tampered | Log; Complete

Log; Complete

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.

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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.

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."

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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."

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?"

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.

♪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 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.

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? ^^;;]

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~))

Getting across "I cannot talk properly because my voice processor might be in the vicinity of my transmission at this time" was too difficult, he decided. He settled for a simple ♪We never did too much talkin' anyway~ don't think twice, it's all right.♪

He started his engine and swerved backwards and to one side a bit, to peer at Pantalaimon with the optic sensors located in his left headlight. It looked like an animal, but Lyra had talked to it as if it understood.

"That's a 'no' then? All right," Lyra said, leaning back against the same tall splinter Pantalaimon was perching on.

"What's your name then?" She asked, blinking in irritation as she realized Pantalaimon was trying to share a thought with her, a memory of another mechanism powered by a spirit. Her eyes widened for an instant, before snapping back to her previous relaxed state. If this was something sent by her mother, well... she'd have to keep her eyes open, and Pantalaimon would keep his distance.

He didn't have a song handy for that one, but a quick check of Shwiggle sufficed.

♪...Bumblebee
More than just a fantasy...♪ he replied, edging a little closer to Pan. There was something off about the creature in his sensors, but he wasn't sure what.

"Bumblebee? Is that your name?" Lyra asked hesitantly as Pantalaimon eyed the vehicle warily and tensed, ready to flee.

"This city... getting out en't easy, but it's possible," Lyra added, "And there are these... strange things happen every few days, and we call 'em 'curses'."

♪That'z my name (uh huh)~♪

Bumblebee paused a bit and then backed off. Whatever the "dæmon" was, he'd get to the bottom of how it could sense him later. It was with the girl, and the girl was being helpful. He shut his engine down and idled in the hopes that it would decrease the tension.

♪Curses on this valley
And the lands on up ahead-

Curse the sleek machine-?♪

Whatever these malaises were, he doubted they would apply to him, but better to be certain...

"Probably," Lyra responded, "They affect everyone else- doesn't matter what they are, or what world they come from, or how strong they are. It's part of what makes this place so strange- they happen every few days, most of the time they only last a day, and they can make anything happen."

Pantalaimon relaxed slightly, and Lyra leaned back again.

"They can be anything, pretty much. None of them make much sense, but they're mostly just humiliating instead of dangerous."

Bumblebee relaxed. He was still unconvinced that the curses could affect him, but as long as they wouldn't actually hurt him, he could probably cope if he was wrong. Hopefully he wouldn't be here long enough to find out.

♪I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds-♪ he said confidently. After a moment he added ♪Rendevous then I'm through with you.♪

That led, of course, to the most important question.

♪This city’s made us crazy and we must get out-

Try to guide me in the right direction...?♪

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.

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.

Lyra smiled, though it was a slightly bitter smile.

"Got that right. But... if we knew a way out, we'd take it. People have gotten out before, but no one knows how they done it- it's like getting in here that way, I think."

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.

That was not acceptable. He had places to be, a trust to fulfill, and his attempts to contact Optimus Prime or any of the others kept turning up a blank.

♪Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline.♪ He rolled forward a bit to emphasize his point.

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