Stop. Listen. See me. Kitai thought towards the artifact. @Chromeharpoon
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“Kitai, don’t listen to them; you are your own being. They are only able to control you as much as you choose to give them.” They tell him, “you are Kitai, you are your own being with your own life, your own choices.”
“We’re here, Kitai, you are not alone, friend,” they say in unison.
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Oreo draws his Overcharger, powering it up with a loud electrical hum. Then, seeing as Kitai hasn’t collapsed or cried out, he sets the gun on a nearby crate.
“Are you ok? That thing isn’t hurting you, is it?” He asks.
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All at once, the cacophony of quintesson voices in Kitai’s mind stops, the sudden silence almost feeling like a vacuum. The visions cease, bringing him back into the Pack Mule’s cargo hold, the alien skull still clinging to his hand. Some of the cilia draw back, though, and dive into one of the holes in the artifact’s surface. The opening expands as the fleshy tendrils wrap around each other and morph into a sinister-looking eyeball with three diamond-shaped pupils inside a ruby-red iris.
“I see you, Kitai,” a low voice drawls from within the artifact- Gabriel’s voice. The eye then swivels around in its socket, panning over the cargo hold and all the other people within it.
“I see all of you.”
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“Hello, Gabriel. Scheming, I suppose? Or are you just here to say hello?”
@Chromeharpoon
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“So, you’re the punk behind it all?” Firestorm asks, “keep your claws off our friend, tendril breath!” Dark screams.
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Oreo grabs his gun, holding it in a position to blast the eye into a thousand pieces.
“Don’t you dare hurt him!”
Razor, on the other hand, begins looking right at the eye.
“So, Gabriel, was this planned all along? That I should bring this device on board with us? And what are these other items, then?”
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“Now where did you get that name?” Gabriel remarks. “I have to assume that my agents have been more forthcoming than I’d hoped.”
A sigh hisses from the quintesson skull’s orifice. "That’s what I get, settling for second-best, I suppose. Very well; I can work with it.
OOC: you can have Kitai swat the skull of his hand whenever you’d like. I don’t mean to hold your character hostage or anything.
IC:
“To answer your question, Razor: no, this wasn’t part of my plan,” he says. “You’re giving me too much credit. This is just a lovely stroke of coincidence.”
The other artifacts that Razor had bought seem to shut down, their lights winking out as their cilia wither like dying plants. The skull remains wrapped around Kitai’s hand, however. “What are you going to do, shoot his arm off?” Gabriel chuckles, the eye passing over Oreo’s cannon and lingering for a moment on Firestorm. “I’ll let you all go in a moment; I just wish to a say a few words. I hope you’re getting a good angle from down there, Miss Hansen.”
The eye looks down at Leslie; a red light glows in the rim of the reporter’s lenses, showing that their built-in camera is recording. Some of the color has drained from her face, but she holds her ground beside Beta Maxx. The minicon’s face is unreadable.
“Good enough,” Leslie replies coolly. “I don’t suppose you could smile for the camera?”
Armor plating beneath the eye slides back, exposing a row of spikes underneath that twist themselves into a hideous approximation of a grin.
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The Firestorms glare at the skull with murderous intent. “Start talking.” They growl at Gabriel.
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“That’s the spirit!”
Maximus exclaimed with a wide grin.
“So, is there any other business left to take care of, or are we good to go?”
He asked politely.
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“Just waiting for where to rendezvous with the Excalibur.” Seraphicon says.
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Defender hears talking, and some violent exclamations from behind him. He turns from the entrance to the bridge, a worried expression clouding his face.
A disagreement? No, not unless someone new has arrived. There can’t be any intruders…
He heads back down the corridor, armored feet clanging against the ground, to emerge at an upper walkway above the others… Defender stops short, seeing the grimacing skull.
“What in the name of Unicron is this?! Firestorm! Kitai!”
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(Gonna tag @ValkyriePrimal as well, in case she needs a jumping-on point to work her characters at the spaceport back into the scene)
“Ah, good evening, Defender!” Gabriel says, the skull’s eye briefly looking over the Autobot. "Unicron has nothing to do with this, don’t worry. It’s only little old me.
“But, back to the point: my message,” the man continues. "When I’m done, I want Miss Hansen to take her recording back to Earth and broadcast it to her people. I want to you all to share this with every world in this galaxy. You’ve only scratched the surface of what I’m after, and you’ve only caught a glimpse of what I will do to get it. I have been working toward this for a long, long time, and you’ve only disrupted a small part of a greater system. You will see just what I’m capable of very soon.
“However, I desire no more destruction than is necessary,” Gabriel says, though Salvage, Beta Maxx, and Leslie all seem quite doubtful of that. “I am not Unicron: when I have what I need, life will continue. Stay out of my way, and I will spare this universe as much pain as I can; but I am more than willing to inflict greater harm if it will deter further interference.”
@MakutaOisli The skull’s eye swivels to look up at Kitai. “I was being sincere a few nights ago, Kitai,” he says. “You don’t have to throw your lot in with these lesser beings. But if you so insist, then I will oblige you.”
The hybrid experiences another rush of images and sensations: a sinkhole on an ancient, lonely moon, at its bottom a shallow pool of liquid thrumming with power; an enormous warship, crewed by foul beings wielding strange and deadly weapons; four beings unlike any ever seen in this galaxy, and the pressing need to find another; and a sleek biomechanical warrior brandishing a familiar sword. The eye in the skull glazes over and rolls back into its socket, and the lights within its frame flicker out as its tendrils release Kitai’s hand. It falls onto the deck with a bang.
“You’re good to go,” Quickdraw confirms. “I’ll refuel and see if anyone else needs getting somewhere; you two go do what needs doing.”
“Excalibur II’s got the message, ma’am,” Downburst tells Axis. “The Avalon Prime Defense Corps will give us some grief for cancelling on them on short notice, but I’ll handle that while you guys are off saving the universe. Again.”
In orbit over Cybertron, the crew of Excalibur II receive their new orders. The sleek navy frigate skims the planets atmosphere as it repositions itself above Iacon’s spaceport.
“Quintessons, ma’am?” the vessel’s pilot, Redshift, says to her captain, hoping that she had misheard her. “We’re gonna be chasing quintessons?”
“That’s what it sounds like, pilot,” Captain Gravastar replies, no more enthused by that prospect than anyone else on the bridge. “That training exercise with the humans still sound like a boring way to spend a month now?”
“It still does, ma’am,” Redshift says, “but now I’m starting to think that maybe boredom has its virtues.”
The Captain laughs quietly before tapping at the holographic controls in front of her, contacting the commander of the ship’s detachment of ground troops. “Trenchfoot, we might be taking on some important passengers,” she says into the commlink. “Get your troops looking presentable, will you? I want us to make a good impression.”
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“The sword…quintessons…warship…they’re coming…Four figures…”
Kitai muttered.
“Lost moon…lonely moon…power…”
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“Kitai?” Firestorm asks, worried as he approached his friend.
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Razor quickly grabs the skull, a blue light playing across its surface as she begins scanning its electronics despite the nervous protests of Oreo. The Mini-Con transforms one hand into a combination circular saw and blowtorch, a fierce hissing flame sizzling from its nozzle.
“I’m getting this opened up. If nothing else, I want to try to reverse engineer how he got a connection to the sensors inside this thing.”
She activates the saw, the blade becoming a whirling blur, it’s motor whining.
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“You won’t learn a single thing. To you, it’ll look like nothing but bits and guts.” Kitai said suddenly.
“I will live.”
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“Are you okay?” Dark asks, “you look a bit shaken; what was that?”
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“Wait, what?”
The saw stops, slowly scraping the paint on the skull. The blowtorch also retracts with a hiss, leaving a small cloud of smoke in the air, like a memory lost to time.
“You mean that thing is organic? Then how… how did… you can’t use telecommunications through organic matter!”
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“Attention, everyone, we will be lifting off soon.” Seraphicon says as he starts the launch sequence.
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