INVASION!!!! (Zombie AU, Open to All)

[Deleted]

<<The TF:P RP has been hit by Zombies. Please prepare and implement your best zombie plan.

The posting order will probably be free-for all, unless we'd like to set up a separate Decepticon thread. Feel free to kick off as a zombie right away. Go nuts, go crazy in this thread.

On another note, ZZ would really like to be a part of whatever zombie killing team includes Fortress Maximus or Red Alert or both. Provided, of course, that none of Red's many zombie plans includes using ZZ as bait.>>

Something had been off all day.

Zoom-Zoom was still chasing up that drip in the lower levels of the base. Sometimes, he really did wonder about the sensitivity of Red's sensors and whether they were a good thing or not. Like, he'd love to be aware of his environment to the degree of the security director was because that would be as useful as slag when cloaked with dampeners and incapable of running scans on the environment around him. However, since the aforementioned sensitivity had moved him somewhat permanently into this room, searching for that Primus damn leak for the past Earth week, he really wasn't digging it at the moment. (Also, it made Red as tense as slag and Zoom-Zoom was excitable enough already without super senses adding to the load.)

He'd just taken a break, leaning his struts against the wall as he tried to triangulate the location of the leak by mapping out the room's dimensions and overlaying his audio recordings with it. That was when he heard it, a loud crash that echoed through the base from the upper levels. The minibot's optics flicked on from behind his visor as he gazed up at the ceiling in puzzlement.

That had been loud. Really, really loud to be heard from all the way down here.

The feeling that something was wrong intensified as Zoom-Zoom flicked to an open comm channel. "Zoom-Zoom to Red Alert," he said. "What the slag was that, Sir?"

It was probably something he was going to fix. Might as well get a headstart on it by contacting Red first.

Zoom-Zoom's concern grew when he realized he was hearing nothing but open static. Switching channels gave him the same thing. He lurched to his feet, sensor scans turning on in case they could detect anything from the upper levels that was causing the disturbance.

Nothing.

He was pretty deep down after all. Could just be that most Bots were out on patrol or elsewhere in the base. But that didn't explain why he couldn't raise a single mecha on the comm channels.

Whatever that sound had been…

It was most definitely a problem.

[Deleted]

Jetfire clung to the cliff face, his vents wheezing with effort, exposed pipes dripping with half curdled fluids.

He’d struck the rock with greater force than intended, but his propulsion systems were the next thing to be going haywire, he could do nothing but brace for the crash landing.

His servo spasmed as he did his best to keep a hold of his own motor functions. Fingers curled around rock and it fell away, loosened by his sudden arrival.

Metal. And not just metal, Cybertronian welded plating. He’d found the Autobot base. Jetfire’s optics glimmered with hope, relief… but the despair was still there.

He’d found it. It would have taken any surveyor of his experience and talent mega-cycles to find this needle in a planet-wide haystack… but here was a Primus-given miracle. He voiced a silent prayer as breathed only could be by a mech counting his last sparkbeats.

It has been an act of desperation, really. The chaos that had ensued on board the Nemesis had brought the general rule among the still conscious: every mech for himself. Jetfire, amongst others, had sought the help of the Autobots- disasters like this held no factions. They only concerned species.

Jetfire slid down the cliff face, his leg servo was crooked and unusable. He moaned, feeling the doom creep over his frame. He lifted an arm servo to beat against the plating, bellowing out his comm. as he sent it on all possible channels. “Mayday! Mayday!” he sobbed, choking on his own congealing fluids. “S.O.S. from the Nemesis! Frag this war- we have a disaster!” He beat on the metal again, tearing rock away as he slid down the cliff. “Chron’s cogs, let me in!”

As his strength began leaving him, he started feeling a deep, unnatural hunger.

OOC: Making some contrived reason to finding the base. Isn’t that was zombie flicks are about anyway?

[Flatline]

What had happened?

When did things go wrong?

It seemed so surreal, there was no way this was reality.

There was no way this could be real.

But no... no... it had happened, whatever had occurred jumping and spreading between them like a crippling disease. Oh it just started with one, a virus, or some kind of dysfunctional software breakdown. But trying to look into the issue was downright maddening! The parameters made no sense, and the way the subjects mind just... slowly dissolved away... wires shorting out, the spark chamber fading. It defied all logic, all of his medical training! It was useless! It didn’t prepare him for what was to come.

What appeared to be some kind of lost cause, a death to the ranks, had actually recovered, but not in traditional means. Before Flatline knew what had happened? Or could do further testing? The measures he had taken to prevent contamination to himself failed, and next thing he knew his arm was sliced into, and the early symptoms of the corruption flowed over him.

The distress, the frustration, the confusion, it was all consuming. Eating away at rational thought, leaving him to breach his self made quarantine to seek help. Oh what a foolish action, oh what a stupid decision, as breaching that door left the first subject free, and his own deteriorating mind free to infect others. It did not take long until logic faded entirely, and the only thing to survive was a deep seeded hunger.

-----

Jetfire's distress signal, would do more than try to contact the Autobots inside their base. What it had accomplished was notifying his position to those that were still capable and mentally sound on the Nemesis. What fools the common drones were, thinking that this new glimmer of hope, this new beacon of some kind of salvation would actually help them. It was because of this, upon the plateau above Jetfire, a Spacebridge opened up, the portal ripping into existence with a crackling boom.

What one would expect, was perhaps a few foolish drones to come running out. And that is what happened, one of the crew fleeing the ship, about to try to get off the ledge, but he would not get far, as ripping from the portal behind him, was one of the things they should have been working to contain.

A large form rammed into the back of the drone, downing them as a crackle of breaking glass and crunch of twisting metal rang out in a gory display. From the perspective of the older Decepticon, they would be unable to see what was occurring up on the higher ledge, only able to hear the electrical pulses and snarled hisses, then comparative silence.

Small pebbles and rocks fell down from the upper plateau, as a dark black and charcoal frame loomed up and over the edge like some kind of vulture. The light from the spacebridge behind it, made its frame look even more drowned out and darker, just a black silhouette in contrast to the spiraling tones of light. It stood upon all fours, and clung to the top lip of the stone with a sort of dexterity one would anticipate from an Insectacon. However, this beast was no Insectacon, and while it had once been a Decepticon? It appeared far from that state of normality.

Flatline's face had mutated from what it once was, the bottom jaw flaying open into a mangled mass of angled pieces of metal, and broken gnarled teeth. The maw hung open in a gaping look with tendrils of Energon and other fluids laced in-between the ragged barbs. This 'saliva;' of sorts hung down in draping coils, starting to drop onto the stonework above the Aerial bot. The eyes of this past Medic, were wide, the pupils thinned and color drained from the red iris plate, giving it a washed out gunmetal look more common with death than the living.

As it moved forward over the edge, a granulated sound of metal sliding across stone could be heard, as a long chain hung out of one of the turrets on his shoulders. The chain had been fired previously, but its wielder lacked the mental capacity to reel it back in, leaving it to drag behind it in a disarrayed trail. At its end, was the massive barbed harpoon, the barbs all expanded, clutching onto a chunk of outer armor from some other poor soul that had been on the receiving end of the mauling. This chunk was saturated in Energon, leaving a plain trail behind the Medic back to the gateway.

Broken plates from gunfire on the Nemmesis, jutted up to give his frame an even greater look of ragged disarray, and a large slice was on Flatline's left forearm. This slice was discolored, a webbing like corruption of wiring and disarray visible like a living plague of moss spreading from that point. But despite this damage, it didn't seem to impair the beast, as its long spindly arms reached down on the stone, gradually climbing towards the other Decepticon with a very focused look of ferocity and hunger.