robothell | [ INTRO LOG ]

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 no one in sight -- right at first, anyway -- 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.

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, with the bits and pieces left behind and a few determined minds, it wouldn't be too hard to build a working, if rudimentary, one...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She's so small, she almost gets lost in the mess. Orion doesn't even notice that she's come to sit down from the other side of the rubble, but when he finally spots her, he is both concerned and confused. He leans around to look at her, nearly 15 times her height.

"Are you alright?" he asks, trying to speak softly. He's never seen a creature quite like this before.

Brass jumps a bit, looking up in surprise. And further up. This was by far the largest medabot she had ever seen. Assuming he was a medabot, which she was seriously beginning to doubt the more she say of him. She gets up slowly as if that would help the height difference at all as she looks up at his face, eyes wide.

She takes a moment to try and compose herself before answering.
"Not really. I'm lost, and I don't know how I got here, and Miss Arika isn't here."

He frowns sympathetically, coming around the rubble a bit to face her more directly, but keeping his distance. He imagines that he looms quite a bit, and he visibly hunches down at the shoulders, as if trying to seem smaller.

"Who is...Miss Arika?" he asks.

Brass is very relieved that there is someone friendly here, even if talking to him is a bit challenging at the moment.

"Miss Arika is my medafighter and my best friend. We're always together." She sighed, eyes lowered, "I was just with her but then I wound up here and there was no one else around."

Miss Arika wasn't here, and sitting here feeling sad for herself wasn't going to get her home. Arika wouldn't approve, anyway, she'd want Brass to be strong. Brass straightened up, looking up at Orion again. "Could you tell me where we are?"

Orion doesn't know what a medafighter is, but he at least understand the sentiment. He vents a little, and nods, looking up and out at the wreckage.

"I believe we are on Cybertron, or a place like it," he says, carefully. "If it is my home, then it is in much greater disrepair than when I saw it last." He looks back to her, carefully. "But it would seem that you are not from here. I could not tell you what has brought us all here, but it may or may not offer consolation to know that I do not recall how I arrived here either."

That wasn't terribly consoling, really. All it did was bring up more questions. Brass took a look around. If Arika were here, she would start looking for answers, like a real investigator. Having someone else around made things infinitely more manageable.

"Thank you, anyway. I'm Brass, it's nice to meet you."

She looked around, spotting what looked like it might be a computer in one of the nearby walls.

"Do you think that works?" she asked, pointing it out.

"I am Orion Pax," he replies, and smiles for her before contemplating her question. Thankfully it's one he's already been examining for a while.

"I have been searching the area for a while now, and it appears that all of these machines have been damaged to the point of being nonfunctional. I have hope that I may be able to repair some of it with time - my class was never trained for technical work, but I have spent my entire life working within the Iacon Archives. Some understanding of communication arrays has rubbed off, over time."

"If you need any help, I would be happy to assist you any way I can. I'm not very good with computers, but I have helped Miss Arika fix her video camera before."

If Orion could get these machines working, there might be a clue as to how to get home. If only everything here weren't so big, she might be able to help more.

"What are the Iacon Archives?"

"It is where my people, Cybertronians, collected and cataloged all of the planet's cultural data. Communications. Broadcasts. I functioned as a clerk, indentifying and sorting files into the repositories." It is said a little wistfully. He's never quite sure whether those should be fond memories or not. "I was assigned there shortly after I was sparked."

"Oh! Like a library!" Brass actually spent a lot of time at the library, since Arika usually didn't have the patience for research. She would often wind up talking with the librarian or helping shelve books.

"I'm sure you had all sorts of interesting articles, it sounds like an amazing place." She couldn't even imagine a library that had information from all over the world. The Iacon Archives must have been enormous.

Orion smiles faintly, looking down to her. He appreciates that sort of curiosity in other bots.

"It is," he says. "One could read of the entire history of our kind there...if one were granted access." The last part is added a little awkwardly. He'd gotten access, but it had never quite been allowed. "If I had not ventured into the Archives, there are many important things I never would have learned of."

[ INTRO LOG ]

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