Entry tags:
ROCK'EM SOCK'EM ROBOTS [BIG OPEN FIGHT LOG]
Who: Signless, Robots, and YOU
Where: City Hall, and all over downtown LA.
When: April 14th
What: Signless bates the Cybetronians into having a big fight in downtown LA while attempting to get a valuable artifact. Earth civilians and superheroes are SUPER WELCOME to notice the fuss and try to stop the fighting/safe people from collateral damage.
Warnings: SUDDENLY ROBOT ULTRAVIOLENCE
Signless leaves himself, and the hammer, visible at first. He wants them to see him, to know that the battle is imminent - and with any luck, a conflict will start. He'll do his best to disappear and keep them hunting for him as as long as possible after he's initially been spotted. Maximum collateral damage is his goal.
It also helps that he's an empath. He'll be taking whatever opportunities he can to agitate people's emotions, whether it be anger, panic, or fear, in the attempt to make ever more chaos.
This is a party style log, meaning you can make you own threads and scenarios. Signless will be around with the hammer. LET'S MAKE THIS AS BIG OF A CLUSTERFUCK AS POSSIBLE, GUYS.
Where: City Hall, and all over downtown LA.
When: April 14th
What: Signless bates the Cybetronians into having a big fight in downtown LA while attempting to get a valuable artifact. Earth civilians and superheroes are SUPER WELCOME to notice the fuss and try to stop the fighting/safe people from collateral damage.
Warnings: SUDDENLY ROBOT ULTRAVIOLENCE
Signless leaves himself, and the hammer, visible at first. He wants them to see him, to know that the battle is imminent - and with any luck, a conflict will start. He'll do his best to disappear and keep them hunting for him as as long as possible after he's initially been spotted. Maximum collateral damage is his goal.
It also helps that he's an empath. He'll be taking whatever opportunities he can to agitate people's emotions, whether it be anger, panic, or fear, in the attempt to make ever more chaos.
This is a party style log, meaning you can make you own threads and scenarios. Signless will be around with the hammer. LET'S MAKE THIS AS BIG OF A CLUSTERFUCK AS POSSIBLE, GUYS.
AFTER THE FIGHT
He drives far more aggressively than he ever has before while ferrying her out, his horn blaring a good few times. They'd lost this one, in more ways than one.
He can relax ever so slightly once they reach the desert, but not much. He doesn't see any of the human law enforcement following them anymore, but he's even more assured of how useless in battle he is than he was before, and he's not yet sure what has become of the other Autobots. There was so much chaos that he lost track of nearly everyone.
They're the first ones to get back to the Rod Pod, and he leaves of trail of dust in the air as he skids to a stop in front of it. One of his arms is still no good for carrying much weight, but he manages to pull one of those transformations where the passenger ends up supported in his arm. He rushes her inside of the pod without a word.
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Right now, it's hard not to feel like they've lost.
Her optics are dim as Orion hurries her into the Rod Pod, flickering faintly, lying limply in her grasp. The fight with Megatron had ended disastrously, leaving her battered and dented and spilling energon -- but what had she expected? She hadn't ever been a match for Megatron, couldn't have hoped to be. Only Optimus could have managed to come out the better in a fight like that. But then, maybe that's the problem.
Megatron has the Matrix, she knows -- and now he has the Forge, too. And she's not the only one injured, either. She knows they can't afford to give up now, but Arcee doesn't know how they're going to come back from this. They don't have a medic -- they barely have a team -- she doesn't know how she's supposed to lead anyone in this condition. She clenches her jaw as Orion's grasp on her shifts, closing a hand weakly over Orion's broad arm. "Orion," she manages, her vocalizer weak and flanging.
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"Arcee," he says, voice tense. "I've brought you back to the camp. I...I remember how to use the energon tranfuser, I will get it for you now."
He can't quite turn away for a moment or two after he says this, however.
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Arcee doesn't argue; she knows she needs energon. Dimly, in the back of her mind, she notes the strange reversal, remembers that it wasn't too long ago that it was Orion who lay injured and bleeding energon in the pod. She'd felt defeated then, too, but not anything like this. It seems strange, somehow, that Orion is the one to treat her like this, of all of them. She hears the tension in his voice, knows he's struggling with this but he's shaken, too. She doesn't know what to make of that yet. She closes a hand over her midsection, feels the energon still leaking there. "Welder," she says, after a few false starts. Her voice is lined with static, tight with the effort it's taking just to keep it together. "Get the welder, too -- it needs to be closed up, or a transfusion's not gonna do any good."
Ratchet. They need Ratchet or somebody, a real medic, not just an officer with basic battlefield first aid training. They need a medibay. Orion's still crippled from his old injuries, and Arcee's not feeling too healthy right about now, either.
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"Yes - I will..."
He's used a welder before, he thinks - but never something this serious. Minor patch work, maybe. What a nightmare. He feels like he is the least equipped bot in the world to be doing this, but here he is.
Calm, part of him insists. This amount of inner self deprecation isn't going to help anything. He knows he's not stupid, but he still finds his frame shaking from that fight. Between Breakdown almost killing him, and what Megatron did...
Someday, years from now, maybe he could grow to be prepared for this. But he's not that person, and this is a powerful reminder of that.
He manages to bring the transfuser and welder over, deciding to try to work with the welder first, as per her suggestion.
"I am sorry," he says. "I...do not have much experience with this."
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She watches him shake, though, feels her spark clench -- something stirs low in her fuel tanks, uneasy and rueful, and she closes a hand around the edge of the table he's laid her on, venting out slowly. He shouldn't be the one apologizing.
"I'm sorry, Orion. I just -- " She makes an aborted gesture with her other hand before it falls back to her abdomen, both hand and voice heavy with the weight of guilt. "I let them get away."
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He shakes his head, venting slowly as he manages to lure himself into quivering less. He makes sure his good arm has a solid grasp on the welder before slowly and carefully starting to work.
"We shouldn't worry about that now," he says. "That was not a duty resting on your shoulders alone."
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"Maybe not," she says again in acknowledgment, her face softening, even though she still grimaces at the welder. That's just the trouble, though, isn't it? It's the sort of thing Optimus would say. That's what the other Autobots need to be hearing. Arcee's no longer so sure she even possesses any of that wisdom to dispense. She cycles air through her vents, sighing slowly. "But it's all we have when the odds are stacked against us. Now that Megatron has the Matrix and the Forge..." She slumps a little, her frame going slack. "I just...have to find a way to pull through."
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But he also knows that he is the only potential Prime around and he finds himself afraid that this was somehow what Megatron wanted from him all along. That maybe they'll come for him next.
He tries not to think about it. Instead he focuses on Arcee's voice and the lines of broken metal as he welds them back together.
"You are not alone, Arcee. In thought or in deed. I have often felt inadequate here as well... But you have everything that I am, just as I know you give everything you are. You were...You are so very brave in the face of all this and I do not think I would have made it this far without your guidance."
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"Sorry," she says, if only for the drawn-out silence, the lack of response other than a stunned stare. "It's just -- " She huffs out another vent of air, but this time it almost sounds like a faint, rueful laugh. "I'm the one who wouldn't be here without -- without Optimus's guidance. He's...gotten me through some tough times." There's a pang as she remembers Jetset, the tumultuous period of grief that had followed. Optimus had been there for that, too.
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"I think there is something to be learned from most bots," he says, slowly and contemplatively at first, but picking up momentum. "If Optimus really was like me...I am certain that he learned something from you as well." His smile fades completely then, becoming more nostalgic and pained. "You can learn, I think, even if...the bot isn't everything you thought they would be. Even if they are not perfect." He carefully sets his vocalizer before continuing. "I would not be who I am now if I had never met Megatronus. I do not think I would have...come so far, if I had not been exposed to that first spark of the fire he caries within him. Even with all he has done."
He pauses there, and then shakes his head.
"I am sorry to wax poetic over such things."
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"Don't be." Arcee's voice is still weak and crackling with static in her vocalizer, but she speaks anyway. She's still dizzy, fuel churning in her tanks from the loss of energon, but Orion's working on it and at least she's lying down now. Her plating might still be a scuffed and dented mess, smeared with energon, but her optics are brighter now, attentive and focused. "Optimus...wasn't often prone to sharing his feelings, not like this. Whenever he chose to, it was like -- I felt honored. It's...good to hear you talk about it."
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"Learning of Optimus Prime so often feels like some unnatural premonition," he says, something musing in his voice. All the while, he is continuing to patiently work with the welder. "I had often wondered what would become of me, if we would succeed. This is not an outcome I had ever imagined."
He hesitates for a long few moments, not sure if he's feeling up to going on.
"The way Megatron spoke to us, towards the end...that is the way you have come to know him, isn't it?"
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Her voice is heavy as her gaze settles back on his face, and though the post-battle ache is starting to settle into her limbs, no longer kept at bay by the rush of energon boiling in her lines, she still moves to put her hand back over his weaker one. "I know I've said it before, but -- I'm sorry, Orion. For all of this."
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"I have been foolish, I think," he says. "Foolish, and too desperate to salvage something with him, despite so many warnings. Right to the end, I had hopes that I still might mean something to him. They were only selfish desires."
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"But only out of a need for things to be how they were before," he says, slow and resigned. "He was...very dear to me. More than anything, I feel my actions were the result of my need for him to care for me again."
Arcee makes it sound like something noble, but it's hard for him to think of it that way. He remembers his own tears at the park, and how he had reacted when Megatron first spoke to him. They feel like the actions of someone smitten and stupid, and the more he thinks of them in those terms, the more resentful he feels towards himself for indulging in them.
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"Orion, you practically woke up in another world -- out of time, out of place...Megatron was the only familiar thing to you. So much happened, so much changed in the blink of an eye for you...there's no shame in wanting to take comfort in something safe and familiar when everything else you know is gone. And to have that something you trust in taken away from you, to discover it just -- doesn't exist anymore..." She lets her optics close, tensing again momentarily under the welder. She sucks in a fresh intake of air through her vents. "I know what it's like to lose someone so suddenly. Maybe not like this, but -- anyone would feel that way. We're Cybertronian, Orion, we're living things with sparks and we feel. And believe me, it doesn't do you any good to just...close yourself off from that."
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Her words take the edge off of his resentment, and the hard stare of his optics softens. He vents out slowly, pausing in his welding for only a moment before continuing.
"I wonder...how I felt the first time around," he says softly. Did the gradually widening gap between them make it easier to bear? Or did watching someone so dear slowly slip away just make him harder?
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"I can't tell you how you felt," she says, her voice sober. "But I know that it hurt. Optimus never talked about it too much, not -- on a personal level, but...he never let it change him. He never let the war become about revenge for him."
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But it wouldn't be enough for long. Even now he still feels tied to this.
He's almost finished with the welding now, and so he starts to hook up the transfusion.
"I have no desire for revenge," he says quietly. "I would settle for being able to return home."
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He vents slowly, feeling the edge of his wound up nerves again now that he doesn't have anything to do with his hands. He looks at her, his optics soft but still mournful.
"I will do everything I am able to aid you in that task," he says, at last. And he knows, in the end, what that will mean.
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