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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 7, 2011 12:20:17 GMT -5
Skyfire can be the AFROTC kid who has a part-time job as a bus-driver, is working on pre-med, and who is also in French Club, doing a study abroad semester. It'll be great.
Sentinel Prime nods along and then asks what he was going to ask in the first place, "How do you handle direction in combat? We're expected to be a combat-functional team. For example, if we end up stuck on Earth," slagging Earth, "a very possible mission scenario would be 'preserve a mosque from destruction while driving the 'cons out of Carbombya'. Our mission statement calls for sensitivity to local cultural landmarks that other Autobots and Maximals may... not concern themselves with as much."
Shooting up alien statues for fun while bored (see Bullets) will be grounds for being beaten senseless by Sentinel Prime, he thinks. It doesn't matter if he believes in their value or not; he has orders. Orders are serious.
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on May 7, 2011 13:26:42 GMT -5
Skyfire is just one of those annoying very smart people who races through his homework in ten minutes before heading over to the library to read French classics for fun. (Or reads his assignments for one class while listening to the instructor in another class--and hears every word the guy says).
If Skyfire had eyebrows, he'd raise one now. "Combat is like any other emergency in that one person has to be in charge, making the decisions, or there's complete chaos and people die unnecessarily. You don't stop to argue about who does what, you just do what the person in charge says until the situation has stabilized."
He steeples his hands and adds, "Though if you're talking about will I argue about the mission objectives, as opposed to taking orders in battle... I'd only object if I felt the objectives were harmful, and I'd try to have well-reasoned explanations as to why."
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 7, 2011 13:37:33 GMT -5
Sentinel Prime pays close attention to Skyfire's reaction. He is aware that he is sometimes thought of as, erm... overbearing, perhaps totalitarian. You know. When they aren't just making fun of his chin.
Skyfire, on the other hand, is, to be brutally uncharitable, a Pinko intellectual who questions things and gives a slag about ethics and mortality, how pesky of him. Sentinel Prime has to wonder if Long Haul is secretly a sadist, to have made them roommates.
But if Skyfire says he'll obey orders in a crisis, and he'll try to have logical grounds for questioning orders? That will... have to be good enough for Sentinel Prime. He'll cope.
Sentinel Prime looks over his questions again. This went faster than he was expecting. He lays a card on the table and admits, "Even if you didn't apply," he actually wasn't expecting that, "I was going to ask you if you wanted to do some lectures for us. I'd like to do some team trials together later, see how the potential group works or... doesn't work together, but do you have any questions for me, now?"
Kup lets interviewees ask questions at the end. If it's good enough for Kup, it's good enough for Sentinel Prime. He opens his hands and spreads them out.
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on May 7, 2011 19:22:59 GMT -5
Skyfire gives Sentinel a quizzical look. "Lectures on what subjects? Event Horizon's resources are somewhat limited, but depending on the subject I can pull something together."
He looks at Sentinel Prime, considering. "How do you feel about working with aliens?"
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 7, 2011 20:22:03 GMT -5
"Problem solving in xeno relations, mostly," Sentinel Prime replies. "You've met an awful lot of aliens, and it hasn't always gone right. Teach us what you did to solve it. And more general information. It might not always hold up - apparently humans have spider powers in Rodimus Prime's reality, but in most realities, they don't?"
Yes, Sentinel Prime is fixated on the humans with spider-powers. It is one of his many worst nightmares. He shrugs and puts his hands up.
Carefully blank, he replies, "I don't feel that my opinions actually matter with regards to the job, which is something I'd like to say first. Secondly, I was a soldier of the Autobot Commonwealth in my reality. 300 million stellar cycles ago, the Age of Expansion ended after a war with the Quintesson Pan-Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Destrons, at the time, felt that they bore the burden of defending the Autobot Commonwealth without equal benefits, relative to the Autobots. Those seeds of discontent," blast it, Botanica, "will crop up later. Anyway, we took up isolationism then. Somewhere between 10 and 4 million years ago, we launched the AllSpark, our creation relic, into space, to try to stop the war. That... didn't exactly work. The war puttered on until 2 million years ago, and at the end, the surviving Decepticons were granted amnesty in exchange for exile."
"So, what did I grow up with? That there are aliens out in space that will attack your colonies and kill your people. That the AllSpark is out there, and you should never go looking for it, because you might restart the war if you find it. That the Decepticons are out there, and if you find them, they'll kill you."
Also that there are crashed ships full of energony goodness.
"We were forbidden to travel to organic worlds, for fear of what might happen. I went to one, in my youth, and I was rewarded with a tragedy out of a morality tale. On the second organic planet I ever visited, though not the first visit - the other visits weren't roses, either," seriously, Botanica, quit infecting him with plant metaphors; it's annoying, "one of the natives chopped off my head and stole my body." His expression stays blank and serious, his voice level, even detached.
"He violated me and made further modifications to me without my consent. My assailant got off scott free. You see, machines have no rights on that planet. We're not people. We're property, and since I didn't belong to anyone, it couldn't even be charged as destruction of property."
"And then I came here." Sentinel Prime smiles, a grim expression with no warmth. "I was told that isolationism and xenophobia are unacceptable, and I've done my best to follow that. I actually worked for the Pz-Zazz TSA." He shrugs. "Saw a whole lot of different species. Been vomited on by a few of them. But we have showers."
"So you have my context. As for how I feel..." Sentinel Prime fidgets and stretches a bit, "... blank, mostly. If they're a threat, I'll deal with them accordingly. If they want to be left alone, I'll leave them alone. If they want to trade goods or ideas and we reciprocate, I'll see to it that we can do so in a safe and civil fashion. I don't think we should conquer them, and I'm not a fan of uplift. I don't think making a people beholden to you is the greatest of ideas."
See: Quintessons and Kup's Transformers.
"I think isolationism as a form of fear-mongering populace control and a method of preventing war is doomed to failure. I don't have an opinion yet on whether there should be exploration specifically directed at finding sapient life, or if we should focus on barren worlds for colonisation."
He finishes by leaning back and putting his hands behind his head, "And I would be lynched for saying all that back home. But that's fine. My Ultra Magnus trained with aliens to improve his combat skills, and he was the one calling for a forcefield to keep out Earth-life and for Optimus Prime's crew to be decontaminated when we brought them aboard."
Hypocrisy runs in the leadership of Sentinel Prime's reality, you see. Oh, and yes. Earth was where he had his head lopped off, where he was treated as a masterless slave.
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Skyfire
Major
I'm a scientist, not a....
Posts: 891
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Post by Skyfire on May 8, 2011 12:12:00 GMT -5
Skyfire nods. "It sounds like you've run the gamut of the unfortunate things that can happen. Slavery is one of those nasty things you run into--there are races that enslave their own kind as property!" He sighs, a susurrus of air through his air-breathing ducted thrusters. "I don't know anything about humans; as I understand it, they hadn't even evolved when I crashed on their planet."
Skyfire leans forward a bit and says, "I think we are more or less in agreement. I'd like to explain why I believe isolationism to be foolish--it was one thing my former partner and I agreed on. It's simple logic; just because we don't go out there looking for them doesn't mean they aren't out there looking for us. Turning off your optics doesn't make either the bad or the good things out there go away. It just means you can't see them coming and prepare for them."
Heading toward a wrap?
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Post by Sentinel Prime on May 8, 2011 13:41:46 GMT -5
"Oh, no," Sentinel Prime deadpans, "I'm sure there's yet more horrible things out there."
Joke or not, he really is sure about that.
Sentinel Prime's a little surprised that Skyfire would agree with him, but he doesn't let it show. What Skyfire says, though, actually brings a slow, wicked smile to his face, and he replies, "There is no excuse for a lack of vigilance."
OOC: Sure.
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