In Pursuit Of...

Whirl has had a lot to think about since everything went down at the Forge. There's the fact that all the Decepticons and the major players of their movement are now in custody, there's that whole awkward and tense conversation he had with Blast Off from opposite sides of cell bars, and also having a lot (okay, like, 2 but thats a lot for Whirl) of people he would describe as friends sitting in custody. All of that stuff occupies his mind, but there's something else there. Something far more pressing. Something that has consumed him since he first laid his optic on it.

Pursuit. Who was she? What is her connection with Barricade? He heard her call him 'dad' and he saw her flip out when Barricade was attacked. He has a pretty good hunch as to what's going on between them but he wants to make sure. He HAS to make sure, because if he's right... then he has the perfect opportunity to make Barricade's left miserable.

At some random time, Pursuit will have been dragged out of her cell by a group of Enforcers only to be placed alone in an interrogation room where she will wait for what might feel like a long time before a figure finally enters. And what figure is that? Why, it's Whirl of course! And he's gotten his face fixed up kind of, not really. It's still pretty bad but at least you can kind of recognize who he's supposed to be now.

"I told you I'd be seeing you again."

Pursuit, still clamped up by the inhibitor claw, with arms behind her back, sits in the chair across from Whirl, staring at him and his broken face. She lacks nervousness, fear, or even unease - either she's got some kind of cast-iron, suicidally-brave level of courage - or she's not really aware of what could happen to her. Being that she's 48 hours old, it's the latter.

Her expression is neutral as she ascertains her situation, looking around the room, studying the lights, the table, the chair, the door. Eventually she stops paying more attention to the room and gets back to Whirl. "You did," she answers simply.

Well, it's only two words but it's still a lot more conversation than she was willing to give him the other cycle. So there's some improvement right there! Whirl says nothing as takes a seat across from the femme, elbows on the table that seperates them. "I have a few questions for you to answer. Don't worry, this wont take long and it will be relatively painless depending on your cooperation. We'll start with an easy one, okay? I want to know what your name is. What do the others call you?"

"Pursuit." It's a reasonable question, and she sees no reason not to answer. She doesn't know NOT to answer.

"Pursuit." Whirl repeats the name to himself as it's one he intends on remembering. It's an appropriate name, given her appearance, though he wonders if it was her original designation or if that's just the name she's taken. He supposes it doesn't really matter at this point.

"Okay, Pursuit. What is your relationship with Barricade? And before you answer, keep in mind that I heard what you called him so there's no reason to lie to me about it. I want the /whole truth./"

"He's my mentor and he has designated me as his kin. I've accepted him as my father," Pursuit asks simply. She keeps looking at Whirl's face, his torso, his claws. They're very interesting, different than what she's seen before.

"I see." That's pretty much what he suspected and it makes him absolutely sick. Is this how Barricade copes with loss? Is this how he decided to handle Shiftlock's death? By /replacing/ her? His claws flex almost instinctively but he catches Pursuit staring at him, staring at his mutilated features. There aren't many empurata in the Decepticon ranks, she probably hasn't met many before this.

"Do you know who I am? Has your.. 'father' ever told you about me?"

"No." It's a simple answer. "I heard you called 'Whirl'. I assume you are the same Whirl mentioned in Megatron's "Towards Peace" writings. Is that correct?" Pursuit doesn't have the faintest clue about this mech and why he's so fascinated with her father. She pauses to mentally thumb through the data slug of writings that Soundwave gave her.

"Is that all you know?" Whirl sighs and rises to his feet, beginning to pace around the room as he talks. "That's really dissapointing. I was hoping Barricade would've filled you in on some of the juicier details, but it's completely understandable why he wouldn't." He gradually makes his way back over to Pursuit, coming up from behind her now.

"I'm going to hazard a guess and say he never told you about the femme before you. He never told you that there was another, naive femme just like you in his care. She also referred to Barricade as her father, and he considered her his kin. Since he never told you about her, I take it you don't know what happened to her. Would you like to? Would you liked to know what happened to her? What happened to the femme in your exact situation?"

Pursuit seems interested and sits forward, thinking over what's being said before answering. There's a step in the right direction.

"It doesn't matter what happened. The past cannot be changed. The writings identify you as corrupt; it stands to reason then, that you do not have my best interests in mind. I am not interested in what you have to say."

"And you think Barricade does!?" Whirl shouts, dropping any facade of professionalism and slamming a claw on the table with a loud clang. "You REALLY think he cares about you? About what happens to you? Allow me to be the one that enlightens you to the fact that HE DOESN'T. He is only using you to calm his own demons. His own mistakes. His own failures as a father. You are nothing more than a pathetic replacement."

He pulls his claw from the table, placing it and his other pair on both of Pursuit's shoulders to grip them tightly. "Her name was Shiftlock. Do you want to know what happened to Shiftlock? What BARRICADE did to Shiftlock? He threw her out of the Decepticons and onto the streets. He put a kill order on her, demanding that any Decepticon that come within contact with her make an attempt on her life lest they be punished as well. He let the Autobots abduct her, mess with her mind, force her into their emply. He let the Decepticon medics, YOUR medics, use her for sick experiments. He let her /die./ And do you know why? Do you know why he did all of that to her?"

He leans in now, that mess he calls a face close to her audio receptors. "It was because of me. It was because I interfaced with her. I tainted her with my corruption. So tell me.. what would he do if the same fate was to befall YOU?"

Pursuit startles at the loud noise, flinching briefly, as Whirl slams his claw against the table. He begins to shout at her, driving accusations about Barricade at her. She's willing to listen to Whirl and what he has to say (what choice does she have but to hear it? He's shouting at her after all) and she compares it against the small fragments of experience that she has. They'll have to be forged of solid ununtrium to get out of this intact.

Whirl puts his claws on her shoulders and holds her there, and she squirms under that grip, wanting to scoot away from the irate mech. His statements are powerful and potentially damning. All she has to weigh this against its the fragile, infantile bond she has with her "fathers" and the brief instructions they gave her. She looks away from Whirl. She's thinking over what he's just said, and in no way hides that fact in her expressions.

'Interfacing' means very little to her. She has experienced it - at least the lower tier variety, the frame engineer who designed her testing her systems, Barricade sharing defensive skill modules with her for her own protection, so she has no comprehension of the sort of connection Whirl is speaking of. It's no different than handing off a datapad, right?

Pursuit raises her optics back up to Whirl after slow seconds of silent contemplation, and her look hardens in defiance. "You're lying."

"He tried to physically protect me - from you, from that white enforcer. He threatened to kill you when you collected me. That's inconsistent with your accusation that he doesn't care about me. As for what became of Shiftlock - I don't care. The manifesto lays out very clearly what kind of mech you are, and if she associated with you, then her punishment was just. I'm defenseless against whatever you may do to me. The guilt will be on your head - not mine."

Whirl really has no clue as to what Pursuit's history consists of. From his point of view, going by his own experiences, Pursuit is just some Decepticon femme that Barricade has decided to take under his wing. He assumes it's nothing more than Barricade trying to atone for his past failures as a father. His assumptions are based entirely on conjecture but that's all he really needs to go through with this shameful interrogation.

Maybe if he knew just how young she really was, how she was just 'born' no more than a mere forty-eight hours ago, how she had absolutely no experience or knowledge outside of what she was told.. maybe he would've thought twice about all this. Maybe he would've just sent her back to his cell and try to forget all about it... but he doesn't know any of that and the way she speaks of him and the image she paints of his character in general. This is what they all think. This is what all the Decepticons see him as. Whatever shred of personhood he had left after his mutilation has been completely destroyed, Whirl now nothing more than a living example of everything that is wrong with the world, everything that made the Decepticon movement completely neccessary.

Then Pursuit makes the mistake of speaking ill of Shiftlock, daring to imply that her fate was somehow deserved or justified.

Claws sink into the seams of Pursuit's shoulder armor, the mech taking a firm hold of her before slamming her face-first against the table. He leans over her, craning his neck so hold his face close, his voice a hiss in her audials. "If you think I'm lying then I will /show you./ I'll show you everything that happened. I'll show you what kind of person she was, the kind of person I saw her as. I'll show you exactly how Barricade betrayed her and tossed her away. I'll show you the deep depths of despair that consumed her, what YOU'LL experience for yourself in time."

Pursuit yelps as she's smacked into the table. She struggles against Whirl's grip, but with the inhibitor claw in place, she's weak as a kitten. She clenches her teeth and begins to feel the smoulders of an emotion she hasn't yet felt before - anger. Maybe even hate.

"I don't -care- what you have to say and I am not interested in viewing the data of some other femme that has nothing to do with me!" she growls from beneath Whirl's grasp. "You're -everything- they said you were!"

And so Whirl finds himself standing at a fork in the road, caught between the paths that lay before him. He could try to prove her wrong, try to show her that there's more to him than what's written in Megatron's manifesto. He could try to forget about this whole thing, send her on her way. He could do literally anything else and still be able to recharge at night.

Or he could give in to his emotions, give in to his anger and prove her right. Prove to her that he really /is/ everything they've said he is, that he's exactly the horrible person Megatron described him as. He could just become the monster everyone says he is. It would be so much easier, wouldn't it?

"..You're right. I am."

Whirl digs a claw under the edge of Pursuit's interface panel and pries it open before accessing his own, taking his cable in his claws. There's no hesitation as he makes the connection, there can't be. If there was, he might've thought twice.

Soft as wet tissue paper - Pursuit has no mental defenses, no barriers to protect her from Whirl's assault. Experience, decisions, information - the things that lead to strength of will, hardened firewalls and wisdom to escape - she's completely bereft of these things. She is a shallow puddle that Whirl quickly and easily splashes with any mental movement he makes, a grape crushed underfoot.

The depth of her experience is a quickly sorted out flicker of two day's worth of memories: Waking up in some hidden frame development center, coming online to the presence of two mechs, one obviously Barricade, the other a strange looking ground vehicle in black and green. Taking first steps. Barricade's gentleness and protectiveness, his warmth and concern. Driving to the Forge. Soundwave handing her information. Going to sleep. Waking up. Reading and receiving a download of basic combat and defense disciplines, and the nurturing reassurance of Barricade's mind, a hand holding her as she mentally toddles into the word to experience it with wide-eyed innocence.

Her mind is so fresh and unwritten that her personality is visible and clear as the unclouded night sky. She's... familiar. ... Very familiar.

Protectiveness, giving, unselfishness. Concern and compassion. Adventurousness, but now - now without worry and loneliness. She's untainted by abuse or abandonment. She has no desperate need for a missing piece of herself to return. She is whole, calm and at peace. At least - up to this point anyways - and the pulse and signature of her spark energy flows freely along the the connection.

That spark pulse and frequency has been felt before. Like DNA, they are unique to an individual.

An individual that Whirl is claiming to avenge.

Whirl is on the assault, fully armed and ready to lay waste to anything that dares to come in his way. He has no idea what to expect and he prepares himself for anything, ready to unleash a torrent of information upon the femme pinned beneath him. His plan is to bombard her with those precious memories of Shiftlock, once treasured experiences, now weapons the he uses against Pursuit.

But there's nothing for him to fight against. Not a single thing that makes any sort of attempt to impede him. Pursuit is like an open book now and what he finds inside those pages is troubling indeed. There's barely anything there, her life experiences no more than a scribble amongst thousands and thousands of blank pages.

The anger that surged through him is gone now, replaced by a steadily growing sense of dread that swells from deep inside Whirl as he comes to fully realize the extent of his actions. This femme was innocent in every sense of the word. She was extremely young, filled with curiousity about this new world she found herself in. There is real affection between her and Barricade, nothing forced or implanted there by the police mech; just a naturally occuring affection that was bound to happen given the circumstances. She was untainted and pure, she had no reason not to be. Until he came along.

There's also something else there. More than just the familiarity of her nature that Whirl quickly pushed aside, chalking it up to nothing more than a coincidence; he /did/ have Shiftlock on the mind after all, of course he is going to draw parallels between the two. There's definitely something else there.. something more unique.

Shiftlock.

Whirl begins to panic, his entire body shaking, the connection between the two of them rapidly becoming unstable. Memories are just pouring out from his side of the connection; any and every interaction he's ever had with Shiftlock, and everything that happened as a result of her life and her death an uncontrollable torrent of information that flow out of him. He makes a desperate grab for his cable and yanks it free, severing the connection altogether despite the pain it brings the two of them.

The assault on Pursuit's mind is more than she can comprehend, the memories of otherness stabbing into her head. Vertigo and confusion follows swiftly after. Mentally she is being beaten senseless. She begins screaming shortly after the connection is made.

She is unaware of Whirl's panic under the deluge of another, more developed consciousness. She's drowning in someone else's life, gasping for mental breath, her fragile sense of self being torn to shreds. There is a sharp spike of pain, like running into a wall at high speed, as soon as Whirl physically disconnects. She can't take any more, and she immediately, mercifully drops into a stasis lock, blacking out.

The sounds Pursuit made during their connection, the screams that left her mouth, they will forever haunt Whirl. Anytime he's alone, when the noises of the world around him are quiet, those screams will replay in his mind with the same anguish they had when he originally heard them.

Pursuit goes into stasis lock once the connection is severed and the interface is abruptly ended, and Whirl is left to himself to come to terms with what just happened. What he just did. What he saw and felt inside of her. He stumbles backwards and braces himself against a wall but finds it difficult to stand, soon collapsing onto the floor and staring at the unconcious femme slumped over at the table.

"What.. have I done?"

Whirl sits on the ground for a long while, arms wrapped tight around himself, a poor attempt to comfort himself as he begins sobbing uncontrollably. He's not sure how long he stays there as time has no meaning to him at the moment, but eventually he leaves and some time after that, two Enforcers come in to retrieve Pursuit and place her back in her cell.