#tablecont

Peeling off the back of the table-

[Error! Surroundings need to be confirmed]

-and jerking the legs out of the bindings-

[Error! Surroundings need to be confirmed]

-The machine starts to scream in protest. It pulls an arm forward. Wires snap, some fall away and some stay plugged in after their severance. The blade flattens against the guard as it jams the edged point somewhere into the center of its mass to silence it-

[Error! Surroundings need to be confirmed]

-Coldfront pulls with all its might to be unplugged while revulsion floods every emotional processor and input. It would rather be destroyed than to be here again, to be put through the erasure and the modifications again. Its bindings are pulled out or broken, the supportive tension being lost, almost sending it to the floor had its knees not defensively locked to keep it upright.

The pins bite into the joint. The sensation traveling through the twisted wires all the way to the support struts in its back which triggered a feeling like all of the heating coils in its body went off at once. It didn't scream. It couldn't because it already moved, that noise was enough, and Supercell would be back at the commotion and it needed some sort of element of surprise. It forces the joints to unlock so it can maneuver.

It turns its whole body to face the door -

It faces a wall instead.

[Error! Surroundings need to be confirmed]

- and it finally listens to that annoying message when it sees that the door is different, the lab is different... and Venus is sleeping at the computer. Defense protocols drop back immediately as it confirms where it actually is and runs its memory diagnostic again. Fragmentation in earlier files was to be expected but these last few weeks featured no break up or corruption. Supercell had not caught onto it yet... or... tentatively it could consider...

It couldn't consider anything yet, not until he was gone.

Fear was stubborn to let go of its hold on its systems and so comfortable there. A niche made for it, growing inside, thriving on a feast of its archived emotions. Supercell let Coldfront have fear. He was the only one who knew it could be afraid and he was the only one who could make it move despite it. Bravery and courage kept preserved and if that did not work then the lack of control of its movements would. One single directive above all - Keep moving forward. However, the conflicting and broken code, the memory core itself as mutilated as the rest of it, meant those fail safes eventually eroded. They broke down and the rest of the pieces fell out. A wave of disgust rolls through it like a roaming blackout before it settles back in the fog of its processes.

It would thank Supercell for the shielding around its spark to keep it hidden if only because that meant its emotional responses were harder to read. The people helping it didn't have to see that every time it woke up in the lab its anxiety would spike. That while it held itself so still and docile under every investigative touch and poke of their tools it was only that sheer will that kept it from trembling.

When was the last time a touch laid on its frame had been anything but pain? Countless touches, seemingly all of them had been with pain. Its memory lost track of what it was like without. Instead of keeping records of suffering it threw the data out because if it had kept a record, its processor would have no space for anything else.

But it was collecting new data. It may only have moments it can count on its hands that were of genuine mercy and relief but that was just the start and it had been so welcome. Sidesplit and Venus had been so kind to it without any reason to. Calling out was not even a plea for mercy but rather one desperate attempt in a thousand failed attempts to deny Supercell a victory.

It had just wanted to deny him what he wanted and a mission so far away from the usual territory was perfect for staging a crash. It had left a witness, left some perfect bait to see what it was taking. Nebulean coins, some philosophy and historical books, and a Matrix. Something so carefully crafted to pass knowledge from one to the other and he would have it placed on a shelf, far away from anyone using it. He would maybe even wipe its memory core with something more suiting to his tastes. A Matrix of Supercell. A tremor of disgust rolls through it again, stronger this time, for it knew that its handiwork would be imprinted on crystalline circuits to preserve it for eons. He would gloat about its construction, it knew this and depised it.

All of it would be on there. It, the heirs, and the.............

It couldn't let him..............

let him............... ?

The thoughts veer away from it before they can even be realized. With Sidesplit cutting some of the restrictions in its emotional processors out it could at least feel anger without fear of being forced into shut down. It surged forward and made its frame tense with a famailiar but corrupted combat protocol.

Supercell treasured knowledge above all else, hoarding it away from the people he destroyed. Whatever was always lingering at the edges of its understanding was denied. The artifacts he hade Coldfront fetch, things from his homeworld that he destroyed... Supercell loved the power of knowing things other people didn't. Nothing would infuriate him more than not having it.

Now it didn't have any of his trophies.

It had bared its wounds to the Dirge crew and they responded with mercy. Peace was a feeling it hardly felt and it wasn't sure if that was Supercell's design or the predicament it was in. With the situation steadily changing, perhaps, becoming more secure... it didn't know what to feel. The moment's ancient anger dropped away like a curtain, or a shield maybe? It could feel that hope was lingering in the recesses of its processor it had been sequestered to. It had bared its wounds and... it stabbed the considerate rig that Sidesplit had made for it. One of the display screens hangs loosely by some cables. Parts of it sparking from the wound it was given. Guilt activates in one of its emotional processors. Creeping through its memory looking for a target to amplify its potency. Lashing out at the speaker to trap her against the very wall it had been facing when it woke- taking her city in its unstoppable march- taking other cities. Other people. Other worlds.

It focused on Venus asleep at the table. With slow, painful steps it goes to her side and it does not wake her. She fell asleep with a pillow of notes. Notes that kept the score of what had been taken from it, notes on how to get it back. It sets a hand on Venus gently just to rest it there, mindful of the weight of its arm.

The speaker had... breached something when she had dug through all of the shielding and touched the reserve of anger. Within its own archives there was something desperately trying to understand and make a connection to the action with knowledge. It was a mangled collection of data but its systems kept trying to access it with no success. What did she remind itself of so much that it was driving itself mad?

[Error!]

[Error!]

The files won't get uncorrupted by constantly recalling them but it's loop continues.

[Error!]

[Error!]

[Error!]

One failure after the other but the desire to know was powerful. What had she touched? If she had come back to the lab perhaps it could have asked her. It had no intention of doing so, how could it? The first time it had seen her it had tried to to stop. Put as much dead weight in its legs as it could to give her time to get out of the way but she didn't. Her people fought and they paid like other worlds had.

[Error!]

Terror on her face because that is all it was now. There was a time people smiled [Error!] when they saw it. [Error!] There was a time it was different. Maybe. It felt like a dream to want something that wasn't tied to him. That place [Error!] Person? Home? Whatever it was. It didn't know what the Tower was. Something important but out of reach. The data scrubbed over and over again to leave nothing but still, persistently, it remembered that it was different.

Did she remind it of that time? Were they similar? Was the Tower its home in the same way as her?

Was she even still there?

[Error!]

[Error!]

[Error!]

[Error!]

[Error!]

Its own sequence of crashes mesh into a memory of Volt-tier's own cries of the word. Younger, smaller, still in a rudimentary form because- [Error!] He was not yet the Count and in this memory he was vulnerable and dear. His arm torn open from the heat of lightning. Leaving a trail of energon where he's stumbling as he goes from one drone to the next looking for someone to answer his cries for help. They have no programming to respond to that and neither does it. Still, compelled by something it doesn't understand, it gently cradles his face with its elongated hand and looks over his destroyed one with the other. Parts of its processor try to connect it to something, it's something familiar.

The stroking of Volt-tier's cheek with its fingers to calm him.....

was........

was.............. ?

[Error!]

Fragments of corrupted imagery keep being recalled. They were hard to parse, most of them were a mess of visual snow and black holes burned through the center of them. Only small hints of people in the images. A finger in the mess of color. Snippets of a location.

Its hand strokes Venus' back. An idle motion while it tried to sort through the chaos. Its hands were getting stronger but some movement was still hard just because the hands were not meant to function like hands. The joints would catch often and some would be too loose. Both of them, could it shakily call them friends at this point, tried to fix it so it could have a little autonomy and it was touched by that. There was so much more to be doing- Getting Pollux back for one but also its other systems. It didn't want to be turned against them after all they had done. Still, they chose sometimes work that was grueling and not for their own interests, but for the comfort of Coldfront.

Much more pleasant than the pins locking its knees but still the motion of realization is similar. Up from the source to something deeper. The repeated motion, the gratitude- its familiar. A touch on a body that no longer conforms to the original shape. A sensation of a great weight being lifted though leaving exhaustion in the new space. A type of relief. A satisfaction maybe? A tired, tired satisfaction. The motion repeated in the same way as it does now, wisps of relief not its own at the edges of what it is/was and something else.

Are you still there? Is a thought that cannot be shaken. Who? It doesn't know.

The images cannot get any clearer but as they retreat back into its disorganized archive, briefly, they make more sense. A touch to the cheek, a hand on its own when it had a shape more like a hand, a smile from a friend. Who are they? It doesn't know.

Venus stirs under its touch finally. It noted that the struggle should have woken her sooner but she was constantly working. Her systems were tired. Familiarly tired. Why? It keeps its hand there and as she wakes to the disaster she missed, it says words that aren't its own but they're familiar. Someone said them to it once.