Station Battle: Nightbeat, Arcee, and Hardwire

[Spinister]

Mr. Singe, if you will, Spinister notifies his companion, not needing to explain the details. The Nebulan knew as soon as Spinister did.

Gladly, Singe answers, and perhaps he means it. It's something to do. He transforms and stretches. It feels so good to be back in a proper shape again. Then, he sprints at Nightbeat's dropped weapon, aiming to snatch it away from him.

Hairsplitter stays tightly clutched in Spinister's hand.

Spinister doesn't let Nightbeat's insults ruffle him. He knows his own capacities, and no amount of Autobot banter can change them. Softly, softly, he notes, "You sound desperate, Autobot. Is that why you took up poisoning your prisoners? To make yourself feel better?"

Two can play the goading game, but Spinister has no pride to offend. He does, however, try to close the distance and kick Nightbeat in the kneecap.

[Nightbeat]

Nightbeat grunted as he was kicked, skidding a bit away from Spinster, and even farther from his gun.

"What the heck are you talking about, Rotors-for-Brains?" he snaps. It's delivered evenly, without any kind of surprise evident in his voice. He's reasonably certain they'd actually stop short of poisoning a prisoner, but he's also more than willing to engage in breaking afew parts during an interrogation.

Stripped of his primary weapon, he transforms to vehicle mode, revs back, and charges forward, firing his hood-mounted photon pistols.

[Spinister]

Singe did apparently manage to nab Nightbeat's gun. Go him! The thing is about as big as he is, so he just awkwardly tries to drag it off to the side and keep out of the main swing of the action.

At Nightbeat's charge, Spinister holsters Hairsplitter and leaps, and the photon blasts nick his feet. So he'll be sick of dancing for a few days. His jump should carry him onto Nightbeat's hood and into the car's wind shield. He keeps his hands free to grab onto Nightbeat if he connects, because the car will no doubt try to remove him. Spinister hisses in reply, "I trust you are familiar with Good Cop/Bad Cop, detective. There's no good cop here. There's just me. So you're saying that you're not in the habit of storing high profile prisoners in stasis and then testing experimental drugs on them?"

[Nightbeat]

Nightbeat continued driving, swerving this way and that to try and dislodge Spinster from his back.

"Aw no way...." he mutters. "Grimlock... that idiot!"

[Spinister]

Spinister grabs onto one of Nightbeat's rear view mirrors in this game of ride 'em cowboy. He's staying on for now, but he's not sure how much longer he's going to be able to manage. Helicopters are quite peculiar at balancing, btu he wa never built for this. Spinister doesn't even like fighting in close.

He digs his fingers into Nightbeat's mirror at that admission, and Spinister demands, "What did Grimlock do, Autobot?" With the hand that's not trying to gouge Nightbeat's mirror, he draws Hairsplitter.

[Nightbeat]

This had quickly, in Nightbeat's opinion, crossed the line from annoyance to a major hassle to aggrevating. There were, of course, two ways to try and dislodge a rider. He's been trying the first, without too much success.

It's time to try the second: when it doubt, slam on the brakes.

And slam he does, skidding to a stop he hopes will throw Spinster off his roof.

"Nucleon. It's gotta be," he says. He probably shouldn't be having this conversation, but detective tradition practically demands he reveal how much he knows. "That idiot went out looking for something that probably doesn't exist and probably found something nasty."

[Spinister]

Spinister is sent flying off Nightbeat, and he hits the sand. The Mayhem rolls a few times, cradling Hairsplitter to his chest. He's protective of his weapons, even to the extent of perhaps not treating them like the people they are. His helicopter blades, always fragile, are a bit banged up. He's going to need to get them looked at or at least some quiet time to himself with a stress gauge.

The Mayhem grunts and gets to his feet. He doesn't rise out of a crouch. Instead, Spinister snaps off a shot at one of Nightbeat's tyres and then dives off to the side.

Spinister continues prying, "Nucleon doesn't exist, but Grimlock found it? Just what is it supposed to be?"

[Nightbeat]

How can he talk so damn much and still fight at the same time!

Nightbeat tries to swerve, but the blast takes out his tire, forcing him into a skid and back into robot mode. Rather than try for anything fancy, he settles for throwing a rock at Spinster's head.

"Some kind of kooky fuel," he snarls. "Don't know what Grimlock found, but it sure couldn't have been that."

[Spinister]

Spinister is ruining his reputation as tall, dark, and silent. Okay, he never had any credibility at all as being dark, but he was (relatively) tall and silent! Nice, again, this is something that Needlenose will never appreciate, but Spinister doesn't begrudge Needlenose too much this time. The poor rookie is facing down Omega slagging Supreme. Anyway, banter during fights is a comic book tradition.

Nightbeat's rock serves him well, as it finds a place in one of Spinister's optics. Well, it doesn't stay there, but it does crack the lense. Spinister growls lowly in pain and frustration. He needs his depth perception!

Actually, he doesn't, come to think of it. Spinister repeats and summarises Nightbeat's babbling back at him, "Grimlock went looking for Nucleon, a super-fuel. Found something. Used it on the prisoners in stasis."

Mr. Singe, return.

Singe drops Nightbeat's gun out where he dragged it and sprints towards Spinister.

[Nightbeat]

"Keep in mind," Nightbeat says, eying his gun, "that those are only my best guesses."

Granted, his best guesses are usually better than most people's exhaustive research, but that's beside the point.

At which point, his antenna flip forward, firing off a pair of photon blasts at Spinister.

[Spinister]

Oh yes, Nightbeat's guesses are very good indeed.

Spinister hits the dirt when Nightbeat remembers that he's not entirely unarmed here. The photon blasts just barely scorch his frame, as he had advance warning when those antennae started rotating. Hairsplitter scurries out of the fray.

He slides down and grabs Singe, who transforms in his grasp. Spinister twists and comes up in a crouch. Singe is a flamethrower, and he has a number of settings. Spinister orders Singe into his highest setting, a toasty 3200 degrees Fahrenheit. He doesn't need depth perception to aim a flamethrower! Spinister unleashes Singe's full fury at Nightbeat.

They're done here, in the sense of being cooked.

[Nightbeat]

The flame blast washes over Nightbeat, the sheer intensity of the heat knocking him back several feet and blackening his chest armor. He teeters for a moment, and, with a "Play it again, Jazz," falls back, knocked out.

This message also goes out over the radio.

[Arcee]

And here comes the cavalry! Arcee--and presumably Hardwire--roaring up the road.

Nightbeat's not quite in visual range just yet, those Arcee wonders just how badly in over his head the smart mouth got.

[Cannonball]

Hardwire was indeed following, though having a royal gawkfest at this strangely-colored chopper-former up ahead. "...buggah's roit gaudy, innit'e?" he asks, though the question is rather rhetorical, as one would have to be blind to not see what he meant.

Either way, time for a warning shot! The ghostly form of a blue key cruises in from the sky, and plugs into the top of the Magnum's back, where one would expect a top tailight to be. Rear panels move out, deploying two yellow cannons that fire off streams of laser energy, though deliberately aimed to miss. That's why they call it a warning shot!

...still felt weird as all slag, though. If Cannonball could get creeped-out-chills down his back, he'd be having them.

[Spinister]

Spinister should probably open up one of Nightbeat's panels and finish the job. Indeed, Needlenose just explained to Spinister what happens when he doesn't finish the job - he gets shot by Carnivac and nearly dies in a ditch. However, it's a bad, bad trend of comic book villains and villains in general to not ascertain that a kill is actually a kill, let alone finish off a badly wounded foe.

More charitably, Spinister does have two new Autobots after him. He could threaten to slag Nightbeat if they don't leave him alone, but come on. He's Spinister. He would slag Nightbeat anyway. This should be obvious even to people who have no idea who he is.

Then there's a rather dazzling lightshow in the sky, and Spinister can only think, That had better not be something exploding.

With the lights distracting him, Hardwire's shots get convincingly close to Spinister. It's only Hairsplitter's hollering in Spinister's head that gets him out of the way in time. It's an exquisite pity that there's nothing flammable around here, or he could set a fire-line with Singe.

Arcee, the first in, though not the first to fire, is the one at which Spinister aims the flamethrower. Despite Spinister missing an optic, Hairsplitter and Singe can still see just fine. Spinister's just sulking over going down from six point vision to five. He fires one the pink one. She's pink, like him. Clearly, that makes her the more dangerous of the two!

That, and Spinister heard the bit about Hardwire being a covert operative on the Decepticon channel. Spinister tries to pay attention to these things.