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.
Hearing the sirens, Elita broke into a run. She half-hauled the femme with the burned face with one hand, hitching up the half-grown sparkling they'd found wailing in the street on her opposite hip. It wasn't far to the last transport, but already she could see buildings melting and collapsing before her optics, and the streets flooding with molten metal. Time had run out. If she delayed, even the One would be left behind.
"Hold the transport!" she bellowed as she neared, leaped over an ominously-shiny patch of metal and shifted into a sprint. Twenty paces, ten - and then she'd reached Contour, with femmes already reaching down to haul her and her rescuees up. Made it. She waved off an offer of medical assistance, stripped halfway out of her thermal armor, and cycled deeply as Contour lifted off.
Below them, the island melted into nothing, crumpling into an unrecognizable lump of metal before sinking out of sight entirely. Somewhere in the back of the cargo hold, someone wailed in grief. Elita shuttered her optics briefly.
"What's our status?" she asked of whoever was close enough to report.
All the suits were tagged. Combine that with the usual Rescue sparkcount procedures and Flareup was confident in telling Elita-One "We're clear!". Technically it wasn't quite true since they would be unable to retrieve the submersible deployer, but that had been a hive decision made with Firestar earlier. Without it probing the undermetal conditions, they would have had no warning when the debris went under at all. As it was, they were too close.
"That was too close," Firestar said very grimly. Flareup replied to the head of Rescue with an apologetic pulse from Contour, accepting the criticism on behalf of the hive. If they ever ran into a situation like this again, they would do better, but the hive was still integrating the deployers and learning how best to use their capabilities. The absence of a live sensor feed through the metal was unavoidable but had put them in a dangerous spot.
The Order members that weren't hive seemed a little shaken. They had probably left live mechs behind. Contour was moving away already, rising to an altitude that escaped the worst of the heat and turning towards the affected areas on shore.
"High Councilor Ratbat is here, Elita One," Flareup said uncertainly. High Council politics were above the level of what hive was supposed to deal with. "He groundbridged in."
"My thanks to the Order on behalf of the people of Polyhex," Ratbat cut in with unctuous smoothness, transforming to mech form along with his bodyguards to secure a place on Contour as the ship began to move in earnest.
The maglocks kicked in with Elita still in a resting position on one knee, and having to address Ratbat like that... irked her. For no reason she could put a finger on, aside from the Order's traditional injunction against kneeling or bowing to anyone. She'd taken a knee to address smaller individuals on occasion, but not usually until she'd gotten to know them and knew whether they would take it amiss. She and Ratbat had no such rapport, and some snide voice in the back of her processor told her that not only would the Councilor not take it amiss, he would likely take it as his due.
An unworthy thought, to be certain. Elita shook her head at herself and addressed Flareup for the moment, using the delay to quell her spark on the subject of kneeling. "It was a hard duty," she said to the hive member quietly. "You did well. All of you did well," she repeated, raising her voice to include every Order sister within hearing, and trusting that the message would be passed along to those outside the reach of her voice.
Now she was ready to deal with Councilors. "Please do not thank us yet, Councilor Ratbat," she said, turning her steady gaze to him. "The work has barely begun. The people we pulled off that island represent only a fraction of the number still in danger." She paused, glancing behind her to where the wounded were being seen to. "We did manage to save your household manager. She is injured, but I am told she will make a swift and full recovery."
Ratbat mentally marked that footage out to be inserted gratuitously into a press release video at some point. The Order would hate it, and public outrage against Megatron's faction would ideally be diverted by yet another public spat between the Order and the Council.
A sideways glance at the rescued servitor, locked to the deck, head being hosed off by the Order's ship. "Assistant household manager," he corrected, suppressing... irritation.
Was there anything he could do with her? Alleged swift recovery aside (and as she'd just been pulled out, he could hardly see what the Order was basing that statement on) ... time was getting short.
He supposed he could compel her to self-terminate. He was going to be hounded by media as it was, he didn't want to be trapped into a schedule of visiting some repair bay for appearances when Soundwave was demanding more and more of his time. There were individuals on his staff that it'd be worth going through that for. One or two of them were currently melting. She wasn't one of them. It would just be a waste. Megatron was going to make his move, there was no time to retrain her to another function...
He looked at her thoughtfully. Then at Elita One. "I have no immediate use for her. Would you like me to transfer her contract to the Order?"
It'd save him the repair costs, certainly. And he could get a tax write-off for it.
This time, Elita didn't even bother to hide how appalled she was by Ratbat's words. The femme had been injured in Ratbat's service, and Ratbat was ready to throw her away, as though she were an appliance that didn't fit in his new dispensory room? Had the mech no spark?
"If you are releasing her from your service," she answered slowly, keeping her temper in check, "then she is a free agent, and may join the Order if she so desires. I will speak to her of it. Now," changing the subject before she said something she'd regret later, "I am told that this act of terrorism was targeted toward you, Councilor. Or so the group taking responsibility claims. Have you received any messages or threats to that effect, either before or during the event?" It was a long shot, but if Ratbat could provide information as to the identity of the specific group, and if it was one the Order had files on, it would make things much easier when searching for secondary explosives.
Which she hoped they would be in position to do soon, so she could fragging stand up.
"Oh, constantly." Ratbat said. "I assume they were caste malcontents of the usual sort. Our lower orders are renowned for their poor restraint and violent impulses, after all. You have no idea how much effort it takes to keep a civilization running under these circumstances."
Flareup kept an audio receptor on that conversation as she scanned the local communications bands. She was startled to see footage of Ratbat and the hive on one of the news channels, with an overnarration about High Council contribution to rescue efforts. She pinged for Elita's attention with the relevant band.
Then a tide of hive controller reaction hit her, and Contour banked abruptly. She heard the sound of a rocket launch through Flamewing's audios on the shore, and then a loud explosion ripped through Contour's rising manipulator arms where the deck had been a few nanokliks prior, raining shrapnel on the deck. This was followed by three more impacts in quick succession against the thick shields and reinforced armor of the underside, experienced as dull thuds, and another two rockets that missed entirely. One impacted the the ruined fortress in the center of Polyhex with no discernable effect, while the other overshot the fortress and detonated well beyond the canyon rim, out of sight.
The deck tilt worsened suddenly with the kinetic energy imparted and then the ship flipped. Maglocks kept everyone on the deck locked in place, but the high-caste sparkling the One had just rescued was thrown out of the arms of the sister he'd been passed to, flung out towards the pool with a wailing shriek. Flareup called for help on the Order emergency band while Contour tried to ride out the barrel roll and get back to horizontal. The manipulator arms that hadn't been warped by the explosion reached out for a catch, failed.
A deep and very ominous hum rattled the ship as Contour's weapon systems charged. Targeting locked on the location on the far cliff where the rocket fire had come from. Flamewing had a visual.
"We see him." The entire hive spoke as one, Contour's strong, deep voice cutting through the chaos on the deck. "We cannot fire without taking the cliff down." The ship's multiplicity of arms transformed back into a roof over the deck as she righted, though holes remained where the explosion had done damage.
"We are tracking his coordinates." Contour was finally on a predictable enough course to accept the groundbridge from headquarters. It opened in an empty place on the deck. "Non-hive who are mobile will evacuate now."
Flamewing had followed the attacker down the hole on the cliff he'd disappeared into in robot mode. She was feeding coordinates to Flareup, who was feeding them to headquarters in preparation for a double-groundbridge back in.
Perhaps fortunately for public relations, the missile attack on Contour knocked Ratbat's words completely out of Elita's head.
She grasped at the nearby wall, unnecessarily as the maglocks were still quite strong, and rode out the sickening spin of the barrel roll. In the middle, she heard a shriek; she looked out the clear viewport and saw the little one she'd saved falling rapidly toward the molten pit. A cry of horror tore itself from her throat.
Then, as Contour righted herself, she saw a flash of silver wings, and the little one was caught neatly by an Order wingsister. Elita vented in relief.
"We see him. We cannot fire without taking the cliff down." Elita straightened as Contour spoke, grip tightening on her hammer's shaft. The maglocks released, and Elita stood up gratefully, listening with half an audial as their rescuees were herded through the groundbridge and to safety. She would go last, making certain everyone got to safety aside from the hive who were staying in position.
"You've revealed yourselves," she murmured. "Solus guide me. I will give these people justice."
The last to enter the bridge was Ratbat; Elita placed her palm on Contour's hull a moment, and followed.
Ratbat seethed inwardly a little. The Order's behavior was absolutely unacceptable.
Yes, yes, evacuating the injured was all very well, but he was the actual target. Their groundbridge had come in close enough to preclude him using his own remote, they'd shut him in their ship so he couldn't fly clear, and (disregarding all precedence!) they'd made him wait until the ship was nearly empty before they'd let him through.
He shot a look of genuine dislike over his shoulder as he exited the groundbridge, dodging between sisters in his mech form to locate his wounded assistant household manager. His field reached out to touch hers, wrapped her in. He had a few instructions for her before he left her here, best handled over a private com line...
He'd wait until Elita went charging after the imbecile who'd shot rockets at him before making his own exit. Baiting her had been fun, but he was not at all sure he should be running interference for Megatron right now. Maybe a little public outrage would motivate him to get his house in order and stop distributing rockets to hotheads. Unless he missed his guess, that was some of the military-grade ordinance his factories had redirected to the Decepticons after the Council argument over the Guard budget had gone badly. Who was organizing things over there? Clearly, he needed to have a chat with his supposed allies.
The groundbridge deactivated and then reactivated. Elita, and a team of violent-looking femmes were streaming back into it, presumably to chase after the mech with the rockets. If they didn't get him, Ratbat would make sure Soundwave did.
Ratbat mercifully forgotten, Elita-One leaped through the groundbridge and landed on the other side already running, hammer braced over her shoulder. The ground here was all but untouched by the surge from the pool, but it was by no means sure, the roads uneven and cracked from years of neglect. Fortunately, the crowds who'd fled to this level escaping the molten metal knew enough to get out of the way of an Order charge.
"Get the glitchspawn, Elita!" someone yelled. Elita smiled grimly.
She was being fed data from Contour, a constant update of coordinates bounced from Flamewing. The rocket mech was fleeing deeper into the city, making use of the area's twisting, seemingly random streets to lose hir pursuers. But Elita had optics in the sky and real-time map data pinged to her every half-cycle. And her quarry was, apparently, slow.
//Split up,// she ordered her sisters. //Surround hir.//
She turned a corner, unslung her hammer, and used it to propel her over a low, hastily-constructed barricade. She had visual confirmation: a broad-shouldered mech fled before her, still clutching the rocket launcher against his side. This time it was Elita's turn to send data to Contour and Flamewing, as she unholstered her blaster and snapped off two shots on the run.
Flareup watched through the optics of her climber deployer, which had latched onto a sister's shoulder to provide a ground viewpoint near Elita. Flamewing had taken to the skies again to join the encircle operation. Someone in the Order had thought to bring her a weapon, so the hive's rotor flier was at least armed, now.
She took in data from the part of the hive that was doing tactical analysis. "If he's kept the launcher he may still have rockets. Be careful!" she sent over the comm. In the city streets, those military-grade rockets would be the next best thing to a weapon of mass destruction.
She wondered who the mech was, what had made him turn to this kind of evil. Clearly he hated Ratbat, but the sheer callousness and destructiveness of the attack was novel in her experience.
Contour as hive controller would handle all the fighting. Flareup was focusing on rescue operations as well as the chase. Being shot at certainly wouldn't prevent the Order from fulfilling their duty to Solus. Rescue teams were being redeployed from headquarters into the previously flooded areas of the shore now, while Contour and the hive aboard her had risen out of the canyon to head towards where the sixth rocket had impacted in the city.
Last Edit: Aug 14, 2012 22:16:55 GMT -5 by Deleted
//If he's kept the launcher he may still have rockets. Be careful!//
//Copy that,// Elita sent back. The blaster bolts had hit, but only glancingly, slowing their target down with a limp that became a stumble when three sisters bristling with weaponry and hostility arose in his path like wraiths. The mech snarled, turned to escape down a side alley; bright gold blaster fire warned him back again. He turned again, and met Elita-One's fierce stare.
"In the name of Solus," she intoned, "stand down."
Sometimes that worked. Sometimes it didn't. The mech didn't seem inclined to surrender - he spluttered a bit, looking vainly for a way out - there wasn't any, not even up, although he didn't look like a flier - before seeming to remember that the thing he was clutching was as good as a weapon of mass destruction in this environment. He smirked like a Tarnean skyshark and hefted the weapon.
"My regards to the Pit, Solus glitchspawn," he growled, leveling the rocket launcher directly at Elita's spark.
Elita was in motion even as he spoke. Her hammer swung, striking sparks off the ground before hitting the launcher's barrel from underneath just as the mech fired. The missile screamed into the air, arcing hard to the left as it flew (bad aerodynamics, that); an Order flier shot it down, detonating it harmlessly in the atmosphere overhead. Elita felt the brief, hot shockwave, but by then, she was busy knocking the launcher out of the mech's hands and battering him to the pavement with blows calculated to cripple and pacify, not kill.
Death was too good for him.
"Councilor Ratbat lives," she snarled, resting the head of her hammer on her fallen opponent's neck. "He groundbridged out when the first shockwave hit. All you've succeeded in is destroying lives above and below, lives that had nothing to do with whatever political point you were trying to make, you idiot. No," she snapped when the mech opened his mouth, "don't tell me what it was. Frankly, I'm not interested."
The mech was at least smart enough to shut his mouth then. Elita nodded to her sisters, who descended on the dented mech with stasis cuffs. Only when he was bound and harmless did she lift her hammer from his neck.
//Target pacified,// she transmitted to the Contour hive, with a quick smile at the deployer on her sister's shoulder. //Have you detected any more of them?//
There was a clatter of rotors as Flamewing transformed and dropped to the ground, field transmitting profound respect for the leader of the Order. The tiny climbing deployer hopped off the sister he was currently perched on and skittered over to and up Flamewing's chassis.
"No other hostile targets have been identified. Polyhex enforcers and news media are converging on your position." Flareup replied through her. "Rescue efforts in affected areas remain ongoing."
Elita gave her a nod, as much in acknowledgement of the respect-glyphs streaming her way as for the report. Her own field was agitated with the aftereffects of battle - short as it was - and worry for those still in danger. But she found her own respect and gratitude for her sisters, and pulsed it at them through her field.
"Then let's move on," she said, shouldering her hammer, bearing its weight without a flinch. "Before the press gets here."
Better terrorists than the news media, as far as she was concerned.