shitposting rave 4: (almost) anything goes

All I did was remove one option.

 

you were threatening me too.

 

And?

 

so are you telling me you wouldnt have attacked me if i HAD stayed quiet?

 

[He subsides a little, but shifts his grip on @Afterglow to better hold onto him. Not least because Afterglow is still apparently trying to dismantle warbuild-grade fingers with only his teeth. Whatever floats his boat.] 'Kay.

Shutting up is generally conducive to stealthification, dude. Even I know that.

 

Is he okay?

 

Will be, once he gets the jitters down. [Thunderwing shrugs.] Better he try'n rip me apart than someone squishier. Less work for Wires later.

 

-She shrugs.-

If he wants to try to hit me he can.-

 

Nope! I'm the chewtoy, it is me.

 

-She tilts her head, thinking.-

...can you or him explain to me why what I did was wrong?

 

[He rests his chin on Afterglow's shoulder, chirr-clicking for a few moments; nearby transformers and/or technomages might be able to tell he's comming the other mech, but the communication is heavily encrypted.]

...okay, so. I don't know exactly how your no-lying thingamawhatsit works, but-- someone with the right skillset could do a whole lot of damage to us, to our personalities, to how we react to things and what our programming allows us to do. I wasn't alive for most of the really awful slag that used to happen, but, like-- 'if you lie to a superior you'll feel like you're being stabbed' would be pretty easy to hook up, that's simple reprogramming. Subtler stuff is harder, like reshuffling priority trees so you just want to tell someone every little thing you see exactly as it happened. And then there's stuff even farther off the deep end, stuff that ties a mech to a handler or punishes him for not being useful enough or whatever.

It's not so common anymore, because one-on-one stuff really isn't useful unless you know your victim's gonna survive long enough for it to be worth the drawbacks for the surgeon, but. Slag's scary even for me, and I didn't live in the empire that used it against everyone who so much as looked like they were gonna step out of line. 'Glow's old.

 

-She taps her chin.-

It's hard for me to really process that, but I think some people in here think that might have happened to me. Which is... wrong. Maybe. My brother thinks- but I don't know. He could be wrong! I don't want to be wrong about that.

But what I did was just... eliminate the possibility of the other person outright lying, but they could still evade or choose not to answer. It was maybe a dumb thing to do. I mean... I wanted to know what he'd done, but he'd already been punished for it. I was just curious. So... I guess it's bad to do that sort of thing because you're curious. But it could help with some things, like proving someone was innocent, right?

 

I'm really not the person to talk to about what's right or wrong or bad or whatever. I'm still trying to figure out why I'm not supposed to just eat everyone who scares my swarm! [The tone says joking, the giant fangs and claws say valid threat.] I just thought you meant what did Glow think you did wrong. He doesn't like anything that messes with brains. Not even engex, can you believe??

 

What's engex?

 

Ehhh... Mild intoxicant drink? Pretty much non-fatal unless you explode it? I dunno how it actually works, I'm not a science Guy, we'd have to get Wires in here. Kinda blurrs everything out and lowers your filters?

 

Oh, like alcohol.

So, you should only do mind stuff to people who have given explicit permission?

-She looks at Afterglow as she asks that.-

 

-chirps hello back!- "What sawrm are you from?"

 

[When Afterglow's fangs are no longer stuck in his palm, Thunders moves his hand. He's still hugging Glow, though.]

[He rattles off a string of clicks and chirps; depending on how up-to-date Sprocket is with troop movements, he may be aware this particular swarm was marked Defunct several thousand years ago.] I fly with [a particular buzzing sound translates roughly to "outsiders", non-insecticons, those from outside the hive] now though. Like this guy! [He taps his outermost fangs gently against Afterglow's shoulder, not even so much as scratching his finish.]

 

Yes. Permission including detailed negotiations and boundaries.

 

Okay. I'll do that in the future, thank you for the information-

-She pauses.-

Oh. Hrm.