maskormenacelogs | hello destructor (closed)

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hello destructor (closed)

WHO: riptide, poe
WHERE: ~where they first met~
WHEN: after the forgiveness thing
WHAT: bros being sad bros
WARNINGS: mentions of trauma, maybe? war?

Riptide didn't leave the forgiveness event feeling ashamed like he should've.

He left feeling upset like he'd been proven right. The Autobot literally cannot imagine any situation in which this world won't fall into civil war. It scares him, especially knowing he falls under the people who would form one side of it. Without a choice. Again.

He doesn't realise it but the park he's stomped back to is where he first met Poe -- who he appreciates for the conversation and not judging him, though subconsciously.

A loud thud sounds out as he flops down near the bench Poe'd almost crashed into him. He stares blankly out over the park, imagining how it would look like bombed out and burnt down.

Man, he's really fucked up.

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The park was not far from Poe's house, and so it wasn't exactly hard to notice that a giant robot was in the neighborhood.

He felt like an utter nerf herder, from earlier, and had already been debating about going to talk to Riptide and try to make it up to him. So having the robot almost on his metaphorical doorstep was the kick in the pants he needed. He drew a long breath, grabbed a couple of things, and headed out the door.

It was a little ridiculous how small he felt, walking through the park to the giant hulking silhouette. In one hand, he had two beers, and in the other, a bag of popcorn. Neither were of an expensive variety. They were literally just what he had in the fridge.

He walked up until he was in front of Riptide, and cleared his throat.

"Hey."

Giant sulking shilhouette, more like. Eyyy.

It takes Riptide a moment to snap out of his little trance, but he looks down at Poe, expression unreadable.

"Hey," he replies, flatly.

It's hard enough to read the face of a giant robot most of the time, and Riptide is giving him absolutely no hints now, so Poe does a bit of an awkward shuffle, and then rubs the back of his head, still holding the beers.

"Look, I-- I wanted to apologise."

That gets his attention. Riptide frowns, leaning over to properly look at Poe.

"For what? Why?"

"For being a jerk." He took a step closer, neck craning upward so he could look at him.

"For making things worse instead of better, for digging into grief that I had no right to dig into, and being a real ass about it while I did it." He looked down at his hands. "I uh... brought a peace offering, but I don't think it's worth much when you're in your droid form."

Riptide watches Poe for a moment longer, then decides this would be easier if he was a human.

"Cybertronain," Riptide corrects. "And I still don't get what you mean."

"Sorry. Cybertronian." Right. Race, not robots. He just looked like a giant droid.

Poe held out one of the beers.

"I didn't really understand, at first, and so I got frustrated with you. And said dumb things about your friends when I had no idea what even happened to them. So, I'm sorry. Both for the dumb things, and for the fact that you lost your friends. And I thought - I don't know. I've lost a lot of people, all of the sudden, very recently. I haven't really... done anything about it. So I thought - if you wanted - maybe we could just share a drink and share some stories and have our own little wake."

He takes it, though doesn't drink.

"...Alright. You first. I don't really-- not right now. Not first."

That's about as good as he expected, so he just sits down in the grass, putting the popcorn in his lap, and took a slow sip of his beer, before clearing his throat.

"So... Before I came here, an entire star system - five planets - and the whole Republic Fleet were destroyed in an instant. A few years ago, I would have been with them. I guess I'll start there."

He paused for a moment, not looking at Riptide, but clearly including him. "My first crush was probably there, in that fleet. In fact, I know he was. He was a captain for one of the squadrons and could almost fly as well as I could. Probably had more of a crush on his ship than on him, but you know how it goes. When he found out who my mom was, he didn't stop bothering me for a whole week, trying to get me to teach him some of her famous maneouvers." He takes another sip. "Okay, so, for the story - he was my Captain on my first actual mission with the fleet, ever. Nothing too fancy, we were just doing pirate patrol, basically, in the outer rim, with about six other pilots. But I thought I was such a big shot that as soon as I saw a blip on my radar I took off after it without giving them so much as a 'by the way'. He just happened to notice my Y wing suddenly zooming out of formation after some huge tanker that was almost definitely going to blow my ass out of the sky. So the bastard chased after me and managed to get my R2 unit to shut down my engines. Wouldn't respond to me at all! He ordered the rest of the squadron to go after the tanker and then basically just left me stranded in space on low power for three hours to cool my heels. When we got back to base he was furious."

A smile spread across his lips, almost completely unnoticed to himself.

"Lectured me for an entire afternoon and put me on latrine duty. If he hadn't been a superior officer - man. Anyway, he thought I was a right little piece of bantha fodder for years, but we ended up pretty good friends. Last I heard he'd gotten married and everything, some little kid--" But that's where the smile faltered.

"Yeah. They were probably there too. Didn't even get a chance to meet them."

There's a lot in there Riptide doesn't understand-- R2 unit, latrine duty, Y wings, marriage, kids....

He gets the gist of it, though. Going off on your own, doing something stupid, getting saved, making some vaguely happy memories, then the guy dying. Riptide knows it all too well. Hell, he was something of a pilot himself-- at this point, he would say he misses the Rodpod.

"Five at once?" he asks. Riptide has fought long enough to know that it could've only been a weapon. If it was a natural event, that implies there could've been evacuations or it could've been prevented somehow. You don't get that in war. "That's disgusting."

"Tell me about it." He frowns at the grass and sort of picks at it, pulling out a few pieces of it and just tossing it back on the ground, absentmindedly. There was a long pause before he said anything else.

"One shot, five planets. Billions of people. Every time I try to actually think about it, my brain just kind of fizzes, you know?" He sighed and took a sip of beer, but he was barely drinking it. It was mostly just to give his lips something to do while he thought.

"Mostly civilians. The fleet, the Republic, but the majority of it was civilians. All they ever did was just want to live normal lives, but for some reason, other people in the galaxy thought that those normal lives just weren't worth it, if they weren't in control of them. That's it. The whole motivation. We want to be in charge of it all, so why not kill a few billion people to get there."

Another pause.

"Janae would have been there. She was like a sister to me, in the fleet. Never had siblings, but if I did, she would have been it. But she took a job for the government branch - was tired of endless patrol runs. She had the brightest, reddest hair you've ever seen in your life and it would never stay down. It was like she was wearing a second helmet, just of her hair."

"Trillions, probably," he comments without really thinking about it as he moves to sit down next to Poe, finally. He doesn't like to think about how many people died at the warlord's hands and the six phase infiltration protocol.

"It's always civilians though, isn't it? You can't really do anything without there being collateral somewhere." Said like someone who's truly trying to come to terms with that but failing. "I think the Decepticons were like that. They started off with good goals, but eventually it just became an attempt to wipe out all opposition."

Riptide's full name is proof of that.

"I'm sorry. At least they died instantly."

"Yeah. Trillions, probably." He certainly couldn't count off the top of his head. What was billions versus trillions? Just another number he couldn't fully comprehend. Just more depth to a grief he couldn't fully feel.

"Not everything comes with collateral. We were actually making some progress. Doing some good. For a while there, anyway." He took another long sip before turning his head to look at Riptide, who was seated down finally.

"Yeah. If you've gotta go... at least it was fast. But it wasn't fast enough for them not to see it coming. I can't imagine what it looked like from the ground." His gaze sort of trailed off, before he sighed.

"So what are the Decepticons?"

He decides not to mention that he has a vague idea of what a world-ending event would be like. It's not nice and there's no point upsetting Poe further.

"Like those bad guys you mentioned. They had some stuff before the war, but I wasn't alive then," the unfortunate implications here are clear. "When I came around they just wanted to kill everyone and take the planet for themselves."

He's quiet for a moment, debating if he wants to tell Poe about Simanzi.

"I was created during - well, in Simzanzi. It was... kind of a big moment at the start of the war; it lasted for longer than a human could comprehend and... by the time it ended our race had been pretty much cut in half."

Seeing as they are sharing stuff...

"My full name is Riptide of Simanzian Dawn. That's the kind of names MTOs like me get."

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hello destructor (closed)

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are your ready for a stupid amount of head canon because here we go

I'M SO READY

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