robothell | [ INTRO LOG ]

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[ 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

Well, now, that fellow didn't seem like he was in a very good condition at all.

Aftermath slows to a stop, standing over the injured mech and taking in his condition. Didn't seem to be of Cybertronian build- at least, nothing that he recognized. Leaking strange black fluid too.

Tilting his helm curiously, Aftermath gingerly kneels down next to the small flier, minding his own injuries. And then he reaches out, and very, very gently lifts and turns the strange mech over onto his back, making sure the wings were out of the way.

"Can you hear me?" the old mech asks once he's set the stranger's prone form down.

He can't fight it as he's turned over. Though he's dimly aware of being moved -- of someone else being nearby. He wants to struggle. He's frightened and helpless and hurting. But he can't do more than twitch.

His hands twitch. Clenching. Trying to move toward his weapons. The vague shape of the other bot registers, but no details.

Who is this? A BP unit? No -- he won't be captured.

No verbal response. Aftermath takes out his flashlight and clicks it on, shining it into the mech's eyes. There was some movement in the mechanisms there; was the mech at least somewhat lucid?

The old truck notes the hand twitches, although he doesn't see any kind of visible weaponry on the mech. Well, risking it for now.

"I don't have much in way of medical supplies, stranger," he says conversationally, clamping the flashlight onto his forearm and pulling out his field kit. "I'd go out and search but I'm not sure you'd last that long. Let's see if I can pull you through somewhat, at least."

Somewhere along the line, he starts hissing through his teeth. It's meant to be a warning. He doesn't know this bot. He doesn't know what his intentions really are. If this is a BP model, then --

Then he's in danger. And Shadowmaru really did break his promise. A thought that hurts. It hurts enough to turn the hissing to a distressed whine, his teeth bared.

Why... why would his friend break that promise? Why would he let them capture him?

He's probably in danger and all Kagerou can do is think of why his only friend in the world would have let him down.

It looked like EMP damage. Superficially, there was nothing he could see that would have caused enough damage to make a mech glitch quite like this. Just touching the fellow's plates felt like touching static. A quick scan with the basic mediscanner confirmed his diagnosis.

There wasn't a lot that COULD be done with something like this though. Just ground the mech, reboot and hope his systems hadn't been too fried. Otherwise, he was stuck on what was looking more and more like a derelict planet with no way of replacing or repairing any of his internal components.

Aftermath slides a steel wire under Kagerou's wrist armor, attaches the wire to a metal rod which he then hammers into the ground with a fist. Electricity pops against his hands briefly. That should take care care of some of the excess charge.

Gently, the big mech clamps one massive hand down on Kagerou's head. "Try to reboot," he tries, then switching his language to Standard Galactic Basic since the mech wasn't Cybertronian; "You need to reboot."

He's hardly aware of what's happening around him. There's another jerk or two, his hands clenching, shoulders moving like he wants to pull away entirely, but he can't. Nothing wants to move.

He can hear pounding. Electricity crackling. He flinches, despite himself. Because that's never a good sound to hear.

Then something is holding his head. There's a voice in a language he can't identify. It isn't Japanese.

But if the charge keeps getting displaced, maybe he can try to restart his motion centers...

Does this one even understand Basic, Aftermath wonders. He might not even be lucid enough to understand anything to begin with and attempts at communicating were just futile.

He runs the mediscanner again, but there was only so much he could figure out with the alien layout of the mech's internals. There wasn't anymore crack of electricity under his fingers anymore at least; the grounding rod was doing its job.

Turning to the city, Aftermath quietly debates going off to find some proper help.

Slowly, he feels the excess energy start to fade. Slowly, he starts getting control of his frame again. First his fingers. Then his voice.

He's not sure if he'll hear any response... but he should say something. Something to let them know he isn't just a machine. Whoever this is.

"Stay... stay back..."

Of course it comes out in Japanese. And of course there's no way for him to enforce that demand. But he has to try.

The quavering voice brings Aftermath's attention back to the mech. There's a peculiar moment where the words just sounded like gibberish to him, a language he'd never encountered.

And then it just sounded like standard Cybertronian.

Aftermath sits there for a moment, baffled by the development. Was it the pain dampeners? Did the mech actually know Cybertronian after all?

He decides to shrug it off for the time being; there was time for speculation and questions later. Gently setting the small mech's helm down on the ground, the truck-former sits back on his heels.

"You've been hit by an EMP of some sort. You should wait until your systems have rebooted before moving."

"Wh... what?"

The shudders have dulled down to shivers, now. His visual field keeps flickering in and out, but he's managing to get a steadier picture, now. A better image of the stranger.

And it makes him want to recoil.

"Who are -- who are you?"

Static cuts in and out of his voice, making it jerk and rasp. He feels himself moved, but it doesn't help. His hands dig at the ground, trying to crawl away without effect.

"Don't move," Aftermath repeats patiently. "Reboot your systems first."

Honestly, he doesn't blame the little mech for recoiling. The old mech was a towering, death gray colored pile of dense, combat-grade armor. He could fit the green fellow's head in one palm easy and probably crush it like a sheet of tinfoil.

"I am Aftermath," he answers, voice on it's gentlest setting. Easing back a bit more to give the little flier some space, he continues, "I just woke up here a while ago, just like you."

He froze, though his ventilation systems worked rapidly, harshly, reacting to his panic. It was all he could do not to fight the immobility by thrashing. That wouldn't help anything. But he didn't want to simply lie there, either

Reboot? How could he reboot on his own? He had to be in a repair bay, hooked up to outside systems.

"I can't--"

He shudders, before he gets himself back under control. The sight he sees doesn't comfort him. The massive bot only makes him want to run and hide all the more.

"Are you -- are you Brave Police?"

"I am not." Shrugging, Aftermath places his hands on his lap, tilting his head curiously. "I'm afraid I've never heard of such a name, but then I've never met police officers who were particularly brave. Sadistic and tripping on power, yes, but not brave."

"You can't reboot?" he asks after a moment. "Unfortunate. Try not to pull the grounding rod out of the ground for a bit then, I suppose. You'll have to find someone to help you with rebooting later."

"They... police force. AIs."

He wants to say more, but the static laces through his voice again, and he has to fall silent. Shuddering, while the grounding device pulls more charge out of him. The world starts to come into focus.

"What... what are you then...?"

Good, an entire sentence. That's progress. Even if it's halting and broken. He glances to one side, at the aforementioned rod, and is surprised when his head actually moves.

Also probably a good sign.

"No. Humans. Don't want their help."

"There are no humans here as far as I have seen. I was thinking more a visit to a medic, although I'm not sure how much good that might do you as the medics here would be Cybertronian." Aftermath watches as the mech slowly begins to recover, contemplatively tapping the side of his mask.

"I am Cybertronian. I am a journalist." The words are followed by a slight shrug.

Something... relaxes. It's hard to see, unless you were looking closely. But something in that frame relaxes, when he hears there are no humans here. No humans in this world.

"All... right," he says, and it comes out as a sigh.

His visible optic blinks.

"What is a... what is a journalist...?"

No humans as far as Aftermath knew, buddy. He's going to be disappointed once he finds out there are actually some humans around, wasn't he? That or finding out how shitty Cybertronians kind of were.

Still, the way he relaxes after that earns a somewhat curious look from Aftermath. Bad encounter with humans?

"A person who collects and distributes news. Or other current information, really, news takes a lot of different forms."

He's going to assume that means there are no humans. Because Kagerou's assumptions have always been good to go with. Clearly. His face is still turned skyward, so he misses the look.

"I've never... met an AI... who does that."

Because clearly all robots are AI.

"Never?"

Folding his hands against one knee, Aftermath leans over Kagerou once more, a curious expression on his face.

"What do you mean by 'AI'?"

"Never..."

He has to sit through another spasm or two of dissipating charge before he can answer. But the question itself is strange. Why is he being asked that, of all things? He frowns as best he can.

"Artificial. Intelligence. AI. Robots."

Though the last word comes out more bitter than the rest.

"In my experience, AI is a very strange and fluid term. Clones of sentient organic life would be AI, but they wouldn't be robots, would they? On the flipside, an organic being putting themselves into a machine body would not be AI, but whether or not they're robots is up in the air." Tapping his chin speculatively, he continues, "It's a lot of red tape and politics."

"You see, I myself would not be considered an AI traditionally. My 'personality core' or 'spark', as far as anyone knows at least, was not artificially created. Unless someone considers possible divine creation to be artificially creating intelligence." Aftermath stops to think that one through; WOULD being synthetically created by omniscient beings be considered artificially creating intelligence?

"My point being," he continues after a moment, making a note to research more on that later on. "that the legal definition varies from place to place and it's hard to tell what people mean sometimes."

This was possibly a lot of words for a mech who was just recovering from EMP damage.

He hears the words. He hears every one of them. But... by the same token, not all of them register. He doesn't have meaning to attach to them. He doesn't have the experience to puzzle them out. Divine creation? Red tape? Legal definition?

Honestly, it sounds a little like the things Azuma would babble about when he thought Kagerou wasn't listening. Things Shadowmaru was upset by, but pretended not to be.

He shutters his visible optic, tilting his head back while he tries to filter through all that information.

And fails.

"I... don't understand," he murmurs, finally. "I'm an AI... what. Does the rest of that mean?"

"Ah, well." Aftermath seems a bit taken aback. He takes a moment to think before carefully answering. "Perhaps this is a discussion best spread out over a bit more time, stranger. If you do not know a lot if what I am saying then I think we will have a lot to talk about."

Either the mech was very young or very, very under-educated. Aftermath would need some time to think through any answers he gives to the fellow. It would not do to have him growing up with any wrong ideas. Or at least, he would need to be able to give the very basic information and let Kagerou work out his own view on things.

"Kagerou."

He all but hisses the word. The name. He can't help it. Even through the pain and fear, the confusion. That's his name. His and his alone. He is Kagerou.

Everyone should know it. So he'll never be allowed to forget it. So there's no way they can take it from him.

"I am Kagerou."

"Kagerou," Aftermath corrects himself, tone gentle.

"Are you feeling better?" he asks after a beat. "Do you need any fuel? And more importantly, can you run on energon?"

Re: CRATER

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