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.
“I do not… know if that…” He stared, then, “Very well, that makes sense,” because honestly if they were naming plants then he would defer to Rhinox’s expertise on the matter. Additionally, Rhinox’s expression was simply so pleased that the Prime couldn’t bring himself to give any contrary opinion on the matter of the mech’s cacti being named after his weapon specialist and the medic with blades for arms. He glanced at the slightly stumpy little plants, all spiny and grouchy and aggressively misshapen. Like with Ratchet… Optimus would not be sharing the naming of the frumpy cacti with Cleaver or Hide, but it would amuse him to know that out here in a mound of dirt in Nevada was a pair of lumpy plants named for them.
“You may...want to keep that a secret, however. Lest Ironhide take issue with your flowers and resolve his issue with a machine gun.” He didn’t really mean it of course… mostly.
Rhinox made his optics go wide and limpid and innocent. "But, it's a great honor! The cactus is a protective figure in human mythology!" ....Yeah, he couldn't keep that up for long, the innocent expression crumbling into a grin. "Sorry, kidding. I promise, Prime, I have some self-preservation instinct." He chuckled, turning his gaze back to the newly-christened cacti. "No one will hear about it from me."
Unless Rattrap's managed to bug Rhinox's garden. Possible, but highly unlikely.
Optimus just nodded – that flicker of muted amusement again in his field. For a while he didn’t say anything else, appreciating the quiet and the sun on this day, the heat of it against the plating of his armor, lazily converting the solar energy into reserve power in a secondary process that was pleasantly relaxing – not quite the intense relief and system-deep pleasure of energon refueling, but it was a comforting sensation, that your body was taking something in, even something so meager as the sun. He closed his optics for a kilk, cycling down and letting the tranquility sink in for what he knew wasn’t going to be very much longer – he’d be headed back to base soon enough.
“If any of us are ever to be judged for our actions here on earth,” said Optimus, eventually, “it is my hope we are judged on the things we do outside of the fighting.” He was looking at the cacti when he said it. “The preservation and protection of life in some way other than… simply protecting it from destruction. One day… when we no longer have to call ourselves a ‘warrior race’.” A beat. “I would rather humanity remembered a mechanoid like you, Rhinox, than I. That we might leave a better impression.”
For a while, Prime and engineer existed in companionable silence, keeping company with the plants and simply being. Mechs and plants alike opened themselves to the sun, basking in it and partaking of the warmth and sustenance it offered. For a moment, the war fell away, and they were simply two sapients in harmony with the sun, the Earth, the universe. It was as close to paradise as anyone could come, this side of the veil.
Then Optimus spoke, and brought it all back again. Rhinox listened, spark breaking, arms itching to hug the Prime as he had once before, hearing the sadness in that rich, noble voice. Had all Primes been so burdened? No, surely not - Optimus was a Prime during a civil war, fighting against mechs he had been meant to guide and protect. It was a unique moment in Cybertron's history. Primus forgive us, Rhinox prayed, how cruel we are to you.
"You sell yourself short, Prime," Rhinox answered, as gently as he could. "You are so much more than a warrior, or even a war leader. You have been our hope, our reason to continue on despite - despite everything. I cannot tell you how much it felt like I'd been given a chance to live again, when you invited me to join your team." He tried to smile. "Besides, I've seen you interact with the children. You cannot tell me you have nothing to contribute outside of fighting, not after seeing the way Raf lights up when you bring him back the odd souvenir from your patrols."
Optimus did not allow the words to affect the pitch of his external EM field nor cross however briefly into his optics. Though he knew that Rhinox did not mean it in that manner, the fact remained that as leader of the Autobots he was the reason that the Autobot campaign had never flagged. He was, in the way that would count in the historical record, the leader of one half of the war that eradicated Cybertron to its core and spread as a viral strain of violence across all galaxies around them and it was during his time as leader the Cybertronians became, in function and practice, machines of war.
“It is not that I have abandoned who I am outside of battle, or my talents beyond warfare,” said Optimus, his tone sober, gaze cast to no particular place across the garden, “but it is generally for the better that those talents that do relate to warfare, take precedent beyond all others.” For the sake of those who follow me. “It is not my place to divide myself. When peace comes for our race it will be for those like you, Bumblebee, Bluestreak, all who have followed…”
It will not be for me.
Last Edit: May 24, 2012 23:23:06 GMT -5 by Deleted
Rhinox couldn't bear the resigned sadness on Prime's face any longer. "Forgive me," he murmured, lowering his head, staring at his hands without seeing them. "Forgive us all."
He wasn't sure, at that moment, whether he asked it of Primus or his avatar. Though he still wasn't convinced that Primus wasn't dead already along with Cybertron, or hadn't turned his back on them all. Optimus, at least, was here, and alive, and had not forsaken them.
Even if his followers demanded far, far too much of him.
Optimus didn’t flinch. He did look at Rhinox though, expression carefully neutral. He couldn’t…. tell from the glyph arrangements if Rhinox was talking to him or just in general speaking aloud his regrets as to the war. Either way, the quiet lament send a sharp jag terminated through the locus of his spark and diffused as a charge through his body, tensing the circuitry beneath his plates in such a way that was very close to agonizing. It troubled him to see Rhinox so distressed.
“There is nothing,” said Optimus, holding Rhinox’s gaze, “to forgive; you of all soldiers. Your regrets show the pulse of your spark, a mech who prizes life and gentleness despite the harshness of war. The same war that wears so many to cold simply to survive.” A faint pulse of gratitude and support from the Prime. “You have done your duty as an Autobot, Rhinox. Forgiveness is no one’s to give to you, to any Autobot who fights for the lives of those they care for. Let no one tell you otherwise.”
The Prime's word was the word of a god. That was what Rhinox had been taught, even though the Matrix had not chosen a true Prime since before his birth: that when one called Prime spoke, it was with a god's authority, and it was blasphemy to question hir. Old indoctrination died hard, even after everything Rhinox had seen and experienced, but it had still been a bit of a shock to see those close to Optimus openly contradict and even argue with him. No one had been struck down for their daring; Optimus had even seemed to appreciate being challenged.
None of that made it any easier to tell Optimus that Rhinox thought he was wrong.
He pulled in his storm of conflicted glyphs, almost feeling them sink like blades into his plating, shuttering his optics against the pain. "Thank you," he forced out, his voice thick in his throat, and pulled in air in a full cycle before trying again. "Thank you, Prime. But... I still regret."
I regret that you feel cut off from the peace we strive for. I regret you were ever dragged into this stupid, destructive war. As our general, no less! This isn't what the Prime is supposed to be for!
Painful regret tinged with horror - what kind of monsters are we - escaped his control, in a blurt of glyphs that made him wince. "I regret that it's not enough," he said quickly, and if his voice threatened to crack at least that wasn't as damning as his EMF.
Rhinox, even in trying to keep face on the subject, was not an adept liar and it was in his field – his own horror, that familiar kind that the Prime was all too familiar with, when he himself turned the focus of his attentions inward and back and traced the long line of violence from now to the street of Kaon and the Senate floor all those eons ago. Rhinox, in comparison, was innocent. Optimus got to his feet, prompted by the glut of despair verging on panic radiating from the other Autobot. He moved quickly to kneel in front of him, catching the engineer by one shoulder and gripping the seam in the plating there, a charge of spark-deep sorrow and support crossing from alloy to alloy. His other hand laid firm across the other mech’s wrist.
“Rhinox, friend, every Cybertronian, Autobot or Deception, regrets that the war was not won on either side, in time to stop the consumption of our world. I know this sorrow.” His voice held the glyphs that made it true. “We all do and it will be the burden of our race to regret and our mission to repent in the recovery but until then is our duty to fight and survive long enough so that we may have the luxury of seeking forgiveness from our very selves. Until then, however reluctant, to fight for the survival of our people is our right purpose and that makes us soldiers, not the monsters war would have us be.”
His grip on Rhinox’ wrist tightened a little.
“You are needed not for how you attack, but how you defend. We need guardians now, more than ever and see a guardian spark within you. Do you understand?”
The Prime's field enveloped Rhinox, making the world - even his garden - fade away from his awareness. Optimus was all he could see, feel, even taste. Optimus's presence was heavy with sorrow, but underneath it was the unshakeable strength and determination of a Prime - no, of Optimus, the mech who'd defied Council convention and Megatron's powerlust, who'd sacrificed as much or more than any of them for the vision of a Cybertron free from oppression, who'd been their banner and inspiration, who even now was kneeling in the dirt to comfort a minor soldier who felt far too deeply. He made his choices too, Rhinox thought, even as his helm canted forward to rest lightly on Optimus's broad shoulder. Nobody dragged him into this. I'm being foolish.
Even so, he couldn't bear the thought of Optimus cut off from the peace they fought for, if and when they ever finally won it. He turned his hand over, curled his fingers gently around Optimus's wrist as Optimus was doing to his. "When... when that day comes - when we have the luxury to mourn and repent and rebuild..." He shifted closer, his other hand hooking around Optimus's arm. "Please, be there with us. It will be your peace as much as anyone's. Please." His treacherous field reached out again like a lonely sparkling. "Promise me."
“In so much,” began Optimus quietly, “that such a promise can be made in a time of war…”
He had not even finished before he tasted the twist in it, the tang of falsehood. He ignored it though. Maybe it was a lie. At the very least, it would have been a lie without the proviso of his own mortality and the necessity of war which he forever expected to make a claim on his life. He seemed natural now, after so much had been lost in fistfuls torn and torn over and over endlessly from the body of what he had to give that his life would be a laughable cost to require now. Matching the wavelength of Rhinox’s field, Optimus Prime didn’t look or let go of the soldier in front of him though – because reluctant as he may have ever been, he was not allowed to be so now.
“I promise,” he said and wanted, very much, more than he could admit, to keep his word.
This close, Rhinox could feel the twisting uncertainty in Optimus's field as he spoke, as Optimus could likely feel his guilt and confusion. Yet he didn't shy away from his leader's pain. With EMF and gesture, he embraced it.
"None of us can promise to survive," he murmured, field flooding with unspoken gratitude. "But... thank you. It means much to me."
He was calming, the black empty ache in his chest chased away by Optimus's promise. Rhinox shuttered his optics and let it cradle him, for just a moment longer.
Optimus nodded, grip tightening once more, briefly, but he didn’t yet stand up, choosing to remain seated while the other mechanoid’s systems cycled down from the strange precipice they’d climbed to. He hadn’t intended to talk about any of this, it seemed that Rhinox coaxed honesty from him with silence was his norm. The Prime didn’t choose to examine that too closely. He just waited until Rhinox seemed to have calmed down a fraction.
“It is nothing to say the words,” he said. “But I will fight to my promises. That much I can swear to you, friend.”
It was almost dizzying, the descent from his state of heightened emotions, and Rhinox founded he needed Optimus's solid presence to ground him. Luckily, Optimus had made no move to pull away. Rhinox let his field open a little, warmth and gratitude spilling out (hopefully not in an overwhelming way) to glow against Optimus's plating.
"That, I never doubted," he murmured, a smile finding its way to his face. "You're an easy mech to trust, Prime."
The fact that said Prime had called him friend... that he stored away in his spark, keeping it close.
“I have been told,” said Optimus somewhat dryly, “that I have one of those faces.”
He smiled, squeezing the other mechanoid’s shoulder guard before standing up and looking out toward the garden again. The shadows and lengthened somewhat, the Nevada sun swinging away over the gulch so the creep of shade spread slowly toward the corner of earth Rhinox was occupying with his rows of many plants. He glanced back to Rhinox, tilting his head slightly toward the quietly shifting plants, evening breeze stirring the quiet.
“Why don’t you show me how to take care of these? In case you ever require a substitute gardener.”