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.
On Barricade's shoulder, Fairwinds dipped her helm and wove from side to side, optics bright with scans. It was a clusterfrag of an aftermath. The Autobots had come in with a plan and steel bearings, and both had clearly paid off. It would take days to repair the ship, and there were sketchy reports come in of stolen materials.
There was an even sketchier report, nothing more than a rumour, that Lord Megatron was missing, had been missing since the Autobot attack begun, and that one of the escape pods had been launched.
Her comm.s were still too fragged to try to contact her master, and the cassette link felt... wrong.
She clucked her tongue around a static hiss, then twisted her neck to the infiltrator's faceplates. Deal with the slag here first, and the rest when her master's ship wasn't falling out of the fragging sky.
"Attack's over, but Soundwave's still working on getting the datacore back to normal. Ship's listing and fire suppression is fragged." The cassette blinked, beak tightening. "Got enough intact in your processor to be useful in the engine room? Eradicons work better with direction. Particularly yours."
Barricade run a perfunctory hard drive scan, pulled up all related files and training and found the majority of the secondary function data still intact. His control operative had apparently limited the parameters for his core lock to primary branched functions. Either that or the hacker who'd cracked his ice had tried to stop the viral bomb that stripped his neural net for everything, stopped it before it got to locking that section of his head. It was a mess in there, trailing data trails, snarls of partial crypt code, trigger keys, and a massive lethal-looking wall of red ice.
Soundwave's work. Whoever Soundwave was, besides his control operative that is.
"I know enough to know the power core's got a glitch. Let's head there first and i'll see if there's anything i can do. What's my rank?" He opened his personal Ident to recode it as necessary, already setting off down the hall, following the track of power nodes in the ceiling. "Let 'em assume I'm up to snuff. Reflector, if you've been here before now's the time to share. Windy, stay with me until medical can get to you."
((Sorry for the long wait. I got conned into helping a guy start up a forum and it proved to be a lot of hassle, RP energy draining hassle.))
"No...very few bots get to be on a warship, let alone Megatron's personal one. I never made the cut." Reflector quickly spilled out, clearly unnerved by all of this as his had both his and Barricade's scanners on full power for fear of who or what they might find.
"Tour starts with the power core, Ref'," Fairwinds announced, sans her usual cheer as she hopped forwards off of Barricade's shoulder to begin a brisk glide in front of them. She wanted to ditch them both and find Megatron, now, but the Nemesis was truly in trouble and her Master's ire at not serving her post to fuss after her carrier instead would be immense. Take the pair to the core, get Barricade shouting at the Eradicons, then get the pit out to investigate that missing evac. pod.
"Won't have any problems getting folk to listen to you, Cade," she called back as they rounded a corner, pausing at the array of crushed and sparking Eradicon drones covering the decking. Something big had mown through here. Her scanners reported back that there was nothing they could do and she fired her thrusters again, leaving Barricade to run over them after her. "Your rank is field lieutenant, technically, but you've got free agency as Lord Megatron's personal operative to give orders and wreck mesh."
Barricade swapped out his ID ping to reflect the rank, even if it was missing some of the Decepticon frequency glyphs he was certain he was supposed to have. Didn’t often matter. Throwing one’s weight around in the appropriate manner was typically more than enough to get him the door and doing things he, really, should never have been allowed to. Acting the rank was as much part it as actually being the rank he’d found. The ship was massive but something in the pulse and frequency off its frame – and deep, low hum of engines deep, deep within – felt familiar and with each tunnel he took following Fairwinds the more his body seemed to recall the rhythm of this place.
‘Feels familiar,’ he said to Reflector, his voice running soundlessly down his carrier link to the cassette, crackled with intrigue. He took a hard right, sprinting after Fairwinds, passing half a dozen collapsed passageways, hurdling a couple of fallen trooper bots. He glanced at then briefly. “Those are Eradicon models,” he said, to Fairwinds now. “Last I remember they were throttle-bots for the Towers.” They ran the last 100 meters to what must have been the power core. Smoke was still pouring from the hatchway, more of the faceless soldiers hauling charred framework from inside. Well, then, time to get started.
“You and you!” Barricade pointed at two troopers emerging from the smoke. “Damage report and casualties?”
They stared briefly, then forwarded him a data link, the info hitting his neural net immediately, the ship-wide targeted points, the count in medical and just like that he was up to date. The winged trooper on the left tilted his head. “It’s good to see you back Lieutenant…” Where the hell were you? was there in the afterthought.
“Flush the smoke through the auxiliary venting system in the core room and get welding equipment.” He caught the tech-looking trooper by the elbow. “You with me, now I can hear the internal stabilization feeds getting ready to blow. Anyone not an engineer or tech, get clear!” It was gratifying to watch troopers move. Fairwinds hadn’t been wrong about his authority.
Knowing he wouldn't be much use, even after spending years with Cleaver, he still knew next to nothing about repairing even your most basic machine. Outside of hacking into coms that is, Reflector knew all there was to know about screwing up machines, almost an art-form for the little mech.
He did his best to keep his scanners on wide, only focusing on bots who looked like they might cause trouble. Of course Reflector freely gave all of his data to Barricade and even processed some of Barricade's own scannings to yield as much information as possible. Even if he had no idea what to do, he had a feeling that Barricade would figure it out, or have the barrings to muddle through and come out unharmed.
::Some of the Eradicons have gained sentience. Like, they're not drones anymore,:: Fairwinds advised over a short-range comm. having taken a perch on a crumpled ceiling rail to oversee the chaos. ::Picked names for themselves. Don't act weird over it. They like you because you're supportive of them.::
The cassette weaved across her pedes, optics bright and wide with the want to find her master and the want to watch over Barricade now that he had finally, suddenly, miraculously returned. A bit broken in the processor, but sarcastic and acerbic and him. At this present moment, Barricade was a highly valuable asset in getting the Nemesis to stop falling out of the sky, and as Lord Megatron rather liked his warship, he won for her continued attention at the moment.
She hopped down, wings wides and thrusters firing a single burst to arc her back up to a perch closer to Barricade. ::Hey Reflector, I know we didn't get the chance to talk much, but I saw some of your digi-prints in Cade's systems. Pretty sweet stuff. Reckon you can snoop around the Nemesis's mainframe and see if any digital bombs got left behind? Autoscraps have got virus-builders on their side, and Soundwave can't catch everything.::
Last Edit: May 22, 2012 15:21:20 GMT -5 by Deleted
“Great,” muttered Barricade through the smoke. “They blew out the engine.”
He ignored the chitter of Fairwinds from the hanging shaft of metal suspended behind his wheelmounts. The Eradicons had erected scaffolding to get to the upper level of the drive core, above the core power converter and Barricade was atop it now, looking grimly into the wreckage that had once been the ship’s main engine. The Nemesis was listing, its auxiliary engines barely firing meaning wide-spread sabotage and imminent ship-wide flight failure if they didn’t get this engine limping again. The only good news appeared to be reports that the saboteur in question had meant to take out the actual power core it self – the converter base were the raw fuel was accelerated into the massive fission of power that powered the ship forward.
If that had blown, the ship would have plummeted from the skies and repairs for that could have taken months just to get firing again. So for all that had clearly gone wrong on this ship, it could have been leagues upon leagues more horrific. He glanced briefly toward Fairwinds who was, sensibly, choosing to stick close. An amnesiac faux CO walking about the Nemesis could prove problematic and when it came to light that he was not exactly firing on all cylinders it was possible he would need her to smooth things over.
For now though… he could fix this, get it patched, keep the ship in the air. Then they could repair the auxiliary’s. Once those were operational, they could shut down the main engine and fix it properly.
“This is hours of work, Reflector.” Cade didn’t look up from the circuit board he was pulling, smoking, from the engines. “You can stay with me if you wish, but aiding with any software malfunctions would be ideal to us not falling, screaming, out of the fragging skies.”
Reflector caught on to what Fairwinds meant, though he would much rather stay with Barricade, as anyone wanting to kill him would have to get through the moody slagger first, on the other hand it would be a great boon in the long run to prove himself useful.
"I'll go with you..." The little mech answered, tapping into the com system so Fairwinds could hear his reply from inside of his partner.
Slowly a mass of cords slithered from Barricade's chest, looking like a scene out of a alien movie as the little minicon took form before dropping to the floor with a light thud. He then moved over to the avian shaped minicon, tapping his cord shaped fingers together as he waited to be shown the way to the closest access point for him to use.
"Be quicker if we fly," Fairwinds replied, looking down at the little mech with interest as he reassembled himself fully. Being a cassette went a long way as first impressions went, and being Barricade's cassette even more so. Reflector was competent, suspicious and friendly if extremely timid. She'd bring him out of his shell, she decided. With energon gummies and movie nights and hijinks.
She flattened her body and dropped her wings down to make it easier for him to scuttle up onto her back, waiting patiently. "All the access ports in this section are slagged. I can take you and watch your back until I get called away."
Or I get even the most teeny tiniest of pings from Master. Because then I'm gone and frag the ship.
“Get out from underfoot,” Barricade growled at the cassettes, though less murderously than his usual baseline. He watched Fairwinds take flight, optics tracking his partner and the little flight model out of the chaos of the engine rooms. Half a dozen troopers were gathering on the platform below him, nervous frequency and anxious optic bands turned up to him in a way that suggested that there were, apparently, no other officers coordinating the repair efforts on the ship. Lead engineer was either down and out or this ship was that shorthanded.
“Steve and his team are bringing up all the tools and spare parts, sir.”
“Thank Primus for that,” growled Cade.
There was a pause. “It’s, uh… “
“Good to see me. I know. Things are on fire. Let’s discuss this later.”