[ INTRO LOG ]

[robotsatan]

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...

Comments

[aminerproblem]

Had this situation not already been as increasingly weird as it were, the possibility may never have crossed his mind. But given the recent string of utterly ridiculous encounters on his way into the city, he was starting to expect anything.

"What would be your answer to that?"

[towardspeace]

"The same as yours," he says, levelly: "Megatron of Tarn."

Despite the confidence of that assertion, the gaze he's got fixed on the younger bot is distinctly suspicious. It's not so much that he doubts it's really him – now that the initial shock is beginning to subside, he has to acknowledge that after everything he's seen lately he has pretty much zero reason to doubt that – but he sure as hell doesn't want to have to deal with this.

[aminerproblem]

His apparent older self also get a look over, giving a considerable pause to the Autobot badge. The look across his face is not so much disappointment as confirmation of what he'd been told, and a bitter uncertainty on how to approach demanding answers for what happened.

But, given they were currently on an unknown location that neither of them seemed to recognize, he suspects this might not be the best time to get sidetracked explaining four million years of his own history. Not when there were more prudent issues at hand.

The feeling subsides, for now.

"What were you trying to do to that terminal?"

[towardspeace]

Straight to business. He appreciates that. Nice one, past Megatron. This whole situation is still profoundly uncanny... but with it established that this is his past self, he'd rather work out what's going on here than dig into their differences.

"I wasn't trying to do anything to it – I wanted to see if it was functional. It isn't." He looks back at Megatron Junior, contemplative. "... What brought you here? Not here to this planet – here, specifically. Did you feel any... pull, to this location?"

[aminerproblem]

"It is rather strange that we'd cross paths in a city this large by mere coincidence."

He finally starts to close the distance between them. Having a conversation at a couple dozen feet away is just awkward. (He'd also be lying if he said he wasn't curious enough to want a closer look.)

"Yes, there was something. A feeling. But I never considered it more than that on my way here."

[towardspeace]

He nods. (And doesn't move himself – he's too used to other people coming to him.) "I felt the same thing. I was expecting some kind of trap, but..." He looks around the ruined forum, frowning deeply. "Nothing. Unless whatever it is is simply waiting for some appropriate number of visitors to trigger it."

[aminerproblem]

"I doubt sitting here and waiting to see what is triggered will be particularly advantageous."

Being a fugitive didn't make him much of a fan of spending too much time in open spaces, even in an abandoned city.

"I believe I've met your engineer. Nautica was their name? Perhaps they'd be able to detect something with their -"

He makes a hand gesture to indicate the wrench-like thing she liked to swing around.

[towardspeace]

"Her spanner, yes... Where did you meet her?" he asks, peering in the direction his younger self seems to have approached from. Seeking out members of his crew certainly seems like a better use of his time than standing around here.

[aminerproblem]

"Surveying energon deposits. There was a piece of the city that was gouged out of the ground. "

No where near here, unfortunately. The alleyway he'd emerged from looked just monotonously gray as the rest of the dust covered landscape.

[towardspeace]

Energon deposits... that's something, at least, if they're going to be stranded here for any substantial length of time.

"Hm. Recently?"

[aminerproblem]

"Not more than an hour ago. If you want to speak with her, we've set a meeting spot before we split up."

[towardspeace]

He nods in thoughtful approval. "Then if you don't have any more urgent matters to attend to I'd appreciate it if you led me there. If I can locate any more of my crew..." Then he'll probably be immeasurably more frustrated, but at least he'll know where the fuckers are.

[aminerproblem]

"I'll take you," he says, before letting a biting edge return in his voice,"But I want to know what went wrong. All of it."

The matter may not have been immediately urgent, but it was bothering the hell out of him, knowing how terribly his cause would be twisted.

"We'll have plenty of time on the way."

[towardspeace]

There's silence, for a moment. Megatron glances at him, sideways, his frown tight at first – but then he looks away, his tremendous shoulders sagging slightly, and repeats, "What went wrong." He laughs, humourlessly, tired. "Alright." He gestures for his younger self to start walking, as he does.

"How far have you come, Megatron of Tarn? What have they driven you to?"

[aminerproblem]

He falls into pace as Megatron begins to walk, not liking that defeated look in his face. It was offputting - something he'd never thought he'd have to bear witness to.

He rests a hand on a silver shoulder to give it a light nudge, indicating to the older of the two that he needed to alter his course a little bit. That way.

"I was going to meet Clench before I was brought here."

[towardspeace]

"Ah." He changes direction as suggested – then, after a moment, falls back a little, to let his junior take the lead. He turns to look at him, thoughtfully, and then says, "Do you have any regrets?"

[aminerproblem]

Well that was a question, wasn't it?

Ordinarily he'd be hesitant to reply - but if this really was his future self, he'd already partly know the answer anyway.

"I still think about the guard on Croteus 12. Even if.. what happened was necessary at the time."

It was still vividly fresh in his mind - the first Cybertronian he'd killed with his own hands. Even if he'd been a blind, cruel servant for Senator Decimus.

[towardspeace]

He nods slowly.

"... Hold onto that," he says after a moment. "Don't let yourself lose your disgust for slaughter. It was necessary... but remember it should not have been."

[aminerproblem]

Given the context of what he's been told before, it wasn't hard to make sense of where this was going.

"I'm not going to pretend that overthrowing the Senate won't result in more violence one way or another."

And with it, more death. He'd had this same conversation with Orion. As much as he insisted on reform, his solutions just didn't seem thorough enough.

[towardspeace]

"I know." He sounds very tired. "I won't pretend I have the answers. I don't know that overthrowing them by force wasn't necessary. But you don't need to become a monster to do what is necessary." He vents a heavy sigh. "You want to avoid this," he says, gesturing to himself – to the Autobrand, but not just the Autobrand, "then remember that. Respect your followers. Let yourself regret what you've had to do, and let them regret it as well."

[aminerproblem]

There's something in that tired voice that made pity seep from his spark. Megatron could only imagine what he'd decided to go through to become so exhausted with existence.

"What made you start to regret again?"

[towardspeace]

Megatron lifts his head a little, looking at the skyline. "I... realised what I'd become. That I enjoyed what I was doing, and that, with that, what I was doing – everything I had worked for – had long ceased to be defensible."

[aminerproblem]

He pauses thoughtfully, keeping his gaze ahead of them.

"It couldn't have been easy to reject something you've built up for so long, even if it was as diseased as what you'd unseated in the first place."

It certainly wouldn't be the first time he's adjusted his outlook on things.

"Letting that go is a step in the right direction."

[towardspeace]

He shakes his head and laughs quietly. "Taking it up in the first place was just as hard, if I remember correctly." He gives his younger self a thoughtful look. "I had to kill many more than just that guard. I let myself kill many more." His gaze hardens a little. "How much have you been told, about the war?"

[aminerproblem]

"Enough to know it was far worse than a few deaths," he crosses his arms.

"How the Senate and the Prime came to be defeated at Kaon. How the planet was finally free for a short time before it was driven into a narcissitic, farcical parody of what I've written. From Functionism to the iron rule of a military gorging on its own toxic propaganda."

"No one seemed to want to mention that we'd come to destroy the planet - but I could gleam it from their reactions to this city," the edge in his voice only seems to sharpen as he remembers the conversations and realizations as they came.

"You let yourself do a lot more than kill, didn't you?"