Darkened: The hermit in the wilds (5/7)

[the_lost_robot]

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four



The hermit in the wilds

Prowl knew it was going to be a strange orn the moment he onlined.

This opinion was not helped by Ratchet’s ranting. Mini-bot parts? The medic raged indignantly. They used mini-bot parts to fix you? Annealing the metal to fit your frame size would completely weaken the parts; you could break a leg with a hard gust of air! You need to find a med-bay with a proper medic immediately if you want to get yourself up to any level of decent functioning.

It was not often that the living chose to speak to him inside his processor. Ratchet however normally stirred when his self-repair had been running for a significant amount of time. His self-diagnostics were often delivered by a spectacular rant from the memory fragment.

It is better than what I had before, Prowl reminded him placidly.

The patch they welded over your spark is barely holding. It’ll crumple if anything hits it with the slightest amount of pressure. You hear me? You won’t survive a hit there.

I understand.

Of course, Ratchet began snidely, that is only just one of your many near fatal damages. Don’t even think about using your alt-form. Just don’t. It’ll probably kill you. And when I say probably, I mean it will most definitely. In fact, I wouldn’t access your subspace either.

How is that dangerous? Prowl protested.

Well, your emitter is damaged as well and your subspace is in danger of collapsing. Accessing it will most likely cause a nice big explosion. Which is also likely to kill you. In fact, just don’t do anything. The chances of you surviving if you do nothing are marginally higher than if you use your alt form.

Those odds are not reassuring.

Maybe if you took better care of yourself, you wouldn’t be in this situation.

…took better care of myself…? It was a bomb! On a battlefield!

Ratchet waved away his protests dismissively. Battlefields are not conducive to one’s general health. Avoid them.

We’re at war.

What the slag are you talking about? The medic huffed and Prowl realised that this was a memory fragment of Ratchet before the war. Do I need to deep scan your processors for glitches?

…never mind. I misspoke. You can leave now Ratchet.

Hmph. Whatever. Ratchet folded his arms and faded away.

Prowl’s attention slowly turned to his current situation. His self-repair had done the best it could with the repairs he’d received but he was nowhere near recommended functioning levels. He would need proper medical attention, though he was unsure of Jazz’s intentions towards him. Would the mech let him go, leave him to try to attempt a trip back to Iacon alone, a feat that he was sure would kill him? Or would the cyber ninja do the job himself?

You will be going home soon. Do not worry.

Prowl narrowed his optics at Yoketron as he calmly leant back against a med terminal. Since when did you get a life of your own outside my processors? And should I be worried about all the others?

The cyber ninja master simply smiled at him and vanished without a word. Prowl let out a slow exvent, his processor damage had taken a turn for the worse, it would seem.

He didn’t have time to dwell on this. One red mini-bot barged into the med-bay, took one look at him and did an about-heel. “MAAAAAASTER!” Zoom-Zoom boomed down the hallway. “He’s AWAAAAAAKE!”

As Prowl stared at the strange little mech in complete bewilderment, Zoom-Zoom quickly approached the berth he was laid out on. “Good news, Prowl! You are not going to die in my master’s tender care! We’re taking you back to Iacon. So you need to get up, up, up!” Zoom-Zoom quickly began to pull diagnostic cables from Prowl’s frame. Once he was done, he began to subspace other equipment, tools that would be useful for field repairs, supplies of both med-grade and regular energon.

The Autobot swung his legs over the edge of the berth and maintained his stuporous gaze on the other mech. “…What?” he asked slowly.

Zoom-Zoom paused in his actions and looked back at him. “We’re going,” he said, “To Iacon.”

“Now?”

“Yup. Now. Come on, let’s go before Jazz changes his mind,” the mech shooed Prowl to his feet, where he swayed dangerously. “Hmm,” Zoom-Zoom said, eying him thoughtfully. “You aren’t going to be able to transform,” he stated.

“Yes,” Prowl affirmed reluctantly. He could tell that this was going to make things difficult.

“Well. This trip is going to be very interesting,” Zoom-Zoom said brightly as he gathered up more energon. “Let’s not tell Jazz until we’ve left. In fact we should put it off for as long as possible.”

Prowl levelled a dry look at the mech and Zoom-Zoom’s positive attitude wavered. “Alright, so you are probably going to die on this trip. Don’t let that get you down. Come on, come on, come on!”

Carefully, Prowl manoeuvred his way out of the med-bay, Zoom-Zoom a step behind him in case he suddenly fell. He wasn’t as weak as he thought he was, the more he moved about, the more he got a feel for his frame’s current capabilities.

“Where are we?” he inquired when he was confident he wasn’t going to fall anymore.

“In the middle of nowhere, seriously,” the mini-bot answered, increasing his pace so that he was leading Prowl now. “It’s about two decacycles to Iacon-if you have a decent functioning alt mode. Jazz and I have made the trip in about a third of that time though but that’s only through familiarity with the area and being stylishly fast. I imagine that this is going to take us double the time.”

“Do you have adequate supplies to last that long?” Prowl asked quietly. Energon was a precious commodity on Cybertron and unless one was in the army, few mechs had enough to make such a trip.

“We do,” Zoom-Zoom answered. “Jazz was determined to make this place as self-sufficient as possible. We have stores of energons and something approaching a refinery in the lower levels. This complex extends pretty deep into Cybertron’s surface and we have a small lake, a pond really, of energon down there. But we haven’t used it, everything’s set up to extract energon but we scavenge mainly for it from the battlefields or in the ruins of cities. The lake’s a last resort.”

Prowl frowned as a thought occurred to him. “Is that why you found me?” he asked. “You were watching the battle?”

The mini-bot hesitated. “Actually…” he began thoughtfully, “A decacycle ago, that’s what I would have thought. But now…I wonder if Jazz was out there because he knew you were there. We didn’t take anything from the battlegrounds but followed you and the Decepticons instead. Jazz only decided to interfere once one of them went for your spark.”

The Autobot wondered briefly what had motivated the cyber ninja, was it his own desire to extinguish Prowl himself that had caused his rescue? Was this offer to return him to Iacon a cruel ruse, designed to raise his hopes so that Jazz could take joy in extinguishing them? If it was, Jazz would find himself sorely disappointed, Prowl simply could not feel at the same level most mechs did. Such an outcome would not cause him undue distress that Jazz could find delight in.

But…he glanced at his companion. Zoom-Zoom at the very least seemed genuine, if somewhat excitable. Of course, it could all be an act; the mech had cyber ninja training. With the loss of most his emotional coding, it was harder for him to pick up the subtle clues of a mech’s true intention. At the very least, he was divulging important information to Prowl freely, either he had decided to trust Prowl…or they were planning to kill him and decided that it did not matter whether he had the information.

At last, Zoom-Zoom led him through an exit and he found himself in a bluff of rocks. Jazz was casually perched nearby, he straightened at their approach. The door behind them slid shut and when Prowl turned to glance at it, he realised that it blended seamlessly into its surroundings.

Jazz slipped off the rock, frowning as he took in the Autobot. “You look like the pit,” he said bluntly.

Prowl felt that this was rather obvious and decided not to respond. “Well, ain’t a thing we can do about that without a proper medic. Can you transform?” Jazz asked.

“No, my self-diagnostics suggest that to do so is highly unadvisable,” Prowl replied.

“How unadvisable?” the cyber-ninja asked.

“Fatally unadvisable.”

Zoom-Zoom winced but Jazz’s expression remained unchanged. “Let’s move,” he said simply.

It had been a long time since Prowl had put his cyber ninja training to the test. Zoom-Zoom and Jazz blended seamlessly into the landscape, leading him down the easiest paths. They kept circling around him, one always maintaining a position behind him whilst the other scouted ahead in front.

Come on, new spark. This will be fun, Vibes suddenly murmured earnestly inside his processor.

He did not give any signs away of his sudden visitor. This was a memory fragment from the time of the enforcer-that-was during his cyber ninja training.

You just need to find …Vibes leant back and let the crowds of Praxus sweep him from Prowl... me without me noticing.

It had taken him several orns to track the older ninja through the city and then several more for him to learn how to blend in properly. Vibes kept vanishing the moment he came even close to the ninja and the training exercise had ended up taking a more than a few decacycles to complete.

You can do better than that, Prowl. Let's try this again.

“-rowl. Hey Prowl,” Zoom-Zoom had fallen back to walk with him as Jazz moved past silently to scout ahead. “What’s the deal with your processor?”

The Autobot blinked his optics at this question. “Why the interest?” he asked evenly.

“I’ve been going over the readings I took when you were offline-I didn’t take a processor scan,” he was quick to add when Prowl narrowed his optics at him. “Pit after going through the processors of the Decepticons that hacked you, I’m glad I didn’t. I was monitoring your neural activity, which wasn’t in line with standard readings. You had parts that were active when they shouldn’t have been and others that weren’t active that should. And I am a code mech. I might be able to do something. Not fix anything major, but just something at the very least. Also, this is a long trip and I am going to be bored. Might as well as be productive.”

Prowl hesitated for a moment. His damage was not the sort of thing any mech could fix. However he could not see that he had anything to lose by sharing the information with Zoom-Zoom. It would be extremely difficult to make anything worse inside his processor.

“When Praxus fell, the sheer trauma of so many deaths at once sent my frame into complete systems failure. All my core codes and personality matrix were irrevocably corrupted and lost.”

Zoom-Zoom missed a step. “How the slag are you alive?” he demanded.

“I…allow me to correct myself. My frame’s predecessor, an enforcer from Praxus, the mech you attended his induction ceremony, his personality matrix was completely destabilised. In his last moments however, he managed to hack his own command cortex and write a few lines of core code. Those lines of code were not corrupted during the terminal crash and formed the base line of my own core programming.  My spark was kept stable during Praxus’s fall by the Autobots and that is how I came online.”

The mini-bot gaped at him. “Whoa. You’re like. Dead. Well, you’re obviously not but you’re alive in a frame that someone has died in. That’s kinda creepy. Does it bother you?”

“No,” Prowl answered shortly.

“Aaand since you remember the induction ceremony, I’m guessing you have the other mech’s memories. That’s even creepier.”

“It is how I am,” the Autobot replied simply. It was all he had ever known, ghosts inside his processor everywhere he turned.

“It sounds freaky,” Zoom-Zoom muttered.

Prowl ignored him. Many Autobots that knew about him felt the same way. He could grasp in some abstract way why it was disturbing but it did not bother him and he accepted it. “Have I sated your curiosity?” he asked politely.

“Uh yeah. I have no idea where to start but you’ve given me an interesting problem to puzzle over. Should keep me occupied for…oh, the next couple of vorns at the very least.”

Zoom-Zoom dropped back and Prowl turned his attention ahead of him. He couldn’t see Jazz, the mech didn’t show up on any sensors but he was certain that he was there.

You’re looking with your optics too much, Vibes chided him. You’re never going to find anything that way. What you’ve got to look with is your spark.

My spark is connected to my frame which is connected my optics, therefore I am looking with my spark, the enforcer-that-was spoke.

Prowl almost stalled this. Even after all this time, he wasn't prepared to hear that particular voice inside his helm. He focused his mind and followed the twisting path he was certain Jazz was taking but it didn’t stop the memory file from playing out inside his processor.

You think too much.

And you are not making any sense.

I am making perfect sense!

Prowl sighed internally.

This was going to be a long trip.

This trip was torture.

Jazz found himself thinking of every single curse he knew -which was quite honestly, a lot- and focusing them at the bit of Yoketron that was floating around in his spark. He should have just ignored the group of Decepticons that had taken one Autobot prisoner. They’d done it before, just waited until there was no one about before descending on the dead frames to scavenge for parts and energon.

This supply run shouldn’t have been any different. Nothing about it had felt different going in. He hadn’t felt Prowl’s spark at all in fact, couldn’t blame it for the reason why he’d followed the Cons. Something else had urged him on.

Everything is moving again.

Shut up Yoketron.

Maybe your spark simply recognized that the time for waiting was over.

Seriously. Shut up.

Well it certainly did not recognize Prowl. Not until you were in very close proximity. Why is that, I wonder?

He’s a dead mech walking. Jazz had been close enough to hear the conversation between his apprentice and the Autobot.

Indeed he is both dead and haunted. What a strange procession we must make, a cyber-ninja, his apprentice, a twice-dead mech and the ghost that lurks within them all.

One of them doesn’t need to be here, Jazz replied acidly.

Very well.

And Yoketron’s presence vanished. Jazz sighed internally with relief, then glanced back to make sure Zoom-Zoom was alright. He very deliberately did not glance at Prowl, if he did not acknowledge the mech, he found it did wonders for his self-control. Not speaking helped as well.

-Hey masteeeeer.-

-What is it Zoom-Zoom?- Jazz asked suspiciously. He knew his apprentice. That was his plotting voice.

-Just doing some thinking. You said you rewrote your core codes and personality matrix. How did you do it, oh wise one?-

-No.- Jazz was adamant.

-No? What do you mean, no? I’m just curious!-

-Hmm…lemme think. There’s a mech who has processor damage from core code corruption. I am an amazing, brilliant mech who rewrote his own core codes. You are a meddling brat who has a bit of a gift with coding but lacks the patience and foresight to do it properly. I’m going to go with NO.-

-You could just fix him directly so we don’t have to go through this rigmarole- Zoom-Zoom replied, unfazed by his master’s annoyance.

-Has he ever actually outright expressed a desire to be changed at all?- Jazz retorted.

-Offffffff course he….hasn’t- the min-bot answered sheepishly.

-Yeees- Jazz drawled in response. -You might want to check with that first. And also bear in mind that what I did was completely controlled, I knew what I was doing and how to do it. What happened to him was the result of major traumatic damage. The two are completely different.-

-Yeah, I can see how that could be a problem.-

-Besides,- Jazz continued, -Would you really trust me inside that mech’s helm, knowing what you do about my past? Because I sure don’t.-

-Uh. I see your point. I’m going to shut up now.-

-You do that- Jazz couldn’t supress the smirk that arose as his apprentice signed off the comm line. That brat.

Sometimes he did not know what he’d do without him.

How long can one travel in the company of a mech that loathes one’s very existence without saying a word? Prowl had discovered that the answer to this question was about one and a half decacycles. Jazz had not said a thing aloud during that time, though Prowl did not doubt that he was communicating with his apprentice using his internal comm lines.

Zoom-Zoom, on the other hand, was less quiet. He had occasional questions to ask about Cybertron, what had been happening in the war. Prowl answered those questions the best he could without giving away vital Autobot intelligence. Then the mini-bot would turn his attention back to Prowl’s processor. He never asked for a processor scan, which would have been the best way for him to start diagnosing any possible patches he could write, but instead asked broad questions about the way his core codes impacted on his functioning.

It was a strange way to treat a problem and eventually Prowl was curious enough to ask why.

“I need to get a scope of what’s going on with your processor entirely,” Zoom-Zoom answered cheerfully. “Patches aren’t the way to fix this. If I have a scan, I’ll just be trying to fix the small things, one at a time but that won’t help overall.”

Prowl absorbed this thoughtfully. “You seem very determined to fix my processor,” he said at last. His tone was even but he did not hide the uncertainty in this statement.

“Oh. Well, only if you want this and if I can do anything about it. To be honest, I don’t think I can. At the moment, I’m treating this like a hypothetical situation, what to do if I ever had to do it, you know?”

“I see,” the Autobot said, somewhat relieved. “It is…how I am, how I onlined. I understand that it is not how mechs normally are but it doesn’t bother me.”

The mini-bot accepted his words with a nod. “I can understand that,” he replied. “It’s a good mental exercise though; I’d be bored out of my processor otherwise. And everyone seems to hate me when I’m bored, thought I have no idea why.”

Later that orn, they’d stopped to rest and recharge. Jazz and Zoom-Zoom took shifts whilst Prowl recharged for as long as he could. He onlined to Jazz’s visor hovering above his own optics, a frown across his faceplates.

Prowl did not move. Jazz leant back easily. “Don’t get your hopes up,” the cyber ninja warned him.

The Autobot did not tense but his mind went onto high alert. There was very little that he could do to defend himself against Jazz, not with the condition his frame was in. But if he could wake Zoom-Zoom…the little mech might raise a protest against his master…

Or simply allow his death.

“Relax,” Jazz advised him lazily. “I haven’t changed my mind about that. Well, at least, not yet. I’m talking about Zoom-Zoom.”

Prowl narrowed his optics at him, uncertain what had brought this conversation on. Jazz had given no sign previously that he was bothered that his apprentice was talking to Prowl. “What about him?”

“The half-bit seems to have the idea that he can fix whatever the pit is in your broken processor. Part of the reason is that he was originally onlined as A3’s successor. Didn’t happen as you can see, he’s stuck with me instead. Another is that he’s trained under me and I know my way around code fairly well. The brat does have a knack for coding but he ‘ll never be as good as he thinks he will be.”

“I was under the impression that he thought this was a problem beyond his capabilities,” Prowl returned smoothly.

Jazz waved a hand dismissively. “The brat says that but that’s not what he’s thinking. He’s convinced that he can do it because he thinks that code is his legacy.”

“Are you asking me to discourage him?” the Autobot asked calmly.

“Pit no. Zoom-Zoom isn’t going to learn his limits unless he fails at something big. I was talking about you. Don’t get your hopes up because the brat can’t fix you.”

“I will endeavour to remember that, even though I have very little capacity to hope as it is.”

Jazz’s face tightened. “I get the feeling you just thought I did something unnecessary and somewhat wasteful of both our time.”

Prowl shrugged minutely. “I am not bothered by how I am.”

A sharp grin suddenly flashed across Jazz’s face. “You really are, aren’t you? So Zoom-Zoom’s completely wasting his time and effort. I can appreciate that.”

“…that is a very strange way to think of your apprentice,” Prowl said with honest confusion.

Bad choice of words, new spark.

Jazz jerked abruptly and was on his pedes and retreated away from the Autobot. Prowl stared at him in surprise, uncertain what had sparked such an extreme reaction.

“Like you would know,” Jazz said bitterly. Then he gave Zoom-Zoom a sharp poke. “On your pedes, half-bit, we’re moving.”

“What?” the mini-bot peered at his teacher through dim optics. “What, wait that was not my entire recharge period!”

“Whatever,” Jazz snapped. “Let’s go.”

“Sheeeesh!” Zoom-Zoom straightened reluctantly. “What crawled up your plating and died? Or have all the vorns finally gotten to your processor?”

“My processor is functioning just like it always has.”

“What, old and degenerate?”

“That’s wise and all knowing, half-bit.”

“Which is just a fancy way of saying that you are as old as the planet.”

“…Zoom-Zoom?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up. Just shut up.”

“Whatever you say, wise and all-knowing ancient one.”

There were some orns that Jazz wondered what he’d do without his apprentice.

This was not one of them.

Part Six
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