re_alignment | [Video -> Text] [Transmission Originating From: Vectorian Sector]

Entry tags:

✘ real steel | noisy boy

[Video -> Text] [Transmission Originating From: Vectorian Sector]

[The video is only on for a few moments - long enough to show a purple bot with wide shoulders, a samurai helmet, and glowing yellow optics - before shutting off. After that is a burst of text.]

Many of you exceed WRB height restrictions. You also violate a number of other WRB regulations, including illegal use of weapons and possession non-standard upgrades.

I am not where I should be.

[He would just like to let you all know YOU ARE SO ILLEGAL. SO. ILLEGAL now down to a few extra messages-]

If anyone happens to see Charlie Kenton I would like to be informed. He is a human with short, dark hair and brown eyes. He also has a son, Max. I do not wish them to be alone with unfamiliar bots if they come here.

Gunmax. Thank you for the ride, when we arrived. It was kind of you.

To the bot with the fins on his head: My name is Noisy Boy. 'Soundwave' is a terrible name.

And there was a red and white bot. I apologize if I fightened you somehow.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I can never forget them. Or my opponents. But that does not stop me from continuing on when I am transferred to another handler, or go into another bout.

They are part of me, but they are not all of me. Just like those you have encountered do not define you entirely.

Can I ask a question?

[HE WILL ANYWAY. Because you can always not answer.]

How do you do that? I mean. If each one is special, how do you do that without them seeming less...special?

[Because he doesn't want that.]

I remember what made them each unique. Tak Mashido built me. Charlie Kenton repaired me when by rights he should not have. Others upgraded my systems, or took me to places I had not seen previously.

One showed me the stars for the first time.

They each did one thing that the others did or could not. It puts them on equal footing for me, save one.

[Tak Mashido is important beyond just being his handler, for him.]

How does it not hurt to remember that?

[He tries to understand this, but it mostly just hurts, thinking of Gasket, and how everything had changed with his death. Thinking of Wing, and how everything had changed again.]

'Save one.'

Sometimes it hurts. But I try to remember the positive changes more than the negative. And it is our nature, to be passed from one handler to another. To have them enter and leave our lives.

Tak Mashido will always be different. He was my handler and my father.

[And being sold by him still stings a little because of that. It was the one time he could remember feeling like he wasn't good enough.]

It's a nature I don't have, I'm afraid.

[Noisy Boy might have been programmed to it: Drift was not.]

Your 'father'? [Another thing he has no frame of reference for.]

I wish I could help. I am afraid I am out of my depth, here.

[Cybertronians are so much different from Earth-bots, it seems.]

Yes. A human term for a relative - one of the ones that made them or raised them when they were young. Tak Mashido created me and was my first handler and trainer.

I think both of us are. [He's not that good at metaphysics. Yet!]

We, Autobots, we believe a mech has a right to their own destiny. Free will, choice. Freedom. Something like being a possession, to be given or sold or bought...that's like slavery.

[He listens, trying to understand. ] It is normal for the parent and his creations to part ways?

We boxing bots are a commodity. We were built with a purpose already. I am only passingly familiar with slavery, but I do not think I have met a bot that dislikes what they were programmed to do.

[It's simply how things are. He couldn't really ask for more.]

It can be, among humans. To my knowledge, many of them part ways when their children - their creations - reach a certain age.

[This is making his head hurt. Because he's trying to understand but he has only his frame of reference.]

Well, [He sounds a bit uncertain,] what matters is that you're happy with it.

[Are you?]

And is that how it was for you?

[Noisy Boy is having the same problem, really.]

If I can fight, I am content with it.

[The fight is the important part.]

No. I believe Tak was unhappy with how my match against Rubicon went. He retired for a time after it.

[He couldn't ask Tak's reasoning at the time, so he'll likely never know.]

Even if it's fighting for yourself, not an owner?

[Drift hopes so; he's not crazy on the robot trying to find an owner here.]

So, he blamed you for the loss? One loss? [Ouch.]

Without a handler I cannot fight. I cannot acquire another handler without my previous handler transferring ownership to them.

And bots cannot own other bots.

[Besides, even with the whole Midas thing... Noisy Boy kind of likes Charlie and Max. He's not going to replace them.]

It was a difficult loss for both of us. I was the bot with previous experience and I was better-made. I should have won. [While he forgave Rubicon a long time ago, it's still hard on Noisy.]

But your handler's not here.

[So...how's this supposed to work exactly?]

Sometimes it just happens, though. You do everything, and you still lose. That doesn't mean you...stop trying. End a partnership.

[Does it?]

Then I function independently until my handler arrives. But I cannot fight.

[This isn't a situation he was designed for, really.]

No, but
[The text stops for a while. He shouldn't speculate, and thinking of Tak in that way hurts, but...]
I do not think he could stand to see me after that. He wanted a winner, and I had lost a championship bout that I should not have.

Until.

[Yeah, he's not going to go there, that possibility his handler might not ever arrive.] Who is your handler now? So I can look out for him?

[Ouch. Yeah, maybe you think you're doing a good job about the 'hiding how much it hurts' thing? You're...not. Because Drift feels the slap of that from all the way over here.]

It wasn't your fault. You know that, right? And no friend abandons his own for losing one fight.

[You might think Tak is god, Drift thinks he's kind of a jerk.]

My current handler is Charlie Kenton. He is a good man, but he seems to bite off more than he can chew, as the saying goes.

[He also adds a fairly accurate description of ~~Hugh Jackman~~ his handler after that.]

[Noisy Boy had only ever wanted to please Tak, really. Being given up on was tough.]

I have not had 'friends' before. Just handlers, mechanics, fans, and opponents. And I know it was not all my fault.

[The tough part is that Tak is god to him... even if Tak is also kind of a jerk. But Noisy Boy doesn't have that information, himself.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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