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Post by Hook on Jan 9, 2008 20:31:53 GMT -5
The first thing Hook does once he's certain he's alone in the abandoned subway station is deface the map that Thrust left untouched. Some bits of its are still discernible, and he leaves which bits rather randomly chosen.
The second thing he does is a controlled collapse of the street entrance to the subway station. Shortly, it's closed off from direct surface access, and Hook turns his attention to the preparation he wants to make to the subway stop.
While he's working, the flag is tossed into a maintenance locker with a crude explosive rigged to send shrapnel exploding outward if the door is mishandled.
Now the Constructicon lays out his toolkit and really gets to work. With good foresight, he is not using up any of the actual supplies that he's pulling out, but rather holographic equivalents of the same. It can't be said that he works terribly quickly with no one to hurry him but himself, but that's why he sent Hellbender off to cause trouble. So long as attention was over there for a while...
---
OOC: This is likely a stand-alone post. A Hook follow-up will come sometime tomorrow evening.
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Post by Hook on Jan 11, 2008 15:26:16 GMT -5
The subway station looks much the same as it did when Hook started. Perhaps there are a few more braces in place than there were before, but it would take a keen optic and a close familiarity with such places to notice.
Hook has a welding visor on, the optic-panel a lurid, shifting yellow. He picks his way carefully around the station now, minding the infrared and ultraviolet trip-wires that his welding visor lets him see. Triggering any of the explosives now would be unpleasant.
Controlled collapses have left only one exit - the tunnel going towards where Thrust reported chandeliers.
The flag has been retrieved from its maintenance room, that door welded shut and sealed with explosives, and is now mounted in the middle of the ceiling over the maglev tracks. The flag portion itself hangs down limply, while the pole has been cemented into the ceiling as best as Hook has been able to do so.
Hook has been a busy, busy Constructicon, yes.
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Counterpunch
Minor
The Overlord, His Peerless Highness, Arch Duke Counterpunch. The Salient Vanquisher of His Own Mind
What're you looking at?
Posts: 419
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Post by Counterpunch on Jan 16, 2008 18:47:33 GMT -5
Counterpunch, in alternate mode, makes his way through imaginary tunnels under an imaginary city. Tied around a door handle is a flag. It's a very good fake, though not perfect. He didn't make it during the prep period, but it's pretty much all he's been doing since the prep period was over.
And he's been given specific co-ordinates, even!
Naturally, he expects a trap. He's sure it won't be this easy. But it's a step forward, and better than giving Hook time to dig in while everyone is distracted by his pet worm.
OOC: Should hopefully be arriving in the room with the chandeliers shortly, as travel gets dull.
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Post by Hook on Jan 17, 2008 12:38:24 GMT -5
The chandelier glass lies all over the floor of the upper-station, and Hook lets it lie there. It'll serve as an adequate warning of anyone too stupid not to fly.
All of the exits to this station remain open. The map of the subway tunnels has already been destroyed by Thrust. Hook has ripped open part of a wall and is doing a hasty rewiring job. His toolkit is open behind him, but only the top rack is deployed.
Curiously enough, his welding mask is in the top rack.
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Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
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Post by Hellbender on Jan 17, 2008 13:05:28 GMT -5
Meanwhile, Hellbender meandered through the subway tunnels on his way back to Hook. Once away from where Cannonball and Fleetwind were yelling and blowing up things, it was very, very quiet. There was no traffic in the dead city to rumble through the streets above, no subway trains moving to shake the tracks (or run into Hellbender), not even waste water sluicing through the storm drains.
There was only the sound of Hellbender's metal skin hissing against the metal maglev rails of the subway system, coupled with the occasional groan or thin shriek as metal slid sideways across metal at turns in the track or ripples of the mining worm's coils. His cutters were spun down and still, his grinders, unmoving, sparing him further pain from the damaged ones. Yellow warnings and one red flashed in his diagnostics queue; the power loss was not yet critical, but Hook had been right to recall him.
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Counterpunch
Minor
The Overlord, His Peerless Highness, Arch Duke Counterpunch. The Salient Vanquisher of His Own Mind
What're you looking at?
Posts: 419
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Post by Counterpunch on Jan 17, 2008 19:05:52 GMT -5
It takes a bit of time, even with the coordinates. After all, the tunnels aren't always straight. Still, Counterpunch is fairly good at getting into and out of strange places, and he eventually makes his way to the room with the broken chandelier. And ahead of Hellbender, it would seem, although given what Cannonball has told him over the radio, it wouldn't surprise Counterpunch if he makes his way there soon.
Counterpunch needs to be fast about this, without making it obvious that he's in a hurry.
The spy enters through one of the train exits. Probably not the one Hellbender is approaching through, given that Counterpunch had gotten turned around. He transforms, leaps up to the edge of the platform. His gaze sweeps the broken glass, but he does not yet move to go around it - or above it. Instead, he just shouts, "Lord Hook. Here," as he works to untie his flag from his side-view window.
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Barricade
Minor
Knight of the Spastic Sword
Trust Me
Posts: 372
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Post by Barricade on Jan 18, 2008 13:11:06 GMT -5
Receiving a go ahead from Fleetwind with some helpful notes, Barricade manages to worm his way into the sewers and eventually the subway system that hellbender now motivates through. The signs are subtle, a scrape along a wall here, a trail of musty water there, but, although Barricade is not precisely a tracker, with a direction to head and few, if any, places for such a large mechanism to turn off into, tracking Hellbender is not as daunting a task as it might seem on first thought. Fighting him in his own domain, now that is not exactly something that barricade is particularly looking forward to, especially not alone. He is careful to maintain as significant a distance as he dares from that distant scrape and low rumble of the mining worm as he traverses the city's tunnels. Corners and intersections are very carefully approached, always wary for ambush, always alert for those subtle signs. The tunnels here bend and warp what sound there is, casting it in scattered directions, often masking it utterly. He cannot depend on the occasional distant sounds of metal scraping over stone and metal, must instead rely on those subtle visual cues. He has no idea how deep he has penetrated, yet, into Hellbender's territory, for surely into that team's territory they must have crossed, as he approaches another subway station. Dark and deserted, like all the others he's already crept silently through, with odd sounds echoing eerily in the quiet gloom. A maintenance tunnel of some sort branches off to one side; his feet slide so quietly against the ground below him as he creeps to the opening, peers cautiously around the corner down its length as far as his faintly glowing red optics can penetrate. The shaft yawns into the distant darkness of a curve, fading from sight, and the dust and scree littering the tunnel there at the entrance to the shaft has been undisturbed. No Hellbender down that tunnel, and this low platform here is far too confining for the worm to have managed to tuck himself up onto it without leaving considerable damage in his wake. Press on, then. Another suspicious look down the shaft as he creeps past it, and then he continues down the line after Hellbender.
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Post by Hook on Jan 18, 2008 18:09:47 GMT -5
Hook examines the rewiring job thoughtfully. All of this station's accessible power should now be running into the maglev track. Making the last little connection should activate the electromagnetic levitation in overdrive and possibly short out any ungrounded vehicle on the track.
Of course, it would burn out after a five-second burst and possibly take the entire area down with it. And it has to be connected by hand.
Well, it's an option to keep in mind.
Counterpunch's call alerts him to what that car-engine noise that had been intruding on his work is. Hmm, he would have preferred Hellbender to arrive first...
Oh, well, as long as this doesn't get him killed out...
"Counterpunch. Drop your guns on the floor." Hook leans out just enough that the warrior should know where he is, and perhaps see that he's holding something.
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Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
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Post by Hellbender on Jan 18, 2008 19:09:18 GMT -5
It's the deep silence that kept Hellbender's nerves on edge, the lack of city noises, lack of proper seismic vibrations thrumming through the rock--so anything that broke that silence stood out like the highest note of a flute played in a dark, silent cave. The soft scrape of Barricade's stalking feet, the subtle vibrations of one metal foot after another setting down, supporting over a ton of metal--these spoke to Hellbender. He was being followed.
His stalker was wary; he stopped short and scuffled around at every branch and intersection in the tunnels. Hellbender would not catch this one unawares by lurking in a branch line, and Barricade was too cautious to follow closely. How to lure the infiltrator in reach?
If Hellbender were still Midnight, being followed by someone through the canyons, a side-slip and wing-over would at least get his guns pointed in the right direction. This great, awkward ground-bound body could do no such maneuvers, basic as they were. The memory of a face frowned to itself. Midnight would never have believed he could possibly be less maneuverable, slower and clunkier than he was, but so help him, if he ever got his proper body back, Hellbender was never going to complain again about flying like a winged tank!
As he slithered past yet another station it hit him--that branch line just ahead has a maintenance cross-cut that opens back behind him! Yes...
It was a fairly short cross-cut as subway tunnels went, long enough for moving cars from one branch line to another. Short enough that as Hellbender waited for Barricade to move past, his tail tip softly scraped the rail of the branch line behind him, sending faint vibrations ringing down the branch line in front of Barricade.
Barricade began to move, creeping softly down the main track--
Hellbender lunged forward, bringing his bulk down from its cobra-like rear around the corner, pushing off hard with his tail against the tunnel walls. Fast he was not, but with surprise--
The mining worm didn't lunge out of the shaft and turn towards Barricade; instead, he slammed through the corner of the intersection, aiming straight at the infiltrator just beyond the intersection. Ceramacrete shattered and fell forward with Hellbender's mass behind it; sections of the adjacent ceiling, derived of their immediate support, came tumbling down as well in a thunderous avalanche of ceramacrete and earthen fill.
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Counterpunch
Minor
The Overlord, His Peerless Highness, Arch Duke Counterpunch. The Salient Vanquisher of His Own Mind
What're you looking at?
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Post by Counterpunch on Jan 18, 2008 19:45:18 GMT -5
Counterpunch doesn't even hesitate. Unarmed is not good, at least not as far as his plans are concerned, but nor is it unexpected. Counterpunch's officially reported weapon clatters to the ground.
Of course, he still has Punch's weapon, but that, naturally, is not officially reported. It's not likely to get pulled out, unless Counterpunch is sure he can't be spotted, but the option exists.
"All right. Done," Counterpunch replies gruffly, crossing his arms, his flag now held in his right hand. "Now what?"
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Post by Hook on Jan 20, 2008 13:28:44 GMT -5
Hook steps out from behind the (very) partial cover the ripped up wall provides, and yes, he does have his pistol in his hand.
"Step three paces over there." He gestures with his free hand, and if Counterpunch complies, approaches to the point where he can set one of his feet down on the warrior's gun. "Now let's see if you're for real or not."
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Hellbender
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Post by Hellbender on Jan 20, 2008 14:33:11 GMT -5
Hellbender lazily shook the rubble off his back and listened. Nothing stirred under the pile of rubble, other than the settling of gravel and earth as it trickled past fallen slabs. No machinery whirred and whined. No soft, sliding footsteps scraped along the track, either; if Barricade had escaped, he was utterly still.
Hellbender waited in the shifting silence, waited for something to disturb the stillness. The stillness only grew and stretched taut like a razor's edge...
Diagnostics insistently reminded Hellbender of his damage and creeping future disability. He couldn't wait any longer, and the damage to his grinders contraindicated drilling into the rubble pile and making absolutlely sure of Barricade. Reluctantly, he uncoiled and slithered away.
--- Barricade's silence and MIA-status by permission of player
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Counterpunch
Minor
The Overlord, His Peerless Highness, Arch Duke Counterpunch. The Salient Vanquisher of His Own Mind
What're you looking at?
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Post by Counterpunch on Jan 20, 2008 15:10:50 GMT -5
Counterpunch does as Hook orders, but there is an air of impatience, of annoyance, as he takes those three steps.
Of course, he's always got an air of annoyance, so nothing new there.
He holds up the flag in his right hand, and states the obvious. "The flag."
Then he holds the small, metal sphere in his other hand, and announces, "Screwdriver's 'toy.'"
C'mon, Hook, he thinks. Let that engineering interest override common sense...
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Post by Hook on Jan 21, 2008 21:24:25 GMT -5
The sounds of metal sliding over metal can be heard coming down one of the tunnels, a soft rasp that has gradually grown more noticeable.
Hellbender.
Hook smirks and steps towards Counterpunch, pistol vanishing into subspace. He accepts both flag and marble from the warrior. The flag is given a cursory examination in the poor lighting of the subway station - it looks correct enough. He would have appreciated perhaps some shining light from below to surround him as he took it, just to show that this was the correct flag, but he didn't expect such a thing at the best of times.
Once he takes care of whatever problem Hellbender has, he can examine it at his leisure. For now, he shifts his attention to the marble.
It is a smooth silvery material that doesn't feel at all odd to the touch. It doesn't even seem to hum with the internal energy that must surely power such an odd little device. He rolls it between his fingers carefully, listening as well as he's able in these irritating field conditions.
He's going to need his tools to take this apart and spread it all over his workbenches later on, oh yes.
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Hellbender
Major
Mecha-Shai-Hulud
"Seriously."
Posts: 892
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Post by Hellbender on Jan 21, 2008 22:01:45 GMT -5
Hellbender, for his part, slowed down when he heard voices ahead. What kind of situation was he rolling into? When he heard Counterpunch's surly voice saying "the flag", Hellbender lunged ahead--he still had three functional cutters to tear the dark blue warrior to shreds, hopefully before he could do anything to Hook.
Metal scraped on metal as the worm slithered down the track and up into the lower sub-station. Hellbender finally spun his cutters up as he surged into the airy hall of the upper station--the whir and whine of them adding to the noise of his bulk rasping and scraping across metal and ceramacrete--
--And stopped short of smashing his head down towards Counterpunch. He hadn't been ordered to kill Counterpunch, and the warrior was not attacking--in fact, he appeared unarmed. Someone's gun--Counterpunch's?--rested under Hook's foot, and Hook had a flag in his hand. Whose flag, Hellbender couldn't tell, blind worm that he was. Perhaps that was not a threatening demand he'd heard.
"Orders, sir?" Hellbender rumbled, keeping the enemy scum at the focus of his many sensors.
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