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Post by Long Haul on Oct 30, 2010 22:46:38 GMT -5
Long Haul snorts. "Things that live fast burn out just as fast. Especially if their building's not up to code. I prefer to think for, well, for the long haul." Despite not having a face, he beams. "'Sides, a well-tuned factory could crank out our kind at a pretty dizzying rate, 'cept that we're not dumb enough to overrun our leaking selves when we've got no natural causes of death." Really, Transformers don't. They're functionally immortal.
"Seems to me, though, if they did something like that, they'd run outta fuel fast." Long Haul probably means food. Though he's been in this reality for over a year, he's a robot, and still thinks in robot terminology. "Sounds like you're a fair expert on 'em, though."
He finishes the baseline readings. "There we go. Shouldn't needa open you up for anything, not for something like this. Not unless there's something screwy with the scans - still looking over them, but it doesn't look like it."
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Post by Sentinel Prime on Oct 30, 2010 23:04:20 GMT -5
Sentinel Prime thinks he likes Long Haul!
Poor Long Haul.
"Yeah, I don't know about your reality, but in my reality, back during the Great War, we cranked out protoforms like they were nothing." He makes a face when he realises just how that sounded, and then, as he thinks about it, realises it was true. It takes about five of his Autobots to handle one of his Decepticons. They are, as propaganda says, all just cogs in the great Autobot machine. Not a one of them matters, individually.
Yeah, well, Sentinel Prime will see about that.
"Besides, that Unicron thing here? Guess it's more durable than the nukeable one in your reality. Turns out, you can drop it in a star, and it's fine." He crosses his arms and scowls. Ugh, he doesn't even want to think about that Unicron thing!
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Rev
Cadet
Faster than a fast thing
Posts: 110
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Post by Rev on Oct 30, 2010 23:29:21 GMT -5
“No, I’m no expert, just swapped data with a couple of ‘em in the past month”. She had to agree with Long Haul, though in their primitive youth, the Human race had been the natural cause of death for just about everything else on their planet. “Does Unicron or even Megatron slash Galvatron count as a Natural cause of death for our kind?”
That fight with Galvatron, or more accurately Galvatron fighting and everyone else running had stressed her components but she was glad to find she was ticking along just fine, being fine and feeling fine could be two different things.
Just don't tell Rev what constitutes 'dust' regarding Humans. Or she just may even worse than Sentinel...don't tell him either.
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Post by Long Haul on Oct 31, 2010 14:35:03 GMT -5
"I'm pretty sure those're counted unnatural," Long Haul answers, filing the baseline readings with a few taps on the terminal's face. "S'like... from what I seen with organics, you put 'em in a place, make sure they got fuel, keep 'em safe from diseases and and whatnot, don't let 'em kill each other, and still sooner or later they die off. Might build more of the same model before they go, but the original ones eventually terminate, y'know? With us..." he shrugs. "If we don't kill ourselves through wars or accidents or catch something what affects us or just flat run outta fuel, and we just keep going. Hell, with a lot of those things, even if they do happen, we just move into a dormant state and someone else can get us running again later on. I guess what counts as 'natural' with these things is beyond me," especially when you're talking a robotic species, "but what I'm saying is, well..." he shrugs.
"We just keep going if nothing onna outside stops us. If we do run down, it happens so slow that it don't mean much. Just so happens, we're pretty good about finding other ways to stop ourselves."
"But anyways..." he tilts his head and scratches the top of it, right next to his head-ridge, in some confusion, "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't call 'eaten by a planet-eating-planet as a 'natural cause' for nothing."
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Ultra Magnus
Major
Disappointing Fellow Autobots Since the Age of Internment
Posts: 565
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Post by Ultra Magnus on Oct 31, 2010 15:50:37 GMT -5
Ultra Magnus's optics flicker once, twice, then flare up a little too bright before levelling out. A low hum precedes the first hints of movement from him. His hands twitch, then flex, and a chorus of clanks, clicks, and whirs follows as his armour settles and locks into place.
It takes another moment or two before he can turn his head, all the while watching the data scroll past as sensor nets connect and relays engage, sending input from his various parts once they come online. He'd forgotten how long the initial boot takes; he'd also like to think he can be forgiven that. It was a very long time ago that he last went through this. It isn't as uncomfortable as he recalls.
With everything reading online and functional, he moves to take a step – ill-timed, just as the final systems check pings the additional processors and nets. Magnus can handle many things without much more than a blink or a grunt; the sudden influx from his armour system isn't one of them. Humans would call the sensation a head rush. He calls it aggravating as the dizziness seems to take the deck out from beneath his foot and he wavers, grabbing for the nearest object to keep himself upright.
He'd forgotten this part, too.
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Post by Sentinel Prime on Oct 31, 2010 16:03:20 GMT -5
"Yeah, I sure wouldn't call 'casualty of war' natur-ah-ah!" Sentinel Prime just happens to be the nearest object. He blinks and manages, "Hey, whoa there!" before he tries to steady Ultra Magnus. Falling over now would be so embarrassing to them both. "You're pretty heavy," Sentinel Prime can't help blurting, before he amends it to, "It's all armour plating, I'm sure." It's not like Sentinel Prime's weak - he's pretty strong for his size, but his servos are definitely glitching him out right about now. At least there were witnesses around to see Sentinel Prime help catch his fellow Autobot and preventing him getting fresh with the floor. If this was his own Ultra Magnus, and no one was to see... Sentinel Prime can't deny it'd be tempting to let him fall and hope the obsolete old buzzard broke his hip. - - - OOC: Catching Ultra Magnus done at his player's request.
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Rev
Cadet
Faster than a fast thing
Posts: 110
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Post by Rev on Nov 1, 2010 3:17:32 GMT -5
Rev shrugged, she was enjoying the discussion, it was helping to draw her self out. And Ultra Magnus with his second armour was putting some interesting ideas in her processor that she would defiantly have to de-frag later.
“I was just sorta thinking that since Primus and Unicron are both older than even the ancestors of our race, that sorta makes ‘em more natural than us” Rev shrugged again, happy to skip her processor for once and let her vocalizer do it own thing, “you could argue though that getting eaten by a planet naturally kills”. Unless your last name is Prime.
OOC: "obsolete old buzzard" thankyou, you made my day =D
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Post by Long Haul on Nov 1, 2010 12:26:37 GMT -5
"Woah-woah! Easy there, easy!" Long Haul exclaims as Ultra Magnus goes stumbling. Due to his position at the sensor terminal, he's not near enough to be much good, but Sentinel seems to have that well in hand. Since he's done with the baseline readings, however, he starts to shut it down as he adds, "You'll wanna take it slow until your systems re-adapt to the extra bulk."
At Rev's musings, Long Haul shrugs, muttering, "Pretty weird nature, then, if you ask me." Louder, he says, "I'm just talkin' 'natural causes' to mean what folks usually mean it to say. Alla this... philosphy stuff is a bit over my head," and he waves his hand over his head absently to demonstrate. "Sides, my reality don't got a Primus, but, uhm... I thought he was the ancestors of the Transformers what have 'em. How can he be older than himself?"
Is that like the question of whether or not God can create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?
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Ultra Magnus
Major
Disappointing Fellow Autobots Since the Age of Internment
Posts: 565
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Post by Ultra Magnus on Nov 1, 2010 18:22:51 GMT -5
Ultra Magnus gives Sentinel Prime a thin but grateful smile and a slight nod, leaning on the smaller Autobot no longer than it takes him to recover his equilibrium. He pats Sentinel Prime on the shoulder before righting himself.
"It is a good deal of extra mass," he says mildly, "and thank you." Then he turns to Long Haul and shakes his head. "No, I'm fine now… I'd just forgotten about the initial data flood. It's been… a very long time since I went through this process last." His smile turns wry – and it's a full smile now, mouth and all – before he glances at the Constructibot and Rev. "Now… do I want to know what I missed while I was rebooting?" he wonders. All he's caught is talk of Unicron, Primus, and what may or may not be natural. Coming in on the end of the conversation isn't the best way to go about it.
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Post by Sentinel Prime on Nov 1, 2010 19:14:53 GMT -5
“Call me a godless heathen,” seriously, it’ll be one of the nicer things anyone’s ever called Sentinel Prime, “but my reality doesn’t have a Primus or a Unicron as far as I know, either.” Long Haul is not alone in his secularity. “To me, this whole Unicron thing just seems like somebot’s pet super-weapon gone horribly, horribly wrong. Indestructible, unstoppable, have to do some hokey rite to put it out of its misery, sure, but that doesn’t make it a god.”
He remembers the Omega Sentinels his people made. After all, Sentinel Prime had the clearance to read about that secret past, and secret history’s always been more interesting to him than the stuff the teacher-bot taught in school. (Sometimes, he wonders if his Kup knew about the Omega Sentinels and, if so, what the heck Kup was thinking, naming Sentinel ‘Sentinel’! After all, that would be like naming a human child of the 1950s ‘A-Bomb’.) Omega Sentinels are pretty mind-blowing, but if the Autobots had been backed into more of a corner and made something even worse, if the cycle of escalation had continued, Sentinel Prime wonders just how ugly their war machines would have become in the end.
“But anyway, some of the bots around here are older than the human species. If they decide to go murdering the little spiders,” wait, Sentinel Prime thinks humans are spiders? Why would he think that? Oh. Mostly because the information file here on humans talks about their spider-powers, “are they a natural cause of death? Somehow, I don’t think that would hold oil in one of their barbaric little human courts.”
Sentinel Prime has reasons to hate courts in general, but he’s dealt with human courts before, and as far as he’s concerned, they blow tailpipe. He has no rights because he’s an alien machine? Yeah, Sentinel Prime’ll show them ‘no rights’.
He grins back at Ultra Magnus and accepts the pat gracefully, but there's a little piece of him squirming inside at the touch. It's not Ultra Magnus's fault at all, but after what Blackarachnia, Oil Slick, and Elita-1 put him through, Sentinel Prime would like to avoid unnecessary touching, if at all possible.
So of course, it's unavoidable.
Sentinel Prime steps back, servos twinging a bit, and he really takes a look at Ultra Magnus's new/old look. So hauntingly familiar, but he looks younger, sharper, not the weathered old wreck that Sentinel Prime circled like a vulture, and that makes him a threat.
Except it doesn't, Sentinel Prime reminds himself, before he gets too wrapped up in his envy and paranoia. This one's a Wrecker, and Springer bosses him around just the same as Springer bosses around everyone in Military, anyway, except with an extra side of bossing on account of being a Wrecker. If Ultra Magnus was really going to bust out and become Hero of the War Supreme Commander, he probably would have done that sooner and not let a lack of armour stop him.
See, nothing to worry about.
Sentinel Prime keeps grinning and enthuses, "I like the look on you. We're just discussing shoddy building practises, why nuking Unicron doesn't work, and how we don't get old but humans do. It's great!"
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Rev
Cadet
Faster than a fast thing
Posts: 110
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Post by Rev on Nov 3, 2010 12:08:18 GMT -5
“Yeah, that armor certainly adds to the presence factor, you look good…ahh... not that you needed anymore presence, you already looked good…” too late, she’d really rolled through that one, she slumped in embarrassment. Oh frag oh frag oh frag oh slaggin frag. She didn’t dare look back up let alone meet someone optics.
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Post by Long Haul on Nov 3, 2010 13:27:30 GMT -5
Any subtle social interactions, mistakes, and embarrassments go completely over Long Haul's oblivious head, which is reasonable, since he's the shortest one in the room.
(And yet, the only thing that keeps him from having the largest alternate mode is Ultra Magnus's newly regained trailer.)
"Hey, you're welcome," Long Haul inclines his head in a faint nod. "Glad to finally get that outta the way, really." He's actually rather pleased when Sentinel and Rev compliment the 'new' look, because even if it's not actually his design, he is the one who actually built the new armor, so it's a compliment of his work as well.
Then he scratches the top of his head. "And, uhm, I'm not thinking age is really relevant to the naturalness of a murder, y'know? I'm not much up on philosphizin', but that seems kinda silly."
"Anyways, I'd... better go take care of..." he glances towards the body Sentinel had brought in earlier. "Uhm, yeah."
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Ultra Magnus
Major
Disappointing Fellow Autobots Since the Age of Internment
Posts: 565
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Post by Ultra Magnus on Nov 4, 2010 12:41:28 GMT -5
There is quite a lot going on, Magnus decides based on the multitude of answers thrown at him. He mutely nods his understanding despite not actually following much of it – least of all Rev's sudden babble. Is she saying what he think she's saying? That… unsettles him deeply. Hasn't she only seen him for the first time today? Is this sort of rapid infatuation normal?
"It's… excellent work, Long Haul," Magnus says, deciding to take a different tack. Perhaps if he doesn't acknowledge Rev, she'll latch onto someone else. Someone other than a tired, worn-down soldier likely old enough to have built her. "Like having the original again, good as new. Thank you." He looks down at his hands as he flexes them, watching and feeling the movement. Smooth as fine oil. He flips up the communication screen in the back of his right hand to check it as well, then – shoving his apprehension deep where he needn't think about it – wonders if Holi might be willing to handle the calibrations for that.
Long Haul's effort at a retreat and the inference he makes bring Ultra Magnus's guilt and hesitation back to the fore, however. Excusing himself from Sentinel Prime and Rev with a quick, apologetic look, he reaches after Long Haul, trying to catch him by the shoulder.
"…Wait," he says, adding in a firmer voice, "please. I – before you do anything, I…." Need to say I'm sorry. Even though it's too late. "…Would like to attend," is what he says instead, in stilted fashion. "If I won't be in the way." He knows his regret hangs about him like a shroud, and that same regret makes it so hard to say the right words.
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Post by Sentinel Prime on Nov 4, 2010 15:03:51 GMT -5
Sentinel Prime makes little pistol motions with his hands, chk-chk, and agrees cheerily, "Seems like you're the medi-bot for the job when you need a mod rebuilt, Long Haul."
As for poor Rev, Sentinel Prime is from a reality where love polygons are pretty common, and he's had the misfortune of living through one of said polygons. He's also pretty keen on picking up social cues. So Sentinel Prime can't help but smirk, stifling a laugh, and he teases, "Looks like Rev ought be asking Ultra Magnus, not me, to go for a cube!"
Maybe he should be jealous or something, but he can't bring himself to care. He just met Rev, and she seems way too goo-goo over humans, anyway, and besides, women have been straight up bad news for him, lately.
Sentinel Prime rubs his chin, shaking off the smirk, and he adds, "But all this talk of buying cubes is reminding me. I do need to ask you a favour, Ultra Magnus. I'll pay you back, anything you want that I can reasonably do, and look," his gaze wanders over to the storage room and softens a bit, "when I was a commander, if anything happened to one of my bots, I would have been torqued off enough to kill." Sentinel Prime has a downright ugly possessive streak sometimes. It was bad enough when Optimus's crew of goof-bots ignored the Elite Guard sigils stamped on the Twins; Sentinel Prime sure chewed out Optimus over that. Someone under his watch dying? He'd be a very unhappy Guardsman. "And if it was, per chance... my fault," but nothing is ever Sentinel Prime's fault, "due to faulty intel, reading the situation wrong, a double agent, whatever - I'd have no one to blame but myself. Thing is, as much as I'd want to punish myself for being the bot responsible... there were other people still alive depending on me, too."
Sentinel Prime spreads his hands and finishes, "I don't know your situation. I don't know what happened. Just don't beat yourself too much over it, whatever it was. Take it seriously." Something Sentinel Prime himself should have done more, he knows now. "But remember your responsibilities to the dead and the living."
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Rev
Cadet
Faster than a fast thing
Posts: 110
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Post by Rev on Nov 5, 2010 15:21:59 GMT -5
This is why she preferred stick to the track and out of talk; she would always be more capable on her wheels than with her vocalizer. Thank someone for minor miracles though. Long Haul was apparently too professional and dedicated to his primary function to even notice her little faux pas. By all accounts the ‘bot was pretty damn effective at what he did. Ultra Magnus seemed to be deliberately ignoring the screw up, that was her guess anyway. If the situation was reversed, that’s probably what she’d do. Of the three guys, it was Sentinel Prime’s teasing that made her relax a little; making light of the situation is exactly what she needed.
If she was more mature socially, she might have just let the whole thing slide and be done with it, but nope, she had to explain and defend herself and just dig the hole some more. “Oh come on guys, all I meant is that when I first came in here and saw Ultra Magnus all pearly white, I thought he looked the part of pro Autobot advertising, the ‘bot on the “We Need You” poster. Now in this admittedly very well constructed extra armour, I’d follow him into battle confident that all the ‘cons are busy looking for rocks to hide under”. Actually, that didn’t come out too bad at all, no wheels in mouth that time.
Then the conversation turned back to Crunch and everyone seemed to sober up. Rev looked to Sentinel and hitched a thumb towards the door, “I think we should take the next exit, I’m no good on this type of track” she said looking back to the where the body lay. One day she would have to run that course, she hoped that day was a long time away. “Besides, aren’t you still on rock duty Sentinel? I’ve got the shift after yours”.
OOC: Does Magnus get a new Avatar now?
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