revivalproject | And Frightened Miss Muffet Away

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And Frightened Miss Muffet Away

WHO: Donnie and Various
WHERE: The wiiiiilderness beyond Temba
WHAT: Trouble, what else?
WHEN: Um. Now. -ish. Time is fluid.
WARNINGS: Possible violence and all the things that come with it. Oh right, and 8-legged freaks in the other thread.

I. Wild Robot Chase (For Stu and maybe a Billy if he is so inclined)
Scuttle is a robot. Scuttle's name is actually supposed to be Slashtag but Scuttle doesn't particularly like it. But the Purple one insisted that it was much cooler. Indeed, Scuttle can slash things, theoretically- well no, he can slash things rather well because his appendages are nice and sharp in the front, but he hasn't been running around slashing things as often as he simply...scuttles.

Scuttle is a cute name. Scuttle has conveyed this to the Purple one. The Purple one only made a face of [displeasure] but hadn't said anything more on the matter, so Scuttle had taken it as an acquiescence.

The Purple one was not the one who built Scuttle, but he'd Fixed him. Now instead of being stuck watching things in a tree all day, or sitting on a rock to do pretty much the same, Scuttle was free! Now he can wander the woods and look for things and... Hm. Well, anyway, he can wander! And...okay, play a signal booster for the Purple one's other not!scuttlebots (who are not nearly as cute as he!)

Cute may not necessarily be what one would choose as a descriptor for the robot. While Donnie had initially intended to replate the skeletal structure with something better suited to camouflaging with the local fauna, he rather liked how edgy the former Robotnik-bot looked shape-wise when stripped of the original exterior, and so simply reinforced the frame and gave it a snappy paint job- metallic purple, of course. What resulted was a spidery-looking crab-like bot, 3 feet high and 4ish in length if Scuttle splayed his legs out (but if he does that then he can't move very well.) Each of the six legs ended in sharp points, with an additional two that were slightly bulkier than the rest, shaped more like scythes that opened up in strangely angled pinchers.

Scuttle thinks that this exposition was highly necessary.

Of course, who would know that such an unseeming (?) robot is under the employ of (one of) the resident engineer(s)? And certainly its lurking by the fringes of the woods is not suspicious at all! Indeed, he's waiting, having received some positive feedback from one of the scout-bots. The Purple one is just taking his sweet time in coming to meet him! Surely this "pizza" can wait!!

II. Finder's Keepers (For Leo)
Some of the robots were unaccounted for. Even if they aren't Donnie's original creation, he's not about to let any resources go to waste around here. He'd said as much to Robotnik when the doctor had still been around, so surely the man can't fault him for repurposing any of the things he's left. But that's besides the point.

"I lost the signal on two of them somewhere out here," he explains to his brother as they make their way through the woods. At least there's plenty of shade, the ever thickening foliage providing at least some shelter from the heat that's been slow-roasting Temba, and the ground isn't going to threaten to burn their feet with every step.

"They probably wandered into a spot with bad access to sunlight for their backup charger."

An annoyance, but at least if they'd run out of power, then it shouldn't be difficult at all to find them at the last spot that Slashtag had picked up a signal from. All they'd have to do is drag the bots back to a spot with some reasonable solar exposure and let them charge. It'd certainly beat trying to bring them all the way back to the city, anyway.

Donnie pauses to set another tag on a tree, a digital and physical breadcrumb trail so they can find their way back if they get turned around somehow.

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The creature he was picking up on his scans was larger than the usual rodents that he'd caught on his radar before. What's more, it was coming closer. Scuttle ran through potential operations, discarding options with each moment that the distance between them shrank.

And then it spoke and tapped at him, and the robot finally allowed itself to turn as it identified: human. Six metal leggies began to move one after the other in an undulating fashion as he turned about so he could properly see the person in question. A name to the face came up readily as he cross-referenced his databanks: Ah! One Macher, Stu. The Purple-maker's notes were largely unhelpful. Excitable, loves movies. Claims there is a killer in our midst.

Oh, right! Scuttle was asked a question! .... What an odd question. Maybe the pause taken to answer it wasn't exactly very reassuring, nor was the response that was finally given, a very electronic sounding "Why?"

The answer already seemed like a sure confirmation well before the thing spoke. The second it started moving, Stu startled and fell back into the litter, where leaves and mud stuck to his palms and he clutched at a handful in case he had to throw a distraction. It moved like a spider, which was a little gross and a lot radical, and Stu watched with curious wide eyes and a raised lip, feeling like he had finally found something properly alien. When it went still again, he took his chance to do his own scuttling, cautiously backwards, very aware of every shushing sound that the leaves dragged under his feet betrayed. Then he broke with a laugh.

"You talk! Very cool, my man, very Terminator, if he sounded like Hal," Stu commended. A killer robot was significantly cooler when it could monologue. "I'm not the one that's supposed to be telling you 'why', I'm the innocent bystander here, dude, I'm the disease that needs to be wiped out by superior robot intellect or whatever."

Scuttle stared. He was good at staring. Sometimes he stared at Leo just for fun until the turtle jumped or moved somewhere out of visibility.

Scuttle said nothing as he processed this data. The Purple one had mentioned his first encounter with the Stu-being was in the hospital. This person was diseased? Yellow optics flickered, then brightened as the bot shifted its weight.

"Escaped contaminant? Must be quarantined! Please return to [Hospital] facilities for stabilization."

That brightening light certainly looked like a warning, making Stu's next laugh a nervous one, and he didn't try to hide how he crawled back and out of reach this time, until he was backed up against a tree he couldn't have accounted for. See, this was the problem. "Okay, man, take it easy. It wasn't supposed to be a suggestion, just, talking, huh, having a conversation? I say something, then you say something else, and we laugh about it, and then we're buds," Stu explained, taking it upon himself to tame the wild robot.

The entirety of the bot listed to one side in what could have been considered a head-tilt, optics flickering in and out as though it were blinking.

"Oh!" Scuttle knew what conversations were. Very one-sided most of the time, since he was often having to listen to the Purple one talk to himself. He paused. Interactions with anyone other than the Purple-maker's brother was basically nonexistent. Scuttle stared again, and then took skittering steps forward to get into Stu's personal space.

"Is this the part where we laugh?"

As it was a feral forest robot, it continued to be hard to read, and Stu flinched and gave another tight giggle at the sudden exclamation, not sure what kind of revelation it had just had. Maybe it just realized it was supposed to be a predator. Stu grimaced as it came chasing after him, but stayed where he was with his own curious head tilt to watch how it moved, a proper walking motion that would have been taken illusion of puppets or wires to achieve on Earth. Belatedly, he drew a leg up to plant a foot on the robot's advancing face before it could get any close, crunching his own knee up by his head. "What?" he had to ask, not sure what the joke was. "Uh, I guess. Ha ha! Good one."

"Ow." The response seemed more of a reflex than actually due to damage, the robot effectively stopped.

"Oh, okay! Ha ha ha!" the robot spouted, his tone very unconvincing, like reading a script. He was trying! "Incidentally that is rude, please remove your foot from my face."

That only earned the robot a push as Stu challenged, "Remove your face from my foot, man." He wasn't the one getting too close and personal, for once, and maybe that could mean taking a moment of personal reflection, if he was a killer robot. Instead, he gave another shove of encouragement to try to get himself back onto his feet and a better vantage point for his escape route.

The robot stumbled back with an indignant squawk, optics flashing briefly before his forearms split to show off his pinchers. "Hostile detected; initiating attack mode!"

"That wasn't attack mode?" Without anyone to give Stu a proper answer, he could only shout it back at the threatening robot before he was throwing himself to the side to go leaping over the snarl of roots and grabbing blindly at any hold to keep himself upright. The branch he reached snapped away immediately in his hands, forcing him to correct his stumble by swinging himself around and brandishing his stick like a baseball bat. "You got a serious attitude problem!"

Scuttle shifted his weight from one side to the other, taking a few steps to the side as he kept sight of the human. Hostile was now armed!

"Engaging!" the robot announced, much too cheerfully as he stepped forth and swung a bladed arm at the branch. Yup. He could definitely slash.

Stu was not prepared with his own battlecry, and had to unleash the first sound that he could produce, which was an atonal yelling as his stick was cleanly slashed. He continued yelling while he swung what was left of it down onto the crown of the robot, then thought better of being so close to the slicing devices and went dancing back with the stick pointed out to keep it at a distance, or occupied, or something.

Tik-tak, tikkity-tak, it was an almost comical scene were anyone to come across it. The crablike robot danced back and forth, pausing only to shake itself out when an errant smack rang against his housing. But a stick was hardly damaging, thankfully.

Pausing, Scuttle regarded the updated situation before suddenly quick-stepping forward to grab onto the end of the stick with a pincher. Poor as the weapon choice was, it seemed only sensible to disarm the threat. That he was actually more threatening did not occur to him.

This thing was playing with him. Game recognize game. "You're a real sicko, you know that?" Stu accused as his only defence was snatched away, and he jerked his empty hand back, shaking out his fingers like he could magic himself a new stick. Eventually, it was going to have to get to the climax and finish this, and Stu would really rather not be involved.

A walking robot was something already impossible, so maybe, if Stu was lucky, that was where the miracles ended, and making a quick jump to scramble up onto the closest branch and keep climbing would keep him out of reach. It might be a sharp little thing, but it would take it some time to hack through a whole tree trunk.

"Impossible! My anti-viral scans are up to date!"

Scuttle came up to the tree after Stu began to climb it. Now why would he go through the trouble of cutting it down? He could climb just fine! It was practically a natural habitat. If...he were at all natural.

He closed his pinchers and set the sharper sides of his arms into the bark to give him a good grip before he started to bring his legs up and around, digging sharp points into the tree as he began to scale it.

"You can climb?!" Stu demanded, before he was wailing again in panic, and tried to aim a kick close enough to at least slow the killer robot down as he dangled from a branch. What else could slow down a robot? Water? There was only trees and dirt around here, no matter how desperately Stu looked around. He had to throw himself out of the tree, landing on all fours before flailing himself up into a run that scattered leaves, with the blind hope that he would run into something that handily defeated the Terminator somewhere in the alien forest.

"I can! It is part of my standard skill set! Ha ha ha ha ha!" because Stu had said that was how the exchange was supposed to go. Unfortunately it only made Scuttle sound a bit demented.

The clang of Stu's foot connecting once again with his face overlapped with the "ow emitted, and even as Stu was swinging down from the tree, the robot was falling, landing on his back as legs wiggled pathetically around in the air for a moment.

Dodging around trees and the tangle of roots that threatened to snag his shoes and send Stu sprawling into the undergrowth took most of Stu's focus. He only threw a glance over his shoulder to see how close the robot was to his murderous intent, glimpsing it through the branches as a glint of sunlight off of its flailing legs. Then Stu was almost faceplanting, so as he caught himself on the next trunk and went hopping away from the bush that tried to end up, he didn't waste any more time checking for the robot. He had to veer for the treeline, back out into the heat of the city, where he might find some help.

In typical teenager fashion, Donnie had his attention on his tablet while he made his way towards the woods. He was also hovering about a foot off the ground as his battle shell carried him along while saving his feet the pain of toasting.

He was a little annoyed that the signal he'd been looking at had moved from the treeline, which he finally reached right about when a sudden human came rushing out. Well, good news, Stu wouldn't have to go very far at all for help? Maybe? How helpful Donnie was willing to be likely depended on how good Stu's brakes were.

Stu was not in any way prepared to brake. In fact, as the brush cleared and the edge of the wooded area was in sight, he risked trusting his feet and throwing another glance over his shoulder for his pursuer. When he did finally look back around, it was too late, and he was careening into the flying alien experiment with a yell and windmilling of his arms.

Hear that? That was the sound of a turtle getting the wind knocked out of him, rapidly followed up by a rough thud and crunch as metal hits the ground first, on top of it a pile of turtle and human limbs.

"Owwwwww..." Donnie groaned uncomfortably from where he'd sprawled, raising his head to glare blearily at whoever had the nerve to collide into him.

This was not the worst hit Stu had ever taken. He went sprawling, could feel the scrape of his elbows and chin, and the bruises from the jab of metal and knobby kid, but hardly let this slow him down. With no indication that he recognized Donnie, he drew himself up enough to shake him by the shoulders and declare, "Save yourself!," before he was up and running again, sprinting away from the forest.

Maybe he'd taken a hit to the head. Donnie could only stare, the shaking not really helping him before he found himself falling backwards again.

He stared up at the sky, puzzled.

"...what. The. Heck."

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And Frightened Miss Muffet Away

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