Oh, awesomesauce

[wreckerverity]

Characters: IDW Verity Carlo, IDW Ironfist, OPEN
Content: Verity wakes up and is...Verity
Location: Central Iacon, near an old transit hub
Time of day: Midday
Warnings: None at the moment
Status: (Active/Finished?) Active

Comments

[fisitron]

Ironfist had been reclusive, to say the least. Once he'd awoken on Cybertron, he'd found the nearest tall building he could and made it his base of operations. As it turned out, the nearest tall building had been the Library of Iacon, the location of the archives. That had been his first project: hack the databanks. Funny that the archives were empty. Project two had him resetting the Iacon surveillance grid, and for the past several days, he had been doing nothing but watching the interactions of mechs, and a single human, as they grouped up, fought, and separated

[wreckerverity]

The voice startled her. She'd been expecting a response, duh, but not...from him. Of all mechs. She'd seen him die. She'd been...right there with him. Through everything, but most of all through that.

How was he here? That struck her as being an even bigger and more improbable question than how she was here.

//I-Ironfist?\\ She completely failed at military training. She rallied. //Acknowledged. Going for cover.\\ One advantage of being so small was she could hide damn near anywhere.

At least she hoped it was an advantage.

[fisitron]

Well, her reaction to his response was a pretty good confirmation of his theory. She'd be in for a shock, then.

It only took him somewhere near ten human minutes to make his way to her location, and he transformed once he was in the area he'd last seen her through the surveillance cameras he'd hijacked. He hadn't stuck around long enough to see where she'd darted off to, though, so he was stuck looking for her and hoping she would come out on her own.

"Verity? Where are you?" He called out softly as he peered around. The sector had been clear that last time he had checked, but one could never be too cautious.

[wreckerverity]

Verity was lecturing herself: Girl, you have faced down Overlord. You stared Megatron in the face and didn't feel this...afraid. Why now?

Because all they could do was kill her. Ironfist...could break her heart.

She crouched behind a doorway, watching him as he advanced. It looked like him. Moved like him. He moved past the doorway she was in.

Seeing him alive... hurt.

Hush, Verity. You don't even know that it is him.

Yeah? But squatting here's not going to solve anything.

She stepped out of the doorway, arms loose, down by her sides, behind him. "I'm here."

[fisitron]

The thought didn't even occur to Ironfist that maybe this was a trap until he was already on the scene, and Verity seemed to be holding her position. After all, why would a human be in his afterlife? If that was what this was.

Her voice from behind startled him, and he whirled around, falling completely still when his optics fell on her. It looked like her. Held itself like her. Sounded like her.

"Verity... What are you doing here?" he asked numbly, unsure what else to say. He didn't more towards or away from her, his processor still trying to figure out what to make of the situation.

[wreckerverity]

"Could ask the same of you," she said, without thinking. It was a natural reflex but one that didn't belong here.

How do you tell someone you saw them die?

"We can start with where 'here' is," she said, trying to sound a bit more reasonable. "Then, I guess we try to find the others." If he was here--alive--maybe the other Wreckers were, too. Maybe she hadn't lost them all.

Or maybe she'd gone crazy and this was all some hangover-induced hallucination.

[fisitron]

Quick, defensive comeback. Yes, this was more and more likely Verity.

"'Here' seems to be Cybertron... But rebuilt and wiped clean," he observed, taking a small step closer to her. "Perceptor is at the Autobot base at the edge of the city." The tone of his voice wasn't terrible expressive, but one who knew him like Verity might notice a tone of disinterest.

Now how to explain this next bit to her...?

"There's... one more thing... He's not the only Perceptor." Let that sink in a moment... "There aren't many bots around that I've seen, but some of them seem to be from very different worlds." As he spoke, his mannerisms became slightly more nervous. The idea of multiple universes was unsettling. That was most of the reason he had sequestered himself in his tower.

[wreckerverity]

"How the hell did I end up on Cybertron?" she snapped. "Last thing I was back on Earth and now this." And you. Here. Alive. Acting just like she remembered.

Perceptor's here, too, she thought. It was a clue, to something. What, she wasn't quite sure. "Anyone else here we know?" Like...someone she doesn't want to punch in the face? First things first. She'd save her own feelings about Perceptor for later. Mr Someone Else Should Sacrifice Himself for Aequitas.

"Different...worlds? You mean like they look different but have the same name and stuff? But then how come you...look like you?" Multiple Perceptors was..interesting. But if there could be many of him, there could be many Megatrons. Many Sixshots.

[fisitron]

Ironfist was about to express his relief that she had made it back to Earth safely, but that seemed ridiculous since she was here now, and obviously not safe on Earth.

"Not that I have seen. Mechs seem to be appearing fairly frequently, though," he noted.

"Some bots seem to be from the same world. You and I are probably from the same world. They all find ways to find out if they're from the same place or not." He pondered asking her a few questions to verify that she was his Verity. In fact, that was probably a good idea. "Verity... Where you came from, how did we.... part ways?" Ironfist was going to be absolutely spark broken if this wasn't his Verity. She was one of the only Wreckers he'd actually enjoyed the company of.

[wreckerverity]

"What do you mean *probably* from the same world?" She knew who he was. He knew who she was. What was this...probably junk? She could wrap her head around the idea of many Megatrons--though, eurgh, bad thought--but if they knew each other...?

And where was everyone else? Why just her and him?

And him. Dead.

"We...," her throat closed up. Frag. She did not want to talk about this. Still. Even with the evidence of him...not dead...right in front of her. " You died. "

[fisitron]

Her words didn't come as a shock. Ironfist had suspected since he woke up here that he was offline. The confirmation of such wasn't any easier to take, though.

"... How?" he asked after a moment. He didn't want to talk about it either, but he had to know. He remembered getting on the ship to leave Garrus-9, and completing the dataslug... Ironfist had come tot he logical conclusion that his cerebro-seeking bullet had finally finished the job. If she had a different story to tell than that, then he would know this was not his Verity.

[wreckerverity]

"They-they said it was one of those new-style bullets. But I don't believe it. I think it was--" Wait. If he didn't know, she didn't want to put that in his head. And...what if it was already there. Aequitas. That's what she really blamed. Having that monstrosity in your cortex had to have done something.

"It was after Garrus-9," she said, aware he was waiting for her to say something. "I don't know if you remember any of that."

And she really, really wanted to forget.

[fisitron]

"It was," he confirmed with a slow nod. "It was a lab accident. I knew it was coming. I'm sorry."

A rush of pain and guilt hit him all at once. Her he had gone and befriended this human, knowing he wasn't going to survive. How terrible must it have been for her? Why had he chosen to reach out and make that emotional connection in the last of his days? It was so selfish of him, he scolded himself. Poor Verity.

Ironfist lowered himself down to one knee, putting himself closer to her level. "I think it's safe to say we're from the same world." Lame exposition from a tough conversation, but Ironfist really didn't feel like dwelling on his betrayal of Verity's trust for too much longer.

[wreckerverity]

"But...but you didn't tell us. Any of us. Don't you think we had a right to know?" Don't you think *I* had a right to know? was what she really wanted to ask. It would have made a difference. She wouldn't have changed anything, but...she would have known. Somehow, it would have changed it.

Maybe.

But she didn't want to argue about it. Not when he was right here, alive. Well. As alive as she was.

"Are we...both dead then? Because I don't remember dying."

[fisitron]

"I'm sorry," he repeated again, gaze averted to the side so he didn't have to see the hurt in her expression. His excuses of wanting no pity or special treatment surfaced in his mind, but refused to exit his vocalizer. There just wasn't an excuse in the universe that could make it up to her, he felt.

Her question caught him off guard, and his optics snapped back to her as he regarded her silently for a moment. "It doesn't make sense that you'd be here. Humans have their own afterlife, don't they?" He'd never taken much stock in theology, but now seemed like as good a time as ever to start considering it.

[wreckerverity]

"Yeah, well," Ironfist apologizing to her was...making her ache. She didn't want him to hurt: he had hurt enough. She'd seen it herself.

She shrugged. "Yeah, allegedly. You're supposed to get sorted out when you die--good people go to Heaven, bad people go to Hell." A laugh. "The problem is, no one seems to agree on what's bad." Killing was bad, but she couldn't bring herself to think that that applied to the Wreckers. Topspin? Twin Twist? They were killers. But not...evil. None of them had been.

She knew who was really evil, and he sat behind a desk.