[Open]

[tsunclonus]

Who: Cyclonus and YOU!
When: Between the 18th and the 24th (pre-Scraplets)
Where: Cargo Bay/Hallways/Observation Deck
What: Cyclonus gets his mail, starts doing his job, and tries to be a better boyfriend.
Warnings: Gay robots. (Will update as needed)


Cargo Bay, 18th

Cyclonus has received a message about a package waiting for him, and has made his way to the cargo bay to retrieve it. He opens the large crate first, and much to his relief it's the energon he requested. The rest of the Cybertronians will be pleased to hear that they can relax the energon rationing somewhat.

He's surprised by the second, smaller crate. He didn't request anything else. Pulling off the lid, however, his jaw actually drops. If anyone approaches, he'll be quickly pressing the cover back into place.


Hallways - Various

Following the shipment of energon received on the 18th, Cyclonus has decided to actually start doing his job. With the energy available now to project his holoform, the Moira's crew will find a tall, dark-skinned, red-eyed, and purple-haired woman prowling the hallways, wearing something that looks like an odd amalgamation of his usual holo dress and his appropriate Moira uniform.

He's busy getting a better sense of the ship's layout in order to plan evacuation routes and it's much easier to get around when you're the size of a human, so his holomatter avatar can be found all over the ship.


Observation Deck - Semi-closed to Tailgate

It took him awhile to work up his courage and set aside his pride, but several days after the mail drop, Tailgate will receive a simple message in his inbox from Cyclonus:

Meet me on the Observation Deck

Comments

[warandpeace]

Pretty sure they would find a way around that. Cloning is a new favorite.

You might have heard that there's several guys named "Snake" on board. Snake is a codename. The military skill set version of a surname, when you're a part of an organization. One man was the original. He goes by something else here. Venom Snake is an altered, programmed copy, built from someone else. [He chooses his words carefully there.] Solid Snake and Liquid Snake are clones. All of them, meant to be the copy of a legendary soldier. The greatest of his century.

But it's that soldier's dogma that's going to put our world at risk.

Anyway, limitations of land, of animals, of resources? All they've done is affected the economic market in the long term. I don't know that it would stop the fighting.

[All the people on motherbase that had been suspected of infection had been placed in quarantine, and those were given a cure that rendered them infertile. Unable to pass on their genes. Would that make them. But those men kept fighting. Would it really make them view others as more valuable? Or a limited population, easier to cull.]

Probably not exactly what you would call a viable solution anyway. I wouldn't want to take away a person's right to be a parent willingly. [Even if he didn't exactly have the greatest examples.]

[tsunclonus]

My apologies, I didn't mean to propose it as a solution, merely a thought experiment to see how closely our species might react to the same situation.

[Cyclonus closes his eyes for a moment to think, wondering how much if this he should share with Miller. It doesn't really matter, does it? Even in his home universe this information in a human's hands would hardly change anything.]

My people are on the slow path to extinction. No new Cybertronian sparks have been produced for millions of years. For a period of time Cybertronians fought against this, and found a way to create sparks artificially. They stockpiled many in storage before this method was lost.

Unless something changes, every Cybertronian spark that will ever exist already does. But rather than cherishing those remaining sparks, making them last, they were sacrificed to the machine of a four million year war.

[warandpeace]

[Millions of years. Hard to think in time that broad. Maybe that much time available makes some of them think they could go on forever.]

Forgive me for asking, but "spark"? I think I get the general idea from context. But it never hurts to be sure.

[tsunclonus]

Ah. The spark is the core of every Cybertronian. [Cyclonus touches his chest even though the holoform is sparkless.]

Our life source and animating force.

[warandpeace]

And all there are now is all there will ever be.

I often have thought sometimes someone finds their place on a battlefield. I've felt the call myself. I think that was part of it. Wanting to be out there, fighting, that made me want to support the movement to make military businesses. Where wetwork was needed, we would answer.

The other part was that it seemed like it would be good for countries, in theory. When military responsibility was removed from the nation I was born in, it could focus on industry, better supporting its population. Not perfect by any means, but it went from frugal island nation to economic super power.

I still want to believe that warriors have their place. But civilians... Were there ever any where you're from? Business owners. Entertainers. Artists. People that weren't intended to fight?

[tsunclonus]

[Cyclonus inclines his head in agreement.] Every one of us who dies now it a step closer to our extinction, and yet most of are too numb or too angry at this point to care.

[He's one of them. Killing means nothing to him, and there are only a few individuals whose deaths would trouble him.

He nods along silently as Miller speaks. He, too, had been drawn to the warrior's path - some would say he was born to it giving his form of fighter jet, but he was no Functionist.

He lacks the social context to understand all if what Miller is talking about - human nations work differently than Cybertronian ones. But he gets the idea that he had noble intentions.

So did the Decepticons, in the beginning. Noble causes don't always go as planned.]

In my time- in my youth, during Cybertron's Golden Age, there were people of all sorts. Most were civilians. Warriors were only one class of many.

[warandpeace]

[Numb or angry. Kazuhira supposes that he's the latter. He doesn't know that he'll ever get over it. Even with prosthetics, the pain constantly reminds him of what he lost. What he sacrificed.]

But now, all soldiers.

Somehow I think of warrior as meaning more than soldier. Someone who practiced for years, fine-tuned their abilities. From what I hear in our future, most soldiers acquire skills through a pathetic dependence on technology that steals the abilities of others. Strength. Stamina. Perception.

Emulating men who put time and training into building those skills. That definitely was not a future I wanted to contribute to. I wanted to teach, to train.

[Whenever they get closer to the gardens, he goes to pat Cyclonus's shoulder with his false hand, just to make sure he turns with him.]

[tsunclonus]

Not all. [He thinks of Tailgate, a civilian out of time, no soldier even if he chooses to wear an Autobot badge. And he thinks of Brainstorm, who managed to never kill a single person with his own hands, creating weapons to fill the hands of others instead.]

Most, but not all. From what I gather, you either chose a side, abandoned Cybertron, or died.

[Cyclonus nods along with Miller. Being a warrior was not the same as being a soldier. There was a difference in philosophy and code and training.

He turns at the appropriate place, continuing to speak as they walked.]

Being able to automate the production of soldiers, or other professions, is a straight path to the devaluation of the individual.

What does it matter if you lose one, or ten, or a thousand troops, if you can simply have more ready with days, even hours?

[warandpeace]

What were those sides representing? Do they begin to lose that, too?

A great woman once said that there was no timeless enemy. But if you've put that much time into it, sounds like you guys were really working to contradict the idea.

[Though those were words he'd heard secondhand, they still had motivated him to stand alongside someone he hated for some time.]

But you're right. Worse when you only have limited life, at that. How long until you're scraping the bottom of the barrel?

[He finds a place to sit near that glass statue. He's seen it often enough now that he no longer worries about the occasional reflection. His mind wonders enough on its own. Who is he to complain about it helping.]

[tsunclonus]

Megatron and Ultra Magnus would be better suited to explain, but both sides represented change but disagreed on the path to it. [His opinion on the two sides has shifted slightly since he first talked of the conflict as he understood it with Tailgate at the beginning of their journey.] However, after the corrupt regime fell the war continued.

Sometimes I think perhaps the war continued so long because after a time none remembered how to do anything else.

[Cyclonus settles next to Miller, staring out over the garden without really seeing, thinking of how many sparks were wasted creating soldiers almost guaranteed to die.]

In my age, people were named for the location their spark ignited in. Among the youngest generations many are named for the battle they were created for. They were made to order, for specific battles.

[warandpeace]

Born for war and nothing else. Not even the option of anything else.

[He leans forward, folding his hands in his lap.] Can those people find any other way than as a soldier?

[tsunclonus]

[Cyclonus nods. He chose to fight. To those tossed into battles with just enough knowledge to live, the only choice was fight or die. He's heard that most died.]

The Autobot-Decepticon war has only been over for several years. Some seem to be finding a new place for themselves... But for most I think it is too soon to tell.

[Cyclonus sympathizes with them. After turning against Galvatron, he too found himself lost.]