Bikini Atoll Scouting

Summary: Three Decepticon jets look for a new home for Bruce in the Pacific, and get a visit from a plucky progressive-rock playing C-130!

West Central Pacific

''Huge, ominious cumulus clouds block out the sky in a climate of heavy, year-round rainfall, the brisk winds stirring the gray waters into choppy waves. Lightning flashes, forked tongues of fire reaching down from the heavens to strike at the dull, heaving ocean below. Though, in less than a few hours, the wind sweeps the clouds away to reveal the bluest of skies above, bringing the ocean back to sparkling blue life again. The seas are prolific with sharks, tuna, marlin, rays, and even turtles, attracting deep sea fishing and reef diving.''

Objects: Marshall Islands

 Boomslang says, "Aww, it IS part of the Marshall Islands."

 Boomslang says, "We'll just have to bleach it real well."

 Fusillade says, "GROSS what are you trying to infect us with?"

 Space Attack XO Blueshift says, "BOOMSLANG. While you are here, I have a QUESTION"

 Boomslang says, "Whaaat"

 Space Attack XO Blueshift says, "When you are invisible, where do you go"

 Fusillade says, "YO MOMMABOT'S ROOM"

 Boomslang says, "Uh... the Shadow World."

 Space Attack XO Blueshift says, "I see"

 Space Attack XO Blueshift says, "Could we not use that as a staging ground"

 Astrotrain says, "If you make his head explode yer cleaning up the mess!"

 Boomslang says, "Yes, all the invisible people can come and stage there with me."

 Boomslang says, "But it smells of hobbit so that may be a drawback."

 Space Attack XO Blueshift says, "OH New Zealand"

 Boomslang says, "The, uh, special part of New Zealand which is invisible to the untutored eye."

 Boomslang says, "Where all the sheep come from."

The Super Hornet, slower of the two jets, skims in low over the ocean, rolls towards one of the islands in the chain and pulls up hard into a Pugachev's Cobra, bleeding off speed rapidly. Just as it stalls it transforms and Boomslang lands on the beach with a dull thud, rising from his crouch to look up and down the idyllic aquascape.

Lazily slapping at a wave crest with one wing, the Lancer barrel-rolls, making great use of her thrust-vectoring modifications. Once she rights herself, she bobs on her tail, sending out tremendous plumes of brine aerosol before transforming and tucking herself into a rolling gymnast dive, before jabbing gilded toes in the sand. "Ta!" And then she scowls a bit. "Not much to look at. Although the crescent shape from that detonation's pretty nice." She struts along the ocean-soaked sandbar to see how stable the beach is. "Gonna be a pain flying back and forth between here and the rest of the planet. Smelt, New Zealand was better."

The sleek bomber rears up, wings collapsing onto hips even as the rear fuselage splits to form arms. The horizontal stabilizer slides up, the forward fuselage folds up accordian style, and Fusillade hops up on thrustered feet.

AC130U Gunship <Encore> seems to be on a scouting mission of his own, cruising slowly towards the islands from the direction of Autobot City. If the loud growl of his engines weren't enough to herald his presence, the large, heavily-armed Autobot is also blasting out Chesney Hawks from his external speakers at volume. o/" I am the one and only - can't take that away from me... o/"

"Cripes, they're multiplying," Fusillade finally remarks to Boomslang as Encore trundles past in the air, raising a wingblade to shield her optics. "I can't tell them apart, but there's at least two now. We should probably distract him from our mission." Another pause. "Oh, wait a sec, this one's a boy," she says, pointing out the port armaments situated in Encore's mid-fuselage.

"Well, I'm glad you can sex 'em, I must've missed that briefing," Boomslang remarks. "Did you bring the cartographer? Not much land to cartograph, but Cyclonus totally had his gear down for this spot. Mentioned it by name more than once. I guess we'd put the city in the bay there?"

AC130U Gunship <Encore> seems to be heading on a slow grid-pattern patrol towards the islands, apparently oblivious to the presence of the two cons until he turns to make his third pass- and the music cuts off. He angles for a closer pass, obviously wanting a better look

Doonk! comes the sound of a coconut being kicked over a neighbouring sand dune, landing with a loud plop in the sea past the breakwater. The would-be coconut footballist soon trudges into view, a olive green Decepticon with a strikingly handsome goatee. "Seems like any other island on this planet" Fulcrum remarks, approaching Boomslang and Fusillade. "Why here?"

"Oh hey, it's the one that actually does stuff. Might need to keep an optic on him," Fusillade remarks casually to Boomslang in a tone similar to discussing the weather. "I really didn't bring a cartographer, I f-- FULCRUM!" Fusillade throws hands in the air in glee as she greets the dour Decepticon. "WELL, this was the site of multiple ship graveyards, which means easily accessible scrap metal, and also there are no hyoomans that really poke around here because of their atom bomb testing decades ago."

Fusillade adds, "The C-130 circling around upstairs isn't ours, by the way." "And it's centrally located in the ocean," Boomslang adds. "Oh, yeah. There's some plane hanging around. It's probably an Autobot, but assuming it isn't a Wrecker I don't think it'd dare mess with us."

Fulcrum lifts one hand to his optics as he peers skywards. "That's a brave, stupid, or suicidal Autobot flyer" he says. "Scrap metal.. hn. If it's been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for that long, it's not going to be useful for much more than scrap. Have to smelt the whole lot down." Fulcrum brightens somewhat at the prospect. "...Maybe set up one of the large turboforges with the high capacity air intakes..."

Fusillade shimmies in her spot on the beach, using her wingblades to semaphore a provocative message at the Autobot, daring him to come down. She turns on a heel to Fulcrum, and hmms. "Yeah, that's more like it!" Her expression darkens a bit. "So uh... yeah. Cyclonus is missing again. How permanent do you two think it is?"

AC130U Gunship <Encore> continues to circle at a medium distance, just observing quietly. After all, this is, relatively speaking, close to Autobot City - a relatively short hop for the fast, agile Seekers, and there are Autobot interests in Indonesia, Japan and Australia, all within relatively easy reach of this location.

He amuses himself by playing Iron Maiden at the Cons as loud as he can in an attempt to mildly irritate the foe.

<<Hey laserlips>> the Autobot responds, eventually, to the semaphored message. << I may be ugly but I ain't stupid. Like 'ell is I gettin' any closer.>>

Fulcrum shakes his head. Is that human music? "That is the weakest sonic weapon I've ever had aimed at me. So are we cleared to kill him?"

"Frankly I was surprised to see him last time he came back," Boomslang remarks, kicking a coconut into the bay, where it bounces off a dazed nurse shark. "He seems to spend more time lost than found."

Fusillade signals some more.

Boomslang flips open his wrist panel and brings up the Aerospace roster to see if he still outranks Fusillade. He doesn't. "I guess that's up to sassmouth here."

Fulcrum nods at Boomslang. "He may just have a secret base that he can retreat to when the strain of Galv.. of command gets too much."

Boomslang recognizes one of the less genial Universal Greetings in Fusillade's fan-dance and snickers.

Fulcrum only understands the swearing.

Fulcrum also moves his lips when he's trying to translate semaphore.

AC130U Gunship <Encore> changes to the unofficial 'theme song' of his chassis - Riders in the Sky by the Outlaws. It's quite plain the music isn't intended as a weapon, more just to irritate, annoy, or get any kind of response off the Cons and, more importantly, to distract them from whatever it is they're up to. He's plainly no real threat, coming closer but gaining altitude so he keeps the same rough distance from the islands.

<<Oooh, nice comeback, Laser-Lips.>>

"Huh," Fusillade remarks to Fulcrum. "Never really thought of it like that." She reholsters her wingblades, and crosses arms over her chest. "Yeah sure, why not? You are obliged to hurt insults at him while shooting, too." She bends over briefly to examine a craggy, badly worn coral fan that had washed up on the shore. "Get to it, Boomer! Hey Fulcrum, what should I be looking for here? I wonder how deep the city's draft is. Think it could come INSIDE the atoll?" She points to the break in the island's ring.

<<<Before ya fink 'bout gettin' any closer, ask Windy, Iceman, an' Motormouth 'ow much the Bofors cannon 'urts.>> Encore comments, referring to Windshear, Coldwar, and MotorMaster.

"The Lagoon is quite deep" Fulcrum replies, idly running startup diagnostics on his arm-mounted heat rays, a rising tone just audible as they power up. "We'd have to dig, ram, or blast a channel to get it inside, probably in the southeast corner."

"Windshear?" Fusillade breaks into a loud, raucous guffaw, drowning out Fulcrum's otherwise helpful assessment. "Didja hear what that said, Fulcrum? AHAHAH! Gah ha!"

Boomslang sighs. He was kind of enjoying the beach! "All right, I'll shoot it down. Mind your heads if it starts shooting though, that's one of those close air support planes." He crouches momentarily and kicks off, thrusting into the air and transforming to streak towards the circling prop plane with autocannon buzzing. With the usual ratcheting sound, Boomslang spins and flips and turns into a fighter jet.

Combat: F/A-18E "Super Hornet" <Boomslang> strikes AC130U Gunship <Encore> with his Autocannon (Pistol) attack!

Fulcrum shields his optics from the sudden gust of sand kicked up by Boomslang's takeoffs. "Which one's Windshear again?" Fulcrum asks. "Is the Autobot threatening us by bragging about how his guns can slightly damage someone that would be bruised by a thrown fruit?"

AC130U Gunship <Encore> yelps and shudders a little under the shot, the AC130 immediately beginning to drop altitude and circle a much tighter path. From the encrypted chatter on the autobot and NEST bands, it's obvious he's squawking.

Energy surges through his weapons systems and into the minigun, and that's about all the warning that Boomer will get as the large attack plane goes on the aggressive attack.

<<Oi, numbnuts! I was 'appy just to circle an' watch, but no, you 'adda get lairy, didn'tcha?

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> misses F/A-18E "Super Hornet" <Boomslang> with his Minigun Burst (Full-Auto) attack!

"A reminder of a failed mentorship program," Fusillade scowls deeply, before flicking the strewn about sand out of her neck joints. "I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on him, he's learned to dodge more since then. And actually is still alive." She looks over her shoulder at the area indicated by Fulcrum, and nods. "I think just about any spot we choose is going to require modification of some sort." At the sound of weapons-fire, she looks up briefly, and shouts back "JUST WATCHING?! PERVERT!"

<<Bite me.>>

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> sets his defense level to Neutral.

F/A-18E "Super Hornet" <Boomslang> aileron-rolls around the tracers winging their way down towards him and manages to get another burst off from his integral gun before he streaks past the Spooky and starts making a sharp bank turn up above to line up for another pass.

Combat: F/A-18E "Super Hornet" <Boomslang> misses AC130U Gunship <Encore> with his Autocannon (Pistol) attack!

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> sets his defense level to Aggressive.

"Maybe he's afraid to get up close and personal" Fulcrum says, test firing into the sand, then bending to pick up one of the fused chunks of glass that result. "Performance anxiety. Could be his first time." He attempts to skip the shard of glass across the waves towards the spot he indicated, and fails completely. "Bah" he scowls. "Might as well just bomb it. I'm sure the humans won't mind another explosion here."

AC130U Gunship <Encore> banks hard as Boomslang shoots past him, the big gunship standing up on the starboard wingtip to keep the faster Seeker in view. The minigun fires again, its familiar, if rather rude, noise accompanied by a trail of smoke - showing where one of the AC130s nicknames, Puff the Magic Dragon, comes from.

<<Or maybe I ain't stupid. Three o you, one o' me.>>

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> strikes F/A-18E "Super Hornet" <Boomslang> with his Pphhfffrrrrrt! (Pistol) attack!

"Uh," Fusillade says, covering her nose and moving away from Fulcrum, giving him a dirty look.

Fulcrum says, "You know full well that was Boomslang."

"Teach you to use your weaksauce machinegun on me!" Boomslang emits, transforming as he careens towards the gunship, corkscrewing through the hail of high-velocity rounds and catching a few as he does so. He vanishes with a fizzing electronic sound, but shortly thereafter there's a sharp *clang!* as something grabs onto Encore's wing.

The F-18 produces that distinctive transformation sound as it flips around and pops out limbs to assume a humanoid shape.

Combat: Boomslang activates his cloaking field and vanishes from sight!

Fusillade then relents, quickly, and watches him skip (or at least attempt to) the fused glass across the water. "Will strongly consider that, sure. Constructicons like cyberforming whatever they come across too, so making some locks wouldn't be out of the question either. I like your suggestion about bombing to earthmove," she says, flicking a finger under the tip of his goatee, before glancing up at Encore's erratic flight. "He got a hit! And there goes Boomer. Oooh, this is gettin' good, I kinda wanna go up there."

AC130U Gunship <Encore> yelps at the clang and rolls hard, trying to shake off the sudden contact on his wing.

<<There's Klingons on the starboard bow!>>

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> strikes himself with his Gerroff me ya muppet! (Grab) attack!

"I thought you might" Fulcrum says with a slightly smile. "Hrm, yes.. locks. Hadn't even thought of that." He shades his optics again, following the frantic aerial combat. Looks like Boomslang's done his disapearing act again. "It'd be short work if we were all attacking him. Fun though."

The unwelcome weight drops off Encore's wingtip, and there is a hiss of jet engines as Boomslang maneuvers in midair. It sounds like he's circling around to the upper side. "Get your own!" his flanged drawl calls down to the other two Decepticons as he tries to land on the evading Autobot.

Combat: Boomslang analyzes Encore for weaknesses.

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> sets his defense level to Guarded.

AC130U Gunship <Encore> continues to go widly evasive, performing barrel-rolls and corkscrews madly in an attempt to a) make it harder to grab onto or b) catch the invisi-con by surprise with a wingtip.

<<Stop hidin' ya big jessie.>>

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> misses himself with his Clang! Wingtip! (Grab) attack!

"You should enter the Ig-Yak contest next Space Olympics, ha ha!" Fusillade shouts in glee up at Boomslang, before smirking a bit at Fulcrum. "And what part of this whole project would be fun for YOU? You really perked up at the idea of those air-fed forges..."

"I couldn't come to visit you without bringing you a present," says the voice from right in front of Encore. Something latches onto his nose with a bang; the impact distorts Boomslang's cloaking field and reveals the seeker, with what could only be a grenade in his hand, clinging to the front of Encore's nosecone. Cocking his fist back, Boomslang tries to smash in Encore's windscreen and set a grenade the size of a fifty-gallon oil drum in the pilot's seat.

Combat: Suddenly, Boomslang appears out of fat air!

Combat: Sneak Attack!!

Combat: Boomslang strikes AC130U Gunship <Encore> with his Frag Grenade attack!

AC130U Gunship <Encore> yelps as the grenade goes off in his cockpit, in the co-pilot's seat rather than the pilot's seat.

<<...frag dis...>> he broadcasts, gunning his engines hard and blasting over the islands low and fast, evidently attempting to run for California, trailing a little smoke.

Combat: AC130U Gunship <Encore> begins retreating, outrunning all pursuit.

"There's only one, it's rude not to share!" Fulcrum shouts up to Boomslang just as he pops back into view. "Processing that much scrap would be a good task, and would look very impressive when we're at full production, especially at night. Set the forge units up outside and just drag the ships straight up to them to be broken down."

Boomslang drops away from the Spooky and swirls away in the slipstream, opening his hands in an apologetic gesture to Fulcrum. "Well, now there's only none, so I guess you're too late."

Fusillade's face breaks into a wide grin as Fulcrum engages. And then, there's a big detonation. "Huh, he's smart. He can count, and knows when to retreat. We're pretty much done here anyway, Boomslang. I don't think that they mean like 'surveying' like land surveying anyway when it comes to the shark."

Boomslang unfolds his wingtips and glides back down to land by Fulcrum and Fusillade. "That's a relief, I don't know how to use one of those surveying tripods anyhow. What do you two think of it? Good shark locale? Plenty of the organic ones."

Fulcrum says, "Could be useful for defence, give them cybernetic brain boxes and weaponry."

Boomslang picks an unexploded 20mm shell out of his armor and flicks it into the water, skipping it across the shallow bay.

Fulcrum frowns. He can NEVER get that right!

"Lasers," Fusillade nods toward Fulcrum.

"Lasers on the heads again?" suggests Boomslang.

The 25mm round bounces four times and then hits an innocent shelled animal of some kind, where it detonates. Mmm, crab-gibs.

Fulcrum says, "I was thinking some sort of harpoon and winch system combined with metal teeth, but yes, sharks with lasers on their heads could work."

You say, "Oh, mechanical! That's be less prone to shorting from waterlogging.""
 * splish* *splish* *splish* *splish* *bang!*

"I kind of like the harpoon idea, it's more nautical- ha, look at that! Stupid organic life." Boomslang laughs and points at the exploding blue crab.

Fusillade leans forward, wingblades whipping out to their full span, even as her arms lock backward in place as the rear fuselage. Her torso folds out to the become the cockpit of a space capable B-1R Lancer, ready for flight!

With the usual ratcheting sound, Boomslang spins and flips and turns into a fighter jet.

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==================== Decepticon ================================= Message: 2/76                     Posted        Author Brief: Bikini Atoll               Fri Nov 05    Fusillade --

~text only~

Accompanied Units Fulcrum and Boomslang (previously assigned this task by Cyclonus) to evaluate Bikini Atoll its suitability for parking Bruce. The southeastern rim will require demolition, but the internal lagoon would provide a fine mooring location. There is a nearby underwater ship graveyard that could be smelted down for raw materials, and residual radiation from former human fission bomb detonations would deter casual observation -- except by the new, effectual Autobot C-130 that buzzed us while we were on the ground. Boomslang wrecked his slag, though. Will continue surveying other areas, hopefully less remote since we've been spoiled by Mexico's quick access to a lot of juicy targets. Fusillade, out.

~end~

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