Frenzy
Minor
Emperor of Profaningshire
Fscking Bigjobs
Posts: 339
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Post by Frenzy on Sept 29, 2012 13:49:18 GMT -5
Title chosen at random from my song collection. Cross-posted from 'Flotsam'.
"Nope. Don't feel like it. Not gonna." Frenzy tugs on only one of Ultra Magnus's antennae this time. "Thattaway. Gotta find people, gotta kill people, gotta giggle at their hubris."
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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 Oct 1, 2012 17:02:41 GMT -5
Magnus resolutely doesn't budge to spite the tiny, chattering robot attempting to steer him. He's not in the best of moods. Perhaps that's why he doesn't exactly disapprove of the notion of killing someone. Preferably Overlord. Preferably as brutally as possible.
"For your sake," he says quietly, looking around, "you'd best not be in on this." A pause as he checks his rifle for damages just to be sure. He doesn't want to be caught by surprise if the thing jams because he was lax.
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Frenzy
Minor
Emperor of Profaningshire
Fscking Bigjobs
Posts: 339
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Post by Frenzy on Oct 10, 2012 13:22:57 GMT -5
"If I was in on this, it'd be much cooler. Less grotesque. Grotesquery's not cool." Frenzy settles a bit, chittering to himself. Okay, he has a ride. Said ride has a gun and a lot of armor. Does said ride have a safe place for Frenzy to hide if things go to heck?
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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 Oct 22, 2012 4:11:27 GMT -5
Magnus only grunts at Frenzy once he confirms his rifle is undamaged and should operate normally. He doesn't really believe the little talking caltrop, but he has bigger issues at hand – such as getting out of here. He eyes the snake fangs, wary of the potential for toxin exposure but at the same time wondering if he should just kick the fangs out. He doesn't doubt that he can. He could also shoot them, or shoot one of the walls. Not once does he consider playing along with this game.
"I'm in the mood to kill someone," he mutters before taking aim on the snake's mouth. He might as well put the thing out of its misery while he's here. The best Frenzy will have for hiding is to cling to Magnus' back. As far as anyone on this asteroid is concerned, the hollow in Magnus' chest doesn't exist.
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Frenzy
Minor
Emperor of Profaningshire
Fscking Bigjobs
Posts: 339
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Post by Frenzy on Nov 13, 2012 21:27:24 GMT -5
Frenzy would probably adore that compartment in Ultra Magnus's chest and see it as a good reason to keep the Autobot. So everyone everywhere is happy he doesn't know about it and won't learn of it.
"Someone volunteered to be killed just by building this place." The words spill out so fast a human would have a hard time separating them. "Get 'em, get 'em, get 'em!"
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Post by SceneMod on Nov 18, 2012 16:29:39 GMT -5
"In a mood to kill someone, you say? I was not aware that was a... mood. More a constant of existence," says a flickering H-Overlord in the dark and dank maze of snakes and ladders. He smiles, optics blissfully vacant. "Nonetheless, you'll get that chance once you hit rock bottom."
"Which is now."
Snakes and ladders is, in some cultures, a metaphor for heaven and hell.
However, then the floor opens up, they're just dumped into a small room with two buttons and a clear view, something like a box seat for an arena. Out that window, there seems to be some sort of adventure game.
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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 Mar 10, 2013 20:34:44 GMT -5
Magnus is getting rather sick of all the sudden drops. He manages to grab the lip of the hole this time, so hard his hand leaves an impression in the flooring in fact, until he can look below to see just how far Overlord is trying to make him fall. (If only he knew.) It isn't that far to the floor beneath him and now that he can control the fall, he lets go and lands in a crouch.
"I'm starting to think you like games," he mutters flatly.
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Post by SceneMod on Aug 7, 2013 19:11:29 GMT -5
"Oh, it's all games," H-Overlord replies, waving a hand grandly. The hands sweeps down to gesture at the arena.
In the adventure game arena, there appear from a trapdoor, with a clatter, a gaudily painted firetruck Autobot, a black-and-white police car Autobot, and a greyish Autobot who looks like he might be a crane.
The firetruck Autobot declares boldly, "I just want to say that, if this is the end, it has been an honour serving with you both -"
"We just met," says the black-and-white Autobot coldly, folding his arms across his generous chest. He looks around the arena with keen optics, as if he is calculating how each and every panel was laid into place, as if he could see the ghostly forms of the long-gone construction workers. Almost immediately, he stares up at the box where Ultra Magnus is trapped.
So does the greyish 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 7, 2013 21:12:19 GMT -5
Magnus follows that gesture purely by reflex, not because he's actually interested in anything the apparition has to show him. Nothing so far has been much to his liking.
That isn't changing any time soon, he realises as he takes in the arena below and the occupants therein. He recognises Prowl instantly, though on closer inspection, there's a divergence in the details that makes him think this isn't really his Prowl. Small things. Nothing major enough that he can dismiss the Prowl he sees, nothing that stops him from worrying. The loud one, he can't place that one. He can't quite make himself look at the mechanism head-on; his face too closely resembles Optimus. It's unsettling. Magnus focuses on the third stranger with a queasy feeling in his fuel tank. He doesn't know this Autobot either, though it looks like the grey one shares a home reality with the jet twins if Magnus doesn't miss his guess by the similarities in aesthetic.
"…What's this about?" he demands sharply. What's the point of keeping him in a cage to be gawked at? What's the point of having those bots down there?
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Post by SceneMod on Aug 8, 2013 15:34:53 GMT -5
"It's about choices. And free will," H-Overlord explains grandly. "You see those two buttons? One will launch a grenade into the arena at the grey one. The other will open up a sharp drop into a spiked pit under the black and white one. You have thirty seconds to select an option. If you don't, both options will activate."
"I know what I would do, and that makes it boring. Your choice is uniquely your own, and that's why I want to see it."
The three Autobots down in the arena don't seem to be able to hear Ultra Magnus and H-Overlord, or if they can, they don't give any indication. The gaudy firetruck forges his way over a narrow bridge, with the white-and-black and grey Autobots following more cautiously behind him. Perhaps voiced by Peter Cullen, the gaudy firetruck assures, "If anything happens to any of us, I just want to let you know that I'm not leaving anyone behind. I'm here for all of you."
"That is the third time you've said that," the grey Autobot ventures, ticking off on his fingers. His voice is smooth, mild, pleasant, and nondescript. He looks back over his shoulder suddenly.
"I had him pegged after the second time," the white-and-black Autobot mutters, "Primus apotheosis."
The gaudy firetruck doesn't seem to have heard, because he's calling, "If you look at this hallway coming up, there are these little holes in the wall, so I'm guessing that's where the spears will pop out, this is just like the time Optimus Prime went through the Gauntlet of the Hidden Temple..."
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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 12, 2013 22:59:29 GMT -5
"You're bluffing," Magnus blurts out angrily. There's a chance, he supposes, that this isn't a bluff, but he feels he's being toyed with and it makes his temper boil. "Trying to make me choose between lives just because you want to see what I'll do. You can't expect me to pass judgement on them like this."
But in a way, he already is. It's difficult to think around the anger even knowing it isn't necessarily his own; he's already weighing options, weighing lives. He has no idea who the grey Autobot is, no attachment, no connections. How much does it really mean to him if someone he doesn't even know dies? He could save Prowl – perhaps not his Prowl, but alike enough that Magnus feels a sense of horror and fear for the carbot's life down there – and what difference would it make to him? But it would make a difference; he would have actively worked to end an Autobot's life. He has lost soldiers before; there are plenty of deaths counted in his name, but they came in wartime, with the buffer of distance, of command responsibility. He can numb himself to those, somewhat.
Twenty seconds remaining. He eyes the time in his HUD like he wishes he could shoot it down or throttle it until it stops dead.
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Post by SceneMod on Sept 21, 2013 20:42:32 GMT -5
"What reason do I have to bluff you? How does it possibly serve me to let them live?" H-Overlord inquires, and his optics look very, very blank, even for a hologram. He seems bored, vacant; empty.
"You must understand that the lack of a choice is itself a choice."
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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 Nov 2, 2013 10:56:15 GMT -5
Ultra Magnus knows too well that avoiding a choice is still a choice. Prowl reminded him very violently of that when he returned to the ranks from his self-imposed isolation. It's a rebuke he hears in the back of his mind with painful clarity as he stares down into the arena at the three Autobots who have no idea he holds their lives in his hands.
He tries to divorce emotion from his decision, to focus on the tactical. Saving Prowl is the soundest choice given the data available; between the two of them, planning and executing an escape is possible. Not only possible, but highly probable. It's the safe path. Eliminates one unknown factor.
But can Magnus simply condemn an unknown like that? For the sole reason that he isn't a friend?
He'll never know, says a terrible part of himself.
Almost as if by accident, as if the weight of his own limb overcame him, Magnus' hand settles on the button to launch the missile. Prowl was right all those aeons ago: Ultra Magnus is a terribly selfish soul.
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Post by SceneMod on Jan 7, 2014 20:31:18 GMT -5
A grenade is launched into the arena!
It sails towards the drab grey Autobot. He sees it coming, but he's too slow and clumsy to get himself out fo the way, and he knows it. This is the end.
The black and white Autobots knows that he could intercedes, but he chooses not to. His life is worth more than this. He is, after all, essential. The Autobots need him. They deserve him.
But the gaudy firetruck throws himself down on the grenade in a flash without a second thought in his head.
There's a bang and a blast of light, and the gaudy firetruck's pieces are all over the arena and leaking down the grey and the white Autobots' faces.
The white one expected he would probably do that, not that he reckons the grey one particularly worth saving.
"You know them?" H-Overlord asks, of the remaining two.
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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 May 16, 2014 21:54:18 GMT -5
That – that isn't how it's supposed to happen. Ultra Magnus looks on in horror as the wrong Autobot explodes and he's reminded of the Space Bridge all over again. As that face vanishes in a burst of light and noise for the second time in his life and his fuel pump drops out.
"No. NO!" he howls and nearly throws himself through the window, crimping the top edge of the console in his grip.
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