We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
Arranging to see Knock Out by appointment was a clear indication that the visit was entirely separate from Decepticon business. Megatron had cancelled a scheduled visit four times already over the last nine orns as planetwide 'skirmishes' with the Autobot forces escalated unexpectedly, and both the doctor and Decepticon leader were kept busy.
When things had quietened again, the opportunity to get a matter that had been hovering low but consistently on his priority list for almost a full solar cycle was not to be passed up. Megatron had left the other subject of the matter to wait in the corridor outside the Medbay.
"I trust that you're not occupied, Doctor," the large mech intoned as the doors slid shut behind him.
"For you, sir? Always." Especially, Knock Out thought, since Megatron had made an actual appointment. Knock Out did so love to encourage the senior officers to make appointments rather than waltz in whenever was convenient for them (which was inevitably convenient for no one else, including himself).
Knock Out's unobtrusive surface scans weren't reading anything dire at all, except for popping up the reminder that Megatron was overdue for his annual exam. Megatron was meticulous about having structural damage seen to, especially since it had been so lively of late. It was one of the things that Knock Out had to admit he admired about the Decepticon leader: he not only wasn't afraid to get his servos dirty, but also he was willing to deploy himself as often as he did any other top-tier frontliner. As a result, Megatron never knew when he would be required to go into battle, and as much as Knock Out had to pester him for maintenance, Megatron did have any significant battle damage seen to promptly.
Which probably meant that whatever was wrong was likely something that Knock Out wasn't going to like having to fix.
Knock Out kept all of this off his faceplates, however. "What can I do for you, my lord? Something tells me that you're not here for your vornly maintenance."
Megatron's faceplates remained schooled, as cool and severe as ever. There was a vague tremor at the very edge of his field, present solely because it was entirely out of his control. Otherwise, the Decepticon Commander was still and heavily serious.
"I wish to establish a cassette link with Fairwinds, and as I am not a Carrier by design, I require your assistance." Megatron stepped deeper into the medic's domain, coming to stand just close enough to Knock Out to be looming, but not so close as to convey a threat.
"Fairwinds is waiting outside," the larger mech went on, helm angling with scrutiny upon the medic. As if daring him to challenge the notion. "For guidance in her part of the process."
Of all the things that Knock Out might have expected Megatron to say...that was not one of them.
"A cassette link? That is--" utterly surprising? "--a very serious decision, sir...as I'm quite sure you know, of course." Knock Out found himself scrambling through his memory banks for anything he'd ever absorbed on the process. It had certainly never come up since joining the Decepticons. Every carrier or cassette-linked mecha he'd treated had come to him with the links already in place.
Knock Out felt no need to hide this from Megatron. Better, in his mind, to admit his failings than to be held to standards he couldn't match. "I am far from an expert in cassette link technology, but with a bit of research I believe I can handle the process." Knock Out's memory query came back with several options. "I am assuming that you are thinking of a coding and processor link, my lord?" Not Knock Out's favorite area of cybermedicine, but it was like enough to gestalt coding that he felt he could make nuts and bolts of it.
Knock Out was not an honest mech, and certainly knew when selective truth and swathes of ambiguity were to be favoured. He was a survivalist, however, and knew better than to feign confidence with his Lord for assurance's sake. That attitude would be suitable for Starscream, certainly, but Megatron did not need to be constantly appeased to keep still.
"Nothing more complex than that," Megatron affirmed. "And I'm certain you are fit for the task."
A single-glyph comm. signal summoned the red cassette, and she alighted onto the edge of the nearest examination berth before the Medbay doors had finished opening. Fairwinds gave Knock Out a respectful nod, helm crests flicking, before looking to Megatron. The edges of her field were vibrating with barely concealed excitement. A minute narrowing of the large mech's optics had her reel it in with a smile, twisting her beak into the collar-like vents around her neck.
Megatron returned his attention to the waiting medic. "Fairwinds has earned this priviledge, and I believe she understands the ramifications of her decision. I am, however, content for you to make your own assessment, Doctor, before you procede."
Privilege, was it? Knock Out couldn't--quite--think of it that way, but he supposed that to a cassette it might tweak as such. A particularly dippy and YOUNG cassette at that.
Knock Out was not a psychologist. He was not particularly empathetic, nor did he particularly care to be. He did, however, want to head off potential problems at the pass, if only because it made less work for him down the road. And making a nigh-permanent processor link with a youngling was something that one or both of the mecha in front of him might regret one day.
"Fairwinds," Knock Out said, nodding to the avian. "If you would accompany me into the other room for a few kliks? I just want to run a diagnostic on your carrier systems. We'll be right back, Lord Megatron."
Knock Out stepped toward one of the private exam rooms, gesturing to it with one outstretched hand. If there was one bit of psychology Knock Out understood, it was the psychology of power. Megatron, Knock Out knew, was a master of the same. Knock Out didn't believe that this new desire was a matter of intimidation, but he also knew that one could give very different answers when one's...crush? cohort?...were present than when they were not.
More from a keen desire to get on with the linking procedure than obedience, Fairwinds made the short flight into the indicated exam room and settled with a hop and plate-flutter on the edge of the berth. The door slid shut behind Knock Out, though not before the cassette caught sight of Megatron pacing to the far end of the medbay with a familiar speaking-on-a-comm. expression of concentration.
She looked back to the medic's overly handsome face, and only then realized that she had been bouncing on her hydraulics with a speed that constituted a vibration. Falling still, Fairwinds exposed the diagnostic port on the back of her helm by fanning open her trailing crest-plates.
"'m'ready!" she trilled, sounding overly pleased by this.
Knock Out did not have a terrible lot of experience with younglings. However, neither was he under the mistaken impression that Fairwinds was actually QUITE as young and/or innocent as she often pretended to be. He did, after all, know her specs and her specialized mods. And had interacted with her for more than five kliks.
"So you are," he said, plugging the medberth connection into the offered port. The berth promptly returned the preliminary scans of her frame at about the same time, indicating that she was functioning well within frame specs. That was one thing that Knock Out could appreciate about Fairwinds: when she was hurt, she made sure that everyone--including him--knew.
Knock Out started the coding diagnostic and while they waited said, "Now, Fairwinds, could you tell me why you want to be linked to Lord Megatron?"
Scuttling to the end of the berth closest to the screen, Fairwinds stared at the monitor screen for it to begin scrolling data until, a few nano-kliks later, she realized that the medic was keeping the readings to himself. Likely so she wouldn't be distracted.
Hopping about to face Knock Out, Fairwinds put on her very best smile. "Because he's Lord Megatron an' he's gonna let me."
Clearly, despite how much she delighted in this answer, it wasn't cutting it for the mech. Fairwinds plopped her undercarriage down, pedes tucked primly away, to indicate that she was taking this seriously. Really. As seriously as she could. Honest, guv.
"Me an' my original Carrier, Switchback, joined up when the Towers in Iacon went down. Not 'cause of that, but, y'know, about the same time. Lord Megatron looked out for me when Switchback got... Um. Yeah." The cassette shook off the face she'd pulled as quickly as it had darkened her avian features. "An' he gave me these specialised data extraction mods, right, so that I'd be more valuable as a recon spy. Cassette link would give me faster transfers, optimise his systems when I'm docked and make me a super extension of his, like... himness..."
One optic squinting at the trail-off, Fairwinds fluffed her plates and waited.
"I see." Well, nothing surprising there. She might as well have shrugged and said, "He's SHINY!"
Which Knock Out could not disagree with. Megatron was the most powerful mech that any mecha could possibly bind themselves to. His was the engine that drove the entire Decepticon army, after all. Knock Out wasn't worried that Fairwinds wasn't making a good decision. He was more worried that she and Megatron would have a falling-out in one or ten or a thousand vorn and he would have to deal with the uttrly unenviable task of attempting to untangle their coding and processors.
"I know that you have experience with a carrier-cassette link, Fairwinds, but I must remind you of how serious a decision this is. Coding is not my specialty, and though I can establish the link, breaking it once your and Megatron's systems have assimilated it and synced will be quite difficult." Knock Out looked at her seriously. "Are you willing to be linked to him forever? No matter what?"
Fairwinds had stiffened at the suggestion of this being a decision that might be regretted, optics narrowing with a flash of heat that briefly transformed her peculiar features into something sharp; something closer to the side of the cassette that had observed interrogations and blunt-force executions by the Decepticon Commander's hand, and eaten out the still-warm processors afterwards.
"Of course. He'll be my Master until I'm deactivated. That's how it's meant to be."
A beat, and then Fairwinds went back to twiddling her toes. She smiled with beaming reassurance. "And he likes me like I am now, and I'm gonna stay like I am now, so he'll like me then because then I'll still be like me now." A genius calculation in her personal, pleased opinion. "I'm not gonna get spark-old and surly and boring. I'll keep on being fun and sneaky and infectiously delightful."
Normally, he would take Fairwinds' assurances as the confidence of a young mecha in the immortality of her own personality. But something in the glyphs she used made him think that this was something else. "You...are so sure, are you? Mecha change as they get older, learn, grow--" The coding scan completed, the analysis coming up on Knock Out's internal hub with a slew...of...flags....
Knock Out's optics narrowed further...then simply shuttered with a sigh. "Fairwinds. What have you done?"
<<I'm assuming that she has either done it already or has made some preparatory/temporary changes that make it abundantly clear what she's intending. If not, and he shouldn't see anything suspicious, just let me know and I'll edit. >>
"Nothing." The response was so automatic and immediate that it carried absolutely no secondary glyphs of meaning. Her steady field and sharp optics were the picture of innocence.
A beat, and then the cassette flicked her crests and rocked up onto her pedes. She reached the edge of the berth at about the same time as Knock Out found it in himself to look at her again. "Not asking you to do the permanent coding," she stated, pitched to be reassuring. Sort of.
Fairwinds knew that convincing a medic like Knock Out to perform the necessary procedure to throttle her processor irreversibly would take far longer than the duration of an appointment. It was an intensely personal decision, and the arguable benefits of the reprogramming were particularly so.
The small cassette straightened at the edge of the berth, talons curving into the worn mesh-padding. "I did the coding that I could do on my own a vorn ago. And Lord Megatron said that it's my right to choose to do it if it's what I want."
There'd been a bit more to his opinion on the matter, but Fairwinds elected not to repeat that now, just as she'd elected not to be perturbed by it then.
Knock Out suspected exactly what Fairwinds wasn't saying: that Megatron had been perhaps a bit less blase about Fairwinds throttling her processor than the cassette was letting on. But it was an elective procedure, and (at this point) reversible, so....
Knock Out sent Lord Megatron a quick ping asking for confirmation that Fairwinds' throttling was not something he wished to have reversed. Not that Knock Out suspected Fairwinds was lying, but the vague and spotty medical ethics he possessed required at least confirmation that Megatron knew what was going on.
Knock Out shook his head ruefully. "Please promise me that you will NOT go rooting about in your own coding anymore without running it past me first?" He turned his attention to her coding, dismissing the errors due to her self-imposed throttling and checking the rest. "Luckily, you seem to have not done yourself permanent damage, but that is NOT a given, Fairwinds. Hacking is NOT the same as med-tech, and what looks fine at first can cause serious problems down the line." He shook a servo at her and then ran it over her tiny, air-for-processors helm for emphasis.
He elected not to tell her that she had already probably skewed herself out of spec far enough that his own limited coding knowledge might be inadequate if she ran into serious problems with her personality matrix. He added "full backup of personality matrix" as a to-do in her medfile.
Fairwinds cocked her head at a ninety degree angle as the medic's elegantly crafted hand slid off her crest plates, trilling a contented and agreeing note. "'Kay. I won't touch my code like it's someone else's. Hacking not Medteck. Gottit." She made a note of it and pinged it to him to see that she'd written it down and everything. Perfect patient. She wanted an energon gummy at the end of her medic appointment, after all.
On a different wavelength, Megatron transmitted a confirming glyph to the inquiry, as well as approval that he had taken to do so.::Freedom is the right of all mecha - including the freedom to be... It will be some time before she is able to make it permanent, however, and with your consultation, Doctor.::