Echos of Butterfly Dreams

Sentinel Prime has taken to balancing his Skyboom shield on his knees, just in case he needs it if an unfriendly rival shows up. Cast up shield, get Mirage behind him; hit containment control from safety. It's simple, and it's a procedure. Hopefully Mirage was joking about eating the shield.

He can't help but cringe when Mirage asks about Quintessons. Sentinel Prime looks away, awkwardly, and he rubs the back of his helmet, ashamed. Calming down comes more easily than it should, and it isn't long before he's pasted a vaguely pleasant expression on his face. He looks back at Mirage and answers, "Oh sure, we have Quintessons. Got into a war with them, but that's history. They're arms dealers now. What's it to you?"

Certainly, Sentinel Prime heard a thing or two on the radio, but he's sure Mirage heard a thing or two on the radio about him, too. This has to be personal for Mirage on some level, but there's personal and there's personal, and personal makes for very good leverage indeed.

Mirage plays it cool. Sentinel Prime has to admit, he is impressed. He'll bite, he decides. Sentinel Prime nods and agrees amiably, "Yeah, I'd like that. So let me think a little more on what the teacher-bot said about Quintessons in my reality."

He really does take a while to think and dig out those old files out of compression. "All right. About 300 million years ago, the Autobots were in power, but the Decepticons didn't yet exist - there were Destrons. This was the Age of Expansion, and the agenda was to expand Cybertronian influence to neighbouring planets and set up colonies. During a major colonisation push, we," isn't absurd, to use 'we' to describe those Ancient Autobots? "ran afoul of the borders of the Quintesson Pan-Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere. After some skirmishing, the Age of Expansion came to an end."

"These days, they're arms merchants. Sometimes sell to the Decepticons. We don't have much use for them, since we use power mods instead. Quintessa's their homeworld, but..." he struggles to remember geography class, optics narrowing with concentration, "...there's a bunch of other planets they call 'theirs'."

Sentinel Prime looks over at Mirage curiously, "So, did your reality have Quintessons?"

Even exhausted and emotionally unstable, Mirage can be the epitome of cool when he wishes. However being exhausted and emotionally unstable means that a jarring event has a higher probability of breaking that cool.

Jarring events like having one of the few people he might call friend appear and call you both murderer and Decepticon. For certainly Hound's words are for Mirage.

"Hound!" Mirage, tired and pained as he is, moves swiftly. //Medical at the rock room! Hurry!// he calls, rushing to Hound's side, and unless Sentinel activates the forcefield very quickly, Mirage will try to help prop the wounded mech up.

"Whatever happened to you, it wasn't me. It wasn't! This is a different reality- damn it, there should be a medic on these watches!"

// En route. ETA: fifty seconds, // Perceptor responds almost immediately. He even sounds as if he's already running. It's an accurate guess, too, because at 43 seconds post his transmission, the sounds of pounding feet carry down the corridor outside. Perceptor slides to a surprisingly graceful halt at the door a mere six seconds after that.

Of course, that means that he's missed Hound's outburst, but he can still see that Hound is not doing so well, nonetheless.

"Hound! Be still, before you further damage your systems!" he instructs as he dives into the rocks with Mirage to attempt to help the damaged mech.

When Perceptor arrives, Mirage backs off in order to let the scientist better do his work. At least, that is the proper thing to do, and no one should question Mirage for it. It isn't the real reason, and certainly isn't what Mirage wants to do.

Yet another case where the name "Mirage" is a much a curse as a name, where he's hated, where he's done.... This Hound can't be from Mirage's reality, though; Mirage won't allow himself to believe it could be so. He can't allow himself to believe it, if he wants to keep his sanity. It has to be some odd trick, a cruel joke, that this Hound arrived when Mirage was on watch.

"My very function decrees that I should not be trusted," he murmurs as he slumps down near the dying Autobot, "Not by anyone. But whatever Mirage did this to you, it was not me. In my reality, we are friends. I would never harm my friends."

Except to save them from a drawn out and painful death. Or to bring them home and away from the horrors of a war drawn out too long. Perhaps to a make a point in a blunt way, drawing fuel with words...

Mirage whimpers softly and covers his face in his hands. Perhaps he really is as horrible a person as Xaaron and Ultra Magnus named him.

Perceptor has learned a great deal, since being brought to this hub of realities, about the various internal functions of mechs from different realities. The concept of a condensed spark is an odd one to him, who, for so very long in his life, had to take the existence of his own soul upon faith. But, even so, even he knows that seeing the feeble flicker of one of those sparks is a very bad thing, in the strictest technical terms available.

"Hound, be still!" he orders out of frustration, hands flying to remove the splintered bits of weapon and shattered core casing from the weakening spark, pulling tools out of subspace to try and put a temporary patch upon the casing, find something, anything to stave off the immanent systems failure. "Mirage is one of us, and I have not given you permission to expire!"

Power. He needs power! Energy! With a slash to his own forearm that he doesn't even feel in his frantic bid for Hound's life, he rips loose a thick cable, and starts trying to splice it into Hound's systems, desperate to cling to the fading lifeforce.

"...please don't do this, Hound," he whispers. "...please..."

Hound's not moving. Hound can't move. There's nothing left to him. He feels cold, so very cold. Why's Perceptor - this impossible Perceptor, this Perceptor they could have used to make sense of that Zodiac Energy - wasting his time on him? Why's that blue guy just standing around, doing nothing?

Then a paint malfunction that looks a tiny Omega Supreme walks into the room.

Hound's hallucinating, for sure, he decides wearily. There's a warm trickle he can feel, electrons flowing again, and he murmurs to Perceptor, if that is really Perceptor and not another delusion, "Perceptor, help Jetfire, and don't... believe... Mirage."

Sparkcore failure.

His spark and optics wink out in an instant, and his paint slowly starts to fade. As his spark expires, an electric feedback surge rips through his head, slagging the circuitry there, though his back-up processors in his chest remain, lifeless as the rest of him.