shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

Nah, mech, we've seen Prowl replaced by Decepticons and he still didn't trust anyone. It'd be, like... Prowl replaced by humans or some slag.

 

i mean
good as a concept is subjective and nebulous as hell but its less of a mouthful than all that my dude
ive got at least five hundred other words clamoring to get past my teeth at any given moment
im not gonna bother explaining that shit
people can justify a lot of nonsense trying to serve the greater good or whatever
you just have to do the best you can and hurt as few people as you can
great power great responsibility youre not entitled to trust you have to earn it and that doesnt always happen when the playing fields about as level as mount everest
so on and so forth

i feel like i should be offended

 

Case in point: [Wires gestures at himself, a convenient neon purple sign flashing "DJD Operative" over his head.]

I mean say what you want about how inventive you fraggers got once you got your hands on our tech, but it probably says something that one of your first avenues of research was "how can we do this communally".

 

That's gross, why are you giving me ths mental image that's just wrong.

Joke's on you I refuse to actually contemplate whether my powers do or don't hurt other people outside of specific circumstances where I actually actively plan to hurt as many people as badly as possible.

It's okay, gramps, we don't need to be reminded you had a tragic short in your judgement routines.

 

I'm just saying, much as everyone gets their cables in a twist over combiners the humans really went for it.

To be fair I'm pretty sure your rig's got more offensive capabilities than the gen one runs-- I don't gotta think whether or not my powers hurt people 'cos outside of blackmail I ain't got that option.

[Uncanny imitation of Kup's voice:] Back in my day we just shut up and let everyone definitely more important than us yatter on.

 

i understand approximately none of the significance that is supposed to convey sorry
im tragically not well versed in your whole culture
theres only so many alien customs a guy can memorize and i havent had the opportunity to familiarize myself with what yall get up to

i mean im missing hells of context given that where im from you guys were a saturday morning cartoon i only occasionally watched and whatnot but
sounds about right

good for you i guess
whatever helps you sleep at night dude

 

[He is wheezing with badly suppressed cackles.]
Nooooo not Kup-voices, my one weakness.
But in all seriousness, yeah I'm kinda uniquely fucked with the offensive capabilities, it was a one off experiment and they ended up having second thoughts like right after because they remembered that if they make a tool with a personality, that tool might not be as cooperative as you want. If they made others like me... well. I wouldn't know about it. Sweep's the standard passive observation build as far as I know.

 

The DJD-- the Decepticon Justice Division-- are... I mean, does it count as "secret police" if everyone knows what they are and that they're coming for everyone who so much as ventilates in a vaguely treasonous manner? Everything For The Cause and all that. "Greater good"... I mean. Theoretically. Removing impurities and all that, making us stronger as a whole by taking out the weak links. [He shrugs, pulling a face.] I just wanted to help people, but here I am, enabling mass murder... again.

...we could look. My group, I mean. Since we're supposed to be listening for info on our targets anyway, and that usually includes a lot of slush. Wouldn't put it past them to make more than one at once. Repeatable results and all that.

 

... Slag you bring out the squishy dumbass side of me every single time, frag you. Yes. Yes please, I'd... I'd like to know if there's more. Eavesdroppers gotta stick together, right?

 

Yeah. I'll letcha know if we come up with anything. Haven't found any other antiques in... Slag, must be getting near four mil by now, but a younger run might actually get on better with you than me.

 

I dunno about that I'm hard to get along with.

 

True, but 1) I'm like 72% sure the 'cons never did a run of us and if there are any other eavesdropper bots out there they're probably not gonna take my purple too well; 2) if my bosses actually are paying attention the last thing I wanna do is show them a bunch of us, that's just got Bad Idea written all over it; and 3) I am in fact an old sprocket and some MTOs don't take the prototype for their line showing up too well.

 

[Scanner winces]
Guess you're right. I just don't think I can manage to be nice enough for long enough to not scare 'em away, you're generally kinda better at not being... y'know.

 

I mean. Being nice ain't always the best approach, freaks some people out. [He shrugs.] We'll see. I'll letcha know if I find anyone and we can take things from there.

 

[He nods, grim and serious.]
Eavesdroppers gotta stick together. Because they can trust no one else.

 

[Wires hides a wince. Not badly, to his credit, but there's still a split second of 'oh no'. Scanner you are doing him a Feeling.] ...or 'cause no one else really gets it, but. Yeah. Solidarity's a thing.

 

"As Doctor Kalinthy has told me many times, it's no surprise that I developed paranoid ideation after everything I've been through; with my learning curve, it was only to be expected." Ford shrugs. "Many of us have lived lives that have taught us nobody else can be trusted, even though people have often helped us, loved us even--because the brain tends to prioritise what it learns when you have narrow brushes with death. It's eminently logical. But it is also a shitty way to have to live, so learning to recognise the signs that someone might actually be trustworthy and pay just as much attention to those as the others is a thing worth doing, if you want to enjoy life at all."

 

...doc Pines, I realize you're tryna help, but you kinda sound like you're missing the context of "Scanner and I and everyone else with our frametype were literally built as intelligence equipment." Sure, the war didn't help anyone's paranoia, but the junk about 'listen to everyone, yes even that cute guy you really don't want to turn in, no not your superiors you dumb fragger'... That was our job. An' we're allowed to glitch about it now we're mostly out, even if we still gotta put up with the hardware.

 

I mean same difference, right?

Oh primus how-

yes that. Call me an egocentric aft, but I know how easy it is to break someone, both because I've done it and because I've never been whole a second in my entire fragging functioning and it's honestly not that hard. Everyone has things you can kick them in to make them do slag. Ergo, no one can be trusted, except those of us who know.