Taking care of Lyric's memory firewalls turned out to be more demanding than they had first anticipated.
Just when they finished dealing with one, she would create another, and then another, and it never seemed to end!
Currently they had been working on them in turns, each going to work when their turn was over.
They were exhausted, it felt like they were living through years at a high speed, learning faster than normal what should have taken them fourteen vorns to learn.
To top it off, Jazz also had the duty to correct code as much as he was able...which ever parts were accessible to him that is.
Eventually Ratchet had had enough, and threatened the two to take a day off, or so help him he would put them under medical leave.
It was the rest they had needed, once they were done. Jazz returned to his duties as third in command and Special Ops head, while Prowl went to take his turn with Lyric.
He didn't expect today to be very different from the usual, a childhood memory, likely of her hiding away from her foster family to have some fun and a few moments of freedom.
He would do what they always did: play for a little while, talk and then comfort whatever was bothering her. Lyric turned out to be someone that always felt a great deal of responsibility towards others around them, and even at young age it had burdened her.
He sat down in the usual chair, and opened the compartment in his forearm taking out the cable to connect to her processor. He was sucked in like usual, and found himself in a human street, around him were tall buildings, and what appeared to be one of Lyric's old schools. Her second if he wasn't mistaken. The sun was setting soon, bathing the area in an orange light, the sounds of the students inside the building could be heard as a light buzz, and a few of them, whose teachers had not shown up to teach, were playing ball in the school yard.
Prowl waited patiently, listening in for any clues of where Lyric could be, trying to find any signs of what he was supposed to do this time.
Then it happened, young children's yelling, not the happy kind, he turned towards the sound in time to see the young cybertronian run around a corner of the school building, skidding a little as she turned directions so quickly and running as fast as she could forwards.
Behind her, came a group of boys, he counted eleven of them, all of them wearing amused smirks and chasing after the young femme with whatever they could use for weapons in their hands.
Lyric however proved to be much faster than them and gained some distance, enough o give her time to scale up a large oak tree near the metal bars fencing the school.
She took shelter in its thickest branches, just as the boys caught up to her. They circled the tree, some of them attempting to clumsily climb it before falling off on their afts in the cement.
"Get back down here and we won't be so hard on you!" The apparent leader, a boy with light brown hair, green eyes and a tan skin spoke, grabbing a rock from the ground.
"Like I'm going to believe that!" she snapped from her perch "you'll just hurt me twice as bad!"
"Get down here so we can beat that arrogant little smile off your face!" another growled, making another attempt to climb the tree.
"Hmmm... how about no? Do you honestly think I have your pea brain? I'm not handing myself over to you simple brains."
"This is your last warning! You're making it harder than it has to be!" the leader spoke again, glaring up at the femme.
She stuck her tongue out at him in response.
"That's it! Grab some rocks! We'll force her down!" He shouted to his henchmen, throwing the very first rock, which bounced off the branch she hid behind of.
Soon enough, she was being showered by rocks, and Prowl was about to dash and intervene when she swung from a branch and threw herself over the fence, barely missing in palling herself on it, and landing crudely on the floor.
Primus he hoped nothing was broken. Even if in reality that didn't happen, it did affect her dream persona in many ways.
"Get her!Get her!" the boy shouted angrily, just as she managed to gain her bearings and roll onto her feet.
She didn't manage to jump away from some of the rocks being thrown at her, but she did see the boy reach for his backpack, and take out something black and as long as his hand. Her eyes widened and she made a mad dash to hide behind a car.
A loud BANG! Followed after her, something hitting the tire of the car and piercing it, it squeaked out its air the car lowering towards that side.
Prowl's spark tightened, that was definitely not a rock, and what the boy held, was definitely not a toy gun.
"You lot!" He shouted, getting their attention, the boys looked startled at first, then panicked, they scrambled for their bags and ran back inside the school before he could even address them further.
Waiting a moment to make sure they would not return, Prowl turned back to the car, slowly walking around it to find his creation sitting on the ground, curled into herself in absolute silence.
With a sigh, he knelled down next to her.
"Its all right Lyric, they're gone now" He spoke softly, waiting for her answer.
She took in a shaky breath, sounding slightly like she was crying, which he really couldn't blame her for.
"They'll be back later...they always come back."
"No. They will not. I promise you they will not." he said, reaching to pet her atop the head, frowning at the mess her hair was in, it had lots of tiny papers in it, and even a chewing gum, which really needed to be cut out now...
"They always do...we're in the same class after all...they will just make me pay double next time..." she said depressingly.
"I promise you, you do not have to return there, you will never go through this sort of bullying again if I can help it." Prowl said, sitting down next to her. "What were they bullying you for anyway?" he asked.
"I was reading..." she mumbled with a sniff.
"Reading?"
"Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban "she explained "I...like to read...and they don't like those kind of people so..."
"So they picked on you" he surmised.
"They started throwing papers at me, and other stuff they had from their left over lunch..." that would certainly explain the gum. "I snapped and told them to knock it off...should have just stayed quiet and endure it."
"No, you should not have endured it at all." Prowl corrected "you had more than right to snap and to tell them to stop, it is they who acted wrongly towards you after all. There is nothing wrong with standing up for yourself."
"Except when it makes others shoot at you..."
"That, was taking things too far." Prowl said severely. "That child should not even have a gun in his possession, it was luck that that was likely his first time holding it and that he was such a bad shooter by nature." he admitted.
She didn't say anything to that, staying in her huddled position, trying not to let any of her sniffling be heard.
Prowl let out another vent, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer to his side.
"Everything is fine, you don't have to go back there, I will protect you from them." It was the role of the sire after all, to protect their offspring, but it was much more than just a role, it was something he wanted to do.
"I HAVE to go back there... my parents-"
"Want what is best for you." He interrupted.
"They want me to succeed in school..."she corrected.
"No." he let out another ex vent. "Lyric we've been dragging this out long enough, Jazz and I." he said petting her head. "Deep down I know you know it as well, your human parents...are not your parents. We are."
The child took a moment, lifting her head a little to stare at the concrete in front of them.
"I...I know..."
"Then you should take my word when I tell you that we do not want this life for you. If I were able, I would go back in time and undo it all, but I cannot. What I can do however, is make sure to end this misery you live in your mind every orn."
"I...I'm not sure that I can..."
"You can, as long as you want to."
"I...do want it to stop...I want to forget the pain..."
"Then let us help you. We can take it away, and we will be with you along the way while you recover from it. I admit it will not be easy, it never is, but it is worth getting rid of a life of pain and fear."
Her eyes began to water again, and she tried to muffle a small cry, hands grabbing at her messed up hair.
Prowl only did what he could, pulling her closer against his chassis, letting her hide her face in it, feeling the tears fall and trail down his metal.
"There now... I am your sire Lyric, and I will do everything I can to make you happy, just like your carrier"
A small cry broke through and she grabbed at his metal tightly.
"Daddy... I want out." Prowl felt his own spark stall, those were words he had been hoping to hear from her, at least when she was conscious, this was the first time.
" Come then, I'll help you find the way." He said, shifting his presence to exit the dream state.
He couldn't actually bring her with him, but he hoped that at least that way she would follow out of that dream.
He unplugged his cable from the side of her helmet with the usual care, and rolled it back in place, sinking back in his chair. That, as usual, had been exhausting.
He didn't know how much longer he and Jazz could keep this up, it was keeping them from their duties, and it took most of their energy to go through with it too.
It didn't help that Ratchet simply couldn't tell how long until the young femme woke up, because it entirely depended on breaking through those firewalls. And that meant, whenever the young femme was ready.
A loud gasp startled him out of his musing so harshly he nearly jumped off his chair.
In an instant he saw his daughter's body arch, and go back down onto the berth as she entered a coughing fit, trying to spit out the feeding tubes from her mouth plates.
"Ratchet!" He called urgently, leaning on the side of the berth, petting the femme's helm trying to soothe her, her bright blue optics darted in every direction in panic.
"Its all right" he said to calm her down "Ratchet is coming, he'll take those out."
The medic was there hurrying to the med berth just as he said that, rushing to check the stats and then to remove the tubing.
"Hold still! It'll be harder if you squirm so much!" he grumbled as he and Prowl tried to keep her in place.
Once they took the tubes out, she coughed, squirming even further now that she was free. The stats on the machine began to bleep warnings as she twisted her body painfully.
Sure enough, parts started to shift, changing her pleasure bot appearance the cons had forced her to take, and slowly but surely becoming smaller...its color darkening all the way to black leaving only the optics with their blue shade.
When it finally ended, she laid there, heaving, trying to cool down her systems with noisy fans. She was smaller, possibly the smallest size her shape shifting abilities could manage. One could easily mistake her for either a microbot or a youngling of around 10 vorns old.
"Its all right" Prowl tried to reassure her. "its over now, everything is fine." he repeated the mantra for her until she started to calm down, her systems slowing as she looked at him with blurry optics.
"D-daddy..." she cried out pitifully, a hand managing to hold onto his persistently.
"Shhh... I'm here" he said, briefly glancing to Ratchet who had been checking all the vitals carefully.
"She's exhausted, but not much more than that" He said after a while. "The sorcelling is probably responsible for it. I recommend letting her rest before you two attempt to fix the rest of the coding. Also you should probably be able to unlock her memories now, but I advise doing so bit by bit, too much information can be too overwhelming sometimes."
"Understood. Should she stay here? Just to be safe?"
Ratchet hesitated, looking at the young one holding on desperately to Prowl's hand.
"...no. Right now she needs you more than a lonely medbay with bots she doesn't even remember. She needs to have a sense of safety and stability, and like it or not, that's your job."
"One that I will grateful take." He said, gently helping his creation to sit up.
"Do you need any help taking her?" The medic suggested, eying his disoriented looking patient wearily.
"No, I can take her by myself."
"Very well then, you can give her some midgrade to compensate for the sorcelling, but after that its only low grade as usual." he instructed.
"Thank you Ratchet, we'll be leaving then, come Lyric." He encouraged, helping her to stand.
She nearly collapsed at first, only not doing so because of his hold on her arms.
After a moment of fighting off her unbalance, she managed to walk with him out of the medbay.
Ratchet watched them off, glad to have that patient out of his hands for now.