robotsatan: (Default)
robot satan ([personal profile] robotsatan) wrote in [community profile] 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...
rodders: <user name=brodinsons> (WOAH WOAH BRING IT DOWN A LEVEL)

[personal profile] rodders 2015-01-06 07:00 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, that." Wait what. "Legitimate magic? That's a thing?" Yeah, okay, there's a difference between people doing stuff it's just easier to classify as magic, but actual real magic? Not something he's really inclined to believe actually exists.

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.
smarterthandad: (82)

[personal profile] smarterthandad 2015-01-06 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Rodimus was really not in a position to be casting aspersions on other people's stages of development. Fortunately for him, Val couldn't read minds and didn't have a machine to do it on her right this second.

"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.
rodders: <user name=brodinsons> (I'M TELLING THE STORY)

[personal profile] rodders 2015-01-12 03:51 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh." Yeah, it's too late. But that means she's something he knows, which is a lot more helpful in the long term. Who needs math anyway? Not him. "Guess you're like Skids then."

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.
smarterthandad: (40)

[personal profile] smarterthandad 2015-01-12 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
Fortunately for his life expectancy, being obnoxious was not, in Val's opinion, a capital offense.

"'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.
rodders: <user name=brodinsons> (LEAAAAANING)

[personal profile] rodders 2015-01-16 05:02 pm (UTC)(link)
"One of my crew, yeah."

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.
smarterthandad: (move if you're not using that outlet)

[personal profile] smarterthandad 2015-01-17 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
Val's opinion of the Autobots took a sudden dip. Who the heck put this guy in charge of anything more serious than a lemonade stand?

"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.
rodders: <user name=brodinsons> (SO PEOPLE ARE PRETTY DECENT)

[personal profile] rodders 2015-01-17 04:06 am (UTC)(link)
No one put him in charge of anything, Val, he just became in charge of it. Also he at least has a hint of leadership ability, so credit where credit is due.

"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."
smarterthandad: (18)

[personal profile] smarterthandad 2015-01-17 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Val miiiiiight have a preference for chessmaster types. Maybe. A little.

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.
rodders: <user name=brodinsons> (SAVE ME FROM THIS TRIAL)

[personal profile] rodders 2015-01-18 05:48 pm (UTC)(link)
"A what?" He peers at her, optics narrowing suspiciously. "I've been to your planet. It was awful, but I know little undeveloped organic offspring don't talk like you do."

'No special powers' his aft.
smarterthandad: (78)

[personal profile] smarterthandad 2015-01-18 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm just smart. It's not like I can generate force fields or set myself on fire or anything."

Val wasn't trolling, but her player sure was.
rodders: <user name=brodinsons> (I'VE GOT TWO WORDS FOR YOU)

[personal profile] rodders 2015-01-24 08:52 pm (UTC)(link)
"Setting yourself on fire doesn't make you an Outlier, I'd know."

Or does he.
smarterthandad: (10)

[personal profile] smarterthandad 2015-01-26 05:17 pm (UTC)(link)
None of us know that's the problem.

"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.
rodders: <user name=brodinsons> (MAYBE CHROMEDOME GOT ME)

[personal profile] rodders 2015-01-27 08:28 pm (UTC)(link)
"Well no, not really--" You'd think this would be the time he'd stop and think about himself and the fact that no one else he knows can set themselves on fire and what that means for him but that's asking a lot from Rodimus at this point in time. "So what, you're just super smart?"

That's actually kind of boring. Sorry, Val.
smarterthandad: (that's very interestinzzzzzzzz)

[personal profile] smarterthandad 2015-01-28 08:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, actually, with respect to powers [RIDICULOUS BACKSTORY REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF WE'RE PRETENDING THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN] so as you can see, it's still up in the air.

"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.