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.
“If you’re talking about desertion, I wouldn’t have it, of course,” Jetfire grated with confidence. He would normally have been irritated but Starscream was an old friend, and old habits died hard. Speaking with friends was much easier, and Jetfire found himself comfortable with the subject at hand, controversial as it was. “…But we’re all better off without a war. That’s where all our satisfaction would be, I’d think.” Jetfire had a feeling that there was more that Starscream was getting at, but what it was…
“We wanted to restore social order, Starscream. Megatronu- Megatron, hm, it was his order we believed in. I didn’t believe in his science. Just want a happy life and a free spark. Can’t do the science without that.”
It was the older Seeker’s turn to be pensive. A life without the war. It meant much more to Starscream than himself, he was sure. Jetfire had lived through the war so briefly. He’d barely been It had barely begun to feel the heat of Autobot blasters when Jetfire was sent off for resources. “I could have deserted very easily. Planted myself on some alien planet and enjoyed my own sort of freedom there.” He vented, making an effort to gather his ideas. “What use is that? I fought for social good. I owe something to my fellow mech, hm?”
"I do remember the days of Megatronus and the revolution," he said. His voice took on a wistful tone through its usual harshness. "When we truly believed there was a chance we might turn the course of our future back towards the path which the Golden Era had lit so brightly."
With a surge of power he nosed upwards, rolling inverted in one smooth motion. There he flew, mere feet above Jetfire. It was a difficult manoeuvre, and dangerous, a breath away from collision, but his flight path did not falter. Starscream did not reflect or pride himself upon that fact. He gave little thought to his flying skills. They were simply there, millions of years old, to be drawn upon on his command.
His mind dwelt upon other things.
"But you have been gone a very long time," he said. He spoke delicately, picking his words with care. "What if you were to learn that the Decepticon cause had turned from the creation of a new and just order, to a mission of conquest? Is that the social good you wished for? Would you benefit from a Decepticon empire? I have rank and power now within the Decepticon army. I have everything to gain the further our kind marches across the stars. But what of you? Can you conduct your research with a spark burdened by the knowledge that your ability to do so was paved by the subjugation of the planets we once explored freely?"
Starscream may have thought little about the maneuver but Jetfire’s processors jolted with a spark of fear. The error codes in his peripherals kept at their polite warnings; there was no change, but he was on edge. “Hey, warn a mech before you near fall on him, scraplet,” he barked with a sharp edge of dignity. Despite Starscream’s new title, appearance, all… Jetfire still felt it was appropriate to scold him. The ease of it surprised him only a little- he was used to speaking with him under unfamiliar starfields.
Jetfire soared steadily under the topside-down Starscream, EMF sending a feeling of glowering upwards, but he didn’t break course. “Megatronus is… educated. I’d think he’d learned about the last time Cybertron went on a mission for conquest.” As much as Jetfire wanted to sound confident in his leader, he held a tone of questioning. It had been a long time, but at this moment, it felt like no time at all. What could have changed in a cycle? “I have faith that our leader had the greater good in mind…” he drifted off, the pieces coming together slowly.
Were it anyone else, Starscream would have taken offence at the snap. But this was Jetfire, and he only laughed instead. He remained inverted over the bigger aircraft, keeping only a few feet of separation between them. The cold, thin air was making him feel a little light–headed, almost pleasantly so. It was like being drunk on flight.
“Oh, I won't deny that our Lord Megatron is clever,” he said, chuckling. “He received the brunt of his education in the gladiatorial pits of Kaon after all, and such teachings hone one's wits into a fine, fierce edge. But that is a sharp cunning, old friend, and what it lays that edge to it can just as easily pare away. And what is this planet to his cause than a resource to be cut, quartered, and divided into what is needed for our greater good, and what might be thrown away?”
A touch of aileron flipped him over and righted him again. Moonlight shone against his cockpit as Starscream tilted his wings and swept back to Jetfire's wingtip. His voice was mild as he said, “And so that's why I ask you... what do you want? Ignoring the other Decepticons and the war for the moment, what is it you wish to achieve from following the cause?”
Jetfire grunted at the repeat maneouver, but let this one slide.
The old Seeker was slowly sinking into a black mood, feeling uncomfortable with the sudden deep talk. It rang with politics he didn’t understand, of events he didn’t know of. His processor rattled with the feelings of finally having found a familiar face in the sea of time, and being reminded that he’d been dragged by the current too far out.
After a long pause, Jetfire finally responded, his voice grating with weariness. “You can be as poetic as you like, I don’t know what you’re getting at.” He didn’t like the thought of being interrogated, even a little bit.
So, he gave up. Politics be damned, this was an old friend of his.
“What’s happened, Starscream?” His tone was flat, uncompromising. “Last I heard you were rallying the troops, singing praises. Now you’re sounding ready to desert. What I want…” he vented, the exhaust making him teeter in the air slightly. Their wingtips scraped dangerously close, but unheeded. He still needed to process. “No, shut up a klik,” he interjected before the other Seeker could halt his train of thought.
...But he found he couldn’t really think of anything. “ ’Cron’s grinding gears of scrap, I want to be back where I started,” and despite his age, he sounded for all the world like a sparkling throwing a temper tantrum. His EMF seethed with black, vibrating waves of crabbiness… underlaid by despair.
He was filled with that deep, sore, black feeling of being in a situation far beyond his control and hating every minute of it. The melancholy swept over him quite quickly, stronger than his initial jolt at seeing his old friend so changed by time. The same darkness that covered him while in medbay, meditating on the lost time, feeding into his tubes, his wires, the atoms of his frame. The difference this time, was that he was aloft and alongside a very real scrap of his past.
For a moment he even contemplated taking the plunge. Plummeting from that height on that foreign rock, the spinning and pitching of his frame wouldn’t be so different than that his infernal time period was doing to him.
Dropping.
Down...
-But he was too old to go down like that, no matter how depressed his circuits were. He was experienced enough to know that they were tied up in knots of misery and he wasn’t going to think like himself for a while, but he had better things to do than to listen to a few loose screws. He mentally shook himself from his own thoughts, if not his mood. The chasm of air below him closed as abruptly as it had opened up to him.
He grunted, aware that his EMF was probably dreadfully out of control, but too dignified to admit to it.
OOC: Woah. That escalated quickly.
While, I wanted to assume that while Jetfire could easily log into data files and catch up on history, it was probably dreadfully backed out by good old fashioned propaganda. He’s old and wise enough to have understood this and given up on the old textbooks long before Screamer got a hold of him. So, I guess this is just me trying to justify his ignorance and frustration over the situation.
Last Edit: Mar 27, 2014 22:34:19 GMT -5 by Deleted
For a minute or two they flew in silence beneath the stars. There was nothing to be heard but the muted roar of their engines, the whispering buffet of wind over their airframes.
Starscream said nothing at first. Though he had been startled by Jetfire's initial outburst he was now quiet, contemplative. It was all too likely that he had picked up on the old jet's turbulent field and was brooding over it. His own field was unruffled, even clinical. It would appear that the objective scientist had not yet been stamped out of him, despite the millions of years of war that separated the Seeker that Jetfire knew then and the Seeker flying alongside him now.
However, when he did speak again it was in a mild voice, his words chosen with care.
"It must be... distressing," he said. "To lie frozen in time for so long, only to return and discover that so much has changed in your absence. And - hm. I cannot imagine what that must be like. The disorientation, perhaps. The sense of ill being. Hm. However."
Starscream hummed. His scanners flickered over the old jet.
"However," he said. "It is for that reason why I pose you the question of what it is you wish from your life, now that you stand on the verge of such an unfamiliar future. I know what the other Decepticons want. I've spent millions of years leading those clods, catering to their whims, their desires for power and superiority, for victory. But I am genuinely in the dark over how you desire to fit yourself back into the Decepticon cause now that a tragic accident has thrown you apart from it for so long. Make no mistake - I know my role in it. Rallying the troops and singing praises has been replaced with the more tedious but necessary work of organizing troops, devising strategy - managing vital military assets. But the role you seek for yourself eludes me."
He snorted, lightly. "I suppose as second in command I am expected to simply assign you to a project or division and think no more upon it. But I... respect our old friendship too much to give you so little consideration."
----
OOC: No worries, Mingo - personally, I adored seeing this kind of frustrated reflection from Jets <3. It's lovely to see his character struggling to come to grips with his situation, awwww.
Jetfire’s EMF waves smoothed over after hearing of Starscream’s consideration, but he still wavered on upset. Starscream was pulling away from emotions and politics and getting back to work. The older Seeker would have appreciated it if he didn’t have a strong sense of foreboding about it. He sensed a missed opportunity, but had little desire to turn back to it.
“I think best at work,” he responded flatly, pushing the strange apprehension away. “Just give me work, ‘Commander’,” the title was said with a hint of sarcasm, but not disrespectful. He knew Starscream’s new title would limit Jetfire’s usual demeaning list of grandfatherly nicknames for him… at least in public. He may as well use the privacy while he could. “I’ll sort out my new political ideals on the job.” A minute sigh. “I appreciate your ‘consideration’, Starscream- but you know what I want. An open sky and an empty datasheet.”
The thought of conquest concerned him. The idea that this rock -sustaining life and thriving- was in danger of destruction brought by such archaic ideals. Concern was too feeble a word for it… But he was too much a scientist to take it from the word of another mech (even a trusted old friend like Starscream.) He needed facts.
A small voice told him he wanted only the old days. It told him he wanted to see the present for what it wasn’t- for the past. It told him he was deluding himself, stalling. Stalling for the sake of normality.
But his sanity knew better than to dwell on that… at least right now. Let the present settle in on him, covering the dust of the eons he’d gathered.
“Haven’t had time to work- haven’t had time to think,” he grunted, irritability prickling at the edges of his EMF. “My processors are scrambled listening to that self-absorbed medic every cycle. Get me out.” He couldn’t take more gumbling talk from the drones, cheeky and discouraged about a war that had drastically changed in the time he was gone.