"What are you doing?" "Scannin..."

[staresat]

Who: Shockwave's Drones & You! (and possibly him in person)
What: A swarm of drones begins to investigate what they can of the Haven
Where: Everywhere!
When: Last Night
Warnings: PROBES

The relative peace in the Haven might find itself mildly disturbed this day. 

From Liege's quadrant, the disturbance would appear as a small black cloud before immediately dispersing across the haven. It was a swarm, to be more precise. A swarm a small drones. Only about three feet in width and roughly oblong in shape, the robotic drones began to wander into every crevice and hole they could find themselves in.

Aside from the swarm that emerged from their point of origin, the drones never interacted with each other. Individually, each probe tirelessly and methodically scanned what they could of the Haven's temples and the wide expanses between them. Any open doors or windows may lure one of the small machines in to investigate.

But, save for their rather nosy nature, the drones appeared to be totally harmless. They could be handled (to an extent) and will only flee from detectable danger. But, unless you're particularly offended by their scanning, their stay shouldn't drag out for too long. A brief scan and a few kicked over items later, and it's gone.

But of course - what would be the fun in leaving them alone? Someone's behind the use of these drones. And the motive of said person has yet to be revealed.

[[Part of this plot. The link has the deetz. Actionspam or prose is welcome!]]

Comments

[staresat]

The tiny drone was in the middle of scanning before suddenly finding itself pinched between two massive fingers.

Uh. How about no?

It doesn't have any weapons or any actual defenses to retribute with, but it still has means of moving. It's going to try to slip out of Jetfire's grip. Leave it alone to do it's job, mysterious giant.

[angleofscience]

How about yes? He just wants to know what that job is, mysterious little drone!

Of course, he's not necessarily going to open the thing up or even plug in immediately just for curiosity's sake, so he's hoping a basic outside scan is going to reveal something...

And he carefully tightens his grip on the drone, because he's not ready to let go just yet.

[staresat]

A few of the smaller panels on the outer chassis are bent, but the drone is otherwise intact and stuck where it was. It still pushes against the grip for a good minute before seeming to realize it was trapped, and stops.

A basic outside scan reveals a few basic things, the most interesting was that it was transmitting a signal. What the signal contained or where it was being directed to would need a little more invasive approach.

There's a small warble as it makes a scan of it's own to assess it's environment.

[angleofscience]

Well, it is just a drone... and a very basic one, at that. Eyeing the drone, Jetfire frowns thouhgtfully, hesistating for a moment...

Technically, the scanning it's doing seems perfectly harmless... as long as it keeps out of private areas, but he doubts this thing has has been programmed to differentiate or ignore that.

"Well..." He could always apologise to whoever'd made these if it became necessary, because it was obvious he wouldn't find anything out like this.

So excuse him, little drone, as he plugs right in... after he finds some adapter to make the jack small enough because why so tiny.

[staresat]

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of AI, though there are a few security measures... Oh, is that a self-destruct countdown?

That's a self destruct countdown, Jetfire. Someone doesn't want you messing around with the drone's programming.

You've got thirty seconds to defuse it before the small device blows up in your hand.

[angleofscience]

And here he just wanted to have a look.

Frown growing as the seconds passed, Jetfire had to wonder what was worth putting a self-destruct mechanism in something as basic a drone as this. Of course, some effort and resources had gone into them, but a self-destruct would eliminate that more sharply than someone reprogramming them.

"Too simple to carry much, and it's merely sending along what it scans, it seems like..." Shaking his helm, Jetfire huffed as the countdown stopped a few seconds before completion. This just made him more curious...

And wary.

Since the important thing was the scanned data itself, but he probably wouldn't find that out from this drone. That could only its maker reveal.

[staresat]

Good guess. A little investigation would reveal just that. The probe had been scanning the surrounding environment and quickly sending it's findings to a remote location.

With the countdown defused, further investigation would go fairly undeterred. Not that it held much. The probe had stopped scanning, seeming to refuse to process any further information with an unknown connection plugged into place.

Nonetheless, the hardware and software it was built with suggested that it was analyzing the spatial area around it, measuring the distance and analyzing the composition of the nearby material. Probably for some sort of 3D map.

[angleofscience]

It was a bit unfortunate that it seemed to refuse to send anything more on its own; Jetfire wasn't sure how much further he wanted to force, given that a map... even as detailed as the scanning suggested it'd be, wasn't technically dangerous.

Of course, that depended upon use, and whether or not the drones avoided certain places or not. Like rooms people lived in.

After a few more moments of consideration, Jetfire decided to try and simply attach a notification tag to the simple bit of programming that'd make the drone send what it had gathered onwards.

He'd already calculated a reasonable area of origin from the point he first saw the drones, but that hadn't been immediately when they'd been left out, so the point of origin was uncertain...

And if he couldn't get the exact location the drones were sending information to, he ought to at least get a vector and go from there. It shouldn't be too hard, calculations had been going... amazingly easily lately.

That done, he unplugged the cable and carefully let go of the tiny drone. It wouldn't be too hard to catch it - or even another - if this didn't work.

[staresat]

Some of the surface plating was damaged, but the drone itself was still functional. It levitated in place after Jetfire had released it. After a brief assessment of it's surroundings, it continues on it's way. The drone quickly drifts off, aiming to leave for another quadrant of the haven.

With the initial defenses bypassed, Jetfire should find a little ping of data reaching him some minutes after. Looks like it had traveled to the neighboring quadrant in the meantime.

The data was being transmitted to a mainframe somewhere within one of the mountains of the area. More likely, it was probably within a cave.

[angleofscience]

Well, that was... interesting. Whoever it was was obviously taking some measures to remain out of view, since they hadn't even taken one of the finished or half-finished buildings on the terraces around the temple, like Jetfire had.

Noting absently where the drone was going, Jetfire took to the air and tried to pinpoint the area the data was transmitted to, as well as the probable cave or building entrance. This was getting curiouser and curiouser, really.

Though, given everything, unless Liege had a side-project and had hidden it away outside of his temple, Jetfire had a rather simple short list of who it might be that was responsible... but not what it was for.

Clearly, he'd never heard of the saying that curiosity killed the cat.