Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 4:16:55 GMT -5
Wheeljack bit back a mocking laugh and a few choice comments. Yeah, he got that whatever mess he'd stumbled onto, it had a few hundred layers to it. That much was evident, he didn't need Prime to tell him that. But the Autobot leader wasn't the enemy, no need to lash out at him, no matter how much he wanted to do. The individual that deserved to have Wheeljack's foul mood and both his swords turned upon them was not here.
Wherever Deuce had gotten to, the Wrecker would track down. Then wring the truth from the mech's scrawny neck.
But he doubted it was as simple as Deuce wanting an audience or backup while he took down Skywarp. The aerial had been looking for him specifically. But for what?
The Decepticon's words floated back to Wheeljack.
Him or would anyone have done? the Wrecker wondered. He didn't know. And it was doubtful he'd be able to find the Decepticon again or get a straight answer out of her.
Although if there was a truce…
Hmm…
Such plans would have to come later. When he'd returned to the Omega base and retrieved his ship. Seen Ratchet. Mentally regrouped and made sure nothing nasty was lurking inside his head.
What had been his alt-mode?
A simple question. It was a simple question. The answer should have been easy.
And yet.
And yet.
Wheeljack did not know.
He had opened his mouth to reply, then froze as he made this realisation. The Wrecker had not transformed once during the...excursion and nothing had specifically drawn his attention his alt-mode. He'd made a comment to Psi confirming that he was a grounder but that was it.
Would a Cybertronian simulation known what an earth based mode was like, could it have rendered him with one? The Wrecker hadn't known to look. Would another alt-mode have felt any different? It should have, he knew, if the kibble was distributed in an alternative configuration. But whether he felt it or not would have depended on how accurate the simulation was.
And given it had apparently taken about a week to render the journey across Iacon…well the Wrecker doubted that the simulation would have handled such a minor detail such as shifted kibble weight.
"I don't," the answer escaped Wheeljack reluctantly. "Know what my alt-mode was." He grimaced but continued, "I assume I had my earth alt but I can't confirm that. Didn't use it once and there wasn't a moment where I consciously checked on what I had."
As for the other thing Prime was asking for…the answer was depressingly the same. "When I arrived on Cybertron or dreamt that I'd arrived on Cybertron, first thing that happened to me was colliding with a building. Then tromping around the dusty insides of said building. If I carried a bit of earth with me, it would have been mixed with home dirt immediately."
"But," he added. "Last thing I remember, before waking up, I'd been coated in ash and slime in places I didn't even know I had. Thought it was probably going to take years before I scrubbed every bit of it out from under my plating. And yet, I can't feel a trace of it now."
The slime really hadn't been the kind of thing one cleaned easily, it was the kind of thing you'd be picking bits out of your plating for weeks on end before you got all of it out. Combined with the ash, it had hardened into a gross kind of gunk that would require more than water to remove. Of all things, Wheeljack could say he honestly never thought he'd be grateful to the goop Bolt had oozed everywhere. Or that it would be used to solve an existential crisis.
One point in favour of the simulation idea.
Though, Bolt itself…
"Speaking of, know of any massive segmented Cybertronian creatures that have clustered optics and tendrils around their mouths? Had thick plates that cover each segment and oozed goop everywhere. Kind of like an earth slug. Had an encounter with such a beast and I don't know if it's a real creature or not."
Almost as soon as he asked the question, Wheeljack realised it was an irrelevant one. If Prime didn't know what Bolt was, it proved nothing, only that Prime did not know the organism. It could still exist, an unknown species that few had discovered or encountered somewhere. If the Bot leader did know of the creatures, then well, someone had gone through the effort to program one into the simulation.
Or the Wrecker had actually run into one and had a hell of a shower afterwards at some point, that he had no recollection of.
This was more solid ground than Prime's previous questions. It was also easier to talk about, discussing the events of his journey, rather than the painful possibility of a neural breach. "It might have been a smoking ruin of a city now," Wheeljack snorted, "But I'd recognise Autobot Central when I see it. Plus the people I spoke to thought it was Iacon. Dug up a map in the undergrid that placed it as Iacon." He shrugged as if to say, what more do you want? The place was Iacon. "The last thing Deuce said to me before vanishing was that I needed to get to the Iaconian Academy of Science and Technology."
"I met a few people. Psi was first, found me pretty soon after I got dumped there. Blind aerial, bit odd but friendly. Said he was associated with the Academy, that it was still active, a whole community of surviving Autobots and scientists hidden away in the lower levels. That there was a wormhole specialist there that might be able to get me back here." Wheeljack pressed his lip plates together and debated sharing what the Con had told him. The bit about Psi being a double-agent and her small group working against an enemy trapped away in a sim.
She had trusted him, by letting him know Psi was a double agent. And the more people who knew that, the more danger the mech was in. Perhaps he would hold onto that tidbit for now, though he would share about the neuroscientist, Prime needed to know about the enemy. The whole thing was confusing as is.
"That sounded like my best bet getting out off Cybertron," Wheeljack continued. "So I went with him, trying to get to the Academy. But we got separated when a coolant tube spilled and washed Psi somewhere down in the tunnels in the undergrid. Jumped after him but didn't find him. Got topside again and stumbled upon a crew of scavengers. Bargained with their captain, Tailspin, to repair their ship for a lift to the Academy. He offered to drop me off wherever I wanted to go but, well. Deuce said I needed to get to the Academy to prevent something terrible to happening to some Autobots."
The Wrecker paused then shook his head. "Not sure which ones, just said my Autobot friends, which sounds awfully broad to me." The mech could have meant it in the sense of Autobots in general, he could have been referring to a specific subset of people that Wheeljack was friends with. Ultimately, it did not matter what Deuce had been talking about. For Wheeljack, Autobots had been danger and so he went, it was a simple as that. "In any case, I wasn't about to leave with that hanging over my head. Tailspin agreed to drop me off and decided to come with. Think he was hoping to scavenge something interesting in the Academy."
They'd been standing still for too long, Wheeljack decided restlessly. A cool breeze drifted. Far away, an unknown bird called out. They weren't too far off from where he parked the Jackhammer, there wasn't much further to go. So he swung round and got moving again.
"So with Tailspin's help, made a second attempt to get to the Academy," Wheeljack called out over his shoulder. He pushed a pine branch out of his way, uncaring if it sprang back into Prime. "Ran into this great big creature, the one that oozed slime everywhere. Burrowed through the tunnels and dragged me down what felt like a few thousand levels towards Cybertron's core. Thought it had set us hopelessly off course but well, actually, I think it might have got us to the basement of the Academy. We were in a big room, reminded me of a museum. Lots of displays of Cybertronian animals and it was a pretty big collection. Not just creatures like roto-rats and turbo-foxes, there were exotic ones like a flock of lilleth and a nitro-tiger."
"Then there was the equinoid."
The Wrecker grimaced. "Tailspin…Tailspin didn't take kindly to what they'd done to the equanoid. He was a slick talker, spoke a lot but I wasn't sure how much to believe. He was very…" Wheeljack paused and searched for the right words. "Fancy and theatrical. Had a thing for decoration, very eye-catching. When I met him, he boasted that he was a Knight of Cybertron and said he once rode an equinoid. Thought he was joking at the time. Anyway, the equinoid reminded me of him, they had the same…aesthetics, the decoration looked similar. And Tailspin certainly seemed to recognise it, said it wasn't his but he knew who it belonged to. Was upset that it had ended up mounted in a display case."
"I don't know what he did," the Wrecker scowled. There were just too many things that he didn't know. Too many gaps, frustrating gaps in his knowledge. "I was looking in the last display and I saw Psi, that Decepticon that just ran off plus one another, think he was a medic. The three of them were gathered in a room, talking but I don't know what it was about. "
Not to mention there was that whole tangle of weirdness with Psi and the light show.
"Anyway, Tailspin did something, I heard it but then things went black."
Black? No, not at first, that wasn't quite right. Everything had gone silver and fractured on him before switching off to black. A sign of the simulation breaking down? Wheeljack wondered. Maybe. And if it was, well, how the frag had Tailspin managed to damage it?
"That was the last thing that I remember before I was prodded awake a few minutes ago by a Decepticon with a stick."
Wherever Deuce had gotten to, the Wrecker would track down. Then wring the truth from the mech's scrawny neck.
But he doubted it was as simple as Deuce wanting an audience or backup while he took down Skywarp. The aerial had been looking for him specifically. But for what?
The Decepticon's words floated back to Wheeljack.
It was a risk to everyone if they body-jacked you.
Him or would anyone have done? the Wrecker wondered. He didn't know. And it was doubtful he'd be able to find the Decepticon again or get a straight answer out of her.
Although if there was a truce…
Hmm…
Such plans would have to come later. When he'd returned to the Omega base and retrieved his ship. Seen Ratchet. Mentally regrouped and made sure nothing nasty was lurking inside his head.
"Once you were upon Cybertron, did grit from Earth remain on your frame, and did you retain your Earth Alt-"
What had been his alt-mode?
A simple question. It was a simple question. The answer should have been easy.
And yet.
And yet.
Wheeljack did not know.
He had opened his mouth to reply, then froze as he made this realisation. The Wrecker had not transformed once during the...excursion and nothing had specifically drawn his attention his alt-mode. He'd made a comment to Psi confirming that he was a grounder but that was it.
Would a Cybertronian simulation known what an earth based mode was like, could it have rendered him with one? The Wrecker hadn't known to look. Would another alt-mode have felt any different? It should have, he knew, if the kibble was distributed in an alternative configuration. But whether he felt it or not would have depended on how accurate the simulation was.
And given it had apparently taken about a week to render the journey across Iacon…well the Wrecker doubted that the simulation would have handled such a minor detail such as shifted kibble weight.
"I don't," the answer escaped Wheeljack reluctantly. "Know what my alt-mode was." He grimaced but continued, "I assume I had my earth alt but I can't confirm that. Didn't use it once and there wasn't a moment where I consciously checked on what I had."
As for the other thing Prime was asking for…the answer was depressingly the same. "When I arrived on Cybertron or dreamt that I'd arrived on Cybertron, first thing that happened to me was colliding with a building. Then tromping around the dusty insides of said building. If I carried a bit of earth with me, it would have been mixed with home dirt immediately."
"But," he added. "Last thing I remember, before waking up, I'd been coated in ash and slime in places I didn't even know I had. Thought it was probably going to take years before I scrubbed every bit of it out from under my plating. And yet, I can't feel a trace of it now."
The slime really hadn't been the kind of thing one cleaned easily, it was the kind of thing you'd be picking bits out of your plating for weeks on end before you got all of it out. Combined with the ash, it had hardened into a gross kind of gunk that would require more than water to remove. Of all things, Wheeljack could say he honestly never thought he'd be grateful to the goop Bolt had oozed everywhere. Or that it would be used to solve an existential crisis.
One point in favour of the simulation idea.
Though, Bolt itself…
"Speaking of, know of any massive segmented Cybertronian creatures that have clustered optics and tendrils around their mouths? Had thick plates that cover each segment and oozed goop everywhere. Kind of like an earth slug. Had an encounter with such a beast and I don't know if it's a real creature or not."
Almost as soon as he asked the question, Wheeljack realised it was an irrelevant one. If Prime didn't know what Bolt was, it proved nothing, only that Prime did not know the organism. It could still exist, an unknown species that few had discovered or encountered somewhere. If the Bot leader did know of the creatures, then well, someone had gone through the effort to program one into the simulation.
Or the Wrecker had actually run into one and had a hell of a shower afterwards at some point, that he had no recollection of.
"-How did you know it was Iacon-"
This was more solid ground than Prime's previous questions. It was also easier to talk about, discussing the events of his journey, rather than the painful possibility of a neural breach. "It might have been a smoking ruin of a city now," Wheeljack snorted, "But I'd recognise Autobot Central when I see it. Plus the people I spoke to thought it was Iacon. Dug up a map in the undergrid that placed it as Iacon." He shrugged as if to say, what more do you want? The place was Iacon. "The last thing Deuce said to me before vanishing was that I needed to get to the Iaconian Academy of Science and Technology."
"I met a few people. Psi was first, found me pretty soon after I got dumped there. Blind aerial, bit odd but friendly. Said he was associated with the Academy, that it was still active, a whole community of surviving Autobots and scientists hidden away in the lower levels. That there was a wormhole specialist there that might be able to get me back here." Wheeljack pressed his lip plates together and debated sharing what the Con had told him. The bit about Psi being a double-agent and her small group working against an enemy trapped away in a sim.
She had trusted him, by letting him know Psi was a double agent. And the more people who knew that, the more danger the mech was in. Perhaps he would hold onto that tidbit for now, though he would share about the neuroscientist, Prime needed to know about the enemy. The whole thing was confusing as is.
"That sounded like my best bet getting out off Cybertron," Wheeljack continued. "So I went with him, trying to get to the Academy. But we got separated when a coolant tube spilled and washed Psi somewhere down in the tunnels in the undergrid. Jumped after him but didn't find him. Got topside again and stumbled upon a crew of scavengers. Bargained with their captain, Tailspin, to repair their ship for a lift to the Academy. He offered to drop me off wherever I wanted to go but, well. Deuce said I needed to get to the Academy to prevent something terrible to happening to some Autobots."
The Wrecker paused then shook his head. "Not sure which ones, just said my Autobot friends, which sounds awfully broad to me." The mech could have meant it in the sense of Autobots in general, he could have been referring to a specific subset of people that Wheeljack was friends with. Ultimately, it did not matter what Deuce had been talking about. For Wheeljack, Autobots had been danger and so he went, it was a simple as that. "In any case, I wasn't about to leave with that hanging over my head. Tailspin agreed to drop me off and decided to come with. Think he was hoping to scavenge something interesting in the Academy."
They'd been standing still for too long, Wheeljack decided restlessly. A cool breeze drifted. Far away, an unknown bird called out. They weren't too far off from where he parked the Jackhammer, there wasn't much further to go. So he swung round and got moving again.
"So with Tailspin's help, made a second attempt to get to the Academy," Wheeljack called out over his shoulder. He pushed a pine branch out of his way, uncaring if it sprang back into Prime. "Ran into this great big creature, the one that oozed slime everywhere. Burrowed through the tunnels and dragged me down what felt like a few thousand levels towards Cybertron's core. Thought it had set us hopelessly off course but well, actually, I think it might have got us to the basement of the Academy. We were in a big room, reminded me of a museum. Lots of displays of Cybertronian animals and it was a pretty big collection. Not just creatures like roto-rats and turbo-foxes, there were exotic ones like a flock of lilleth and a nitro-tiger."
"Then there was the equinoid."
The Wrecker grimaced. "Tailspin…Tailspin didn't take kindly to what they'd done to the equanoid. He was a slick talker, spoke a lot but I wasn't sure how much to believe. He was very…" Wheeljack paused and searched for the right words. "Fancy and theatrical. Had a thing for decoration, very eye-catching. When I met him, he boasted that he was a Knight of Cybertron and said he once rode an equinoid. Thought he was joking at the time. Anyway, the equinoid reminded me of him, they had the same…aesthetics, the decoration looked similar. And Tailspin certainly seemed to recognise it, said it wasn't his but he knew who it belonged to. Was upset that it had ended up mounted in a display case."
"I don't know what he did," the Wrecker scowled. There were just too many things that he didn't know. Too many gaps, frustrating gaps in his knowledge. "I was looking in the last display and I saw Psi, that Decepticon that just ran off plus one another, think he was a medic. The three of them were gathered in a room, talking but I don't know what it was about. "
Not to mention there was that whole tangle of weirdness with Psi and the light show.
"Anyway, Tailspin did something, I heard it but then things went black."
Black? No, not at first, that wasn't quite right. Everything had gone silver and fractured on him before switching off to black. A sign of the simulation breaking down? Wheeljack wondered. Maybe. And if it was, well, how the frag had Tailspin managed to damage it?
"That was the last thing that I remember before I was prodded awake a few minutes ago by a Decepticon with a stick."