robothell | it's a doll revolution

Who: Skipper Roberts and her cell phone, tablet, and handheld gaming systems! And ALSO YOU!
Where: Near the crater!
When: RIGHT NOW AT THIS VERY MOMENT GO GO GO
What: Intro thread
Warnings: literal barbie doll in your robots

At first, sitting tailor-style with her head down in her phone, Skipper didn't notice anything wrong. Sure, the air pressure changed a bit, and the sound of Ryan playing his guitar to serenade her big sister vanished, but sending a friend advice on how to talk to some boy at the mall? A totes more dire emergency. Like, what even could be more important than that right at this moment?

It wasn't until the sending the text netted her an error message, and her phone was all like, "no reception!" at her, that she frowned. No network? This is Malibu! There was always cell reception!

She poked and prodded at her phone for a minute, then looked up.

This is not Malibu.

"Oooookay," she said to the empty air, "This? This is pretty weird."

Slowly climbing to her feet, she stuffs her phone into her purse and pulls out all the rest of her electronics, one at a time, testing to see if any of them can pick up an internet signal she can use; they all come up empty, which is making her feel a little panicked. No internet? No internet? How is she going to live?

Slightly less importantly, where the heck is she?

Slowly, she begins to hike around the edges of the weird crater with its weird glowy center; the signs of nature are, thankfully, all made of metal-looking stuff, and thus not as awful as they could be, but it was still weird and uncomfortable and incredibly mysterious, and completely out of Skipper's area of expertise. Still, metal. She could work with metal! It's not as good as plastic, but it's better than nothing, and occasionally she'll pick up a piece of promising-looking wire or scrap metal and stow it in her apparently bottomless purse.

Any robots who happen across Skipper may notice that, while technically made out of organic materials, Skipper herself doesn't appear to be an organic, strictly speaking; humans, with their closer perspective, may notice that she appears to literally be made out of plastic herself, if uncommonly animate plastic, and while her clothes cover her shoulder and hip joints, the seam where her head meets her neck is pretty noticeable.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Skipper is hard to miss, despite her comparatively small stature, because her colorful clothing stands out against the muted, ruined surroundings. Lock-On does has not learned very much about human fashions in the time that she has known humans, but, for some reason that she can't quite articulate, the garments of this particular human speak to her more and more as she gets closer.

The sounds of Lock-On's approach are just as hard to miss as Skipper's bright clothing, which works in Lock-On's favor. She doesn't want to startle any more humans than she already has.

"Hello there," she says, in her usual phone operator tone of voice. "I do not believe that I have seen you before. Have you arrived recently?"

Yeahhhh, a big noisy tank is pretty hard to miss, and Skipper looks it over with wide eyes, her phone still held in the air in a hopeless attempt to get signal.

"Uh, yes?" she answers whoever's in the tank, slowly lowering the phone and snapping a pic of the legit tank that's actually right there, wow. "I guess so. This totally isn't Malibu, and I've never been anyplace that actually looks like this place before, so..."

Is this a war zone or something? Skipper's big sister has been in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, so it's not like war isn't a thing, but Skipper herself has never been to one before. It's a lot... quieter than she'd expected, somehow.

"You are on what seems to be an iteration of a planet called Cybertron," says Lock-On plainly. Hopefully stating that information in a matter-of-fact way will make it a little less shocking.

Though, perhaps this human has some experience dealing with Cybertronians, like June does. The lack of immediate screaming at encountering a talking tank is a promising sign. This might be another opportunity for interspecies cultural exchange.

"...Is Malibu on Earth? I am interested in Earth."

To be honest, Skipper is just assuming there's some lady in the tank talking to her through a speaker or something. Still, a look of dawning understanding crosses her face. "Yeah, Malibu's on Earth. So this is an alien planet?" True, she hasn't seen any aliens yet-- unless the tank is an alien tank, and the lady inside is an alien lady, which sounds pretty likely-- but a planet called Cybertron sounded like a totally alien one.

"Malibu is totally on Earth! It's a place on the west coast of the North American continent, and it is super gorgeous and sunny all the time there. Are you from someplace on this planet, or...?"

The human seems to take the whole you're-on-an-alien-planet thing pretty well, which is reassuring. Lock-On still has an inclination that she's dealing with someone who knows at least a little bit about Cybertronians here, based on the calmness of this conversation, but she's beginning to have doubts. "That is correct...in a sense. I was not constructed on Cybertron, but I am a Cybertronian. I was made off-planet."

She pauses thoughtfully for a moment. "Have you not had prior experience with either Cybertronians or our civil war?"

"Uh," Skipper starts, and squints at the tank. "No, I've never heard of you guys before. But my sister's an ambassador to the aliens we've got back home..."

Look, Barbie has had a lot of jobs.

"... Are you an alien robot or something?" she asks, because while technically everyone Skipper knows was made in one way or another, the only person she knows who talks about it like that is Closet, the robot that lives in Barbie's closet.

Lock-On's assumption wasn't entirely incorrect, then. This human has encountered, or at least indirectly learned about, species from other planets. There's some relief in hearing that the Cybertronians' civil war hasn't reached Earth, though that does beg the question of how exactly June knows about Cybertronians. Then again, there's weird dimensional and temporal stuff happening here – or so Lock-On has heard.

"Not exactly," she says. "I am a mechanical being, but many of the connotations that accompany the word 'robot' simply do not apply."

...Wait a minute. Has she forgotten something?

Oh. Yeah. "...Either way, you may call me Lock-On."

"Another one? Seriously?"

What is it with this place and organics? Which, as far as Rodimus is concerned, is what Skipper is - sure, there's something off about her, but he's perfectly willing to write that off as a weird organic quirk. He did, however, almost step on her because he is not used to looking where he is going when he's on Cybertron. No one looks past their knees, he can't be blamed!

Skipper yelps, and dodges out from under his giant foot, and yells up at the big ol' alien robot (wow, who's WAY more sensibly designed than Closet, with the legs and everything-- though she's a little unfond of how he just about stepped on her with them), "Hey, watch where you're going, you jerk!"

Like, okay, clearly he's painted in look-at-me colors, she should've been able to see him before he nearly squished her, but she was super busy, like, looking at her phone. So this encounter is all his fault.

"Watch where I'm going? You're the one that's too small!" This is clearly the problem here and not that he just wasn't paying attention.

He does back off, however, gesturing at her everything. Primus, she's even smaller than most of the human organics he's seen - around the height of that one he'd met and never ran into again here. Whatever her name was. Wasn't really important, or else they would have run into each other again.

Defensively, she snaps back without thinking, "Being too small never hurt anyone! Unlike you, you big blind dumb robot!"

Okay wait that was kind of rude. Barbie's not here, but Skipper can see the sad look that her sister would give her for that kind of attitude, and it makes guilt stir up in her hollow plastic torso.

"... Sorry, that was kind of mean," Skipper apologizes, and takes a few steps back, and a couple completely unneeded breaths. "I think we're getting off on the wrong foot here."

"Hey!," he exclaims defensively. "I'm the normal size, or haven't you looked around yet?"

'Big blind dumb robot'. Ugh, organics! But then she apologizes, and Rodimus taken aback slightly - that's something he's not used to from humans, surprise flickering over his face before it settles into an expression far more open, and then he grins.

"Foot, huh." Now is not the time to point out unintended jokes, Rodimus. But he continues on from his earlier comment "You're on Cybertron - it's my planet. Er, sort of." He hasn't really paid attention to the details about being on a different Cybertron beyond that particular fact. Something about alternate realities and ending up here when he should have been in the past on his Cybertron.

it's a doll revolution | open

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