Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on Oct 11, 2007 23:33:05 GMT -5
Skyfire raises the ramp behind Hook. "Burn for home at maximum speed, or do you need a stable working platform now? If so, I'll cruise."
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Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
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Post by Hellbender on Oct 11, 2007 23:37:04 GMT -5
// Hey! Shockwave did not do shoddy work on me! Seriously. // Midnight sounds genuinely aggrieved.
There's a long silence on the radio. // Hook... you going to be able to fix me, or something? // There's something anxious in Midnight's tone; he has looked into the face of Unicron, and the Reaper is tapping on his shoulder with rusted metal-blade fingers.
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Post by Hook on Oct 12, 2007 0:41:00 GMT -5
//Do not even turn your engines on, Skyfire. I do not need the vibrations making this more difficult than it has to be.//
Some might consider it simple rudeness that leads Hook to insult Shockwave's work on Midnight. Some do not understand the complexities of being a surgical engineer, and thus do not realize that a combative patient is more likely to survive than an apathetic one.
Also, Hook rather dislikes Shockwave on general principles for his care of Cybertron while Megatron was out of commission.
"Your body is unrepairable, Midnight. I cannot fix it with the materials I have on hand." Hook has a terrible bedside manner. "I can, however, ensure your survival in other ways. First, though, I need to get a stable power source connected to your lasercore, memory banks, and personality components."
Hook's visor dims briefly. The mining worm and Skyfire both qualified as stable power sources, but he had no idea how much power either of them had available and for how long he could drain them before that proved unworkable.
And he still needed a body for Midnight!
"Skyfire, ah, do you have a power line I could splice in your holds, or anything else equally useful?"
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on Oct 12, 2007 0:58:06 GMT -5
// Acknowledged. I will hold here until you are ready. // Hook no doubt had a reason for answering him over radio, so Skyfire replies the same way.
"Of course I do! Internal shore power connectors and cables located behind the access panel forward, frame A-36, and to the right." Hmm, he needs to remember that Hook isn't Starscream, and doesn't know his way around Skyfire's class of shuttle.
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Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
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Post by Hellbender on Oct 12, 2007 1:04:16 GMT -5
The one working optic flickers. // Not.. repairable. Yeah. Didn't really think there was enough left to repair. Gotta rebuild me, huh. Wonder what I'll be next? // Midnight muses, and there's an oddly distant shade to his voice.
His optic flickers again, and dims slightly. // Uh-oh. I'm getting drop outs... power transmission. //
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Post by Hook on Oct 14, 2007 17:39:29 GMT -5
Smelt and forgefires!
The answer comes in a perfectly clear epiphany of utter insanity.
"This will get ugly," Hook informs the room as he shifts Midnight to only occupy one hand and uses his other to rip a panel off his own side. Underneath, there are assorted connectors of sorts generally only used for emergency power transfusion.
Next, Hook turns his attention to tearing open Midnight's chest and finding his lasercore. Fortunately, that is easily done with bare hands as the jet has already been mostly reduced to 'extremely dead'.
Once found, Hook draws out a connector from his side and attaches it to Midnight's lasercore. For the moment, the jet is drawing power directly from the crane's generators.
A momentary wooziness hits Hook, and his first step towards the mining worm is perhaps not as steady as the other two people present might prefer.
There isn't time to worry if this is a madmech's idea. It will give Midnight the healthy body he requires, and it will take a minimum of resources from the resource-strapped Decepticons.
Hook doesn't bother with hacking at the mining worm's armor with any of his saws. He just draws his energy-sword and slashes a great slit in its belly. This? This is not Hook being subtle and precise.
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on Oct 14, 2007 18:59:26 GMT -5
Skyfire considers asking Hook what he has in mind, but decides that distracting the cybersurgeon in mid-surgery would not be an intelligent thing to do, and Skyfire is intelligent. He's intelligent enough that a plausible answer to the question "What is Hook doing there?" quickly comes to mind. Hmm. Rather extreme for a field jury-rig, but Hook is up to a bit more than basic first aid. Skyfire waits in silence, going through his pre-flight checklists, making sure they are ready for takeoff. While Hook works, Skyfire gets Cannonball straightened out as to just where he is and schedules him for pick-up when this job is done. Then he contemplates Perceptor's communication. Skyfire isn't going to view the purported video now; too many people are depending on him getting them home intact to risk incapacitation. Perceptor's tone and word choice are revealing. One, there's the fact of the transmission itself; these Autobots are making an effort to attempt to sway Skyfire's loyalties by appealing to his sense of decency and compassion. Likewise, Hook and Starscream have both attempted to rouse Skyfire's animosity towards the Autobots by painting them as destructive and cruel--again, an appeal to his basic values. It's not an appeal that would work with everyone from his time. Starscream knows him well, or did... but why do these others know that about him? Why did they know his personal frequency? Perhaps they are telling the truth, and he worked with them in a different reality. Perhaps they are lying, and he had been a prisoner. Speaking of prisoners... by Perceptor's admission, Cannonball was a Decepticon spy in disguse among the Autobots. His cover was blown, and he took a hostage and bluffed his way to escape. Holi, the hostage, was injured, but not badly so, and no one else was harmed at all. Skyfire did not know what the laws of this war were for Cybertron, but in many alien cultures, the penalty for spying was death. Cannonball had made a commendable escape from a dire situation. So what did Cannonball do that Skyfire was supposed to think so poorly of? Skyfire opted to explore this question further when he could risk viewing the video. Third: Perceptor held a grudge against Starscream. Judging from the stresses in his voice when he spoke of damage dealt by Starscream, he'd had friends damaged or destroyed by Starscream in the course of the war. Skyfire considered Perceptor's word choice: "I have faced damage Starscream has inflicted that could not be repaired." Destroyed, then. Either very close friends, or recently, or both. So, why the interest in Skyfire? With Omega Supreme on their side, the Autobots already had deep space transport. Skyfire was not generally paranoid; Starscream had enough of that for the both of them. He was, however, prudent; deep space exploration was not for the reckless. Not beyond the first voyage, anyway. Was it possible that they were trying to sway him as a means of getting at Starscream? If they knew anything about him, they had to know he wouldn't turn against his friend--certainly not on mere hearsay! But might they be trying to lure him into a trap, and use him against Starscream that way? Possible. Prudence dictated that he not go running off to any lone meetings in the woods with strangers, at least. Not that any had come up, but if they did...
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Hellbender
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Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
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Post by Hellbender on Oct 14, 2007 19:09:00 GMT -5
Power! Midnight had been running on fumes; his remaining optic brightens and stays steady.
// That's a little better. Must've been low on fuel. Was afraid the wireless was giving out, and that would be bad, seein' as my wired connections are all cut--Yiii! // Midnight's abrupt exclamation came as his head was grabbed in one of Hook's hands and held out of the way, causing his viewpoint to swing around and get all topsy-turvy again. As a result, it took him a bit to decipher what Hook was doing.
// 'Get ugly'? That there thing is already fraggin' ugly! What are you doing, doc? //
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Post by Hook on Oct 15, 2007 13:18:35 GMT -5
"I am doing what needs to be done. Now, try not to die in the next few hours, Midnight. I will become very cross to have all of my work wasted."
So saying, Hook deactivates his sword and kneels down to examine the slit he has made in the worm, shifting Midnight on his hip so that they're both properly balanced. With one hand, he yanks out lines and wires to examine as he tries to force a basic understanding of the worm's anatomy into his head over the course of fifteen minutes of rather limited observation.
Somewhere in that fifteen minutes, Midnight gets laid out on the deck so that Hook has two hands to work with.
It takes half an hour, plus or minus a few minutes, for Hook to find what he's looking for - the seat of the worm's programming. Or, rather, what he finds are the major lines that lead to those computers, and he starts opening the mining worm up even more to get to that point.
It's slow going as he is trying not to damage too much of the worm's internals while he shifts them out of the way. Quite a large amount of wires and circuitry have been spilled out over his legs as he works his way deeper and deeper into the alien machine; it's a rather macabre sight to someone used to thinking of machines as life.
After a lengthy time of careful, painstaking work, at last his hands close around the worm's "brains". Hook is shoulders-deep in the mining worm now, seeing by optic-light and a bright surgical light he attached to the side of his head shortly after he got involved in this.
On one side of him, Midnight lies sprawled on Skyfire's deck. On the other side, his toolbox is open, displaying the vast amount of useful items Hook has at his disposal. This, kids? This is what seperates perfectionist, controlling surgical engineers from other people.
Gears, struts, tensors, cables, wires, and circuitry press down on him from all sides; Hook is quite sure that some of those gears will leave impressions in his upper arms if he keeps pushing against them. But he must, because he must move his arms to do this work.
His arms in front of him cast weird shadows, half-obscuring the computer-core he wishes to manipulate. If he moves just so- Yes, there are the cables with the 'this carries electrical power, dolt' markings. And these other wires and cables?
Carefully, precisely, Hook disconnects the brain modules, examining the connection points with his fingers to try to make sense of what they might be for.
Fortunately, there's room enough here to establish the lasercore and Midnight's metaprocessor. After he removes several of the native brain modules, and how to determine which ones should go and which ones should stay?
Really, there wasn't a logical method to determine anything with the limited knowledge he had of Gillanan technology. Best to just make the hollows he would need for Midnight's components, and let the ex-jet figure out what he had access to for himself.
He withdraws form the worm, brain components in hand and places them behind him. There's space for Midnight to be seated in there now, as soon as Hook can make a few adaptors.
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on Oct 15, 2007 13:58:24 GMT -5
There's also, Skyfire concluded, the possibility that the Autobots are telling the truth: that he was one of them, and they are concerned for a friend. But what did that say about Starscream and himself? Why would he have abandoned his partner, or worse yet, turned on him? That did not make sense at all!
He didn't know enough. He had to give it more time, gather more data, devise a sound enough hypothesis to test... and that still wouldn't tell him what to do now. It would only tell him what some version of him did in another time and place. In the here and now? The only right thing to do was evaluate and act on what and who was here and now. Still, that other past might give him clues to what lay beneath the facades of the current present.
"Hook, in case you should find it useful in the present emergency, I think I should inform you that in addition to internal shore power connections and data console access for passengers, there's some exploration gear and instruments stored in my various lockers," Skyfire announced during one of the moments when Hook was looking contemplative rather than working deep in someone or something's circuitry.
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Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
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Post by Hellbender on Oct 15, 2007 14:10:52 GMT -5
Midnight is not the genius that Hook or Skyfire is. Mentally, he's pretty average, which is to say, in the current company, he's a dolt. Even so, after hours of laying on the deck watching Hook work out of the corner of one optic, he'd finally gotten a notion of what Hook has in mind.
Oh no you don't! You're not putting me in that thing! was what Midnight thought and very badly wanted to say. A certain instinct for self-preservation held his radio in check--and it was probably a good thing his vocalizer was still clogged with fscking swamp mud! Telling the guy who is trying to salvage your brain component from the utter salvage you've made of yourself to stop doing just that? Bad idea. Seriously.
Primus! This has got to be a temporary measure to get me back to base, yeah. Just a temporary thing. Please let it be just a temporary thing...
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Post by Hook on Oct 16, 2007 10:12:23 GMT -5
With a few handheld sensors taken from Skyfire's locker, the connectors of the mining worm, a set of lasercore and metacortex connectors from Hook's toolbox, a multi-tool, and a soldering iron, Hook quietly set about building adapters for Midnight. This, sadly, took longer than the twenty minutes it took him to convert a power-extractor into an orbital laser as he was working with a mixture of alien and not-quite-right Cybertronian technology.
Really, Midnight should be pleased he has a genius of a surgical engineer here to actually do this job. Because it's insane.
After finishing the adapters and laying them out in front of his knees, Hook settles Midnight's torso into his lap. The remaining scraps of chest armor get ripped away, baring the soon-to-be ex-jet's lasercore1 to the world.
Optics zoomed in as Hook examined the 'core for infinitismal cracks. A single, microscopic crack could prove deadly, especially in a transfer of this sort. An engineer who ignored the possibility that a jet in Midnight's condition might have a damaged lasercore was a very careless engineer indeed.
So Midnight is treated to the odd experience of someone staring intently at his brain module, turning it over and over to examine everything.
"Well, you are an extremely lucky mech," Hook comments as he sets the lasercore down and takes a circuit probe out of his toolbox. The probe gleams wickedly in the light of Skyfire's hold.
There are multiple ways to put someone under. Most of them require tripping any of certain breakers at important joints in the torso.
Midnight only has one of those breakers actually intact, and it's not connected to his head.
Another method of offlining someone temporarily involves tripping a breaker directly in the lasercore. It was not a method generally taught, as a clumsy medic could kill someone if they did not do it exactly perfect. Even experienced Decepticon engineers could be a bit leery about performing the operation.
Hook does not even hesitate.
---
1. This is actually Midnight's brain module. However, the admin have decided, for sanity's sake, that what G1 Marvel guys call the brain module and what G1 cartoon guys call the lasercore is the same thing.
Midnight should go unconscious in his next post.
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on Oct 16, 2007 15:24:30 GMT -5
Skyfire simply observes as best he can--his internal cameras have rather limited coverage and resolution, as they were intended for him to supervise loading operations and give him a clue what's going on in his holds. His engine rooms and cockpit, for instance, have no such coverage.1
He notes particularly interesting things Hook is doing; later, when the surgeon is less occupied, Skyfire means to ask him what he was doing then and why. Perhaps he'll learn something.
--- 1For RP purposes, I don't want Skyfire to be blind and deaf to his passengers; however, there's a lot of evidence that cartoon Autobots don't always know what's in their trunk. Assume Skyfire has to actually pay attention to his cargo hold pickups (i.e., turn them on), and they're not designed for high-res, zoom-in stuff.
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Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
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Post by Hellbender on Oct 16, 2007 15:29:39 GMT -5
"I was built to survive," Midnight replies--
Then Hook touches the probe to his lasercore.
Oblivion.
--- Midnight is offline and skippable.
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Post by Hook on Oct 16, 2007 17:48:45 GMT -5
The subtle vibrations of the lasercore grow even more subtle after Hook puts Midnight under. That's expected, however, and well within acceptable parameters.
Hook withdraws several cables from the mining worm, checks them with a multimeter to make sure they're channeling power, and then attaches them to Midnight's lasercore. Again, everything is checked with a multimeter.
Carefully, he takes the lasercore and pushes his way back into the mining worm. Once he can place the 'core where it will rest for some time to come, Hook detaches the cables tying himself into Midnight.
Then, he waits, utterly still, with his fingertips on Midnight's lasercore. Now is the testing time- if he did everything absolutely correctly, Midnight will live.
If not, Hook will have just wasted hours of his immortal life.
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