Heck's Kitchen

Absolution - Combat Arena

The combat arena is rather simple -- take one part expanse of empty floor, add one part holoemitter to keep the crew from literally killing each other, and mix well over what honestly looks like rusty, second-hand bleachers until there's a place for people to punch each other in the mouth.'

''The fighting space is essentially a big empty swath of floor. Though the holoemitters mark the corners of the space so that no bystanders can be injured and no combatants actually killed, there are still numerous signs of damage around the room -- a stray blaster scorch on the wall here, a bit of finger found on the ground there -- that indicate that sometimes the fighting isn't exactly confined to the proper space.'''

A doorway on one wall is marked with a sign reading 'THE POWER STATION' in gnarly, x-treme lettering.'

Blueshift skips about merrily in the training room, waving his sword about. "I'm so great!" he sings. "Great great great! I can kill any-"

THOOOOOOOOOOOOM

The door to the training room explodes off its hinges, crushing Blueshift to a pulp underneath it. And stepping into the room is a huge humanoid alien clad in a white uniform-like armour. He looks about the room, shaking his head.

"F*$& me..."

Catechism comes running at the sound of the explosion, a datapad in hand that reveals all of Twin Twist's secret weaknesses! She sighs and shakes her head and sees that it is just Blueshift crushed to a pulp again. She starts to say, "Situation nor... wait. When'd we start letting squishies on board? Really /big/ squishies."

Sinnertwin comes sprinting up behind Catechism, a baloney sandwich in his hands (much more important than a silly datapad.) "GOOD GOD," he gasps, staring at the carnage before him. Then he takes a bite out of his meal.

Astrotrain wasn't skipping about merrily in the training room. He was standing off to one side, idly stuffing his face with energon chips as he was watching a large flat screen hanging on one wall, showing an interstellar game currently on between two alien races. The rules of the game that they're playing isn't quite clear, it's somwhere between a cross of football, ballet and rhinocerous wrestling.

"Shut up!" He calls out towards Catechism, narrowing his eyes at the screen, "They're about to make a touchback and the guillotines are loaded!" And that's about when the racket starts coming in, causing the big triplechanger to sigh overdramatically. "How the frag am I supposed to watch the game!?"

He munches idly on more energon chips.

Redshift looks up from shooting lovely little holes in cardboard cutouts of Blueshift, shaken by the sudden crash of the door blowing in off it's hinges. The figure is large, imposing, but Redshift stands his ground. "The mess hall is on another deck, bub. Get lost, before we mess you up."

Catechism calls over to Astrotrain, "No, /you/ shut up, or I'll cram that television down your throat. Do you understand, soldier?"

Sinnertwin oooooooooh's at that sick burn. "Nice one, sir."

Astrotrain responds with all the respect for authority that he's ever had for anyone that wasn't Galvatron or directly in some way able to beat him senseless. A few flicked energon chips and a face made at Catechism's back when she's looking elsewhere.

G'Don shakes his head slowly at the door, and at Astrotrain watching the TV and eating. "My /god/" he mutters before moving up to Catechism and offering one huge, crushing hand out. "G'Don!" he exclaims, looking about. "It seems we have a lot to do to turn this place around. Munitions are up, bodycounts are down, lets get started and... YOU!" He points at Astrotrain with his bowl of chips. "YOU! When did you last /murder/ somebody?"

Catechism grins over at Sinnertwin. That guy's two heads know what side the butter is on. She moves to shake G'Don hand, rather bewildered. Hopefully he doesn't mind the spiked knuckles.

Astrotrain is caught in mid-face-making at Catechism's back, his optic ridge rising as the....thing addresses him.

For a moment the triplechanger looks left, then right, as if to make sure he's the one being spoken to, then looks back at G'don again. "Uh...today? Does that pigeon I smeared on my windshield count?"

"I think it should," Sinnertwin quips. After all, that's more than he's done lately.

G'Don flicks out a personal data-log recorder. "Day One. Hour One. Client: Galvatron. It seems that the Decepticon army is a shadow of its former self. Slow, sloppy..." he stares at Astrotrain "...and slow. There's barely anyone in the training room, what a /mess/. How are they going to kill anyone? If they carry on like this, they are going under!" He snaps his head up at Catechism. "Right then, before we get started, lets see your normal service. Bring out some prisoners and we'll check out your moves"

Redshift stows his rifle away, eyeing the supposed G'don with suspicion, who supposedly towers over most Transformers but is only size 6. "G'don Ram-Z, I presume? The merc brought in to 'evalualate' us?" Redshift asks, makig little 'air quotes' with his fingers. "We don't NEED your help, why don't you bugger off?"

Astrotrain just stares on the whole time as G'don continues speaking, even making his own thoughts about the triplechanger's state of mind.

And he keeps eating energon chips the entire time. *chomp chomp chomp*

Slow.

He called you slow!

Astrotrain's eyes widen and he thrusts out a finger in indignation, "HOW DARE YOU CALL ME SL..." Of course by then G'don has moved on and is talking to Catechism.

Catechism looks sidelong as Sinnertwin and makes a suggestion over radio. They don't /have/ any prisoners. However, she tries to grab Sinnertwin by the elbow and shouts, "Oh, hey! Sinnertwin is a prisoner! For, uh, reckless niceness."

Outside in the hall, there's the click-clack-click of Seeker-heels on the metal floor, a noise that initially seems like it's going to move right by. The sound pauses, however - likely when their owner observes that the door to the training room has been blown off its hinges. From the outside. He sticks his head in, puzzled frown edged on his face. "What the blazes is going on here?" he asks.

"Thank you very much, sir!" Sinnertwin says, forcing the biggest smile robotically possible. "Oh darn! It seems I've yet to learn from my mistakes! I'm just soooooo nice!"

Astrotrain stops then, mouth open as he stares at Catechism and Sinnertwin.

< Decepticon > Astrotrain says, "What the f*BLEEP*."

< Decepticon > Catechism says, "You see that reckless niceness, Astrotrain? It's a sad state of affairs."

"One prisoner? ONE PRISONER?" G'Don's face has already turned red as it boils with nuclear energy. "And they were scuttling about already, do you not have proper prisoner storage?" He starts to wave a finger in Catechism's face. And then he turns on a heel to see Fleet. "Ah, and here the rest come into work /late/. Where's the passion? Where's the fBLEEEEEEEEEEEPing passion?"

He hits his recording device as it makes bleeping noises. "You, late guy, go kill the prisoner"

< Decepticon > Fleet says, "... Wow. I didn't realize this frequency had an auto-censor function."

< Decepticon > Wiretap has encrypted this channel.

< Decepticon > Wiretap says, "Speaking of censoring."

Astrotrain raises a hand, "I'll do it."

Catechism crosses her arms and insists, "No, no, Fleet was late, this is his punishment. Fleet, execute Sinnertwin for reckless niceness." Then she winks at Sinnertwin and Fleet.

Sinnertwin stares, mouth agape at Catechism. Then Fleet. Then G'Don. "Uhmm...OH BOY! Execution! Thank you for the priviledge!"

Astrotrain just blinks again, and finally lowers his hand, "Spoilsport." He finally mutters.

< Decepticon > Wiretap says, "G'Don RAM-Z's presence is not to be mentioned over unsecure communications."

Fleet looks at the alien, then looks at Sinnertwin, then looks at Astrotrain, then looks at Catechism, then shrugs, lifts his arm, points at Sinnertwin, and fires his freeze ray. He'll worry about the fact that it's not actually fatal in a minute.

Fleet strikes Sinnertwin with his Freeze Ray attack.

Sunder has arrived.

< Decepticon > Wiretap says, "Pre-emptive censoring, for the dumb ones."

"WAIT, WHAT! THIS WASN'T PART OF THE P-" Then poor Sinnertwin gets frozen. ):

"Training room, activate simulation Two-three-six-nine-eight," Fleet commands, and the environment is replaced. The group now finds themselves standing on the top of an impressively tall alien skyscraper. Fleet, whistling, cheerfully starts to push the frozen Sinnertwin towards the edge.


 * BLEEEEEEEEEPing hell!" G'Don's bleeper goes off again and he slaps it, as Sinnertwin gets frozen. "You froze him! I can't believe you're using frozen goods!" He watches as Fleet starts to push Sinnertwin towards the edge of a building, and takes out a baton, that flares into life with an energy cleaver blade. "Look look, if you're going to kill someone, do it professionally. Like so!" And with that, he hefts the cleaver and throws it straight at the frozen and helpless Sinnertwin's neck

G'Don Ram-Z strikes Sinnertwin with Energy-Cleaver.

Sunder wanders into the training room, out of curiosity after hearing the door blow off. He peers at G'Don Ram-Z and strokes his beard. "So, you're the bounty hunter we've heard so much about?" he asks. "And practicing on a Terrorcon, no less. Interesting."

And just like that, Sinnertwin's awesome green head goes flying right off his neck. The horror!

Astrotrain watches rather impassively as Sinnertwin's head is taken off in the process. "...he gets point for style, I'll give him that." He can't help but comment, nodding approvingly.

Catechism steeples her fingers and makes a mental note to give Sinnertwin a very /good/ keg of high grade. She tilts her head to the side and murmurs, "Well... he has two other heads. He'll be fine, I'm sure."

G'Don then stoops down to pick up Sinnertwin's head and throw it in the nearest garbage compactor, which slowly begins moving it towards the crushing jaws. "A clean training room is an efficient training room!" he snaps as he sees Sunder wander in, and he picks up his data recorder. "30 breems in, and another employee walks in late. It seems this establishment is sorely lacking in professionalism!"

He turns back to Catechism. "Now, all of you, show me your weapon storage!"

Redshift snorts, still unimpressed. "Any idiot can just chop someone's head off. No style, no flair? It takes alot more than a big knife to win a fight." Redshift quips, polishing a corner of his already gleaming armor. "Still not impressed over here, G'don."

Fleet actually stops pushing a few moments /before/ G'don's attack. When the attack comes, he's in the process of getting up a hologram, but before he can, Sinnertwin's head is chopped off. "Erm..." he starts, frowning. Well, there goes /that/ plan. "I see. So you mean, like this?" He activates his energon daggers, takes two steps over... and then de-activates the daggers, while keeping them holographically in place. If he's got this timed right, holo-Sinner should lose another head while regular-Sinner doesn't.

Catechism twiddles her fingers together, and she asks, "Our weapon storage? Emporer Galvatron authorized that? Er... Swindle would have the quartermaster's keys..."

Astrotrain mutters to Catechism, "... him... we... always... was an..."

< Decepticon > Runamuck says, "So...like... if we -do- have to talk about this guy in unsecured communications whatsis, are we allowed to use hilariously inappropriate euphemisms no doubt leading to mass confusion and misunderstandin' on the part of t'Autobots before it's all resolved by the end of the episode?"

< Decepticon > Runamuck says, "J'est checkin'."

< Decepticon > Catechism says, "Yes."

< Decepticon > Runamuck says, "Great, 's important t'know these things."

Fleet drops Twinnersin.

And almost like magic, Twinnersin appears. He must be a spy or something. "I, uh, heard some noise? So now I'm..here?"

"Better, better!" G'Don waggles a finger at Fleet. The /technique is getting there at least." He then waves a disembodied robotic hand at Catechism that is clutching a pair of keys, which he then throws to the Seeker. "Quartermaster's keys. Done my homework. Now make it snappy whilst I deal with some of your lazier employees."

And with that he wheels on Redshift. "You've started off not impressing me and you're getting worse. You've not killed anyone properly in years, have you? Where's your passion man? Your spark?" And then he stares harder at Redshift, and a flurry of Mind Daggers shoot from his head at the hapless Decepticon. "THINK FAST!"

G'Don Ram-Z strikes Redshift with Mind Daggers.

Astrotrain can't help but point and laugh. Afterall, it's someone else's misfortune right now, isn't it? "HAW HAW HAW...but seriously." He then asides to Catechism. "Vroom vroom? Thump thump?" He makes a motion of one hand like it was a car, the other like it was a person bouncing over the hood.

Catechism catches Swindle's severed hand and stares at it for a moment before running off to unlock the supply closet, which is conveniently just right off the training room. She murmurs to Astrotrain, "You can try it."

"Late? What in the blazes are you talking about?" Sunder asks pointedly.

"Ooooh no." Astrotrain states towards Catechism, wagging a finger in her direction, "I ain't falling for that. I know this whole 'throw them to the slaughter' mentality."

Redshift's optics flash with passion, and he opens his mouth to begin a long-winded, self-important tirade, but his reply is cut short as mind-daggers are flung into his face.

Redshift rolls around on the floor, kicking and screaming, as the mind daggers sink deeper into his face, leaving him reminiscent of a whiny red pincushion.

Catechism, meanwhile, is assaulted by the weapons closet and buried under a pile of weapons. It will take a team of Seeker with pick, like from the Ruby Mines of Burma, hours to unearth her. Closets and Catechism have never gotten along well.

Twinnersin stares at Redshift for a few seconds before pointing and laughing. Ha ha! Schadenfruede!

G'Don strokes his chin after mind-daggering Redshift, and shakes his head. "This is a less than spectacular start. YOU!" He points at Sunder. "How many people have you murdered today? Quickly, speak up!" And then he places his head solidly in his hands as he sees the weapon cabinet explode. "F*BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEP* me. What Mickey Mouse operation is this? Look!" He storms over to a plastic container full of ammo shells, covered in cling film, and waves a hand at Twinnersin. "What is this? Come on! What!"

Twinnersin shrugs. "It's to keep them fresh.."

Fleet doesn't point and laugh. Partially because he's focusing on keeping the Twinnersin hologram moving with the person beneath it, and partially because he's trying to avoid drawing even /more/ attention to himself. He looks around for other Seekers in order to try to take advantage of Multiple Seeker Invisibility, but sees he's the only one here. So he just sighs, and tries to look like he's paying close attention to G'Don.

G'Don takes one of the bullets out of the tupperware and throws it to the side angrily. "Fresh? Who's that going to kill? No-one!" He then points at Astrotrain. "You! I bet your weapons aren't locally sourced, are they? They're from /catalogues/ I bet!"

"Uh actually..." Astrotrain states at that, producing his rifle, and that huge sword he got a little while back, "I don't remember -where- I got this gun it's...been here for awhile. This sword, I stole off some squishy-mech with a bunch of whiny teenagers piloting it!"

"Hmmmmm" G'Don looks suspiciously at Astrotrain's sword. "And how many hours do your slaves spend sharpening it every morning. Not enough I bet. What are you going to do, /blunt/ someone to death with it?"

"Actually," Fleet observes, "quite a few swords /are/ intended as blunt weapons."

Fleet removes a picture from subspace, showing Skullcruncher's aweful sword (we'll take Blue's word for it). "For example, that's obviously intended more for skull smashing than skull slicing."

Oh no he -didn't-. Did he just insult Astrotrain's sword?

"Hey!" He suddenly shouts, thrusting out the finger from his free hand, for he has shunted his rifle into subspace again, "Fer YER information this sword's plenty sharp! But it doesn't need to be, cause it's one of those energy burnin dealies! See!" And with that, he produces an energon clip, identical to the ones he feeds his rifle with, and slides it into a slot in the sword's hilt. It suddenly ignites in a brilliant vermillion fiery aura with a loud *VRMMM* that would make Darth Vader proud. Or maybe Voltron.

"Yeah! That's right! Whaddaya think of -THAT- ya limey!?"

G'Don looks all taken aback and sniffy at Fleet. "Well, just because others have very low standards doesn't mean you should. When you are a multi-award winning mercenary then you can talk to me as an /equal/!" He waggles his finger again. He then stares at Astrotrain's sword with energy and rifle. "What do I think? I think you're trying to be too /fancy/. You need to concentrate on just one flavour OF DEATH"

Redshift finally manages to extract the piercing mind daggers from his face, and he hauls himself to his feet, optics smoldering like a pair of embers. He keeps his mouth shut this time, watching G'Don carefully, seeing who the supposed award-winning mercenary picks on next.

"Yeah? What the frag do you know!?" Oh boy, now Astrotrain's gettin fired up. He stands up to his full height, grinning now as he leers at the alien. "You look all poory in that white armor? Whatsamatter, ya goin out to a fancy wingding? Ya forget yer metal skirt while yer at it! HAW HAW HAW! Loser can't even transform and he's thinkin he can muck around here like he knows better than us? Where's -your- interstellar empire, ya big fleshy phoney!?"

Twinnersin tries his best not to laugh, but alas, it happens. Loudly, I might add.

Fleet shrugs. "Erm, yes, sir." He decides he can see where this is going: the only in here who is 'right' will be G'Don, so it's mostly a matter of tolerating the guy until he gets gone.

The Twinnersin holo doesn't quite move with Twinnersin as he starts laughing, because Fleet was distracted. Someone has to have been watching Twinnersin closely to notice that, though.

"I actually run a very successful chain of Galactic Empires" G'Don snaps back at Astrotrain. "Which is more than you are doing right now, sitting about and eating. I mean, look at this!" He presses a button on a projector, and images flicker up from the classic G1 episode The Ultimate Doom, as the Autobots all surfboard across the sea and beat up the Decepticons.

"Disgraceful. At least this one here!" -he points at Fleet - "has the right attitude"

"Can I -please- push him out an airlock?" Astrotrain all but whines to the other Decepticons.

Sinnertwin stares at the surfing Autobots, rubbing his chin. "What!? When did this happen? Where was I!?"

Fleet blinks. He has the right attitude? How'd that happen?! He looks at Astrotrain and shrugs. "If you want to explain to Galvatron where his consultant went, have-at."

Astrotrain of course always has a plan, "I could just say Sinnertwin did it."

"We just killed Sinnertwin," Fleet points out. "That's Twinnersin. /Remember/?"

"Yeah, /remember/?" Twinnersin says with a snerk.

Astrotrain blinks, "....no, he's right here. Look! Sinnertwin! Disgusting Predacon!" His hand waves rapidly straight at Twinnersin of course.

G'Don taps away on his datapad as he writes a preliminary report to Galvatron. "Right. Tomorrow we will look at fresh, locally sourced weaponry from local slavemines, and start to change your techniques. I want you to ALL go away and think about how awful you are and how much better I am than you, and write it all down in a letter."

Twinnersin throws his arms in the air. "WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME!? DID YOU JUST CALL ME A PREDACON!? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE! SINNERTWIN CRUSH YOU!"

"That's Twinnersi-" and then Sinnertwin shouts at Astrotrain. Fleet sighs and covers his face with his left hand. "You know what? Never mind."

Astrotrain is actually caught by surprised by Sinnertwin's outburst, leaping back for a moment and staring at the Terrorcon. "A'right a'right! Terrorcon!" He corrects a moment later, before grumbling, "Not my fault they started makin em all alike..."

G'Don then opens up a box and looks at Astrotrain. "You need to quit it with your weapons, you're trying to do too much. I want YOU to learn this!" He throws a net at Astrotrain. And then he turns to Redshift. "And I want you to learn this." He throws a plastic set of bola at Redshift. And then he turns to Sinnertwin and throws a tiny plastic toothpick at him. "And I want you to learn THIS." Then he turns to Fleet. "And finally I want YOU to learn how to lie properly, GOT IT?"

Astrotrain succeeds in grasping Sinnertwin, throwing him off-balance.

"RAARGH! WE ARE NOT ALL ALIKE! TERRORCONS ARE BETTER!" Sinnertwin, Twinnersin...whatever, shouts. Then he gets a toothpick thrown at him.

Fleet stands up very straight and formally and offers G'Don a proper Decepticon salute. "As you command! I will learn how to lie flawlessly," he lies.

Astrotrain looks at the net, looks at G'don.

Looks at the net, looks at G'don.

Looks at the net, looks at sinnertwin.

He then throws the net over Sinnertwin's form, draping it down around him and...not really doing anything other than that.

"Done. What's next?"

Sinnertwin immediately falls over and begins to thrash around in the net. "RAAARRGHH TERRORCONS ARE KIIINNNGGGG"

< Decepticon > Astrotrain says, "Jeez Fleet why dontcha just glue yer mouth to his skidplate?"

< Decepticon > Fleet says, "Mostly because that sounds /extremely/ uncomfortable."

Astrotrain pauses and watches the Terrorcon thrashing about, "....Bwahaha! Okay that -is- kinda fun. You got another net?"

"You better!" G'Don threatens darkly at Fleet. And then there is a strange alieny glow about him, and he vanishes from the room in a huge explosion of deadly nuclear energy that buzzes and crackles in the air.

"This was a waste of my time. SOMEONE, FETCH ME MY HEAD!" Sinnertwin bellows.

< Decepticon > Shadow snickers a bit.

"Freakin transform and use those predacon teeth on the net for cryin out loud!" Astrotrain hollars to Sinnertwin, then watches as G'don vanishes in his flash of unhealthy looking light.

"...okay so when are we gonna kill him?" He asks the room at large.

Sinnertwin goes into another fit thanks to Astrotrain and his inability to tell Terrorcons from Predacons.

Fleet brushes his hands together as though brushing off dust. "There's got to be some sort of 'cost savings' line we can use to justify it. 'Sorry we killed your consultant, but on the up side, you don't have to pay him now' sort of thing..."

"Pfft." Astrotrain states, crossing his arms and shaking his head at Fleet's inability to be underhanded, "Hello? We have Sharkticons now. We'll just say they ate him!"

Sinnertwin manages to completely wrap the net around himself. "We could kill him and then have Scrapper turn the body into a throne for Lord Galvatron!"

"For that matter," Fleet murmurs, "there's any number of Decepticons we can claim ate him." Then, louder, he agrees, "But the Sharkticons are the least likely to argue."

"do we have local slavemines?" Redshift mutters, before going back to pretending to pay attention. "um, sure, whatever you say..." Redshift hefting the flimsy plastic bola, which is quickly discarded once G'don leaves.