The Intergalactic Highway

The move that the Dinobot she challenged, made to block and counter her attack wasn't unexpected.
She knew instinctively that the first rule to fight an unknown enemy, is to learn all that you can to adapt your tactics to your opponent.
And so she allowed the obvious move to intercept her punch to intercept it.
Then she saw his knee go up to collide with her.
That simply wouldn't do.
Being this close, her instincts told her she wasn't facing Dinobot at all.
And now she was sure he wasn't who he appeared to be. He didn't even carry the faintest smell of being Dinobot.
Plus, Dinobot wouldn't go soft on her.
Maybe, she thought, she would show him a glimmer of how Dinobot would've treated this challenge, if it actually happened right now.
When the knee of the fake Dinobot was almost at her chest, she grabbed hold on the arm he used to block her punch, and twirled away from the knee, and when she was underneath his arm, she kicked at the knee of the leg he still had on the ground.

NaitoKage wrote:"Our" enemies you speak of..just mean me.

She stared at her opponent with focused optics.
"We all have our own deamons to fight. You have yours,m and i have mine.
Neither one needs to be the same, however, in the physical world, at this time, and if you choose to join us, we will have common enemies."

She then lets up an amused grin on her face. "But how about you deactivate your imitation and show me your true self, so we can continue this by using your own skills.
I promise not to hold back, if you won't."

Venatrix took a few steps back to hive the bot she was facing a bit of room to react however he sees fit.

The fake Dinobot watched as she swiftly grabbed his arm and twisted it, then kicking at his knee joint which seemed to flex in an abnormal manner. Landing on his other leg in a kneed pose, he then stood up seemingly unphased.

He gave a warm smile as his skin then shifted color to a solid black, as if ink was bleeding the color of his form, tentacles uncoiling as textures and shapes shifted. With a gold accent of color taking to his form and purple optics and sensors becoming active, Umbra raised his right hand with two fingers held up before him, his tentacles writhing around him relaxed but still in positions that were easily to defend.

As he spoke, he begun sounding like Dinobot still, until it wore off. Looks like I still have more to learn on him before I can give a good impersonation. As for my skills.. if I only learn to use those I'll never get stronger.

He then lowered his right hand, walking towards Venatrix slowly. While shorter then Dinobot, Umbra was still taller then her, with a 4 meter reach on each tentacle, each one nearly twice as thick as her own arms and almost as fast. One of the uper tentacles on the left side of his body swung out towards her like a whip, the other limbs moving slightly closer to each other while doing so.

OOC: @ OOP...it's no big deal. I really just asked the question for the sake of knowing the answer not necessarily to get you to change your post.

((OOC: Sorry, I didn't see any mention of Inferno firing his weapon when I first read it, but I'll go ahead and edit it into my post. Also, radar uses radio waves so we could just assume that her exoskeleton is designed to absorb it. NK is right about sonar since it uses sound waves. They operate on two entirely different wavelengths which means Arachnitron would have to be specifically built to evade both... which would've made her one very expensive robot to build lol. Although, if you really want to get technical, she would be emitting some form of radiation (heat, electrical, etc.) if she's talking, moving, firing a weapon, and so forth. Just because her spark isn't releasing energy from her shell doesn't mean her body isn't generating energy from physical activity. Nothing is completely cloaked, as NK mentioned a few episodes back.

Also, I just want to remind you guys that Season 1 Orcariner doesn't use sonar as a means of detection unless if he's putting up Beacon 2.0 which utilizes both sonar and radar for 30 seconds. Not that it'll change anything that just happened, but just know that permanent upgrade won't happen until Season 2. So, let's just say that he can't recognize Arachnitron's identity when he's using radar. He can, however, recognize her using sonar based on the 3D feedback... or at least confuse her with some other spider.))

Yeah, I didn't really give the "Inferno shooting Orcariner" thing as much attention as I really should have. I should have made it more exciting. Or at least made it it's own sentence!

Anyway.....the no energy signature thing happened as a result of the experimentation, it wasn't something she was actually designed to have. I mean, unlike Starshadow, Arachnitron is not originally a Hybrid. She came online a Predacon and became a Hybrid artificially. She wasn't created from scratch to be a Hybrid...she was changed. I mean, imagine the possibilities that could have arisen for the Predacons if they had been successful. To take a bot that was one faction and change it by force. The Predacons could do quite a bit of damage if they were able to change a bot like that. Especially if they could create a Hybrid faction that could have the best features of both Maximal and Predacon factions.

I imagine, to change her genetic make up there would have been some side effects. I mean, probably a lot more goes into a bot's identity than just the programming itself. That would be too easy. I'm assuming they would have needed to tamper with things like her energy and radiation and maybe even her body's chemical compounds as well. She was probably injected with things that maybe, once exposed to over a long period of time, could affect the material her exostructure was made of.

I did a little research on this: In a lab in Illinois in 2011, scientists created an artificial material that could potentially be used to hide submarines from Sonar. The material causes sound to wrap AROUND an object instead of being reflected or absorbed rendering it invisible. Also, like Alak mentioned, certain materials can absorb radio energies to mask it from radar equipment. So, perhaps all that tampering caused the metal Arachnitron was made with to alter slightly and give it some of these properties.

All in all....Alak's suggestion seems to make the most sense. She probably wouldn't have the ability to hide from both sonar and radar. She probably wouldn't be detected using radar. With sonar she would be detected....or at least she would show up on the screens as SOMETHING, perhaps she just shows up as an unknown blip often confused for a glitch. Perhaps as things progress, Orcariner's sonar technology becomes more advanced and she is no longer able to confuse his beacon. And the inhibitor chip that Tarantulas installed might also contribute to her not being detected as well. Perhaps it emits some sort of technology of its own that helps her to hide from detection devices.

As far as knowledge...I don't know that Arachnitron really understands the extent of what's been done to her. She knows that no insignia shows up on her arm (well, there's a spider there now thanks to the inhibitor chip), but she is unaware the detection difficulties that are a result of her not having an energy signature. Nor do the Predacons realize this about her (with exception of Tarantulas).

(well, the Predacons do have the technology to cause a transformer to flip.. Tarantulas made that machine that made Rhinox into a predacon.. I assume similar technology was used in the shell program to make Blackarachnia the way she is..

There are also other ways to mess around or avoid sonar.. technically, Manterror has the ability to hide from that with his sound dampers. But he'd still show up on radar in robot mode. And yes, there is radar absorbing material, but that still has to be used on certain shaped hauls, which also use systems that reduce heat signature and so on to make stealth planes so stealthy. I'm sure we could go further into this, but it'd probably drive the others insane. Ah.. now I remember Energon vision from the Transformers Armada game.. That was a nifty ability. )

OOC:

NaitoKage wrote:(well, the Predacons do have the technology to cause a transformer to flip.. Tarantulas made that machine that made Rhinox into a predacon.. I assume similar technology was used in the shell program to make Blackarachnia the way she is..

Right....but the changing faction part wasn't really where the experiment ended. The Hybrid part was the experiment, but not making a Hybrid from scratch....taking a Predacon and making a Hybrid from it by adding new coding. I mean, if they could change a Maximal into a Predacon and vice versa, then they could go a bit further. They could form this Hybrid faction and add Maximal code to unruly Predacons...not to soften them up, but to make them more compliant. And, as we can see, taking a Maximal and making a Predacon doesn't always make a compliant Predacon. Rhinox was not a Predacon I would want to mess with that's for sure!!! But this extra faction that would be, ultimately, under the Predacons control would be like drone warriors with a brain.

Think of the plot of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew".....and now, we have "The Taming of the Predacon."

OOC: Alak, I think we need to discuss the matter of using Tarantulas as a shield ....I could understand you nicking him with the swords before he made his way over to the pods during my last post (which he needs to begin working on as part of an important plot point), but grabbing him and using him as a shield for incoming firepower? That kinda derails alot of what's supposed to happen between now and when Optimus is sent up into space. Tarantulas needs to remain functional long enough to work on the stasis pod before he gets burned alive by Inferno (plus, T is far too tiny to serve as a proper shield against Predacon firepower anyway, especially given Orca's size).

((OOC: Sorry, was kinda busy annnnnddd I have nothing much to write.))

Inferno was here too?! She hissed at him and turned to the spiders, "You were followed and you arachnids didn't even know?!"

Everything is about to be in total chaos. A giant whale and a psychotic plus a blindly loyal bug. Megatron must have sent him to spy on the spiders.

Guess I'll just have to do everything by myself... she growled in her thoughts and charged towards Inferno, moving behind him as she grabbed one of his arms and pulled it then slamed her elbow at the back of his head with all of her strength.

( Er.. not to be pedantic.. but isn't Darkspark a guy? Anyway.. Break it up kids, if we all get too hotheaded it wont do any of us any good. Alright, from what I can see, Orcariner did screw up but has fixed the line.

As for breaking out of the situation.. that shouldn't be too hard for Tarantulus..For on the one hand, Tarantulus's cybervenom should be causing paralysis which should in theory stop sending signal pulses to Orcariner's hand servos.

If signals or power is still being sent to Orcariner's servos in his hand, with his expert knowledge and Orcariner's macro-scaled body.. reaching and pulling a wire out of a servo-joint on Orcariner's thumb should cut the power or data and make opening the grasp easy enough Or use one of his tools..like a laser scalpel and destroy part of the joint to make the thumb fall off if he really wants to be evil. Then which maybe use a web shot to send a webnet at his upper or lower body to restrain him long enough for the Cyber venom to course through the rest of his body and knock him out. But that's just a suggestion.

If skipping over being grasped, well with Tarantulus plugged in like that, he doesn't have alot of room to dodge without that visor popping off or suddenly snagging, but could probably do it as he is nimble and Orcariner is as nimble as a steamroller. On the other hand, inserting information while having your vision reduced from a semi transparent display while focused on installing a custom program in a terminal..IE:"Programming" would make Tarantulus less likely to be paying attention and less capable of dodging. But I'll leave that also up to Darkspark. )

(ooc: Oh lord.. From the looks of it, OOP won't have too much catching up to do when she returns in a week. :p Let's not make this more difficult than it has to be, for all our sake. You were all doing so great until the last two pages worth of ooc comments so let's just move on. )

Nemesis stood silently in the shadows, her wings wrapped around her, as she watched Megatron in silence. The Predacon leader appeared rather preoccupied with the events that were taking place and from the looks of it had not noticed her presence. Or at least he had done nothing to acknowledge it if he had.

The avian female pondered speaking up, wanting to discuss recent revelations of their whereabouts on Earth along with coming up with a potential backup plan in case whatever the commander had planned that involved the spiders now wrecking havoc at the Maximal base. But now did not seem like the right time.. With any luck they would have another chance to talk after all this was over.

She decided to leave the Predacon commander be, making her exit from the room as silent as her entry had been. All she could do now was wait and hope for the best.

Nemesis made her way back to the hangar where Umbra and Venatrix were busy practicing. Or at least that's what she assumed they were doing. At the time being she found it a little hard to concentrate since her mind kept focusing on recent events.

What a strange twist of fate this was turning into..

Upon first arriving on this planet and losing her larger body, Nemesis' goals had simply been to regain her former size, speed and strength, or die trying. Things had gotten more complicated now with the divulgement of the fake moon and possibly instrument of their destruction, which had been the final missing piece in the puzzle of what planet this truly was. It was not so much the planet itself that captivated Nemesis' interest nor was it the massive resources their ancestors had been fighting over this place for. But if she was correct about where they were, a more important question would be when this was all taking place. The wildlife she had encountered so far, the lack of human life or signs of their era of fame, and the plentiful energon reserves available here all pointed to the possibility of something bringing all of them to the past. A time before they woke..

The cybertronians were now faced with the possibility of changing the course of history. That is, of course, if they were right in their assumptions and if they could locate the missing ships. And if they did not end up obliterated by the alien weapon before this night was over..

All they could do was wait and see..

Nemesis ruffled her feather a bit in annoyance. She hated waiting for the unknown like this.

Meanwhile Aurora moved aside a bit to allow the newly arrived help some room so they could help move the injured Maximals.

(ooc: Sorry for bad post.. Sleepy. And a bit bored. Question; Will Ironclaw and Wintersong, along with other injured OCs, be turning transmetal ? Because the CR chamber appeared to shield its occupants from being altered.)

((Actually yes my character will be Phoenix, and Winter didn't take a bad hit like Ironclaw did. She was lucky enough to just get hit by a single cybervenom dart which seems to wear off after a little while to which point think would be a good time.))

Wintersong's optics flicked a little as she began to come around, the cyber venom at last wearing off and leaving her systems, and thank Primus it hadn't been a lethal dose either otherwise she'd have been lucky to not have been in the CR chamber to recover. The white tigress was taking a few moments to really recover and focus again, at first confused as to why it was so quiet and how the slag she was even outside the ship when she recalled the bridge being turned into a battle field shortly after the spiders had arrived. But the spiders were the last bots she wanted to think about, especially Arachnitron and knowing had just played a part in the widow turning against the Maximals. Had even giving Starshadow a chance been a bad call too? Again the tigress wasn't wanting to find out, unaware the panther had already turned to helping the spiders inside the cargo bay.

Pushing the thoughts aside Wintersong finally glanced around to know where she was and was relieved to see her teammates instead of enemies,"Glad to see you three made it in one piece."She told them before converting to beast mode just in case there was a chance her systems would be hit by an energon surge and to repair the damage done by the cyber venom. But her attention soon went to Ironclaw next, seeing the badger had taken the worst of the hits and she guessed he was the reason she had gotten out here in the first place,"Is Ironclaw okay? That looks pretty bad."She said with deep concern for the mech, hoping there wasn't a chance they'd lose yet another friend.

Onyx's gaze became fixed on the now transformed weapon. He had time before to go when he had the chance, he'd been questioning this sudden change in allegiance since they left the alien site and yet he had wasted all that time with his mind in turmoil. The stallion couldn't be more angry with himself at that moment and knowing the opportunity for now was gone and that his soon-to-be former teammate was right: there was just no time and it would be suicide to attempt now when the weapon would likely shoot at any given moment.

With a reluctant sigh Onyx looked back at Steelclaw,"Alright Steelclaw I shall return, and if the outcome is in our favor I plan to go to the Maximals and fight for their cause until we find a way off this planet. If we do." He said, accepting the possible fate that their factions faced and followed the bear back towards the Darksyde to await their fate. Hopefully it was not truly the end for anyone and that they could find a way home and not end up dying because some of these Vok found it necessary.

=======================

Silverstreak watched as the others were given orders and were quick to follow them but it seemed the gorilla, which she guessed by now from the way he carried himself and was giving orders that he was the commander. But they all seemed worried beyond that the condition of their teammates and she assumed it had something to do with the odd moon-like sphere in the atmosphere and the danger it was beginning to pose for them all, though she didn't know just how bad it was since she hadn't been there even a day yet nor seen the transformation that had taken place. She had just come out of stasis lock due to the cyber venom and was still pretty new so she wasn't exactly fully aware of everything.

Pushing the thoughts to the back of her mind and turning her attention to Tigatron when he spoke she smiled,"Nice to meet you Tigatron, I'm Silverstreak and I'm doing fine now. Little sore but nothing I can't handle."She said with a greeting smile before looking back towards Optimus and the monitors. "Tigatron , I know this may not be the best question to ask considering the situation, but how bad is it really? I mean with these aliens?" Silverstreaked asked as she looked back at the white tiger, having a quizzical look on her face since she was truly curious and worried.


((So sorry for skipping Megs this time around but hasn't quite gotten to where he can do much else but stare at the hologram and see what's happening in the brig. So when we settle with some of them getting slagged in the cargo bay then Barney will have his moment.))

OOC: If Alak would rewrite his post with regards to what actually transpired in my post then I'd consider everything to be well from that point on. Thanks for pointing things out & standing up for me WorpeX and Blackrose, I hadn't wanted to make waves but I was honestly confused by how much Alak's post ignored what had happened during my last post & what I was gonna have to do about it so that my next post would make sense

P.S. I am actually a dude ...And a Cylon!

"Arachnitron called you out there?" Cheetor repeated Feralnight in surprise. "I thought she was on our side... or kindof." Well, now she kindof wasn't.

Optimus wrote:Dinobot, get Rhinox to the CR.

Dinobot's retort collapsed in on itself just before he was about to open his mouth. Wouldn't my services be better offered in the cargo bay with the others? His true feelings were less about efficient use of personnel and more about the chance to engage in combat with a deserving enemy. Not that he was convinced his services wouldn't have been better offered there... And not that he didn't also want to defend his own allies from harm. But at any rate, functionality of the Maximals as an entire unit--and with it, functionality of the chain of command--was... maybe... more important than taking the spiders down more swiftly.

Without a word, he turned to Rhinox and began attending to his orders.

Optimus wrote:Whitegrazer, Cheetor, get down to the hangar and assist Aurora with Ironclaw and Wintersong. Bring them inside immediately.
Airazor and Rattrap are on their way to back up Orcariner, but be on alert. Blackarachnia, Starshadow, Tarantulas and Inferno are in the cargo bay.

"You got it, Big Bot," Cheetor said with a grim look of determination on his face. He transformed to battle mode, pulled out his quasar rifle, looked across the bridge, found Whitegrazer, said a quick, "See yah, Night," and then headed down the halls with the instructor.

As he and Whitegrazer came closer to the sound of all the fighting, Cheetor tightened his grip on his weapon, and he took a careful look down one of the halls that would have led to the cargo bay as they passed it by. When he got to where he was going, he saw Wintersong was "o.k." Maybe not Ironclaw...

"Hey, Aurora," he said, and then looked at Ironclaw again. "CR chamber?"

* * *

Onyx wrote:Alright Steelclaw I shall return, and if the outcome is in our favor I plan to go to the Maximals and fight for their cause until we find a way off this planet. If we do.

Steelclaw gave a small smile as a rush of relief washed over him. He looked behind his shoulder again just to make sure Onyx was following him. And he was. Good. Onyx wasn't lost just yet. Now... could he convince a defector to stay on the Predacon side for good in the time it took to survive and defeat the... whatever-they-were's endgame?

On his way into the base, he saw Venatrix and Umbra sparring just outside.

"Hey, I'm sorry about this, but I think it's time to call the match off. Doomsday device and all that. Y'know... big, alien weapon. It's ready to go."

Without waiting for an answer, he got himself into the Darksyde's hangar, and then turned around to watch and make sure the other three made it back in safely. He caught sight of Nemesis off to his side and he acknowledged her with a head nod. "Hey. You ready for this?"