Pestilence

From Axalon RPG

PESTILENCE

Aliases: None

Faction: Predacons

Sub-Group: Predacon Loyalists

Function: Weapons engineer

Type: Beast Warrior

Beast Mode: Moth

Gender: Female

Size: Small (5 ft)

Theme Song: “Science Genius Girl"- Freezepop

Statistics (Sum of 63) Strength: 7 Stamina: 10 Speed: 6 Skill: 10 Aim: 2 Firepower: 10 Intelligence: 6 Discipline: 7 Luck: 5

Quotes (Optional) -“What do you mean, compensation issues?? I just like really big guns."

-“Wow, cool!!!”

-“Come here and say that, you...you...unscientific person!"

-“Wanna see something awesome?"

Appearance ·Beast Mode: A moth. The moth form is in shades of brown and yellow, with brown for the body, legs and head and yellow for the wings, bodily patterns, and eyes. The body consists of a small thorax, six thin and multi-jointed legs, and a stubby cylindrical abdomen. There is a slight bulge within the back of the abdomen where the armament rack has been stored. The thorax has a yellow stripe pattern- there are curved lines that move across the upper part of it and short stripes with round ends on both sides on her lower thorax sides, three to a side. The legs have numerous joints and small feelers. She has short, elliptical wings with ornate yellow patterns on them. When transforming, her normal arms and legs fold into the thorax and abdomen respectively, and her armament rack sinks into the abdomen. Her head takes upon the moth form; her optics widen into two large round multifaceted eyes, and a mandible visor slides over her mouth. The head has two long, waving antennas.

·Robot Mode: Pestilence is a short and lithe- petite, really- Predacon in brown and yellow. She has some signs of her insect Beast Mode, and a plethora of next-generation weapons and equipment hanging off her bodice. She retains the striped pattern on her chest, but the moth legs fold into her body and the moth abdomen’s inner side curves in until it is a half-shell and slides up under her wings, which are folded up on her back. She has effeminate arms and hands with five fingers and bulbous gauntlets. Her short legs end in bulbous boots with two toes and flat soles. She wears a slightly S ‘n’ M-ish belt loosely around her waist with two holsters, and has a pair of goggles generally worn up over her forehead. Her face has round yellow optics, a moving mouth and two moving antennas just behind the goggles. On her back, in between the wings, is a sunken-in armament rack with various guns attached to inlaid compartments on it, giving her a warhorse look. She has a small emitter on her left shoulder and various tools hanging from her belt. Pestilence is pretty in a weird-teenage-kid kind of way, because that’s exactly what she is: A weird teenage kid. She speaks in a bubbly, slightly nasal voice and moves in an energetic, enthusiastic kind of way. On the whole, she looks like a small girl carrying way too much weaponry.

Skills

Endurance

Flight: Winged

Technical: Weapons

Gunnery

Heavy Weapons

Autofire Weapons

Traits

Winged Flight- Pestilence can fold out her moth wings in Beast or Robot Mode, and can fly in a jerky, slow manner. She is known to get a fast start, then slowly descend, then put on another burst of speed, then descend again before another burst of speed. She is known to take to the air in Robot Mode, pull out one of her weapons and fire down on the opposition as she hovers around through the air.

Tracking Goggles- This is a pair of zooming, thermal vision goggles that Pestilence uses to track enemies. It looks like an oblong black bar with grooves on one side where she puts her optics, a vinyl band that goes around her head, and small extending lens on the outside of the bar. In the goggles’ view, everything is varying shades of blue depending on how much light is there. Enemies show up as heat signatures with coldest areas being blue and hottest areas being red, with varying heat/colors being green, yellow, and orange. A Bot often has yellow and orange for appendages with red areas at the head and torso. The goggles are tuned to live targets, and Pestilence can’t use them to track inanimate objects or energy. Everything in the thermal view is somewhat illuminated, and through a dial on the goggles’ right side she can zoom in up to 200 feet away. She puts it over her eyes to hunt enemies, and when not in combat wears them up over her forehead.

Stasis Field Array- This is a small pod-like device on Pestilence’s left shoulder that generates a full-body stasis field that repels direct physical damage and weak kinetic damage. Upon activation, a shimmering blue orb surrounds Pestilence. The field will dissipate if placed under strong kinetic energy, and will also disappear if Pestilence fires anything from within the field- she can’t fire any weapons while in the field. The field repels direct physical attacks, but can pass through passive matter, like walls and doors- so when Pestilence walks through a door while in the field, the field won’t get caught against the doorframe or anything. Pestilence activates it by pressing a toggle on the device on her shoulder. The stasis field can last up to a half hour, and will then automatically shut off and take about forty-five minutes to recharge. Pestilence mainly uses it to repel enemy fire when she’s out of ammo or needs to get away from an intense battle.

Portable Armament Rack- This is a gunmetal gray, egg-shaped floating rack that Pestilence stores all her weapons and ammunition in. It is about four feet tall and three feet wide. It operates through antigravity thrusts on its underside, and Pestilence can attach it to her back through a chain tether and walk or fly with it on her back. It is very heavy when it has all the weapons on it. The weapons are stored in inlaid compartments with magnetic grafts, and there are closed compartments that the various types of ammunition are stored in. Up to five rockets, ten smartgun magazines, eight plasma cells, and twenty fusion magazines can be stored in their various compartments. The rack also has storage spots for things like computer discs, small stolen weapons and equipment, and other such. The rack may or may not contain discs with technical schematics for weapons that Pestilence is working on.

TETSUO- Stands for Tertiary Electronic Tenant of Systems Under Operation. (At least until Pestilence can think of a better acronym.) Created only recently to aid Pestilence in reconstruction of computer systems, TETSUO is an artificial intelligence within a laptop Pestilence carries within her armament rack. Its on-screen representation looks like a three-dimensional CGI head, colored green with light green eyes and spiky light green hair. It speaks in a complete monotone, soothing but dull. It's capable of repairing, analyzing, and operating computer systems, and also plays a mean online deathmatch. The laptop Pestilence carries with him in it is fairly standard, but it does come with an electric shock mechanism for unwanted users, to be used at TETSUO's discretion, and an adaptable cable to be attached to all sorts of computer systems.

Armament Dual Fusion Pistols- This is a pair of fusion heat-based pistols. They are medium-sized, about ten inches long and eight inches wide from grip bottom to barrel top. They have a square grip with chamber and a silencer barrel. They fire precise beams of heat that burn and char up to medium-strength armor. They have a maximum range of 200 ft, and are almost totally silent. The heat beams are based on fusion shells that have been superheated to the point where they’re basically boiling gas. The pistols’ barrels collect the gas and microscopic energy chargers focus it as a high-intensity beam. The pistols use magazines with fifty fusion shells each. Pestilence prefers to use both at once. When not in use, they are stored in holsters on her belt.

Electric Injection Rifle- This is an energy rifle with a focused taser effect. It is oblong and black, and has a cylindrical electric generator, a charge-based trigger and emitter prongs in place of a barrel. It is three feet long by six inches wide. The rifle is roughly square, and Pestilence holds it with the stock under her right arm and her hands gripping the charge trigger. To fire, she holds down the trigger and electricity flows from the generator into the rifle and begins collecting in the prongs- one can see this through the humming and sparks it emits. A gauge on the rifle tells her how the rifle is charged, and when it’s at the right level she taps the trigger to send forth a stream of electricity that fries weak armor and seriously chars strong armor. The rifle requires at least four seconds to charge up and then she can either tap the trigger to fire or let it go to negate the electrical flow. The rifle requires no disposable ammunition- its generator draws its energy from the electrons in the air and she can fire it anytime as much as she needs. It has a maximum range of 100 ft. When not in use, it is stored on the armament rack.

Automatic Smartgun- This is a high-powered assault rifle modified to track targets and enemies. It is three feet long and consists of an oblong stock, handle/middle section with direct sensor relays, and three barrels in a triangular pattern. The barrels rotate counterclockwise when fired and are connected by metal treads running around the barrels. The smartgun fires hollow-tipped, one-inch long shells and holds a magazine of 200 shells. The magazines are bulky and square, and fit into a chamber on the middle section. The gun has a firing rate of 3 rounds a second and a maximum range of 300 yards. Pestilence fires it through a grip and trigger on the middle section, with the stock held under her right elbow and her left hand on the grip. The gun has small motors and couplings where the barrels meet the middle section, for purpose of tracking targets. This is done through the sensor relays on the middle section that scan for targets within the field of view and up to the maximum range. The sensors don’t distinguish between friend and foe; they just track motion. Pestilence may sometimes have to turn off the sensors if they are forcing the barrels to point at the wrong targets. The smartgun will not aim for her; it simply helps her aim. Bursts of fire are fine, but lengthy firing of the gun will sometimes overheat the barrels- smoke can be seen to be wafting from them after firing extensively. When not in use, it is stored on the armament rack. The smartgun has intense recoil, and will physically shake Pestilence as she fires it.

Plasma Accelerator Cannon- This is an energy cannon that accelerates, focuses and fires plasma energy. It is a cylindrical cannon, about three feet long and a foot-long radius. There is a grip on the underside and three prongs compacted into a cone on the front. When the gun is activated through a jerk of the grip and a toggle next to the trigger, the prongs open up and fold out until all three are folded out. The prongs are stainless steel and end in sharp points. The middles of the prongs have joints that allow them to assume a right angle once folded out. They reveal a turbine after folding out; the turbine has spokes and vents and points outward in a rounded cone. As Pestilence holds down the trigger, plasma electricity crackles and generates from the prongs, collecting over the turbine. The turbine is permeated with plasma energy, glowing and shifting, as the prongs continue to pour more electricity into it. A glowing ball of pure energy emanates from the turbine, held in place by the prongs, and Pestilence taps the trigger. The ball of energy rushes forward with an intense howling sound, incinerating and destroying whatever is in its path. The plasma ball burns and chars most objects, but it is hard to aim at all precisely. It takes a full five seconds to charge up for a shot, and it has a maximum range of 200 feet. The cannon runs on bulky, battery-shaped plasma cells; these are loaded into a chamber on the outer side of the back of the cannon. The cells are good for three shots each and the cannon holds one at a time. Pestilence holds the cannon with the back under her right arm and her left hand holding the underside grip. The cannon operates with no recoil. She stores it on the armament rack.

Manual Guidance Rocket Launcher- This is a prototypical advanced rocket launcher with modified guidance systems. It consists of a five-foot long gray tube with a square outcropping on the middle side, a grip and trigger under the outcropping, and a shoulder support and loading funnel in the back. Pestilence holds it with the shoulder support on her right shoulder, her left hand on the outcropping, and her right hand on the grip. The rocket launcher fires one-foot long exploding rockets with small sensors and graviton thrusts built into them. The square outcropping has a sensor computer and a three-foot long relay wire built into it. When she is loading the rocket, Pestilence activates the sensor computer and pulls out the wire. She plugs it into a small node on her right temple. The wire allows her to access a mental program that lets her view from the rockets’ sensors and control them through her thoughts. To that end, when she fires the rocket, she has full control of it- she can see where it is going, she can maneuver it, she can even activate the graviton thrusts to stop it in midair for a bit until she figures out where it’s going. She can also choose when it explodes- it explodes automatically upon impact, but she can choose to have it explode in mid-air, going or stopped. The rockets’ sensors show her an infrared, fish-eye view that limits her distance and depth perception somewhat. She can switch the rocket view on and off if she wants to fire and forget, and will automatically lose the view once the launched rocket hits its target. However, she has to find a safe place to stand while she manually guides a rocket; she can’t see anything in her normal field of view while on rocket view. The rockets operate on the graviton thrusts and can fly indefinitely until they reach their target. Pestilence stores the rocket launcher on her armament rack.

Personality

Pestilence is the Cybertronian equivalent of a sixteen or seventeen-year old kid. She’s energetic, enthusiastic, and friendly. She aspires to be a mighty Predacon warrior, but at the moment she’s more of a well-armed trainee. Well-armed: Pestilence’s trademark. She’s a military technological genius and an above-average engineer, with smatterings of knowledge in Bot construction and repair and a fair amount of skill with computers. A few of her inventions grace the Predacon militia, and she arms herself with others that haven’t even been patented yet. She is constantly working on new weapons, but most of them are erratic and some are downright failures. Pestilence once went through a phase where she near-worshipped her fellow teammates, even going so far as to ask on a couple of occasions for their autographs, but has since become less kid sidekick and more youthful peer. She now views them as her good friends. She most notably likes to hang out with Sphinx and Lightspeed, two new girlfriends of sorts. Unicron also looks at her as a little bit like a niece figure, and she looks at him as kind of like an uncle figure as well. Pestilence is the antithesis of the Predacon evil scheming must-kill mindset that so many of her brother and sister Predacons seem to share. She’s bubbly and enthusiastic, and doesn’t directly hate Maximals; they're just on the other side of the conflict, unfortunate indeed to be caught up against her and her badass friends. Pestilence used to be viewed as a nuisance kid by most of the others, tagging along when she wasn't needed or wanted, but her skills were too good to deny, and her eager, helpful manner grew on most. Unfortunately, she neither aims well nor shows enough caution. A fellow Predacon has been sent to the CR tanks more than once because she accidentally caught him in the line of fire.

Pestilence has all the emotional baggage of your standard teenager. She’s been known to develop random crushes on her male teammates, only to drop it a few weeks later before she ever got around to coming on to them. She has a bit of a temper, and will occasionally unleash it on friends or enemies. When angered, Pestilence will become slightly more intimidating- she will walk right up to the offender and yell profanities and insults in his or her face. She gets over it pretty quickly though, and will likely apologize to them and give them a hug later on. That is another facet of her personality- physical shows of love, admiration, gratitude, etc. She tends to jump into the arms of someone who’s saved her, give a kiss on the cheek to someone she likes, ask for a high five from one of her friends, and the like. She loves big chaotic battles, a trait she shared with her brother. Pestilence was born with an older brother that she looked up to and loved dearly, before he went missing. It was that disappearance that pushed her to develop next-generation weapons and join the Predacon military. She eventually relocated her beloved brother- Backlash. Pestilence loves Backlash and looks up to him, and used to basically be his shadow, always with him. She's a little older and a little wiser now, grown more into her own person and more of an equal. But a lot of the afore-mentioned traits remain. For fun, she likes to play video games on occasion, most notably first-person shooters or anything else where lots of weapons come into play. She is also a serious movie junkie- she loves most of all cheesy Earth sci-fi flicks. Pestilence's idea of a great evening is overclocking her computer, beating TETSUO at Unreal Tournament 2K9, and sitting down with a big bowl of popcorn, either by herself or with some friends, and watching "The Invasion of the Brain Slugs from Planet X" for the umpteenth time.

History

Pestilence was born into a civilian family on Cybertron with a single mother and an older brother. She didn’t like her mom too much, but she absolutely worshipped her cool big brother. At a young age, Pestilence was a technological whiz and looking into advanced concepts like transwarp drives and Transmetal technology. She enrolled in a fine scientific academy, where she chased boys and gossiped with friends in between learning how to generate antimatter and accelerate plasma reactions. She graduated with honors a few years later, and was planning a career in science when her brother went missing. He had always been kind of weird (then again, so had his kid sister), and the family had expected him to run off sooner or later, but this was devastating to her all the same. Pestilence threw herself into a new tangent of her science aspirations- weapons technology. Finding her forte in developing advanced cannons and lasers, she put out an application for the Predacon military…and was rejected. She tried again later. She was rejected again. She tried again. Rejected. For some reason, she just couldn’t get in. Pestilence grew tired of resubmitting her military application every few months, so she simply resolved to get out into an aggressive ship all the same. This finally came about when she was initiated into a pirate vessel.

Among the pirates, known as the Harbingers, she learned the combat usage of the weapons she was rapidly developing, and earned a place of respect, however lecherous, as the ship’s armory scientist and cabin girl. She developed a major crush on the captain, Styx, and was just about to do something about it when Captain Styx gathered his crew together and told them of a raid on a Maximal military vessel. They would take over the ship and use the onboard technical schematics and weapons plans to update and arm their own ship. They broke into the ship via a daring shuttle-to-airlock maneuver, and began wasting the crew. But they were just a tad outnumbered…by about nine point seventy-six to one. Pestilence was one of the first to be taken down in a flurry of firepower, and the Harbingers were forced to retreat into their ship and get the hell out of the sector. Pestilence was later revived by the Maximals, and she managed to keep from imprisonment or execution by volunteering to work for them- one of the first Predacons to serve on a Maximal vessel. Unofficially, anyway. She worked as a standard ensign, and never really rose from that position. Among the Maximals she learned new lessons in co-factional cooperation and love for her fellow Bot. C’mon, you didn’t really believe that, did you? There was no lesson about co-factional cooperation, no love for her fellow Bots, no life morals along the lines. She just learned that Maximals are slightly too caring for her tastes, and that she would never get a chance to really have fun with weapons among them- no way they’d trust a Predacon with a smartgun. She decided she was never going to get anywhere among their ranks, and put in her request for release. The release was granted- a lot of the Maximals never trusted her anyway- and she returned to Cybertron.

Upon her return, Pestilence got word of a group of Predacon loyalists that were looking for new recruits. She applied post haste, and found her brother Backlash among the recruits. Overjoyed, she immediately started a new life working alongside her brother. She grew to make friends with a lot of the other Predacons as well- Sphinx always seemed happy to converse with her, and Lightspeed was just so cool, and X-Ray was so cuuuuute, and Prism kicked so much butt...so on, so on, to listen to her. As the above-mentioned evolution of kid tagalong to peer took place, she grew more self-reliant and a bit wiser. She was deeply grieved by Unicron's death following their final battle against Tigress and her minions, and went off as a government-sponsored weapons scientist for a while, until she got the idea that Unicron could be resurrected. She spent years obtaining all the right pieces to put him back together, and by the time she was called upon by her brother for a mission to Earth, she had everything in place. Pestilence began Unicron's reconstruction with Sphinx and Lightspeed's aid, hoping to restore her commander to his former glory once and for all.

Since then, Unicron's brain has gone missing, apparently taken by the Purification. Pestilence has mostly faded into the background, keeping quiet in the midst of Prism and Lightspeed's bickering over leadership, but is no less active in her free time, getting up to all sorts of odd experiments. What's she been up to lately...?