New arrival
somewhat-sequel to Same fate shared
Light!
Humans.
Motion! I'm taken out!
Get your filthy hands off me.
The fleshling says something, but before my innate Cybertronian talent of adapting new languages would activate (and believe me, it wouldn't have taken much), I'm already placed back into the dark box. The thick cardboard paper dampens the noises, but I make out that they have checked if I was still in one piece (of course I am, you puny organics! Just because that organic wrapping got damaged after you dropped it, why would I be scratched?) and now they are re-wrapping the outside of the box with sticky tape. I quietly seethe inside. Apparently that idiot missed the large red 'FRAGILE – HANDLE WITH CARE' sticker on my makeshift prison. Oh, how I hate you, humans! If only I had my blasters with me!
As the noises die, I start to wonder if that meatbag has any redeeming qualities. Maybe he has a kid or two. Maybe he's a beloved uncle to some.
OK, that was too easy. I think I got soft.
Too much downtime.
Like I always said, I hate downtime. And I spent years in a box similar to this one, only dirtier and more crumpled... and a lot more quiet. When I've seen the light again, the small boy I used to know was a fully-grown adult, selling me to make place in his attic and to collect money for the whatever he wants to possess now. A female bought me back then, one who seemed to have recognized me for who I was, I even caught her saying my name once. But little progress did I make.
Then, perhaps two weeks before the yearly lights-and-pinetree time, she turned to me and said she'd found me a place where I would be appreciated.
Well, if this treatment is what you call appreciation, then thank you very much, madam!
The re-glued box is picked up after two more days, and I hear one woman instructing another one to open it and see if anything is missing, and she is to sign an 'I received everything the box originally contained' sheet before getting her ID card back. I guess the card was necessary to identify herself as the one to appreciate me. Hahh.
And to my surprise, she does. When our optics meet, she appears to rejoice in my not-so-unexpected company. But then she spots the necklace I was travelling with (it has a Decepticon pendant on it, quite nice for something human-made) she loses interest in me and asks the post-worker to help her attach it to her neck. I get thrown back into the box, but at least it isn't re-glued again. I can see the cloudy sky on the way to her home. It must have been a miserable decade for me if I'm delighted over this minuscule detail.
Then, she lifts me out of the box, and sets me on a worktable. I'm still somewhat dizzy after the journey. I travelled roughly six thousand kilometers in that thing she finally throws away.
She examines me, carefully touches my helm. I'm too exhausted to pull away. I notice she's still wearing the Decepticon pendant... maybe things will turn for the better, a pale gleam of volatile hope...
WAIT! You put that screwdriver down, you squishbag! You don't even know how to hold it properly!
She murmurs a few hushing words, informing me I'd only be cleaned thoroughly. The way she's learned from a friend of hers, to whom, oddly, she refers to as Shockwave. Most certainly it cannot be the Shockwave I know.
She removes my right wing's black side first. Then she looses the spring inside the wing's structure, and it takes her an entire minute to find it, and an additional half breem to make sure she didn't lose anything else. No, idiot. Just put the screwdriver down! Otherwise I'm foolproof.
She removes my other wing, this time with more care. She disappears in the bathroom for a while, and when she returns, I see water dripping off my once-proud, strong and moderately detailed wings.
She grabs me and turns me around so that she can access my back. Apparently, I was wrong. She might have learned something from Shockwave, the real Shockwave.
I grit my plates and I silently endure. She opens up my entire torso, setting the seven screws aside as if they were some sort of trophies. I try hard to ignore the humiliation.
She takes my arms apart, one after the other. My lower arm's block saves the last of my pride, they don't open for her, but far too soon she gives up and washes the pieces nevertheless. She then uses a hairdryer to blow out the water between the small hatches of my tank-treads. I put the last ounce of my strength into not screaming. But I can't help the burning sense of shame when she finds an empty spider-nest in the back of one of my wheels.
She rubs a finger against my helm, and tells me we're almost halfway there. She then switches off the lights and leaves for, as she calls it, a training lesson. When she returns, she's all bruises, properly exhausted, and apparently very proud of herself. For a moment I naively think she's doing some sort of martial arts, but no, as it turns out she had only been poledancing. Doing upside-down inverts and holding her entire weight with only one bent knee and such. But after she's done squeeing about it, she pieces my arms together.
And takes apart one of my legs, and this time I cannot suppress a whimper. She carries on with her work without any reaction. More and more I get the feeling she'd indeed been trained by our cyclops. The realization doesn't improve my mood. By the time she goes to bed my entire left leg has been taken apart, including the knee kibble to which she keeps referring to as a kama. According to her, it's a word from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, more precisely from the Karen Traviss books called Republic Commando, and it refers to a piece of armor that shields the thighs and whatever is in between. My 'kama' is visibly positioned lower, almost on my shin, but that doesn't bother her.
In the morning, my torture continues. To my little comfort, she's impressed by my inner structures, most prominently by the working mechanism of the ratchets in my lower knee. She likes the springs in the dark grey patella-part so much she actually decides not to tear them perfectly open. She would only unscrew them, then resolve to the hairdryer she used yesterday.
I do find some unexpected energy to fight back when she starts unscrewing what is still left of my torso. She tries, oh, she tries hard to pull my back's outer and inner pieces apart, but for that she would have to remove the rods from my wing's roots, and I WON'T let her do that. Realizing to have reached her limits, she unscrews my helm and takes out both parts, then she even removes the cover of my (now empty) head cavity. I would cry now, I would cry out loud, but alas, I cannot.
I try to bite her with my wolf-head. My fangs are muffled with age, and she was prepared for the attack: she pins me down and removes my last screws even though she knows she won't be able to open my wolf-part.
She finds the plasticine of which she has only seen remnants before. My boy stuffed it into my mouth once, back when we were playing, long before he abandoned me. She takes some other tool and starts to methodically remove the brownish mass. This goes on for a while.
As she is working between my child-friendly fangs, I try to regain my focus. Not very easy when my other head is taken apart and both pieces are soaked. But I am a phase-sixer. I have endured a similar process before.
As if reading my mind, she points out how shiny my properly cleaned parts are. I am unable to argue with her, and when she reminds me of the spider-nest in my arm I'm not sure I should. I meekly point out the scratches on my legs, which were obviously not removed under the shover. She promises to do something about them, and gently rubs what remained of my shoulder. Then she grabs me and marches to the bathroom.
She starts the new method of torture by placing me under running water, then she grabs an old toothbrush and starts rubbing my entire surface. So this is what she's been doing to my poor parts?! Outrageous!
Then she stuffs the brush into my wolf-mouth, and washes it from the inside out! She says this is to remove what's left of the plasticine, but how could I endure such treatment? She's trying to take away the last reminder of my boy, the last proof I have of his childhood!
The wing-rods have prevented her from taking my torso apart, and consequently they didn't let her to open my wolf-head completely. I feel the hatch getting pushed wider and wider by the unforgiving toothbrush, but I won't give up, I will never give up... What is that thing? TOOTHPASTE?!
So this is why my parts have that strange odor. She's washing me with toothpaste whenever normal brushing doesn't satisfy her. Shockwave's student, definitely.
Finally, FINALLY, she takes me back to the worktable and allows me to dry. I don't see her around for a while. I enjoy the reprieve and gather myself. I'm not broken yet.
Next time she just checks on me whether the empty holes of my screws are dry yet. They aren't, and she helps me get rid of the water by rubbing my parts against her own clothing. I duly appreciate her sacrifice, that means I don't growl at her as her shirt gets wet because of me. She even pins a smaller screwdriver into the holes with the cloth also nearby, so as to channel the humidity away. It works, so I give up fighting.
The pin that connects my legs at shin causes her some trouble, but not in the way I intended to. She takes a mental note to check if I actually need that pin – I can see that on her face. According to her, without this my legs could be moved separately. I'm not sure if I want that poseability. She also tells me she would later apply nail polish on the feet joints to make them tighter. The way she describes the process, it could even feel good, but I have no illusions after the toothpaste. Yuck!
One by one, she screws my pieces together. I feel... lighter. Cleaner. I might even say I feel better, if I weren't reeking of the toothpaste. She covers the inner sides of my shins in thin purple paint – the scratches are still there, still visible, but I have to give it to her: they're much less prominent. When she pieces my two kamas together, she even jokes about hiding jewelry in there. Too bad she doesn't wear jewelry.
Finally, I'm one again. I stand strong, unflinching, menacing and imposing, I easily transform from robot mode to wolf, and then to spaceship, and then, gun. I greatly enjoy my regained motility, the freedom of my every joint. Under the dust in the attic, I missed this sense of cleanliness.
Before I could move on to my tank mode, I notice familiar frametypes coming my way from the nearest bookshelf. My little misfits? Is that you? Sinnertwin, Cutthroat, oh, how happy I am to see you! Ehm, Blot, yes, I'm also very happy to reunite. Just... just don't come closer for a little while, please?