re_alignment | [TEXT] [TRANSMISSION ORIGINATING FROM: LIEGE'S FORTRESS]

[He can hear it out there, the fighting and the screeches of the monsters. It's an all too familiar sound, and it takes every ounce of courage Four has to not find a blanket to curl under and stay there forever. Four has a spectacular memory, and he remembers everything he saw during the last days of humanity. He remembers those sounds so clearly that they almost match the distant explosions of battles being fought. The only thing absent here is the screams of dying humans, and his family.

The choices he has are either to give in to his crippling fear, or try to do something.

But what? He has no illusions about his size, and what possible help can he be anyway? He's a chronicler, a librarian. The most he can do is to record what's happening as they happen. Four wouldn't be worrying so much if it weren't for the fact that he had made friends recently, and he'd very much like to keep those.

At the very least he should see if they're alright.]

I am not a very courageous person, but I do not fear for myself during this time. I fear for all those who are brave enough to fight those monsters. My only hope is that all of you will be alive and well in the end. I wish I could help. can someone tell me a story?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Elita's mostly looking at this because it's such an... unusual request. And in the middle of a minor crisis, as well.]

I suppose sometimes, even wishing others to be safe is useful.

[If not very efficient, but at least whoever this is recognizes their own limits, which is just as well. Inbetween Elita speaking, there's the occasional crunch of metal, or the whine of laser blasts. Sometimes a more thrumming, near-silent static noise as Elita fires her own weapon.]

... I'm not much for stories, but if I have time, I could perhaps share something. Anything in particular you're looking for?

[Four frets a little with a piece of string he has clutched between his hands. That sounds like fighting, and he can't help but feel a little distressed over it. Pushing back that, he carefully analyses her voice, memorizing the rise and fall of her tone, as well as how she forms her words. He has the feeling that if he pays close enough attention, he'll be able to tell Cybertronians from humans based on voice alone.

He's not completely sure what she is, but he realizes that that isn't all that important right now.]

Any story is fine with me. Maybe one from your home?

[She takes a while to respond - nearly a full ten minutes - but Elita isn't foolish enough to split her attention when she needs to concentrate.]

How about the very first story? Origins are good places to start, after all...

[And, he might be interested anyway, since Four ought to quickly notice some similarities with what he might have been told or seen of his current locale. Elita hums before she starts speaking, her low, even pitch nearly disguising the noise of her EMP scrambler.]

In the beginning, there was The One, but being unable to experience all, The One split into two, creating a being that was named Unicron; not yet satisfied with simply one part to send out, The One divided the first creation, naming the second Primus.

[Four will have to excuse the sudden noise of an explosion, as one of the creatures managed to die in a particularly... incendiary manner, though Elita's muttered swearing is unintegible before she continues.

This is a challenge, since telling a story is also about the experience, not just the words, but she finds it's an interesting one, especially while attempting to fight at the same time. An evolution of snarking at her targets.]

The two were sent forth to experience the universe, but Primus soon realized that his brother had stopped merely observing and was destroying. At first, he attacked his brother directly, but Unicron was more than a match for him. Primus then shifted the battle to a form insubstantial to most senses, and then back into the physical world.

When all senses were returned, the first and the second of The One's creations realized they were trapped; they had re-manifested inside planetoids. Primus had known and prepared for this sacrifice, hoping to trap Unicron irrevocably, and it nearly worked.

But even Primus' cunning couldn't stop his brother's determination, and Unicron transformed the planet he inhabited... at first into metal, and then into a shape that matched the form he'd had on the insubstantial astral plane.

Primus, observing this, wouldn't usurp the natural order of things so severely; while his body became metal, from said metal his chosen weapons were formed, even as he stayed in his newly gained form to afford his creations somewhere to fight Unicron the Chaosbringer from.

---a moment.

[Elita huffs, and on her end launches into fighting again, but from the pause at the end, it's clear the story's finished. Story... or history?

Or, perhaps here, future, rather.]

[Four listens carefully to her story, memorizing everything from the many unfamiliar words to the tone she chooses to use. As she speaks, his mind flickers back through his memories, randomly picking up myths he already knows and comparing it to her story.

So this is the story of her world? He makes a note to talk to the others about their worlds, and then see the similarities and differences between the two.]

Is this the true story of your race, or merely a myth?

[It takes a few minutes for Elita to reply again, but she doesn't sound out of breath or strained - if a cybertronian even can be such - when she does.]

It... well, it was considered myth, but over fifteen years ago, a lot of those myths were confirmed as real when Unicron attacked Cybertron, and Primus spoke through an avatar.

Fascinating. What consequences came from this? If you do not mind my asking.

Ultimately..? We got Cybertron back. Not that we'd really lost it, but it's more or less disrupted, if not completely finished, the war, and we've been rebuilding.

[She shrugs, the noise a faint slide of metal.]

If they hadn't won against Unicron, none in... as I understand it, our whole reality would be alive or existing by now. Unicron consumes all.

[TEXT] [TRANSMISSION ORIGINATING FROM: LIEGE'S FORTRESS]

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