5.Nov.08

Cat and Mouse

Part 2

By: Taratron

Cat and mouse

tis but a feast…

        For want of a nail, a horseshoe was lost.  For want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost.  For want of a horse, the rider was lost.  For want of a rider, the message was lost.  For want of a message, the battle was lost.  For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

-Author Unknown

            The steps leading up to Dihexaline Laboratories were solid steel, but for some alien reason, they were not silver, but an eerie purple-blue with white.  Any bot who might have studied ancient Earth history would have realized instantly the steps were steel, but coated with fine color to imitate Roman marble. 

Meagos was not one of those rarities among bots; he knew Earth had once been important in the far past with the Autobots, but as of recent times, the nuclear wasteland was not any place he found important, much less interesting.  The human race had long since dispersed from that world, and if he had known of the imitation on the steps, he would have thought nothing of it at any rate.  Earth was Earth, Cybertron was Cybertron, and mixing the two was the work of designers with far too much time on their hands.

And this we’ll defend, he thought darkly with the hint of a smile.  Not that he despised or even mildly disliked designers; he knew they had their place on Cybertron, just as he did.  But he had been coming to Dihexaline, or Dihex, as it was more commonly referred to, for nearly a year and had witnessed the construction of these oddly colored steps.  Privately, he liked the previous color, which had been a stark silver gray.  But the specialist walking with him adored the new color scheme, and so Meagos smiled and let the technician prattle on about worthless facts.

He knows weapon systems.  I don’t think he has claim on anything else.

“I think it looks interesting,” added Dragon, and Meagos nodded again.  He was a little more than used to Dragon, but the turnover rate at Dihex was not overly high, merely enough that Meagos was never certain who he would be speaking to that day.  Not that he had come to the labs often, but his Commander had advised him on several occasions to find a wealthy advocate, and Dihex seemed as good as any.

Plus there was always the chance of volunteerism paying off, as it was today.  The few times he had actually worked in Dihex on that basis, he had done nothing more than scan over profiles of new weapons, participated in a stasis pod demonstration, and done minor paperwork.  Today was the day the menial help ended, and Meagos for one was pleased about that.  Not that Dihex was an unpleasant place, but the sooner he got through basic training, the sooner he would get through advanced, and by then he would be a full Guardian, with some help from Dihex.  Working for the labs was a certain way to have High Command approve of his application for Colonial Guardwork, since the labs were High Command’s own.

“It does,” Meagos dutifully agreed, and by that time they had reached the top of the hideous stairs and were at the massive doors to the building.  Twice as tall as Meagos, they gleamed of blue crystal, again imitation, but in this case, of energon.  They contrasted nicely with the gray of the walls, and were entirely Cybertronian.  Meagos passed through them with barely an inner wave of excitement; his time for paperwork was over.  Only three days ago someone had called him to say they had an opening in the experimental weapons division.  He would be the first, the secretarial technician had said, to have this system installed, and the first to test it as a user.

Which means something else presumably tested it first, he thought, and for a moment his mind ran amok with images of dead and dying test subjects, then slammed those closed.  It was a safe procedure, and he knew that.  Test subjects were just that, and he knew for a fact (having helped repair them) droids filled the lab halls, and surely in the test subject lines.

He watched Dragon out of the corner of an optic.  The smaller red bot was chattering away again, this time to another technician, about something called the Beta Project.  Meagos internally sighed and waited. 

The sooner I get this done…the sooner I can be on my own colony.

Dragon…

He knew a little of mythology, at least, thanks to a class in early schooling.  A dragon was a flying fire machine, though organic, and was rumored to have been both malicious, cruel, and very intelligent.  The bot named after that creature was surely the last trait, but trying to imagine the technician as anything but his chattery self was a stretch.  Meagos tried seeing Dragon flame someone as the mythological lizards had, and of course the image came up far too short.  The best he could make was Dragon exhaling smoke from an internal injury.

“Are you ready, Meagos?”  The red chatterbox beamed at him, and again he nodded, hoping Dragon was not in charge of the installation.  He was grateful to Dihex for using him in this project, but he didn’t think he could stand another hour with Dragon.

“Let’s get you prepped then.”  Dragon started off down a hallway like every other: lined with black doors, the walls and arched ceiling a dull gray.  Meagos followed, and slowly the arcane and sinking feeling of being watched came over him, which was nonsense, really.  The few security cameras he could see were certainly not watching for him to leave the labs, if in fact he wanted to.  But the sensation of more cameras than he could see continued as they walked down, stepping into a lift, and began to ascend.

“Did anyone tell you about Ylleria?”

“No.”  As a matter of fact, all he had been told was that Project Ylleria was that it was a new weapon system, an internal system that would allow for greater radar and more blasters.  Both of those would aid him immensely in his training and career, and Meagos was well aware of that.

“Well, it’s a new system the guys in Defense cooked up…”  And off he was again, prattling on not about the system, but the ‘guys’ in Defense.  Meagos listened dully and with half an audio; it was not that Dragon was boring, but his tales were pointless.  Meagos was never going to meet these techs, and he had no want to.

Dragon talked without pause until the lift reached the seventh floor, and only then did he shut up about the techs in Defense, not their projects, their families, their names, personal items Meagos found tedious.  The doors to the lift thankfully opened then, and he stepped out quickly, but Dragon was still faster as he led the future Guardian down another endless hallway, and then finally to a crimson door with an armed guard on each side.

Meagos raised an eye-arch; he had never seen guards of any kind in Dihex before…but of course, this was the experimental system level, and it certainly wouldn’t do for such things to fall into the wrong hands. 

“Identification,” said one guard, showing all the charisma of a dead Predacon; Meagos wondered if the bot had any intelligence other than what was needed to beat people, or shoot them dead. 

Dragon pulled out a hand-sized circuit, which the guards scanned with small tools, then nodded, satisfied with the talkbot at least.  They then turned to Meagos, who dutifully presented his own identification circuit and was allowed to enter the room after two scans, one of them with the same as Dragon’s, then another which Dragon insisted was normal for civilians.

I won’t be that much longer, Meagos thought with a grin.  Guardians were part of the military, the same as nearly everyone at Dihex.  Of course, people like Dragon, he felt privately, were surely nothing more than weapons designers in the war.

The room they had entered in was actually another hallway, this one short and with green lights overhead, casting the silver walls with eerie shadows.  They were inspected and passed through yet another checkpoint, and finally reached the end room, where two bots met them.  One of them was obviously another guard, though he did not appear to be armed.  The second was a bot slightly smaller than Dragon, with gold optics that seemed to pick over every paint scratch on Meagos’ form. 

“I am Slydar,” said the tech with gold optics.  “I’ll be the head technician in your installation today, Meagos.”

“And this is?”  Meagos nodded politely to the guard.  A part of him was beginning to wonder what the grand secret was.

“The backup.  I’m Crizos.”  He offered his hand, which Meagos shook. 

So not a guard.  Crizos didn’t have the handshake of a guard, and was in fact marked with the identification of a backup technician.  But still the sheer amount of guards around was a bit…disturbing?  Meagos decided that word worked the best.

“Relax,” beamed Dragon as he patted Meagos on the shoulder.  Meagos imagined himself smashing the annoyance into the wall, but of course that was only a stray thought.  He often had those, but never acted on them.  Guardians couldn’t do such things.  “You’re in good hands, Meagos.”

“I hope so,” he said with a grin, and of course the technicians chuckled dutifully.  Dragon left after another idiotic flurry about wanting to see Meagos after the installation, to see how well his systems reacted with it, and other pointless smalltalk.  Meagos was very relieved when the red bot was finally out of his sight.

“Ready?”  Slydar opened the final door; inside, under brilliant operation lights, was a white room, three side tables filled with instruments and circuitry on the side.  A very large metal operation table was in the center of the room, and Meagos entered it without fear, the techs following.

“As I’ll ever be,” Meagos remarked calmly, taking in the stark white walls (what IS it with white rooms in this place?) and tools without interest.  He laid down on the table, watching curiously as Crizos removed some outer armor on his upper chest; the act itself was painless, but Meagos was far from used to people touching him in such a vulnerable area.  He felt himself tighten, but Crizos only moved two major energon veins to the surface of the slightly chilly room, then attached to their sides small adhesive probes.  From the probes came two clear tubes, and by turning his head, Meagos could see that the tubes were themselves attached to energon supply beakers.

“You may feel some temporary discomfort, but the installation shouldn’t take more than an hour,” Crizos said brightly, parting more secondary circuits aside as Slydar entered, his body gleaming still with disinfectant.  Slydar would of course be doing the most of the installing, and chances of his inner circuits getting dirty or damaged was not one Dihex took lightly, especially not with someone as promising as Meagos.

Meagos nodded; it could take all day for all he cared right now.  He wanted this system almost to the point of being angry it had been denied to him thus far.  Crizos continued to set up side tables with the needed instruments, a large steel box that surely contained the parts of the new system wires being settled carefully on a larger one.  Meagos let his mind free in the room, staring at the sheer white brightness of it all…save for a small metal grating near the floor he could barely see. 

Ventilation, he thought easily, and that was when a teeny echo-y wail rang throughout it, leaking out softly from the vent and into the room.  Meagos blinked; the technicians had not reacted.

I’m hearing things.

No…it might very well be plausible that someone stupid got hurt a few floors down.  That was very much a chance, and Meagos knew it.  The shafts were excellent conductors of sound.

“We’re going to put you in stasis now, Meagos,” clipped Slydar as he approached, a gleaming tool that looked far too much like a blade used for slicing steel hunks for Meagos’ liking.  But it was too late to back out now, of course, and he nodded, drawn back to things of the hopeful future. 

“When I wake up, be all nice and shiny new?” he asked with a sardonic grin.  Crizos smiled, but Slydar appeared not to have heard. 

“Quite,” said Slydar several minutes later, removing a panel on Meagos’ side.  The future Guardian waited with faint apprehension, not enjoying the slight violation, but then again, if he was going to be so sensitive, he knew he could just walk away from his dream of colonial defense now.  So instead he waited, optics dimming, and then shut off entirely as Slydar pulled a circuit free, dropping him into stasis.

“Time.”

“Zero two four ninety.”  Crizos counted, and they began to remove the rest of Meagos’ outer plating to expose the sensitive circuitry wires beneath.

Nearly thirty stories below, the technician hurriedly slammed the grate shut, but according to Ivex, it was nearly too little, too late.  Of course, Commander Ivex said those kind of things a lot.

“No one heard, Ivex,” came the irritated voice from a console monitor.  The red bot was watching readouts with some interest; never before had they used shock boxes, what the minor technicians called them at least, of such magnitude of power.  They had always stayed below a full AMU, but here at nearly double that, it was amazing the protoform was still even conscious.

 “I don’t care that no one heard.  It’s slips like that which could cost us this project!”

Dragon rolled his optics in irritation; Ivex was always worried about breaching security as well.  “Ivex, this place is a fortress.  No one can get down here, and much more, no one unauthorized can get out.”  He nodded pointedly at the console monitor, where the protoform had been restrained and was even now trying to scream again.  Someone had thought after the first screeching episode to gag it.

It, him, those words didn’t matter, and Ivex and Dragon were all too aware of it.  Some of the lesser technicians had even named the project.  X.  Protoform X.  Dragon supposed it worked; it certainly was easier than calling the protoform ‘it’ all the time.  But by naming it…that was dangerous, in his mind.  Things that were named were seen as worthwhile things.  Items.  People had names.  Objects did not.  But projects only had names because it was easier to distinguish them from each other.  That was the defense he stood by.  A name was harmless.  People thinking a name meant something would be the culprit.

“We’re at 1.91 AMU, sir,” came a report from a ComLink on the keypad.  Dragon glanced at Ivex, who was not even paying attention, but was looking over another monitor displaying security tapes over the past twenty hours.

“Sir?”

“Raise it,” Dragon said smoothly.  “Let’s aim for two.”

On the screen, the protoform was trying to scream again, his body barely writhing in pain from the restraints, and Dragon watched with scientific interest and detachment as the protoform shrieked, and then went still, the room filling with dark smoke and the unpleasant stench of melted circuitry and wires and metal.

“Nice,” Dragon said after a pause.  “Wake it now.  Fix some of those wires, and let’s try it again.”

The technicians nodded, and began work on waking the protoform.  First, of course, they had to remove the shock boxes and over half of the protoform’s systems.  Melted and damaged, they were thrown away.

“Slydar?”

The head technician sighed; he was up to his elbow joints in wires, and reconnecting them to the central computer system that was Meagos was not a task he could do with divided attention.  “What?”

“I’m having a problem here with the psi chip here.”  Crizos glanced up from his monitor, where he was watching the operation from a bystander’s view.

Slydar snarled to himself, settling the wires down in a harmless place, and stalked over to see the screen.  Indeed, an image of the new psi chip was on the screen, and the console read in bright green letters: DAMAGED PSI ROUTE 50432.

This time the snarl reached his audios, and he sighed.  “Fine.  We need a new one.  Go down to the chip lab and get us one.  NOW.  It’s not like we’re not in a rush here.”

Crizos hurried off with a slightly apprehensive look, but Slydar only shook his head in exasperation.  The psi chip missing was not life threatening, but now having to find a new one, and one that would MATCH, had just extended the operation and installation by perhaps another hour, even two.

So much for my free time this afternoon, he thought wearily, and went back to work sorting the new circuits to connect them to the old. 

In fact it took two hours merely to find a psi chip that matched the new system.  During that time, Slydar had spent a very nerve-racking duration keeping the circuits activated and functional, and by the time the psi chip was brought back and tested and rested, the installation was back underway.

And it was nearly completed less than an hour later.  The final processes were running checks over the connection system pieces when Slydar announced he needed a break, which Crizos felt he well deserved.  The head technician left for a ten minute rest, and that was, naturally, when the scanning monitor announced it had found a glitch.

“Installment paused,” declared the monitor, and Crizos, who had been relaxing after a very unusually stressful project, looked up in some alarm.  One glance over the monitor proved that his worry was not worthwhile; a minor glitch had been found in some core programming.  “Core code 01986 missing.”

“Not for long,” muttered Crizos in annoyance as he reopened the monitor’s screen shots to reveal the cause of the problem.  Hm, and there it was, merely a line of programming that, for some reason, had been laid over another.  A dual strand where only one could or should be.

Interesting that no one else has picked this up before, he thought, but then again, Meagos’ files showed that since his activation years ago, no new programs had been installed in his central system, and having routine system scan checkups wouldn’t pick up such fragile details.  It took an entire system bypass scan to even catch its existence, much less fix it. 

“Core code 01986 missing,” repeated the monitor as an image displaying the installation process blinked, declaring itself unable to continue until the right amount of code was present.

A glitch in programming, thought Crizos without much wonder, and deleted the foremost code.  A simple scan revealed that this code had been added after Meagos’ activation, but surely it wasn’t worthwhile.  Most core codes in that numerical system weren’t.

The offending code deleted, the installation continued, and when Slydar returned, he was informed of the second code.  He only nodded; he would have done the same thing. 

“Sometimes we get those,” he said simply.  “Usually a core system tosses up a mutated code in response to an alien item inside the system.  Could be a virus, could be a viral, could merely be dust.  Nothing to worry about.”

Crizos thought about telling the other technician that the second code, the foremost code, had been added soon after Meagos’ activation, but thought nothing much of that factor either.  Virus, viral, and dust indeed.

“Is it awake yet?”  Dragon’s voice boomed over the intercom system in the system pit, where six technicians were adding the finishing touches on the protoform, strengthening its restraints.  Several of the last ones had melted on its chest and torso, binding its arms to the table.  They had since been replaced.

“Not yet, Captain,” came the steady response from the pit floor.  “We just finished substituting his central circuitry bar.  The last one was destroyed.”

A pause.  Then Dragon’s voice, cool and collected; Meagos would have merely stared in shock.  “Do what you have to.  Then wake him.  The hard way, the easy way, it does not matter.  He just has to be awake.”

Dragon was aware that Ivex was staring at him.  He returned an equally baleful glare.  “What.”

“You called the protoform he.”

Dragon waved a hand dismissively.  “Everything in our world is divided by gender.  It’s only natural to assume the protoform is of one.  Scans show it is a he, at the very least.”

“I don’t care what scans say,” Ivex said coldly.  “I care what others think of it.  It’s a protoform, Dragon.  It would do you good to remember that.”

“It’s not a person, I know.”  Dragon’s optics gleamed.  “I was the first person to say so, wasn’t I?”

Ivex nodded uneasily.  The line between object and person, he knew, was fine indeed.  Naming the protoform, the object, the experiment, was not a close call he cared to repeat or remember.  “It would do you good to remember that,” he merely repeated, and waited for it to awaken again.

Oh, would it? wondered Dragon thoughtfully as he watched not the pit, not X, but Ivex.  Or does it bother you that there might be some random chance a tech named the protoform after a letter in YOUR name?  It’s…he’s, whatever, not named Protoform D or R, now, is it?

He turned his attention back to the protoform.  Indeed, it was still in a stasis mode.  Its inner wiring had been replaced nearly good as new, or as new as could be made within the time frame.  Its emerald green optics were blank and dead and faded; the restraints on the protoform were new and freshly strong.  It would not do to try with a higher AMU with the boxes if no one had sufficiently tied the protoform down.

Dragon watched impassively as some of the technicians removed several of the shock boxes.  During the last surge charge, the supposed never-ending boxes of energy and electricity needed to be recharged.  It was, he thought, enough to make one despair about science.

He was floating…floating in this darkness, and part of him realized that he was floating IN himself, or in his mind, in that darkness that was his unconscious self.

Hmmmmmm, he went, and suppressed a laugh.  How odd to laugh and hear it without audios, only with your spark.  He laughed again merely for the novelty of it all.

Something felt…different, and it wasn’t the system.  He supposed the installation had been completed, it had to have been for him to be THIS awake…but something felt different, something felt NEW, New in the capital sense.

And this we’ll protect?  And this?  And this?  In his mind the faces swarmed, the idiots, the chatterboxes, and he realized in a dim, and then brilliant way, that Dragon was not around, that those other two…those other two, he remembered their names vaguely, but their faces with ease.  The stares, the stupid looks and the asinine grins. 

And this we’ll protect?  I never vowed to guard the terminally stupid…

Terminally?  He laughed again, that word was suddenly hilarious and he wanted to grab it, embrace it, strangle it and feel it scream out.  Terminally stupid, eh?

And I let these people into my circuitry?  

Oooo…who’s the idiot now?  You’re in good hands, you’re in GREAT hands, let us probe into your mind and spark and…and…this we’ll defend?

And this?  And this?  This too?  Even this?

The answer would be yes to all if it was yes to one, and he knew it with utter denial.  Noooooo, he tried to say, and it came out in bubble form, itching across the darkness, where their faces stared back at him.  Dragon.  Those two techs.  The guards that asked for more ID.  And more.  And this…and more ID and this we’ll defend?

He rose from the darkness with those words in his mouth, and then the darkness was born away and he was staring into the light.

Light, and light, and then some more light as his optics blared on, and Meagos stared upward with sudden blindness as his optics rejected the light…and then grew calm, and he could see again.

“Meagos?”  There was someone else in the room, and he turned to face them, but something barred his way.

“What…” he started, puzzled, the rage building as he saw the restraint over his lower torso.

“Oh, sorry about that,” said the bot without gold optics.  The one with gold optics was watching him, a face of potential intelligence.  The first bot reached over, over to a console.  “That was just in case the shock was too great.  We’ve had some people in the past come out of stasis after an installation surprised.  They thrash around, sometimes fall off the table.”

The restraint began to withdraw slowly, too slowly, far too much.  Meagos could barely stare at it through the crimson view that was his sight.  They…they tied me DOWN, did they?

And this we’ll defend?
            “Oh….” he whispered softly, unaware that he had spoken.  The two technicians weren’t even looking at him.  “….oh slagging no…”

“Meagos?” asked the one without gold optics.  “How do you feel now?”

He waited, waited, was silent until the bar was gone, and then sat up abruptly.  His chest felt sore, and his inner circuitry ached without explanation.  “Fine…”

The bot with gold optics was watching him critically.  “You look fine.  Now why don’t you go to the training deck?  We can test out your new system.”

New system?  A careful probe revealed the truth; his mind was still murky from stasis.  Yes…  

There was something new, something alien and powerful, and he felt something new in his torso.  Launcher, his mind supplied, and, loaded.  Loaded, loaded launcher.  Radar.  He was aware that he could nearly feel the technicians (and he was certain that was what else they were…a slight shake of his memory revealed it all, yes…Slydar and Crizos), nearly feel their sparks, his radar was that new and sensitive, and they were watching him curiously.

Slydar was out the door by the time Meagos was standing up, and he weighed himself carefully against the table.  Newness, indeed…

“Meagos?”  He turned to see Crizos smiling at him.  But Crizos’ spark wasn’t.  No…his spark was not smiling, but it was calm.

Let’s see how long it stays that way.  I never vowed to protect these…

And this we’ll defend?

“Yes?” he asked, when his mind screamed the opposite to his mental question. 

The tech smiled.  “I think you’ll really like this system.  It shows so much promise…like you, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Meagos felt a smile, but it was not really a smile, only a grimace stretched upward.  “I don’t,” he said honestly, and Crizos headed to the door, unaware that Meagos had delicately plucked up a scalpel from the instrument table. 

He waited until the tech was nearly at the door.  “….Crizos?”

The tech turned, and when he saw the blade, he didn’t connect its intent to Meagos’ smile, nor the fact that the future Guardian was coming closer very quickly.

“Yes?”

“You may feel some temporary discomfort,” said Meagos with a tight snarl that looked far too much like a smile, but by the time Crizos had realized something was amiss, Meagos had brought the blade down, shearing off his vocal unit in one clean sweep, and even as Crizos tried to scream in alarm and fear (THERE is it!  There was what his radar picked up, what he had to feel and have-), Meagos picked him up and shattered his back armor and wiring against the wall.  The last Crizos saw of the world was Meagos’ clenched fists racing at his face, and then there was only agony, and then he knew no more.

“It’s awake now, sir.”

“Good,” said Dragon, his optics glittering with something like malice.  But because this was, after all, all for the cause of science, it was considered brilliance instead.  “Start.  0.06 AMU.”

Meagos dropped the corpse, looking at it curiously.  This we will defend…this lackluster fool?  And all his kind?

Never again.  He picked up a handful of other instruments, weighing each thoughtfully.  Another scalpel.  An electric prod, what THAT was doing in here he could only guess…but he was glad it was here.  A blade thick enough to slice through solid energon.  A curved wirecutter.  Circuit solder.  He smiled at each in turn, and then waited to the side of the door. 

He did not have to wait long.

“….Crizos?  Meagos?”  The room was still brilliantly bright, and thus Slydar had no problem seeing the sudden and wild splashes of mech fluid that now stained the walls, floor, the operation table and side tables, and then he saw Crizos’ pieces, and could only gape.

“…..CRIZOS!”

“Guess what, Slydar?”  The head technician spun to the sound of the low voice, and his bright golden optics widened at the silvery-gold splashes on the future Guardian.

“I’m very shiny and new!”  Meagos lunged at the technician, and his radar bloomed with the sudden explosion of primal fear from the golden-eyed bot, picking him up and shattering his torso armor before Slydar could even scream.

Be fast be quick, ordered a part of Meagos that was still in control, a part that was cool but calculating in this excitement, and his optics gleamed with sudden realization.  The guards.

He would have to be fast then.  So he merely slammed this technician on the operating table, and then Slydar shrieked as fists nearly larger than his head pulled his torso in half from the middle, splitting him evenly, wrenching out fistfuls of wires and gleaming circuits.  Mech fluid exploded from the impact, and Slydar’s vocal unit was flooded with the liquid, a shimmery shower of it flying from his mouth before Meagos thought to shield himself.  Hot fluid sprayed over his upper chest, and he inhaled the smell, drawing some of the steam into his mouth.  The taste was raw and ravenous in his mouth, but the taste of the technician’s spark was unbelievably delicious. 

He left the body on the table, wiped off his lower face, and went to find the guards.

And this I’ll defend?  Oh…they have NO idea…

“Raise it.”

The floor technician nodded, waved to the tech on his right.  That tech looked up curiously, then nodded, and turned the dial of the shock boxes up to 0.42. 

If the six technicians on the floor had any indication the protoform before them was trying desperately to shriek in agony, they gave no sign.

The guards were…surprisingly easy to surprise.  None of their training had taught them to be aware of employees of Dihex.  They were armed and set to defend the labs from intruders from the outside, not the inside.  They were very prepared for the former case.  In the latter, their performance left something to be desired.

Or so thought Meagos as he made his way to the main lift shaft.  His supply of instruments from the operating room was running low, but experimenting with his new system made up for any lack of other weapons.  The launcher in his chest he had made full use of already, watching with bright interest as a disc over a foot in diameter had sheared the arms off of one such guard.  Aiming was another thing entirely, but the shrieks of the surprised guard had promised that learning how to aim would be very….fun.  Yes.  Fun was the word he was looking for.

And his radar…he was still getting used to this increased signature pickup.  But that too was fun.  Feeling, if not hearing, the sparks of others on his new system was certainly more entertaining, especially in the radical difference between a spark at rest and one in a panic flight mode before he tore into it.

Fun.  And to think I thought PROTECTING these things would be!

The thought drew a rough chuckle from his throat.  But he knew he could not afford to be random here, he had to be safe still.  Chances were very good the security cameras had picked up his activity; he did not doubt that he had not destroyed all of them in that corridor.  And sadly, save for those two guards and the technicians, the entire floor he had been on had been empty. 

Draw me down, he thought with another grin, not caring that his mouth was stained with mech fluid.  Energon is NOTHING by comparison…

The lift was also empty.  More’s the pity.  He could not feel any other sparks, but perhaps his systems, he realized, were not that sensitive to pick up spark signatures over a distance.  The lift was enclosed and thicker than the doors on the operations level, but his radar also had not picked up any energy signatures either.

Can it be feasible that there is not a PERSON on ANY of these levels?

Well…perhaps it was.  But he also knew the lower levels were teeming with scientists and testers; had he not seen them on the first floor when he came with Dragon?

Dragon…  Oooo, he liked the sound of that.

Try your chatterboxing when I’ve made you swallow that unit.  Another low and raspy chuckle ran over his vocal unit, and he descended.

“Half an AMU.”  Dragon watched with interest as the protoform writhed on the table; his pain was enough that he was nearly bending his restraints.  Instead he was merely raking paint off on them, and that was one thing they never replaced.  Well, hardly.

“You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”

Dragon favored Ivex with half a glance.  “And you’re not?  Don’t wax martyr on me, Ivex.”

The head of security only looked at the protoform, whose optics were blaring in agony, rich sheets of deep green, verdant like an organic forest.

And this we’ll defend?  And this?  And this?

Dragon’s face swarmed in his mental vision.  Crizos.  Slydar.  The guards too stupid to fight back, only scream…and the sheer vibrance of their sparks against his throat on the way down.

The lift descended to ground level, and then continued down, much to his surprise. 

Meagos reached out to halt the lift, then paused with a slow smile.  He had always been told (once, before?  Oh, yes, back THEN…and this we will defend!) that Dihex had nothing below ground level save janitorial supplies.  A basement.  Worthless things.  But that hardly explained why his radar was picking up sparks now…a lot of them.

It was warming up before…and below level?  Below ground?  The stairs, those hideous stairways, and what are they hiding down there?  Mmmmm?

He kept sinking into the laboratories, no Dihex guide to stop him, and only grinned when he heard another shriek, this one loud and brimming with agony, not unlike the screams of Slydar and the guards.

“WHAT happened!”  Ivex’s blue optics gleamed paranoia, and the protoform screaming had finally brought Dragon up to par with the importance of restraints.

“What is going on!” he demanded, but Ivex had already grabbed control of the communications link, shoving orders into it and the system pit.  The technicians had already replaced the gag; somehow, none of them could explain how, and that how was what Ivex was so worried about, the gag had come undone, allowing the protoform to scream.  Such noises frightened the techs…and made it hard to concentrate as well.

The electronic bit had not been used in this experiment, and Ivex growled to himself; he had pushed for its use in every experiment, and had demanded that it be installed inside the protoform permanently.  The idea had been shot down by his commanders, as well as High Command.  They might have use for the bit elsewhere, they had told him repeatedly.  We can make new ones, he had cried back, desperate at that stage, so early on in this game with the protoform, but his idea had been vetoed again, and the bit was only used when the thing refused to be silent. 

In this case, the restraint barring its mouth shut had come loose, somehow, and Ivex could only stare in a raw fury as the shock boxes were forced to halt, the technicians scurrying like small animals or drones to fix the problem.  The protoform had managed to scream twice before being barred off again.

“I told you something like this would happen!” he shot at Dragon.  “I told you, I’ve been TELLING all you people since day one-”

“Shut up, Ivex.”

Ivex stared in mute shock.  After a pause, his mind refusing that that had not happened, Dragon was a subordinate despite what he thought, he managed: What did you say?

“You heard me.”  Dragon stared at Ivex, his optics gleaming, his back to the system pit.  “It was a gag, Ivex, it was not his restraints!  You are too paranoid over small mere things like a scream once in a while!  Flash to Ivex, it is going to scream and we can and HAVE stopped it before!  This is not an emergency, and the sooner you realize-”

He was cut off by the shrieks of metal, not originating from a vocal unit, but from the security doors to the system pit.  They were being torn in half, and even as he stared in shock, a final blast of power bulldozed them the rest of the way. 

Safe in the observer room, a box above the system floor and pit, Dragon and Ivex watched in disbelief, the technicians staring in mute shock as the bodies of five security guards collapsed into the pit, parts splaying with mech fluid, the smell overpowering and rich in airy texture.  The techs began to scream, males and females alike, as a sixth body was flung into the room, knocking over the cart of shock boxes, spilling scalpel and blade and circuit welders.  The scientists finally scattered, a few paralyzed, staring at the mech-smeared bot who stood in the doorway, his crimson optics brilliant, a supernova against the white of walls.

The door dust crumbled into the pit, blocking the lights as other dust rose, blocking it out.  But there was still enough light for the bot to lunge out, seize a screaming technician, knock his head away like so much cheap metal filling, and then fling the body in a mech gold-silver smear into the wall.  The survivors shrieked and bolted, but there was only one exit and entrance to the pit, and the bot was standing in front of it.

The only person in the pit who did not seem terrified, who was not screaming, was the protoform himself, giving the newcomer a quick glance, and then jerked as hard as he could against his restraints.  Metal squealed and gave, but it was not the restraints that did.  He screamed in fury and frustration as the scientists and technicians screeched in panic.

The intruder was too fast for them.  When drawn by one away from the others, he was distracted only momentarily before firing a load of discs, each of them roughly a foot and a half wide with eerie edge sharpness, into the crowd…then spanning his aim to include the entire room.  Many of the techs and scientists were struck down, not fatally, but the sound of their wails and shrieks filled the already hellhouse of sound.  One fallen tech collapsed part-way on the operation table, the disc slicing into the restraint and nearly the protoform, who looked at it for a moment in disbelief, and then began pulling at his bonds with more eagerness, one arm freed and nearly flailing in the sudden surprise of freedom.  His feet beat on the table, the restraint over his lower legs shattering with another disc.

In the observer room, the leads could only stare in stunned stupefying shock; the alarms were sounding, but mixed with the cries of the dying and soon to be dead, they were only a small whisper.  There were no guards racing in; there was only massacre.

Dragon stared for several more moments, his mind rejecting what his optics plainly saw, and even then could only barely gasp out in a whisper.  “…..Meagos?????”

Meagos was having a ball, in a form of terms.  The guards and the techs on the higher levels, he realized in a deep and nearly gruesome way, had been only practice; cunning had brought him this far, and the destruction of the main guard room had only added fuel to the inferno. 

He stared at the few sparks remaining in the pit; they were all trying to occupy the same space against the furthest wall.  The taste of their shocked fear, their disbelief that this of all things was happening, that this was how it was going to end, was, not to understate it, the most delicious thing he had ever the luck to sense.

And THIS we will defend!  His mind crowed in victory, and that was when his vision cleared enough (wiping his optics also helped with this action, naturally) to see the operations table.  And the restraints, twice as large as the one that had pinned him down like some sort of specimen, here were smeared with not only mech fluid, but paint, and char marks as if from electrical or fire burns.

There was something strapped to the table, something that was trying very enthusiastically to get its other arm free, and that was when Meagos stepped close enough to actually see that this was not a technician, not a scientist…but something else. 

And here he stopped and here he stared, more in amazement than anything, for here was something, someone his size, someone who was still fighting against his restraints, but that was not what had him spellbound.  No…he was also not used to shock boxes, but he knew enough of them that they were couriers of pain if a tech was dumb enough to activate one near himself.  Here, inside the torso of this large bot, were at least seven of the insane things, all of them linked…or had been, he realized, optics trailing along the snapped links to the main battery storage one of his launcher discs (and the bodies of two technicians) had destroyed and crushed.  And judging from the scorch marks, they had been in high use. 

But that still was not what he stared at in simple and sheer shock; his optics were drawn to the open cavity of the bot’s chest.  Lined and surrounded by the now dead boxes, was an open hole, a missing shard of protection, and the bot’s spark was gleaming bare to the world, glowing and revolving lazily, a light show that was far too open. 

As if drawn by magnets, his optics trailed along a shock box’s cord; the cord was not attached to anything, but the spark itself, or at least the bearings under it. 

To shock the spark, he realized dimly, and he stepped closer, the protoform freezing and staring at him warily.  To shock its SPARK?

Yes…and judging from the scorch marks on the cord…they had been doing just that.  Those technicians were SHOCKING its SPARK?

The protoform stared at him, silent, emerald optics whirling, and even as Meagos stared, the strapped-down bot wrenched at his other arm, the metal squealing like a trapped animal.

“What are you?” demanded Meagos.  The protoform looked at him warily again, and for a moment its optics seemed to dull, and then focus with alarming alacrity.  Meagos thought to step back, step back and fire on this eerie thing, when the protoform seized a piece of its restraints, a curved and sharpened arc of metal, and flung it through the air. 

It nearly sliced into Meagos’ shoulder, and even as he drew back in the realization of that factor, there came a strangled sound behind him; he turned in time to fire another disc into a trio of armed guards (So I DID miss a few of them!  …what ELSE have I missed?).  They died very loudly and messily, but he had even less time now, and he knew that.  The idea was now to escape, to leave Dihex.  He was finished with these labs, and he wanted out.

His gaze jerked back to the protoform, who was bound only to the table by a lower restraint. 

“What are you?” he repeated, staring, still mesmerized as the bot had started wrenching out the shock boxes and throwing them as far as it could.  Its spark cavity was still open, and the last box was ripped away with a strangled hiss as the cord unlinked from the bearing under the spark.  Then it too was flung, smashing into the battery, and even as Meagos watched with widening optics, the first of the fires exploded from that union.

The protoform had managed to close the spark casing, but the gleam of it, a simple spark open to the world like that, and yet the bot was still alive!, despite the shock boxes, despite the burn marks, and even then it only stared at him, uncertain, unsure. 

“What are you?” it asked back finally, the second and third fires already starting.  In the observer room, Dragon and Ivex had already left.  Neither of the bots still alive in the pit knew. 

Meagos smiled, his teeth and mouth stained with mech.  “Death.”

The protoform, of all the bots he had encountered, all the techs, the guards, the scientists, did not flinch, did not even appear afraid.  Only…interested.  And it grinned, grinned of all things.

“You’ll find me a difficult customer to service then,” it said with an equally low and vicious tone, and Meagos blinked, startled.  His radar was picking up no fear from this new spark…only a low, intense curiosity, and something…darker, something similar and alike, and he found himself smiling back, unaware or caring that dribbles of mech began to fall.

“What are you?” he repeated.

The protoform looked back at him, met his gaze, and that seemed to startle it, because it could only stare into his optics, but there was still no fear, only that sense of similarity again.  Meagos was not certain if he enjoyed this feeling, but staring this thing in the optics was…unsettling.  It was obviously not the same as the techs, or the guards, or anyone else he had met in Dihex.

It opened its mouth, perhaps to reply, and that was when a volley of laserfire screamed into the room, exploding the final shock box cart in a flurry of sparks and white air sparkles, lethal to touch and blinding to sight. 

“It’s escaping!” came a wild shriek, and Meagos spun, opening in return volley; he realized suddenly that there was security alive still, and it was the defense system.  And the screams…he knew that voice.  It was wild here, and panicked, and streaked with an underlying fury, but it was Dragon, and he knew that in the same way he knew the bot strapped to the table still was not like anything he had ever encountered before.

The protoform screamed in a pain-filled rage as lasers struck not only the table, but himself, knocking him back onto the broken restraints.  His hands grappled wildly for the last bar, and despite his obvious shock, he did not hesitate but instead plunged off the table, hands pressing the spark casing of his torso closed.  Meagos pulled back from the table, the last restraint still in his hand from where he had wrenched it free, aimed carefully, and shattered a security camera above the doorway.  The explosion knocked out another laser cannon, and Meagos glanced at the freakish protoform, who stood nearly as tall as he himself did.  Despite the scorch marks and paint smears (and the eerie smell of melting metal), the bot was standing by himself, staring at the carnage.

“Dragon,” hissed Meagos; his radar had finally picked up the panic in that chatterbox of a spark, which was running away…but not to the lift.  To someplace below even this floor. 

The table behind them shattered into shards, making the two males jump aside, the protoform nearly falling over in surprise.  Meagos stared at it with some contempt, but the memory of the shock boxes around its spark, and the cords under it, to fry it with equal animosity, quelled that feeling.  This bot was like no one else he had ever met, and he realized that almost grudgingly.  For starts, it was upright and standing, despite what had been happening to its spark. 

“What are you?” asked the protoform again, staring at him openly.

“What?” he replied in irritation.

“You’re not a technician.  What are you doing here?”  The protoform seemed honestly confused. 

“This.”  Meagos opened fire at the doorway again, but there were no new screams.  Dragon’s spark signal was getting weaker, and his optics narrowed, fists clenching with small squirts of mech fluid.  The protoform eyed his hands, then the rest of him.  Its spark did not read any fear factor…but there was something akin to awe.  Surprise.  And that feeling of being in the presence of an equal only unnerved Meagos, but it was time to leave.

“I’m leaving,” he said simply, and started for the door, letting his radar sweep out widely in arcs.  “You can come or you can stay.  I don’t care.”

He was startled by how silent the protoform could move, sliding right behind him, optics also narrowing, but there was some inner frenzy inside this one’s strange spark.  An eagerness not only to leave, but…

“Escape?” he said, unaware he had spoken aloud, pausing in the doorway to stare at the new bot, who looked back at him with equal confusion.  And then nodded.

“Where’s Dragon?” Meagos demanded.

“Who?”

“Dragon.  Dragon.  A technician.  Red tiny thing that never shuts up.”

The protoform looked at him, blinking slowly.  “I…don’t know.”

“Do you know anything useful?” he snarled, stepping out into the ruined hallway.  He noted the missing lift with a nod; Dragon had passed by here.  Now, to find him…and then escape. 

“I know about shock boxes,” growled the protoform, and he blinked at the new tone of voice.  “I know about technicians and gags and having my circuits melted and scientists taking careful notes while I scream, or try to.”  Its optics gleamed dangerously as it stared around the room in surprise, taking in every new detail meticulously.  “What did you want to know?”

Meagos watched it carefully, then headed for the lift panel, striking its activation button.  “Your name.”

The doors opened, another lift already present…either that or Dragon had escaped.  Meagos growled, a low thunder in the silver and gold streaked lift, at the very thought, but watching this new bot smile slowly, then with a brilliance Meagos had never quite seen at the split life fluid, was very…intense.  Interesting. 

“Name?” asked the protoform, and for a second he was silent, his optics concentrating on his massive hands, digits bent and twisted and melted at joints.  “My name is…..X.”

Meagos eyed him as the lift descended.  “That’s all?”

“That is all,” agreed X, then met his gaze again with alarming alacrity.  Such clearness Meagos had never seen since…he could not remember.

“Meagos,” the other replied, and slammed the pause button on the console.  The door opened obediently, a smear of bright gold left on the console, and the two stepped into a vast cavern lit from above brightly.  The walls were dark, and the contrast cast and flung shadows around the sub-basement of the laboratory building.

“What…is this?” asked X, staring.  Meagos barely looked at him; his radar system was slowly picking up something new.  A form of block, something that insisted he could read this spark…but it was wiser not to.  That was perfectly all right, because X had not yet learned to mask his face.  His eagerness…and something else showed perfectly in his grin that was not quite a normal facial expression.

But he was confused as well, and Meagos knew that all too well.

“Draaaaaagon?” he called softly, stepping into one of the vast and blocky shadows.  X followed him silently; the protoform’s body was large yet quiet, but every action of him teamed with an eerie life, a jerkiness that reeked of inexperience. 

Considering what condition I found him in, I think that is forgivable…and this we’ll defend?

Meagos peered through the darkness, meeting the emerald glowing optics of his escapee.

…perhaps.

There was a very light pressure not on him, but near him enough to make him turn to face X.  “What?” he hissed, and that was when he saw the lift light glow, and the doors open.

A bot stood in the doorway of the slashed dark and lightness, shaken, his hands and feet smeared with the mech of Dihex’ staff.  But his form was not red…it wasn’t Dragon.

Meagos became slowly aware of X growling next to him; it was a near silent snarl of rage, and he imagined that the protoform was not trembling (was he even aware he was doing it?  surely not) in fear, but raw fury.

“Who is that?” whispered Meagos as the blue-opticed bot slowly slunk from the lift, staring into every corner.  He was a walking panic attack; his spark palpitated within its container, fast and wild, feral.  Meagos could nearly feel it screaming in fear, and he watched curiously.

“I know him,” hissed X, and it was a hiss, words forced into a gasping snarl too strong to be set free and alert the bot.  “I...know him.”

Meagos smiled at this, but mostly at the fact that the bot had proven some form of use.  Still unaware he was being watched by potentially the two most dangerous sparks ever to visit Dihex, Ivex quickly entered his private access codes into a nearly invisible console.  The two watching him continued to do so.  Only Meagos grinned as the shuttle decloaked, a black ship lined with gold and silver trim. 

So he thinks he can get away so easily?

And this we’ll defend?

No, not never ever again…trying to run, are we?

“I’ll get him,” hissed the protoform at his side.  “Can you get that….other thing?”

Meagos looked at him, this time in surprise.  “The shuttle,” he whispered, and nodded.  He paused.  “You are able to…?”

“What?”

“I only meant….”  Meagos trailed off, suddenly puzzled.  What HAD he meant?  And much more, why did he care?

Because this X…he is not like the rest.  No.  And you know that.  You can sense it.

And that much was very true.

“Your spark,” he finally said quietly.  X looked at him, and this time Meagos could not stop his systems from feeling the sheer shock radiating from the other’s spark.  He didn’t expect that.

“….my spark…”  The protoform blinked, then shook his head.  “I have survived worse.”  And then he was gone, sliding away in the shadows of perhaps other shielded shuttles, ships, whatever other offal Dihex stored far below business and research levels.  Meagos followed his spark for a moment, then stepped off to cut off the blue-opticed bot.  He had not yet reached the shuttle.

Ivex almost made it.  He had reached the door; this model of a shuttle was older than most, and its side door was a manual open.  Unlocked as always, it merely waited for him to open it, and then, he knew, he would enter the shuttle, open the bunker’s door, and then be gone, be so far away from all of this, all the bodies and the dead guards and Dragon and…and the missing experiment.  High Command just might be upset about all this, but he had warned them, oh, yes, he had, and he nearly made it out and into the escape shuttle.  Instead, his optics were drawn from the door and its promise of freedom and escape to the sudden agony flaring in his arm as something very large and heavy seized it; he turned, and felt all of his inner wires freeze in the sudden realization of what his future held.

X smiled at him, a true smile for once, one of pure happiness…and something else. 

“No,” Ivex barely had time to gasp, but of course the protoform knew him, of course it had seen him before, and Ivex realized in the moment before he was wrenched from his arm, left clinging to the door handle and console pad, before he started to shriek and could only gape silently at X, who was suddenly far too close, too close, and then closer in screeching agony, that no restraints could have been strong enough.

Less than two minutes later, Meagos appeared, and the look he gave X was not one of disapproval, only more curiosity. 

“Where is he?”

X shrugged carefully, not appearing to notice the great amount of mech fluid that dribbled from his elbow joints and fingers.  “Which part?”

Meagos felt himself smiling, and for once it was a real smile.  And perhaps…perhaps yes.  He only nodded to X, then wrenched open the shuttle’s door, motioning to it.  “In.  Now.  There’s no time for anything else.”

X stared at the shuttle, and for a moment Meagos could only look at him.  He’s acting like he’s never seen this kind of transport before.  The blank yet surprised look in X’s optics.  Or any. 

Meagos growled.  This is no time for…for…for STUPIDITY.

But he knew it was not, somehow.  “IN!” he roared, and the protoform bolted inside, taking in the inside of the control room with quick surprise before sitting in one of the chairs.  Meagos locked his position in the control seat, and not totally unaware that X was watching him with curious and somewhat wide optics, activated the main console.  The panels and consoles erupted in lights, dials activating, and the radar and small defense system came online…and with them, the basement’s door activation.  Meagos struck that button swiftly, then watched with a satisfied face as the west wall faded to reveal wide-set door panels, and they were opening swiftly.

“Lock in,” he ordered, setting their course and reviewing the panels.  A full reserve fuel tank, check.  All instrument panels online, check.  Locked in for hyperdrive, check.  A full fuel tank, check. 

The sound of metal screeching against metal caught his attention, and he glared at X, who was holding up the three lock seat restraints in puzzlement.

“Hurry it up!” Meagos barked, but it became quickly apparent that X had no idea what he was doing.  Snarling curses (and part of him wondering all the while why he simply did not leave this idiot...but no…he wasn’t quite that), he unlocked his restraints quickly, bolting over to X, and locked him in his seat.

The protoform gawked after him, and then locked his hands onto the seat lock.  “What…what?” he cried out in confusion, and was about to rip the bonds apart when Meagos stared at him.

“It’s for hyperdrive,” he snarled.  “Now be quiet, we have to get out of here.  We’re good at killing people, but we can’t kill everyone Dihex calls in!”

X nodded mutely; his rage seemed to have fled in the sudden realization that he had traded restraints with the scientists…for restraints with this very strange Meagos.  Who, he noted, was not a technician, not a scientist…had in fact killed every single one, directly or not, in the operations pit.  He didn’t work for Dihex.

But…why did he get me out?

Still in a form of shock, he settled his arms on the rests, looking at them blankly, then at the brilliant array of panels and touch-screens on the consoles before him, his hands curling into small loose fists on the bond restraints.  It was too much, so too fast, and X could feel his mind aching with the filling, but there was another thought rampaging in his mind, and that was only a sheer repetition: I’m free…I’ve been freed…I’m…freee…

The shuttle was moving, slowly at first, and then, warming up with takeoff, glided over the basement floor, and Meagos watched it grimly.  He knew he had been enjoying himself a lot…perhaps too much inside, and it was only a matter of time before someone, like Dragon, perhaps, or even someone watching the security monitors from another place, called in the great security.  High Command’s army.  Perhaps the Guardians. 

From what he had seen of this X person, he could do damage as well…but even the two of them wouldn’t be able to stand against such numbers. 

“And this we’ll defend,” he whispered with a rough and callused chuckle, making X look at him discreetly, but then the shuttle really began to move, accelerate, and the outside was visible, bright daylight.  The protoform stared, unaware that he was shaking slightly from the overexposure; he was very used to the bright white of the pit, but this natural light…it ached in a new way, and he dimmed his optics, unable to continue.

“Are you all right?” Meagos demanded, glancing at the stranger, who was sitting bolt upright in the other seat, optics dead, vaguely shaking. 

The answer was so low he blinked.  “…I think so.  Where are we going?”

“Out,” he said simply, and shoved the shifter gear into place.  The shuttle’s engines bellowed to life, and here X’s optics grew brilliant again as the shuttle took off, out of the basement, out of Dihex, and into the brightness of the natural world of Cybertron beyond. 

The protoform was forced to turn his optics off; his mind was wheeling and reeling, and the shock of it all, of Ivex and the shuttle, of the dead technicians and the fights, of these bonds being able to be broken, of this Meagos breaking him free, this shock of being free, made him clench his fists tightly, letting his breath out through a clenched mouth and teeth, a gasp. 

Meagos barely glanced at him, and then turned his attention to the hyperdrive.  They were reaching it, reaching it, and in a final burst of fuel, the sky before him turned a jet sable black, the brilliance of stars streaming in it, and the shuttle flung itself into hyperdrive, jetting away from Dihex and Cybertron, and was off both’s radar scans in less than two minutes.

They were safely out of Cybertron’s orbit and into the next galaxy a few minutes later, and it was only then that hyperdrive slowed to normal shuttle speed.  Meagos would have liked to have gone further from Cybertron, but this was an escape shuttle, not one suited for extended hyperdrive missions.  He felt lucky that it was filled with fuel alone; he had yet to determine how many more hypers they could make before the engines gave way.

His companion still silent beside him, Meagos flickered his gaze and fingers over the control consoles.  So they had used that much fuel for hyperdrive…so they could go this far on it (he was not really surprised to see that the shuttle’s hyperdrive was much less powerful than what he was used to), and according to the locality range, they were in the Gala Quadrant, of the Ricos galaxy.  That was fine with Meagos. 

Soon we’ll have another ship.  And he was only mildly surprised at the we.  He finally looked at the bot in the passenger seat; the shuttle was barely large enough for a third, perhaps fourth party in a back sliding seat, and beyond that rested several reserve boxes.  He knew enough that they would have energon and little else, perhaps a few repair kits.  Weapons surely were not included, much like batteries.

“Are you awake?” he demanded, watching the console lightly.  Their path was straight and easy, and according to the radar systems, it would be clear for some time.

X stirred, optics coming back on as he vaguely stared into the vastness of the black world before them.  “…where are we going?” he managed, tearing his gaze away to look at Meagos.

The future Guardian was wiping his front torso off; most of the mech had dried there, but some was still liquid enough to glide off.  “Away from Cybertron at first, which we have accomplished.  Beyond that…I don’t know.”  He gave X a brilliant mech-stained smile, and in his mind, a few grudging judges held up high score cards as X again did not shrink back, nor even look vaguely disturbed.  “Where sounds good to you?”

The bot stared at him for a moment.  “I’m…not sure,” he said finally.  He glanced back at Meagos; for the first time in his life, X was uncertain.  “I don’t know much about that.”

“Well,” said Meagos with forced brightness, “other than sparks, what do you know about?”

X turned his gaze back to the vastness of space.  “Shock boxes,” he said finally.  “And circuitry melding with restraints.  And lack of energon.”

Meagos was not aware that he was staring at his passenger, and even if he had, he would not have cared.  “What,” he asked, “were they doing to you anyway?”

“At what point?”

Meagos was silent for a moment.  “…I can see we’re not getting anywhere.  You know my name and I know yours, and beyond that-”

“Why did you take me out of there?” interjected his passenger suddenly. 

Meagos was again quiet for a few minutes.  The sad fact of the matter was he simply did not know why he had not killed this other bot…for Primus sake, he had even been strapped down, and still Meagos had let him live.

But his spark…remember his spark!  And the technicians.

Well, fine, perhaps he had been distracted by the technicians…and the security system, but that was still no excuse.

“I have a better idea,” he said instead.  “I ask a question, you answer it.  Then you ask a question, and I answer it.  That work?”

X nodded.  “It sounds workable,” he admitted, and found his optics dropping to his form again.  When he was not staring at the shuttle, or at this stranger, or at space, he was at his body.  True, it was still scarred and marred from the scorches, and he ached all over inside, but it was the first time in…in a very long time he had ever seen himself without restraints.  It was still a novelty.

“Who are you?” demanded Meagos, watching his passenger curiously, and jetted the shuttle into automatic pilot.  “And don’t tell me your name, I already know that.”

“I am X,” said the protoform.  “But I was called Protoform X.”

“Why Protoform?”

X thought about commenting that that was two questions, but decided to let it slide.  For reasons still unknown to him, this stranger had not only attacked those technicians and freed him…but had taken him with him to…wherever.  But it had to be better than Dihex, wherever it was.

“Because,” he said.  “That’s what they called me.  But don’t.  I prefer X…I’m not a protoform.”

“You’re up.”  Meagos watched the shuttle pilot through the darkness lit only by the shuttle’s seeker beam, and the dimness of the stars.

“Why are you covered in that stuff?”

“This?”  Meagos flicked a finger over the gold smears, and X nodded.  “Technical term is mech fluid, as you know…and none of it is mine.”  He paused.  “Well, perhaps a little.  But it’s from the crew at Dihex.”  He grinned.  “I killed them.”

X nodded; this was perfectly understandable.  While he had not known precisely what that shimmer of liquid was, he had felt more than enough of it come from himself, and the pain that followed insured it was not painless for anyone.  He had to smile at that.

“Why were you at Dihex?  Some volunteer?”

X blinked, and then turned a very startled (and partly, he admitted privately, enraged) look at the other.  “No.  Not a volunteer.”  He knew that word at least; the scientists and technicians had spoken over him enough for him to pick up language. 

“Then what?”

“A protoform,” he said guardedly; for some reason he was reluctant to explain further.  He knew he had never had a chance to escape before, and it had taken him some time to put together the fact that there was indeed a world outside the white walls he was always shown and trapped in.  Obviously the techs came from somewhere, right? 

“Why were you at Dihex?”

“Who says I could leave?” he shot back, annoyed suddenly, and his optics gleamed into an equally irritated Meagos’.

“You couldn’t?”  Open, honest question, but X still had no want to answer.  On the other hand…he had his own questions, and he had agreed to this. 

On another hand, he was secretly thrilled, and not only because he was free…no matter where he was going, or what this Meagos had planned for him…Meagos was talking to him, not at him, not above him. 

“No,” he said.  “I couldn’t.  What were you doing in Dihex?”

“Getting a new system installed.  I was in training to be a-” -and here Meagos spat the word- “-Guardian, but plans have changed.  Why couldn’t you leave?”

“They never let me,” said X shortly, and that of course was true.  “They never let me out of the building.  What’s a Guardian?”

Meagos eyed him suspiciously.  “Something useless who protects the fools and the idiots and the stupid.  No, not useless.  Call them target practice.”

“But you were going to be one?”  X let the question revolve slowly, and had to blink at the sudden flare in Meagos’ crimson optics.

“Was going to…but as I have said,” admitted Meagos, eyeing his hands, “plans have been altered.  I have decided I have better things to do to the stupid and weak than protect them.  Why wouldn’t they let you leave?  Even if you were an employee, you had that right.”

“I wasn’t an employee.  I wasn’t a tech, or a scientist…or a janitorial, or a head of anything.”

“Secretary?”

“No…I was a protoform.”

“Meaning what, precisely?” clipped Meagos.  “I know what a protoform is, but I don’t see how that’s why they could force you to stay in that place.”

“They did, obviously.”

“Well, obviously they did,” he growled.  “But you can be more forthcoming with answers.  I have been.”

And this of course X knew.  “They never let me leave,” he said slowly and with much hesitation and doubt, “because they didn’t think I should.  If you’re not a Guardian, then what are you now?”

“A runaway from insanity,” observed Meagos.  “Call me Meagos the anti-Guardian.  Why didn’t they think you should leave?”

“Because…they were afraid of what I would do,” and here X stared at his hands, remembering…and rather vaguely at that, the earliest times he had tried to speak and could only scream…and then had slowly learned to speak, and how the techs had stared at him.  And how worse the things they had done had been after that….

“What?  Like kill them all?”  Meagos grinned to reveal it was a joke; even now he could understand how some people (most, really, from what he had seen) deserved death, but it was still entertaining to think otherwise as a devil’s advocate. 

“Yes,” said X quietly, and nodded.  “Why did you kill them all?”

“They were stupid,” admitted Meagos honestly.  “That and….it was fun.  Very fun.”

X could understand that; even before he had been given a vocal box, even before he knew the terms for what he wanted to do to those techs and scientists and those two heads, the ones he had always seen in a box above everyone, watching, watching, observing everything, he had known what he wanted to do to them.  And how he wanted them to do only one thing back: scream.

“All right.  Would you have killed them all?”

“If I had the chance,” X said calmly, though he could feel his hands clenching, not in fury, but an eerie expectation.  How can I trust this person?  …as if I have a choice.

“And you didn’t?”

“The bars weren’t for my benefit.”  X hesitated.  “Why did you set me free, take me with you?”

There was no response for a few minutes, and X fought the urge to repeat the question.  On the rare time he had been able to speak and ask the techs not to, to please not to do something, it was ignored, no matter how many times it was repeated. 

“I don’t know,” came back softly.  “Would you believe that I really don’t?”

“You don’t work for Dihex?”

“No.  Not anymore, at least….you never answered me this.  Why didn’t they let you leave that place?”

“Because….”  And here X realized he could use the same answer, he didn’t know…but he DID know, of course.  Sometimes the techs became overcharged, and very chatty; on those occasions they would stop by wherever he was, and they would say everything they could.  He was never quite certain if they spoke the real truth, or only what they saw as a truth.  It was a sad thing, but he had to admit that to himself, but everything he knew of the places outside of Dihex (he only knew that was where he had been because sometimes the techs would talk nonstop, even after they started to recharge) came from the words of unreliable technicians overcharged on energon. 

“Because?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “…because they didn’t want me to leave.”

“They couldn’t keep you there.”

“They did,” X said shortly. 

“Why were you below ground level?  Dihex never said it had a basement.”

X glared at him.  “Isn’t it my turn to ask yet?” 

Meagos blinked, then waved at him.  “Go ahead.  What else do you need to know?”

Try everything.  X shook his head at the thought.  “What else was in Dihex?”

“What else…?”

“What else did they have in there…besides me?”

An odd question, but then again, Meagos realized, every question X had asked had been odd, eerie, questions about things that everyone knew.  Every young bot was informed of Guardians, and every bot he had ever come across knew the words for mech fluid, rather than “stuff.”

“A lot of radar systems,” he started.  “Some High Command stealth war plans.  Computer upgrades, shields for personal use, increased hyperdrive for shuttles and ships.  They had a lot of projects going on.  So why were you below ground level?  Why didn’t anyone tell me about you?”

“Did you ask?”

“Don’t be stupid.  They wouldn’t tell a volunteer Guardian anything.  But they told me about every level…except for yours.”

X was silent; this was, like most everything Meagos had told him, news.  True, a part of him had often wondered why the techs and scientists coming to see and work on him were always the same…but the times when a new face entered the pit were very rare indeed. 

“I don’t think anyone was supposed to know,” he guessed.  “Why did you leave Dihex?”

Meagos snorted, waving a hand at the darkness outside the shuttle.  “They were all so stupid there…they thought I was like them.  In every way.  Stupid, insane, little piddling targets running around chatting useless facts at every corridor or audio.  But I am not.  And realizing that had to kill them, if I didn’t.  And you have been avoiding every question I ask about that.  Why you were down there.  What they were doing.  So tell me why you never told them you wanted to leave.”

The answer, when it came moments later, was quiet, but Meagos sensed an inner rage echoing within it.  “Why would they listen?”

Meagos stared at his passenger.  “Because they legally couldn’t make you stay…and they couldn’t force you with all those restraints.”  Something seemed to dawn in his optics, a new light, a learnt light.  “What were they doing to you?”

“Tests.”

When it was clear that no further elaboration would be coming, Meagos asked again.  “Why?”

“Research.”  A pause, and here X looked outside into space.  “Because…because they could.”

“And no one stopped them?”

“Who would?”  X laughed bitterly, a sound so strange and forlorn Meagos felt a cold drip of fear.  It was nearly worse than the confusion his systems had picked up from X’s spark.

“Why,” he asked again, and X looked back at him with eerie optics, echoing the near blankness of space, shorn of stars and light. 

“Haven’t you found it strange that I’m asking what I’m asking?” asked X instead. 

“About Dihex, yes…you’re asking things that everyone knows.  Like you’ve never been outside the damn place.”  The continued nearly dead look made Meagos blink.  “…you haven’t.  Have you?”

It was far too late to deny anything, and despite his inner rage, despite even being freed finally.  X knew this utterly.  “What gave me away?”

For the first time in his life (even what he could remember of before getting this new system, as disgusting as that was), Meagos was stunned silent.  For a moment, he stared out the window, and then back at X, who was staring back defiantly.  “You’re not joking, are you.”

“Do I sound it?”  Perhaps X was unaware that he was even doing it, but his hands were clasped around the main lock on the seat restraints.  Trying to open them, maybe.

“But…what about your creators?  Friends?” 

“What kind of social circle did you expect me to have?  And I stayed with my creators.”  Meagos blinked at the venom in the final word.  “What kind of help did you expect me to have?”

What every other person has.  Even the stupid Guardians would have done something, Meagos wanted to say, and so he did.

“Every person,” X said, finally looking up from the lock on his seat restraints, “is not me.  There was no help in Dihex.  No one else knew about me.”

“That’s impossible,” Meagos said flatly.  “Even if you never spoke to your friends and creators, they would have come looking some time.  Or some tech would have told the Guardians.”

“No one knew I existed,” snarled X, optics gleaming like polished precious stones. 

“Except for the techs and scientists…and Dragon,” and that was when it finally boomed in him, and Meagos again could only gape.  “They created you?  From scrap?”

“Did you expect anyone in there to care?  To let me out?  Why would they ever do THAT?” 

“They have no right,” Meagos said, but he knew that excuse was frail at best.  Of course they had a right; this was Dihex, after all, this was High Command’s personal research labs. 

“No one stopped them,” said X carelessly.  “Why would they?”

“Because I saw what they were doing…well…part of it,” admitted Meagos.  “You were trying to get away…and I know those shock boxes hurt.”  He was astonished despite himself, not only for the questions, but for remotely caring about the answers.  “And they wouldn’t let you leave because they made you…and no one knew.”  He paused.  “That’s torture,” he said flatly, and was astonished again when X began to laugh.

“Noooo,” the runaway said with a brilliant grin and a mad chuckle.  “That’s not torture, Meagos.”

It was, Meagos realized, the first time he had been called by name by this X.  “What else is it then?” he demanded roughly.

“Research.  Scientific research.”

“But what they were doing was torture.”

“No no,” said X, shaking his head and wagging a finger, something he had picked up from a very overcharged tech, as if to a bad child or computer.  “It’s only torture if it’s done to a person.  It’s research if it’s done to a test subject.  Or a protoform.”

“Protoform X,” repeated Meagos, unaware that he had spoken, but slowly and dangerously the pieces had fallen into place, and he could only look at X in sudden understanding.  “That’s you.  Your name, X…not protoform.”

“You are the first person to call me that,” said X, and somehow Meagos was not surprised. 

“What were they researching?” he asked, not certain he wanted the answer. 

X paused, thinking this new idea over.  He knew, of course, again, the chatty overcharged techs had been all too happy to explain, sometimes in terrible detail, what the next ‘test’ (they never called them experiments, but after listening to them for a while, he realized that was what they were…and how they were only agony, no matter the details) would be, and sometimes why.  The reasons often varied, but one was always the same.

“Pain,” he said slowly.  “How much of it…I could withstand.”

“I saw those boxes,” Meagos interjected.  “They were around your spark…and linked to its supports.  That kind of pain would have killed you.”

“As I was once told, whatever doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger,” said X with lackluster. 

“It would have killed you,” he insisted.

“It didn’t.”

“…how long had they been doing those things?  Since you were created?”

X nodded.  Somehow Meagos was not surprised.

“But…why?” demanded Meagos almost desperately.  Dihex was forgotten, Cybertron was forgotten, even space as the final frontier was forgotten.  He could only look at X.

“I asked…but they never exactly said.  To see how much pain would kill me.”

“And none ever did,” said Meagos slowly, grasping still.

“No.  That’s what they wanted, I think.”

“And what would that be?” asked Meagos, mystified but curious despite himself.

“They…didn’t want me to die.  I heard them a few times.  Not many…but once a technician remarked on immortality.  A spark that couldn’t die…and Starscream.”

Silence from the ex-Guardian.  He knew of Starscream, of course; everyone did, or at least anyone who took any form of history course in the education systems.  A second-in-command in the Decepticon army.  He had been destroyed in the time of Galvatron…but had been seen and felt on scanners since, even in the current modern era.  Theorists who had come across him said that his spark had an eerie twist in its making, and as such, it was impossible to destroy it.

“They wanted your spark to be like his?” he asked, incredulous.

“I don’t know…I only know it never went out.”  X turned a frightfully empty face at Meagos, his optics glowing dimly from the inside out.  “But that’s what they said…when they said anything at all.”

Meagos paused; he was intelligent enough to realize that this did not have to change anything…but also smart enough to know that it had and did.  “But that one bot in the shuttle launch.  You took care of him easily enough.”

Here X’s smile brightened, and it was indeed a smile, a raw, open grin.  “I didn’t have experience, if that is what you meant.  But I did dream of having it sometimes.”  He paused, looking down at his hands, still clasped on the seat restraints.  “…where are we going?”

I know he’s not stupid, Meagos knew.  I know he’s not…and I think he understands all too well that this DOES change something…and pretending it doesn’t is idiocy.  On the other hand…

On the other hand, what?  Really.

Meagos smiled at him, and a second later, an equal expression greeted him back. 

“We,” said Meagos meaningfully, “are going on a well-deserved vacation.  Computer, chart us for the nearest populated planet.”

“Vacation?” asked X dubiously. 

“Oh yes,” grinned Meagos.  “Think of Dihex…only better.”

This time he was not surprised by X’s laugh, mostly because he himself was about to, and both chuckles were dark and soothing in the empty silence of space.

Colony Arbox was a mining community on the dark side of the planet Sycorax, but because it was a colony, several bots had brought their creations, creators, any amount of colleagues and friends, and despite the fact that over half of those in the colony worked in the metal mines, it was a busy place to live and work.  Those who did not mine settled deals with Cybertron and other colonies in the importation of supplies and the exportation of their metals. 

It was, for the most part, a peaceful colony.  As with all colonies, however, there were a handful of Guardians present on a daily basis.  It was Arbox’s unfortunate fate that all the Guardians had been summoned off planet for a meeting when the alien shuttle landed.

It was obviously of a Cybertronian design, and most of the colonists paid no attention; shuttles landed every day, with some relations or friends of some lead miners or exporters, or with supplies.  The few colonists that did go to the landing pad to see the new arrivals went, as was their usual custom, unarmed.  After all, there was no war on the Homeworld. 

Nor did it strike those in the landing control towers odd that this shuttle had arrived unannounced.  These things did happen after all.  Emergency landings did occur.  Sometimes there was engine failure, or machine malfunction.  On a few very rare landings, they had been crashes rather than easy landing.

The shuttle landed easily, however, and the welcome party swarmed by it, waiting expectantly.

A few minutes later, when no one had emerged, a daring pilot trainee stepped closer and opened the door.  She was a fairly young bot and like most of those on Arbox, threats of warfare and fighting had always been seen as slim to zero chances.  Damaged bots, however, thankfully or unthankfully, were much more common, and so when the door fell open at his touch and a very large red and silver bot collapsed outwards with it, those gathered were surprised, shocked, but not panicked.

“Get the medic team!” screamed the green and silver hopeful pilot as she knelt by the stranger, inspecting what wounds she could.  Several others sprinted away to do that, while others gathered closer.

“What’s wrong with him, Havelock?”

“I’m not sure…”  Her fingers traced over a scorched torso plate, the melted colors on the side armor and hands.  Green optics flickered on briefly with a low snarl of pain, and she withdrew her fingers quickly.  “Hey!  Hey, wake up!”

They flickered again, finally staying on dimly, far too dimly for her liking. 

“….Guardian,” the stranger gasped faintly.

“They’re all gone on that meeting call!” cried a bystander from the back of the mob. 

“Don’t worry,” soothed Havelock, setting her hand where there seemed to be the least amount of damage.  “We’ll take care of you.”

This seemed to calm down the stranger, though he suddenly flung himself into a sitting position, clutching his head and torso with obvious agony.

“Don’t move!” cried Havelock, seizing her hands onto his.  “You’ve been damaged!”

“You have NO idea,” came a low reply, and she stared, blinking.

“…what did you say?” she whispered, and the brilliance of the emerald optics bore into her as easily as a drill.

The answer, when it came, was low, and she barely heard it.  “….you’re a fem?”

“Yes,” she whispered, not certain what that had to do with anything.  The stranger was obviously damaged; perhaps he was delirious as well, circuitry damaged.  “….why?”

“It’s just that….that….”  So soft, so faint, and Havelock was entirely unaware that the rest of the crowd was staring. 

“Get the medics!” she cried to them, turning back to the optics.  “Just what?”

“I’ve never killed a female before,” came a low growling response, and as the words struck home, as she blinked and realized and tried to pull back, the hands beneath hers seized her wrists, compressing with enough force to dent the armor and make her scream, but that high sound was lost in the orchestra of shrieks as the second bot stepped out from the shuttle, smeared with mech fluid and chuckling, then opened fire.

Arbox was still a small colony, and six hours later, the Guardians returned from their rendezvous with Command Central, and a scant hour before the Guardians’ shuttle docked in the landing bay, the Dihex escape shuttle had departed.

“Captain?”

“Something wrong, Sibyl?”  Captain Montrax glanced up from his checklist Central had given him, a mere itinerary of new criminals and pirate raiders in the Sycorax system.  Most of them, he noted duly, were repeat offenders and had yet to be apprehended sometimes months after their crimes.  This would soon change, he felt.

“Not wrong precisely, Captain…I’ve radioed the landing towers and there’s no response.”

“Check the radar on the mines,” he said, all too aware of the last time this had happened.  The towers had been abandoned because of two great cave-ins, and even with every colony member digging, over fifty lives had been lost. 

A few clicks later, and: “Captain…I’m not picking up any signatures!  Not one.”

He growled.  “The shuttle must be malfunctioning.  Dock us down and run another scan.  If there’s been another cave-in, I want to know before we vacate.”

“Not a single one?” came a hiss from another console.

“Not even in the caves…”

The shuttle landed, and when radar still revealed the same, Montrax ordered a sweep around the towers and then out to the caves.  It was only when he heard a high gasp from one of his subcommanders that he halted orders.

“What!” he demanded.  “What is it!”

Sibyl was the only one who could look at him, and her face was drawn dark and gray.  “Captain….” was all she could manage before shock seized her again; she was not a Guardian for anything, but the radar clicked with the image before her console window, and she could only sit in disturbed amazement. 

Montrax, as he was sitting higher and away from any console windows, had not seen, but, growing more apprehensive by the moment, stepped over behind Sibyl, and then he saw the mass of mech fluid sprayed over the landing bay, the swarm of dead bodies, perhaps ten, perhaps fifteen…and how the trail of silver and gold spirals and swirls littered not only the bay, but inside the windows of the landing towers, like eerie flowers of an alien world, and even on the outside of the towers…and how the colors smeared across, and in his mind he could see them across the entire colony, even in the mines. 

He stared in mute agitation and sudden fear, naked and green across his spark, quicksilver and dark, and that was when he saw the footprints.  Two pairs of them, leading away from a massive explosion of mech fluid, trekking to the control towers, and in his mind, Montrax saw them on a colony-wide sweep, from the mines to the living quarters…and in his mind he suddenly realized why the radar system had not picked up a single energy signature, and combined with the footprints, he was unaware when he began to gasp out screams of disbelief and denial.

“Well…was it good for you?”

Meagos glanced at his companion, and chuckled.  “Yes.  And you enjoyed yourself.”

“I still don’t see why I had to…pretend that part,” snarled X wearily, but in truth he had enjoyed himself a lot.  A very lot.  He had learned quite a bit on his range around the colony with Meagos as well.  Education and entertainment in one place…and not a technician in sight.

“You need repairs,” Meagos said simply, and that of course was true.  He had no doubt that X had survived far worse than a few half-hearted laser shots, but there was no need to tempt any form of destiny that was out there.  He had had some time to think about that rather idiotic idea of a grand fate for every person. 

I suppose there COULD be a fate for every spark…most of them will end screaming it out, of course, since they are fated to come across me.

“I do not.”  Here he glanced at his passenger with another mech-streaked grin.

Across us, rather.

“If there were Guardians there,” he explained patiently, “they might have outnumbered us.  They’re fools…but armed fools.  And armed fools are liable to shoot back.”

“You are speaking to someone who has had his spark shocked, you realize,” X said softly, optics gleaming as he relaxed, hands still on the meeting point of his seat restraints.  Silver and gold streaked between each of his finger joints, and he could not recall any feeling in his past life that even came close to such sweet tension.  Even in his dreams, it had been nothing like this.

Meagos grinned; he knew that look on X’s face.  “I know.  But, X….there is a huge array of stars out in that emptiness of space.”

“So?”

“If each star is really a heat central of a sun…and many planets usually orbit suns….can you imagine how many planets and colonies we have yet to visit?”

Slowly another smile crept and broke on X’s face.  “I can only imagine….but I like it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”  X looked at the pilot of the shuttle.  “I do….”  He grinned, displaying teeth and a tongue layered in gold and silver swirls, swallowing the excess. 

“Did you ever imagine life would taste like this?”

X swallowed with a wild smirk.  “Like mech fluid?”

Meagos glanced at him, and this time they did not chuckle.  The shuttle rang with their satisfied, elated laughs, and the automatic pilot set their course for the next colony on Sycorax’s neighboring planet’s moon.

It was on that moon that they changed shuttle for ship: the Pulsar was a small cruiser built for wealthy patrons of Sycorax.  In other words, the owners of the metal mines.  As rich as they were, they had no problems in exchanging their very fast ship for the much smaller and slightly damaged shuttle.  One reason was the fact that the owners knew all too well that it was never good business to argue with people like Meagos and X.  Another reason was that they were dead.

Sirius, the moon, was another base dotted with colonies, but Sirius was also a leisure depot, a nice and well rested stop for the wealthy, though some smaller areas were devoted to the miners and other workers on Sycorax.

Sirius, as Meagos explained, would be a quick stop for them as well.  It was well and fine to take entertainment and enjoy themselves, but chances were that Arbox’s Guardians had returned by that time, and it would be prudently wise to leave the immediate area.  X, who still had no real understanding of the Guardians, much less of the real world and reality outside Dihex, could only agree.  But he never followed mindlessly.  Even as they were obtaining the Pulsar, X took care of the three owners, and even suggested another shuttle.  He was not bothered when Meagos insisted on the Pulsar.  For one, the Pulsar had a greater speed system.

They killed relatively few people on Sirius, only the owners of the ship and all the landing bay attendants, and it was not long later when the Guardians were summoned there as well.  By that time, of course, the Pulsar was a galaxy away.

They of course left the shuttle from Dihex.  In hindsight, they perhaps should have destroyed it, as the shuttle was brimming with their evidence of life, but the Guardians and High Command’s elite military forces knew as much from the shuttle as they had learned from Dihex.  The two escapees were lethal and were to be brought in.  Dead or alive did matter for once.  Dead was not an option.

“So you technically can’t die then,” Meagos said a few days later after Sirius.  In a new solar system, the Pulsar’s radar was still picking up colonial life, or any planet sparsely populated with Cybertronians.  Since Sirius, they had restocked on all of their supplies; the past owners of the ship had been very obsessed and interested in weaponry.  While weapons, Meagos and X both knew, would never replace the bare feeling of mech in your finger joints, they were interesting and rather fun tools.  Bots screamed when they saw certain weapons.  They only screamed half as loud with bare hands after you had already started on them.

“I never did in Dihex,” said X shortly; he had been free for barely seven days, and free life was still fairly new to him.  Despite the recreation Meagos and he had entertained with, he was still wary of explaining more about the labs and the tests.  For some reason, even though he knew it really had been torture, not just tests, experiments, he didn’t enjoy thinking about such things.  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t.  But he preferred to let his mind settle on the past seven days.  Five of the seven days had been spent in the Pulsar, scanning for new planets, areas without High Command influence.  They had once found a planet teaming with life…only to have radar reveal it was a Guardian training station.

They had no fear of Guardians.  But on the other hand, X had no want to put himself (or Meagos) in a situation where they could not destroy, and then escape.

“But can you?” 

“I don’t know,” X snarled, more severely than he had intended, and tried to ignore the puzzled look Meagos gave him.  The past five days had not been solely silent.  From Meagos, X had learned a lot.  About Cybertron, about Dihex.  The names of some of the heads of his project.  And a hundred other things about life and general terms.  What an R chamber was.  Why there were two factions even after the war was over (“Because some people like being part of something.”  “Even something so insanely stupid?”  “And that, X, is the majority of people in a nutshell.”).  Why this, why that.  It had been a very educational time, and Meagos had found himself nearly enjoying it.    

And it was, in a way, flattering.  Meagos had no patience to idiocy, but he knew X was no idiot.  Inexperienced, yes.  But stupid…no.  So Meagos really did not mind or was bothered by the virgin mind and the constant questions.  It helped, of course, that X did not want to know everything, like historical epics about the Great War.  It was enough to know he had been created in Starscream’s image.  No, X was content to know about Cybertron and its colonies.  Nothing else really mattered; as long as he could attempt to fit in with the general populous, he felt safe.  Safer.

“Where are we going?” X demanded; it was easier to change the subject.  He still despised even thinking about Dihex; the fact he had been an unwilling test subject did not, in some vague dark and still foolish part of his mind, change the fact he had been a victim.  It still enraged him to even grasp such a concept.  However, Meagos did not seem to see it as such; in his mind, from what X could tell, X was still somewhat awe-inspiring in the sheer fact he might be immortal.  That and the fact X had warmed so readily to aid Meagos.  Of course, X felt, surely Meagos knew he would have aided in whatever Meagos wanted (within reason, naturally) after they had escaped, be it mining or mocking Guardians.  For how long was still the question. 

“Altair-5.”

“Which is…?”

“A trading post.”  Meagos grinned, and X echoed the feature back.  They were back on neutral ground here. 

“A good one?”

“With diversions?  Oh yes.  I was there last a few months ago.  Very…intense kind of life.  But it’s only one, really.  There are several kinds out there.”

X nodded; it sounded even better than Sycorax.  Then again, he had very little to compare anything to still.  He was well aware how unskilled he was, and did not like that fact much either.

Still…a week duration.  Much more than he had ever expected…or dared to dream about.

“I think we can enjoy ourselves there for a while,” Meagos offered.  “And perhaps get a little…cleaned up.”  He flicked a hand meaningfully at X; they were both still mostly coated in old mech.  The inside of the Pulsar’s control station room reeked of the stench; the smell, however, quite failed to bother either of the robots.

“I hope so.”

X was staring out the window again; he had yet to master the controls of any ship or shuttle.  He had no doubt that he would someday, however.  Meagos had already offered, indirectly (he seemed to know enough not to offer openly how to show how something worked), to show him how.  It was only a matter of time before he accepted, indirectly, of course. 

It was an odd thing, but something X had come to realize; all of his life he had been solitary, and having Meagos around as a teacher, an equal, a…comrade (was that stretching the word?  He thought about it, and decided it did not.) perhaps should have alarmed him.  But rather they seemed to get along with ease.  They had not opposed each other’s wants or needs to destroy the others…the weak, the stupid, the screaming pointless masses. 

“Meagos?” he asked, after a pause; his hands still rested on the seat’s restraints.  He had learned how to operate them, but they would always, on some primitive level he could never sway, alarm him.

“What?”  The teal bot was watching the radar, setting their course.

“Do you know yet?”

“Do I know what?”  A tinge of irritability.

“Why you brought me out of Dihex.”

Meagos blinked.  “Does it really matter?”

“…I suppose not.”  And perhaps it did not.  But it was still a question that caused X some amount of worry.  He had learned not only from Meagos terms and words, but from several discs of information in the Pulsar’s living quarters.  Its past owners had enjoyed things called, for some insane reason, he was certain, the ‘classics.’  Fictional, not real tales, but still enjoyable…and somewhat pertaining of and with information.

“Why do you ask?”  Meagos relaxed; it might take another ten hours, but they would be at Altair-5 by then.

“I was just…curious.”  A word X had learned, one he was certain he was overusing.  Curious.  To want to know how and why about everything.  It applied to him, and he was well aware of that.

“It wasn’t planned, if that is what you meant.  I didn’t even know you existed, remember?”

“I remember.”  Then why DOES it matter?  X didn’t know; he only knew on some level that it did.  “Why didn’t you leave me there then?”

There was a pause of silence from the pilot.  “I didn’t want to,” he said finally.

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does,” insisted X.  “I want to know.  It does matter.”

“Fine,” sighed Meagos, but he could still not explain to himself entirely.  “You didn’t seem like the rest of them.  The techs, the scientists.  Dragon.  You didn’t seem so…stupid.  You seemed normal.”

“Normal?”  It sounded alien, even from Meagos.  A joke.  A prank.  Cruel and unusual.

“Like me, I meant.”  And at this X had to hesitate and stare at him. 

“I’m not,” he said slowly and pointedly, “like you.”

“Of course you are,” and coming from him it nearly sounded like a small matter, an ordinary matter.  “You’re like me.  We both despise the weak.  We both understand that they don’t deserve to live.  We both-”

“Didn’t start out as protoforms.”

Meagos paused.  “I meant now.  We are like each other.  Very much so, I’d say.”

“I meant before we…escaped.  Before you let me loose.”

“I didn’t do it alone.  As I recall, you did help.”

There came no reply back, so Meagos continued.  “Well…you did, X.”  He paused.  “Why are you asking this?  You were a protoform.  So what?  You’re not anymore.  You’re free, and I’m free, and we’re never going back to how we were.  You, at Dihex, and me…well, being extremely stupid and wanting, wanting of all things to defend those…things!”

“I used to be-”

“A protoform?”  Meagos sighed.  “Yes, I know, change the disc already.  Get this: you’re free.  As in you’re not anymore!  Your name isn’t Protoform X, it’s X.  There IS a difference.  You left the protoform part back at Dihex.  You’re X.  You’re one of the banes of civilization now, of the weak and stupid and inane.  You’re a death.”

“And what are you?” X demanded, optics glistening.  Of course Meagos was right.  He is.

“Me?”  Meagos grinned.  “Another cancer of all worlds.  Between the two of us, X…there’s a lot of things we can do.  The first being to take out all the stupid, the idiots…and enjoying ourselves at the same time.  I think we deserve to, after all.  It’s what we are.”

“What’s that?”

“Evidence.”

“About?”

“The theory of evolution.  The strong survive, the weak fuel them in that survival.”  He grinned in the brightness of the Pulsar, the darkness of space, and his crimson optics gleamed like supernovas into the green of X’s.  “We’ve drunk from mech fluid slashed from throats and central veins.  We’ve devoured sparks as…treats.  Just rewards.  Because this is what we are.  Evolutionary wonders of death and destruction…and not a protoform in sight.”

X could only grin back.  “And this is the natural order of things?”

“Natural?  Who gives a slag about natural?  It’s the way things are.  That’s enough for me.”  Meagos curled his fingers around a speed dialer to up the fuel intake of the ship.  “Besides…I almost took care of these prey, and you were used as fuel by them for them for….well, forever.  I think it’s time we had our own time to enjoy the meal.”

“And X?” asked the ex-protoform.

“What about it?”

“It’s a project name.”

“Change it if that’s how you see it.  It’s a project name, so?  The fools who named it such are all dead now.  Probably already been melted down for scrap.  What does it matter what they intended?  They never intended you to be free.  And here you are.”

“Yes…”  X nodded.  Here he was…and here he intended to stay.

“So why do you keep asking why I let you come?”

X paused; he knew enough about the term trust from reading and scouring whatever information he had been able from the discs and other clues about the past owners.  His prey held trust in strange things: in images, frail weapons which bent at the first touch, buildings, names.  Did he trust Meagos?

“Because…I saw no reason for you to.”

“And do you wonder why I never left you on any of those colonies?”

X had to nod; it had been plaguing him for some days.

“Did it ever occur to you that I might…”  Here it comes.  But it had been coming for a long time, hadn’t it?  A week, so short, so long.  So filled with change.  “…might like having you around?”

X stared at him.  Do I?  Do I really?

“…after all, you can make a bot scream in no time.”  Meagos grinned, and of course X saw beneath that exterior feature.  In seven days he had learned a lot about his form, its abilities, and he had been very pleased to understand how sensitive his radar system was.  Of course, he had never had such a thing in Dihex.  At least, he had never understood it to be so.  But now the novelty of feeling other sparks before he tore into them…perhaps radar was the wrong word.  Perhaps it was because his spark was so strong, that it could sense the death in others.  And relish it utterly.

So Meagos was smiling, but he meant more than the killing.  It was true then.  A comrade?  The word fit.  Others did as well. 

Do I?  …I think I do.  I think I really do.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” he said honestly, and was fairly certain Meagos picked up beyond his exterior as well.  Which, of course, he did.  

Days passed and melded into the next.  And the next, and the next, and gradually even the weeks came.  The console’s lights blurred with the travels; the stars and planets began to shift but never looked the exact same.  Nor did the looks on the faces of the prey.  Each screamed, each wailed, and sometimes even tried to bargain or plead.  The sounds they made as they were dying differed, and the taste of each death was sweeter than the last.

In the thirty days that had passed since he had last seen Dihex, X had expanded what little he had known of any world to now knowing many.  He was still a bit shaky on the Astral’s (the Pulsar had been abandoned on Altair-5, and the Rayfire on the colony Alphix) controls, but was getting better (the sole reason they abandoned ships was merely because they would get damaged, either from last minute defenses, or from the two themselves), better enough to actually pilot for a few days, with Meagos watching with little alarm.  The radar on the Astral was much better than even the Pulsar.  It was rather hard to damage a ship on passing meteors when you could find them over miles away.

The ship’s controls.  Branches of Cybertron High Command government.  Ship designs, transformation designs, spark patterns and locations per design (though he could usually sense them without knowing the location).  Weapons, tools, the learning how to fashion them both from ordinary things (“Like what?”  “Oh….arms, legs, that kind of thing.”)  Male and female relations (“Who cares?”  “I thought you’d want to know.”  “Yes, but only worthwhile things!”).  And discs and discs of knowledge.  X felt full after every new session, every new lesson, every new colony or spaceport.  Yet, like after another massacre, it was a pleasant kind of saturated feeling.

The days passed, time passed, and with it, passed Meagos and X.  Each new colony was something new, a treat, a gift, and they had come to expect certain things.  Guardians were easily dispatched, and any other forms of guards or defenses were interesting but hardly challenges.  The days passed and melded and melted into each other, and with each came a new target, new prey, and X and Meagos both had discovered, privately still, how grand life truly was with freedom of this sort.

Exactly thirty-one days after the death of every technician in Dihexaline labs, the Astral landed on Starbase Tetrala.  It never took off again.  The two did not see each other again.

Dihexaline, in cooperation with High Command, as well as elite force teams of mercenaries, had finally managed to track down the pair via radar.  Meagos’ signature was on file, but it was X they were truly after, or so was told to the force teams. 

They managed, with a lot of effort, skill, and quite a bit of luck to capture the two together, and alive.  According to the reports they gave to Dihex, the Astral had landed only an hour before the strike teams arrived.  The strikers tracked down the pair, disabled the ship, and when the force teams arrived, very heavily armed, they attacked the two head-on.  While X and Meagos fought back, they were surrounded from the backside by special Guardian units.  It took nearly twenty minutes to bring the pair down and out into stasis; Meagos had a special electrical unit fired upon his torso.  Upon landing, it attached there and released enough pent-up energy to power a large shuttle.  X, being distracted during that point in time, was eventually shocked into stasis.  He was nearly in two pieces by the time he fell.

X was taken back to Dihexaline Laboratories.  Meagos went to the same place, but understandably so, to a different level and for different treatment. 

Thirty-one days and exactly four hours to the very minute, X was back in a room very similar to the one he had once escaped from.  The only difference was that this one was more reinforced and secret.  And that since Ivex was dead, and no successor appointed, there was only one head on the project of protoform X.  He was still as talkative as ever.

Meagos…Meagos…where are you?

He was not aware he had spoken, even barely aloud for a technician to look at him with a sort of dull apathy. 

Meagos, he gasped faintly, and for some reason he knew something had gone terribly wrong, something had gone wrong at Tetrala, something had gone too wrong, so very wrong.  He could barely remember the Guardians, the attack, and then the sudden agony…and seeing Meagos, hearing him shriek and hearing his spark for the last time, seeing him fall and feeling a nearly equal pain wail throughout him.  He dimly remembered the darkness, and now there was still darkness, but not so deep, so rich.  He could see the tech, and more than that, he could feel the bonds.  Restraints, and the truth was bitter and aching deeply, too deep.  He felt more than his spark wail in despair, and yes, it was despair, not fear, but a terrible realization of misery.  Not true, it can’t be, it was, of course.  The natural order of things.

He tried to repeat his name, but then even the power of speech was lost utterly; he felt something cold latch onto his vocal unit, and the sound was rendered silent.  Mute.  Voiceless in the darkness that was not quite darkness, and in it he saw crimson.  Bright crimson red, and in a moment of lunacy that he KNEW was lunacy, he thought it was HIM.  Meagos had come back, had somehow found him again.

The red didn’t speak to him, and the lunacy passed, and for once he was nearly afraid.  But more than the tinge of fear was the utter and simple shriek of denial and misery, it couldn’t BE like this, something had gone wrong, the unnatural order had been disturbed, evolution was revving backwards, and even as all this raced through his mind, the red stepped before him, and he knew who it was even through the distant rambling of denial.  His optics were suddenly and achingly wrenched out and off in a flower blooming in crimson darkness, and the last thing he would see for several days was the red, was Dragon staring down at him with a strange smile on his face.

Click here for part three