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."

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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."

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Lay my ghosts to rest

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s'all good!

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