red_diode_district | Everybody learns from *somebody*

Everybody learns from somebody

Passing the doors into the library, Megatron was pleased he had gotten the schedule correct as he saw who was sitting at the desk. If it had been completely necessary due to his own schedule, he'd have come here when he could. But since he didn't have to...

Ignoring the faint itch interfacing hadn't properly gotten rid off, Megatron approached the librarian at a lazy, casual walk. It was a pity he hadn't seen any signs at all that the surprisingly fine-lined truck-alted mech had the inclination he was looking for. Things would have been a lot easier (and, really, pleasing) if he had.

As it was, since there was no one left in the current arena circuit that he trusted with what he had to hand over, perhaps he would have to avail himself of one of the clubs. It made an irritable twitch slither down the treads on his shoulders, the thought that he'd have to do that.

It was ages since he'd had to go to an open venue like that to simply get his needs properly taken care of.

And he really would have preferred the librarian. Orion Pax - it hadn't taken anything to find out the designation when to found the schedule - was witty, somehow diplomatically argumentative and didn't give in if he knew he was right or wanted to stand for his opinion, actually had some smarts to go with said use of words and Megatron wanted to know more.

More, and more personally (most of the earlier he'd simply learned over the few times he'd been in the library when the mech was, but hadn't actually approached him). So this time, he decided to actually use the librarian's assistance in what he was looking for... and perhaps get something more out of it.

"Excuse me?"

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Megatron, who'd already unhooked the line as he was on the floor, chuckled and tugged on the cable.

"Even if it was still attached, that wouldn't have done anything. You can jump, Orion." Snapping another light rod to make it glow, Megatron made a quick turn around, but saw nothing different from the other time he'd been here.

Not that he'd expected it to, really. The guards wouldn't go down this far unless they actually realised someone was down here, and it was much more probable that anyone who did stumble in down here (or knew about it prior) could climb down elsewhere.

The roof had holes in it, little holes of darker black than the shadows around them, but it didn't matter; they didn't need to walk out on the roof, and even if they did the holes would be easily avoided.

"Yes, fine. Fine," Orion grumbled, flashing his lights to check the distance with more reliable senses before jumping lightly to the ground. Well, roof. It didn't feel terribly safe, but it didn't collapse so he considered it a win. Rolling up the end of the cable and tucking it away for later, Orion took in his surroundings, flashing his lights on full to light the area for them both.

"It looks...well. Unsettling." Like the results of some world-ending Apocalypse. He could make out the edges and lines of other buildings amoung the rocks, and the empty desolation combined with the lack of sky made the area as eerie as it was fascinating.

"It's not the most welcoming place, no," Megatron agreed with a shrug, "but this isn't our destination. This way." Taking Orion by the elbow, he led them across the edge of the roof, around one of those partly-visible buildings and then spread his hand at the wall they were faced it.

"This is where things get interesting," he said with a smirk and reached out, pushing his hand against the rock... which flickered with a shimmer of electric blue and gold, and Megatron's hand passed through the rock.

"Clearly not," Orion grumbled quietly, shaking himself past the discomfort to focus on the surroundings themselves. Despite the creepy, disturbing aura, the place was a genuine relic of lost times! Perhaps Megatron would be able to share what he had found, possibly reguardinig dates-

Orion froze, vocalizer sputtering.

"W-What?!

Too shocked to be hesitant, Orion jerked past Megatron, replicating the trick with with own hand.

"But...That makes no sense!" Who would be powering a holo-emitter this far down in ruins?

Laughing, Megatron aburptly (if gently) pushed Orion through the seemingly solid wall, and the corridor beyond was softly lit by directionless, sourceless golden light.

"Quite a few things down there make no sense, when you get past the ruined layers of older settlements," he said as he followed Orion through, looking around the curving corridor, part of it made up by what seemed to be tightly braided cables, the rest by interlocking hexagonal plates with subtle carvings along each edge.

"This," Megatron said and reached out a hand, laying it against the wall, "as far as I can tell, has never been at the surface, compared to the ruins outside."

"-Megatron!"

Orion stumbled through the illusionary wall with a yelp. It took him several moments to even notice the decor - he was too busy glaring at Megatron after he stepped through.

"That was uncalled for..." He trailed off, stepping past the taller mech to rest gentle hands on the nearest carving, before whipping out a scanner eagerly.

"Oh."

Megatron, of course, was utterly remorseless in this, merely crossed his arms and smirked down at Orion. An expression that widened at Orion's surprise and his immediate fascination with the wall.

"I think it was perfectly called for. This is far more interesting than the outside, and I didn't want you to get stuck out there when this was beyond that," Megatron said with a chuckle, his sharp grin softening slightly into amused indulgence.

This, beyond his own reasons, was why he'd brought Orion down here.

"I beg to disagree," Orion grumbled faintly, already getting caught up in the thrill of discovery. "You could have just said something." He would normally hold a bit of a grudge over the trick, but well.

The walls were very distracting.

"...I will give you interesting, at least." The scanner hummed in his hands, scanning the images, attempting to match the iconography with known references, and dating the artwork itself. Orion wasn't sure of it himself, though the style looked annoyingly familiar.

"That would've taken longer," Megatron said with a wave of his hand, tone clearly implying that he also thought that to take that extra time would've been utterly unnecessary.

"It is, isn't it?" Stepping around Orion and crossing the corridor to lean back against the opposite wall, arms crossed. "I was hoping you could help date it; I haven't had much luck, though my knowledge is limited."

He'd read what he could, but this level of archaeology was quite beyond him. While some of the symbols seemed familiar, such as those denoting warning and the quintesson iconography - if nothing else it was familiar to notice that those had changed very little.

What frustrated Megatron the most were the inability to figure out what other thing was being warned for, and something he thought had, in some way, to do with their origin.

Sure, the symbol he'd noticed that he thought meant 'origin' could refer to any number of things, but he had... thoughts, hopes, theories.

Careful fingers tracing the lines of carvings - Alpha Trion would simply murder him not breaking his habit of touching everything with such a discovery - Orion was immediately engrossed with deciphering the marks. They itched at his processor; he knew he had seen something similar before.

"...hexagonal iconography generally indicates mid-first to very early second age...but the cyberglyphics are even older, mid-first at latest...positively archaic," he marveled happily, helm progestions almost scraping the wall in his eagerness to examine everything. The scanner in his hand was chugging away, scanning glyphs and reading various sections of the wall to get the best date conclusion. It finally beeped loudly, breaking Orion's rambling monologue, and he stepped back from the wall with his hands on his hips.

"Well. It's definitely some sort of an origin-story."

Still leaning back against the wall, Megatron was utterly amused at Orion's delight, but it also pleased him that he had been able to give him this. It clearly was something Orion was happy (a bit of an understatement) about.

"Hmmm, impressive," Megatron murmured, and really, it was impressive that Orion was able to tell this from the etchings, if with the assistance of his scanner. He'd definitely made the right choice.

"I was wondering if it wasn't. Anything more specific than that?" He already had part of something useful to give to those interested; probing deeper about this wasn't really necessary except for anyone but him.

He definitely wanted to know about their possible past, both because he was interested and because it might be useful to him.

"Oh yes. It will take a little bit to translate, of course..."
Eyeing the beeping scanner, Orion's optics went a little wide as he trailed off.

"...And origin story as told back in the very beginning of the first age," he corrected himself in awe, holding up the device to show off it's dating results. Field and engine revving with excitement, Orion practically danced in place.

"Do you have any idea how rare this sort of thing is?!"

A slow, quiet bubble of something between excitement and smug pleasure bubbled up when Orion corrected himself, and Megatron smiled.

"Of course I do. While I wasn't sure it was quite that old, it was clear to me the first time I ended up in these sort of areas that it's older than anything officially on record."

And oh, hadn't that been interesting. It'd also been part of why he'd worked on getting placed here in Iacon and its arena, to more easily approach the 'proper authorities' to make some probing inquiries.

Which hadn't much gotten anywhere, but not, he was sure, because they were ignorant.

"I want to know whatever you can interpret of these," here he paused to wave at the wall, "and other things we can find down here."

"This is just..amazing," he couldn't help but marvel, even as he nodded back at Megatron distractedly.

"Of course. I wouldn't allow myself to leave even if you didn't want to know!" he laughed, gaze not leaving the wall. Processor humming eagerly, Orion traced the markings with both optics and gentle fingertips.

"...Well, the symbols for the first Primes are somewhat unmistakable, of course. Telling their tale - most of that seems similar so far, but some of the marks are unknown to me..."

Orion made a face, muttering under his breath to himself as he looked stubbornly closer.

"If I didn't want to know, I'd just ask you to keep it to yourself," Megatron said with a chuckle, waving a hand, "but since I do..." A shrug of those massive shoulders as Megatron tilted his helm when Orion continued.

"Show them to me," he said and came forward to stand beside Orion, willing to wait for further clarity in what the etchings might mean in exchange for further knowledge on the spot, that could be used later and elsewhere.

And it'd probably amuse Orion to get to teach him something as well.

It certainly would.

Grinning, Orion moved over enough for Megatron to see, gesturing him over to the space left behind eagerly.

"Here, see? This glyph is for Solus - see how it's vaguely like her hammer? And Prima, of course, like the Matrix. It looks so much like the actual glyph for the Matrix itself, it hasn't changed much over the eons," he laughed. Orion pointed out each one in turn, scattered throughout the wall, some more memorable than others.

"That there is the symbol for all Thirteen of them, united. You might note how the Senate has co-opted that symbol into their sigil." He rolled his optics, before giving Megatron a sly look.

"Oh yes, here is Megatronus. Very pointy and intimidating, of course. They er, changed it, after he, well, Fell." He pointed out another glyph, farther down the wall- darkened and inverted.

Carefully tracing his fingers above the glyphs Orion pointed out to him, Megatron committed them to memory. It could be useful at some point, to know these, whenever he went exploring again... alone, next time, perhaps.

"Of course," he said dryly to the comment about the Senate's co-opting the unified symbol. In itself, technically nothing wrong with that - originally it'd probably been a very good idea. Nowadays, though, one could wonder...

"It's a glyph, Orion," Megatron said with a soft, rumbling laugh, "lines forming a pattern; information. And while information itself could be intimidating, I wouldn't call an individual glyph that." Snorting, he still glanced down down the direction indicated, catching sight of the one Orion meant.

The inversion made sense, the darkened colour seemed a bit overdone.

"Doesn't surprise me. Say he really did turn against his siblings for some actually catastrophic reason, it actually tells of some integrity that not every single glyph has been inverted, only the ones after the proper event in the timeline," with a shrug, Megatron pointed to another glyph, one with curved, pointed prongs jutting out from a jagged bottom line with a circle between the prongs.

"And that one?"

"I was joking," Orion laughed, nudging Megatron with a shoulder. "But you cannot deny that they obviously designed his personal glyph with harsh lines and edges on purpose. It was the personal mark of a warlord Prime, after all."

It was obviously another one of those things that frequently came up in Orion's scholarly debates; his opinion was a stubborn one. But the question made Orion twitch slightly, a grumbled sigh escaping him despite the excitement in his field.

"Unknown, unfortunately. I've seen it before - most of us have, if you bother to look at some of the more archaic manuscripts - but no one knows what it means. We've never been able to figure it out. It only pops up once or twice. This is the most I've ever seen it referenced."

"Intimidation is key, yes," Megatron said with a small smirk, considering the original, uninverted glyph thoughtfully. It might come in handy, at least the look of it, though it'd need some embellishment...

"Hm. Could we maybe get some context to what it might refer to in these etchings?" Waving a hand down the wall, Megatron didn't have too much hope - Orion had so far obviously not managed to translate anything beyond what he already knew or otherwise, with that knowledge, could gather from context.

But it was worth asking. Something told him that glyph, always given a pretty unnatural space from the preceding and following glyphs, was important</i< in some way.

"That is the plan," Orion confirmed, turning back to sigh at the wall again.

"Even if it will take some time. This sort of thing isn't exact. Meanings and translations of dead languages are often up for debate, and previous context for this glyph has been...inconsistent. To say the least. That's part of why we can't figure it out."

A moments pause with the scanner, and Orion was able to bring up a small holo of a old and crumbling looking wall painting, mechs in professional scanning equipment and datapads around it. The strange, round glyph was barely visible somewhere near the bottom, right where the wall crumbled away.

"The Hardwire-Tintop artdeco manuscript, dated to the second age. The most popular speculation is that the glyph is referring to dying star or a scraplet infestation, depending on translation for the contextually important bits. It breaks off pretty ominously."

Another click, and the image switched to another; this time, a tiny manuscript, written in shaky hand-lasered etchings.

"The Malloy letters, from the end of the second age. The previous context is gone, and the writer - unknown - rambles on about end times in obvious insanity. The glyph could stand for some sort of doom the mad mech predicted - supposedly his own demise to his slow, processor rust, according to most."

Orion waved a hand helplessly, indicating that it was all he had; but he didn't sound terribly convinced by the conclusion.

Optics dimming while Orion talked, Megatron stared at the two holos with narrow concentration, resting one hand on Orion's shoulder, twitching the wheel there as he thought.

"Depending on what you can get from this," here he paused to wave at the wall, "and whatever else we might find down here, there's at least one thing those three interpretations seem to agree on, isn't it?"

Reaching out slowly to brush the wall in front of them, with the offending glyph so starkly separated from the ones around it; not a usual appearance in cybertronian writing at all.

"A catastrophic end, though whether that's something personal or societal..." a pause, and Megatron turned his head, arching an upper optic ridge as he looked down at Orion, "since while no one can argue the inevitable end of a scraplet infestation unless it's treated immediately, such a thing could affect only one... or a whole civilisation."

The most interesting thing, to Megatron, was that, and that the glyph (and whatever it referred to) wasn't new. It seemed to be about as old as it could be, after all.

Orion grinned, pleased by Megatron noting the similarities - and the hand on his tire. His engine gave a little rev in return.

"Very true! The few others are just as vaguely similar, even if there is still nothing concrete. Hopefully, this-" he tapped the wall, "-one will make a difference."

He paused for a moment.

"If you want to wait long enough for me to translate the whole thing properly, at least."

His tone implied that he better.

"I guess I must," Megatron said, smirk now showing fang and he leaned in to give a little nibble to the base of Orion's audial, since his hand at the tire hadn't been shrugged off, "since I fear that you'll beat be into stasis-lock otherwise so you'll be left to work in peace."

Chuckling, he straightened back up, but kept his hand at the base of the wheel and cast a glance down the corridor again.

"I think that it'd be interesting, if you'd be able to interpret enough to get another possible explanation out of that glyph. It seems important, after all. No other is given space around it like that, are they?"

"Go-oood," Orion's grunt turned into a groan, and he gave Megatron a swat as he pulled away.

"I just might. I don't need to be distracted while working on something like this."

An audial twitch, and Orion gave Megatron a final glance over his shoulder. "After, however..." He grinned.

"But for now, this is too important and exciting - if we weren't trying to be stealthy, this sort of find could be a career maker. I don't understand why they're hiding it down here..."

Well. Maybe he did. If it told as much history as he suspected...

"Being able to work under pressure and distractions is a very good ability to have, Orion," Megatron said with a wide, pleased smirk, engine rumbling slightly deeper even after Orion's groan quieted.

Then he shrugged, snorting heavily even as his engine stayed with its deeper, softer idling.

"I think you do. And unfortunately, this can't be your career breakthrough, even if we weren't trying to be stealthy. Since they're obviously presenting a history which does not include these underground parts, as they're forbidden to be explored..." trailing off, he tilted his helm, an upper optic ridge quirked.

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Feel free to make up details if you like :D

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