Sailing all alone
WHO: The Primes Vector and Sentinel
WHERE: ...The MAC of all places?
WHEN: Sometime this week...IDK let's backdate it to Monday.
WARNINGS: AAAAANGST
SUMMARY: Sentinel's been MIA since the Starscream debacle. Vector has tracked him down and is about to boot some sense into him. Or give him sagely advice. Or both. Let's find out, shall we?
FORMAT: Parasomething
It had been a week. One week since everything went to Pit in a handbasket. Since he woke up in the wreckage of the machine that was supposed to have solved everything, his systems still sluggish and aching from the forced shutdown caused by Starscream's EMP. By that time, the battle had moved into the streets, the City's heros combatting the newly-created robot threat, Starscream was dead, and some afthat had cordoned off the room with crime scene tape.
And Sentinel had been left behind. Worst case scenario, no one had thought him worth saving. Best case scenario, they thought he was dead. And if he was presumed dead, who was he to tell anyone otherwise? He needed time to figure things out anyway.
Going back to the base was not an option, not after he'd been caught colluding with a Decepticon. Optimus was probably stealing his command out from under him already, and he could imagine the look of piercing disapproval on Vector's face. No, he couldn't go back. Not now. Lacking other options, he walked to the MAC. He still had his tags. They still worked. It would do for now, until he figured out what to do next.
He watched the comm, almost obsessively. Blackarachnia's post was the only one he replied to, and that turned out to be a disaster. He saw Thundercracker rejoice in his freedom, howled in rage, and knocked a hole in the bedroom wall. He looked for his name. Saw what people were saying about him, and what they weren't. He tried to access the police filter, only to find he had been taken off of it.
After a few days, he shut the comm off and didn't look at it again.
With Starscream gone, so was his energon supply. He could survive without it; Starscream had designed their bodies to accept alternative energy sources, but it wasn't the same. He could feel the inefficiencies in his systems, the slight delay in response time, vague dullness in his sensory net, the minor glitches that resulted from energon depletion. He had to spend more time plugged into the wall outlet than usual, just to keep himself powered up. Human food was another option, but he refused to resort to that. It would be tantamount to admitting defeat.
It had been a week. He hadn't left the apartment in days. He had no reason to, and every reason to avoid it. His processor flashed a warning at him that he needed to recharge. Again. He ignored it. Even stasis lock was preferable to this.