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Post by Rodimus Prime on Jul 4, 2011 17:36:48 GMT -5
"Yeah, I guess," Rodimus admits, rubbing the back of his head, a bit embarrassed. His optics go wide at Swerve's mishap, though he automatically starts to cheer when it looks like the little red racer will recover.
Fastlane, meanwhile, tries to take advantage of the moment to push ahead, squeezing between another racer he's lapped - at least until that one attempts to smash into his side!
OOC: May I propose we timeskip to the end of the race on my next post? We can determine winner by die roll: 1 - Swerve, 2 - Wildrider, 3 - Fastlane, 4 - Somebody else. And then let the controllers/players of the relevant characters even decide whether their guys lasted that long.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Jul 8, 2011 20:19:58 GMT -5
OOC: Because Swerve's player asked for this...
Wildrider is missing a lot of pieces by now. Some of them are important pieces. He screams, every now and then, when he isn't shouting. They're mostly undercarriage pieces he's missing; Wildrider is low slung, and he tends to land poorly after ramps, scraping his bottom. He takes curbs and assorted obstacles haphazardly, too.
Wildrider seems to have so little concern for his own health; it's a wonder that he's survived at all.
A scattershot gun pops out of his hood and angles around crazily, tracking Swerve in his jump. Wildrider fills the air with lasers, laughing all the time.
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Post by Swerve on Jul 11, 2011 20:18:54 GMT -5
OOC: Think I'm up here again since most everybody is either skippable or just not posting.
"Fastlane looking to cut through on the inside – oh! But not if Burnout has anything to say about it!"
Swerve hasn't even completely touched back down when Wildrider fires. The scattershot blasts hit him hard down one side while he's already unbalanced, ripping into his panels, tearing off his pipes, and knocking him back into the retaining wall in a half-transformed, tangled heap. He tries to get moving again almost immediately, but one of those shots has completely destroyed his knee; his leg falls off at the joint when he heaves himself upright, and grabbing the cage is the only reason he doesn't topple over again right away.
"Looks like a problem for Swerve!" crows the announcer. The spectators nearest Swerve jeer and laugh. He wonders, briefly, while a warning beeps at him from the corner of his vision, what it's like to be a Junkion who can just slap dismembered limbs back on and get back to business.
Then he doesn't wonder anything at all as his arm gives way and the track rushes up to punch him in the face.
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Post by Rodimus Prime on Jul 13, 2011 18:43:43 GMT -5
"Aw! No!" Rodimus shouts as Swerve is taken out of the race. He leans forward, over the rail, and looks to see where the red and white racer is, trying to make sure he's all right. Even knowing that damage in the simulation room isn't real, it's still instinctive for him to check.
Later still...
He's not the last one operational, but he's the closest. He's also the closest to the finish line, but he hasn't... crossed... yet.
Fastlane pulls himself painfully forward, grunting. By this point, he's so damaged that he can't transform again, can't even stand, and there's another racer who can still roll (barely) coming up from behind.
But he only has to move one... two... three...
Almost there. Almost overtaken. Almost...
There!
Fastlane manages to pull himself across just before he collapses, moments before the racer behind catches up.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Jul 13, 2011 20:52:35 GMT -5
The simulation room might just be extrapolating here, but a Drag Strip and Dead End come by to pick up Wildrider's pieces. Hand on her hip, radiating irritation, Drag Strip snarls, "We shoulda just sold his pieces last time. Skidfrak keeps getting himself wasted. I could outrace him blind."
"We'd just be conned on the sale," Dead End notes glumly.
Meanwhile, Emirate Xaaron is stony when Swerve wrecks out, showing no emotion. This isn't real, but Swerve tends to take things the wrong way. Instead, he turns and comments loudly to Rodimus, "Well, this was a waste. We take it out of his metal?"
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Post by Sentinel Prime on Jul 17, 2011 20:51:56 GMT -5
Sentinel Prime doesn't have any empathy when Swerve wrecks out. It would be a great act, if it was an act, but it's not an act.
He does, however, holler and cheer raucously when Fastlane wins. Sentinel Prime hoots, "Woo-woo, that's the way you do it!"
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Post by Breakaway on Jul 20, 2011 18:50:51 GMT -5
Breakaway has been watching the race quietly for the most part, cheering when Swerve pulls off something cool, wincing when he takes a bad hit. It's almost painful to watch when the racer wrecks out.
"If they're just gonna beat on each other, do they really need a race track for it?" he inquires aloud of no-one in particular.
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on Jul 23, 2011 16:49:23 GMT -5
"Well, slag." Skyfire frowns; he thought Swerve would win this one. Besides, it's the thing to cheer for the guy you know.
"It's not pure pit-fighting," he points out to Breakaway. "The race is an important element."
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Post by Swerve on Jul 25, 2011 20:53:17 GMT -5
Ordinarily, the simulation would end once Swerve is out, or even when the race finishes, but it keeps running. Those paying attention will notice that Swerve has, in fact, vanished, and while Wildrider's friends have spirited him away, there are more racers who haven't yet made it out.
And now that the race is over, the after-party begins; salvagers and scrounges and collectors find their ways onto the track so they can get their pieces of the action – literally. They maul and pick over the beaten, the broken, taking away parts or whole limbs, if they get to a body early enough. There isn't much left of Whiteline by now but his upper torso, one mangled arm even the most desperate of the scrounges gave up on, and his head.
While all this carries on, Swerve makes his way toward Xaaron and the others from some dark nook where the supports are gathered too closely for much light to eke past. He looks… resigned and weary more than anything else, but angry as well. Always angry. And wary. He eyes them uneasily, feeling exposed and rubbing the back of his neck with a wince. He doesn't say anything yet.
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Post by Rodimus Prime on Jul 26, 2011 7:56:31 GMT -5
Rodimus seems distracted, largely because he is. He keeps looking back at the race field, and occasionally he starts to lift a foot before replanting it on the ground, battling the urge to go out on the track and try to put the fallen back together. His optics flicker with surprise at Xaaron's comment. "What? No!" Then he shakes his head faintly and smirks. "All right, all right, I know, playing along. But I'm not going to with that!" Although he realizes on a conscious level that this is just a simulation, part of him (possibly the part that lead his Optimus to commit suicide over a video game) wants to go out and put a stop to all this, while yet another part regrets not having been part of it.
He snaps back to the here and now when Swerve returns, however, and the smirk returns. "Well, I can see why you wouldn't want to do that with the youngsters. But is that the only kind of racing you do? Or is it just so... automatic that you'd rather be on the safe side?"
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Jul 27, 2011 21:27:26 GMT -5
"You're still walking," Emirate Xaaron observes, looking Swerve over. His gaze is cold, mechanical.
Walking's not enough for Swerve, is it?
Emirate Xaaron does lighten for a moment, laughing, and he looks sidelong at Rodimus Prime, commenting innocently, "Who said I'm playing along?"
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Post by Swerve on Aug 4, 2011 8:40:05 GMT -5
OOC: Just skipping everybody since I think it's been two days for each poster ahead of me.
Emirate Xaaron's stare earns him a heated glower from Swerve, who hooks one thumb over his shoulder, pointing down the line toward the bookmakers.
"Then I still came out ahead of the odds," he growls, and indeed, there are actually some winnings to be collected by those who bet on him. No, he didn't win, but he didn't die, either, and that – in truth – is enough for the racer. Escaping death on the track is still a form of winning down here. Of course, they'd have taken more at the bookmaker's if he'd managed to get across the finish line instead of wrecking out early. To Rodimus, Swerve looks both proud and chagrined. "It – it isn't just my racing," he says awkwardly. Not because he's ashamed; because it's hard to explain any of this. Laying out the circumstances of his life like this is little different for Swerve than cracking open his bonnet and asking another mechanic for an opinion.
Being that the thrice-slagged jet and one of those kids are here, it makes things doubly delicate.
"This ain't just a hobby," Swerve goes on, stiff, forcing out the words with just as much effort as it took to put everything out there for Kup back in the swamp. "Or – it wasn't. It's… I lived here," Swerve mutters and gestures widely with one arm. Those who look beyond the track's lights will see denizens of the underground chatting, haggling, fighting. That dark corner where he'd appeared from currently hosts a vicious mugging. The spectators are all slowly disappearing back into the warren of roads and bridges that makes up Velocitron while the crew that set up the track is breaking it down in record time. There's a palpable sense of urgency about them; they don't want to be caught. Even the announcer keeps checking the canyon walls and the nearby tunnels while he directs the heavies in their labour. What's left of the dead or mostly dead is ignored until the parts need to be kicked out of the way; Whiteline ends up wedged in a drain.
Swerve watches all this with anger, mostly, and a faint hint of fondness – homesickness – that the perceptive in his audience might catch.
"This was my home," he says quietly, voice like loose gravel. "It was my life." In fact, hidden deep within this simulation somewhere is the shop he called his own. He spared no detail when he programmed this substitute Velocitron. "It wasn't always like this. I… used to race topside. Legal." These words come even more grudgingly than the rest. "But that," he adds, "was… a really slagging long time ago. A whole different life." A whole different me.
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Post by Rodimus Prime on Aug 4, 2011 13:30:44 GMT -5
Rodimus looks around and nods, murmuring, "At least in the Cybertron underground, we had the other Autobots." He looks back at Swerve, considering. On the one hand, it's tempting to reassure Swerve that he isn't alone anymore, but on the other hand, he... misses this?
"This... this is what you want?"
Maybe he should instead be assuring Swerve that he'll try to get the racer back to it?
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Post by Sentinel Prime on Aug 4, 2011 19:58:05 GMT -5
OOC: Ack, sorry about that! I'll just assume a new place in rotation here?- - - Sentinel Prime finds the whole situation somewhat incomprehensible. If Sentinel Prime had been in Swerve's place, of being banned from racing for bad behaviour? Sentinel Prime would find a patsy to throw under the bus and just sneak back into legal racing. Being bad doesn't matter as long as it is legal. Why would anyone ever become an outlaw, when there are other options? Sentinel Prime wants to think that there is something wrong with Swerve, some moral infirmity, some weakness of character that has led him to this depravity. Why do these Autobots even keep Swerve around now? Why isn't he brigged? Look at poor Whiteline in the drain! All of these unkind thoughts flash through his head. Then Sentinel Prime remembers that he wants something out of Swerve, so he just pokes mildly instead, "Yeah, I see you're familiar with failure. Glad you joined a winning team instead."
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Post by Breakaway on Aug 5, 2011 17:56:58 GMT -5
Breakaway is familiar enough with the macho posturing that is part and parcel of being a badaft manbot to understand how much Swerve is exposing himself here, and he appreciates the gesture. But being nostalgic for this? It still weirds him out. He shifts his feet uncomfortably.
He has to restrain himself from shoving Sentinel Prime.
OOC: Going skippable again.
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