robot satan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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robothell2014-12-19 11:20 pm
robotsatan) wrote in robothell2014-12-19 11:20 pm
[ 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...
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...
no subject
Helpful, Rodimus. He finally actually manages to see who's talkg to him and just. Stares slightly because he knows that's like an infant organic or something so why is it talking like Perceptor? He didn't ask for this, he really truly didn't.
"Don't take this personally but what would you know about stuff like that? Your planet can't handle Cybertronians without wanting to blow us up." And quantum engines are clearly more difficulty for the human brain to process than giant living robots.
no subject
Oh, right, she should probably clarify, since there was no way this guy was going to connect the dots. "You and I aren't from the same universe. Whatever happened between your species and humans never occurred where I'm from. If Cybertronians even exist in my universe, they've never visited Earth."
Granted, Val couldn't be absolutely sure about that, given how much of a secret history her planet had, but this particular giant space robot didn't seem like someone who really appreciated the existence of error bars on measurements, and an argument about proving negatives and the preponderance of evidence was one she didn't care to have right this second. So, rounding it up to certainty. He'd never know.
no subject
But the thing about the universes actually explains a lot, and Rodimus deflates a bit - plating smoothing out from where it had puffed up in aggravation. Sure, that's fine. That's not the weirdest thing he's heard in the past few days, so he just sort of shrugs.
"Alternate universes. Right."
The unasked question: how do they go about fixing this, because he has no desire to remain here. Thanks but no thanks.
no subject
"Anyway, I can build a portal for trans-universal travel, but it's gonna take a while." She gestured around them at the ruins. Putting together a half-decent lab would take months. "Hopefully someone back home notices I'm gone and comes looking so we can skip that part."
no subject
He is, on the other hand, going to need a second to process that last statement. "But you're like... an infant organic. How can you do that?" He knows they have a period of learning where they kind of ooze across everything and shove things into their mouths, right? Rodimus is pretty sure how that went, and he was really grateful that was never a stage of his own development.
no subject
"One, yes, it's a thing. Two, I'm an outlier." Someone should probably explain to her that the word with a legitimate technical meaning up until it was co-opted that Cybertronians used for their particular hated-and-feared minority was 'outlier' and not 'mutant,' before she managed to hopelessly confuse them by continuing to use it in its mathematical definition.
It was probably too late for Rodimus, though.
no subject
To be fair to him, superlearning is not a bad guess. He shrugs - Val looks overall unthreatening, and while he's not very fond of humans thanks to that bit with the guns and the shooting and the killing Autobots in the street thing, she doesn't seem likely to whip out a gun and kill him. Yet.
no subject
"'Skids' is a person?" Thanks to Val's perceptiveness, Rodimus' tendency to only have about half the conversation he should be having was only annoying rather than infuriating.
no subject
The way he says 'my' definitely indicates that he is in charge of said crew and attached ship. "He's an outlier. Uh, so was Trailbreaker before he--"
Yeah.
Hmm.
no subject
"Depowered or dead?" she asked as soon as it became clear he wasn't finishing the sentence. The only time Val didn't go straight for the throat, conversationally speaking, was when she was hiding something.
no subject
"Dead. Er, messily." Rodimus's face turns dark, and his optics fall away from Val. Trailcutter's death might not be his fault but it's still one more member of his crew dead. And he hates that, more than anything. "Anyway, Skids learns things instantly."
no subject
Huge egos, however, were not a problem.
Rodimus obviously didn't want to talk about this Trailbreaker person and Val didn't care about dead people she never knew, so she let it go. Time to deal with the misconception she now realized was afoot.
"You think I'm a mutant?" she asked, rhetorically, punctuated with a sigh. Terminology. "I meant 'outlier' in the statistical sense, not in whatever colloquial meaning it has to you. I don't have any special powers."
...Insisted the time-traveling, supervillain-manipulating, lightsaber-building, TARDIS-inventing supergenius three year old.
no subject
'No special powers' his aft.
no subject
Val wasn't trolling, but her player sure was.
no subject
Or does he.
no subject
"So there's more than one way of getting powers where you're from, too. Fine." She brushed off the qualification. "It doesn't change the fact I don't have any."
Val was willing to die on the hill of arguing about definitions, because three year olds were very, very good at being stubborn about stupid, stupid things. She just did it with a bigger vocabulary than most.
no subject
That's actually kind of boring. Sorry, Val.
no subject
"It runs in the family," Val said, propping her chin on her hands. "Everyone else has powers, though." She wasn't particularly upset about that, because being the smartest person ever is way better than lighting yourself on fire.