Who: RiD Sideswipe and YOU
Where: the CRATER then CITY
When: NOW
What: An Actual Child arrives on the planet of manchildren and... well.  Things happen.
Warnings: POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR THE NEW CARTOON?? that's about it.


[SCENARIO A - CRATER]
This... is not the scrap yard.  Not even close.  It looks a little like Earth at first -- what with the plant life and everything.  So for an instant, he thinks maybe that's what it is.  He made a wrong turn, or this is some sort of joke Grimlock is playing.  Dumping him off in the wilderness to see who can get back first.  That would make sense.

Sort of.

"Okay, really funny," he grumbles into what he thinks is his comm unit.  "You win, you're hilarious, whatever.  Strongarm put you up to this, right?  Because of the whole patrol-taking thing?"

There's no answer.  No nothing.  Just silence.  Which... he likes to pretend makes sense if they're mad at him for some reason.

Except when the red bot staggers out of the little copse of scrubby plant life, it's... apparent this is nowhere near anything like Earth.  It's not like anything he's ever seen before, actually.  He actually stumbles a little, staring around him in wide-eyed shock.  He keeps his comm pulled up, just in case.    Just in case some Decepticon had the ability to mess around with his head or make him hallucinate or whatever Bee had been babbling about.

"C-C'mon!  This really isn't funny!  I was kidding about that part!  Bee?  Grims?  I'll take Strongarm even!  Throw me a word here!"

More silence -- heavy and cloying and a little unnerving after so much time in close quarters with other bots and humans.  After a life (albeit a short one) spent living in the middle of a big city.  There's just so much nothing, it boggles his mind trying to pick up any familiar sound at all.  The next word out of him is a little shaky, at odds with his earlier, brash, shouting.

"... guys?"



[ SCENARIO B - THE CITY ]
... it doesn't get any better when the lanky young bot arrives in the city proper.  In fact, it gets worse.

The last time Sideswipe saw Cybertron, it was restored.  More or less.  Bots everywhere.  Life everywhere.  Enough to where they needed a police force to mitigate things.  But this... this is just wrong.  He can recognize it as Cybertronian, but that's it.  It looks like the place has been through a war, compared to the Cybertron he knew.

That thought, for someone whose "serious action" is only dodging authorities and collecting rogue Decepticon criminals, is horrifying.  He actually stops in his tracks, staring at the shell of a building on the edges of the city, looking it up and down in what is pretty much mute horror.

"This is... this is so not okay."

It's about all he can say.  The building is all he can stare at, stupidly.  Not even thinking to watch his surroundings.

This is not how he wanted to come home to Cybertron.  Not in the least.