User blog:RoboHobo77/Shiftlock's Notes To Self

(Usual IC/OOC warnings apply; this is Shiftlock's notebook and you're gonna have to figure out where it is ICly to know what she's been writing in it. Enjoy!)

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It's kind of sick and sad that I had to learn about this from Bludgeon, of all people. I don't dare tell the Autobots that I'm finding wisdom among some of Decepticons, but I don't expect them to understand. They're lockstepped into one mindset and they aren't even about to consider that the Decepticons might have a few valid points. Seeing the enemy as people instead of targets is one of the first steps to peace -- but if I said anything to Bot CoC, they'd just tell me I'm not fitting in, or worse, that I'm ignorant and don't understand because I haven't been fighting as a Bot for the last primus-knows-million-years. Yeah, let's ignore that I've been fighting for my life for the last three million years, after all, if you aren't wearing a badge, you don't count.

First session was awful. He said it would be. I couldn't stop thinking about all the other Sentinels, all the Empties Ruiner tricked me into killing, everyone I let down. I can't recharge most nights without their faces haunting me, but I suppose that's because I've never put them to rest in my head.

Ruiner's waiting for me behind those tombstones. I've mentioned his name to a few people. Punch has seen the holosim I created of him. I can't even fight a holosim of him without having a panic attack. Primus help me if he's moved out of Polyhex and is now running around under Vos... I'm not ready to face him. I'll be dead for real this time if he finds me.

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Kinda like the new kid, Crusade. I know he's hiding something, and I want to know what his story is. His face is all smiles but his eyes have that hollowness to them that I see in my own reflection when I look in the mirror.

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Definitely want to get Defcon alone for a drink.

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Need to build a conversational rapport with Sixshot. I'll be able to shake him down for information if I can learn to interpret his body language. Not many other Cons are approachable, he's touch-and-go at best.

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Don't get why everyone's so freaked out that I'm comfortable with my own mortality. You'd think that an organization that prides itself on self-sacrifice and seems to have a running contest on 'who can die the most noble death' wouldn't get so shaken up when someone's actually putting a voice to their modus operandi.

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Freedom is NOT the right of all sentient beings. A right is something you are owed by a higher power, intrinsic to your very existence. It's a nice plattitude but it's total exhaust. Who are we that everyone else can look to us to give them freedom? Gods? How incredibly arrogant. Freedom is the privilege of those who refuse to let anyone move them. I don't know if the other bots have looked around the universe, but physical freedom is a matter of luck and fortune at best. Mental freedom... resisting the oppression of the mind... that is what true freedom really is.

Yeah, I'm never saying that outloud to any other Bot ever.