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| - White cement tile floors complete with floor drains mark this room as a maintenance space even before you see all the machine tools. Toolchests and workbenches are mounted on the walls, with the center of the room left open for access to the lifts and hoists. Air hoses for pneumatic tools hang in reels from the ceiling, easily accessable from any part of the room, and at several points along the rear wall there are connections for fuel, coolant and welding gas hoses. Cackle Backbone IED Out leads to Darkmount - Atrium. Shockwave has arrived. "I've never understood the archetypical obsession with stealing the technologies of inferior species." So says Cackle to...well, anybody who'll listen to her. Which may be a depressingly small audience, really. "I mean, we, the mighty Decepticons, are obviously superior, so it should be no issue for us to create our OWN inventions, no? Inventions which are obviously superior. Inventions such as my amazing SCIENCE RAY! Ray based technology -is- the key to the future, you know." She pauses, then glances around the lab for a moment. "-but, uh, when can I see this microscope device?" Scrapper has torn himself away from working on his casino, with which the Decepticons will bilk money out of... whoever they allow into their casino, to go check out this subspace microscope. He recaps, for people who have only tuned into this issue, "Gee, Cackle, the last time I messed with subspace, we all ended up weird sizes. Is this such a good idea?"
* See: SIZE MATTERS! Issue #36. "Time is the driving factor," Shockwave intones, looming in the doorway. As he comes in and crosses to look over Scrapper's shoulder, he elaborates, "The research and development cycle is lengthy, painstaking, and often many missteps and sidetracks are taken in the pursuit of a goal. The warrior caste will smash and harry and steal whether we instruct them to or not. It would be irresponsible not to direct them to expend that effort in a productive direction, even if the yield is minor." "Well, that's when YOU-" Cackle begins, only to come to a sudden stop as she realizes what she's about to say. And for once, she's tactful! Ish. "-were rudely interfered with by meddlesome Autobots. Eheh." She pauses, and glances up (and up, and up) at Shockwave. "Well said, Commander Shockwave! It's-" she pauses, and glances about- "Oh, there it is!" And then Cackle sees the device in question! She bustles up to the subspace Microscope, and immediately begins to fiddle around with it- she clicks it into a monitor, and brings up...floating pinkishness. "Hm. Is it calibrated right? You don't think those clods damaged it when they retrieved the device, did they?" Scrapper explains, looking a little sheepish, "Uh, actually? Subspace is kind of..." he gestures with his hands, looking off to the side, "...pink. I've been there. It's pretty trippy. So what does Galvatron want us looking for, anyway? Have you looked at the work order yet? There's monsters in subspace, too. I may have... summoned some of those. Once. While under the influence of mind control programming. Uhm." He rubs the side of his helmet, distinctly uncomfortable. "Galvatron has given me no specific instruction," Shockwave drones, eye flickering. "In the absence thereof, I suggest a thorough examination of the properties and operational parameters of the device, such that a preliminary operational manual can be written. Carry out non-destructive tests. At a later date we can disassemble the device and reverse-engineer it." Cackle glances at Scrapper. "There's a work order?" beat. "There are -MONSTERS?- That's wonderful!" and with that, she eagerly starts to tweaking the knobs of the device, scrolling and panning this way and that. "We can summon one! Then we can sic it on the Autobots! Otherworldly, non-euclidiean horrors from another dimension, the mere sight of which can drive a mortal mind to madness! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" And the microscope pans this way and that. And, unfortunately: "Blast! All I can find is this oblong grey box." Another beat. "...is that an Autobot symbol on it?" Scrapper stares at Cackle for a long moment, and he finally replies, "Woman, you have the most amazing luck. Mind you, I'm not sure if it's /good/ luck, but... stumbling across an Autobot subspace pocket, blind and out of the blue, has exceptionally low odds!" Shockwave can probably calculate them. They're really low. Lower than a snake in the grass in the bottom of a ditch. "Is the device capable of accessing the pockets it reveals?" Shockwave asks. "If not we have some work ahead of us to make use of it." Cackle pauses, letting her discovery set in. "...so...it's an Autobot subspace pocket? What use is that? I was looking for monsters!" She scratches at her helm for a moment, and then she looks over at Shockwave again. "Uh. In THEORY it might be possible. It'd just be a matter of keying into the proper molecular frequencies- maybe if we could apply some space-bridge tech to it..." she drums her fingers atop the counter a moment. "What Autobot does it belong to, anyway? Looks like some sort of trailer. Must be a transport model or some other dull peon." Shockwave performs a rapid cogitation. "Optimus Prime or our Powermaster variant." Scrapper suggests, "Oh, let's find the other trailer and race them to figure out which is the real one!" What? That's totally how you do it. Shockwave points out helpfully, "That method would not work without the cab section, which is deceased currently in both cases." "Does it matter which one is faster?" Cackle asks, puzzled. She leans back in her chair a little, and pans out with the camera. "Oh look, more equipment! Let's see...some sort of rifle, laser pistols...a box marked 'Wheeljack'...hmmmm. Interesting, I suppose, if from a historical standpoint, at least." "Access the 'Wheeljack' box," Shockwave instructs. Scrapper notes, "Well, we could get Motormaster to pull one and Octane to pull the other." He then tries to push Cackle away, exclaiming, "Wheeljack!? The man was a genius! A mad genius! His death-rays were works of /art/... well, if they lasted long enough for you to see them without exploding in his face first. Lemme see." "Oh! The Autobots have mad scientists? I thought they were, y'know 'responsible' and boring and always going on about 'Morals.' Bah!" Still, Cackle accesses the Wheeljack box- which...is still a box. "Um. I'm...not exactly sure if we can ACCESS it with this setup...we'd need to engineer the proper equipment and make thousands of calculations..." "Wheeljack admitted to me on more than one occasion that he was personally responsible for the Dinobots," Shockwave adds. Shockwave finds the Dinobots particularly troublesome. "He was a very poor scientist but a very effective engineer." Scrapper raises a hand and says, "Yo. Engineer." Scrapper's actually a much more boring and responsible engineer than Wheeljack was, making buildings out of live people aside. Then he points at Shockwave and adds, "Thousands of calculations." Handy how that works out! Cackle ohs at Scrapper! "Oh, uh. Right! Eheh. Obviously, our SUPERIOR Decepticon capabilities shall deliver! Once, um. Once we get to work." As Cackle, mad as she is, isn't about to give the two larger and scarier Decepticons anything close to orders. "So, uh. Where do we begin?" "We begin from basic principles," Shockwave declares, the marching of drones audible outside the door as, summoned by his radio control, they attend the Decepticon scientists (and engineer) with crates of parts and materials brought up from the cavernous bowels of the fortress by hover-sled. "Following immutable natural law. The unified field theory. Plancktron's constant. The elegance of the hexagon," he intones, throwing out an open hand in a commanding gesture drawn by Jack Kirby. SCIENCE MONTAGE Cackle says "We need more blinky lights!" And then she plugs an overly large cable into a plug in the wall. "Soon, it shall be complete! BWAHAHAHA!" Scrapper works on something vaguely like a Jacob's ladder that crackles with black dots around it as some 80s music plays. In the background, behind him, it looks like they have assembled a Stargate, with runes on it from the Bayverse Allspark. He asks, "Do you have the bandwidth gap calculated yet?" Shockwave has his cannon arm plugged into a blinking computer mainframe (all the control systems in Darkmount have ports that fit Shockwave's gun arm). "It is done. I am loading the compiled runtime to the actuarial processors." "Aha! We are ready! Behold, my fellow geniuses!" and with that said, Cackle throws switch! Lights blink, dynamos whirr, and power is channeled...and soon, there's a great flash of light from the gateway, nearly blinding! And when it's done...weapons. A big pile of weapons. Optimus Prime's trailer. Prowl's Acid Pellet Gun. A crate of Wheeljack's inventions...and more! All the former weapons of now-dead Autobots. Optics wide, Cackle takes it all in like a kid at Christmas. "Oh, this is going to be FUN." Scrapper looks a bit bashful at being called a genius and scuffs his foot on the floor. He walks over and picks up a round blue shield with odd designs on it, and he remarks, "Now /this/ is really old. Brings me back to before I was a Decepticon." Then, he drops the shield and rubs his temples; his backstory always gives him a migraine. "I strongly recommend against attempting to remember the 'time' before you 'were a Decepticon,' says Shockwave, as he goes to open Prime's trailer. His timbre expertly voices the fingerquotes he cannot execute with his single hand. "The logical paradox may cause runtime errors in your quantum cortex." Cackle glances over the array of weaponry, nudging it experimentally with her foot. "Hmm. Old, but serviceable. What's in the trailer- Ooooooh!" and Cackle leans in to get a better look at the mysteries within! TO BE CONTINUED!
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