We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
'Two months. That sounds about right.' Almost. But whether or not Barricade's landing was in time with her digging hardly seemed to matter the more she thoughts of it. Apparently Cybertronians have been landing on Earth without reaching the media and for decades.. if not centuries. That only confirmed her suspicions-- someone higher up had to know, someone high enough to control what was leaked and what wasn't. Now, admittedly, this all seemed to pale in light of the fact that she was now living on an alien space ship with the aliens someone was trying to cover up… understandably so. Technically she didn't need to find answers anymore. But no one ever said she was looking for answers…where would the fun in keeping her nose out of secret government business be?!
Her thoughts were quickly diverted when she saw Reflector emerge from under the hood, her easy smile widening to a small grin. And to her delight, it seemed Reflector was at least comfortable enough to stand near Cat and hold a conversation. "Sounds like you found a good friend in Cleaver. She seems like a pretty awesome person." Though she wondered about the intricacies of the factions, the war, the planet, even she could see where it might be a painful subject to recall. One that she felt she had no right to dig in just yet. "So you've been here since the 40's or something like that, right? And you for two months. Ever been outside of the States?"
Barricade did not answer the human’s question immediately because it fragged him off, the reminder that he honestly had no idea.
So he only sat there on his wheels and ran system checks, puzzled to find that his general system speed was slightly faster after having Reflector linked up with him. Their brief networking session had already defragged a section of his heavily slagged up processor. Little as Cade liked doing it, having somebot network him and help with the clean up of his available processor and memory files would probably speed his recovery, though in the wake of finding himself linked to Reflector, he’d been in too much of a rage with Cleaver to ask her for a medical defrag. He was generally refusing physical therapy as well, which was stupid but cathartic because it caused the medic anxiety watching him walk around slagged to hell still.
“Not recently,” said Barricade shortly. ‘Recently’ being all that he could remember.
Reflector more or less ignored Barricade at this point, pretending the larger bot didn't exist, it seemed to make everything in general a lot easier. "I don't know...I've barely left the ship since we crashed here." He answered, cocking his head a little as he scanned his data-banks for more on the topic. Sadly Reflector knew about as much about the 'states' as he did how to weave shag carpeting.
'Oookay, so that question fell flat.' Pressing her lips together she quietly wondered, what did you ask an extraterrestrial being in casual conversation that had nothing to do with war, or their apparent war-ravaged planet? Looking over briefly at Barricade, she also factored in questions that wouldn't light up a short fuse or… wouldn't provoke frustration. 'I don't have any way of knowing how far back his amnesia goes.'.
Well.
That left her with 'How's the weather, Oli?' and 'Do you like the ship?', both of which she predicted would frustrate her more than them. With a slight wince, she realized… she wasn't going to get out of this without either pissing someone off or making someone (herself included) sad. Ah well.
"…How do you transform, anyway? That entire process… it's just a natural part of your anatomy?" That wasn't so bad… better than the weather, not as bad as asking to recall up possibly bad memories, and something that wouldn't dig into an unknown history... right? At least, she hoped.
When that did not appear satisfactory to the human he expanded. “A very long time ago, our species underwent a techno-biological shift that created the mechanical complexities within our kind to transform. We found the technology and incorporated it.” Barricade sifted briefly through his English vocabulary. “Evolved if you like. To bring a mechanism online without this software would be… analogous to introducing a chemical agent to purposely stunt the genetic complexity afforded your species.”
Though it had been done under the caste system from time to time, throttled mechanisms without processor power high enough to know what had been done to them. But that was not something Barricade was bringing up. Let Cleaver go into greater detail if the human was her pet. For now, focusing on the fleshling’s cultural education was easier than addressing the issue of Reflector. They had gotten the necessary out of the way. No need to push for more than that with any immediacy. Barricade was also curious about the organic’s responses to this knowledge.
At this Reflector had to turn and stare at Barricade, the shutter on his optic going wide with shock as he listened. He had never heard a single word of this, then again all he ever got was 'go here and do this' which wasn't all that rich in the history of his race. "Um...yeah, that...I guess." He had no idea, for all he knew the other mech was blowing smoke out of his exhaust, it wasn't like either him or Catherine would be able to tell. Then Reflector turned his optic back to the human "Cleaver will certainly know more." he stated quickly, as the little bot's faith in the medic was pretty sturdy.
"Makes sense." At least she could see where any species would have their own sort of evolution.
She tried to relate what Barricade was saying to some type of event within her own species. The natural evolution from whatever they once were to their current state didn't seem to fit-- essentially it sounded like the Cybertronian's 'evolutionary' leap to transforming was due to their own artificial tweaking. This would be, she predicted, one of many things that she wouldn't be able to understand within one the span of a single conversation. An alien sense of patience came with that thought. To her surprise she'd had an unexpected feeling of clarity despite having her world so suddenly expanded. If she had the opportunity to explore and understand this new found universe… she would gladly be patient, steady, for every new puzzle piece waiting to be discovered.
"Yeah, I bet she does." She said, pushing off the wall to casually step around Barricade, hoping her continued speech and slow pace would prevent another road block. …At least the serrated fingers were gone. "Just don't want to bug her 24/7. Kind of hard when every second brings another question, ya know?" Bending, she retrieved her energon reader, switching off the dull beep before making her way back to the two. "But luckily, you two showed up! How old are you guys anyway? ..Or do you even measure time with things like 'years' and 'birthdays'?"
“Let’s just say we are very, very old,” said Barricade, who didn’t want to explain the entire evolutionary arc of all organic life on Earth was, perhaps, a only a handful of generations to Cybertronians. To say that the life cycles of their kind were longer than human kind’s would have been a gross understatement and he didn’t feel like volunteering where in his own life cycles he was lest the human attempt to assign some cultural bias to his age which would be fragging ridiculous as frag all. That said… “I am older than Reflector though.”
Reflector had wondered how Barricade would handle the topic of their long lifespans, that was until he sort of just sidestepped the topic and didn't explain it all that well. "Well...yeah." Reflector commented before adding on "Though to some f us, who are built with full adult bodies, our age is largely a state of mind. If that makes any sense to you." as he tried to clear things, Reflector had a nasty feeling that he was only making things worse.
That 'smirk' sent a chill up her spine. Not so much because it was chilling so much as she… was not expecting it. She found herself looking at the Saleen oddly, head tilted and a not-quite-so-sure smirk barely tugging at her lips, which grew to a more certain smile when Reflector added to the explanation. "Yeah…" She said slowly at first, nodding after a moment. "Yeah, that makes sense. We have sayings kind of like that here: '80 year old in a 20 year old's body'. 'Old young man', visa versa. A settee ani i e puttee, a setanta i e 'ncora quei." With a smirk, she shrugged. "Kind of fits."
Barricade seemed more like a middle-aged man, in her opinion, and Reflector somewhere near her own age. '….Man. He…'He did seem like a he. They both seemed like he's, and Cleaver a she. But.. they were mechanical.. and from the sounds of things did not reproduce the way she knew. Which means they'd have no use for s/he parts. Brows knit and lips pursed, it was clear in her expression that whatever awkwardness she was brewing inside her head was coming out to light up the world. "…Are you a he…?" She paused, rephrase! "I mean, does your race differentiate between the two? Or is that…" How long have they been here? 46 years or more for some? "…an Earth-adopted thing?"
There was a definite distinction in her opinion at least. She naturally gravitated towards calling Cleaver female, and Barricade and Reflector males.
“Male and female are sexual dimorphic terms applying to organics only, so in the context that you mean, no we do not differentiate and certainly not on a mere two function types. That’s absurd.” The Saleen revved boredly. “We have hundreds of thousands of variable function class, models, function-types, and frames. We did not build our language or our species on a mere two variants of our kind, but thirteen original mechanisms and only diversified since. But I am not an archivist or techno-biologist, fleshling, so I don’t feel like going over the finer points of Cybertronian sexuality and evolution with you. Feel free to ply Cleaver with your cross-species queries. They are both amusing and culturally inappropriate.”
Barricade was not, in actuality, offended at all... nor was he entirely telling the truth - because, frag he was not getting into gender function set identification philosophy - but he hoped the human would get socially awkward and cease her yammering so he could go mull over and parse through the data residuals Reflector had left in his systems. Socially awkward situations for Cybertronians didn’t get much worse than sharing airwaves with a cassette that didn’t want you while you yourself contemplated how very little you wanted them.
"That said, your hypothesis is accurate. There is no point trying to adapt your language to reflect what we are so we adopt whatever is most conveniently suitable according to your preset biases. So, if you perceive a Ford Saleen Mustang as male by your own bizarre organic standards that is your problem, fleshling."
Last Edit: Feb 25, 2012 13:20:54 GMT -5 by Deleted
Reflector winced as the conversation went into one of the stranger topics that the little bot had hoped would not come up. But it seemed that Catherine was too curious for her own good, possibly for Cleaver's own good to. "Yeah, I think you should save any questions like that for Cleaver, she can explain it far better then I can and unlike Barricade you can trust her not to lead your astray." The little mech stated, glancing between the two with his massive optic.
"But that's half the fun, isn't it? Snark and sarcasm… Barricade's input is just so fun and entertaining." She said, the flatness in her voice contradicting the supposed excitement of her wording. But she wasn't deflated yet… it would take a lot more than social awkwardness to discourage Catherine. Eyes shining, her flat expression grew to a smile. "Masculine, by the way. Ford Saleen Mustang is masculine. Sexy masculine with clean lines and just enough muscle, so kudos, nice choice."
She paused, pursing her lips. That sounded better in her head, better before it came out. But raising her brows, she decided that… maybe not, maybe she'd go with it. She was sticking with her guns… might as well complete the strangeness while she's at it. Turning to Reflector, she firmly nodded. "And your three modes are adorable. …Four." Shrug, pleasant inhale… well now that that's out of the way.
"Fine. New subject. What's your language sound like?" Robo-sexuality, as interesting as it sounded, could open another conversation entirely. She should lay off a little, wait until the conversation became less tense, more open (hopefully). Until then, she was content to stick with language.
Barricade didn’t know how he felt about being ‘sexy’ to a fleshsack, but it grudgingly admitted that the aesthetic lines for his alt were structurally attractive in both appearance and function, even by Cybertronian standards and there was something just alien enough (like, you now, aliens building it) in the design that it was intriguing. He also was not certain if humanity was a primarily matriarchal society, patriarchal, or theirs was a rare organic speces who made no distinction. Basically, he had no context for whether or not being ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ held an underlying suggestion of weakness or inferiority so he elected not to feel any way about it at all.
To Catherine’s next question Barricade actually glanced, in such a way that he could in his alt, toward Reflector before the doors, and then everything else about the parked Saleen came apart at the seams and stood back up into Barricade’s root mode. He knelt down over the human, one fist braced against the floor, one elbow braced on his knee and with very little preamble started reciting the law cohort mandate to public protection. The low starting tone of it began in his chest, cycled through his vocalizer as a four-chord pentaphonic sentence that hit the human auditory register in what – unbeknownst to Barricade – could have been singing, sudden stops and halftones breaking and stopping the click-and whirrs mechanical phonetics beneath the words themselves.
Formal, lyric, two steps down from outright the poetry, The Mandate was used only in public ceremony but it served its purpose and when Barricade reached the end of it he just glared down at the little human.
“That is what my regional mid-caste language sounds like. I’m not going through all our dialects as they are not universal by any means, human.”
For once Reflector felt that Barricade had explained or at least given a good example of what Catherine had asked for. "He is right. We have many different versions, comparable to all the different tongues you humans use." The little mech added on as he nervously followed what Barricade had quoted, wondering if it had any pull on the larger bot's moral code, though Reflector doubted it.