Admissions of an Old Soul

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Goa Murusa
Murusa came to the one place she figured no normal Cybertronian would come to willingly. The Cable Jungles are, in a word, dangerous to be in alone. She's just on the outskirts of it, then she sends an encrypted message that is brief, to the point. "Goa, we need to talk." then she shut off her radio.
Goa muses to himself as he triangulates the signal. Encrypted, but his audio instantly decoded it. Rare codec, or at least it was rare the last time he'd broken it. But that company had probably gone under long ago. Someone had done their homework. Some clicks later, the green silhouette appears in the fringes of the jungle. With no assumptions, he has one blade already drawn.
Murusa is partially obscured by the tendrils of vines and dense undergrowth, but those optics brighten a bit at the sight of you. She smiles a little, not really surprised you have that scythe out. If something tried to pounce either of them, it was going to be in for a nasty surprise. She leans on her Crystal City Guard issue spear. The crystal within it glowing in the dimness. There is no need to conceal herself, if this child is to trust her.. no.. no longer a child she reminds herself.
Goa notices you, but his step doesn't halt until he's a stone's throw away, where he stops quite abruptly. When vines brush the rear points of his shoulders, he unloops them as second nature. So Crystal City wanted to talk to him. He tilts his conical nose up a little, eyeing you up and down skeptically. Could be anything.
Murusa stands quietly, just leaning there on her spear, making no move of aggression. The light of the crystal shining on down upon her gives her a peaceful glow. The femme just smiles at that sizing up, that suspicion is so readable to someone of her age. "You must be wondering how I knew your name." she states.
Goa 'holsters' the scythe in his shoulder, but leaves it folded out, flipping the other forward to match. He sets his hands on his hips, and his antennae form a downward arrow on his forehead. ... "No, but I am wondering why." The Decepticon smirks weakly. "What did you want?"
Murusa watches the movements quietly, recognizing you are relaxing a bit but still a bit on guard. With a smooth motion she slips her spear to her back where it magnetizes, then slowly she settles herself in a seated position, legs folding off to one side, a hand placed to keep her from listing and falling over to that side. "It's not what I want, Goa, that matters. What does is what I know." she gestures with her free hand in front of her. "I am not here on Crystal City business. No even knows I am here."
Goa casts one more long look around, particularly to the jumbled jungle interior, then takes a few more lanky steps forward and falls seated. His legs, twiggish as they are, have little difficulty crossing through each other. The mech hunches his upper body over them. The weak smirk is gone now, replaced with an even more suspicious look. "Shoot."
Murusa cocks her head, observing you quietly a moment, that smile still there. Her free hand comes to rest against her chest, fingers curled. "When I saw you on the battlefield that day, not so many cycles ago, I realized just how much time has passed since I saw you last." she begins. Her gaze into your optics is unwavering, her voice clear but soft, not a hint of deceit in it or her optics.
Goa stiffens his back. So this wasn't about him snooping their files. This was a bit worse. His fingers steeple against each other in front of himself like magnets. "How much time would that be?" Goa's voice is a fraction higher-pitched than before. "If this is about your guard, he attacked me." A half-truth.
Murusa notices the back stiffen, then that steeple fingered gesture. "This has nothing to do with that battle, Goa. It has everything to do with you, however... you and your sister." a little pause for you to take than in, then, "Do you remember your days as a sparkling, Goa?" she asks.
Goa snorts through his ventral fans -- it would be an invisible gesture save the hanging debris it puffs out to his sides. He looks around again, then loosens up. The hands stay clasped. "No."
Murusa inclines her head to that, "My dear Goa, you and Firestorm.." she sighs, suddenly just looking so utterly sad, ".. it had to be that way. I am so sorry I had to take part in it." her optics have not left your own, if she breaks that contact, you won't believe her. She cannot have you not believe her, or this is for nothing. "Every moment of my life since that decision, the action that had to be taken, I have lived with that shame. I turned to religion to help succor my soul."
Goa bites his lip. "So it was you." His hands unlock, and the mech leans forward, digging his orange fingers into the ground -- though perhaps to your eye, they ought to be more bronze. Like his optics. "Who built us, and why? Why were we separated? Why is one," He unclaws his hand from the ground to motion upward, "a seeker, while the other suffers on the ground?" Goa spins his tires and frowns, sarcastically, but takes on a much more serious tone for the next question. "Why can't she come back to Crystal City?"
Murusa nods to the first comment, "It was I that built you two." she admitted, not flinches at all as you dig into the ground before us, not at all surprised by the change of optic color either. "The why.. you and Firestorm should both hear this. Can you contact her?" she asks, then there is sympathy and empathy clearly etched in her face. "You have looked long for your answers. Did you think they'd be easy to find? You were meant to be a smart mech, Goa. I already know where you have been looking. Your answers were not there." then a sigh at that last question, "The emblem you both bear now.. that is what keeps you out. For how long that keeps you out though, only Primus knows for sure.. I only pray that he gives us a warning through his Hierophant before the missiles rain down and take out the city."
"Primus," Goa shutters his optics closed, leaning back away from you, almost curled into a ball the way he's folded in half. "She's too far away." A lie. Firestorm wasn't far off at all; Murusa had some brass showing up this close to Polyhex. But Goa didn't want to drag her down. Drag her back. She'd been through enough. "You know who I am, you know my brand doesn't mean slag to me. Save paying the Autobots back for what they did to her." His upper lip curls. Not entirely a lie. Less than he'd like it to be. "But I know. I know. Got to keep your castle trim. Back when, I resented you slaggers for that. Pretty sure I still do." Yellow optics dart around neurotically. "But I understand."
Murusa hears the bitterness there in that response, she accepts it for she was partially to blame for it. A nod of acceptance to his next response, "Just like a brother to protect his sibling." she murmurs, "And like a brother, eventually you will tell her in your own time and in your own way. Won't you Goa." she remarks, but continues as if she already knew that answer. Though the accusation draws out a thoughtful look on her features, "If you care so little for the brand you wear, Goa, perhaps you need to reexamine the source of what was done to her. Being a neutral, I have the unique opportunity to see the war for what it is.. and for what is isn't. I have prayed many times upon it for insight." then a nod to the rest of your words, "Please resent only me and the build team, maybe even your parents.. your true parents... for taking away not only your memories.. for separating you two."
Goa is a twitching pile of green and black plate. Were this a trick, he would be completely vulnerable ... and he seems to recognize that, as he unfurls back upright, uncrossing his legs to just set them in front of his body. He hides and finagles with his face, like he's wiping something from it, and continues. "I was a neutral once, too, you know. We all were." He scowls a little. "I've examined and reexamined. There's nothing else there. The high files and the low files, all dead ends. And what's done is done. That's done, and my youth is done. Worked out for us, didn't it?" More sarcasm, but this is quieter. Like he actually believes a bit of it. "Tell me why. I might not be able to get down here again."
Murusa watches the twitching, the motions, frowning a hint that this is some physical semblances of emotional and mental torture you just have to be going through. She'd seen it in herself, at that age, so long ago... she recognized it because it was exactly how she reacted that day when they asked her to make him.. his sister. "Take into account the name Decepticon," she begins, straightening herself up so the other hand can come up, she fiddles with her helmets, unlatching something and unfurling a length of cable with a neural net jack. She holds it loosely in her palm in front of her, "Take into account the mech who started the Decepticon army. Then ask yourself this, Goa, who is better suited to what happened with your sister? Who better able to hide it? Was it really something an Autobot would do? Anything a neutral would do?" then a sad little smile, "The story would be too long to tell, my dear Goa. I can show you, through my optics. Unedited, unabridged."
Goa twists his antennae into that V shape again. He didn't know as much about the mechs and femmes of the City as he'd like, courtesy of their long, isolationist history. As such, he didn't know ... he didn't know in general. If they would do something this subversive. This femme was suggesting to him that he had been walking his enemy's walk all along ... HIS enemy ... not the enemy of his faction. No, no. No. His spark strings were being pulled -- he was vulnerable. Drilling himself internally for believing even a small bit of it. And he didn't only believe a small bit of it, at the moment. All in all, it comes across in that V shape, bright white yellow-rimmed optics, and a mouth held thinner than a patch cable.
He takes the cable and attaches it to the input beside one optic without a second thought. "Need all the facts there are."
If there had been doubts of her being subversive, it may be quashed the moment the first images through her optics are shown to you. It's like watching an old home movie, but so much more vivid and tangible. You may even recognize the surrounding area, untouched yet by the war. Murusa has just come off shift from a construction site, ready to transform and head home, but is approached by a femme and a mech. Young by Cybertronian standards. The mech was pure white with blue accents, strangely familiar to Firestorm in that regard, but obviously of grounder design by his bulk. The femme, a green seeker from a line before Slipstream's time, but there are hints of that design that you would see in Slippy. The mech is speaks first, for such a bulk his voice doesn't seem to fit, perhaps it’s his youth. "Are you Murusa?" he asks. "I am." comes her reply, you can see how she studies them.. how they hold hands, hold the femme leans against him. "We need your unique talents."
Goa shuts his optics off. By now, it was hardly the first time he'd shared a neural link, and staring around like a fool just distracted one from the data. But that doesn't disable a thin flow of energon from both the Decepticon's lens rims. Half the answers ... no ... a nontrivial portion of the answers. "And the separation," Goa mutters, whispers.
Murusa replies, "We can speak in private about this. Follow me." she says, transforming and driving home with the two right behind her. She takes them into her home at that time, they speak about the femme being with twin sparks and that they needed someone to build the bodies. They also wanted to be sure that it was done in complete secrecy. She had to agree, considering their age. So young. Not ready for this at all. Inquiring into what forms they wanted, they said they wanted a grounder and a flier, just like they were. It made perfect sense. So she went about building the bodies with what spare time she had, the nervous couple visiting often to check on progress. She senses your prodding, moving up to the moment of the sparks being placed into the bodies. So small, but put together well. She had entrusted a medic friend to assist her in the power up process. You notice though, when she looks toward your parents, that they are bearing emblems as they had not previously. The femme the Con sigil upon her shoulder. The mech with the Bot sigil upon his chest. They watched from afar though, the femme was crying. He was trying hard to comfort her. The war had just begun, they had chosen sides.. this was their final day together as a couple. "I wish we didn't have to do this." Murusa is saying softly, curling the young Firestorm in her arms a moment before settling her in the arms of another couple. "It's better this way Murusa." Then she picks you up, her grip gentle but caring. "I wish there was another way." she repeats, then handing you over to another couple entirely. "They must not know where they came from... could they even forgive us."
Goa's link had been completely silent, a wall of inky darkness, until the final point. Forgiveness. Goa's neural net bursts a subsonic tone, drowning out something else. "This war," he both mumbles and echoes, "will kill us all." Before he's silent and unmoving again, the screams of the dying, the energon-possessed, manage to sneak over the line. Goa's optics flip back open and online, but dim. "Is there anything else?"
Murusa feels the intrusion for a moment, her firewalls aren't up to par, so she feels that flicker of screaming and quails mentally. "Not long after your parents gave you to those couples, I was snapped up by a group of scientists who needed someone with not only construction ability, but was a graduate from security training, which I had just completed. I lost touch with your parents, and with those couples. I only came back within this last solar year. My first thought was to see what happened to you all." she frowns now, showing what she saw that day. The account of when your Mother had died in battle. Your Father was so stricken by her death, because of the spark merge connection, he had died as well. This was before either of you had fully grown as you see the date of their death. She had tried to locate the two of you of course, but the couples that had taken you had covered the electronic paper trail very well. She was no computer hacker. It was only by luck she found mention of you in a Autobot battle report.
Goa curls up again, limbs about his chest uncomfortably. Almost paranoid. He hadn't known ... he couldn't have known. Both of them, long gone, not in the war, but because of it. And he, Slipstream, they had so nearly joined them ... because of the war, not in it ... Goa is biting his lower lip hard enough to draw the energon that runs through its repair and motor systems. "Murusa." He levels a look at the femme, like he's not completely sure of the name yet. "What would you have me do?"
Murusa reaches forward to take the connection out of your socket, her fingers brushing gently against your face.. like a Mother would touch her child. But you get one more image of another battle report, from the Autobots, the mention of finding where missing Cybertronians had gone. The rescue of the few they could take before the Decepticons overwhelmed them. It was early in the war then too from the date upon the report. Then she takes the connection away, "I will not impose my beliefs upon you. You have free will for a reason, so do what you feel is right Goa. "
"A lot of things /feel/ right." Goa looks up through glossy optics. It'd been a long time since anyone had taken that much care with his faceplate. He hears, he sees what's offered. But he ignores it. Files it away ... but not too far away. It's just too much for the little guy right now. "A lot of things sure as the pit aren't." He still looks to be in shock. "Some cycle," His hands wring and fidget against each other, before just digging into the opposing armor like claws, "I'll see your tributes to Primus. Pay my respects. Wouldn't be alive otherwise."
Murusa nods a little to your words, she strokes your cheek again, "I know. Trust me I really do know. I left this place in its beauty, returned to her in the state she is in now. Found out I had lost many friends because they decided to join one side or the other, some fell in battle on a side, some because of a battle they weren't even engaged in." then she gives you a little smile, "I'll pray for you to get the insight you need Goa. Even if you may not believe in Primus, he believes in you."
"He'd better. I'd hope the stooge is keeping my death-wished aft around for a reason--" Goa stops himself, and sigh-hisses. Of course. Get even a little curious about something, and his first rule of programming is to push buttons. "I want to see it. She--" He tilts his nose down. Wrong she. "I think we'd all do well to see it. Insight."
Murusa smiles to that, "Remember what I said about free will. We make our own choices. It was all you who kept yourself alive." then she hmms softly, slowly getting to her feet, "See.. it?" she asks, then peers down at you.
Goa tilts his helmet back, smiling almost serenely. Bizarre, considering -- his locked-up posture, the violet marking his face. "Home." The Decepticon stands, forced by his odd center of gravity (Murusa would know, after all) to push off with his hands to balance. He takes your shoulder with one hand, clutching the accompanying hand with the other-- "I don't know if what you just did felt right. It didn't help fix a broken shell of a mech." He lets go of your hand to take his face and flip the red lenses back over his optics, narrowing them to see you. "But it was right." He steps away, almost looking ... ruffled by standing so close to another Cybertronian. Or maybe it's just the frazzled way he looks, period. "You'll see us again."
Murusa inclines her head, then understands your meaning all too well. "I'll see what I can do to arrange. But you must do your part too, Goa. You must not come with that emblem visible, you must not come with Con weapons upon you. In fact no weapons at all. When you come, radio to me directly on the frequency I contacted you. I will meet you at the front gate. Give you a tour." she smiles a little, "I owe you that much." then a pause, "It was the truth, dear Goa. Truth is always right."
Goa displays that calm, shell-shocked smile again. He feels that's all he needs to say, apparently, as just afterward, his limbs and canopy fold smoothly into vehicle mode. The armored car blitzes far, far away from here with speed typically reserved for a rocket- or jet- powered craft.
Murusa watches you leave, then turns to head home and begin arranging things on her end.
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