A Cube Is Never Just A Cube

[Sentinel Prime]

Day 22 - Event Horizon, mess hall, open to Team Good.

- - -

Sentinel Prime just had a drink at that café with Oracle and Jazz, so he doesn't need his ration right now, which might actually just work out perfectly.

Just waiting in the mess hall and hoping his mark would show up would be stupid, though.

Sentinel Prime leans against a table, hands on the edge behind him, and he makes a call over the radio.

//Heeeey, I figure you ought to be on your feet by now, am I right? Good old Autobot health care plan, and you don't seem like the kind to ever stay down for long. So about that cube I said I'd get you in the mess hall. You up for that?//

[Impactor/"Imp"]

//Hnh.// comes the reply.

//Oh, yeah.// he murmurs in a tone that suggests the offer had slipped his mind. Then, //Sure. I'll be there.//

It takes a few moments, because Impactor isn't one to just go jogging down the hallway for a cube, but he arrives before too long, immediately glancing around to see who's in and who isn't. He looks a bit worn, a bit grayed, and a few of his panels seem... loose, but it would still be hard to peg him as a member of the undead if one didn't know already. Spotting Sentinel, he tromps over towards the blue Autobot.

"Never been one to turn down a free drink, not without a good reason," he shrugs.

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime perks up when Impactor arrives and pushes away from the table. He greets cheerily, "Heeey there, Impactor," and holds a hand to shake. Sentinel Prime observes, "You're looking much better!" That's true, but that doesn't make it a complement. "I'm glad to see you up and walking. Now then. How do you take your energon?"

Whether or not Impactor shakes his hand, he then marches over to the dispenser.

[Impactor/"Imp"]

Impactor looks down at Sentinel's hand. Then looks at his harpoon. He shrugs, and then shakes Sentinel's hand with his left hand. As Sentinel heads towards the dispenser, Impactor tosses himself down in one of the seats and shrugs. "As long as it's strong, I really don't care much how it tastes. Which works out pretty well, all things considered."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime frowns at the dispenser, trying to figure out how to accommodate Impactor's request. He doesn't usually keep company with hard-drinking commandos, and fetching Ultra Magnus his beverages of choice hasn't really left him properly educated for this task. There were times when he thought about slipping just a little something in there, it would have been so easy, and it would have been... murder and treason, he reminds himself. Shrugging, Sentinel Prime wings it and comes up with something like a Cybertronian piña colada with six shots of Bacardi 151 in it. He sniffs what the dispenser gives him, and it about takes the paint right off his nose. His optical ridges raise. Okay.

Sentinel Prime takes the drink back over, sets it down in front of Impactor, and sits down at the table, prompting, "So you were going to tell me about how the war really was in your reality?"

[Impactor/"Imp"]

Impactor accepts the drink, sniffs at it, and frowns. His sense of smell, like taste and touch, is a bit deadened, but he's pretty sure this smells like a girly drink.

A girly drink with a lot of booze.

Good enough.

"Thanks," he answers before throwing back a fourth his cube in one long swing. He finishes and looks at it thoughtfully, considering Sentinel Prime's question. "What the war was like," he murmurs thoughtfully It's a harder question than it seems at first, because to really answer you need a basis of comparison, and Impactor hasn't ever known anything but war. Even when much of Cybertron was at peace, Impactor, Tarnish soldier was not.

But that is the answer, isn't it?

"The war... was life, and life was the war. Cybertron's been at war for so long, it pretty much defines what were are anymore." Then he shrugs. "Always did for me, anyway, but now, it's the planet."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime has a brief moment of looking nervous at that frown, but he masks it quickly, and Impactor is at least drinking the concoction Sentinel Prime coaxed out of the dispenser via the highly scientific method of keymashing buttons.

He has to think about what Impactor's saying. Sentinel Prime's first thought is to think that Impactor means he was built after the war started, but what is with that 'now, it's the planet' line?

So Sentinel Prime asks instead, "You were built as a soldier?"

[Impactor/"Imp"]

Impactor gives a quick, sharp nod. "Yeah." He takes another gulp, drinking down the fruity-girlish drink in swallows very unlike the dainty sipping it was intended for and goes on. "The thing is, Cybertron wasn't as much at peace before the Autobot-Decepticon war started as most Autobots like to think. It's just that the city-states that most 'Bots were from tended to not be much involved in those earlier skirmishes. I was from Tarn, though, which always had a more militant bent to it and tended to be in a lot of on-off fighting with Vos." Impactor doesn't clarify that the Decepticons tended to come from these city-states, but the statement that most 'Bots are from the uninvolved ones implies more or less the same thing.

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime tries to think about where he wants to steer this conversation. Try to pick up any tips on how to be awesome, because Impactor Major in his reality obviously did his Ultra some good - the bot became Magnus! Maybe this Impactor also knows something useful. Try to convince Impactor that he really wants to help Sentinel Prime steal a lot of money. How to get there from here?

He asks something completely off-track, "Do you think it'll be that way again when your Autobots win the war?"

[Impactor/"Imp"]

'When the Autobots win the war.'

As it so happens, Impactor actually knows something about what it will be like when the Autobots win the war.

He's not happy about it, and he's not about to talk about it to a relative stranger.

The zombie throws back the rest of his cube and slams the frame down, causing it ti dissipate in the jolting.

"I think war's part of who we are. We used to keep it under control with outlets. If the Autobots don't remember that, don't find new outlets..." he shrugs.

"It'll make outlets."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime watches Impactor slam down the cube warily, noting that down. Was that a bad question? The Autobots won in Sentinel Prime's reality! He also has an unhealthy propaganda addiction. Maybe Impactor is just naturally grumpy or... violent, yeah, based off what he's saying.

He tilts his head and can't help but point out, "No offense, but I don't see Emirate Xaaron hauling out and punching people. Do all of you really need these 'outlets'? Or is this a soldier thing? I, ah, we seem to be programmed a bit differently in my reality. Actually, we're not really built with functions at all."

[Impactor/"Imp"]

"You haven't seen me hauling out and punching people, either," Impactor points out, leaning back in is seat. Then he smirks up at Sentinel. "Spend enough time around me, though, and you will, though I prefer to use this," and he holds up the harpoon.

"We're violent by nature, but whatever saw fit to include that violence also included suppressions." He rubs his chin with his good hand, thinking it over. "In a way, I guess the control's as much a part of us as the violence, though it works better in some than others." And doesn't work at all in some, though Impactor doesn't feel interested in opening that whole can of worms in this conversation. "But violence is a habit, too, and Emirate Xaaron hasn't been making it as... habitual as those of us doing the actual fighting."

He shakes his head. "Maybe there's a way to... to ween us off the violence, but the thing is, just now it's still needed."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime laughs, as if Impactor made a really funny joke, but he's entirely sure that Impactor's not actually joking. He explains, "Yeah, we're definitely not built that way in my reality." Like Sentinel Prime needs more problems in his head.

"We've had, oh, about two million years of mostly peace in my reality, since the Great War." Some recent unrest that he's not going to go into unless he has to. "Still have a standing army, because to be honest, a little violence is always needed, and I wouldn't have a job if we didn't." Sentinel Prime really doesn't know what he'd do with himself, if he couldn't have gone for soldier.

Really quite genuinely interested, Sentinel Prime finishes by asking, "But so... war's your life. But what's a day in the... what's an average day for you?"

[Impactor/"Imp"]

Impactor grunts. Sentinel just keeps managing to ask questions Impactor doesn't much feel like answering. He is certainly paying for that drink!

He does, however, answer. "Come out of defrag cycle, yell at Xaaron, kill a few 'Cons, knock back a few at Maccadam's. The details past that change a lot depending on what's going on." He looks up at Sentinel Prime. "Look, most of the stories you hear.. those are not the day to day things. They happen, and they happen a lot, but day to day, a lot of it is... well, drudgery." He shrugs. "When I was killed, we didn't have the upperhand. We were working to fix it, but we didn't have it. So there's a lot of hiding, a lot of shaking of trails, a lot of scouting out new bases or figuring out the best way to get at some target or another and a lot of skulking and a lot of tunneling..." He pauses. "Well, okay, the tunneling is mostly limited to folks like me and Twin Twist, but it's pretty handy when you're part of an underground movement to be able to actually move underground."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime idolises an idealised mental picture of the military life during wartime! The trenches, the starvation, the experimental chemical weapons, the blown off limbs that Autobot Health Care won't cover re-attaching, the everyone he cares about dying in horrible ways before someone snipes him off the glint of his own barrel of oil, the sheer and utter bot suffering - Sentinel Prime's not interested in that. He cares about the glory, the fame, and the path to power, how a bot can become a hero that captures the sparks and minds of a whole republic and rises to greatness, forged in the crucible of war.

He politely manages to not look let down, rationalising that maybe Impactor just got stuck in a reality with a crummy war, and maybe the Great War in Sentinel Prime's own reality was much more inspiring.

Sentinel Prime decides this is as good a segues as any and seizes on it, "So about that tunneling. Done any down on Pz-Zazz?" He pauses a beat. "Want to?"