re_alignment_logs | OPENING LOG: Awakening

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OPENING LOG: Awakening

WHO: Everybody!
WHERE: The Junk Pile.
WHEN: Right here, right now.
WHAT: Game opening! Our Heroes find themselves in a strange place not of their own world, however familiar (or not) it may be.

Consciousness is slow, and a struggle to obtain. The moments before darkness are hazy enough; a great vertigo, a twisting, and then, falling. Falling for what seemed like forever. And when you are finally aware of your surroundings, it is most decidedly not where you came from.

Instead, you are now in what appears to be a wasteland. A wasteland...of junk. Debris as far as you can see, heaped in mini-mountains that offer only so good of a view of the world around you. Perhaps in the distance, you can make out some flatter land, perhaps you can just make out what looks like a crevice - but it's difficult at best. The light here is all wrong, the two greatest sources being a white line in the alien sky that doesn't so much give off light as simply have it - and something in the south that glows like a setting sun.

You may or may not notice it at first, but you, too, have something alien - something on your arm, more likely than not. A marking that glows softly, but offers no clue as to how it got there - no pain, no sensitivity. It's simply there, as you are here.

So.

Now what?

((OOC: This is it, you guys! Have a blast! Please remember to keep everything under the first thread for now; we'll be adding the Firstforged in in a little bit...

OKAY There is now a second thread to post in! Feel free to make new threads there to react to the arrival of the Firstforged, or respond directly to the Firstforged themselves.))

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Wing shifted through the junk pile chasing a strange energy reading. He wasn't sure if his sensors were functioning properly--he had no baseline on the environment to recalibrate against--but if there was a chance this was energon of any kind it was worth the search. He only wished it was nearer the surface of the pile.

It was one of the downsides of being an airframe, and a jet in particular. Your optimal operating state required higher grade fuel than grounders and there was no way to be conservative about its consumption in altmode, other than to just not use it. The sooner he acquired more fuel the better he'd feel.

Wing sifted through the junk, tossing objects and debris away in his search. Curious things he'd never seen before and a few that were more familiar. His progress was impeded by a torn sheet of metal, what might have been part of a vehicle or structure previously. He gave it tug, the effort returning only a slight shift in position. Bracing his foot against a large chunk of rock, he put both hands to it and heaved. With a sudden shift the object pulled free, and Wing had to scramble to keep his balance, stumbling backward. The twisted metal, proving to be far larger than he'd originally thought, had also been supporting a fair amount of the junk pile. To his dismay Wing watched the entire left side of the pile destabalize, creating a tumbling landslide of litter and debris as gravity took hold.

Well, wasn't that a neat trick? Knock Out let out an appreciative whistle as his new human friend surged up beside him on a rolling wave of earth. Experimentally, he increased his pace-- still hobbled by his injured leg, of course, but even limping he could pace faster than walking human.

She kept up easily. Impressive. He wondered idly how fast she could go like that, then realized the direction of his thoughts and chased them away with a scowl and a shake of his head. He wasn't going to be in racing condition any time soon.

He purged his vents in a sigh and forced a pleasant expression onto his face. "You're just full of neat little surprises, aren't you?" he asked as they moved on. They were skirting the base another of the ubiquitous junk piles, and he still wasn't paying attention-- not to the sounds coming from the other side, nor to the Cybertronian spark signal starting to register faintly with his distal scanners. "What else can you--"

He didn't get a chance to finish the question; he was interrupted by the sudden collapse of the wall of junk to his left. He didn't have time to do more than yelp with surprise as it avalanched down on top of him, burying him swiftly.

Korra had felt very pleased by Knock Out's favorable attention, and was very tempted to show off her firebending, especially when he had started to ask what else she could do.

Distracted by the return of her ego, Korra had failed to notice the avalanche. Shocked, her earthbending went wild, the wave of dirt launching her. While upside down in mid air and yelping, Korra managed to comprehend that Knock Out was just buried by the avalanche, despite her reversed view point. In another second, Korra completed the arc, landing hard on her back with a pained grunt.

Now on high alert, the girl swiftly rolled up and back into an earthbending stance, preparing to free Knock Out. Korra's paranoia after being captured hadn't exactly lowered despite the civil encounter with Knock Out. The girl rapidly concluded that was either an accident or an ambush. Her already rattled nerves snapped into 'fight' mode when she spotted a large shadowy figure above where the avalanche had started, immediately identifying 'enemy.'

Korra bent out a wave of fire up toward the figure. She kept moving, not stopping to see if her fire wave struck. She bent up a large wall of rock for defensive cover before starting to earthbend Knock Out out. She first used a rush of rock to push the debris off her large companion.

"Knock Out, can you hear me?!"

Admist the sounds of the avalanche Wing heard a what sounded like a shout of surprise. Concern lancing through him, he sprinted to the other side of the hill he'd toppled, skidding to a halt when he was met with a jet of fire. He twisted, letting his shoulder drop behind him, the flames rushing over his chassis and flicking against his thigh and knee stabilizer. The heat charred his white plating causing some discomfort but no lasting damage.

Wing braced for another volley while searching for the source, just in time to see the wall of earth jut up to his right. The junk pile seemed to be shifting again, the earth shaking. Was this area geologically unstable too? The thought was more than distressing.

Wing refocused, battle instincts alive, ailerons flaring out. He strafed left to get a better look, one hand hovering near his waist and the other outstretched with palm open. The fire. It'd come from somewhere.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" The knight shouted, pitching his voice over the noise of the shifting junk and earth. "I mean you no harm!"

The tide of falling junk had been more than enough to bowl him over, but once everything had stopped moving so much, he realized there wasn't more than a thin layer of detritus burying him. Thank Primus for small mercies, he supposed, although his whole body was aching in acute protest of this most recent mistreatment.

Korra's effort was enough to clear the worst of the piece-work rubble off of him, and he sat up with a groan. "Yes, yes, I can hear you. That scrambled my gyros, not my ears."

As soon as he heard the voice, he sat up straight, optics immediately tracking-- Ah, but there wasn't much to see, not under the bulwark of rock she'd thrown up. Scrunched under the shelter of the rock, he peered at her with poorly disguised nerves. "There's someone out there, isn't there?"

And then louder, projecting his voice, he called, "Who's there?!"

(OOC: Thanks ladyofdragons, that language thing completely slipped my mind! BTW, nell and I decided Korra's equivalent language is Mandarin Chinese.)

Korra stopped earthbending Knock Out, relieved that he could free himself now, and was still well enough to be snippy.

She nodded in response to Knock Out's answer, her face grim.

Korra's scowl deepened. She had heard a voice boom something in gibberish. She couldn't really decipher the tone, but it was too loud and too close, and it just made her hair stand on end. And the girl didn't care to wait to see if the stranger would answer Knock Out. She wanted to give out a warning shot to gain some more protective distance, at least.

Via bending, she listened to the vibrations through the earth, trying to track the other's position.

She bent out a warning barrage of earth and fire, first with a controlling kick. She followed that up with a second warning barrage via a thrown punch--

Korra shouted as pain lanced through her back. She stumbled, throwing out her hand to break her fall on the defensive wall she'd bent into existence. Her free arm climbed up her back, felt torn fabric and broken flesh, and her fingers came away with blood. Great, so her landing had been rougher than she thought. Her gashed cheek and cut up arms protested, as if reminding her they existed too, she hurt there as well.

If only she had water to heal herself....

Hissing, Korra straightened back up, lit a preemptive flame in her hand, and waited for the other guy's response.

Edited 2012-06-24 16:49 (UTC)

((Nella I'm going to assume KO switches to respond in Cybertronian, if not let me know! Wing of course knows no Earth languages so he's speaking entirely Cybertronian.))

A query response, and in Cybertronian! Wing was about to respond when the earth moved again, surging up to be joined by fire that propelled towards him. He was more prepared this time, battle instincts sending him into a powerful leap, back and to the side, somersaulting in the air to land gently on his feet some distance away. His optical sensors scanned the area, tracking the source of the attacks. A moment passed and then he saw it, a small and slender thing, organic and alien, and given the nature of that shout, possibly in pain?

Wing cocked his head, "Are you injured?" he called. It seemed so fragile to him in construction, yet that posture. The style was alien but he knew a disciplined battle stance when he saw it. And... it now had what appeared to be fire in its hand!? He was pretty sure fire and organics didn't mix? Perplexed, Wing stood his ground and sifted to the most neutral defensive stance he knew. He did not want to fight this creature but he had no desire to give up his battle readiness yet either.

Remembering the query from earlier, he spoke up again. "I am Wing. As I said I mean you no harm. Apologies if I brought the mound down on top of you. It was not intentional. Please, allow me to help set things right?"

Well, that was the second time their mysterious assailant had avowed that he meant them no harm, which meant-- well, it possibly meant nothing, if the other Cybertronian was a Decepticon. But the name 'Wing' meant nothing to him; it wasn't matching anyone in his databanks, and the name itself was so nondescript that it didn't offer any hints.

Which meant he was going to have to have a look. Scrap.

"Let me handle this from here, hm?" he murmured to Korra, remembering to switch to a language she'd find comprehensible. "Good job with this--" He rapped his knuckles on the rock. "--and you'll have to show me more of that fire thing later, but leave this to me for now. That's a Cyb-- er, a spirit like me out there."

Careful not to aggravate her apparent injuries further, and apparently heedless of the flame in her palm, he pressed her firmly into the safety of the shelter with gentle hands. Then he crawled out and rose painfully to his feet, ignoring the protests of his systems. He tried to smile, though he knew his ravaged face was such a sight that it probably didn't do much.

Not so much a Cybertronian like him, he realized as he got his first look at the other mech. Very much not a Cybertronian like him, in fact. The build was all wrong... But the language, at least, they seemed to share, and he switched back to it.

"Forgive my little friend, will you? You caught the both of us a bit by surprise that that stunt with the junk."

Korra almost comprehended what Knock Out was saying when his hands got very close to her. Instinctively she tensed, a sudden flash of the mech tanks attacking her underground, Knock Out was just so large...

But she noted that his hands were gentle as he pressed her deeper and firmly into the shelter of her stone wall.

The girl closely watched her companion crawl out, never letting the fire die out in her hand. She bit her lip. Korra should probably obey the spirit, but she didn't like the thought of him without any cover or back-up. Then again, she might just slow him down, probably part of why he'd left her here. And if this was between two spirits, Knock Out should probably handle it. But she was the Avatar, bridge between the mortal and spirit worlds! ...The least spiritual Avatar ever. She had absolutely no experience!

And what had happened the last time she'd ignored advice and acted impulsively? Get bloodbent by Tarrlok, captured, and now she was in this super weird place.

But what if....

Either way, she had to deal with her back first. The cuts on her arms and the gash on her cheek were kinda sorta okay by now, but the wound on her back was fresh.

Korra let the fire die out in her hand.

Then she quickly took off her fur pelt, tore a strip from it, and tied that strip as best she could around her wound, wrapping around the front and back of her chest. It was uncomfortable, but it seemed to do the trick.

Afterward Korra began to bend out a hole on her side of the wall. Another half of her bending went into tracking Knock Out's movement and the other spirit's movements via the ground's vibrations. The girl started her underground tunnel in earnest, then slowed down its progress. She carefully stepped down into it, and moved forward as she bent a path forward. Still she tracked Knock Out's and the other spirits moves. If Knock Out needed an assist, she could come from below, and hopefully as a surprise....

Edited 2012-06-24 19:56 (UTC)

A moderate sense of relief came over him when the aggressive organic went back into hiding and out came a Cybertronian. His frame type was not one Wing recognized though that meant little; who knew how things had advanced technologically and aesthetically while he'd been away with the knights? The newcomer was also red. Very, very red. Down to the optics. Perhaps not the best sign but as earlier, Dai Atlas's chiding when it came to stereotyping optic color rang in his mind.

What truly gave him pause was the way this mech moved so gingerly. He had a grace to him but it was strained, and upon further inspection Wing noted that his frame had been ravaged by something, the external damage was extensive but seemingly not structural, though the way the mech carried himself spoke of possible internal issues. And was he limping?

"Yes," Wing replied a bit sheepishly, "That was my fault I'm afraid. I didn't realize there was anyone in the area. I'd been trying to dig out a possible energon reading when the pile destabilized. Again, my apologies."

Wing took a few steps closer so he did not have to raise his voice to be heard. "I see that you're injured. And your organic companion as well? That's not anything I caused I hope?"

"Think nothing of it," Knock Out said with a wave of his hand and a thin smile. "We're both still whole and functional." Although when he'd taken care of this he was going to have to make sure that was actually true of Korra. He'd seen her pain make her stumble, and he had only a limited conception of the trauma tolerances of human bodies...

But he could worry after his companion later. He had more pressing concerns right now.

He paced slowly out from around Korra's rock barricade, doing his largely ineffective best to disguise his limp as he moved. Once out from around it, he leaned against the upthrust stone, slouching with forced ease (and just happening to take his weight off the injured limb, too). "Don't worry, a little tumble isn't nearly enough to do anything like this," he said, this time taking in his sorry state with the flicked gesture of his hand. "You added a few dings, but they're not the first I've gotten today." And he even managed not to sound bitter as he said it. It was a little victory, but he'd take it.

Korra had did her best to make sure she could hear well enough from her underground tunnel, but it still seemed like she got every other word, and maybe the whole thing was pointless since Knock Out and the other spirit were apparently speaking their own language. She tried to decipher their tones; they seemed calm, and via the vibrations she sensed in the ground above her head, neither had moved to attack, and their stances seemed less on edge as well.

It seemed like things were all right, and Korra was losing her patience. But even as she lost it, she made sure to lose it carefully--Korra just bent a hole above her head and bent the earth to raise her back up, so that she now stood in between the two spirits. With two such large beings around, Korra felt even smaller.

The girl made sure to bow to both of them, then asked Knock Out in a rush, "So, what happened? This spirit's cool? Can he speak my language too, like you can? Does he know where we are?"

"I am grateful to hear that." Wing replied with a soft smile. Taking a cue from the other mech's relaxed posture he approached to a conversational distance. His stride was easy and fluid, wing panels rustling away the battle tension.

"It seems as if other events have been even more unkind though. Where are you headed, are you managing alright?" Wing's voice was light and touched with honest concern. "And I'm sorry but I didn't catch your designation?"

At that moment the ground shifted again, loose earth churning upward and out as something emerged. Wing started, hand reflexively straying to near his waist as the creature, no the organic from earlier, emerged from the underground. Wing eased a touch when it looked as if her attention was not even on him, staring perplexedly as she rambled on in some language he did not understand.

Korra's unexpected eruption from the ground startled Knock Out too, but he couldn't help but be grateful. Her sudden arrival between the two of them meant he didn't have to talk about his injuries; certainly he wasn't all that interested in recounting his ignominious defeat at the hands of not even the Autobots but their pets and a stupid machine.

He turned his attention to the human, bringing up the correct language as he did. "Not very patient, are you~?" he said, the pointed tone in his voice chiding. "I've barely had a chance to talk to him. He claims not to mean us any harm, although it won't hurt us to keep an eye on him, hm?" The pleasant expression on his face didn't falter but his gaze, resting on Korra, was pointed. Knock Out hadn't lived this long by trusting every mech who claimed not to mean him any harm, after all.

"Now let me see what I can find out from him." Straightening up, he faced Wing again. "I don't suppose you've got a Mandarin Chinese setting in your language database?" he said, switching back to Cybertronian. "It'd certainly make things easier if I don't have to translate."

Korra gave a sheepish grin and shrug.

Knock Out's face was calm, pleasant even, but not his eyes, and with that and his words, Korra took the hint.

Still, it was supposed to be a civil conversation, so Korra didn't take an obvious martial stance, though her body remained tense and she crossed her arms.

She watched the two carefully, quietly.

Wing curiously watched the red mech converse with the small organic. It had a fair amount of bravado for a creature its size, though if it was the source of the fireworks and earth moving then perhaps that bravado was warranted. He'd never seen anything like it and the jet was getting more and more curious by the minute.

The small organic at least seemed to defer to the red mech, and Wing was thankful that it did not intervene, relaxing his stance again.

"I'm sorry but that language does not sound familiar. What system does it originate from?"

Well, that was going to make things tedious. "On our maps it's planetary system 7822 in the Xerret cluster. The locals call it Sol. Ringing any bells?

"He doesn't seem to know your language, I'm afraid," he informed Korra, after the appropriate lexical shift. "I'm more than willing to translate, of course--" Even if he wasn't exactly thrilled about the duty. "--but I'm going to need you to bear with me, all right?"

Korra was glad when Knock Out was speaking words she could actually understand again.

The girl nodded. "Sure, thanks for the assist."

The cluster the red mech mentioned was definitely not a region of space the Knights had passed through nor had any lore on.

"Unfortunately no, I'm sorry to say." Wing shook his head. "So you may be forced to translate, unless you have an acceptable way of transferring a data packet."

"Translate it is!" Knock Out said brightly; there was no way he was going to offer to share data with a total stranger.

He gestured at himself. "I'm Knock Out, and my squishy little friend here is Korra," he said, then switched languages and repeated the introduction the other way. "He says his name is Wing."

He turned his attention back to Wing. "I don't suppose you have any idea where we are?"

Korra really wished she knew what the spirits were saying, but it was still all gibberish to her. But she tried to guess what Knock Out could be saying. Well, okay, they both didn't know where they were--Knock Out was probably asking this Wing fella if he had a clue.

Korra picked at her bandaged back, and winced. Not a good idea.

But it reminded her of something.

"Hey, Knock Out, could you ask him if he's seen any water around?"

Wing couldn't agree more. What he had to gain in languages might of made it worth it but over he was just as happy not to.

He inclined his head to them both as introductions where made.

"Unfortunately I do not know much of this place. I awoke here only recently. Some of the constellations are familiar" he points out a few and tentatively names them, "but it's been a very long time since I've been on Cybertron and this looks nothing like what I remember."

He noted the small organic's question and awaited a translation.

"This is Cybertron?!"

Knock Out, obviously, hadn't exactly made the connection yet. This time when he looks up, he actually focuses on the stars and not the disquieting white void, and...

And now that he was looking, he could recognize some of the star patterns. He'd never been much of an astronomer, and he'd been away from Cybertron himself for a long time, but there was no mistaking it. "Scrap. How can this be Cybertron?!"

He was distracted enough that it took him a moment to comprehend Korra's question and convey it to Wing. "Ah... water. She wants to know if you've come across any water."

"What happened?" Korra asked, noting that Knock Out had exclaimed in gibberish. "Did something happen? I didn't get what you said, but it sounded kinda important?"

She looks up at the stars again, because Knock Out had done so. They still made no sense to her, none of the constellations were right! Or familiar, she supposed.

Korra switched from the stars to looking back at Knock Out and the one called Wing.

"Perhaps? The stars don't lie but I've never seen the it like this. I would expect a planet ravaged by war. Not..." He gestures around them, "This."

He could only shrug helplessly. It was all quite perplexing. Still, having confirmation that his memory of the night sky was correct was comforting at least.

"Water?" Wing regretfully shakes his head at Korra, "No, I'm sorry, not that I have seen. I shall keep watch for it however, can I assume it's an important survival factor?"

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automobile_enthusiast - 2012-07-01 19:38 (UTC) - Expand

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OPENING LOG: Awakening

Re: Thread for KO, Korra, and Wing

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