Zippo
Cadet
Twisted fire starter
Posts: 88
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Post by Zippo on Aug 18, 2011 3:59:01 GMT -5
“Still poor-poor etiquette, back home, we fire our own energy and-and their aint no trigger or safety latch, a weapon drawn is a weapon ready to kill-kill”, Guzzle was eerily on the mark regarding Zippo’s true courage and lack thereof, a good observer might notice the slight crack in the young maximal’s composure but he was good at hiding it too.
And then a grin to cover everything all up nice and tidy “if I run-run into a Con, then I fragged up in the first place, these wings were made-made to FLY!” And with a flick, his wings were spread wide with their vtol fans spinning, arms crossed defiantly and in half a nano, Zippo was hovering just a fraction over Guzzle’s head height.
He turned to face the racer, by far the nicer view, “long story short-short, crashed maximal stasis pods, damaged systems, three-three maybe four of them hatched real banged up Maxis, two beast-beast modes, no-no robot mode, total ferals. Fast-forward 40 kay-kay cycles and they would have scared the-the life out of any rock bangin’ human. Racing ha! From the-the moment my stasis pod opened to the moment I-I got here, we were all on borrowed time. Fighting and surviving were our only sport-sports”
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Post by Gertrude Huldon/Guzzle on Aug 18, 2011 5:24:28 GMT -5
Zippo stutters. In a weird way. No matter how well he manages to hide his composure, Guzzle is the kind of dick who will still think of you as a stuttering coward until you prove you're the opposite.
"Heh. Still sounds a lot simpler. Almost better than my reality. Might even give those weird key-powered guns a try. Gotta have a nice big kaboom..." Hell, he's actually serious, too. But come on, god-powered weaponry? How can he pass that up?
Zippo gets another groan from him before he decides to just ignore him altogether. Instead he focuses his attention on the ammunition that's laid out in front of him, at least until Override speaks again.
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Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
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Post by Override on Aug 18, 2011 14:45:49 GMT -5
"I'm not sure you'd be able to summon the key," Override explains to Guzzle, palms turned towards the ceiling in a shrug. "The power... comes from Primus. Does your reality even have one?" She shakes her head. "It hasn't felt... right since arriving in this universe, though."
You can't tell Override there's no such thing as Primus. She watched him transform once.
She nods faintly as Zippo explains the Transformers with two beast modes, but frowns, her demeanor turning distinctly frosty, when he says, 'Racing ha!' Whether Zippo had intended it that way or not, his words come off as dismissing the center of her entire culture, and her lip pulls up slightly as she snaps, "Oh, yeah, right. I forget that you Cybertronians are a lot more sophisticated than us narrow-minded Velocitronians, what with focusing on war instead of racing." Override is, perhaps, being unnecessarily hostile; she knows intellectually that racing just isn't as important to everyone else as it is to her. But that doesn't stop the kneejerk reaction of, 'Damn it, racing is important.'
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Zippo
Cadet
Twisted fire starter
Posts: 88
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Post by Zippo on Aug 19, 2011 0:54:02 GMT -5
Zippo raises his hands apologetically towards Override, “I meant no-no disrespect none-none at all, and actually I-I envy you. Yes racing is important, very-very important, so is-is history, philosophy and entertainment. Society and culture are-are important, everything that-that isn’t War, Conquest and Subjugation is important. War slagging suck-sucks aft, I hate it, it ruins EVERYTHING. It’s why I-I awoke on-on Earth, it’s why I’ve got this-this half-afted god FRAGGING DAMNIT shell program running through my processor and this glitched up-up vocal pattern. War is why you two and me have-have guns…so that we can kill. War aint sophisticated, it’s the-the ultimate in stupid”. Override wasn’t the only one who knee-jerked, Zippo hung his head and hovered over to the window where he settled back down to his feet.
After a long moment he looked back to the other two, “I'm sorry”.
And because of just everything, Zippo stutters just as much when he’s in perfect calm as he does nervous and angry. But even this coward will raise a gun for the right reasons.
God powered weaponry? What’s the catch? Zippo doesn’t trust the gods, not yet anyway.
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Post by Gertrude Huldon/Guzzle on Aug 19, 2011 16:20:47 GMT -5
"Feh. Ain't a religious bot, but we got a lotta stuff. The Matrix, the Knights of Cybertron, Prima, and a couple dozen other slag." Seriously, there's so much in his home reality, that it's impossible to keep up with it all! And who knows what's real and what isn't.
Wow, and now look at her mouth off against Zippo! Sure, she's kinda insulting him too, but slag it, he's enjoying the ripping so much that he even chuckles. But then Zippo tries to get his opinion in and it makes him facepalm and groan, looking at the Maximal through his open fingers. "Great, you're a slaggin' pacifistl, aren't you. Frag yer apology and go hide in a hole, you strutless coward."
Guzzle really, really isn't fond of people who don't want to fight.
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Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
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Post by Override on Aug 20, 2011 16:58:21 GMT -5
Override's optics flicker in confusion as Zippo claims that war is the only reason she has a gun. "My guns are for racing!" she exclaims.
Velocitronian racing tends to be kind of violent. And that's the legal kind.
She glances at Guzzle, then, when the tank calls the Maximal a pacifist. "If he was, wouldn't he not have a gun at all? There's a difference between people who don't like fighting but are willing to do it anyway and folks who just flat won't fight at all." Override, for her part, has no problem with the former.
She looks back at Zippo and rubs the back of her head. "Look, I swerved too far off the track with your comment. Swerve got it worse than I did, but I still run into folks who just can't get how we can center our whole lives around racing like we do, and I'm just saying it seems weird to me, is all, since as near as I can tell the folks talking have had their whole lives centered around one thing, too."
She gives a smug smirks and leans back in her seat, looking completely self-satisfied. "I'm supposed to be the one from the 'narrow' culture, but who's the one who managed to change lanes the fastest?" Her grin grows wider.
(Well, Hot Shot, but he's not here.)
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Zippo
Cadet
Twisted fire starter
Posts: 88
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Post by Zippo on Aug 20, 2011 17:52:06 GMT -5
Well no one could ever claim Zippo was not passionate.
Zippo turns to face Guzzle square on and attempts to explain himself better to the soldier. He spoke as calm and clearly as he could, his stutter more controlled.
“I would be a pacifist if I could but I know I can’t. I will fight to defend myself and on the rare occasion to defend others who can not fight.” In Zippo's experience, he was in fact defending himself from his own side, he feared Magmatron more than any Maximal.
“From what I’ve seen, there are three types of soldiers. The first type and this is what I believe I am, we fight to defend others. The second type fights for glory and honour but not at the cost of the innocent. The third type fights purely for their own gain, either because they find killing fun, for conquest, or profit.” Zippo paused hoping that his words might sink into Guzzle’s processor how he intended them to do.
“I believe you to be more experienced than I, do you think this is true?” hopefully by appealing to Guzzle’s experience as a soldier, Zippo hoped to get a less angry response.
Zippo turned his head to face Override, curiosity in his optics “Racing with guns? I do so hope no one is forced into these races”.
OOC: better clarity this time?
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Post by Gertrude Huldon/Guzzle on Aug 21, 2011 10:02:13 GMT -5
Guzzle glances in Zippo's direction, listening to what he has to say, even if he is still cleaning. Once Zippo's done, he puts down the munition he had been working on, leans forward and gives the Maximal a good, long critical look. He is not impressed. At all.
"No. It's not. It's too naive. War's more complicated than that, and most o'the time, it doesn't even make sense. But I ain't gonna sink into a debate like that. Go pester someone else if you want that."
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Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
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Post by Override on Aug 21, 2011 15:07:12 GMT -5
Override looks between Guzzle and Zippo, then shrugs. "I'm too new to this soldier-game to say much one way or another," she says. Then she gives a wide, grinning smirk to Guzzle. "Besides, apparently they do things simpler back home, anyway," she reminds, tone showing that this time, at least, she's not offended at all, just amused.
When your Cybertron transforms into your god and battles a planet-sized Starscream, maybe 'over the top' is a better phrase than 'simple.'
She tilts her head and considers Zippo's observation. "Would not involving guns make it all right to force people to race against their will, then?" she asks, still faintly amused. "No, no one's forced into it, and different races have different rules, anyway. We just default to guns for the major ones. Just because our culture's built around racing doesn't mean that everyone on the planet actually races. You have support, the folks who do repairs, the folks who sell the parts, the folks who play the band, the folks who run the news, the folks who build the stadiums, the folks who support all of them as they do their jobs, and on. Now, I sometimes make racing me a requirement when people make a special request, but, well, they're asking for special treatment, that's not really 'forced.' Besides, I don't usually pull out the guns for those two people racing duels."
She smirks. "And no, I don't always make actually winning a requirement for folks to get... whatever. Part of it's just their willingness to try, part of it's that I can learn a lot about a person by how they roll and what kind of stunts they pull on the track. When the Cybertronians came to my planet, both sides had the same story, that they needed the Planet Key to prevent the destruction of the universe, but the other side was out for power and conquest, and neither side had proof! So I made them race me, and it was on the track that I learned who was driving straight and who was just blowing exhaust."
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Zippo
Cadet
Twisted fire starter
Posts: 88
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Post by Zippo on Aug 22, 2011 13:34:43 GMT -5
Zippo had given it his best shot to befriend Guzzle but it seemed to the Maxi that the soldier was just too stubborn. If Zippo wanted respect from Guzzle, he would just have to come back another time dragging Megatron’s head with him, and there just aren’t enough natural 20’s in the world for that to happen.
Zippo listened and smiled as Override described aspects of her culture, to him it sounded pretty cool. He let himself imagine how he would get along there, there was the racing, he was small and fast but he didn’t know how he would compare on a planet of racers. Maybe he could run a betting place and rake in all the money; yeah that was the way to go, profit all the way. And just maybe get a little red sports car to hang of his arm…big emphasis on little.
“Your racing duels sound like a good way to settle stuff. Did your Velocitron have much in the way of fliers?”
As soon as he asked Override the question, he imagined racing jets that could go mach 20, significantly faster than his own mach 0.8, his smile faltered at that dismal thought.
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Post by Gertrude Huldon/Guzzle on Aug 23, 2011 16:08:00 GMT -5
Guzzle keeps an optic on Override, listening closely while she tells her tale. When she's done he snorts, looking back down at one of the last cartridges, setting aside the one in his hand and picking that one up. "Heh. Before the war, racin' was big on my Cybertron too. Real big events. Especially popular with the clugged aft Senators."
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Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
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Post by Override on Aug 24, 2011 22:51:04 GMT -5
Override shakes her head at Zippo's question. "Very, very few fliers, and those were usually cameras. Flying was illegal in all the races I've ever been in, though I suppose if we had enough of them, they'd eventually start racing themselves."
So Zippo would be faced with life as a camera man.
She gives Guzzle a very puzzled frown at his observation. "Well, of course it'd b- oh!" Her optics widen slightly in realization. "Oh, that's right. So your guys wouldn't have actually become senators by racing, would they?" This makes them liking the sport a bit more worth noting, Override supposes. Otherwise, it'd have been a given.
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Zippo
Cadet
Twisted fire starter
Posts: 88
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Post by Zippo on Aug 27, 2011 2:59:27 GMT -5
Zippo would make a totally awesome camera-mech, finally a good use for that voyeuristic tendency.
Plan A: Become camera man, progress to commentator, level up to reporter, and then finally get his own talk show. The late Show with Zippo Maximal. Yeah that sounds like a pretty good plan to Zippo, just got to get to Velocitron.
“Hey Guzzle, what was your Cybertron like, before the war?”
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Post by Gertrude Huldon/Guzzle on Aug 28, 2011 18:10:49 GMT -5
"Feh, hell no. Though they did sponsor athletes. If their racers won, bam, rakin' in credits while riding on their spoilers to instant prestige. They didn't really do anythin', but that was the senate for you." Guzzle doesn't share the same hatred for the senate as many others of his reality do, but that doesn't mean that he has a high opinion of them.
And then Zippo gives him the perfect opportunity to tell them that. But he still looks a bit uncomfortable at the question. It's been a long time since that era ended, and Guzzle doesn't like to remember it. "Ern...Great, big civilzation. Plenty of culture and riches, the usual. But no freedom. Everyone had their own role in life, you did what you were made for. Very 'cog in the machine'. Couldn't choose for yourself. Aliens called us Autobots, after automatons. Until this bot named Orion Pax stood up to the senate and changed that name into something we could stand behind, be proud of. Senate didn't like that, though. Prolly wouldn't have lasted long if it weren't for the Decepticon uprising right around the corner."
"Some prolly remember it fonder than I do."
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Override
Minor
The Chancellor, Her Noble Potency, Empress Override. The Glorious Victor over Everyone Else On the Track
Shut up and drive
Posts: 476
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Post by Override on Aug 28, 2011 20:17:30 GMT -5
Override listens as Guzzle describes his Cybertron, frowning. "That sounds pretty rough. I mean, sure, on Velocitron, certain things are off limits for certain races," like flying, "but body mods or rebuilding's perfectly fine. No one's stuck with what they came online with."
She leans back and brings her right leg up to rest on her left knee, arms behind her head. "Once upon a time, they used to have rules about who could race based on stupid things, like bios factory defaults. The wrong setting meant you couldn't race, which was rough since leadership and government are determined by the races, but I thought those rules were pretty stupid so I got rid of them when I took over."
Granted, she broke those rules in order to take over, but that's neither here nor there.
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