We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
<<Takes place concurrent with all the other Autobot raiding party craziness.>>
Jazz had served on the Nemesis, once. Not continuously, of course, as his particular brand of spec ops had never called for spending too much time in one place, but for a good, broken stretch of vorn, it had been home. He'd known the exact time he needed to rise from recharge to allow him to get to any post on the ship on time. He'd known the fastest way from point A to point B using corridor, maintenance tunnel, or Seeker-assist. He'd known the average stretch of time it took for the mess to go through the energon kegs and when was the best time to get a nice fresh cube for you ration. He'd LIVED there. He KNEW the place.
So, he'd chosen a hallway for their insertion point that had one of the better snarls of accessways. A four-way intersection that was within a dozen steps of no less than four different maintenance tunnel systems, a lift, and an inter-deck ladderway leading both above and below.
Jazz waved to several stunned Eradicons as he jumped into the ladderway and dropped all the way to the next deck. Then it was only a quick sprint to port, a slap of a timed explosive to the back of a power regulator conduit, a toss of one of Steeljaws' Scraplet Surprises into a communications panel, and a slide into a maintenance tunnel before heading amidships toward the labs.
Ravage thought it was an Eradicon at first. Dark plating, visor, a clawed hand preceding him as he crawled through the duct. An engineer perhaps, or someone trying, like he was, to get somewhere fast and undetected. Ravage was moving too fast to stop easily, and the duct was not really wide enough to pass without some gyrations, so Ravage pulsed an irritated high priority-out of the way at the frame blocking his way through the duct and only slowed marginally, expecting to be heeded.
Then the mech looked up, blue light flickering in surprise behind his visor, and Ravage realized that he was NOT looking at an Eradicon. He wasn't looking at a DECEPTICON.
Ravage's claws screeched against the duct floor, his weapons coming online automatically, uselessly this close quartered. "YOU."
Jazz had the utter and incredible BEARINGS to GRIN. "Heya! What's up, pussycat!"
Ravage snarled, flash-burst a status-warning to Soundwave, and leapt.
Jazz had always respected Ravage. He was smart, skilled, and--when called for--viciously determined.
Of course, when Jazz switched sides, he had started wishing that Ravage would use a little less of that vicious determination ON HIM. Ravage took Jazz's (quite damaging) defection as an affront to Decepticon special operations in general. Given the minicon's loyalty to said, that meant he took it PERSONALLY.
Which was why meeting Ravage in the ducts so soon after he'd arrived was such a slagging scrap piece of luck.
Jazz hadn't advertised his main targets, signing up for troubleshooting, support, and general troublemaking and leaving it at that. And he'd not been lying: he was enjoying scrambling the insecticon nest.
But if he was also on the lookout for a very specific mech, well....
Prime didn't like assassinations. And it wasn't an assassination, Jazz justified to himself, if it wasn't planned. But if he ran into the Decepticon warlord, they'd have to deal with each other, wouldn't they? And no one could blame Jazz for not pulling his shots when faced with a mech twice his size who could kill him with one blast of his cannon.
Running face-first into one of Soundwave's cassettes had scrapped that plan.
Jazz threw up an arm to block Ravage's lunge. Better teeth in his forearm plating than in his throat. Jazz pulled his other arm back, bringing it forward with his blade out and stabbing for Ravage's optics.
Ravage, with a last plate-shearing headshake, reared back out of the way, frame already transforming to give him hands.
Jazz took the slight distraction's chance to switch his position in the duct, grabbing a pipe along the duct's ceiling and using it to hold his weight and swing his feet forward. He slammed them into Ravage's chest, kicking the cassette further back down the passage.
Time to go.... Jazz rolled over, getting his hands and knees under him and scrabbling for distance.
It was not a particularly graceful or effective retreat, all said. This particular stretch of duct was more linear than Jazz would have liked, and the saboteur was for once at a different disadvantage than usual because of his size. Ravage was faster, in either form, and Jazz often found himself bitten, clawed, and stabbed in his legs and feet as Ravage attempted to climb him to get to more vulnerable systems. Once he got as far as Jazz's waist, hand flashing up with a dagger and slashing in a long and messy but not terribly life-threatening wound to the linkages of Jazz's back and side. Jazz kicked, punched, and stabbed back, taking advantage of his greater strength by kicking and tossing Ravage away whenever he could.
No doubt the two of them were making an unholy racket as they fought their way away down a deck and aft toward the science labs, but Jazz could only hope that whoever heard them was too involved in dealing with the rest of the distractions to try to pin down what sort of snarling Pit was being unleashed in the ductwork.
"Kittycat...nngh...you are real pain in the--OW, slaggit, I need that!"
The only reason they both weren't dead was because they were catfighting (ha!) right alongside energon transmission lines. One stray bullet or energy blast or even a too-vigorous stab could mean a whole lot of explosions that even Jazz hadn't been planning on. So, instead, Jazz tried to escape to get out of Soundwave's sight, and Ravage harried him the whole way, neither in a position to end this quickly.
"Can't we...whoa!...can't we just get alon--"
Encased in the bones of the ship like they were, the explosion was felt as much as heard. Jazz couldn't tell, exactly, whether it was one of the signal explosions or not. Still. The others were obviously having more fun than he was. No fair.
Jazz gave a final kick, catching Ravage in the face as he pulled himself up a crosstunnel, climbing for distance. Maybe Soundwave would send Ravage to investigate or do something more productive than tussle with one spec ops agent....
Or not, he thought, as he heard the click of limbs catching onto and climbing the ladder behind him.
Your loss, stubborn fragger.
Ravage knew Jazz well. He knew that Jazz was an improvised fighter, one that you did NOT want to leave with hands free. If he wasn't using part of the environment, he was pulling Primus only knew what from his subspace. The most effective method of fighting that had been what Ravage had been doing: harrying, making sure that Jazz was too occupied to get creative or dig for toys.
Like the EM grenade that Jazz finally found the time to pull from his subspace. Jazz grinned as he passed a bank of systems relays, climbed past them, and activated the grenade. It hummed in his hand as it counted down, and Jazz swung up and to the side, into a crosstunnel before dropping the grenade down into the shaft he'd just left. He tucked in every bit of plating he had, rolling away from the shaft. He was halfway through the second revolution when he felt the grenade go off: a silent WHUMP that washed over his plating in a fuzzy wall of static. At that distance, with that much metal between him and it, it was a mere head-shaking annoyance.
Certain minicons (and that bank of relays, which Jazz was sure was causing someone a headache), however, were not so lucky. Jazz heard a surprised, staticky curse, then a clang...then another, farther away...then another...and another, then a crash. As if, for instance, a small frame had lost its hold and fell...all...the way...down the shaft...bouncing off rungs and walls here and there.
Jazz resisted the urge to go look. Timetable. He was off it.
"That'll learn ya," he told the intersection before checking his injuries (minor) and his bearings (he was way, way away from where he wanted to be...oh well, maybe he could go help Shadow blow up the labs) before moving on.
<<I'm hoping that I'm not messing up the timing here? Someone let me know if I am.... ^_^;; >>
With the virus completed, the cure would have to be of similar strength and it had to be ready before Megatron jumped the gun and did something like ask to mod his own cannon with the stuff. Acid Storm had been working hard and quickly, getting the antidote up to nearly 59%, a 10% boost from where it was not long ago. However the seeker was running on empty, stretching his body to the limit. It came to the point that the flier slumped over his desk, the virus sitting on his desk right beside a very similar looking canister, the cure. He had been testing the the two against each other to gauge the effectiveness of both. But after a few rounds of testing the seeker felt his tank bottom out, his system forced the seeker to go into stasis to recoup some emergency power. Most likely Acid Storm would only have power for a few hours after he woke up, plenty of time to get nice and recharged...
Later on, Jazz would admit that the whole thing had gone down because of equal parts bad luck and his just not quite being dexterous enough.
The Nemesis' labs had gone through a lot of hands in the vorn since they'd been built. Starscream had always commanded the largest and most central, but the others had rotated through servos as scientists had defected, given up science, or died (either on the battlefield or via blowing themselves up/infecting themselves with cosmit rust/acidbombing themselves to death in their own laboratories).
Later, Jazz would remember that laboratory. He'd remember that it had once contained the most impressive scientific death he'd ever seen. He'd remember how the acid had gone EVERYWHERE, eating through walls before neutralizing itself, including the ceiling. He'd remember how maintenance had bitched and complained about having to rebuild the whole thing and never HAD gotten to completing the ceiling plating, leaving the ductwork exposed.
He'd remember that later. At the time, though, he'd only had time to note that the metal beneath his servos had felt strange before the Nemesis had lurched without warning, the entire hull shuddering. Jazz had scrabbled to not be thrown against the sides of the duct and had come down hard on one hand.
A hand that, along with most of Jazz's weight, had gone right through the weakened metal of the duct beneath him.
Jazz had, to his credit, attempted to pull himself back from the gaping hole opening in front of him. The vorn-ago acid-eaten duct, however, would have none of it, his weight only adding to the metal tearing beneath him, one weak point chaining on another faster than he could backpedal.
Jazz got a cartwheeling impression of a table and a bent head between green wings as he'd fallen right on top of it all. Things went crunch, one of those things jabbing painfully into the wound on Jazz's side before breaking. Jazz stifled the yelp of pain but couldn't stifle the incredible RACKET as he slid over the back of the table and hit the ground.
<<One Jazz, special delivery! He's now on the floor on the other side of the table from Acid Storm. Also, Officially Infected.>>
With a low grunt, Acid Storm's fatigued senses slowly came back online, sharp energon starved pain ripped through his body as the Seeker pulled himself up off the table and began to rub his optics. His first instinct was to shoot the drone who woke him a glare and invite said bot over for a good look at one of the acid vats. But when he pulled his servo away from his optics the bot didn't see a single drone in sight, instead he was 'graced' with an Autobot having ripped right through his roof only to damage hours and hours of work. Not only that but his deprived body continued to send wave after wave of discomfort and pain.
"Computer...lights off." With that order the lab went dark as Acid Storm stood up, slowly walking around the table to loom over the Autobot. The glow from his acid protected spark and green optics were some of the many lights that made up the lab. There was the slight sound of grinding metal as the Seeker's arm transformed into his blaster. He then raised it straight up, at one of the large tanks hanging from the ceiling. The mech then shot it, blasting a hole so acid could rain down, covering most of the lab. Thankfully anything really important was proof against acid, as the scientist was not real big on losing his work over a gash in his arm. However, the Autobot was not so lucky and in this environmental Acid Storm knew he would have the upper hand, being resistant to his own blends and all. The Seeker knew he wasn't much of a fighter, but he hoped this would tip things in his favor, turning what should be a disadvantage into his strength.
"You shouldn't have come here...you shouldn't have woken me." His voice was low and monotone as he pointed his blaster back down at the warrior, behind this cool mask rage welled up inside, rage for his lost sleep. Very little got Acid Storm to even bat an optic, but when his slumber was involved the Seeker could be quite scary.
Jazz had expected to get shot at. Yelled at. Punched. Maybe tossed across the room, as the Seeker was bigger than him. Maybe, if the Seeker was feeling adventurous, grabbed and an attempt made at restraint.
Jazz had NOT, however, expected the Seeker to DOUSE HIS OWN LAB IN ACID.
At first, Jazz had thought that it was some kind of fire suppression system kicking in. After all, what else would be liquid and falling from the ceiling? Then the first itch had started and a splatter of the fluid had hit a chemotactic sensor, and Jazz was actually stared at the Seeker in confusion for a nanoklik in sheer disbelief.
"What the FRAG, mech?!" Jazz rolled away from the blaster pointed at him and, incidentally, under the lab bench that he'd just crunched down onto. He continued rolling, pulling a solid-slug gun (was acid flammable? Would it blow up if hit by blasterfire? JAZZ DIDN'T KNOW) out of his subspace. He shot at the Seeker's legs as he scrambled out the other side of the lab bench, across a walking space and under another bench.
Gotta get out of here. Jazz looked toward the door and made a break for it. It wasn't a great escape angle, with the Seeker closer to it and at enough of an angle to have a long, clear line of sight. But even getting shot would be worth getting out of the ACID.
Evidently the 'Cons had continued selecting their scientists for CRAZY.
To the Seeker the raining fluid was like a light mist, a refreshing rain after so long of being dry. Further more it would create another layer of protection as he was now doused in the stuff. It was a real pity Acid Storm had no drive or ambition for being a Decepticon, he could have been rather good at it.
The mech began to move shortly after the Autobot dodged out of the way, the first rule of any fire-fight was to never stay out in the open, bots that did ended up with gaping holes in their spark-chambers. Even as the Seeker dashed back to gain some cover behind a shelf, he felt a stray energy bolt slam into his left leg, wrenching it horribly out of joint and fusing his knee joints together. Under this sort of pain Acid Storm was a bit more motivated then normal, reaching into a compartment he drew out three small orbs, tossing them in an underhand motion towards the door. Once they hit the ground the balls rolled right through the Autobot's legs, coming to a halt just outside of the doorway. They were rust bombs, three of them meant the bot wouldn't be able to just disarm a single bomb, if the bot had such skills, they would also get some rather decent coverage.
Aiming back along the Autobot's path, Acid Storm hoped that the invader would double back, if he did the scientist was ready to open fire and with any luck score some more hits.
<<btw, Jazz is shooting solid slugs, not energy blasters. He's concerned that energy blasters would light up whatever is that's falling from the ceiling. ^_^; >>
Grenades!
Normally, Jazz would have just taken his chances with something that size, but those didn't look like normal grenades. They reminded Jazz more of some of the specialized payload weapons he'd seen. Chemical, cyberbiological, who the frag knew what, especially since they just got tossed by the crazy-aft scientist that had just doused his entire lab in acid.
And said crazy-aft scientist had just cut off Jazz's escape.
Jazz cursed the Seeker's good aim and threw himself backwards and to the side, scrambling with a curse back for the end of the table. The grenades went off with a venomous hiss, and Jazz felt something sting his right pede as he dove under the table.
Well, frag, maybe he should have stayed out there and seen if the acid could wash off....frag, was that rust?
Ratchet is gonna kill me. Fragging PIT.... "Can't we talk about this?" Jazz called out, looking through the table's legs toward the shelf the Seeker was hiding behind. He even popped up to see if there was anything useful on the tabletop, but it was mostly datapads and a few instruments that he didn't recognize. Frag. Frag frag frag, and the acid was starting to STING....
((Sorry about that. Well, same affect in any case. And sorry the short post.))
Acid Storm was not very amused by the Autobot "Any other time I would enjoy a chat with someone with half a processor. Sadly we all have our personal lines and you crossed mine." with that he aimed his blaster at the table and sent a volly of shots into it before ducking back behind cover. The shots would warp and weaken the bale, possibly forcing it back a little, but they wouldn't eat through it.
The Seeker's mix infused with his laser fire was more geared towards Cybertronian metals, not the inanimate stuff that they made into furniture.
Jazz ducked back down behind the table, his audios detecting the odd splat of the shots hitting the table...some kind of liquid round? He'd bet the universe the salary he wasn't drawing that they were acid, too. Just a hunch....
"I crossed yours by what? Disturbing your work? Denting your table? Hitting you in the head with my foot? M'really sorry about that, mech." Jazz popped up again to keep the Seeker in sight...frag, he must have ducked back behind that shelving.
Jazz slid a look at the door, so temptingly close but also so very open to the Seeker's line of fire. He could just make a run for it and take another round or two (and might have to, eventually), but if he could just get some cover, or get the scientist to move.... He had a few grenades, but he was leery of using them while he was still inside the room with whatever-the-frag-it-was falling from the ceiling....
Jazz eyed the top of the table, where the Seeker's fire had warped the table but not, interestingly enough, broken through. He looked down at the construction of the table, servos finding the best support points.
"Look, look, can't we just talk about this? You obviously don't want me here, and I obviously don't want to be here...we can work this out! Violence isn't the answer!"
<<sorry for the lateness here....had a busy week. ^_^;;>>
If Acid Storm had a sense of humor he might have laughed at the Autobot's claims, but all it caused was a slight narrowing of his optics as he paused long enough to give a 'your a moron' glance before ducking back behind the shelf. Said shelf was horribly chewed up by gunfire at this point, no doubt it would need to be rebuilt and more then half of the little trinkets stored on it were now useless.
"Yes. Quite. And you wouldn't snap my arm off and beat me to death with it. Fool me once..." With that he ducked low, crouching to the ground before taking another of her grenades and rolling it across the floor until it bumped against the table. It was just an acid bomb, but it's explosion spread a wide arch of the burning stuff, covering the table and most of the floor around the blast radius. It now became a waiting game, Acid Storm had all the time in the world, but the intruder had just until the table buckled and folded from the acid eating away at it.
Waiting in the shadow of the bookshelf the Seeker's green optics blazed with abnormal energy as he watched and waited.
Last Edit: Jul 23, 2012 13:16:55 GMT -5 by acidstorm
Jazz's clever servos were working on the bolts holding the table to the floor when the grenade showed up again. He scrambled of the way of most of the splash radius, but that just meant he left the safety of under the table and was getting drenched in the acid dripping from the ceiling.
"Scrap and fire, could we stop with the acid for two kliks?!" Jazz yelped, finding a section under the table that hadn't been drenched (too badly) by the grenade. Luckily, some of it had landed on the table's bolts, which weren't as acid resistant as mech plating or the table itself. Jazz let it do its work and went after the remaining bolts with a wrench he pulled from the depths of his subspace. "Look, mech, I'm not here for you, y'know? S'nothing personal! Prime makes all kinds of sadfaces at unnecessary killing, what, you haven't heard?"
There! The last bolt came off in Jazz's servo, and a hard kick at the remaining table support snapped the half-melted bolt and released the table from the floor. Jazz lifted and heaved, sending the table over onto its side and giving him a nice bulwark against any more acid grenades. Not so much with keeping the acid rain off him, but needs must. And the table had felt heavy, but not so heavy that he couldn't move it for ten steps or so. Perfect.
Not that he didn't still have a job to do. Jazz pulled a bomb from his subspace, hunching over it to protect it from the acid as he set the timer and babbled the first thing that came to mind to keep the Seeker occupied. "Fluffy bunnies and rainbows, that's the Autobot motto! Come to our side! We have energon gummies!"
There was something oddly familiar in the Autobot's taunts, claims and chants, though Acid Storm was dead sure the two of them had never met before this rather annoying day. After a short memory-bank dive as said Autobot used the Seeker's good table as a shield, he realized that the invader sounded sort of like an inverted version of Barricade. This caused a flood of very painful memories of Barricade taunting Acid Storm and sending all sorts of abuse his way, it also wasn't much helping the bot's case that Acid Storm had largely guessed what the bot was doing. After all one did not suddenly stop and hide behind a shield unless he was up to something and considering that this bot was sent by the enemy, Acid Storm was banking on either a bomb or was just setting up a distraction to blow the Seeker into scrap.
"Right...I'll remember that when your scratching at a case of spark-rust..." It was an odd sort of rust that could be transmitted from spark to spark contact and was rather hard to cure, it could be spread by simple touching as well, but that was a lesser known cause. In any case Acid Storm knew he had some of the stuff on the shelf he was hiding behind and plucked it off, he then took out one of his rust bombs and emptied it out, replacing it with the spark rust before he did an under hand throw, aiming for just to the left of the door in hopes he would tag the Autobot and leave a lasting message... interrupt Acid Storm's nap at your own risk.
Jazz's head snapped to the door when he heard the grenade hit over the patter of liquid on metal. It must be a proximity-trigger, if the seeker was tossing it where he was NOT. Great.
Still, he thought, setting the bomb and pulling out his grenades, it was seriously time to get the frag out of there.
The first grenade went underhand toward the seeker, aiming to clear the shelving he was hiding behind and ruin his day.
The second grenade and the bomb went sliding across the floor to thump up against the bank of computers against the wall opposite the door.
The third and fourth grenades were winged under the tables that had the most equipment on them.
And a stray bolt was winged hard at the mystery grenade, hitting it hard enough to send it skittering away from the door. Not as far as Jazz would like, but certainly better.
Time to go. Jazz grabbed the table, heaving and using it as a shield between him and the seeker and his mystery grenade as he rushed for the door.