ximilialog | MISSION: THE SLEEPER

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MISSION: THE SLEEPER

● ● ● M I S S I O N 3 . 1

INTRO • MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN • IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT • FYI

// INTRO. beam us down!  

It’ll be during the early hours in the morning when the communications device pings the Orbers in the midst of whatever you may be doing: whether it’s sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast, or being deep into whatever task it is you’ve planned for the day. Viveca’s familiar voice filters through, a cheerful interruption.

// VIVECA.AI

Hi everyone. We’ve got your next mission ready, but I was asked to give you the file a little bit in advance so you could prepare better… so here it is. I don’t think I can delay the teleportation machine more than a day, so early tomorrow morning it’ll be time to go. The situation in Kilnan is a little strange, so I’ve prepared an antidote for you just in case. Pick yours up from the infirmary before you get going. It’ll only work once, so be careful. The orb is somewhere in the castle… I trust you’ll find it. Good luck.

Without any further fanfare, the comms go silent and you’re left with a new mission file and some rather concerning information within the report about a sleeping sickness. But instead of the immediate departure like you might be used to, you’ve been given the day to rest up and prepare for the trip down. So pack your things, grab the antidote, maybe enjoy a hot shower and a good night’s sleep … or if you’re not the sleeping kind, find a good song to jam to and get you motivated for what’s to come.

The next morning before most of your alarms will go off, the teleportation machine will hum to life, crackling with stored energy. Those who have been here for longer might notice this difference and what Viveca had meant when she said she didn’t think she “could delay it for more than a day”. As soon as you’ve been gathered together, you’ll feel the pull — and a tug that removes you from the station.

For what might seem like an agonizingly long moment, you simply hang there in stasis, white light surrounding you accompanied by a strange, ethereal chorus that whispers in your ear, informing you of the goal currently set before you and the cost to achieve it, as well as the exchange for its power —

But before you can venture to open your mouth and respond, the light around you materializes into a fog of cool, damp cloud cover. The moment your feet touch solid ground and the fog parts as you move through it, you’ll see a marble road ahead.

Welcome to the country of Kilnan, Orbers.

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// PART I.MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN  

Around you, the courtyard of the Crystalline Palace opens up — white marble pavement, extravagant sculptures half-covered in moss, and fountains that have long since dried up — its splendor abandoned and left for time to neglect like a long forgotten secret.

If you look behind you, you’ll see nothing but clouds; and underneath you is mostly open sky. Faintly (if you really squint), you might be able to make out the grassy earth somewhere below the clouds but the distance seems a little treacherous to even consider taking your chance to get there. As such, the only way is forward — up the wide steps and through the imposing, but majestic, double doors of the castle.

1.0 Once inside, a seemingly empty castle greets you. There are no servants rushing to greet you, no hustle and bustle that you'd expect from a castle this size... just silence.

You’ll find yourself standing in the middle of a grand foyer. Daylight filters in through tall windows framed with long flowing curtains that seem to sway just a little, even though the casements are clearly shut. Further in, you’ll notice multiple staircases leading you to the upper floors, some of them straight, and some of them curved, while others wind upwards in a seemingly endless direction towards one of the towers. Most of these stairways will appear to be your regular run-of-the-mill means of egress, but the moment you turn away and look back to where you’d just come from, you might notice that the stairs have disappeared … only to be right in front of you when you glance back. Another set of stairs may take you in one direction, but try and retread your path and you’ll find the very same staircase you’d just used will take you somewhere completely different.

These stairs might be playing tricks on you, or maybe you need to get your eyes checked.

From the foyer, hallways appear to sprawl in all directions of the wind, some of them lined with paintings from a very deft hand (or hands). Walk along and peer at one of these incredibly detailed depictions of vibrant rich cities, lush idyllic countrysides, alluring, well-manicured gardens and find that all of them seem so incredibly lifelike — almost uncannily so. If you study one for too long, you’ll find yourself losing focus of the world around you, only seeing the painting that beckons you forward … and helpless to resist, you take a step forward and wind up within the world of the painting. Is it as beautiful as it seemed from its frame? Of course it is. Just look at that colour! Feel that breeze! Take a deep breath of the air around you. But remember that you probably can’t stay here forever; you have to get back. And the way to the castle is … somewhere here. You just have to find it.

2.0 Inside the castle, your task is clear: find the orb.. and for some of you, perhaps try and look for the people sent to the castle before you. To do that, you’ll need to search through the different rooms and accompanying towers… but the moment that you try to, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary castle and the rooms are not exactly just rooms either. Some have stark differences in scale: in one room you enter, all the furniture within appears to be made for giants; while in another room, everything has been shrunk down to its miniature.

Further still, another room will appear to be deceptively normal… but the moment you step past the threshold, the door will lock shut behind you and then fade into the wall like it’d never been there at all. You only have one clear objective then: search through the room for a way to get out… or make yourself a way out.

3.0 When you enter this next room, you find yourself having to pause to take it all in, it’s so incredible that you can barely believe your eyes: whatever this room holds within seems to cater specifically to your individual interests and desires like it sees into your soul. It might offer rare books to those interested in knowledge, the best entertainment for those who seek self-indulgence, decadent foods you’ve always wanted to try for those with a discerning palate. What a wonderful time! So wonderful, in fact, that it’s too easy for you to forget the passing of time … what was it you were doing before? Nothing important, surely. Right?

4.0 There are rooms that don’t even seem like rooms at all once you’ve entered them: you open a green painted door and instead of the marble floors, you step right into a hedge maze. When you turn to glance over your shoulder, you’ll find that the door has vanished, and your hand lingering on the door knob is now clutching at a cluster of prickly foliage. With nowhere else to go but to brave the labyrinth, you move forward. The path you take will twist and wind until you realize that the best-case scenario here is coming face-to-face with a deadend rather than the other delights that the maze holds in store. One end greets you with a particularly angry tree, hell-bent on wiping you off the face of this plane; at another turn, a creature that looks suspiciously like a Sphinx, sitting on her hind legs and blocking the way, might ask you a riddle in exchange for passage; and there is always a chance that the right-hook you take will pull you through a cloud of deceptively beautiful fluttering dots of lights that whisper to you with the voices of people long-dead before you.

5.0 Another room will pull you — quite literally — into the eye of a storm. Hail and rain pours down, drenching you immediately, while lightning flashes in the open sky — it almost looks like the countryside you saw beneath the castle, but that couldn’t be, right? You don’t remember leaving the castle… And more importantly — the rain really is coming down, and that lightning is striking dangerously close. It might be wise to find some temporary shelter, perhaps a little cottage to hide in, or at the very least, get to that overturned hay cart and hide beneath it — and wait for a chance to find your way back to the exit door … wherever (or whenever) it may appear.

6.0 Not all of the castle will be entirely strange, however; there, too, are regular, non-eventful rooms scattered within. A large dining room with the table set for one, a thin layer of dust collecting over the silverware, for instance; a library filled with old tomes and scrolls that don’t appear to have been touched in years; a storage room full of strange items; and, if you make it into the cellar, you’ll find the kitchen, its food storage still robust despite the fact that some of the meat has begun to gather mold, and some of the vegetables have darkened and gone a little mushy. On the layer of dust settled over the floor, there is exactly one set of footprints, perhaps smaller than you’d think, but even those seem at least a number of weeks old.

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// PART II.IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT  

It’s almost too easy to become distracted by all of the strange happenings within the castle, easy enough to forget about the sickness you’ve been warned about — and perhaps, with so far there having been no sight of anyone actually affected by it, it’s easy enough to think that there might have been a mistake or a misunderstanding. But the longer you spend within these beautiful white stone walls, you become aware of a whisper: quiet at first, the barely-there breath of a language you know you understand and yet you still can’t quite grasp it, the meaning frustratingly close to the edge of your consciousness. And the more you try to touch those not-words and too-light-whispers, you feel a little dizzy before the world around you suddenly changes.

7.0 At first you think you’ve simply fallen into another room, just another hidden trap-door or painting you’d stepped into. So perhaps you don’t even realize that you’ve fallen under a spell at all when everything around you is just … dark. Beneath your feet, if you focus your gaze, is a still surface of a black lake glinting — and yet you are not sinking. Every step that you take forward creates a little ripple across the glassy surface. As your eyes adjust, so do your surroundings begin to take shape. It will be different for everyone, this dreamscape morphing and melding into a scene (an island, a meadow, a small patch of forest, or will it remain the lake?) or setting that reflects you — it’s where your soul feels most at ease … for now.

8.0 As expected, the dreamscape does not stay still for long. The more time you spend here, the more it seems to draw inspiration from your memories. Suddenly you find everything around you materializing into solid form, the experience being dragged from the depths of your mind into manifesting a vivid study in touch and sight and smell and sound. It’s something you’ve already been through before, but whether you like it or not, this memory is being replayed around you and now you’re the observer … you and the lucky (or unlucky) person who has entered this memory with you.

Do you stay, or do you try to run from it?

9.0 The stronger the memory, the stronger its effect on you: the heaviest memories, whether they’re happy ones or sad ones, may latch onto your subconscious so tightly that it pulls you right into the memory itself.

Just as these dreams often do, it’s hard to tell whether this is made up or reality itself — perhaps you remember that this has happened before and you’ll try to change the course of events. Or perhaps you think you’re living this memory for the first time. Whatever it might be, you find yourself fully convinced of its authenticity … but the power of belief is a dangerous thing. Beware that the injuries sustained in this state will become real, visible to those who might be observing this — and observing you — from the outside. (You know the line: if you die in the game, you die in real life.)

NOTE: These strong memories might also draw you into them as yourself from that time, so someone wandering into this re-lived memory might find you there as a child, a teenager, a young adult, or perhaps someone with the same or a different face — whatever you were at the time of the memory.

10.0 Once you become aware of these memories, you may push them away or will them to stop. The moment that you do, the dreamscape will immediately shift to become its unaltered state once more. The other way to escape these memories is to leave. At the edge of your dreamscape, you will find that the air shifts and shimmers just a little differently than the rest of this space … and once you get close enough, the doorway will open to let you out of your dreamscape and into someone else’s like a chain of several small links. If your dreams are more akin to nightmares, perhaps you enter the door willingly. But just as likely, you might simply get too close and are sucked into the passageway.

And you never know just whose dream you end up in next …

The only way to leave the dreamscape is by being woken up by someone administering the antidote to you, and it will only work once. So if you fall back asleep, remember — if it takes you in again, you will remain under this sleeping spell, unable to wake … at least until the cause of the sickness has been found.

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F Y I

• The events in this log take place during the month of November.

• If you have questions about any of the prompts or the mission in general, please direct them HERE.

• To submit a search request regarding exploring a specific place during any of the prompts, please do so HERE.

• Voting for how the characters will get the orb will go up November 22. Though voting will be done in an OOC post, it is an IC vote in the sense that you should pick a choice your character would ICly make. What the characters choose to do will determine the conclusion of the mission.

• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪

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1.0

[ For once in his life, Drift was grateful to grandiose architecture when it became clear the massive castle could easily accommodate someone of his stature. Moving slowly through the corridors with the naked expression of curiosity clear on his face, Drift finds himself stopping near a series of paintings in an eastern wing of the seemingly never ending series of hallways. ]

Those look like ginkgo trees. [ Drift says to whoever might be nearby as he motions to a large painting of a garden surrounding a small pond with a stone cottage off in the distance. Three large trees with rich, black barks and fan-shaped leaves stand in pride of place, each loving rendered in a brilliant golden hue. ] There were some of my favorites while in Japan. Pleasant to look at, but they seem out of place here somehow.

5.0

[ Every room appeared determined to be more chaotic than the last. It was with great reluctance that Drift opened the door, and- , of course, he found himself over the threshold before he could blink with the door disappearing on them. Yet again. This room presented yet another physics problem as it proved not even to be a room at all. What opened up to Drift and whoever was unlucky enough to tag along was the vast countryside.

Above them, where they had first been greeted to the sight of serene white clouds gently floating below, was a sky torn about in a riot of sound and fury. Massive black and grey clouds fecund with hail and rain roared as they broke open and delivered a tremendous storm down upon them. Out here in the open, they were pressing their chances to be a statistic on the casualties of lightning strikes or hail. ]

Quick, get in! [ Thinking quickly, Drift lunged forward to give himself the room to transform. Once in his vehicle mode, his rear tires kicked up mud and grass as he spun in a frantic half-circle before throwing open his doors. ]

8.1: Delphi
CW: body horror, violence, and aggressive diseases

You know, Ratchet, one day you'll say something nice to me—just before you tell me I've got a terminal illness or something. [ A thinner, more compactly built Drift stands off to the side out on a snowy landscape in the company of two other Autobots. One was a red and white, thickly built mech with the chevrons of a medical vechical and a frown permentanly afixed into his expression. The other was smaller and blue and looking fidgety as they pair aruged outside a large door with a giant 'X' painted on it ]

Ratty... [ The present-day Drift was watching the scene play out exhales the name like the sound of someone getting the wind punched out of them. He stared, transfixed on the medical Autobot like someone seeing a night sky full of stars for the first time after a life having only known darkness. It was dazzled amazement and bittersweet longing interwoven together.

Just then, the nervous-looking blue Autobot transformed and abruptly careened himself at top speed into the hangar doors. The one called 'Ratchet' was quick with a rebuke, shouting: ] That cross on the wall? The one you just ignored? It's the universal plague symbol. It means "stay the hell away" in a billion languages. It does not mean "ram raid a morgue!"

[ The younger Drift sheepishly raised a hand before saying: ] Hands up, who thinks this trip's just taken a slight turn for the worse?

It never occurred to me how...ironic that whole conversation was. [ The 'real' Drift intoned before gripping the hilt of one of his swords strapped to his thigh. ] I was right about one thing: This is about to get a lot worse. Stay close to me.

8.2: Dead End
CW: drug abuse and police brutality

Your hands are shaking again. I though you got clean? [ A round-faced, friendly looking mech with chrome and chipped yellow plating gingerly touched the wrist of the one he was addressing. Just two of a small group packed in tight beneath the overpass of a ruined street somewhere in a darkened city. It was Drift, but a Drift from a long time ago. This Drift was gangly with the crouched posture of a hunted animal with a haunted face and the hint of something vicious behind sickly reddish-orange optics. ]

Just a little something to even me out before it gets to bad. [ This Drift snapped waspishly, a hint of fangs poking behind the mouth of his dirtied and haggard face. A sad smile from the other mech and Drift deflated and more calmly said: ] Don't worry, Gasket, I'm not looking to get more. It'd mean another trip to the Relinquishment Clinic for that kind of shanix, and I like keeping myself off the market, thanks.

[ The conversation was interrupted and a sudden tense air rippled through the small group, all of them huddling closer to each other like startled animals. The cause of this was a group of heavily-built and heavily armed Senate enforcers parading a whip-thin mech in cuffs down the alley. One of the enforcers laughed after nudging their detainee, nearly making the cowering creature trip.

Behind Gasket, Drift quietly let lose a low and terrible growl that was a more feral sound than something that looked so human should be able to make. ]

Calm down, Drift. [ Cautioned Gasket, ] We steal, we break the law. As far as the system is concerned we're the bad guys.

[ This did very little to talk Drift down as his hissed through gritted teeth: ] If it weren't for this corrupt system we wouldn't have to look out for ourselves like this.

Maybe one day we'll- Whoa!

[ Out of nowhere, one of the enforcers rammed the butt of his gun against the back of the prisoner's head with a thunderous crack. The handcuffed mech could only cry out in pain before doubling over. Shivering on the dirty concrete as his tormentors jeered at him and hauled him to his knees. ]

Hey! [ Gasket stepped out, hands up. ] Come on, there's no need to-

[ Everything escalated from there in a cascade of one poor decision after another. One enforcer roughly shoved Gasket, which gave the detainee a window to knock his bound hands against the Senate goon closest to him. That only panicked the other enforcer, who hastily fired off his weapon. The stray shot caught Gasket point-blank in the center of his chest.

Dead before he even hit the ground. ]

NO! [ Drift lept out of the shadows on the end of his anguished cry. No longer shaking or curled in on himself, Drift reacted with the blind fury of any cornered animal kicked one too many times. He was throwing his full weight at the offended enforcer, driving them into the ground before stealing their rifle.

What followed was a massacre.

Some distance away, the 'real' Drift watched in silence with a blank expression. ]

Wildcard!

( ooc: got a request? feel free to drop me a line at bretons or on discord at bitchard#0228 o7 )

Edited 2021-11-06 22:46 (UTC)

[ Megatron had done his best not to fall asleep himself. It seemed to come with so much odd, uncertain danger (though God knew the Lost Light had run into enough of this kind of nonsense) that he wanted nothing to do with. If he had nothing else, even after his centuries of imprisonment, he had his mind. And now, he even seemed to be sharing that.

Cybertronians do dream, though it is different for them than for organics. Fragmented memories and bits of garbage data floating through electronic haze. This sort of thing feels different from that in how solid it feels in spite of the bizarre way memories shift and come apart, seemingly at a touch. This one is shared.

An alien skyline is lit by flames and smoke beyond shattered windows in some sort of luxurious high rise--the fanciful wall hangings and curtains have been torn down, artwork smashed or vandalized. Someone has painted a lurid purple symbol across one wall, along with the words YOU ARE BEING DECIEVED. That same wall is pock-marked by bullet holes and energy burns over the crumpled corpse of an alien mechanoid, half-covered by some of the curtains that have been torn down and casually tossed onto the body.

A rounded table is here and Megatron, some version of him, sits cockily in a chair that might as well be a throne, looking cooly at the gathering around him. A blue and yellow marked Cybertronian with his face covered in a mask, sits stroking the back of dark feline-shaped mechanoid sprawled across the tabletop. A sleek flyer leans against one wall, smirking about something. A collection of other faces and forms, all looking towards Megatron with rapt attention. There's a familiar-and-yet-not form in the small group clustered around the table, though if you called him 'Drift' he might not answer to it. The Megatron seated on his 'throne' smiles. ]

My Decepticons. My Conclave. We have earned a victory here in Kaon and our people celebrate.

[ Through the window beyond, fires and smoke continue, along with the pounding and clattering that sounds like a million washing machines filled with spare change having a dance party, overlaid with cheering, crowd noise, and celebratory gunfire. ]

Tomorrow we will bring the joy of our cause to bear against more targets, against other corrupt, powerful mechs who thought they could be saved by their money or their infuence or their police. Tonight though, my friends, my comrades, we have earned a celebration.

[ He raises a glass full of something glowing. ]

You are being deceived!

[ The cry is chorused back and the gathered break into excited conversation and laughter a moment later. Someone starts playing music. It's the world's strangest house party taking place in a trashed penthouse. And this younger Megatron watches, grinning over the rim of his glass.

Off to one side, the current Megatron watches with a grim air. ]

...We could have had the world that night. That's what it felt like, anyway.

Edited (typos) 2021-11-07 02:11 (UTC)

[ Unfortunately, Drift had been one of the first to succumb to the strange sickness. The dangerous combination of being skeptical of their briefing and the stubborn overconfidence that he would be spared from a seemingly organic malady. This is what Drift got for the mistake of trying his hand at being incredulous. The dreamscape itself at least seemed to follow specific rules, however. Once Drift made it through that hurdle, the horror of being dragged through every painful memory and old shame was an experience he could numb himself to just like everything else.

That was at least until memory lane started seeing more foot traffic and turned more into an urban memory highway with bumper-to-bumper slowdowns. Drift never cared for crowds, and he certainly didn't appreciate his own mind playing host to curious tourists. Even though any whose paths he crossed were as much a victim of the sleeping sickness as he was, he didn't have to pretend to like it, especially when he was currently sharing headroom and memory with Megatron.

The worst part? This specific memory, this very night replaying itself out in near-perfect detail, untouched by even the first signs of information creep- was honestly a good one. Tremendously violent and tinged with the warped, fragmented recollection of what was to come and what it would all look like in hindsight, but Drift could have been dealt far worse.

Drift lets his attention fall to the half-concealed, broken body of the senator tossed haphazardly in the corner. Virtus, Drift thinks his name was. A hedonistic pig that boasted one of the only high rises in the poorest city of Cybertron, treating Kaon like his own personal playground for whatever sick fantasies only the absurdly wealthy and the undeservingly powerful had. Of course, no one ever bothered to curb his behavior. Why would the Senate care what went on in Kaon? That night they had made them care, made them look at what their own greed earned them. Drift couldn't even say with certainty that if Virtus or anyone like him were standing in front of him now that his swords would stay sheathed.

The Drift of now sidles up beside his contemporary as they watch the speech to its conclusion. Both were not saying a word between them until the mood had shifted from an impromptu rally to a full-tilt blowout. Soon, one of the Seekers had shot off the lock of an ornate engex cabinet and was passing out bottles of expensive high grade like cheap party favors. ]

To our gracious host! [ Drift winced when he saw his firebrand of a younger self rip off the cork of a bottle of refined engex and tilt the bottle, pouring half of it onto the corpse. The room shook at the rafters with the roars of the Conclave's laugher. ]

In a way, we did. I remember two days later, Vos was practically ours, with Tesarus following soon after. [ Drift said once the energy of the roar dialed back to a dull roar. It was surreal to frame his words as if he still called himself a Decepticon, but that was the harsh truth of it. This was as much Deadlock's memory as it was Megatron's. In a strange way that made the atmosphere between himself and Megatron almost casual, they observed a shared red-letter day with mutual feelings of embarrassment and regret.

Drift pulled a face as he watched the scene play out, and a memory within a memory dislodged himself when he saw Deadlock and Soundwave lock eyes. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Drift groaned before explaining what bothered him. ]

Oh, God. I remember this. It's the part of the night after I've gotten into the nucleon and decided to circle you and start a fight with Soundwave for no reason. Starscream is about to drop his glass, pitch a fit, which only lights a fire under my aft and puts me in a mood. Watch.

[ Then, as if following a director's cue, a tinkling of shattering glass is just audible over the music serves as a prelude of Starscream earning the reputation of his name as he threatens to render the entire room deaf. ]

You were always such a charming person at these affairs.

[ Megatron says it with something that's almost a laugh. Even with all the ill that's yet to come from this point, it's hard not to think of this as the good times. When a whole world of possibility waited for them and a better tomorrow seemed to be theirs, if they could only reach out and take it. As Starscream begins some sort of heated argument about... something. A bit of the spoils, perceived disrespect, or just because he wanted someone's attention, Megatron cannot recall. It was the energy of these things. Almost a bacchanal, everyone let loose to indulge in engex, circuit boosters, nucleon. Fights happened, though usually as a sort of odd flirtation or foreplay. Occasionally they got serious but the bouyant mood typically had kept such things from happening. ]

I always thought you were jealous of him, because of how close he was as my advisor. You needn't have been. You were both invaluable to me at the time in your own ways.

[ He glances aside at Drift, requesting clarification while Deadlock and Soundwave crackle and posture at each other. Ravage has moved to drape themselves across Soundwave's shoulders, as if daring Deadlock to make some sort of move. ]

Fortunate that I wasn't the mood for two of my best to rip themselves to shreds. Even if they were in a good mood, I'm not sure Ravage would have been inclined to let you off lightly for picking that particular fight.

[ The Megatron of the memory is on his feet, glass of engex still in hand as he starts to insert himself between his two lieutenants. It's a party, after all. No need for that, right? Meanwhile Starscream is still yelling about something, providing even more chaotic and riotous noise. ]

[ When Megatron hits to mark on that started that fight, Drift vents loud enough to make his engines rubble with the crackling heat of ignition. Of all the shared memories they could have stumbled into, this wasn't the worst of the lot. It just dug up some things that Drift had long since buried and would have left undisturbed until the heat death of the universe. So naturally, Megatron had to be his usual observant self. ]

Well, thank you for laying a concern of mine I haven't had in over a million years. [ There was more bark than bite there, but Drift hadn't taken this mission expecting to go digging through his past in such an intimate way. ] Megatron, of course, I was jealous. That fact is what you would call an 'open secret' in polite company. If it wasn't Soundwave, then it was someone else in the Conclave. Even back when you weren't actively encouraging it, I was fighting over any measly scrap of attention like a starved turbofox. Belonging can become another tether, another addiction.

[ When his option was turning his attention back to the memory or Megatron, Drift went with the memory. However humiliating it was to watch his younger self put on airs in front of Soundwave before Megatron intervened before Ravage could go for the throat, at least he knew the script. Drift shook his head as he watched Deadlock flash an undeserved cocksure grin before shoulder-checking Soundwave as he strutted off towards the balcony. ]

Where the hell are you taking that thing? [ Deadlock sneered as he was met at the balcony door by Starscream. The latter now over his latest tantrum and dragging the senator's corpse behind him by its half mangled ankle. The seeker grinned viciously and answered: ]

Throwing a parade. [ Without preamble, Starscream kicked open the balcony doors and lept down into the night. The roar of jet engines was heard, followed by a redoubling of cheers and gunfire from below. Drift could fill in the blanks from there that the raucous Decepticons still riding the high from taking the city were enjoying their new toy for target practice. ]

Hard to believe because of him that Cybertron stood a chance after the war. [ Drift said with genuine awe that he would hesitate to call admiration as it risked finding something admirable in that conniving backstabber.

He cursed just then as he watched Deadlock move out onto the balcony away from the crowd, drop into a lounge chair, and grab for an all too familiar packet of several vials. He knew precisely where this was going... ]

Well, [ Drift said flippantly with a sidelong look back at Megatron. ] Now you and I get to find out if observing these dreams are affected in any way by the 'us' of the past being drugged out of our minds.

● ● ● M I S S I O N 3 . 1

F Y I

Drift | Transformers IDW

wildcard; if you want to stop to gawk at robot drama feel free

welcome to the shit show

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8.1 -- 8.2 | Time to ruin some childhood memories

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