Aug 31, 2018
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Bob has found a wall-
-but it’s not so much the wall that catches his optics. There are a lot of walls here, after all. Tall walls, cracked walls, walls that seem to go down and down and down forever, and walls that forgot how to be walls because they instead were rubble.
This wall has things on it though.
He can read some of the glyphs, the caretakers had taught him after all, but he doesn’t understand completely. Doesn’t understand the imagery. Or all of the symbols. The cracked insignias are a little unsettling. Because the ARK friends wear the red one. The caretaker does as well. Seeing it broken seems wrong?
He doesn’t understand.
Still...
Somehow this wall, forgotten and covered in broken holos, and graffiti, and posters... it only reinforces the thought that wherever he was, wherever this was-
Something bad had happened.
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Before Bob leaves the wall-
-of posters, and pictures another notice catches his optic.
It’s another “AD-VISE-OR-EE”
It’s newer looking than the doctor-talk one, but still fairly old. It’s a lot shorter too.:
WARNING-GLOBAL GROUND AND SPACE BRIDGE SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN HIJACKED AND COMPROMISED BY THE ENEMY. HALT ALL EVACUATIONS, AND STOP USE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL THE SITUATION HAS BEEN RESOLVED. A VIRAL CODE HAS BEEN EMBEDDED INTO THE PROGRAMMING. COORDINATES, REGARDLESS OF WHAT WAS ENTERED, WILL BE RANDOMIZED ON USE-.
Bob blinks at that.
Space Bridge? Ground bridge? He knows those words! Did he hear them at the Ark-home? It was the green light! Right? Huh. But there was nothing like that where the Autobot friends lived.
He is sure he remembered what that was though....Although the picture in his head is foggy... Far away and from a time when everything was immense, and strange, and hard to focus on.
A time that was lonelier.
Maybe it was from a while ago?
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He thinks he remembers them feeling like falling.
Some time later, a little away from the broken city,
Bob finds a really odd structure.
It towers over the sheered buildings he had passed to reach this opening, but it doesn’t seem to follow the same design. There’s no suggestion of sleek lines, sheer surfaces, and what probably had been a mirror-like cladding before whatever decimated this place.
It looks like stacks, and stacks of hexagonal cells. Empty and dark which is a change from the scary puddles and crystals of colors and light.
He finds himself ambling toward it. For no particular reason. Not that there had been any particular reason for why he had gone this way in the first place.
There was no particular reason for why he went anywhere here.
Wherever here was.
Yet here he was. He had picked a direction and he had ended up at this place.
Just a coincidence. No different than any of the times he had gotten lost at the Ark home-
Wow, the structure is bigger than he had thought...
Or maybe that was because he’s closer to it? When had that happened? Ah well. He’s here now. Might as well check it out!
Although he doesn’t. Not right away.
Instead he stares at it equal parts intrigued and unsettled. There’s a white noise buzzing in his head discordant and anxious but he can’t figure out why. It’s been there since he arrived here, but most of the time it was pretty quiet. The only time it got close to being this loud was when he ran into the not-friend who called himself ‘Hive.’
...who Bob had thrown a table at.
There are no thoughts or words associated with the buzz in the back of his processor, such things are slipping beyond his grasp in this moment. It’s more a feeling. The wobbly sort that settles in your tanks, but not in a good way.
Still.
Simultaneously there’s a sense of familiarity.
And because he’s a curious buggy he decides to get a closer peak to the thing giving him such mixed feelings. He’s still curious, and there’s still wonder here even under all the scary.
So-
-he shoves his helm into one of the hexaconal prisms-
-aaaand promptly gets a little stuck. His massive shoulders won’t fit. Best he can do is get his head in, but even then his antennas are getting bent at a weird angle in the teeny space.
He tries, for a spatially stupid moment, to wiggle further into the opening but it’s just not happening.
He stops all at once with a sigh. Then pops his head back out.
Bob remembers these being bigger. Being able to fit in completely-
A pause.
Wait.
Remember?
That was silly! You could not remember a place you had never been to before.
That’s just sense.
Right?
Maybe?
It’s hard to think with all the white noise in his head.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t hear the other right away. The one who was watching from some ways away.
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The not friend is much larger than Bob.
He must be strong too because it’s not often that Bob takes any sort of damage beyond some cosmetic scuffing. He could count the times he had bled on one hand, with the last time having been from a scuffle with a Dinobot over a swear jar of all things.
Even that just resulted in a couple of light scratches which was more a testament to his durability than anything.
But Bob is strong too, and the not friend essentially gets suplexed.
Hopefully it’s enough to stun the bigger bug, because after the impact Bob releases, rolls and scrabbles back, his plating clamped down and his hackles raised.
‘Distance is safety’ rings in his head. Something the caretaker had once told him. And he listens to it. If he’s out of range, then the other can’t grab him or do another hit.
It also gives him a moment to get a breather so he can process the chaos of everything.
His right optics and his feelings hurt a little. He can feel the wet dripping down his neck and can’t help but think of all the bandaides he’s going to need to make that better.
He’s not thinking about that too much though.
Because right now he feels things. A lot of thing. Maybe a little bad for causing a return hurt, but that’s mostly drowned out by the fact that he’s a little mad. Which is not something he feels often.
‘If you’re not comfortable with something you can tell them to stop.’
He jabs a finger at the downed bigger Insecticon and yells,
“NO.”
The clearest most concise way to describe his jumble of thoughts.
He’s also confused.
He doesn’t like this game that the other is trying to play. Or the mean un-truths that the other was saying. Or the white noise rattling around in his helm like some violent dissonant thing. It’s unsettling, and frankly it scares him. That loud, negative force that had tried to swallow him earlier... that tried to gather up all he was and integrate it into a patchwork of connections and thoughts and feelings that he just-
-didn’t belong in.
That scared him more than the physical being in front of him now.
It had felt like he was a puzzle piece made for another picture trying to be jammed into a place he didn’t fit.
On the Ark home, especially in the earlier days when sentience (true sentience) was a fresh thing, he would sometimes get those fleeting feelings from the before time. Brief flutters of old hurts and old sensations; the feeling that he didn’t belong, loneliness, that something must have been wrong with him, and rejection.
Especially rejection.
Of being driven away.
But that shrieking in his helm from a moment ago, where the white noise swelled up into what felt like a thousand voices trying to break him down in unison so he’d be complacent-
If that was the thing from that before time that had made him feel so bad...
If that was the thing that had rejected him, that had tried to reign him back in just now to force him to fit, maybe it wasn’t so bad that he was the odd one out.
Maybe it was ok if he was the misshapen puzzle piece that didn’t belong in the grander picture.
Because the glimpse of that image made him feel perhaps it wasn’t so bad to be out of place.
Because that was a glimpse of something dark, and mean, and austere. A singular unit of something dominating enough to crush all that you were.
It reinforced the truth of what the caretaker had so painstakingly tried to tell him and reinforce over time.
“It’s ok to be different.”
“You just need time to figure things out.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
These ideas, and this mess of emotions are too difficult for him to truly understand for what they are. They’re too convoluted and layered and nuanced for him to verbalize or explain, however there is one thing he is able to pick out from the mess of heightened things in this moment.
He decides whatever that was and whatever this is that the not friend is trying to do-
he doesn’t want that.
So one more time with more vehemence-
“NO.”
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Bob doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to handle that response.
What were you supposed to do when you asked someone to stop something, and they didn’t?
The aggression buzzing through his lines vacates in a rush, and he’s left with a cold confusion in its wake. The fierce look on his face gives way to something more wide opticked and puzzled.
Complete incomprehension blooms across his features as his processor stalls.
Wait.
Die?
Wait.
‘You give what you get.’
But Bob doesn’t want to cause someone to die.
He doesn’t want that at all.
Wait.
Is the other going to try to make him die? That’s what he said right?
He doesn’t want that either!
He just wanted the other to stop! The words and the sounds and the violence. He doesn’t want to play this game! He just wants to go home!
The other was supposed to stop. He asked them to stop.
They weren’t listening, and the buzzing in his head was roaring louder. Like a torrent. Only it was no longer trying to pull him in. Maybe it couldn’t and it was angry because of that. Angry about the things that made him Bob. Which was wrong, there was nothing wrong with him-!
It didn’t want him to exist as Bob. It saw something wrong with that. The not friend saw something wrong with that.
But that wasn’t fair-
“WAIT,” His antennas flatten, and he crouches and backs away, unsure of what to do as the other is picking themselves up and advancing.
Suddenly Bob doesn’t feel as sure and as fearless as before. The combative feeling is gone. Because this is scary. He’s scared, and he doesn’t know what to do, because he doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to be in a real fight. He doesn’t know how. He’s not like the Dinobots. Or the Autobots. Or the caretaker. He’s not Sunstreaker, or Sideswipe, or Swoop, or the Optipoppy. Or any of the others, he can’t do the fighting for real.
He doesn’t want to do the fighting for real. It’s not a rough out of hand game any more. He realizes this is actually something maybe dangerous.
What is he supposed to do?
He can’t do this.
He can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t-
But he doesn’t know what to do. This has never happened before. There has never been this sort of murderous intent directed his way in his memory and it’s a frightening thing. For so long the fear of something causing him harm was a faraway thing but this one was so very very strong. What is he supposed to do?
The other advances.
And Bob panics, backs up and wants to go home.
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