"First Season Finale: Part I"

[Phoenix]

(ooc: Heh, we're already page 12 and we haven't really gotten very far with any of the leads that need to be followed for this episode to play through, albeit I have noticed a few people trying to get us there. We may need to pick the pace up a bit to get the episode to go in the right direction.

'Silverbolt' rolled over in bed last night and asked me when we were ready for his introduction and I had to inform him that we hadn't even gotten close to killing Primal yet. He was a bit disgruntled by the delay.

Also we may be able to alter the course of the actual plot of the episode a tad, since the Predacons are now able to spy on the Maximals through Feralnight, so since the spiders haven't really been much of an issue to Megatron in this rpg, perhaps Megatron could find out about Primal's plans to use the pod and such through Feralnight and make his own plans accordingly? )

IC:

"You know, I kinda thought I saw somethin' brewin' between those two,"

Rattrap's observation appeared to be all too accurate as Whitegrazer passed by them with a look so innocent and oblivious, yet not at all surprised, it had to have been fake. Although new to the group, even Aurora had seen the subtle, and sometimes less than subtle, signs of the commander and the white mare being in the process of developing their relationship to something more than just friendship. Although they were trying to be discrete about their budding relationship, many of the Maximals could not help but notice the flighty looks, the tender touch, and the two of them often debating in private.

As such, Aurora was hardly surprised by the rat's insight, and she merely offered a secretive little smile in return rather than confirming the observation verbally. Although as the rat proceeded to counter her claim about keeping them out of trouble, she quickly stuck her tongue out at him.

"We'll see how soon the rat gets trapped," she winked as Rattrap divided them up into teams.

"Want a ride?"

"Sure!," Aurora exclaimed after looking down at her own much shorter paws, a bit surprised at the offer since Whitegrazer normally did not let the others climb onto her back.

[Optimal Optimus Primal]

(( OOC: All right, all right. Relax, guys. We'll be moving along. It's not my fault because things are always happening that OP can never get a decent one-on-one conversation with anyone without constantly being interrupted. I think the only successful one he's had so far was with Orcariner. Cut me some slack. I won't be able to do it for a while after he dies.

'Silverbolt' rolled over in bed last night and asked me when we were ready for his introduction and I had to inform him that we hadn't even gotten close to killing Primal yet. He was a bit disgruntled by the delay.

Well, we have a long way to go anyway because everyone wanted to do the truce and have fun. That can't happen until Megatron gets the disk and studies it, and then he'll call upon OP for a meeting and ask for peace between them, and so forth. Also, some people obviously want certain things to happen to their OC's, so there's going to be some minor sidetracking which will take up some time.

Also we may be able to alter the course of the actual plot of the episode a tad, since the Predacons are now able to spy on the Maximals through Feralnight, so since the spiders haven't really been much of an issue to Megatron in this rpg, perhaps Megatron could find out about Primal's plans to use the pod and such through Feralnight and make his own plans accordingly?

Hm. I'll go along with that.

at una. I try. ))

"One step at a time."

Optimus nodded confidently at Whitegrazer, although her words still lingered in his mind.

"We are slow moving, aren't we? Will do, Optimus!" "I think my hand is stuck. Kidding."

The leader chuckled when she pulled on his arm as she went to turn, nearly yanking him off in her haste. As their hands released, Primal held his smile on Whitegrazer and watched her start walking away.

"And, Optimus? I always had that feeling."

Optimus sighed lightly, happy to hear that from her. They were very much on the same wave length and it comforted his spark. His joyfulness of her company lingered until she walked further away from him and on to her search-and-rescue mission with the others. Aware of Orcariner's large presence brought him back to the other matter at hand; the Vok. Quickly, Primal's demeanor grew serious and he glanced up at the giant Maximal.

"Let's check out your data, Orcariner," said Optimus as he immediately headed inside the Axalon. That's when Icebreaker's report came through on the Commander's comm. link.

Optimus, this is Icebreaker.We found Arachnitron knocking the oil out of Manterror.. Seems Manterror was building some sort of Catapult, probably planned to sling boulders at the Axalon.

Sighing with some irritation toward Manterror's constant attempts to disrupt the Maximals and their duties, he responded, "I trust the situation has been handled," suggesting that the Predacon mantis was chased off and the catapult was either destroyed or dismantled. "Tell Arachnitron that if she would like her weapons back, she'll have to return to our base." While keeping her weapons away from her was a way to keep his Maximals safe, it was also a form of control and Optimus couldn't keep his thumb on her, so to speak. She had the right to defend herself out here if she preferred to be away from the protection of the Axalon. And it would help her Maximal programming to have some kind of defense against anyone who might attack her.

(( OOC: Alak, go ahead and show those readings to OP so he can zip off toward that mountain before Tigatron can contact them. Just thought it would give a reason as to why OP was flying around in the first place in that episode before Megatron's hologram caught up with him. Once Megatron has the disk in his hands, he'll be contacting OP for the truce agreement. Does that work for moving the plot along? ))

-----

"We'll see how soon the rat gets trapped,"

After Aurora's tongue insult and wink, Rattrap grabbed the corners of his mouth with both his front paws and pulled them out to the sides of his face, sticking out his tongue and making a gagging sound with his throat. Releasing his mouth, he said with a grin, "Rats never get trapped. We always find a way out. Especially ones with tools."

Watching Whitegrazer walk between him and the ermine, he made kissing noises and cupped his front paws in front of his stomach. "Awwwe."

"Let's his it!"

Rattrap watched the eager cheetah jump off, almost leaving him in the dust. Sighing, he waited for him to stop and offer him a ride. Kids, he thought, shaking his head.

"And um... maybe you want to ride on my back?" "I think we'd go faster."

"What da heck is that supposed ta mean?" Rattrap teased him in a serious tone. Before Cheetor could react to that, he added, "Uh, yeah, maybe I do. Thanks for rememberin' how slow I am." The brown rat smirked and waddled up to the yellow cat, climbing up on to his back and grabbing hold on to his shoulders. "Now mush!" he called out as if Cheetor were a sled dog.

[Alak]

((OOC: Speed things up you say?))

IC:

Orcariner presented a device to Optimus which had the readouts to the signal.

"Topgraphy indicated a pretty treacherous path to navigate though. Lots of cliffs and such to run in to, but unfortunately the elevation prevents any of us from simply flying over without our gear stalling. I've never seen a mountain this large before."

The image of the mountain rotated and zoomed in.

"Given your speed, you should be the fastest one to get there assuming that the Predacons did not have an early start. Their base also provides them a more favorable approach. Optimus, we have to leave now. With the earlier events delaying our activities, we really need to speed things up in this RPG investigation."

[una]

((OOC: Aurora and Rattrap. They are a riot. ))

Whitegrazer started galloping in a steady pace, "Just hang on, Aurora." Despite the conversation before, she forced herself to clear her thoughts and focus on finding Feralnight. She wondered how Airazor was doing in her search. If she found her, she would have called Whitegrazer as she asked her to. Hopefully, Airazor ran into no trouble.

"I bet you are excited, Aurora." Whitegrazer smiled lightly, "I remember when I was in your years...you don't mind if I tell you a story of one of my past adventure, do you?"

________________________________________________________________

Blackarachnia had just came back from her snack. It was a red frog, which was very sweet, sweetier than the green ones. She will have to catch those more often. She chuckled darkly when she passed the Starshadow bathing Sonar. If she only had a camera...she really should stole one from Tarantulas.

"Enjoying your bath, Sonar?" She laughed.

Looking at Starshadow, she inwardly smirked as an idea popped in her head. Though, she wanted Sonar out of earshot.

[Wildfire94]

((Lol all the character interactions are amusing. ))

Upon hearing Glowstick the Predacon leader was a little eager to see how successful this would be. It would be a little time before Inferno returned so Megatron came to his personal quarters and pressed a button on his throne to activate the screen which popped up what Feralnight was seeing and heard what she said. It seemed the Maximals had been lookin for her but the tyrant wondered what could have brought this normally more cautious one out here.

And what of this new Predacon? It was unlike the Maximals to keep so many prisoner unless the other had stayed on their own, well they would know soon enough. Now as for Nemesis he wasn't that worried,"Her own fault for getting herself captured." He said aloud to himself.

===========

Onyx had not wandered far from base and when he heard the bear the stallion turned, ears turning forward a bit before he trotted back over to Steelclaw and Venetrix."I merely didn't want to be rude Steelclaw and I was just off looking at our territory. This planet is so different it has caught my interest." He said and shrugged his shoulders a bit. But seeming as he was there now Onyx decided to stay since he really had nothing else to do and looked at Venetrix curiously."And pardon my interruption who are you miss? I haven't met everyone quite yet." He asked being a rather polite mech despite his background.

[Venatrix]

Valkyrie nodded at Rhinox and dimmed her optics as she slipped into a slumber, as her systems scan started to kick in.
Now Rhinox could connect her to his equipment and start his observation.
She knew it would take a while before his systems where done.
The last time she had awakened from a checkup almost a half an planetary rotation had gone by.
He was away on a mission back then, as where most of the other Maximals.

--------------------

Venatrix nodded at Steelclaw right before he turned his attention towards the Stalion.
She could've told Steelclaw about her new designes for her twin blades.
The large sword on her back was mostly used in its sniper and semi-automatic rifle mode.
The sword itself she found hard to handle, as it was much heaviar then the usual blades she wielded.
She might tell him later.

[Optimal Optimus Primal]

(( OOC: Thank you, Alak. But let's not sacrifice the quality of our posts for speed. Besides, some of these twelve pages are several OOC posts just taking up space that I'll probably be deleting eventually. ))

"Topgraphy indicated a pretty treacherous path to navigate though. Lots of cliffs and such to run in to, but unfortunately the elevation prevents any of us from simply flying over without our gear stalling. I've never seen a mountain this large before."

As they walked, Optimus took the device from Orcariner's large hand, studying the images and data while they headed to the command center. Not an ideal area to navigate through. At the moment, he was the only flier left - save for Valkyrie but she was too unstable to send out on a mission like this -, and those who had beast modes that favored this kind of terrain had already taken off in search of Feralnight. Orcariner and Rhinox were too large to efficiently handle such a diverse land of valleys and peaks, and Frilla was too small. However, he supposed Dinobot and Ironclaw wouldn't fair too badly against it. After all, it would be wise to have someone following him on the ground in case of anything happening, like a Predacon or Vok attack.

"Given your speed, you should be the fastest one to get there assuming that the Predacons did not have an early start. Their base also provides them a more favorable approach. Optimus, we have to leave now. With the earlier events delaying our activities, we really need to speed things up in this investigation."

Picking up the urgency in Orcariner's voice, Primal agreed with him entirely. It may have been too late already, and maybe that was Onyx's whole purpose of showing up at their base in the first place; to delay the Maximals, something along the lines of what Rattrap had suggested. But maybe it was still innocent on the black stallion's part. Who knew. What he did know was that he'd have a lot of fuel to burn to reach that mountain as fast as he could fly. And it could be a dangerous situation.

"Dinobot, Ironclaw, report to the command center immediately," Optimus called over his comm. link to them. Reading through more of the data on the device, he stepped on to the main deck and glanced at the frilled lizard.

"Frilla, stay on those monitors and the scanners. Keep an eye out for any Predacon or Vok activity, and our other Maximals who are currently in the field." Handing Orcariner's device back to the orca, Primal stepped out of the room for a moment, unlocked the compartment which had been hiding and holding Arachnitron's weapons, and came back placing both guns on the center console. "Have Rhinox return these to Arachnitron if she chooses to come back here."

"Orcariner, give the mountain's coordinates to Dinobot and Ironclaw as soon as they arrive and have them follow me as quickly as they can."

"Rhinox," Primal opened a transmission to him via his communication link, "I will be absent for some time investigating a recent alien anomaly picked up by our scanners that Orcariner has just informed me of. You're in charge until I return."

With that, Optimus opened the roof hatch, ignited his prime jets, and flew straight up out of the base. As soon as he cleared the roof, he spiraled into the direction he needed to head in to reach the mountain and blasted off faster, closing his mouth plate with his arms stretched out in front of him. To save some fuel and energy, he didn't fly at full speed, but his current acceleration was quicker than any Predacon's.

[Blazemane]

"Now mush!"

If he wanted to treat him like a dog...

Cheetor made a show of stretching his front legs. Then he gave a loud yawn and promptly fell flat onto the ground. He crossed his forelimbs and rested his head over them as if he was planning on taking a long nap.

"Oh," he said. Not a second later, he was up and running.

* * *

Steelclaw listened silently and gave a simple nod as Onyx explained where he had been heading.

And pardon my interruption who are you miss? I haven't met everyone quite yet.

Steelclaw waited for her response, but she seemed to be contemplating something else. Becoming suddenly aware of the silence that had fallen among the three, he decided to speak up.

"I think this is my fault. I had just asked her a question and then called you over before she could answer me, so I believe right now she's distracted with contemplating the best way to destroy me."

Then he addressed Venatrix directly. "But don't let my bad timing stop you. I am still interested to hear about your weapon."

* * *

Dinobot didn't say anything for a few moments after he walked into the control room, opting instead to look over the place in search of something.

"Hmm..." he began speaking to whichever of the Maximals in the control room would answer him. "Optimus requested my presence here, but he doesn't appear to have stayed behind to explain his reasoning himself. Is that a good sign or a bad one?"

[Blackrosefencer]

OOC:

(Cheetors probably a young teenager at best.)

In that case, Arachnitron is definitely older than Cheetor. Although, the Predacon can definitely act much younger than she actually is. The other two personalities are fairly mature, but the Predacon is petty, childish and stubborn and will not hesitate to throw a good temper tantrum.

BIC:

Arachnitron’s confusion and frustration were still apparent though her hostility and aggression had subdued greatly. She shifted positions a few times uneasily as she observed the Maximals’ reactions to her outburst. This obvious lack of self-worth and self-confidence was unusual coming from the Predacon personality. For a brief moment, her optics coloring flashed green before returning to their red hue almost as though she was in the middle of transitioning between personalities.

Arachnitron not everyone thinks that.

Arachnitron knew well the bond that had been steadily forming between her Maximal personality and the white tiger in front of her. She lowered her optics thoughtfully. She wasn’t sure how to respond. The tigress may be friends with the Hybrid and Maximal programming, but the Predacon still saw herself as friendless. In her mind, Predacons had no friends and Predacons didn’t make friends nor did they need friends. But she didn’t say all those things. What would have been the point?

She looked up again at the Maximals when the penguin chimed in.

I wouldn’t know about the scrapheap, but lady, you are a pain in the skidplate.

To this, Arachnitron showed her fangs and narrowed her optics, but she didn’t move. At this particular moment, one of her alters was preventing her from reacting in her usual manner; though, for whatever reason, whichever personality was about to take control was hesitant to do so just yet. Perhaps in the brief moment that her optics had flashed green, the Maximal (or Hybrid) personality had realized what she might be interrupting and felt the Predacon needed to hear these words to quell her insatiable anger and hatred. Or perhaps, the Predacon programming still maintained too much control for another to take over.

If we didn’t care about you, we wouldn’t have bothered coming for you. I would have just taken a potshot on Manterror and put you both in the slagheap. So, how about I fix that leaky leg?

Arachnitron narrowed her optics once again and took a moment to let what Icebreaker said sink in. This concept of having others worry about her, care about her, and help her was something Arachnitron’s Predacon programming had difficulty understanding. She had spent her entire life locked away in a cell, she had been beaten and tortured, she had spent endless days and nights having her programming altered and rewritten, but the only reason any of the scientists ever “cared” about her safety was based solely on the possibility of their experimentation being a success. But these Maximals didn’t know which personality was in control when they began their search for her and once they realized it was the Predacon, they helped her anyway.

It dawned on the Predacon that they cared about her as a whole…not one individual personality over the others…all of her. And no matter how hostile and destructive the Predacon was to them, that would likely not change. Not while there was some chance of them taming the infernal Predacon programming. She was unsure how to react; she could not wrap her mind around this idea of caring for other bots.

“I didn’t ask anyone to care about me,” she responded stubbornly crossing her arms over her chestplate. “I can take care of myself.” But she kicked out her injured leg for the medic to tend to. “It’s only a scratch,” she told him shortly.

[NaitoKage]

Rhinox watched Valkyrie, then started to run some cables from the table connecting them to her body. He moved towards the computer, typing into it to run the diagnostic software, then when he finished he found himself suddenly interrupted by Optimus on his radio.

"Rhinox," Primal opened a transmission to him via his communication link, "I will be absent for some time investigating a recent alien anomaly picked up by our scanners that Orcariner has just informed me of. You're in charge until I return."

Rhinox rubbed his face, he'd be burning both ends of the cord again today it seemed. He got up from his chair leaving the diagnostic to run on it's own, then headed towards the bridge.

At the bridge he saw Frilla at the console with a smile Well least I wont be running this place alone. Frilla, who's currently left at the Axalon?
He asked, he figured it'd be best to know who was left as the guard in case anything happened.

___________________

Reviewing the data from the CR chamber, Glowstick let out a sigh. He knew he wouldn't be able to do it alone.Tarantulus wouldn't help, and Sonar seemed a little unusual lately, but was his best option as Frilla was gone. Looks like I'll have to milk that snake and see what either one of us can come up with as a vaccine..Which just leaves my other problems.. Nemesis and that Predacon the Maximals have.. Hm.. that would require covert actions..

Floating out of the water, he sent out a com signal to Steelclaw. Hey, looks like we have a situation which might require a stealth team, depending.. That Maximal I sent out had information on where Nemesis has been the past few days.. Seems the idiot took on the Maximals alone and messed them up bad, she's locked up in their hold. They also captured a new Pred Spider, but she seems off..she possibly has Maximal and Predacon programing.. fighting against each other.

No words from Megatron since he doesn't seem interested, but we could do an operation to recover the two girls if you're up for it Claw.

_________________

Icebreaker kneeled down pulling out a few tools, then started working on patching up the leaking tube in her leg. He then applied a patch and layer of tape to keep the area clean. Alright, that should do. Internal repairs will do a better job sealing that hole to make it look nice, but the patch will keep dirt and water from preventing that.
He gathered and put his tools away, then put the pack on his back standing up, then held his hand out to help her up As for that.. No one asks someone to care about them, it's just the natural way of things.There's always an opportunity to make friends upon meeting someone.. Now then.. Optimus reported on the radio he's giving your weapons back, so lets head to the Axalon and do that. Okay? He smiled warmly as he finished speaking.

[New Moon]

Frilla turned in her chair to look after Optimus,"No problem."She said after he left though looked towards Dinobot and Rhinox as they came in,"Honestly I don't think it's really that big of a worry DInobot. And to answer your question Rhinox besides you, me, and Dinobo there is also Orcanier and if I'm correct Ironclaw and Valkyrie. Though Icebreaker and Wintersong headed out to go find Arachnitron, they should be returning soon." She reported and thought about this for a moment and guessed if there was an attack they had enough there they wouldn't have much issue,"With plenty of our heavy hitters here I think the Axalon is in good hands. But hopefully the search team is going well, Feralnight has been missing for a while since Onyx came around." Frilla added and turned slightly back to the monitor.

Reaching over she pressed a button to stop the schematics of the shield she was working on and took the disk out, placing it in a subspace. "Though the good news so far seems to be that we haven't had signs of an attack yet so hopefully it stays peaceful."She said though knew better then to have high hopes, the Predacons always did seem to have something going on. It was just the matter of figuring out when they would.

[Wintersong]

"Icebreaker is right, your a friend no matter what and we care about our friends and teammates. It's how this crew is Arachnitron."Wintersong assuringly, smiling a bit to show she meant what she said. Hopefully the spider would consider this a bit more and see they were trying to be her friends and cared about her, even if it took time to earn trust it was still there to help one another no matter the cost. Wintersong herself learned that a while ago as well and inwardly smiled since she knew the others meant well in their actions and it was because they did it because they felt compelled to do so, it was how a team was. Pushing the thoughts aside for a moment the tigeress looked back to where Manterror had gone and for now was watching to make sure he indeed was gone and didn't try a sneak attack.

[Night-Hunter]

"Aww my boy's growing up!"

Sonar growled again, his patience was slowly fading along with his santity.

"Now let's have a nice chat. So...where were you and what were you doing before you were inside the ship you blew up months ago?"

"Nothing of great importance. Or anything that concerns you."

"Enjoying your bath, Sonar?"

He looked in Blackarachnia's general direction and growled before replying. "Go choke on some thing she-spider."

* * *

Inferno arrived at the base in record time, once inside the Predacon base he turned off his thrusters. He quickly headed for Megatron's quarters and respectfully knocked on the door before saying. "I have returned, my queen. With the object you wished for me to get for you."

[Phoenix]

(ooc: Had to rush through the posts so hopefully nobody else tried to contact my characters aside from Whitegrazer, since if so I may have missed it. Things are a little crazy with school and life in general right now, since we're in the haul of the semester and as such it's all or nothing! Well that and at this point in the pregnancy I feel kinda blechy and tired all the time.)

IC:

As the white mare suggested, Aurora held on as best she could with her claws. Her beast mode was considerably smaller than Whitegrazer's, allowing for quite a bit of playroom on the horse's backside, as she tangled her paws into the mane of the galloping equine trying to hold on while not pulling too tightly. It was a tricky task at best. It must have been quite the sight for anyone watching to see the two white females rush off together. Aurora's delicate wings, glimmering in the sunlight, lay flat against her backside so she wouldn't get caught by the wind and sail off.

"I bet you are excited, Aurora."

The white mare was right, yet excited as she was Aurora didn't dare stand up at the speeds they were going. Instead she merely clung to the horse's neck and mane, holding on for dear life. As exciting as the trip itself was, Aurora was also looking forward to the prospect of actually getting to participate on a mission, something they had not let her do until this point.

"I remember when I was in your years...you don't mind if I tell you a story of one of my past adventure, do you?"

"That would be prime!," Aurora responded, borrowing Primal's frequent quote for the occasion.

[una]

((OOC: We understand, Phoenix. You try to get as much rest and relaxation you need. ))

Whitegrazer hoped the ermine was doing well behind her and tried as much as she could to not overbear her with her speed.

She smiled when Aurora used Primal's catchphrase and nodded. Though, technically, this wasn't anything like the first mission she had, but it would hope keep Aurora occupied before they passed the Savannah, where their base was now still in their sights behind them, into the deep mountain range ahead, which they had to go around. ((OOC: I'm actually going by the first episode here because I just saw it again for reference. XD Of course, it seems to change in different episodes. XD))

"Well, this was my very first mission. I was basically done with basic training and with a group of others like me and our Commander, we were derailed from our colony to a planet where an Autobot signal was showing up." Whitegrazer took notice at Cheetor and Rattrap, who were ahead of them, checking on them before she continued, "The planet was lush like this one was but it was eeriely void of inhabitants and had some weird shaped energon crystals. My people were setting camp for a designated base. I was alittle rascal back then so I decided to head towards the ship to explore it as the others made camp. There was an Autobot there injured from the crash and in stasis lock. I decided to repair the Autobot as much as I could. The commander and my comrades found me, scorning me." She smirked at the memory even though back then, it wasn't funny, "It was then one of them check the logs on the ship to find out this Autobot was shot down. Guess who shoot him down? Decepticons. Guess what happened next? You ever watched those movies where Cybertronians found a ship like we did and one person tells them like my comrade did that the ship was attacked then they get attacked?"

Whitegrazer shook her head, "Well, that's what happened. We got attacked by two Decepticons, two very angry mates."

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Blackarachnia feinted sympathy, "Awww, what's the matter, Sonar? I thought this was your dream to be bathed by Starshadow." She laughed, "Make sure to get him good on his aft and...clean his mouth with soap too."

She smiled evily. It was good to get under Predacon mechs skin.