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Post by Swerve on Jun 3, 2007 20:52:58 GMT -5
Even as the weather closes in and the light continues to wane, the smoother roadway is all Swerve pays attention to at first; the buildings are incidental, background and little more. Metal is a rather different sensation under his tires – well, metal not formerly attached to another mech – but it's welcome. Good, even. He can't help gunning his engine and picking up speed, enjoying it immensely.
At least until he hits the first spatters of rain. He slows, then comes to a full stop a length or two from a crossroads and transforms, glaring up at the wet, heavy grey sky.
"What the slag's this?" he demands, wiping the water off his face and looking around at the puddles forming here and there, at the runoff trickling down his panels. It feels weird. He shakes it off, or tries to, but it's replaced quickly enough. He glances toward Arcee with a definitively sour look on his face. "Don't s'pose you'd know, wouldja?"
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jun 3, 2007 23:22:22 GMT -5
What? How can he not know...?
"It's called rain," Arcee says. As she talks, she switches on her headlights and windshield wipers. Her interior was going to get wet, but she'd manage. "Water falling from the sky. Pretty common on most organic worlds. It's harmless."
Despite what Sunstreaker and Tracks would say, anyway.
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Post by Swerve on Jun 3, 2007 23:36:57 GMT -5
Swerve still finds it weird. This sort of thing didn't happen on Velocitron. There might have been the rare cloud once every ten World Cups or so, but this 'rain' stuff? No way. The only times fluid fell from above were if somebody with a line leak jumped over you.
"Rain, huh?" Well, whatever it is, despite feeling pretty bizarre, it's cool on his panels. Sort of nice, in a way; easier on his cooling systems. He shrugs and returns to racer mode once more and picks up after Arcee. "Guess it isn't so bad."
…It does make the road a little trickier to grip, though.
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jun 4, 2007 0:35:50 GMT -5
"Little hard to drive in sometimes," Arcee agrees. "It helps if you reverse the polarity of your windshield. It'll repell most of it."
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Post by Swerve on Jun 4, 2007 0:49:12 GMT -5
Not really the problem he's having, but Swerve's feeling sort of magnanimous, so he humours Arcee and takes her advice. Meanwhile, he'll have to take care; his tires don't hold the road as well as he'd like.
"What kinda dump are we in now?" he wonders aloud, giving the buildings a once-over as he passes them. They're pretty gaudy even with the clouds and rain muting the light. Attention-grabbing. The whole area reminds him a little bit of the setup around the finish line for the Big Two. Do people live here?
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jun 4, 2007 12:26:09 GMT -5
Arcee's own tires are slipping a bit, but because her overall design is for more standard (and sometimes a bit rough) driving than straight up racing, she's probably not quite as badly off as Swerve.
"It looks like it might have been a city," she replies. "But I don't see any people. It's starting to feel like this whole planet was just abandoned."
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Post by Swerve on Jun 4, 2007 12:40:34 GMT -5
Swerve mulls on that, having nothing really to say about it. If the place is abandoned, then it's abandoned; asking questions won't change that. Though it does sort of remind him of the unlicenced body shops that were forced to close up and move before the officials got to them. It might be unnerving if Swerve were a less willful mech.
…Just a nano. He slows to look around more closely, checking for something, anything unique or discernible among the generally homogeneous architecture. There has to be some sort of signage. "Hey," he barks out, "hey, maybe there's a service shop around here somewhere." He's thinking, of course, of possible spare parts or materials. Most of his are still on Velocitron.
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jun 4, 2007 13:26:45 GMT -5
"Could be," Arcee replies. She's more thoughtful, curious about just what's going on around them. It's a state she usually finds herself, at least compared to her fellow young Autobots Hot Rod, Blurr, and Springer. Sometimes it seems like she's the only one thinking.
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Post by Swerve on Jun 4, 2007 16:05:40 GMT -5
"There's probably some time to look," Swerve murmurs, "just real quickly, at least." They don't have to meet up with the others right away, or so he assumes. He turns down a sidestreet to start hunting. If people live here, or lived here, or whatever, like Arcee thinks, and if they've got roads, they gotta have some kinda vehicles. And vehicles need service. He'd like to be prepared if there are any more lousy roads like the one they left behind. Or if there'll be any serious off-roading.
Putting this sort of forethought into things is a little new to him; he has his own little place on Velocitron where he keeps all the stuff he needs. If he got really thrashed in a race, he just went back there to fix himself up again. But he doesn't have that here, much to his irritation and dismay, and he grumbles a lot of non-verbal displeasure to himself as he looks at building façade after building façade for anything that might suggest a service shop. The doors all look too small, even for him.
I could've taken parts from that husk. If there was anything salvageable, he didn't know and wouldn't without checking. The thought of going back up that road wasn't a pleasing one, but it might be necessary. Why hadn't he tried to salvage anything while he was there? Oh, yeah. Femme with a gun pointed at me. He slows when he spots something that looks promising– no, just a large window. He mutters a quiet curse and continues. …Come to think, she'd probably blow a gasket or three if I tried it. Leader or whatever, though, why waste serviceable parts?
Swerve steadily gets moodier and moodier as he searches and thinks. Something in a subfolder of a subdirectory near the back of his storage banks tells him salvaging from that husk would be wrong, but there's the immediate concern about supplies. He decides if he can find a shop, that niggling secondary impulse will cut out on its own.
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jun 4, 2007 22:13:19 GMT -5
Swerve is quite wise to abandon the idea of stripping the body of Optimus Prime for parts. If he'd tried it, he'd have been in need for many other replacement parts when she was through with him.
Optimus wasn't just any leader, he was... well, Optimus. Chosen to carry the Matrix by Alpha Trion himself, the greatest Autobot, greatest Transformer, greatest being[/b] the universe has ever known.
Perhaps it was hero worship, but virtually every other Autobot she knew felt the same way.
"Find anything?" she asks.
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Post by Swerve on Jun 4, 2007 23:01:08 GMT -5
"Nothin' yet," Swerve growls, even the rumble of his engine betraying anger. "Just all these little doors and windows." He's looking for something large enough to fit a vehicle through. He tries another sidestreet even while wondering if he should just give up and look elsewhere, or later, or something. The rain isn't doing much to help keep him cool at this point; he can practically feel the steam seeping outward through gaps and loose panel seams, and both exhaust systems are starting to kick in full.
Between this and the nosy old codger on the radio…!
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jun 5, 2007 19:01:42 GMT -5
"Looks like most of the lifeforms here must have been human-sized," Arcee says. A little bit strange, that. From what she understood, a large percentage of other lifeforms were actually Transformer sized.
"And look," she adds, "you really need to calm down. Getting angry isn't going to do anybody any good."
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Post by Swerve on Jun 6, 2007 1:39:37 GMT -5
Swerve snarls, the sound almost more engine than voice.
"I'm not angry!" Not really, not yet. But he's getting there. More there than not. And Arcee isn't helping. He was always being told to calm down, to cool off, to hold his temper. It really cranked him the wrong way. He could keep it in check if they just shut up and stopped 'advising' him, slaggit!
Then he spots something, a difference. A door. Shut, but large. His revving cuts off and for a moment, he sits there, steam rising off his hood and through the vents, off his exhaust pipes. The rain almost stings as it hits his overheated panels and quickly boils away. He transforms and the steam virtually pours off his head and torso as he wordlessly stalks to the door, pulling it open and ducking inside.
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jun 7, 2007 15:51:16 GMT -5
Arcee transformed and rolled her optics skyward in a gesture universally known to mean 'Men.
Still, she follows Swerve inside the garage. She could probably use a chance to look over her own systems anyway. She hadn't propperly been checked out since the attack on Autobot City.
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Post by Swerve on Jun 7, 2007 17:11:55 GMT -5
As Arcee enters, Swerve is busying himself at the back of the shop with rifling around for spare parts, pointedly keeping silent, focusing on his search. He's still too hot, but it's easier to cool down with a distraction. The parts are fairly distracting. Some of them are constructed oddly; what he'd at first thought a solenoid valve is instead a solenoid starter. Useless to him. He sets it aside and scours some of the lower shelves, looking to add to the meager array of items he has already selected. Some, he'll have to try and modify.
Won't be the easiest thing…. He doesn't have all of his tools, just the few he carried to that last race. The tools here are mostly too small to use easily. Slag, I'll figure it out. Not much different than when I first started. He shrugs and pushes aside something he guesses is part of a torque motor to reach for what he suspects – and hopes – is a pneumatic valve. He glances briefly at Arcee as he sits up, then checks over his find.
"…Shouldn't be much longer," he mumbles gruffly while examining the part in his hands. A valve. It isn't perfect – mechanical, and on the short side – but he can't complain much. He might even be able to retrofit it with one of the smaller solenoids lying about.
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