[backdated] Like some Kid N Play video

[knightoflight]

Who: The Cybertronians and anyone else who might be nosy as to what all the large robots are doing together because why not.
What: Sharing resources houseparty?
When: Shortly after the robot network post excitement
Where Green 6, aka Wing's Swingin' Bachelor Pad

After Drift's post, Wing realized that as a knight, he had a mission, to help his people come together and find a way to coexist. Or else.  And Drift had mentioned that they should pool resources.  So, after double-checking with Drift, Wing sent a small message to each of the Cybertronians on the station to please meet him, this evening, in his quarters.

He wished food wasn't such a consideration here, because he felt bad not being able to lay out a spread of food for hospitality.  Maybe they would all bring their own?  He can hope. He has his few flight grade fuel rations on a table, just as, well, something.

As it is, he has soft music and subdued lighting, hoping they might defuse any, well, interpersonal tensions. 

He stood by the door to greet his guests, with a silent prayer to the whole Guiding Hand, that this went well. 

((OOC: This is a general robot shindig meet and greet and hopefully not punch each other.  Feel free to post a header for your character for others to tag into--anywhere in Wing's quarters or the hallway or whatever; mess with his stereo, steal his towels, show up early, fashionably late, whatever you want!  And of course, non-Cybertronian partycrashers welcome!)) 

Comments

[knightoflight]

"The Senate had its own imperial ambitions, Rodimus." Dai Atlas hadn't spared them, over the long years of exile, many of the details. "The Autobots were defending a Senate with an agenda just as corrupt, if a little less violent." Which, well, violence is no good, but corruption is worse.

"He what?!?" Uh, yeah, well, pretend he didn't squeak there at the end. But that...off a corpse. "After he killed him?" And Megatron had seemed so...nice.

But the hits just keep on coming. "Crystal City's destroyed? Why.....," No, Wing, there has to be a reason why Drift didn't tell you. "Does Drift know?"

[rodders]

He shakes his head at that, hands clenching into fists. "Optimus wasn't the Senate, wasn't Zeta. I didn't join the Autobots to defend the New Senate or Zeta, and if you think for one second that when the war really began that's what we stood for? Then you don't know anything about us." So Wing should just stop, as far as Rodimus is concerned.

But then they're talking about Megatron, and Rodimus' desire to sulk about that overcomes his kneejerk reaction to separate the Autobots he joined from the ones he threw bombs at. "No, Shockwave killed him. Guess he finally snapped and decided that destroying the universe was a great thing to do? I wasn't there for that part."

'Does Drift know?' Well, part of it. "Yeah, he was there when we tried to find you guys the first time."

[knightoflight]

"But he made no move to stop them, after he interrupted the Senate. We'd had such hopes for him, then." His methods--carrying the body of an injured copter--had been a bit crude, but it had taken courage and character.

"OH. I....think I am missing a lot of pieces here." Shockwave--he remembers the Senator, and the public spectacle of the empurata, but he couldn't make that add up to...this.

"He was. I see." And he doesn't want to be seeing it.

[rodders]

Well now Rodimus knows why Optimus was so glad to have seen the Circle leave, 'cult' or not. "Yeah, I can see where you really helped him out."

As for the missing pieces-- "Uh. You do know who Shockwave was, right? Purple guy, gun for an arm, does things according to logic? Decepticon?" Work with him, Wing, he's trying.

"Right. So we probably rescued you while we were at it, right? Before you all decided to go off to find Thunderclash and not join my crew." Sorry about exiling Drift, Wing. He didn't want to, he wasn't going to, but Drift insisted and, well, Rodimus didn't know what to do with that. It's not as if Drift did things that Rodimus didn't want him to on a regular basis, but that's because Drift agrees with him.

Doesn't he?

[knightoflight]

"We chose not to assist the Senate, who had participated in the genocides at Nyon and other places. And Dai Atlas said there was also the matter of, well, his contamination by Shockwave." It feels like gossip about things long dead, but what can he do? Dai Atlas had been friends with Shockwave...to a point. And then it ended, abruptly.

"I can't imagine Dai Atlas would not want to search for the Knights of Cybertron, though." It had been his passion, for centuries. It seemed odd he'd miss any opportunity to indulge it. "Did you..by chance...say anything to upset him?" Because he's still alive, right?

[rodders]

His hands clench further at that, because 'participated in the genocides at Nyon' is a really detached way of describing that. Wing can probably see his face darken, a hint of regret and guilt in his expression. "Don't-" He vents harshly. "Did you ever think that maybe by doing something about it, you could have prevented them to begin with?" Oh yes, this is personal. "Old Senate, New Senate - whichever it was. You could have done something instead of standing aside and keeping out of it just because Optimus talked to someone."

That doesn't exactly make you any better as far as Rodimus is concerned.

"Did I--? Well, Whirl probably did because it's Whirl. Kinda hard to join a quest when you're dead, though." 'God Map', yeah, Rodimus remembers that was part of Drift's whole reasoning to go find the Circle at the onset once they'd become kind of... distracted from their main route. "Cyclonus said Star Saber killed him."

[knightoflight]

"We helped as we could. But we didn't know everything, where to help. The news vids were run by the Senate. You remember how they spun the stories of any resistance." All they'd known is they weren't getting the real truth.

"Optimus did nothing but make matters worse, a faction almost indivisible from the Senate." Which was exactly why the Circle had had to stay back: they didn't want to pick sides. Simply save lives.

"....dead? He's dead?" The news strikes him like a blow. Since the beginning, Dai Atlas had been a steady, massive presence in his life, in all their lives: his resources, his knowledge had gotten them where they were. If Rodimus wanted to cause Wing pain in retaliation, he's certainly aimed true.

[rodders]

"I don't need to remember the stories something I was a part of." His voice rises in anger - he knows, logically, what Wing is saying. But logic has never really factored into anything Rodimus has done. So why start? "You could have helped anywhere! Asked anyone on the street and they could have told you what we needed - not to fight but to survive. Optimus - he saw what was right eventually, he turned against Zeta. While all you did was act like you were too good for getting involved? No wonder Prime doesn't like you."

Sometimes saving lives requires picking a side, though, and sometimes it doesn't matter what you do - people still die. But Rodimus could at least say he did something to make sure no one else had to burn their own cities to the ground. No, he was sick of seeing things burn.

Never on purpose. He's not the vindictive sort, just childish and incapable of watching what he says. "Yeah." His face falls slightly, and one hand rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "I don't know much - I just read the report." For once. Because he's trying now, he really is. Magnus would have been proud after he'd sat down on the floor out of shock.

[knightoflight]

"We did help! We did what we could, but when we saw that the war was going to destroy everything we were, everything we had, we tried to save what was left. It was too little. It was too late. But because of us, our science, our knowledge, has survived." He chafed under not being able to help, himself, but Dai Atlas had been adamant. And possibly deluded that the Senate would rein Zeta Prime in.

"Is that supposed to hurt, that a leader of half of the genocide doesn't like those of us who refused to be crushed under the juggernaut of your war?" Sorry, but Wing doesn't care.

And he's being reckless and close to anger, but the news of Dai Atlas's death has shaken him. "Report. I can...only hope he died bravely."

[rodders]

"No," a shake of Rodimus' head. "If you wanted to help you would have stayed. You would have done something, because I sure as hell didn't see any of you helping when Nyon was starving. Before-- before Zeta." He doesn't even care about fighting now - he remembers the gnaw of hunger in his tanks, he remembers being forgotten and left because no one cared and he remembers everyone who died because of him. But he did something - he tried to do something.

'Leader of half the genocide'. What the hell, Wing. "Except he was defending us from the Decepticons? You know, the guys trying to kill us? And anyway, he's still Prime. I thought that would mean something to you." On account of being obsessed with traditions or whatever. He thinks Drift respects Prime, and the whole 'part of the Guiding Hand' has to mean something too, with the Matrix.

"Uh, I guess? You'd have to ask Cyclonus or Whirl - they're the ones that actually saw it."

[knightoflight]

"Did anyone know how insane Zeta was before Nyon?" Wing hadn't. Maybe he was naive, even moreso back then. But he knew he wasn't the only one who had been taken by surprise at Zeta...trying to kill his own citizens to power a weapon. "Did you?" It's less a challenge than it might sound: he knows the Circle's intelligence had been flawed.

"He was siding with mechs like Sentinel and Zeta, Rodimus. When did he even try to make peace? When did he ask to speak to Megatron?" He shakes his head. "Who would want to be Prime? Who would claim that title, after the legacy of mechs like Zeta and Sentinel?" Wing clearly has opinions as to who would.

[rodders]

"I did!" He can't help shouting, temper still rising. "Because I saw it before it got that bad, I saw my friends suffer and I did something about it, because I knew. I knew Optimus would see how bad it was and change." He didn't know at that time he'd become Prime - no one could have guessed that. But he knew that if Orion Pax had seen what was going on, had understood why the insurgents had been fighting Zeta-- that he'd come around.

The last few questions take Rodimus by surprise, however, but he has an answer ready for that. He always has, and while he'd told Optimus it only recently, he'll tell Wing it too if that's what it takes. "He would. Because Optimus - Optimus makes it mean something that isn't the legacy of those Primes. And he does it because no one else can, because everyone else is like you, who'd rather think about it as a tarnished title instead of attempting to be everything good and noble. Well, not me. Never me."

His hero worship is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

[knightoflight]

"I...I'm sorry." What else can he say to that? "I thought we did the best we could." He trusted Dai Atlas's guidance blindly back then, only later realizing that the former Senator had had his own blindnesses. "We thought...we thought it was all we could do. We knew it wasn't enough. It could never be enough."

What could have been, other than stopping the war before it started?

"Maybe we need a new way, at least here. Maybe we shouldn't have any Prime at all, but all of us, equals."

[rodders]

Wing's admittance effectively rips the wind from Rodimus' sails, and he has to take a second or two to recover. "You could have stayed." It's more muttered than anything else, and he scowls - not at Wing but at some other point in the way, above the other bot.

"Well it's not like he's here, is he?" Which means that Rodimus fully expects Prime to be Prime if he shows up. Right before he has words with him about Megatron.

[knightoflight]

"We could have. We maybe should have. We just saw everything falling apart, everything collapsing. We wanted to save...some part of what we had once been." It sounds lame, it sounds like running away. At the time, he'd thought of it as heroic, a daring rescue mission. Now...he wasn't so sure.

"No, and maybe this is our opportunity, to show the kind of people we can be without a war, without that kind of hierarchy." Like Crystal City...originally.

[rodders]

"That-- that sort of thing, that's what I'm trying to do now. Finding the Knights of Cybertron and restoring Cybertron to the glory we had. Bumblebee wanted to start over but why? Why should we leave behind everything that made us who we are when it still exists out there somewhere?" His voice loses both the remainder of his hostility and sadness, instead turning confident. Because he still believes this, after everything. Finding the Knights won't make the losses worth it, he knows that, but it'll still be something.

Although the second part makes Rodimus pause, a questioning tilt to his helm. "We tried that, or at least Bee did back on Cybertron. Starscream's now leading it." So he's... going to gently take Wing's suggestion to abandon following Prime, or at least the idea of Prime, and place it not so gently in the scrap heap.

[knightoflight]

"You are?" He sounds more delighted than surprised. Drift hadn't told him this. "Perhaps Crystal City's archives could help. Dai Atlas..." And it hits him again: the city captured, Dai Atlas killed.

It's the thought that counts?

"Starscream? Megatron's second?" Wing feels bad, because he knows that his information is a few million years out of date, and he's apparently missed, well, a LOT. "Surely Megatron could do something?"

[rodders]

The thought indeed. "I thought so too, but uh. They didn't really want to come with us after we freed them all. Something about the movie Rewind made before he died." Which Skids had shown the Circle in their attempts to get them to come with, but that-- yeah that had not ended well. "But we're going to find Thunderclash and go from there."

He's not giving up on this. Not that he ever gives up on anything.

"Probably. Except that he's been 'fairly elected', so I bet you can guess why we can't just take him out." 'We' being Autobots and not Megatron, because somehow Rodimus doesn't think Megatron would care either way about Starscream. Or maybe he would, Rodimus doesn't know. He doesn't actually want to know.

[knightoflight]

He sounds disappointed in his own friends. "I'm sorry. I guess, perhaps they just wanted to mourn and rebuild." He was the only one who had tried to slip out of the city, stealing a few moments here and there.

"Take him out? You'd seriously consider assassination?" Wow, talk about way to not learn lessons about peace.

[rodders]

"I guess. They didn't stay and chat much after that." Which he was okay with, considering the mood their rejection had put him in. That and he was occupied with other things; like the no longer existing hot spot which was his fault, Fort Max, Magnus... Anyway. He rubs the back of his helm for a second before shrugging.

"Democratically elected leader, remember? So no, we wouldn't." As much as it chafes him to admit that, at least he doesn't have to live under Starscream's leadership. "It's not like he's going to keep from screwing up for much longer. And when he does, well. We all saw it coming."

[knightoflight]

"Shock, I'd imagine. It sounds like they'd been through a lot. And unlike you, we've been, well, isolate from so much." Not that it hit them harder, but, yes, well, maybe that. A little.

"They say every people get the government they deserve, for better or worse." They'd gotten Dai Atlas, in a sense, and he'd done well enough, but even he'd had his limitations, Wing had discovered. "We can hope the people are forewarned and on guard."