OPEN |

[orerrible]

Who: Shockwave and YOU, unfortunately
Where: Around
When: Oh man who cares.
What: Cracks knuckles despite only having one working hand - it's time for Science.
Warnings: Shockwave. Will update as needed.

( a ) city

The laboratory was stopgap; very much a work in progress with antiquated equipment identified after the sheets of dust and debris were pulled back revealing something, well, altogether underwhelming. Shockwave had worked in greater want for his nigh impossible standards met in the past, but he felt the simplicity that ruled his life now more challenge than before. All because he was presented with the rather disturbing mystery to be opened up and examined: What, in his absence, could have so thoroughly salted the earth. Reverse engineering the apocalypse certainly seemed like a task he could accomplish given time.

Shockwave needed to work - too many questions to be answered, and after Emma carved that much-needed stricture into his brow he was...spurred to begin anew with greater purpose. The bare bones of what he surmised to be a university research lab would have to suffice. For now.

Prodding the nerve endings of the network, now more noticed by the outside world than a ripple in a greater reservoir, he examined the footprints left behind by the minds behind it, amused with how rudimentary it was. Impressed that even existed at all. A Beowulf cluster suddenly superseded all other priorities; something closed and close to the chest away from prying eyes. In the matter of hours all useable hardware had been cannibalized with the stripped parts left out the front doors out into a narrow alleyway between the lab and desolate campus like bones spat out at the mouth of a monsters' cave. The afterthought of his mess a warning written loud and clear: Stay Away.

( b ) wildcard

( pick your own adventure; finding holo avatar Shockwave in somewhere too small for his regular old purplesaurus rex self or any other feasible random encounter )

Comments

[optout]

Optimus couldn't believe his eyes as it happened. Despite being told exactly what it was, it was like watching the impossible happen. The purple turning to white, the green highlights strikingly painted against it. It was Shockwave as he was, as everyone had wanted to remember him, standing before him as nothing but an illusion, but everything that Shockwave was behind the wall of Shadowplay.

His blue eyes soften at meeting the other's, knowing full well that this wasn't the past being corrected. It was sad, but a kind of sadness that Optimus would let into his spark. Ratchet would say that pain is necessary to feel happiness. Maybe this was what he meant by that.

Looking at a ghost, something so real that he could touch it. But the ghost touches him, instead, eyes slowly tracing down to where they connected, seeing the light. That ache in his spark slowly returning.

"I knew."

There's more to that. Optimus, for as well as he spoke, still had trouble finding words sometimes.

"I knew you could be who you were. This light show...it's certainly spectacular. But your efforts to make it....that's what proves that I'm right. That you've been here this whole time."

And there's the happiness in the pain.

[orerrible]

As it had been said and reiterated ad nauseam by anyone attempting to grasp at real depth: the mind was a funny thing. No one truly lacked that inherit predisposition of wanting to be fooled, even if it was a mere trick of the light. It manifests in slow and subtle ways that the most grounded individual falls victim to it: Day after day on a bench hopelessly waiting for a preferred past to reestablish itself. In place of an emotional crutch applying to word 'logic' to extreme behavior as an insulator.

Knowing that this was all the optics tricking the brain module into believing physical touch was possible. All an illusion until you've convinced yourself otherwise when the reality becomes too painful.

"I never left."

Shockwave had told Emma when she was in his mind: The hard truth at the heart of it all was that Shadowplay, the empurata, all of it - it never had really broken him. It just cut out anything worth breaking. A sad reminder that this had always been him in there. The smitten young senator flirting with agitators or the frigid scientist reducing lives to a cold calculus. When one resurfaces the other never really goes away.

"Just once." Shockwave says thickly as he leans forward; a hairsbreadth knowing that any closer and the hard light projection would be unable to create a convincing enough lie. The crown of his forehead rests gingerly against Optimus's and once more, just above a whisper. "Just this once."

[optout]

Optimus's eyes flick a shade dimmer at listening to Shockwave's voice, more alive now than it had ever been in the last four million years. It was like music, although it was a sadder tune, full of pain and sorrow. And for a moment, Optimus just drowns himself in it. The light projection takes a backseat to just hearing his friend, someone he'd waited so long to see again, seeing them again here...

A trick of the optics wasn't so bad...it was more than what reality had ever given him.

Something in his system hitches as he feels Shockwave move closer, his forehead slowly looming towards his. Those eyes flick down, looking at how his friend had once been, drinking it in. Because if this was an illusion, he wanted to be fooled for as long as possible.

"This once." he repeats, voice as soft as it's ever been.