Nightbeat
Minor
Lord High Instructor, Duke of Snack
Cybertron's Greatest Detective
Posts: 373
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Post by Nightbeat on Jul 10, 2007 0:25:31 GMT -5
"Now we're talking sense," Nightbeat says.
He never was one for working with others. Granted, he was frequently paired with Siren and Hosehead--and if he was forced to admit it, he would say that right now, he missed those yahoos--and sometimes even with other small groups of Autobots, but that was the burden of being a top soldier in a long-running war.
Just as often, though, he could find some excuse to sneak out on his lonesome, solve the problem without having to worry about what someone else was going to do, and without having anyone question his methods. It was a good life and he was eager to get back to it.
Though if Prime had his way, there might not even be a war to go back to. Maybe Kup was right. Maybe they should've relieved Optimus of command.
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Synapse
Minor
Do not touch...please
Posts: 380
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Post by Synapse on Jul 10, 2007 8:07:31 GMT -5
Synapse never consciously wrote of Swerve's actions as sinister. He just really doesn't like anyone touching him unannounced.
A whoosh of hot air passes through Synapse's filters and the rapid activity around him slows. Still maintaining a deliberate distance from the group, he transforms and launches himself into the air.
His nodes do one last orbit around their host before speeding off ahead. Synapse ignores the bit of guilt nipping at his heels. None of this is his fault....is it? He really doesn't want dwell on the subject.
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Post by Swerve on Jul 10, 2007 16:34:49 GMT -5
It's without a word – instead a distinctly sullen snap and slam of transformation pushed almost too quickly in anger – that Swerve reverts to racer mode and speeds off, again not bothering to wait for the rest of the group. He needs the distance to cool off, to try and think.
These Autobots are pretty much like the two who came to Velocitron. They're self-righteous, meddling, think they're better than others. Maybe they are better than Swerve; not like he ever claimed to be an upstanding sort of mech. Doesn't make it any less irritating, this whole thing. He didn't ask to be stuck here with them. …Okay, so none of them did. Fine. He's still stuck with them and they aren't a smelting thing like him, although that Nightbeat character has a couple of ideas Swerve can get behind. So it stands to reason that maybe he should try a different tack, doesn't it? Direct hasn't been working well. But that's about all he's got; civility and tact are things that have never really come to him. What, then?
His answer is an internal overheating alarm keening raucously at him. He grimaces mentally, bites down a groan, and starts rapidly cutting back on tasks. The only thing that gives away his brief spell is his slow drift to one side of the road and the subsequent wild swerve back into place once he's down to the basic processes. Well, that and a really ugly thermal signature to anyone who can see that sort of thing.
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Post by Perceptor on Jul 10, 2007 18:31:35 GMT -5
"Yes, of course, Arcee," he replies easily before neatly transforming and landing in Arcee's open passenger compartment. He heaves a soft sigh as Swerve takes off with an energy-consuming swiftness that bespeaks his anger and frustration. After a long moment, he opens a secured transmission to Arcee and Synapse to sort out his thoughts.
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jul 10, 2007 19:25:57 GMT -5
Arcee hits the gas as well, rolling off after Swerve, albeit at a much more reasonable cruising speed. No need to rattle her passenger, after all.
There inability to get along frustrates her as well. There's just... no reason for it. When other Autobots, like herself, Kup, Springer, and the others had started returning to Cybertron and Earth from across the universe, they'd been welcomed into the fold with eager arms. And they themselves had been so grateful to find others of their kind, they'd wasted no time in joining up.
Even loners like Devcon broke into smiles at the thought of other Autobots, whenever and wherever they had roamed.
What was wrong with these guys?
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Nightbeat
Minor
Lord High Instructor, Duke of Snack
Cybertron's Greatest Detective
Posts: 373
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Post by Nightbeat on Jul 10, 2007 19:34:55 GMT -5
And there goes Nightbeat, bringing up the rear. Not that he couldn't cut out faster if he wanted to, but frankly, this whole bunch deserves to be hung back from.
Idealists who didn't understand how the universe worked. And some punk-racer who was practically a neutral. He was going to need a long vacation from this vacation when it was all over.
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Synapse
Minor
Do not touch...please
Posts: 380
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Post by Synapse on Jul 10, 2007 20:23:50 GMT -5
Guilt no longer nipped. No it bites right right in and takes a secure hold. Synapse remains silent listening to Perceptor's words running through his memory banks. That incident with the racer is Synapse's fault isn't it? It's obvious that Perceptor's not happy with the division in the ranks...
He boosts his speed for a moment, catching up to Swerve. It's then that his sudden courage fails him and he falls back a couple meters. Trailing silently behind and above Swerve in indecision. What if he just worsens the situation? What if the racer just snaps back? It's obvious that Swerve's irritated if his heat signature is anything to go by.
Quietly Synapse mulls over his choices while automatically dogging behind Swerve.
Nothing like a lost puppy, really.
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Post by Swerve on Jul 10, 2007 21:15:52 GMT -5
Sure, Swerve's speed eats up energy, but the consumption rate isn't as bad as it could be. He built this body to be better than the last, more efficient. He's never been able to repair whatever flaw it is that causes the overheating, even through fifteen complete rebuilds. A thought that would anger him all over again, if it occurred to him. With his tasks scaled back to the minimum required, however, he's left unmolested by the recollection of past concerns about his cooling systems.
He does notice Synapse, on a vaguely peripheral level. He's too busy not concentrating on things to give the other mech much more notice immediately than that. The presence makes him tense instinctively, the habit of preparing for an attack too deeply ingrained to completely ignore, even when he's making an effort to cool down. But no attack comes and no taunts are thrown and he's reminded yet again that things here aren't like Velocitron.
Once the alarm stops making noise at him, Swerve eases back a fraction on the throttle. A slight fraction; he still wants some distance. He finally acknowledges Synapse with a low grunt barely audible over the roar of his engine.
"…Hey," he adds awkwardly after a long, empty pause, voice slightly strained, "uh… sorry. 'Bout earlier." It may or may not sound like it, but he means it in spite of also just wanting it out of the way. "I'll try to remember that, if you keep 'em away from me. Or warn me first."
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Post by Perceptor on Jul 11, 2007 12:36:58 GMT -5
Perceptor heaves another long sigh; how did he come to this place, and why? He was as close to content as he'd been in many years before he'd been transplanted here with these strange Autobots from other universes.
Oh, the possibility of further realities to explore is a newfound wonder - unfortunately tempered by the discomfort of seeing what possibilities those realities may hold. Is it possible, even, that somewhere in all the myriad universes that potentially exist, that the Autobots and Decepticon's roles have been reversed?
Sometimes it is a curse to multitask so efficiantly. Even as he is absently correlating all the data Synapse had provided, as well as continuing his discussion with Arcee and the rather quiet Synapse, part of his CPU is free to ponder these thoughts.
Sometimes he wishes he could just shut down his higher functions for a while.
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Arcee
Minor
Token Girl-Bot
Posts: 330
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Post by Arcee on Jul 11, 2007 22:47:22 GMT -5
I'm doing it again Arcee reflects as she drives.
What in the name of Cybertron was wrong with her? Certainly, she respected Optimus Prime and had valued him as leader, but he was hardly the be-all and end-all of them. Ultra Magnus, the late Prowl, Jazz, and plenty of others had admirably filled in the leadership role in varying situations. One mechanism did not make a faction. It was too big, too great a thing for that.
She was still in shock, that's what it was. The battle hadn't been that long ago and she'd barely had a moment's downtime since then. Eventually, she'd be up on her feet--metaphorically speaking anyway--and back to normal.
Fighting with Nightbeat oddly seemed to help bring her better side back out.
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Nightbeat
Minor
Lord High Instructor, Duke of Snack
Cybertron's Greatest Detective
Posts: 373
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Post by Nightbeat on Jul 11, 2007 23:17:54 GMT -5
Primus, but traveling was so dull. Nobody chasing him, no thugs to outdrive, no pursuit to shoot the tires out of, heck, not even any partners he could yell at to keep up or keep their heads down.
Nightbeat was bored. He was a detective and a warrior, not an errand boy. But what the Emirate wanted, the Emirate got. And he--Nightbeat--was the one who ended up paying the price.
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Synapse
Minor
Do not touch...please
Posts: 380
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Post by Synapse on Jul 11, 2007 23:34:50 GMT -5
Synapse wobbles in his flight path at Swerve's address. He wasn't expecting for the other to step up to the plate first. "Ah...w-wasn'tyourfault...really," spills his automatic but earnest response. "I just don't like others....touching."
Awkward.
The border of black on the horizon grows in the transmissions streamed back to him from his nodes. Just a bit farther to the desert if he guesses right. Synapse zooms on ahead to play catch-up with his surveillance equipment.
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Post by Swerve on Jul 11, 2007 23:53:08 GMT -5
Yeah, Swerve gets the no touching part. He said he'd try to remember it, fraggit!
Ugh. Don't bother, the apology's done with and… probably accepted. Hard to tell with the way that mech babbles. Either way, Swerve has some road to himself while he's still ahead of the others like this. Plenty of time to spin down a little on the drive before they get where-ever they're going. This could only be better if he had a good fight to vent, too.
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Post by SceneMod on Jul 12, 2007 14:26:12 GMT -5
The full trip actually takes about three days 1. The party is forced to scrounge for energy in the small, deserted towns full of alien architecture that they pass through, but it is assumed that they can find enough to keep themselves going and powered-up. The natives seemed to have left this planet in pretty good shape when they left. Further studying of the sky at nights allows for the narrowing down of this planet's location in the galaxy, although it's largely a matter of confirming what has already been determined. The world does, indeed, have three moons, blue, red, and white, and while none of them are quite as large as, say, Earth's, when all three are in the sky at once (which happens only on one night during the trip) it's a fairly pretty sight. It also makes very in-depth studies of the stars more difficult, due to the ambient light pollution of the moons themselves. The terrain changes slowly, first to hard, black desert, but while the land stays arid, the soil eventually starts to change consistency. Dry riverbeds become more common, and hardy desert plants start appearing around the bases the buttes that begin to break the land's flatness. One gets the impression that during the right time of year, the riverbeds are not so dry. The buttes slowly grow into mesas and plateaus, even eventually one particularly large one looms over the dry lands. The road the Autobots have more or less stuck to has a turn off that leads up to this one, and it seems to match Perceptor's estimates for the beaming station's likely location. Even from the main road, even from the low ground, the group can see the top of a massive building of pale red metal atop the plateau. The angle makes it hard to see the rest of the building, but it is obvious that the thing was built on a very grand scale, especially when the size of the natives is considered. The plants, however, seems to have vanished. While the last few days have been filled with desert shrubs and wildlife, this close to the group's destination no trace of life can be found. 1 As usual, just don't think too hard about any time discrepancies that pop up in the RF frequency threads or whatnot.
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Post by Perceptor on Jul 12, 2007 21:06:24 GMT -5
"I believe that may be our destination," Perceptor observes from his perch in Arcee's passenger compartment. "The trajectory indicated by my previous calculations indicates a high probability that our target can be found, if not in or on that structure, quite near it."
Yes, Perceptor is advising taking the turn off that leads up the tall butte.
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