[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]Late to the Party but Still the life of it! [Open]

[Deleted]

Episode 2.5 | Week One | Day Two

If one were in the area of the Nemesis after its sinking, they might’ve heard the whine of an engine coming from above, an engine that had been taxed for several cycles on end. Eventually they would also see a cybertronian plane nose diving from orbit, several chunks of ice still attached to it. Once Sky-Byte got within about 20 Km of the Nemesis, roughly in the Stratosphere, Sky-Byte could feel his energon shifting from his thrusters to everything else, waking him up from his Mega-cycle long coma. As he looked out his visor, he realised he was about to crash into the ocean. And that the rudders on his wings were frosted shut. With some effort he managed to break the ice on them and pulled himself up, just skidding the water before lifting up. He transformed with some effort, chunks of ice breaking off as he did. Sky-Byte’s thrusters switched from burning Energon to shooting pressurized air, letting him hover. He tore a large chunk off his face, panting hard as he scanned the ocean, having no idea where he or the Nemesis was. He lowered down to the water, twisting his body upside-down and dipping his head in. He looked around, realising that the Nemesis is wrecked underwater. He spins up, clenching his fist.

“SON OF A SLAGGIN’ GLITCH!”

The Seeker’s face is contorted in rage, his sharp teeth clenched and his eyes twisted into a scowl. He propels himself to the shore and lands, slamming his fist into the sand.
“I was too late...The Nemesis...What a cruel fate I have been bestowed!”
He sits down, resting his Claw on his knee and glaring the ocean, presumably trying to intimidate the Nemesis into a repaired state.

“Alright, Sky-Byte, think. Even if the brunt of the Decepticon forces were killed in the crash, which is unlikely, there are other worlds of Decepticons who will come and decimate the Autobot scum that plagues this world! This is a deficit, but not an unrecoverable one…”

Sky-Byte calmed himself and decided to try and assess the damages of the Nemesis up-close. He knew his Survivor Seeker Chassis was vacuum-sealed, pressurized, everything he needed to survive in the strange area they called “underwater”. He’d just have to hope the trip didn’t cause any damage that would make this a very stupid move...

Sky-Byte nervously crept into the shallows of the sea, watching his legs and his HUD closely for any signs of flood damage. He continued walking, getting more confident in his plan the more his paranoia was proven wrong. He soon was submerged completely, using his air boosters to float towards the ruined Nemesis.
The gargantuan warship that once housed the brunt of the Decepticon forces on Earth was in a sorry state. Not only had the crash caused quite a bit of the plating to rupture and fall off but it appeared some Vehicons were lurking about, salvaging what they could. Sky-Byte sighed to himself. They wouldn’t be ripping the ship apart unless they intended to abandon it completely. This was the end of the Nemesis.
On the bright side, the fact that the Vehicons were doing something suggested there were survivors who were commanding them. The potential threat of being the last Decepticon on the planet was one Sky-Byte had pushed faaarrr back into his mind, and he was glad that it was more-or-less unwarranted. Sky-Byte flew closer, entering the ship through a large tear in the hull. The Decepticon hovered silently through the wrecked insides of the Nemesis. He hadn’t spent much time here, even back on Cybertron, but it was rather depressing seeing the helm of the Decepticon’s fleet in such a sad state. He soon hovered into the submerged control room, which was devoid of anything valuable as most of its tech was either destroyed or salvaged. Regardless, Sky-Byte looked around, muttering to himself.

“I’ve got a feeling there’s something here…”

He scanned the area, his HUD showing that anything that would be worth taking was broken. He lifted up a piece of rubble with his claw and grinned as he saw an indicator pop up showing that there was an Eradicon across the room. His air jets pushed him in the direction of his ally to hopefully get in contact with him and the rest of the Decepticons.

[Zercon]

"What the heck was that about?"

"I don't know... should we report it?"

A pair of Vehicons stood a short ways off from the shore near the treeline, their shapes muddled by the shadows the foliage cast. They were watching warily as some unknown individual had decided to tromp down into the water and vanish beneath the surface, it not an individual they had seen before around the ship, but judging by their explanations to the sky, they seemed to be Decepticon.

The duo did not move to follow, instead still standing on the sandy bank turned rocks, each holding either end of a large piece of salvage they had taken from their escape pod. The pod could be seen a short distance off from where they were up the shore, half submerged into the sand, jutting pieces of metal arching up into the air in irregular intervals. It appeared as if it had been decimated by the crash, but in actuality it was being parted out and dismantled, intended to be taken back to Blackridge and erased from the beach so no humans could stumble upon it.

"Let's just get this moved to the export pile; I don’t want to be late for the scheduled pickup."

"Yeah, ok..."

Choosing to let the odd guy do whatever for now, the troopers continued to work, moving in tandem to relocate the shrapnel.

----

Below the sea, it was quiet...

As Sky-Byte entered the Control Room, he would be met with a very disconcerting sight, made even more abstract by the fact that the entire ship was turned upside down.

What was the floor now became the ceiling. What had once been placed here or there was now uprooted and thrown to the new 'floor'. A series of monitors that were mounted to the wall, were broken away from their brackets partly, allowing them to hang at lopsided angles, some twisting completely free to fall to the ceiling below. This exposed wires on their backsides, many of which were pulled taunt to support the screens as best they could, while a few were severed, causing a fizzling reaction as minute bubbles formed along the exposed coppers.

The most notable thing was the absolute absence of the centermost walkway. The walkway and platform before the crash had stretched into the arching dome of a room, creating an imposing platform. It is here the Warlord would set his grand plans into motion, and command the mighty ship to its next path. Now however, this entire structure had broken free, never meant to be pulled upside down under full gravity. Its rough shape lay in a mangled mess at the bottom, turning the smoother structures into a disjointed pile of metal rubble and cables.

On the contrary... much of the room has not been touched, nothing pulled out after the crash, and nothing seeming to be salvaged, though its viability begs to be questioned. Large terminal banks, complete consoles... while the technology may be too damaged to be salvaged due to the water, many raw metals and other tangible wares were in perfectly fine condition, including a few tools, chairs, and locking supplies. It didn’t appear to be touched at all since things went astray, that said, Sky-Bye was not entirely alone.

Though his visitor wasn't talking.

An Eradicon's corpse lay at the bottom near the doorway that would lead to the rest of the Warship, its dark armor and jagged wings, almost blending in with the rest of the mess that lay around it. Energon and other inner chemicals leached into the open water, curling in the subtle currents to dissipate entirely. Its visor was blacked out and plain, frame twisted and chest crumpled in where a set of three prongs had crushed part of the armor.

Around the trooper on the frame of the door, were a few sets of scratches, appearing to almost be claw marks. They marked someone else's escape into the rest of the warship.


Sky-Byte had a choice to make here, he could choose to further explore the room or ship, or return to the surface to confront the troopers.

[Deleted]

"Ah, a Vehi-."
Oh scrap.
He's dead.

This was worrying for Sky-Byte. He had assumed that the Nemesis had been evacuated, making him and the Vehicons the only ones aboard. But it wasn't water damage that retired the bot before him, the claw marks, his chest was crushed by...three...prongs. Sky-Byte glances at his claw.

Oh scrap.

Sky-Byte was never really sure what happened to the Autobot's Claw project after his raid. His rudimentary searches on their terminals didn't come up with any schematics although it seemed likely that they existed. Is it possible an Autobot had caused the crash? One with his same weapon? He had to investigate! If not to avenge this Vehicon, or the Nemesis itself, then to get a 2nd claw. Like hell he's letting anyone ape his bit!

Sky-Byte gently pushes the Vehicon's body towards the closest approximation to a table. He would come back for him, he deserved a proper recycling into materials for other Vehicons. His air jets tilt forward and he flies deeper into the ship, his eyes peeled for any suspicous activity, like alive people who aren't him.

[Zercon]

The Eradicon's frame seemed reluctant to move, its metal form waterlogged entirely in the hours it has been left beneath the surface. It made the trooper seem almost like an oversized paperweight, though it eventually could be maneuvered into its new home by the slab table that had been overturned. The removal of the body cleared the path towards the entrance that much more than before for the Decepticon.

As Sky-Byte continued through the doorway, he would find the soldier's counterpart, the second guard that traditionally stood watch over the massive spiraling metal door hunkered to the right side almost out of line of sight. Like the other Eradicon, this individual seemed to suffer a similar fate, narrow grooves pinched down into the chest armor, paint peeling away at the centermost point to expose faint glints of metal in the dark depths. This corpse was leaned up against the far side of the archway's frame that supported the doorway, helm turned away, and one arm raised up to curl across the other, it's pair of two fingers snagged into a light 'grasp' on the far limb.

If Sky-Byte were to continue along the new hallway, he would find that the path was steadily sloping up and away from the Control Room, the ship sitting at an angle on the sea floor. In addition, the fact that the entire ship had been flipped upside down in its crash, was actually a boon for the lone Decepticon. Mars and scratches, scrapes and marks... the essentially untouched ceiling plates, did not hold the same durability as the floor, and it painted a picture of something's movements that happened after the ship had fallen.

A rough series of scrapes and claw marks...

Scuffed flecks of black and red paint that barely hung on...

It lead up towards the surface of the water that rippled ahead, where trapped air within the massive ship kept the sea at bay, for now.

[Deleted]

Sky-Byte pushed the second Eradicon over to his partner. It'd be tricky carrying them both out but he'd manage. In the meantime he did one last look of the control room before going deeper into the corridor.

Sky-Byte scanned the hallways ahead with both his actual scanners and his optics. The last thing he wanted to do was be caught unaware. He quickly noted the wild markings on the ceiling. This suggested that whatever had attacked the Eradicon before was more savage than he thought an Autobot would be. It also told him that he didn't have as much manueverability in the water as he did. Sky-Byte once again silently thanked Warlord Megatron for indirectly giving him his Chassis and Air Jets.

The Seeker opened up a plate on the side of his abdomen and unholstered his one-handed Rocket Launcher. There was a risk with using the thing but maybe he could bring down a section of the Nemesis on top of this monster. He kept moving, following the trail of his foe, nay, his prey!

[Zercon]

Once Sky-Byte exited the water to pursue the target, the trail would change due to water no longer washing away some of the evidence.

Blue and green, spatters of inky black smudged with coolant and fuels... whatever had been scraping and clawing itself along the corridor, was most definitely injured and was not in a good state at the moment, though it was now apparent it was most likely a Cybertronian of some kind, or a similar mechanoid creation. Its clawed marks continued in a steady scrape, before seeming alleviate and grow more scarce, the scratching and gores lifting away to be nothing but a trail of Energon and oils.

Except it wasn't right.

The Energon that had been left behind, was sharp and jagged, it jutted off from the ground in tiny spikes that looked as if the fuel was trying to return to its natural crystalline state of being. They were all small, shorter formations that glinted with a faint glow, acting almost like tiny beads that speckled the individual's pathway down the hallway and around one of the many corners. One could almost call it a breadcrumb trail.

Nothing else seemed to be out of line or damaged once out of the water, other than a small chunk of metal that was embedded into the wall at Sky-Byte's right side. It appeared to be painted or stained darker gray to a near black, so it did not stand out against the rest of the warship well. It was only due to the silver end that it even had a chance of being seen, if the Decepticon could even notice it with other things to take into consideration. The short chunk of rod was lodged deeply in place, a few grooves around the wall surrounding it.

It would not budge if pulled.

[Deleted]

Sky-Byte wasn't an Energon expert, but he'd seen enough bots bleed out to know that generally speaking the Energon didn't go back to crystals when it leaked out. It leaking out was a good sign though; it was wounded which means it would be an easy kill...hopefully. Sky-Byte was still rather unnerved at the whole situation and even now was thinking he should go back up and grab some Vehicons, atleast as cannon fodder.

As he passed he gave the chunk of metal in the wall a few tugs with his claw to no avail. If it was able to do that even while injured...Sky-Byte flicked the safety off on his rocket launcher. This wasn't gonna end well, was it?

Regardless, Sky-Byte keeps going, his Launcher raised and on high alert for his target.

[Zercon]

The chunk of metal sticking out of the wall did not budge nor move in any way, soon abandoned a moment later as the Decepticon continued his adventure down the halls of the felled ship.

The dappled path of Energon seemed to waver and dip from side to side, fluctuating as if the thing was not entirely certain where it was going to go next. A few drops here, a few more there... a pattern of scuffs and scrapes, a transfer of black paint to pair along with the gory mess... This wobbled until it cut around a bend to a new hallway, where a few paces down the way lay a new sight to behold.

The architectural arches of the hallway that offered structural support, served as a makeshift hideaway that was utilized in full for some time it seemed. Energon, oil, coolant... it all pooled and collected into a large mess, where streaks cut through it from a body part sliding past the threshold. As with the dappled bits of Energon before, the luminous glowing material had crystallized, and was jutting out at awkward angles away from the center. The points glinted in the nearly nonexistent light, its edges sharp like a blade's.

Resting nearby from this mess, was a simple tool.

The tool was atypical in color and form. It appeared to be an in-built piece, possibly mounted within an individual instead of found in a drawer, yet there was no broken portion that showed it had been snapped off. The object was a soldering gun, a simple trigger, all made of black and silver metal, with the handle being red that had folded over from some previous shape. This was left abandoned, and beside it was the signs of the next path the mysterious individual had taken.

Smears.

What had once moved on its own power now was leaving behind a dragging trail in its wake, a few dents along the one smooth plating that now composed of the floor, indicating a larger frame had walked through beside the new marks. This new path through the nemesis was very direct and cutting. It did not deviate or meander around, instead moving with focus and precision to get from point A to point B.

The flow of Energon would start to dissipate some, marking a loss of pressure to keep hemorrhaging the precious fuel, but while that had lessened, the trail was still easy to see from the scraped and black paint marks of the individuals progress. This would lead up to a massive stairwell if SkyByte chose to continue...

A stairwell that was now upside down.

The flip of the Nemesis now being upside down, meant that the functionality of the area was hindered greatly. No footfalls to step upon, no functional handrail... instead there was a slick slope that was rather steep, leading up and down to different levels of the immense ship.

The path went down.

[Deleted]

Sky-Byte noted the change in Energon. He must be getting closer! He hoped he was getting closer, this had been a much longer journey than he expected. The Decepticon took the soldering gun in his hands, inspecting it thoroughly. When he realised it was a tool and not an actual gun he threw it behind him and continued onwards.

He kept his eye on the fluids and energon stains marking his path, once again noting how it had changed radically from before. Because he was watching the energon so intently he nearly fell off when he arrived at the slope. After regaining his balance he peered down it. Trying to see into the depths. After failing to see down fair enough for it to matter he shrugged, kicked up his air jets and hovered down to hopefully find his target.

[Zercon]

The path wove into the deepest parts of the ship, channeling further into what would have been known as the Science Wing of the grand vessel. Even though the ship seemed to be completely empty at the moment, no personnel or other individuals wondering the halls, this portion of the Nemesis somehow managed to feel even more isolated and cold. Trapped within an abundance of layers of rooms, hallways and metal, caged into a secluded portion... The dappled trail lead to a large doorway, having once been an area of rather significant importance due to its centralized location.

The door was open, a yawning gap that lead to another smaller hallway.

Scrapes and gores tore through the sides of this new passageway, a burning mark where something seared into the metal to melt and corrode connectors and devices mounted within. Similar damage could be found on a monitor just past these marks, the device barely hanging on upside down at a crooked angle, its screen cracked and flickering to shoot broken shadows on the ground below. An image could be seen on its surface on few occasions, split up fractured by boxes of distortion that etched through it, though there was a silhouette of a tall figure that could be barely seen, its wireframe twisting away from the central mass.

Down in the room, it was quiet, a soft hum heard of some of the machines within that remained functional despite their upside down existence, but what was more notable, was the brilliant blue Energon that was smeared... everywhere...

A medical slab was roughly propped up into the center of the room, scrapes etched onto its side and other damages likely incurred during the flip of the ship as it crashed. The medical bed held a few restraints upon its surface, but there was nothing to be found in their grasp other than pools of Energon and other internal fuels among black and red scuffs. The vibrant blue crystals encrusted broad swaths of its surface, glittering in the faint light of the broken monitors and occasional sparks that flicked out from damaged machinery.

Tools, an empty IV bag... some dirty rags and bits of metal that had been sheered clean... Whoever was on the table may have been long gone, but evidence of a bad time was plain as day.

While Sky Byte explored for the source, he would hear a voice bark out from somewhere behind him in the hallway where he once walked.

"Who is there!?"