by Birgit Staebler
"Do you really think this is such a good idea?"
Optimus Prime stood in front of the secure room, drawn
between running away and going through with it. It had been his idea, his
decision, and he wanted to go through with it.
"Yes," he said firmly.
The female robot at his side gave him a close look. Her
emerald optics held his blue ones and he thought she was reading his mind.
Sphere was not telepathic or empathic, but she seemed to know what was
going through him.
"Optimus, you don't have to prove anything," she said
quietly.
He stared at the closed doors. They were held in a mute
gray color, totally neutral, no signs on them as to what lay behind. There
was no control for the door opener. It went by signature detection. The
room behind the door was empty, the walls of the strongest metal known
to Cybertronian kind, shielded and unbreakable. Normally cameras were running,
monitoring who was inside, but not today. Today it would be a private room,
locked and sound-proof, as well as shot-proof. He had chosen it.
"Maybe," he answered and stepped forward. The door opened
automatically and Sphere followed.
When the door had closed again, Optimus keyed in the
locking sequence and they were alone in a featureless rectangle bare of
any chairs or tables, anything you could use as a weapon. He hadn't come
unarmed, though. He still had his weapons stored and accessible in subspace.
Staring at the closed door and the key-pad he shut out everything he didn't
need right now. All problems, all things still-to-do, all his scheduled
appointments. No one knew he was here, not even his second-in-command,
Rodimus Prime. If Rodimus had found about his plan, his experiment, he
would have tried to stop Optimus. Prime couldn't let him do that. This
had to happen! He knew that when this was over and he told his younger
friend, Rodimus would most likely experience a fast rise in temper and
an explosion of that would follow. Optimus was expecting nothing else.
He turned to Sphere who stood erect, hands clasped in
front of her, in the room. Her light blue and silver metallic body seemed
to glow in the light of the room, her white hair cascading down her shoulders.
But he wasn't just looking at a female robot he had met several decades
ago. Sphere was much more. She had been borne as an organic, she had died
helping Starscream get a new body, and she had been reborn by Ralyk as
a robot, a Key. Sphere combined many trades inside her. She was Starscream's
sister, at least the reborn Starscream's one, who knew how to handle the
rather short-tempered Gatekeeper. She was Megatron's partner, or at least
so the rumor mill went, and Optimus knew there was a grain of truth in
every rumor. She was a Key to the Cybertronian centerway and as such held
a very important position. And she was the Host to a creature that was
the worst and most terrible of Prime's nightmares.
That creature was why they were here now.
Ranora.
"Optimus?"
Sphere's soft voice broke into his thoughts.
"Yes?"
"You are still confident you can do this?"
There was no judgment in her voice. She would not go
around and proclaim he had chickened out of this confrontation. She would
accept it and she would help him accept her.
"Yes," he managed.
"I won't let Ranora materialize until both of you are
comfortable with this."
"Both of us?" he echoed.
Sphere smiled. "She is just as terrified of this as you
are, Optimus." Prime stared at her. "Optimus, you bear the Matrix. The
Matrix can kill a Tji and it can kill Ranora if you aim it at her. It's
lethal and if she materializes and can't go back into the Host space fast
enough, she dies."
"I didn't realize...." Optimus touched the closed chest
plates behind which the Matrix sat. It pulsed warmly, reassuringly.
Yes, the Matrix was as deadly as it was attractive to
the Tji. They were drawn to it like moths to the fire and it would burn
them. Ranora had been drawn to it when he had been lost inside Cybertron,
trying to find a way out, and it had nearly driven him insane.
Not far away, just a few feet down the tunnel, a luminous
body of energy hovered. It sparkled faintly. It didn't look overly beautiful,
as expected of an energy life-form. The body was like a tangled string
of wool, unraveling here or there, tentacle-like extension swinging back
and forth. The color of the body was a bluish yellow, looking like an unwashed
piece of cloth.
Sphere nodded. "You can kill her, Prime. Remember this.
Ranora is a warrior, but with a big disadvantage."
"I won't hurt her."
Part of him wanted to hurt her though. Badly hurt her,
kill her, dismember her..... Optimus fought those thoughts valiantly, but
whenever he was reminded of the Tji, he was reminded of the slaughter they
had spread among his kind.
"I'll let you two talk now," Sphere interrupter his dark
thinking. "If you feel uncomfortable any time, say it. Don't force yourself
to do anything you don't feel secure with," Sphere continued.
Optimus nodded. "Okay," he whispered.
And then the light in Sphere's optics died. It was a
frightening sight. In any other robot it would be the sign that the Tji
had killed the personality, had taken over the body shell, and that it
was now the enemy, no longer a friend. But Sphere was still in there ....
Optimus hoped. He felt a chill pass through him at the thought that Ranora
might just have waited for this moment, that he was now facing a Tji in
a dead shell. But the skin was still its healthy color and not covered
by the grayish film he knew indicated a Tji possession.
"Sphere is fine," a voice said.
It wasn't Sphere's voice, but it sounded slightly like
her. This voice had an accent, was a tiny bit tremulous and deeper.
"Ranora?" Optimus heard himself ask.
Sphere/Ranora nodded. "Yes. Sphere gave me access to
the outside world, but most of my body is still inside the Host space."
She hesitated.
Optimus didn't know where to start. Why had he wanted
this? Answer: to confront his fear, his terror -- his demon. It overcame
him every time he thought of what was still among them: Tji. Many were
still hiding out on Cybertron, the last survivors of a race that had been
hell-bent on destroying Cybertron and every Cybertronian in the galaxy.
His fear had once very nearly driven him over the edge, had almost killed
Rodimus and it was haunting him since then.
"Optimus Prime, I am sorry for what I did to you," Ranora
suddenly said.
His head came up and he stared at her. She was sorry?
Ranora?
"What?" he blurted.
"I hurt you."
"But....," he shook his head, "no, I hurt myself."
She gazed thoughtfully at the larger Autobot. "I hurt
your soul because I haunted you down in the tunnels, because I followed
the trace of the Matrix."
"You followed me out of survival instincts," Optimus
heard himself say.
Ranora smiled dimly. "Maybe. I was driven by the possibility
to find a matrix. I never realized it wasn't a Venerakkin matrix, but the
Matrix of the Autobot leader." She gazed thoughtfully at the floor. "And
even when I had realized it, I didn't want to back down. I thought it was
my only way to survive."
"It was."
"Yes, maybe."
"Without Sphere you would be dead today," Optimus reminded
her, surprised at how easy it was to talk to the Tji.
"Without Sphere I would be many things," Ranora admitted
softly. "I don't think I would have survived touching your Matrix anyway.
Still, my presence hurt you and the wound hasn't closed. I know what happened
and what you did and went through. I apologize sincerely for it, though
I know nothing can undo what has happened."
"True," Optimus conceded. "Nothing can undo the past.
And it hurt a lot at the time and still does."
Guilt crossed the well-known but now alien features.
"You were touched by one of us before," she said almost inaudibly.
Optimus winced, his mind flinging wildly back to that
moment in his past.
Firebird.....
The touch.
He screamed in agony as something cold and slimy invaded
him, tore through his mind. White-hot pain raced through him and his circuits
screamed as they were overloaded by an energy he didn't know. He thought
his memory circuits were bursting and something slipped into his body.
The Matrix revolted, first recoiling, then fighting back,
pushing the invader away.
The evil presence withdrew and left him alone.
Weak and dying.
"I don't know what it does to one of your kind when we
touch you, but I assure you, I never wanted to repeat the procedure. I
watched too many of those .... possessions." She clasped her hands, then
stared at them as if they were alien objects. For a Tji they were.
"Why ... why did you defect?" Optimus asked.
"Because I had enough," Ranora answered. "I am a warrior,
but I was not born and trained to slaughter." She spread her hands. "You
see, Tji society is not...." She stopped, pain crossing her features, "was
not...," Ranora corrected herself softly, "it was not built on war and
conquest. We are like the Veneran, we *are* the Veneran. The Tji just split
from the main group a long time ago because of ethic differences. We didn't
start hunting your kind immediately. Think of it as two scientific groups,
just working with different ideals and methods. But our group changed.
Our leaders encouraged warriors and workers, not the scientists and thinkers.
Philosophy, science, all was suddenly of less importance. The art of war,
the thrill of fighting, the battles, the victories, all took prime importance."
Ranora stopped and evaded his burning optics. Optimus
tried to imagine the changes inside a society of energy beings set out
to explore the life and the universe in a whole, now becoming ruthless
warriors and determined to kill what they had created. In a way, it was
like Cybertron, he realized. They had coexisted peacefully, had strived
toward ideals, only to bury these ideals in a war no one really understood
now. Why had it begun? Because of ideals? Because of opinions? Because
of misunderstood priorities? Had Autobots and Decepticons really been that
different? Looking back, Optimus Prime realized that this war, the Civil
War, had destroyed more than it had done good. Most of all it had almost
completely destroyed their sense to make peace with one another. No one
had been willing to make the first step and it had taken a superior enemy
to band them together in an alliance that was miraculously still holding.
The Tji had forged them back into one race, the Cybertronians.
Ironic, wasn't it?
But it had happened and not only that. The Sentinels
were back home among them as well, all reunited now, under the lead of
the Council. Miracles do happen.... sometimes they just took longer to
do so. Sometimes even millions of years.....
"Did you ever kill one of us?" he now asked a question
that was weighing heavily on him and to which he somehow already knew the
answer.
Ranora hesitated. "Yes," she finally whispered. "I killed
your kind. I killed the one whose body shell I took."
"Did you get to know him before he died?"
Ranora looked at him, then sighed. "Yes. You get to know
your victim because you wade through his mind to his personality core and
erase it. It happened within a second, but you live his whole life in that
time....." She shivered.
"What was his name?"
The dead optics were suddenly full of pain and it Optimus
just how much Sphere was Ranora right now.
"Who?" he still demanded, voce dropping a few degrees.
"WipeOut," she answered.
Optimus froze. WipeOut. The name echoed in his head.
No.... not him! He had imagined every possible robot, but not WipeOut!
WipeOut was a very good friend... had been a very good friend. They had
gone way back into a past where Optimus Prime had gone by the name of Orion
Pax. They had grown together, had laughed and shared pranks together, had
even fought for Ariel's affection. Orion had won and WipeOut had good-naturedly
given up.
Now he was dead.
Killed by the accursed Tji!
"I'm sorry....." Ranora whispered.
"You are a murderer," he burst out, anger riding on the
wave of pain. All his dead friends seemed to pop up in front of his glowing
optics, parading in a silent accusing army, joined by the ranks of those
who had died as well, those he had never really gotten to know for real,
just names and faces in the crowd. "You killed my kind in cold blood!"
He walked toward the slender and smaller robot, towering over her.
Ranora shrank back in fear. "I had no other choice!"
she cried. "I didn't know what would happen until it happened! I had no
chance to keep him alive like Jaimaa did with her host. It happened too
fast!"
Something cold and slimy invaded him, tore through his
mind. White-hot pain raced through him and his circuits screamed as they
were overloaded by an energy he didn't know. He thought his memory circuits
were bursting and something slipped into his body.
Optimus' optics flared bright blue and his fingers flexed.
He knew what it felt like to be invaded by a Tji and he could only imagine
what it had been like for those kidnapped, totally helpless, unable to
flee, not knowing what was happening to them.
He felt pressure build up inside him, searching for a
vent. His optics were fixed on the light blue and silver form. It would
be so easy to kill her now, to get rid of the hated presence.
The Matrix pulsed softly. Its energy spread through him,
calming and reassuring in one. Ranora whimpered and sank down on the floor,
curling up, shaking. The Matrix's energy grew in strength and there was
a keening sound from the floor.
Optimus snapped out of his hatred all of a sudden and
stumbled two steps back. "No!" he exclaimed.
The Matrix energy died down. It had reacted to his panic,
had soothed him, but in doing so it had started to hurt Ranora. No, he
couldn't let that happen, though a part inside of him said to go through
with it. Get rid of the creature! Optimus shook his head. He wouldn't fall
for revenge and pay-back. Everyone had suffered enough already. All of
them, including Ranora.
"I .... I'm sorry," he whispered.
Ranora looked up at him, wariness crossing her features.
She slowly got to her feet, back pressed against the wall.
"I never wanted to hurt you," she said, voice trembling
"I know. We are aliens and we have to get used to being
different."
"We have to get used to being lethal for each other,"
Ranora corrected him calmly.
Optimus nodded. "I.... I'd like to see you personally,"
he suddenly said.
Panic erupted inside Ranora. "No!"
"I want to face you," Prime continued.
She shook her head. "It won't help."
"Maybe; maybe now. But I have to face my demons."
"Me."
"Yes."
Their optics met and Ranora trembled more. Then she walked
away from him to the other side of the room. There she stopped and her
hands curled into fists.
Suddenly something shimmered around Sphere's chest area.
It was a beautiful white, turning into a less beautiful but still energetic
yellowish-white. Something stretched, extended, grew,
-- slithering, twisting, pseudopodic tentacles reaching
out for him --
Optimus felt an electric jolt run through him. Panic crept
into his waking mind.
He watched in silent horror as a Tji materialized out
of Sphere, glinting softly with a light that came from inside it. He couldn't
move, frozen to the spot as he continued watching.
Ranora withdrew her last body part from the security
of her host body, hovering in front of him.
"Optimus?"
The voice was still the accented one from before and
still female. Optimus felt cold, his fuel pump racing, his mind feverish
bright with a tumble of memories. He fought against them but their noise
was drowning out everything else.
A wheeze escaped his air intakes.
A small hand closed around his arm and he flinched away,
wild optics staring at the figure at his side.
"She is not going to hurt you, Optimus Prime," Sphere
said softly.
"Sphere ...?" he stuttered.
"Yes, it's me. I think you have taken on more than you
can deal with."
Optimus desperately shook his head. "No. I can do this."
He forced his optics back at Ranora. She had not left her position and
he wondered how Sphere had so quickly arrived at his side.
Prime had face so many dangers in the past, had fought
Decepticons while almost getting killed himself, had faced alien monsters,
had faced even death itself. But he had never felt this mind-numbing fear,
this creeping coldness, the blackness lurking in the back of his mind,
ready to swallow him. He didn't mind injuries, shots and stabs, poisonous
liquids or gases, but something touching his very mind was freaking him
out.
Ranora's tentacles moved faintly, as if there was a faint
breeze in the room, and she looked much better than the day he had last
seen her. Gone was the washed out appearance, the dirty yellow color. She
looked healthy.
-- Healthy and strong enough to take him over --
No! He battled his darker side and managed to take a step
forward. A ripple seemed to pass through the Tji. Optimus stretched out
one hand.
"Optimus...." Sphere started.
He ignored her.
"Ranora?" he addressed the Tji.
She inched closer, coiled up and visibly tense, ready
to flee. "It will hurt you," she said with a wavering voice.
"And it will heal me."
Maybe. Maybe not. There were so many possibilities as
to what might happen. This way, the one he had chosen, was the most painful
and dangerous, at least for him. He was trying out shock therapy, facing
his worst nightmare, confronting it with his waking mind, and hopefully
winning. He had to win. His sanity depended on it. A whole society depended
on it ... on him. He was the Autobot leader. He couldn't give in to his
demons.
A thin, almost purely white tentacle reached for him.
Optimus fought down every instinct to flee and left his hand outstretched.
The tentacle closed the distance and suddenly he felt the tingling touch
of energy against his index finger tip.
A whirlpool of memories broke loose, accompanied by emotions
so strong they drowned out everything else. Optimus felt like he was swaying
on his feet, like he was tumbling and falling, like he was rooted down
and nothing could move him, frozen and solid. Everything in one. He heard
his screams, he heard his silence, he felt his tremors and nothing at all.
The Matrix flared and he died; he woke and it was gone.
And then it was over. As suddenly as it had come, the
wave broke into a mere droplet of water, one of infinite numbers in a sea
of calm water. Peace wove through him, wrapping him into a warm blanket.
Optimus let his optics light up and found he was sitting
with his back against the wall of the secure room. When he looked up he
met the warm and compassionate optics of Sphere.
"Optimus?" she asked.
"Yes.... What .... what happened?"
She smiled. "You keeled over."
"Oh." His mind was slow and he seemed to take seconds
just to formulate a thought. "Why?" was all he could think of.
"I think you overloaded your CPU the moment Ranora touched
you."
"Where .. where is she? I felt the Matrix...." Slight
panic spread inside of him.
"She is fine. The Matrix energy did not harm her."
Sphere stretched out one hand and Optimus took it, surprised at how strong
she was when she pulled him up. "How do you feel?"
Yes, how did he feel? Optimus thought about it, running
an instinctive self-check and coming up fully functional. His mind was
calm and even, no sudden spikes of fear or panic hitting him, though there
was still an underlying dread of Tji. But it was no longer so vivid and
horrifying as before.
"I think ..... I think I'm fine."
A smile crossed over her features.
Optimus dimmed his optics, feeling a tremor pass through
him. It was over. He had done it. And he had come out of the ordeal; maybe
not better but at least on the right way to be better in the future.
"Thank you," he now addressed the female Key. "Both of
you."
Sphere's small hand was still touching his arm. It felt
oddly surreal, warm and tingling where her fingers touched him, but it
was like an anchor while his mind was busy smoothing out his processing.
"You are welcome. You should take it easy for today,
maybe even tomorrow, Optimus," she advised.
"I will," he promised.
They carefully, almost hesitantly left the room, the
door sliding noiselessly shut behind them. When they reached the elevators,
Optimus turned to his silent companion.
"Are you starting your next shift now?" he asked.
Sphere shook her head. "No, not until tonight."
Optimus hesitated briefly. "Care for a drink?"
She smiled. "Only if you are paying, Prime."
He chuckled. "Of course."
The elevator arrived and both got in. Optimus was still
not very comfortable around the Host, knowing that the Tji was inside this
slender, light colored robot, but he was starting to accept it. Just like
he had accepted the Venerakkin and their strange ways. Just like he had
to accept changes among his kind. They all had still a very long way to
go and accept more than just another's presence.
But he had at least taken a first step to erase one of
his nightmares.
It was a beginning.