| abstract | - Millions of years ago, Magnaron was the biggest intersection on Cybertron, which gave it serious strategic value, and because of that, nowhere else on Cybertron has seen so much fighting. Over the years, Magnaron was transformed from an intersection into a blast crater, a lake of toxic waste, a deep abyss from one of Unicron's pincers, and a lake full of Quintessa's water, a memento of the Quintessons' attempt to retake Cybertron. This, its latest incarnation, is the result of the structural stresses of the recent move to the Alpha Centauri system. The abyss, the lake, are no more, sealed by the compression of the crust. Instead, a huge but shallow depression marks the location of some of the fiercest conflicts on Cybertron. F-16C Agile Falcon Buzzkill Skids Ford Benett Shockwave North leads to Northern Highway. South leads to Southern Highway. East leads to New Cybertron Highway . West leads to Old Maintenance Center. Fly In KREOland, in his evil secret lair house, Trivia feeds his pet sharks a bucket of red studs, which they eagerly gobble up. He says aloud, "Shockwave and his Decepticons knew they were dreaming. They shouldn't have been able to do that. No one is supposed to know they are dreaming. This was designed as a nonlethal weapon, a method of subduing enemies without causing any physical harm. That fact that I know that - that I know /anything/ about this place - that I can, ah... 'minus nine' undesirable entitries would suggest that I... designed this institution? That I am the sole architect. I built the shadows here. I built the growling voice I fear." "But /why/? Why would I do this? Am I a weapons engineer? That doesn't sound right. I can't remember anything about my waking life. I don't know where on Cybertron I was built." Trivia sighs gustily and concludes, "Ah, what do you know? You're just sharks. But you listen, at least. Thanks." His painted smile is wan. It is awfully sunny in Trivia's house. Wait, that's not right. There's a roof overhead. Why's it suddenly... Trivia will find that the entire roof of her 'evil secret lair' is suddenly being raised up. Outside the house, the most adorable Kreon ever (Shockwave) is behind the controls of a massive lime green crane truck. Shockwave works the lever as best he can with only one hand, directing the crane truck to move the entire roof away from the house. "Buzzkill..." Shockwave drones, signalling that it's the bee Con's turn to act. After their last encounter with Trivia, Shockwave quickly put two and two together. Facts: Trivia is Apocryphacius. Fact: Apocryphacius is the inventor of this idiot dreamscape. Fact: Apocryphacius has absolute control over the dreamscape, whether he knows it or not. Fact: Controlling Apocryphacius means being able to shut down, trap, or mine the brains of every other Autobot trapped in here. Shockwave understands the 'logic' that this place runs under, and so the crane truck works remarkably well. That he is willing to put up with this is a testament to his dedication to the destruction of the Autobot cause. Compact minivan , just driving by and passing into view from behind a stand of plastic trees, honks his horn twice and asks, "Hook, that you?" When these dreams first started happening, Buzzkill was very confused and even disturbed by them. Often she would wake up, thoughts of blocks haunting her mind, driving her crazy. Some things just shouldn't be blocky, flowers and honey included. But now that she knows what's really going on, the dream world is just slightly more tolerable. Just slightly. At Shockwave's unspoken command, Buzzkill (who appears in the dreamscape as a ridiculously adorable, fat, blocky bee) swarms the house, crawling through the giant hole where the roof used to be. She ratchets open her mandibles with a clickclickclick noise and lunges for Trivia, snapping them tight around her ankle and dragging her to the ground. "This little game of yours is over, soon the Decepticons will rule this pathetic world!" This might actually be scary if Buzzkill wasn't so gosh darn cute right now. Buzzkill transforms into a giant robotic honey bee. Bzz bzz! Bees are always a trump card. Always. Trivia looks up in time to see his new skylight, only to be dragged to the ground by a bee around his ankle. He cries out, "Oh dear!" His sharks proceed to not give a slag. They are sharks. If Trivia wanted actually useful pets, he should have had dogs. Shockwave completely and utterly ignores Skids. He heard him, yes, but he decides his best bet is to pretend he didn't hear and hope the Autobot keeps... doing whatever it is Autobots do when they aren't hassling him. Pulling on another lever (it's one of those machines that has 3 levers yet can be apparently perfectly controlled), the crane truck swivels to the side and sets the roof of the mansion down. Climbing out of the truck, Shockwave steps through into the door since his Kreon mode cannot fly. He's carrying what looks like a blocky handheld drill. "Hold him. Ensure his head does not pop off." There's a reason Shockwave has to specify this, but it's too stupid for him to bother explaining. Compact minivan transforms into his Skids mode. Skids walks up, holding his hands up to his cylindrical face (no longer with a separate faceplate, and yelling, "Yoo-hoo! Hook! It's me--oh, you're not Hook. Thought you'd gained weight." Repugnus has arrived. Robotic Honey Bee would never say anything but Shockwave is really friggin' cute in his kreo mode. Seriously, she just wants to gobble him up and maybe turn him into little honey blocks or something, it's actually really troubling to her to feel this way. Nevertheless, she puts those disturbing thoughts away and obeys, grabbing hold of Trivia by the shoulders and pinning him to the floor. She also makes sure to use a second pair of legs to hold Trivia's head down just in case it decides to pop off (as Kreo heads tend to do.) On the far hill, a blocky figure spies the unconventional break-in. Reaching behind him and pulling a little pair of binoculars out from hammerspace, he eyes the assault in more detail... in spite of the piece having no lens of any sort. Somehow, his eyes are just bigger. He could spy Shockwave as he got out the little truck. Him, Ford recognized. He was the one that caused all that trouble last time. Ford had no clue of the details... he just knew those guys were trouble. Bringing his hand up to his painted mouth, he squinted. How did he do this last time...? Ford very awkwardly put his hand to his mouth, somehow giving out a whistled tune that may or may not echo down the hillside and may or may not sound familiar to Shockwave. What may be more likely is the recognizable whinney of the newly summoned blocky chrome horse running to Ford's side. Mounting up, Ford flicked the reigns, ordering Sh@d0wH@X down the hill in a race to aid Trivia. Ford drew his bow as he slowly approached the attacking Cons... Trivia struggles against Buzzkill as his sharks proceed to completely ignore everything. He can't even pop his head off to escape, how cruel! Then Trivia asks, "...do you remember me? I mean, have we ever fought? In real life? Did I ever try to foil one of your schemes or something? Maybe you firebombed my city-state?" Asking a Decepticon to try to help jog his memory is a pretty bad idea, but he is all out of good ones. The crane truck is empty, and indeed it is not alive. It sits there completely still, failing to answering Skids's question despite how adorable his enthusiastic greetings are. Inside the house, Shockwave is oblivious to Buzzkill's conflicted emotions, just as he's oblivious to the cavalry in the form of Sh@d0wH@X riding towards the house. Holding down the trigger on the techno-drill, causing it to start up with a vicious sounding whirl. Shockwave doesn't answer Apocryphacius's question, instead commenting. "So you recall some of the real world, but not all." With Buzzkill holding the robot down, Shockwave presses the drill up to Apocryphacius's forehead. The drillbit snags a bit before getting going again. Glancing at the screen on the back of the drill, Shockwave says, "The administrative passwords are coming through now." Skids steps out of Sh@d0wH@X's way, thankful at least that Ford didn't go with the dollar sign instead of the S, and ducks the arrows. "Hey, what's with you today?" While all of this is going on, a hunched-over form watches from the plastic-y trees surrounding Trivia's house, green optics glowing ominously as he watches the scuffle from outside. What is he going to do? Will he help? And if so... who? Ford waved up a hand at Skids as he pointed his bow in at the house. "You there! Lend me a hand! I don't know who these fiends are, but they're causing a lot of trouble! I've dealt with them before, and they must be stopped! Something /bad/ is brewing..." Ford leapt off Sh@d0wH@X into a run as he stood at the doorway of the house, arrow drawn back as a convenient wind kicked up the scarf cape over his back. "I see you've returned, whoever you are... but I'm afraid today is when you're plans are put to a permanant stop!" Ford let his arrow fly for the back of Shockwave's blocky head. Seeimingly appearing out of thin air, Backfire waddles up towards Shockwave and Buzzkill.. carrying what appears to be a handful of different sized blocks. "Lord Shockwave, Beebot.. you won't believe all the resources I've found!" he happily reports, dumping the assorted collection to the ground. "And what's better, these things stack real easy.. right? I figure we can build a tower to the sun, and plant flowers on this green block here." the Seeker pauses to grab a green block, "And then we'll cultivate super flowers possible of creating super energon that is enviromentally safe and sound." he smiles. You know how everyone else in KREOland is super cute and chibi? Not Backfire. His head is two times too big for his frame, his body seems asymetrical, and his left optic has a weird twitch to it. "What do you think??" Robotic Honey Bee would give Trivia or Apocryphacius or whoever the hell he is a good slap across the face for asking such stupid questions but she doesn't want to interfere with Shockwave's drilling, so instead she just gives him a nasty glare which is actually more awwww-worthy than intimidating because how can you possibly be intimidated by a Kreo bee, especially one as fat and square and dorbs as her? "I have a name and it's not Beebot," Buzzkill snaps at the hideously deformed Backfire. "...But I must admit, I am very much supportive ofyour idea. Very few people recognize the usefulness of plantlife." Trivia does not know who he is, and there is a drill being pressed into his plasticky head. The pain is exquisite. He twitches, his tube-hands clawing at the air, square-feet kicking. His sharks still don't care. Trivia gasps, "Code Lucid." Skids, Ford Benett, and Repugnus will suddenly find themselves lucid. They'll know who they are. They'll know how dangerous the Decepticons are. But Trivia finds the code doesn't work on himself. He still cannot remember being an Autobot named Trivia, of some unspecified function, a son of Cybertron... Skids pokes his head up through the hole in the wall. "Hey, I recognize Mister Honeycomb, there." He's pointing at Shockwave. Well, maybe that explains Buzzkill's reaction: it's a mellic symbol, just begging to be filled with sweet honey. That Shockwave, always compensating for something, "He's a big meanie," Skids says, turning his back to the Deceptikreons and crossing his arms. "And I refuse to play with him." A look of shock comes over his painted face as enlightenment dawns. "Son of a scrapheap." Shockwave has to put his gun on the other side of Apocryphacius's head in order to get enough leverage to push the drill in further. On the screen, a thousand ones and zeroes dance past Shockwave's vision. He doesn't respond to Backfire's comment. His attention is so focused on the codes that at first he doesn't even seem to be aware of the Seeker's presence. Then the ones and zeroes end, and everything makes sense. The system the dreamscape runs on, the way it networks minds together, the way physics works. But most of all, the administrative powers make sense. Shockwave lets go of the drill, pulling it from Apocryphacius's blocky head. "Ingenious," he tells the Quintesson. "Yet foolish." As he speaks, Ford lets loose with one of his water arrows. The arrow flies true... up until it suddenly stops inches from the Kreon's head, floating in mid-air. With a wave of his hand, the water arrow falls apart into multi-coloured 1x1 thin Kre-O blocks. "You had the codes for this entire dreamscape, Quintesson, yet you failed to utilize this power. With them, *I* am now this world's God." Staring down Ford Benett, Shockwave raises his chin. "I may not be able to affect you directly now that you've been 'freed', fleshling, but then... I don't have to." Glancing at Backfire, he says, "I have a better use for your materials." Shockwave waves his gun arm, and the blocks suddenly start flying towards Buzzkill, changing colours into black, purple and silver mid-flight as they attach themselves to her. The interior of the house quickly follows, building Buzzkill up until she's a Kre-O bricked bee the size of a blimp. "Kill him, Buzzkill." Repugnus was just crawling in through a window when realization comes to him. "Wait a minute... oh, right! Hahahaha! I remember now! This is all some--" Then he shuts up at that point. Best to be quiet and sneak up on them. Hrm. What was he trying to do before he became lucid? He can't remember. Probably something comically awful. He's still planning to do something along those lines, though. "Whatcha doin' there, Beebot?" Repugnus says, emerging in his monster mode from a room behind Buzzkill. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Skids calls up to the bee, "Oh, Buzzkill. Hey!" He whistles for her attention. "How are you even flying?" Trivia feels empty and hollowed. He is. A big piece of his head was just drilled out! The KREON twitches some more, painted face showing blinks and expressions of incomprehension. After a long moment, he manages, "I'm not a Quintesson. I-i-i- mean, look at me. I'm a hatchback. You're just making these things up now..." Smiling, because Shockwave actually acknowledged him, Backfire hastily constructs a small gondola shaped object with what wasn't taken for Buzzkill's transformation into.. GIANT BLIMP BEEBOT. Afixing some block ropes to the sides, he quickly attaches it to the underside of Buzzkill. Jumping in, two feet kick rhythmically until Backfire is safely inside. A moment later the disfigured Kreon representation is glaring over the side of the 'basket'. Craning his hands together, the Seeker croaks out "Witness the power of our.." he pauses, tossing some projectiles at the Autobots. Are those.. bee shaped bombs? "..FULLY OPERATIONAL BOMB-BEE STATION!!" Of course the Decepticons can't do anything evil without some good guys barging in and ruining everything. It's like there's some kind of homing beacon that goes off anytime they're about to get seriously evil that attracts Autobots or humans or both. The Kreo bee releases her hold on Trivia once the data extraction is complete and spins around to Repugnus. "Eurgh! It's /you!/" Primus, how she hates that Monsterbot. Even in his Kreo form she still finds him...well, repugnant. Before she can do anything, Buzzkill suddenly finds herself growing larger and larger and larger, the house around her breaking apart into little blocks and attaching themselves to her ever growing mass until she's finally the size of a blimp. It's both terrifying and adorable, somehow. "Aaargh! Why must you pester me with such a stupid question!?" Buzzkill snaps at the tiny (in comparison) Skids. The translucent, blocky wings on her back beat rapidly, lifting her high into the air despite the fact that they really shouldn't be providing her with flight at all (seriously, it would never happen if this weren't some kind of terrible dream world,) Backfire's bombing basket dangling underneah her. Truely, this is the most terrifying thing the Decepticon's have come up with so far. Skids catches one of the bees by reflex and with an oof. It buzzes in his hands, so he lets it go and off it flies to pollinate some plastic flowers. "Cute," he mumbles. Skids yells back up, "Well, aren't you worried you'll fall?" His voice doesn't actually come out louder, just yodel-pitched, as if he's trying to sound "loud" in some cartoon. Ford felt everything fold his memory at once as he had to fall to his knees as his head processed it all. Humans didn't have nearly the mind power of a Transformer or Quintesson. But he remembered everything. Everything that was supposed to have happened. This was a dream... he was EDC... he was... he was The Best! Which meant that if someone was gonna stop them, it had to be him. And the best way to stop an army? Take out the general. "Skids, Repugnus! You guys might want to handle that blimp! I'll find a way to stop Shockwave... or at least rescue the admin!" A shame... Code Lucid gave Ford his memories, but took away the dashing charmisa they could've benefitted from... Ford didn't let that stop him. "Hey, Shockwave! You know the beauty of not being effected by your stupid powers!?" Ford dashed away just as a bee bomb buzzed it's buns in a big bash on the ground behind him. His drew back a minifig fist, swinging it as he charged the DeceptiKreon. "I can still do THIS!!!" Repugnus backs up a bit from Buzzkill as the house he had been skulking into is suddenly broken down into spare parts to form a terrifyingly huge and blocky bee! And there's Backfire, raining bomb bees onto his head. The Monsterbot grunts as one lands on his bulbous head and explodes, and he feels himself losing one heart of life. "Ow! Hnnnh... yeah, sure, Ford. At least I think that's you... but first..." He turns towards Trivia, cute little plastic talons popping out. "I gotta deal with the source of the problem!" "You little scheme's over, Archaeonix!" Repugnus declares as he steps up behind Trivia, and stabs him in the back with both talons. Why'd he call Trivia by the name Archaeonix? Simple: alibi. Kreon Shockwave steps away from Apocryphacius. He got what he needed from the Quintesson and has no further use for him. A 1x1 brick floats around his hand, changing from green to red to blue to yellow and back again as Shockwave tests the administrative powers of the Kre-O verse. It looks simple, but in reality (so to speak) Shockwave is modifying the dreamscape's database in thousands of different spots with each rotation and colour shift of the tiny block. Perhaps that was the problem with the Quintesson, Shockwave reasons. He doesn't have the processing power that I do. This distraction means that Ford Benett is able to get in close and /deck/ Shockwave. It's almost (almost!) as good a hit as Torque delivered on the real Shockwave just a few days ago. The Kreon flies into the now stripped down wall of the house before landing on the 'lawn' outside. Upon impact, the 1x1 block suddenly FLARES UP brightly before vanishing. The hit ruined Shockwave's calculations. Database errors were input. Data integrity is slipping. "Correctable," Shockwave states as he gets back to his feet. "As is your continued survival, Ford Benett." Shockwave waves his gun arm, and suddenly huge 1x30 thin pieces rip out of the ground all around Ford, hemming him in and forming a Kre-0 brick cage! Ford Benett needs him! Skids shouts up at the heavens and all its bees, "I mean, if you don't even know how it works, how are you sure?" And then, he pulls out his trump card: "It would be pretty funny." Trivia is skewered through the back twice by Repugnus's talons. Coughing up clear pink studs, he sputters, "I'm not Archaeonix! He's... how do I even know him?" Some of the studs he starts to cough up, though, are clear green, not clear pink. His injuries start to show physical marks on the landscape. Shockwave will find how swathes of memory just outright wiped out. Function libraries are 'losing their books', so to speak. The world is falling apart. Can Shockwave keep his grasp on this digital dimension? One, Backfire isn't very smart. Two, unlike the other Decepticons (especially Shockwave) the Seeker has very little grasp on the reality versus the dream. Three, Backfire isn't very smart. Those reasons alone cause Backfire to question the validity of Skids statement, and thus lean over the gondola and fall out of the Bomb-Bee Blimp!! "Curse you Autobot, curse you to KREO-HELL!!" the Seeker spits out, before hitting the ground and bursting into a hundred pieces. Skids does throw off a, "See, you can talk 'em down," but it's strictly pro forma. Ford is knocked into place as bricky bars thanks to Shockwave. He'd gotten a solid slug on him... but it wasn't enough. And with Repugnus being a douchebeetle, Ford needed to get out fast! Thankfully (sorta), as Trivia gets stabbed, huge swathes of memory are wiped out... including one of the block bars. "Repugnus, stop! We need him to stop the Cons, dammit!" Ford slips through the bars, rushing over to sock another punch to Repugnus as he draws one of his tiiiiiiiiiny daggers accessories in the free hand. Ford wasn't concerned about punching an Autobot like Pugs anyways; he had a face only a fist could love to begin with. "Hey, admin!" Ford said to Trivia as he began to try and loosen his restraints. "You've gotta tell me how to counter those tricks Shockwave is using-- the one with an incomplete LiteBrite for a face. There must be /something/ as a back-up, right?" "The rules of this world are entirely unlike what you are used to," Shockwave explains to Skids on why Buzzkill hasn't fallen yet. "Buzzkill can fly, your weapons are meaningless, and I can do anything." Shockwave points at Skids, and the bee blocks that he just threw away suddenly reconfigure themselves, smashing together to form a single bee about the size of Skids. There's a sudden flash of light near the bee's right wing, though. Ah. Shockwave sees the error. A misplaced 0 due to the first data corruption. It would have been correct under the old data, but under the new... "Correctable," Shockwave repeats. The bee still functions, though, and dives for Skids with its butt stinger first. Shockwave turns towards Repugnus and the now-useless(?) Apocryphacius. There's flickering in the terrain behind them. "Correctable," Shockwave repeats. He reaches for a function to patch it up, but the function vanishes mid-use. "Correctable..." Shockwave does it manually, throwing in millions of lines of code towards the problem. He sees the missing bar in Ford's cage and fixes the failure, causing the bar to reappear. Shockwave seems unaware that this is about ten seconds too late, though. The sky flickers. Repugnus grins as the talons sink in. He ought to thank Shockwave for giving away that Trivia was actually a Quintesson--Apocryphacius specifically, but Repugnus is pretending to think that it's Archaeonix. "No, Ford! Urf--" He takes the punch to the face, stumbling back, and losing another heart. "Dammit, that's Archaeonix, I'm sure of it! And look, the dream world's collapsing! If we finish him off, we can fix this problem altogether!" And he roughly shoves Ford aside as he raises his claws for another stabbing. "Sweet dreams, Squiddy!" And suddenly, just like that, before he can deliver the death blow, Repugnus is gone. Meanwhile, in the real world, Repugnus suddenly jolts awake on his medtable with a startled gasp. He looks around to see other Autobot patients, and a few medtechs doing diagnostics. "No. NO NO NO!!!" Repugnus screams, pounding a fist into his table. Repugnus's posed. is lying on the floor in a growing pool of green and pink clear studs because he's been stabbed twice. There is a hole drilled through his head. His injuries are rendered in a way that is oddly realistic, perhaps disturbingly so, given the cartoony nature of everything else. He would like to give Ford a good answer, he dearly would, but there is a HOLE IN HIS HEAD. "...I don't remember. Well. There's a lot of things I don't remember. I could only remember little pieces of the administrator controls, and that's all gone now... I know I used to know these things... I guess... Shockwave has it now? Behead him. Take his head. And build the future."%r%rHe slumps down. He slumps down. Skids jumps back with a "Yah!" before he even processes what's coming, watches the bee embed its stinger in the studs of the baseplate, fly up, pull it out, and--it's a bee, not a wasp. It can't survive once it's stung. "Poor bee," he murmurs, before he realizes what he's saying. He shakes his head. Better get back to business. And play, right now, is very serious business. Okay, what does Skids have to work with? He doesn't say that out loud, but he doesn't need to. First, he dashes over to Backfire, scoops up the two pieces of the Kreon-Fusion Cannon, and snaps them back together. "Mind if I borrow this?" Then, what else? Oh, man, those sharks look just pathetic, flopping in the ruined pool. He rushes over to where Sh@d0wH@X is grazing placidly, but ignores the horse, and scoops up Ford's bow under his other arm. Then, he rushes over to one of the beached sharks. He straddles the noble fish, king of the seas, fits the weapon onto his headpiece to free up both of his hands, nocks a water arrow onto the bow, and fires it onto the ground right behind them, where there wasn't a river before. "Cowa-BUNGA!" Fifty tiny voices all shout in unison, "Nope." to answer Skids quip. Why, it's the other pieces of Backfire.. in tiny KREO monster form, and actually kinda cute. Until they start flinging themselves at the Autobot van dude, yelling all sorts of senseless Backfire ramblings. "You'll rue this day!" "For the EMPIRE!" "Glory!" But you know, in pint-sized children voices.. kind of like tiny nails on a chalkboard. Like fifty of them. Ford stood up as Trivia seems to drift out of consciousness... how were they going to stop Shockwave now? Repgunus seemed to have woken up, and Skids was busy with the bee blimp and it's bumbling buddy. And Shockwave seemed to be exercising more control over this world. And that left one person to stop him... Ford. Welp, we're screwed! But Ford was never one to accept defeat. It's what made Ford a Ford, after all! Ford stood up, repeating phrases in his head as he turned to Shockwave's position. "Think outside the blocks... and build the future... we have to get his head... somehow, we have to get his head!" Ford whistled his tune, summoning Sh@d0wH@X to his side once more and mounting up and riding for Shockwave. He had ABSOLUTELY no clue what he was about to attempt, but he knew one thing: the only thing necessary for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing! This was a job for HUMANITY'S CHAMPION!!! ...but he didn't seem to be present, so Ford would have to do, unfortunately... Ford Benett says, "And yes, I'm aware of how many times I've said my name in that." The bee that stabs Skids falls to the ground, having delivered its payload. Shockwave is too distracted by the growing flaws in the dreamscape's code to bother removing that weakness from the bee. He looks up at the flickering sky, and suddenly the sky returns to its normal clear blue hue. "Data corruption on the southern reaches of Kreoland," Shockwave states as if talking to himself. "Purging code. Code purged." He only vaguely seems aware of what's going on around him, but he knows Repugnus has vanished. Someone pulled him out of Kreoland manually. Dangerous, that. "Table KR_CLASS_ASSEMBLED is flawed. Dropping all associated views and recreating." The world vanishes for a split second before coming back into existence as if nothing had happened. But while Shockwave is temporarily out of it, the Buzzblimp moves into position, carrying the fifty Backfires along with her. Then 1x30 thin pieces start raining down from the blimp, threatening to skewer, Skids, his horsefish, and humanity's replacement champion. Even as this happens, the ground buckles, and a huge crack appears like it's a cartoon earthquake. Skids looks up to see the fifty mini-Backfires after him, and thinks back to one of the strangest human flicks he's ever witnessed. "Good, bad, I'm the one with your gun. Kayuga, Kayuga, dive, dive dive!" He spurs the shark to dip under the clear river blocks, to let the spears plink on the surface. Ford and his stead ride hard through the falling 1x30 blocks, the ground around them bricks apart both from the bricks crashing around him and even the ground itself apparently trying to swallow them all up. It seems Shockwave has taken on a very powerful and monumental task from Trivia. One that apparently keeps him spouting command lines. A tidbit Ford hoped to exploit! Soon enough, the ground became too rough for Sh@d0wH@X to traverse, neighing frustratedly as it as suddenly stopped dead by a falling 1x30 block. But what stopped horses did not stop Ford! The blocky human leapt from his stallion and onto the block that blocked his path, which now tilted towards Shockwave. Ford raced up the incline, reaching the peak and leaping for the hopefully still distracted DeceptiKreon. He had only one thing on his mind: somehow wrestle Shockwave's head from it's shoulders! While Shockwave is out of it, Trivia flops over and starts to crawl towards Shockwave, leaving a trail of clear pink and green studs behind him. Everything hurts. He's missing part of his head. His memories are a mess. But he has a few facts. Shockwave said he was a Quintesson. Repugnus tried to kill him, and it... feels like that has happened before? He's bleeding pink /and/ green studs. He has useless pet sharks. He has a mask collection. Trivia mumbles hazily, "Maybe I /am/ a Quintesson... it would make sense of the data being presented. Clearly one with some deep-seated self-loathing issues, if I manifest in my dreams as /the wrong species/, and moreover, as my ancestral enemy, but nevertheless... if I really was a Quintesson, I would like to think I would have better tricks up my proverbial sleeve than 'die on the floor'... He wheezes up some more studs. "Ford Benett, Godmode. Activate HorseSharkMegaZord. ...and if this works, I suppose that I will be forced to admit that I am not, as I appear to be, a hatchback." Skids, popping back above the surface of the water-bricks, comforts him with, "We can't all be." He fires another water-arrow to propel him at Shockwave. Shockwave ignores the buckling ground, even though the crack it's creating is continuing to grow. "Ah," he states. "I have found the memory access functions." He turns away from Ford, apparently considering the man not important enough to deal with. In a dream or otherwise, a fleshling is no match for him. Surface thoughts of the dreaming Transformers pass through Shockwave's mind. He starts to dig deeper, but finds himself focusing on one more than the enough. Upon hearing the 'Godmode', Shockwave turns in that direction. "Archaeonix," Shockwwave states with surprise. "You have a copy o-" Ford leaps from his horse, and Shockwave calls up a wall of bricks in his way. But Godmode Ford is able to just smash right through it. Shockwave calls up the delete function, but it's coded to be ineffective against Godmode. If Shockwave had a sense of irony, he would be amazed that, in the end, a head popping off has once again proven to be his downfall. Ford gets Shockwave's head without a problem, and the rest of the Kreon body stands still for several seconds before Skids's water arrows knock it over. The Kreon falls forward with a loud clang. The yellow optic on the Kreon's head fades offline. What effect will the administrator's 'death' have on the world? Skids dismounts the magnificent white shark as the water drains out into the crevasse, and pats it on the back for a job well done. "Some days, you ride the shark, and some days, the shark rides you." He observes sagely. Skids' Autoblock face frowns as he wonders, "But what was that about a HorseSharkMegaZord?" Ford had wrested Shockwave's head from it's shoulders as he turned it about in his hands. Well... he had it. Now what? Ford wasn't exactly certain what to do with a DeceptiKreon's head. "Well... uhm... the world is safe now...?" Ford asked, looking about to see if the world's crumbling had stopped... The world is crumbling /more/. All the functions and data that ran this world were, temporarily, stored in Shockwave. With him forcibly removed, this world will only last as long as the data buffer does, and it's going in more of a purge than a trickle. Images pixelate. Renders lose their geometry. The KREOworld is well and truly dismantled and will menace sleepers no more with its bricky goodness. They had better do what wacky hijinks they want in the last few fading seconds, while they still can. It's the end of the world as they know it. With the last moments fading in the dreamstate, Backfire (well one of the tiny Backfire's anyways) shrugs and does what he's always wanted to do.. build a tiny Backfire totem pole. The saunter around until the Kreoworld dissipates completely. Ford isn't quite sure if he saved the world, destroyed this one, saved another, stopped evil plans... did they do anything valuable? Ford... wasn't entirely sure. But... well, if the world was about to end, and he still had Godmode enabled, Ford DID have something he wanted to do... Tossing the head of Shockwave to Skids, Ford crouched, before taking off and flying into space, smiling for the camera. ==================================== EDC ===================================== Message: 22/12 Posted Author Condition Update Thu Jan 17 Apocryphacius ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Text Only There is a note that Apocryphacius briefly flat-lined, was successfully resuscitated, and has finally woken up after his 'accident'. He should be cleared for duty soon. ============================================================================== ================================= Decepticon ================================= Message: 2/112 Posted Author Kre-O Dreamscape Thu Jan 17 Shockwave ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *** TEXT ONLY *** Our connection to the Kre-O dreamscape has been severed. - Shockwave ==============================================================================
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