Oh I couldn't wait! I had chapter 2 done and wanted it on because I think it's such an integral part of the beginning of the story, breaks all stigmas hopefully about memory loss.
Chapter 2
On the Nemesis...
"There you go." Knock Out said to her with a sponge and bucket plopped down on the floor.
Crumb looked at the sponge and picked it up. She squeezed it ignorantly and looked it over. Knock Out didn't know the extent of her memory loss. Crumb just stared at the funny looking object. Knock Out sneered, when access is blocked to memories like hers was, even the simplest of tasks were hard for a person to grasp. Knock Out took the sponge from her and dipped it in the bucket, then wiped it on the walls and floors. Then he took the buffer and wiped the walls clean.
"Think you can handle that?" He said as he dropped the buffer by her side after showing her how.
Crumb watched him polish and buff, looked simple enough, so she picked up the sponge and mimicked exactly what Knock Out had done.
Knock Out sighed, he was going to have to have a talk with Megatron.
"Megatron, she doesn't know anything! And I'm not going to take my precious time to teach her! She knows basic words, basic feelings, and basic tasks, like walking...but THAT'S IT!" Knock Out complained to his superior.
"Hmmm.." Megatron hummed, " So you're saying that along with her memory, anything that has been taught to her is also gone?"
"It's like wiping a clean slate and starting over from scratch, I mean, it's not just memories! It's simple stuff like, skills and specific training. She didn't know what a sponge does!" Knock Out placed his hands roughly on his hips and continued, "Imagine...a sparkling child..."
"Go on..." Megatron roughly rubbed his face.
"That's where the state of her mind is at." Knock Out said, pacing. "I believe she will eventually remember, she will slowly gain her memory and skills back. To what pace that will happen I can't be sure of, but, I was able to scan her processor again and find a time span missing from beginning to end, which means, it's not erased. That in itself was progress just from yesterday."
"I want no one to breathe a word to her about her origins and speed up that process. I want to hang onto as much as her shame as I can, it pleases me to see her so undignified." Megatron turned to Soundwave, "Make sure everyone gets the memo Soundwave, no one is to address her as Princess, as royal, nothing about her past, she shall remain ignorant until time says so!" Megatron thought... "She may already know, but sparklings are naïve to the fact."
"Starscream, order a drone to teach her the sanitation duties of the ship...time won't be wasted." Megatron chuckled.
Later that week...
After basic training, Crumb polished the floors and the halls relentlessly, and when she wasn't doing that, she was scrubbing the facilities, removing dirty oil and neutralizing static ions from surfaces. She wiped her brow after a particularly dirty facility after Megatron's troops had returned from a short mining expedition. How long had it been now, maybe a week since she'd been on the ship? She couldn't stop her mind wandering though, through her tedious daily tasks, as to who she was before now. She had begun to formulate bigger and broader questions than she had from the beginning. She used to wonder why everyone hated her, but now she actually wondered reason.
She wouldn't have thought any different had he not have told her. She was regarded to have been a terrible person, but she didn't feel like she was terrible. Not feeling an ounce of spite or hatred toward Megatron made her question why there was such animosity from the past. Not even knowing who he was made the thought even harder. Maybe he was right. Maybe she should be thankful for not knowing where she came from, because it seemed as though she wouldn't have want to remember anyway. No one likes to feel bad.
She sat back on her haunches and sighed, glancing at herself in the reflective plating of the walls. She took a double take and peered at herself more closely. She was older than she remembered. She was surprised by the way she looked. But then, how did she know that? She didn't know what she knew and what she didn't know anymore. She looked at herself but didn't see anything old that would jog her memory, but she didn't see anything new either. It was all so confusing to her. Daily tasks were easy enough now, and how was it that she was able to function even basically? She sat and pondered.
Maybe if she tried to make good relations with Megatron and his army, then he may tell her a little more about herself that she didn't know. Why was such an integral part of her past lost in the far reaches of oblivion? She rubbed an aching spot on her head as she thought and flashes of large buildings and an old Cybertron began to flash in her vision. She began to tremble. Cybertron. Why wasn't she on Cybertron? Or was she? Her reasoning became faster and more evolved the more that she pondered.
She tried to remember Megatron. Megatron had been so furious at her when she came to. He was powerful, she didn't have to remember him in order to figure that out. He was the leader. How could she have made someone so powerful so angry in the past. Perhaps she was once powerful, perhaps they were enemies. She felt powerful inside, but where was it coming from? She looked at her reflection again, wasn't she supposed to be wearing a silver tiara? Was the tiara a toy at one point? As her forgotten memories tried to make sense of themselves, she shook her head trying to ward off a headache.
The way she figured it though, she had been given a second opportunity, and by the sounds of it, she didn't deserve it. She didn't think that he'd jest with her, he seemed much too serious to do that. He didn't seem cruel, unless given a reason to be. She wanted to find out more about him, and what she may have done to make him feel so vindictive. That would probably take time, so she dunked her sponge back into the charged bucket and continued to scrub.
Megatron rarely caught glances of her, but Knock Out reported on her almost everyday. The message was usually the same. 'She is working diligently and is not causing trouble', he would say. There wasn't much more to say than that. Her presence on the ship was isolated most of the time and a drone programmed to stand guard nearby would make sure that she wouldn't stray, nor would any mech on the ship bother her, being equally hated by all.
Megatron and Crumb did finally cross paths one day after a few days of not seeing each other. She was sweeping the halls manually and Megatron was on his way to the bridge. He stopped by her and looked inquisitively at her work. Crumb noticed his large feet by her primitive broom and she looked up to see him. She immediately dipped her head towards him and opened her mouth.
"My Lord," she greeted. She took her cues from all of the other mechs on the ship who called him 'Lord' and "Leige' among other omnipotent titles.
Megatron thrust his chest forward and locked his hands behind his back, a stance so indicative of his character, unyielding and unforgiving.
"Crumb." He regarded her, "I trust that your duties are punctual today?" He questioned her growing ovals of optics.
"Ahead of time, sir." She replied.
"I believe you mean schedule." Megatron corrected her. "But I see..." Megatron dropped his head to look at her handywork on the floor. She had been cleaning so much that there wasn't much to clean. The contents in front of her broom were small, and the rest of the corridor was spotless and more polished than he had ever seen it.
"Do I need to give you more duties then?" Megatron snarled in her direction.
Crumb hesitated in her answer, treading wisely around his unsympathetic attitude. She wanted to tell him no because then she wouldn't have time to keep things at this level of sanitation, but she retracted that thought quickly when she looked into his deep optics, fearing making him more angry. "Whatever you wish, sir..." she said.
Megatron had no intention of giving her anymore duties. In fact, he hadn't thought much about her at all lately. He was satisfied with her current position, and was contented seeing her clean the scrap and grunge from the ship, knowing she couldn't be any lower. He found it refreshing to see fear in her eyes rather than fire.
"Continue your current work." Megatron replied and he continued his stride down the hall.
Crumb looked after him, watching him in secret. The way he walked was even powerful, and his strides were long and deliberate. He was the largest mech on the ship, possibly the largest one ever, but she didn't know.
She received a double dose of interaction later that day as she was finishing up her sweeping. Starscream and Soundwave strode down a corridor that she was finishing up. Starscream wanted his turn to to give her a piece of his processor. He despised her for his own reasons, as well as her past anti-Decepticon attitude.
"Hah...look at you, you meaningless grunt. How things change." Starscream's insulting voice hit her back like ice, and she stopped to peer at him from the side.
The drone guarding her stepped closer and held up a hand, "You are not authorized to interact."
"Puh-lease.." Starcream responded, "A peon guarding a peon..." he smirked victoriously her direction, "You have no idea how much we've all waited for you to be in this circumstance, do you!?" He yelled. Soundwave took his shoulder and held him back from her, showing him that it is unwise to initiate conversation with Megatron's detainee.
"She.. " Starscream growled through his teeth in a high-pitched whine, "...once regarded us as filth! How do you like our filth now!" Starscream was enjoying seeing her cower to him but Soundwave nudged him forward, knowing that Megatron had instructed all of his crew to not say a word to her while she was aboard the ship. Anything that they said could be used to jog her memory, and Megatron was fierce to implement sanctions to ensure that it didn't happen.
As they walked away from her, Starscream spit lubrication on the floor that she had already cleaned, "Clean it up!" He demanded, and they walked the rest of the way in silence.
Crumb sighed dismally and felt her body shake with emotions she didn't understand. It wasn't the fact that she was on custodial duties that made her feel terrible. It was they way they all treated her on the ship. They all seemed to loathe her. Megatron could bury her in a hole with just the way he looked at her, but, what could she do about it? She had no way to fight back nor did she know anything about fighting anyway. As hopeless as things seemed, still she planned that she wouldn't be in this same situation in the near future. She had to find a way to change their attitudes, or it would eventually drive her crazy. She reluctantly got on her hands and knees to clean up Starscream's hateful spew.
From the bridge of the ship...
Megatron watched her from on a screen. Soundwave had notified him of her interactions with Starscream. Megatron sighed. Starscream always defied his rules. Over time, the fact that she still had no memory as to why she had been imprisoned by the Decepticon symbol didn't set well with him. Actually, he began to believe that things would be better this way. He didn't want her to remember the past. He wanted to keep it from her as much as he could. He still wondered if she felt remorse for things that she had done but didn't remember. He wondered if she would change her ways if he educated her on how she degraded him so many times with her words, with her actions, with no probable cause. He wondered how long the facade would last.
