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Who: Disciple and OPEN
Where: Here, there, everywhere.
When: March 21-25th
What: Various shenanigans from Di adopting a mutant cat that seems to be made of silly putty, painting, and other things. Feel free to ping me on my journal if you want to plot :3
Warnings: None for now.

a. meet pudding

[Di was surprised it had taken her this long to get a pet. It was so simple to do here on Earth, and she was in a position now where she could reasonably do so. Returning to her home day after day, with no company made for a lonesome experience. With everything that had been happening she really could use someone to openly love, dote on, and cuddle with.

When she entered the animal shelter, Di quickly realized that limiting herself to just one cat would be one of the greatest tests of her will she had ever undergone.

After a couple hours of cooing over nearly every cat in the shelter Di walked out a very happy troll, with a new pet cat on her shoulders. A pet cat that looked more like a big lob of pink silly putty with eyes that was currently melting down her shoulder.

His name was Pudding and she was enjoying a day out in the park with him, perched beneath a tree with a picnic basket next to them.

((ooc; so an explanation. I've always wanted to get Di a cat like Choo-choo Bear from Something Positive. Pudding is similar in attitude and...substance and is the result of your run of the mill crazy mutation through tragic/scientific means. Feel free to be completely and utterly disgusted by him. Or love him. Or hate him on a sincere and personal level.))]

b. painting

[With a small source of personal income, Di now felt she could buy things she wished for without guilt. One of the first things she had invested in was some paints and canvases, and she had been painting nonstop since.

As it was a beautiful day, cooler than some of the recent ones, Di had decide to work outside. She had brought along her canvas bag with some finished paintings: the sight of both of Alternia's moons in a starry sky, the Signless, Psionic, and Dolorosa gathered around a campfire, the market place of one of the many rural villages they had passed in their journeys. There were other paintings as well, not pertaining to her home world: the first look of Earth she had glimpsed from space, the city at night with all its bright lights.

At the moment she was well into another painting, working with a tiny brush at painting the likeness of the Cybertronian she had recently encountered for a second time. Orion Pax was someone her heart went out to, and she hoped that soon all things would become clear for him.]

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[This person had the right of it. Generally speaking an Alternian would not go out of their way to help any other species. Hell, they seemed to have difficulty enough helping their own kind.]

Well, our relationship with them in the past may not be all that great, but I don't see why that can't change.

[Wait. No. Let her amend that. There was a definite reason why it couldn't change. At least not on a large scale.]

Well. I suppose it wouldn't because of our...Empress, but I've never been particularly supportive of her.

[ Di is just full of surprises. That's actually pretty comforting to hear; the Alternian Empress has given Cybertron no shortage of trouble, and she's even allied with the Decepticons once or twice. Doesn't really put her in Arcee's good book. ]

Is that why you're here -- on Earth? I didn't expect to find Alternians here, but it seems like there's a handful of you scattered around.

That's right, more or less. [She dips her fingertips in a small can of water she has, then wipes her hands free of paint and water with a towel before holding a hand out to shake.]

I'm Magdal. Are you also not from Earth? [Arcee's wording seemed to imply as much, and perhaps that was why something seemed different about her. Di still hadn't been able to pinpoint exactly what it was that seemed unusual]

[ Magdal. She'll have to remember that. Anyone who went out of their way to help Orion is someone Arcee wants to keep in mind.

She hesitates, debating with herself for a moment, but it's not as though the presence of Cybertronians on this planet is a secret to this Alternian, and her sympathies don't lie with the Condesce. And more than that, Arcee can't see the benefit in lying to her. She nods, keeping her voice at a discreet volume. Mostly, she just doesn't want to say too much in public. ]

This isn't my real body -- just an avatar. I'm Cybertronian as well. [ She takes Di's hand and shakes it, her grip firm. ] My name is Arcee.

[With that small revelation dropped, Di's mind is blown away.]

An avatar? [She can divine what Arcee means by that, even if she has never seen holographic images before. What she finds astounding is the fact that this avatar is solid. It's also with this new information, and Arcee being a little closer that it finally hits her. This person has no scent. It seems so obvious now that she thought about it but usually she fixated on how people did smell, not how they didn't.]

That's incredible. [Her pupils seem to grow much larger than usual and her hair ruffled a little as her ears stood up in excitement. She gave Arcee’s hand a gentle, experimental squeeze before she finally remembered herself and quickly let go, embarrassed]

Er, sorry. [It was only then when Arcee’s name finally sunk in and she realized who this must be.] Arcee? Of the Autobots? [The name was one she had only recently acquired from Legion. Small city, indeed.]

[ Magdal's fascination at her avatar is...kind of endearing, in a way. Arcee can definitely see how she and Orion could have become friendly, at least. ]

It's all right. [ She really doesn't mind the touch, honestly -- if anything, she's just glad that Magdal doesn't seem to be angry that she'd pretended to be human. ]

The Autobots, yes. I'm guessing Orion mentioned something?

We did talk about the situation. [Di couldn't really fault anyone for being disguised. It's not as if she were upfront with everyone about who she was either. In any case Arcee had dropped the pretense rather quickly so she saw little reason to hold a grudge.

Knowing her identity did, however, cause her to feel a bit awkward. It was the first Cybertronian that she had met who was involved in the warring factions (to her knowledge, in any case). Everything she knew about the Autobots, about the Decepticons, about Cybertron and its history she all knew from Orion. It almost felt mythological in a way, and to meet someone who was a part of it felt very surreal.]

Your name I got from Legion.

[ Legion? Well, that explains it. Legion seems to have a subroutine in every pie around here, so to speak. Arcee's not all that surprised -- although she's a little ruffled. She supposes it might have been a double standard to ask Legion to keep her identity a secret, since discretion is the name of the game here, but they've helped the Autobots out a lot just by leading them to Orion when he'd been kidnapped. ]

The...situation. Right. [ She smiles faintly, albeit ruefully. ] You mean the situation where Orion doesn't know who to trust to tell the truth?

[Di watched Arcee studiously. It was a strange feeling. In this situation the only emotional investment she had was Orion. Especially considering that she did not know the truth, the factions of the Autobots and Decepticons could only mean so much to her at this point in time. She truly had not idea how she was supposed to regard any of the actors involved in this.

While her instinct was to sympathize with Arcee, she could very easily be someone just trying to manipulate the situation to return Orion to the Warlord the Decepticons said he had been.]

Yes, that situation.

[ And now Arcee looks faintly uncomfortable, because she knows what kind of position that puts both her and Magdal in. Awkward. ]

Look, I'm not here to try to convince you one way or another which of us Orion --or you -- should trust. I know that anything I say about it is more or less suspect. I just wanted to...thank you. For helping him.

[Arcee sounds sincere. Especially if that's all she wants to say, but Di can't help but still keep her defenses up. She gives a nod of acknowledgment.]

You're welcome. I would like to hear your side of things though. The more I know, the more I can try and give him an unbiased opinion on the facts.

[Whether Arcee spoke the truth or not, more information would help them see what lines up and what doesn't]

[ Arcee looks at her hesitantly, an eyebrow raised. ]

You do? You want biased information?

[ Even though Arcee knows Megatron was lying and she's not, it's impossible for her to speak without bias. But at least she never said anything that wasn't untrue. ]

I do. I'm not saying I'm necessarily going to believe everything you say, but biased information is still better than no information.

[Particularly for her, there were still a lot of things she didn't understand simply because she was not Cybertronian.]

I guess I see your point.

[ Arcee hesitates still, but her avatar shrugs. What does she have to lose? It's not like Di doesn't already know a lot -- that there are Cybertronians on Earth, for instance. ]

It's...a long story. I have records I could send you, if you're really that curious. But the short of it is that Megatron and Orion were once friends, a long, long time ago. They were revolutionaries, I guess you could say -- there was a lot of injustice in our society, a caste system. They wanted change, and they were working together to achieve that change. And then Orion received the Matrix of Leadership -- the artifact that made him Optimus Prime -- and...long story short, Megatron went off in a bad way. He turned away from his ideals, turned to tyranny and war mongering.

[ She tries to keep her voice level, but her hands clench into fists and she sighs. ]

There are no innocent parties in a war, I know that. But the atrocities Megatron's committed...the Decepticons aren't revolutionaries, they're cruel. And now Megatron's taken the Matrix from Orion -- I don't know how -- and he's lied to Orion, tried to make it sound like the Autobots are some kind of oppressive regime. But we've followed Optimus Prime all this time, and I know you don't know Optimus, but...he wasn't all that different from Orion, in the end. There's a reason Orion was chosen as the next bearer of the Matrix.

[There was a small amount there that Di felt confident was factual. Orion had told her about how things were on Cybertron, how and he Megatronus--Megatron, had been friends. They worked together to try and make things better and had been received by the Council who decided to give Orion the Matrix.

The whole thing with Optimus and Orion was strange to her. She had simply thought that was a title Orion had taken on, just as she had once cast aside her birth name of Magdal for the title of Disciple. The way Arcee spoke about them, however, made it seem as if they were somewhat different entities and that didn't sit very well with Di for personal reasons.

Her own feelings on that, however, were irrelevant.]

When exactly was the Matrix taken from Orion? [Di had been hoping to hear something about how the Matrix had been taken from him. Figuring out if it was in fact gone was important and Di felt it would lead them to the truth. Arcee may not know how it was taken from him(or claim to not) but getting a tentative time frame was a starting point.]

All I have is a time frame. [ The avatar's shoulders slacken, and Arcee sighs heavily. ] But it was pretty recent. Some months back, Optimus left our outpost to take care of another threat. I don't know exactly how things went down -- Orion doesn't remember, and I don't trust Megatron to give me an accurate account, if any -- but somewhere along the way, Megatron managed to get his hands on the Matrix. I don't know how, but he did. My best guess is that it was in the last couple of months. Whenever Orion's current memories begin.

"Did he say what this threat was?" From the little she understood about the war between the Autobots and Decepticons it was hard to imagine something that would draw Orion--Optimus, away from it.

"He told me before he left, when he left me in command of the Autobots," Arcee says, a little haltingly. "But I hope you'll understand if I'm a little reluctant to share all the details. It's not that I don't want to tell you, it's just -- it's sensitive military intel, and I don't know how much the Decepticons know."

Right. It ran both ways, this uncertainty of whether the other was safe to speak to or not.

"It's alright, I understand."

It brought her focus back on the Matrix.

"The Matrix then, you don't think it has been destroyed?" Whether the Decpticons were in the right and it was corrupted, or whether it wasn't and a powerful source of knowledge it was hard to see why Megatron wouldn't destroy it. Perhaps she was interpreting things incorrectly but from the sounds of it someone could only hold the Matrix if they were chosen, so in the latter case it would be useless to Megatron.

The avatar shakes her head, her mouth set in a grim line. "I doubt it. I think Megatron told Orion the Matrix had been destroyed because he didn't want Orion to go looking for it. But I don't think Megatron would just destroy something he might be able to use. He's ruthless, but he's not stupid."

It looked like she had been wrong in her assumption that it was something only Orion would be able to use. She'd have to ask him to be sure, but it definitely made the Autobots' argument make more sense.

"If the Decepticons aren't fighting to get rid of the caste system, what are they fighting for now?" She half wondered what the Autobots were fighting for too. With their home gone it seemed like that would eliminate a lot of what they might have defended.

"What else? They're fighting to win." Arcee looks grim, tired -- as though suddenly grown weary from the seven millennia of war. "Admitting defeat is the last thing Megatron would do. He wants to stop Optimus, the Autobots -- he wants to win, Magdal. The war's not over for him until he's in charge -- of all of it."

What was there left to be in charge of? Di kept her mouth closed on that one, and simply nodded. While Alternia carried mostly memories of pain, and there was much that was wrong with it, Di didn't want to think about it being destroyed. She couldn't imagine what it must be like to have your home world gone be a reality.

"Well, thank you for everything, Arcee. I don't know where I stand in all this," not only because of how little information she knew, but also because it was hard to imagine how a group of people fighting for equality could have gone so astray, "or if I even have a right standing somewhere in all this but."

She gave a small nod, looking Arcee in the eye. "I do know Orion is a good person--a friend. I'm sure he'll make the right decision when the time comes, and I'll do my best to help him with it."

"Listen, you're a friend of Orion's, and that's enough for me." At least for, now anyway -- she does mean it, though. "I know all of this has been...confusing for Orion. The fact that he has someone he can count on who doesn't have a stake in all this...I think it means a lot to him. So...thank you. For being there."

Well, as far as first impressions went, Arcee had left a good one. She wasn't herding her anywhere, and she really did seem to have Orion's well being at heart.

She gives Arcee a small smile a nods.

"Of course. I'll do my best. It was good to meet you, Arcee." And hopefully they could talk again under better circumstances.

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deadpartners - 2014-06-19 17:13 (UTC) - Expand

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