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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 25, 2012 20:33:30 GMT -5
M6W2D3, in a 'green' graveyard in Detroit, semi-private, "We really are totally good with others joining if they ask, just have a good reason for being there."
Pincher feels practically delirious with thirst, and opening his optical shutters, he supposes that severe delirium would account for why he appears to be inside a box made of some sort of cellulose structure. It smells like trees to him and not particularly interesting. Being thirsty is somewhat interesting, because it feels... wrong, somehow.
Everything feels wrong.
He was in Bhopal, doing some volunteer work to help with clean-up there. There are still chemical traces left there from the chemical disaster that happened so many years ago. Now Pincher is in a box. If he hadn't already fallen out of one reality and into another, he would think this was very odd.
Now, what Pincher thinks is odd is that his radio and chronometer and file indexing systems all are not working. Where has his HUD gone?
Maybe he will find more answers if he gets out of the box. It appears to be of inferior construction, and he pushes hard at what seems to be a seam, trying to remove the lid.
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Post by Impactor/"Imp" on Jan 26, 2012 22:14:11 GMT -5
The hole's prepared, the coffin's set to be moved shortly, and a female who goes by "Imp" but remembers being called "Impactor" far more clearly takes a break in the funeral home next to the small grave yard. The other gravedigger has just gone for a smoke, leaving her by herself when the lid starts to move. She frowns and turns to look at the thing, eyes narrowed. "What beneath the Spires?" she mutters, baffled, then walks over to the coffin to investigate.
She looks around, then pauses just long enough for the thing to start making noise again, so that she's sure she's not imagining them, then shrugs and starts to open it up.
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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 26, 2012 22:24:30 GMT -5
Once the lid is opened up, Pincher sits up. He's... okay, so he's in that Man in Black outfit he sometimes wears when he is trying to interact with normal human beings. The problem is, he can't pull his armour out of subspace, and he can't split his shell open.
He can't even raise a command line prompt to try to execute some of these things the hard way.
Pincher pauses a moment, staring at the deeply grey, cloudy sky, and he is stricken by an abiding fear that frankly makes no sense to him. It's just the sky! All the same, the urge the tug the lid back down on the coffin and hide from the... sky is there.
Pincher mutters to himself, "My Pretender Shell has never gotten jammed before..." Then he finally notices the woman there. He blinks a few times and exclaims, "Oh, by the Helix Gardens! Are you quite all right, uhm... Miss?"
He can't hear a pulse, and he's sure that's not right.
Wait, since when can he hear a pulse?
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Post by Impactor/"Imp" on Jan 26, 2012 23:05:22 GMT -5
Imp raises one eyebrow. She has them now, instead of just brow-ridges. It's a little odd, but given all the major odd, it really amounts to "just one more thing."
She studies the man in the coffin. The one who should be dead, but just woke up. The one who's familiar because Impactor keeps up to date on personnel files and he looks the same as at least one of his previous modes. A shell counts as a mode, right?
"Pincher," she declares, like passing sentence.
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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 26, 2012 23:26:17 GMT -5
"Yes, that's me!" Pincher cheerfully declares, because he has no reason not to. His cheer quickly fades, though - the sky is still seriously freaking him out - and he asks again, "Are you certain you do not require assistance, Miss? You seem to have no pulse. I am given to understand that is a serious disease state for most of humanity."
He climbs out of the coffin and dusts himself off, looking around the graveyard with interest.
"Now, if I could only fix my subspace access, I could pull out my datapad and look up where I am..."
Well, he could ask her, too, but that would be too easy.
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Post by Impactor/"Imp" on Jan 27, 2012 17:43:04 GMT -5
Imp sighs and closes the coffin back up. That's going to be some paperwork. She'll have to make sure to lose it.
"I wouldn't bet on getting that to work," she observes. "And I'm doubting you can give any sort of help I need." Because yes, Imp does require assistance - she needs to get back into her own body, and she can't do that on her own. But she's pretty sure that Pincher can't manage it, either.
"I don't think that's a shell anymore. Not if what happened to you is anything like what happened to me."
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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 27, 2012 17:59:17 GMT -5
It says something about how naive and trusting that Pincher can be that he is not immediately assuming that the woman there has kidnapped him. He sits down on the ground and pulls up his pant-leg, before digging his fingers into what should be a seam for his Pretender shell.
All he manages to do is give himself a mild bruising by vigorously poking himself. He frowns and mutters, "I can't even find the seams and latches..."
Frustrated, he pulls up one of his sleeves and checks over his arm. The seams and latches, yes, they were disguised to be all but invisible to even a trained observer in case he ever needed to fool a human doctor for some insane reason, but by the Helix Gardens, he knows his body, and this is not it.
Pincher slips, and he digs his fingernail into his skin. He comes away with a little ruby red drop of blood on his fingernail. He stares at it, feeling awfully fascinated, like this is the most beautiful thing he's seen in his whole life. Then he licks it down, rolling the droplet over his tongue and down his parched throat. His eyes roll back a little in his head, and he shudders a bit.
Then Pincher snaps out of it, because this is bizarre behaviour out of him. Forcing himself back to rationality, he observes, "That... doesn't taste right at all. I have simulated blood, yes, but it is simulated. The ion balance on this is... completely nonsensical."
He stares up at the woman and asks, "What happened to you, then? You never know, I might not be able to do anything myself, but I might know someone who can."
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Post by Impactor/"Imp" on Jan 27, 2012 22:02:05 GMT -5
Imp grabs her shovel, not to return to digging, but to give her something to lean against. Hers is modified, to allow her to more easily hold it with the hook that replaces her hand. She really has no idea how the heck this body lost it, but she finds it annoying that she can't swap it out with other options easily.
"Pincher. I'm Impactor," she explains. She shrugs. "What happened to me is I woke up yesterday looking like this. Apparently I got a job and a place to crash, but I don't know why. I don't remember doing any job hunting or renting any human apartment or anything." She looks down at herself. "Apparently I'm a zombie, but that's nothing new."
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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 27, 2012 22:22:24 GMT -5
"Impactor?" Pincher repeats, blinking owlishly. "But you're a woman!"
Then he just stops right there, because he thinks he just put his foot in his mouth and that anything else he can say will only make it worse.
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Post by Impactor/"Imp" on Jan 28, 2012 17:52:29 GMT -5
Imp just stares for a moment. Finally, she shouts, "That's what you notice?! I go from being a thirty foot undead robot who turns into a drill tank into... into... this," she gestures to herself with her good hand, "and that's what makes it seem unlikely to you?"
"I didn't even have a sex before! I still don't see why I should care about care about having one now! As near as I can tell, it's something to do with reproduction, and I'm pretty sure this body either can't or shouldn't be doing that, anyway!"
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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 28, 2012 18:10:31 GMT -5
There are women in Dreamwave. They are evil spies. Pincher doesn't know the evil spy part.
"But I'm not a woman," Pincher says in a small voice. He brushes his hair back, dread still in the pit of his stomach over the sky. "I mean, if something has turned us human, don't you think it would have turned us both into women? Processes with erratic results unnerve me. I like consistency."
"So uhm... I never really had much to do with you, but I did have access to medical records, and you... might know something about me? So uhm... your medical records say you have this problem with, well... I suppose you would call them claws? If your fingertip armour is knocked off?" Pincher is trying to say something only an Autobot would know about Impactor to confirm that he is indeed an Autobot.
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Post by Impactor/"Imp" on Jan 28, 2012 22:42:16 GMT -5
"Yeah, and-?" Imp starts, puzzled as Pincher mentions the claws. She looks down at her good hand and its unusually sharp fingernails. Then her eyes widen in understanding.
"Ah! Yeah." She shrugs and leans more heavily against the shovel. "So.. might know about you? How about you showed up as a non-Autobot dupe of Shockwave who hadda be contained until Ultra Magnus and Perceptor could talk some sense into you."
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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 28, 2012 23:19:28 GMT -5
Angered by her words, true are they are, Pincher stands up in a start, his fingers held together and his thumbs drumming against them. His eyes widen and he - hisses, fangs dropping down.
It's enough of a surprise for him to blink and take a step back. He exclaims, mortified, "Humans don't have fangs!" Pincher gingerly reaches up a finger to touch the aberrant teeth that have folded down into his mouth. Voice a bit muffled from his own prodding, he says, "I think these are supposed to retract up? Maybe it's these muscles... ah! Got it."
The fangs fold back up.
Sheepishly, Pincher offers, "I do apologise. I sometimes have these... outbursts. Not with fangs. I just occasionally think or say things that are... not appropriate. So... I would tentatively conjecture that whatever I am at the moment, it is not precisely human - and I would conjecture the same for you, though you are obviously a different specimen of... something than I am."
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Post by Impactor/"Imp" on Jan 29, 2012 19:15:04 GMT -5
Imp raises one eyebrow at Pincher's explanation.
"So I take it you're convinced I am who I say I am?" she deadpans.
Then she shrugs and picks up her shovel. "Anyway, that sounds about right. But look. The other digger's gonna be back from his break soon, unless he fell in or something." It's entirely possible that the other digger is also female. "So we can't talk about this much longer. But I am going to need you to sign something that says you're really not dead and that I didn't lose the body or anything."
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Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 29, 2012 19:44:58 GMT -5
"Yes? Should I not be?" Pincher replies nervously, now second-guessing himself. If it turns out that Impactor is really Springer pretending to be Impactor just to mess with him, Pincher is going to be so mad at himself!
"Uhm, I can do that, I suppose? ...uhm, why was I being buried, anyway? I mean, I read that some humans bury their dead, and that is really kind of peculiar, so I am assuming that they assumed I was human and that is why they were trying to bury me, but do you know if there was a specific human they were assuming I was?"
He runs a thumb through his hair and rephrases more succinctly, "I mean... do you know what name I am going to be expected to sign on the line?"
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