Transformers Familial Bonds Ch 2

“Hey, if someone shot your tires, would that be a problem for you?” Robert asked, doing some quick napkin math in his head. “Asking for a friend.”

“Well, it certainly wouldn’t help me in the middle of a race.” Jazz answered as the car shoved back against the annoyingly red car.

“Okay cool.” Robert said, grabbed the window crank handle and quickly turned it.

“Woah woah woah!” Jazz said over the sudden rush of air screaming through the car’s interior. “You can’t just grab a bot’s tender spots without warning, it’s indecent!”

Robert finished lowering the window, aimed, and pulled the trigger six times in quick succession. The gun bucked in his hands, and judging by the sparks he saw, he hit the wheel three times, one shot hitting the street, the other two flattening against the red car’s paneling, which was apparently quite bullet resistant.

The wheel still tore, causing the red car to become unstable and lose speed.

“Hah! Eat shit and die you rust bucke-eep!” Robert cut off his insult when, with a scream of rage the big-ass cannon that had nearly vaporized him earlier popped out of the hood, causing him to duck back inside and frantically work the window crank handle.

“That tickles!” Jazz protested.

“Don’t make this awkward!”

The Porsche began weaving side to side, its four intact tires giving it a significant advantage in maneuverability as well as the upper hand in speed until, with a fading scream of rage, they lost the red car.

By that time Robert had already reloaded the cylinder with individual rounds, preferring as usual to save the speed loaders for emergencies. And very thankful for his fancy headphones, without which he’d probably have to deal with tinnitus.

“Alright Ratchet, I’ve lost ‘em! Get me a ground bridge!” Jazz said.

For lack of anything better, Robert scowled at the radio. “A wha—?”

Kaleidoscope, weightlessness, nothingness, the smallest glimpse of eternity the smallest fraction of which was itself eternity, a vast roiling sea of energy that wasn’t energy, matter that wasn’t matter. He could hear their call, welcoming, joyous, ecstatic, they marveled and cooed and laughed in exultation at his presence. They welcomed him with warmth and kisses and love, knowing he didn’t belong but at the same time not caring, dancing and laughing and singing a—

“—aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Robert did not finish the question and suddenly transitioned from screaming to a painful full-body spasm as his body burnt from within and expelled everything it had in the fleshy sack full of industrial strength acid, bits of undigested bread and cashew bits covering the windshield and window and seat and upholstery.

He was suddenly on the ground, his body spasming uncontrollably, he heard something pop as he felt something tear, there was screaming all around him as something enormous and terrifyingly strong but strangely warm held him still with surprising gentleness.

Then darkness and blissful oblivion.

=][=

“By the Allspark, Jazz! What were you thinking!?” Ratchet snarled, the human in his grip not ceasing its disturbing self-destruction sequence.

“Oh Primus, it’s all inside me!” Jazz howled, opening his mouth and expelling a mixture of cybonic lubricant and organic acids and semi-mulched biomatter. “Oh, oh this is gross!”

“What is it doing?” Moonracer asked. “It looks…grotesque.”

“The land-bridge is not calibrated for the local lifeforms.” Ratchet explained as the meat creature’s self-destruct sequence seemed to pause and it fell still, thankfully not stopping its arrhythmic venting, that seemed important for them. “The energy of the teleportation overcharged what passes for its synaptic pathway system. Likely causing the…bizarre reaction.”

“Oooh, oh it’s leaking lubricant.” Moonracer said, her digits hovering over the now still creature. “That’s bad, right?”

“I’m not a meat mechanic!” Ratchet shot back. Noting that the creature was, indeed, secreting a mixture of water, salt, and meat-based oil, becoming marginally more slippery. “Search one of their medical databases and check against its symptoms.”

As Moonracer followed his instructions, Ratchet took the time to visually inspect the tiny creature. He knew what a human was, of course, but this was his first opportunity to study one up-close, it had a surprisingly cybertroid form. Two arms, two legs, rough symmetry. A more invasive scan showed that it even had a number of internal parts that seemed to be meat analogues to Cybertronian physiology.

Distressingly, it was entirely lacking in a Transformation Cog.

Its squishy version of paneling was a mixture of pale pastel coloring and pink, though it had turned progressively more pallid by the centklick before Ratchet’s very oculous. Its head was covered in a short mane of dark brown organic fibers that provided no armor or functionality that Ratchet could discern, as well as a strip of similar fibers across its face under its nasus, extruding out of its upper labium.

It had covered itself in a mixture of organic and inorganic fibers, which made sense, by Ratchet’s reckoning the humans’ squishy paneling was painfully subpar.

Its body emitted a series of disturbing meat sounds, before it groaned and shifted but did not fully reboot its cognitive systems.

“Oh, oh something else is coming up.” Jazz said with a rattle in his speech box, before venting violently and ejecting a small amalgamation of stainless steel.

Ratchet scanned it and saw that it was a primitive projectile system. Not very powerful, but considering how fragile humans were, it didn’t need to be.

Ratchet let out a frustrated vent. “I would chastise you for your reckless endangerment of the local, but I have a feeling you will not soon forget the lesson you are currently learning. Moonracer, have you found what afflicts the creature?”

“Right, at first the resource I found said it had network connectivity issues.” Moonracer informed him, which surprised him, perhaps their central computing station analogue was more advanced than he’d given it credit for.

Moonracer’s next words dashed his wonder. “But as it turns out, that was an error code used by the database. Once I resolved that and ran a check of his symptoms, I have come to the conclusion that it has cancer.”

“Oh that poor thing.” Jazz said in between heaves.

“What in Primus’ name is a cancer?” Ratchet asked.

“I dunno, let me check.” Moonracer said.

“It’s a terrible disease!” Jazz said, speaking between heaving vents. “It has afflicted their species for as long as it’s existed!”

“What, their analogue of the Cybonic Plague?” Ratchet asked.

“Worse!” Jazz answered to his mounting horror.

“By the Allspark.” Moonracer whimpered. “It’s like some meat-based logic virus! Some…thing overwrites their version of CNA and turns their body against itself! Creating these…these abominations! A combination of scrap globules and Cybonic Buboes inside their bodies, their only hope is to cut them out and hope they don’t come back!”

“Unicronian.” Ratchet whispered, his horror and pity climbing to unprecedented heights. “And it’s terminal?”

“According to their media. Yes.” Jazz said. “We have to help him, Ratchet! I was ambushed by Knock Out and Breakdown. He distracted Knock Out long enough for me to turn the fight around on Breakdown! If it weren’t for him, I might not be here!”

“And for his help, we gave him Cancer.” Ratchet said. “By the Allspark, this will not stand! Moonracer, transfer me all you have on this ‘Cancer!’ I may not be a meat mechanic, but I will not let this human’s bravery be his undoing!”

“Right!”

Moonracer transferred him the information, thus armed, he began an invasive scan and a through inspection of the meat creature’s systems.

A long time later he cut off the scan.

“Moonracer?”

“Yeah?”

“He does not have cancer you  ignoramus!”

=][=

Wakefulness was a slow process for Robert, which was itself unusual. His grandfather had made certain that he was a light sleeper.

‘Boy if you can’t wake up to that, then you’d just get your throat cut by some slant.’

“I heard you the first dozen times, grandpa.” Robert muttered as he pushed himself up on his elbows. Looking around, he seemed to be in a standard hospital room.

But it was wrong.

For one, the bed was too soft, too giving. The proportions were off, every hospital gown he’d ever seen or wore was one-size-fits-all, which meant that it was either ‘way too small’ or ‘far too large’, with no in-between, yet the one he wore fit him like it had been tailored for him specifically. There were things around him that beeped, but they weren’t following any pattern he could discern. Even the faint susurrus of conversation coming through the thin walls of his room, it was nonsense, nothing more than meaningless noise.

As if someone had looked up ‘hospital ambiance’ and were playing that on hidden speakers.

Not to mention, it didn’t smell like a hospital.

The air smelled flat and sterile, but the ever-present whiff of antiseptic was missing.

The door opened, and a blonde woman in scrubs walked in. She was not tall, she wasn’t svelte but neither was she fat. She wasn’t beautiful but far from ugly. The most notable thing about her were that her hair was blonde and she was wearing scrubs.

Her lips were split with an empty, plastic smile that was a tad too wide and did not reach her eyes.

And her eyes.

Her eyes were wrong.

It was like looking into marbles.

They had a human shape, and a human shade, and a human sheen of lacrimal secretions but they weren’t human. And now that Robert had noticed that, he quickly found more and more incongruities. Her face was too symmetrical, her skin too smooth, her gait too balanced, her movements too sure, her hair didn’t move right as she walked.

The more he saw, the worse it got as a horrible revulsion made acid churn in Robert’s stomach.

“Good morni—!” Is as far as she got before Robert’s size twelve foot impacted against her head, her entire body tilting backwards.

That hadn’t felt like kicking someone in the head. Her skin had been too rigid, her flesh too hard and unyielding, her nose not producing the crunch of breaking cartilage.

“That was not very nice.” The creature that pretended to be a woman said. “Also, uhh, you’re a patient, and shouldn’t move like that. What? Ah! I-I mean, ow?”

Robert settled into a fighting stance. “I don’t know who you are or what the hell is going on. But if you don’t explain what you are and what you want with me, I am going to find out if you have bones by doing everything I can to break them.”

“That…” She sighed, all throughout their interaction, the smile on her face had not wavered. “Jazz, I don’t think this is working…Why would I disconnect my speech box from the hardlight projection?...Oooooh.”

‘She’ fell silent.

After several seconds of waiting, Robert narrowed his eyes. “Look lady, you have five seconds to explain what the hell is going on before I choose further violence.”

“Yeah okay.” ‘She’ said. “This is officially over my paygrade.”

She vanished.

Literally. She was there one instant, not there the next. There was no ‘pop’ of misplaced air, nothing. She’d simply disappeared as if someone had switched off a light.

Robert was still wrapping his head around that when the same thing happened to the hospital room, leaving behind a featureless metal box. Though thankfully the hospital gown remained.

The ceiling of his metal prison folded away as the walls began to lower into the bare metal floor. As they lowered, they revealed the huge upper body and head of a giant robot, the sight making everything that had transpired prior to him waking up rush back into Robert’s mind. It took two booming steps forward, making Robert realize he currently stood on a metal platform that brought him to chest level with the metal behemoth.

The robot’s body was painted bright red, its head consisted of what looked like a bright blue helmet, and a featureless ‘face’ that looked not unlike the faceguard of a medieval suit of fullplate armor. If a suit of fullplate armor made for a sci-fi supersoldier.

But its eyes.

It had two large flat glowing screens where a man would have eyes, something in them made him think of them as ‘eyes’ not as the lenses of a visor. They were not unlike the ones he’d shot on that first robot that had tried to kill him, nonetheless, they had more life inside them than the dead eyes of the ‘nurse’ that had greeted Robert when he woke up.

“Robert Mick.” The robot stated, its voice deep, commanding, powerful enough to vibrate Robert’s marrow. Yet it was nonetheless a kind voice. In a way, it reminded him of his grandfather when he was having a good day. “My name is Optimus Prime. And you have both my gratitude, and my most sincere apologies. Your bravery and selfless sacrifice saved the Spark of one of my bots, yet he repaid your act of support by endangering your life. I should have foreseen that we might have needed to use the ground bridge to move a human in an emergency, my failure to prepare for this eventuality led to your Spark nearly being snuffed out. As leader of the Autobots, I take full responsibility for this oversight, you have my promise, this will not happen again.”

Robert opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it a second time.

Closed it again.

He opened it a third time, took a deep breath, and said. “Meep.”