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Post by Breakaway on Oct 17, 2012 16:14:52 GMT -5
Month 8, Week 2, Day 1, Undisclosed location in the Amazon rainforest. Semi-private.
Brock slaps his forearm. "These mosquitoes are the size of MiGs, I swear," he gripes, checking his hand to see if he scored a kill on the latest flying parasite. No bug guts. He wipes his hand on his pants leg anyway, just to get rid of some of the sweat. "Why can't terrorists ever set up shop in tropical beach resorts or ski chalets? Ecological wonderland, my butt."
Maddox, Brock, and a small support team were dropped in via black helicopter three days ago. They've been trudging through the jungle toward where their target is supposed to be ever since.
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Post by Mayday/Maddox Wayne on Oct 18, 2012 16:23:48 GMT -5
"It's psychological torture!" Maddox hisses. He's doing a bit better at bug-killing than Brock, flailing an improvised fly-swatter around at his insect attackers with super-human reflexes. However, despite both active and passive defenses - Maddox smells like he washed his clothes with insect repellent1 - some have still managed to slip past to do their dirty work, and now he itches in places. Or maybe that's just heat rash.
"They're trying to break our wills before we even arrive with this- this- place!"
Beating away a few more enemy mosquitoes, Maddox adjust his pack on his back - luckily for him, his cyborg strength meant he could carry both the normal gear and some extra sanitary materials - then asks Brock, a hint of whine sneaking into his voice, "Are we there yet?"
1 He did.
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Post by Breakaway on Oct 21, 2012 18:08:24 GMT -5
"We're still a few days out, according to the GPS," Brock responds, looking over his shoulder to make sure the squad is keeping up. "We could get there faster following the river, but we'd be easy targets. Better to just cut cross country and put up with the bugs."
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Post by Crankcase on Oct 22, 2012 3:52:04 GMT -5
The jungle is a thick place in many ways; the air is heavy with humidity, almost palpable. The trees and plants form a morass of greenery so profuse that anything much larger than a human can't possibly move through at a respectable pace without alerting everything for miles around of its presence.
Crankcase is not moving at a respectable pace, nor does he intend to move faster than his current, patient crawl. Not until the moment is right. He slowly, slowly ekes out movement on a course roughly parallel to the humans' path, far enough from them to be largely obscured by distance and forest growth but near enough to hear them, to smell them. One of them positively reeks of chemicals. It's like blasting a siren in an empty amphitheatre, that strong scent amid the pungent aromas of soil and decay. Crankcase relies on that and their voices to follow them, willing to give up line of sight to keep himself concealed a little longer. Staying silent is challenge enough as he twists between trees, watching the forest floor for anything likely to snap underfoot. There are many such things. He's never had to walk quite so much on his toes.
He wouldn't even be here were it not for one particular human in the group. Files and observation have led Crankcase to believe with relative certainty that one of the soldiers is an Autobot in disguise. The trail has led him here to kill.
Slowly, slowly forward.
OOC: Skippable for the moment, though he continues to track the squishies.
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Post by Mayday/Maddox Wayne on Oct 23, 2012 19:20:25 GMT -5
"But we've already been walking days..." Maddox whines softly under his breath. He glances over his own shoulder as Brock checks the troops, then looks ahead and hunches his shoulders. He feels kind of bad for them. Maddox is not exactly the sort of super-soldier that inspires confidence in people. He doesn't even inspire much confidence in himself! In face, if he thinks too hard about what they're here for, he starts to get the shakes.
Really, he's not much of a super-soldier at all. More like a super-civilian tossed into conflict. What was he thinking, doing this?
Maddox clenches his hand around his fly-swatting stick to keep it from trembling and takes a deep breath. Then he looks at Brock to steady himself. It's okay, because he has Brock at his back, and Brock is a soldier, and a damn good one in all the ways Maddox cares about, which don't include always obeying orders!
Putting on a determined face, he murders a few more flies, just to prove that he's totally a stone-cold killer. Totally.
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Post by Breakaway on Oct 29, 2012 17:29:53 GMT -5
"If I'd been planning this shindig, we would have flown in supersonic, laid down some shock and awe, and been home in time for supper. But the brass wants this kept low-key. We haven't technically informed this particular country that we'd be here."
Breakaway is confident that some day, under pressure, Mayday will have a heroic apotheosis and find his courage, and go on to save the day. All the best heroes start out as flawed characters, right? He just hopes he doesn't have to be the one who tragically dies in Mayday's arms in order to give him that final push to greatness. Emirate Xaaron or Kup could, maybe. They're older mentor figures, right? They've led full lives.
Brock reflects on all this as he swats another mosquito. A flock of colorful tropical birds, startled by the sudden appearance of the soldiers, flits up to a higher branch.
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Post by Mayday/Maddox Wayne on Nov 4, 2012 17:15:15 GMT -5
Maddox wrinkles his nose. Ugh, politics. "They should just invent some form of teleportation already. Low-key and rapid."
He startles at the moving birds, one of his eyes twitching, and glances around nervously, making sure there's nothing more dangerous than small avian organics around. There is a lot of noise and movement in a rainforest. Makes it hard to tell. Makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
Ugh, hair. Humans are so gross.
Maddox gives a nervous shudder, and adds. "Of course, teleporters have the potential to result in some particularly unique and horrifying accidents..."
Mayday would honestly prefer to remain a peaceful engineer and not have anyone die in order to spur him to heroics.
...Okay, maybe he wants to be a hero a little, otherwise he wouldn't be here at all. But he'd still prefer no-one die for it.
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Post by Breakaway on Nov 8, 2012 19:36:27 GMT -5
Mayday will eat his tropes and like them, or there shall be no dessert.
"I can barely even imagine what warfare would be like with easy access to teleportation. Troop movement would just be . . . ridiculous." Breakaway is fine with there just being one Skywarp per reality.
"It'd be nice if we could teleport across this," he sighs, as the squad breaks out from the trees. The 'this' he is referring to is a steep ravine with a river at the bottom. The gnarled roots of the trees go right up to the edge and dangle over in some places, along with vines. It's all very atmospheric. It also appears to extend as far as the eye can see in both directions.
"Time to break out the climbing gear, unless anyone sees a way to bridge this. Before anyone asks, we are not blasting down a tree to bridge the ditch, so you can stop reaching for your detwire, Meadows. This is supposed to be a stealth op."
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Post by Mayday/Maddox Wayne on Nov 11, 2012 10:11:19 GMT -5
"Um," Maddox says, eyeing the gap of the ravine. He gulps, imagining slipping over the edge, tumbling end over end down those steep slopes, colliding with obstacles, unable to stop until he collapses into a twisted and broken heap in the river at the bottom. If the fall doesn't kill him, he'll drown, unable to move as the water washes over him and fills his lungs...
"I- nh. Um. I think I can make that jump." He shivers slightly. "If... if I leave my stuff and we tie a cable around me, then I could tie it to something on the other side..."
Or. Or maybe he could try and build a small hovering spacecraft out of trees and vines. Yes. That is totally possible and much more practical! ...Why is life so hard.
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Post by Breakaway on Nov 16, 2012 16:26:20 GMT -5
Brock looks at Maddox briefly, raising an eyebrow. "Alright, let's do it," he says, shucking his pack to pull out a spool of cable. "Meadows, Shepard, keep your eyes peeled."
"You sure you can make that jump, Mad?" he asks quietly.
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Post by Mayday/Maddox Wayne on Nov 18, 2012 21:26:16 GMT -5
"I, um-" Maddox swallows heavily again, implants in his head ticking away calculations in a way that's entirely familiar for Mayday but rather odd for a human brain. "I'm... pretty sure. Like. Over 90% sure. Small chance of failure sure. Not likely to die horribly at all." He sounds a bit squeaky.
But he takes slow, steady breaths and sends a signal to his hypothalamus to lock down on the physiological effects of panicking for the moment, and begins to strip off his gear, shedding weight down to his fatigues. When he's done he gives Brock something between worried puppy eyes and a determined smile and holds out a hand for the cable.
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Post by Breakaway on Nov 21, 2012 10:12:20 GMT -5
Breakaway gives Mayday a reassuring smile as he hands him the cable. "Anything we can do to improve those odds?" he asks, half to himself, half to Maddox. Maybe if they threw him across and he jumped from their hands to give him some extra momentum? "Put the detcord away, Chrissakes, Meadows, not every problem has an explosives solution, just watch the jungle."
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Post by Crankcase on Nov 21, 2012 11:04:04 GMT -5
When the humans stop and begin discussing how to cross the ravine, Crankcase stops as well. He could easily shove his target into the ravine for a quick but inelegant means of disposal. A fall might not necessarily kill the thing, however; humans can be obnoxiously resilient. Of course, he could just as easily knock his target into the ravine and jump after. He is considerably more deadly than a fall.
He could also just shoot them. It would be the easiest option with the least amount of personal involvement on his part. He can't be certain, after all, that these humans don't have the same sorts of Transformer-specific weapons he's accustomed to humans carrying even though he doesn't think he saw them the few times he's glimpsed the unit through gaps in the brush. The less time he needs to be in close, the better, period. He creeps forward cautiously, slipping one gun free of its mountings once he reaches enough of a break to draw sight on the humans. Of course, if one of them happens to look in this direction, it’s possible they will spot four narrow, red eyes peering at them from the murk of the jungle.
It will be harder to spot him if they’re running for their lives.
He opens fire, focusing on the soldier named Brock Wayne.
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Post by Mayday/Maddox Wayne on Nov 25, 2012 20:23:15 GMT -5
Maddox is calmly tying the cable around his waist when he hears weapons-fire. It only takes a split second for him to switch from his forced calm into adrenaline-overdrive. It feels like time is slowing around him as he tries to take stock of what's happening, but there's still no time to think, only react.
Which is a good thing, because if he had time to think, he would probably have frozen up rather than lunged towards Brock in an attempt to knock him to the ground.
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Post by Breakaway on Dec 1, 2012 17:57:54 GMT -5
Brock is glad that Maddox's training has kicked in. If it hadn't, he'd have been instantly killed instead of the tree behind him having a plasma-based hole in it. He rolls away to the side and clicks the safety off on his weapon. "Spread out and stay mobile! Does anyone have eyes on the hostile?!" he shouts, crawling for the cover of a thicket of scrubby bushes before he raises his head to see what's shooting at him.
He strongly suspects it's Decepticons, unless humans have upgraded their weapons technology very suddenly.
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