Meanwhile, elsewhere...

[0ut_of_sight]

*The Decepticons' old underwater base had been rather quiet as of late. With the truce in place, everyone seemed to prefer hanging around in Autobot City or some other such location. For his part, Echoshift saw no reason to leave behind a perfectly good set of personal quarters and go through the bother of moving all his assorted belongings to an

Comments

[0ut_of_sight]

*back in the command center, Echoshift finishes up checking off the last item on his List Of Things To Do For Now as far as the main console is concerned. He leans back and narrows his optics slightly at the screen, as if examining his work critically, then sighs tiredly. Reconnect that memory bank now, or reconnect it later? Later sounded very tempting-- he'd been here too long already and he wanted a break --but he was still curious about Duskwing, and leaving it until later would probably therefore mean it would bug him until he came back to it. Which would only be annoying

Reading can be illuminating

[stupidityinblue]

Meanwhile, Duskwing was happily catching up on the gossip and popular entertainment he'd missed over the last twenty years. At least, the first twelve years or so of it, because somewhere in the late 1990s, the first of the Stunticon art reviews caught his eye. They were reviewing Slog's art!

"Stupidity in Blue", by Slog. Unlike most of Slog's pieces, this particular slogism was created from a Decepticon Seeker jet....

Memory flung Duskwing back nearly twenty years to Cybertron, to a very bad night in 1987--

Diamond-steel chisel claws tearing through his canopy, into his chest--

Realizing he'd made a horrible mistake as his nosecone explodes in a spray of metal, energon and pain--

Fuel pump ripped free, energon spraying through the air, nosecone hanging in abstract shreds of metal--

The blow he'd missed in his pain and shock and horror, the single cold punch through his lasercore, that should have ended it all, but instead started his sojourn in hell--

--IT'S OVER, I'M DEAD, IT'S BEEN SLAGGING OVER FOR TWENTY YEARS!Duskwing

Re: Reading can be illuminating

[0ut_of_sight]

*Echoshift makes his way down the corridor towards the room which he recently assigned to Duskwing, walking past the door to his own 'storage room' before stopping outside the door to C-135. He glances down at the datapad in his hand one more time, and then raises his free hand to rap on the door

Re: Reading can be illuminating

[0ut_of_sight]

*Echoshift stares wide-opticed at the screen in front of him, and does the Transformer equivalent of swallowing. He eventually pulls his optics away from the actual images and lets his gaze be drawn to the text of the review instead

You forget to pay the light bill?

[stupidityinblue]

The lights flicker for a moment, and come back up dimmer than before. Perhaps one of the circuits has failed.

The chill of the deep sea seems to permeate the abandoned base, as does the damp. A light mist seems to rise from the deck.

"Yeah, whadda ya want?" Duskwing asks from right behind Echoshift.

Re: You forget to pay the light bill?

[0ut_of_sight]

*Echoshift whirls on the spot and clamps down on the instinct to raise a weapon. That's the second time Duskwing's sneaked up on him today, and the only reason he's not immediately flailing around and looking scared out of his wits is because... well, when you've lived on the same base as Skywarp for any particular amount of time, you get a bit more used to people appearing out of nowhere right next to you without warning. Not that this means Duskwing's manner of reappearance doesn't bug or mystify Echoshift at all, of course. Because while Skywarp might be a known teleporter, Duskwing isn't Skywarp. And after leaving the creepiness of Duskwing's room in C-135... well, did the corridor have to take a leaf from the book of that room? Especially when Echoshift had thought solving this weird little mystery would be easier in the warmer, better-lit and more familiar area of the corridor

Re: You forget to pay the light bill?

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing gives Echoshift one of his blank stares.

"Whaddaya mean, where was I? I gotta start giving you position reports now? Close enough to be here, okay."

Re: You forget to pay the light bill?

[0ut_of_sight]

No, I'm just trying to work out how you got here so quick. *pause* You're not a teleporter, are you?

Anyway, what I was originally gonna ask you about is this. *holds the datapad out to him and points to the latter part of the file on the screen. It's Duskwing's file, which he'd downloaded from the console in the command center earlier* It's trying to tell me you don't exist. *looks at him* So either I'm seeing things, or there's a mistake on this file. You gonna tell me which one it is?

Re: You forget to pay the light bill?

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing frowns like he's trying to figure something out.

"Sometimes. To some people," he finally says. Then he looks at the file.

"You can't read," Duskwing points at the last line. "It says I'm dead, not that I don't exist." His finger strays up half a page. "Hey, who put that discipline report in there? That slagging afthead! That fight was Rumble's fault, not mine!"

Re: You forget to pay the light bill?

[0ut_of_sight]

I can read fine. Dead, don't exist... *shrugs* Same thing. The point is it means you're not supposed to be here, but you are. *and it doesn't make any sense, so I'm hoping you might be able to shed a little light on the matter and explain it to me* *ignores his comment about the discipline report. Is trying to stay on topic here, after all*

Re: You forget to pay the light bill?

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing backs up a few steps and scowls rather angrily at Echoshift. The mist in the corridor beyond seems to thicken, and the chill becomes more noticeable.

"Not the same," he snarls. "If something doesn't exist, it just isn't. If someone is killed, they aren't alive anymore, but they still exist".

Re: You forget to pay the light bill?

[0ut_of_sight]

*blinks at that, apparently trying to digest what Duskwing's just said. He can't resist a glance around as the mist seems to thicken and the temperature decreases noticably though*

*there are several moments of silence. Eventually, Echoshift manages to put most of his thoughts into a worded sentence, and voice it*

*carefully:* You're... not disagreeing with what's on this datapad. *it doesn't quite sound like a statement, but neither does it quite sound like a question. And yet, it might have been intended to be both*

Dead files

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing steps forward and grabs the datapad Echoshift has been waving at him. He stares at it for a few minutes, scrolling through it at random.

"I disagree with some of the stuff that's in the discipline section, but that's not what you're askin'," he says. "An' this one's incomplete. You don't have the Cybertron record. 'Course, that probably went away with Darkmount. An' it wouldn't tell you anything that would disagree with this record, anyway. Just more particulars 'bout the 1987 entry."

Duskwing hands the datapad back to Echoshift.

"Nope. Not disagreeing."

Re: Dead files

[0ut_of_sight]

*Echoshift glances down at the datapad as if to give himself something else to look at for a while. When he looks back up again, Duskwing is still there*

*more silence*

*in the same tone of voice as before, with a bit of Okay, so let me get this straight thrown in too this time:* You're trying to tell me that I'm now talking to someone who got killed... about twenty years ago...?

Re: Dead files

[stupidityinblue]

Duskwing tilts his head slightly.

"I ain't trying to tell you anything. You're trying to tell yourself something's not so." He smirks at Echoshift and slowly fades away into the mist and gloom, turning transparent, translucent and finally invisible.

Re: Dead files

[0ut_of_sight]

*stunned silence at the sentence, then starts as Duskwing disappears, backing up a step and abruptly fading out of view himself in instinctive response. Knowing that he himself would show up on the right kind of scan, Echoshift switches to senses other than visual and attempts to locate Duskwing*

*the corridor continues to remain unoccupied in appearance, save for himself and any lingering mist. Almost cautiously, he allows himself to become visible again*

Duskwing?

*the corridor regards him in return, silent and empty. If the other Seeker was still around he didn't seem about to reappear just yet. Echoshift glances down at the datapad in his hand again and wavers on what to do next. Eventually he seems to come to a decision and starts to head back towards the command center, occassionally pausing to turn and take another look back down the corridor until he rounds the next corner*