Seraphicon draws one of his shorter blades and slices off the tendril before taking a couple shots at its face with his pistol to cover his dive to aid the human.
Firestorm catches the blades in his own and moves to strike at the phantom’s neck in turn.
Nova, who was still clinging to the face of the creature, quickly recoiled as Seraphicon’s shot barely missed her. She pulled on her crushed leg in the process, and let out another agonizing scream as horrible pain shot through her body.
“You IDIOT! ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!”
“Peekaboo!” Dark gleefully shrieked as he launched towards the Quintesson with his blade and gun ready to rip and tear the monster, “that face does not suit you, maybe something like this will work better?” He cackles as he tries to, quite brutally and viciously, rip apart the Quintesson into smoldering metal filings.
Kitai’s chance presents itself as Firestorm and the Phantom lock blades, and the Headmaster swipes at the mech’s neck. His dagger slices through a pump running along the side of the Phantom’s neck like an artery, and energon sprays from the wound. The machine spasms as its self-repair mechanisms take a moment to reroute the flow of energon from the breached conduit. Firestorm then seems to jet off to join the battle on the island, apparently leaving Kitai to finish the Phantom off…
@ValkyriePrimal @BlackBeltGamer98
Nova’s knife plunges into one of the quintesson’s outer eyes, sending up a spray of goopy yellow fluid spurting from the biomechanical wound. The monster howls in agony, releasing Nova from its jaws and recoiling from Axis before her sword could find its mark. It also releases the Prime’s shield and backpack, reeling back as Seraphicon shoots up its face. Shrieking like a banshee, it whips its six tentacles- one now missing its drill tip- around itself, lashing out at Axis and Seraphicon. However, it is unprepared to evade Firestorm’s sudden divebomb attack; the Headmaster is able to slice of its plasma cannon before the quinesson swipes at him with a claw.
Hammer emits a strangled cry as Ferrex’s teeth pierce his neck. Reflexively, he transforms back into his tank mode; the shifting armor plates against Ferrex’s claws and teeth, but may dislodge the mech all the same.
“Yes, your friends told the whole council about the quintessons just a few hours ago,” Carrion tells Maximus. “It’s got everyone in quite a tizzy, let me tell you.”
“Gyro and I would like to join the planetary militia!” Talon proclaims. “We’re good, smart bots- well, Gyro’s smart, anyway, I’m just good at hitting things- but that can still be useful, right?”
Carrion shoots Maximus a critical eye. “Who are these two?” he asks.
“The one called Carrion believes that there is still much that the Prime keeps from us,” Pterygota says. “Some of the other chieftains feel the same. I believe, however, that she must have her reasons for her secrecy; rest assured that I have already begun preparing the Below for war, regardless.”
Kitai attempts to grab hold of the mech, whilst draining its energy.
Dark cackles like a maniac as he fires into the open wound on the Quintesson, very keen on reducing it to scrap metal.
Firestorm keeps the pressure on Phantom while trying to give Kitai a chance to get his licks in.
Seraphicon was diving to get the human out of the trap, causing the Quintesson’s lashings towards him to only strike empty air as he lands by Liege, “well, this is not how I thought this day would go.” He says, trying to cover Liege as he tried to see how to get the human out of the trap.
Ferrex was effectively thrown off by Hammer’s transformation. The lion mech rolled and stopped on its feet, its claws digging into the ground.
Niko readied to charge back in, until a single sound pierced through all the noise. A horribly human scream striking through the din of battle.
“Nova…”
The music stopped short and Ferrex abruptly turned around, running back towards Axis and the quintesson.
Nova tried her best to hang on as she was sprayed in alien eye fluid, but the violent thrashing about threw her off the creature’s face. She screamed in fear and panic as she fell.
Now freed from the quintesson’s grasp, Axis dove forward and caught Nova out of the air. Ducking and rolling all in one motion. Dodging the quinesson’s attack and coming to a stop a short distance away, settled in a kneeling position with Nova in her hands.
“You’re hurt. What is your status?”
“Ughhh… my leg is broken. Everything hurts. Really glad I decided to wear my helmet for once.”
Ferrex quickly charged up to the group, stopping close to Axis.
“I heard someone screaming! What’s going on?”
“Oh just kill me already,” Nova quietly groaned.
“Your friend is hurt. She’s unfit for combat and needs to be taken somewhere safe.” Axis hastily explained.
“I still have a gun. I’m not useless.” Nova protested. Though Niko and Axis both ignored her. Ferrex knelt down and Niko hurried out, while Axis carefully lowered her hand to pass the human off.
“Agh.” Nova recoiled in pain as Niko took her into his arms. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m getting you out of here.”
“But why? I -gahh- I hate you!”
Niko frowned at the remake.
“Well right now that doesn’t matter. You’re hurt and I need to get you somewhere safe.”
With that Niko took Nova back into his mech. He gently set Nova down in his fold out bunk and returned to Ferrex’s controls. The machine rose back to its feet and looked for a safe place to retreat to.
“They’re friends of a friend. They’re here to help.” Maximus replied.
“Good! That’s really good.” Honeycomb replied eagerly. Though she felt a little awkward that the one thing she had been sent here to do had already been done.
“Lunawing and I will be leaving with ambassador Maximus soon. Is there anything we could do for you in the meantime? Maybe a message we could deliver to Axis Prime if you wanted?”
Kitai seizes the Phantom, and its indicator lights flicker as the hybrid starts to siphon its energon. They flash green momentarily, but revert back to blue. The mech thrashes against Kitai’s grip, swiping its blade at both him and Firestorm and firing its thrusters into the hybrid’s torso.
Hammer, still in his vehicle mode, emits a furious battle cry as he sees Ferrex attempting to flee. He gives chase, his treads tearing up the dirt, and he fires a shell at the feline mech’s feet.
@ValkyriePrimal
The quintesson creature, its armor rent and the biomatter beneath shot with holes leaking putrid oily fluids, lunges at Axis again. Its outer jaws swing open as it moves to sink its teeth into her neck and bite off her head.
OOC: the person in the weird tentacle-trap is actually a cybertronian. I apologize for the confusion.
IC:
“Seraphicon! Good to see you again,” Liege Maximo says as he continues to cut the trapped bot free. Gesturing to the battle raging around the island, he quips: “Are these colorful characters some new friends of yours? They certainly seem to share our little fellowship’s flair for the dramatic.”
The tendrils ensnaring the pink-armored bot seem to emanate from a black capsule magnetically attached to his chest, creeping across the rest of his body from there and contorting his limbs into odd angles. One tendril is wrapped tightly over the captive’s mouth, effectively gagging him, though some some rather spirited snarling can be heard from beneath the limb.
“I’m Gyro,” the grey-armored bot introduces himself. “And this is Talon.”
“Splendid,” Carrion deadpans. “If you wish to enlist, there’s a recruitment center in the valley- go bother them, will you?”
Talon and Gyro look to each other, then to Maximus, and then take a step back toward the doorway off the bridge.
“Uh… sure,” Talon says, obviously put-out by Carrion’s dismissiveness. “Thank you for your time, sir. We’ll… we’ll be going now.”
Pterygota is silent for a moment, the only sounds in the cavern being the chittering of her many attendants as they scurry across the walls and floor. Then comes another clockwork chorus:
“Tell the Prime that she has more allies than she may yet believe,” the insecticon queen requests.
Defender sees the capsule as his left arm is engulfed in nanobots. With a last wrench, he fires not at the tendrils, but at the capsule itself, the blast tearing through metal, nanobots, armor, and treads.
“Aaaarghh!!”
The massive Autobot falls forwards, the tendrils collapsing into goo as his damaged leg collapses under his weight. He lands on his side, smoke wisps ensnaring from where the capsule used to be. However, his vision is blurring. Patches of static fill his vision as he stares blankly at the battle raging around him.
“Primus, what have I done… my allies… they cannot win alone… Ferrex… the Prime!”
He crawls upright, kneeling in the goo-filled crater, his cannon sliding into place on his shoulder. Defender’s vision clears, a targeting display showing his new target: the Cybertronian charging towards Ferrex. With a last surge of energy, Defender empties his magazine of shells into the bot, smoke and fire billowing from his barrel with a deafening roar.
Razor dodges, though the metal shards tear through the wheels of her vehicle mode, turning them into twisted rings with metal spines and rubber shreds sticking out.
She returns fire, her blaster switching to automatic fire. Energy blasts pepper the Knight, spattering her body and limbs with sparks and small explosions.
“Surrender, Knight, before I tear all your armor into tinfoil!”
“Now let’s see what you can do on your own,” Oreo growls. He grabs the chain with both hands, and begins reeling in the struggling Cybertronian, his eyes changing from their usual blue color to a fierce red. Oreos armor also begins changing, plates angling open so that he seems to be growing spikes everywhere.
“You will pay for your rebellion, little scrap heap.”
His right gauntlet retracts to expose a jagged knife blade attached to his forearm.
“If you don’t give up, your knight ally will be forced to contemplate your demise…”
Firestorm goes for the thing’s head, wanting to end the fight quickly.
Dark screamed, “eat plasma, freak!” As he just unloads on the monster, hacking, slashing and blasting at him with reckless abandon to keep it away from Axis.
“Eh, you know us, Liege.” He says, trying to slash at the thing stuck on the chest of the pink armored Cybertronian, “got anything to disrupt this little problem and save this fellow?” He asks, referring to the pink bot.
Kitai holds tight, squeezing on the mech, even while the burners sear his armor. The energy siphoned slowly repairs Kitais armor as the machine seizes in his arms. His three eyes glow bright multicolors as the energy flows through him.
So focused is Hammer on chasing down Ferrex that he is caught completely unaware by Defender’s intercepting salvo. The shells crash into the side of the camouflaged tank, blasting its treads to pieces and pummeling its turret. Hammer transforms to robot mode and his broken body tumbles across the ground. The brute succumbs to his wounds and falls into stasis lock.
Beta Maxx throws a punch at another one of the cyborg soldiers, his fist smashing through his opponent’s faceplate in an explosion of gore. The chronicler turns around as he hears the explosions from Defender’s salvo, watching as the Autobot falls to his knees.
“Defender!” he yells, and he rushes to his ally’s aid- before a laser beam punches through the right side of his chest, severing his arm at the shoulder. Beta Maxx cries out and keels over, his left hand gripping the smoldering stump.
In front of Defender, the air shimmers and Nail, the sniper, reappears, smoke wafting from the barrel of his rifle. The silver bot trains his weapon on Defender, lining up a kill shot, but then a burst of plasmafire from behind the assassin causes him to stumble forward. Hunkered down behind a boulder, Salvage fires another shot at Nail’s back, and the sniper whips around to shoot a retaliatory laser burst from his rifle at the Junkion. Salvage quickly swings himself behind cover, the beam lancing by the boulder and shearing off a few flakes of stone.
The plasma bolts from Razor’s blaster melt holes in Erinyix’s armor plating, revealing writhing strands of quintesson biotechnology beneath. The Knight raises her left arm in front of her face to shield it from her enemy’s barrage, while her shotgun transforms back into a battleaxe.
“My injuries matter not!” she defiantly retorts. “My masters will have their prize!”
Erinyix lunges at Razor, heaving her weapon forward in a mighty strike aimed to cleave the smaller bot in two.
Smelter gets back up as Oreo reels him in close, his chain disengaging from his right arm as he reaches out to grab at his enemy’s right wrist. With his left, he throws a punch at Oreo’s faceplate. Meanwhile, Slurry and Ingot circle the two combatants, looking for an opening to strike at Oreo without injuring their partner.
In a final spray of energon, Firestorm decapitates the Phantom, its head tumbling into the ocean below. The mech’s lights go out, its jets cool, and its arms fall to its sides. The last of its energon is siphoned out of its systems and into Kitai (@MakutaOisli).
The quintesson recoils as Dark Firestorm intercepts it, flopping onto its side as the Headmaster’s weapons rip off more chunks of flesh and metal. It writhes in the bomb-blackened dirt, crawling toward Axis and Dark even as the light in its remaining outer eye starts to fade (@ValkyriePrimal).
“Just keep cutting, I suspect,” Liege suggests, doing just that. He slices off the tendril covering the prisoner’s mouth.
“Ugh!” the prisoner coughs, flexing his jaw. “About time, Liege! What took you?”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but they tried to bury me in my own house,” Liege retorts. “I was thus preoccupied. Spotwelder, meet Seraphicon; Seraphicon, meet Spotwelder. I had hoped to introduce you under more pleasant circumstances, but I suppose this will have to do.”
As our heroes continue to lay into the quintesson attackers, Excalibur II continues its deadly dance with the enemy’s living starship. Excalibur II’s engine blocks swivel around, and the frigate is launched backward, skimming across the water to position itself behind the quintesson ship. The barrel of its warp cannon begins to glow…
Dark just opens fire on the Quintesson, “keep your claws off my boss!” He screams.
Seraphicon tries to cut at the core the tendrils all connected to, hoping it would release Spotweld if it sustained enough damage.
Even for such a horrible creature, Axis didn’t feel right letting it suffer. The Prime stood back to her feet and summoned the Star Calibur. With one swift swing she attempted to sever the beast’s head from its body.
The shell strike’s the ground at Ferrex’s feet, shaking the mech but not damaging it.
“AGH!” Nova cried out in pain.
“Crap! Sorry!” Niko worriedly shouted, looking over his shoulder to check on his passenger.
“Don’t get your tail in a knot. I -ah- I’ve been through worse scrapes than this. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure? It really doesn’t sound like nothing to-”
“Would you just shut up and worry about driving the robot! We can worry about my leg after we’re out of the active combat zone!” Nova angrily snapped.
“Right! You’re right. I’m sorry.” Niko returned his attention to the battle field. He noticed that the tank bot he had been fighting with was taken out, which was good. What wasn’t so good was the little purple dude not too far from the tank guy. On his knees and clearly hurt.
Ferrex runs to Beta Maxx’s side. The mechanical lion looked down at him. Its face covered in bullet holes as well as its damaged eye, likely did little to inspire comfort.
“Hey, little guy! You alright? I can give you a lift if you need it.”
“Great, just what I need. A roommate.” Nova groaned.
Maximus folded his arms, clearly irritated by the predacon’s harsh attitude.
“Come on, man. I get that you’re under a lot of stress, we all are. But you could at least try to be hospitable. They came here to help.”
Honeycomb transforms into her robot form and gives a quick salute.
“Understood! I’ll be sure she hears it as soon as I see her.”
The young insecticon quickly retrieved her datapad and jotted the message down, just to be sure she wouldn’t forget it later.
“Thank you for your time, your majesty. If that’s all, we’ll be on our way now.”
Razor dodges to one side, then snaps the handle of her blaster upwards. It folds open and attaches to her right arm, the barrel widening and glowing a bright orange.
“Maybe your wounds will matter less after sufficient cauterization,” she says, as she fires a blast at Erinyix’s face. As she fires, Razor reactivates her blowtorch, preparing for another bout of close combat.
Oreo wrenches his head backwards, the fist glancing off in a shower of sparks. The blow still hurt, and it leaves a line of scratches paint on his face.
“Let’s see you try your own style,” he says, lashing out with Smelter’s chain.
Defender slowly rises to his feet, his right leg smoking where the nanobot capsule used to be. He sees Nail’s exposed back as the sniper turns towards Salvage.
“You must have quite a bad memory, sniper!”
Defender fires his machine gun into Nail’s back, aiming at his shoulders and neck.
“You forgot that I’m not dead yet!”
@BlackBeltGamer98 @MakutaOisli
Dark perforates the quintesson’s outer jaws, exposing a skull-like mechanical face beneath. With one swing of her sword, Axis then parts the enemy’s head from its shoulders, and it rolls across the dirt. The now-headless body continues to crawl toward Axis for a moment more, before it violently seizes and goes limp, its remaining limbs curling around its torso.
Seraphicon cuts the core mechanism apart, and the tendrils dissolve into a gritty black fluid. Spotwelder groans and falls over, now freed from his imprisonment.
“Thanks,” he says. “Seraphicon, right? I owe you one.”
“Let’s get you to safety,” Liege suggests, sparing a glance at the battle continuing around the three. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ve got slime in places I didn’t know slime could go, and I’ll never feel clean again, but I’m undamaged,” Spotwelder replies. “What about you?”
“A little singed, is all,” Liege says, looking over the black smudges on his arms. “And it seems as though our attackers are looking worse by the second.”
The armor plating over Nail’s upper back shatters, and bullets tear into the mechanisms beneath. The sniper spasms and transforms into a cybertronian hoverbike, its repulsors flashing as he attempts to retreat. Salvage, however, vaults over the rock he’d been hiding behind, transforming into his vehicle mode as he hits the ground. A red Earth pickup truck barrels into the hoverbike with a crunch, bulldozing it across the ground in a shower of dirt. Salvage and Nail revert back to their robot modes, and Salvage pins his opponent onto the ground beneath him.
Beta Maxx shakily climbs to his feet, his remaining hand still clamped over his mangled shoulder. “I’ve looked worse,” he says, wincing. “But not by much. I’ll take you up on that offer, Niko.”
He hobbles over to Ferrex enters the mech, provided its pilot will allow him to do so.
Erinyix’s head snaps back as the shot hits, and shrapnel blows into her right eye. The Knight screams and turns her blade, sweeping it out at Razor as she clasps her free hand over her face.
Smelter recoils as the chain strikes him in the side, and he releases Oreo’s arm. Slurry and Ingot run at Oreo from either side and try to tackle him.
“I’m not stressed, Maximus,” Carrion scoffs. “Border disputes between the Below and the Deep are stressful. Convincing the predacons to not eat alien tourists is stressful. Impressing upon my contemporaries the need for a proper defense fleet is stressful. Right now, I’m terrified. A mystery man is sending teams of mercenaries to attack Cybertron, with little indication as to what he’s after apart from evidence connecting him to the quintessons, of all beings. And it’s up to me to convince a planet of stubborn animals that this is their problem, too.”
“I bid you safe journeys, one called Honeycomb,” Pterygota rumbles. The massive insecticon queen falls silent, her many eyes staring out into the darkness around her.
Kitai’s body glows neon green, his eyes becoming bright as spotlights.
Kitai stares down at the group, before diving down towards them, his giant figure darkening the ground.
With the beast dead and the human out of harm’s way, Axis took a moment to look over the battle field. The moment she saw Liege she rushed over to him, sword and sheild at the ready just in case anything tried to jump at her.
“Liege! Thank Primus you’re alright. I wish I could have seen you under better circumstances, but I’m honestly just glad to see you’re alright.”
Axis said as she approached, sounding very much relieved to see her old friend mostly unharmed.
Niko allows Beta Maxx to enter, then quickly starts looking for a safe place to hide and wait for everything to blow over.
The old minicon would enter in from the back of the pilot’s chamber, passing Nova as he entered.
Her head rolled to the side so she could look at the newcomer. Her black pilot suit was splattered in a viscous florescent green fluid. One hand laid over her stomach while the other tightly gripped the edge of the bunk to keep herself stable.
Even through her helmet Beta Maxx could hear her breathing. It was heavy, slow, and very deliberate. The initial shock of adrenaline was beginning to fade, and now she was struggling to stay conscious.
She looked at the ancient bot for a few long moments before saying anything.
“Huh… I never would have thought they made any of you guys people sized…”
“Just hold on tight. I’ll find some place to lay low, and when all of this is over I’ll make sure you get the care you need.” Niko replied, desperately trying to give her some kind of reassurance.
Nova’s head turned again, back to looking up at the ceiling above her.
“C’mon whiskers… what did I say about worrying too much?.. I’m a pilot. I’m a soldier… I lived on a frozen over wasteland of a rock for most of my life… no way I’m gonna let something like this get the better of me.” The girl replied. Though it was hard to tell who she was trying to comfort more. Niko, or herself.
Maximus couldn’t help but share in Carrion’s concerns. It wasn’t all that long ago when he and his fellow predacons barely ever gave a thought to the idea of other worlds in the first place. Even now, after living abroad for five thousand years, living on Cybertron and adapting to its customs, the idea of a truly united Eukaris felt like a pipe dream.
“Look… I get it. As someone who very much used to be a stubborn animal, Onyx above, I honestly still am sometimes, I really get it. I know I haven’t exactly lived here in a long time, but this is still my home. Making sure Eukaris is safe is the entire reason I came here. I just…” Maximus paused for a moment, trying to put his words together. “Look, if there’s anything I can do to help, anything at all, just let me know.”
With that Honeycomb transformed back into her beast mode and flew back to the tunnel she came out from, making sure Lunawing was close by before going too far.
“Well, that definitely went better than expected! Wouldn’t you say?” She said cheerfully.
“Was that too much for you?”
Razor leaps forwards, and with a violent swing embeds her blowtorch and saw in Erinyix’s knee, the blade and flame cutting deep into the Knight’s limb.
“Perhaps an amputation may be in order to rid your body of infection.”
As Slurry grabs one of Oreo’s legs, Oreo lashes out at Ingot, punching him in the face. They then topple over as he loses balance, falling on top of Slurry.
“I reckon I have you all to thank for that,” Liege says, looking equally relieved to see his friends and their new allies. He has changed little since our heroes saw him last- he even still sported a missing horn from his infamous last stand atop the Hydrax Plateau eons ago. “Spotwelder and I put up a fight, don’t get me wrong, but they caught us by surprise.”
“You put up a fight,” Spotwelder retorts. “I got jumped by those little cyborgs and tangled up in that nanotech-octopus-cage-thing. Do any of you know if this gunk it melted into is corrosive? Am I gonna explode?”
“You need to stay conscious, miss,” Beta Maxx urges Nova. However, he is beginning to feel faint himself as energon streams from his shoulder down his side. He slides down into a sitting position beside Nova, placing his hand against the bulkhead to steady himself.
“Are you bleeding? We should apply pressure to your wound,” the minicon says. “I’d do it myself, were I not also incapacitated.”
Slurry thrashes beneath Oreo, swinging his fists and grabbing at our hero’s armor plating. Ingot reels back, clutching his face, while Smelter grips his chain in both hands like garrote wire. A shadow then blooms over the four combatants as Kitai makes his entrance, his body alight with a bright green glow. With the limp, headless body of Phantom Malevolent presumably still in his grasp, he makes for a sight intimidating enough to inspire the three hooligans to cease their struggling and simply look upward in dread.
Erinyix falls over as Razor’s weapons all but sever her right leg at the knee. She drops her axe and rolls onto her side, the pain from her numerous injuries now beginning to overwhelm her.
@ValkyriePrimal @MakutaOisli @DuneToa @BlackBeltGamer98
Excalibur II’s shields flash green as she skates over the ocean, tons of seawater battering the barriers as the frigate angles her bow up at the underbelly of the quintesson ship. The living vessel’s tendrils spread apart, crimson bolts of energy crackling between them, and a hooked beak ringed with saws and laser emitters emerges from the ship. The beak snaps open and emits an unearthly shriek.
The space between the two ships then ripples like a heat haze, and the warp cannon fires. A torrent of energized particles are shot through the barrel of Excalibur II’s weapon, traveling through the channel of warped space that it had created between our heroes’ ship and her target in the blink of an eye and lancing through the quintesson vessel’s hideous mouth. The beam bursts through the ship’s top, cracking it in two. Melting metal and boiling flesh fly out from the creature. An eruption of light and thunder then sweeps over the island and silences the din of battle: the warp tunnel collapses, producing a shockwave that shoves away the water around Excalibur II and buffets the relay towers hovering above the sea. The fires burning in and around Liege Maximo’s hut are snuffed out in a swift gust of air, and a wall of seawater surges against the rocky shore. The surviving enemy combatants squeeze their eyes shut against the flash and flinch, as do our heroes’ allies.
The remaining humanoid cyborgs trading fire with Trenchfoot and his marines all fall over at once, their bodies going limp. With Phantom Malevolent and the quintesson beast slain, Hammer in stasis lock, their minions now seemingly-inert and their ship destroyed, Erinyix, Nail, Slurry, Smelter, and Ingot look to each other. Battered as they all are, surrounded and outgunned, they know that they have lost this battle.
“Tell me, small one,” the corrupted Knight wheezes to Razor (@DuneToa ). “Do you consider yourself a merciful woman?”
“Find this Gabriel fellow, rip his guts out, and do the same to any quintessons that show up,” Carrion requests. “That will go a long way in easing my mind.”
The vulture-like Eukarian then casts another glance at Talon and Gyro. The young predacon sheepishly waves back at him. “And…” Carrion sighs, “I suppose the planetary militia can’t be too choosey if we’re to prepare for the worst.”
“Certainly,” Lunawing says, surprised. She flies a little ways behind Honeycomb, her moth-like alternate form not quite able to match her friend’s speed. “I’ve never known Pterygota to be that talkative.”