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.
Pyrotech kept walking. He stepped off the pavement and into the sodden grass. Water squelched up around the heavy weight of his feet and haloed the dark metal. Branches overhead creaked and rattled. They rubbed against each other. Little bits of lichen sloughed off and scattered down to stick damply against Ghost's plating and then blew away.
He stalked between the trees and pulled his doors back so that they did not touch a single organic thing. Rain curled around the rungs of the silver ladder on his back and sheeted to the ground.
A gravel path wound around. Pyrotech stepped over it and continued. Ahead of them was a flat area and in it was playground equipment. The swings creaked restlessly over a shimmering puddle. Weirdly colored animals rocked on rusty springs back and forth, back and forth, swaying under the weight of the weather.
Vacant pink and teal eyes watched Ghost pass by and then an elephant bobbed his nose to a turtle; as if they were whispering to each other.
The red mech stopped and looked around them. A soccer field sat empty behind some park benches that could have used a new coat of paint years ago.
"I'll call for a bridge," Pyrotech said. "But first..."
He turned back to Ghost. His crimson optics shone in the dark, smouldering softly as if something could either flare or go out.
Though he was following, rather than on point, Ghost Wind did not relax his vigilance. He cast a glance at the playground equipment, both caught off guard and somewhat creeped out by the odd animal mimicries, but hey, to each their own.
His wariness did not end when they came to a halt; about the only benefit of being out in the open was that Ghost could keep an appropriately respectful distance from Officer Utmost rather than crowd him with his dusty, surely unkempt self.
"I'll call for a bridge. But first..."
Just knowing Pyrotech was going to be safe, out of his hands and no longer Ghost's responsibility dropped a subtle weight of stress off of the two-wheeler's rigid stance. If Officer Utmost was safe, Ghost could focus on his own staying-alive issue. Whatever 'first' Pyrotech might want, up to and including swatting him around for mouthing off, Ghost could deal with.
"Tell me exactly why you missed that ambush."
... Except that.
The Tomahawk couldn't help it. For a moment he could not hide how crestfallen he felt. He lowered his bow and stood up at parade rest, as if to provide a report. His mouthplates opened, then closed, and he rethought what he'd been about to say. He repeated that process a couple more times before he could begin to speak, very slowly.
"I... can try, sir." How could he explain that the sense of the tunnels had been wrong? How could he put in words those untouchable, unseen variables he'd learned through the endless shifts in the depths and the dark, working with his cohort? They had never named them for him, they had never put any of those principles into words. They just... were.
"No matter what tunnel you're in, there's a... What the tunnel or the conduit does, it touches everything about it. The air of a ventilation shaft has a strong current, the eddies of it are always short and low. The air in an electric conduit snaps. The air in a sluice hardly ever moves. I swear I'm getting to a point, sir." Ghost rubbed his helm a bit.
"When you're inside a transport system, you can tell. The power moves through very specific paths; the temperature regulation hops along and it's not... regular, but it is predictable. Even the air, the pressure, it does things not in a pattern, but in a specific way. I've known those ways since my first vorns, and they were all there when we went into the tunnels... but they were also just different enough. These weren't... they're not our tunnels. All the same variables are there, but when we go in there, they don't move the same way. The pressure changed, but I couldn't tell if it was a human train, a human, or one of us. The air currents shifted, but they were so scrapped to begin with I couldn't tell where or why or how."
Ghost trailed off. He couldn't. There were no words, just as there had been no words then. If he could have taken Mister Utmost through tunnels and conduits for a lifetime, perhaps he could have explained, but not as things stood. He drew himself up straight, knowing his words were not going to go over well.
"The tunnels were familiar, sir. They were also just alien enough that on first time setting pede on them, I was reading them a couple of seconds too slow. I have no clearer explanation than that."
"Try," the red mech told him. It was a statement, not a question.
As Ghost fumbled quietly through both his physical and verbal response, Pyrotech stood and listened.
Icy rain beat down on them both, slicking into uncomfortable places; tricking into throat -guards, seeping into seams. It lingered in the hollows of their plating; collecting into cold pools. The tunnel dust was washing away from them and back onto the ground.
Pyrotech settled his hands onto his hips as Ghost continued to speak. After that, there was no motion from the sleek red mech. He didn't even lift a door or shrug a shoulder to get rid of the water. His field was utterly quiet as well, not even the slightest hint of agitation or reaction. It was as if the question he'd posed the bikebot was was simply thoughtful; musing on an offhand query onto how things worked as he passed by.
"Yes, a point would be good," he agreed dryly to Ghost's prompt.
When Ghost finished speaking there was a long silence. No sound but the guttering wind that lifted the empty swings and swung them softly back and forth. Rusting chains braided, twisted, and rattled. A tangle of sodden food wrappers and leaves flipped across the playground bark, pushed around by a particularly large gust. They came to slap themselves with a wet thud against the bikebot's ankle; curling cold and clammy around the edges of the joint.
A scent of fecund rot rose with the disturbance; mold, food grease, and mud. Organic deterioration. The fiberglass animals compressed on their springs and looked at Ghost with faded eyes full of disapproval, as if they were judging his explanation. Then they shifted back and stared off into the depths of the old park.
Had the red mech listened? Had he understood what Ghost was trying to explain about those silent things he himself could not hear. That there was a perfectly logical, understandable reason to the fact that Ghost had failed because of all the differences between Earth and Cybertron, all the tiny nuances that had thrown the bikebot off concentration?
The red glow of the architect's optics threw sharp shadows across his pale face. He lifted his hands off his hips and focused directly down at Ghost, as if he was weighing something, turning it over in his mind. His field was smooth, unruffled; nothing, not even a ripple. A thin smile started to curl the corner of his lip upwards...
Crack.
Immediately Pyrotech turned away from Ghost to face the noise. His cannon was at the ready, it swung to pinpoint. He came up on his toes and his doors flared. The rain was coming down nearly in sheets now; it fuzzed sensors and drowned sounds in the drumming roar.
The courier had trotted out from between the oak trees and stood obviously in the clearing. Her foot had come down square and heavy on a thick branch and snapped it. Immediately she sidestepped nervously, and then came to a stop and ducked her helm before she tucked her hands behind her back.
"Sir," she said, with a quick nod to him, and then Ghost.
"You better not have been followed," Pyrotech warned. His focus had been entirely drawn off of the bikebot and onto her.
Immediately the courier adjusted herself a little more inward. "No!" she hastily reassured him. "No sir, no, I wouldn't have come to find you if I was. I know not to do that, I just- I knew he needed to bridge back and you were with him and- ah, should do it fast, sir, the Autobots have reinforcements on the ground. You really hurt the one you shot. They're upset."
"Vehicons are clear," Dart mumbled. "I checked. I just- we should go, sir."
Last Edit: Nov 10, 2014 0:22:13 GMT -5 by Pyrotech
Welp, that had gone about as Ghost expected, if not worse. The Tomahawk shifted slightly, bracing himself as subtly as possible for either a verbal harangue or a physical swat. He fully expected that gun to come swinging at him, with whatever ugly thing it was packing.
Mister Utmost was just too weird to read and predict, and Ghost couldn't be quit of him soon enough. Scrap but this job had --
His bow was up, the string humming and every inch of his attention on the one sound before he identified its source. Vents blowing a water-logged huff of relief he lowered the bow again, his tone quiet. "This is exposed as..." He bit back the comparison, still not wanting to use that kind of language around the officer as he spoke to Dart.
Dart's news, however, gave him a sliver of hope and he straightened up, attention once again roving all over their perimeter (inasmuch as he could keep track of it). "If one's hurt bad, that's good news, sir. Autobot field SOP usually is to stick to that position until they can ferry their wounded out. I'd suggest, sir, widening the gap between you and them while we can." Remembering Officer Utmost's priorities, Ghost added, "And the generator's. Orders, sir?"
The architect reached up a hand to rub his chin. He ignored the rain dripping off his plating as he mulled over Ghost's comments. "Hmm. It is," he agreed finally. "Always good news when one of them is downed. Only thing that's better is a report that one of them is dead."
"Well then, I've got what I came for," he said. "So yes, we should be on our way. One moment."
There was a slight shift of his body language that said he was on a comm line. A moment or two after that there was that bright green whirl of a bridge opening up on the empty edge of the playing field nearby.
"Head back to the Nemesis," Pyrotech told the bikebot, with a politely dismissive wave of his hand. "You did an excellent job tonight, minus a few little things you need to work on. I'll put that into my report. I'm sure those issues with the tunnels will be fixed next time I require your assistance..."
Of to the side Dart took a step forward, as if the courier was anxious to leave. Ghost would see her helm duck slightly, as if she was bracing against the blow of the wind and the rain. Immediately, the red mech's focus was drawn back to her. His gaze came to rest on the still-oozing blast hole in her shoulder.
"That doesn't look good," he said casually and began to stroll towards her. Over the dull, constant beat of the rain came a new sound- a hiss. A wisp of steam curled up from his fingers.
Dart flinched.
"Go on," Pyrotech ordered Ghost. "We will be seeing each other soon, I should think."
Five quick strides would be all Ghost would need to make the portal.
Depending on how fast he was, he might not hear the sound of super-heated metal on dull black plating...