Relentless Hunger, all welcome

[FireHex]

Bane let out a roar as he felt his circuits took to sizzling a bit as he transformed into his beast mode. Stomping his foot in his anger, Bane watch as Ulgris was no in pain and was still attacking his base. Of all the frack.....

"Agur, what are we going to do Hunter?" growled Bane, "Either I slag him now or throw you to slag him,"

[Streak]

Last post of mine before you guys go, I swear!

The Conquest was lost to Ulgris. The base was inundated with the radiation, and still vibrant with the harmful particles emanated by this prison-world. All of the matter nearby would be similarly immunized against its dominion. That meant that it would need to kill the transformers assembled against it with what it had. That was unlikely, as well it knew. Nonetheless, if it stayed in here, they would simply use more bombs against it; it was not aware of how many they had, but it knew that they could withstand the assault of that radiation more readily than it could. It had killed those within easily enough, and if it consolidated all it had and fought intelligently, it might yet triumph.

The Prince of Gulmrk, for all the power he possessed, would not be a suitable form for facing those outside. It would need something with more ranged firepower, and with less density, as neither of the two forms it had taken while inside the Conquest was light enough not to sink into the soil outside of the colony ship. It needed something with enough surface area not to get bogged down in the loose soil, and enough ranged firepower to return attacks against the adversaries it would surely face.

Still, none of the guns that Cybertronians used against one another had yet yielded the kind of sweeping destruction that it desired against them, and there were too many for it to engage in a prolonged firefight. Slowly at first, the four-legged ceramic warrior began to morph into something bloated and repulsive. The thing Ulgris was becoming, unlike the crystal barnacle and the prince, had never actually lived on any other planet. It was a biological reconstruction of a thing that could once be found on its creator's gas-mining ships. They had been long tubes of coiled metal surrounded by spongier, chemically resistant materials designed to help suck in nutritious or profitable gases from surrounding worlds. On the end of each prehensile tube would be found a complex apparatus, the magnetic drill, which could both drive away harmful contaminant clouds and simultaneously draw in the desired vapor product into the collection tube. In this case, the tube would be used to give Ulgris the range it needed. The drill would be its weapon.

In place of malleable synthetic skins, Ulgris surrounded the powerful coiled-metal endoskeleton with a bloated, mucus-covered flesh exterior, to protect itself from the radiation, while the integral parts of the apparatus were remained as designed. The mucus contained electrolytes which would conduct the effects of the drill through the squishy outer-layer. The proud warrior of the clay people rapidly transformed into this repulsive thing, now much much greater in volume, but no heavier, and still narrow enough to fit through the halls of the Conquest. With a rapid thrashing, slithering motion, the slime-drenched worm slid out of the Conquest's destroyed passage way. Dozens of eyes opened along its length, staring down the transformers even as they opened fire.

This post has been edited by Streak on Sep 24 2009, 07:18 AM

[Big Kahuna]

Moonhunter was optimistic, even if Bane was too thick to understand what was going on. The bombs had worked, and the grin he had in beast mode was carried over to his robot form as he transformed once again. There was hope for this day, after all. Moonhunter had never fought an entity like Ulgris before, and what he didn’t know about it frightened him a little. Up until now, he hadn’t been completely convinced that it could be stopped. Now he had a glimmer of hope. “Well obviously the radiation weakened it. It left your base,” he said, pointing at the new form of the enemy as it emerged from the Conquest. “Now, we just shoot it until there is nothing left. Maybe even scrub the area with radiation one more time to make sure it stays dead.”

It was all a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Radiation could have harmful effects on the native biological life of this planet, but if they did not destroy Ulgris then there might not be a planet after a while. Ulgris would destroy them all, and he doubted the entity had any concern for preserving ecosystems. “What the slag is that?” he asked as a creature unlike anything he had seen before came into view. “Oh who cares. All fighters, vaporize it!” He took aim with his rifle and fired. Between himself and the hundred or so armed warriors all shooting at the same spot, they had to destroy Ulgris quickly and thoroughly… right?

--------------------

“You heard your commander, Maximals” Toxicon hissed from his vantage point. Balancing both the ionic rifle and his acid-pellet gun in each hand, Toxicon began rapidly alternating shots between each weapon. “Make the creature burn!” While he knew technically that acid did not burn, it caused similar pain and sometimes even left similar scars, depending on the substance it was exposed to. It was good enough for him, so long as it destroyed what he wanted it too. It was a slow-working weapon sometimes, but he had his fellow Predacons and—the though sickened him if he thought about it too much—the Maximals to cover the limitations of his weaponry.

[Darkchan08]

"Do this, do that," Grounder muttered to himself, "feels like I've been hearing this for a month now."

Transforming from beast mode to robot mode, the lumbering Maximal unleashed his rifle and began to load a heavy clip of potent, acidic pellet shells. Taking a position among the others, he started to fire upon Ulgris, trying his best to aim for what he thought to be potentially vulnerable spots. He called out to Moonhunter,

"My best guess, he's been fatally wounded. No creature could survive such a blast of radiation, not even the Grimace! At this point, cellular integrity should begin to dissolve."

[Gravity_Dragon]

Recoil was nonplussed. The radiation had taken it's toll on the ship, but Ulgris still lived, and slithered out of the Conquest like some kind of nightmare. He transformed again, and pulled his electron rifle from it's back storage and began firing at the thing's eyes as he moved further away, planting a few explosive traps along the way, just in case the thing should attempt to follow him.

He finally found a nicely shielded spot nearly two hundred yards distant, and pulled himself into the cover, all while still firing. He altered his fire controls to his off hand, and pulled his cannon from it's storage. Within seconds, he was anchored and in position.

The cannon was charged, and loaded. He sighted in on one of the slimy thing's eyes and fired. The distinct concussion sounded throughout the surrounding as the round left the barrel, and then he spotted what looked like weapons. Good, something else to shoot at. He took aim, and fired at the base of one of the long fleshy appendages.

[Streak]

The fire began, and immediately Ulgris registered damage all over its body. Something was wrong with the electron-bonds it had formed in its outer layer of matter; they were supposed to be manifold stronger than was typical for their matter, and yet they were parting as would ordinary flesh under the torrent of acidic and laser fire. The crackle of jumping electrical energy began and then roared out around the tendrils at the tube-like entity's anterior end. Its body, being sliced and melted by myriad beat and projectile weapons, quickly slid through the earth, darting with alarming speed over to the first cluster of transformers--all predacons.

It did not rear up, but stayed as low to the ground as possible. There were thirteen of them standing there, pumping fire into it, but their fire was being refracted and redirected through the tendrils. Suddenly, those tentacles were among them, and fierce magnetic force began dragging at the fiber of every cybertronian within. The lot of them were ripped to shreds in seconds. Ulgris's weapon concept had been extremely effective, but even as it slaughtered them more efficiently than it had before, their defenses were much stronger against it. The same sniper from before had targeted the apparatus housing the magnetic machinery, and was blasting tentacles off of its front. It was not long before the damage attained was so great that Ulgris knew it would need to assume a new shape. Even so, it shot toward the sniper like a dart, but the acid-rounds from its allies quickly slowed its progress, and defeated its hopes when their rounds found its weapon and quickly obliterated its integrity as a complex magnetic machine.

Ulgris, surrendering its attack on the sniper, quickly coiled back within itself, much of its flesh sloughing off as fire continued to plow through its skin. It was surrendering a large percentage of its mass to take a new shape, but it was only a matter of time before they killed it this way, and because something seemed to be wrong with the electron bonds of its amassed matter, it couldn't depend on being able to seize more later. It would need to conserve it as best it could.

Suddenly, several long tubes exploded out from the coils of the dead worm, and light flashed repeatedly from the end of each. They were gun barrels, of the same type as the Conquest's defense systems. Flashes of laser-light erupted from twelve different weapons, all aimed at where its enemies had last been standing when it had retreated into itself. The thing inside was a strange vehicle, guided by two treaded tracks and three wheels. The treads began spinning, gouging the earth, and the wheels began going the other direction, attempting to counter act the thrust of the treads. It was inefficient work, but as the moments dragged on and gun fire streamed out from its position, it slowly dug in and hunkered down into a slowly deepening fox-hole. Now it would aim to outlast them, in hopes that they had no more great ordnance to throw its way.

[Big Kahuna]

Watching Ulgris move and shift nightmarishly reminded Moonhunter of a bad acid trip, though he had the sense not to say so aloud. It was a gruesome being, and he felt a spark of sympathy for the Predacons who fell prey to it. Predacon or Maximal, right now it didn’t matter—they were united, fighting an enemy as one, as their ancestors had done to defeat Unicron and then the Neo-Decepticons and the Swarm. If only they could learn something from these experiences. For the insanely long life spans they could live, Cybertronians were a very stubborn race. How else could one explain a war that lasted six million years?

“You were saying, Grounder?” Moonhunter yelled above the roar of combat as Ulgris emerged in a new form. Finally though, he saw an opening. Ulgris had made a fatal error: this form was slow moving, and shedding energy fast as it returned fire. And their weapons were hurting it. If they kept back long enough and didn’t allow it to feed off any more Cybertronians, eventually it had to run out of power.

“Keep as far away from it as you can!” he called out to everyone. “We can’t outfight something like this. We can only wear it down and outlast it.” It was ironic that he and Ulgris were thinking the same thoughts. But then, warfare was a very logic-reliant affair, when one didn’t pause to think about what they were doing.

“BANE! Look out!” without thinking, he rammed into the side of temporary ally, pushing him out of the way just as weapons fire ripped past where they had been standing a moment earlier. “I… well… that was odd. Don’t make me have to save you again.” Shaking his head it bewilderment, he returned his focus to the monster. He didn’t want to think about what he had just done for his enemy.

[Streak]

The fight wore on. The fire pouring out from the monster's position was relentless, and slowly but surely eroded many of the better hiding places around the yard in front of the Conquest. Optical receivers coated in loose skin would occasionally rise up from the protection of the deteriorated worm body to reorient the fire of the guns, but while the area was becoming a warzone, Ulgris was consuming its mass to produce energy for the guns. Soon, its fire became sporadic, and it began to re-evaluate its situation.

Return fire continued, and eventually the worm flesh had completely dissolved under the torrent of fire, and the alien's new form was receiving most enemy fire. Without the reliable super-strength of its electron bonds, none of its forms could withstand such a deluge for long, and Ulgris calculated that before long, any appreciable form, biotic or otherwise, would be destroyed completely; or at least enough for the transformers to close in and finish the job up close. That not being an acceptable outcome, it changed tactics yet again. Forsaking its outer layer of matter as it had before, the artificial intelligence quickly crafted a form within the war-machine, enhanced the strength of its basic design as it had before, and just as the acid was about to bore through its thick bio-steel hull, it opened the top hatch of the tank and leapt out.

Four wings roared into life, slicing through the air with sudden ferocity, and soaring up, up, up into the sky. Streak's auto-gun screamed vibrant yellow death down on its foes as the dragonfly rapidly gained altitude. There were no flyers, Ulgris could escape. It would take a long time to gain enough mass to build a ship from scratch, but escaping today was key to its success tomorrow. Streak's familiar smirk twisted the alien's lip before all six compartments in its chest opened up, and the once-predacon, once-maximal's hunter-killer missiles ripped outward, before raining down on its foes.

[Big Kahuna]

Visibility was decreasing as the maelstrom of energy being released stirred up the earth around them. Were in not for the energy sensors all Cybertronians were endows with, they would not be able to tell friend from foe. In the back of his mind Moonhunter pondered the fact that they were catalyzing entropy with so much energy being released, but shoved those thoughts away. Existentialism made his head hurt.

They were running out of time; radiation warnings began to scroll in a corner of his vision. He ignored them for now, but already he could see several Predacons being forced to revert back to their beast modes, removed from the battle for now. He felt a surge of hope as he could see something begin to emerge from Ulgris. He was shedding more mass, which meant his plan was working. Any triumph was soon replaced by shock as he saw what came out, though. "Streak?" he mumbled, momentarily taken off balance.

But he knew it wasn't the fallen former-member of his team. As soon as he saw his chest open up Moonhunter began screaming warnings. Everything seemed so distant as the explosions wracked the ground. His own audio sensors rang surreally. Rolling to avoid the missiles, Moonhunter brought his rifle to bear once more. He had had enough, it was time to end this. Taking several shots, he destroyed the faux-Streak's wings.

[Streak]

Ulgris continued flying into the air, but soon enough it found all four of the wings provided by Streak's form riddled with holes, and soon after, nearly shaved off. Whoever was doing the firing knew their priorities. The alien began plummeting down to earth. Moonhunter was not the only transformer whose gun was leveled on the ascending creature, however, and as soon as the speed and agility of Streak's flight was denied the intelligence, its chance of avoiding that river of laser light was gone. First one arm, then the other; great holes were blasted through its torso; a leg flew off at the knee, a shoulder pad collapsed. The chitinous chest was exploded outward from behind. The final blow which ended the alien's bid for freedom was the simplest of all: that of gravity taking back what belonged to it.

The pitiful remnant of Streak's form exploded against the onrushing earth like a split garbage sack; mechanical wires and hydraulic veins burst out violently as it hit the earth, and all visual and audio input was cut off. Quickly, the alien began rallying up what matter it had left. It must create a shield for itself, or a burrowing organism. There had been small lifeforms that it could inhabit for a while, it only needed to transform one more time. It would go down...it would save itself. It had begun creating the new shape in the remains of the maximal's head and opening a channel from which to drop down, but even now its intelligent processes knew that the final round of fire would come pouring in before it could finish.

As the tiny burrowing creature was reaching completion, Ulgris registered a sudden, rapid influx of heat and damage to its amassed matter. All electron bonds in its extremities were severed. Damage was quickly internalizing, a combination of lasers, plasma, acid, and radiation from the planet flooded in, destroying everything it had taken. It didn't have the opportunity to identify which of these many things destroyed it; but in the end, something lit up the inner core of its adopted form, and denatured all matter within; including the tiny molecular computer that held everything together. The component parts of the molecular mind disconnected from one another, and the subatomic technology of each section of the computer was cut off from every other part. The intelligence known as Ulgris was lobotomized, and its remarkable brain would remain ever quiescent from that point onward. It would work no evil for its foes, nor good to its long-gone masters, ever again.

This post has been edited by Streak on Oct 5 2009, 06:49 AM