#beyond use

The bot that Perihelion is watching is a truly bizarre one. It’s clearly a human-form bot, but far too large to efficiently perform nearly any task that such bots are built for. You don’t just build a bot as a humanoid for no reason; it is rarely the most useful form to have if you want a function performed best.

On top of that, it’s emitting some kind of local signal that keeps tapping the edge of Perihelion’s sensors. A simple, repeated fluctuation in EMF, too strong to just be passive signal residue, too weak to be any sort of attack. It reads the pattern and compares it to codes, patterns, and anything else in its databases that comes to mind, but nothing is coming together. It could continue this analysis in hopes of solving the puzzle itself, but then the bot might end up walking away, and it wouldn’t have the chance to ask.

I am receiving your signal, it confirms via the feed. For context, it sends annotated data on the fluctuations it has picked up. The connection feels strange, nonstandard, but the information still transmits.

Barry is standing outside of a door that he just knocked on, and in the instant that the door opens, he forgets entirely why he's there. Which is bad business practice, obviously. He doesn't recognize the fellow in front of him--in fact, he can't think of a single time he's ever met a robot at all, so this must be a client he’s only spoken to by mail.

"Barry Bluejeans, at your service!" he says anyway. He's really just going to have to wing this, since he can't remember the name of his client or the job he's been hired for.

Oh, well. He's just getting old. Keeps forgetting his own age, even. But he can still kick plenty of ass, and that's what keeps a guy in this line of business.

Davenport was immensely grateful when he found that Barry was here. Although the situation is still highly alarming, getting his take was far less uncomfortable than talking to Lucretia any more than necessary. And now he’s in Barry’s... house, and Barry ran off with an apology to go help his... child, and Lucretia's been gone since the moment she could hand Davenport off to Barry because she was just as uncomfortable as the gnome was.

So he’s alone in the house, with more to process than he ever wants to deal with, and of course it’s now that there’s a knock on the door.

“Ah,” he says when he opens it to someone who’s taller than the door itself. He stands stunned for a moment, before he starts putting together a few pieces of what he’s learned in the last few hours. “You must be... Rung.”

Besty thinks he’s pulling off the vampire look pretty well, for someone who doesn’t usually have to deal with things like legs and arms and balance. He’s stalking about the dim evening, cape pulled dramatically around him, as he looks for people to scare.

Underneath the marvel the locals call “Ophiuchus,” near the light greenery that leads into the nearby woods, Prowl stands with a perfect stillness. He’s looking past the bird that’s alighted on his elbow, at a large insect slowly crossing a branch. It looks so much like the leaves that surround it that it might be passed over by any casual observer, much like certain aliens in Earth’s cities might pass as vehicles.

The bird stills, unnerved by another being coming too close, and flies off into the nearby trees. Prowl tilts his head, watching it go, and then puts his other foot on the ground to turn towards the approaching entity. A Cybertronian, it seems, though not a familiar one.

That’s a weird place for a big statue like this! It’s actually sort of in the way, standing on the sidewalk and facing the crosswalk, as though it’s eternally waiting for the light to change. It doesn’t even remotely occur to Itty that this might just be an actual person waiting to cross the street.

No, what they see is a tall, metal statue, or perhaps a vantage point, and they are absolutely going to climb it. They start clambering up the side of its leg, hooking their key ring into crevices to pull themself up.

They’re a decent ways up (from their perspective) when the statue moves. Hmm! That seems, wrong! For a statue to do! They slip from the sudden movement, but the key ring manages to stay in place, so now they’re just hanging from it, off the side of this person(???)’s leg.

“Uhh!!! Hello! I’m here!! Sorry!!!” they yell upwards, projecting their voice as best they possibly can.

“Oh! Good afternoon, Rung. I will be honest that I wasn’t expecting you in today.”

Honestly, Reines wasn’t expecting much of anyone. There was heavy roadwork going on outside, something to do with replacing some of the water pipes. It made it far too cumbersome for most people to make it to the store, and so even with it being late in the afternoon Reines had seen all of three stop by for a quick drink.