[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Risky Riches [Closed]

[Bandit]

"Energon is too volatile for traditional explosives.  But these things here are gravity charges.  They produce an intense gravity field when activated."  Bandit started setting the charges along either side of the seam, all clustered together.  "It'll open up the seam enough to get at the crystals inside, with no boom-boom.  Just more of a thoom sound."

He set one final charge facing outward from the cliff.  "Now this here is our trigger, and the sticky bit of this whole scheme."  He tapped on the mine's face.  "It's activated by kinetic energy.  We set it off, and it'll set the rest of the charges off.  Problem is... I'm not really strong enough to set it off myself.  I'm more of a brainy type, not a brawny type."

As if to drive the point home, he held up his free arm, flexing it, showing off the spindly limb.  "But you? You look like a cunning and strong Decepticon warrior."  He nodded.  "So what we need is for you to hit this, physically, as hard as you can."

Bandit watched the femme, earnestly.  Or as close to earnest as the masked crook could manage.

[Cintra]

An explosion around Energon, or at least the raw kind, was not a good idea at all. That much Cintra knew. Fire from the combustion means more fire and then a boom and even more fire with rocks being used like the shrapnel from a missile... It would completely negate the fuel they were meant to be harvesting for the Decepticons, if not simply just kill them in the process. Unless there was some odd science bit where the exploding fuel would eventually not ignite itself, but who really knew. Not her, that was for sure. Yet, the other mech seemed to have the answer for it, elaborating that it wasn’t the standard run of the mill bomb.

"Ohh, that makes sense!"

Did it though?

Heck if she really knew.

What mattered is that there seemed to be logic behind it of some kind. A push being no more dangerous than if they started to manually pull and wrench at the rocks. It just had a bit more punch than anything either of them could muster. Flux certainly could do more than them! But more than the bomb? It depended on the strength of the gravity who knows what other elements... Was it even correct to compare it to them pushing and clawing...? Wasn’t gravity a one-way force that couldn’t really be altered or messed with? No, wait, there were hovering altmodes and tools used all over Cybertron. What was she thinking. Perhaps it was the thought she hadn’t really seen such things before as an outright weapon, or if she did, she didn't remember them in the now.

If Cintra was an observant individual, she would have asked more questions the more the nameless mech spoke. Lucky for Bandit, she was not an observant individual on most days. While she had her moments of brilliance where she lodged a conclusion together well, in the now she didn’t even slightly consider what would happen fully to the Energon, nor did she consider the fact she wasn’t more robust and 'strong' than him, or even what would happen to HER if she was close and hit something like that.

She simply trusted the other Decepticon, because it wouldn’t be in his best interests to deliberately harm her when Energon was on the line.

"That I am!"

She boasted, her right hand raising to gesture fingertips at her collar in a sort of pleased stance. One that was paired with a too wide grin as she truly felt complimented on the matter.

"Just let me know when you are ready and I will take care of it."

A support role as always, Cintra ready to help.

[Bandit]

Bandit nodded, giving the Spring Mines he had lined the seam with one final look over. "Everything seems to be set. Let me get out of your way...." He scrambled up the side of the cliff with his grappling hook. While not as naturally dexterous on vertical services as the spidery-femme, his long experience with skittering up and down sheer surfaces got him clear, peering down at Cintra from the top of the cliff.

"Say, I never caught your name. I'm Bandit. What're you called, warrior?"

He grinned down at the neon femme.  "If I get back to base before you, I just want to make I give Pyrotech the name of the Decepticon who helped our Energon surplus, you know?"

[Cintra]

Why couldn’t they throw one of the bombs into the crevice to trigger it?

Why couldn't they throw a rock?

Why couldn’t they do literally anything else other than physically strike it themselves?

These would all be good questions, however Cintra was dead set determined that she was going to accomplish what was asked of her in order to get the fuel they desired. While the Decepticons were not in desperate need for Energon, having their own hoards and surplus from active mine systems, any little bit clawed out from the earth was that little bit more that the Autobots couldn't get their hands around. That alone made this all the more valuable an outing. Even if the Energon all burned away it could still be considered a win. A fail, but also a win... depends on how someone looked at it. Whatever the case, the pink femme would move once Bandit had gotten out of the way.

Blunt tipped blades clunked down across the stone as Cintra repositioned herself, each of the tendril's ends lodging and clipping onto the varied surfaces with ease, adapting angles and pressure subconsciously with borderline no active thought placed behind it. While the knives were not original to her frame, she had enough practice with them at this point that it did not matter they were not stock installed. All that mattered was the fact she was stable, and she was now in front of the crevice, looking upon the bombs intently before the other Decepticon caught her attention.

"Oh! I am Cintra!"

She thought she had introduced herself, but evidently, she hadn’t, being far too focused on the indignation felt that someone had been sent to babysit her and make sure she was doing her job right.

"You better not be ditching to make me pick it all up!"

She snapped this back when Bandit implied that he would be getting back to base before her. Was he going to run? Make her play an Energon version of 52 pickup all over the rocky wilderness below? WOULD the Energon even pop out like a piñata? No time like the present to find this out, as Cintra's focus went back down to the devices, her upper right tendril pulling out from the rocks before leveling its blade off with its surface. A split second later, she struck forward with all of her force.

Which was the wrong choice.

The ruptured pop of the gravitational grenades went off all at once, and it felt like she had been hit by a moving shuttle in the process. Their combined force, with her smaller frame, absolutely wrenched her right tendril up and behind her, and punched her right shoulder and chest hard enough that her entire frame was thrown backwards in a twisting movement. It had caught her completely off guard, and its force of impact was violent enough that she lost her grip instantly on the rocky surface, being thrown into open air overtop the darkness below.

Losing her grip to plummet into a fall was always a risk in Cintra's old occupation, and it had happened every now and again due to momentary negligence. Luckily... as seen by her being still alive... it hadn’t happened when she was at the peak of a skyscraper, however the point was that she responded by instinctive measures, consuming her processor so fully that she couldn’t even piece together the source of the launch and the slight that had been made against her.

Twisting hard, Cintra threw the extrusions on the back of her helm and shoulders at an angle that ended up with her being turned upright over the dark wilderness below, orange optics locking down and trying to pick up on any details of the surface she was now cascading towards. She sharply confirmed what she was looking at, before her bottommost tendrils would hook to aim down like a curved spear, while the upper ones bent over her frame in a hooped shape with points towards her feet.

The straightened cables struck first onto the ground, bending some to absorb as much impact as possible, while still offering a bit of a 'push' that caused her to flip and spin forward. This motion made the rounded makeshift roll-cage strike down next, her frame curling up around itself to try to keep her arms, legs, and most importantly her helm in one piece. Her broad hands would even slap on either side of her head as well, not knowing if any rocks or a tree or who knows what would penetrate to her through the banded sphere she manufactured around herself.

Cintra didn't know how far she really went, but she would unfurl when her roll had slowed enough, her frame slamming down onto the ground to drag grooves and marks with her pointed joints and detailing. Eventually... she came to a stop... however she made no immediate motions to get back up, doing nothing more than laying on her stomach, hands clapped over her helm, while the bladed extrusions went limp and slapped down around her, slumped over the varied terrain.

Everything was stiff. Everything hurt... it felt like she had been punched by a tank and as such her entire shoulder, upper arm, and half her chest was almost numb like it had bottomed out the hinges so hard that they pinched into other components in the process. Or maybe the internals within were shifted and tweaked. It didn’t matter... Cintra simply remained splayed on the ground, gaping for air.

[Bandit]

Bandit watched the colorful femme tumble out of sight into the darkness -- then he got to work. He didn't know how long he had until Cintra came crawling up the cliffside like an angry neon arachnid.  

The thief moved over to the opened seam and reached in, drawing out a few of the precious crystal -- even the small amount he could carry safely would keep him going for awhile.  Once he had that pocketed, he looked down the cliff, and back down at the seam.  

He really should go.  Buuuuut...

Bandit pulled out a stasis mine, and set it in the seam, lightly buried in the dirt.  This would give him an extra twenty minutes if Cintra set it off.  He pulled himself back up the cliff to the top, and looked down over the strip. 

This little con had been quite successful -- but not without its casualties.  He scratched his helmet's crest idly, wondering where Chauncey Pilkington had ended up.  And what havoc the rogue Furby would cause, left unattended.  He shrugged, and transformed into his alt-mode, speeding away from the overlook.  He told himself that everything would be all right... but nothing would be all right while Chauncey Pilkington was out there.

"May Primus have mercy on us all."

[Cintra]

Everything hurt, everything was stiff, and everything felt cold.

Cintra remained splayed along the ground like a thrown ragdoll, her hands still clasped over her helm from her cascading fall down the mountainside. She didn't know how far she had rolled away from that fissure of Energon, however, that wasn't so much of a concern when she needed to do an inventory check of her own body first. The most important step was simply recognizing that she could still think and that she had a head to hold all those thoughts, her fingertips feeling over said helm to see there weren’t any huge indents or cracks. This showed her that her hands worked, and so on so forth as she felt her throat and shoulder...

With slow movements, Cintra's palms planted on the ground, and she pushed up onto her pointed knees, the first real issues coming into play as her right shoulder ached painfully to a point it didn’t want to help with the motion. As far as a cursory glance over could tell, it wasn’t bashed in, though it certainly felt like it had been, her head rocking to the side as the tendrils snaked together behind her to then curl in front of her more, seeing that they seemed whole as well, even if the upper right hurt a good deal.

Blearily, orange eyes blinked a moment, before they shifted to look up the hill, noting just how far she had been thrown in order to get where she had ended up. It was only then that her mind started to move away from checking off the list of body parts, to a form of indignation at what had happened to begin with.

What was that!?

Cintra wasn't just unhappy with what the other Decepticon had done, she was downright PISSED. Shouldn't he have known what his own technology would do? That was grossly incompetent in a way that even she could recognize the recklessness of it. What she didn't piece together however was that it may have done exactly what it was meant to do, and this was the only thing holding her back from trying to go on a chase she didn't even know was a thing yet.

"What the hell!?"

This was barked up the mountainside, echoing around her in the newly silent wilderness while she pulled herself shakily to her feet, left arm rubbing at the upper right.

"You knew that would happen! Didn't you!"

As with the prior words, they shouted up into a new quiet, Cintra letting out a low growl beneath her breath before she took a couple of shaky steps forward, a choice that shifted right after as the tendrils unfurled once more. The sore one had planted first, though bowed back, not wanting to bear weight, though that she could still work with, utilizing the three remaining ones and her own foot or handholds to scale back up while yelling.

"Say something!"

Snarled in hostility, Cintra finally got to the top, left hand grasping the railing to heft herself up enough to see over, the metal protesting in the process. She was about to yell something again, only to see that he was gone? This caused her mouth to gape before quickly closing up, only to then peel back into a sneer. She was going to tell anyone who would listen on how much of an ass he was, though in the meantime she needed to see if he had left anything behind. This choice was another of many poor choices this day, as once she got before the now much larger fissure and reached in to see what fuel she could get, that everything went dark.

She wasn’t going to get a passing grade on her first solo mission out on this world.