re_alignment | [Accidental Video]

Entry tags:

tf: beast wars | blackarachnia

[Accidental Video]

[CRACK

CRASH.

The sound of something breaking over takes everything before the video feed clicks on. Wherever the device is, it's showing a downward angle aimed at a berth far below the camera. All across the flat metallic surface is something glittering. Whatever it is continues to shine before something else in thrown into the mess.

A small mirror crashes down against the already broken shards of previous mirrors and shatters. A few others rain down from some unseen spot before it suddenly stops and for a moment everything is just silent. Then Blackarachnia comes into view hugging herself and just staring down at the mirror shards. When she accidentally sees herself in one of the shards, she recoils and kicks it away and over the edge of her berth before shuddering.

Blackarachnia just couldn't stand looking at herself. She was terrifying.. hideous. Why the slag did she want this upgrade so bad!? Everyone else had to be as terrified as she was now that she looked like this, didn't they?

Suddenly she turns away from the mess of broken mirrors and seems to pull out a small jar from... somewhere. Inside of it is something glowing yellow. She just gazes at the crystal for a moment before walking off screen. The video times out seconds later.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No idea. I mean the mirror thing is kinda understandable, since mirrors were expensive back in the day and broken glass can be dangerous if you're not careful, but I'm not sure about the rest.

Don't you guys have any weird superstitions like that?

I'm... not sure.

How can you not be sure if your own people have superstitions? I mean, you must've grown up around them, right? [Pause] OK, maybe 'growing up' isn't exactly the right way to put it, given the whole robot thing, but you know what I mean.

...I was brought online on a different planet and in a completely different time period. Slag, up until I ended up on this Cybertron, I've never even seen my home planet.

Not to mention they only things I know about my own people I've learned from the history tracks on both the Darksyde and the Axalon. So no, there hasn't been an opportunity to learn about any Cybertronian superstitions.

[Welp, that wasn't quite what he was expecting...]

...Well, I guess I just proved that I can still put my foot in my mouth, even while insubstantial. Sorry.

Though by 'coming online', you mean you were born, or built, or... however you guys reproduce there, right? Or is this something else?

[Axel's clearly not sure how such a thing world work. Or if this means BA is a robot-baby.]

Yeah well, don't beat yourself up over it.

[Sigh]

What I meant was my protoform was brought online and a beast mode chosen for me. The programming and my spark were all there, it just needed the go ahead from the stasis pod to bring me online.

Before that, I was just a spark in a blank form. So, I guess... you could say that was when I was "born". Just, not in the sense you organics mean.

Not sure if I could, under the circumstances, but thanks.

[As for the explanation, it explains some of what Axel was wondering about but not all.]

OK, but... you'd been up and alive before that, right? I mean, even if you don't remember it for whatever reason, were the protoforms in pods like yours all people that signed on for the trip and and were just turned into protoforms and put in the pods til they got where they were going to conserve resources or something?

Cause from way I understand it, protoforms are sort of like robot-babies, and if you weren't turned back into one somehow for the trip... Well, frankly just grabbing however many of them right after they were born, sticking them in pods, then launching them off into space aboard a ship to come online who-knows-where doesn't exactly sound like the brightest move.

[Axel finds himself rather disturbed by the second possibility, for reasons he can't quite understand. Obviously it would be something of a dick move on the part of the 'adult' robots, but if it works, it really shouldn't bother him, given that it's hardly something that concerns him. Maybe it's just a sign that his heart is coming back, like Sora said...]

[Blackarachnia's silent for a very long time before finally answering.]

...No, I wasn't. We all start as protoforms and sparks. The DNA sequencing program helps us blend in on whatever planet we're dropped on. The programmings all there to tell us what we need to know.

So... I guess to an organic, we're born when we're brought online and already fully functioning adults.

[She hesitates for a moment.]

Some bots willing revert to protoforms to change their body structure or alt modes. As long as our spark is functioning, we exist.

[Axel considers this for a moment, then nods.]

Alright. Still kinda seems like a dick move to me, sending a bunch of your offspring off into space to wake up on some random-ass planet or something. Even if they will be basically adults when they do.

But I guess if it works for you guys, I probly shouldn't worry about it.

[He shrugs slightly, trying to shake to odd feeling.]

Huh... So you could theoretically do that and come out of it looking totally different? Could you go from say, a small, skinny body to a big, burly one, or are there limits to how big a change can be made like that?

And from my perspective its a waste of time to wait several years before your offspring are useful.

Uh... yeah, possibly. It depends on the planet an the lifeforms the stasis pods find around it. I could revert to a protoform and possibly come back bigger and different...

Touche.

[Not that humans really had much of a choice in the matter, but that was neither here nor there.]

Huh... interesting. Humans are generally stuck with the frame we have. Yeah, we can take care of it, work out to build up muscle and stuff, but there's only so far that can go. There are ways to enhance ourselves artificially, but those tend to come with some rather nasty side effects and thus are generally considered not a smart thing to try.

Wait, what kind of artificial enhancements can humans do to themselves?

[Now she's curious and at least it's distracting her from her fears for the moment.]

Well, first of all there's plastic surgery. Generally low risk of actual harm, as long as you go to a reputable doctor to have it done, but even then you can wind up with a result that just doesn't look good after you're all healed up, especially if we're talking facial alterations. There are some legitimate medical reasons to have it done, like repairing a disfiguring injury, but for the most part people who 'get a little work done' just aren't satisfied with their body in some way and are willing to endure various amounts of pain to change it.

Then there's various drugs, like steroids. They improve athletic performance and build muscle mass, sometimes to ridiculous extents. Unfortunately they also can make their users abnormally- sometimes violently- aggressive and tend to damage various internal organs. And they have a tendency to be addictive, for extra fun. Best avoided for those with any sense.

The last really depends on the level of technology on whatever world you happen to be on, but some places, there's various kinds of cybernetic implants and artificial limbs. Generally only employed if you've already lost the limb or other body part you had due to some kind of injury, because anybody crazy enough to say, lop of a hand to replace it with a metal grappling claw, clearly has more problems than just a missing hand, if you know what I mean. Artificial limbs can comprise everything from a wooden peg leg you might see in a place like Port Royal, to high-tech cybernetics with lots of built in gadgets. There are a few kinds of implants that don't require losing a limb first, but even those carry the risk of the person's body rejecting them which is not fun, from what I hear. Maybe useful, but not usually worth the risk unless you need them.

....So let me get this straight. Humans use technology to fix themselves, but they also use it to satisfy some form of vanity and potentially harm themselves in doing so.

Slag. I think humans might have been better off as neanderthals.

Pretty much, yes. I did mention that these things, at least when taken to extremes, were generally considered really bad idea. S

Not like we've got a monopoly on bad decision making, though. I seem to have heard something about you guys fighting a war that lasted millions of years, after all.

....

[Polite cough. You may have her there.]

I never said humans were the only ones that make bad decisions.

Yeah. I think every race out there probly does dumb things sometimes. I think the universe arranges it that way to keep us from getting too smug.

Maybe...

Either that, or there's some dumb people in every race who just screw things up for everyone else. Which... might be the more likely explanation, now that I think about it.

[Now that explanation she can definitely agree with.]

That's probably it... we had our fair share of idiots where I was stuck at. One of them was constantly getting himself shot down, blown to bits, cubed and all around scrapped at every turn.

[Admittedly... blowing up Waspinator HAD been fun at the time...]

OK, I think the only thing I can say to that is 'Ouch.' Sucks to be him, I guess.

Though if he wasn't already an idiot before, I doubt all that damage really did his IQ any favors.

Probably not.

Then again, he really didn't have one to begin with.

Yeah, doesn't sound like it. Guess there's one like that in every group.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Accidental Video]

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