Night of the Living Obsolete Aircraft

[Tarantulas]

Month 4, Week 2, Day 4, 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, Open

It is a large, open space full of sad metal hulks in the Arizona desert. It is called The Boneyard, and it is where airplanes come to die. The night is dark, but not stormy, though there is a strong wind blowing the sand and dust around.

The sand doesn't bother Tarantulas, because he's coated himself in a transparent polymer. It makes him look extra-shiny, though it's not cosmetic. He's carrying several liters of what is, to a Transformer, the equivalent of a powerful bio-weapon. (He has actually tested it extensively to make sure it is safe for Transformers. [He has actually tested it extensively to make sure it is safe for himself, specifically.]) Still, one can never be too careful, so he's wearing proper protective equipment.

Tarantulas is carrying nanites. They are designed to replicate by feeding off any scrap metal that is available, then inhabit and animate the airplanes here into a zombie army. If this test is successful, Tarantulas plans to release them at high altitude for global distribution.

[Lyzack]

Lyzack is accompanying Tarantulas. She has been painted up in an extremely drab and weathered coloured scheme that makes her look like the zombie F-14s that hang around this place.

If anyone stumbles on them, Lyzack can just transform into F-14 mode, and she'll blend right in with the rest of the sad derelicts.

Right now, she frowns over the whole field, as much of it as she can see. Lionessbreast stays at her heels, actually alert and vigilant. Lyzack says softly - but then, her voice is always soft, "It seems so... sad. These humans are so wasteful. But the doctor is going to give these abandoned ones a new purpose, yes? The best purpose."

Theirs.

[Tarantulas]

Tarantulas's optic visor deforms in a puzzled expression as Lyzack explains events as she sees them to her cat. The way she tells it, it almost doesn't sound like fun.

The spider shrugs, pulling a vacuum-sealed gunmetal gray canister out from his subspace pocket. He taps it speculatively with a claw while giving the surrounding aircraft a once-over. He finally settles on an old Boeing 707 that's been mostly stripped down for parts, leaving just an empty shell, and strides over to it, releasing the clasps on the canister as he goes. His mouthparts quiver in a mixture of anticipation and anxiety as he opens the container and pours the gray goo inside onto the landing gear of jetliner.

At first, nothing happens. Seconds tick past and the nanite goo just seems to drip away and disappear. Then there's a creaking of metal and the giant plane slumps as the landing gear disintegrates. This is shortly followed by the rest of the hulk being consumed, seemingly disappearing into thin air as its mass gets converted into airborne microscopic robots. Other than the plane falling, the entire process is eerily quiet, only a faint buzzing audible over the wind.

Tarantulas starts giggling quietly to himself as a group of nearby Hueys starts rumbling ominously.

[Lyzack]

Lyzack's wings fold down, making her look smaller, and all four of her optics widen. She raises a hand to politely cover her open mouth, and she hopes that, in the dark, Tarantulas won't notice her tremble and shiver. That Boeing 707 might have been a wreck, but seeing it dissolve away to nothing is terrifying. What if what was her? Is that why they sent her to help Tarantulas? Expendability if something goes wrong?

Lionessbreast makes a low growling noise.

Lyzack says faintly, "Doctor? Does anything need doing?" Should she be doing something other than standing around, being creeped out in an airplane graveyard in the dark, and looking for Cybertrons Autobots and Maximals?

[Tarantulas]

Lyzack was probably sent to assist Tarantulas less because she is expendable, and more as a form of hazing. Maybe everyone has to do their time with the crazy spider before they get a shift with one of the sane, normal Decepticons. Of which there are surely many. Somewhere.

Tarantulas goes from giggling to full-on cackling evil laughter when the group of helicopters transform into bipedal robots. They're not particularly pretty bipedal robots, what with being grey, rusty, asymmetrical, and generally zombie-looking, but they are robots.

"Doctor?" the spider says, cycling his optic band in a blink and turning to look at the jetformer, ceasing to laugh for the moment. "Since you asked, yes there is. Take these and find some more scrap to apply them to," he says, pulling a few more canisters out of his subspace and offering them up to Lyzack.

[Lyzack]

The normal, sane Decepticons are in another castle.

Lyzack takes the canister gingerly and turns away from Tarantulas to conceal a grimace. She mutters, "Scrap," perhaps just echoing Tarantulas's command, because a young lady of her upbringing would never cuss.

How to decide, what is mere fodder? Wandering in the graveyard, Lyzack passes by a 13,000-pound guillotine winched by a steel cable, supported by a crane, which was once used to chop B-52s into pieces. This, she decides, is amazingly morbid. She's going to have screaming nightmares and annoy her roommate, the fact that she might annoy her roommate clearly more important than the screaming nightmares.

Lyzack releases one of the canisters into a butchered B-52. That thing isn't going anywhere, she has decided, and will be a meet and proper sacrifice.

[Tarantulas]

Tarantulas continues moving through the Boneyard, releasing nanites on unsalvageable aircraft so that they can spread to and zombify more intact ones. He's quite enjoying himself, practically skipping through the lanes of planes, chuckling occasionally.

When the spider has almost run out of nanite canisters, he stops beside a C-5 Galaxy at the end of a row, looking up at the massive transport, mouthparts rustling in anticipation. He empties his final canister nearby, tossing the empty metal tube over his shoulder. There's the buzzing, and then the rumble as the Galaxy transforms, rising to its feet, its head towering over the scrapyard. Tarantulas draws his blaster, shoots out a line of webbing at the giant zombie's shoulder, then transforms to beast mode and climbs up.

From his new vantage point, he can see the wave of nanites spreading over the Boneyard, or its effects, at any rate. Aircraft after aircraft comes to "life" as the shambling horde continues to grow.

Maniacal laughter ensues.

[Lyzack]

Lyzack manages to drop off her other canisters and wrings her hands nervously, as if she can feel insidious itching nanites burrowing into them. It's nothing. it must be nothing but her mind playing tricks on her.

Then she looks back - and up at Tarantulas's new 'friend'. Lyzack babbles, "I... I... I..."

She has no words. Lionessbreast pads over to her side and nudges against her leg. Without thinking, Lyzack looks the way that Lionessbreast is pointing.

There are lights in the distance. What does that even mean? She stares numbly. Then Lionessbreast bites her on the foot, and Lyzack yelps, "Ah... ah... Doctor! Doctor, perhaps your work has been noticed!"

[Tarantulas]

"Noticed? By who?" he asks, scanning the horizon from his perch. There's definitely something moving out there, but he can't tell what from this distance. Not that he thinks it's going to be a problem.

"Bah! Let them come! My zombie army could use a shakedown! Ahahahahaha!"

[Lyzack]

Lyzack does not have an answer for 'who'. She looks left and right, feeling a bit guilty. It's dark! Still, she is failing at being on watch, she supposes. She must rectify this.

Lyzack transform into a F-14, and given her paint scheme, she looks much like the other zombies jets rising from their mortal coils all around the Boneyard. She lurches into the air, flying off toward the movement in the distance, so that she can determine just what has noticed them and report it to the Doctor.

[Slingshot]

Slingshot races through the night, wondering what the Decepticons are doing at the 309th AMARG-

//Ugh, this is the Boneyard!// He complains on a low Autobot-general comm. //The twins threatened to mode-lock us out here once.//

He neglects to mention what he and Air Raid did to earn that threat.

Closer to the Boneyard, he begins to see airplanes climbing into the sky and circling. Unease slowly crawls up the back of his processor - there's something weird about them.


OOC: Slingshot will be on scene next round.

[Tarantulas]

Tarantulas braces himself with one hand against the side of the giant zombie's head as he orders his army into motion via radio signal. Some rise up into the air, others lurch along the ground, but all of them are heading toward the steadily-growing speck that is Slingshot.

The spider is having the time of his life, giggling to himself occasionally.

[Lyzack]

Lyzack spots what would appear to be a F-35. It is not yellow, so she decides it is probably not Fleetwind in a new and strange paint job, though all the same, she hails over the short-range Decepticon band, her voice soft and deferential, //Fleetwind?//

Then she reports to Tarantulas, //What is seen is perhaps a F-35, Doctor.//

The F-14 has its wings out straight, to better fly more slowly, and is flying more or less straight, with no evasive maneuvers, and her weapons are cold, not running hot yet. She has a lot to learn, if she doesn't want to learn how to be a fatality. That's easy.

[Slingshot]

Slingshot doesn't answer Lyzack's query, on the wrong set of radio-bands that he is.

The swirl of planes has turned towards him, and he-

(the moonlight on the desert is pretty)(faster, faster, come on! let's shoot them already!)(-two vs. a hundred, I've read this before)

-has too many voices in his head.

Shut up! Man, why the heck had he missed these guys? Stupid fragging new gestalt process.

The bit of him that remembers how to be Silverbolt is cool and amused and pushes the others down so he can focus on the planes. They fly weirdly- badly. With a lot of damage and stupid pilots-

He gets a good look at one of them, then just opens up with his guns. //Zombies!//

[Swoop]

Swoop flies, but he can't go nearly as fast as Slingshot, which leads to him transmitting //Jet-bot slow down!// for what must the . . . . as high as Swoop can count-th time, as he frantically flaps his wings to keep up.

He's about to ask why all the plane-bots are acting weird, but then Slingshot starts shooting at them. If a mechanical pteranodon is capable of having a slag-eating grin, Swoop has one now as he screeches and opens up on the zombies with his flamethrower, strafing a large grouping of them.