nexus_crossings | (no subject)

Current Mood: annoyed

(no subject)

Okay first off, this place so didn't look like the dig she had been on in the middle of the Pacific. Which would explain why Taylor has a mud streak in her dark hair, and on her clothes. Though she brushes herself off mostly to try to look presentable.

After a moment she gives up, after all at least it's only mud and not blood or any thing else. Though her bare arms, show she's not unused to rough landings, coral hurts if you hit it in a bailout after all.

"This so isn't Rapa Nui, so. Would it be a bother to ask two things? Well three. Who is the Kahuna in charge? And where are we?" Yes she slipped into surf slang only because so far, she doesn't see professor types around and she really had been looking forward to getting the job done and testing some of the waves before she crashed for the night. Of course, it's hit or miss lately if she gets surf time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Still would be interesting." She smiled softly. "I never said he wasn't. And now I know why Ash said what she did when I asked about doppelgangers." She walks with him glad he's relatively human sized.

Taylor hasn't ever run from danger, or at least initial contact with dangerous things. Hell she's gone surfing with bull sharks in the water off the coast of Australia, though they probably aren't from the same Earth at all.

"I thought 'mythology' meant things that aren't real. Doppelganger?" Megatron doesn't know that word. "Is that a lookalike? The alternates don't, always, though. The two Soundwaves look different, or so I've been told. I've not met the purple one. But it traumatised Ravage to meet him, and Ravage and Soundwave have loved one another since the day that they met."

He ex-vents, softly. "If you want to learn about Cybertronian history, I might start giving classes, again. I did before, once. I should warn you that I'm mass-displaced and at twenty percent of my natural size. Cybertronians can transform into different things, and some of us have the ability of mass displacement. I'm currently the size of the smallest among us, but I'm naturally five times bigger than this. If I give classes again, you'll be in a room full of very large people."

If he knew how brave she was it would please him, but what he likes the most about this odd girl is the sense he gets of her wildness.

Megatron isn't particularly fond of tameness; he likes wild things that refuse to stay between the lines, regardless of frame-type or species. He does wander in and out of the Wilds sometimes, though he avoids the Eliksni. He finds wildness a comfort, as one would expect from someone who loves Loki, loved Ravage, tried to love Starscream once...

Edited 2021-04-18 11:18 (UTC)

"Yes, though legend says that they are bad to run across actually. it means your death if you see yours. But Mainlanders also say you shouldn't go into deep water on just a board. I may not be Native Hawaiian, but there's no place I've felt safer than on a paddle board in the deep sea. You see more out there."

"So I'll just have to make sure if I do, I find a good perch. Though I'm not great in a classroom setting." She smirked. "I was horrible in a formal setting, which drove my professors at college nuts. Seriously, I'm the reason three of them started seeing a therapist."

Megatron can't help laughing. "There are different kinds of safety," he says, "and people who spend their entire lives trying to avoid risk never feel safe. Some people only feel safe in deep space, or the deep sea. I was never particularly risk-avoidant, so I'm not going to worry about it if you decide to join my classes. Besides, I already need therapy, or so people tell me."

He smirks right back at her. "You're going to love Una, by the way. My partner's younger daughter. She's afraid of nothing, so the rest of us get to be terrified."

"The false safety is overrated." She was glad he was laughing about it though. "I'll think about it though. That is if I don't get sidetracked by other things."

Taylor grinned. "Aw, so aliens do care. Most of our corny movies state otherwise. And only saying that because you are alien to me." She grinned.

"Actually, for the most part, they don't. For the most part, aliens want what they come to a planet for, which usually isn't the inhabitants, at least in my experience. It's typically something they need to survive that there isn't enough of on their own worlds. If you're very unlucky, what they need is real estate. If you're lucky, they want something you're not even using, and they'll leave you alone if they can. But I told you that I'm not proud of all the history I've made," Megatron says gently.

"The delightful thing about the Nexus is that everyone is aliens. Especially the ones who look like you, but come from somewhere else. They can be more alien than anyone else, because you expect them to make sense and then they don't."

She was silent a moment, "It's in the past right?"

"This is true, I know it's all alien to me. As for making sense... I'm a treasure hunter and a surfer. I don't make sense to most people."

"Very much so," Megatron assures her, and his expression is not one of a man--or a mech--who's proud of his crimes. "I led a slave revolt, but the government I started after that got out of hand. After I stopped waging war, I wanted for a while to be a pacifist. But even after I stopped, I kept ending up in situations where my choices were to fight or let other people I cared about get hurt. So I'm not a pacifist, but I'm also not a warlord, anymore. It turns out that the middle path is almost always the best one. Now I will only fight to protect and defend those who need it."

The woods are getting sparser now, the town closer.

"I don't think most people make sense even to themselves. We're capable of wanting two or more contradictory things at the same time, and we're not very capable of making a decision between them and living with that. What kind of treasures are you hunting?"

She listened to his words and after a moment she reached out her hand placing it on his arm. "If you're remorseful and trying to make up for the past then that's the best you can do."

"The job I was on was for the guy that raised me. He's part of a society that, honestly I don't think it would be good if they found the lost continent. So, I was debating double crossing them, finding the place just so I could see it, maybe get a few sketches, but keep it secret. Finding this place though, little cooler than an ancient civilization. Even if they were a Water people." She touched the shark tooth at her neck, nearly as big as the palm of her hand. "Most of the time that's what I'm doing though, finding ruins of villages, or cities and trying to piece together the past. Sometimes there's a cool treasure involved. Like this one time I actually helped find an ancient statue that had been stolen from a temple in my mother's home country. It was a good luck totem for the village, and bringing it back, actually helped restore some of the prosperity for the village, mostly because it brought people to see it and bumped up commerce, but still felt good returning the statue."

Megatron is touched by Taylor's response, even though he knows she doesn't know how many flowers there are around his statue on the Necroworld--how many lives he's taken, or ordered others to take. But she's right.

They could still be blossoming there at an exponential rate.

"Thank you," he says, and means it. "I'm glad you take things back to the people they belong to. That's not what I think of when I hear the words 'treasure hunter', normally. I take it the person who raised you does not share your values."

"Yeah I know what most people think. But I figure the past is so full of people stealing things and claiming them for themselves, it's fun stealing from those kinds when needed, to try to make things right." She stretched a little. "Though most people also don't expect a surfer to have a doctorate either."

"Oh? What's your doctorate in, archaeology or something of that nature?" Megatron studied her. "Well, I'm clearly no better at estimating organic ages as I ever was. I would have sworn you were no more than twenty."

"Art actually, well Art history. The guy who raised me hoped that it would convince me to try to be a director or some other 'honest' profession." She tapped her pocket where her journal and pencils were. "Joke was on him, I learned to draw really well, and abuse the skill on digs, because sometimes a camera flash can ruin important details."

"Good for you. I bet your work is lovely." Megatron smiles. "It's also important to have a creative outlet. I write poetry, myself. I have as long as I've been able to write. Though some of the first ones weren't very good."

"Sometime if you want I'll do a sketch of you. I already drew Lucifer, not everyday a girl sees a guy with wings after all." She grinned. "Though both of us were sitting talking so it was easier."

"Sure, I'd like that. Loki might, too."

They come out of the woods onto a side road, the Plaza not far away.

"There's a lot to see here. When I decided to come here to live, and not just to visit Loki...I started wandering around all over the place to see what I could see. That's why I shrank myself down so far, so that I wouldn't attract so much attention and I'd actually be able to watch what went on. Angels are not uncommon here. There really are a lot of them. They have their own enclave. There are all sorts of people here. There are multiple varieties of humans, not all from Earth--there are Cybertronians, and another kind of mecha called Exos. There are sapient flightless birds--I think they're called Skeksis. Some dinosaurs, at least one person who looks like a humanoid feline..." He shrugs. "And of course you won't know this, but sapient Cybertronians can have a humanoid shape, like mine, or an animal-like shape, or even just a machine shape, and they're all equally intelligent."

"So, this place... Will be fun." She grinned. "Hey I'm cool with all sorts of people, I might be a little startled, but I adjust. Another reason why my uncle swears I really am part fish."

"...how would that even work?" Megatron is completely confused now... as he often is by idioms and metaphors that presume even a basic knowledge of how organic plants and animals work. "Is that even possible?"

"There is a mythical creature on my world, that is part fish, they're called Mermaids, though there are Mermen as well. He insists I'm one. Though I assure you I am Human. I just feel safer on the water than on land, or at least near water."

"Ah...that's different. Some Cybertronians are like that about the air, they're happier there than anywhere else." Megatron smiles. "I thought perhaps your ...mentor? guardian? had been alluding to some bizarre experimental thing. Humans in our universe have been known to experiment upon us, when they've had the chance to..."

That's not so pleasant a thought, but it's true, and it's been so long since he heard about it that his expression is pretty much neutral.

"Oh?" She caught what he must have meant. "Oh Gods no. I mean he's looking for artifacts of beings, but as far as I know, none of them can do that. At least I hope not." She rubbed the back of her neck. "Only time I've ever heard of stuff like that happening is in sci-fi movies or ya know cartoons. Either way it's not considered real where I am from."

"It's real where I come from," Megatron says, "but I suppose my universe would qualify as science fiction in many of the places where other people in the Nexus have lived."

He frowns. "I don't think it would make a very good cartoon. At least not an Earth-style cartoon. Don't they limit the amount of violence you can have in those? My world's a fairly violent place."

[OOC: Face. Palm.]

"I don't mean to mock it honest. Just... It's still a little mind blowing that ya know there is other life out there. I mean of course there is, Humans really haven't even finished exploring our own world." And she thinks she just swallowed her foot up to her knee thanks.

"Some of them they do. But not all cartoons are made for kids."

"Everyone has to start somewhere. I'm glad for you that the aliens didn't find you first; as I said, that's not always a good thing."

Megatron's not offended. There was a time when he would've been, but during that time, he wouldn't have been having such a conversation with a human, anyway. "I suspect there would have been a time before my own people knew there were aliens, if the Quintessons hadn't come and made our lives hell."

He ex-vents, letting out some waste heat. "Is that so? Well, I suppose you could make a cartoon about my universe then. It would be pretty dark, especially if you wrote it from the point of view of the people of Earth, who never asked to be brought into our war."

"They're probably looking. I don't turn to the skies as much. Not when we've forgotten about so much buried in our ground or dropped into our oceans."

"I see." She looked down a moment.

"I've seen some horrible ones. The joy of having hobbies that are so dangerous, you sometimes have downtime as healing up."