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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 4, 2010 15:41:02 GMT -5
Emirate Xaaron tries to send the Commando in deeper into Ultra Magnus's territory. Perhaps he intends to assassinate Ultra Magnus's Overlord?
He remarks casually, "You like law and order. Moreso than the average Autobot."
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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 Aug 6, 2010 0:30:09 GMT -5
"…Ah." Magnus pauses, taking the time to examine the board once more. His answer is slow, measured. "I watched my Cybertron – the Autobots… I watched us all descend into chaos," he says quietly. Very, very quietly. He eyes Clipper uneasily, as if fretting over speaking of such things around one so painfully innocent. "I tried so hard to make it right again. Tried… and failed."
That Infantry piece is now perfectly placed to delay Xaaron's Commando for what little time it can do so while Magnus now orders his Veteran away from the line to join the Cavalier.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 6, 2010 10:20:52 GMT -5
Emirate Xaaron smiles, raises a finger, and calls, "Commando calls in Air Strike, Air Commander moves in." He asides to Clipper, "In the field, this would be a commando squad providing telemetry to aerial units."
Now there's an Air Commander and a Commando deep in Ultra Magnus's territory, ready to unleash several cans of whopping on that infantry unit.
"I have to force myself to remember to use the Air Commander. It doesn't really come naturally to me."
He looks up, "Ah, so you see rules as preventing chaos?"
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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 Aug 8, 2010 10:11:29 GMT -5
The Infantry will have to be sacrificed, unfortunately. Magnus knows it's necessary, but he certainly isn't happy about it. But he has never been happy with sending good men out to die.
"No," he answers Xaaron. "They don't. We had rules in place before the war. And still…." Still, the war. Still, they all lost control. Even with so many laws in place after Shockwave took over, war still managed to find a seed. "But the law… it gives us something. A starting point." He watches the board for several moments, still and silent. "There are," he murmurs, shifting his weight, "unjust laws, too. Unjust rule. And allowing them to remain is worse than warring to end them." So what does that say about him?
He looks up at Xaaron, expression for once empty of pain and self-loathing. It's almost blank. He takes a full drink of his energon.
"Forgive me," he says, "since it's not the tidiest execution of a Kaon Delta manoeuvre, but…." At one corner of the triangle are the Veteran and Cavalier; at the second, his Artillery. It should have been his Brigadier, but that piece remains Enthralled. The third corner is one lonely, forgotten Infantry unit left behind in the initial flurry. If any corner falls, it will be this one. And in the middle, that Commando.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 8, 2010 19:01:12 GMT -5
"Do you think," Emirate Xaaron asks, "that there is some ideal that could hypothetically be reached? Or do you think that, realistically, we can only try for greatest good for the most people and that some will inevitably be shortchanged and wronged?"
He takes a drink, too, and his face lights up in delight. "Oh, don't apologise! Now let's see, that Infantry is the obvious weak spot, but... that's really a bit obvious, isn't it?"
He sends the Commando to try to plow through the Veteran, instead.
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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 Aug 8, 2010 22:05:57 GMT -5
"…No-one can please everyone all the time," says Magnus. There's a haunted quality to the words. "We might keep trying – we might even try until it takes everything we have. Until it does us in. We'll never reach that ideal no matter how far it drives us."
Ultra Magnus, ever the perfectionist. Though he says we, even he knows it's painfully obvious he means me. He has his ideal; he knows he will never reach it. Nevertheless, he will always strive to find it in himself. And anyone who knows him knows he will keep looking for it unto the heat-death of the universe.
With the Cavalier there to back it up, the Veteran weathers the Commando's assault. It probably won't again, but it shouldn't need to – he orders it aside, putting the Commando between it and the Cavalier. Though it can't fire this turn, his Artillery is in place.
"I only apologise," he adds, "because I'm sure you've had better opponents."
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 9, 2010 13:48:13 GMT -5
Emirate Xaaron is getting the impression that Ultra Magnus is the self-flagellating sort of idealist, rather than the chipper, optimistic sort that is usually found in Bumblebees. "Hmm. But in striving for an ideal you can never have, are you not denying yourself the chance to be happy and thereby ruining any chance you may have had of reaching your ideal?"
That Artillery... Emirate Xaaron called in the Air Commander over to the Commando's position, did he not? He sends to the Air Commander to try to deal with that point of the triangle.
He admits, "I have had better, but you know? I have had worse, and none of them have ever apologised to me."
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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 Aug 10, 2010 18:01:03 GMT -5
Xaaron gets a pale shadow of a wry, self-deprecating smile over the rim of his cube. None of those opponents was Ultra Magnus.
"I'm just a soldier," he says quietly. Soldiers are meant to serve – happiness has nothing to do with it. The Artillery falls to the Air Commander; Magnus turns his Veteran on the Commando.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 10, 2010 18:38:39 GMT -5
Emirate Xaaron's Ultra Magnus was always too busy being late and wandering off and trying to kill Optimus Prime and getting buried in volcanoes to play a round with his old commissioner, it is true.
Here, he has a captive audience.
Emirate Xaaron muses, "A citizen soldier is still a citizen, but that is easy to forget."
The Commando falls to the Veteran, but he did his job of getting the Air Commander deep into enemy territory, and now Emirate Xaaron sends the Air Commander prowling after Ultra Magnus's Overlord.
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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 Aug 11, 2010 13:50:36 GMT -5
Easier to forget than you may expect, Xaaron.
"I can't remember if I was ever just a citizen," Magnus says in barely more than a whisper. Not when – if. He joined the security force so early that sometimes, he wonders if he simply came into being and grabbed a weapon. Optronix, ever the passive one, hadn't thought much of it or his brother for the decision; but Optronix had always shied from things smacking of violence. He needed the buffer of files, folders, and things long past and dead. Really, once he'd gone into the Archives and Magnus had gone under Sentinel Prime's command, they hardly saw more of each other than the occasional video call.
That was so long ago.
"If I'm not being too forward," he adds before calling on his now-freed Brigadier to follow his still advancing Gladiator, "why did you come down here? I don't imagine you just sit down for a game of Full-Stasis with every prisoner." It's clear enough to Magnus that he's been using the game and the idle chatter to take the former security commander's measure, but the wherefore remains. Surely he has some subordinate who could do this for him.
He watches Xaaron even as he watches that Air Commander and considers the threat to his Overlord.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 11, 2010 17:33:00 GMT -5
"If you weren't a citizen, what were you fighting for?" Emirate Xaaron asks thoughtfully. Why a citizen soldier fights is obvious, too obvious, sometimes - his country, his home, his way of life, his people. People who fight for such airy things as ideals are shifty like shadows and harder to nail down. Then there are the fuel-stained butchers who fight simply for the sake of it, and the weak-willed followers who fight simply to have someone to follow. The cowards who are too afraid not to fight. So many reasons to fight, making this such a simple and complex question.
Emirate Xaaron looks up from the board again, and he says very bluntly, "You have been compromised by Shockwave, and I wanted to pick your brain. Air Commander takes Overlord, full-stasis."
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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 Aug 11, 2010 18:26:26 GMT -5
Did Magnus see, just for a moment, that clumsily but attentively carved white Overlord in a shade of pale purple? Perhaps.
"Peace," he answers as if that peace is some elusive creature he once saw long ago and has been seeking ever since. "There was a time we were all the same… without war. Even if it killed me – even if I wasn't meant to see it with my own eyes – I wanted that back for all of us." He reaches to tip his Overlord, for a moment forgetting that he can't actually touch the board or anything on it. He stops, hand hovering there until he lets it fall back to his lap, and he looks imploringly at Xaaron. "…Was I wrong?" he asks, voice gone hoarse. The aeons seem to melt away and he's that young recruit again, unsure, seeking guidance.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 11, 2010 18:57:36 GMT -5
There are those who think that fighting for peace is folly; those who think that peace is only thing worth fighting for.
Emirate Xaaron leaves the board as it is - in stasis.
He again stands and fiddles with the prison controls, unlocking the cell. Emirate Xaaron grabs his drink and tries to sit down next to Ultra Magnus, looking up at him thoughtfully. "Wrong to want peace? Never. But take care before saying you're willing to die for it, to never live to see it. After all, if all the men like you die in the winning of the peace, who is going to be there to keep it peaceful, hmm?"
He lightly reaches reaches over his pointer finger to give Ultra Magnus a poke on the arm and sips his drink.
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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 Aug 11, 2010 22:25:46 GMT -5
"If that's what it takes…." Magnus, making no protests to sharing the edge of his berth with the small golden Autobot, stares into the last dregs of his energon with a grim determination before looking back up at Xaaron. He's certain even if he falls, there will always be some other soldier willing to protect the peace. There's almost a smile in his eyes. Almost. "…But I'd rather see it myself," he adds.
Either Xaaron is an insane risk addict, sitting with a potentially dangerous prisoner, or he finds something trustworthy even in a compromised old soldier like Magnus. Magnus is just optimistic enough to hope for the latter and pragmatic enough to wonder if it isn't a little of both.
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Post by Emirate Xaaron on Aug 11, 2010 23:06:23 GMT -5
Emirate Xaaron is a bit of an insane risk addict, to tell the truth, but he's not going to mention that right now.
Instead, he just reaches over to give Ultra Magnus a pat on the wrist, smiling. He raises his drink and suggests, "Now that's something to live for. Cheers?"
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