 29, 2007 0:59:48 GMT -5
Screwdriver pulls her head out rather quickly when the tower comes online, but then her face is split wide by a smile. "Breath must be drawn first," she says in a voice filled with wonder, barely above a whisper.
Then she frowns and tilts her head to the right. Apparently she was expecting something else. She leans forward and pokes her head back in, then begins poking and prodding once more at what's inside. Her exact activities are lost in shadow, but after a few moments she pulls out and shifts positions. She pulls herself up to allow her to sit on one of the antennae protrusions and pulls her right foot up within reach. She slides aside the cover of her ankle and removes some parts, rewiring the redundancies on the spot to compensate. Then, new bits back in hand, she drops down level with the open panel once more.
"All for the want of a nail,"1 she declares before sticking her head back in and getting back to work.
1 For Want Of A Nail
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Post by SceneMod on Dec 29, 2007 19:50:10 GMT -5
After enough adjustments are made, Screwdriver manages to loose the 'stuck words.' Included among the towers functions is hologrphic image transmission, and one message, stuck in the system, the last message ever displayed, has been recovered. Now the tower is online and operational, so once more it shows its final message for the world to see. Overhead, images form as light is manipulated into a 3-d holographic display, one large enough and high enough to be seen anywhere in the mining town. What is more, because of the Junkion's adjustments, it is transmitting its message to the other towers, and, through a quirk of fate, into the training room inside base, where these same images are forming above the artificial Gillanan cities. Of course, the training room uses solid light, so if someone were to fly up to them they would run right into any surface rather than passing through. It also means that yes, Hellbender can 'see' this: The broadcast starts in a tastefully decorated but somewhat spare room. There are a number of pieces of furniture that look to serve as chairs and are arranged in such a way as to allow those sitting in them to converse with each other while still partially facing a central point. In other words, it appears to be a talk show or news room of some sort. No one is sitting in them. Standing amongst them are two beings, roughly humanoid in appearance but with four arms and skin that tends towards much redder shades than you get on Earth. 1 The observant who have noted local statues, pictures in their solid media, and so forth should easily peg these two as natives of Gillanan III. One is considerably more slender than the other, suggesting, perhaps, that they are male and female. The two appear to be addressing the recording device, although they will sometimes interact with each other, and sometimes interrupt each other. Their movements are erratic, almost frantic, and their faces, roughly humanoid even if the nose is replaced by slits and the eyes are probably too tilted, hold expressions of fear, desperation, and sorrow. Liquid falls freely from both eyes on both beings. The words are incomprehensible, for the most part, but the tone is clear. Fear, exhortation, something that falls just short of panic. All in all, they give the impression of newscasters attempting to give a message that utterly terrifies them, and completely failing at a neutral delivery. Between the two is a screen that seems almost to be floating in the air. The screen displays images of widespread panic and mass movement, Gillanan's loading into spaceships and spaceships taking off. A mass, hurried evacuation of the planet itself. The entire broadcast flickers, and now the room is gone, and the images that had been on the center screen take over the entire transmission. More evacuations. The alien-language voice-overs continue, tone and speed of delivery doing much to convey information where words themselves are meaningless. The image flickers, and a world is seen from space. Not Gillanan III, this is a metal world. Their sister planet, lost Gillanan IV. Another flicker, and scenes of panic, mass movement, and evacuations appear, only this time the setting most of those doing the running are made of metal and match the creature Synapse had brought back on his trip to the asteroid belt. Four arms, two legs, a more alien face, and since there are some organic Gillanans also on the streets 2 some scale is provided. These individuals are larger, perhaps a bit closer to Minibot height, although still on the small side for that. Flicker. Again, the metal world from space, but it is no longer centered in the image, but towards the bottom, most of the planet cut off. From behind the world a bad moon rises. The first thing visible is the outer ring, not a ring of dust and debris such that a natural world might have, but a solid thing made of a metal that is a dark orange in color. Then, below that death-rust colored curve peeks the sphere itself, all grays and oranges and made of metal. Flicker. Another angle of the same scene, and the great pincers extending from the invading world become clear, as does its maw. It moves closer to the metal world, and the pincers open, then close, ripping out huge gouges of the planet's surface before sucking them in. Flicker. Back on the planet's surface. In the distance, the spike of orange metal tears up blocks of cities, slaughters metal and organic alike, rips the crust of the world itself apart. The spike moves swiftly closer to the source of the recording, to the viewpoint of the watcher, massive swaths of destruction left in its wake before the camera blacks out, not in flicker, but in static as whatever was doing the recording is destroyed. Flicker, and the static is replaced by another scene from space. This time it's obvious that the recording is being made through the view-screen or port hole of some sort of spacecraft, and is positioned in such a way as to let the viewer see, quite clearly, metal, buildings, people being sucked into the maw of the destructive force that's come down on Gillanan IV. Several space craft take off in an attempt to escape the planetary destruction, only to be drawn back in and destroyed. Then, the camera source itself, and therefore the viewer, starts to move swiftly closer to the mouth of the dark planet. The voices that have been providing the alien-language narration rise up in a crescendo of fear and terror as the viewer catches its first glimpses of the terrible, grinding jaws of Unicron, and then everything dissolves in static once more, and all is silent. The silence lasts fifteen seconds, and then the transmission begins once more. A tastefully decorated but somewhat spare room is displayed. There are a number of pieces of furniture that look to serve as chairs... End Interim. 1 Zigzag's description of Gillanan's from an early post: 'Too many arms, but otherwise not bad.'2 There was a great deal of travel and trade between III and IV, as they were two closely placed inhabited worlds OOC: This post has a theme song, kindly provided by Perceptor's player. Feel free to download in order to listen: www.ravynfyre.com/Music/Transformers%20-%20The%20Movie%20Score-1987/01%20-%20Unicron%20Theme.mp3
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Post by Victoria Raines on Dec 29, 2007 23:04:33 GMT -5
The broadcast begins and Shockwave steps back a bit from the tower, trying to make sense of both the transmission and the data streaming in from the his sensors attached and about the tower. At the appearance of Unicron, the gun-former goes utterly still.
The Council may have been sparing in their information about Primus' nemesis, but Shockwave has fought one of Unicron's heralds, and peeled apart the mind of another. Though he has never encountered that being before, he knows it, knows its name, its purpose.
Unicron. The Chaos Bringer.
As the transmission begins to cycle again, he notes that the tower is sending this signal out, possibly to every tower on its grid, including....interesting.
//Spinister, it seems we now know why the planet was abandoned so suddenly. I need to be patched through to Starscream. And Hook.//
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Screwdriver
Rookie
The Lady Protector, Her Splendid Primacy, Grand Duchess Screwdriver. The Devout Silencer of Common Sense and Logic
"And *I'll* live happily ever after..."
Posts: 225
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Post by Screwdriver on Dec 29, 2007 23:20:14 GMT -5
Screwdriver pulls her head out of the side of the tower to stare up at the image overhead with interest. Her expression is of no more than idle curiosity, however, up until the point when Unicron makes his first appearance.
Optics and mouth open wide, and Screwdriver shrieks, incoherently at first, but then there are words. "That's no moon!" she shouts out loud, even as she transmits the same message over the radio. In her fear and panic she loses grip on her perch and goes tumbling to the ground.
She lands with a clang, a clatter, and a sickening crack. Her upper body is separated from her lower at the waist for a moment, though she quickly pulls herself back together, at least in a physical sense. The mental is far different.
"The world... the world... the devouring world..." she gasps out, panicked, and scrambles to hide behind Shockwave. "My people threw themselves at the world for flame-clad Arthur, but I wouldn't go! I was too smart!"
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Post by Victoria Raines on Dec 30, 2007 0:16:44 GMT -5
The transmission is looping yet again, he has a squealing Junkion crouching behind him, myths and nightmares have been proven real and Shockwave clings to his gods Logic and Order. He has knowledge and power and is in a position to use them once he returns to his proper place. Chaos can not be the ultimate end for them, for him.
He will not allow it. Not in his reality and certainly not in this Primus forsaken smelting pit in which he has been dropped.
Shockwave turns sharply towards the tower. No gentleness, no care is taken as he rips a panel off the tower's side. He will stop this.
It takes time though, as he is still loathe to destroy the tower. There might still be information that could prove useful within its memory. A full transmission cycles as he searches for the proper commands, and half another. He looks up, sees Chaos once more devouring Order.
He steps back and fires his cannon at the tower. The console he had uncovered sputters and sparks, and for a moment the transmission continues unabated. Then it too stalls, sputters, and fades from the sky.
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Screwdriver
Rookie
The Lady Protector, Her Splendid Primacy, Grand Duchess Screwdriver. The Devout Silencer of Common Sense and Logic
"And *I'll* live happily ever after..."
Posts: 225
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Post by Screwdriver on Dec 30, 2007 0:27:41 GMT -5
Screwdriver continues to cringe beneath the terror-tainted sky, refusing to go nearer the tower as Shockwave approaches, even if that means being left alone. She covers her eyes with both her hands and curls up until, with the sound of a blast, the voices and noises stop. Then she peeks up.
"Enough is enough and enough is too much," she murmurs softly before twisting into alternate mode and roaring off, riding hard and fast to forget what she has seen.
It won't take long. She remains innocent because her memory is short.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Dec 30, 2007 11:10:52 GMT -5
Shockwave stares a moment at the smoldering console. He should not have done that. He had tempered the blast of course, concentrated it on one area. At worst, he might have fried the towers operating circuits. He has recovered data from items in far worse a state. But it is not the condition of the tower or of any data stored within that bothers him.
Screwdriver roars off, and it barely registers. Shockwave's optic twitches once, twice, and his hand clenches. Abruptly he turns on his heel and strides away from the tower.
Later, he will return and ring whatever else may be salvageable from this damnable tower. But not now. Not with his ignored and buried emotional processes striving for dominance in his mind.
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