Exploring and Exploiting: Aftermath

[primus_seeress]

This... has been an utter disaster.

I came home to the lingering traces of Chaos, and much fear and anger. Blackstar had come, to leave me reassurance that at least one of Snowcat and Demolishor's sparklets do indeed understand what he did for them. Apparently, a servant of Unicron had come, to cause mischief in this sanctuary, and Blackstar was unfortunate enough to be here when he arrived.

I am more angry than I have been, in a long time... I think I surprised Blackstar and the others. But this is not something I will stand for. I am told, by a spirit from the Allspark, that Unicron is not pleased with his servant -- possibly he acted out of his timing, I do not know -- and so there is a chance this will not happen again, soon. Still, I will be watchful.

I write this quickly, only to make note... Starscream is still here, with his mate, and his alternate self (needless to say, the multiverse is indeed a strange place). All three of them have been dealt grief, through their efforts to restore Blackstar's strength. Blackstar himself has recovered, and has gone away to think on what we have spoken about. Echoshift appears to have left for the moment, though he may yet return.

I must put the sanctuary back in order; the servant of Unicron cast corruption on the mosaics here, and I must remove it, before they begin to decay. A childish prank, but no less deadly dangerous. I have yet to decide what to do with the copy of the Covenant that he left. Smelting it would be satisfying, at this point...

*Auspex sighs wearily, putting the datapad aside, with the drawings, and the crystal. She approaches one of the mosaics, requesting power from Primus, and gingerly touches it. She winces at the sting of Chaos on her fingers, but she methodically begins driving it away, to disperse into nothingness.*

Comments

[primus_seeress]

*Auspex doesn't quite smile, but it is a more-or-less positive expression* Yes... the important parts have been taken care of.

*Now, something more like a smile warms her optic-glow, though it's still weak. She attempts to clarify* I don't deal with free-sparks terribly often... and I've never been that close to the Allspark before. It... affected me more than it should a living Transformer. There is new pain, that I did not have before, and I will have to examine it in more detail.

*She looks at the mosaic, fingering the figures portrayed there -- the Transformers, and fleeing Quintessons -- before turning back to glance at him* You've... probably realized that there is more of the supernatural around you than you knew, at the very least. *A smile is still trying to creep onto her face, but never quite making it*

[0ut-of-sight.livejournal.com]

He gives her a kind of half-shrug. "Well, I don't know as much about the Allspark as you probably do. But I'd say not that many do get so close and stay alive afterwards. It never really struck me as the sorta place the living would visit for fun, you know?" Something perhaps a little too weak to be called a real chuckle accompanies the last sentence, but he does at least try.

His gaze follows hers back to the mosaic. The sanctuary had a number of these things on display, painting images of legends and myths made suddenly less unimaginable in the aftermath of Unicron. "That's one way of putting it," he agrees, grinning. To be perfectly honest, he hadn't been the type of superstitious mech who paid too much attention to the supernatural world before. And then one day, Duskwing had appeared at the Undersea Base.

Things had seemed to snowball from there.

Echoshift glances around the room. The main temple area appears empty save for himself and the priestess. There is only the kind of solemn quiet that seems to settle over places of religious communion everywhere, unbroken save for the sound of their voices when they spoke. There is no sign of any other mechs lingering in what space he can see beyond the doorways at the back. His attention goes back to Auspex.

"Did you know... about Starscream?" He gives her a questioning look, keeping his voice relatively low as he continues. "I mean, let's be honest here. He's still a ghost really, isn't he? Unless I imagined everything I saw earlier. And weird as it was, I don't think I did."

[primus_seeress]

*Another weak smile* It's too overwhelming. There are too many voices, too many presences, for a mind bound by a processor to understand.

*Auspex tilts her head, deliberating for a moment. She supposes, at this point, that most of Starscream's secret is no longer so secret, and she may as well clarify. She nods* I knew... a living spark has a different feel, than one that is no longer embodied. His is a strange case, as he is disembodied-reembodied... but he is still dead, yes.

[0ut-of-sight.livejournal.com]

He can believe that now. A nod is all that's needed to convey his agreement; they'd both been there to see the proof. A small tip-of-the-iceberg glimpse, relatively speaking, but it had been enough to give at least some idea. It also wasn't the sort of thing you forgot in a hurry.

"Heh. He looked pretty convincingly alive, I'll give him that." He doesn't look too surprised when Auspex describes him as a 'strange case'. If anything he looks a little amused. The idea of Starscream being an exception to the rule just seems typical of him, somehow.

Still, now that Auspex had given Echoshift confirmation for the suspicions he'd left the temple with earlier (suspicions that he'd been 99.9% certain about, true, but he figured it couldn't hurt to get a second opinion), other things were starting to make more sense. "So that's why him and Duskwing and Blackstar were always comfortable in each other's company," he muses. "He'd known they were ghosts, and they'd known he was one too."