To Guest: I've gotten the impression everyone's been waiting for this. XD
Warning: Cybertronian cussing. Decepticon style training. Energon loss. The Mentor. Mentions of rape. A twist at the end.
Torn
"Sometimes we don't meet our heroes until it's already too late. Sometimes… we have to become the hero. And it always tears us apart."
~ Anonymous...
Genesis
Chapter 10
Lesson 4
A note to my younglings, when you find this journal entry – I apologize for deceiving you. It is natural for my kind to do that, unfortunately, and I detest the fact that I had to degrade myself to their methods in order to create you. He has to be stopped and this was the only way to do it.
My designation means nothing in your language and it has never meant anything in any of your languages since all the times you have spent making languages. Since you are still learning to understand even the most basic of Cybertronian languages (and admittedly some of your are much better at it than others, to our astonishment) I cannot tell you my name in my native tongue. For now, know me as Atlas, though some of you might know me better in the legends you are about to learn as 'The Original Killjoy'.
You must protect The Secret. You must not allow for anyone to know about it, in case it gets discovered by him. He will use it poorly, in every way it is not supposed to be used, and he will destroy it, and that would destroy any chance we have of restoring Primus to His Golden Self.
Of course, naturally you have little to no idea as to what I mean. I don't know how much of my message gets through, and I am fully aware that sometimes almost none of it does. Certain pieces get lost in translation when I first send it out – this I know for sure. But that doesn't make my message any less important. If you value importance, then you will easily grasp the gravity of my message and most of the important bits will stick. If you do not value any form of importance, then you might very well be already lost. You cannot help being what you are and I wish I knew someone to send for you, to awaken you from this nightmarish sleep you will succumb to.
I know you will be confused, my younglings. I know you will not understand and might never understand why I had to do what I did, but I leave my mission in your servos anyway. It is imperative that you tell no one of this. No one. Not even the Prime. If any word of the Secret reaches him then our cause is lost.
Its greatest protection is absolute secrecy, and this is why I can never directly tell you its name. Its name isn't even truly it's name – it was a name dubbed onto it over the years after it constantly was confused with our 'Heaven', so to speak. The relationship between them is not important right now. I hope I will be able to explain this to you later. If you can figure out how to get out.
Please, my daughters, protect this Secret and all information surrounding it with your life.
The Original Killjoy.
It made sense, in its own twisted way. If she was Killjoy, then this guy had to be a previous Killjoy. But how it had known about her becoming The Killjoy didn't make any sense. It never explained that little detail and Killjoy was wanting to know more.
She recalled downloading the text before, how much shorter it had been then, and how she had felt that she had forgotten something after downloading it. She felt lost without those memories, now and then. It had caused her to wander around for fifty years, lost in the midst of timeless memories and forgotten dreams. She had distracted herself then with little odd-jobs here and there, but she didn't have the luxury of being distracted. She was standing in the midst of enemy territory and she needed to be sharp and alert.
She realized after a moment that something was amiss. The sound of her pedesteps didn't sound hollow, like she was standing in a square box of room instead of the observation deck - like it always sounded when she was out of phase. It sounded startlingly normal. She checked her systems in hopes that it was a glitch in her audios, but discovered that it was in fact not. A familiar screen had appeared in her HUB which she had ignored up until that moment. Her phase shifter was rebooting and it was alarmingly slower than it had been when she was on board the Ark-One. And she didn't think for a moment that it hadn't been tampered with.
"Mentor!" she called. "What have you done to me?"
If not for the alertness sweeping in her body and spark, she wouldn't have noticed the slight tingling sensation sweeping unbidden across her frame. Perhaps it had been scanning her for years and she'd never notice if not for the overwhelming sense of being in enemy territory. The uncomfortable thought sent a cold shiver up her spinal strut and she stared silently up at the ceiling.
She had always thought that The Mentor had been dormant until she had busted a hole in the side of the ship. It made sense that something like an intruder would cause it to wake up. But if it had been awake prior than why did it awaken only upon her return? Why did it not recognize her as an intruder and rather saw her as a pupil? Her cortex throbbed, reminding her of the computer interface she had been forced to disconnect from just moments earlier and her subsequent memory loss. It was extremely terrifying thinking about her memory loss, and she was afraid that there might be something out there she was hiding from herself. The Secret that would restore Primus to his Golden Self came to mind.
"Mentor?" she asked, wary.
"These specs are not in my databanks," it said, with a long pause that made her squirm. "Your systems must be adapting to the alien atmosphere."
"Come again?"
"Your weapon systems have been offline for a time," it said by way of explanation. "They came online again when you came back from your earlier escape." By earlier, it meant a lifetime ago.
"Weapon systems?" she queried, searching her databanks for records of any weapons systems but none appeared.
"Yes," it said. "Curious how you'd figure out how to use the phase shifter first." That last statement was mostly for himself, she was sure. It didn't sound like it was even speaking to her. She was just privy to his thoughts. It was very un-A.I. like, especially one that had been asleep for the first vorn she had been awake. And why would it refer to that incident only compounded how un-A.I. like it was.
"Why did you do it?" she asked.
"For the sake of a lesson," it said, matter-of-factly and a little coldly.
"Lesson 1?" she asked. "Or Lesson 2?"
"Neither and both," it said, taking pleasure from her confusion. It was almost smug.
She scolded. Answers where inside that thing's head and she wanted to find them, as well as turn the holomech's advanced computer intelligence to mush. She told herself it was to prevent others who might stubble upon the ship from getting damaged by it's rather twisted nature, but she admitted to herself that it might not be the only reason. She had sworn to make sure that no one took pleasure in anyone else's pain and it was the one she had sworn that oath for.
"It doesn't make sense for someone of your personality to so easily cave in to the pontificating of a heroic fool," it continued. "I was expecting better of this."
"Better than what?"
"You are mature, young and strong. You are not like your sisters, or Optimus Prime. Why do you choose to follow their preachings?"
Of course, it occurred to Killjoy that he might have read her mind while she in the interface. How many secrets he had gleamed from her mind were entirely impossible to discern. She wondered if the Original Killjoy's Secret was one of them. She shivered, silently promising herself to not try and fight The Mentor on his own ground again and avoid the interfacial option until The Mentor was safely neutralized.
"I can understand my sisters," she began slowly. "But Optimus Prime? I think you have me confused with someone else."
It was quite for a moment. "Hm."
"Hm what?"
"That would be the first time you haven't lied in a while."
The Killjoy remained quiet on that, adding knowing everything about Vibes and the others to the list of things that the holomech now knew about.
"It makes one wonder what else you might be hiding."
She didn't frown and almost didn't breathe as her mind whirled to respond. "You mean you don't know?" she partially teased, keeping her surprise hidden beneath a warm and relaxed mask. "You were in my head, were you not? Wouldn't you know that?"
The silence was its own answer and she fought back a smirk, relief flooded through her as she realized that The Secret was still safe, however long that would last.
"So its confirmed that you have completed Lessons 2," it half growled. The emotion caught her by surprise, but then she realized that she honestly shouldn't be surprised about anything anymore.
"What makes you think that I hadn't completed this lessons before I woke up?"
It gave a long suffering sigh. "I don't like the universe choosing when you must learn a lesson."
"You said something similar earlier," she recalled. "But what if the universe teaches the lesson better?"
It fumed. "The universe is a chaotic entity with no mind or purpose of its own. It cannot teach valuable lessons necessary for your development."
"And yet last time I was here you called me 'more mature than you were expecting'."
"Physical maturity has none of the same connotations as a knowledge based capacity."
"Physical maturity?" she said with incredulous disgust. "Sounds like a justification for rape and murder to me."
The dead silence which answered her made the room stiff with some unseen cold.
"Do not mistake me for a regular mech," it said, angry. Yes, angry.
"Then stop acting like one," she said.
The banter had gone on long enough for her phase shifter to get up to 32 percent, but the moment she checked it The Mentor caught wind of her scheme.
"You dare!?" it growled. "You dare waste my valuable time on this stupid, pointless conversation?"
She didn't respond, hesitant to cause a similar incident to last time and unaware of the fact that The Mentor had planned for that anyway. In fact, it had predicted and plotted out the entire conversation before it had started, leading her into a corner she couldn't back out of and hoping to knock the ungrateful student down a peg.
"Lesson 3, completed," it noted to itself, entirely for her benefit. It had all been entirely for her benefit, to keep up the illusion.
"What are these Lessons, anyway?" she asked, hoping for a few more seconds to get her that much closer to using her phase shifter.
"These lessons," it began, "are made to evaluate your loyalties and your skills, your strengths and your weaknesses, as well as teach you lessons."
"And yet I seem to be completing these Lessons," she answered. "So the first five are just an evaluation before I get more."
"Correct," it said, pleased with her discovery.
"How many more lessons can there possibly be?" she asked aghast, the magnitude of what it was talking about sinking in.
"As many as needed," it said vaguely. "Now, enough talking. I have created the perfect simulation for your specific skills sets and your estrange personality. It will be a good motivator for learning to use your new weapons."
The Killjoy growled lowly in frustration. "Motivation?" She had not forgotten the last time The Mentor had used that word and it filled her with trepidation.
"Let us begin."
The Mentor had closed off areas of the ship with his holographic technology and, without her phase shifter, she was unable to get through them. Whenever she cut down the first wall, the next one was indestructible and on amount of swiping at it was going to get it to fall. She broke her hunting knife the first time she had confronted it, forcing her to follow the hallways to the trap or get speared by a wall of spikes moving slowly behind her. It took the better part of a joor, but she was finally corralled as carefully as possible into the holodeck.
It had been transformed into a gladiatorial ring, much like the Colloseum in its hay-day, stretching high and far in all directions, looking much bigger than the ship had from the outside. Killjoy knew it was an illusion, a trick of the optic she couldn't figure out, but that information didn't help her any. Everything felt real, down to the murmurs of the crowd and the cheers. The holodeck door behind her closed shut and faded out, leaving only the illusion behind.
"A thing to note," said her announcer. "Before Gladiators fought Gladiators, they were pitted against the wildest creatures the planet had to offer. In this case, the Predacons."
The crate door opened opposite her and a creature emerged from it's dark mouth. Long front limbs pumped opposite each other, one moving forward and the other pushing backwards, moving like some massively large lizard. It's face was more like an ape's, with the rounded though longer muzzle and sharp teeth. Its body was short and without a tail, with a stout medium long neck. It had long digits and a wide stance, with the overlapping armor plates of various lengths and sizes creating a very scale like pattern over its features. Those almond shaped dark red optics stared unblinking into her very spark.
"Cool," she said aloud, looking at the unearthly creature with more than a touch of admiration and awe.
"This is a Predacon. While the Insecticons are very much insectoids, Predacons often had a very reptilian and amphibian look to them," the announcer said, pleased.
Killjoy frowned, glancing upwards at the announcer. "Insecti-?" she interrupted herself the instant the creature moved, freezing when her gaze landed back on it. She knew immediately that she was outmatched. Even if she did activate her battle program, she still wouldn't have the skill necessary to defend herself.
"You call yourself a teacher!?" she snarled.
The Mentor didn't deign that with a response and Killjoy's attention was quickly grabbed by the speedily approaching predacon. It moved like a reptile, whipping its legs back and forth and sprinting towards her across the arena so fast it practically flew. She only had time to raise her shield before the predacon struck, nose ramming the shield hard. She dodged around, hoping to avoid the fast moving reptile while looking for some weak points. It drove at her fast and hard, keeping her distracted from evaluating it for weak points.
Killjoy felt the difference almost instantly. Her defense programming had come alive, just as much a ceaseless murmur of sound in the back of her mind as the crowd was. It wasn't pulling her out of the situation and taking over her body, ruthlessly destroying anything that had activated it and leaving a confusing mass of memories and emotions in its wake. But that didn't stop the sudden fear that it might go off, here in the ship. It wouldn't have mattered much, but she had no idea where her sister was currently, or if The Mentor hadn't done anything to her that Killjoy wasn't aware of. She scanned the program on impulse, and it told her that it was now 98 percent integrated into her system.
Noting that she was momentarily distracted, the creature snapped its neck beneath her shield in an attempt to get at from underneath. She jumped back, its unexpected strength pushing it up, and she gave a yelp of shock as its triangular shaped teeth snapped close. Her free arm moved faster than she could think, knocking the surprisingly light-weighted beast away. Her counterattack hadn't been enough to knock it off balance, and it was soon redoubling its efforts to claw through her defense, sensing weakness.
Correcting her shield in the short nanoklik it took for the beast to strike again, she felt the strength of its neck as it slammed its open muzzle into her shield, knocking her back a pace. Its claws clipped her legs with each step, her front leg poked out from beneath her shield as she fought to find her balance and hold her ground. Its head suddenly switched targets, aiming towards her legs and grasping the offending black and white object in its strong jaws, yanking hard. Yelping, she fell, her shield edge crashing down on its head. Infuriated, it snapped at her through the shield, its claws scraped across the hardlight surface, leaving scratches across the practice shield. They were at a momentary stalemate.
If not for the ice cold defense program which had gripped her processor, her thoughts would have gone haywire in an attempt to find a solution. The program's logical approach kept her mind clear of her emotions, detaching her soul from her body and leaving nothing but cause and effect running through her helm. It endlessly tried to predict her enemy's movements, recognizing the patterns in its assault and using her own growing insight into the mind of the beast to seek out an opening, while also evaluating her own strengths and weaknesses in a future counterattack. Her skills were only over shadowed by her inexperience, which dragged her down and made her reaction time too slow. The battle programming understood this and knew how to compensate for it.
Its speed gave her little time for thought, and its weight kept her shield effectively pinned. It was a nice reprieve, but one that was making her lose the one advantage she had - adrenaline.
She shifted the shield upwards, towards her head, shifting its balance and forcing it to scramble against the smooth surface of her shield. Kicking up into its soft belling and knocking the light-weight creature over her head, she twisted onto her front and looked up in time to see it slam into the wall. Twisting up off the ground and raising her shield, she watching in surprise as the creature tried to wiggle off its back, large paws scrambling almost vainly in the air as its body whipped around. After an incredulously long moment in which Killjoy was sure a real lizard would have already flipped over, the predacon was back on its feat and approaching fast. The momentary show of weakness had boosted her confidence, though, as her battle computer wrapped around that weakness like a lifeline.
She whipped sideways, feeling the breeze as it whipped passed. She didn't have the luxury of staying still as it twisted around and snapped at her doorwings. It lunged upwards at her, catching the shield in its mouth and stabbing its claws into her stomach as its neck whipped back and forth. Strong jaws crunched hard, triangular shark teeth cut their serrated edges into the practice shield, cracking the hardlight surface. In a particularly hard twist of its head, the whole shield snapped and the next thing Killjoy knew, her arm was being torn apart by the sharp teeth and whipping neck. Its claws had sank into her armor, puncturing her tanks and ripping out her wires, causing her to bleed. Her strength was pouring out of her abdomen as the creature writhed in victory. Her digits clawed at its mouth, hoping to pry the jaws apart but it was writhing around too frantically to get a grip. Her servo grabbed the back of the creatures neck, hoping to stop the frenzied movements as it tore her arm apart, and felt the world slow down as its head ripped apart her armor, flatworm shaped coils being snagged between its teeth. Ugly unintelligent white orbs were focused on her, not recognizing the look of dull horror which had crept across her face. All she could see was death in those hungry optics.
No!
She knew in that instant that no one was going to rescue her. A flickering ember of hope, born of the beginnings of Stockholm Syndome, that the Mentor would save her had died as she looked into its all too real expression, filled with the hungry murder of a hungry beast. Her whole body tensed for its last fight, ready to save her life.
Her servo tightened its grip on the back of the beasts head and she yanked hard as it tore itself away from her useless shield arm, digits dipping into armor as the creatures head snapped downward at the hard yank, opening a crack in its armor it would otherwise have blocked by armor. Her digits were cut by armor as they hooked around, tightening their grip as she wretched her servo hard, her servo and digits slipping free along with some very important wires. The creature floundered for a moment as its legs went haywire, but it turned to attack her, its movements slowed. She half-jumped away, spreading her legs so that one ugly clawed paw flew underneath her and the creature's chest aimed right for her leg. Her arms wrapped around its head, tightening in desperation and failing strength, as she wretched its head sideways. The creature went completely still. Blazing white orb focused on her and she realized with a start that it wasn't dead.
It was paralyzed.
The dead silence was unnerving. The battle computer had dropped back into dormancy, the gentle murmur of the roaring crowd had died like the white noise of the world had gone silent, leaving her trapped in a silent room with a creature, which only moments ago had tried to kill her. Time seemed to stretch before her endlessly, and she didn't even try to move.
A hot white beam of energy suddenly exploded out of nowhere, zapping the paralyzed predacon into dust. She swore for a single second, she could hear the frozen creature's internal mechanisms screaming, screaming to move, to escape, or just to scream. Her tanks twisted.
"Well, that was interesting," came the bored tones of her Mentor. The world around her had dissolved, returning to its original blue-purple walls. They looked more like Nemesis' walls with each passing moment. An echo of a pedestep made her slowly turn her attention away from the floor where the predacon had once been. The holomech had materialized a short distance away, looking her over with a blank look. "You need repairs. We shall continue the lesson after that is done."
She stared at it, unable to comprehend. The whirlwind that had been her mind for the last two vorns had disappeared into the echoing silence which hurt her helm. She didn't want to think, the memories she had just made unable to slip away from her grasp.
Everything had felt real, every breath of that creature, every movement, almost as if she had been fighting the real deal. The Mentor had sat back and watched, like every bully she had ever known who preferred to watch his good work from a distance.
She remembered the sound of a car on a sunny day. She was standing on the sidewalk when she realized she was alone. When she was young, she had always been near her sister. They had practically been twins since they were young - and as a kid she had never once thought of her sister as older than her. Even when she had grown up and gone to college, she had never once considered her sister as anything less than her twin - just as she had never once considered her three closest friends as anything less than her sisters. But on that warm sunny day, she hadn't yet met her best friends, and all she had in the world was her sister.
When she had turned around, realizing that her sister wasn't beside her like she always was, the sight before her had given her pause. Her sister's foot had gotten caught in the spokes of the bike they shared, stranding her in the middle of the road. A car had stopped just before her and the driver was just sitting there, in the car. Just sitting there. Watching. Watching her sister struggle with her foot in the spoke, a seven year old and her bike.
She had decided that she hated that woman, but she didn't realize until much later just how many in the world were like her. Like The Mentor. She was alone against the world, standing between it and her sister. She had raced into the middle of the street to pick up the bike, so her sister could hobble to the sidewalk. As she offered her shoulder to her sister to lean on, Killjoy remembered looking around, looking for that woman, but she had driven away. As if nothing was wrong. She had done nothing.
She hated people who did nothing.
Actions speak louder than words.
"Why haven't you just killed me?" The question escaped her before she could think on it, bitter cold hatred gripping her voice. It had done less than nothing. It had tried to kill her.
It shrugged. "Why haven't you killed me?"
It was stupid of the Mentor to remind her of her vow. What had been mere words before had transformed into something else, engraved into her subconscious. Her dark red optics narrowed as words that meant nothing slid from her vocaliser. "You are currently more valuable to me alive then dead," she responded, coldly.
It glanced over its shoulder and that unnatural emotion gleamed red hatred at her. "Same."
She watched it disappear out the door and she couldn't suppress the shudder that wracked her frame. A moan of pain escaped her as claws of fire stung her abdomen and her legs crumbled beneath her, knees splashing in a puddle of energon. Her tanks did flip flops as the world slowly spun around her and she dropped senseless on the floor.
I've been treating this too much like one big game.
She was staring up at the ceiling of the not-quite-a-medbay, watching the transforming arms that unfolded from the ceiling check over her systems manually one-by-one. She was ignoring them for the sake of her sanity, not wanting to confirm the horrendous thought that she might actually be unable to move.
Everyone was a chess piece on her board, a variable she had yet to figure out but still followed a pattern. That's how she had viewed the world, as something that could be quantified and controlled. Was it some unknown Cybertronian mentality which had gripped her unawares? She didn't know, but she was tired of treating everything around her like it was new experiment that needed dissection. Some game that need to won.
People's lives hung in the balance and at every turn she was doing everything in her power not to help. When her sisters were trapped under, she did nothing but sit back and watch them sleep, waiting for them to come out of it on their own. When Darklight took too long to do anything interesting, she left the Autobots and the neutrals and put them into even worse possible danger. Was she there to help them? She had thought so, but every action had said otherwise.
She had thought she would be working on automatic to help them, as if she expected herself to suddenly act like a machine. But working towards something took effort - working towards any goal always took some massive amount of dedication which she had been failing to demonstrate. She had goofed off, more interested in learning the story than actually participating in it, and that realization was enough to send a stab of guilt through her over developed ego. It was crushing, thinking on the time she could have spent on freeing her sister when she spent it learning frivolities and trying to alleviate her boredom.
Primus, had she even been paying attention? She had spent so much time in unknown territory and she hadn't bothered to look+ around and check to see if some programming might be lying dormant in the ship. She couldn't have known that there was, but it bothered her that she hadn't thought about it. She had been too busy pulling door panels apart.
And then there were the vows. Like a knight in shining armor, she had thought making the vow in her head would make it so and she suddenly be exercising herself toward that goal for the rest of her life. She had mixed up cause and effect with effort. It would take effort for her to get where she could finally rid herself of The Mentor. It would take effort and self-control to track down the Decepticons. She had blown it all on boredom.
Or almost had. She hadn't gotten any word back from Vibes about the state of affairs on her end. She wasn't even sure Vibes would call her. She seemed like the kind of femme to take things into her own hands, or at the very least prevent everyone else from getting involved with the war. It was a nice sentiment, but Killjoy knew that The Mentor automatically made her involved. Something about the Autobot insignia on his chest, the Decepticon programming and creator, right inside the only home she knew, near her defenseless sister, had made things a whole lot more personal.
She cringed to think about them. How could she have just abandoned them to The Mentor? It didn't make any sense. Had she become so independent that she had forgotten about them? The bond was still there, and granted it did hurt every time she thought about it, but otherwise she didn't feel it at all. A new terror filled her spark - had her sisters died?
It was a ludicrous thought and she knew it the moment she thought it. If her sisters were dead, she knew she would have felt them die. Every fanfic out there had stated as much. But enough had happened to cause reasonable doubt. No fanfic she had run into had been this bizarre. No canon story had been this bizarre. Usually there was a linear understanding - some knowledge of what was going on beyond what she already knew. She was looking at the whole world from one perspective and it was scary and boring. Boring because she was stuck with her own perspective and didn't have something new just lying around the corner. Scary because it meant there was so much going on out there that she didn't know about. Where was Megatron? Was he asleep at the bottom of the sea? Why was Airachnid here? What was she doing? What had happened before she woke up?
There were too many question that she had left unasked, and worse, unanswered. She had dragged in her heels and let the world pass her by. Her vows had become as meaningless as her life. She hadn't done anything, really. She had screwed things up because she hadn't thought things through. She had just done things. Even after the incident with Reverb, she was still just doing things. She hadn't thought things through.
And here was the opportunity to do just that and she was busy bemoaning her fall from grace. Frustration made her ground her teeth and mental rebate herself into the dust. Slaggit, why was she so stubborn?
And why has she been cussing in Cybertronian for the last few seconds? She looked over her thoughts and realized with alarm that she had been thinking in Cybertronian this entire time. Even though it was faster than thinking in English, it was certainly slower than what she was used to - or was that her perception messing things up again?
She dropped that thought as soon as it show up. It was a philosophical question, one that would get her walking her mind around in circles for hours. It was useless to think about in her situation when more important things should be weighing on her mind.
The Mentor had said something about her weapons adapting to the changes in atmosphere. She had no other weapons beyond her shield as far as she knew, which meant she was missing some valuable information - or perhaps even a program that would tell her she had a weapon. Really, when it came down to it, she was a machine and a machine needed programming before it could move its own parts. She had found neither hide nor hair of the program within her systems and it was starting to drive her crazy.
Seeing this thought process as nothing more than a dead end, she turned her attention to the updated message from the newly dubbed 'Original Killjoy'. Those two words together threw her entire history as Killjoy into an entirely different perspective, one that seemed to like to sit at the tip of her tongue. She wasn't able to fully grasp the connection and she felt that she need some valuable piece of information. Like what? Gut instinct told her that something about the world around her wasn't real, but she didn't know what about it wasn't real. It was infuriating, like words at the tip of her tongue she couldn't say.
It will come in time.
Lazy, she chastised herself. I can't wait around anymore.
What she should have done, instead of coming to this blasted ship, was survey the territory around the mountains, expand her patrols. Instead, she had come back here. As if it had drawn her here. She had told herself that she hadn't come here for the information about her creator, but the next thing she knew she was wondering just exactly who this mysterious person was. How could he know about the humans? How did The Mentor know about the humans? Were they just made up?
Perhaps that would have made sense, if not for the simple fact that her human 'hallucination' had details about the Autobots and Neutrals that she shouldn't possibly know. After all, if she was created by the same creature that created The Mentor - who might be this Original Killjoy - then she should know only half of what she knew now. After all, who wasted time and effort to create thousands of different Transformer Universes, fanfiction, and the like? Considering every Batman episode she had seen about dreams, it was a left brain and right brain thing. The part of you that dreamed couldn't read the written word. Her human self had been able to read, therefore it couldn't have been a dream. This meant that the Mentor was lying when he said they shared the same creator.
Assuming that their creator and this Original Killjoy were the same person, that is. If they were different, if the Mentor had been referring to some other creature she hadn't met yet, then that meant something else entirely about the Original Killjoy.
Was this all a simulation? The thought was like a lightbulb had gone off in her head. It made sense for a simulation to include something she found familiar. If that was the case, though, what was she being tested for?
The Five Lessons were only part of it. She hadn't gotten any word on what they were, what she had done to complete them, and to attempt to figure it out now left her possibly getting the answer wrong. Only the Mentor himself knew what was going on.
But she had tried to hack into the Mentor to destroy it, but only suffered because of it. She couldn't even remember if she had found anything. It left her wanting and even more curious than ever before.
If you thought erasing it from my memory was going to prevent me from looking into it, she thought at the Mentor, knowing he couldn't hear. Think again.
She had found out the problem and now she was working to solve it. She needed to think carefully and act quickly, before anything else happened.
Foolish child.
The Hivemaster hadn't done anything of the sort.
It was irritating.
The fact that the virus was also affecting her was alarming.
What else could explain it?
It was happening right in front of him, being recorded, but he didn't have enough evidence to do anything about it and that bothered him. He would have to change his ways of remembering just to keep a step ahead of the virus. The information would have to be stored in another part of his processor. Lucky for him, he had a recent expansion of his processors in the last stellar cycle and lots of space to fill up with information. A quick change in the program which sorted out his memories was all it took to prevent the virus from destorying them, and he could then return his attention to his Student without risk of losing essential data.
When he had first met this troublesome mind he had known right off the bat that this Rhythm character thought too much. Her default character was an observant and manipulative sociopath-wannabe. If not for her ability to actually grow in character, she might very well be a sociopath. Even as it stands, she wasn't far from falling off the edge into that territory. He viewed the thing holding her back without any real emotion, viewing it as the only thing preventing her from becoming indominable and straight up scary – if he was capable of feeling fear.
Emotions were difficult for him to understand, and he tried his darndest not to. Because of his ability to divine emotion through observation, he was stuck with two fully developed emotions in his otherwise empty emotional center – love and hatred. One cannot forget an emotion after one has thoroughly learned its principles, or divined it from the understanding of another.
He could not recall a time when he ever had all emotions – too much of his memories in the distant past had been destroyed due to some fool hardy war against odds that could never be feasibly beaten by a creature of his speciality. He assumed he never had any to begin with and only developed love through his first Student, and then quickly learned its opposite.
His most distant memories were sketchy at best. He only remembered escaping, protecting his charges, and seeking out erratic spark signatures across the galaxy, most of which had no visible form for him to absorb and reconstitute. He entirely devoted to his charges and, as far as he was concerned, everything which came before him beginning his self-appointed mission to find them sparks was unimportant. His charges, which would later become his Students, were all that mattered. Making them happy and nuturing them to maturity were secondary compared to his greater goals. He returned his attention to his new Student.
Default programming was easier to understand than emotions, and the bonus effect was that it never changed his own core programming to investigate into it. Rhythm's default programming was simple, driven by a desire to protect those she cared about including from herself, viewing herself as a powerful and dangerous creature that needed to be punished whenever it went out of hand. It was a childishness innate to her character and immaturity. That was what the whole simulation had been built towards; establishing a universe where all her secret thoughts and desires were met. A secret sexual interest had built the building blocks of most of the characters and an estrange belief that every male on the planet was sexually aroused at all times was merely icing on the cake.
But the duplicity of humankind, the ability to believe one thing but think according to an entirely different belief, seemed to have started a rift between her and the simulation he had so painstakingly applied. It wasn't the first time this had happened so he was not entirely without experience in dealing with it. However, it was the first time that his patch job had not worked. He worried that it might mean he was unable to fix the problem without out first wiping the slate clean. But that was a last possible solution, one which he'd have to fight his own core programming in order to enact. She was better without a personality anyway and it would be interesting to see if he could create a living breathing and fully functioning mech with only their default programming to work from.
Now that his memories weren't being muddled, he quickly found himself extrapolating a very interesting and very worrisome threat. It was a familiar touch, older than his own touch, and one he had felt only twice before in the distant past – from two separate sources. His Creator.
Something else had been pulling the Hivemaster's Student's strings, to whatever end. It was not aiding Mentor's cause to push forward and complete the conversion process on his Student's mind, which made it a threat to his Student's future health. It would have to be dealt with as quickly and thoroughly as possible, but alas he could not do that after that last EMP burst. It might not have physically affected anything but it had effected the simulation, which meant he would have to wait for an opportunity in the simulation in order to fix the problem.
Or perhaps he could bypass the simulation again and just force her into shut down? It was a last resort, considering the amount of internal programming he would have to work around to see it through.
Which brought another conern. This touch of his Creator might very well mean that the only creature in the universe that could fix his programming was near by. His programming was troublesome and prevented him from helping his Students most of the time. It would take centuries to work around it again and he did not have the time. Multiple other conversion processes were in progress and he could not just switch from one goal to another and expect everything to fall in line. No, he had to stay the course. This was much better than the old programming anyway.
He would have to work through the medium he had control over already. It was an inhibitor on the speed of the process but he was patient and in no rush to complete the process anyway. He would rather it never be completed for any reason anyway. Too many of his Students left and never came back. There were too many dangers out there. He had tried to send them out in groups, gestalt teams, anything and everything that would protect them but it seemed very few if any of them survived. It was worrisome.
Problem detected. New emotion might be forming. He checked its progress and was satisfied that his internal software was prevent it from forming. He returned his attention to Rhythm's manifestation.
The one upside to being in the not-quite-a-medbay was the arsenal of weapons on the medbay tables that her sisters never used. She hadn't wanted to touch them before, because she had felt they belonged to her sisters, but now she had a different reason for taking them. She never wanted her sisters to have them.
Reverb's death had impacted her like it never had before. Perhaps she had finally let it sink in that she had killed that had triggered her sudden desire to keep all the weapons away from her sisters. Killjoy didn't care about the whys anymore. Her mind was a razor sharp edge of focus, other issues dissolving into nothingness. Her targets were Airachnid and The Mentor, her charges were Vibes and her sisters. Nothing else mattered. Not Darklight, not Allout, and not a single Decepticon.
Are you ready to become this heartless? her inner voice asked.
What other choice do I have? What else am I supposed to do? I can't solve everyone's problems and I can't even solve those I can do perfectly.
Guilt tickled her conscious, but she didn't let it penetrate the brick walls inside her mind. I will do what I can when I can, she promised, but no more.
One day, she would figure out what weapons The Mentor was talking about, but because most of its words had led her astray before she had decided this was just a secret she was going to have to abandon. She didn't want to - it went against everything she was - but she decided other things were more important and this secret was more she'd have to drop despite her curiosity.
She pulled a long sword off her sister's berth table and a brace which she put over her fixed arm. It was the perfect protection against the predacon when it attacked her again.
"Mentor," she called, knowing it could hear her. "Lead me back to your Colosseum and send me your best." This time, I am ready.
She felt ready, all the way down to her very core. It was no longer a system of 'I found the problem and I have it solved now, even though I know I have hundreds of other problems to solve; I'm ready'. This was a 'I am ready, because slaggit I will never be ready'. It's a strange concept to grasp, knowing one is not ready but not caring. Whether she liked it or not, she was ready. She was ready to take on the world.
The not-quite-a-medbay's doors opened, and she left the laboratory at a sharp trot, not even bothering to turn down hallways she knew were roundabout ways of getting to the holodeck. Walls blocked her way, except for a path leading straight to the Colosseum. She heard their screams even before the door opened to admit her. They were all ignored. Her focus was on one thing only; her opponent.
She recognized the purple and blue seeker which uncharacteristically stood boldly up from the opposite end of the arena, stance ready and waiting with calm serenity, from the upraised massive shield to the sword that duplicated the one Killjoy was currently wearing.
It didn't even surprise her to be facing off against her twin.
A/N: Review please!
