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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 21, 2010 22:57:23 GMT -5
Bambi's expression quirks at Mirage's 'hmpf'. He's reflective and analytical enough about himself to call his past actions those of a fool. Is that not being self-aware? Did she do something wrong, to say that he is so?
Funny that the friend called Mirage a coward, when Mirage was still willing to risk himself of his friends. There are different kinds of cowardice, different kinds of bravery, she supposes.
Bambi's visibly fretting, and her talon-tips have started to poke through her gloves, leaving pinprick holes in her notebook where she grips it. She grabs a pastry to gnaw on to calm her nerves - her tea's still fine, no need for refills. it's a big cup for a little robots.
This is going to end horridly, she knows it, and yet she can't tear herself away from listening and taking notes.
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Post by Mirage on Jun 23, 2010 0:21:35 GMT -5
Mirage looks up from his teacup and notes Bambi's demeanor. He reaches out and lightly rests his hand on her wrist. "Don't fret so, love. Past is past, and while it isn't easy for me to speak of it, worrying over what has already happened does neither of us any good."
"Also..." he looks pointedly at her notebook, "I would...rather that my tale not be shared with our fellow displaced. I hope you understand."
He removes his hand and settles back into the his chair with his tea.
"Following him without being seen wasn't a difficult task. I've always been skilled at stealth; it comes naturally, something I was sparked with, and this wasn't the first time I'd played ghost. Nor was it a long trip, though it did take me into a part of the city I'd never seen before, a desolate, empty area. I found a nice shadowed balcony to watch from and none of them any the wiser."
"There was a small group of them, three jets who later became quite notorious, and a few others of no consequence before or since. My friend was nervous, obviously so, a bit frightened perhaps but still seemed eager. The red and blue jet seemed to be in command, and he seemed not at all pleased to see my love. At least, not alone, as I found out quickly enough."
Mirage's sets down his tea and gazes over Bambi's shoulder at nothing, eyes and voice far away as the camera does a nice dissolve and fade in on the obligatory flashback scene.
"I believe you were supposed to have company when you came to us, or did I misunderstand your promises to Megatron?" Starscream asked, not quite sneering at the delicate purple and gold jet who stood before him.
"He...wouldn't come," the jet replied, voice hesitant, "And I didn't promise, I said I would try, and I'm sure that he'll eventually come around to the right way of thinking, if I can keep in touch with him. I gave you all the other information before...so...I get to be a Decepticon now, right?"
"Sure are you?" Starscream fairly drawls, "Nevermind that we don't need you for any of that information. What we need is a spy inside Iacon, and you were supposed to provide that."
"You can't mange a little persuasion and coercion, but you still want to be a Decepticon. Very well."
Skywarp and Thundercracker grab the younger jet by the arms and force him to kneel, while Starscream pulls a branding iron out of subspace. He applies it to the purple jet's chest, smiling a bit too widely as the other screams in pain.
The brand returns to subspace, and Starscream turns away with a negligent wave, the other two in his trine turning with him.
"You wanted to be a Decepticon. Now learn what happens to Decepticons that fail in their missions," he says, then adds over his shoulder to the remaining mechs, "Make sure we never see this particular failure again, unless as one of Scrapper's art projects." The remaining Decepticons fall on the still-whimpering jet before he can even think to try and flee.
Fade back in to the the tea table for two, and Mirage's optic shutters have long since closed as he tells his tale. "They set upon him like a pack of cyberwolves up on a wounded packmate, casually yet savagely beating him. I thought, perhaps, that it would just be a beating; we are awfully hard to kill, after all, and when they were done with him I could slip down and spirit him to a medic."
"It became apparent all to quickly that this was about torture, and about death when one of them started to systematically break all of his fingers, and another idly mused how many parts they could break before he passed out, and then how much before he was irreparable. Six of them, one of him, and he without even the strength and ability to fight one of them alone. I could, perhaps, have shot them all, but the chances of getting kill shots on all of them before they could consolidate on my position was slim, and six opponents was beyond my melee skill at the time."
"He was going to die in a horrible, terrible manner, and I could do nothing but listen to his screams. I couldn't save my love's life."
"So I took it instead," Mirage finishes, voice very, very soft, "And at least made his death quick and painless, instead of what they planned."
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 23, 2010 14:13:59 GMT -5
Bambi smiles at Mirage at the pat on the wrist and replies, oddly weakly, "Worrying about past is whole of me Bambi's job." She pointedly sets down her notebook on the table. Bambi says solemnly, "Me no tell anyone. Me swear."
Some stories were never meant to be repeated.
She toys with her teacup as Mirage tells his tale, as if she wants her hands to be occupied. So yes, Mirage's 'friend' was trying to manipulate him. Must have hurt, when Mirage was willing to risk himself for his 'friend', his... 'love'. He tosses that word around a lot. What does it even mean to him? Agape, eros, philia, storge... love wears so many faces.
A mercy killing. She raises a finger to her mouth again, feeling along one of her fangs. Tyrannosaurids are cannibals. The first stories of humanity are of murder: of brother killing brother, wife killing husband; son killing mother. So Transformers are murderers, too, if the news reports were not enough. Oh, sure, she fought Blitzwing here, but no one died, and as Mirage said, his people are hard to kill.
Does she want to belong to this species?
Bambi stretches restlessly. She looks away and says softly, "...me Bambi sorry." Something occurs to her, and she frowns. "What happen if him show up here, your friend?"
All the more reason to worry about the past, because here, the past walks.
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Post by Mirage on Jun 23, 2010 22:55:45 GMT -5
Mirage uses "love" entirely too easily and too often, and it has many meanings for him. Bambi's been favored enough to hear something he's never voiced in full to another; she hasn't been favored enough to get a full on breakdown of Mirage's thought processes.
Mirage's optic shutters close at Bambi's question. "Then we would have an arrival scene that would rival Blurr's, I imagine, though a good deal more bittersweet." Mirage doesn't yet know exactly how bittersweet that arrival was. "If he could be saved from that fate...."
When he opens his optics again, the look he turns on Bambi is imploring, "There wasn't another option. I'd never....not a person, and I avoid it even now, though some seem to think that part of my designation. People die in battle, and I can't claim to be innocent of any part in that sin, but I don't...I'm not a killer. Not like that."
Mirage toys with his cup. He had glossed over the gory details of exactly what all had happened before he got up the nerve for that mercy killing, and he hopes the girl doesn't ask for more justification. He picks apart that choice enough as it is.
"That...wasn't exactly the reason I chose the Autobots, but it is a large part of why I did not choose the Decepticons. That, and they started the war which is destroying my world, my culture."
"It was several days later that they began a siege against Praxus, and a few days after that when I arrived home to find the Prime at the time waiting for me in my living room."
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 24, 2010 14:52:16 GMT -5
It does occur to Bambi that Mirage could be lying. Everyone could lying about everything, too. There's skepticism, and there's paranoia, though, so she thinks she'll believe this, and she... aches for Mirage and awkwardly reaches a hand to try to patch him on the wrist. It isn't the perfect detachment she should show in the field, she knows.
In the end, however, Bambi just ends up looking baffled, and she tilts her head and asks, "You Mirage no have security system?"
Who knows, maybe Transformers on Cybertron live in multi-story yurts with no walls. She's got no clue what anything there looks like!
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Post by Mirage on Jun 24, 2010 15:53:53 GMT -5
The attempt at comfort earns a wan smile from Mirage, and he murmurs a quiet thanks. At least she doesn't seem to think him a horrible beast, or if she does, she's hiding it quite well.
Her question, though makes Mirage laugh, true humor in the sound along with his lingering sadness.
"I do, but it isn't as if Sentinel slipped in like a thief in the night. He wasn't like our Sentinel Prime, by the way," Mirage hastily adds, "My Sentinel was quite competent, and not nearly so... exaggerated."
"But back to the tale. The Primes are known by sight to most, and when he called at my estate, the servant on door of course let him in. He was a bit annoyed at having had to wait until I returned, though, I think."
"He was there to attempt to recruit me of course. The conflict was getting more heated with each passing day, and we were feeling it even in Iacon now, the fall of Praxus making the Decepticons bolder. 'We need every resource,' he said, 'We need to know more about what they're doing, and I'm tired of losing spies.'" Mirage sips his tea again, "I think he expected me to be flattered by the unspoken vote of confidence, or maybe he was just as I'd heard, no-nonsense, a career solider. Much like Ultra Magnus, come to think of it." Mirage muses.
"We spent several hours in argument, and in the end he left unsatisfied. He left me with a lot to think on, as well."
"He knew about what I did, you see. 'Glass houses and all that,' he'd said, but not cruelly. In fact, I think he was a bit sad."
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 24, 2010 16:14:24 GMT -5
Bambi is a prehistoric monster. Okay, so maybe she's only a terror to butterflies and only in her own mind, but she's not going to throw stones.
Bambi has no reference points for any of this! In fact, she has to raise her other hand and ask, "Uh, Prime is... title? Rank? Surname? There Primes around here, but me not know what it mean yet."
She feels like she's missing something here, about this caller of Mirage's, who also treated Mirage as an asset. Bambi also wonders about the legal system. If Sentinel Prime knew that Mirage had killed someone, or... are Decepticons just enemy combatants?
Or maybe murder's not a crime at all. That would explain so much.
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Post by Mirage on Jun 24, 2010 19:19:13 GMT -5
"Ah, that's right. It's different in your reality, isn't it? A rank, yes? I confess I still find that idea rather odd," Mirage says at Bambi's question.
"There was only every one Prime at any given time in my reality*, and was a title reserved for the Matrix-bearer." His brow furrows, "You... don't have a Matrix in your reality either, do you? Maybe I should see about downloading some history files from my archives for you."
"The start of a war made him the Autobot leader as well, as the Matrix and its bearer were tied to the council."
"Obviously, I chose the Autobots after all. After a great deal of soul-searching, I determined that I couldn't not choose, and they were the lessor of the two evils. At least they weren't actively trying to remake our world into some parody of itself."
He smiles slightly. "Now you may ask your questions, which I'm sure are considerable."
*This may not have always been the case, but is truth as far as Mirage knows.
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 24, 2010 21:16:03 GMT -5
"Me no know. Me Bambi avoided Autobots. Them, er, not you them, no good with..." what to call her 'people'... "...ferals. Me tell you about brothers, him Wreck-Gar ended up dead, them Scrapper and Mix went evil..."
She clasps her hands together and glees, "But oooh, me would love history files!"
Then, Bambi looks wistful and sighs. "Me have more questions than you Mirage have time. So... what creation story?"
There has to be a creation story! And it seems a good place to start.
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Post by Mirage on Jun 25, 2010 22:21:23 GMT -5
"Creation story?" Mirage repeats after draining his cup. He sets the empty cup on the edge of the table, and it is quickly picked up by a busser.
"Well, I'm not the best source for such things, I must admit. I'm not a proponent of atechnogenesis by any means, but I'm not overly religious, either. I'm a bit of an agnostic, I supposed."
He smirks, and says lightly, obviously trying to improve upon the earlier mood, "But that isn't what you asked, is?"
Their waiter drops a refill off for Mirage as the spy continues, "Atechnogenesis- the idea that we simply evolved from naturally occurring gears and pulleys has taken hold in the scientific circles. But the legends of Primus as our creator are still told, and the Matrix- in my reality at least- is tied to him."
"Exactly how or why we were created isn't something I can really speak of, and we don't really have a true creation story. Or," Mirage looks a bit sheepish and rubs the back if his head, "at least if we do I never paid it much attention. For that, you might want to speak to Emirate Xaaron, or Rodimus Prime. Their realities and mine are actually quite similar in ideology."
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 26, 2010 22:36:56 GMT -5
Hmm, discreet service. Bambi grabs the notebook again. She notes down yet more people to talk to - tracking down people to get the story is going to be the work of several lifetimes, she thinks. Not exactly her line of work, but interesting enough, and it would be so very easy to get wrapped up in it. She chews on the top of her pen and scowls a bit to herself for a moment.
Bambi says, more to herself, "Random chance or work of gods... hnn. Not put forth by mortal hand at all." That seems... a bit odd, to her.
But then, she told Mirage that Sumdac built the Dinobots. She was never intended to be alive at all, just an animatronic park exhibit.
So Bambi asks something else, "How Transformers made? You Mirage say you of breeding. You have family?"
Her optics glitter, round and blue, and she has no idea just how awkward a question it is that she just asked.
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Post by Mirage on Jun 27, 2010 22:53:22 GMT -5
Mirage blinks slowly at Bambi's question. "Family?" he says the word as if it is unfamiliar, and in a way, it is. His brow furrows as he searches his data banks for the appropriate equivalent in Cybertronian. He understands the book meaning of the word, but not the...connotations and expectations surrounding it.
"I am not a split spark, like Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, nor do I have a build brother as Ultra Magnus does, someone designed to be a mirror of another. That...is what 'family' means in this context yes? Someone who shares a relation with myself?"
He shakes his head, "No, I've no family. As for my comment about breeding- I came online among those of the upper class, one of their protoforms I assume. I...never saw another being sparked into life, so I can't speak as to the process."
"I simply know that from the moment of my first thoughts, I knew who and what I was. That I was nobility, a higher class, genteel- I knew that my fingers itched to hold the rifle that was stored in my subspace, that I longed to hunt and track, and that I longed to race along narrow roads and through hairpin curves."
Mirage's tone is musing as he finishes, "It isn't connections or... 'family' that made me a noble. I simply...was. My spark defined me. It still does."
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 28, 2010 10:31:09 GMT -5
"Could be," Bambi replies, because 'family' means a lot of different things to different people.
So Mirage was born fully formed with a purpose and a place in society hashed out for him without any effort on his part. Hnn. Must have been nice.
She looks up at Mirage again, "Everyone just go along with that? You Mirage come alive, you say you nobility, and that it? What if no one believe you, think you gutter trash instead? What if someone come alive and lie and say he nobility when he not?"
This whole scenario seems very, very peculiar to her, and it should be clear that she lacks the most basic context for what life as a Transformer is supposed to be like.
Because she concludes, "And what 'spark'? Me Bambi keep hearing that, and me no think you talking about ignition."
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Post by Mirage on Jun 30, 2010 11:35:44 GMT -5
Mirage frowns, not so much at Bambi but at the thoughts her questions spark.
"Breeding always tells, and as I said, I was one of their protoforms. One can become ennobled, or course, work their way up into society, but seldom can they actually fit in to the point of not showing what they once were. There is a...subtle difference between those who pretend to the class and those who were born to it. I'm not sure I can define it. I just...I can tell."
He sips from his cup, watching Bambi over the rim of it. As he sets the cup down, he says, "You called yourself and your kin ferals, wild things, and based on how you say you came to be I can see where you draw the comparison. However, the qualities you exhibit would not immediately place you as some rouge spark in my reality." His brow furrows, and he muses, "I dare say you'd get along better with my Grimlock than with our current representative of the name, as well."
He shakes his head, "But that's for later, and is unimportant at an event. Sparks are, well...in my reality they're our life force, or souls, a bit of the Allspark, said by some to be the essence of Primus himself1," Mirage looks a bit uncomfortable to be discussing this topic. "In some realities, they don't have sparks at all, but lasercores or brain modules, mechanical constructs that, I think, house what makes them...them. I'm not sure how that works, especially in Rodimus's- I mean, his reality's case. They have a Primus like in my reality, and Rodimus is so much...more than just a... program...." his voice trails off.
"While it's possible to build a protoform and implant certain coding in the hopes of influencing the end product, personality and individuality come from the spark itself. I'm...not even sure how one would go about bringing a protoform online before its spark came to it, but I've heard whispered tales of drones that are just that.2"
Mirage's head bows slightly, his optic shutters closing for a moment as a smile quirks at his lips. He lightly touches his chest. "Several realities seem to have sparks as mine does, but in mine it is not a...tangible, removable thing.3. The spark coalesces in our spark chamber, but then diffuses throughout. It has been conjectured that this is why we are as durable as we are. It takes a serious systems failure to offline us beyond repair."
Or the perfect shot through the right system.
He looks back up at Bambi, "I really am sorry, my dear. I'm sure I am just creating more confusion and questions, rather than helping. Such topics are not my areas of expertise."
1Not entirely accurate, but Mirage is an admitted agnostic. He has a great deal of reverence for the Matrix and its bearer, but not so much for Primus and the whole mass soul repository thing, and hasn't paid much attention to it.
2As far as Mirage knows, a spark equals life. No spark is just a construct, and the idea of someone playing god makes him twitch.
3Not true, but again, this is from Mirage's beliefs/point of view.
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Post by Lynn Deanna Payne on Jun 30, 2010 12:56:12 GMT -5
Bambi can't tell any class difference between Mirage, Spy Shot 6, and Botanica a priori. She has no magical breeding sense, and she frowns.
She shrugs and replies dismissively, "Me Bambi no know if there correct word for what me am." Bambi never trusted any other robots to get close enough to ask! However, Mirage is going in some interesting directions, and she has to ask, "Rogue spark? And you Mirage have him Grimlock, too?"
She wonders about alternate versions of herself - do any exist?
Then Mirage suckers her in with talk of theology, and there's a lot more note-taking now. Bambi doesn't actually believe any of this, but hearing what a Transformer from Cybertron believes is perhaps more interesting than actual facts. She mutters, "Or maybe like ka or hun or jiva..."
Mirage mentions Rodimus Prime a lot, Bambi is noticing.
When Mirage mentions 'spark chamber', Bambi's expression turns thoughtful, and she pages through her notebook and holds up a rather detailed sketch of a... spark chamber, which has a lot of confusing annotations in English, such as 'possible fuel metabolic site?'. There is an odd, pleading tone to her voice and a worried look to her optics, and she asks, "Spark chamber look like this?"
Then she holds up a hand and assures, "No be sorry! Any perspective important."
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