Sentinel Prime Interviews Skyfire

[Skyfire]

Skyfire gives Sentinel a quizzical look. "What type of performing? I'm not a practitioner of any of the performing arts, though I do watch them from time to time. Art reveals a lot about the artists."

He chuckles. "Don't ask me to sing. Just... don't."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime smirks over Skyfire's reply, and he explains, "If we're supposed to put on a good face for the Autobots and Maximals, we'll be performing every minute we're out in public."

He pauses a moment, to take in Skyfire's reaction, if any, to his casual mention of the art of spin.

"But this is actually specific to you - you fly. A number of cultures have demonstration squadrons. This would be low, low priority compared to... everything else." Skyfire trying to science a way home >>> Skyfire flying figure 8s. "But would you be comfortable with that at all?"

[Skyfire]

Skyfire looks at Sentinel Prime for a long moment. "Of course we'll be putting our best foot forward for meeting with locals. Fortunately, we're not Decepticons; we don't have to lie about who we are and what we stand for."

"Well I won't say I don't take pleasure in doing a bit of tricky flying well," he says. "A perfect ballistic re-entry, dodging funnel clouds, investigating pyrocumulus formations are quite thrilling. However, I've never trained in formal, parade-type formation flying. I'll be quite the newbie at that."

"On the other hand, I expect Breakaway is going to be drilling us all in formation flying and suchlike. If you have something in mind for demonstration flights, I suppose you'll let him know what formations those of us in both groups need to know, right?"

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime looks back at Skyfire, expression guileless. He muses absently, "But what if we do have to lie? Suppose that, hmm, we're dealing with Femaxians." He pulls up his notes on them. "Males of their species aren't as sapient as the females, apparently, so the females run society, and the males are cast out into the wild. You can imagine the females don't think much of males. You want to tell them you're a," his expression quirks into a smirk, "lowly male? They won't give you the time of day. A beheading for your impertinence, maybe."

The smirk becomes more of a normal smile. "Yeah. I'll talk to Breakaway." Sentinel Prime is sure that Breakaway will be just thrilled about drilling on manoeuvres that are useless in real combat but look cool.

[Skyfire]

"Gender isn't all that relevant to our species, anyway. We don't mention it, or tell them we are genderless. Wiser to say nothing than for them to find out later that we blatantly lied to them. I know I tend to not trust people that I find out have lied to me repeatedly," Skyfire says, still not smiling.

"Sentinel Prime, you know and I know that sometimes you have to make harsh choices to survive--but the important thing is to know the difference between 'have to' and 'easier to'." Skyfire leans forward, ice-blue optics bright and intent. "Doing the wrong thing because it's easier is where the Decepticons went wrong. Sooner or later, it always comes back to haunt you."

He sits back and smiles again. "But you know, it's not hard to sell people on the idea we're the good guys when we really are the good guys!"

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime does smile, though, and notes aloud, "But you're fine with lying by omission."

Lying by omission is just exactly what Skyfire described. It is one of the best kinds of lying, Sentinel Prime thinks, because a lot of people feel it isn't really lying, so it is easier to get away with.

Skyfire is lecturing again. He really does do that often! Sentinel Prime nods and agrees, "The easy choice is rarely the right one," even if he's been known to pick easy over right.

He takes a considering look at Skyfire. Sentinel Prime recalls thinking, when this assignment was dumped on his lap, that he needed someone around who is actually sincere. So far, he knows Elita-1 is interesting. She is the exact opposite of sincere. Skyfire's a good contrast to that. He is actually earnest. Sentinel Prime jots down a note to that extent.

Then he says mildly, "As long as their definition of 'good' is within a few standard deviations of our own." Then he stretches and admits, "Though if they're defining it radically differently, we might want to avoid those folks, anyway. Speaking of... what are your opinions on Cybertronian-xeno relations?"

Isolationism? Trade? Uplift? Conquest? Again, Sentinel Prime can guess what Skyfire will say, but he needs to hear it.

[Skyfire]

"There's a difference between lying by omission and keeping personal matters private, you know," Skyfire says mildly. "I don't show all my hole cards in a hand of Praxus Fold'em, and I don't publish Emirate Xaaron's encryption keys, either. Some things not everyone needs to know; some things it's not anyone else's business to know."

"Indeed." Skyfire thinks a moment, or pretends to think for a moment, because he's held those opinions for a long time. "I always was in favor of exploration, contact, and possibly trade. We can learn things from other cultures; they may learn from us. I'm not an expert on Cybertronian economics, let alone the economics of interstellar trade, so I don't have a reasoned opinion on free trade vs. regulated trade or degrees of regulation. My Cybertron had barely gotten to the point of checking to see if there were lifeforms on other planets--my original mission directive was to search for energon sources. However, we did often find alien races on planets of interest, and there were... opinions about how dangerous they were, and what we ought to do about it."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime decides not to quibble the point. Skyfire has his reasons to want truth, reasons beyond just being a scientist and lover of knowledge. Skyfire has been betrayed. Being a stickler for the truth makes Skyfire a good sounding board for 'what is good' and a good example of a good Autobot, it also makes him less-suited for more propaganda-oriented missions.

Sentinel Prime prods, "And? What were your opinions?"

[Skyfire]

Again, a thoughtful look at Sentinel. Skyfire spread his hands slightly and said, "Mine? I favored a 'judge each contact on its own merits'. The Fenachrome were a great race to avoid, and a good argument for beefing up our own planetary defenses. The Tines would have been interesting to study because of their unique social structure, but were too primitive to be a danger to anyone. I think we could have learned a lot from the Norlaminians, who were pacifists but had a highly advanced culture. And so on."

"My partner thought the rest of the galaxy was dangerous, and that sooner or later we'd run into an advanced conquistador race, or something worse. His opinion was that Cybertron should militarize, and take out potential threats before they could threaten us, and then go ahead and exploit their resources. We argued a lot about that. I believed, and still do believe that we should be cautious, and prepared to defend ourselves, but that a 'kill them before they kill us' policy was just plain wrong."

"I'm given to understand that what I consider the stupid option--isolationism--won out after I vanished. It was already a popular position back then--some were afraid we'd stir up the sort of threats my partner envisioned, and others argued that exploring would lead to conflicts that would strengthen the 'military faction', so for political reasons they opposed it."

[Sentinel Prime]

When Skyfire calls isolationism 'stupid', Sentinel Prime bristles slightly and then forces himself to relax. He didn't make that call. Ultra Magnus probably didn't even make that call. It was probably Powered Convoy Magnus or someone super old like that.

Besides, it doesn't even matter what Sentinel Prime thinks or feels. He has a job to do, and it must be done. Anything that would get in the way must be cast aside. So he stays quiet on his thoughts, jots down his own notes, and looks to the next question.

Why does Skyfire want to do this? Can Skyfire put up with tedium? Can Skyfire kill, if needed? Will he? How does he feel about performing? How does he feel about lying? How does he feel about Cybertronian-xeno relations?

Ah, there he goes. Sentinel Prime asks, "Explain how you've acted in a team setting and what you accomplished out of it."

[Skyfire]

Skyfire is mildly surprised that Sentinel doesn't ask why Skyfire thinks isolationism is stupid. He was all ready to explain. Oh well, next question.

"I'm not sure I've ever done anything in a team setting, really. The Autobots here are the biggest team I ever worked with, and so far I've mostly gotten shot down," he says deprecatingly.

"I have worked with a partner for long periods, however. I learned to be patient with an insecure, egotistical, 'prima dona' personality and get him to work with me rather than against me," Skyfire says. He smiles briefly, then looks serious again. "At least, I thought I did."

[Sentinel Prime]

The fact is, Skyfire's opinions about Cybertronian-xeno relations really don't matter that much, as long as he's not heavily extremist in one direction or the other! Surprising as that may sound, as long as Skyfire doesn't want to hug and/or kill every alien he meets, regardless of context, he's probably fine.

Skyfire's lack of team experience could be a problem, but command stressed to him that Sentinel Prime has to have blah blah diversity.

Skyfire's partner sounds... uh... Sentinel Prime's just not going to think about that too much, because that's Starscream Skyfire's talking about.

He asks instead, "I've noticed you're pretty didactic. How do you react when someone knows a topic better than you do?"

[Skyfire]

"Didactic? Oh, you mean the way I keep slipping into 'lecture mode'?" Skyfire looks slightly embarrassed. "It's a habit from my Academy days, sorry."

"Mostly I listen, ask questions, try to learn. Right now I'm working with Perceptor on learning First Aid skills, since I rather lack them."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime phrased it as 'didactic' in a vain attempt to be polite, but 'lecture mode' is more accurate, yes.

When Skyfire mentions first aid training, Sentinel Prime skips ahead a question to, "That reminds me, we all have a lot in our cubes, but do you feel you can reasonably handle this time commitment?"

Between training with Breakaway, training with Perceptor, normal training that everyone has to do, normal duties, random emergencies, and possibly rest if he's lucky, does Skyfire actually have time for the Elite Guard on top of that?

Maybe Skyfire has awesome time management skills. That would be cool.

[Skyfire]

Skyfire purses his lips slightly. "As my schedule stands now, yes. I do not yet know how much training time you or Breakaway plan to schedule. Perceptor and I work training in as time and situation allows." I.e., when people get holes blown in them by Decepticons, Skyfire gets to work on his internship. Other than that, he just packs in reading whenever.

"I'll probably have to do a bit of navigation work on the bridge, but Mayday has made that much easier--now I'm not the only expert navigator on board. Until we change course, there's not a lot of navigating to do."