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.
Settling next to Bumblebee, curled up against the wall (and well out of range of anyone walking by), Steeljaw tucked his paws underneath him and extended a slim link cable from beneath his shoulder plate. Better not to over think it, he told himself. It was just entertaining a youngling. Sparklings were the one type of mech he had relaxed and played games with, all in the name of teaching and keeping them entertained during a Creator's work shift. This was really no different.
Except that Bumblebee was an Autobot, and a warrior, and Steeljaw's processor was having a hard time juxtaposing those things without feeling a need to cuff someone upside the helm, quite possibly the Prime. No, better not to think about it.
"Here," he said instead. "I unarchived a strategy action network game - Nullspace, if any of your sibs had a copy. I'm... probably very rusty at it, but it used to be one of my favorites." If 'favorite' meant 'the one he had written so many code hacks for that he was unbeatable in cheat mode', maybe. Without cheating... this was going to be a quick and very ugly game from Steeljaw's perspective, but he offered the cable to the yellow Scout anyways.
‘Binary had a copy of that, said Bumblebee with perfect joy.
He accepted the uplink, hooking the cassette’s link cable into a jack in his wrist and opening the multi-player interface for Nullspace. ‘I usually play on synced HUD or you wanna use the holo display?’ Bee was already rifling through the player options, selecting his specs for this player type, the option interface spinning expertly to his commands as he armed and hit the ‘accept’. Binary had been a hardcore fan of the game and made it a personal mission to school Bumblebee up to expert just so he could play him between shifts. Bumblebee missed that. More than he could allow himself to think about. Just keep it simple – playing a game.
‘Don’t worry! I’ll go easy on ya,’ added Bee in a tone that promised unmitigated destruction.
'Easy,' the scout said. If that was easy Steeljaw didn't want to see 'competitive' or 'out for energon'.
Five minutes and as many quick, crushing defeats later, he was willing to admit this had been a particularly stupid idea and Uplink hadn't stopped chortling. Bumblebee seemed to be enjoying it, but Steeljaw was finding it an effort in particularly humiliating frustration.
"I'm sorry," he said for the third time. "It's been a very long time. I'm definitely a bit rusty."
Bumblebee whistled something cheerful back that Steeljaw didn't catch, too busy grimly refitting his chosen avatar type to the best of his limited abilities. Bumblebee, he knew, was doing the same. Gritting his dente, Steeljaw signaled his readiness and plunged into the sixth repeat of the game.
It was over just as quickly as the others, but Bumblebee was taking pity on him and at least doing it a different way each time. Steeljaw wouldn't have noticed - a loss was a loss, after all - except for the fact that this win had involved a finishing move that... the scout should not have been able to unlock yet. Not with the bare handful of rounds they had played, not even winning them all. He shouldn't have had enough cred in the game to reach that level yet.
Steeljaw narrowed his optics. THAT was a commonly used unlock patch. The symbiont knew it quite well, because he had that and dozens more filed away along with the game core. And if Bumblebee was using them...
Well. No more playing nice, then. Driven on by the exuberant whoop of his former carrier in the back of his processor, Steeljaw grinned sharply and unpacked his hack patches, ripping through the locks of the game to lay all of the advanced 'earned' additions in his reach. It the scout wanted to play like that, it was on.
Oh boy .Steeljaw had suddenly gone from dying repeatedly and spectacularly to thrashing him with incendiary moves that were perfectly lethal. Bumblebee, who had been playing fair up until that last three rounds where he started cheating furiously and mercilessly for the sake of cheating, cheerfully accepted the kick back from the other mechanism and coded in yet another patch of his own. He didn’t suppose he would win if Steeljaw had realized what Bee was doing that the gloves were off, but he was certainly going to try. He unlocked every advantage code he had available to him, openly boosted his level in the middle of the game, didn’t even pretend to fight fair at this point.
And Steeljaw did it right back.
Bee loved it. He chirp-whirred happily as Steeljaw began to take matches like they were going out of style, the both of them no longer playing to win so much as playing to see who could cheat in the most spectacularly audacious way possible in a single match. Steeljaw was an professional literally. Bee was picking up tricks as fast as his avatar hit the floor. It was like having Binary back.
‘You gotta teach me how to do that one’ said Bee, no longer talking about game moves, but cheat codes.
Audios perked and jaw dropped in a silent grin, Steeljaw leaned in against Bumblebee's side. It was more fun than he'd expected, far more fun than he'd imagined, to go up against someone who cheated just as outrageously and without restriction as he did. It was a little like playing Uplink again, the both of them trying to code new hacks on the fly to create even more humiliatingly devastating wins.
Pleasantly chuffed, he let himself rest against the scout 'Bot's shoulder, systems purring softly with the processor workout of running the thread intensive game. "I'll be happy to," he agreed, tail curling loosely around the other mech's hip. His own plates flared, half expecting the easy familiarity of Uplink's fingers tweaking and working them all back into place before he reigned himself in and pushed them back down. The scout was just a youngling, an enthusiastic and happy youngling, and that was, Steeljaw told himself, more than enough.
He left his tail where it was and turned to push the flat of his head against Bumblebee's shoulder. "Which other ones do you like? If I still have it, I guarantee I have cheat hacks for it."
‘Meridian Cross, Star Crush, Iacon Blitzrunner Phi!’ said Bumblebee immediately, more than happy to allow the cassette to feed his addiction because Primus if he hadn’t been doing without a proper play partner for a while. He chrip-whirred, slouching a bit more against the wall so Steeljaw could more easily lean against the wheel-rotor of his shoulder guards, His EM field had gone lazily open, his door wings flattened to more easily accommodate his position slumped happily against the wall in post-game bliss.
Blue optics flitted to Steeljaw. ‘This is really fun, by the way. Like, really fun.’ There was some real fondness there, among the glee. ‘Are you gonna be around for a while? I mean... we’ve had a couple Bots come and go before so I wasn’t sure…’
"Iacon Blitzrunner Phi," Steeljaw murmured thoughtfully. "Now THERE is a fun one to hack. I think you'll like the moves I've programmed into it."
He had turned his optics down a little, busy searching the files out of vorn old archives, when the rest of the scout's words registered. Rebooting his optics, Steeljaw flicked an audio array at the scout, tail tip twitching, but made no move to remove himself from where he was leaning up against the yellow plates.
"I don't really seem to have anywhere else to go," he said flatly, "so yes, I suppose I will be staying." One shoulder hunched up in a half shrug. "Oh, I heard about the femme Neutral you made contact with - a medic, right? Medics are parts scavengers, they chase the battlefields. If I'm going to leave then I want to leave; this planet, this solar system, as far from the war as a transport will take me."
He flicked an audio array again, shaking away the seriousness of the moment with a shiver of his plates, and let amusement shine through instead. "Lacking any galactic taxi service in this backwater little quadrant, I suppose you're stuck with me for awhile."
‘I don’t mind being stuck with you,’ said Bee honestly. He looked at Steeljaw with unassuming optics, EMF bright his paintjob. ‘Though I get it if you don’t want to be stuck with us/me/Team Prime. Being an Autobot means you gotta choose to fight and stuff… not just get saddled with us cuz you crashed.’ Bee fidgeted a little bit. ‘I mean, I hope we’re/I’m not just ‘stuck together’, Steeljaw. I mean… we can still be friends even if I’m an Autobot can’t we?’
He glanced hopefully at the cassette. ‘Optimus says the hard part is going to after the war. When we all have to give up the brands/signias/sides/identities and try to be Cybertronians again. He says war is simple because it’s selfish. Peace will be hard because we gotta forgive.’ He paused, looked down at his hands again. ‘I guess, he means we need to forgive eachother just for *being* Autobots/Decepticons/ Neutrals. And that *is* gonna be hard/impossible/tough but I’m trying. There’s Sniper he was a Con/enemy but the more I talk/network with him the more he sounds like any other solider/Bot/fighter I’ve met. I think I get it. I dunno.’
He looked at Steeljaw. ‘If the war ended, could you forgive me for being an Autobot?’
Last Edit: Mar 28, 2012 14:17:31 GMT -5 by bumblebee
Steeljaw cycled a long ventilation, carefully keeping his optics fixed on the far wall and not on the scout whose shade of yellow was clashing with his own where they leaned against each other. "I'm not an Autobot," he said quietly, "and I doubt I'll ever wear colors again. Being an Autobot killed my host, and I'm sorry, but I don't and never have believed that this war is the right course of action."
Turning his head, he nudged the flat of his helm against Bumblebee's shoulder. "I don't mind being 'stuck' with you, though. I won't pretend, and I won't fight, and it's nothing but Primus' will that's thrown us together. There are certainly worse mechanisms to be stranded with, though, and..." he huffed softly "...I have to admit I'm growing fond of some of you as individuals, ignoring that whole messy 'faction' part. I suppose that is it's own kind of forgiveness."
Sitting up again, he cocked his head, eyeing the scout sidelong. "The Prime, for all that he's perpetuated this mess, has occasional moments of blinding clarity. I suppose, given that it will be one of your two factions who eventually wins this war if it ever ends, that the real question is if the rest of you will forgive those of us who refused to pick up arms and join you."
‘Maybe. I think I’ll have a harder time forgiving the Cons/enemy, not the guys who didn’t want to kill anyone/fight/join. I mean… that’s… that’s what my cohort wanted to do. So I understand neutrality even if I didn’t pick it. They were contracted combat engineers. They just wanted to leave…’
And they all died because of it. Bee irised his optics closed and chirred softly, thinking back, again to a conversation with Optimus, one of those rare ones where he actually looked at you and you couls feel that million year old exhaustion. You had to squint to catch Optimus at looking tired, but it had been one of those times when he’d said this. The scout folded his arms, propping them on his knees, dropping his chin guard on his arms. He looked at Steeljaw sadly, all the glee from the games long gone now.
‘Best question: When the war is done and there’s no faction/war/whatever… how do we forgive ourselves?’ He chirped, looking away. ‘I mean… look at what we’ve done…’
Steeljaw ran another ventilation, forequarters sagging slightly. "I won't praise you for it," he said firmly, "but you did what you believed in. According to some, what started this whole mess was individuals refusing to allow other mecha to think for themselves."
Turning, he pressed his helm to Bumblebee's shoulder once more. "It takes thought to believe in something, though," he noted. "So in that, both you and the Decepticons have won. You choose, every one of you, what side to stand on. You think, you believe, you make choices based on that belief. There were..." he vented again, field sour, but made himself continue. "There were parts of the old ways that were broken. No one denies that. But the old ways are gone. You all think and choose when you take a stand and in that, you've won. It may not be a victory we can all live with, not yet, but it's more than what a lot of mecha had before."
Rearing his head back, he brought it forward again with a subdued chime of armor on armor, bumping his head against the scout's plating. "For what it's worth."
Bumblebee tried to remember back as far as he could, to the first cycle up of his systems, that primordial crackle and flare as he came online with his spark spinning up hot in his chest, his whole frame warming with heat and life born from the strange nova born of the planet itself. He remembered waking and knowing that he was a guardian-class defense engineer, designed specifically for adroit manual labor but geared for combat, sparked fast and quick on the draw, made to move and he remembered liking that. He remembered his Creators and cohort pulling him to his feet for the first time and how natural everything came, how easily the current of his soul took hold and the frequency of his thoughts linked with theirs and he was them, they were him and he thought we are at war and because they knew it, he knew it.
Gestalts like theirs don’t preprogram much into their new builds, allowing them to spark freely and take their knowledge uploads from the hive-mind of their cohort, a process taking less than a day and allowing for Bumblebee’s unique personality quirks to permeate in their way through the others and he remembered they/he was pleased with how his personality matrix balanced some of the dark. He remembered their regrets and not understanding them though. Their memories of the old Cybertron seemed so far away from the scorched earth and energon drained war-zone on which they battled, the ruins of Kimia, Simfurr, Iacon, and so much more laid down. He didn’t get the Council, the caste system, the Decepticon cause or the importance of a Prime.
It takes thought. Bee didn’t remember thinking when he took to the fight so eagerly, only doing. He was sparked an Autobot. It wasn’t until the rest of his cohort chose to stop fighting that he was forced to examine his reasons for fighting and decide, for himself, to stay and an Autobot. His cohort had argued with him, he with them, and by the end they had sounded much like Steeljaw in that moment – they understood even if they disagreed ultimately on his course. Bumblebee didn’t mean to, but hearing Steeljaw talk about it made the scout miss them suddenly and without thinking of it really, the yellow sports car promptly wrapped two arms around the cassette and hugged him.
It was awkward - his rotary joints weren't really meant for that angle of maneuverability - but Steeljaw sat back on his haunches, lifted his forequarters, and managed to drape both forelimbs around Bumblebee's shoulders, bumping his helm gently against the yellow scout's. "You're welcome," he told the Autobot, and that was only a little more awkward than 'hugging' was, but worth it for the relaxing feel of the other mech's thread.
Still... He bumped the scout's helm again. "Alright. Down now, please. I'm not really made for this position." Bumblebee let go, chirped something apologetic sounding, and rather than let it go there Steeljaw nudged the other mech's shoulder. "Iacon Blitzrunner Phi, you said?" he asked, curtailing further conversation. The scout's optics brightened, doorwings lifting a bit, and Steeljaw grinned with audials and field. "I don't have anything new for that one, but I have the creator Pit of all cheats for it. Want to see?"
Bumblebee whistled assent and Steeljaw settled back down at the scout's side, paw pedes tucked underneath him as he brought up more game files to the link between them and set them to running. Games were safe, and nostalgic in the right ways, not requiring awkward words and more awkward philosophies... and he really did have some excellent cracking codes to share.