Magnii

[Ultra Magnus]

At first, a nod is the only answer Override gets; Ultra Magnus looks down at the console for a moment, glancing over the displays.

"Yes, Cybertron," he says once he lifts his head. "The same Cybertron as Mirage, but… much, much later on. The time he's from is virtually a lifetime ago for me." Other than his head as he turns it to give Override another flat, considering look, he remains motionless. "I don't suppose you've met Mirage, have you? I think he used to be something of a social butterfly. I'd be surprised if that's changed."

[Override]

"Oh, yeah," Override answers, smirking. She waggles her right foot back and forth absently as she recalls her encounter with the spy. "Corraled him to Xaaron so he could have a talk with the guy of some sort."

"You're right about the social butterfly, though." She shakes her head, expression now pulled back into a vaguely puzzled frown. "He's... odd. Seems to fancy himself a racecar of some sort, but he's a... hobbyist."

The concept of people for whom racing is not the whole of their existence is a fairly new one to Override, but one she's getting used to. The concept of people who call themselves racers but treat it as a hobby? That's still a pretty foreign concept.

[Ultra Magnus]

True to his word, Ultra Magnus is surprised.

"A racer?" he repeats, sitting up and turning to more fully face Override with a bemused cast to his face. "I was never very familiar with Mirage – at all, really. We ran in completely different, ah, circuits." Magnus was a soldier from very early on; Mirage was just a foppish socialite with a penchant for playing with guns. "But that sounds… new."

[Override]

"Wouldn't know," Override answers, shrugging one shoulder. "Just met the guy recently myself. But in this case, I'm thinking 'hobyist' is the major point here. Like, not central to him, just one of the things he does?"

"If you're from so much later than he is, are you sure it's not old? Seems to me that the whole soldier-and-spy thing is what's new for him," Override observes, and in a way, it's an odd observation. Override's much newer at being a soldier, and yet she took to it quickly and naturally after eons of defining herself as a racer. But then, the ability to adapt quickly is essential to being the queen of the tracks that she is - and now, the ability that served her so well on the roads is serving to make the transition to something completely different that much easier.

"Like, could be that by your time, soldier-and-spy are so much more important that racecar amounts to less?"

[Ultra Magnus]

Magnus shrugs in turn, less easily than his watch mate does. He can't help wondering, in the back of his mind, if he'll ever genuinely be comfortable – but at least he can still worry. That's reassuring.

"It could be," he says, adding self-deprecatingly, "I really was never very familiar with him." Now he fumbles and looks down at the console again. He was never particularly good at small talk, either, and that hasn't changed, leaving him silently groping for a topic to broach; no one soldier should have to carry all the weight, not even in conversation. Finally, he seizes upon something he's been trying to avoid for fear of prying. "Was – is – Velocitron neutral?" he wonders. "You don't wear any brands, but that small fellow with the foul temper… Swerve does."

[Override]

"Nope!" Override answers instinctively and cheerfully. Her rationale here is simple enough: a question like that usually refers to the stance of the governing body. She is the governing body. She is not neutral. Therefore, Velocitron is not neutral. However, after the smallest portion of a moment, it occurs to her that Ultra Magnus might not mean the question that way, and she frowns and considers. "Yes?" Brief pause. "Maybe? I mean... is Cybertron neutral? No, Cybertron's made up of a bunch of different folks with a bunch of different ideas." Or so most Cybertrons seem to be - Override is largely unaware of the specific circumstances of Ultra Magnus's Cybertron.

"See, the thing is, we were originally a colony from Cybertron, yeah, but we'd forgotten about that. Cybertron only recently came into contact with us," and then Override adds, smirking, voice lower, "and then only because they needed us," her tone returns to normal, "so we only just found out about the whole war thing, Autobots and Decepticons, that business. Folks are still choosing sides. Really, I'm kind of surprised that Swerve not only picked a side so early, but went 'Bot - he's from the Underground, and from what I've been hearing, a lot of them are going Decepticon." Override's voice turns grimmer as she explains the last bit. "I'm not going to pretend to know why or how every banned racer got that way, but usually, it's for a good reason, and the Decepticons seem to... appeal to their sensibilities.

"I took longer to sort out what was going on. Everyone had all these sob stories about how the universe was being destroyed and they wanted to save it and the other side wanted to stop them, but nobody had any proof!" Override exclaims, exasperated. Did she not demand that Optimus Prime back up what he had to say? And it wasn't until he proved unable to that she fell back on the races. "So finally, I made them settle things the way we always do on Velocitron: through the races. You can learn a lot about someone by how they run, and believe me, I figured out a lot about both sides at that Planet Cup. Hot Shot defeated me, sure, but I didn't throw in with the Autobots and follow Optimus Prime off world because he beat me. I did it because after racing with and against him and the other Autobots, and seeing how they do things, and watching the sort of underhanded scrap the Decepticons were willing to pull, I knew it was the right thing to do." She shrugs. "I don't have a brand, but things were moving pretty back there, and sometimes you don't have time to hit the pit stops for something like a paint job. Here?" She shrugs. "It hasn't been a priority. Folks should be able to figure out where I stand quick enough."

[Ultra Magnus]

Ultra Magnus listens wordlessly to Override's explanation, nodding slightly here or there and containing his curiosity at Velocitron's status as a Cybertronian colony. His mistake, going with what he knows and assuming the entire population might have held a neutral stance. The actual circumstances as she describes them, however, both interest and sadden him; she says her world was originally a colony, yet they had been free of the Autobot-Decepticon war until Cybertronians came to Velocitron.

"I see," he murmurs, warmer this time. He turns distant and quiet again, however, as he adds, "My Cybertron… was neutral." Yet he kept his brands.

[Override]

And Override's gaze drifts to those brands. "Was, when? From what I understand, the war generally starts on Cybertron. Sure, go back far enough and they're all neutral, but Mirage is from earlier than you were, and the war was going on then! You talking that far back, or saying it ended and then started back up, or what?"

[Ultra Magnus]

"It ended," says Ultra Magnus with an air of finality. "We waged war for aeons and we paid the price. Every last spark on Cybertron was caught in the Great Shutdown. When we finally woke again… there was peace. No more war. No more factions. We prospered once more and it stayed that way." He can't disguise the longing in his voice.

[Override]

Override's expression twists into something of a puzzled frown, and she studies Ultra Magnus for a silent moment. Finally, she speaks.

"So if going to sleep and waking up were all you all needed to end the fight, why were you even fighting in the first place?" she asks in confusion. "I mean, where I'm from, it's pretty easy, or at least was once I sorted out who was lying and who wasn't. The Autobots were trying to prevent, well, first Cybertron, then the universe from being destroyed by the Unicron Singularity. The Decepticons want the Keys we need to do that to make themselves more powerful. If we all fell asleep suddenly... well, there probably wouldn't be anything to wake up to, really. No Cybertron, no universe," she says thoughtfully, considering the consequences of such a situation. Then she shrugs and adds, oddly cheerful, "Though I guess that would pretty much end the war!"

[Ultra Magnus]

Ultra Magnus solemnly shakes his head and the expression on his face is a pained one.

"It was Cybertron that stopped us," he explains. "We fought for so long… kept fighting for so long… we couldn't stop ourselves. Some tried – brief truces, pacts that only lasted a handful of days – but it never worked. We were killing our world, Autobot and Decepticon alike, and it had been so long we couldn't even remember why we started fighting. So our world finally fought back." It takes Magnus a few moments to relax his arms and unclench his fists before he adds, "Cybertron forced us into shutdown."

[Override]

Override studies Ultra Magnus for a moment, optics narrowed. Finally, she holds up a hand, palm facing herself.

"So, let me get this straight."

She touches her pointer finger with her other hand. "You don't know what you were all fighting over, but," she touches her middle finger, "you weren't willing to stop." Ring finger, "So Primus put you to sleep," pinky, "and then you all woke up, and now," thumb, " everything's hunky dory and you all get along swimmingly and there aren't any more factions or anything, except for some reason, you're wearing a collection of red shapes on your shoulders that looks an aweful lot like what everyone else keeps calling an Autobot symbol."

It doesn't occur to Override that Ultra Magnus may not see it as natural to equate Cybertron and Primus, but since she was recently standing on him as he transformed, it's the first thing that pops into her head.

Finally she snorts and glances briefly ceilingward, a gesture that seems to suggest rolling of the eyes. "I can't believe people act like a society based on racing makes no sense when there're realities like that."

[Ultra Magnus]

"…Primus?" Ultra Magnus shakes his head again, this time in confusion, and lifts one hand in a placating gesture. "No, no," he tells Override, "Primus had nothing to do with it." Magnus is relatively sure Primus wasn't involved, at least.

Override seems to have caught on rather well – setting aside for now the fact that apparently only Megatron knew why he started the war in the first place and it blindsided the Autobots – so that leaves only one other point Magnus feels he should address.

"No," he agrees, "there were no factions. But… we didn't necessarily all get along. We had our own sort of underground. Those of us who didn't agree with the new regime." He tucks his hands beneath his chin, but not before they tighten into fists. He should have been with them, fighting, not silently dissenting in service. "Senseless. Stupid," he mutters very quietly, and he doesn't mean the resistance.

[Override]

"Well, you did say that Cybertron did it," Override points out, as if explaining things to someone much younger than she. On the other hand, how recently did she learn about Primus's form? Her optics flash. "Oh, wait! So you're saying Cybertron isn't Primus's alternate mode where you come from? Or maybe he just never transformed, so you didn't notice it!" The fact that one is living on one's god is an easy thing to overlook, right up until the point when the god transforms.

Ultra Magnus may be muttering quietly, not not so quiet that Override can't hear him. She frowns. "What's stupid? Disagreeing with your regime?"

She can't hear his thoughts, however.

[Ultra Magnus]

The idea of Primus having an alternate mode – of that mode being the planet Cybertron – is so alien that Ultra Magnus can't even begin to picture such a thing. He simply stares at Override like she's suddenly generated a third mode.

He stays that way until her last question snaps him out of it, and he answers, "…No. Not that." It's hard, but he forces himself to turn away from that line of thought before his mind grows as dark as Scourge's plating. "Your – Cybertron," he says, "transforms?"