Crosshairs
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[edit] Profile
"Don't shoot until you see the wires in their eyes!"
Meticulous, cautious, some would say overcautious -- won't take a shot unless he's sure he can't miss. Won't ever waste ammo. Fufills his duties as weapons supervisor for Fortress Maximus, but begrudingly. Disgusted by the destruction wrought by weapons and war in general. Pinpointer, his dual rocket-propelled grenade launcher, can lock on target in less than .0003 seconds, but usually trusts Crosshairs to decide when to shoot. As an engineer, Pinpointer shares his love of efficiency. In vehicle mode, has a maximum speed of 160 mph, and can traverse rough terrain with ease. Crosshairs sometimes becomes emotionally overcome by the rampant destruction he witnesses in battle, hampering his combat effectiveness.
[edit] History
- The history of Crosshairs: A living and occasionally updated document.
Crosshairs is old, dating from an era before most Autobots were even thought of. And he wasn't originally called Crosshairs. Whatever his name was has been lost to antiquity and he isn't talking.
He was brought online as the dust slowly settled from the War of Liberation and Cybertron freed itself from Quintesson rule. (Roughly 12 BCE)Originally designed as a civilian laborer he soon found that he had an aptitude for things mechanical and likely would have become a medic if not for freak coincidence. Instead he became an industrial maintenance worker responsible for heavy machinery -- all of it asteroid and surface mining equipment.
This was the so-called Golden Age of Cybertron, the time of Straxus and Alpha Trion, unimpeded research and much political wrangling. Crosshairs was fairly active in following the debate between the two leaders. As things came to the head and came down to the final argument that led to the formation of the Autobots and Decepticons, he was firmly on the side of Alpha Trion -- his involvement with the mining community threatening to give him a front row seat if Cybertronians were to forcibly strip mine an inhabited world. Many of those around him shared the belief and when push came to shove, he went with a group of rough and tumble miners to join the 'Autobots' and defend against the growing forces of Straxus.
He was young and idealistic, and when the fighting really broke out it fell on him to improvise weapons out of what wasn't intended to be so. From his hands, plasma cutters became plasma cannons and laser torches became pistols. Mining tools were drafted into service as melee weapons and all sorts of improvisation occurred. Crosshairs had a gift. He progressed from converting mining tools to building actual weaponry and so became a valuable cog in the Autobot fighting machine. The war continued as it did with Crosshairs developing into not only a skilled armorer but a potent fighter as well. Trained as a sniper, he took his name during this time for his unerring accuracy and soon became lauded as a crack shot.
The war took it's toll, however. Friends came and went and fighting in the kind of high-intensity conflict that this turned into is enough to weigh on anyone's psyche. And the intensity would only get stronger. With the factions not yet truly established and many attempting to remain neutral he ended up watching -- and sometimes being responsible for the destruction of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. A growing determination to prevent this caused him to hone his aim further;
Eventually he was assigned to the command of Fortress Maximus, an able warrior who he genuinely liked. Unfortunately also, around this time the evil Scorponok began to make himself known -- a frightening and terrible combatant that was responsible for the deaths of many Autobots. Gradually, Crosshairs and his men grew closer to the area that he was operating in and soon were tasked with the idea of doing something about him.
They failed, initially but succeeded in drawing the attention of the beast. With the current eye (and hatred) of Scorponok fixed upon them, Fortress Maximus, Crosshairs and the lot of them received surprise orders: lure Scorponok off of Cybertron and into deep space. Remove him from the conflict, no matter the cost. To this end they were assigned the Cruiser Steelhaven and soon blasted off into space with Scorponok and his crew in hot pursuit.
For many, many millions of years Crosshairs was exposed to hell on a daily basis as the Steelhaven crew engaged in life and death cat and mouse with the crew of the Hellbender. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps more times over the two ships fought with intense attrition on both sides. Sometimes with ship-board weaponry, sometimes with bare fists in hand to hand, but always the Steelhaven crew managed to stay ahead by the skin of their teeth. During this time he was responsible for keeping the Steelhaven's weapons running, keeping his weapons running, keeping everyone else's weapon's running and fighting off Decepticon attacks at the same time. As the crews of these two ships fought their own private war, the intensity of the war back home subsided as Cybertron ran out of fuel and slowly, the intensity of the Second Cybertronian War gave away to the much smaller, longer flares of the Third.
From star system to star system, the Steelhaven and the Hellbender fought until ironically, the involvement of someone else caused the vicious circle to end. Having been tracking it for some time, the Autobot Detective Nightbeat tracked down the Steelhaven in orbit of the planet Nebulous. While he was on board the ship bolstered by Apeface and Snapdragon, Scorponok and the Hellbender attacked in full force and the two crews engaged in their bloodiest battle to date. With both ships crippled the two crews crash landed on the surface of Nebulous.
Despite his best efforts, manning the Steelhaven's guns for as long as he could, Crosshairs went down with the ship -- the crash landing knocking him unconscious. Including him, all of the Steelhaven's crew were damaged to the point of being in comas; many killed as well. For him it would have lasting effects. When a Cybertronian is damaged, normally repairs are as easy as replacing the damaged components. Laser-core damage is a far different story. Seated near a weapon turret, Crosshairs became the victim of an overwhelming electrical current when the power source for the turret overloaded in the crash. Exposed to it for a sustained period it eventually overwhelmed the core's resistance and the resulting damage permanently destroyed his ability to interface with any sort of targeting system. Even if the components in his body are replaced a thousand times or he is completely rebuilt, the disability will stay with him for the rest of his life.
In transformer terms, it is not unlike being extremely myopic. As long as things are within his reach he operates by visual and other sensory cues and can engage in hand to hand combat just fine. But when it comes to hitting things beyond his arms reach, it becomes impossible. He has lost his ability to perceive where to point his weaponry.
Meanwhile, as the Autobots laid in damage-induced comas Nightbeat crawled away from the wreckage to get help -- only to be tried and (almost) executed by the Nebulous government for the crimes committed by Decepticons during a previous assault on the world. Supposedly, at least -- when his true crime was hitting on the wrong person -- Llyra, the daughter of the Nebulan War-Hero and Supreme Leader Zarak. Either way, the crew of the Hellbender emerged far less damaged than their Autobot compatriots and began a brutal rampage across Nebulos -- echoing the damage done by other Decepticons years earlier.
In an effort to halt the Decepticon attacks across Nebulous, Arcana and a few other Nebulans banded togeather to attempt bring life back to the comatose Autobots. Eventually, the headmaster process was developed and the Nebulans sacrificed some of who they were to get the Autobots back on their feet. Palantor, a civil engineer on Nebulous elected to become Crosshairs' new targeting system -- gaining the ability to feed him targeting data as long as they were reasonably close togeather and transforming into a weapon system for him. He took the name Pinpointer to go with Crosshairs' own name and reputation as a crack shot. Through nook, crook, or luck, Nebulan security forces managed to lay out the Deceptions at this point.
The headmaster process had been spearheaded by one Arcana, and Vorath, a mentally sketchy colleague of her's performed the process on the defeated Decepticons and soon, the two crews were battling yet again with the aid of their binary-bonded pairings. Vorath believed Nebulos could be made save by enslaving the Decepticons in this manner. Intervention would soon come from off-world Autobots and Decepticons. The war ended with the rendering of Nebulous uninhabitable to Cybertronian life by poisoning all available energy sources.
Now returned to the Autobots, Crosshairs was immediately subjected to questioning and hatred by his new (former) comrades, believing that he and the rest of the Steelhaven crew were deserters. He passed the time by repairing what he could -- noting that the Autobots on Earth did not have a proper armorer and soon settled into modifying as many munitions for the conflict as he could. Deep within, he was sickened by the thought that for him at least, it had all started again. Same faces, new conflict. Even with innocents -- this time humanity -- caught in the middle. But what was the alternative to be? Without his all, the Decepticons would win . . and so he found himself re-embroiled in a high-intensity war that he was shockingly sick of.
When the time came to put Fortress Maximus on trial for his actions, Rodimus Prime was without a prosecutor. Cunningly, he manipulated Crosshairs into filling that role against his own commander -- arguing to the old 'bot that if he didn't make a good showing that bias would forever remain against the Steelhaven crew. Without a trial, he said, and without prosecution, there was no proof of innocence. At the same time, he manipulated the other old(er) timer, Kup into serving as Fortress Maximus' defense. Unsurprisingly, the two proceeded to get blind drunk the night before the trial. The trial came, and it was ruled that because of their headmaster components that the Steelhaven crew were no longer the same people they were when they left and the trial was thrown out.
Despite his misgivings and weariness of the war, Crosshairs threw himself into filling the niche that he had discovered as best he could. The Autobots needed an armorer and after convincing Rodimus Prime to let him retool an empty area in Metroplex into a proper armory he set about the construction of munitions and additional weaponry. Over time, his willingness to help his comrades as well as his personal drive earned him a few friends.
A short time later, he became involved in the recovery of the Autobot Seeker, Raptor. After he was shot down by Cyclonus, Crosshairs braved the face of considerable stupidity around him on the part of his comrades to recover him. After the younger Autobot displayed some psycological issues, Crosshairs negotiated with Rodimus Prime to have Raptor assigned to work with him in the Munitions Bay to 'give him someone to talk to' to get to the bottom of his issues. Somewhere in this, Crosshairs was promoted as he had finally earned the trust of those around him.
Not so long after this, the long-offline autobot Arsenal was recovered from Cybertron and rebuilt by First Aid. Having been studying Terran military history and vehicles, Crosshairs was responsible for the selection of Arsenal's altmode as a M50 Ontos along with the design and fitting of his weapon systems.
A short time later, Crosshairs was promoted again -- this time to the rank of Chief Armorer.
[edit] Notes
The downside of being old, and having seen far more than his share of battle is that Crosshairs secretly suffers from a form of Cybertronian Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It stems from a series of incidents early on in the Autobot-Decepticon conflict. In the early periods of the war there were many individuals who had not yet picked a side in the growing battle. And time and time again, they suffered. Weather it was from attempted forced recruitment by the Decepticons or simply being caught in the middle, they were hurt.
Now, millions of stellar cycles later the exposure to far too much of this is beginning to rear it's ugly head -- especially considering that it is happening again. On Earth and other inhabited planets, the Autobots and the Decepticons continue to battle and it is always the innocents that seem to suffer the most.
A stubborn old bot in the best of times, Crosshairs is determined not to let innocent people be brutalized on his watch again. Ironically enough he is perfectly fine when it is actually happening, galvanized into helping them evacuate or pummeling the source of the threat. It is when there are none around that he worries the most and the PTSD begins to show. In an area where there /should/ be innocents, such as an already evacuated area he tends to mistake shadows and inanimate objects for people and reacts accordingly -- moving to defend a tumbleweed lodged behind a dumpster or a shirt flapping on a clothesline. In these times he is easily taken advantage of.
[edit] Logs
[edit] 2030
- Recess - In a solemn place, Kup meets with Crosshairs to try to learn why they did what they did. Meanwhile, Red Alert chats with Crosshairs's gun.
- Prosecution - After his unorthodox choice for defense, it should come as no surprise just who Rodimus Prime has chosen for the Prosecution.
- Verdict - Finally, the trial itself. In the shadow of the ruins of Autobot Headquarters, cases are argued, evidence presented, grand speeches are given, and a decision is made. Oddly, no one makes any surprise interruptions.
- Impactor gets WRECKED! - The Wrecker is caught out in the middle of nowhere with bad reception, the Decepticons strike!
