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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 9, 2012 20:08:55 GMT -5
M8W2D6, Elly's apartment, semi-private
Elly is totally not playing with her dolls again. Piled under a bunch of blankets on her sofa, she is playing with her action figures, which is completely different. A little Optimus Prime is trapped in an imaginary burning building, and she narrates for him, "Oh no, I am trapped in this burning building, and I'm totally not fireproof or anything, despite being a firetruck! Oh woe is me!"
Then she picks up her Override toy, which inexplicably has lipstick, even though Override doesn't - the toy blogs say the next edition is going to fix that, but that one is going to have NASCAR tampos, so if Elly wants an accurate Override toy, she's going to have to do a head swap, and she finds the thought of that kind of creepy. She narrates for Override, "Hah, I'll save you, puny but endearingly incompetent Optimus! Vwoosh!" and Override drives through a wall of the imaginary burning building, transforms, scoops up Optimus like a delicate prince, and then busts out a wall like the Kool-Aid man.
Elly pauses and complains, "Blast, but this would be more fun if they made a me-toy. I should write Hasbro another letter..."
Elsewhere, the Hasbro mail room staffer throws out yet another anonymous letter demanding a Sentinel Prime toy. Crazy fans!
Elly shrugs and decides, "Hmm, this time, Optimus will get rescued from an acid pit by Jetfire." She reaches for her Jetfire toy...
She has completely forgotten that she has an appointment with Kate right now.
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Post by Kup on May 10, 2012 19:48:29 GMT -5
There's a knock at Elly's door.
That appointment that Elly had forgotten about? Yeah.
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 10, 2012 20:01:54 GMT -5
Elly grabs her Mirage action figure, too, deciding that Mirage can also be stuck in the acid pit with Optimus. 'Optimus' rails, "Mirage, you are the worst spy! How did you not see this acid pit coming?"
'Mirage' pouts, "Oh, Optimus. You are much too low class to understand my burden. If only your insides were plated with platinum like mine, you might understand how hard it is to be amazingly rich."
'Optimus' asks, "Platinum-plated insides? Really? I thought you were full of -"
Then Elly hears the knock on the door and shouts, "Slag." How could she get so wrapped up in inserting her Optimus action figure into stupid scenarios that she forgot she had an appointment with Kate? She lets the Optimus and Mirage action figures fall on the floor in a completely inappropriate position and scrambles out of her pile of blankets. Elly checks the peephole of the door, panting a little, and then she opens the door a crack. Hoarsely, Elly demands, "What's the passcode?"
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Post by Kup on May 14, 2012 21:12:42 GMT -5
Kate sighs and rolls her eyes, but actually does give the passcode. Her ability to yell at Rodney about ignoring security is reduced if she doesn't follow the rules herself. Not eliminated, of course, and there are plenty of good reasons not skip some of the security details, but none of them really apply right now. Assuming she's let in (and if she isn't, she'll attempt to push her way in), she enters the room and looks around, asking, "Did I hear you talking to someone?"
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 15, 2012 9:38:24 GMT -5
Elly allows Kate in and even salutes, though she drops it without being told to do so, remembering that Kate is not much one for formality. Once Kate is inside, Elly works on doing all those locks back up. her apartment is impeccable clean, except for the disheveled pile of blankets that Elly was just using, the bucket of toys on the couch with the blankets, and the Mirage and Optimus toys accidentally indecently posed on the floor. There is a very blank look on her face, like a deer in front of headlights, when Kate mentions that Elly had been speaking. She hems and haws, "I, uh... ah..." Does she want to lie to Kate? This is Kate. Kate will find out somehow. Elly sighs and admits lowly, "I was just, uhm, playing with my toys. Sir."
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Post by Kup on May 15, 2012 21:42:34 GMT -5
Kate frowns as she spies the Optimus and Mirage on the floor. Was she... creating Optimus/Mirage stories?
She decides she doesn't want to know.
"Ah, right. Got it. You, er... might want to put those away before you have visitors over, you know?"
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 16, 2012 10:47:06 GMT -5
Looking mortified, Elly snatches up Optimus and Mirage, transforms them into alternate mode, and puts them away in her box of toys. She excuses, "You told me to look into possible Decepticon activity. So I had to look at the toys! None of the Optimus toys come with his grapplers, can you believe that?" Elly sounds rather indignant. "And even worse, there aren't any toys of me. Shockwave has toys!"
Shockwave has toys because the Autobots provided the UN with a fair amount of information on the cons, so as to make hunting them easier.
Sentinel Prime does not have a toy because all she did was help wreck up an arena in France and then ran away. The Autobots were probably not too keen on disclosing information about her after that.
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Post by Kup on May 16, 2012 21:07:04 GMT -5
"They gotta know about you to make a toy of you," Kate points out reasonably. "That business in France didn't exactly help our reputation; Optimus and Override did what they could to clean up, but we didn't exactly go outta our way to explain who else was part of that, for their own good." Otherwise, Sentinel probably wouldn't have been too thrilled with the Sentinel toys created.
She heads over to the couch and sits herself down on it without asking. "So, whatcha got for me?"
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 16, 2012 21:50:10 GMT -5
Then Sentinel Prime quit the Elite Guard because she could not handle being under Optimus Prime, so she did not even help with the clean up work later. What a jerk!
Elly still looks resentful about Hasbro not making a toy of her. She explains, "Actually, I have mastered the primitive human software known as 'PowerPoint'," she does the air quotes, "in order to make a presentation for you, sir. It is neither powerful nor pointy, yet more proof that humans have no idea what they are talking about, but it does make slide shows. My laptop is in my bedroom."
She opens up her bedroom door. Her bedroom is meticulously clean, though there is a pinboard on one wall that seems to be covered in conspiracy theories. There is a chest of drawers, a small bookshelf, a small table, a bed, and a desk with a laptop.
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Post by Kup on May 18, 2012 19:20:15 GMT -5
Kate sighs and rolls her eyes as Sentinel heads off to her bedroom, and then pushes herself up back off the couch. She follows the other woman into the bedroom. "I think the 'point' bit might be about how you have to break what you're trying to say up into points. The 'power' thing's just a sales pitch," she explains. She heads over to the desk and crosses her arms to look at the screen. "Y'gonna give me a copy of the file?" Not that she'd want it emailed; that's not secure.
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 18, 2012 19:54:23 GMT -5
Elly pauses to adjust one of the strings on the pinboard and then pulls out the chair for the desk, offering it to Kate. She takes up a remote for the laptop and leans against a wall, cuing up the show. Elly offers, "Certainly! I am sure you will cherish this presentation."
She clicks it on, and it opens with a brief animation of Sentinel Prime in his old snowplow form transforming to stand nobly in front of an Autobot flag, flapping majestically in the wind, complete with a fanfare. After admiring her handiwork for a moment, Elly clicks to the next slide, which contains a number of photos of Mordred from the news, and explains, "Mordred is really probably Scourge, but I would like to think a box of rocks could have figured that out. Next!"
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Post by Kup on May 20, 2012 20:26:05 GMT -5
Kate shrugs and takes the chair. Really, she's half surprised that Elly doesn't have a projector or similar at this point. She nods. "Yeah. That one's so obvious, it's a wonder the humans haven't figured out."
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 20, 2012 20:49:05 GMT -5
Elly is on a fixed income and has blown a lot of it on some rather odd things. Optimus Prime action figure > projector.
Now Elly pulls up grainy footage of a F-14 flying backwards and explains, "A modified F-14 has been spotted flying around the city. Now, those are decommissioned, and some are in private hands, but there are only so many people in the city who could afford one, and... here's the thing. When Swoop and Slingshot fought Tarantulas's zombie airplanes, one of the F-14s seemed a bit... smarter than the others and was seen evacuating Tarantulas from the area. So. Potential F-14 zombie Decepticon? Potential F-14 Decepticon who likes to dress up as a zombie for unclear reasons? Just an unusual airplane?" She squints at the screen. "Can't belong to Blackrock. He designs his own planes. Can't belong to Black. He has his own... sense of style. Would be unusual for Raines, but..."
She shrugs and clicks to the next section, which is a list of missing persons, who are all serious scum of the earth and often cop killers who have escaped justice one way or the other. Generally, they were noted as missing when they just... stopped paying rent, but there's just a few too many of them going missing for it to simply be them skipping out to another states. Also, the start for this pattern syncs up with the Transformers being turned human. Elly hazards, "Felon convention? Someone gone dark vigilante? Unclear."
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Post by Kup on May 21, 2012 20:34:11 GMT -5
Kate frowns at the discussion of the plane, rubbing her chin. "On the one hand, it's usually a bad idea to jump to conclusions. On the other hand, plenty of times you're better off if you just assume the worst. So lets assume that jet's a 'Con. I mean, I'm not saying shoot it down or anything; there's assuming the worst, and then there's gettin' yourself in trouble by acting on it. I'm just saying that we should be ready to act on it."
At some point later in her life, Kate will no doubt kick herself for having said this to Sentinel Paranoid Prime.
She frowns at the second record. "You got any more information on that stuff? Might be a good idea to figure out who would have access to that kind of information, those sorts of names."
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 21, 2012 21:27:00 GMT -5
"Well, there's also asking Nightbeat to pry into private aviation records to see who owns that jet," Elly points out brightly, seemingly enthused by the idea of egregious breaches of privacy, "It must have an owner, at least on the records. Otherwise the Air Force would be shooting it down or something. The USA's not gonna let some random F-14 fly around!"
Actually, the USA might, if there are enough G1 cartoon characters around, but Elly's from the wrong continuity for all that.
"Uh... I had to cross-reference missing persons reports with wanted lists with housing court..." Elly explains, with regards to the other point, going into sufficient depth and detail. Basically, it's a pattern that only an obsessive paranoid looking at a lot of different sources would notice.
Elly pulls up some generic crime-y information on Professor Sharp that indicates he works in the Detroit area, and she adds, "He sort of reminds me of Riot? With all the brown and the gears?"
Elly does not really understand steampunk.
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