Log; Complete

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

When; August 13, early morning
Rating; PG
Characters; Open
Summary; Bumblebee arrives in the City with a bang. Intro post.
Log;

The City looked like it might still be sleeping, a little - or at least thinking about dozing off. The morning had just made up its mind to get going, and the air was still very quiet, light just barely illuminating the endless circling of the carousel. Within another moment, though, the carousel was lit by the fiery ball that plunged to the earth next to it, throwing up chunks of pavement and splinters of the rock beneath. The crater was surprisingly small when you considered that the metallic ball inside it must have dropped from orbit. It was a perfect shell for its unlikely meteorite, which furtively unrolled itself and looked around frantically. Making that much noise was never a good thing, it was aware - attracting attention was the last thing it wanted to do.

A moment later, hopefully before anyone would have thought to look out or investigate, a sleek and suspiciously unblemished car that some would know to call a Camaro sat next to the wreckage of the street. It was trying to radiate innocence as it got its bearings. It was failing.

Comments

[small-flame.livejournal.com]

The crash was enough to send at least one member of the city jolting out of bed. Long no stranger to surprise attacks, Basil had become a light sleeper out of necessity. It didn't take for the boy to roll out of bed and tug on a pair of worn jeans under his longer t-shirt. He slipped into his shoes as he stumbled from the door, searching for the source of the disturbance.

The weight of the pill bottle in his pocket was a temptation that was hard not to follow through on in the face of this new terror. What met his eyes was not entirely what he had suspected, though.

"An automobile..." he remarked, frowning slightly. The ticking in his head had stopped.

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

Bumblebee hadn't been in the City long enough to register the sudden silence, but he could certainly tell he was being examined. Maybe it would have been a better idea to get out of the vicinity of his landing site while before anyone could show up, but he was pretty sure there hadn't been time. His most important objective was to maintain a low profile until he could deduce why this place had interfered with his navigational systems - he had to think of a way to hide, fast.

He switched gears to neutral, cautiously, hoping his slow backward drift wouldn't be noticed.

[small-flame.livejournal.com]

Basil frowned as the car began to slowly move backwards. It was strange. Certainly a car as new as this shouldn't have braking problems. Perhaps its owner was incompetent. He had seen much of that in the cars owned by some of the older members of other families.

He glanced about, trying to see if there was anyone else about, "Where art thine owner, I wonder."

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

It was working! Yes! Bumblebee angled himself over slightly to exploit a slight dip in the road, moving faster...at least until his left back tire ground to a halt on one of the pieces of debris that littered the area. Unfortunate. He really had to learn to check behind him more often.

Resigned to staying put until the human had satisfied his curiousity, he locked his doors with a click. No point in getting stolen.

[lyra-of-dust.livejournal.com]

Lyra had started to run towards the noise when she heard it- mostly out of curiosity. She glanced around until she saw the car.

Too innocent to be just a car, Pan told her, and Lyra navigated her way though the wreckage to tap lightly on the hood, and peer through the windows to look for a driver, as Pantalaimon watched suspiciously a few feet away, his pine marten nose twitching dissaprovingly at her boldness. Lyra could feel his suspicion.

"Doesn't smell right?" she asked him mildly, "It's a person, en't it. You can tell."

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

The "person" in question's engine made an abortive turning-over sound of surprise; he curbed the impulse before he could actually start, and looked at the human and her companion with fresh optic sensors. She was clearly something humanoid, but the humans he knew couldn't detect the difference between someone in a transformed state and the human device they emulated. It took Cybertronian tech to do that.

♪What's this, what's this? There's color everywhere-♪ he ventured, with a bit of static crackle from the radio.

[lyra-of-dust.livejournal.com]

"This city... it's in a sort of universe between universes. Everyone here's from someplace else," Lyra explained, "This place- oh, it's strange! It en't like other worlds at all, in some ways."

"What are you? You're some kind of person- Pantalaimon's a dæmon, he can tell that sort of thing," she continued. Pantalaimon was glaring at her, but she didn't need to turn around to see that. She wondered idly if it would be able to figure out that Pantalaimon wasn't entirely separate from her, and that he was was hardly an animal.

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

Not like other worlds? That might explain why he'd crashed here. But if it was between other universes...well, unfortunately, now was not the time to speculate. He was trying to carry on a conversation with this girl, and he did not want to transform in such a public spot until he knew it was safe. And what was a dæmon, anyway?

♪In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea-

So we sailed out to the sun
Until we found a sea of green-

And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door-♪ he explained.

[lyra-of-dust.livejournal.com]

Lyra tilted her head and tried to think. Why was it just playing back recordings? Well, she could try to guess what it meant, at least.

"You're loooking for your friends? I'm sorry, but we never seen anything like you before. Maybe you're the only one here?"

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

♪It's no surprise to me, I am my own worst enemy-♪, Bumblebee responded morosely. He wished he could talk properly in this form. This was a roundabout way of getting information.

♪You could hide beside me, maybe for a while, and I won't tell no one your name-?♪ he asked hopefully. Very roundabout indeed.

[lyra-of-dust.livejournal.com]

Lyra didn't know what he was trying to say with the first bit, but the second one made a bit more sense.

"But you don't know my- oh, my name? It's Lyra Silvertongue," she explained, "Can't you talk properly? It's hard to understand you this way."

Pantalaimon's suspicion was receding in the face of his curiosity, and he climbed up on one of the taller splinters of rock to survey the newcomer better.

Be careful, Lyra reminded herself, be careful and think about what Will would do.

[clever-enough.livejournal.com]

Lloyd had come running when he'd heard the explosion -- he was starting to learn to expect anything around here, but this was something new. And possibly dangerous, so he approached the crash site with caution.

What he saw there confused him. A lot. "What's that thing?" he asked no one in particular, walking towards the weird yellow vehicle with a frown on his face.

[ooc: ugh, sorry for the short post -- and the fact that I gotta run now. We shall continue later, yes? ^^;;]

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

Bumblebee despaired of ever getting away - there was quite a crowd now. He stayed completely still and inanimate, hoping Lloyd would shortly get the message and go away.

It wasn't as if his luck had been good today, though.

((Right back at you. DX And certainly~))

*Post Cruising With Arion*

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

Before Lloyd could get there, however, Bumblebee and Arion were off. If anyone was paying attention, they arrived back at the square twice more before Bumblebee figured out the direction in which he wanted to go.

Re: *Post Cruising With Arion

[clever-enough.livejournal.com]

Lloyd had been paying attention, though -- he'd never seen a machine like this before, and he wasn't about to get blindsided by another curse, not after walking around with no face for an entire weekend.

So, ever so stealthily, he followed the yellow thing, careful to keep his distance without loosing sight of it.

Re: *Post Cruising With Arion

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

Once Arion had left the alleyway in which they'd turned up, Bumblebee did a quick check for other human life signs likely to turn up at inopportune moments and then shook himself free of the car shape with a million tiny clicks and clanks as his body slotted into its natural form. He shook himself slightly, then shrank back against the far wall and kneeled, careful to keep below the roofline. He couldn't utilize all his sensors properly as a Camaro, and he needed to find this "network."

[clever-enough.livejournal.com]

Lloyd peered around the corner, and what he saw wasn't exactly something he could explain, or understand. He gaped at the spectacle of the giant robot for a second or two, barely managing to keep the what the hell?! completely internal.

He shrank back a little, not willing to let the thing out of his sight.

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

Bumblebee wasn't paying attention. He was busy checking his equivalent of Network Connections, finding the city network, and making sure his link was secure. It'd be much easier if he could log into it while in his car shape. And start trying to hack it, at least enough to get the information he needed.

His mood quite improved, he started to stand up again, saw Lloyd, and froze.

[clever-enough.livejournal.com]

With the robot facing him, Lloyd could see that the thing had a face. He jumped back, and yelled, "Wait, what--"

And then he tried to relax. After all, he didn't know the thing was evil or anything -- it hadn't done anything threatening. "Um... are you a .... person?" he tried, glancing left and right, wondering if anyone else could see this.

[heronoday.livejournal.com]

Arion had heard the racket and only cautiously approached. This place constantly had him on edge, although that wasn't really anything new. Once he had gotten near enough, he made out a rather distinct shape in the debris.

"A Camaro?" he said, torn between amusement and confusion. The scene screamed "movie set", but that was hardly surprising; this whole city was like something from a movie.

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

Yet another human come to investigate. Bumblebee considered just driving out of there as fast as he could, to avoid all of this commotion; he even turned himself on in preparation. But Arion was too close now, and he rather sheepishly turned himself off again, hoping that the human hadn't noticed. He wouldn't have been able to drive out without running someone over, anyway.

[heronoday.livejournal.com]

Arion raised an eye, almost certain that the car had been on a moment ago. "You're not really a car, I'm guessing," he said. This place was so completely ridiculous that it was more unlikely for the car to just be a car. Had he even seen another automobile since getting here? "You're kinda conspicuous," he offered, merely stating the obvious.

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

The point was being inconspicuous. This was not a good turn of events. He attempted to look extremely inanimate and normal and not at all noteworthy, but he could tell it wasn't working - he'd picked this model of car because it was flashy and notable, to impress Sam and Mikaela, and just getting a little dusty from sitting parked wasn't going to change that.

He tried flicking the passenger side lock up again instead.

[heronoday.livejournal.com]

Hearing a soft click, Arion walked closer to the vehicle. He was curious and, since the car hadn't tried to hurt him or anything, hesitantly reached out to open the door. He didn't really expect it to work.

[concept-camaro.livejournal.com]

The door opened easily enough. With a human inside, Bumblebee figured, his leaving the area would look a lot less strange, and as Arion already seemed to suspect him of being out of the ordinary...besides, Arion's movement had opened up an escape route.