re_alignment | [audio] [the Game has Changed]

[The initial assessment of the situation hadn't taken long. No guards, a strange place - this wasn't the mine he'd made into his home, not in the least - a small winged lizard creeled at him and then vanished into thin air. His shotgun on a table, with a holster. That was handy. The remnants of a life that apparently just left like the organic sitting strewn about.

Then, there was the communication network. He studied it for a good, long while. Someone here bore a face that was and wasn't his. And they were revolting.

Measures needed to be taken.

The Link transmission opens with a sharp electronic pop, and the voice on the other end is Barricade's, but rougher and colder.]

This is the Lord High Protector. Any Decepticons within transmission range - I require a sitrep on the current location and your status. I also require the last known whereabouts of the imposter Barricade.

I should not have to remind you that you ignore these orders at your own peril. By the Allspark, I shall feed you to the Autobots myself if you fail me.

That is all.

[The transmission cuts out immediately after. Anyone in Solus Prime's temple might catch sight of the 'Lord High Protector' in the halls, though. Barricade, though not with the face he was upgraded to... and without legs, wheeling himself through the halls in a battered chair, now-holstered shotgun slung across the back.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I am 'delusional'; so says the mech that believes we are from different worlds. But are you not born of Cybertron, as us all?

Then you truly know nothing, as the title was created and held by Megatron himself, rest his fool spark.

Not on my Cybertron, he didn't. Just talked a lot 'bout our potential and past purpose that we'd forgotten or whatever.

And I dunno, I've seen the guy you call your "impostor" and I sure don't share any fraggin' similarity to you. [Have a video instead of audio to underscore that fact, Skywarp doing a passable equivalent of rolling his optics.]

And I came from the Matrix like anybody, but since it was on Cybertron I suppose that counts? [It's phrased as a question mostly because Barricade's phrasing tripped him up some.]

Different Cybertrons. And I am the delusional one. Do you truly think that I am such a fool?

[Barricade gives the video a cursory looking-over, and the best he can say is-]

Curious design. And I suppose next you will tell me that unicorns exist 'where you come from'.

Hey, here, nothin' else makes much sense, and what's outside of the known universe anyway?

[It's a rethoric question, Skywarp doesn't actually care about an answer, like, at all, and he waves it away himself.]

Unicorns? What does this look like, a magical land with talkin' ponies to make little girls squee with glee? [Even if there actually was such a place, given... uh, Rarity. But that was neither here nor there.]

'Course there ain't unicorns there, but we did have a crazy guy who spouted slag about bein' chosen and the "light".

[Shrug.]

It is precisely the same kind of nonsense you have been proclaiming. "Shockwave isn't dead and attempted to end the war". "We come from two different realities and two different Cybertrons".

[He scoffs sharply.]

Next you will tell me that you are comrades with Bigfoot and the chupracabra exists, and the world is full of rainbows and puppies wielding chainguns.

Hey, you can believe whatever you want, but I know what's happened...

[And Skywarp grins, sharp and utterly unrepeting - unseen only helps him here.]

Well, I dunno 'bout you, but I see rainbows often enough, but no puppies with chainguns, though I suppose that'd be cool. And I talked with Bigfoot once.

Not very exciting though, grunts usually ain't.

[You asked for this, Barricade.]

[audio] [the Game has Changed] - Ninth Transmission

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