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.
Though the impact had not even left a dent in its heavy chassis, it staggered to its feet as if damaged. Broken glass vibrated on the floor as it let out another audial-piercing howl and thrashed back and forth. For some reason it could not lift its arms. They were pinioned to its sides as if welded in place. In what little light illuminated the lobby the blue glow that surrounded it was barely visible, like bioluminescence.
With its arms pinned the Leaper lurched about in a circle. Shots peppered into its shoulders. One struck its remaining engine, and it stumbled.
"YOU!" it roared. "YOUUUU! I'LL KILL YOU!"
Its purple optic fell upon Wheeljack. Light flared from its back as the Leaper fired up its engine. In an explosive rush it skated after him in a clumsy charge, it shoulder lowered. The damaged engine on its back sputtered white sparks at the strain of propelling its bulk.
Yeah, yeah. You'll have to catch me first, asshole.
And here Wheeljack had been thinking the cycle's weirdness had ended with Deuce's arm stuck in Skywarp's head and dumping him back on Cybertron. But hey, he wasn't going to question his luck or whatever had seen fit to disable the Leaper's arms. Greatly appreciate it, new weirdness.
And then the Leaper was charging Wheeljack again. The Wrecker leapt aside and out of its way once more, charging more shots in his blasters. He wheeled around quickly and fell back to the default of shooting enemy Leapers in the back.
It tried to clumsily ram its shoulder at Wheeljack as it roared past. But the Wrecker was too nimble, and the Leaper's momentum was too great for it to alter its trajectory. It smashed through a row of seats and into a wall, which erupted in debris. As the Leaper yanked itself from the rubble the blaster shots slammed into its back. It reeled from the barrage, even as a volley of shots ripped into its last engine.
Still at full power, the engine sparked. Wild energy crackled along its shredded nacelle.
Sensing danger, the Leaper struggled. One arm tore free, and the Leaper pawed frantically at its back. The damaged engine whined, the sound growing louder and angrier as more and more charge built up inside it.
It exploded.
The force of the blast threw the Leaper off its feet. Fuel lines ignited in the backdraft of fire and energy, and an instant the Decepticon detonated in a blast of concussive force and light.
The shockwave of its death thundered through the floor, powerful enough to batter Wheeljack where he stood a distance away. Even Psi was nearly bowled over when it hit him. The lobby disappeared as it was enveloped in a massive cloud of dust and ash. Wheeljack would not be able to see through the thick grey haze.
But beneath his feet the floor continued to tremble. The tower quaked, its support beams creaking and groaning.
An instant later, Wheeljack would feel the floor give way beneath him as the lobby caved into the Undergrid below.
Wheeljack had a moment to grimly appreciate his handiwork. Looked like the Leaper was finally on its way out. Its last engine sparked angrily and the Wrecker began to back up. He knew what came next.
The Leaper exploded.
The Wrecker braced himself for the concussive blast. It battered his frame as a haze of dust was kicked up from the force of the explosion. Wheeljack's vision was completely blocked by the cloud of ash and dust. And beneath him...
Well, that wasn't surprising.
There had been moments during the fight when he'd come close to just tossing his grenade, all to the hell with it. But Wheeljack had restrained the impulse, recognizing that the tower they were in fighting wasn't exactly in the best shape and lacked the structural integrity to survive such damage.
Looks like blowing up the Leaper had gone ahead anyway and done that job for him.
Scrap.
The floor vanished underneath him and for the second time this cycle, Wheeljack plunged down into the unknown.
The lobby rapidly shrank away above him. Wheeljack fell into darkness, pursued by chunks of collapsing rubble that streamed dust. The speed of his descent whistled in his audials and through his limbs.
The space into which he fell was pitch dark, but he would be able to sense the presence of debris all around him. He was falling through pipes, past rusted out conduits and shattered maintenance tunnels, and into the belly of the grid beneath the city. Now and then a sparking power coupling or flickering monitor would strobe past, flickering in the darkness for an instant before streaking upwards. The air was stale and stank of rank chemicals.
All at once a hard impact would roar through his frame as he smashed through the gnarled remains of a bundle of burnt out heavy power cables. He would feel them shatter upon the collision with excruciating jolt, but it was nothing that a Wrecker could not withstand. Falling debris from above would pelt into him, each blow a clanging bullet of pain, and then -
His descent was slowing.
Wheeljack would feel himself coast to a halt in mid-air.
Beneath him was some sort of transfer station for maintenance drones, a narrow hall with filled with utilitarian work terminals and broken monitors. A few of the holographic screens still had power to them; they filled the ruptured space with a dull purple glow. Outside of his control Wheeljack would drift gently downwards into the station, until he could grab a sagging cable or ventilation duct to halt his descent, or even vault down the remaining distance himself.
And to think this all started because of a weird comm call out in the middle of nowhere. Note to self when he survived this: Ignore all comm calls from strangers.
The Wrecker plunged down through the air. He couldn’t see a thing but he knew that chunks of debris that used to make up the bottom of the tower had to be falling with him. So there was every chance that even if the drop didn't kill him, the falling debris could crush him to death. Great.
Occasional lights flicked on in the darkness but Wheeljack couldn't even begin to guess their source. They were gone from his vision almost as soon as he registered them. Then-
Impact.
He'd hit something. Something that hurt but that wasn't what was important. His arms and legs snaked out, flailing around for any sort of hold. But whatever Wheeljack hit had crumbled completely under his weight and all it had done was slow him long for small pieces of falling debris to catch up with him and pelt his frame. Not really an improvement on his situation at all.
...whoa-
What the-
-frag was going on here?
He was slowing down. In mid-air.
...and was he glowing…?
The Wrecker wasn't exactly going to fight whatever was saving him from a nasty drop to the bottom of the Undergrid. He allowed himself to go limp and float down into what looked like a drone transfer station. A few sad holographic consoles were powered up, enough to see and be absolutely sure that there was solid ground beneath him.
Wheeljack snagged an overhead ventilation duct with one servo and then pushed himself down to the floor. He dropped to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust and the Wrecker took a moment to appreciate having something underneath him once more for the second time this cycle. Primus only knows how long this would last, though.
The blue glow lost its grip over him the instant he caught the duct and dropped.
This time, his footing was solid. The floor did not quake beneath his weight as he landed with a thud. In fact, if Wheeljack studied his new surroundings, he would see that while the station into which he had fallen was in a state of decayed ruin, it still appeared to be structurally sound.
He stood in the middle of a dark and cramped tunnel. Once it had likely been a hub for the maintenance drones that inspected and repaired the underground grids devoted to the transmission and distribution of energy throughout Cybertron. Now it was empty, its broken ceiling a knotted mass of torn and dangling cables. They hung like moss. Each was dead, with no sparks to indicate that any current flowed through them. The entire station felt as still and musty as a tomb.
But a handful of monitors still glowed along the wall terminals. Static fritzed across their holographic screens.
Rubble lay strewn across the floor. Some of the debris looked to be the husks of dead drones. They lay crumpled together like pill bugs beneath a layer of soot, their metal shells punctured. Judging by how thickly the soot lay over the station, it had not been disturbed for years. There were no footprints other than those that Wheeljack left behind him. Each step he took tolled across the hollow space.
"Wheeljack?"
A voice echoed. A moment later Psi floated down through the shaft, his hands outstretched.
"Wheeljack, are you still here? Ow!" He landed badly in the rubble and fell onto his face. Dust flew up. "Frag!"
Wheeljack had been examining the tunnel, checking that nothing had stirred at his unexpected entrance. No enemies, no traps, for the moment the only things here were the long dead drones and more dust. Briefly, his optics had travelled over the broken cables above him while he'd scanned the room and, once he was certain nothing was about to attack him, Wheeljack's attention returned to the wires. No power up there and yet somewhere else it flowed from to keep the consoles going. Maybe there was a generator still ticking somewhere in the dark.
Didn’t really matter actually.
What mattered was deciding on his next most. Who knew how far down in the Undergrid he'd fallen?
...Who knew what else lurked in the dark?
The Wrecker took a step forward towards the monitors. It was an extremely long shot, he knew, but perhaps one was still in good enough condition for him to download a schematic of the area. If not from the holographic interface, then maybe directly plugging in to strip information from their degraded memory banks might be an option.
Before Wheeljack could act on that thought, someone called his name.
Wheeljack's optic ridge flew up to the top of his face. Inwardly, he was impressed and surprised that the aerial had managed to keep track of him while he fell. Kept track and lent a helping servo, perhaps…?
"'m here," the Wrecker called out, his attention partially still mulling over the monitors. He scuffed his foot on the ground to help indicate his location. Wheeljack pivoted round fully, however when Psi landed badly. The sound of the mech falling flat on his face focused the Wrecker's processor on him.
"You alright there?" Wheeljack called out, treading through the dust towards Psi.
"Yeah." Ash streamed off his back as Psi rose to his feet. "Yeah, I'm okay. Ugh. Sometimes I hate having special needs. But at least neither one of us are dead. So I've got that going for me, at least."
He climbed out of the debris and stood awkwardly, his black paint caked in dust. He shook it off himself and patted down his arms and legs to make sure he was undamaged, then turned his head back and forth a few times until he pinpointed the sound of Wheeljack's quiet footsteps.
"There you are," he said. "Glad you sound okay. Whoa. There are some weird acoustics going on, what the hell. Did we fall into a transit station or something? Seems like a big space. Echoing. Picking up a bit of an EM field too. Is there actually power on somewhere down here? Frag, please tell me yes, yes, Psi, there is."
"Tend to find not being dead is always a nice bonus," Wheeljack deadpanned.
He glanced over the tunnel they had fallen in when Psi asked about their location. Wheeljack's optics roamed over the corridor once more, lingering over the drones curled up in the dust this time.
"Looks like some sort of maintenance station for drones," he replied. The Wrecker peered back up at the ceiling with a frown. "Quite a bit of rubble on the floor, be careful where you step. Dead drones, mostly. As for power...seems to be some coming from somewhere. Not sure where though. A couple of the wall monitors are still lit."
Wheeljack took a step towards the nearest one. "'m going to check if any are still actually working. Maybe we could get a schematic of the tunnels down here. Would be useful but I'm not really betting on anything."
Last Edit: Jul 17, 2015 18:34:47 GMT -5 by Deleted
Psi took slow, exaggerated steps through the rubble, mindful of where he placed his feet.
"Man, you're right," he said. "There's a lot of junk about. Wait, did you say there are a few monitors still active down here?"
There were.
The one nearest to Wheeljack was mounted on a damaged kiosk. The screen was small, no bigger than that of a personal datapad, but it seemed to be the brightest and least staticky of the surviving holographs. Like most of them, it was violet in colour and touch-activated. A press of his finger would be enough to navigate the directory of information it contained.
If Wheeljack examined it closely, he would see that the directory was mostly related to maintenance tasks and the monitoring of those tasks. There were options to look up sweeper activity, the patrol status of ground and circuit inspection drones, the operational status of the drones themselves, distribution and collector substation information, the condition of various switching stations, etc. If he tried to activate any of those options a small window would pop up with a request for a supervisor password.
However, there was a small directory that included basic information such as a simple layout of the tunnels connected to that particular maintenance station. That map had unrestricted access.
Psi was still talking.
"That's a good idea, getting a schematic," he said. "I'm not too crazy about the idea of walking around blind. Blinder. All kinds of revolting assholes live down here now. Every idiot scavenger and spark-harvester that couldn't hack living up there in Iacon's shitty ruins is down here preying on whatever unlucky suckers wander through. So, uh... let's get a map if we can, and not be a pair of suckers. I can steer us away from the worst pockets of crap if you'll gimme a hand steering through this garbage."
Last Edit: Jul 18, 2015 12:54:18 GMT -5 by Deleted
Wheeljack stood in front of his chosen monitor, allowing Psi's chatter to wash over him as he interacted with the holographic interface. He pressed the screen with a finger, one optic ridge lifting as the interface responded and activated, brining up the console's home directory.
The Wrecker read over the names of the various options and sub-directories, a frown marring his face as his finger hovered above the screen.
I can steer us away from the worst pockets of crap if you'll gimme a hand steering through this garbage."
"I can do that," he said simply. He paused for a moment then asked the question that had arisen at Psi's statement. "How exactly will you able to steer…? Or is that a question you'd rather I didn't ask?"
Wheeljack attempted to access the first option but came up against a password. He cancelled it, checked a few more but it was the same situation for the others before he settled on calling up the area map.
"Heh heh, wish I could say this was the first time I've fallen down into the Undergrid," said Psi. "Naw, I don’t mind you asking. I've gotten stuck down here before. Once I fell in when I accidentally, uh, made a rapid descent down some stairs into a transit tunnel. The other time I was out on patrol and a couple topside raiders got me, and dragged me down to one of their hideouts. I think they figured they'd strip me for parts. After I killed a few they decided to let me hang with them for a while instead."
Wheeljack would feel a hand pat his arm as the blind robot groped for him. Once Psi had assured himself that it was the Wrecker he held and not a piece of rebar he stood at Wheeljack's shoulder and faced the monitor.
Even though he couldn't see it he still looked at the directory with interest.
"Anyway, since then I've made it a point to make a mental note of where the raider outposts are located," he said. He shrugged one shoulder. "And the traps, and the pitfalls, and the scraplets, and the Insecticons, and the berserk drones, and the cannibals, and the autoguns. The slugs. Iron glass windows. I hate those."
He pointed vaguely at the monitor.
"So if you can tell me where on the map we are, I can tell you which is the safest route to follow."
If Wheeljack accessed the map, he would discover that they stood in the M1 maintenance station. The main tunnel out of it was labelled as the M1A1. It appeared to arrow straight towards the centre of Iacon.
There had been a disconcerting moment when Wheeljack had tensed at the unfamiliar hand feeling around at his arm before settling there. It hadn't been unexpected but the contact was a reminder that there was someone invading his personal space and was, also, at his back. It wasn't that he didn't trust Psi...okay, yes, he didn't trust the aerial. He was...weird blip of almost normal amongst the sad remnants of Cybertron. Very helpful but still unknown to the Wrecker.
It took him a moment before he forced himself to relax. Wheeljack focused instead on the answer to his question that Psi was giving. One optic ridge arched up when the aerial mentioned that he had killed a few raiders. Psi seemed appeared to give off the air of a non-combatant. Had he still had his sight when this happened?
"That's quite the list of unpleasantness you've got there," Wheeljack commented. He wasn't surprised by most of the items on that list but- "Hold up, the slugs?"
The Wrecker glanced the area map. "We're in the M1 maintenance station. There's a tunnel, M1A1, that leads out of here. Looks like it runs straight towards the centre of Iacon."
Cybertron, to the uninitiated optic, was a madhouse.
It wasn't just the maze-like structures that were its city-states, although that was bad enough: gatherings of buildings, strongholds and towers connected on a hundred levels. Highways, docks, flight control centers, traffic oversight networks, a thousand upon a thousand layers of life had once taken place on Iacon, Kaon, Praxus, all to their own beat.
But half the mecha that had once dwelt there had moved through their lives without much knowledge that, like an iceberg, the support and maintenance structures of such cities reached deep and wide into the planet. Maintenance tunnels and sluice channels knew nothing of political boundaries; energy lines and recycling piping traveled where they would, blithely unhampered by caste or wealth. Somewhere beneath Kaon it was entirely possible that the massive systems that had once powered her pits were still alive and pouring heat into dead machinery run by long-gone servos.
The Undergrid might as well be its own world, for all that it was part of Cybertron. It had fared a lot better during the War, on the sole reason that it had been protected from some of the damage inflicted upon the surface, but time and decay, though slow, could be just as thorough, their dangers triggered by the most minor of jostles on the surface.
Wheeljack's only warning that something might not be as it should was a mild flicker on the monitor bank. It didn't lose power, it just flickered for less than four astroseconds, and then returned to its steady, sedate glow. Like mild pink optics, small warnings opened up at the bottom of each screen; nothing critical or dangerous, merely a warning that the current location had lost contact with the main database and the information may be out of date.
A faint whispering sound superseded the background medley of distant groans, grunts, creaks and grumbles as ancient structures settled and shifted minutely.
And then a hissing blue gel-valanche tackled them like a combiner at full speed. Psi, holding onto nothing but the Wrecker and with far more area surface, was gone like a leaf on the wind as slushy coolant, thick as syrup and clogged with age-related impurities, poured into the tunnel too fast for words; whatever containment for it had been breached, there was enough of it that in that brief moment between the hard data lines being severed and the front of the flood reaching their position, the tunnel filled nearly to capacity, leaving one or two meters, barely (metaphorical) breathing space, between the frothing surface and the top of the tunnel - a space that was vanishing swiftly.
It was brutally cold, violently fast, and it grasped and tugged ferociously at the Wrecker, apparently eager to take him to whatever fate the flyer had met in the depths of the debris-filled tunnel. Swatches of color began to appear in the blue depths of the coolant as more pipes, somewhere else, began to be breached and their unknown contents added to the flash-flood. Through it all, the bank of computers stood steadfast, apparently welded to the spot with supreme workmanship, the writing on their screens blurred but the glow of the monitors themselves more than enough to gleam through the mess. It was entirely possible they'd support themselves and the Wrecker; then again, they might not. And it was also entirely possible Wheeljack would like to go surfing, who knew. The flood would pull him away from Iacon if he let it take him, though. Or there may be something else in that sharp, cynical mind.
And he had a whooole four seconds to decide what he wanted to do.