re_alignment_logs | Intrepid explorers!

Entry tags:

Intrepid explorers!

WHO: Blurr and Cliffjumper
WHERE: Out in the wilderness, in a building they've found.
WHEN: Now~
WHAT: ADVENTURE. Exploring! TRAPS. So many traps.
WARNINGS: Nothing, really.

The structure had looked like a heap of boulders or a small hill at first, but when they got closer it was obvious it wasn't. Question was just what a building, especially a somewhat disguised one was doing out here in the middle of the literal nowhere.

Frowning as he landed from having had a look from the top, Cliffjumper shrugged.

"Either it ain't too big, or it might go down underground." It might be bigger inside, otherwise it couldn't hold more than at the most three rooms, maybe. Three kind of small rooms for someone of average size, three average rooms for someone his and Blurr's size.

"... So, what'd we do?" He couldn't help the scowl as he eyed the rather well-disguised entrance. He just didn't trust this situation, the building, whatever might be inside... but he also didn't feel it safe to just leave the building without having checked said inside.

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"Then we are doomed." He gave Cliff a pat on the back, trying to ease the tension. "I don't know about you but I can't really swim. Even I weight too much." And Blurr didn't really feel like getting stuck forever at the bottom of a pool.

"Not a deathly one? For all we now that could be some sort of acid. We CAN always try a different room."

Cliffjumper's grin widened a little at Blurr's proclamation of their doom, before he grimaced.

"Me either, though if it ain't too deep we could get out anyway--- Uh, yeah." He hadn't even thought about the acid. "Moment." So said, Cliffjumper pulled out a piece of wire that would otehrwise be used in bomb-creating, and tossed it in.

It took a while, but after a klik, it was obvious it was starting to get... thinner.

"Great. Doubt we'd notice anythin' at first 'cause our armour's thicker, but if the pool's too deep that we wouldn't be able to get out after gettin' in..." Trailing off, Cliffjumper shook his helm and backed away from the door. he didn't feel like trying to jump in and walk across just to realise they were stuck at the bottom and having acid slowly eat away at them.

"If my jetpack was still whole..." He scowled at the room and wandered a few doors down, opening it to a... completely empty room.

"Well. That ain't suspicious at all, but..."

An empty room didn't make it easy to tell what the slag the trap that undoubtedly was there was for sort.

Too many years involved in too many missions with Decepticons. He knows that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. His hopes sank like the piece of wire did in the pool.

"Y.o-u-r armor is thick. I barley have any." Blurr grimaced. He really didn't want to think about what that liquid could have done to his chassis.

"You don't think we could fix it, right?" It was too much to hope for, but the thoguth was there. Blurr scoffed at Cliffjumper's words. "Not at all. UHm....maybe fire, this time? "

"Thick or not, I'd have ended up as dead as you," commented Cliffjumper as he gave the empty room another sweep with narrow optics. "And nah. It got bisected pretty neatly... Would need more replacement parts and tools that I don't have."

With a grunt, Cliffjumper carefully planted a foot beyond the doorway... nothing happened.

"Well, whatever it is, we're obviously gonna have to get in to actually find out." With a grimace and a reluctant slide of his frame into the room, Cliffjumper gave Blurr an arched look. This was stupid, but it would hopefully be more manageable, whatever it was, than the room with the acid pool would have been.

"Too ba..wait!" Blurr put a hand on Cliffjumper's shoulder to stop him from walking further into the room.

"We should make sure the door doesn't close behind us once we are inside. I don't have anything on me that we could use to block the door. What about if we use the broken jetpack?"!

"Huh--?" Turning around, Cliffjumper stared back at Blurr and then slowly, reluctantly, nodded. "I... s'pose that makes sense. And I ain't got anythin' else we could use either." He did have a replacement, as horribly coloured as it was, but still, the idea of probably sacrificing what was left of it was... unpalatable.

With a grimace, Cliffjumper pulled the nearly bisected jetpack out of subspace, putting it in the doorway.

"Well, hopefully that'll work. Or maybe this room won't be as bad." Cliffjumper's dry expression and tone said easily that he didn't believe that.

Blurr had a bad history with doors closing behind and over him, he wanted to avoid that if he could help it. "I'm sorry, I wouldn't ask you if this weren't really necessary."

Blurr could tell, and he had the same feeling. He glanced over his shoulder one more time before following Cliffjumper inside the room, his chainsaw ready again. They managed to cross the whole room without incidents, oddly enough, and when they reached the other side and opened the door...

...they found another empty room.

"You gotta me kidding me."

"Yeah, I know," said Cliffjumper, waving off Blurr's apology with an easy shrug. he did understand why, and it was logical and probably (definitely) a good idea, it was just somewhat frustrating.

"Well." Peering into the next empty room, Cliffjumper looked around but there didn't, at the least, seem to be any tiles or similar that would disappear under their feet, and at first when they cautiously walked in a bit further 'nothing' still happened.

"If this is the beginnin' of some fraggin' labyrinth, I'm gonna get really slagged off---"

And then the door closed behind them, and there was a low, grinding sound that reverberated through the room and up through their feet and was it just imagination or did the walls twitch?

"... Aw, come on. Not that."

"If this were a labyrinth I could figure the way out but the problem is that most of the doors are closed." The sound made Blurr froze, literally, on his tracks. "No no no no no..." From all the things, please not this. He had enough moving walls for a lifetime.

"C---Cliff..." Blurr couldn't quite scape the panicked tone that his voice carried.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." Cliffjumper's gaze flickered around, and he'd tensed up, and for some reason dread that seemed more than just the possible imminent reality of being crushed crawled along his circuits.

More like déjà vu, which didn't make sense.

He'd never been in this situation before, had he?

Shaking his helm and forcing extra fuel to actuators and cables in his limbs so he could move, Cliffjumper whirled around and grabbed Blurr.

"Look for a release button, or something. The trap would be useless if it couldn't be reset!" And that felt like he'd said it before as well, but the thought was lost in the inevitable grinding progression of the walls, which were indeed moving.

It wasn't a déjà vu for Blurr, it was a crystal clear memory that he had no wish to experience again.

"ThelasttimeIwasinthissortofsituationtherewasNOreleasebuttonthatwasthepointofhavingmovingwalls." Even as he spoke Blurr was looking everywhere frantically to see if there was some sort of way to open the door.

If there was one it had to be in a place where the door didn't crush it, like flat on the floor or the ceiling.-

Grimacing, because he didn't hear any of that - Blurr talked fast normally unless he made a real effort, and panicked? Well, understandably he was a bit too upset to do much about his speaking speed.

Running up to lean against one wall, even if that would do nothing at least he was doing something while looking around, gaze flickering around the center of the room, since if there was any catch-release, it ought to be where the walls would meet---

"Blurr! Up near the ceiling!" shouted Cliffjumper and pointed, frowning. Like this, despite the way the room was rapidly decreasing in size, neither of them would be able to reach it, but...

"You can run on vertical surfaces, right? If ya wait until the wall's close to the button..." Which meant the room would be only barely large enough for them to not start to get crushed, but that was probably as good as it was going to get, even if the thought had energon thundering through his systems and his engine revving.

This sucked.

He would apologize later. If there was ever a later. Blurr hoped that Cliff wouldn't hold that against him, he wished he could stop feeling panicked and focus but the flashbacks weren't helping him.

But his crazy speech patter would have to be an issue for another day. Today's problem was advancing towards them and advancing fast.

"T-that's risking it too much. WhatwhatwhatIFwethrowsomethingatit?" How heavy could Cliff be, anyway? Blur stared at him with wide optics.

This time, at least, since he was paying a little more attention, Cliffjumper caught the jumble of words and was able to make sense of them... even if it still took a few moments because he was distracted by the fragging moving walls.

"What if we... what?! With fraggin' what!" Throwing his arms out to encompass the empty room, Cliffjumper was rather sure he didn't carry anything that was precise and heavy enough to be able to hit the button.

And he completely missed the meaning of Blurr's panicked stare, since, well. Blurr was understandably panicked and Cliffjumper wasn't perfectly calm either.

And the space they had available was shrinking.

Sorry Cliffjumper, Blurr was too stressed and cared to waste time explaining himself properly. He promised himself that he would apologize later, if they get away alive.

Glancing briefly at the approaching walls he took his decision and moved in front of Cliffjumper, grabbed him by his waist, aimed, and sent him flying.

"Wh---GAH!"

Flailing, Cliffjumper had the time to register the fact of how close the walls were as he sailed through the air and then slammed into the wall. And frankly, it was merely pure, dumb luck and chance that got his flailing hand to hit the depressed button as he reflexively scrabbled for something to hold on to because the floor was quite far away right now---

Cliffjumper missed the brief, grinding halt of the walls as he fell to the floor with a truly spectacular noise as the walls started to retreat and a panel in the middle of the floor slid away to reveal a similar dataslug to the one they'd picked up from the pendulum room.

All things considered, Blurr should have tried to catch Cliffjumper when he fell. Too bad that he was usy pushing the walls in a final attempt to stop then in case his mech-tossing plan failed.

When the walls retreated he almost fell down on his face, but turned and faced Cliffjumper with an expression of pure relief in his face. "ITWORKED!!!"

He could have kissed Cliffjumper right now. But he did not, instead going for a nervous hug as he tried to check if his friend was injured all at the same time.

"Areyouokay?Didyoubreakanything?Didiyouhityourhead?Whatisthatthing?"

He'd have laughed - from nervous relief if nothing else - when Blurr almost fell over, but he was busy patting himself down and thus missed Blurr's approach. But of course he didn't miss the hug and froze for a moment and then... somewhat awkwardly gave a half-hug back with one arm.

"Think my chinguard got a dent," said Cliffjumper, managing to catch that at least, and while the grin was slightly pale, it was teasing, because he hadn't hit the wall that hard. His hip-joints when he landed on the floor, however...

Well, diagnostics said nothing had been injured, just temporarily compressed, so he wouldn't say anything about sensory nodes flaring a bit of pain out through his net. Standing up, Cliffjumper eyed the revealed little pit in the floor with its dataslug.

"Whatever these things contain, seem like the rooms each got one, or somethin'..."

He wouldn't have complained if Cliff laughed. he was still all over the red mech, checking on him.

"SorrysorryIdidnotknowwhattodoijustDIDwhatitseemedthefastestsolution." The blue mech picked up the dataslug and then moved an arm over Cliffjumper's shoulders just in case.

"Great. Can we CHECK what they are outside the room? Please" He was ready to run out of the run dragging (carefully) Cliff with him the moment the other said 'yes'.

"You're just lucky I accidentally hit the button," said Cliffjumper with a huff, but really, they were both lucky - though if it hadn't worked, Blurr would still have had time to follow up on Cliffjumper's suggestion.

Had neither of them had Blurr's speed, then things might be a bit... less fortunate. Scowling around the room, eyeing the walls suspiciously, Cliffjumper nodded.

"Yeah---"

"I would have thrown you again if you missed." Perhaps that wasn't the best thing to say, wasn't it? Blurr was smiling very slightly, still nervous.

Oh, there they go. Enjoy Blurr's speed as your own, Cliff.

Blurr grabbed the shortest mech and ran about of the room as the speed of light. The racer close the door behind them and leaned against it, sighing. They found themselves on a long corridor, this time there was only a single door at the other side.

"---sure." Optics flickering and his gyros stabilising after they were out of the room, Cliffjumper eyed Blurr and grimaced. "No, 'cause that'd have been too little time left, I think. And shouldn't we have gone back out the other door, to the big room?"

Glaring down the corridor, Cliffjumper didn't like this. At least with a vast amount of doors to choose from, they had the illusion of choice (of choosing one of the doors or doing nothing). Here there was just one door, because he was rather sure the door back into the room that would get them back into the big room was now locked.

Not that he really wanted to go back in if it wasn't, since that might trigger the trap again, but still.

"Oh...you are right. Sorry I panicked " As if it weren't obvious before. It embarrassed Blurr to admit that he was not over his fear of enclosed spaces and moving walls but he had good reason to feel scared of them.

"Look like we don't have that many options. Shouldn't we check what are those dataslugs, perhaps those are some sort of key." He tried to open it but he wasn't strong enough.

Waving his hand in dismissal of Blurr's apology, because he could understand why; it was just a bit inconvenient for them, Cliffjumper held up the dataslug he'd picked up and frowned.

"Maybe, but I ain't sure I wanna plug directly into this thing before I know it's safe. Rather have a computer to plug it into first. We don't know what's on this at all..." trailing off, Cliffjumper's frown deepened and he squeezed the dataslug slightly.

"Dunno. Should we just... try the door? Unless you're willin' to risk plugging it in." By Cliffjumper's tone and expression, it was clear he thought it wasn't worth it, not while they were stuck in the middle of this and with no guarantee the dataslugs were safe.

He still felt bad now that he could think about it more calmly. Cliffjumper was right about the possible danger and Blurr merely nodded.

"I can't, If that thing tries to download anything onto me my system will fry it automatically." Blurr hit his chest a few times. "Fastest engine ever made also the one that destroys any unwanted connection. Unless I allowed it to happen, which I wouldn't." It wasn't worth it at all, no.

Blurr patted Cliffjumper on the back and headed to the door, looking at the corridor's walls warily. "Let's try it then."

He was surprised that nothing happened and that the corridor seemed free of any traps. When they reached the door, though, it was clear that it had a strange round lock with symbols. "Are those musical notes?"

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