Chapter 6: Misunderstanding
"How's my favorite six-eyed, six-armed technological savant doing?" Whirl greeted in a booming tone, as he blindly entered the smelting area of the ship. The inside of the spacious room was covered mostly in mounds upon mounds of junk and scrap metal, and was bathed in the orange glow of the pit that was in the center of it, molten metal oozing around it, giving the entire room a feeling of great heat.
After seeing that the person he was trying to greet was nowhere in sight, Whirl began walking around the maze of scrap, his single optic scanning the area. Rounding one of the towering piles, he heard a crunching sound coming from up ahead.
As he finally got to the other side of the pile, the first thing he saw was a bulky figure a few meters larger than himself, both in size and width. It was bent over to half its size, devouring the metal in the pile, voraciously. His barrel-shaped body was rust in color, and his head and face was covered by his armor, and appeared as only a long, paper-thin slit that had purple light coming out of it. His mouth looked like nothing more than an open hatch, a faint, purple glow coming from the other side of it, and metal was being shoved into the black, door-shaped opening every second.
The large, four-fingered, razor-sharp claws that were the creature's servos were busy scooping bits of scrap into his the hatch-like mouth, a grinding noise of what sounded like multiple buzz saws coming from behind it, when Whirl coughed into his servo, getting the bot's attention. The thing stopped eating, and turned its head in Whirl's direction, standing on its legs until it reared to its full height.
"Hun-Grrr... Have you seen Q?" He asked the ravenous fiend.
"Hungry" the mech growled in response, before turning, bending back over, and resuming its rapid devouring of the metal, shoving chunks of them into his maw at a time.
"Yes you are" Whirl chuckled in amusement. Seeing how the brute wasn't going to answer, he continued to look around by himself.
He finally found the bot he was looking for a few seconds later, behind another pile. Sitting on a ramshackle chair, over an equally shoddy desk, a thin, green-tinted Cybertronian sat, in a comatose state. His legs were apparently made up of a band of coils, and his head ended in an two joints that made a half arch-like constructs at its top, but the most distinguishing factor about the strange old bot was perhaps the six long, bony arms he had, resting by his sides, and above his ajar, drooling jaw, six eyes rested, open, but unfocused on anything.
"Hey... You awake?" Whirl asked the vegetative bot. Each of Q's eyes only seemed to blink, slowly, in succession to each other in response.
"Hellooo? Come in, Q. Come in" Whirl said again, knocking on Q's head.
Still no response.
"Well, at least I get some entertainment from this" Whirl said again, as he started to poke at one of one of the comatose bot's six yellow optics, watching with childlike amusement as it bobbed in and out of its socket. As he continued his antics, an announcement went off.
"Two new prisoners coming through. All available crew members to the hangar" the ships monotonous, A.I. voice went out.
"Ooh, must be that Phase-something guy they were talking about" Whirl said, turning from his activity. "But, wait a second, he said there were two. Hmm. A glitch, maybe?"
Q's head suddenly moved, and his jaw closed the second after Whirl spoke, as if coming to life from death. Turning in his chair, Q went and grabbed several random pieces of scrap in each of his six servos, and place them on his desk. Whirl watched with fascination as Q began to move his hands around the junk, bending pieces, reashaping some, and screwing in others, until it appeared he was actually making something out of it.
"Whatcha making?" Whirl asked. no sooner than he did, Q finished, and handed the hand-sized, strange-looking, cylinder-like mechanical object to him.
Whirl pressed the button on the side of it, and a whirring noise came out as the dull razor on its other side began to spin, and a yellow light lit up in a bulb near its top.
"A... Can opener?" Whirl inquired in a gleeful voice, looking at the random mechanical device Q made for him, that any other bot could clearly see was not a can opener.
"Q... You shouldn't have!"
Scampering off with the miscellaneous item to get to the hangar, as soon as the door closed behind himself, Q completely turned in his chair and faced the direction where Hun-Grrr continued to greedily devour the scrap metal, the orange glow of the smelting pit bouncing off his green armor.
"Gûs ressnack" He suddenly spoke in an ancient voice. Hun-Grrr immediately stopped his eating, and his hatch-mouth slid close. He got up, and began trudging toward Q, where he stopped once he was near him.
"Ker sûn derrock. Phasoot des rûng, unger Ar-Ree des rûng" he spoke in his dead language to the mech. Nodding, and without question, Hun-Grrr bent his knee to the ground, and placed a servo to his hatch-like mouth as it slid open.
A Scraplet suddenly crawled out of the dark space of his maw, its large, purple optics blinking as they adjusted to the rooms lighting. It hopped into Hun-Grrr's servo, and was slowly placed on the ground. After hopping off, it turned its small, spherical body to Q and looked up to him.
"Scarac nol dur. Nas grûs" Q said a final time to the creature, before he turned back to his desk, and, without warning, suddenly went idle again, falling back in his chair, his jaw lolling open, and his arms hanging loosely to his side.
With those words, the Scraplet turned again, and began to skitter toward the exit as fast as its four, tiny legs could carry it. Not long after, Hun-Grrr went back to eating, and pretty soon, it seemed as if nothing had even happened.
Habeas, helmet and cape in one hand, spear in the other, calmly walked into the lounge where the Silver Knight, Cyclonus, and Star Saber were. When he looked, he saw that Star Saber was talking to Cyclonus, while the Silver Knight had his view set on a hologram of writing on the wall, his chin covered by his servo, in a thoughtful position.
"Hello, again, Green Knight" Cyclonus greeted in his accented voice. "How was your mission?"
"Oh, it was fantastic!" Habeas replied in a happy tone. "It was perhaps the best duel I've had in the last decade or so, give or take."
"What was so good about it?" Cyclonus asked again.
"And what in all that is good and holy happened to your head?" Star Saber continued, pointing at the several, unnatural indents imbedded in Habeas's chitinous skull.
"I was getting to that" he replied. "The best part is, I finally lost a match! It was so good to feel the taste of defeat after so long a time of being lost to me."
"That Phase-Out character beat you?" Star Saber asked.
"Oh, no, no, no. A fem by the name of Arcee did me in. Took my helmet off of the ground and used it to beat me over the head into unconsciousness. Look what she did to it!" He said, lifting the heavily dented piece of headgear. "I'm going to need to pound the indents out of it before I can wear it again."
The Silver Knight suddenly turned his attention from the holographic words, and faced him after he spoke.
"What did you say her name was?" He asked in his deep voice.
"Arcee" the Green Knight replied. "A crafty blue devil she was. Knocked me loopy helping out Phase-Out... Who just may be her love interest, given what we eavesdropped on" he said, cupping his mandibled mouth with a hint of whispering in the last part. "She got captured like Phase-Out did by Lockdown and the others, after I got felled."
"What planet were you just on?" Star Saber asked.
"I do believe it was called "Earth"" he answered, placing his spear on the nearby weapons rack, and resting his cloth and helmet on a nearby bench. "Peaceful-looking planet. Reminds of many I encountered before."
"Cyclonus, do you think...?" He started again, turning his gaze to the shorter, horned figure.
"It's as he said, down to the detail" Cyclonus responded to his superior, his red optics closing.
"What is it?" Habeas asked, scratching his head.
"One of the reasons we're on this scrap-pile of a ship" the Silver Knight replied. "Just before you joined up with us, we were originally here for Q, that old, six-armed, six-eyed bot in the smelting area..."
"...Then..." Star Saber continued, his hand gripping the chained book around his neck, tightly. "...He spoke of something that was to come, and what he said was too eerie to our leader, here, to be mere coincidence."
"The second we met Q, he spoke of a prophecy in ancient Cybertronian" Cyclonus spoke. "Des ruus et droth Urth dur derrock, fis dûs crom hung telran et Cron. That means "The day the one in blue boards this ship from Earth, two great, universe-shattering evils shall initiate soon after.""
"Oh" Habeas said, in a somewhat shocked tone. "Did I just usher in our bloody doom, or something?"
"That's why we're here, old friend" the Silver Knight said, in a reassuring tone, placing a servo on the Green Knight's shoulder. "We are Knights of the Circle of Light. Some of us may have dark pasts, but what we do is to defend the future of Cybertron."
"How do you know who Arcee is, then?" Habeas asked.
"She's... an associate of mine from long ago" he replied.
"This has Sideways written all over it..." Star Saber spoke again.
"We're not sure about that" Cyclonus argued, his skull-like face turning back to the zealot. "This place is full of those who have done great evil, ranging from savage war criminals, to psychotic lunatics. Any of them could be what Q spoke of."
"You shouldn't deny your sibling's true nature" the Red Knight retorted. "You were just like that wretch until you found that sword of yours that cleared your mind."
"Calm yourself, Star Saber" the Silver Knight spoke. "Cyclonus is indeed right. Only time will tell who we must look out for, and we must be ready for anything..."
"Hey, you awake?" A voice went out in the blackness. Arcee opened her optics groggily.
"What... Where am I?" She asked, rubbing her sore-feeling head, as she placed a servo on the dank, cold ground, and began to lift herself up.
"A ship, called the Astrotrain, full of bounty hunters. To be more precise... A prison cell" the voice said again, in a snarky tone.
As Arcee's optics looked around, she saw she was, indeed, in a closed, cuboid cell. In front of her was a blue barrier of energy, and past it, she could easily see several cells, each with similar barriers, and figures inside of them.
As she tried to sit up, a terrible pain began to form in her chest, and she slightly winced in surprise. She felt an alien object as she clutched at where the pain was coming from, and saw a small, flat device with four, claw-like appendages hooked onto her armor.
"Need a hand?" The voice spoke again. Looking up, Arcee saw a Cybertronian about her size, his armor colored purple and yellow, and his arm outstretched in a friendly manor to her. Grabbing his servo, she found herself being helped up by him.
"Whatever you do, don't use your T-cog" the stranger said again, as she got to her feet. "That thing they've got on our chests... It acts a bomb, if you attempt to use your T-cog, or try and pull it off."
"Good to know..." Arcee said, unsteadily. Getting a good look at the bot, she saw his face looked like a blue visor lying on a yellow mask of metal that made up much of his purple head. Two, downward, horn-like objects, each on looking like the handlebars of that of a bike or motorcycle, on the side of his head. On his back rested two wheels that stuck out, in the place of where Arcee's wing-like protrusions normally would have been.
"Who are you... And how long have I been out for?" Arcee asked.
"Sideways... Charmed" he started, folding his arms. "And they threw your drooling body in here about two hours ago."
Arcee groaned in frustration, and pounded her fist at the stasis field, sending out ripples of the energy that followed.
"So, what's a fembot like you in here for?" He asked, walking to the back of the cell, turning, and leaning against the wall. "You don't look like any kind of Decepticon or criminal scumbucket I've ever seen. Are you one of those "femme fatale" serial killers I've heard about, or something?"
"I'm here because of a grave misunderstanding" she said, looking to him. "...And so is somebody else."
Vos's Logs
Subject Name: Sir Habeas Brittle/The Green Knight
Quote: "I'm but a simple man of refined taste. I have a fondness of poetry, I like to sip vintage energon, and I'm a collector of great pieces of art. What I find the most enjoyment in, however, is nothing better than a simple, good-old throwdown consisting of nothing more than one's strength and skill pitted against my own in a friendly battle of honor."
Mental Stability: Stable
Mental Issues: None
Bio: The crustaceous-looking Habeas has told me that he started life as a no-named gladiator in the pits of Kaon, and quickly rose in the ranks with his sheer skill in the field of spearplay, speed, and levelheadedness. Eventually, he actually even dueled Megatron (when he still went by the name of Megatronus), almost to a standstill, until Megatron gained the upper hand, and defeated him, but the two formed a close friendship after the encounter. However, their friendship did not last, as Megatron's Decepticon movement grew more radical and violent, prompting him to use his fight money to leave and avoid the coming war. He's also told me that in his travels away from Cybertron, he visited and became cultured in by many, many inhabited, alien planets. One of his favorite stories to tell is how he became a celebrated actor and playwright on the planet of Quintessa with the Quintessons, an old, enigmatic machine race known for their extreme pride and xenophobia, after he somehow gained their trust. It was here where he enjoyed life for quite a while before leaving to do who know how many other adventures. Only recently did he become involved with the other three knights, their quest and plans of which he will not tell me about.
Further Notes: Habeas is a calm, cultured, eccentric individual, and the only one of the "Knights of the Circle of Light" to actually socialize with others, and is quite friendly. Given his strange appearance, it's no wonder he wears a helmet and armor most of the time when in public. During our first, and only session, he told me that, while he's associated with the knights, he's not a true member of them, and isn't in it for the money (he has enough of that), only the adventure, but he has said that he knows who Galvatron/the Silver Knight is from one of his past exploits. He has stated to me that his current plans for after this venture is over, is to "settle down" and possibly "find the right person." In other words, he's the only one of the four I can confirm is perfectly sane, given the fact he's the only one to share his life story with me.
