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Who: Rodimus and the Decepticons
Where: Outside the ~~congest~~ Conquest
When: Not long after the robot fight (12 hoursish) Nighttime
What: Rodimus enacts step 1 of his 1 part plan
Warnings: Robots? Bad lying.

Rodimus is outside the Decepticon warship. Well....HALF of the Decepticon warship. He's not really sure what happened there, but makes a mental note to have a good chuckle about it later when he's NOT about to put himself in a situation that's either going to go, well, the way he hopes it will or...the way he hopes it doesn't.

Still, broken in half, functional or not, it's hard not to admit that the Decepticon dreadnought is pretty intimidating. He's not even sure how many cons are in there...although he suspects not many, considering Megatron made a personal appearance to obtain the forge. He shakes his head, thinking about the Autobots own paltry list of resources. Even if it wasn't functional now, this massive ship could be someday, and who knows how much energon and weaponry they had stored inside. The Autobots could barely scrape together enough energon to treat themselves after battle...they weren't ready for a long-term siege scenario.

Rodimus feels a sudden pang of guilt thinking about the Autobots. About leaving...no, let's be fair, abandoning the other bots back in downtown L.A. True, he never really saw them except from a distance, and didn't actually have any idea of the outcome of the battle when he decided to follow the 'cons trail back to their base, but Drift filled him in afterward and it...wasn't good. He now knows that Megatron had gotten the forge, and that the Autobots had come out the other side pretty roughed up. It didn't help that they all still had injuries from their last fight that hadn't been properly repaired. And to hear that Arcee had taken onMegatron, one on one (Rodimus thought that was pretty badass and vowed to tell Arcee next time he saw her). Drift told him the details as best he could; had said she was stable but out of commission, and until they got a medic - Rodimus grit his teeth angrily. There wasn't anything he could have done. Not in the fight, not afterwards. And maybe that's what made it worse. Right now he felt so...so useless.

He looks up at the warship, it's outline menacing against the dark sky. He vents heavily, and sets his commlink to bounce an unencrypted message at the ship. No point in waiting. If they're monitoring the radiowaves at all, they'll get it. It's a simple message, he doesn't say who he is, just where and that he wants to join the Decepticons. It'll get their attention...of that, he's sure.

What he's not sure of, is how they'll react.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So you're a fickle, backstabbing asshole then, is all that Sollux can think to that. Ditching your teammates because you're the underdogs sounds reprehensible to him. Either Rodimus is a spy or he's a motherfucker.

"Ugh, I'm not saying that I'm like indebted to them so I have to be here or something," he says, sounding faintly impatient, like he doesn't know how to explain it. "It's a troll thing, okay? Sometimes you just...want to protect someone and help them out, and it doesn't matter who is indebted to who, because you know that you've got each other's backs."

He's sort of embarassed to lay it out like that, but it's not like robots romanticize that kind of thing anyway. There's nothing wrong with just going with his instincts on this even if the implications don't actually mean anything to Breakdown, right?

"I don't really care about all your Autobot Decepticon beastshit. But Megatron told me about how the Decepticons got started and it seemed fair enough to me."

Rodimus tries not to laugh. Not in a malicious way, but in general bemusement of the awkwardness of this guy attempting to explain himself.

"Are you, are you trying to say you're...friends? That you're friends with the 'cons?" Rodimus asks. It's not meant as a jab, but if you didn't know Rodimus well enough it might seem that way. "Because that's okay...really! You don't have to be all...weird about it."

Rodimus is tentative about challenging Sollux's ideas about the Decepticons and how they got their start. It's hard not to argue the point, to make clear that the Decepticon's founding ideals and their current ones have...drifted; but at the same time, he's already let slip enough of his actual feelings about the 'cons as is...he doesn't need to slap a neon sign on it too.

Sollux growls softly in frustration, raising his hands in protest.

"No, friendship is a totally different thing, that's not even a quadrant," he says impatiently. God, why can't all species do things this way? "And I'm not even being weird, I'm trying to explain a sociological concept you fuckers don't even have. It's called moirallegiance. It's not just friendship, but you don't fuck."

What the hell was a 'quadrant'? What the hell was a morraylleganblahblahblah? Even humans weren't this complicated.

"Whoa, hey, listen...I'm going to be honest with you. I have no idea what you're talking about," Rodimus says earnestly. He can see that Sollux is losing his patience. "Sorry, I'm not trying to offend you I just...I don't get all this...this..." he gestures helplessly. "...stuff you guys've got going on. I mean I guess, maybe, the idea I kind of get...but do you need all these...all these words for it? 'Cause then you get all bent out of shape about it when someone gets it wrong. I'm just saying it seems like more of a headache than it's worth..."

Rodimus's seemingly earnest repentance there seems to take the edge off of Sollux's anger, and he instead gives the bot a still frustrated but more baffled look, like he can't understand how it could be so confusing. His long ears twitch like a dog's would when making a similar expression.

"It's not, and it's not really even that complicated. There's only four relationships and all of them are for totally different stuff, and ones like moirallegiance can make a big difference for someone like...me, I guess."

He frowns, looking sort of upset at that thought. He pushes his ears back defensively.

"Nobody else takes care of trolls, okay? We don't fucking have...'psychologists' or doctors that care about us. We don't have fucking parents or families or whatever. The quadrants are so you have people looking out for you when no one else will."

"Right. Okay, that...yeah, that makes sense," Rodimus says slowly. Maybe it wasn't all thatmore complex than the humans. He barely understood their relationship nonsense anyway....maybe these quadrant things actually did make more sense. "We're - Cybertronians, I mean - kind of similar, I think," Rodimus says cheerfully. He feels bad that his line of conversation seems to have upset Sollux in some way, although he's not sure, and not sure what. It seems rude to ask. "I mean, not exactly but, you know...we don't have "families" either. We make our own families. I don't think most of us are any good at it, but we try, I suppose."

Rodimus is really starting to warm to this little guy. He seriously seems like way too okay of a person to be hanging around the Decepticons though....

Sollux basically knew that, but he'd almost forgotten for a moment. He's got some baggage about the ways that humans do things at this point. He doesn't really think they understand trolls at all.

But Knock Out basically told him that robots just kind of pop out of the planet wholey formed, which is a reasonably similar situation. Sollux relaxes a little, looking a little sheepish.

"Yeah, trolls sort of suck at everything but murder, so, whatever I guess. I guess the quadrants give us a checklist or something to make that easier." He hesitates for a few seconds. Maybe this is a good time to ask...

"You guys pair up though, right?"

"Pair up? Uh, yeah I guess so. Sometimes." Rodimus is taken aback by the question, and a little bit embarrassed. There's a lot of things he could mean by 'pair up'. Interpersonal relationships aren't really an often discussed topic amoungst Cybertronians. It's considered a pretty private topic by most, and generally secondary to more important things....like their thousands of years long civil war. He's definitely not accustomed to other species asking about it.

"We're not really...it's like, it's not all that common," Rodimus says, struggling for the right words. "We're a pretty long-lived species, so having two bots "pair up" like you call it's not really the norm...or, or even a goal. And there's a lotta ways you could mean "pair up"...I dont really know how all you different organics do things. Although, you know, maybe things were different before the war. I wasn't really around for much of that. It's pretty well and good messed up our societal status quo." He shrugs.

Whereas with trolls, interpersonal romances are more or less worn as a badge of honour and a symbol of social relevance. Also, you know, requiring to breed with two of them or be killed.

"Yeah well, you guys don't fill pails or whatever so I guess it'd seem like less of a big deal. With my species, if you don't mate with at least two different people every brooding season they cull you." The magic of troll sex. "You guys still totally fuck though. I know that much."

Gross.

Actually Rodimus basically doesn't know what any of that means, and he doesn't really want to. Rodimus had only once heard the basics of another organic species reproductive process and that was enough to put him off of it forever.

"You're nosy, aren't you?" he says, crossing his arms. "I know what that is." Rodimus is casually familiar with fucking*. "What we do is absolutely not the same thing." It's a lot less horrifying...that part might be offensive, so he keeps it to himself.

*you know....that thing that some organics do

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