Old and Young

He couldn't remember where he had been sparked. He honestly could care less about it, if not for the fact that the current social standards placed such great importance on such a pointless thing. He couldn't remember when he had been sparked either. He wasﾅ old. It was difficult to tell though, because he had been broken down and rebuilt so many times that the only thing that was the same from the time he had been sparked was hisﾅ well, spark. His body was young now, all systems running optimally, his paint a mere polish away from shining, and his processing hardware top notch for once.

If he hadn't been slagged to a stubborn spark and almost fried processor a number of vorns ago, he would have made do with his almost critically outdated processors and countless programming patches. It wasn't exactly a pleasant thing to have a medic go about swapping around critical mental components. The transfer of his files from his destroyed processors had left him with a little more corruption in the files, a little more degradation of things that had occurred so long ago that he didn't even find the lack disturbing. The only problem was that his coding was so old he was having compatibility issues popping up like turbo-rats.

And that was how he had wound up in this situation, having accidentally stumbled into a heated fight between two different groups and that problem was compounded by a glitch suddenly deciding to grow to an overwhelming issue. He could not duck and wrestle with his unruly processor at the same time. Unfortunately.

Prowl (a designation that he had adopted when he had once lost most of his memory files but not his base personality routinesﾗhe was pretty sure that it was not his original one.) stared up at a hideously orange ceiling blankly. There was a dull throbbing in his head that told him the instabilities in his processors were still giving him fits. Ow. The orange did not help any. Why would anyone paint a ceiling orange? Prowl let the question chase circles through his processors not particularly caring if he came up with an answer or not for once. It was purely youngling speculation to entertain himself. It truly was awful though.

The faint whoosh of a door opening had Prowl turning his head to observe the new occupant of the place that he had found himself. Hmmmﾅ A medic? The mech certainly had the numerous redundant features and the bulk that came of it. Lightly armed as well, at least in comparison to what so many mechs had begun integrating as a matter of course. War was coming. The medic stood at the side of the berth and began scrolling through what was probably comparatively nonvital information as Prowl could tell that there were alarms connected to his vital systems. A sudden sound of surprise had Prowl wondering what was wrong.

"You're online?" For some reason the medic sounded incredulous.

Prowl turned his optics straight toward him, "Yes."

"How the Pit did you manage that? You should be dead to the world right now." The medic certainly seemed to believe what he was saying, but Prowl had long since learned that medical treatment was a gray area for him. Some treatments worked well. Others might as well have been blank data for all the effect they had on him.

"I am not normal," Prowl said without inflection, bored with the reaction, not caring that his unlit optics were probably unnerving the medic. Lit optics were a waste of energy when he could see sufficiently without. Perhaps "see" was the wrong word. His sensor wings picked up all the necessary spatial data that he might need and more. "Where am I and what is your designation?" Obtain information. Evaluate the situation.

"You're on the Arc, a heavily armored intergalactic transport, currently serving as an Autobot base. My designation is Ratchet. What's yours?"

"Prowl," he said, "What about my condition led you to believe I should still be in stasis?" It was always interesting to hear explanations, interpretations, and other ideas that mechs came up to explain Prowl. They were always different, and usually somewhat entertaining. Unless the mech in question favored vivisection. That was unpleasant.