| abstract
| - Shrink wrap, also shrinkwrap or shrink film, is a material made up of polymer plastic film. When heat is applied to this material it shrinks tightly over whatever it is covering.
- Even in his current state it didn't take long for Jetfire to make an oribtal drop from the Pax down to Earth's surface. Just took a bit more of his own engine power since he had less mass for gravity to yank on, but it gets the job down all the same. The minaturized starfighter comes shooting down across the sky, then finally levels off as Jetfire extends his wings fully for atmospheric flight, and does a few circles over the forest until he finally reduces his speed enough to come in for a landing, taxing to a stop just outside of Crosshair's portable work station. "Okay, I've got the backups in case we break something. Trial and error and all that. Let's get this going before Rodimus -really- starts nagging us." Crosshairs is nowhere to be found in regards to the portable workstation. However, Pinpointer is standing atop the thing. He waves to Jetfire; pacing about the table thoughtfully. "He says he'll be along in a minute. He's placing some remote equipment to help try and triangulate anything that we found." Sure enough, the roar of an engine; and Crosshairs appears, transforming. He's got an external cargo bay in vehicle mode which becomes a backpack in robot mode. "Indeed." He says to Jetfire. "I'm fairly confident that this will work the first shot." Approaching the workbench, he pulls a device from his 'backpack' that looks a good deal like a gun. Sadly. But it's not! The tube is too thick, and where the hammer of the 'pistol' would be is a screen. "Where *IS* Rodimus anyway?" Mini Veritech Fighter transforms into his Jetfire mode. Jetfire stands up into his robot mode, more or less pulling the container he had in his currently minaturized cargo bay out as he does so and tucking it under one arm. He nods up to the Nebulan before turning his attention in the direction of the motor. "It's not that I don't doubt that it will work, I just want to be prepared in the off chance that it doesn't," he replies to the armorer with a bit of a grin. Then adds a bit more seriously, "This has taken as long as it has, I'd rather not have any more avoidable setbacks." Crosshairs waves his hand at Jetfire. "You of little faith." His voice echoes out, the 'friendly' tone dropping out of it for his nominal business-like one. A few pushes and pulls and he has his device connected. "I'm surprised it still works. Five hundred stellar cycles out, that warhead." A few buttons are pressed and a knob adjusted and a beeping sounds. He points it at Jetfire and pulls the trigger. Another beep. Then he hmms, thoughtfully. "Well. It registers to you at least, probably residual contamination for your lost mass. Let's go hunting!" He begins to walk towards where Metroplex /used/ to be. "Still, as I said. Feels nice to do something a little different." Jetfire just chuckles a little bit as he sets the container down by the portable, then walks over to Crosshairs. "Some things just keep going and going. Sometimes because they're too stubborn to know when to stop... So it's sensing me? That means we're on the right track then, if it's picking up an alteration." Crosshairs nods slightly. "Remember what I made this for." He points out, waving the object around. "It was originally meant to home in on large uses of subspace. I'd go into exactly what methods I use to find it, but . . " He trails off. "Do you have any idea what to do with this, once we actually encounter it?" He continues looking around, pressing the trigger in random directions. "Which means we may of been right about the ties still connecting us to the misplaced subspace shunts." Jetfire nods a bit. He's looked over the notes and stuff so Crosshairs doesn't really need to go into the details on the matter. Thankfully, or they'd be here all night. "Well," he starts to reply as he follows, "I've got a few ideas, but first we need to find out for certain if there really is a tapable anomolty and that we're not on a wild gyro-goose chase." Aeryn steps into the area, presumably from a shuttle that just brought her here after hearing what the two Autobots were working on over the comm system. Her approach toward Crosshairs and Jetfire is silent, not wanting to disturb their work, only offering a little wave to them. Crosshairs continues to aim the device at random areas. As Aeryn arrives, he swings at the waist to point the thing at her and pull the trigger. There is a tiny flash from it. "Lots of stolen mass there." He mutters. "But, what would anyone expect?" He mumbles and fiddles with a few dials. "I'm not seeing anything." He seems vaugely irritated at this. "Not a fraggin' useful thing. Except it keeps tellin' me at there's mass there or lack thereof . . " He scratches his head. Jetfire ducks as Crosshairs spins around with the 'gun'. He's gotten use to actually needing to duck instead of just step out of the way of people after the last couple of weeks. "Ah, hello there, Aeryn... Wait, that gives me an idea!" That the device is detecting her increase as well as his decrease seems to have sparked something. "Aeryn, stay there." He starts sprinting across the area that had been Metroplex's location before being shrunk. "Since its detecting what's lost from me and apparently some of that displaced sustance in Aeryn, maybe if we position opposite each other it'll show something in the middle between the 'take' and the 'given'. Worth a shot." Aeryn kneels down beside Crosshairs and Jetfire to watch them work, or perhaps to be a test subject. She just wants to help any way that she can, without getting in the way. "Hello," she says when Jetfire gives his greeting, and watches him curiously as he distances himself. "Okay...", she says, really confused about all this subspace stuff. Crosshairs inclines his head at Jetfire; pausing, looking thoughtful. "Perhaps. Though . . " He fiddles with another dial or two. For Rodimus' benifet, he's holding an object that looks exceedingly like a pistol. Either way, he points it between Aeryn and Jetfire and lets the trigger have a squeeze. A small flash, then a beep, and he peers at the screen. "Interesting." A pause to adjust something else, and while he speaks he explains. "With you two standing as you are, tiny bits of energy are being drawn and given . . almost undetectable, but . ." He points where Metroplex used to be. "In that direction." He then points the pistol at the spot and presses the trigger. BEEEEE....KRAKABOOM! No, it's not Metroplex coming back, but Crosshairs is briefly eclipsed by a bit of smoke as the item explodes. Jetfire's expression brightens when Crosshairs says he's starting to get something. "Aha! It's just as I was starting to surmise. As you know, though it may seem to be 'open' or 'closed' when used or when we transform, subspace remains linked to the user regardless if its actually being used. That was the means utilized by your initial scanner, was it not? Because a larger subspace pocket would have a larger binding connected to the utilizer, even when it was closed. In the same effect there's still a distortion that's connecting the people affected--Gah!" Jetfire cuts himself off as the device explodes, and quickly hurries back to Crosshairs' side. "Crosshairs, are you okay?!" Battlecruiser descends from the cloud layer, leaving wide swaths of hazy jetwash behind him from the engine output required to keep his oversized form aloft. He passes by overhead, then banks around ponderously and flies back for another pass. Each flyby takes nearly a minute to complete. After a few such passes it becomes clear he doesn't intend to land, instead he's flying some sort of aerial patrol. Crosshairs stands there for a moment or two, wreathed in little gripping tendrils of smoke as he blinks off the flash. "That." He says, quietly. "Is exactly what we were looking for." He nods at Jetfire. "Fine, fine. Lived fraggin' all these stellar cycles so far, not gonna get undone by a misfire. But, that's where we want. Huge anomaly there. Off the scale." He's honestly fine, it appears. At first look at least, focused more on the end results than a bit of paint scoring around damaged areas. Aeryn lets out a small shriek as the device explodes. She jumps away from it, landing on her side, and ends up coughing from the smoke and fumes thus produced. "Oof," she utters, before sitting up and brushing some leaves off her clothing. "I'm fine too," she says. Winnebago pulls up a bit late. Since, well, he's a land vehicle and all. It takes at least five, ten minutes in cartoon-time to drive across oceans! He immediately transforms and strides over towards the others, looking around the area, then glancing between Jetfire and Crosshairs. "So you guys got something?" Winnebago transforms into his Robot mode. A small human child in leiderhosen, an alpine hat, and other extremely German clothing can be seen toddling about along the outskirts of where Metroplex was. He's bundled up rather halthy, especially considering the weather, and the hat covers his face. No parents can be seen anywehre near. Jetfire waves some of the smoke away, and then gives Crosshairs a congradulatory slap on the.. well, it's meant to be the shoulder, but Jetfire's forgotten his own shrunken size in the excitement and ends up more like being a pat on the lower back. "Excellent work Crosshairs!" He then takes a few steps towards the indicated spot, holding his arms out. "That is almost exactly what I was starting to formulate as a theory." He turns back to the others, taking brief note of the jet sounds overhead, but a quick glance confirms its Scattershot, and he's paying more effort to his explaination. "Because there's no regulatory system in place like there is in a normal transformation mass-shunt process, the subspace links between the size-changed individuals are unstable, and can thus interfer with other subdimensional wavelengths. While working on the repairs to the Pax's engine systems, it occured to me just how many resized members were present on both sides, and when the containment fields on the dwarf universe that powers the ship went down, it would of been suseptible to those crossing patterns, which is what theoretically may of caused the dimensional displacement those present experience. I was hoping we could get a similar reaction to locate the original disruption, which we have!" It's not until after the long scientific shpeal that he notices Rodimus pulling up. "Yes, yes I do believe we have." Battlecruiser passes by overhead again, engines rumbling as he goes. It's like living a few miles from an airport - not defeaning, but distracting. Crosshairs glances at Jetfire. "Would it kill you not to preface everythin' that I've said this whole damn time with 'but I was just about to think of that myself!'. Think yer insecure or something." He brushes a bit of the charred ashes off, and then goes to drop to one knee; bending to attempt to help Aeryn up, even if she's much bigger than he is. "So." He says to Jetfire. "A long story short, techno babblin' aside . . I brought this." He reaches into his 'backpack' again. "I figured you were onto something like that from your notes. Pinpointer actually gave me the idea. I'd, uh, made another kind of warhead that was somewhat similar. Was meant to detonate the same stuff the other one homed on. It was a failure, because it wasn't really controllable. But . . " The device looks alot like a top, ironically enough, that a child would spin. "Subspace exciter. Just . . . need t'figure out how to control it or what to do with it, since right now it just goes foom alot." The 'child' meanders a bit closer to where Jetfire and Crosshairs are performing science in the utmost. Hey, kids like giant robots, right? Rodimus Prime is, incidently, Hot Rod sized. In vehicle mode, there was no confusing them, but as a robot, the clearest difference is in the face. He glances towards the child, but since he's not gotten /too/ close and, hey, it's just a kid, he just gives the youth a smile and a wave before shouting, "Hey there, little guy! You might want to be careful not to get too close here, all right. They're working on something, well, unpredictable." Then he turns towards Crosshairs and asks, "Well, have guys figured out how to do that?" Aeryn welcomes Crosshairs' assistance in getting righted again, and peers at this new device curiously. "A...top?", she asks, but she's distracted by Rodimus' voice, and she turns her head to see him and the German kid. "Maybe I should escort him away," she suggests. Jetfire ahehes, rubbing the back of his head in a moment of embarassmenet. "I'm sorry, Crosshairs. We've both been on the same wavelenth, but I've been reluctant to call anything hard set until there was some actual disconcernable proof." In the end he just shrugs his smaller but still broad for the minibot size shoulders a bit. ".. Hmm. I see. The problem is just detonating it could cause another subspace shockwave to that would accelerate the process instead of reverse it. Last thing we need is Trypticon turning into another Unicron. Control is definately the issue." The kid looks up at Rodimus Prime - Hot Rod? Hot Rod with face lines? Someone? His hat still covers his face, and he replies in muttered, muffled German, "But I brought this for you, you Autobot metal men from space." He holds up a box of... sparkly rocks. The kind of junky stuff that a kid would think is cool. Or that /Scavenger/ would think is cool... Crosshairs nods at Aeryn. "Indeed. Don't spin it." He hasn't noticed Rodimus and he hasn't noticed the incoming kid. He's busy focused around SCIENCE. "That's where -you- come in." He states to the other scientist. "I've given you a means to start something, you need to figure out how to control it. This is beyond my league." He pauses, half seated . . considering. "I don't want to just blow it up. We need to figure out something to . . " He trails off, and spreads his hands. "I got nothin'." Rodimus Prime looks around at the others, gives a faint, almost sheepish shrug, and lifts his hand towards Aeryn. "Naw, I got this. Crosshairs and Jetfire seem to have the project under control, anyway." He approaches the kid and crouches down, giving a friendly smile. "Hey, that's pretty nice of you." He looks at the box and inspects the rocks. "Wow! These are great!" he grins, then looks back down at the 'child.' "You sure you want to give these up?" Sometimes, being small really didn't work; especiall when you aren't usually as stout as Grapple now is. Not that he had been enjoying his change in height -- quite the opposite, he's been loathing it with every fiber of his being --, but today was just icing on the proverbial cakewreck. His little vehicle mode self is slower, now! So slow, in fact, he's only now showing up on the scene. He says nothing to excuse his tardyness; he just shifts to his very tiny robot mode with a sour look on his face. Aeryn gives a nod to Rodimus and inclines her head, spotting Scattershot, but isn't quite sure of his identity since she doesn't have a HUD with zoom feature. One of the unfortunate limitations of being human. She stands up and stretches, then walks closer to where Jetfire is. "Um...Jetfire, is there anything that can contain a subspace field? Could we maybe build something around Crosshair's device to focus, or aim, where it's pointed at? I don't understand anything about it, I'm just throwing out random ideas...I'll be quiet now," she says. Battlecruiser does one more fly-over and then coasts in for a landing, his approach sending loose debris flying, flattening down flora and threatening to uproot a few nearby trees. He finally transforms into robot mode and comes stomping over. "Anything I--" he begins, voice booming before he cuts himself off. "Frak it." he continues in a smaller voice. "It's like being a one-mech Computron. Anything I can do? This is gettin' boring. Tell you the truth, I half expected by now something would...you know, happen." Battlecruiser transforms into his Scattershot mode. Jetfire nods and hmms. And takes the typical scientific approach on the matter... which is to start pacing, folding his arms behind his back as he does so. "Just a 'foom' as you put it is too unpredictable. What we need is a way to maintain a stable control over it." For a moment he's again left wishing he'd really gotten a better examination of the original weapon, but quickly shoves it aside. This was not a time for doubts. He had to focus on the... wait a minute. Focus, that's it. "We've detected the anomolty of dead subspace, but now that we know what to look for, can we lock onto the actually binds to the affected people. Focus it, so it takes or replaces size-mass as we want instead of randomly.." Abruptly he stops and spins on his heel towards the other. "No, wait! You might be onto something. A control field would keep it contained... if we can single out the wavelength of the subspace links between the affected people and the anomolty, the barrier could use the resonate wavelengths to act like a focus. One wavelength down or up should alter if the subspace 'channel' takes in material, or puts it out." The 'child' (who is really Scrapper) holds up the box some more and insists, "Please! They are sparkly, like the stars, those distant stars from where you metal men came. Maybe they are lucky?" He sounds a bit doubtful, at the last, but his voice is so muffled that it is hard to tell. Crosshairs glances towards Rodimus and the Child, but, unfortunatly, nothing seems to dawn on him. At least he doesn't know anything is wrong. Or is it even? He's also paying attention to Jetfire. "So . . " He says to Jetfire, as he did before. "Keep going on that line of thought. What do we need to control it?" Rodimus Prime gives a faint chuckle. Well, might as well keep the locals happy! It's good publicity! "All right, all right," he says, still grinning. He reaches over to accept the box of sparkly rocks. "Those are very nice rocks. It's very kind of you to share them!" Grapple looks up at Crosshairs, Jetfire, and.. Well, everyone, actually. Tiny architect is tiny. "Sorry to interrupt, but to focus any sort of energy, wouldn't we need something TO focus it?" A pause. "..Also, I have absolutely no idea what the conversation is about. Appologies." Tiny architect is also slightly crabby. Aeryn smiles sheepishly, glad to apparently have helped in some miniscule way. "Does...everyone's subspace field have its own frequency, then? Or are all the affected people's fields the same?", she asks, unsure what the significance of that distinction would be. "Pinpointer said you had some additionally sensors set up for triangulation, did those pick up any additional readings? We need to know exactly what subparticle wavelength the anomolty and the subspace connections are on, so we don't introduce an energy wave that's going to.. well... FOOM like before. But now that we know we can get a reaction from the dead subspace..." Even as he's explaining Jetfire pulls out his own tricorder-ish scanner device and starts fiddling with it. "Normally, Aeryn, yes. Each of us has our own 'signal' of subspace. However Scrapper's device likely used the same setting for everyone it shrunk, and thus for the resulting explosion that caused the other changes." He walks about the area a bit, as if trying to pinpoint something with the scanner. "Huh... I'm already picking up some local fluxations, maye be residue from your initial discovery tho-woah!" Jetfire takes a few steps, only to nearly trip over Grapple, and steps back again. "Sorry Grapple! You'd think I'd be use to watching out for people smaller than myself." Grapple is almost tripped over! He doesn't appear any more annoyed than how he came in. "Not a problem." A grumble. "..Been happening a lot, lately, in fact." Though, he then seems to realize what the conversation is about. Now, he listens quite intently. Crosshairs leans over and attempts to snatch Jetfire's sensor device out of his hand. Since that doesn't work too well, he pulls out his own. "Indeed. Perhaps if we're lucky, they captured some data about . . " He pause, and takes a breath. "Yeah. You're right actually. Local . . . energy . . ." He points at Rodimus Prime. "Over there. But, you didn't get affected by any of this. Waiiiiit a minute..." He trails off, and furrows his brows. "Rodimus, don't . . handle that. Back away real fast. Someone who has better on boards, have a look." THen he goes silent again, but he's looking around more. "That said.." He figures Rodimus can handle that. "Here." He holds out the device to Jetfire. "This is everything the remote sensors recorded." Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... oh, crap. It's *Galvatron.* Flying towards the congregation Superman-style is the mad tyrant himself. Something seems odd about Galvatron, though. He seems pretty confident, approaching this many Autobots. And it's clear that he's flying through the air rather quickly, but for some reason, he doesn't *seem* to be going that fast. And as he draws close, he casts an enormous shadow which covers most of those on the ground. Rodimus Prime is, unfortunately, already holding the box of rocks. He's also already been affected by the whole size change business, but since he's only a /little/ smaller than usual, being about Hot Rod sized instead of normal Rodimus sized, the confusion's pretty understandable. "Uhm... too late, Crosshairs. Is it safe to set it down?" Back away slowly is a fine enough plan, but only when putting the thing down doesn't set off some sort of chain reaction! Then an /enormous/ shadow blocks out the sun, and Rodimus looks up. "Aw. Scrap." Scattershot looks over with professional interest. Tense voices, sciencey objects passing back and forth between the tech-heads. Hmm, could be something's finally up. He takes a cursory scan around the horizon and does a double-take at the sight of Galvatron's flying form. He barks. "We've got big trouble." He pauses, and almost as if he can't help it the words continue to spill out. "And I do mean big." The box of rocks is not just a box of rocks. It is an EVIl box of rocks. It is a box of rocks that will almost certainly mess up the Autobot device. Scrapper was hoping it would intensify the shrink effect and shrink all the Autobots and their giant human ally away into nothingness. It doesn't do that. Instead, the sky above turns green, and a swirling, seething vortex opens up. Storm clouds crackle with electric might on the fringes, and the vortex itself is shot through with lurid turquoise and manic magenta, twisted together like a hypnodisk. With all the sucking power of Mega-Maid, it tries to devour all the robots (and the human) below, whisking them away to a strange, strange land... ...a very pink, floaty land. Welcome to subspace. It seems much like deep space, in the heart of a nebula, except that there is a diffuse pink glow lighting the dark. Rodimus Prime doesn't have time to put the box down or do anything else as a vortex opens above them! He drops the box of rocks (which is immediately sucked in) and digs his fingers into the ground. In the space of moments, he's holding onto the Earth with his hands only, his legs above his head as he shouts, "Everyone! Try to hold ooooooooooooon-!" And then he is swallowed up, unable to follow his own orders! Crosshairs is glad that he brought along Pinpointer. Oh, wow, is he glad that he brought along Pinpointer. He's busy backing up, now entirely having forgotten his idea towards getting the aperature sealed or the anomaly fixed and saving the world with Jetfire, because it looks like he's going to have to help save the world from Galvatron. Optics hardening, he's just about to draw a bead and take aim when . . . he's suddenly floating in the middle of nowhere. It's an uncomfortable sensation, given that he doesn't have any form of Zero-G propulsion at all. It just happens so fast. "Well, this is a fraggin' mess." He grunts. "Jetfire, thoughts?" "There, that's the frequency we need. On the right wavelength we can make the links snap back like rubber bands to return the.. huh?" Jetfire had been so focused on the problem at hand he hadn't noticed the 'child' or his rocks until they're pointed out in coherence with the signal fluxes. "Rodimus, don't get too close to the anomolty with those, it's a counter-polarity energy emissio--" Too late. Jetfire lets out an annoyed, disoriented grumble as everything is sucked up and turns... pink. "... I think we just got wapred -inside- the anomolty, to hazard a guess," replies the shrunken scientist, trying to get his own bearings back. Aeryn looks up at Galvatron when his shadow passes over her, eyes widening to anime proportions. But then she finds herself being slurped into the Twilight Zone. "Not agaiiiin!", she groans in protest. She ends up tumbling slowly in zero gravity with a very confused look on her face, arms flailing around wildly trying to stabilize herself and perhaps latch onto something...anything... Galvatron aims his cannon down at the clust of Autobots. "Your doom has arrived, Autobots! One blast of my Fusion Cannon will annihilate the lot of you at this size! Now prepare to--what!?" Before he can have his moment of triumph, he is pulled towards the vortex! "No! Not again! Not while I'm so close to victory! DAMMIT!!!" He screams in rage as he is sucked into the vortex... and finds himself in some sort of strange floaty, land! "What sorcery is this!?" Galvatron roars, appraising his new environment with a look of alarm. Scattershot scowls mightily. "I hate floating!" He announces to no one in particular. Transforming into his vehicle mode, he brings his engines online, slowly powering them up to test the reaction in this environment. Grapple is floating along with everyone else in.. A pink and floaty place, apparently. Somehow, all he can wonder is why everything is pink. Why pink? "..Interesting." And then he realized he's still tiny. Tiny and floating. He flails a bit, trying to get his fellow Autobots attention so he doesn't go floating off. "Primus, I will never take normal height for granted again..!" The 'German child' is especially lost and floaty, being but a wee little thing. But given that he's really Scrapper, he realises just how bad this all is - this is subspace! There are monsters in subspace! And aliens the size of stars! And a reaklly, really big spaceship approaching... wait, really, really big spaceship? The spaceship is designed on a truely mind-boggling scale. You could probably fit a few hundred brown dwarfs INSIDE of it. It is also bright cyan and clashes horribly with the rest of the area. It looks rather run down and decripit, as if it has seen better days but those are long since past. Rodimus Prime twists in the floaty environment, trying to manauver to lunge at Galvatron, or fire at him, or something. He's just about ready for Operation: Sparkles, when an enormous spaceship arrives. His optics widen, and not just because the ship clashes so terribly with the environment. "What in the- what's /that'?!" Galvatron glances to his left, and sees the space ship. His jaw drops. "What... impossible! No structure could possibly be that big! That's... that's ludicrous! Errghhh! STAY AWAY, whatever you are! I don't care how large you are, nothing can resist the might of Galvatron!" And then Galvatron does what he usually does when threatened, which is to lash out violently. The tyrant transforms into his artillery mode, and fires a tremendous blast at the ship, a blast of such power it would likely destroy level an entire city with one shot. The beam is pretty large, too, and may pose a threat to anyone who is too close to the barrel! Galvatron falls forward, collapsing into himself as he converts into his dreaded artillery mode! S**t just got real! It's not quite outer space, but its close enough for Jetfire as a space explorer. He's probably got the least trouble maunevering out of the lot of them thanks to the oversized jets strapped onto his back that, although he can't fly with them in robot mode, they do make good jump jets. A few moments later he lands on Crosshairs back, hooking his feet under the other Autobot's armpits. Then turns his head to look up at the rediculously sized ship. "Nothing that big should be.. no, I take that back. Dimensional scale is on a whole different level in here, it's -entirely possible- for a spacecraft of that magnitude to be present...And Galvatron is shooting it." Slaps a palm to his face. "This trip down the rabbit hole just gets worse and worse." A decently large hole is blown in the side of the ship. That is to say, the hole is actually visible, which is impressive, considering just how big the ship is. Inside the hole, there appears to be something like a storage bay, full of crates and spare parts. Some of the crates are the size of terrestrial planets! But some are a lot smaller... You paged Crosshairs with 'The newer comics do have him fly with them, but they've kinda gone to a 'anyone with jetmodes can fly in robot mode' mentality, so I dunno how valid it is of an argument, heh.' Grapple quickly learns that you can't swim in subspace. That doesn't really stop him from trying, though, when he sees GIANT SHIP OF DOOM approaching from nowhere. Oh, and now Galvatron is shooting at it. This day was just peachy, wasn't it? Well, at least there was no current of any sort; he wasn't 'floating' away any faster than he's moving of his own miniscule unable-to-fly power. At least he's not TOO far from the other Autobots, right? Rodimus Prime is, fortunately, not between Galvatron and the space craft. However, even as far away as he is, he's near enough for the energy waves given off to sear part of his paint job as he blocks his face from the worst of his blast. He lowers his arms and looks around at the others. "Jetfire! Scattershot! Gather us up and get us there!" He points to the hole in the spacecraft. Battlecruiser swings around and cruises by Crosshairs and then Rodimus' positions. Because he just assumes Rodimus would like to be last. "C'mon move it move it! Let's get on that thing before he blows the rest of it up!" Crosshairs seems to have an idea. He reaches to the back of his neck, where his winch from vehicle mode is. Keeping close to Jetfire even in the face of the massive energy discharge he begins unwinding the heavy, braided steel cable. It's uncertain what he's going to do with it . . but he's looking towards where Grapple is floating. Meanwhile, more paint sears off of him. Galvcannon transforms back into his robot mode, and grins as he sees the damage that he did. Then he realizes that even this much damage only poked a small hole in an absolutely colossal structure, and he looks almost... afraid? Of course, something that scares Galvatron will also make him angry all over again, because he doesn't like the humiliating feeling of being scared. "YOU THINK THAT'S ALL I'M CAPABLE OF!?" he raves, his voice booming through the pink space. "I'll tear you apart piece by piece if it takes me eons! RAHHHHH!" Galvatron then accelerates towards the ship on his boot thrusters, screaming in rage as he fires burst after burst into the vessel. He doesn't really care much if he collides with anyone along the way--everyone here is his enemy as far as he is concerned. The artillery cannon's back section snaps apart into two legs, its treads convert to arms, and the main body slides down as GALVATRON rises up before you! Jetfire leans a little out of the way as Crosshairs pulls the cable out. "If I get us moving, do you think you can grab him? Brace yourself." He slides a bit farther down the larger Autobot's back, and then transforms. Engaging the magnetic locks that would normally be used for docking with a larger ship, he effectively latchs himself onto Crosshair's backside. Energy flares from the engines as he fires up, and like a minibot-jetpack launchs them both in the direction of the indicated hole in the ship, while trying to get as close as possible to where Grapple is floating as he can on the same path line. Jetfire transforms into his Mini Veritech Fighter mode. Rodimus Prime totally prefers to be last. As Scattershot nears him (and yeah, he prefers to be last), he makes a grab for the battlecruiser and pulls himself inside. "Everyone! Move it!" he shouts, leaving the hatch open so he can watch what's going on outside. And he doesn't like what's going on outside. "Now, folks! We've just run out of time!" Battlecruiser appreciates the irony as he carries one Autobot to relative safety ('relative' to loitering around an irate Galvatron that is), while Jetfire at his miniaturized size brings two. Once he's through the hole in the huge vessel he fires his retro-jets and brings himself to a stop. "Now what?!" Crosshairs transmits a thudding sound over the radio as Jetfire docks with him. If the Japanese could see this, Crosshairs would never forgive Jetfire for a million years. But he gets stabilized now, with a neat veritech-like jetpack! Gathering himself and doing the math, he shapes the tow-cable into a sort of crude lasso and tosses it towards Grapple. The intention is to give him something to hold onto, but if his aim is good, he might even snag a leg, arm or neck of his own! Grapple is, so far, really, really disliking how the day was going. At this point, he fully expects Murphy's Law to take full effect at any moment, now. But then he realizes what Jetfire and Crosshair were trying to do! Ah-ha, a simple, elegent little idea! He may be lasso'd, but with everything going on, he grabs on to the rope as well. Just in case it might break. ... Never know, with the way the day is going. As soon as Scattershot reaches the space craft, Rodimus hops out again. "All right, guys, scatter!" he shouts. "Don't clump up - his shots are wide enough without us making an even easier target. Aeryn, make sure you in sight of someone else at all times, Grapple, keep us up to date on your position over the radio!" Inside the cyan cruiser, there are boxes, boxes, and more boxes. There is also a spherical being so radiant and light that he hurts to look at directly. He is massive, easily larger than a gas giant, and he is complaining, "Another hole? We just patched one yesterday..." He does not seem to have noticed the TINY intruders yet. And once Crosshairs is reeling Grapple in Jetfire propels them all up to meet with Rodimus and Scattershot. "This works pretty well, surprisingly. If we don't solve the size issue maybe I'll change my name to Jetpackfire." Okay, it's a pretty bad joke, and he's just not as good at being funny in middle of danger like Trailbreaker or Hound. Once the other Autobots are on the deck he unhooks from Crosshairs and transforms again. Mini Veritech Fighter transforms into his Jetfire mode. Grapple gives Jetfire a fairly deadpan look at the joke; clearly, he didn't find it amusing, either. "Thank you, my friends." He's not floating anymore! Yay! ..But there's still chaos surrounding them. "If we survive this, I am never leaving my quarters again." Galvatron flies in through the hull breach, looking enraged as ever. "Who is the master of this ship!?" he screams. "I demand to see him! I demand an explanation! And I demand his surrender!" He looks about at the mind-bogglingly large cargo bay, and sees only a... what is that, a talking planet? Galvatron, again, is having trouble comprehending what he sees. "SHUT UP!" he screams at the being, and fires multiple cannon blasts into it. "Hahaha, shut up! Hahahaha!" It seems that the longer this goes on the more Galvatron is becoming unhinged! Aeryn heeds Rodimus' instructions to find a hiding spot, but stay near someone. She arbitrarily picks Scattershot to stay near, and dashes in his direction. "So this is what it's like to fall down the rabbit-hole," she mutters to herself as life just gets weirder and weirder. She finds a structural support to hide behind, and ducks around it, while still in visual range of Scat. The being's colour changes a bit, from bright white to a more dangerous shade of orange as Galvatron pumps blast after blast into it. It screams, not just audibly but electromagnetically as well, "Sheyagh! That /hurts/." A lance like a solar flare flicks out in the general direction of Galvatron, but given the size difference, Galvatron can probably easily evade immolation. Some of the smaller boxes, piled way, way atop the larger crates, are marked with Autobot and Decepticon symbols, if someone is really paying attention. Rodimus Prime crouches between some planet-sized boxes, watching Galvatron fighting the... sun. He watching closely, optics narrowed, expression thoughtful, and hasn't yet noticed the boxes with Autobot and Decepticon symbols on them. Jetfire could be -normal- sized and in this place, and he'd be small enough to hide. "I'm not really built for sneaking.. even shrunken..." he mutters to no one in particular as he ducks behind something on a pile of boxes.. and then does a double take, optics blinking. "What the..." He flicks his fingers across the side of the crate, just to make sure he's not seeing things. "How bizarre." The scientist keeps getting distracted by other things in this weird inside-world. Crosshairs transforms to vehicle mode to present less of a target, and to tempt him with shooting Galvatron with glitter less. He's thinking... thinking as he goes. Hmm. Galvatron is most certainly not paying attention, because 1) he wants to kill that thing, and 2) that thing is trying to kill him. "Answer me, damn you!" Galvatron screams, aiming his cannon at the being. "Or I will give you another taste of my might! Who are you? Are you the master of this ship? And what is this place! Give me answers, or I'll make you suffer more than you can imagine!" Grapple is dragged along behind Jetfire via lasso. Really, compared to the alternative, this was a good thing; so, no complaints about that. Still, he's able to notice the boxes, as well. "..I'm liking this place less and less." If he had liked it at all to begin with. Galvatron also dodged the lance-beam-thing. Wasn't terribly hard, but he still got singed a bit from the heat. Not that this would do anything but make him angrier. Rodimus Prime steps out from between the boxes. It's idiodic. It's insane. But he /can't/ just let Galvatron continue to hurt the... the... whatever. He cups his hands to his mouth and shouts, "Hey! Galvatron! What is /this/? You forget your real enemies as soon as you find someone bigger and shinier? Never did have much attention span, did you?" Scattershot crouches behind a particularly tall stack of crates. "Frak! We gotta back him up!" Then he reaches out to gently direct Aeryn behind cover as well. "Stay here 'till the shooting stops!" He hisses urgently at her, then ignores his own advice and then jogs ponderously around the stack to where Rodimus is. "Stay put for a moment," Jetfire asides to Grapple, mostly to keep track of where the tinier Autobot is. He does, however, have an idea, based on the crazy yet entirely possible observation Crosshairs had. Pulling out his scanner, he reloads the readings they had been getting from earlier to detect the anomolty, and the subspace connections to the size-changed people. Then on the hunch that the marked boxes may be connected, starts scanning them to see if any of the subspace wavelengths match up. They're really going out on a limb here, and if it wasn't for the entirely rediculous situation they were already in, it'd probably be absurd!.. but as this inside-world clearly doesn't follow the same physics, anything is possible.... The orange of the star is starting to shade into a sunset red, and it wobbles as it rotates, sputting out solar flares like erratic, desperate gasps for breath. He wails, "I just work in the stockroom! This is the Cyan Class Cruiser J'Hon Eff'Ken'A-Di, of the Azraelian Fleet, deployed to Sector Wilde of Oord Space, and you'll be sorry, once security gets down here!" Grapple sputters for a moment, affronted at being told to essentially 'stay put'. Still, all things considered.. It isn't an alltogether bad idea. Not with Galvatron and a giant star duking it out. Why Rodimus is out there, he really ha no idea. He stares at Jetfire and the crates. "..Seriously?" A soft -clang- sounds as Crosshairs jettisons his tow cable to free Grapple. "Uh, weld Galvatron's feet togeather or shoot some rockets at him once Rodimus engages him. Or something." He sage-nods. "Or keep Aeryn safe or something. I don't know, gotta go!" He attempts to catch up to Jetfire then, scanning device held outwards. Grapple sputters again. Those were, quite possibly, the worst orders he had ever received. Still, he looks around, first for Aeryn -- and then remembers how BIG she is. Right. Size change on both ends, there. So, with a sigh, he takes out his rifle and.. Waits. He wasn't really sure for what, but, hey, better to pretend to be doing something than nothing at all..! Galvatron stares at the being for a moment. "Azraelian?... Azraelians." He lowers his cannon, frowning in thought. "Where have I heard that name before?..." Before he can recall the answer to that question, Rodimus taunts him, though really Rodimus could have said almost anything and it would have made Galvatron angry at him. "RODIMUS PRIME!" Galvatron snarls, glaring down at his diminutive foe, or at least he's diminutive to him. "You fool! You should have kept your head down, now you're going to be destroyed! Haha, at this size it will be EASY!" Galvatron snatches a box about as large as Scorponok from atop a huge stack of crates, and chucks it at Rodimus! "Watch out, Rodimus! Workplace accidents happen all the time, hmmuahahahaha!" Seems the box Galvatron chose to use as a project has a Decepticon sigil on it. And as if that's not all... "Oh, and Rodimus? The Earth will be ruined in a matter of hours. Just thought you should know." Rodimus Prime starts running, then transforms to get fully clear of the rather box being sent his way. "Yeah, yeah, you've bragged about that sort of thing before, Galvatron!" he shouts back as he rolls straight for the Decepticon leader's foot. "What makes you think this time's any different!" Jetfire ducks back down, fiddles with the settings of his scanner a bit, shifting through the wavelength readings to single out... huh. ".. note to self, there's apparently something such as 'anti-mass'.." he murmurs a bit. Adjusts the scanner to just scan for the wavelength matching his own, and starts sweeping it over the Autobot marked crates again. The wounded star seems to be settling down a bit, shifting to a healthier looking yellow, now that Rodimus Prime is helpfully distracting Galvatron. He punches a code into a security keypad on the wall via a series of solar bursts, presumably summoning said security. Rodimus Prime transforms into his Winnebago mode. Galvatron lands on the deck just in time for Rodimus to try to ram into his foot. However, Galvatron sees it coming, and brings his foot back. "What's different, Rodimus Prime? It's simple. I'm big. You're not. Clear enough for you? Now let's how far I can kick you! Looks like there's plenty of room for you to fly, hahaha!" He snaps his foot just as Rodimus approaches. Could this be the most epic field goal ever? Combat: Galvatron misses Winnebago with his Three Points! (Kick) attack! No, because Lucy took away the ball. Or rather, because at the last moment, Rodimus Prime transforms back into robot mode, rolls out of the path of the kick, and summons his photon eliminator, firing up at the leg Galvatron's using to support himself while the Decepticon leader is off-balance from the kick. "All that means, Galvatron, is you'll have an even harder time hitting me /this/ time!" Winnebago transforms into his Robot mode. Combat: Rodimus Prime strikes Galvatron with his Photon Eliminator attack! "Well, either this is going to work, or I'm going to die horribly. What I don't do for science. Or lack of there for in this case." Jetfire jumps out from his spot, vaulting from one stack of boxes to the other, and another, and finally onto the one where he picked up the matching energy wavelengths. "I just hope all this insanity is right." Jetfire has to stand on the crate next to it to open the box as it is, and even that takes a few pries loose. And inside it only gets weirder. But there's not a whole lot of time to consider the matter of why the 'masses' even have the same shape as the Autobots missing it, he just reachs in to grab the one that looks like him at his normal size. "Here goes nothing!" Aeryn inches out of her hiding spot, figuring she's far enough away from Galvatron to not attract his attention, but wanting to have a better vantage point to observe what's going on. She looks around for Jetfire, without moving much from the side of the structural support she had been using for cover. Crosshairs flips back into robot mode as Jetfire goes for the crate. He can't help him any further. What he does see though, is a gestalt sized Galvatron taking aim at Rodimus and just barely missing a field goal with im. Then of course, Rodimus returns fire. It's hardly an equal fight. Of course though, Crosshairs has already said that he left his big heavy hitters at home. That leaves . . . He fingers the holster at his hip. Pinpointer is totally telling him to go for it. He draws the weapon. It looks like a regular pistol except . . it's colored pink. He can blame his assistant for that. Either way, he levels it at Galvatron and presses the trigger. For a second, nothing happens . . . and then, suddenly a tremendous flash of color goes as a giant GLITTER RAINBOW goes streaking towards the Decepticon Commander. It's huge, bright and obnoxious. Crosshairs might pay for it later, but he's used to this sort of thing by now. Either way . . he really is shooting Galvatron with rainbows. Combat: Crosshairs sets his defense level to Fearless. Combat: Crosshairs strikes Galvatron with the Crosshairs-forged Rainbow Bright Flash Pistol attack! Combat: That attack has temporarily affected Galvatron's Accuracy. (Blinded) Combat: That attack has temporarily impaired Galvatron's Agility. (Crippled) ... You know, I'm not even going to -try- and describe what the hell that probably looked like. But if Crosshairs is paying attention to his scanner he'd probably notice the sudden burst of readings as two version of the wavelengths are recombined. And then Jetfire is a whole lot easier to spot, considering he's all big again. "... That felt even weirder than the shrinking part." Quickly he puts the cover back onto the box, picks it up and hurries back towards where he left the others Autobots. "Hey Crosshairs, looks like your going insane paid off again." ... Now they just need to figure out how to get everyone -else- back to normal... Grapple frowns at Jetfire as he jumps in to a crate; he hoped he would end up all right. Still, it appeared the more pressing issue at hand was Rodimus fighting a much larger Galvatron. He may have been tiny, but he had a gun! ..Which was also tiny! And Crosshairs DID say to shoot at Galvatron if he had the chance.. ..And then RAINBOWS. "..I thought he was exaggerating about the rainbows." Galvatron's kick causes him to pitch forward with more force than he expected--he's not used to being this big, and Rodimus's blast tears into his other leg, causing it to give out. "AARRRGH!" Galvatron screams as he flips over onto his back. "I'll crush you--GYAAHHH!" THEN he gets a glitter rainbow in the face! "What is this! Can't... see... too many... colors!" His arms and legs thrash around, and he just might hit Rodimus, albeit by accident! Combat: Galvatron misses Rodimus Prime with his THE COLORS THE COLORS attack! [Pulled -3] Scattershot watches the results of Jetfire's little experiment. He seems taken aback for a moment, then he starts looking around at the crates. "Well...guess that's one point for Science." He moves between different ones. "Anybody see a Metroplex-looking crate in here?!" Grapple looks up at a now full-sized Jetfire. "..My friend, you have no idea how grateful I am right now." And then he tries to climb up in to the crate. 'Tries' being the operative word. Tiny! Aeryn, having nothing else to really do right now, manages to spot Grapple. She runs to his location and crouches down. "Need a lift?", she asks, lowering a hand to the floor for him to climb on. Rodimus Prime is a pretty nimble sonova gun, and he manages to avoid all the flailing and thrashing by leaping back and forth to avoid Galvatron's larger fist. Rather than pressing the attack, however, he turns and runs full tilt for the Decepticon crate that Galvatron had thrown at him. He pulls his hand into his forearm and replaces it with his buzzsaw, which he swings over his head. "Let's hope this is someone's /anti-mass/ I'm breaking out of here," he mutters before bringing the buzzsaw down on the wood, attempting to break his way into the crate. The Global Pose Tracker marks that Rodimus Prime has 'skipped' his action for this round. Grapple nods to Aeryn. "Thank you." Oh, he was very eager to get back to normal, now. No more manhandling the architect, no way no how! Once he's inside the crate, Grapple looks about for any sign of whatever it is that -- Oh. Oh, my. A normal sized 'ghost'-like version of himself. Interesting. More than a little eager, he runs for it. And then.. He's big again! Now, Grapple is able to get out of the crate all on his own! Crosshairs spends a moment or two looking around; with the aid of his scanner. He's about to give up, half paying attention to the discussion on the radio when he spies something. It's a tiny container that has a Decepticon logo. Hmm. Grabbing it up and tucking it under his arm, he winds up like a baseball player and biffs it towards Scattershot. Galvatron shakes his head a bit, the colors clearing. Seeing Rodimus, Galvatron snarls like a beast and crawls after him. "You... dare make a fool of me!? I'm going to enjoy tearing you apart, Rodimus Prime..." He reaches for Rodimus, attempting to give him to snatch him like a doll, and crush him in his hand! Combat: Galvatron misses Rodimus Prime with his Crunch (Punch) attack! Aeryn gives a thumbs-up to Grapple when he emerges from his crate. "Awesome. Now...what can I do to help...?", she says as she turns around and takes survey of everything going on around her. Scattershot tends never to have trouble following instructions that involve smashing, ramming or slamming. He snatches the Decepticon crate flying at him and without hesitation smashes it against the giant Autobot crate. "Sorry, Galvatron, I can't possibly make a fool out of you - Unicron already beat me to it!" Rodimus shouts as the Decepticon leader reaches towards him. Instead, he twists out of the way and leaps, attempting to place a hand on Galvatron's wrist to use its momentum and guide it into the crate before landing on the other side and spinning back towards Galvatron. Combat: Rodimus Prime strikes Galvatron with his Hand In The Box! (Grab) attack! Grapple grins at Aeryn for a moment, simply glad to be tall enough to look at her face-to-face! ..And then he registers the question. The grin vanishes. "Actually.. I am not really sure." He looks around; somehow, Rodimus did appear to have the attack handled and crates are going flying.. "Hmm." Hopefully Grapple can find his own misplaced matter. Jetfire turns his attention back to the rest of the crates, glancing over the Decepticon marked ones. If his mass was present in porportion to his normal size, and Galvatron was made larger by a reverse nature of mass, then there should be one that on the same scale is porportionately... Aha. Rodimus seems to be already looking for the one matching the enraged giant tyrant. "... I see. The exposure of two opposite mass/anti-mass quantities would counter-act each other, causing them to return to their proper places." More or less vocalizing again what Crosshairs is thinking... Meanwhile Jetfire takes note of one of the other Autobot marked ones... though he's kind of waiting to see how the Metroplex/Trypticon pairing turns out before voicing farther theory. Galvatron catches a glimpse at the contents of the box before his hand is jerked inside it thanks to Rodimus's fancy maneuvering. "What... is that..." he mutters, bewildered. But he has little time to ponder the matter as he finds himself shrinking down back to his normal size! "What the!?" he gasps out, finding himself on his knees. "Ehnnnh. It doesn't matter, Rodimus! You may have restored me to my normal size, but Trypticon is still the size of a moon! And did I mention that one of his plasma bombs is en route to Earth? They're thirty kilometers long at the moment! Life on Earth will be DEVASTATED!" The Global Pose Tracker marks that Galvatron has 'skipped' his action for this round. Boxes! Boxes and boxes and.. Grapple really had no idea which box he should be looking for. There were really quite a few! And being normal size again is only slightly dizzying. Still, he looks for a particularly itty bitty tiny box that may belong to Aeryn or possibly anything else that may be of use in this entire insane situation. Unfortunitally, the box would probably not be so easily marked as the Decepticon and Autobot boxes were.. Hmm. As the Trypticon and Metroplex boxes collide they shatter, and as the ghostly images touch, they release a burst of light and vanish. Elsewhere, in normal space, Metroplex and Trypticon are back to normal, though maybe a bit queasy. Rodimus Prime's optics widen, and then they narrow. He even manages to avoid glancing at Scattershot before he snarls out, "But not for much longer, Galvatron! By the time it hits, it won't be large enough to survive entering the atmosphere!" Then the young Prime lunges at the Decepticon leader, attempting to slam him to the ground to keep him distracted by what Scattershot is doing - which, unknown to him, is already done! Combat: Rodimus Prime strikes Galvatron with his Tackle! attack! [Pulled -5] Crosshairs has his optics on the giant crate that contains Metroplex's stolen mass, watching Scattershot unite it with Trypticon's anti-mass or however that works. Maybe it's even the reverse of it. He's so screwed up at the moment it's a wonder that he isn't bleeding from optics and audials. Either way, as Scattershot catches the tiny crate and rams it home; Crosshairs is watching the cumulation of his theroy. Finaly, as the boxes seem to succeed in their task, he rounds on Galvatron. "Not today, Galvatron!" He yells, even as Rodimus tackles him. "We've seen through your /evil plot/ and restored Trypticon to his normal size! Come on, folks! That over there, meets that box there, and that one there, that one there . . " He's eyeballing his scanner real hard. "Let's double time this, and we can be done in time to . . figure out how to get out of here!" Combat: Crosshairs strikes Galvatron with his Shocking Truth! (Laser) attack! [Pulled -2] Oh, hey, Crosshairs has a scanner thing. Well, that made finding the right box easy, doesn't it? So, with Crosshairs' helpful guidances, Grapple picks up a tiny box from the lot and holds it out to Aeryn. "Perhaps you should wait until we are on solid ground again before returning to normal size. Assuming that that's possible." He really ddin't know, anymore. Galvatron is slammed to the ground by Rodimus, but Crosshairs's revelation probably hurts him even more. "What!? No, you lie! My plan was perfect! I won't be thwarted again! AAARRRRGH!" In sheer frustration, he tries to grab Rodimus by the neck and just squeeze. "THE EARTH WILL BE DESTROYED! ARRRGH!" Combat: Galvatron strikes Rodimus Prime with his ARRGH attack! Combat: That attack has temporarily impaired Rodimus Prime's Agility. (Crippled) Aeryn turns to face Grapple and nods as she takes posession of her...anti-mass container. "Yeah, I'll hang on to it for now," she says as she tries to tuck it into a pocket...except the giant clothes Andi commissioned don't have pockets. She sighs, and resorts to just holding it in her hand. Jetfire mmhmms a bit at the radio, and gives Crosshairs a nod. Then turns his attention back to the fight going on. Cover him?.. that means keep Galvatron distracted so he can't stop them, basically. Jetfire vaults over one of the boxes and darts towards the fracas going on between the two leaders. And puts his regained size to use by trying to grab Galvatron from behind and hang onto him tightly for a few more minutes. "I think you've had enough trying to destroy the universe for tonight, mister." Combat: Jetfire misses Galvatron with his BEARHUG (Punch) attack! Rodimus Prime is a bit distracted from hearing Crosshairs and Jetfire /stimulating/ each other over the radio, and so he's grabbed by the neck by Galvatron. (These two are more or less rolling around on the ground together, and yet Rodimus is giving Crosshairs and Jetfire a hard time?) "This time... and every time!" he gasps out, holding himself up with one hand as he draws back the other, once more replacing it with the buzzsaw. "Every time you threaten it, the Earth will!" He tries to swing the buzzsaw against Galvatron's arm and draws it back again only to strike again, once for each of the next words, "Be! Kept! Safe!" Combat: Rodimus Prime misses Galvatron with his Chopping Down That Tree attack! Crosshairs has been given an interesting problem by Jetfire. He ducks behind a crate and whips out the subspace exciter that he'd been pondering earlier. It looks like a giant top, about six feet tall. Or maybe the back of a cement mixer, the rotating drum part. Placing it so that the point rests against the ground, he presses a button . . and the device begins to spin. Once it's picked up enough speed he takes his hand off of it and backs up, rainbow pistol at the ready. It's quite a loud little thing as it picks up speed. A sort of high pitched sound comes out that builds and builds and builds. Kind of like: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As it approaches maximum speed it begins to glow a bright white color and Crosshairs begins to back away from it further, as the air around it begins to shimmer. Then? FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE With an earsplitting sound, it begins emitting white light everywhere like LASER BEAMS which is really subspace energy flying everywhere. Galvatron snatches his hand away from Rodimus just before the buzzsaw descends, and leaps away. Unwittingly, this also causes him to dodge Jetfire's bearhug. "BAH! Sooner or later, Autobots, you'll fail! And when you do, I will stand LAUGHING over the ashes of humanity, and YOUR failure! But first, I'll slaughter the two of YOU!" Then, Galvatron fires a blast at both Jetfire and Rodimus Prime! "DIE DIE DIE!" But just as he fires, white beams begin shooting everywhere! "Eh? What now!?" Combat: Galvatron misses Jetfire with his Fusion Cannon Area attack! [Pulled -7] Combat: Galvatron (Galvatron) used "Fusion Cannon": A Level 6 AREA-RANGED attack. Combat: Galvatron strikes Rodimus Prime with his Fusion Cannon Area attack! [Pulled -7] Rodimus Prime is thrown out of the way as Galvatron grabs his arm and moves it aside. He's in the process of rolling to his feet when he takes Galvatron's blast dead in the chest. The blast knocks a chunk of his armor off, showing the lightless Matrix beneath, and leaves what remains of his chest blackened and charred. For a moment, he just lies on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. Then he caughs and absently lifts his right hand. "Not dead yet." He doesn't bother getting up. That's just asking to be hit by the light show going on from Crosshairs' super science spinny top, anyway. Maybe it's just being back in a size that feels more familiar to him, but all the same Jetfire manages to twist to the side to avoid the wild cannon blasting. And then all sorts of -other- blasting as Crosshairs' contraption goes off, zipping subspace beams all over the place. Jetfire really, -really- hopes he wasn't wrong about that idea. But its the crazy out-of-the-box thinking that got them this far, it was worth a shot. Except now being larger needs more cover, and he has to dart behind one of the bigger stacks of crates to avoid getting hit by stray subspace beams. Maybe Galvatron will do something else stupid to get himself blasted while he's ranting like a lunatic. Grapple nods once to Aeryn.. And then notices.. A top with spinning lights. He boggles at it for a moment, wondering what exactly it does. Though, since one of his allies set it out, it couldn't be TOO bad.. Could it? ..Perhaps he's better off not asking. Aeryn covers her ears when Crosshairs' device makes that high-pitched sound, and turns to face the light show, squinting from the brightness of it. From the storeroom door, one can see see burning, painful light around the edges of the door. Looks like the security that the star warned them about is almost here... Galvatron snarls, "Not yet, but VERY soon!" He approaches Rodimus Prime having his cannon aimed down at his face, and plants a boot on his chest to keep him from moving. "A pity, you put up so much of a fight before, but now you're just giving up. It's like you're not even trying! Not that I'm complaining! Hahaha--" Alas, his standing upright made him a prime target for the beams, one of which strikes him dead-center. Galvatron promptly vanishes without a trace. Rodimus Prime smirks up at the spot that Galvatron used to be in. "And /that/... was why I wasn't putting up a fight," he says smugly as he starts to sit up. Which puts him just tall enough to be in the way of another beam of light. He vanishes instantly. Crosshairs is very deliberate and blunt about what he does. He grabs every single crate he's strong enough to lift, tosses it towards the spinning subspace exciter and watches as they dissapear upon being hit by the 'beams' of subspace energy. It's kind of like a disco ball. So one ought to Panic! But that said, once everything he can heft is gone . . he trusts the others will get hit by the random beams and leaps into one himself. See?
* POOF* Grapple is fairly certain that everyone had absolutely lost their minds. That was all this was; sheer insanity. Still, random flashes of light.. As the humans say, when in Rome! ..Still, he hoped the lights/lasers/who knows didn't actually end up killing him. Aeryn drops to her knees, scared. Very, very scared, as she doesn't know what's going on, and people are disappearing. She looks up toward Jetfire, still with her ears covered, a confused look on her face. Of course, she's not privy to whatever messages the Autobots were sharing over their comm system. "I guess Galvatron got spaced out..." Except then Rodimus stands up to get zapped too. And then Crosshairs says they probably -want- to get zapped to get out of here. Jetfire turns his head to look over his shoulder. ".. Oh what the slag, not thinking about it has gotten us this far!" He puts his foot on one of the larger crates and shoves it into the path of the beams. It's probably Grimlock's considering how big it is. Shoves a few others, by that time the beams seem to finally randomize to the point they start hitting them themselves. That settled, he walks over to Aeryn, whom he's nearly just as tall as now. And despite being a size shorter, more bulky. He holds out one arm to grab her around the waiste if she allows it. "Better hold onto someone big enough to pick you up in case we end up somewhere not to pleasant." And hangs on to the girl to get zapped who knows where! Aeryn nods to Jetfire, unable to hear everything he says clearly, but at least she understands the arm he's wrapping around her. She faces him and holds him tight to herself. "I hope you know what you're doing," she says. Jetfire just grins a little reassuring as he holds onto her and steps into one of the beams. "Not a clue..but that's worked so far tonight." *POOF* Aeryn emerges on the other side with Jetfire, but only five feet tall, clinging to the nosecone on his torso. "Can I open my eyes now?", she asks. Jetfire scoops his hand under Aeryn and kneels down to set her on the ground. "Yes, we're back in Germany and you're back to normal size again. Aeryn inclines her head and takes a step back to look up at Jetfire. "Oh, wow, you're huge!", she observes. Jetfire ehehs. And after all that, just sits back on the ground to take a breather himself. Not that he breaths mind you, but you get the general idea. "Totally normal for me, though. I was over half my normal size." Rests his hands on the ground as he leans back a bit and looks up thoughtfully. "So there's an anti-mass as well as anti-matter..." Aeryn sits down herself in front of Jetfire, a bit light-headed from the experience. "Jetfire, do I still have a subspace field of my own?", she asks. "A non-functional one with no mass-shifting? Or would it have just disappeared?" Jetfire looks back down from his thoughts, shaking his head a bit. "Normally subspace doesn't interact with humans. The only reason you had a field before was there was still a connection between you and were the 'anti-mass' that made you larger was. Now that it's been restored, no, probably." Considers for moment. "Though this certainly explains how you were a giant without suffering considerable biophysical side effects. The direct exchange of matter and anti-matter must subvert the Square-Cube Law." Aeryn nods. "It was...fun while it lasted, actually. I guess I won't have a chance to terrorize my older brother after all," she laments. "I should probably go back to the Ark and thank Andi for all her help." Jetfire chuckles a bit. "I've likewise enjoyed the oppritunity to see things from a new perspective.. but frankly, I'm glad to be back to normal as well. Speaking of back to normal." He starts to get up, or so it seems at first. But then turns more into a roll over, that ends up in a larger spaceship sitting where he would of landed instead of a robot. "I guess it's back to being the resident space-taxi too. Want a lift back to the states?" Jetfire transforms into his Veritech Spacefighter mode. "That would be great!", Aeryn readily agrees. She climbs into Jetfire and straps herself in. Veritech Spacefighter fires up the afterburners and takes off, rocketing off into the skies. Though takes it easy on the Gs for the sake of his human occupant. "Next stop, the Ark!"
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)