Chapter One, Homemaking

I felt the mechanoid arms from the helping girl grab me and gently pulled me up, I smiled in return. Coughing out some snow from my fall I tested my arms to see if the concussion had wore off, which for my joy most of it had faded away and I could move however somewhat sluggishly.

My vision was slightly blurry but I caught the girl who had helped me out look in astonishment to the right and I followed her gaze.
"Woa what the..." I didn't knew if I was having illusions or there was truly a half metal-organic horse bucking around...and a talking one, with a curious girl like voice such as the eldest lady on my team.
I shock my head dazed and watched like a fool the others battle, feeling somewhat sad for not having weapons or being of any use.

A figure moving swiftly caught my new keen sight and as it approached at ME (Oh God, yea and I was defenseless...) I noticed that it was a drone, and had a good sized razor sharp horn on its 'nose' which glowed, no wait, it wasn't glowing, in fact it was electrified! I yelped as I tried crawling back in fear my still numb body failing to move as rapidly a i wished to.
The robot lowered its head aiming at me as it emitted a low grunt similar to a bull's.
Then as I thought it would be GAME OVER for me I felt a strange sensation that coursed through my chest and then it flowed to my arms. I brought them up unconsciously as if to protect myself, maybe an internal self-defense system obliged me to. Then just before the drone could pierce me with its long electric horn the snow below me erupted and a crystal wall emerged, shielding me against the unfortunate drone who stuck himself on it.

I stared wide eyed at what had occurred, blinking as I brought myself up hastily and away from the wall which held the rhyno-drone. Looking down to my arms curiously I noticed blue streams which crossed from a little up from my elbow to my slightly clawed, black hands. They flashed repetitively and I brought my hands up in amazement. "Huh?..." I exclaimed as I flexed my hands expecting to see some more of that crystal 'magic'. Quickly after (And fortunately) I snapped out of my dumbfoundment just to see another rhyno-drone charging directly at the distracted 'lazer girl'.

"EY! GIRL! W-WATCH OUT!"I shrieked panicked. I extended an arm towards her and waved frantically trying to catch her attention since I was far from the two battling ladies. My eyes snapped towards the charging drone and again unconsciously my arm did an upward sweeping movement in its direction, the blue streams of light flashing and a a rush of energy traveling from my chest to my palm. A huge pointed lance-like crystal burst from the snow next to the girl and drove through the charging foe. I gaped and looked to my hand and then to the stalagmite I had somewhat crated. I grinned widely.

"Cool!"

OoC: Where’s this snow coming from guys? We’re indoors.

Antarctica Base

Feeling overwhelmed by the drones swarming over me, I must have subconsciously wished for help because the next thing I knew, my two new pet drones were above me, yanking the attacking little buggers off. Okay, so I wasn’t doing anything to contribute to the fight with the big daddy robot any more, but right now I just wanted to stay alive. I was terrified, more so than when I had been converted. I was going to die a horrible death in a dark chamber. And I did not want to die—I’m not ready yet.

Another surge of adrenaline—or whatever passed for it robotically—and I somehow managed to push the last of the drones off and stand up. Suddenly the eagle flew over me and wrapped itself around my body. I could feel it transform and become one with me. The badger also split in half and transformed in front of me. Instinctively knowing what to do, I stepped into the new armor like a pair of boots. They clamped around my legs and I felt pieces of armor also do the same with my arms. “Whoa,” I muttered, looking down at myself. I almost looked badass… for a robot.

Leaping up, A jumped onto the big robot’s back. I could feel it buck and reach for me to pull me off, but I rammed my blade into its back and managed to hold on. “Let’s kill this thing already!” I shouted and I fired a round from my shoulder-cannon into the back of its neck. I wasn’t firing strategically, aiming for the weak spots. Sadly I didn’t have the foresight for that. I was just shooting it wherever I could, blindly hoping to wear it down or get lucky.

Chaos all around me. I felt the charge building up in my right-hand-jaw-gun again, and then the release, blowing another hole in the gunline of drones. Calls from behind me, and I reached behind me to grab a long-barreled rifle from my back. I rolled to avoid the return-fire from the drones, feeling my rifle switch to automatic mode, I sprayed lasers into their midst, blowing armor from many of them, my crouched position saving me from any direct hits, though the burn of skirting beams was certainly painful, enough to prompt me to act without thinking.

Forgetting the others for a moment, I rose up to one knee and fired, again and again, the psew psew psew of my laser rifle punctuated by the bellow of my jaw-cannon. Obliterated. Holes and craters, the drones were mown down. They began retreating before I turned around, a flash of pain hitting me from four points on my body where their beams had glanced my armor.

The figures blurring in and out of focus, I raised my cannon, before lowering it. I might hit someone. That was too powerful to use if I was having trouble being accurate, and I wasn't a good shot in the first place. I put my guns away, and drew my other sword, picking the other up off the ground.


"I'm coming!"

( Guys... Im gonna skilp this turn. Im holding everything up with my lack of creativity)

Anyway that knew me really, would know that I can get distracted very, VERY, easily. As I tried to help out the bucking girl with the drones on her, I totally fail to noticed the rhino coming straight at me. Lucky, by the time I did, it already was taken care of by the feather girl. Turning over to her, I just gave her a quick thumbs ups, “Thanks, Feathers!” I called out before noticed the boss calling for help...

Ok, so, we really hadn’t picked up a leader yet, but he was taking charge at least. Holding tight to the only weapon I seem to have right now, I ran forward, “Help is a coming!” I shouted.

Now, I have play quite a few video games in my time, or watch them being played by my brothers. In my experience, the head was always such a key point. Now, I thought it would be just as important with the Boss Drone here cause well, wasn’t the control whatever in the head anyway? Hell if I knew anyway. Holding up my weapons, I started to fire at the head or the neck to blow it off. Of course, now I tried to pay a bit attention to the area around myself. Like Hell, I would have a rhino have their horn in my back.

I giggled proudly and nodded in return. "No prob- ermm, muzzle face!" I cried in a pathetic attempt to sound cool.
I turned to see the still bucking rhino bot trapped in the ice structure I had created and smirking I slapped its horn mockingly before running off in the what i thought would be the leader's direction. I stopped abruptly in shock as I gave a sharp turn and found myself face to- umm well a pretty scary face from the massive censpider which roared ferociously and I fell back totally freaked out. The thought of being impaled on one of its sharp legs crossing my mind. Lucky for me the main sentinel wasn't going to attack me, but was actually trying to get off my teammate which kept damaging it mounted over his spider torso.

I quickly stood up and ran around it, shoving and jumping over multiple drones that blocked my way, either dead or still functioning. My blue eyes never off the huge sentinel which reared and shrieked in agony as it tried to buck off the armored guy.
As I looked for a way to help I noticed a high spot on the ceiling, excellent for me to practice my strange crystal making ability. Spinning around looking for a way to climb up onto such high place an odd sensation made me look at my digitigraded feet. '[u]Of course! Dog like legs mean long jumps![/i]' I thought and tensed my legs crouching down preparing for a high jump. Suddenly with a loud zooming like sound I leapt straight into the place, no mistakes, "No miscalculation" I corrected my thoughts, a robotic tone uttered from my mouth as I blinked confused.

I quickly turned to see the battle below me and brought my arms up and in front of me waving my fingers nervously before I could do anything. "Ok, here comes the magic...aand, yes!" I felt the energy rush come from my chest and travel through my arms the blue streams on them flaring brightly and a circular marking on my black palms lighting up filled with raw energy. I bit my lip and extended my arms, my focus point being the big robot, I made a quick forward movement with my hands and slapped them together gesturing towards the censpider's upper body. A bluish light suddenly appeared around the sentinel's body and like a streak it became a huge mass of blue crystal which clasped brutally the robot. It let a horrendous shriek of pain followed by the loud -CRACK- of its chest being compressed by the crystal's grip and seconds after that it dropped to the floor limply, its maw moving up and down trying to speak "Stop- stop..." I could hear its sad voice pleading despite all the noise. I separated my hands. The crystal embrace ceased and became once again energy, the centurion twitched in an effort to stand but failing to even contain its chest pains.

"Poor thing..." I dared to say seeing the centurion try to stand and continue fighting. Despite having nearly killed me, this robot was just trying to defend the base and it did it with such fervor I couldn't help but think that it might deserve to be given a chance.

OoC: Ugh, damn you writer’s block!

IC:
I felt no sympathy for something that was trying to kill me, especially not a robot. I’ve never been much of a fighter, but my parents never raised me to be a candy-ass either. The Latino nasty streak was strong in me, even though I was only half Latino and now I no longer qualified as being Latino at all. Anyway, at this point I wanted this robot to die. I didn’t realize it was a sentient AI, and perhaps if I had known then I would have been more hesitant. After all, I’ve never killed before and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to start. I always believed that if someone or something was a threat to others and would definitely kill, there was no shame in killing to it save lives. But was this thing trying to kill, really? Seemed all it wanted was to defend this place.

As it fell I stood up on its back, pausing. The fight seemed to reach a low point. The big bad was on the ground and the smaller drones, those that hadn’t been destroyed already, seemed to be wandering around aimlessly, as if deprived of guidance. I kept my guard up, because this thing still wasn’t totally destroyed and could attack us again at any moment. ”Nice trick with the ice,” I commended the bird-lady. ”Now let’s shut this thing down.” I didn’t want to have to worry about it, but it seemed like a shame to completely destroy the robot too. We could use something like this so long as it was on our side, and I wasn’t quite sure if anyone here was qualified to rebuild and reprogram it from scratch. ”Can anyone find the, the control center? Maybe we can, uh, shut it down without scrapping it completely, you know?” I stutter when I’m nervous.

A hot spot on my back. I knew it was the jaw cannon, so it made sense that it was hot, it was a high-energy weapon that had just been fired several times. But as I ran toward my comrades in arms, the heat only grew, and that struck me as distinctly dubious. Replacing my sword and retrieving the giant croc head, I felt the heat envelope my hand as the gun automatically secured itself to my wrist. This made it easy to access and impossible to drop during a fight, but right now I could feel searing heat, and slow damage in my metal flesh at the rising temperature of the gun. What was happening?

That was when I saw it. Something was leaking from the back of the gun. I hadn't noticed before, but it had been hit by one of the drones. The hit had been a bad one...the point of impact had actually been low and behind the armor, the shot had come from behind me at some point during the battle, a random and poorly aimed attack from one of the myriad battle drones. The impact had kicked up warped metal, effecting other parts of the gun, and through the burning pain, ever growing, I came to the conclusion that it must have damaged a coolant container of some kind.

Quickly, I fumbled with the thing, trying to get it off my hand. No good, it was attached, and no command I knew was dislodging it. The rest of the transformed humans were over near the big drone, the one I'd attacked earlier. My clawed fingers scratched at the bumpy metal surface of the jaw gun frantically, but no release latch could be found that would respond to my fingers. I quickly threw my arm over my head, detaching the gun from my hand onto its resting place on my back. It felt like fire now, my back was surely on fire! A faint keening noise had begun coming from me a few moments earlier, but I hadn't noticed it until now! The burning was getting worse! The burning, the BURNING. Twisted and contorted, trying desperately to get the maddening thing away from my flesh, but nothing worked.

My hand was blackened and smoking, but I had an idea. I reached for the gun again, and threw it into the snow...nothing! The snow turned to steam almost instantly, and the gun had now begun to glow a menacing red. Hot! HOT! Oh god, I was dying, my hand was burning off, my back was smoking, I couldn't get away, it was attached to me, and it was burning and I was burning and the world was smoke and steam, and I wasn't safe from it anywhere! I stood indecisive for four seconds, turning toward my teammates, then away, then toward them, then away, shifting my weight each time. The pain was maddening, and so I opted away. Some part of my cybernetic brain predicted what would happen, and some part of my human brain decided what I should do about it.

Sprinting away from all of them, I began screaming in my unremitting agony as the glowing ember that had been my gun began warping and melting under the extreme heat of its core. I ran, a dead sprint away from the four of them and the defeated spider, from the facility that was supposed to be my new home, from all of this...away from this horrible life and back toward my old one...I ran for eleven seconds, and then my existence was ripped away in a violent explosion, that evaporated every part of me in a fraction of a human blink, all gone in a flash of beautiful, terrible light.

For the longest time I noticed nothing as I screamed, stomped, kicked and bit at the drones. I bucked and squealed even after the one on my back had been dislodged. My mind was lost in that darkness of a blind rage as I attacked anything that came to close to me. It was a place I was familiar with and this rage cost me many things, jobs, friends, and even family. Yet it constantly snuck up on me to take me into its dark embrace and let me lash out violently.

I was only stilled when I heard the screaming. My bucking stopped and my ears pricked up to point my nose into the direction of the sound. I saw the gator guy freaking out and then running from us... from the fight. Abandoning us was the thought that ran through my mind... but that quickly faded.... as he exploded. I suddenly felt very heavy as I stood motionless in shock. We had lost one of our own.... and though I didnt know him, it hurt. Losing him hurt.


I blinked twice to clear my mind and thats when I discovered that I was not being attacked.... I moved closer to a drone to test that thought and it made no move to me. Hell the thing acted like it couldnt see me anymore. I looked around at the chaos and snorted in understanding. The wolf's words echoed in my head and with a whinny I bolted into the complex to find a console or something to try and help my comrades.

I leapt down the place from which I stood upon, a loud -Thum!- boomed as I landed heavily over the steel floor with my bird-of-prey feet. My blue keen eyes, receptors, er whatever, scanned the zone quickly. No drones, well, not functioning so far. A short -Phew..- escaped my mouth in sign relief; I seemed to be the most useless of all in body combat since, although I could bend a titanium bar with a simple kick, I did not have the skill to fight body-to-body with a well-trained drone. I would rather climb like a coward to a high stop and do my 'magic' from there than jumping over a mob.
With some urge I trotted towards were the leader stood and inspected the spider-centurion with regret. "Oh man, you were such a friggin cold asshole..." I told myself seeing the horrible agonizing status of the guardian and clenching my black fists I kept repeating myself so.

It wasn't after I heard male screams of terror echo through the room that I had stopped looking down unto the censpider and cursing myself and turned to see the 'oh muy macho' croc dude running away screaming in a way which could both disturb and make you laugh. "Pffth, what the?" I asked to nobody, doing my unmatched frown-and-smirk face that was very well known by those who I met. It was then that I noticed the burning hand-gun of him and the red hot color spreading over his body; my face reflected its opposite expression as I realized the horrible truth that was going on. He was overheating, and what did overheated machines do next? BOOM. I did not want that, overheat could be cured! Yes it could, coolen! Yes it could be coolen down!
Frantically I extended my arms towards him, pleading myself to generate that energy blast thing and ironically when I most needed it the energy did not come just a negative response -Tutun- from my internal systems, warning that the -hyperborean-(?) flux needed recharge. "NOT NOW! NOT NOW!" I cried out in plain frustration and seconds after that the sound of a violent explosion came from the main hallway, a bright yellow light reflected itself on the steel walls showing the last of the teammate I never had the chance to met with properly and got to know him only as -The Croc Guy-.
I fell to my knees in despair and kept staring at the still flickering yellow lights that reflected themselves on the distant walls. Why? Why, if I could save him with my new power that had obtained...Why it wouldn't had let me do it? Recharge? Why on Earth, Cybertron, any GODDAMN Freaklaxy, WOULD A DEFENSIVE SYSTEM HAVE A COOLDOWN!? I just couldn't understand this, then the scene of how I crushed the great centurion came to my mind. I stared down and growled ferally with a fearful metallic echo uttering from my mouth.
"Arg! Stupid! Idiot! Im such a- eagr"
I looked like a baby throwing a tantrum in the middle of the place, slamming my fists to the floor and cursing myself neverendingly. I needed directly told orders.

-------------

Damn this tired mind of mine...damn it.

Ok, now I really felt sick.

Never had I see such a sight before, or seen someone just die like that in front of my eyes. Ok, there was TV, but come on! That is just TV! Majority of it wasn't even real half the time. Seeing the Croc guy just...blow up...I think I lost a piece of my soul right there. I did nothing to help. Like there was anything I could do anyway. The others had seem to have more than one trick up their sleeves. What did I have? The guns and good aim. Like that would have been enough to save him....

Oh great, that was pathetic, making this all about me. A guy die and now all I can think about it me.

Without really thinking much, I made the sigh of the Cross and started to mumbled the 'Hail Father' to myself. I just hope the Big Guy up stairs was still with me. He had to be and that the Croc was better where he was now.

But now, there was only four of us left. Already our numbers were dropping like flies. What if one of blew up next? If it happen to Croc, who couldn't say that it couldn't happen to one of us. Man, we were going to die.

I had no idea what to do. I had never seen anyone die before, and not in such a random manner, and especially not in such a violent manner. I stood horrified at the spot where our "comrade" had last stood. We had never even learned his name... and now he was forgotten forever.

I was genuinely scared. I am not a brave person, much as I would like to pretend I am. I got my courage from my family... only they weren't hear now. They didn't know where I was or what had happened to me, and I was going to die here in the Antarctic in a robotic body and nobody would care.

What were we supposed to do now? I forgot the robot I was standing on and walked off it numbly, mechanically. I felt my mind shutting down, I was at a loss as to what to do next.

I ran down the fairly dark hallways, my hooves thundering out as I went. I was looking for anything that resembled a control room. I had been on mining sites so I kinda new what to look for. Big room with lots of buttons. Okay so I'm not a genius but it did not take one to know that we were in serious shit here. Already we lost one of our own and to me... that was unacceptable.

We needed someone to take charge yes and we would find one when we had time to breath. Now we needed to survive. Wait! there it is! The thought ran through my mind as I slid to a halt. The room was large... very large. Monitors shown images of my comrades.... Time to end the insanity.

I concentrated and began to feel my body slip apart. Gears whirred inside me as I unfolded. It felt odd but was not painful. I wobbled as I found myself standing on two legs again, my balance shifted and I fell back on my butt. "Ow... dammit!" I scrambled up and ran to the controls.... I had no clue what all this meant.... so I sat at a keyboard and clicked around. "Main Defense system... Here we go... " I clicked away... "Clearance password?... uh...." I looked at the screen blankly then went back through files in the main systems. A click here, a click there and a new one was set. Returning to the command I typed in... SANCUTUARY.

***

Outside the Drones all stopped in movement....