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Post by Victoria Raines on Oct 15, 2008 10:56:49 GMT -5
After the Merry-Go-Round-To-Hell. Essentially a private thread.
It had taken some time after returning to his temporary workshop for Shockwave to gather up the needed materials for repairing Scourge. All things considered, the tanker was very lucky to have still been functional after such a suicidal move as was made against the Prime. Scourge's torso was a mess, shredded almost to the point of separation, several important lines and circuits damaged. Shockwave makes a soft clicking sound as he looks down at his patient. He wants this one on his side when things inevitably come to a head with Starscream. But Scourge's pride and emotions are strong, volatile. Things must be handle carefully. Very, very carefully.
"Under most circumstances, I would temporarily offline someone in your condition. This will require quite a bit of delicate work, often slow, and most can not be trusted to keep themselves immobile even under restraint. However, I will allow you to choose, with this caveat: the moment you endanger my work with some stray movement, I will render you unconscious. You also have the option of retaining some feeling during the procedure, or being blissfully pain free."
Shockwave taps a scanner which was laying on the table, "I need to hook this into your systems. I prefer to run diagnostics while doing such procedures, so as to be immediately aware of any problems."
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Post by Sable Conolly on Oct 16, 2008 7:11:56 GMT -5
Scourge is marginally less angry at life and the universe around him when he is not around Rodimus Prime. This does not actually put him in a good temper, however, especially not when his transform linkages are all shredded. Being carried around as if he was Shockwave's newly constructed protoform also does little for Scourge's humour.
Perhaps it is a good thing that anger runs so clearly through Scourge; if there was the slightest bit of room for anything else inside of Scourge, he might suffer the delusion that Shockwave actually cares about Scourge's life.
Sulking, he mulls over his options, "I would like to be awake." To ensure that Shockwave does not get up to too many shenanigans with his unconscious body. "You can leave my pain sensors off. Sir." So he doesn't wriggle too much and thereby end up unconscious due to Act of Shockwave.
Probably the weirdest thing about Scourge is that he registers as a part human to certain energy scans, but there's not a single living organic component inside of him.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Oct 16, 2008 9:45:11 GMT -5
"As you like, then," Shockwave answers, setting to work. First the scanner, and what shows there does give the Decepticon commander pause. Fascinating.
Shockwave needs a corpse from Scourge's timeline to disassemble and reassemble, so that he can compare the tanker to a baseline. This would make a very happy Shockwave, it would. In the absence of that, Scourge gets compared to his twin in shining armour, Shockwave's Ultra Magnus.
The gunformer's hand pauses in the midst of picking useless shreds of circuitry out of Scourge's abdomen. A pity the Security Commander was not here. Magnus is such a useful tool, and Shockwave is arrogant enough to believe that no matter what may occur, Magnus will always be Shockwave's.
But then Shockwave's arrogance does not allow him to consider what will happen later in his timeline as a possibility. Disappointment is a rare emotion for the gun-former to feel, but he will feel it soon enough.
He returns to his work. "What did you learn from your spar with the Prime?"
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Post by Sable Conolly on Oct 16, 2008 11:32:04 GMT -5
"He took my Sword of Fury," Scourge immediately complains. That seems to be a rather sore sport with Scourge, perhaps sorer than he'd feel if his sensors were actually activated. A little more intelligently, he adds, "He didn't seem worried about my shoulder rockets. He seems to prefer close combat. He closes distance. I think... he may try to use that anger distortion field around him as an asset in melee combat."
He snarls, anger flaring up, "He thinks he owns everyone. He thinks he owns me."
Scourge does remain still, however.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Oct 19, 2008 22:01:14 GMT -5
"The Prime is under the illusion that even ones such as we fall under his purview. He does not consider that our power and strength may give him more than momentary pause," Shockwave replies as he fishes a now-useless strand of coolant hose from the tanker wound. Hidden in that comment is the acknowledgment that Shockwave, at least, considers Scourge a power, perhaps even an equal power.
"You seemed to be on more or less equal footing. However, he does still have that debilitating attack which he used on the Dinobots and others. Circumventing that in real combat could be difficult." Shockwave picks out the last bits of ruined machinery, then begins to file off and clean up the wound, so as to make the repairs easier. "I would put forth that he prefers melee because it is more personal. He claimed once that he makes us into what 'we are meant to be'." A pause. "I disagree."
Shockwave works for a short while, then adds, "I can understand being attached to one's weapon. After all, for many of us they are part of ourselves in truth. However, going to such efforts to retrieve it is a bit much, do you not think?"
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Post by Sable Conolly on Oct 21, 2008 7:35:11 GMT -5
Scourge was meant to be an Autobot. Forget that.
He points out coolly, "I found occupying his attention and putting him within point blank range of my shoulder missiles to be acceptable."
Rodimus Prime just called time before Scourge could get any of them off.
He remains still during the repairs, though he aches to be up and away already.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Oct 22, 2008 10:20:49 GMT -5
"And yet, when you had him in sights, before he called time, you chose a physical attack over your shoulder missiles," Shockwave muses, not at all chiding the tanker, "The Prime's influence seems to force us back to our basest warrior instincts, pricking the desire to rip and tear, to stain our armour with the fluids of our foes." He pauses both in work and words, head tilted, staring not at Scourge but at opposite wall. "Barbaric."
The gunformer shakes his head sharply, as if to clear it. He does not like what Rodimus Prime brings forth in himself. No, he does not.
"You have a human bio-signature. I wonder if it is possibly to amplify it so that it supercedes your Decepticon signature or if you would still register as yourself?"
Abrupt and idle change of subject? Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
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Post by Sable Conolly on Oct 23, 2008 6:58:04 GMT -5
Scourge pouts and protests, "I was going to launch my missiles, sir! He just called time before I could and before I could hammer him with my trailer."
Scourge thinks for a moment and then replies, quite casually, "I would expect that you could amplify it a thousandfold... but why would you need to?" He has to resist the urge to tilt his head to the side in query.
In another timeline, it took him no trouble at all to pass himself off as more human than human, to drown out the voice of a human child and take control of Fortress Maximus. It took an awful lot of human children working together to wrest control back from Scourge.
This Scourge has never lived through that peculiar experience.
"Might be more useful to amplify my aural resemblance to Optimus Prime."
That was his first thought then, too.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Oct 23, 2008 10:51:30 GMT -5
Shockwave tilts his optic toward Scourge's at the tanker's protests, "I was not faulting you, Scourge, merely making an observation. In truth, I've found little fault with you overall."
A few more minutes of work and that's one transform mechanism rebuilt. Not so exacting as Hook, is Shockwave, but the work is still quality, given the materials available.
"While being able to impersonate Prime on scanners could come in handy, the possibilities inherent in your partial humanity are more interesting to me at the moment. Do you not think that not registering as a Transformer to another would be quite useful?"
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Post by Sable Conolly on Oct 23, 2008 11:12:24 GMT -5
Scourge looks disarmed and put off balance by Shockwave's comment. It is as if Scourge expects to be on the defensive, to need to justify himself; to prove himself.
Presumably, back home, there was some sort of auto-medic, insofar as there is never a real Predacon scientist shown. Sometimes Mega-Octane and Scourge are shown to mess around with weird technology, and Gas Skunk did a little, but that's about it. This whole 'repair by hand' deal is a little odd to Scourge.
Scourge replies, after a little thought, "Only if there were appropriate sensors to detect that one is indeed a Transformer, and given the mish-mash of realities represented here, finding standard, reliable sensors that does that trick would be a nightmare. Alternatively, if we wanted to spoof there being a bunch of humans around for some reason and knew that the Autobots were scanning for humans."
He sounds rather dubious.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Oct 23, 2008 11:55:17 GMT -5
In Shockwave's time they often used cryostasis chambers for most repairs, but the Decepticon scientist has always preferred a more...hand on approach. More personal. More opportunities.
"Thrust's scanners could distinguish between factions with great reliability. It would be a fairly simple thing to reverse engineer those scanners and install them in others. It should also be possible to modify them to pick up the Nebulans, come to think of it. But I am not thinking merely of your unique signature's applications to our current situation."
No, because Shockwave could make use of such a trick when he returns to his time. Cybertron and Earth are undeniably linked, after all. If he could just find out why.
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Post by Sable Conolly on Oct 23, 2008 14:52:11 GMT -5
There is no trick. Scourge is part Prime, part Megatron, and part human. Unless Shockwave figures out how to have a protoform scan a vehicle and a human at the same time and come out all robot in form but partially human in soul, this may be a dead end.
Scourge mutters, "If we could find Thrust." He hasn't seen the motorcycle in ages.
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Post by Victoria Raines on Oct 23, 2008 22:01:55 GMT -5
"I had the opportunity to quite thoroughly examine both him and Jetstorm. I have diagnostic records and schematics for them both." In other words, dealing with the obnoxious and conspicuously absent motorcycle is not really necessary.
Shockwave works a bit longer, then, after replacing a few more connections, he stops to check the diagnostic readouts. "Hmm, I am going to need to restore you pain and tactile sensors for a few moments, but will keep them at the lowest level possible. If there is too much pain, or you notice something amiss, do let me know."
With that, he starts flicking sensors back online.
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Post by Sable Conolly on Nov 1, 2008 11:44:33 GMT -5
A slight flicking back of his antennae is the only reaction to the sudden onrush of pain that Scourge lets slip through his self control. He can deal with pain. It is only weakness leaving the body, after all.
He comments simply, about Shockwave's records, "How handy."
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Post by Victoria Raines on Nov 2, 2008 9:39:06 GMT -5
Shockwave works in silence for the next while. He checks readings, makes minute adjustments checks them again. Scourge is a complex mechanism, not just in build but in programming and mind. Shockwave will not rush this opportunity to garner more hands on experience with the tanker's systems. However, none of what Shockwave does is superfluous, he does not test and try Scourge's systems as Shockwave might another's.
Such restraint speaks of moderate respect, for Scourge's power if little else.
Satisfied that he has done all that he can at the moment to properly balance and repair the delicate workings within Scourge's torso, Shockwave begins to once more deaden the tanker's sensor array.
"I- or Hook- should perform a follow-up check on your systems in several days. The work is not up to my normal standard, (and if it is Hook that checks out the tanker, Shockwave will never hear the end of it.) but you will be able to function with ease. Now, I've just the cosmetic damage to deal with, which will not take so long."
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