#v|this machine

[sparkmender]

"If you didn't want me to slip my collar, it's simple..."

"Don't give me one."

[sparkmender]

Sunstreaker gripped the collar tighter, fighting the snarl that threatened to cross his face.

"Your gonna wear it." He snapped, armor flaring out like a threat. "Miss wants you to, and I aint keen on annoyin' her."

The Ornament backs away from Sunstreaker and nearly bumps himself up against the narrow berth behind him. Rung’s ‘personal’ room is not large at all, with just the berth and desk and a single chair for furniture, all of which were part of the walls and impossible to move because of it. Sunstreaker can probably cross from the door to the back wall in one strong lunge.

And Rung is visibly trembling, fear blotching out his biolights even as he curls his servos into fists at his sides and protests. “I’m not a pet. I am a mech, as you are. I will wear the ridiculous costumes and the makeup the Evaluator requests, I will go without my panels, I will be at the beck and call of the scientists, I will smile and serve drinks and let them humiliate me, but I will not wear a collar.”

[sparkmender]

"You belong to me." -Ten of Twelve :3

Half-braced over the arm of the Madame’s chair, her long fingers curled in the gap between his throat tubing and collar fairing, Rung finds it suddenly difficult to swallow.

“I, I,” the useless thing stutters out, servos starting to slip on the fine material of Ten’s chair, “I didn’t mean— I meant n- no disrespect, genuinely, but the crystals—“

[sparkmender]

"Surely, I am not so dangerous that you need all of this."

The Ornament reaches out to brush one of the heavy armaments pointed towards it, fingers light on the barrel, expression impossible to read behind thick oculars.

"I am unarmed, and unarmored," it says. "And I have no alternate form to speak of. Yet you aim at me. You see me as a threat. Am I a threat to you?"

[sparkmender]

"I may not be a real mech, but at least I know how to be a good person."

[sparkmender]

"I understand that you are upset. I do. All I ask is that you do not raise your voice at me."

[sparkmender]

"I- I'm so sorry, really, I don't want to interrupt and I know ought to stay quiet, but- but, please."

"Have you seen my-- apologies. Have you seen Three of Twelve? Please? I'm lost."

[sparkmender]

“There’s no telling what you’re gonna do when the chips are down.”

With some consideration, Rung sets a single explosive charge on the table across from Terminus. He is careful not to let it roll out of his fingers.

“There are 2,600 of these marbles,” the Ornament says, his voice soft in the dim light of the meeting room. “They have a shelf life of two and a half vorn, undisturbed. There is no fuse; they are designed to shatter and ignite on contact when thrown. One is enough to blow open a standard, Council-approved blast door, or in a pinch, make a new one through a wall. Two could shatter a transparashield.”

His oculars go opaque as he tilts his helm.

“You may not know what I’ll be doing, but I know what you’ll be doing.”