Reborn as a Bitlet?
Part 4, yippie! I should really be doing more school work but the brain worm is devouring me.
Part 3
Summary: There's a horrible smell and feeling and it's all very cold and reminiscent. Hopefully your start as prophetic baby begins here.
Word count: 3000
Gore warning on this one, if you still want to read the story I'll have a red line before and after the described sections. (---------) If you are disturbed by bugs, injury, or decay I would recommend skipping until you see the second red line. If anyone wants me to upload a version without gore and still gives some insight on what happened I'm definitely able to do that as well.
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Falling into recharge to the slight sway in Rodimus’ walk you’re out cold before he makes it to his desk, and a foul smell hits your nose.
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The smell doesn’t start out foul. It smells like humid mould, like a decaying house.
Then something falls to the ground and you hear the thud. The cracking. The crying. And then it all stops and the smell begins. There’s a pin in your ribs and a bubbling iron taste in your throat. Your fingers feel cold. You can’t move.
You open your eyes and see scratch marks in the gray metal beneath you. There’s someone across from you. They have bones sticking out of their arms and torso. They look like a green and purple mass of flesh and ripped clothes. Something is eating their tongue.
Your hands are bound and you feel electricity rip through you and burn your insides. It happens again and the pain in your leg that feels like fire suddenly stops. There’s gnats that have found a home and have begun to eat under the skin that’s slipped off from the injuries. Then you fall and hear everything crunch once you reach the bottom.
You breathe in. The overpowering smell of putrefaction has started to accumulate. You wiggle your toes and fingers. Both are bound. When you open your eyes you see two bodies. One that looks like a green pincushion and the skin of the other one that hasn’t peeled off has turned cherry red with purple marbled limbs. You are so cold.
You are on your back and your chest is being opened. You feel something buzzing on your bones within your sternum as something warm splatters on your chest. Then you fall. And crunch.
Then you wake up. There’s three people laying across and on top of each other. There’s something on your tongue and under your skin and you are so, so cold. Then you fall. And crunch.
Then you wake up. Your fingers and toes and face are numb. Then you fall. And crunch.
Then you wake up. There’s five people. You don’t want to breathe. You don’t know if you can. It’s horrible. It’s become a fishy, and strong stinky cheese smell with undertones of ammonia and sweat. You’re touching something clammy, cold and human. Then you fall. And crunch.
This time you recognize your hands. You have pins in your chest, and as electricity shoots through you it reverberates in the metal sticking out. And you feel the electricity in the metal too.
You feel no drop this time. But the burns, the cold and the smell are all there, and are all you.
All these hands and feet and fears and tears are all yours. And it’s so very cold.
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There’s knocking on metal.
When you wake up, the smell pain and deliberating cold is gone. You’re inside something that is a very bright shade of red that covers half your vision when you look up. It’s probably the bassinet you saw Rodimus bring in. It’s surprisingly soft. Squirming on your back, you feel a layer or two of ruffles.
It’s not very warm. But it is comfortable at least. A blanket would do wonders.
Rising to sit you look around the room. It’s quite artistic. There’s a model ship collection on two shelf’s, a wall sculpture, and some mosaic wall art. The room isn’t vibrant by any means, but it is quite homey. Below the shelf of ships is a skinny orange mech sitting at a comically square computer.
This must be Rung’s office. Weren’t you with Rodimus?
There’s knocking again, you look over to the door to see it closed. Rung seems pretty distracted by whatever’s on his computer. How unlike him.
There’s knocking again before someone on the other side quietly groans, “Please Rung? I can’t believe I’m saying this but let me in!”
Okay, maybe not distracted, but ignoring. Still very unlike them.
Rung sighs before walking to the door and quietly stepping outside. When the doors open you see a gray and white mech with an orange mask, as well as a larger orange and yellow mech standing off to the side. You don’t see either of them long enough to identify who they are. While they’re talking you take this time to wriggle your way out of the bassinet as it will likely be the only time you have for yourself for a while and you’d like to explore with some autonomy. You appear to have been set on one of the benches that cling to the wall, and beside the bassinet is a bottle with energon, a maraca toy, and some multicoloured blocks.
The maraca doesn’t bring much entertainment after shaking it, so you decide to start stacking the blocks. On each side of the block there is a different symbol, there are some duplicates but most differ from one another. They look similar to the symbols you saw on Aquaheaps datapad, so you assume that means these are akin to letters for the alphabet.
You start building a pyramid with the blocks beside the bassinet.
You hear the door swoosh open behind you and Rung walks back into the room, “I’m telling you, they need their sleep. You can see them when they wake up.”
The gray and orange masked mech who you can now identify as Rewind peeks into the room. “They’re awake.”
Rung’s helm swivels to your bassinet, then beside it to where you’re building with blocks, and just sighs. “Well… I guess you could come in. But try not to stress them out, I’m sure this is all very confusing for them.
Despite this warning, Rewind speed walks in and slides right next to you. The yellow-orange mech, who you identify as Chromedome, walks in behind a lot slower. Rewind looks at you, and for a moment, you notice a very small red flash from his visor where his optics would be. Is he filing this?
“Hi there! Did you like your blocks?”
You’re a little embarrassed at this attention. So you knock your tower over.
“Uh oh! Did you want help rebuilding it?”
Instead of starting another tower, you point to the symbols on each block. However instead of seeming interested in learning, this action apparently confuses Rewind as he turns to Chromedome.
“Do they know what glyphs are? Do we know how much they understand what I’m saying? They haven’t developed the ability to form or understand sentences, have they?”
Both Chromedome and Rung look at each other for a moment before Chromedome speaks up.
“The medics believe that they actually have a pretty good understanding of the world and spoken language, but no one has taught them to talk yet.”
Interesting conclusion. It’s workable. You begin stacking blocks again making sure that the symbols face outwards.
“But they’re so young? Do they really have that good of an understanding?”
This time it’s Rung that speaks up, “We don’t know for sure how old they are, and traumatic experiences will definitely force one to grow up to match the environment. Given the circumstances they were found in, I doubt they’ve been well taken care of.”
Rewind hums before placing a neon orange block on your tower.
“They look like a medic. Will they be spending the majority of their time in the med bay?”
Rung walks over to a cabinet and fishes out a box that opens to a surprising amount of varying baby toys. “Actually, according to Ratchet, they have quite a lot of variety in that little frame. The medics aren’t quite sure what box they fit in.”
“I haven’t heard of that before. Do you know who’ll take care of them then?”
“Until we can figure that out, it’s me. Rodimus freaked out when they started crying in recharge."
So that's why you're here.
"However I believe that the best course of action wouldn’t be a traditional raising by function. It's probably going to be a rotation between all of us until they are able to choose a path.”
“How very interesting. Being formed with a choice… how very un-cybertronian. Reminds me of some organic societies I've met.”
Unfortunate. It’s always your biology giving you away, there’s no possible way to cover or explain these things. However you can always change the topic at hand. Thinking back to when Drift and Chromedome first found you, Chromedome asked to carry you but never got his opportunity.
You stop playing with blocks and instead open and close your servos in a grabby motion towards Chromedome. Stop talking about biology and look at how cute the baby is.
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The four of you sit on the ground and play easy games that Rung brought and build more towers. They seemed to be quite impressed at your penchant for colour coordination and made a big show of you giving your blocks to Rung when he didn’t win any in a game. However in all honesty, you’re getting a little bored of placing a block on top of another while three mechs applaud and coo at you. You don’t know why Rung had so many baby-appropriate games or who made all of the baby supplies but you suppose that most of them can be easily made considering the talent on this ship. It may be universal, but it’s unnerving how similar these cybertronian baby toys look compared to regular human ones. They appear to be never ending as well. Your apparent love for blocks and shapes appears to have been noticed as Rung brings out a bucket with different shapes cut into the lid. There’s a square, triangle, arch, circle, semi circle, and thin rectangle that have been cleanly cut out. Rung hands you a cube, would it be rude to be purposefully annoying? You have mechs to meet, ship to see, and important things to do!
“Where does this one go?”
You put it in the square hole. Chromedome gives you a rectangle block.
“This one’s a bit tricky, try it out.”
You put it in the square hole. Rewind grabs a thin rectangle cube.
“You’re so smart bitty! Try this one.”
You put it in the square hole. Rung takes the lid off and searches for the shape to give back to Rewind, “you were close bitty, but this one is a smaller rectangle, so it goes in the small rectangle hole!”
To show you, he places the block right above the hole, then hands it back to you. You put it in the square hole. Rung chuckles before showing you the cylinder, “to be fair, we’ve only given you squares, you were bound to mess that one up. Try this one, see the shape?” Rung circles the bottom of the cylinder to signify the circle goes in the circle hole before handing it to you. “Where do you think this best fits?”
You put it in the square hole.
Rung and Chromedome look at each other while Rewind just laughs, “No bitty! Not everything goes in the square hole!” He takes the lid off and digs through the shapes. “See? This one has a circle, so it goes with the circle!” Instead of handing the block to you, he puts the cylinder in the circle hole. Chromedome hands you the triangle.
You put it in the square hole.
Huffing, Chromedome rests his helm in one of his servos, “I can’t tell if you’re genuinely having trouble matching or if you're doing this for fun.”
Rung hums before rummaging for the semi circle block. “Their mix up for shapes is a stark difference from anything else we’ve seen them show so far.” He finds the semi-circle and hands it to you.
You put it in the square hole.
“You might be right, Chromedome. This may be behavioural instead of a true failure of recognition. Rewind, could you put the pattern and shape recognition test as inconclusive? I think they may be overstimulated.”
This was a test? You failed a test? You are supposed to be acting like a genius baby but fail the first test because you wanted to do something else?
“Sure, but it’s weird. They seem to love all the other games.”
How many of those games were tests?
Chromedome reaches into his subspace and grabs a data pad and pen, “maybe something more expressive would work better. We have been doing tests for a while.”
Oh my God they were testing you the whole time. But on what? Trauma recognition? Behaviour? Pattern recognition is one of them apparently.
Placing a familiar blank datapad in front of you, Chromedome gives you a pen. “Drift said you were quite absorbed in drawing. Could you draw something for us? Maybe about you?”
Ah. You see what he’s getting at. A different kind of test. One that cares more about the picture than how you drew it. You suppose you failed your other test so you should probably make up for it with this one. You could start your claim as a prophetic baby right now by drawing Overlord trapped on the ship. There’s a mech right here that might know what you’re trying to draw.
You split the page in two with a squiggly line. You can’t directly remember what the lost light looks like from an outside view, but you get the bulk of it correct to look like a ship. You draw a prominent box at the bottom of the ship and point an arrow to it. You look up at Chromedome.
“There’s a cube under a ship?”
Close enough. You split the other half of the page again into upper and lower boxes bringing the arrow to the top box. You begin to draw a very boxy and angry mech that hopefully encompasses Overload in a way since you don’t have any colours.
Actually, maybe you do have colours. You dig through the shape bucket and grab the first blue thing you see.
It’s a square. You point at the square then point at the pen.
“The pen is a cylinder, and that’s a cube.”
You dig through the bucket for more blue blocks and lay them all out, and then point to your pen again.
“… Did you want some blue?”
You nod and begin to tap the datapad as Chromedome takes the pen, and clicks the top button twice and gives it back to you. You tap on the datapad and it leaves behind a blue dot. Apparently it's blue now. You colour in the crude picture of Overlord and in the box below you draw 3 stick figures, meant to represent the initial three mechs on board who know about his presence. You give Brainstorm a square on his head and have no other idea how to represent him. You draw a sword that looks more like a long stick (hopefully later to be deduced as Drift), then click the pen and then tap the data pad to cycle through the colours until you find orange and outline the other stick figure. Once you’ve outlined the stick figure you point at Chromedome.
“You want me to draw?”
No. That’s not what you want. You point to the drawing of a stick figure of Chromedome, then point specifically to his orange armour.
Cutting the silence, Rewind speaks to Chromedome, “I think that’s you. But who are the other mechs with you? Is that you saving them? But it was only you and Drift.”
Rung picks up the datapad and places his helm in his other servo in thought. “Well, there’s an angry mech, two unidentified bot’s, and the main image. I can’t quite tell what it is, but it seems like something underneath or in a ship?” Rung places the datapad down and looks at you, “Did this happen while you were on the other ship or before?”
Perfect question! You can easily get to the prophetic vision with this type of prodding! You shake your helm side to side to say no.
“It didn’t happen on the ship?”
You shake your helm side to side.
“So it happened before you got on the other ship?”
You shake your helm side to side. You’re actually getting somewhere! You may not be able to do much other than plant seeds of doubt, but hopefully Chromedome gets a little unnerved by this!
“So it didn’t happen? Are you afraid of this happening?”
Wrong direction. You shake your helm side to side. A little stronger this time.
Rewind coos at you, “It’s okay bitty, there may be a scary mech or two on this ship, but anyone who you meet is going to adore you. You have nothing to worry about.”
Backup, backup, backup. You were tricked into a therapy session.
“Well Rewind, I think that can be a positive for real time cognitive processing and active pattern recall. We learned a lot about bitty today, but I think this might be a one-on-one session now. Any other tests can be put on hold, we don’t want to stress them out.”
Without words, Chromedome picks up the datapad, places it in his subspace and stands up, “I believe we may have overstayed a bit. Let’s bother the bitty another day Rewind.” Once he’s fully up, he begins making his way to the door.
A bit eagerly if you were to describe it. Maybe he understood parts of your image.
Rewind huffs before patting your head and getting up himself, “I’ll get you some candy next time okay?” Before his servo leaves, you grab it, pat the back of it and look at Chromedome once more. Based off conversation, you’re pretty sure that he and Drift have been talking about you and your antics, so you hope he knows what this means.
“Lets leave Rewind.”
Maybe he gets it. You won’t know until it does, or does not happen.
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Thank you for reading! Once again I deeply adore everyone showing this little series love, I wasn't imagining it getting past 50 notes, but you're all so wonderful!
Part 5
