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Post by Drift on Mar 24, 2011 19:08:13 GMT -5
Wow, Drift really wishes you'd go back to calling him a coward, Perceptor. That's a lot easier to deal with than this.
"Fine." Drift glares up the corridor. "It's on you then if you get disappointed."
Oh, right. Let's test that whole 'reality as bleak as you make it' slag. "So, what's not-bleak about our current situation?" Yeah, paint this one all sorts of sparkly colors, Perceptor.
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Post by Perceptor on Mar 24, 2011 19:36:36 GMT -5
It's always easier to retreat to anger than to dare to hope, isn't it?
"Fair enough," Perceptor agrees mildly, adding with a faint smile, "though I doubt I shall."
See that, Drift? Someone believes in you. Even after spending this much time talking to you and butting heads against your stubbornness, he's still giving you the benefit of the doubt.
"Right now?" he asks, holding that smile with little effort. "No one died in the attack."
"Furthermore, we have energon enough to support ourselves for the foreseeable future, and the ability to produce more. We are free to explore this strange new dimension, and have ample opportunities to enhance out various sciences via adopting new advancements from examples provided by individuals from different home realities. To say nothing of simply having the opportunity to make new acquaintances." Hint hint.
"You tell me what is bleak about our situation."
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Post by Drift on Mar 24, 2011 19:49:09 GMT -5
Hope didn't get you very far in the gutters of Cybertron, Perceptor. It didn't fill your tanks, it didn't keep you safe at night. It's...useless.
Everything Perceptor says about their situation is...everything that's wrong with the war. "So, no ground lost, but nothing gained. No real change. No real progress." How the frag are we going to win the war?
No. This isn't his war. It doesn't matter...does it?
"Bleak?" Oh, ask him a hard one, Perceptor. "This place: it's not home. None of us will ever go home, find out what happened, if anyone misses us, if we did any damn good."
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Post by Perceptor on Mar 24, 2011 20:09:25 GMT -5
Perceptor does not know about life in the gutters of Cybertron. If anything, he knows about life in the underground, waiting for battle to find them as the Decepticons continue attack after attack, which was not precisely "safe at night" either.
"Ground? What 'ground' are we supposed to be winning? This reality may not even possess a Cybertron, so what 'ground' should we continue the senseless fighting for? Why not fight for something more concrete and tangible, right here, right now: each other."
"No, this ship is not home, however, you cannot know for certain that we will never return," Perceptor counters. "And beyond which, what good does believing that you will never return do you?"
"Home... is an ephemeral concept, Drift. Perhaps fighting over a place to call home is the root of the problem. This, right here, right now, this is my home, but more than this ship, the people I am here with, they are my home for now. And I will do what I can to make a difference here, with them, for them, and worry about whether or not I had a positive impact from whence I came once I return to that reality."
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Post by Drift on Mar 24, 2011 20:34:32 GMT -5
"Yeah, you might want to have a little chat with the Decepticons about that, Perceptor. They seem to think there's still a war on." Or else, what? Drift threw himself at freaky-looking mechs for...fun?
"IF I believed there was a way to get home, why wouldn't I pursue that Especially if all of you Autobots want to do is to be...together. Exploring. Whatever." He has a war to win. He can't win it from here.
He bridles, hands clutching at his scabbards. "Home isn't just a 'concept.' It's the only thing worth having. A future. For everyone." New Crystal City. All he'd ever wanted. Don't tell him it doesn't matter, Perceptor. You will lose. Violently.
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Post by Perceptor on Mar 24, 2011 20:50:21 GMT -5
"I cannot believe that there is no way home," Perceptor replies, shaking his head as he crosses his arms over his chest. "But if you wish to assist me with my research, I would welcome your help."
"And do not mistake my philosophy for that of the Autobots as a whole." He snorts, wondering what Xaaron would make of that, of everything being reduced to Perceptor's preferences and wants.
"It is a concept, but being such does not limit it to being nothing more than a concept, Drift. Tell me this. If you had to choose between the one who you claim that you betrayed, the one who was killed, and a place, a patch of Cybertron to call your own, which would you choose?"
"Which would be home to you?"
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Post by Drift on Mar 24, 2011 21:14:41 GMT -5
Drift laughs. "Yeah, you...don't want me helping with anything like 'research'." Not his strong suit. All that fancy education you got, Perceptor? He got none of it.
"Well then, what do you Autobots stand for?" He twitches at the slip, but maybe Perceptor didn't catch it.
He growls at Perceptor's latest Pushy Question. The red mech had been ignoring every single 'back the frag off' signal Drift knew how to give. Which means...this must be deliberate. an attempt to break him. Still, the question makes him rigid with rage and...something else.
"This isn't going to work," he snaps. He turns on his heel, storming away for several paces. He halts. Turns around. Returns.
He jabs a finger at the barrier. "I've seen it. I've lived there. And...I'm not good enough to stay there." The two are inseparable to him. Which was why he had to leave.
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Post by Perceptor on Mar 25, 2011 1:02:25 GMT -5
Perceptor isn't deliberately ignoring the signals; he's just not reading them as "back off". He's talented like that, you know, and about as socially adept as Drift, himself, is. Just in different ways.
"What is not going to work?" he asks, confused, and then frowns with further confusion. "Wait... 'You Autobots'? You do not consider yourself one of us?"
Drift is right about "this" not working, if by "this", he means the conversation. Perceptor sighs with defeat and turns to drop down onto the bunk beside the doorway.
"If considering yourself an outsider to those whom you wish to balance the scales upon is how you cope, then... who am I to judge?" he asks quietly, shaking his head as he stares down at his hands in his lap. "I do not intend to anger you, Drift, merely to express that you do not need be be an outsider here. I..." he pauses, tilting his head enough to stare at Drift's feet from the corners of his optics.
"I could not live such a life." Even if he does so anyway most of the time. Sometimes of his own choosing. Sometimes, however, not. Drift is right; he speaks too much.
"I do not wish to argue with you, Drift," he admits wearily. "And I doubt that this is what you were seeking when you came to speak with me. I am sorry."
"Will you tell me of this place? The place you think of as home?"
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Post by Drift on Mar 25, 2011 7:58:44 GMT -5
Should have left, Drift thinks. Should have just...gone. But go where? Just like with his Autobots--they won't accept him here. Turmoil's words echo in his cortex--he's nothing but a 'broken outcast'. Pretending it's by his choice is the least Drift can do.
"I'm not one of you," he says, bitterly. "Stupid to even try."
He looks down at the Autobot insignia he'd so proudly gotten on his shoulders. A sign of change, he'd thought. Acceptance. Now they feel like a burden. He rubs one. "He'd have hated these." Wing didn't hate, really, but he would have been...disappointed.
Drift sighs, looking at his hands. Their hands--New Crystal City's. He feels like...he's stolen his whole body from them.
"They.... It was like Cybertron, before the war. Only better. So much better that I didn't believe it. Wasted so much time fighting against it." He means that literally. Day after day, he and Wing. As though violence was the only language he could understand.
It was. And even then it had taken how long to get through to him?
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Post by Perceptor on Mar 25, 2011 14:34:13 GMT -5
Perceptor listens, filing away Drift's words, picking through them as he would pick through a sample under study. Not one of you. He'd have hated these. Like Cybertron, before the war.
Not an Autobot, then. Neutrals? Perhaps a whole settlement of Neutrals?
"You have not always been an Autobot, then," Perceptor observes. Spent time fighting against it? Fighting against something he came to cherish? Why? Unless... He turns to fix a thoughtful look upon Drift for a long moment, remembering all of Drift's talk about redemption and the "things he had done".
"You were a Decepticon, once, weren't you?"
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Post by Drift on Mar 25, 2011 16:05:40 GMT -5
You know that sound that flame makes when exposed to pure oxygen? That sort of explosive squeak? That's the sound Drift makes before he goes still. How...the...pit had Perceptor figured that out?
OH, that's right: because Drift was the one who 'talked too damn much'. Irony?
Drift wasn't a fan.
" Not 'once'. For a very long time. "
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Post by Perceptor on Mar 25, 2011 16:34:18 GMT -5
Well, that is certainly an interesting sound, but a very telling one. Perceptor merely nods, his expression remaining calm, perhaps even just a tiny bit amused as his theory proves accurate. Logic triumphs once again.
"Ah. But no longer?" Not really a question, that, but more a simple statement.
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Post by Drift on Mar 25, 2011 16:57:56 GMT -5
Drift would like to take your logic out to a shooting range and ventilate it.
"No. But...," Drift sighs. "Not really sure I'm an Autobot, either."
When Perceptor gets out of this brig, Drift may have to kill him. but for right now, it's almost a relief to say these out loud.
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Post by Perceptor on Mar 25, 2011 17:31:51 GMT -5
Usually, it takes more words than that to inspire ventilation-level irritation at Perceptor or his logic. In other words? You aren't the first to want to do so, Drift.
"I believe that I can understand," he offers with a small nod. He waves a hand toward Drift's frame as he settles back more comfortably. "Your rebuild. It was rather recently done," he continues. He refrains from mentioning how Drift's, ah... behavior... might be a bit rough around the edges, though the thought oddly brings a bit of a smile to his face for a moment. "I would, then, posit that your philosophical rebirth is relatively recent as well. I do not find it odd that one might find themselves embroiled with doubt so soon after one has repudiated their former life."
"Besides, they were Neutrals, weren't they?" he asks, genuinely curious. He's only assuming that, based on Drift's comments about his sigil, but it's a reasonable assumption, he thinks. "Coming from such would tend to bias one's perspective, I imagine."
"Something influenced you to adopt the symbol, though," he offers, nodding toward Drift's shoulder.
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Post by Drift on Mar 25, 2011 17:47:09 GMT -5
Well, what can Drift say about his 'speed to wanting to ventilate'? He's precocious. Or...antisocial and violent. Something like that.
Drift slumps back against the wall, sliding down it. A gesture of defeat which is the same as how he views trust: it has to be forced out of him. "Yeah...pretty new." His fists clench, thinking that day in the Council chamber, Dai Atlas's understanding sympathy, later, letting him go. "No idea what I'm doing," he confesses, staring at his hands. "Just knew I couldn't stay there. I hadn't earned it."
He risks a glance up at Perceptor, then back down.
"Not sure I want to earn these," he adds. Was it starting again? Or was it simply restarting the same slide into violence he'd told Turmoil about--that the Autobots were where the Decepticons and begun, while the Decepticons had fallen...so much further. Was he going to pick a faction only to follow that downward slide again?
And who would save him this time?
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