“Juliana!” he tried calling over the noise.
Juliana could barely hear him, and began looking around.
Blight tried rolling towards her, wary of the onslaught above.
Juliana noticed him, and clenched her hands nervously, due to her lack of options.
The cannon’s beam shoot’s toward Spectrum.
Facelift joins the attack, firing a shot from his own cannon. Several of the pilgrims also make their decision to fight Nova and deploy their own weapons, as well.
Nova is pelted with bullets, tank shells, corrosive slime, rockets, and plasma bolts that tear off pieces of his armor and cause him to stagger about. Snarling, his cannons begin to spin around him, each on targeting a different bot and firing. Their yellow beams melt through many a pilgrim, killing them instantly, and carve shallow, black gashes in the walls. Topside narrowly evades death himself, dashing to the side as a beam just misses his shoulder.
Shockwave deals a killing blow, firing a blast from the hyperflux cannon on his right arm at Nova’s sternum. Nova doesn’t even have time to scream as the blast rips his upper body to shreds. Jagged pieces of white and black metal fly out in all directions… and suddenly come to a halt in midair as a speck of yellow light shines above the wreckage of Nova’s torso.
Nova’s spark re-ignites around the Emberstone shard, and the pieces of his body are drawn around it, reassembling themselves into the visage of the false Prime. As his head is rebuilt, he roars in pain and fury as his chest and arms re-form, covered in glowing, blue-green veins of energy.
The NPCs stare at the sight in horror.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be frakkin’ kidding!” Thrift swears.
The barrage was intense. Ordnance continues to pour from the warships’ guns at an alarming rate. It would take blind luck to fly through the firestorm up to the fleet, and Primus wasn’t in much of a position to provide.
A torrent of red plasma streaks down through the spaceport’s bridges up above and strikes the makeshift buildings of the pilgrims’ city, blowing many of them to pieces. Metal and glass flies through the night air, with more than a few dismembered cybertronian limbs among the debris.
The meager defenses the pilgrims had raised fire, sending a pathetic retaliation back up at the enemy warships in the form of burst of plasmafire and laser beams that are quickly lost amidst the barrage.
The most well-armed bot that Pixel may have seen right then might’ve been Halfrunner, whose right arm had shifted into a large minigun. He and his taciturn companion ran through the chaos of the barrage with a group of soldiers, seeking cover. An orange beam shot from one of the warships suddenly strikes the ground close to them, causing an explosion that blows many to pieces. Halfrunner and his companion vanish in the explosion and debris.
Blight clenched to any cover he could find, shutting his optic forcefully.
Pixel chuckled mischievously…
…following his joy with bitter sorrow. “B-beep!” he cried.
A missile strikes the ground close by, producing a fiery explosion.
The explosion had turned the ground where Halfrunner and company had stood to rubble. The DJ and a few soldiers had miraculously survived, but only barely. The DJ’s armor, with its garish and psychedelic paint job, was now scorched and blemished with dirt. Some of the soldiers didn’t seem able to stand, and of Halfrunner there was no sign.
“We need to take out the shard!” GC yelled, and he traversed his turret onto it, and prepared to fire.
Laslow, having lined up a clear shot, sent a blast aimed directly at Nova’s head.
“Blight!” Juliana exclaims, worried.
The shot tears through the back of Nova’s head, which hadn’t quite fully reformed, shooting out his left optic. Amazingly, the Prime remained alive, whipping around to snarl at Laslow as his wings separate into cannons again.
@Toa_Vladin @BlackBeltGamer98 @ProfSrlojohn @meepinater
With a rush of air, Nova takes flight, hovering above the floor as the eight cannons form a ring around him. They hum loudly as their conduits flash, and all at once they fire their beams. Four of the guns spin rapidly around Nova, aiming down at his enemies below him- the beams carve shallow gashes in the floor, destroy the machinery within the forge, and obliterate many a pilgrim. The other four cannons fired at the ceiling, and bored into the ancient metal.
Facelift transforms back to robot mode to jump to safety, but a beam just manages to graze his leg, mangling the limb and causing the mad doctor to fall onto his side.
Topside and company scramble for cover, and Corona deploys a blaster from her hand and fires at Nova.
“Crap, crap, crap, crap!!” Lslow exclaimed, and ducks behind a doorway, and tried to line up another shot.
GC opened fire on the emberstone shard, trying to destroy it.
Spectrum shuffles to the side, narrowly dodging the blast.
“St0p it!” She said again. She fired her version of Nova’s feather cannons at Nova.
As he was destroyed by Shockwave’s blast and then re-built himself, she stepped back. [quote=“Chromeharpoon, post:3750, topic:49995”]
The barrage was intense. Ordnance continues to pour from the warships’ guns at an alarming rate. It would take blind luck to fly through the firestorm up to the fleet, and Primus wasn’t in much of a position to provide.
[/quote]
Thrust stalled, hovering in midair and dodging ordnance.
“We won’t be able to make it through this!” He yelled at his brothers. “We need to go around!”
Lightshift sighed. “Alright, lead the way.”
Thrust flew down and away from the shells, his brothers following.
Thrift had taken cover nearby.
“I think…” the junkion pants, “this calls for an application of the Starscream Maneuver.”
The blasts hit Nova’s chest, knocking him back and throwing off the aim of his cannons. The eight beams spin wildly around the forge before the Prime deactivates and retracts the weapons. He lands on the ground, preparing another attack, but Corona seizes this moment to leap at him from the side.
Unfortunately, Nova sees this out of the corner of his eye, and whirls around to seize the prophet by the neck. Corona grunts as Nova thrusts her against a wall with an echoing clang.
“Oh, don’t worry, miss,” the disgraced Prime says darkly, drawing a massive sword from his back. Corona emits a furious growl as she deploys a silver blade from her wrists and thrusts it into Nova’s chest. He grimmaces, but his new powers kept him alive even as the blade pierced his spark.
“Everything you’ve foreseen will come true,” Nova continues. “I’ll save our people, yes… just not in the way you might have been expecting.”
Nova thrusts his sword into Corona’s sternum, and the prophet’s strangled cry could be heard over the screech of tearing metal as the blade pierces through her back and into the wall behind her. Her white optics flicker as she goes limp. The surviving pilgrims unleash their fury upon Nova, but their weapons do little damage to his armor.
The disgraced Prime withdraws his sword, now slick with energon, and drops Corona onto the floor, he glares at his foes, his optics cold with murderous intent.
Below the Splitter brothers, the idyllic scenery of the island had been transformed into a nightmarish scene like one of the Great War’s many battlefields. Much of the city below the spaceport had been reduced to smoldering rubble, and the rest of it was likely to fall if nothing could be done- the defenses that the pilgrims had managed to raise simply weren’t enough to stall the onslaught.
The spaceport, with most of its mechanisms still inert, save for the ones repairing Salvation, withstood its share of the barrage. Ancient cybertronian structures such as this could withstand eons of neglect and exposure to the elements; the Twenty-sixth Fleet hadn’t the firepower to bring it down quickly.
Salvation groans as waves of plasmafire fall upon her. In her current state, the Fleetcarrier was vulnerable, unable to fight back against the enemy ships and their assault.
GC continued firing at the shard with renewed vigor.
“The what?” Laslow asked.
Spectrum rushed to Corona’s side, bringing some spare medical supplies from Nova’s creation. If she couldn’t get Nova to stop, the least she could do was lessen the casualties. [quote=“Chromeharpoon, post:3757, topic:49995”]
Below the Splitter brothers, the idyllic scenery of the island had been transformed into a nightmarish scene like one of the Great War’s many battlefields. Much of the city below the spaceport had been reduced to smoldering rubble, and the rest of it was likely to fall if nothing could be done- the defenses that the pilgrims had managed to raise simply weren’t enough to stall the onslaught.
The spaceport, with most of its mechanisms still inert, save for the ones repairing Salvation, withstood its share of the barrage. Ancient cybertronian structures such as this could withstand eons of neglect and exposure to the elements; the Twenty-sixth Fleet hadn’t the firepower to bring it down quickly.
Salvation groans as waves of plasmafire fall upon her. In her current state, the Fleetcarrier was vulnerable, unable to fight back against the enemy ships and their assault.
[/quote]
The three Splitter brothers emerge from the raining ordnance and immediately fly up, following the direction of the barrage until they find the ships.
“Take out their cannons!” Lightshift told his brothers.
“Backwards advancement!” Thrift exclaims over the gunfire. “Tactical withdrawal! The Joestar family secret technique! Retreat!”
Nova shields himself with his wings. After blocking the shots, the former Prime deploys his cannons again, and fires at the ceiling. The eight beams blow a hole in the metal, causing smoldering debris to rain down upon the room.
The surviving NPCs open fire upon Nova as the former Prime levitates out of the chamber through his new exit, but they either miss or fail to do any significant damage.
Corona was lying on her back, with a shallow pool of energon spreading around her. The wound in her chest went clean through her back, and a part of her ruptured sparkchamber could be seen within, pulsing with a green light.
For the moment, the prophet was alive, her white optics flickering as she places a hand over her chest.
The barrage was still ongoing; the Heretics had not let up in their assault.
“Sounds like a good idea!” Laslow said over the din of battle.
“Slag, slag, slag, slag, slag!!!” GC yelled as he TF’d ran over to Corona and knelt by her, holding her up.
“Can you do anything for her?” He asked, turning to look at Spectrum (@meepinater)
Spectrum administered a painkiller, then began her work. Her blocky fingers worked nimbly to repair the damage to the sparkchamber and Corona’s chest. [quote=“Chromeharpoon, post:3760, topic:49995”]
The barrage was still ongoing; the Heretics had not let up in their assault.
[/quote]
The Splitter brothers began to open fire on the cannons of the heretic ships.
GC watched the operation intently.
“Anything I can do to help.”
Spectrum nodded and pointed to a box of medical supplies that lay by Nova’s table.
GC laid Corona down gently, and retrieved the box. He opened it and set it down next to Spectrum.