CHAP 21

Hands. She remembered hands moving all over her and shifting her body around. She didn't want to be touched but she couldn't keep it from happening. She didn't have enough energy to stop it. After that she blacked out because she didn't have enough energy to fight anymore.

When she opened her eyes sometime later she was staring up at a dark, green lid. She turned her head and discovered she was lying down inside the energy vampire's closed coffin. No! she panicked and kicked out, slamming both feet against the lid. It snapped open easily, revealing the dark gray ceiling. She calmed, breathing in stale air.

He hadn't locked it.

She remembered how she wound up there too. Nos-4-a2 had to drain her energy to keep them both from blowing up then he'd picked her up and set her down in his coffin. She didn't understand why he'd done that instead of hurting her but she was grateful that he hadn't. Even if her neck was sore and she felt like she'd been climbing a mountain.

Speaking of the vampire. Where was he anyway? Was he still down there or had he gone some place?

When she tried to sit up to get a look around she found out she couldn't move!

Huh?

Sari tried to move her arm to get a look at it but couldn't. In fact now that she thought about it she realized both of her arms were behind her and had been that way for awhile. They hurt like crazy and something sharp was cutting painfully into her wrists. Same with her ankles.

That stupid vampire tied me up!

So the energy vampire wasn't taking any chances. He was going to make sure she couldn't even attempt to get away while he went off and did things. She doubted he wanted to spend all his time in that lair, keeping an eye on a girl he didn't even like. He wanted to do what he did without the risk of his current food source getting away. But.. where did he go?

I bet he went out to prey on other helpless machines, the girl thought. Ones who can't fight back and will make easy prey.

Yeah that made sense but why would he feed on other machines when he seemed to have a thing for her own energy? Thanks to her, other forms of sustenance might seem stale in comparison... Right?

Cut that out! Don't get so big headed about it! she shook her head. Why was she thinking that sort of thing anyway? Did she want him to only feed on her? Of course not! That creep has no right to be feeding on my energy. I only let him that one time because if I didn't I would have died. It's not like I wanted him to do it again, I just didn't have a choice.

Well, now wasn't the time to be dwelling on that. Now was the time to be thinking of a plan to get away. But how was she going to get out now with her hands and feet tied? "Ugh, he sure thought this through.." But maybe she could still get out of this, after all, she'd seen enough escapes in bad gangster movies to know what to do.

Tucking her legs up to her chest she thrust her arms under them and then over. Now they were in front. She smiled. "That was easy." She then sat up and started working on the wires binding her ankles together. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he's not as smart as I thought."

XR stared up at Prowl, unable to make any kind of comment. The cyber ninja had found a problem, no! many problems? This wasn't good. It was bad enough they still had to find the girl but now the Autobot was in trouble himself?! "You can't be serious!"

"I am afraid I am," Prowl responded, looking unhappy. "and I don't like it any more than you did."

"You've been having problems since you collapsed at Star Command," XR pointed out, pacing. "When we recharged you it seemed to help."

"I know," the cyber ninja replied.

"Maybe you just need another recharge?"

"I don't think that's going to help this time," he stated. "I don't get why this is happening or what exactly is causing any of it. If I had to guess I would say it's this universe. Something about it is making things complicated." he shook his head. "But this problem has nothing to do with the universe or its strange side effects or my power levels. I can do something about this. But not now."

"But if you don't deal with that problem now it will just get worse," XR told him.

Prowl thought about that statement for a moment then looked down at the robot space ranger. "You think you can repair it somehow?"

XR blinked, surprised by such a suggestion."What?! Me?!" XR backed up, waving his hands and shaking his head. "You can't be serious."

"I am serious," Prowl told him. "If you want me to get this taken care of as soon as possible you will have to repair me."

"I.. but.. I don't know how!"

"If you can repair yourself you can repair me."

"But my repairs aren't ever internal!" the robot space ranger protested. "I usually just fix my body when it gets blown apart. The LGMs are the ones who do the systematic repairs."

"Well there's a first time for everything and you know as well as I do that I can't do it myself. I can't see inside myself and none of my error repair systems are doing the job they're supposed to." Prowl winced then said. "So.. either you do it now or we wait until we're back on Star Command and I don't know when that will be."

XR knew he didn't have a choice. The last thing any of them needed was to carry around dead weight and if Prowl went offline he would be dead weight in every sense of the word. He sighed. "Okay fine," he consented. "I'll try it. But if I come across anything weird I'm going to stop the entire process." he poked Prowl's chestplate. "Your systems are different than mine so who knows what kind of weird things are in your motherboard."

"Don't worry about that," Prowl replied, sitting back down. "The only thing you have to avoid touching is my spark."

Oh yes, the spark. XR had totally forgotten about that. "I'll be careful."

"I hope so." the ninja said, dimming his optics. "I'll go into sleep mode while you work. It will make things easier. Just please be careful about my spark."

Yeah, right. Like sleeping will make things any less complicated. "I won't touch your spark." Prowl by then had gone into sleep mode. XR waved his hand in front of his face. "Hello?"

Nothing. He was out for now. XR was tempted to pull out a marker and draw on the Autobot's face to teach him a lesson for forcing this on him but he resisted the urge and carefully rested his hand on the ninja's chest, finding a small switch that made the plating open up, revealing the entire internal system. XR ignored the pulsating spark and scanned the rest of the motherboard, looking for something to plug himself into. He found a tiny slot. Ah there.

This feels so wrong. XR thought, pulling out the USB cable and plugging himself in. Ugh. I hope I never have to do this again to a male robot. This kind of thing never bothered him when he was plugging himself into a computer but Prowl wasn't a computer but a robot himself. If it hadn't been for the little fact that he didn't have a choice he never would have done this. "If I get sick later on I'm blaming him. What does he think I am anyway- Hey, what's this?" he'd found the problem or what he hoped was the problem. He wasn't used to Prowl's type of internal hardware so it was a little hard to figure out what should and shouldn't be there.

This thing was green and glowing and looked like a virus. "I hope it's a virus. I wouldn't know what to tell him if I accidentally removed whatever it is that lets him speak English." he focused on removing it. "If he wakes up speaking Swahili it won't be my fault."

As it turned out it was a problem but not the only one. As soon as he had gotten of it he found more. "Craters."

Sari's feet where finally free. Now she focused on her wrists, bringing them up to her mouth and biting the wires holding them together. Unlike the ones binding her ankles, these were more of a problem because she had no other way of removing them besides her teeth and that didn't seem to be working. The only thing she was accomplishing was hurting her jaws.

Rats!

"What are you doing?!"

Sari jumped. She'd been so intent on freeing herself that she hadn't heard the energy vampire return. She looked up to see him hovering over her with his wings out and his arms folded. He didn't look happy. She also noticed he seemed kind of tired around the optics. Either way she could tell he wasn't thrilled at seeing her attempting to escape and still had his hangover.

"I.. uh.. I was uh..," she stammered, trying to think of a good excuse.

"I know bloody well what you were trying to do, Little One." Nos-4-a2 cut her off. He cocked his head, noticing her unbound ankled. "You were trying to escape," he stated in a flat voice.

"I- No I wasn't!" she protested. "I was just changing position because my arms were hurting and-"

"You had to change position by untying your ankles?" he demanded, hovering closer. "Pardon me if I have a hard time believing that." he pointed at her. "You're just lucky I'm still not feeling well otherwise I'd punish you for such a foolish attempt. Don't you realize I won't allow you to leave this place?"

"I don't care what you won't allow me to do," she growled. "You're not my boss."

He grinned a grin that unnerved her. "Not yet anyway."

"What is that supposed to mean?" she demanded angrily.

He came closed. "Do you really want to know, Little One?" he questioned her. "Because once I tell you you won't be able to do anything else without my orders."

What is he- she jumped, her eyes widening in fear. Of course! Why didn't I realize it before? He's a vampire. Every vampire I know of has done of things to every victim its bit. It turned them into it's slave. she knew that first hand from Prowl's experience with Shadowstar but that control had been caused by a virus not whatever caused other vampires to turn people they bit into vampires. Does he? Oh my gosh! Now that she'd been bitten by him he could make her his slave any time. So why hadn't he? What was holding him back?

"The answer is simple," he said as if reading her mind. He reached forward and put his hand under her chin, tipping her head up so she could look him right in the eyes. "If I make you my slave it'll take all the fun out of draining your energy. If you became my servant you wouldn't put up any kind of resistance if I bit you. Now where's no fun in that? I prefer my food spunky. It adds flavor to it."

"You disgusting freak," she shot back.

He seemed amused by her words. "No more disgusting than a machine who takes the form of a human being," he stated. "Tell me; why would you choose such a body structure?"

"That isn't any of your business."

He laughed. "Well you don't have to willingly tell me. I can find out no matter what you say. It's not that hard." he raised his hand and touched her forehead. For a few seconds the girl's eyes turned red and her expression changed. After a brief moment he moved his hand away, breaking the brief hold he had on her will. Her eyes returned to their normal blue and she blinked confused. He frowned. "Hmm.. interesting."

"What did you just do?!"

He grinned again. "That my dear, doesn't concern you."

But it did. She felt violated as if something that was all her own had been taken from her. "No! You did something! What was it?"

"Do you really think I'd tell my food what I did?" he asked her, letting her face go and moving away. "Just shut your mouth and save your words and energy. I wouldn't want you moving around too much and wasting my dinner."

"You don't have to worry about that," she grumbled. "It's not like I cna go anywhere anyway."

XR found the right error. It was dangerously close to the important components inside the cyber ninja's systems so he had to carefully work on fixing it. Even though he wasn't nearly done he was just glad he's finally found it after all that system drudging he'd gone through. It had been so hard to figure out what was not an error and what was because, as he said before, the Autobot had different components that the machines he was used to. Okay, Autobot. Let's get this taken care of so we can continue our search. Craters, why does this guy always have to have some kind of system's malfunction? You'd think a robot that's been around for millions of years would know how not to get bugs. I guess wisdom really doesn't get better with age.

Suddenly something weird happened. The green colored error shot out two other errors. These errors, working as a sort of auto defense, came right at him. XR freaked, jerking away and unplugging himself from the port. He fell back, slamming against the dumpster. It was only then did he realized that he was no longer attached to the other robot. "Whoa! What in the nebula was that?! Obviously something doesn't want me to repair it." he moved back toward Prowl menacing his blank face with the USB cable. "Well I'm gonna get rid of it even if you don't want me to, you freak." he grinned somewhat maniacly. Bring it on!"

"Whoa, lookie here! Now I see why the little bot wanted us to leave the other one alone. He was in a relationship with it!"

"Huh?" XR looked up, startled by the voices. He saw that those yellow aliens from earlier had returned. They were watching him and grinning like idiots. "What are you doing back here? I told you to beat it!"
"Well we were going to beat it," the short one responded. "Then we realized that if we returned to our boss without bringing any robots or robot parts we would get in trouble. So we up and decided we would go back and get your little boy toy here."

"Boy toy?" that's when XR realized he'd plugged himself back into Prowl's port. He quickly yanked the cable out and stuffed it back in the drawer. I knew this would happen! Stupid Autobot! My reputation is ruined now! "Hey you got it all wrong," he told them."I prefer organic females."

"Yeah sure whatever," Short and deep said, stepping toward him. "I don't care. Just hand over the robot and nobody will get hurt."

"The only one who will be getting hurt around here is you." he reached into his drawer and pulled something out. Only it wasn't a gun. It was a banana. "Why in the world do I have that thing?!"

The two aliens laughed mockingly then the taller one stepped toward him.

"Hey, stay back!" XR shouted, throwing random things out of his drawer in hopes of finding a gun. Why was it he could never find a weapon when he needed it? What happened to the one who'd been using before? Finally he gave up and went into a real funny judo pose. "I know Kung Fu! Move away and nobody will get hurt!"

The aliens laughed again. "Don't worry," the taller said hefting what looks like a metal pipe. "We won't. But you will."

The blow took the robot space ranger completely by surprise. He was hit head on, the force of the blow cracking his helmet and front chassis before he was knocked back against the dumpster. He grunted in pain then fell to the pavement. Moaning, he tried to get back up but a foot smashed down ont his back, preventing him from moving at all.

"Now you just stay there until we're done," Tall and squeaky ordered, leaning all his weight onto the small robot.

"Do you think I'll obediently stay here and let you do what you want?" he asked, pressing his hands against the pavement and trying to push himself up. "I don't think so. As soon as you let me go you're both going to regret it."

"I think he's serious, Marve," the tall one said, looking at his partner.

Marve looked annoyed. "Of course he is," he responded. "He's a Space Ranger."

"So what are we going to do about him?" the tall one questioned.

Marve rolled his eyes and grabbed onto Prowl's shoulders. "We're going to take him with us."

"What?!" XR exclaimed, startled. Things were just getting worse and worse. "Now you don't wanna do that. I have partners and once they find out what you did they're going to come running and teach you both a lesson."

Marve grinned wickedly. "No they won't," he said. He looked at his partner. "Hal why don't you put the little robot out of his misery?"

Hall was all too willing. He hefted that pipe thing again and aimed it right for XR's small yellow head. THe last thing the robot saw was a round piece of metal flying toward his face.

Nos-4-a2 was making Sari clean up his lair. He'd made a deal with her for the time being. If she cleaned up his other victims, he wouldn't tie her up or feed on her. Well at least not at the moment. The techno organic girl didn't want to do either but she would rather clean up spare parts than become his dinner. So she agreed. Now she was carefully piling the trash in the left corner of the room while the energy vampire watched.

Oh, he wasn't acting like he was watching, but she knew he was. She could feel his optics boring into her face, just waiting for her to try something. Like she would. Not with her power levels where they were. She couldn't even open her hands much less activate any of her weapons.

Stupid energy vampire, she thought, picking up another robot part and stacking it onto the other severed heads. Like he even gave me a choice.

Sari moved away from the pile, looking the parts over. So far she counted at least a dozen robots he'd made meals of. Their blank eyes stared back at her. They made her nervous so she turned away and returned to her task. Those heads reminded her that her current fate wasn't any better. Right now she was on the menu and would be until she wound up like the others. That's not going to happen, she told herself, collecting severed arms which were remnants from the fight she and the energy vampire had had. I don't care what he thinks, I'm not going to stay this way. Prowl and the others will come and get me before that happens. I know he will. But if that was true why hadn't he saved her yet? What was taking him so long?

He doesn't know where to look, she told herself. That's why but he'll eventually get a clue. Something will come along and give him all the information he needs. Prowl's smart. It won't take him long. Argh! If he's going to drain robots why can't he clean up his own mess instead of letting it get this bad!

Of course there was another problem as well. Since Nos-4-a2 bit her he could chose any moment to make her his servant. What if the others came to save her and he forced her to attack them or something? She just hoped he the thought never crossed his mind when the time came.

Who am I kidding? Of course it will. he's not an idiot. She looked over at the energy vampire. He locked eyes with her and smiled evily. She looked away, disgusted. What I would give to be able to smash in that smug little face of his. If he wants a slave he can find it somewhere else. This girl isn't playing by those rules.

Her stomach growled, startling her out of her revere. She jumped, nearly dropping the parts. One of them slipped out of her hand and banged onto the floor. Nos-4-a2 looked at her. "What was that?" he demanded.

"Nothing," she responded, looking back at him and smiling nervously. "I uh.. just dropped something."

He studied her for a moment, weighing her answer, as if trying to decide whether to believe her or not. Finally he said. "Well pick it up and don't do it again."

"Roger." she turned leaned over and picked up the arm. "Yes master, no master. Whatever you say master."

"Enough with the attitude!"

"I am sorry!"

Rats! Why did I have to be reminded now that I haven't eaten in a long time? She walked over to the pile and dropped the parts onto it. They made a lot of noise and Nos looked back over at her. When he saw the reason for the noise he looked away again and continued doing whatever it was he was doing. She didn't want to know.

"I mean it's not like that creep would care anyway," she muttered stepping back and moving to clean up some more parts. "If I told him he'd probably just laugh at me and say it isn't any of his concern and be like: 'Jolly good. pip pip cherio'." she snickered. "Yeeh he probably would. After all I'm not a guest or anything. I'm a prisoner. bad guys don't exactly cater to their prisoners. If they did that wouldn't be evil. They'd be police officers or something. But.." she glanced back at him. "Maybe I can convince him that feeding me is a good idea? Yeah. I could tell him that if he wants to feed on my energy longer he has to get me something to eat to make it rise. Then, once I'm fed and my power levels are normal, I'll break his face in."

That sounded like a plan. Now all she had to do was convince him that it was a good idea as well. That would be a chore but she was confident she could do it. With that in mind she turned back toward him and yelled. "Hey, Nossy!"