re_alignment_logs | Lay my ghosts to rest

Entry tags:

Lay my ghosts to rest

Who: Drift, Perceptor and the marvelous Captain Marvelous and also Wing
What: Wing-searching and also trying to end the ghost-vasion
Where: The abandoned cave complex
When: backdated to yesterday
Warnings: How could anything with this group POSSIBLY go wrong?

It was a much more somber trip this time, and their path was straighter. Last time Drift had come out here, the party had just been exploring, trying to expand their knowledge of their new home. This time, he has to stop himself from trying to rush everyone there at once, anxious and afraid at what they might find.

It's still hard to see, and only someone who'd been here before could probably spot it, the darker shadow among the other shadows of the cliff face, leading into the cave complex. He transforms, reaching for Overclock's old datapad. He's brought the book of clippings from Alpha Trion's library, too, just in case, but he has no idea why.

"Well. Here we are."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Marvelous acknowledges Drift's comment with a grunt that is perfectly sociable, and then he's on his way inside. His gait is casual, but he's drawn both of his weapons, and his eyes aren't still for very long at all. He's used to booby-traps in caves like this--specially the residential ones, like the remnants lying around seemed to suggest. There's a chest across the room that's of particular interest, and that's where he heads first.

"So how're we taking care of these ghosts?" Finding Wing seems straightforward enough, down to investigation, but that supernatural stuff is out of his expertise.

Well, to be honest, it wasn't that inspiring a comment. More of that 'so here's something obvious because someone needs to say something' things. He can't do extemporaneous inspiring speech--that's Rodimus's talent.

"I thought, well...Barricade had said that the datapad was the problem. That we woke things up when we took it from here." He looks at Marvelous for confirmation: he has precisely ZERO experience with ghosts and how they're supposed to work.

Perceptor shoulders his rifle as he follows behind; it won't be as useful in a cave system as his pistols will be. Although, it's not really that cramped of a cave, he notes, as he stalks into the darkened entry. The rifle may still be of use in parts, but, for now, he'll keep his pistols ready.

"It will probably depend upon what sort of energy readings these 'ghosts' provide. Different energy manifestations require different responses," Perceptor replies to the Captain. He's never really experienced a "ghost" before, but is approaching it as if it were some sort of energy being until he has other evidence to the contrary.

"My only run-in with a ghost was... nothing like the things that've been around lately," Marvelous says, "but putting 'em to rest is usually how this stuff goes, I think? If that datapad was what got 'em all over the place, anyway."

He nears a roughly human-sized box, and tips it open with the tip of his boot. Carefully, he bends over to look inside. Nonperishable food. Nothing he wanted anything to do with. He straightens, unimpressed.

"So you want to try putting that datapad back? Or are we looking for Wing first?" He knows what his priority would be, but it's not exactly his call.

"This one, well, we saw it in Alpha Trion's library." Drift's moving with a little more ease than the others--he's been in here before. He's scanning for traces of Wing, though. "He died out here. Not well."

It feels strange to talk about Overclock here, like the mech could overhear them. "But we saw him there. M-maybe it's better he stay there, though, than here?" Because this place was kind of grim.

So, yes, he's waffling, now. It seemed so clear then, when it was about them in Haven. But now he can't help but think about Overclock and what went on here. He shivers, as though he can feel the bad vibes.

"Do you see any trace of Wing?"

"Wing first," Perceptor intones. Ghosts or not, their duty is to the living first.

This had been an encampment of some type once upon a time. An encampment for both smaller creatures - roughly human sized, by the detritus - and larger, like he and Drift. He can detect the trace elements of old, stale fuel, and volatile organic chemicals from what appeared to be rather battered and aged stockpiles of supplies. None of it looked salvageable.

"He was a benign entity, then?" he asks Drift of the ghost.

Something pings along his sensors; he frowns as he concentrates on it, trying to decipher the garbled data his sensory feed is giving him.

"There's..." He shakes his head, and tries to reset his chemoreceptors. "I am detecting... something... further in. I think. It should be an energy signature."

But there's something wrong with the fluctuating readings.

"Something in the cavern must be interfering with my sensors."

Marvelous nods, switching modes mentally. Less exploration, more search.

Unlike the other two, he doesn't have fancy scanners, he just has his eyes. So instead of poking around in things that are pretty much guaranteed to be more useless crap, he moves to further investigate the cave system. He's mostly interested in the off-rooms, the ones that might be harder to get into for somebody a couple stories off the ground. In a place like this, accidents happened. Accidents like tripping, or falling, or any number of other things.

Perceptor's comments about 'something' further ahead and Drift's concerns about ghosts have him on-edge as he moves forward. Which is what saves him, of course. The movement of the--whatever it is, he can't tell in the light of the cave, but it seems vaguely humanoid and moves a little like something out a horror movie--thing scrapes against stone as he ducks into the next large room, and he lifts his pistol to fire off three shots, rearing back.

"Found your energy signatures," he says, firing another shot--the original rounds didn't quite stop his guest.

"He was guarding a book, and we thought there'd be a clue, but it was just...well...a scrap book of old Cybertronian racers and upgrades." It was a little embarrassing, really--it felt far too personal to rummage through, like revealing a secret passion.

He nods at Perceptor. "We noticed that, too. If it weren't for Vector, well, we'd probably have gotten lost."

The three shots don't startle him as much as one might expect: he's spent most of his life in combat. But he draws his blades, swiftly dropping into a crouch, moving behind Marvelous. "Cybertronian?"

This begins to feel a little familiar, welcome, almost. Taking the tail of a sortie as they skulk through twisted wreckage and dark, shadowed passages. It feels like those days on Cybertron, hunting the swarm, especially with Drift ahead of him.

He watches Marvelous closer than Drift, though. Drift's skills are known, Marvelous' are not. Besides which, Marvelous doesn't have warrior grade plating covering him.

"Noted," he replies to Drift with a curt nod. "Initiating ma--"

He is interrupted by the gunshots. As Drift drops into a crouch, Perceptor snaps both pistols from his hips, swinging them up to line up shots on the darker shadow within the shadows ahead. The readings - energy and chemical - are all wrong. His sensors must be malfunctioning.

Or else, the signatures ahead aren't alive.

Marvelous shoots again, hefting his sword and on alert for further danger behind his target, who appears to have fallen over. He's not getting too comfortable with that just yet, in case it's going to get back up. Looked like he'd risen once: doing it twice didn't seem so out of the ordinary. "This one's lookin' pretty human but it looks like he ain't alone," he calls back.

He's proven correct in a minute. He really hates being right--especially when it comes to the appearances of giant robots. Still, it might be a better challenge than he'd been hoping to get around here. He sheaths his sword and fumbles for his Mobirates, transforming with the ease of practice. Still not an even playing field, but moreso than before, especially with the couple more human-shaped ones he thinks might be bringing up the rear.

Gun and sword? Why didn't Drift ever think of that? Oh, right, because singleminded stubborn robot.

"We searched here!" Drift sounds a little alarmed. "There was no one living. We looked. We wouldn't have left them."

That's all just talk, until he sees them, small human shapes, shambling from the darkness, and behind that, a metal hand, scraping its way across the floor, slow, clumsy but inexorable. ---------

Transforming humans. How quaint.

"Unless someone has created a 'hand-former', with no discernible means of internalizing sustenance," Perceptor observes calmly as he swaps out the pistols for the rifle after all, "then I believe that you can assuage your conscience, Drift."

He takes the shot, watching with morbid fascination as the hand disintegrates in a shower of molten metal and sparks. One almost-intact finger twitches, but then shudders to stillness.

"The materials of the cave may yet be interfering with my sensors, however, I suspect that these energy signatures are simply... not normal." He lines up another shot, waiting for two of the shambling humanoids to stumble into a single vector before squeezing the trigger and vaporizing the head off of one - it was missing a large portion of skull and oozing brain matter, anyway - and half of the second's torso.

Gruesomely, the partial-torso shambling horror continued to try and drag itself across the floor of the cave with only half an arm - that one had been missing before Perceptor took his shot - and a broken leg.

Marvelous curses, not for the first time, the fact that his giant transforming robot is too large to fit anywhere with a ceiling, even the places meant for giant transforming robots. It always makes him feel a little inferior. Still, there's something nice about having guys with sensors and fancy giant lasers, or whatever. The fact that Perceptor stole some of the kills he'd probably have called 'his' by sheer virtue of size miffs him, but hey. There's another on its way out--which he takes care of with several shots to the head and legs--and then the giant arm torso horror.

He shifts his aim to the vulnerable parts, firing for joints and exposed innards. (Thankfully, there's a lot of the latter.)

"How many more you getting?" he asks, moving carefully sideways. "It's a little hard to see in here."

"Yeah, well...Ambulon," Drift mutters. Legformer. Handformer. Tell him it's not possible.

He can share Marvelous's disgruntlement: Perceptor always does have range and that takes away some of the challenge.

But right now he should be less concerned with challenge: Wing's still missing.

He dives in, lopping off a half-human head, and the body collapses, but only briefly, gouting some blackish liquid, before the body begins to move again.

"So. Uh. Solutions?" Because 'chopping them into coleslaw' is the only thing coming to mind.

"Unclear," Perceptor replies to Marvelous. "What readings I am getting are corrupted or inadequate." A twitching limb eeling it's way toward Marvelous erupts into a shower of fluids and gore with another buck of his rifle.

Perceptor snorts at Drift. "Hence my qualifier," he observes as he lines up another shot.

Sorry fellow zombie-slayers. Perceptor sees a target, Perceptor takes steps to mitigate that target. It's almost servo-and-cable-memory by now. His optics widen, however, as he takes note of how the parts continue to attempt to move even after being half destroyed, or worse.

"Incineration seems best."

Now, does anyone happen to have a flame-thrower or a grenade handy? If not, Perceptor has a plan... but Drift won't like it.

"Great," he says, though really, why is he surprised? He's glad for the helmet and suit as the great exploding zombie gets some black on him.

He turns his head at the 'incinerate' comment, glancing back. He grins under the helmet, though no one can see it. "I've got somethin'," he calls, and taps the button on his belt buckle. He kicks a zombie over, and with a click-click-turn-Dairanger! he's swapped forms.

For the sake of brevity, he skips the role call. Instead, he summons up the Qi Power contained in the Key he's used. "Heavenly Fire Star, Blaze Destruction!" Shooting fire out of his hands never stops being cool. He doesn't have the Qi to do this for that long, though: he's out of practice, and this isn't really a technique meant for long applications, like, say, burning bodies. He sincerely hopes someone has something bigger--they've got to find Wing, after all.

Too much talking. Then again, that's Drift's response to pretty much any talking. The fewer words said, the better.

Though that whole fire-out-of-hands thing is kind of impressive. "You Megatronus's?" Because the big First Forged had given Drift that ability--temporarily. And with a serious warning about using it right. Sheesh. Like Drift needed a lecture how to break things.

Drift has his own plan, though and it's the kind Guzzle would be proud of. Okay, not quite as much incoherent yelling, but the same basics: charge in headlong to the enemy. It's the best he's got, but, well....it's pretty damn good.

....That is... impressive. Humans that transform and shoot fire from their hands. What an interesting cosmos it is!

For the sake of not having him interfere, Perceptor waits until Drift is far enough ahead of them, engaging the zombies, before adding his contribution. Stepping just ahead of Marvelous, he tucks the rifle under one arm just long enough to deploy a cutter from the fingertip of dominant hand... and then uses that cutter to neatly nick an energon line in his wrist.

"How long can you maintain that flame?" he asks as he shifts his hand to shoot a pressurized stream of energon through Marvelous's fire. The energon combusts spectacularly as it splashes over the approaching bodies, coating them with a fire that keeps eating into them, even when he directs the stream to another Cybertronian form.

Good thing he'd fueled up before coming out here. Even so, this is a limited resource "weapon". Probably more limited, as soon as Drift realizes just what Perceptor had done.

"Yeah," Marvelous answers Drift, first, though it takes a minute to realize why he'd guesses that. He'd used that particular boon on his Megazord, when it had still worked. "This is different, though."

He looks up at Perceptor. His actions seem fairly straightforward, even if humans don't work that way--he'd been a Transformer himself fairly recently, he knows how it works. He's pretty sure it's not the best plan, but he's not anybody's mother, and it works better than him alone. Not his crew, not his job. "I give it another couple of minutes, tops," he says, honestly, "might be able to drag it out a little longer if I try bursts instead. You gonna keel over?" He shifts his strategy even as he speaks, following the stream of energon with a blast of fire.

"We need to find Wing," he says, "and fast." He's looking around the room, which is lighting up much faster now that half of it is on fire. "Might be able to get around faster than you two if you can get that tablet put back." Marvelous has the size and the experience to go spelunking for Drift's damaged friend with minimum hassle.

Yeah, well, Perceptor, there will definitely be words. Stop outdoing Drift in combat with your rassa-frassin' SCIENCE. Makin' him look bad.

But there's no denying the effectiveness of the attack, if one can measure effectiveness by screaming and flailing bad guys.

"I'll get the datapad back." He hates saying this next part, however practical as it is, "you look for Wing."

"Not yet." Perceptor spares the briefest flicker of attention down at Marvelous, offering something that might almost be a precursor to a smirk. Then he's back to modulating the spray of energon, directing it toward the most intact attackers. He's weakening more quickly than he'd anticipated, though. Almost as if there is something sapping his strength beyond the slow loss of fuel.

"Drift?" he calls, pinning his attention to the swordsmech. Marvelous is clearly quicker and more maneuverable in the tighter confines of parts of the cavern. But wherever Wing has gotten to - or been taken to - it will ultimately be somewhere where a Cybertronian frame can fit.

Perceptor is wary of letting Drift out of his sight, though. Drift has a habit of... doing foolishly self-sacrificing things when he isn't supervised.

Hell, even when he is.

The question is clear in his expression: Go with Marvelous, or come with you?

"Good, not interested in you joinin' our pals here," he tosses off, and then Drift's agreement to what he already knows is the best plan catches up.

"I'll be on the horn, you two have your fun putting that thing back," he decides, authority heavy in his voice. "Gonna go find me a Wing."

He expands his next fire blast in a wider arc, aiming to hit as many opponents as possible. He's barely lowered his hands before he leaps forward, drawing a sword and cutting his way past two humanoids leaping for him. Side passage, side passage--there. He ducks sideways, and leaps over an upturned chest after he makes the turn. This place is giving him the willies, and he's gotten tired more quickly than he thinks is really right. He has no desire for this search to take too long--clearly he's more out of shape than he thought, or something.

Perceptor knows Drift all too well, and the fact that Drift knows that Perceptor knows that is some force of restraint. A little one, at least.

"No one's joining them, if I can help it." He hopes that that also means Wing. He whispers a soft prayer that they not see the jet among the shambling crew. He couldn't bear it.

"The datapad's on my hip," he says to Perceptor, a hint that the other take it, while he keeps the fore clear with a flurry of swordstrokes.

"If I do, be certain to incinerate my hands and shoulders first." Without his guns or his scope, Perceptor wouldn't be worth much as a mindless, shambling frame.

He directs one last spray of fuel along the flames Marvelous has laid down, providing a last burst of cover for the man as he vaults off into the bowels of the cavern system. Then, he's turning back toward Drift, wishing he could spare a moment to admire the graceful, savage dance taking place.

"Including you." Perceptor's as adamant about that as Drift is about them. Or Wing.

He can see that restraint, though, as Drift wades through the unnerving opponents. The way he doesn't fling himself into the midst of the horde without leaving himself a retreat as he has done in the past, and Perceptor suspects that he might be the cause of that. Somehow. He'll take it, even if he's not. Even holding back however fractionally he may be, Drift is still a mightily formidable warrior, and more animated frames and bodies fall under those flashing blades.

"Understood.' Perceptor spares a moment to cauterize the lacerated fuel line back closed with the scalpel hidden in one fingertip, before diving in for a moment to snatch the datapad from Drift's hip. He slaps it onto his chest and pulls out his pistols to guard Drift's back as they prepare to forge ahead again.

"Lead on." He shakes his head, feeling another haze of weakness wash over him for a moment again before it passes under the energizing sting of battle. "While we still can."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lay my ghosts to rest

no subject

no subject

sorry for the delay, folks. been afk all day

no subject

no subject

no subject

sorry, was out all day! hoping a zombie attack already is kosher?

no worries on either count!

zombies!!!

who didn't foresee school stuff this week? it's me.

no subject

s'all good!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject