Post by Kup on Jan 9, 2008 16:34:21 GMT -5
OOC: Unlike most of Kup's files, this one's available either as a transcript or a voice recording.
"History is important. The best lessons usually come from the past, and yet time and time again our kind tries to wipe it clean and forget about it. This happened in my reality, and I've heard evidence of it in several others, sometimes blatant, other times implied.
"We don't know how long we're going to be here. We're all working under the assumption that this is, more or less, a temporary situation. But you know what? I'm somewhere around sixteen, seventeen million years old. Yes, even I start to lose track. But my point is, when you're sixteen, seventeen million years old, a lot of things can be seen as 'temporary' that still go on a good while. So anyway, no matter how long or short our time here is, I refuse to see us inflict ourselves with the same sort of idiocy our species engages in time after time, universe after universe, just because 'We're not going to be here long, so why bother?'
"I'm starting a history file. There's not much to tell yet, and there may never be much to tell, but I'm telling it. As a note to the rest: you know the saying about history being written by the victors? Right now, history is getting written by the geezer. The opinionated old geezer, at that. If it turns out that we are stuck here for awhile, well... down the road, you may come regret not making your voice heard now, in the early days. Add your notes, your explanations, your expansions, to avoid that.
"This all started less than a year ago, now. The first arrivals on our side were Emirate Xaaron, Perceptor, and Long Haul. This makes it back before I showed up, so I only have second hand reports to go by, but apparently they figured out pretty quickly that there was something weird beyond just waking up in the desert on a alien world. Long Haul made it obvious that folks were getting pulled from sometimes wildly divergent time periods, while Xaaron made it clear that it wasn't just time, but reality itself that didn't match up. Alternate universes, and we're not just talking situations where if you go back, you find out that U-Haul Prime dived to the left in the Battle of Kyran Pass instead of right, changing the outcome of the battle. We're talking situations where if you go back, you find U-Haul never existed, because our species have different origins, and yet somehow despite that we all end up with an Optimus Prime crash landing on Earth four million years ago.
"Wasn't until later when they found out that sometimes, we don't even get that much similarity.
"Anyways, eventually they figured out that whatever was going on, standing around in the middle of the desert wasn't going to fix it, so they headed out. Eventually, they came to a jungle, in the jungle they came to a city on the river, a city with a zoo in it. And that's where they met up with Synapse.
"They spent the night there, and during the first night made radio contact with both Omega Supreme and Nightbeat. Omega Supreme confirmed the presence of at least one Decepticon on the planet, a Seeker who was later identified as Fleetwind, and Long Haul... after he got the story of his future, he confirmed the second Decepticon, Hook.
"The group separated the next day, with Perceptor and Synapse going out to meet up with Omega and Nightbeat and prepare Omega for Long Haul's presence, while Emirate Xaaron and Long Haul stuck around long enough to discover a Gillanan IV mecha-dragon and then followed after. Eventually the whole group gathered in one place, convinced Omega Supreme not to kill Long Haul, and were joined by Swerve and Arcee. The group decided to split up. Perceptor had calculated the location of a power plant, one he was worried about Hook making use of, but Omega needed fuel, and they knew the Zoo that Synapse had arrived in still had some juice.
"One group head back across the desert, the other, including Omega Supreme, returned to the Zoo. This is where I come in. I had been pulled out of a situation that... didn't leave me real inclined to trust folks, not even my fellow Autobots, so I didn't use my radio on arriving. But in exploring the Zoo, not only did I recognize the planet, Gillanan III, but I came across another Autobot, Holi, who was very obviously not being affected by the Hate Plague that was ravaging my time. The two of us had just worked out that something had gone really, really weird when Omega got close enough to be seen. He looked more or less his normal self, too, and it was in talking with him, Xaaron, and Long Haul that we were brought up to speed.
"At this point, I'm not going to mention every single arrival, except as it becomes relevant, because folks started showing up pretty rapid fire. Still, it was because Bumblebee had already arrived in the Zoo that we had someone on-hand to recognize Jazz, who showed up in two pieces at right around the same time things started going real sour over at the power plant as our other team encountered heavy resistance in the form of a large Decepticon party.
"Long Haul was able to stabilize Jazz enough to get him loaded onto Omega Supreme, and the whole group of us took off to provide back-up at the Battle of the Power Plant. There, Perceptor took over repairs. Jazz's condition was critical, and forced us to take pretty extreme measures. When Arcee and Swerve arrived, they hadn't been alone. Like with Jazz, not everyone shows up in great condition, and when they woke up, they found themselves near the body of Optimus Prime. My reality, or Rodimus's, we're not sure. Doesn't really matter, I guess. Both were all about saving others, after all, and... well, I can't imagine the guy I knew being willing for Jazz to die just so he could have a prettier corpse.
"Prime's body was flown to the battlefield by Skyblast and Slingshot. It wasn't the first time I've been in a situation desperate enough to call for using parts from the expired, and it wouldn't be the last time we've had to resort to that here. We're still not in a situation where we can afford to be picky, after all.
"As for the battle itself... well, I'd like to say that Autobots from across timelines and realities pulled together despite their differences and handed the Decepticons a stunning defeat, but you know what? I consider myself a pretty honest person, so that's not what I'm gong to say. We went in there expecting Omega Supreme to pull our collective fat out of the fryer, and floundered when we found out they had someone who could do him significant harm. The Decepticons, meanwhile, got out of there with energon before the plant blew, injured several of ours bad enough that they had to be carried off the field, knocked Omega Supreme over, and slipped a plant (no offense, Botanica) into our ranks during the chaos.
"On the positive side, while we didn't hand them a stunning defeat, we did pull together a lot better than I'd have expected, especially with the number of inexperienced folks we had on that battlefield, we got a good measure of their forces at that time, and when the power plant went, it reactivated their global satellite power transfer network. We're not sure where our receiving stations are getting the power from currently, but it looks like back-up stations came online and then took up the slack from when that large station blew.
"Jazz was saved, the wounded were gathered up, and we came back to the city with the zoo to lick our wounds and begin establishing a base. By that time, we'd figured out that folks only arrived in certain locations, like the desert, the beach, or the zoo. We don't have the resources to set personnel at all locations, but with the resources that the city provides and its nearness to one arrival spot and relative closeness to three others, this seemed as good a place as any to dig in. We haven't named it yet, and we don't know what the locals called it. It's just the City with the Zoo, or the City on the River.
"The new arrivals continued, and not just for us. Skyfire's arrival in the North caused quite a stir, since he was snatched from a time when they didn't know that Decepticons were bad and Starscream is worse, and was in a situation where he was inclined to trust Starscream over anyone on our side. The poor sap. I communicated with him, told him about the conflict, but he wasn't yet able to sort the truth from the lies, and although he never joined with them formally, he aided the Decepticons for a period.
"Not long after that, the plant I mentioned earlier was discovered. A follow picked up at the Power Plant Battle and called himself Hardwire proved to be a Decepticon pirate named Cannonball. He wasn't with us long enough to get anything real sensitive - we didn't have the database in place yet, and he never did get our frequencies - but he did get our location, and we have to assume that he brought at least names and appearances back with him. He was able to make his escape, in part though using Holi as a hostage, and he caused one heck of a ruckus all around. Holi was repaired soon enough, though, and that event did emphasize the need to set up a proper back-up repair station elsewhere in the city.
"We also gained our first 'Maximal,' Airazor. They refer to themselves as the descendants of the Autobots in their reality. In the case of Airazor and Rattrap, this mostly seems to mean they were built smaller, have pseudo-organic alternate modes when exploring off-planet, and can sustain themselves, in part, on organic fuel-sources. A later arrival, Botanica, from a reality that's the same or similar shows that down the road they take the whole fusion between technology and organics a lot farther. Certainly farther than I'm comfortable with, but then, I've dealt with the Transorganics deep in my own Cybertron, and I ain't got no sympathy for them. You tell me that Cybertron's built on an organic core? My reaction is, 'So what?' But eh. These people can do whatever the blazes they want to in their reality, long as they ain't messing with mine, and as long as we all agree that the Decepticons, Predacons, or whatever else are a Bad Thing, and that Starscream, their current leader here and now is a right pain and needs to be dealt with.
"Not too long after the business with Cannonball, we finally held our vote for leadership. Emirate Xaaron was declared leader of the Autobots and the Maximals, in part because he needs hugs and because he let Swerve clock him right out there in the voting square. Other qualities that the voters looked at in their candidates included their breakdancing ability, all of which probably explains why Autobots don't do a lot of voting in most realities.
"Soon after he got put in his position, Rodimus Prime arrived on the other side of the damned continent. We guided him here, but on the way he ran into Scourge, a slagger from Wedge's reality who's apparently some sort of evil clone of Optimus Prime. See the file on him for more information. Once Prime made it here, he was made second in command, and not long after the rest of the chain of command and the division structure was established.
"Our base was almost built when Skyfire came to his senses. He'd noticed some discrepancies in the stories the 'Cons were telling him, and went to confront Starscream on the matter. Starscream responded by trying to have him killed, and he fled. We helped discourage pursuit, made his injured landing as gentle as we could, and have repaired him. The intelligence we've gotten from him so far has been more than worthwhile, and although he hasn't signed on yet, he's promised that if we prove to be as we say we are, he will. I'm figuring it's just a matter of time.
"Eventually the base was completed and training sessions began, but our first session was interrupted by a dozy of a revelation. A news broadcast from the native inhabitants of this planet started up in all it's holographic glory, depicting exactly why this planet was abandoned. The contents of the broadcast can be found elsewhere in the archive1, but the explanation was clear: Unicron ate their sister planet, destroyed the mechanical world of Gillanan IV, and the Gillanans fled, fearing that they might be next.
"That brings us more or less up to date. Exploration is ongoing, as is the search for answers. Unicron plays a big role in many of our realities' histories, but we've yet to establish any connection between him and our arrival here a year later. We're also in a bad need for the very basics: fuel, if we want to get off this planet, and the resources to build a space-going craft that isn't as fuel-inefficient as Omega Supreme, but large enough to hold him, Skyfire, if he sticks around, and the rest of us. There's also still the matter of the sensors that have been placed at most of the other arrival points. They either need to be subverted or destroyed, and we've only got so many fliers. But all that? That's the future, and this file is about history. Once time passes, and those things pass from tomorrow to yesterday, they'll get added here, too, but for now, I'm done talking."
1 OOC note: Assume that at some point, the broadcast itself gets added to the database.
"History is important. The best lessons usually come from the past, and yet time and time again our kind tries to wipe it clean and forget about it. This happened in my reality, and I've heard evidence of it in several others, sometimes blatant, other times implied.
"We don't know how long we're going to be here. We're all working under the assumption that this is, more or less, a temporary situation. But you know what? I'm somewhere around sixteen, seventeen million years old. Yes, even I start to lose track. But my point is, when you're sixteen, seventeen million years old, a lot of things can be seen as 'temporary' that still go on a good while. So anyway, no matter how long or short our time here is, I refuse to see us inflict ourselves with the same sort of idiocy our species engages in time after time, universe after universe, just because 'We're not going to be here long, so why bother?'
"I'm starting a history file. There's not much to tell yet, and there may never be much to tell, but I'm telling it. As a note to the rest: you know the saying about history being written by the victors? Right now, history is getting written by the geezer. The opinionated old geezer, at that. If it turns out that we are stuck here for awhile, well... down the road, you may come regret not making your voice heard now, in the early days. Add your notes, your explanations, your expansions, to avoid that.
"This all started less than a year ago, now. The first arrivals on our side were Emirate Xaaron, Perceptor, and Long Haul. This makes it back before I showed up, so I only have second hand reports to go by, but apparently they figured out pretty quickly that there was something weird beyond just waking up in the desert on a alien world. Long Haul made it obvious that folks were getting pulled from sometimes wildly divergent time periods, while Xaaron made it clear that it wasn't just time, but reality itself that didn't match up. Alternate universes, and we're not just talking situations where if you go back, you find out that U-Haul Prime dived to the left in the Battle of Kyran Pass instead of right, changing the outcome of the battle. We're talking situations where if you go back, you find U-Haul never existed, because our species have different origins, and yet somehow despite that we all end up with an Optimus Prime crash landing on Earth four million years ago.
"Wasn't until later when they found out that sometimes, we don't even get that much similarity.
"Anyways, eventually they figured out that whatever was going on, standing around in the middle of the desert wasn't going to fix it, so they headed out. Eventually, they came to a jungle, in the jungle they came to a city on the river, a city with a zoo in it. And that's where they met up with Synapse.
"They spent the night there, and during the first night made radio contact with both Omega Supreme and Nightbeat. Omega Supreme confirmed the presence of at least one Decepticon on the planet, a Seeker who was later identified as Fleetwind, and Long Haul... after he got the story of his future, he confirmed the second Decepticon, Hook.
"The group separated the next day, with Perceptor and Synapse going out to meet up with Omega and Nightbeat and prepare Omega for Long Haul's presence, while Emirate Xaaron and Long Haul stuck around long enough to discover a Gillanan IV mecha-dragon and then followed after. Eventually the whole group gathered in one place, convinced Omega Supreme not to kill Long Haul, and were joined by Swerve and Arcee. The group decided to split up. Perceptor had calculated the location of a power plant, one he was worried about Hook making use of, but Omega needed fuel, and they knew the Zoo that Synapse had arrived in still had some juice.
"One group head back across the desert, the other, including Omega Supreme, returned to the Zoo. This is where I come in. I had been pulled out of a situation that... didn't leave me real inclined to trust folks, not even my fellow Autobots, so I didn't use my radio on arriving. But in exploring the Zoo, not only did I recognize the planet, Gillanan III, but I came across another Autobot, Holi, who was very obviously not being affected by the Hate Plague that was ravaging my time. The two of us had just worked out that something had gone really, really weird when Omega got close enough to be seen. He looked more or less his normal self, too, and it was in talking with him, Xaaron, and Long Haul that we were brought up to speed.
"At this point, I'm not going to mention every single arrival, except as it becomes relevant, because folks started showing up pretty rapid fire. Still, it was because Bumblebee had already arrived in the Zoo that we had someone on-hand to recognize Jazz, who showed up in two pieces at right around the same time things started going real sour over at the power plant as our other team encountered heavy resistance in the form of a large Decepticon party.
"Long Haul was able to stabilize Jazz enough to get him loaded onto Omega Supreme, and the whole group of us took off to provide back-up at the Battle of the Power Plant. There, Perceptor took over repairs. Jazz's condition was critical, and forced us to take pretty extreme measures. When Arcee and Swerve arrived, they hadn't been alone. Like with Jazz, not everyone shows up in great condition, and when they woke up, they found themselves near the body of Optimus Prime. My reality, or Rodimus's, we're not sure. Doesn't really matter, I guess. Both were all about saving others, after all, and... well, I can't imagine the guy I knew being willing for Jazz to die just so he could have a prettier corpse.
"Prime's body was flown to the battlefield by Skyblast and Slingshot. It wasn't the first time I've been in a situation desperate enough to call for using parts from the expired, and it wouldn't be the last time we've had to resort to that here. We're still not in a situation where we can afford to be picky, after all.
"As for the battle itself... well, I'd like to say that Autobots from across timelines and realities pulled together despite their differences and handed the Decepticons a stunning defeat, but you know what? I consider myself a pretty honest person, so that's not what I'm gong to say. We went in there expecting Omega Supreme to pull our collective fat out of the fryer, and floundered when we found out they had someone who could do him significant harm. The Decepticons, meanwhile, got out of there with energon before the plant blew, injured several of ours bad enough that they had to be carried off the field, knocked Omega Supreme over, and slipped a plant (no offense, Botanica) into our ranks during the chaos.
"On the positive side, while we didn't hand them a stunning defeat, we did pull together a lot better than I'd have expected, especially with the number of inexperienced folks we had on that battlefield, we got a good measure of their forces at that time, and when the power plant went, it reactivated their global satellite power transfer network. We're not sure where our receiving stations are getting the power from currently, but it looks like back-up stations came online and then took up the slack from when that large station blew.
"Jazz was saved, the wounded were gathered up, and we came back to the city with the zoo to lick our wounds and begin establishing a base. By that time, we'd figured out that folks only arrived in certain locations, like the desert, the beach, or the zoo. We don't have the resources to set personnel at all locations, but with the resources that the city provides and its nearness to one arrival spot and relative closeness to three others, this seemed as good a place as any to dig in. We haven't named it yet, and we don't know what the locals called it. It's just the City with the Zoo, or the City on the River.
"The new arrivals continued, and not just for us. Skyfire's arrival in the North caused quite a stir, since he was snatched from a time when they didn't know that Decepticons were bad and Starscream is worse, and was in a situation where he was inclined to trust Starscream over anyone on our side. The poor sap. I communicated with him, told him about the conflict, but he wasn't yet able to sort the truth from the lies, and although he never joined with them formally, he aided the Decepticons for a period.
"Not long after that, the plant I mentioned earlier was discovered. A follow picked up at the Power Plant Battle and called himself Hardwire proved to be a Decepticon pirate named Cannonball. He wasn't with us long enough to get anything real sensitive - we didn't have the database in place yet, and he never did get our frequencies - but he did get our location, and we have to assume that he brought at least names and appearances back with him. He was able to make his escape, in part though using Holi as a hostage, and he caused one heck of a ruckus all around. Holi was repaired soon enough, though, and that event did emphasize the need to set up a proper back-up repair station elsewhere in the city.
"We also gained our first 'Maximal,' Airazor. They refer to themselves as the descendants of the Autobots in their reality. In the case of Airazor and Rattrap, this mostly seems to mean they were built smaller, have pseudo-organic alternate modes when exploring off-planet, and can sustain themselves, in part, on organic fuel-sources. A later arrival, Botanica, from a reality that's the same or similar shows that down the road they take the whole fusion between technology and organics a lot farther. Certainly farther than I'm comfortable with, but then, I've dealt with the Transorganics deep in my own Cybertron, and I ain't got no sympathy for them. You tell me that Cybertron's built on an organic core? My reaction is, 'So what?' But eh. These people can do whatever the blazes they want to in their reality, long as they ain't messing with mine, and as long as we all agree that the Decepticons, Predacons, or whatever else are a Bad Thing, and that Starscream, their current leader here and now is a right pain and needs to be dealt with.
"Not too long after the business with Cannonball, we finally held our vote for leadership. Emirate Xaaron was declared leader of the Autobots and the Maximals, in part because he needs hugs and because he let Swerve clock him right out there in the voting square. Other qualities that the voters looked at in their candidates included their breakdancing ability, all of which probably explains why Autobots don't do a lot of voting in most realities.
"Soon after he got put in his position, Rodimus Prime arrived on the other side of the damned continent. We guided him here, but on the way he ran into Scourge, a slagger from Wedge's reality who's apparently some sort of evil clone of Optimus Prime. See the file on him for more information. Once Prime made it here, he was made second in command, and not long after the rest of the chain of command and the division structure was established.
"Our base was almost built when Skyfire came to his senses. He'd noticed some discrepancies in the stories the 'Cons were telling him, and went to confront Starscream on the matter. Starscream responded by trying to have him killed, and he fled. We helped discourage pursuit, made his injured landing as gentle as we could, and have repaired him. The intelligence we've gotten from him so far has been more than worthwhile, and although he hasn't signed on yet, he's promised that if we prove to be as we say we are, he will. I'm figuring it's just a matter of time.
"Eventually the base was completed and training sessions began, but our first session was interrupted by a dozy of a revelation. A news broadcast from the native inhabitants of this planet started up in all it's holographic glory, depicting exactly why this planet was abandoned. The contents of the broadcast can be found elsewhere in the archive1, but the explanation was clear: Unicron ate their sister planet, destroyed the mechanical world of Gillanan IV, and the Gillanans fled, fearing that they might be next.
"That brings us more or less up to date. Exploration is ongoing, as is the search for answers. Unicron plays a big role in many of our realities' histories, but we've yet to establish any connection between him and our arrival here a year later. We're also in a bad need for the very basics: fuel, if we want to get off this planet, and the resources to build a space-going craft that isn't as fuel-inefficient as Omega Supreme, but large enough to hold him, Skyfire, if he sticks around, and the rest of us. There's also still the matter of the sensors that have been placed at most of the other arrival points. They either need to be subverted or destroyed, and we've only got so many fliers. But all that? That's the future, and this file is about history. Once time passes, and those things pass from tomorrow to yesterday, they'll get added here, too, but for now, I'm done talking."
1 OOC note: Assume that at some point, the broadcast itself gets added to the database.