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0 0 Part Four 0 0

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Vortex next wake-up call was far less gentle. His systems booted him into complete disorientation: gyros spinning out of control, visor registering nothing but blurred movement, and audios overwhelmed with a cacophony all around. Everything was confused chaos. As soon as his optics reset and started to focus, there was another lurch that sent everything spinning again. The thumping movement seemed to engulf him whole, flopping him along as an unidentifiable crackling sound accompanied every drunken heave. He hadn't felt this disoriented since Swindle conned him into transporting an entire auxiliary tank full of high grade. The rusted thing must have come from the world's lowest bidder in tank production; it'd promptly sprung a leak as soon as it'd been installed, sending him absolutely reeling through the sky as his primary fuel tanks ran pure distill through his lines.

This felt like that experience, only with less giggly overcharged flying. Hopefully less fiery crashing and monumental system hangover, too. Although he might feel better after hitting solid ground. Ground generally stayed still. Not the ground he was currently on, but most ground.

Blurgh, everything kept moving

He was resetting his visor for the third time, groaning softly, when it stopped. The sound, the pushing flops: all of it stopped. He was still not-flying-home-tonight dizzy, but the sudden respite of movement gave his processor just enough time to finish analyzing the information his sensors were taking in. His proximity sensors were giving him odd information that made him think they were being blocked. His visor reset, clearing the cache and reactivating the optical sensors to bring in fresh input. Hopefully, their input would make more sense this go round.

His visor narrowed and quickly blinked through another reset, focusing. There was a wide expanse of floor stretched out in front of him, which made sense. He seemed to have been rolling across it. Or rather, more accurately, he had been rolled by someone or something. Hence the heaving motion as he'd been turned over and over.

The surround-sound noise resolved slowly into less overwhelming input as he sorted through sensor feedback. His audios dialed back and registered the dull thudding roar as much more reasonable rustling crackle sound. Some adjustments on playback indicated that the whoomp of impact as he'd been rolled had been the main noisemaker. The crackling sound was being produced by the material he had been rolled onto, which was now wrapped around him. To an annoying degree, now that he had recovered enough to give an experimental wriggle. It was some kind of blanket, made of a plastic polymer with multiple small air chambers on one side, and he was completely covered in it from below his feet to just below his visor.

That explained the proximity sensor issues. They were indeed being blocked, for the most part. Except for the few transmitters and receptors on the top half of his helm, experimental pings from his sensors were immediately bouncing off the inside of the plastic. It was making him feel extremely muffled. The fact that he couldn't move only made the sensation worse.

His wriggling got him nowhere, but it did make him aware of a peculiar change to his rotor hub. Had his - ? They had. His rotor blades had been manually unlocked from his vertical mast and folded down to lay in a line down his back. Seriously, who did that to a fixed-position rotary mech? How rude. And the sensors on the ends were rubbing against yet more plastic instead of shuffling against themselves, so they must have been individually wrapped in layers of this plastic stuff before he'd been rolled along like artillery ordnance being prepared for shipping. Fraggit, if someone was going to molest him, Vortex preferred to be awake for it!

The plastic blanket-thing became momentarily unimportant when a pair of feet came into view. He heard them coming first, stepping across the floor from somewhere in the vicinity of behind his knees, but the way he'd been wrapped stopped him from turning his head to look. They took their time, striding slowly up the length of his back until they came around his head into sight. The feet stopped before him, and he once again engaged in a futile attempt to move against the plastic enough to look up. The angle was wrong, however, and he couldn't quite make out who it was standing before him.

He could tell that the mecha was huge. Tank treads were nothing to call HQ about - Brawl was part of his gestalt - but those looked like flight stabilizers up behind the treads. Either this mecha was a flying tank, which was a funny mental image and probably flew like a lead brick, or he was dealing with another triple-changer like Blitzwing. The feet and treads were on the right size-scale.

"Hello?" Vortex ventured when there were only more plastic crackles. There was a subtle tightening across his chest as the last layer of bubbly blanket-wrap was pulled taunt.

His wary conversational opener was met with another tug on the plastic. "Finally!" the mecha answered, rich voice huffing in amused disdain. Plastic rustled some more, and what sounded like the ragged tear of tape being cut came from out of Vortex's limited field of vision. There was a muffled push of pressure somewhere near his shoulder that was likely the plastic blanket-thing being secured. More tape tore. He was apparently being sealed into this thing. As the mecha worked, that voice continued, "I was beginning to think you were going to recharge forever."

A pair of large hands passed briefly in front of his visor, and Vortex found himself lifted effortlessly to a vertical position. The plastic bubbles squeaked protest as the blanket-thing took his weight, and those hands held him steady until the plastic finished compressing down. When the creaking crackles ceased, his feet still couldn't touch the floor. The hands gave a small, testing shove that barely budged him. It seemed that it'd take far more force to knock Vortex off his brand new plastic display base.

'Triple-changer huge,' the Combaticon confirmed to himself, just barely catching a glimpse of the mecha's face since he wasn't able to tip his own head back against the layers of plastic. The unknown mecha towered above him by several meters, and his build looked much heavier than the usual Decepticon grunt's frametype. Those looked like gun hatches in his midriff, and there was enough altmode kibble that he thought the mecha was definitely a triple-changer of some sort. Probably an officer of some kind, if the haughty smirk was anything to go by.

And...wow, those were quite the distinctive set of lips. They were a large and personable facial feature made even more absurd when set against the monstrous machinery of a triple-changer probably capable of wiping out entire outposts. Vortex found the contrast rather attractive. If this was the mecha who'd done things to his rotor blades while he'd been out, he could live with that. Was this the prison warden? Was this a prison? Oh, please tell him that this mecha was going to try playing prison power games with him. Oh, please. He wanted to see those pouty lips twist through the gamut of frustration and hate Vortex brought out in those who tried to outplay the ultimate mindfrag player he was. The warden probably thought he was fully prepared and briefed to deal with the Combaticon, and that was never the case.

The mecha slowly walked around him, looking him up and down, as if measuring... something. Vortex followed the movement as far as he could from the corner of his visor, keeping his helm still. He couldn't move it much to begin with, what with the blanket-thing wrapped well past his chin, but trying to follow the mystery mecha's movement indicated curiosity and grasping after a tiny bit of control. Vortex knew why he was being studied, and how to frustrate that little mindgame.

The 'copter wriggled again, testing the pliancy of the plastic material, and found it didn't give an inch. Either the stuff was much harder than it looked, or he was wrapped in too many layers. From the crinkling sounds and multiple stacks of air bubbles he could see from the bottom of his field of vision, his vote was for the layers. So many fragging layers. He couldn't get a real good look at the bubbly blanket, but the more he tried to move, the more restrictive he discovered it to be.

It took a while to figure out what he was feeling and map it out in terms of how he'd been restrained. There were layers wrapped separately around his limbs and then around his body, keeping his arms pressed closed to his body but separated by many cushiony layers of plastic. His legs couldn't touch each other for the plastic surrounding them, for all that they were bound together by yet more layers around them. He couldn't bend his knees at all, much less flex his ankle joints. Plastic bubble blanket-stuff lovingly cocooning each of his rotor blades under the layers he'd been rolled in at the end, and his chest, arms, and rotor hub had so many layers wound about them that he couldn't do more than twitch his shoulders. His fingers had been individually wrapped before his hands, then arms, then body had been trussed into a neat package of helpless helicopter.

He could barely wiggle his fingers. That was all the movement he could get. His feet couldn't touch the ground. His neck was wrapped so tight that he couldn't do more than tilt his head a bit. He was just...suspended inside a giant tube of air bubbles and plastic strong and big enough to stand up on its own.

Vortex decided the movement restriction was decidedly uncomfortable, but it was quite interesting nonetheless for novelty's sake. He'd never tried confinement like this on someone before, much less tried it himself. He could see how it could be effective in some of the higher-strung airframes, but he didn't need open air like Seekers did. This restraint method might break someone who was claustrophobic, and he filed that little fact away for use later.

With that pro, however, he filed his observations on the cons. Where had this mecha gotten all the plastic bubble-blanket? It would need to be specially manufactured if Vortex couldn't find his source. Unless this was what had been shipped from Earth in the cardboard boxes? But that meant the plastic was likely the low-quality stuff the humans produced. He couldn't see that being very useful. Procuring it himself would be easy, what with Swindle being a fellow Combaticon, but human-made plastic was so weak. It had such a low melting point that it'd be practically useless unless he wanted to mire someone in sticky melted plastic as a prank.

In fact, it was more than a bit odd that the stifling plastic blanket tightly constraining him wasn't creating a temperature problem right now. His body heat might not have created a problem while his systems had been idling in recharge, but now he was awake. His systems were more active, and he couldn't bleed off the excess heat through air circulation as his body usually did. His vents were all bound closed, hitting the plastic in pathetic little flop-flops as he tried to order them open. He had to order it, too, because his ventilation system insisted it didn't need to run at the moment. Air intake from his mask-hidden mouth was apparently supplying enough circulation for necessary functions, and his coolant was handling the rest easily. His temperature gauge, weirdly enough, actually registered below what it'd been onboard Astrotrain.

That was utterly ridiculous. Muffled up to his visor, Vortex would have said it was impossible. This was a puzzle, and that realization morphed his confusion into excitement. Bound in new and bizarre ways in a facility he'd never seen, at the mercy of an unknown Decepticon officer? Sign him up for some of that!

"Should I know you?" he asked brightly on the triple-changer's third turn around him. Time to move this game up to the next level. The pacing stopped, leaving his host looking at him from the side. The giant mecha subtly stepped further around, just far enough to the left so that Vortex had to turn his helm the best he could against the plastic to see him. Nice little bit of powerplay there, making the captive's helpless state perfectly clear. Vortex applauded on the inside.

"My name is Overlord," the mecha introduced himself, lofty manners implying rude things about what he thought of the smaller Decepticon. "And yours is Vortex. I've been asked by Lord Megatron to, hmm, dealwith a minor irritant. Namely, you. It seems that the Decepticon forces on Earth need a break from the likes of you." He circled around Vortex one more time, taking his time until he came up on the Combaticon's other side. "I was told you were...problematic, Vortex," Overlord said, making the statement a question.

Vortex watched his captor's spectacular lips purse slightly, fascinated. They conveyed emotion so broadly the signals actually became harder to read! He couldn't quite tell if Overlord's facial expression was supposed to convey distaste or something else, and the bright glitter of the mecha's optics muddled things further. Everything was at odds with his bored drawl. This was becoming more exciting by the minute, but probably not in the way this Overlord mecha intended.

"Problematic? I have no idea what you are talking about," Vortex chirped, cheerfully obnoxious. "I don't even know why I'm here...errr, can I have your designation again?"

He had assumed the tall mecha would tense and bristle in anger at the obvious lack of respect, but the plush lips curved in a smile. Not that easy to bait; Vortex made a mental note. He'd find the right buttons to push to irritate his host/prison warden yet. "Overlord, as I just said." The other Decepticon's bored tone took on an amused tint. "So, Vortex. You would have me believe that you have no knowledge of why you are here. You are as innocent as a newspark. Am I to assume there has been a mistake? Should I call the Earth base, on your behalf?"

The 'copter widened his visor and gave his most earnest expression of confusion. "You really should," he said, just a poor mecha in distress. Why was this terrible plastic being inflicted on him? Woe was Vortex! "These things happen all the time. One moment you're peacefully recharging in your berth, and then wham! Someone mis-files your designation and off you go, sent to a base in the aft end of nowhere to suffer in place of someone else."

"Oh, such a thing would be terrible, would it not?" The sweet, insincere smile looked totally out of place on the face of this Decepticon. Vortex wanted to see him scowl. A scowl would fit him much better, he could tell. The amusement did suddenly drop, which was an improvement. "Although I am fairly certain we're both aware there has been no mistake this time," Overlord said tersely.

They were both toying with each other. Overlord had been simply indulging his innocent act for a moment, perhaps getting a feel for how the Combaticon played the game. Vortex knew what was happening, just like he knew why he was there. This was the same delicious foreplay he engaged in with his own interrogation subjects. It was the lazy, artificial chatter to measure how the other mecha reacted. Prodding with words always came before prodding with other things, and wasn't this exciting, to finally be on the other side of the table? He was certainly looking forward to seeing just what this arrogant aft had in store for him. So far, it only seemed to involve an extremely wasteful restraint method.

And leaving him alone. Overlord gave him a mocking half-bow before turning to leave, pointedly leaving the door unlocked as he went. The showy exit got a smirk behind the Combaticon's mask. Vortex knew the waiting game. Anticipation of torture and interrogation worked on a subject's mind even before the main event began.

This game? How unoriginal. He knew how to play this old game.

So he waited.

...for days.

Days and days.

The length of time, if nothing else, was sort of refreshingly different. That didn't make waiting any more exciting.

Primus, he was so very bored.

His chronometer had been deactivated along with his weapons systems, but that was standard incarceration lock-down. Vortex was used to that. More surprising was how his ventilation system refused to respond, still insisting he was cool enough despite the insulating layers of plastic. That continued to be strange. Also, his fuel and fluid gauges had been turned off. Someone didn't want him to measure time by his system reservoir status readouts. Clever, if annoying.

Most surprising of all, however, was how someone had cut off access to certain applications. He hadn't been hacked. That was one of the things his watchdog programs stayed online to deal with even when he was knocked out, and those programs hadn't been tampered with. He wasn't too concerned about being hacked by his own side, but he kind of anticipated being hacked by Autobots. As a high-ranking interrogator, he had firewalled databanks under official Decepticon High Command protection. Anyone who got through the first layer would come up against a 'Do Not Touch' order and seal. It would get progressively nastier from there if the hacker persisted, but no prison warden would be foolish enough to disobey that warning without direct orders from Megatron. Autobot interrogators, on the other hand, kept trying. He was hoping for a repeat of the drooling shell of a mech that'd been left after one memorable attempt to crack him.

That was neither here nor now, however pleasant the memory was. It kept him entertained for a brief minute, but the distraction passed too quickly. He'd gone through his best memories already, replaying them until they wore old. He'd contemplated revenge, but even that got dull after the four hundredth imagined scream. No, Vortex was bored out of his plating, and what had been cut off from him was the one thing he really wanted. It was stupid and silly and - and - slaggit. Normally he hated it, but after far, far too long with nothing to look at but walls and nothing to do but futilely squirm?

Right now he was desperate for anything that could distract him, even that annoying Microsoft game application suite Starscream had installed in the Combaticons out of some twisted form of sadism. Vortex would have laid odds that nothing but a direct shot to the cortex could get rid of that application suite, since that was about all his team hadn't tried yet. Blast Off had been convinced he'd gotten rid of it once, only to merge into Bruticus and get the whole fragging set of games re-installed via a gestalt hardline download. Watching the shuttleformer have a mental breakdown on the battlefield because of Solitaire hadn't been pretty.

Vortex would kill for a game of Minesweeper right now. Or, Primus save him from addictive, time-wasting games - Free Cell! At least trying to beat Blast Off's high score would give him something to do. Something, anything, but waiting here like a plastic-wrapped package refused upon delivery.

The slaghead who'd greeted him the first day hadn't so much as glanced at him since. Vortex had held out for days, or what he roughly estimated to be days. Days-ish. Possibly. Between his deactivated chronometer and the unchanging room he was in, time blurred badly. He had called for the other Decepticon loudly when he tired of waiting. Then named him a variety of things, organic and inorganic. He moved on to singing lewd bar songs from Cybertron and Michael Jackson's greatest hits, but nothing happened whatsoever. The lighting never changed. His gauges continued to tell him nothing.

He knew about the waiting game, but there was a difference between waiting and being forgotten in an out-of-the-way room somewhere. This was beginning to feel like the latter. This obviously wasn't a prison, unless prisons typically had otherwise normal rooms dedicated to nothing but isolating difficult prisoners. The door was unlocked, but closed. He knew the door wasn't soundproof because he could hear the drones who tended him, but he never heard anything else. There was just no one else around to hear. Unless the triple-changer walked like Ravage, that meant he hadn't even gone near Vortex's position since trapping him here.

Isolation, despite how Vortex didn't want to admit it, was becoming a more effective strategy by the day. Boredom and inactivity wouldn't break him, but it was uniquely frustrating in a way he hadn't anticipated. That'd been interesting for approximately a minute and half of introspection, and then he'd gone back to trying to do something.

He had tried to tumble himself to the ground, but the restraints robbed him of the ability to move. The tube-roll of bubbly plastic blanket-stuff was surprisingly effective. His rotor hub whirred sadly, unable to do more than twitch, and he couldn't even turn his arms against the layers of wrapping. The best he could achieve was an extremely lame wiggling inside his swaddling. His actuators were going to seize up from inactivity. His joints ached a little at first, but when the most he could do was jitter the tensile cables, they settled into a disconnected sort of numbness. It was rather unsettling, because sometimes it felt like parts of him were no longer attached.

The helicopter eventually got so bored he tried sweet-talking the drones that fueled him. It was an absolutely pointless thing. "Soooo, come here often?" said suggestively to a machine came out pathetic even to his own audios.

They weren't even semi-sentient robots. They came at erratic times and injected him with an unknown quantity of fuel every time. They didn't respond to verbal commands, at least as far as he'd been able to tell. He'd tried every combination of passcode and command he could think of, and several positions that logic said were fictional unless the drones had better

joints than he did. Unfortunately, even trying to dream up new command codes and crude orders could only keep him occupied for so long.

The drones came at intervals he thought were spaced out to keep him from predicting their arrivals or use their schedule to keep track of time, but for all he knew, they were strictly on a timed schedule. The unchanging blank room kept him from knowing just how long he'd been kept here, much less how much time passed between fuelings. He counted how many times they'd fueled him, and he thought it'd been fifteen days. Maybe.

He realized on the (maybe?) tenth day that he was impatiently looking forward to his next fueling. The drones were just programmed to stick a needle in the correct neck tubing, sliding through a hole punctured through the plastic, but the copter had reached a level of boredom where that was the perk of his day. It gave him a chance to at least speak at someone - or something, anyway. Inventing a new obscenity to shout became his goal, since there was nothing else to do.

Also, it was getting cold. Not the room itself, but his body. He needed to find out why that was happening. His body temperature had remained level since Overlord had left him, but every couple of fuelings, the temperature gauge dropped a few degrees before stabilizing again. It didn't seem possible, since his external reader didn't vary. Even covered by plastic - which should have been keeping system-generated heat in, by all laws of physics - his external temperature gauge seemed to be working correctly. A steady cooling over a long period of time could have been attributed to, perhaps, his systems adjusting to the situation by shutting down auxiliary functions. That wasn't good news, but it made sense. This business of stabilizing, dropping, and stabilizing again was neither natural nor healthy.

If it wasn't the room's temperature changing, that meant it was his body that was sporadically cooling. That wasn't alarming at all.

Vortex started yelling questions at the drones. They still didn't react.

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