Reverse Forcefield

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< Prowl Posed on Jan 13 11:18PM CST >- It's a busy night at Autobot Command, mechs bustling about the work of running a planet. At the front of the room, a multitude of holopanes flicker and pulse with motion as operations on multiple fronts are monitored from home base.
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In fact, at this very moment, Prime himself is out in the field, scouting a cold construction factory in Vos. Prowl had attempted to dissuade Optimus from venturing out there himself, but the former captain of the Rodion Police Force seemed obstinate--if Starscream was keeping sparks there, he couldn't possibly stand for allowing them to be robbed of their freedom by the Decepticons.

And so, Prowl watches the mission's progress from the command center now, hoping Prime won't do anything rash... --< Wheeljack Posed on Jan 13 11:27PM CST >--- After getting the alternating shifts schedual that Arcee suggested worked out with Grapple and Hoist, Wheeljack had returned to Iacon while the maintenance expert and the guy that was actually a construction type mech got the refinery work moving again. Though it's no surprise that when the engineer meanders into the command center he's paying more attention to one of his holographic readouts than he is where he's going, earning a fair share of dirty looks from Autobots as they have to move out of his way. < Prowl Posed on Jan 13 11:32PM CST >- Prowl turns away from the holopane when Wheeljack enters. "Wheeljack." he approaches the engineer. "I have something for you." The analyst says in his typical neutral tone. "You mentioned that the Senate had confiscated some of your projects. Well I think I've found at least one of them." He hands him a spherical-shaped device. "Appears to be some kind of advanced shield emission unit, but I can't be sure." --< Wheeljack Posed on Jan 13 11:46PM CST >--- Wheeljack snaps his head up at hearing his name. "Huh?" He pauses and turns around, for a moment looking like he had no clue where he was. "Well shoot, I thought I was headed to my lab." He shrugs a bit at that, and turns back around. "Prowl?... Oh, you finally got to digging up those old impound logs did you?" He pauses a moment, wiggling his digits with anticipation before snagging the orboid shape out of the tactician's hands. After turning it over in his own hands a few times Wheeljack's emitters light up brightly.

"It is!... Kind of." After a few more times rolling it back and form in his palm Wheeljack finds what he's looking for, and extends a small tool from one fingertip and inserts it into an almost unseeable slot on the device, very much like a lock and key. "It's a multi phasewave partical field projector." After a few turns the key retracts and a tubular shape extends out of the device. "Figures, it's been sitting there so long the power core is dried up." He flicks the tube out of the frame with a finger, then pulls another one out of his personal storage and plugs it back in, and closes the device. "Good thing I made most of these a universal fit!"

Once it's wound shut the inset grooves along the spherical surface start to glow faintly. "Though it's less of a shield in a Trailbreaker sense, and more of a deterent.. Kind of like the energized fence they put around an energon farm to keep the turborats out of the machinery. Except," Wheeljack does one of his 'hold up the invention dramatically' poses, "this device uses a transpacial logarithim to alternate it's projection field through different wavelengths of the energy spectrum, so it's usable even in instances were simply electrocuting, super-heating or whatnot wouldn't be an effective countermeasure." < Prowl Posed on Jan 14 12:04AM CST >- "Hm." Prowl looks intrigued. He might have actually understood most of what Wheeljack just went on about. Yeah, he's smarter than he lets on sometimes, and it's probably intentional. "That might actually be useful at the moment." He pulls up a profile of Phantom, the phasing 'outlier' Arcee described in her report. Well what intel they've managed to gather on him, anyway. "I'm not entirely certain how his abilities work, but if I understand correctly, your deterrent may be useful against him." --< Wheeljack Posed on Jan 14 12:15AM CST >--- "Useful against what?" Of course by the time he asks Prowl is already pulling up references. "Oh, you mean the Skywarp that -doesn't- run into things with his transposition ability." Wheeljack looks at the display, then back at the device and rubs his chin. "It might take some trial, without knowing more specifics on how the outlier's ability works. But the most scientific explaination would be that he's somehow able to make his molecular composition pass through that of another solid object." He holds the sphere with the other digits of his left hand so he can extend the pinky and poke it through a loop made with the tumb and index finger of his other hand. "Atomic structure has a surprisingly amount of space in it relative to it's scale. The concept of immaterialization would be a phasic state that's able to slide, for lack of a better more scientific term, through that space. Maybe some kind of displacement of subatomic movement so he's simply not on the same synchronization as the rest of the universe for a temporary length of time." Now he's just rambling. < Prowl Posed on Jan 14 12:26AM CST >- "Well if everything goes according to plan, we should be learning much more about him very soon." Prowl replies, apparently having the patience to listen to the very technical ramble. Actually it's not as bad as Perceptor, honestly. "But yes, I presume it's some ability to manipulate his own molecular structure on a subatomic level. If we can design a containment field that disrupts this manipulation, we may be able to trap him." --< Wheeljack Posed on Jan 14 12:31AM CST >--- Wheeljack nods and tosses the spherical device back to Prowl. "If you can pin him down, that device should be able to produce an phasewave emission that can disrupt his transitional state. If you find the right wavelength to inerrupt his ability. It's not foolproof but it is a higher chance of practical results that, say, randomly guessing." < Prowl Posed on Jan 14 01:02AM CST >- Prowl nods, taking it back. "Do you think you could turn it into some form of a containment field, that we could use to effectively trap him?" It would seem that someone like him could get away from anything. "He probably thinks he can escape from any bind. So it would be advantageous for us to come up with something he's not counting on -existing-." --< Wheeljack Posed on Jan 14 01:09AM CST >--- "Technically a containment field is just a forcefield in reverse. Put it around what you want to keep in instead of what you want to keep others out of." Even as he's answering Wheeljack as brought his holopad back up. "But I'll see if I can find where I stashed the design schematics when I get back to my shop. You know, just to make sure we don't accidentally turn it into a bomb. Or at least not until he's trapped inside of it. Then it blowing up wouldn't be so bad.... unless it collapsed into a singularity instead because of the multiple subatomic disturbances, that would just be hard slag for everyone."

By this point he's already started to wander around the center again as he mused and made notes on the holographic display. < Prowl Posed on Jan 14 01:19AM CST >- "Right," Prowl nods and turns back to the holopanels. That's about enough for right now. "Not that singularities can't be useful." he comments.

"Well keep me updated, then."

He watches the engineer wander around aimlessly for a few moments. "Oh and Wheeljack. Try to pay more attention to your surroundings." --< Wheeljack Posed on Jan 14 01:30AM CST >--- Wheeljack stops and turns back to Prowl at just the right moment to avoid walking into one of the many nameless bots walking around the command center doing jobs that are certainly important to the Autobot cause but definately not in need of describing the details of said jobs. "I'm plenty aware of my surroundings Prowl."

Of course, as he kept walking backwards as doing so, that's precisely when his heel catchs a power cable lying across the floor and he topples over, landing partway through a doorway. "See? Totally found that cable. Don't tell Red Alert you have those lying around, he'll blow a gasket at the safety hazard."

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