Transformers: Steel Reign

[SirNitram]

The twin blasts of lasers caught Overload in the chest. The Autobot made no effort to dodge, remaining in close and grabbing Lugnut by the head. "That didn't." He taunted, before yanking the Decepticon flier around by his head, twisting brutally in a display of Pit Fighting that would horrify more cultured bots.

[LadyTevar]

Firetrack rushed through the door, weapons blazing. It was pure luck which allowed the smaller Decepticon warrior to dive away from the weapons burst.

Crimson was the next to roar through the door, now that Firetrack had cleared the way, transforming as she locked onto the smaller Decepticon with her sensors. Loose fire here in the engine room would be deadly; Crimson made sure of what was behind her target before she took the first two shots, ion and laser lancing out as calmly as if she was on the firing range.

The fembot let Stryke and Firetrack handle Meltdown.

[rhoenix]

(deleted post, due to skipped skill roll - post remade below)

[Charon]

Shellshock cursed as Overload continued to be in close combat with Lugnut.

A bolt from one of the other Decepticon's guns burned against the wall behind and Shellshock growled dangerously. His armor was thick, he could take the pounding it would take to get close enough to finish this quickly without risking the equipment. Though it would help if Hornet kept them distracted. "Hornet! Covering fire!"

Shellshock waited a few seconds before he lumbered up from his crouch and ran towards the Decepticons that had cover. They were either going to fall back, which was unlikely, or they'd have to worry about Shellshock's heavy guns as soon as he had a clear shot.

[Agent Fisher]

Stryke stood back, letting Firetrack fight. He rolled his eyes at him. "Just finish him." He said, shifting and charging in on the small 'Con that Crimson was busy shooting at. He made sure to stay out of her line of fire and closed the distance, laser machine pistol pumping out shots.

[rhoenix]

As his swords cleaved through the heavy rifle Meltdown had hastily held up to shield himself, Firetrack hit his anti-gravity to accelerate forward and upward as fast as possible for a short burst.

His eyes seeming to churn the angry color of molten gold, his right leg came up just as he accelerated, his knee coming up to impact Meltdown's chin hard as he raised his swords up and back. As Meltdown reeled backward, and faced upward from the force of the blow, Firetrack's swords would come down point-first into Meltdown's optics, and through the back of his head.

(Skill roll: <= 3)

[Dark Silver]

Lugnut was hurled around by the larger Overload. Fist flew around wildly trying to strike the Autobot's armor, before he was released and thrown across the bridge. Slowly, Lugnut began to come to his feet.

The two smaller Decepticons popped out of cover, long enough for one's head to disappear in a blaze of energy from Hornet's gatling laser. The other threw his weapon, dropping to the ground screaming out, "I surrender!"

-----------

Meltdown had little chance. The Autobot was coming at him, and the moves were being performed quicker than he could counter. So instead, Meltdown let the Autobot get in close, and released a missile at point blank range.

The missile exploded between the Autobot and Decepticon, flinging both back and away from each other. Meltdown's optics dimmed and greyed out, followed shortly by his body as he lost his Spark.

Meanwhile, the other Decepticon fell to the ground, his chest and upper portion of his head blown out by Crimson's shots.


The Autobots had the engine room.

[rhoenix]

Perhaps it wasn't the very last possibility Firetrack expected to happen, but what happened he certainly didn't expect.

The sudden blast of being hit with a missile at point-blank range caused Firetrack to fly unwillingly and at very high speed backwards into the back wall of the engine room. There was an audible boom easily audible throughout the ship (and perhaps outside of it) when he struck the wall, and second, smaller one a second later as he hit the floor of the engine room. For a few moments, he lay in a heap unmovingly, arms and legs splayed in surprise, his optics returning to their normal golden color. A few sparks were heard from behind him in the resulting silence.

His vision going dim, he only paid a little attention to the long list of errors and damage reports his diagnostics were frantically telling him. Instead, he re-stored his swords back into his otherspace, and for a reason he couldn't articulate at the time, he then crawled over to where Meltdown had fallen.

Once he got closer to Meltdown's unmoving form, Firetrack moved around him to the three pieces of his gun, and looked with dimming optics at Crimson and Stryke. As he spoke, he sounded very, very tired. "I need to go into stasis lock very soon, since that really hurt. Do either of you mind if I take his gun as a trophy before I do?"

[Charon]

Shellshock was not in the mood to take prisoners. This Decepticon had surely never taken prisoners, and a prisoner in the bridge was a liability, something that could bring them down if he escaped. Overload would understand Shellshock's logic, and no one would ever know.

His gun turned towards the Decepticon and there was a moments hesitation in the old warbot as he remembered Hornet was still in the room. But it was only a moment, a fraction of a second as his circuitry took in the information and dealt with it casually. Then the Autobot fired and returned the spark of the Decepticon to it's maker.

Shellshock returned his gaze to Lugnut as his gun came into line with the Decepticon. The old bot said nothing.

[LadyTevar]

"Take it and then rest, Firetrack," Crimson answered. "We'll get you to a CR chamber as soon as we can." He didn't look scrapped, just badly banged up, so she felt safe in letting him shut down.

"Stryke? Let Shellshock know we have the engine room, please," she asked, moving over to the engineroom controls. "Then help me figure out the controls down here?" Crimson knew a little about ships, and she prayed to Primus it would be enough. "Otherwise, this will be a short flight."

[SirNitram]

Overload, with his opponent stunned into slow action and the line clear for Shellshock, didn't interfere. He transformed again, dropped into the siege configuration. A pair of powerful fusion cannons aimed at the door to the bridge, to hold off additional attacks. Dozens of lesser guns swivelled, several pointing at Lugnut. The tiny cab backed into place to provide power and guidance.

[rhoenix]

His motions now more obviously painful, and the sparking noises from his back getting more frequent, Firetrack stored the three pieces of Meltdown's rifle inside his otherspace, along with his swords. With that, he moved slowly to lay on his back, his optics beginning to dim to darkness, with a smile on his faceplate. His words sounded slurred through his speaker. "That was fun. Let's do that again, without the big explosion at the end."

With that, Firetrack manually activated his stasis lock mechanism, and his entire body relaxed. His last words before he did were soft, but still audible. "Stryke, Crimson, thank you..."

His optics went completely dark as he lay unmoving, the slight smile still on his faceplate.

[General Havoc]

It all happened so quickly.

Hornet was spraying shots at the two Decepticons in cover, trying to force them to keep their heads down so that Overload and Shellshock could deal with Lugnut. He was not aiming at anything in particular, not even thinking straight, just reacting, blasting away until he had largely slagged the entire bulkhead behind the Decepticons huddled behind cover. He continued to blast anyway, until his forewings were beginning to smoke and glow cherry red with heat and the paint on his wrists was peeling and bubbling from the heat. Still he didn't stop, locked in fear and rote instinct action, unloading until his emitter coils were at risk of locking up, and just as he was about to stop and take some cover himself...

... everything happened so quickly...

One of the Decepticons stuck his head out from behind the cover he was hiding behind. He had a weapon in his hand, a gun, a sword, Hornet didn't remember. Thirty laser blasts struck the Decepticon square in the face, and with a puff of gray smoke, the Decepticons head was instantly vaporized. His lifeless body remained motionless for a moment, and then slowly toppled forward onto the ground.

Hornet stopped firing.

He did not stop firing because the Decepticon was no longer a threat. He did not stop firing because his fellow con wanted to surrender. He did not stop firing because he wanted to turn his weapons on Lugnut. He did not stop firing for any discernible, logical reason. He just stopped firing.

His optics as wide as bicycle wheels, Hornet stood like a stone statue, watching the fallen Decepticon, as everything faded to darkness around him. His lasercore and spark felt like they had just frozen solid, like he was in some kind of a coma. And in the back of his processor there was a soft voice reminding him that this was a war, reminding him that this was not the first Decepticon he had killed. There were the reformatted humans in the air base. There were the MiGs he had downed earlier in the day. There was the radar dish he had destroyed...

And yet, even if he couldn't explain why, he knew that this was different.

Very different.

Unconsciously, Hornet's hand slid down to his stomach, or the equivalent for a human. He had no vocabulary, robotic or otherwise, to describe the feeling that came over him, no explanation that made mechanical sense. He felt like his energon tank had suddenly constricted, like his laser core was trying to burrow its way out of his torso, like his processor was going to shatter into a thousand pieces and never return. He swayed, staggered, fell down onto his hands and knees, one hand still clutched over his stomach. Tears formed up in his optics and he squeezed them shut to avoid leaking, having forgotten completely about Lugnut, about the Nemesis, about everything else...

A gunshot shattered his personal apocalypse.

Hornet's head shot up in time to see the second Decepticon stagger back from before Shellshock, his fearful face still locked in surprise as Shellshock executed him at point blank range with his primary artillery weapon. Hornet's own internal eruptions of pain and sorrow froze and receded as the second Decepticon's mangled corpse fell to join the first. Hornet had not been paying particular attention to the second Decepticon, but his recorders had been on. He played them back now with a thought, and they confirmed what he'd already known in the pit of his spark. The Decepticon had been trying to surrender, had begged for surrender...

... Shellshock had murdered him.

Slowly, very very slowly, Hornet sat up, his optics moving up, up, up, until he was staring up at Shellshock, blankly, in shock and awe and appalled silence, staring at the artillery bot as Shellshock turned back to Lugnut, quivering slightly, his mouth open, his optics sprinkled with tears of wiper fluid for what he had done and what Shellshock had done, unable to speak a word, just staring, in disbelief, in pain, in horror, in shock...

... in total darkness as to what would happen now.