pain pain PAIN PAIN
… no, it wasn't pain. Optimus was no stranger to pain, but this was agony–throbbing, burning, scalding torment screaming through his circuits and processors, crashing over him from every shattered plate and node.
He hadn't hurt like this since… and he forced his optics online in panic, fully expecting to see a triumphant Megatron gloating over his wrecked body.
But no. The hazy, static-corrupted view confirmed that he was alone. He couldn't see far beyond the crater around him–crater, that means crash, how did I crash?–and strange hard ground sizzled beneath him–I have encountered this not-metal before, this is, this is, what is this–granite, this is called granite, this is not Cybertron, where am I? What happened? Forcing aside the pain as best he could, Optimus focused everything he had on that last question, and finally, slowly, information began to trickle in from heavily damaged systems.
CRITICAL COOLANT LOSS WARNING
REDUNDANT COOLANT SYSTEMS OFFLINE
CRITICAL TEMPERATURE WARNING
CRITICAL ENERGON LOSS WARNING
CRITICAL LOW POWER WARNING 12% SHUTDOWN AND RECHARGE URGENTLY ADVISED
BACKUP POWER SYSTEMS OFFLINE
T-COG 17% FUNCTIONALITY
CENTRAL PROCESSOR 23% FUNCTIONALITY
OPTICS 49% FUNCTIONALITY
AUDITORY SYSTEMS 61% FUNCTIONALITY
VOCAL PROCESSOR 73% FUNCTIONALITY
SPARK CHAMBER BREACHED
EMERGENCY DISTRESS SIGNAL OFFLINE
COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS OFFLINE
NAVIGATION SYSTEMS OFFLINE
WEAPONS SYSTEMS OFFLINE
INTERNAL SELF-REPAIR SYSTEMS OFFLINE
FURTHER INTERNAL ANALYSIS SYSTEMS OFFLINE
Optimus forced himself not to panic. Now that he was becoming used to the agony, he could feel the wetness of Energon leaking down the frame of his transition form in far too many places. Primus, how hard had he crashed to do this much damage to his transition form? It was designed for re-entry and landing! But explanations could wait–stopping the bleeding couldn't. Without his internal self-repair systems online to send repair nanites to fix the broken Energon lines, the only hope he had was to find the worst of the leaks and try to crimp them with his fingers until Ratchet could find him. Hands, he needed his hands!
His first attempt to access his t-cog almost offlined him with agony, but the fear helped him hold onto consciousness–if he offlined now, he would likely bleed out before he could manage to reboot his system again. Optimus pushed his damaged cog harder and finally felt his transition form sluggishly respond. Doubting that he could manage a full transformation and unwilling to try lest he fully burn-out his cog, he focused all his efforts on his upper body, praying to Primus that he could at least access his arms and hands.
Plans helped to stave off panic and Optimus made one now. Stop the bleeding, get out of this heat, survive until Ratchet finds me. His Autobots had to have noticed his disappearance. He couldn't quite remember why he'd come to this planet or who had been with him, but Ratchet went nearly everywhere with him and he had to have faith that the medic had the Autobots searching for him right now.
His struggle to transform sent a shower of small particles over him, triggering another cascade of internal messages–
soil composition 45% minerals composed of ERROR TRACE MINERAL ANALYSIS OFFLINE 25% water 5% organic markers ERROR LIFE FORM ANALYSIS OFFLINE 25% atmospheric compounds ERROR TRACE GAS ANALYSIS OFFLINE
atmosphere composed of ?% nitrogen ?% oxygen ?% unidentified trace gases searching known planets ERROR PLANETARY ATMOSPHERIC DATABASE OFFLINE NO MATCH FOUND
–and he wondered if deleting the word OFFLINE from his internal dictionary would help before recognizing the insidious thread of hysteria in the thought. He clamped ruthlessly down on it. He'd been in worse situations than this (an internal voice whispered but not many) and survived. He would survive this one, but only if he could keep himself from glitching out with panic.
He barely bit back a scream as his head and one shoulder abruptly lurched out of the tangled wreck of his transition form, but he didn't let that stop him from immediately powering up his optics. The visual static cleared enough that he could actually see the sky when he looked this time, and thanking Primus that it was night on this world, he tried to orient himself by the visible stars to determine where in the fragging pit he was.
ERROR GALACTIC POSITIONING SYSTEM OFFLINE
ERROR STAR MAP DATABASE OFFLINE NO MATCH FOUND
Optimus was about to try out his vocal processor in a bout of cursing–at 73%, it was the most functional system he had so he might as well get some good out of it–when he abruptly became aware that he was no longer alone.
A small… something… stood at the edge of his crash crater, illuminated by starlight and flickers of fire. He'd never seen any life form like this one before–at least, he thought he hadn't, but his life form identification database was unsurprisingly offline, too. Much smaller than him, most of its body seemed to consist of a wide, flat torso covered in a single thick, leathery plate that might've been skin or might've been some kind of armor. Its arms were strangely proportioned, thin and long and oddly silvery, ending in large, blocky, visibly clumsy hands that were the same color and texture as its leathery brown body. Its legs were very short and ended in thick, sturdy feet. They looked much too large for it. Its head, a large, dark, squarish lump, also seemed too big for its narrow silver-coated neck to support. Optimus stared at it and it stared back, frozen.
Despite the expressionless blank panel that either covered or was its face, Optimus could tell that it was as surprised to see him as he was to see it.
His arm suddenly popped free with a rending metallic screech and this time Optimus couldn't hold back a cry of pain. The life form flinched back at both sounds, but it didn't run away. Instead it said something to him in a language he didn't recognize–and when was the last time he had failed to recognize and understand any form of communication? But of course, his attempts to translate its speech resulted in an entirely expected message of
TRANSLATION SYSTEMS OFFLINE
What he didn't expect was the report of
CRITICAL HEAT LEVEL WARNING
WARNING HEIGHTENED INTERNAL FUEL IGNITION DANGER
and Optimus reached toward the little life form with his single hand in an instinctive plea. "Help me," he rasped.
He couldn't tell if it understood his words or his gesture. It made some kind of reply, a string of agitated syllables he couldn't begin to parse, waving both big clumsy hands at him.
And then it ran away.
For something with legs that stubby, it moved surprisingly fast, Optimus thought as it vanished over the lip of the crater and fled. Well, it was too much to hope that the little thing could do anything for him anyway, or would, for that matter. He clawed the ground and tried to drag himself out of the fire, hoping that he could somehow get away from the crash site before he detonated from overheating. His first attempt did little more than gouge a long gash in the soil, moving him only a few inches, but he reached out to try again. What else could he do?
WARNING URGENT INTERNAL FUEL IGNITION DANGER
He groaned–after URGENT came CRITICAL, and after CRITICAL came…
… boom.
Optimus spun his cog again on a surge of panic, desperate to free his other arm, but instead of doubling his chances of escaping the impact crater, he was hit with a wrenching pain, an alarm, and a new status of
T-COG DAMAGED 9% FUNCTIONALITY
and he snarled, frightened and frustrated and alternatively praying that Primus would somehow deliver him and cursing whatever had happened that landed him here in such a condition.
Suddenly the tiny life form was back, crawling up the loose dirt at the crater's edge and hauling a red canister that looked nearly half its size after it. Optimus ignored it, focusing on his increasingly frantic attempts to drag himself out of the fire. But before he could do more than clutch uselessly at the loose soil again, it aimed a nozzle at him and attacked.
He shouted with rage–couldn't it see that he was dying? The vicious little thing didn't have to help him along, all it had to do was wait, for the love of Primus–but then the cloud of white foam hit him.
And it was cold. Excruciatingly, torturously, blissfully cold.
Oh, Vector Sigma, this wasn't an attack. Somehow this strange creature had understood his most pressing problem and had brought this thing to cool him down. Optimus nearly collapsed with the intensity of his relief as the little thing sprayed the cold foam all over him, extinguishing the fires from his re-entry and painting him with frigid white. It hurt, oh fragging slag it hurt, but it was exactly what he needed. His internal fuel ignition warning alarm trembled on the edge between CRITICAL and URGENT and Optimus braced his arm and forced himself up out of the dirt to expose his underside, hoping the creature would understand his silent request.
It did, immediately aiming the white foam beneath him, too. It seeped through the cracks in his armor, sending painfully cold foam inside to vaporize on the blazing-hot struts beneath–the pain was like nothing he'd ever experienced but he desperately needed to cool down and he made himself endure it. Abandoning his attempts at transformation lest he completely burn out his cog, Optimus tried to flare his armor as much as he could. He wasn't very successful, but the creature was very attentive, and it immediately shot a stream of foam beneath each panel he managed to move.
But it wasn't enough. His external panels were cooling but the most critical areas remained locked down and inaccessible. Optimus pushed hard and managed to turn completely over with a crash, chest up now, and tried with all his might to retract his chest armor and expose his spark chamber. This wasn't something he would ever have thought he'd do in front of a stranger, much less a life form he couldn't even identify, but he was going to die if he didn't get his core temperature down. His cog whined alarmingly and his chestplate stayed locked down. Finally abandoning the attempt at properly retracting his armor, Optimus dug his fingers beneath his chestplate and pulled.
The pain was immense as he ripped his own armor aside to expose the overheated circuitry beneath it, but that was nothing compared to the blinding agony of that icy foam splattering directly onto his white-hot spark chamber. He screamed–
WARNING VOCAL PROCESSOR OVERLOAD
–and blackness swallowed him whole.
.
... what is this? This is Muirgen79's fault, that's what it is. This is, obviously, how Optimus met Anna, which means it's the story I swore up and down that I WAS NOT GOING TO WRITE. And now I'm writing it. It's going to be patchy, and flashbacky, and probably won't be updated in any kind of routine manner because my focus is still on Alias. But, it's here, because of a certain reviewer, and also because if I refer to some kind of memory or historical event in Alias, I always have to go write it so I know what I'm talking about. Therefore, why not let y'all know, too?
Let me know what y'all think and we'll all see what happens here together, shall we?