No, The Other One

[Sentinel Prime]

Month 2, Week 2, Day 6 - Event Horizon lounge, semi-private for now. May open later.

- - -

Sentinel Prime puts away the buckets in a supply closet, exactly as he found them, notes it down in the use log, and then files a report on the matter. That done, he heads off to the nearest lounge, because considering that he has Pilot Watch in a bit, it would be a waste of time to go all the way back to his room.

He does look around to see who is in the lounge first, and if there were any officers, he'd have saluted properly, but there aren't, so he thunks himself down heavily in a chair and pulls out his current reading material, another one of the war history texts he picked up back on Pz-Zazz. This one is on the Eldrazi, who rather make his head hurt. They're these non-Eucledian space horrors, and that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that he could have bought an useful text, like one about the Apis, instead of this nonsense.

However, Sentinel Prime has it now, and he's started it, so he has to finish it. He almost feels like he has a duty to finish it, an obligation, if he thought about it much, which he isn't doing. He's too busy wondering why in the world making a pact with an extra-dimensional being with incomprehensible desires ever sounds like remotely a good idea, but then Sentinel Prime remembers that some people are just idiots. That explains that.

[Ultra Magnus]

It seems Sentinel Prime isn't the only Autobot on duty just nipping into the lounge during those brief times he isn't busy with watch or resting. Ultra Magnus, in a lull between pilot watch and rock watch, has been forced to concede he's a little too low on fuel for reasonable operations.

He pauses just inside the doorway as he registers the identity of the other Autobot in the lounge, then carries on toward the dispenser.

"Sentinel Prime," he says quietly by way of greeting, trying to acknowledge without disrupting Sentinel's reading.

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime, in this case, however, would like to have have his reading disturbed. Aside from it giving him a headache, there are things he wants from Ultra Magnus. He needs to try another tact to get them, and he at least thinks he's waited long enough to give it another go. Sentinel Prime sets his reading down his lap, looks up, smiles - not too much, too much of a smile would look weird given their past slight antagonism, but the smile he does select at least looks genuine - and greets, "Good cycle, Ultra Magnus! How have you been?"

[Ultra Magnus]

And so the reading is interrupted anyway. Magnus is somewhat mollified that at least Sentinel seems to not mind. He even looks in good spirits.

"Busy," Magnus answers honestly, and the heaviness in his movements as he takes his cube and approaches Sentinel should remove any real edge from his terseness. He pauses a length or so away, wordlessly asking permission to join the younger Autobot at his table. "And you?" Certainly chipper enough.

[Sentinel Prime]

"Busy? Who isn't?" Sentinel Prime replies, letting his smile turn just a bit wicked and sharp. "Idleness is intolerable. Better to be cleaning grease traps than doing nothing."

Not him, of course. Cleaning grease traps is suitable busy work for misbehaving cadets. It's just the principle of the thing. The Autobot war machine can't perform efficiently if there are slackers dragging the whole thing down. If anything, Sentinel Prime feels these people have too much free time and not enough discipline. However, he felt that back home, too, particularly feeling that Optimus's crew was a disorganised mess, ignoring the contrary evidence that Optimus's crew was a highly functional team made of dysfunctional parts, so his viewpoint is a bit skewed.

Sentinel Prime leaves his reading down on his lap and scoots over a bit closer, adding, "But as idleness goes, idle conversation's not bad. Mind indulging me in a history lesson while you're here?"

[Ultra Magnus]

Assuming Sentinel's question and edging nearer are implicit permission, Magnus sinks onto a seat opposite Sentinel at the table. His antennae don't emote, but one can just picture them tilting backwards slightly in bemusement.

"A history lesson?" he echoes, slightly wary. His own history is not the most pleasant to discuss, though he won't refuse if asked. He watches Sentinel, taking in the younger Autobot's expression and posture. It seems an honest enough question and Sentinel certainly looks sincerely interested. Magnus sips his energon before answering circumspectly, "All right."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime waits until Ultra Magnus is properly seated. Then, he sets his datapad down on the table and tabs over to a notes page instead of his reading, and gets ready to jots down notes. All that done, Sentinel Prime asks, "Would you tell me about your Sentinel Prime? I've read your reality entry," and what interesting things were in there, "but that's not exactly a biography."

Leave it to Sentinel Prime to get up to cross-dimensional narcissism, right?

He holds up her free hand defensively, though, and his expression sets to something firm and stubborn. "I know I'll never be him, but I think I deserve to know who I'm being compared against."

[Ultra Magnus]

That is a question Magnus didn't expect. His look of dismay is clear; it's a long, long moment before he says anything. He has to set down his cube before his hand starts shaking, and the look he turns on this Sentinel Prime is a sad, tired one.

"I've never compared you to him," he says very quietly, pity and sympathy both colouring his tone. "That wouldn't be… fair to you." Magnus understands all too well the ways being compared to another can hurt. He goes on before he gives the conversation any more chance to diverge, "My Sentinel Prime was our leader before the war began. He was wise… just… charismatic… an inspiration. I was proud to serve under him. He saw us through the early stages of the war, too, but it wasn't in his nature." Magnus stares into his energon rather than look at this other Sentinel. "The war was hard on everyone, but it seemed to take everything from Sentinel Prime. He internalised the losses, I think… he tried so hard to find a peaceful resolution where there was none. It wore him down. After Praxus…."

Here, Magnus pauses to take a drink. His death-grip on the cube keeps his hand steady, but when he continues, his voice is hoarse, tone bleak. He could talk about this a thousand times and it may never take away the sting.

"He eventually decided to try meeting with Megatron in person," he explains. "But he must have known it wouldn't go well… maybe he didn't trust Megatron to join the talks peacefully. He didn't take the Matrix with him when he left. He didn't come back." He stops again and stays silent this time, head bowed.

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime wants to disagree out of simple bull-headed spite when Ultra Magnus claims he's never compared him to the other Sentinel Prime. He wants to throw Ultra Magnus's words back in his face about how even his Sentinel Prime got his rest. He wants to point out that Ultra Magnus compared the two of them right now, in saying it wouldn't be fair to Sentinel Prime to compare him to Sentinel Prime. That right there says to Sentinel Prime that, in Ultra Magnus's optics, he'll never be as good as his Sentinel Prime. There can be no comparison. That's the worst comparison of all.

The words are on the tip of his tongue, to wound and to harry.

Sentinel Prime swallows them. He could hurt Ultra Magnus now and feel better about himself for a moment and ruin any chances he ever had of getting what he wanted, or he can stay his tongue and maybe get what he really wants down the road.

Besides, Sentinel Prime's making some comparisons of his own, and he's thinking it's pretty clear that, compared to his own Ultra Magnus, this Ultra Magnus is an emotional wreck. Does the poor sod really need Sentinel Prime poking at him just because he's cranky? Like as not.

So he says mildly, "I didn't say you were making the comparisons." Sentinel Prime didn't! He leaves the implication open that someone else has.

Wow, Sentinel Prime reflects as he watches Ultra Magnus with awful fascination. This Ultra Magnus isn't just an emotional wreck; this topic is even harder on him than that history file made it sound. Ultra Magnus even sounds like idolised the fellow to some extent, which feels... weird to Sentinel Prime, when he thinks about how he felt about his own Ultra Magnus when he was younger, before jealousy soured him and exposure to corruption jaded his blue optics.

When did he stop thinking of Ultra Magnus as the heroic Autobot he wanted to be just like and shift to thinking of him as the obsolete Autobot he wanted to replace? Sentinel Prime grimaces and chews on his lip, thinking about it.

Really, Mirage was not wrong. Sentinel Prime is nothing like the Autobot Ultra Magnus describes, he'll grudgingly admit to himself.

Sentinel Prime scoots a little closer to Ultra Magnus and tries to give him a comradely clasp on the - well, what can he reach? Elbow? He keeps his look neutral and replies, tactfully as he can, "Must have been hard on you."

[Ultra Magnus]

It's entirely possible that fatigue and the work of Perceptor, coding in patches in an effort to suppress the hyperaggression Shockwave all but programmed into Magnus, are contributing to the former security commander's current state. He remains silent and unmoving even when Sentinel offers some measure of comfort in that light touch on his arm, and slowly, his tension eases with the energon working its way into his systems.

"No harder," he murmurs at length, gaze remaining fixed on the tabletop, "than it must be, trying to live up to others' expectations and prejudices." Now he looks up, still tired, still sad, and now apologetic, but there's a brief, hard glint to his optics – an old pain that Sentinel can likely guess at, having read that file Magnus posted. He didn't miss the implication of Sentinel's words. "I've said unfair things," he goes on. "You should be allowed to stand on your own merits. Given a chance to prove yourself on your terms without doing it in someone else's shadow. Optimus Prime," he adds abruptly as if it's a natural segue from his rambling, and there's an edge of knowing bitterness to his voice, "took up quickly enough where Sentinel Prime… left off. I focused on the war then." A rueful half-smile tugs at one corner of his mouth and his optics dim. "It made things easier."

[Sentinel Prime]

Any pleasure he may feel over that apology quickly vanishes. Sentinel Prime can't help but look sour, if only for a fleeting moment, when Ultra Magnus talks about his Optimus Prime talking over. That seems to be the case in every universe except his own. Sentinel Prime likes to think of himself as the centre of the universe, but everything he runs into here tells him that he's the exception to the rule - that he should be old and dead, sometimes mourned, sometimes forgotten, but always replaced by Optimus fragging Prime.

He wonders, if he ever did make Magnus - and oh, he remembers what the Twins told him in the biosphere, about Ultra Magnus being down, and he remembers the implications - would he just reign for a time and then be slain, fading into the history books, while Optimus somehow, miraculously took over? The very thought fills him with disgusted dismay.

Struggling for something else to focus on, to dig him out of this hole, he taps the datapad with the stylus in his other hand, and he asks, "What about policy? The budget? How did he feel about education? My Ultra Magnus took a lot of flak from bots like Mirage over the Decepticon Registration Act and... other things, and given that I supported the party line," past tense - he doesn't know what to feel about the party line these days, "I took flak, too."

Okay, so Sentinel Prime's budget proposals were generally terrible and would have slashed funding to education and the Science Guild in favour of the military. The terribleness of his budget proposals is not the matter of discussion here!

"So. You can't please everybot. Your Sentinel Prime's policies must have been unpopular with somebot. What kind of grudges am I looking at from bots from your reality, for having this name?"

- - -

OOC: Feel free to gloss over that, if you want - I know Dreamwave didn't get into too much detail of Sentinel Prime's politics. It's just a logical thing to ask.

[Ultra Magnus]

For all his own conflicted feelings on the matter, Ultra Magnus doesn't miss that brief, unhappy look flitting across Sentinel's face when he brings up his brother. Tactfully, he goes along with the change in subject, though he privately wonders just what Sentinel holds against his Optimus – and what that means, having them both in the crew.

"Sentinel Prime," he begins slowly, in the way of someone trying to remember a different, long-ago lifetime, "led us largely in peace, during the Golden Age when we all prospered. His policies tended to reflect that. There weren't factions then and no-one seemed unhappy." Now he sighs. "But something must have rubbed Megatron the wrong way, or he wouldn't have collected his followers and started an uprising against Sentinel Prime and the High Council. What it was, I can't fathom, for he never publicised the why. So I suppose if Megatron happens to show up, I'd keep my head down, were I you." He tries to lighten things with a more jocular tone, as if to suggest the unlikelihood they'll see his Megatron here. Only belatedly does he realise Sentinel may take it the wrong way. He adds, his shame and humility unfeigned, "The last Megatron saw of me was when he threw me into the mines. I doubt he'd care for me much, either."

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime jots down notes as Ultra Magnus speaks. He has a neat hand, very mechanical. He looks up for a moment and interjects, "It's weird. There are a lot of differences between realities, but I haven't yet seen a reality in our files that diverges from the simple pattern of, 'There's peace. The Decepticons... or Predacons or Vehicons, I suppose, are unhappy with this peace for some reason," he rolls his optics, and being an Ani Autobot, he indeed has light blue circles on his darker blue optics to roll, "and kicks off a war.' You realise, there is no documented reality wherein we started the war? Only in the mirror. Only then."

He's not sure where he's going with that, but he dithers on bravely anyway, "So it might not have even been anything your Sentinel Prime did. There might just be a sort of universal inevitability about it. Like... gravity."

Sentinel Prime pauses and makes a face. "...but I don't want to think about it that way." He cracks a grin and blusters, "Anyway, if I had some stasis cuffs on me, I'd show Megatron a thing or two, don't you worry!"

No, he wouldn't. Optimus was the only one of them who lasted any reasonable amount of time against Megatron in the simulations, and Optimus died all the same.

[Ultra Magnus]

As Magnus finds he doesn't want to think of the war as an inevitability – there is always a reason for what people do even if that reason makes sense only to them – he nods to agree with Sentinel's sentiments on that point. Sentinel is too young to be so jaded, he thinks privately, his lips pressed in a thin, grim line.

"Stasis cuffs?" he queries, openly curious.

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime positively beams when Ultra Magnus asks him about stasis cuffs. He pulls up a picture of them on his datapad and shows it off, holding it up above his shoulder, in front of that half-plow. Sentinel Prime explains quite animatedly, as if doing a commercial, "Stasis cuffs? Only the latest and greatest in Autobot capture technology! Oh sure, Swindle will shill you the Sonic Jammer 3000, but for my energon, stasis cuffs are the way to go. Slap them on on somebot's wrists, and he can't move or use any special powers! Perfect for hauling bots off to trial. Doesn't shut 'em up, though, but that's what mouth gags are for. Stasis cuffs sure do make things civilised. Not like the Great War."

He nods firmly, thinking about how he'd felt a little sick when he was trying to beat Duskwing to death and how stasis cuffs would have completely solved that problem.