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.
Barricade was gone. It was a simple fact, one that had the entire base simmering with, if not anger, at least a strange mix of discontent and relief. Relief that Barricade - with his disconcerting knack for slipping past armor and mesh to a Bot's weak points - was no longer contaminating the base with his lies and half-truths; discontent that he had departed with his spark intact.
Shadowrunner wanted to be angry about it, wanted the clean fury she'd felt in some of the others' fields. Instead, every time her anger rose up it tangled in her own doubts, summoned up ghosts that might be memories and might simply be Barricade's skill at manipulation. And no matter how often she told herself it was all lies, no matter how much she wanted to rip his spark out of his chest and be done with it, a part of her couldn't stop replaying his words, digging at them for what truth they might hide.
She wanted Barricade dead, or she wanted him in her hands, answering her questions...and because of Autobot ethics she couldn't have either of those things.
Last Edit: Dec 15, 2011 18:40:59 GMT -5 by Deleted
Bee, despite the limits on his verbal patterning due to speech loss, was still an expressive bot. His EMF described in complex crisscrosses of frequency and intensity the arrangement of his emotions at any given time and more so than most Bots on the simple grounding that he didn’t have words to rely on like he used to. The beautiful arabesques of Cybertronian language failed in his busted vocalizer so he relied on other dialects, of energy and empathy and electromagnetics.
So right now it would be evident to all how paint-strippingly, spark-clenchingly,mad he was just then. He couldn’t think straight through his rage. It had come suddenly, furiously, like a viral outbreak in his brain and rage was not a feeling it was a disease and he was sick with it. He stormed through the back corridors, headed for the deeper catacombs of the base where he and his violent frequencies could be alone lest he run into Dipper and have round two of Bot Bashing Bonanza like before.
He was so mad he didn’t see Shadowrunner or catch her in the spectrum of his own sensor array until he, very nearly, ran into the black Impala. He jerked back, chirp-whirring, ‘Hey watch where you’re… oh… Shadow.’ His door wings drooped a little. ‘Sorry. I just…’ finished yelling at Optimus. ‘…was heading to my quarters. The thing with Barricade…’ He trailed off, no explanations needed.
Last Edit: Dec 16, 2011 2:13:59 GMT -5 by bumblebee
If Shadow hadn't been so wrapped up in the dark thoughts chasing endless circles around her processor, she would have felt the cloud of raw fury bearing down on her well before the near collision. As it was, she was so surprised by Bumblebee's arrival, and the rage pouring off of him, that for a klik she just stared, processor trying to reconcile what she was feeling with what her optics were seeing.
"Yeah," she said, with a wry smile. "The thing with Barricade." Disgust fairly dripped off her EMF as Bumblebee's white-hot anger prodded her own bitterness over the situation. "Another fragging victory for Autobot morality."
Bee tried to torque down how he felt but he was having trouble with it when Shadow’s own frequencies were so invitingly similar to his own, a jagged collage of EM waves that ran backwards against his own field, flared hot and cold with some complex emotion he didn’t have the awareness just then to examine and gone too fast to look at. Bee realized he was shaking with rage only when he heard it, that violent rattle buzz of metal that seemed specific to his frame type – making his plating sing with the force of his rage just thinking about his conversation with Optimus, the sense that he was wrong slammed against the knowledge he was right.
‘He was going to kill him. Optimus, I mean, to Barricade… at least, I think so.’ Bee said this but he thought, Primus, when did the death of a mech come to be comfort to us? He whirred softly, trying to stop the rage in his spark from superheating his systems. The Camero dropped his optics to the floor, chirping softly. ‘So he didn’t just… let him go.’
Bee's words made it all worse, hope and defeat all in a single phrase. "If he was going to, then why didn't he?" she snapped, but she knew the answer, and it made her dawning anger collapse back down into a seething mass that might be hatred, or might be despair.
Optimus had screwed up. Just like Labyrinth. Somehow, he had given Barricade an opening, and the mech had taken it, run with it. Because that was what Barricade did.
Shadow ex-vented, body canting slightly toward Bee. There was no comfort to be gained from proximity, but there was something. Solidarity in their anger, even as their fields hiss-snapped raggedly off one another.
'Does it help, knowing that?' she asked, dropping into Basic not for the reminder of home, this time, but simply to keep her voice from betraying her, because her hard-won anger was easier to deal with than the emotions under it.
‘No,’ said Bee who would never admit how grateful he was for Shadow’s easy familiarity with Basic, how it was a language to her, a familial dialect instead of a sign something was wrong and a suggestion that something was really wrong. Broken. Glitched. Hacked. She did not hear those things in his voice when he spoke and that among other things calmed the uneven dips and spikes in his EMF to a more even calm. The Camaro ex-vented with difficultly, wrestling with the nest of heat and anger in his chest so intense it was more like a physical shard of cherry-red metal inside him, heating him up inside.
‘I’m so mad at him. I’ve never been this mad at Optimus, ever. I shouldn’t be this mad I just…’ Bee stared at the back of his hand, turned it palm up. ‘I don’t know. It’s like I can’t remember how to forgive him this time.’ And that, more than anything, scared him. 'It's like I forgot how...'
Shadow almost asked Bee why he was so eager to forgive Optimus after this, stopping herself barely in time. The situation wasn't the same for him as it was for her; for her, Optimus was still little more than a near-legendary figurehead, but to Bee...
Optimus was as much family to Bee as Labyrinth was to her, and she knew she'd be just as desperate to find a way to forgive.
'Optimus screwed up,' she finally said aloud. Fresh anger washed through her EMF. 'I'm sorry, Bee. I know this is hard for you, I just... don't think he deserves a free pass because he's the Prime. Not when this means Barricade is back on the loose.'
‘It’s not about giving him a pass, but I don’t… I don’t feel right. I feel mad but it’s not like… not like I should be mad.’
It was hard to explain in Basic. He was angry and purely angry. Bumblebee was objective enough to realize that there was something wrong with the scope of origin of his anger. He was mad. He could feel his oiwn confusion and betrayal and frustration that made his spark clench in his chest to the point of physical pain, the panic that no matter what he did, what data he scouted – how many times he let Megatron rip him apart in the dreamscape – he would be rewarded by nothing but philosophic slag. Objectively, he knew Optimus had at least intended to execute Barricade for his crimes against Cybertron but all he could feel was the betrayal and the heat of that rage was… dizzying. An animalistic seethe that was very nearly crippling.
Talking to Shadow, being away from Optimus, helped but… ‘He didn’t mean to.’ How do you know that though? How do you know his stupid ethical obsession isn’t costing us everything? How do you know he isn’t martyring us all? ‘I shouldn’t… he’s our Prime, Shadow. I trust him.’ Really? I do. And where did that get us? ‘Have you ever had someone you trusted… do something like this, Shadow?’
Bumblebee's question made her spark clench, doubt/denial/guilt washing most of the anger out of her. 'Maybe.' The admission was physically painful, almost dizzying in intensity, running counter to every bit of her training, centuries of blind loyalty. She wanted to take it back as soon as she'd said it; she wanted to share her fears with someone else and have them tell her that Barricade couldn't possibly have been telling the truth.
In the end, she settled for, 'Barricade knew a lot about us/my unit. Too much. There...almost had to be a leak somewhere.' Another stretch of silence. 'He claimed he hacked/killed the others for their data, but if he did, Labyrinth would/should have known. He didn't say anything/warn us.' That, she was sure of; even if she had forgotten such a warning, her security protocols hadn't been altered for centuries prior to her arrival on Earth.
'I feel guilty for even considering the possibility, but I can't stop considering it, either. The questions are just there, and it any of it's true...' She shook her head. 'Is that how being angry at Optimus makes you feel? Like being angry is a betrayal itself, but you can't stop it?'
Bee just started blankly for a moment EMF flat with horror. Barricade had said those things to her? When? During her guard shift? ‘None of that’s true!’ snapped Bee furiously. ‘Barricade is a liar/killer/con-bot and all he does is tell lies. It’s what he does! He can talk/trick/confuse a loyal Bot into betrayal just by knowing a little bit about them. Whatever he said, you shouldn’t believe/buy it. He was shivering visibly with anger, armor chattering furiously against his endo-structure, but the heat in his EMF passed quickly as he thought about her question.
‘I don’t know. I’m just fragged off at Prime right now. I guess… I guess I feel guilty about it, but not really. Barricade is a monster and he should have been terminated today. Whatever he does/whoever he hurts next…’ It’s Prime’s fault. ‘…it’s a betrayal to all of us.’
Bumblebee's vehemence almost made Shadow pull back in surprise, and absolutely confirmed she shouldn't have admitted her doubts aloud. Her EMF drew closer to her frame, her anger and doubt automatically muting and smoothing down to something more neutral, though not the kind of flatline that would put Bee on alert.
She pushed Barricade's words to the back of her processor, and refocused on the situation at hand.
'We have every right to be fragged off at Prime. I don't even know if there's a way to make this right, other than getting to Barricade before he gets to anyone else. And I doubt Prime's willing to go after him like that.'
Last Edit: Dec 11, 2011 22:13:26 GMT -5 by Deleted
Bee didn’t say anything for a while, just looked at the ground for a long time before looking back up at Shadowrunner, his field taking on an entirely new pitch and flux – unsteady and slightly afraid. His Basic went very quiet as he spoke now, the frequency off his frame a far more timid wavelength than it had been just moments before – devoid now of anger. Blue optics flickered a little unsteadily.
‘Shadow, do you think I… that I’m acting like Megatron?’ He cycled his vents a little, buzzing sadly, door-wings drooping low with a nausea mix of shame and dread. ’I yelled at Optimus. The stuff I’m saying/I said… I couldn’t stop myself and I can’t stop being mad. I don’t know if it’s just me anymore now. Bulk said I might be… like… if this is a subversion of my gestalt links then I’m taking on his emotional sub-routines/feedback…’
He looked at her. ‘You’re always honest, Shadow. Just tell me. Should I be in the brig?’
In spite of everything, Shadow quirked a smile at Bee's claim she was honest, of all things. However, in this she could be.
'If I thought you belonged in the brig, don't you think you'd be there?' She wrapped an arm around him, tugged him closer in a reflexive response to one of her own being in trouble. 'Instead, I'm standing here commiserating with you over the fact Prime fragged things up, big time.'
She sighed, a reluctant concession to the point he'd brought up. 'That doesn't mean your moods aren't being affected by Megatron, but I don't think it's a sign he's controlling you, and I don't think it's a sign you'll become a danger. And if that changes, you'll know because I'll haul your aft to the brig myself.'
Bee shot his fellow muscle car a kind of watery smile through EMF, grateful for the words, the proximity, and the solidarity of having another intell bot around, however different their original functions may have been, eons working in the field of intelligence gathering at least gave them like-minded priorities. Their methodologies may not align all the time (usually), but Bee stood on this common ground with her at least. He chirp whirred quietly, glancing at her.
‘Thanks, Shadow. You can throw me in the brig anytime… well, okay. Only when I’m being a glitch.’ A small chuckle. ‘You understand.’
'Now I know what to do with you next time we have an argument.' She offered a final squeeze and released him, stepping away but not out of reach, her EMF unfurling from her frame to brush his. She wasn't sure how their mutual anger had burnt out so quickly, but somehow in the aftermath her gnawing dread and doubts had eased to a more tolerable level, if not vanished. 'Feeling better?'