[ INTRO LOG #2 ]

[robotsatan]

You don't know how you got here. One minute you were walking, sleeping, maybe dead -- then you're here, your feet suddenly carrying you down an empty street. Where's here?

Any Cybertronian would recognize this as their home planet, Cybertron, but it's not a Cybertron they've ever known. It has all the familiar hallmarks, but none of the specifics -- the city isn't one anyone here could identify, and even at a glance it's obvious that no one's set foot on the planet's surface in hundreds of years. The city and its surrounding areas all bear the marks of devastating war, of dust and rust collected over centuries. With other people relatively scarce, there's plenty to explore. In fact, if you start walking, you'll find that your feet may just carry you in one particular direction.

Despite its obvious ruin and aeons-long abandonment, the city and surrounding areas do bear some signs of recent habitation. There's a small but growing population of other people, Cybertronian and otherwise, and there's evidence of their presence -- areas of the city that have been cleaned up for use, intact rooms in ruins of buildings where people have set up to live, a few terminals here and there that have been restored to power.

A) The crater.
On one edge of the city is a massive crater left by some wartime weapon that seems to have taken out a large chunk of the surrounding metropolitan area. At the center of the crater it's broken through the surface of the terrain to reveal what looks like it might be a promising energon deposit. There is some strange but native vegetation growing around the edges, too, that no Cybertronian would be able to identify -- small, metallic, brittle-looking sprouts that bear a curiously organic-looking fruit of some kind that doesn't look like it's intended for consumption by any natives of the planet. In one rocky nook of the crater, light catches on the surface of a pool of water, which seems strangely out of place on Cybertron. On closer inspection, it seems that somehow an underground water source has formed a spring in the crater.

B) The center of the city.
If you follow where your feet seem to want to carry you, you'll find yourself in the middle of the ruined city. It seems that the center of the city was once home to a massive forum, and some of the pillars and structures still stand. At the very center of the forum is a massive, elaborately constructed fountain, although it has now long since run dry of whatever used to fill it. One of the low, inner walls of the forum has a terminal embedded in its surface, although it looks curiously ancient, out of place with the rest of the city, and unlike the rest of the technology still left around, there doesn't seem to be any way to power it on or operate it. There are a few scattered pools of water and a few of the strange metallic plants in the city, too, but they're not quite as plentiful as in the crater.

The planet was obviously once home to a massive network of communication relays, but those have all been long since destroyed. However, a few enterprising transplants have worked together to set up a working local network, which can be accessed via any one of the public terminals, any built-in comms systems your character might have (audio only), or a handheld device produced by one of the people who set up the network.

Comments

[primebyproxy]

Ultra Magnus' back and arms still ache from the weight of the drill as he powers down, curled in on himself to fit in what space he has in his cell. They'll still ache when he has to shoulder the massive machine again tomorrow. There's nothing he can do about that any more.

Everything still aches when he comes online to the overpowering need to walk somewhere. He knows he shouldn't try; disobedience means pain. But he can't shake the urge, and when he looks up slowly, ready to be kicked back down by a guard, he finds he's no longer in his cell. He has no idea where he is or how he got here from the mines, and as he labours to his feet, he groans. His entire being feels sore and worn down to the frame. Abused joints squeal under the strain of standing straight for the first time in weeks; bleary optics focus skyward, at some distant point he can't see.

Magnus has no idea where he is, but he knows he needs to be somewhere else. His first step is a staggering one and he grabs at the wall for balance, kicking over a pile of rusted rubble in the struggle to avoid falling.

He should try to find fuel, too. He starts forward again, more slowly this time.

B

[tsunclonus]

The unidentified city is a harsh contrast to glittering Rodion in its prime. When they time-jumped again, the last thing Cyclonus expected was to find himself in what appeared to be post-war Cybertron in the middle of a city he doesn't recognize.

Were they too late? Is this the new future Brainstorm's meddling wrought? But how did he get here, and why is he alone? Where are Tailgate and the others?

He almost takes to the sky to search for signs of life, but he finds himself walking instead. There's a feeling urging him on, guiding his footsteps in one direction. Ahead of him are the ruins of some grand forum. He can tell it was beautiful once, and his spark aches for it as it does for the Cybertron he once knew.

Cautiously, he approaches the center of the city.

B

[wimbles]

Windblade has never seen all that much of Cybertron.

She's seen it from space, of course, and she knows Metroplex, Iacon, like the back of her hand by now, but she's yet to have much cause to venture into the uninhabited wilderness very often – so when she finds herself here, in what she knows must be Cybertron from the feeling it has, old and alive on a scale far beyond Caminus, she assumes at first that she hasn't left the planet, never mind the universe. Not that she isn't worried, of course – she has no idea where she is or how she got there – but the scope of her concern is... smaller. More manageable.

There's something somehow different about the sky, though, and her attempts to comm allies and friends get her nowhere – and when she takes to the air to get her bearings, she doesn't get far beyond the city limits before she realises something is pulling her back.

It feels, to Windblade, who has spent her entire life speaking with titans, as if someone is trying to tell her something.

She turns around, following that beckoning impulse straight to the ruined forum.

She's drawn immediately to the terminal and its endlessly looping images – it's nothing she's used to, but it's definitely some attempt to communicate...

The trail she's left across the sky is pretty obvious, pretty easy to follow. Someone should interrupt her before she and Cybertron have a Moment.

[smallandincharge]

The stars had stopped moving.
As Ultra Magnus appears on the strange new Cybertron, that is all that she manages to hold on to. Perceptor and Megatron are both gone. The communications room, the briefcases, the Lost Light - all gone. All that remains is that stark, unsettling memory of the universe grinding to a halt. She had tried to put a brave face on it, but being the last witness of the collapse of the grand order of reality was the most unsettled she had ever been since hearing of the introduction of the abridged Autobot Code.
She reconsiders. She has something else - the spark-deep sensation of time, or perhaps space, having passed her by while she wasn't looking. This isn't like the last time that the time-space continuum collapsed out from under her, when whole chunks of the Lost Light had vanished piecemeal, when most of her crew had been swept away by quantum brooms (she's pretty sure that's how that simile goes), when she herself had vanished, only to reappear what was apparently hours later, not having noticed a moment of it. This time, she knows something's happened. She just can't remember any of it.
She looks down, and abruptly realizes that she brought one more thing with her. Inexplicably, impossibly, of all the things she could have taken from the lost Lost Light - she still clutches the golden, grinning face of her Rodimus Star in one massive hand.
Ultra Magnus finally looks up. While she was lost in contemplation, her feet have been carrying her along a street that is both completely unrecognizable and strangely familiar. This is neither the Cybertron she knew of old, nor the Cybertron reborn that she left behind. But, nonetheless, it feels like Cybertron. Where is she, anyways?

((This is your friendly reminder that Ultra Magnus uses she/her/hers pronouns, and that everyone should just use them, by default, both IC and OOC, without commenting or considering that strange. TY!))