ENDGAME ROUGH DRAFT
WARNING: THE BELOW CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Mostly I'm doing this to check my HTML.
That said, if you don't care about spoiling yourself silly, comments/crit is welcome.
Summer dawn in the City.
Dawn was about the only time in a metropolis of this size when things were quiet. Certainly, there were cars about, either people going home for the late shift or arriving for the early; drunks stumbling home from a hard night (even on a Monday morning, this was true), street cleaners going about their work.
The morning sunlight glinted off the tops of the skyscrapers, leaving the streets themselves still cloaked in shadows, great canyons of steel and glass. It was cool for the moment, but the clear skies offered a promise of stifling heat to come.
It reminded him painfully of home.
Soon.
He opened up his cell phone.
“Slade - order drone units six through fourteen to cordon off the area. Have units one through six and fifteen through twenty accompany Mecha Sonic, Sentinel Prime, and the Master into the building. I will take control of unit F-1 personally; tell the other F-units to set up an aerial perimeter in case of any flighted opponents.”
He did not wait to see if Slade followed his orders. If all went well, his minions would erupt from the sewers, flash into existence from well-placed subspace portals hidden in mailboxes and in trees, swarm the area - grim Cybertronian drone soldiers armed with stun rifles, courtesy a design that Shockwave had originally developed for Perceptor.
“Slipstream, Terrorsaur, Shockwave, Dr. Horrible - come with me,” he said.
With a familiar sound of squealing plates and crackling energy, he transformed, tiny wings (just installed the day before) splitting from his back, his feet shifting into jet engines. His body from the neck down was no longer even remotely human, and it gleamed in the morning light - perfect steel painted in silver, burgundy and blue. He unfurled his ceremonial violet cape. Had there been any breeze it would have fluttered - as it was, it hung limp in the dead air.
(To tell the truth, he looked patently ridiculous, but honestly, try telling him that.)
He took to the air, the others he had called following close behind. They hurtled through the air to the top of the Empire State Building and circled the top, slowly.
With a flick of his wrist, Starscream shot out a number of tiny machines that latched onto the sides of the building.
“Slipstream, Terrorsaur - set up a perimiter with the drones. Dr. Horrible, Shockwave; both of you will aid me in calibrating the machine and building our platform!”
With that, Starscream began to fiddle with a translucent screen that he pulled seemingly from nowhere (in reality, from one of many subspace pockets he'd hidden on his person) and began inputting information. As he did, the tiny machines began to drill into the sides of the building, chewing into the steel and concrete and changing it. Slowly, a structure blossomed out from the top of the building, huge crystals and steel pylons seeming to grow from midair. With the three of them working in concert it was only a few minutes before the building seemed to have grown a hideous metal flower from its top.
Starscream touched down on the platform lightly. Circutry glowed violet under his feet, reacting to the presence of a spark. Steel and crystal continued to grow, a great canopy sprouting over the top of the platform even as a bank of access panels grew up from the floor in concentric rings around the center. Around the outer edges, still more flower-like objects grew - broadcasting dishes.
In the center of it all was a jagged metal arch, its inside webbed with thin gossamer wire, like the lair of some deadly insect. Behind it was a long, bladelike crystal held in a mechanical arm.
He was pleased with himself, really. He'd wondered how he would get all this elegant and deadly machinery to a place where he could actually broadcast properly, when the solution had occurred to him - place the raw materials in subspace, and then create an army of self-replicating machines based on scraplet schematics to execute a construction program. Brilliant, really. He wondered why it hadn't occurred to him before.
“Shockwave! The prisoner, if you would! Place him in the device!” he snapped, gesturing to the arch. “Dr. Horrible! Begin calibration of the broadcast frequency based on the protocols I told you. Slipstream, Terrorsaur, take a flight of drones and hold the perimeter; no doubt our heroes will notice before too long..."<
That said, if you don't care about spoiling yourself silly, comments/crit is welcome.
Summer dawn in the City.
Dawn was about the only time in a metropolis of this size when things were quiet. Certainly, there were cars about, either people going home for the late shift or arriving for the early; drunks stumbling home from a hard night (even on a Monday morning, this was true), street cleaners going about their work.
The morning sunlight glinted off the tops of the skyscrapers, leaving the streets themselves still cloaked in shadows, great canyons of steel and glass. It was cool for the moment, but the clear skies offered a promise of stifling heat to come.
It reminded him painfully of home.
Soon.
He opened up his cell phone.
“Slade - order drone units six through fourteen to cordon off the area. Have units one through six and fifteen through twenty accompany Mecha Sonic, Sentinel Prime, and the Master into the building. I will take control of unit F-1 personally; tell the other F-units to set up an aerial perimeter in case of any flighted opponents.”
He did not wait to see if Slade followed his orders. If all went well, his minions would erupt from the sewers, flash into existence from well-placed subspace portals hidden in mailboxes and in trees, swarm the area - grim Cybertronian drone soldiers armed with stun rifles, courtesy a design that Shockwave had originally developed for Perceptor.
“Slipstream, Terrorsaur, Shockwave, Dr. Horrible - come with me,” he said.
With a familiar sound of squealing plates and crackling energy, he transformed, tiny wings (just installed the day before) splitting from his back, his feet shifting into jet engines. His body from the neck down was no longer even remotely human, and it gleamed in the morning light - perfect steel painted in silver, burgundy and blue. He unfurled his ceremonial violet cape. Had there been any breeze it would have fluttered - as it was, it hung limp in the dead air.
(To tell the truth, he looked patently ridiculous, but honestly, try telling him that.)
He took to the air, the others he had called following close behind. They hurtled through the air to the top of the Empire State Building and circled the top, slowly.
With a flick of his wrist, Starscream shot out a number of tiny machines that latched onto the sides of the building.
“Slipstream, Terrorsaur - set up a perimiter with the drones. Dr. Horrible, Shockwave; both of you will aid me in calibrating the machine and building our platform!”
With that, Starscream began to fiddle with a translucent screen that he pulled seemingly from nowhere (in reality, from one of many subspace pockets he'd hidden on his person) and began inputting information. As he did, the tiny machines began to drill into the sides of the building, chewing into the steel and concrete and changing it. Slowly, a structure blossomed out from the top of the building, huge crystals and steel pylons seeming to grow from midair. With the three of them working in concert it was only a few minutes before the building seemed to have grown a hideous metal flower from its top.
Starscream touched down on the platform lightly. Circutry glowed violet under his feet, reacting to the presence of a spark. Steel and crystal continued to grow, a great canopy sprouting over the top of the platform even as a bank of access panels grew up from the floor in concentric rings around the center. Around the outer edges, still more flower-like objects grew - broadcasting dishes.
In the center of it all was a jagged metal arch, its inside webbed with thin gossamer wire, like the lair of some deadly insect. Behind it was a long, bladelike crystal held in a mechanical arm.
He was pleased with himself, really. He'd wondered how he would get all this elegant and deadly machinery to a place where he could actually broadcast properly, when the solution had occurred to him - place the raw materials in subspace, and then create an army of self-replicating machines based on scraplet schematics to execute a construction program. Brilliant, really. He wondered why it hadn't occurred to him before.
“Shockwave! The prisoner, if you would! Place him in the device!” he snapped, gesturing to the arch. “Dr. Horrible! Begin calibration of the broadcast frequency based on the protocols I told you. Slipstream, Terrorsaur, take a flight of drones and hold the perimeter; no doubt our heroes will notice before too long..."<