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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Aug 16, 2008 20:47:14 GMT -5
Bambi flails, and while she probably tries to scratch Motormaster a bit, she isn't actually trying to wound him. She goes for the ankles, then. The dinosaur hisses, and she puffs up her crest at Motormaster.
As soon as he sounds the all clear, she scampers in, sniffing at the stains. At the more dubious stains, she flicks out of her tongue, nearly tasting them. From her unofficial, empirical survey of the local wildlife, she declares, "Me think there blood spilled here."
Bambi studies the spray patterns carefully. One can learn a lot from a spray pattern.
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Motormaster
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Post by Motormaster on Aug 19, 2008 14:24:44 GMT -5
The chemical splashes look like typical 'dropped from a height in a delicate container' breakages. Some of the glass has been scattered out of place.
A few of the blood splashes also look like container-breakage. But there are also clump-patterns and splatter-trails. Splatter-trails leading away from the clump-patterns. Splatter-spray areas shifting into splatter-trails that slink off among the containers.
Motormaster waits, head facing forward.
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Aug 27, 2008 20:45:31 GMT -5
Bambi follows the trails muzzle to the ground, sniffing at the trail, trying to determine how long ago this happened. She comments, "Something go very, very wrong here."
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Motormaster
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Post by Motormaster on Aug 29, 2008 12:35:26 GMT -5
This trail is fairly fresh - a few days old at the most. It crosses several older trails, which range from days to weeks to one so faint it could be many months old. The trail leads off towards the inner access door of the warehouse.
"Yeah? What am I missing?"
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Sept 1, 2008 20:32:33 GMT -5
Bambi paws at the fresher trail, her tail swishing thoughtfully. She looks up and replies, "You can no see trails. Chemical. Biological. They everywhere here."
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Motormaster
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Post by Motormaster on Sept 9, 2008 21:15:02 GMT -5
"Yeah, you're right." Right he doesn't see that kind of trail. "Anything you think we need to worry about?"
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Sept 10, 2008 10:59:29 GMT -5
Bambi straightens slightly, rearing up on her back legs and stretching out her neck. She waves a taloned arm above her head, and she insists, "You worry? Maybe not. Me worry? Definitely. Bleeding wounds and struggle here."
This, of course, means that they must boldly press on and poke their noses right into the danger.
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Motormaster
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Post by Motormaster on Sept 10, 2008 18:57:53 GMT -5
Decepticons laugh in the face of danger!
"I'll make sure you've got nothing to worry about, little sister."
Motormaster points at the entrance to the warehouse. The straight way, so his line of point goes through several boxes. "You ready?"
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Sept 11, 2008 21:38:23 GMT -5
Dinobots also laugh in the face of danger, when they themselves are not being the face of danger.
Bambi nods and agrees, "Me Bambi ready."
She's going to take a path that does not take her through quite so many boxes as Motomaster's will.
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Motormaster
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Post by Motormaster on Sept 16, 2008 14:48:45 GMT -5
Motormaster wasn't going to go through the boxes.
Probably.
He follows behind Bambi, shortening his stride so he doesn't plow into the little Dinobot. Ahead, he senses a hallway with a handful of open doors on either side before the hallway hits a T-junction.
The nearest door has been half torn off its hinges. It hangs weakly from the upper hinge alone, and the metal of the hinge looks very worn. Jagged holes have been punched into the faux-wooden surface in regular patterns. Very regular. Semi-ovals and semi-circles all around the edges of the door.
Inside is a small room with a table, broken metal and plastic abstract sculptures that used to be chairs, and a demolished vending machine. The table's legs are all askew, and it doesn't look like the poor thing will keep standing if it's jostled. The vending machine has been mauled and anything remotely food-like in it is long gone.
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Sept 22, 2008 8:48:37 GMT -5
Bambi peers at the door curiously, her blue optics unblinking, a lizard's stare. She taps some of the damage with a talon and mutters, "This very, very bad."
However, she shakes her head and opines, "Nothing here now. No point to fix - not ours."
'ours'. He is a Decepticon. She is a Dinobot. There's never going to be any 'ours'. She travels with him because it's better than being alone. That's all.
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Motormaster
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Post by Motormaster on Oct 1, 2008 13:55:06 GMT -5
"Seems all broken," Motormaster comments from where he's been standing in the corridor, facing the end of the hallway. He chirps in a pitch beyond human hearing, head tilting as he listens to the echoes. "Not just in there."
He walks down the hall, pausing at open doors to chirp inside. Open doors reveal demolished meeting rooms and offices. Most of the offices contain small computer boxes. One has been torn open. One was smashed open with a blunt object. The other three are battered but intact. Chalkboards are smudged into clouds of illegibility with scatterings of symbols and sketches. Sketches of double-helix designs, bits of repeated proteins.
At the end of the hallway, there is a closed door on the right.
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Oct 10, 2008 20:05:34 GMT -5
Bambi is absolutely fascinated by the pictures of proteins and helices, and she remarks, "What they doing here... they making life. Remaking life. It long dead, but they make it live again. Have to guess, in parts."
Then, she thinks she hears something, which means that Motormaster is probably also hearing it. A skittering noise behind closed doors. One part inquisitive scientist, one part ancient predator, she does the natural thing and runs off toward the source of the noise, taking the door out at the hinges.
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Motormaster
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Post by Motormaster on Oct 20, 2008 17:13:10 GMT -5
Motormaster will take her word for it. From the way she's behaving, this is one of those 'reading' things that he can't do. Flat symbols on flat surfaces are not just meaningless but invisible to him.
Skittering, clicking of claws against tile, rustle of skin against metal, things minutely shifted out of place. Motormaster snaps towards the sound, bashing through a wall to reach it-
Bambi takes the door down first. Motormaster crowds through behind her, mindful of the equipment on the benches all around him. It'd be easy, comforting to just smash it all to the floor, create a cacophony of breakage. Take back some control of the situation.
But that's no way to hunt, and he's not losing the scientist to either his stupidity or hers.
He cocks his head, listens. There are cylinders of liquid over by the far wall, big floor-to-ceiling devices. There are scanners around the room, shapes he recognizes as eye-pieces and focuses. Long tubes ending in delicate twists of wire sit attached to several of the benches. Everything is attached, he notes after a moment when the crawling over his wires settles to a prickle of unpleasance. Stuff that wasn't attached is on the floor now, crunching under their steps, marked by sharp swipes and determined gnawing.
Ruthlessly, he cuts out the sound of glass, the hum of Bambi's systems. Listen. Listening.
Heartbeat.
He swings towards it-
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Oct 24, 2008 16:31:17 GMT -5
There is some irony in a Dinobot being better able to read than, well, any Transformer.
The scent of the creatures - long dead or perhaps never native to this world - stand out from the sterile, chemical tang of the laboratory, and her sickle claws are twitching before her CPU has even processed the situation. Smell is older than sight and quicker.
Vision tells her that these creatures and sinuous and poweful, built vaguly like massive snakes. Their heads remind her of pterandons, with pointed muzzles and back-pointing crests. However, unlike any creature of Earth or this world, they have a long, single arm, mounted right in the middle of the chest, and it terminates in a long spike.
The colour of these is dull, and they behold her with malevolent eyes. One breaks off and lunges at with that long spike. She breaks under and lashes up with a foot, trying to rake that sickle claw of hers into the creature's underbelly.
There is a time to study.
It is not the time when the creature tries to kill you.
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