Though somewhat out of place on Sideswipeâs faceplates for its simple rarity, a sneer was a quite natural part of Sunstreakerâs visage, and one once again found its way onto the warriorâs flawlessly beautiful features in response to Mirageâs bit of commentary on his twins. The gilded brother only made partial effort to hide his growl behind his cube. âIf they fight for himâŠâ he trailed off, unspoken meaning falling into place in the silence his vocalizer shifted into.
If they fought on the Primeâs side, in the name of his cause, they were as good as groveling at his pedes as far as the pair of Decepticons was concerned. Whether their alternates acknowledged it themselves was entirely irrelevant - of course an Autobot would have been blind to their shame and humiliation, they simply could not be expected to admit to it.
The frontliner moved on from that topic with a grunt. âSome universes collapse if theyâre intervened with in any way, others are merely altered, and some never change but instead split into an endless amount of alternate timelines. Ours belongs to the latter category,â and that meant that the twins could indeed go about their business in the multiverse without much care, safe in the knowledge that their universe would still be waiting for them when they were ready to go back.
Barring an incident such as eaten by Unicron, of course. âBut we canât know how yours would react,â he concluded with a shrug of indifference. The chances that an universe would take so poorly to altering forces from the multiverse that it would entirely implode were⊠Well, truly, it was difficult to say how high they were. The very nature of those planes of existence disappearing upon an event they disagreed with made it rather difficult to track how often it happened - survivors or observers of such tragedies were rare. Perhaps it wasnât common, or perhaps it was entirely common, only with no one left to give the warning of how common it was. It could be a truly constant risk they all lived with.
But the multiverse, wasnât it all about the endless danger and risk that came bundled with the more positive aspects of its infinity? Anyone who thus played with it, or in it, had to accept the possibility of unforeseen consequences, both personal and⊠Those of a grander scale. They knew all about the personal ones - wasnât it so, Sideswipe? - but so far, had been fortunate enough to have largely escaped becoming the causes or witnesses of greater events.
Sideswipe nodded in firm agreement to Sunstreakerâs sentiment. âSame difference,â he continued where the golden twin trailed off, made just as grouchy as his brother by the topic. Sideswipeâs engine revved unhappily, but really, they were more or less used to their alternates being pathetic aft kissers, and more or less soft-sparked to boot.
They, though? They didnât kiss even Megatronâs aft before the mech had beaten them bloody and left them with no other choice, and they definitely werenât soft-sparked.
They wouldnât have made very good Decepticons if they were, anyway.
âKinda wish Iâd manage to make a universe destroy itself sometime. Now that would look awesome on my rĂ©sumĂ©~â He was pretty sure the league of figures that destroyed whole entire universes held some pretty darn powerful people. Like Unicron, for starters.
If he managed to get counted among them? Frag. Heâd be a ready legend!
At least they could see if theyâd inadvertently destroy Mirageâs universe by talking about it or by imparting some information upon him that would lead to its destruction further down the line, or⊠Really, what even causes some universes to take so much offense they just decided that welp, guess Iâm not gonna exist anymore if these puny bastards canât respect the dimensional boundaries?
Cuddling the spy a little more comfortable- and purring happily in the process- Sideswipe was swift to at least give the bare bone basics on their universe. âOur Cybertronâs a big ole pile of rubble! Totally dead. The energy crisis that led to the war kinda did that, anâ the war didnât, like, help matters.
âAnâ yeah, thereâs war! Megatron formed the âCons to fight the caste system anâ the oppression of the high castes, but there was a bunch of mecha who werenât too happy about that, anâ under Optimusâ leadership they organized into the Autobots, after the Matrix chose him as Prime. There was a whole lot of fighting, Decepticons chased the Autobots into central Iacon, anâ eventually things got so tight that most of the remaining Autobots left on the Ark to look for resources anâ whatnot. Megatron pursued âem, anâ both ships crashed on Earth after a space bridge accident, anâ âen we spent four million years in stasis on that mudball, anâ after we woke up we fought some more.â Sideswipe shrugged in the spell of quiet in his monologue. âThatâs about the point where we discovered the multiverse, anâ a little after that we left our universe anâ switched factions.â There. The shorthand version of their universeâs recent history. They really didnât know about the state of the place now, seeing how they hadnât visited it even shortly in several years, but⊠Yeah. Last they knew the fighting was still ongoing.
âOur planâs to go back anâ all, but thereâs so much to seeân experience in the multiverse. Been kinda too busy to throw ourselves into the war good and proper again.â
And made some mistakes along the way, yeah yeah. Shaddup, bro. Theyâre not bringing that up.
âSo! What about yours?â
Mirageâs mouth formed a tight, thin line as he listened in on Sideswipeâs rather chillingly cheerful tale of their dearly departed Cybertron. Â The crawling sensation of discomfort spreading over his circuitry was nearly enough to make him take another gulp of likely toxic sludge if only to feel something else.
Though he supposed that what he had yet to tell Sunstreaker and Sideswipe would one way or the other change the mood.
âHmm, well⊠ I believe I should start by regretfully informing you that the Autobots won the war on âmyâ Cybertron.  Megatron now stands with us- against everyoneâs better judgement.â
He scoffed, tapping a graceful finger against the filthy glass, âIt truly seems that Optimus is in fact the softest of us all- wears his heart on his sleeve, as the humans say.  As if Megatron would have shown him the same compassionâŠâ
And against his own better judgement, he suffered another drink- though by this time his mouth had numbed enough that the second go wasnât nearly as horrid.
âUgh.  Should you wish to knowâŠone of the last times I saw him, he was reciting poetry at my bar.  It was certainlyâŠah, one of my more stranger experiences to witness.â
As an afterthought, âAside from Starscream currently serving as acting ruler of Cybertron, of course.â
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