Flashback - Devil's Bargain (Closed, Roulette)
May 10, 2015 21:47:03 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 10, 2015 21:47:03 GMT -5
[Set a few cycles after Roulette becoming Shockwave's proxy]
Like most living worlds, Cybertron was full of secrets. Some of these were the world's own and shared with no one, no even its children. Some of them were of its children's own making, and the world kept the ones and the others with equal discretion.
Shockwave knew he was but one of many secret-seekers. The driving goal of his entire existence was to tease the tiny crumbs of scientific truth out of the many, many secret wells Cybertron held. He rather believed he was the most capable of such seekers, unhampered by both ethical and emotional concern, but he was not unduly distracted by any need to prove such a thing. His merely to work on, work always, to forever court his mistress, Science.
Which was, at the moment, a difficult endeavor.
It was something of a running joke that, if an Autobot scout were to poke a pointy faceplate into any hole on Cybertron's surface, they were likely to find one of Shockwave's labs. Shockwave had, of course, heard the joke, and run appropriate calculations. It was, perhaps, just as well that no one knew how high the odds were of actually poking into one of his preemptive, materials-only stashes. Or worse, the ones with actual security countermeasures in place...
At the moment, however, the Decepticon scientist was stationed on the side of a gaping canyon. once used as a dumping ground for glass slag, the place gave an incredibly foul buzz over most scan frequencies, and bounced other signals back in a haphazard jumble. Access had been initially difficult, but one of his first tasks had been to set up a camouflaged hydraulic lift. The laboratory itself was small, but it had escaped discovery for a tremendously long time, and most of Shockwave's long-term physiology and CNA experiments were sited within it. Such delicate work, of course, required a fairly constant traffic of equipment, materials and, above all, energy. That energy was, at the moment, foremost a concern in Shockwave's mind as he examined the readouts on several of his growth tanks. Their energy feed levels weren't critical... yet.
His deliveries were late.
The big purple mech turned to a secondary screen and activated a few codes, single hand running smoothly over the modified controls. The topographical projection panned out, two blips on it pinging steadily.
So, his proxies were alive, just not on schedule. Shockwave examined the screen, the massive optic shifting slightly. At least one was where it ought to be, picking up power cells from one of his automated energy stations. Betrayal, failure and rebellion were not unknown to the scientist. He had grown particularly good at predicting whenever his proxies, by accident or on purpose, would present any of them. He still found it fairly inconvenient, though.
He entered the codes to open a proxy-specific line, a heavily encrypted affair that sounded off directly to all of his active proxies - two of them, in this case. ::This is Shockwave. Your arrival is unacceptably delayed; report immediately back to the lab for debriefing.::
Like most living worlds, Cybertron was full of secrets. Some of these were the world's own and shared with no one, no even its children. Some of them were of its children's own making, and the world kept the ones and the others with equal discretion.
Shockwave knew he was but one of many secret-seekers. The driving goal of his entire existence was to tease the tiny crumbs of scientific truth out of the many, many secret wells Cybertron held. He rather believed he was the most capable of such seekers, unhampered by both ethical and emotional concern, but he was not unduly distracted by any need to prove such a thing. His merely to work on, work always, to forever court his mistress, Science.
Which was, at the moment, a difficult endeavor.
It was something of a running joke that, if an Autobot scout were to poke a pointy faceplate into any hole on Cybertron's surface, they were likely to find one of Shockwave's labs. Shockwave had, of course, heard the joke, and run appropriate calculations. It was, perhaps, just as well that no one knew how high the odds were of actually poking into one of his preemptive, materials-only stashes. Or worse, the ones with actual security countermeasures in place...
At the moment, however, the Decepticon scientist was stationed on the side of a gaping canyon. once used as a dumping ground for glass slag, the place gave an incredibly foul buzz over most scan frequencies, and bounced other signals back in a haphazard jumble. Access had been initially difficult, but one of his first tasks had been to set up a camouflaged hydraulic lift. The laboratory itself was small, but it had escaped discovery for a tremendously long time, and most of Shockwave's long-term physiology and CNA experiments were sited within it. Such delicate work, of course, required a fairly constant traffic of equipment, materials and, above all, energy. That energy was, at the moment, foremost a concern in Shockwave's mind as he examined the readouts on several of his growth tanks. Their energy feed levels weren't critical... yet.
His deliveries were late.
The big purple mech turned to a secondary screen and activated a few codes, single hand running smoothly over the modified controls. The topographical projection panned out, two blips on it pinging steadily.
So, his proxies were alive, just not on schedule. Shockwave examined the screen, the massive optic shifting slightly. At least one was where it ought to be, picking up power cells from one of his automated energy stations. Betrayal, failure and rebellion were not unknown to the scientist. He had grown particularly good at predicting whenever his proxies, by accident or on purpose, would present any of them. He still found it fairly inconvenient, though.
He entered the codes to open a proxy-specific line, a heavily encrypted affair that sounded off directly to all of his active proxies - two of them, in this case. ::This is Shockwave. Your arrival is unacceptably delayed; report immediately back to the lab for debriefing.::