Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
|
Post by Override on Sept 28, 2011 19:47:20 GMT -5
Override shrugs. "Suit yourself," she says, then shouts, "Override, transform!" She instantly drops into vehicle mode and starts driving down the tunnel after Twin Twist.
"Well, it's a policy that needs to be reviewed," Mikey grumbles sulkily, then turns around to see what's happening with the Autobots. He just manages to catch sight of Override disappearing down the newly made tunnel. He turns back to Simmons and gestures back over his shoulder. "Did they just...?" Whether Simmons nods, says something, or whatever else, Mikey has turned to look back before he does. Then he points out, "You know, following them isn't interacting. And we're supposed to keep tabs on... things like this."
|
|
Swindle
Major
This space for rent.
Posts: 571
|
Post by Swindle on Oct 2, 2011 14:03:35 GMT -5
Simmons turns to look at Twin Twist as he starts tunneling. "Hey! You ca- he can't do that!" he shouts, pointing after the disappearing Autobots. His right eye twitches ever so slightly.
"Alright, let's go after them," he grumbles, striding purposefully toward the tunnel entrance. This was clearly the plan all along.
|
|
|
Post by Tessan Toov on Oct 3, 2011 19:30:05 GMT -5
Twin Twist can't do that? Twin Twist was built to do this. He's being fairly considerate about his tunnelling, in that he's sinking his tunnels in such a way that they're reasonably stable, and they won't cave in anything above him. This is an act of restraint for him; he likes few things better than undermining and sapping.
It's getting hotter the deeper he goes, but he doesn't seem to notice.
Twin Twist narrates, louder than the sound of his drills, "Hard drilling here - not the material, that's soft. There's a lot of blind pockets I can't see, though. The mine maps we pulled before the mission aren't that good. Things have subsided, things have collapsed, things have - caught on fire!"
Twin Twist pulls up short as he opens up a hole into a man-made cave that is ablaze, the flames fanned higher by the fresh air he just brought down.
|
|
Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
|
Post by Hellbender on Oct 5, 2011 20:19:45 GMT -5
Hellbender doesn't bother with wandering up and nattering with the natives. Retrieving the Mysterious Object is Decepticon business, and what the humans don't know, will probably hurt them, but not as soon as knowing would. The big mining worm does what he does best--drills up from below.
In this case, 'below' is a layer of soft shale, far easier to dig through than hard anthracite coal. It had been simply a matter of diving into the ground somewhere out of the way and following the underside of the coal seam while scouting the lay and texture of the rocks with his sonar. Hellbender can 'see' the trace of the crashed Mysterious Object as a pattern of compressed soil and shocked rock--and the thing itself is metallic and spherical. Not very enlightening.
His thermal sensors are giving him some damn weird readings. The layers above him are hot, too hot for this shallow depth; they're hotter than a mile-deep diamond pipe. Volcanic activity? Or--coal is an organic-based fuel substance. Volatile, though not as volatile as energon. Perhaps the crash had ignited it? (Hellbender does not yet fully appreciate the value of the Internet for intelligence-gathering, or he'd already know about the Centralia mine fires.)
Someone else is drilling down from above--a drill-tank, by the vibrations that buzz unpleasantly through the rock like a dentist's drill against a tooth. Did the humans have drill-tanks, or was it Autobots? Either one was a dense metallic machine tearing through soft rock. Only one way to find out.
Hellbender turns aside and around, cutting behind the drill tank's path. He tears his way into Twin Twist's tunnel from the rear, following it down until he 'saw' clearly the shape of his opponent. Or opponents.
Twin Twist, that noise behind you? It's the four-fold grinders of the worm from hell. Everyone, welcome Hellbender to the party.
|
|
Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
|
Post by Override on Oct 7, 2011 15:55:42 GMT -5
Franklin smiles wide briefly as he follows Simmons and the robots, before he remembers himself and puts back on his proper serious government agent expression. There were agents who spent their whole time with the Sector, joining and leaving, without something like this. He had always dreamed of a serious discovery, serious contact on his 'watch,' and now... alien robots openly walking the Earth? Acknowledged by the UN? Lately, there were days when it was extremely difficult to contain the excited little boy he generally kept hidden inside that proper agent demeanor of his.
Override rumbles along behind Twin Twist, noting that the humans are following her but not really paying it much mind. It doesn't thrill her, but hey, it's their planet, after all. She stops and transforms as the tunnel reveals the fire, and her lips twist into a frown. "Great. That's all we need," she grumbles.
And then a giant alien drill worm blacks off their retreat, trapping the two humans with the Autobots. She spins around, optics wide and bright with shock. "Though we need it a lot more than we need that!" she shouts. She looks down, sees the humans at the base of the thing, and starts to rush forward. "Get back, you two!" she shouts.
Franklin, meanwhile, spins around and stumbles backward, eyes wide and round as he rips off his sunglasses (the lighting in here doesn't really suite them, anyway). For the moment, he's rather too shocked for words.
|
|
Swindle
Major
This space for rent.
Posts: 571
|
Post by Swindle on Oct 12, 2011 11:50:00 GMT -5
Simmons sulks as he follows the Autobots down the tunnel. Stupid N.B.E.s, coming to his job and telling him what to do and not doing what he says. They need to learn to respect the badge! He's about to start in on the red and white one (since he seems to be in charge), making up some laws if he has to to get rid of the meddlesome robots. (Simmons and crew were here first. If there's an alien artifact to be uncovered, some fragment of the long-dead past that might reveal something about extraterrestrial life, the humans will claim it, not the living breathing aliens that are also here.)
He's about to start chewing out Override, but then a black wall of metal and terror and horrible spinning pointy things appears with a horrible noise behind him. He spins around and backs away slowly. "What the hell is that thing?!" he exclaims, pointing.
|
|
|
Post by Tessan Toov on Oct 14, 2011 21:58:40 GMT -5
"That is Hellbender," Twin Twist says matter-of-factly. Twin Twist has never met Hellbender personally, but he reads the databases, mostly so he doesn't shoot the wrong person in the heat of the moment.
This moment is very hot.
With fire in front of him and Hell...bender coming fast behind him, Twin Twist decides to open up a side-tunnel, roughly orthogonal to the current tunnel, with a gentle slope upward. He has speed and agility on the great worm, but everyone else, Override and the humans, aren't made for this kind of fight, the harrying of crow versus eagle, only underground.
|
|
Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
|
Post by Hellbender on Oct 17, 2011 16:52:25 GMT -5
The drill tank is an Autobot--in fact, the one that arrived aboard Ship and tore up the decks on its way out... and nearly killed Lugnut. Hellbender actually liked the big dumb lug, and this worthless piece of scrap drilled into him like some kind of giant scraplet from hell and nearly deactivated him. And he's a fraggin' Wrecker! There's another Autobot here, too--Override, possibly one of their officers according to the files. He's never fought her before--mining machines don't generally mix it up with race cars. She wears the wrong badge, though; she's a target.
"TWIN TWIST!" A basso roar of rage echoes through the burning tunnels. Wrecker. Target #1. Hellbender revvs his cutters and lunges forward, uncaring of small, fragile mortals that may be in the way. He'll go through Override, too, to get to Twin Twist, if she stands in his way.
|
|
Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
|
Post by Override on Oct 19, 2011 19:54:49 GMT -5
Override scoops the two humans up and shoves them into her front seat as she transforms. "That is something that we're running from, at least for now," she says, spinning around and racing after Twin Twist... at least until Hellbender makes his lunge. She stops suddenly and summons her cyber key, firing up at his underside as he passes overhead.
"Hellbender. One of the 'Cons," she explains, then louder she shouts, "Twin twist! If we head up, it needs to be away from where the humans are digging!"
Franklin, who has been deposited in the passenger's side (putting Simmons in the driver's seat), briefly considers the virtues of seat belts, then decides against it in just this one case. He's liable to want to be able to exit this vehicle with all due haste, and if Override crashes, being thrown from his seat will probably be the least of his worries, anyway.
|
|
|
Post by Tessan Toov on Oct 25, 2011 15:37:31 GMT -5
Twin Twist is torn. He would rather be between the mining machine and everyone else, rather than having everyone else between him and the mining machine. However, if he backtracks, they have nowhere to go.
He radios to Override, //I guess we just gotta count on me being a faster driller than that worm until I can get to the surface, because I know you're a faster driver.//
That's not the kind of thing that Twin Twist wants to count on. //Uhm. I'm gonna drill a lil' differently to make the tunnel collapse behind me. You'll need to stick close to me to outrun the collapse, but it oughta slow Hellbender a bit.//
Cue exciting CG effects.
|
|
Swindle
Major
This space for rent.
Posts: 571
|
Post by Swindle on Oct 28, 2011 20:44:50 GMT -5
Simmons reacts in the only sensible way possible when giant robots are picking you up and tossing you in the air and transforming and catching you in their driver's seats: he screams at the top of his lungs and then grabs the nearest hand-hold in a white-knuckled death grip, shoulders hunched to make himself as small as possible.
|
|
Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
|
Post by Hellbender on Nov 2, 2011 14:29:39 GMT -5
Override is fast on her feet, and Hellbender's cutters carve the air scant inches behind her--until she darts up the side tunnel Twin Twist just made. Hellbender's initial lunge is spent; he turns and bulls his way up the tunnel, moderately relieved to be getting away from the rising temperatures below--
Only to have it collapse in his face. "Slagger." Hellbender starts chewing through the rock, throwing a cascade of coal and shale fragments out his tail, into the fire. It's possible that tossing finely ground coal into the flames might not be the safest thing to do. Not that it worries Hellbender; there's no one here whose safety he's concerned about, and he's ridden out a coal-dust explosion before.
Twin Twist is a fast and agile driller--faster than Hellbender in the relatively soft coal and shale. Hellbender has sheer power on him almost certainly, and could probably chew through hard rock faster--but there's none of that here. On the other hand, Twin Twist has to dig through solid (soft) rock while Hellbender just has to eat his gravel; on the gripping hand... Hellbender has to eat Twin Twist's gravel. it's the way he's built: anything he drills through goes through his ore grinders and out the cloaca. He can't easily shove it to either side, unlike Twin Twist. He can mine his way through rock without requiring an open shaft behind him, but he does it slowly.
It's a stern chase, and who catches or doesn't catch whom depends on where it goes....
---- Hellbender is responding to a slight retcon, since the previous Override post as written is impossible and we caught it too late. Retcon: she ran off after Twin Twist, no stopping, no firing, with Hellbender 'nipping' at her heels. Proposed by Override's player and agreed to by Hellbender's player
|
|
Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
|
Post by Override on Nov 3, 2011 18:51:20 GMT -5
// Close I can do, // Override radios Twin Twist, doing exactly as she describes, staying ahead of the collapse. // Just keep moving - we're practically parked down here! //
"Sorry about that," she tells Simmons and Franklin through her inside speaker, "but I figured interacting with us was a better idea than leaving you to interact with him. We'll get you to safety as soon as we can."
Franklin grips the side of his seat as they roll through the fast-collapsing tunnel. "Oh god.." then he pats his jacket, eyes wide behind his sunglasses. "I think I dropped my walkie-talkie!"
Yes, people still use walkie-talkies. A lot of them are more hardened than your typical cell!
|
|
|
Post by Tessan Toov on Nov 3, 2011 21:11:50 GMT -5
Twin Twist was designed to chew through metal, not rock, and he has a top speed of 200 mph. He's probably faster than Hellbender in any terrain.
And yet, he's painfully slow to Override. This bothers him, and he can't say why. Twin Twist has never been unhappy with his physical abilities. Unhappy, sometimes, about his urges, but his body has always been fine. It's his code that is messed up.
Now he wishes he was faster.
Twin Twist breaks the surface, drills boring through nothing but air for a moment before his levels out. He calls out, "Out, out, quickly!"
|
|
Swindle
Major
This space for rent.
Posts: 571
|
Post by Swindle on Nov 6, 2011 19:46:31 GMT -5
Simmons manages to get over his terror for long enough to give Franklin an incredulous look. "I don't think you would have gotten a good signal down here, Mike," he says slowly, before the latest in a series of loud, underground drill robot-related noises jolts him back to reality.
He tries to catch a glimpse of the giant monster behind them, only to discover Override's passenger compartment lacks both a rear window and rearview mirrors. "Is it gaining on us? Where is it?" he asks, facing the dashboard, protocol forgotten for the moment.
|
|