11119/Down the Mountain

Down the Mountain
Date of Scene:	24 February 2020
Location:	Sol System
Synopsis:	Lockdown is on the hunt. This time, his work has brought him to Earth.
Cast of Characters:	Blurr, Lockdown

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Blurr has posed:
    The terrestrial ball of blue, white, and green floats in the dark void of space. Today, Lockdown's job is to track down the Autobot Blurr, who has supposedly stolen some data from a lab in sector 1623. As is often the case, the bounty hunter's client is an individual aligned with the militant Cybertronian faction known as the Decepticons. He hadn't been told what kind of data it was, but was told not to divulge his client's identity or details about the job to anyone, not even other Decepticons. Probably could guess it was a reputation thing. As in this was the person responsible for that lab, and doesn't want Command to know he screwed up and let the enemy get their hands on valuable intel.

    At any rate, the ion trail for Blurr's ship would lead the bounty hunter to the Sol System. It's rumored one of the Arks crashed here with a number of key Autobot leaders aboard, and the crew were thought lost but had recently been discovered alive. Nothing for sure, but could be a reason the he'd come here.

Lockdown has posed:
On the bridge of the Tactician, Lockdown was busy scanning the system. The cloaking field was active, so nothing in the system could see him... but Cybertronian sensors made short work of it as the transport flew in.

Lockdown had seen Terra on his sensors in fly bys before, of course. A bounty hunter was sent to all kinds of really weird places... and especially Lockdown, who has been across /galaxies/ in his line of work.

Still... as primitive as this system was, it didn't seem like a coincidence that Blurr came here right afterwards. Blurr was obviously interested in finding his leader.

Which was fine by Lockdown. Lockdown would dearly love to talk to Optimus himself. Maybe this time he would listen to Lockdown now that he's had time in stasis lock to see how much this war has ruined both sides.

Lockdown comes into orbit around this point, his sensors calibrated for Blurr's signature as he scans the planet for the Autobot.

Blurr has posed:
    A few sweeps, and a signal would appear planetside. It looks like the Autobot landed somewhere in the mountains of British Columbia. Or maybe Alaska. Somewhere near the west coast.

    As for Blurr, his ship is perched on a plateau among the snow-covered mountains, and he has just disembarked. He was planning on heading toward the Ark crash site, but he found himself hesitating. He had to make sure he wasn't being followed...

Lockdown has posed:
if only Lockdown knew Blurr's plan.... as it is, he could only intercept.

Coming down through the atmosphere, Lockdown started his descent down towards the mountain. Lockdown didn't have an alternate form for this planet yet... but honestly? He wasn't planning on staying long enough for it to matter this time.

The hesitation made it easy for the Tactician to smoothly be brought over the general area... and Blurr can likely hear the muffled Cybertronian engine at this point... followed by a quiet *thump* as Lockdown launches a drop pod down towards Blurr, a few dozen meters away. The resounding /CRASH/ could be heard for miles, and no doubt Lockdown started a small avalanche with that.

Nonetheless, the pod bolts pop... and out comes the black and purple form of Lockdown, staring at Blurr.

The notorious bounty hunter had found his target.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr tenses when he sees a signal pop up on his sensor arrays, a drop pod is incoming toward his position. Slag, he knew it! Someone -was- following him.

    Indeed, a ton of snow starts rolling down the mountainside where the pod landed. Thankfully, if anyone has amazing reflexes, Blurr does. He leaps up onto a rocky formation that juts out of the wall of the valley he had been headed down toward to avoid the barrage.

    But once he has collected himself again, he looks up to see not a true Decepticon, but the bounty hunter Lockdown. Huh, well that's interesting--why wouldn't the Decepticons just send one of their own soldiers instead of paying a mercenary? Precious shanix that could have been spent on other war efforts, right?

    Instead of bolting immediately, though, he sort of feigns nonchalance, though he is preparing his weapons clandestinely. "Lockdown. The frag do you want?" he smirks. "If it's my autograph, sorry to disappoint, but I'm kinda in a hurry."

Lockdown has posed:
"Good. If you want to get moving, just hand over the data you took." Lockdown responds, simply. His vocabulator grinding a bit.

From here, Blurr can easily see that Lockdown isn't nearly as armored as most Cybertronians... but given his reputation, that likely just means he's chosen an agile chassis, like Blurr.

Which means any fight between the two... would get very ugly, fast, with their speed.

His right arm mount pops out, and Blurr can see the custom ion blaster within it. If Blurr knows his weapons... he knows that thing is designed to short out his chassis, but leave his spark intact. Perfect for captures.

"I don't care about *you*." The Ion blaster audibly gets loaded as a canister slides into the chamber. "I just want the data. Give it to me, and you can go on your way."

Blurr has posed:
    Oh, Blurr knows what that weapon does. And he expected as much from someone like Lockdown. But can Lockdown hit him, as excellent of a marksmech as he is? Even some of the best snipers have a hard time hitting the speedster. At least, from his perspective, it's true.

    "What data?" he asks, again feigning. This time it's ignorance. "I don't know what the slag you're talking about." He starts to sidestep slightly, attempting to prepare for a flanking maneuver.

Lockdown has posed:
He's seen it all during the Great War. Children, all of them. They think they know better... but they don't. "Kid, if you want to play ignorance, that's fine... but I don't have the time for it."

With that, almost as fast as Blurr is, the ion blaster is aimed directly at his chassis as Lockdown fires a field of ionic energy right at him...

... then fires again once Blurr starts moving, trying to intercept his movements. The first shot was a feint to get him to make his move for prediction.

Blurr has posed:
    "You don't have time to chase after nothing, either!" Blurr taunts. He twists out of the way of the first shot, falls for the feint but manages to re-adjust fast enough to get out of the way of the second as well. The blaster bolts melt ice and snow behind him instead. Well they didn't call him 'Blurr' for nothing, did they?

    As he threw himself onto the ground to avoid the second blast, he slides on the icy terrain and whips out his electrolaser--a weapon similar to Lockdown's in that it is not designed to kill but to temporarily incapacitate. As he slides past the bounty hunter he fires it up toward the mech's waist. Whether it hits or not, he starts the transformation sequence as soon as the high-voltage bolt is off, preparing to make a getaway through the chasm he'd purposefully thrown himself toward.

Lockdown has posed:
A twist of the chassis and the electrolaser flies past Lockdown, causing another minor avalanche due to the sheer force of his chassis hitting the ground in a back flip, then righting himself.

It gives Blurr more than enough time to transform and start heading down the mountain.

Of course, this doesn't get him out of Lockdowns line of sight.

A few 'steps' forward, and Lockdown aims the blaster down into the chasm... aiming carefully.... and popping off ion bolts at Blurr as he goes.

Lockdown is in no hurry, despite what he said to Blurr. He can hunt Blurr across Earth, if he must.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr speeds down through the chasm, swerving wildly left and right to avoid Lockdown's shots. The bolts hit a lot of rocks near him, breaking them and causing debris to start rolling down the mountainside, so he ends up also dodging bits of terrain, too. There have been a lot of avalanches today, yes. But there's about to be an -even bigger- one, as the speedster punches it, accelerating past the speed of sound itself. The resulting sonic boom pops through air, sending a shockwave through the mountainside. Yep, now practically -all- the snow sitting on this side of the big rock is starting to coming sliding down.

    A glitcheaded move, perhaps, given he's driving down it himself, but he figures he can outrun it. He figures he can outrun anything, really.

Lockdown has posed:
Except Blurr doesn't realize something. He can't, really...

Lockdown left his transport hovering above for a reason... and it's still cloaked, ready to fire.

He hits a button on his Tactician control pad on his arm, and the autoprogrammed blaster turrets on the front link with his chassis sensors... "Target in sight, Chassis designation Blurr. Suppression fire."

Moments later, and raw energy bolts begin to fire from the cloaked vessel down into the chasm, even as Lockdown watches from above.

It'd be far too much about luck to hit Blurr in that. Better to let the blasters and terrain destruction soften Blurr up, slow him down for the hunt.

Blurr has posed:
    If there wasn't enough snow rolling down the mountain already, the blaster bolts from the Tactician make it even more chaotic. The chasm starts to cave in, bowing to the impact of the ship's weaponry.

    Slag it...Blurr transforms and jumps out of it, barely clearing the barrage of snow and any rocks it may be carrying with it. Again he transforms, skidding on top of the avalanche as it barrels down. The Autobot sort of rides it, darting from outcropping to outcropping to avoid the suppression fire. One advantage this is giving him is that all these environmental hazards have to be giving Lockdown a hard time getting a bead on him. Well that was kind of the point of the avalanche. To make the bounty hunter lose his line of sight.

    When he reaches the base of the mountain, he makes for an icy cavern near the foot of a neighbhoring formation, hoping Lockdown won't be able to locate him there.

Lockdown has posed:
Of course, if that was all it took for Lockdown to lose his quarry, he wouldn't have a reputation for specializing in tracking down the serious troublemakers. Lockdown has modified his chassis to have a vision mode specifically to track Cybertronians. It's one of the many reasons he's so good at his job.

Of course, with all the terrain chaos, getting a lock on Blurr with all the new reflections and ghosts is going to make his life difficult.... and of course, that goes both ways... and Lockdown has the advantage for now.

As the avalanche slows down, Blurr is out of sight... but that can only mean he's found his way underground, because his ship isn't activating.

Lockdown has all the time in the world to hunt Blurr.

Welcome to Earth.