A/N: It's Friday again! …Yeah, I couldn't keep the torture-angst (in detail) up for long. Some of you guessed this chapter, you clever girls. Congrats and I hope you aren't disappointed!
UND ZE PLOT SCIKKENS--!
Purchase
"Holy--"
"Dial it down, idiot."
"But… scan that. Scan it. What a downgrade," Stackup whistled, slapping at the mech beside him. "Suicidal malfunction."
"Barely protoformed, too," the other agreed. His blue optics whirred, sizing up their quarry up from a comfortable distance. "But moneyed. Take a look at that polish."
"Didn't have to wear it on his fraggin' chassis."
"Saves us having to ask."
Because Primus save the glitch if he wasn't asking for it all on his little lonesome.
Even when the underbuilt mech strode right up to their 'operation'—the cargo ship was cloaked under a shell that resembled the compact-soil buildings that populated the desert planet, the two on-duty mechs sitting out front with jugs of dirty coolant to protect themselves from the white heat—and started an all-too-pointed conversation with them, they didn't know whether they were going to let him in or not. Popping out against the red sand like a glossy marble toy, he was the only technomechanical being for continents, perhaps planets. The local level-six populace consisted of low-slung, heavily armored arachnid creatures and he was not one.
No, he was small and white. Haughty. And he knew the keyword.
There were so, so many reasons to justify refusing him at the door—his excruciatingly suspicious presence in the primitive desert gutter of a miserable C-level planet at the edges of a declining galaxy, the symbol on his chassis—but the keyword and the clean, collected but thoroughly undersized look of him won out. As tight as his tensors were strung, as exacting the beam of his stormy optics, there was something about the new customer they couldn't take seriously…which would have been the perfect undercover strategy for busting them all to Pit and Boss never would have let the little glitch in.
They weren't Boss. They just had to answer to his sadistic temper if they didn't move at least one 'bot on this stop, which was reason enough to stretch their 'trust' a bit. It had been nearly five months en route and they'd barely rid themselves of three older models after hacking their prices to pieces: they were in sore need of a pay-off, especially with Boss jacking up that bike's tag every time a customer tried to take a look at him. Scaring them off.
Still wasn't finished with him, apparently. Judging from the noise that happened off-shift, he was just getting started. Explained the new scratch marks, not to mention the cracked visor.
So they let the mech in, still biting hard onto their doubts. The two settled for looming physical intimidation once their customer was inside the stale-aired ship: the small mech nearly whirled in a barely-repressed panic at a threatening scrape behind him. Fender just finished closing the airlock and pushed him forward into the dark, closing in. No, once out of the sunlight he was no threat—if a little fun to push. Plus, as far as they could tell (and they could, after scanning him for bugs and manually disabling his commsytem) he was alone. Utterly and ridiculously alone.
No one came there alone. No one save trusted family heads and business contacts. Stacks was right: their 'invader' was an idiot, but he didn't know that they knew. And that didn't change the fact that he had credits out the tailpipe and maybe a kink or three to work out.
Beyond that, it wasn't altogether unheard of. Some of them were freaks.
Eons of business had taught the workers that just because a mech or femme was awarded that dashing red insignia? Didn't mean a damn thing. A few of them had even been indispensable; valued customers and alibis, somehow stowing their merchandise (and sordid activities) away from the optics of the public. Never before, however, had Boss' gamut simply been approached or blatantly infiltrated on a neutral planet: there was always a tense dance beforehand, a distant swapping and manipulation of contacts that rivaled a marriage arrangement between two warring parties in its complexity. They couldn't afford to be anything but vigilant regarding their pristine reputations and usually never even stepped pede in Boss' base of operations.
This? Different. The slender thing held up under their workover, arms crossed and optics half-shuttered arrogantly, but they smirked to hear the sound he made when he actually stepped inside the main chamber of the ship and the smell hit him.
"Lookin' for anythin' in particular, sir?" Stacks rasped, throwing Fender a look as the little white mech picked his way around a smear of grey Gordone dung (little servo over his olfactory receptors as he hurriedly offlined them with a stifled blip) then turned to the dark rows of mechs and femmes hooked up all down the ship's yawning length. He paused, big optics focusing and brightening to a clean blue to chase off the guttering yellow lighting, then flicked his servo.
"Show me all of it."
They intended to.
It was random; destructively haphazard, only feeding the fear left by the gaping statistics. What else could she do?
It had been months. Months and months, bare of leads or news. Still, for him, she reached out.
"I'm—excuse me. Have you seen this mech?"
The stopped femme, surely on a business trip on the mining planet, regarded her strangely for a cycle then peered at the visual of a small bike model spinning on the other's datapad screen. It was a mech, heavy with well-crafted modifications. After a too-short moment, the blue femme shook her head and moved away, but Torque grabbed her arm and drew the others' suspicious optics up from her blank chassis by swapping the images—by now accessed two hundred times on twenty planets. Blank stares gained for every one, casting around in a boundless, black, dense universe for a single flickering Spark. A lost star.
Impossible.
"Please. This is his alt-mode. Without his mods—you're sure?"
Her own battered Spark always quivered when they walked off and out, leaving her once more with no ground to stand on. Torque hooked her datapad onto her hip, staring at the colorless plateau and black refineries before her. Then the old femme shook her head and, slow with sorrow, moved on to the next.
It had been a row and a half. The little mech was beginning to walk a little fast, out of more than a disinterest in the vacant-optic'ed models strung up to his left, the tubing snaking out of their mouths still stained with the last pulse of muddy energon. The two watched him avidly, plainly baffled and more than a little malicious—if he turned out to be too suspicious, they could just offline their little lone ranger and be done with it or… new stock was always appreciated. To slow him down, Fender stopped and pointed out a particular favorite of his, detailing her alt-mode and so forth. The young mech nodded curtly, optics already scanning the next row with a nervous, muted hum.
"Ain't often we get 'bots like you here," Fender said after a cycle or two of resumed meandering through the Spark-deadening buzz of so many stasis-locked 'bots. The white mech stiffened, taking an effort to inspect a willowy bit of merchandise with orange plating and filth-caked digits that closed—clawed--on empty air. Her chassis barely had any paint left, scored by claw marks.
"The Guard are not without their unwanted tasks."
"Didn't say nothin' 'bout Guards, sir," he said slickly, striding on. "Rarely get our kind. S'mostly organics looking for an easy worker."
"And what is to say I am not an inorganic looking for the same?" the mech snapped, fixing the worker with a scathing look that he barely honored with a backwards glance. He stopped to let a Gordone limp out of their path with a strange, sickened expression, then clenched both fists, scowl reigniting. "Your curiosity is unbecoming. Show me the rest of your stock or I will consider this a waste of my time."
The youngling wasn't good at being sincerely snotty; he overplayed it. Stacks was pretty sure the deep vocals were an upgrade. It only added to the preposterous weirdness of it all, but not in a way that fit. All the same, they led him onward, commenting here and there and keeping uncomfortably close lest he do anything that would prompt speedy action, especially if Boss came back from his negotiations in the nearby settlement. He would disassemble them down to the sub-atomic level if he found them leading an Elite around the ship like a tourist.
All in all, however, the mystery-mech was behaving himself--then they turned the corner and he stopped.
The gold and black bike was three tables down, still-glossy plating gleaming in the low light. Even stripped, he was a pretty picture. They'd even wiped him down before opening their doors—then again, he sorely needed it. Oil and energon, fresh from tubing and fuel lines, could be corrosive if left too long and there were not a few occasions where he was dripping with both. Thankfully, though, their 'customer' wasn't worried about slashed fuel lines and hairpin cracks. His optics were wide with something entirely different. Something… ground-shaking.
Staring blankly at the table and its limp occupant, the young mech muscled down something very strong (his engine gave a shrill, strangled rev) and took a few, extremely careful steps toward the model. He stared at the bike's rounded shoulders, the simple stunted jut of his horns and the elegant fairings, fists drifting closed at his sides.
"What is… this one's name?"
First time he'd ever heard that one. As far as Fender was concerned, they didn't have names. He moved forward and rapped on the bike's chassis, offering a positive smirk.
"That's entirely reprogrammable, sir, with the right software: you can call him anything you want."
"No. What is he called?" They looked at him blankly; the little Elite turned his rounded face up and said in a trembling tone, like he expected an answer, "Your name."
They stood and listened to the false silence.
Goaded by the little mech's stony stare once turned on him, Fender eventually reached up and yanked the tubing out of the bike's mouth with a coarse slurp and popped his hood and fiddled unhappily with the Pack, disabling it for a moment. The change was startling: after the electric breath returned to his limbs with a moaning noise, the little bike seized up and shuddered, digits twitching piteously above their thick cuffs. He sucked in the dirty air with a heave of his scratched chassis and emitted a feeble, dumb bit of static, obviously as befuddled as the other mech was aghast at the agonizing return of movement.
"Say it again," Fender ordered him, one servo clamped on the side of the table. His own blue optics were locked on the model, now attempting to raise his heavy head and look around; the young mech spared him a horrified look before turning back to the revived—released—mech.
"What is your n-name?"
It got through. It actually got through and they could see it working its way through his dry insides, birthing a cautious, frightened flicker of his cracked, oil-spattered visor. Rising from a suffocating stretch of pain and helplessness, half mad with the weight of his own sentience, the model's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. Then:
"P… Prowl," he whispered, already husky vocals mangled from the ceaseless chafe of the tubing. Then Fender popped him and switched the Pack again and he sagged with a cold metal creak, visor grey once more. The other worker stepped back, slapping his servos together with a half-stunned look. It was amazing, but it made sense that he'd be able to spit his name out from such a haze. It was the only thing he had left, after all.
Stirring them both from reverie, Stacks put a heavy, heavy servo on the young mech's petite shoulder-plating.
"You interested?"
"Indeed," he whispered faintly after a long, long moment, optics locked on the limp figure, ever-more ghastly in the low lights after exhibiting a jerking, rattling split-klik life in a row of vacant stock-still shells. He refreshed his vocals nervously. He shook. "How lo… long has he been—"
"In the circuit? About half a stellar-cycle. This one's fresh chrome." Fender reached up and twisted three meaty digits past the bike's chassis-plating. It creaked. "Wanna see his Spark?"
"What?"
It slipped—or catapulted—out, straight from the Elite's own Spark and it was too late even to slap a servo over his mouth. Glaring in surprise, the two workers traded a dark, knowing look as the little mech half-turned away and forced himself to continue, "N… no. I have no wish to--no, this will be proficient. E-enough."
With such a reaction to such a rational health question, his cover--and benefit of the doubt--was blown. His former nervousness could have simply been cowardice, but concern? If given a chance to make conclusions and close suspicions and activate their vocals, the two mechs might have straightened up and told him to get out. Stacks might have used that mighty grip and closed down and forced him down onto the floor and that might have been the end of it. But the little 'bot cut them off them: he mastered himself and looked up with a strangely cold, blank expression and conquered their doubt with the one thing that had conquered their lives and their racial identity. Money.
"I'll take him as he is."
So they got the bike ready. No more questions, no more games.
No doubt Boss would be somewhat pissed at having his plaything stolen, but while he wasn't around to scare buyers with prices, they knew the angle now. Unorthodox as it was, they knew of a connection, thanks to the little mech's slips and wide-optic ogles, and the resultant price they eked out of him was downright blasphemous. In the six-digit area, bigger even than Boss was threatening. Feeling cocky, they added on bogus taxes, extras, stretching the mech's gold-trimmed worth to a ridiculous length—and with an almost-horrible determination, the white mech nodded to each. He argued one perfunctorily, but accepted it in the end, unable to tear his optics off of his silent prize.
They unhooked the slim model with a speed only gifted by centuries of practice, chains rattling noisily as he was laid out on another brown-spattered table. Upon freeing him from the cuffs, they wiped the crumbling rust from his too-slender carpal seams where his very exostructure had peeled off and dissolved away in the chemical-laden air, leaving scuffed rings. It was much like wiping at a sticky open sore, driving alcohol into the glistening scabs then scraping outwards. The air squeezed and heated with the silent pulsations of the model's Spark; the pain made him vibrate with anxiety and blind fear.
The white mech's bravado, if it had ever been intact, was decimated. He was practically hooked into the other mech, trembling in time as though the anguish were a throbbing electric current, greedily conducted by the oil-thick non-air between them. Stacks gave the buyer all the information he would need. Vocal-registered him for the DC software. Opened his new pet up again, took out the hack-pack and did some more fiddling with his exposed and ugly alien insides. The little mech hardly heard half of it, stasis-walking through the motions, but when Fender uploaded the blocker via his distal auditory port, all the invisible tension bled out of the bike in a single klik, leaving him almost flat-lining in his calm. Their customer stiffened and drew back, staring down at the disturbingly limp 'bot.
"What was that?" he asked almost fearfully, unaware even of Stacks' scathing look directed at the back of his head.
"That was a blocker—a file-lock covering everything that occurred here, for your safety and ours," Fender explained. "Obviously, we can't let anything go out of here except for you and yours. He's got an inhibitor code running in him right now. When he reboots in thirty-six megacycles, he's gonna be slow on the take and the DC will kick in right away, but he'll still be fully functional. If you try to jog or jump-start his memory, the locker will cancel out."
Even if his optics were locked on Prowl, the mech knew there was a question to be asked--as though he needed to at least give a nod to the clean red symbol on his chest.
"And how does this keep us from simply jogging his memory files and retracing your route?"
"They never see where we go—and you'll be stuck with an unsalvageable malfunction." Fender chuckled, ugly and deep, when the mech just stared at him. "Believe me, you don't want your new toy to remember this place. I've seen 'bots go deranged after having their memory files unlocked. Keep it where it is. That way, your investment won't fritz on you, 'cos Primus knows you paid a clean credit."
They propped the black bike onto his pedes and he remained standing when they moved away, visor lit a somnolent, disconnected back-up blue. Jerky and slow and heavy with the inhibitor, he was capable of movement if propelled by a guiding force but simply stilled precariously when untouched. The white mech trembled when he reached for him, blue optics wide. Stacks caught his shoulder again.
"Remember. Thirty-six megacycles. If you wanna to install any behavioral rewrites, do it before then but use a good hacker. Really, I'm serious: this slaggers a fighter."
Fender led them out of the door and out into the white-hot suns light, watching an entirely different creature leave out than the sniffy bastard that came in, too-carefully guiding the lifeless black model step by halting step over the red sands. It was a wonder they didn't offline him on sight. Suspicious little glitch… but still.
"Enjoy your purchase."
Boss'd be pleased in the long run. No one could say no to a payoff that big, even if it meant losing a playtoy.
There was not much strength left. He used all of it up getting through that place and getting to his ship and guiding Prowl--Prowl, smaller and slighter and creaking alarmingly--ahead of him, word by word and step by step. On the way in, the last of his desperate resiliency gave out with an inaudible, messy crack; he stumbled and Prowl's pede caught on his. They both fell to the blue-lacquered floor in a cacophony of metal-on-metal clangs and slams, but he grabbed for the other mech. Prowl fell against him, doll-like and lukewarm and horribly quiet.
Unable to restrain himself anymore, Anicon melted.
He finally rushed the rigid, naked bike with greedy, despairing, hysterical touch, all flinty posture sloughing off. His rounded face filled with intense pain as he wrapped his arms around the other mech and held him close to his quailing center, simply reconnecting to the echoing, nearly mythical creature with the push of his healthy Spark, feeling the other's tortured existence in all of its silence--and grieving that he could not have come sooner.
"Oh, Primus. P-prowl. Oh, what have they done to you?"
Source hidden behind a blank, cracked visor, the weak buzz of black stasis was his only answer.