shitposting rave 2, electric boogaloo

Please, let's not do this.

 

It must be nice to be able to know exactly which friends were lost, rather than being forever unsure because the battlefields were so devastated the only way high command knew was to count who was missing, and who had the time to care about their soldiers? It must have been very nice to stay back in a lab for most of the war. I very much doubt that footage is the ugliest thing I've seen, but please. Let's have a war-crimes-off. I'm sure some of the weapons I've seen used can be laid directly at your pedes. I want to be done with this, but slaggers like you who've never had their hands wrist-deep in the guts of countless mechs while they watch the color go out of their frames will never understand what it was like on the front. I've seen ugly. I've saved MTOs and mechs who chose freely, and I've failed to save even more. I've even killed a few myself, when they got too close to a squad who was injured and I had to defend my hard work. And where was Towards Peace then? Where was Optimus Prime and his ideals? Nowhere. I'm glad you can still keep yours, but don't blame me for hating them, and don't blame me for hating mine.

I'm sorry, Iridium, but I've kept my vocalizer off about this as long as I possibly can.

 

Just stop!

 

1) I freely admit that I'm a twisted little monster that deals in lives. Thanks for acknowledging that. Makes it so much easier.
2) I was on the front lines. I was on the front lines when it wasn't even acknowledged that they were front lines yet, you know, back in the days of the barricade riots? Quite the successful battle for me, I made a bomb out of a dead comrade. Got me a good job in a nice position I could defend from.
3) I was Inject's guard during each and every single one of the "field tests" our division performed. I know it doesn't say "erratic knowledge of how to assist a field medic" in my files but please don't assume I haven't been up to my elbows in guts before.
4) I'm sick and tired of defending my badge at every turn. I should not be taking this out on you because frankly you are the probably the first halfway decent Autobot I've met. But I'm not going to apologize for how my people are being treated by red badged fraggers who think they can get away with anything.

 

(Tempest Dive is watching the two robots fight.)

 

You know, I could have been you. The Autobot version. The Senate wanted me to use my research to make medical weapons and they threw me into the middle of the terrorist attacks as a combat medic when I wouldn't do it. No weapon, no training. I didn't start out wanting to be an Autobot. I wanted to get as far away from them as I could. But when it came time to choose between devastating the enemy from a very safe distance and risking my own function on the ground, you know which one I picked. And that's why I get so angry when you start in on this. You had the same choice I had. And as far as I'm concerned, you chose wrong.

I'm sick of defending myself to you too. Your second-in-command is in charge of Cybertron right now. Do you think Autobots haven't been harassed for their badges? I'm tired of you thinking you're oh-so-much better than us. When you get right down to it we're all murderers, each and every one of us who had our hands in the war. Your cause isn't any less ugly than mine was.

 

I don't think I'm better than you.
Do you know how hard it is to remember I am equal to everyone else, sometimes? You think it's oh so easy to make decisions right? Well guess what, listening to Flexitas and reading Lord Megatron's writing was the first decision I made for myself. And sure in hindsight it was maybe stupid to go from one master directly to the next. But at least the guidance of high command felt more like something useful than being pointed at a wall all day.
Frag you.

 

You don't think you're better than me? Then what was this?

Because you've said quite often enough you still consider me an Autobot. I've gotten that message very well. Go frag yourself to your Lord Megatron's writing, then, if the words of someone who's wiped out entire planets mean so much to you.

 

Maybe I will.
... Or maybe I will say that it was wrong of me to say that. Fancy that.
Four million years of distrust and hate are hard to get rid of but so were three million years of learned deferrance and I shouldn't work harder on one than the other just because one benefits me more.

 

...thank you.

I should not have brought your past into this. That was uncalled for.

 

Why? It's true. I wonder if someone kept count of just how many deaths I'm responsible for.

 

Just because it's true doesn't mean it's relevant. I'm being hypocritical, wanting to move past the war but bringing that up instead. Like I said, none of our hands are clean.

 

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

 

Nobody who's fought has clean hands, even if their cause was just. And many of us were lied to that our cause was righteous.

 

Our cause was as just as it could be and our hands will never be clean.

But the alternative was so much worse. I could have taken Valiska and fled, if she had been as lone as I was when we married; but we could not abandon her family. My family. For twenty-five years, the only family I believed I still had.

 

...I wonder what it's like, having a family. Being able to defend one's place in the world when the violence catches up to you again.
...
I've always just disappeared instead.

 

It's wonderful, and it's terrifying.

 

Huh.
I have heard both of those answers, but never in conjunction with each other.
...
My greatest value has always been knowledge. And to keep all this knowledge I have accumulated from being destroyed, I fled when I still had the opportunity.
...
Some people call me cowardly.
But I wonder, would I by myself have made the difference between annihilation and survival, or am I still making the difference by not letting the knowledge and legends disappear?

 

Personal opinion: Kite's work = important enough. "Cowardly" more often used as judgement than as truth, and in any case often biased. Knowing one's boundaries and abilities not a weakness or a failing.

If Kite's priority is protection and preservation of knowledge, and Kite is the only one with some of that knowledge, only follows that survival is preferable to some tank's ideal of "glorious last stand". Sometimes retreat is the only way to survive.

 

...
(Kite makes a choking sound)
Thank you.

It's just... Sometimes, during long hours spent removing earth from books I come across mentions of the peoples I have forsaken... I ask myself, could I not have done something? Saved at least a few of them?
...
And then I tell myself that if they didn't make it they just weren't strong enough, because it hurts less.