The "canned" post that was so objectionably to some, including at least one it was never shared with.
transformerssd.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=nestus&action=display&thread=616Again came the heavily distorted voice, seemingly awakened by the new presence. Seeker looked through his Cyber-tendril and started to speak in Cybertronian.
~"The Primes left us a potent legacy. They left us behind to survive when they sought to quell their wanderlust and search for stars to harvest for energon. As often happens when far from home, a disagreement started small and grew into a schism that drove apart any hope of peace.
When we learned that The Primes were overdue, seekers were sent out to find them, learn what happened, and if necessary rescue or render aid. I am one such seeker. My path has not been an easy one, and there is not much I still retain. I know that I am no longer in full possession of my memories. Herein, I transcribed into places and systems not known for storing data, that which is precious beyond all hope of survival. I can only hope that which I have saved, does not fall into the wrong hands.
I am seeker and have sought, and though it has taken far longer than anyone ever could have predicted, I have found the path and the way. Though it is not without troubles. For one, the power of the Primes can only be handled by a Prime else it will protect itself. It is more than just a means of tapping into an awesome energy, but it is not unlike the All-Spark in that it is more than the sum of its parts. There was more to this, but those memories are lost to me.
There is a test of any non-Prime that attempts to use the power. The test is not recorded in detail other than its existence. The candidate must prove their spark to the Primes, only then can they behold the power. The danger is that the Fallen, even though his name was struck, is still biologically a Prime and could seize the power-source either from the tomb or from someone who has passed the test.
Even though I have spent veritable eons on this quest, I find little comfort in its completion as I know now how or even whom to report to. One of the many parts of my existence that have been taken from me. I lament that no longer have logs of the quest for the Tomb of the Primes, only of its conclusion and the associated attack that left me in this state.
I know that the primitive tribes of man were the victims of our exported violence. That battles in many places across the planet left them to clean up the mess. In places where the many tribes of man could not dismantle the machines that we are or made, they attempted to bury them in Pyramids. This is why there are Pyramid building cultures throughout this entire world.
My search started in what is now know as the Far East. After many years of scanning and searching I then when to the Jungles of Central America, looking over Aztec, Mayan, and Inca ruins. Those were glorious civilizations. I passed through Egypt but didn't stay, instead working my way to Mesopotamia and spent many years on sites in that wasteland that gave birth to the alleged culture of this planet.
So much of those investigations are gone. So much lost. It wasn't until very recently, that I was able to piece together the clues left behind in Cybertronian Glyphs all over the globe at sites of battles, now buried under Pyramids."~Seeker paused then. He was feeling faint. Looking at The Prime through his single working Cyber-tendril.
~"My life wanes, there is more... Forgive me."~ Taking a moment to aim, the Cyber-Tendril emitted a paralyzing laser beam, striking Optimus in his left Optic. The compressed datastream impacted with the weight of an emotional gestalt. Along with the condensed contents off all of Seeker's clandestine datastores, most as holographic vids, was an instruction to activate Prime's wide field projector in his right optic, and show in sequence all Seeker knew, which wasn't much.
-=>*<=-
Seeker was sent to find the Tomb of the Primes. He had been here so long as to make any sort of review of this quest all but unnecessary. He was a scout, and about as rugged as they were ever made. He had additional abilities above most others. All of these bonus traits were what signified him as an advanced scout. Some of the best self- and autonomous repair systems known. Even his weapons were awesome in scope and function.
Through the ages Seeker had learned that Pyramids were connected to the Tomb of the Primes, but not which culture's Pyramids. He had spent untold ages going through the Mayan territories looking for clues. But these inventive humans had created something that allowed him to search with a much greater veracity than before, computerized, networked, data storage sites. It was a leap of logic and wisdom nearly Cybertronian in scope.
Seeker was sneaking through a public data-net, when he found an internet blog-entry about an Egyptian Artifacts Exhibit of a recently uncovered tomb visiting one of the larger Museums in Los Angeles. The trucks carrying the exhibits were traveling along I-40 which would let him intercept them en-route. Seeker could then gain entry to the trailers and have time under cover to examine the artifacts closely. What caught his eye was that the internet article included an image of a particular sarcophagus that was marked with a Cybertronian Glyph. When Seeker saw that, he knew that it would hold the key. That sarcophagus was listed as being part of the traveling exhibit. He managed to catch up with the truck in Flagstaff, and gaining entry was easy enough if one knew how.
Seeker possessed an ability that while rare was useful, he was able to separate himself into tiny pieces and enter through holes intended to allow for drainage. Seeker knew there was at least one other like him, but a much smaller one, and whose pieces were smaller than the parts of his whole. Seeker remembered his name as Reedman and was seemingly spark-bonded to that feline beast of Soundwave's. Soundwave was someone he never wanted to encounter again for that matter. The mind-rapist was not someone you wanted to mess with, or could ever forget.
Once inside, while the ride was bouncy the luxury of being able to take his time was well worth it. It so happened to be the third sarcophagus that contained the hidden compartment. But time and grime had made it difficult to open, while the density of the sandstone made scans difficult to read. In the end, Seeker was forced to spend almost an hour carefully scanning the compartment before finding the key to opening it. Seeker found inside that compartment what he sought, a carefully preserved record of a great battle, a great construction and directions to a grave. Success! Seeker had found it, he had found the source of his quest.
Seeker was careful to replace everything just as it was, leaving the physical record as he found it. His scan would be enough, no need to cause any indication of his presence at all. He left under the cover of darkness just as easily. Taking his bearings he was in Kingman, Arizona, something pulled him towards Las Vegas, but he turned East, back towards Flagstaff.
-=>*<=-
From there, the vid moved onto the attack that left him crippled, data corruption was everywhere, but enough of the vidstream remained to make for a useful show.-=>*<=-
Seeker was nearing his base, and nearly ready to transmit his findings when he discovered that his base had been compromised. One of the others, a police SUV was destroying everything. Seeker remembered only one police vehicle transformer, Barricade but was sure he was based on a cruiser, not a full sized SUV. Seeker tried to slip away but was caught as the bot grabbed him from around Seeker's ineffective cover.
~"What have I found here. I should kill you, instead I want to know what you found. Please me and you might be allowed to live."~~"I found nothing."~ Seeker replied.
~"Wrong answer"~Seeker was in serious trouble, he had chosen to bank his laser core's energon by taking a much smaller mass than he was made for. This smaller form was useful and stealthy, but it lacked strength and his weapons could not help him, as they required him to be larger. In any case it didn't matter for Seeker was caught flat footed. He simply couldn't resist the aggressive bot. Nor could he really do much to stop what happened next, save for compartmentalizing himself away to insulate from what occurred. Pain, tearing, parts ripped away including his primary data core. But Seeker was too wily for such a brutal gambit to work. He had coded all of his secrets in places that would never be found. The bot was brutal and ruthless, and when the assailant departed, he left Seeker for dead. The fact that it was very nearly true was not a comfort. The comfort was that his primary data code was encoded, and the idiot bot didn't find or remove the hardware key, Seeker's last thought before slipped into stasis was the possibility of recovering the data core later.
-=>*<=-
The long process of re-building himself from the components of a truck, rather than scanning it, were mostly corrupted, the few glimpses seemed to make it look much like the trucktype that Ironhide adopted. It was plain to see that Seeker was literally crafting a body for himself from the available components though.-=>*<=-
(2200 Zulu on March 15, 2008)[/u]
Seeker had not quite managed to repair his laser core when, the truck started falling apart around him. It became impossible to continue pursuit, and he struck something solid. The next thing Seeker knew was that there was one of the ephemerals working on him. There was a cable and hook wrapped around him as he was being lowered to the ground in what looked like a fenced in junkyard. This 'human' jumped when Seeker shifted to look at it.
This world was so strange in many ways, these creatures had not learned to best the natural forces yet. It has started to rain some time back. Clouds in the sky showed signs of all sorts of wasted energy seeking a place to go. So desperate were these energies to find ground, that they would lance out of the sky towards any opposed charge. Not only did these 'humans' allow such terrible waste to go unchecked, they didn't even really understand it. Seeker knew though that if he could stimulate such a blast he might be able to use the energy discharge to fill his reserves and build up his laser core to the point where he could hold onto the larger form. Seeding the area with the last of his Nano-Repair-Cells he instructed them to release positive ions in massive amounts. It was a gamble, and a long shot, but it worked. The desired blast of lightening struck him, but it hit the tow truck first, and ran through the cable and even the human before it reached Seeker.
-=>*<=-
Seeker was damaged far greater than he anticipated. His core, already damaged from his previous fight, was further damaged, this time badly. By some fluke his Laser Core was holding a much greater charge than it should have, perhaps 210% of his normal full capacity. Even more strange was that his vastly increased Laser Core was stable at that swollen size. His NRCs were all fried, every last one, but this was not unexpected as the summoned lightening bolt would have generated a rather intense EMP. It would be awhile before he would have any replacement NRCs manufactured. His Bio-interface cable and port were damaged but salvageable, and in addition he was left with one working cyber-tendril, and one that might be repaired or re-purposed. The working one was equipped for independent movement, manipulation, repair, and recovery a very lucky break. He found that his previously commandeered body was lost beyond all hope, but that its Cybertronian parts might be salvageable. His system, laser, and neural cores were viable and seemingly connected to what was left of the vehicle that the 'human' had been operating. His ability to separate himself into many parts was also greatly compromised, having been used to keep his spark from fragmenting to pieces when he was torn apart. It was working like a tourniquet that allowed him to section off the parts of him that were gone. The human's body was a smoldering ruin, no point in even trying to scan for life. Quickly he began migrating his still functional parts to the chassis and found homes within it for himself. He couldn't do much else, but enter stasis until his scout's survival systems could build and deploy more NRCs.
-=>*<=-
The scene melted away and stayed blank for a moment before the next file played, -=>*<=-
(March 17, 2008)[/u]
Seeker awoke from stasis and was careful not to do too much. He had to disable his own pain center to manage the task in front of him. His systems were not operating properly, and he didn't need to guess as to why. Snaking his single working cyber-tendril around he managed to take a good look at his assets and liabilities. His form was intact, but not working properly. His laser core was both large enough and stable enough to maintain this much mass. His neural core was intact but damaged, his system core was producing NRCs as fast as it could, his armor forge was operating at capacity. He discovered he was in a fenced off area along with his former body. This was good as it provided a means to recover his weapons and Cybertronian resources that would be impossible for him to fabricate.
For some reason that did not really make sense, Seeker used his limited abilities to dig a grave and bury the remains of the human. The human was likely about to salvage his parts, but deserved some death-rite. Seeker studied the Internet and that gave several alternatives, but burial seemed the simplest answer as a funeral pyre would attract too much attention. Seeker lamented the human's death, again this feeling was not one Seeker expected.
It took him three days to recover everything, with only one working tendril, and no other means to manipulate the world around him, and the added chore of hiding the gear in this new body. It took even longer to get things in some semblance of order. Seeker found it useful to convert the liquified petrol-hydrocarbons in the fuel tanks of this truck and his now discarded form into ready reserves. It was convenient, as it meant not having to break cover to seek more power than his limited solar receptors would provide. Seeker re-engineered his damaged cyber-tendril to siphon the liquid and make the conversion. This was only one such re-tasking Seeker made with components that were not otherwise not possible to use.
-=>*<=-
Once again the scene darkened, and once again it took a moment, almost as if some tiny projectionist was inside that optic changing the reels and readying the next vid.-=>*<=-
(March 24, 2008)[/u]
Seeker knew he was still not working right. Seeker had re-written his internal operating systems to match the haphazard state he was in but it wasn't helping. That blasted police SUV had done too much damage in the initial attack. He knew his mind was affected too, he just couldn't reason out how. Seeker's logs were corrupted, in fact he didn't have anything older than the attack, other than a few secreted memories hidden away. He didn't even remember the name of that bully with the attitude problem. Seeker was unable to recall his own designation or even which planet this was.
He attempted some repairs on his neural core, but his only cyber-tendril was not precise enough to make such repairs easily, not that it was designed for such things. You can use a plasma cutter to do a lot of things, even a few things that a scalpel can do, but it doesn't do them well. It was only through Seeker's reverse-gestalt ability that it was even possible to store a few instructions to follow while he was in repair stasis. This limited his ability to self-repair, it would take time but he was sure he would be whole again. After three passes he regained some additional control and stopped to triage his needs.. There was a strong need, strong beyond measure and it was totally alien to him. It wasn't like his task, no this was something else. It was similar to his drive to survive, but it was stronger, bolder, and in places within his core that had no business producing such sensations. Seeker was able to repress the alien sensations and finish making the most desperate repairs so that he would not leak power or critical fluids.
Seeker looked into the parts of this large truck and the wear on them. Seems the truck was damaged somewhat by the Lightening bolt too. Scanning the internet he found a company that refit trucks of this type. Making arrangements to have work done on the truck, he planned on risking using his damaged holoform projector in the morning to drive to this other location. Seeker felt this was still within his abilities and the new parts would greatly assist in integrating his Cybertronian weapons. In addition, there may be an opportunity to use the tools and equipment such a shop was sure to have. Seeker also set worms up to assist in purchasing fuel, as it was going to be needed in quantities difficult to steal. Seeker or his holoform would only need to interface with a diesel pump to get all he'd be able to carry. Slipping into stasis he made a mental note to go looking for more of the liquid fuel, he was almost out and his reserves were nearly gone.
-=>*<=-
This time, after fading to blackness, when the vid came back, the viewpoint had shifted to that of another, but the signal was the same. The voice was familiar yet distorted slightly... The point of perception wasn't right either. It was lower to the ground and moved more naturally, less wounded.-=>*<=-
The human in the sleeper bunk woke up and stretched. Checking his cellphone, he looked at the date and knew it was going to be a long day. He had about 600 miles to go ahead of him. The new drum and winch was ready for his truck and he knew the one he had wouldn't work after getting hit again by lightening. He hoped the new crane would be ready too, the old one was just to beat up to work properly in some configurations anymore. Getting down he walked around the rig doing his normal pre-trip inspection, and noted he'd need new tires soon. He also saw the asshole that worked nights had locked him in the yard. It was time he taught that lazy good-for-nothing a lesson, and the Moose-Masher front bumper would protect his rig from the gate.
He had one other stop to make before getting on I-40, he had to stop for fuel. He didn't remember the tanks being empty but they were. It wasn't more than an annoyance to him until he saw the line at the Little America truckstop. This place wasn't made like most truckstops, with a pump and satellite pump on either side of the rig, but with single pumps and really long hoses forcing drivers to reach across to fill the offside tank. Made for lines too, but it was covered and since it was starting to snow a little, he decided to cool down and not worry about it. Swiping his card, the pump authorized much faster than he remembered, not that he noticed. It was almost half an hour down the highway before he realized he didn't so much as get a cup of coffee for breakfast, but by then he didn't need it either. The miles melted away and he even surprised himself at not stopping at several of the usual places he remembered stopping for a run to the can. The bears were asleep at the weigh stations and the truck was running hot for a change, he made Amarillo before sunset, and even when he looked at the time thinking about how to log the day's drive, he didn't realize he must have averaged faster than 90MPH for the whole trip.
-=>*<=-
This time the vid didn't fade out until the being in it, laid down in a bed and seemingly went to sleep. When the vid returned it was Seeker again...-=>*<=-
Seeker felt things moving around, and not from his instructions. His limited systems reported he wasn't where he went into stasis either, more things screwy, but he found his fuel tanks half-full. The system log showed him entering stasis and the holoform projector operating for ten hours, but no entries from the holoform projector. The shop was working on his chassis, adding and upgrading the parts he had ordered. The new crane would be a perfect place to house his linear accelerator, and provide as near gun-turret mount as would make no difference. The separate lifter piston would work well for his plasma stream blaster.
Seeker purged his mind of revenge and started to work the patterns of the new parts out, scanning and re-patterning them as would be necessary for his purposes. This was not the way it was usually done, but Seeker was working with far less than ideal circumstances. When he found that damned bot, he'd not be unprepared, even if it took awhile. Seeker wanted to be able to fire while in alt mode, something not normally done. Stealth armor was going to be the trick and it so happened that Seeker knew one, a special alloy of light and heavy metal. Seeker even knew how to craft it with his own armor forge. Revenge started to creep back into his thoughts as Seeker imagined seeing the death of the one that left him a shattered torn hulk of his former self.
-=>*<=-
It was on the second night in the shop that Seeker got perhaps the most fortunate break, several hours with the shop to himself. He was able to access the shop's computerized milling machine and several other machines and make some badly needed parts. He even managed to repair one more cyber-tendril, and while it would not be able to do anything much, it was able to move around and manipulate objects. This in turn allowed him to begin the process of assimilating the wrecker. Between the shop's automatic mill and cutters, Seeker was able to accomplish in several hours what would have taken him weeks on his own.
-=>*<=-
Many hours of vid were compressed here, of all the hours spent working, it all passed as a time-lapse flash. Seeker had timed it just right, allowing for the nights and even an entire weekend permitting him far more time than he had hoped. After another transition, the vids that followed were heavily distorted and suffering from data corruption and compression, but still conveyed their message.-=>*<=-
(March 29, 2008)[/u]
Seeker spent the better part of two days working on reconfiguring the mass of all the new equipment. It was much more difficult to do things this way. While most of the labor heavy chores had been done in the shop, still lots of little things needed to be done. Like, making cuts for every new joint or split where his bot form would need to move about. It was going slow. Seeker lamented the fact that he was simply unable to get another repair capable cyber-tendril online. Seeker still had a few advantages, namely his NRC factory was one of the best ever made, strong and fast it manufactured NRCs even when he was in hard stasis, as a scout could count on getting hurt bad and often. He also was equipped with a highly efficient armor forge and between the two it was possible for him to actually create a body from parts he found elsewhere. Normally adding mass to a transformer wasn't possible for any length of time, but Seeker had a special reserve that permitted him, or at least did, to vary his mass to assist in his scouting missions. Seeker's NRCs had to do a lot of work that a full service bay would normally take care of. Seeker knew he was going to be more patch than original material but that couldn't be helped. His NRCs and armor forge spent the bulk of their time reinforcing and up-armoring the metal construction into alloys and states that would withstand the punishment they would need to survive. The stealth armor would like a charm, reducing his signature to less than 3% of what it should have been.
He brought his plasma gun online and tested it. The system worked flawlessly. Then he brought his railgun online and tested it. The weapon wouldn't quit charging until it was fired. Seeker almost wasted his entire reserve before he figured that one out. There were hundreds of little systems that he didn't have control of anymore, and it was bothersome to find these shortcomings the hard way. He filed the bug away on his glitch list and moved on.
-=>*<=-
(November 29, 2010)[/u]
Seeker was growing weaker now. He was sure it had something to do with his holographic projector but couldn't isolate it to fix it. He had rewritten his operating software several times, even going as far as grabbing useful code and debug routines from the internet when his own libraries failed to offer the pieces he needed. Seeker knew that his control was dwindling, and that soon his spark would fail, never having gotten to transmit his information nor garner revenge against the one that had hurt him. Seeker wasn't even sure who hurt him anymore. The last round of core surgeries did not go as planned even if they had seemed to work at the onset. It was almost as if the longer Seeker slept away in stasis, the weaker he got. Seeker decided to trust to luck that if he were to start dumping data on the internet in protected encrypted datastores he could get past his near total lack of long-term-memory storage. He was running out of subsystems he could encode data into. While he had experimented with constructing a solid-state memory array, it proved to be far to unreliable. Hard drives were more reliable but slow and fragile. In the end he was left with distributed offsite data hosting as his only reliable answer, and even for this he would have to encrypt the data. He struggled over a key that he could both utilize and still maintain some degree of security.
-=>*<=-
(September 11, 2011)[/u]
HammerLane was asked to participate in a memorial parade on the tenth anniversary of one of the worst days for the United States. He was to tow a parade float honoring several local decorated military veterans, many from Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Afghanistan campaign. Flashes of life in uniform raced through his mind but he discarded them. These flashes became almost impossible to ignore when a flight of A-10's overflew the ceremony in the Missing Man formation.
The somber remembrance of the day got to him. Made him want to think back to a time before he drove a wrecker and his life before. It bothered him when he discovered that he couldn't remember. The military lifestyle seemed familiar and comforting. He spoke with several of the soldiers in the parade afterward. It came as a greater shock that one of them recognized him. HammerLane was careful not to say anything in conflict with the soldier's memories.
Whats worse, one soldier remembered HammerLane being awarded a both an Air Force Cross and a Navy Cross during a single mission. Such a seemingly impossible feat led them to discuss it until one asked HammerLane directly why if he won both medals he didn't get the Medal of Honor instead. “Because I didn't die,” was all HammerLane would say. The myth of dying as a requirement for the Medal of Honor probably comes from the fact that it has not been awarded to a living recipient since Vietnam. The others buzzed about it a little while longer before directly asking for the story. HammerLane put up a shield of false modesty that after a few moments of silence no one tried to breech. Ask any soldier, the medals are never worth the price paid. It was a true mark of their character that they interpreted HammerLane's reaction as buried pain and left it be.
After HammerLane got back to his yard he started to brood over the event. It felt good to be with other humans and talk about things. He felt a bond, a kinship with the other soldiers. It really bugged him not remembering what others remembered him for. He thought and thought until he started having trouble thinking. He thought it was just a headache coming on. He decided to lay down to take a nap and perhaps get a better perspective after sleeping on this, when in fact his neural core was crashing from the conflicts.
-=>*<=-
Shifting back to Seeker from the core crashed HammerLane, the scout found himself in a further deteriorating situation.-=>*<=-
(September 15, 2011)[/u]
Seeker had been unlucky again, something nearly melted down his neural core and it was making things slowly worse. Seeker did not know what the triggering event was, only that it happened during one of the increasingly long periods of time the holographic projector was active. After the core-crash he was aware of fewer systems available to him. It was bad enough that he was in rotten shape, but he was still alive and he was going to survive to report his findings, but to who... Seeker was going to have to try to patch his neural core again before another critical meltdown occurred.
While Seeker was looking through the internet for parts, he ran into an article from a recent event in town about him, or rather the wrecker he had assimilated and its human driver. The driver had been in the human military and even a veteran of the Desert Storm War, having earned a few medals. The climax of the piece was a short bit about shooting down a MiG-29 with the cannon of his A-10. The act was recognized by both the Air Force and Navy in a ceremony that was reportedly held on an aircraft carrier. Seeker felt a sense of comfort by this news but couldn't understand why. Seeker decided to research this further and to record present findings in protected storage.
-=>*<=-
When the video returned this time, it was a simple display of a website.-=>*<=-
Originally published in Stars and Stripes, February 2, 1991
A Rare Breed.
Last week, aboard CVA-60 Saratoga a truly remarkable event took place. Capt. Jonas 'Blackie' Blackfoot of the 355th Fighting Falcons was honored – to this reporter's knowledge -- in a way no other Air Force Pilot ever has. Yes, you read that correct, an Air Force Pilot honored on board a Navy Carrier. Capt. Blackfoot was awarded, by Admiral Davis, the Air Force Cross, while during the same ceremony he was also awarded the Navy Cross by General Johnston. And if your not confused yet, keep reading.
((Additional details in the first reply of
this post.))
-=>*<=-
The vid returned to Seeker's perspective again.-=>*<=-
Seeker had found that through making use of a primitive computer on the local cell phone tower that he could access via radio, he was able to leave messages to his holoform, and to his surprise it replied to the messages. It offered no clue as to the nature of he separation between the two systems, but for the length of a text message (140 characters) they were able to pass limited information. Seeker was cautious with these exchanges, lest the holoform do something stupid. But with collecting the number of packages that were arriving for Seeker and leaving them in places where Seeker could access them, it allowed the scout an additional source of materials.
-=>*<=-
No explanation or vid existed since September 2011 to the next one, in fact it seemed to take longer to load the next vid in sequence, it even felt like it was the last one in the queue as it preloaded.-=>*<=-
(June 2, 2019)[/u]
Seeker was finished with his sixth and last attempt at repairing his neural core. Even the newest human supplied parts and tools he weren't helping, their interfaces just weren't fast enough to be anything more than a simple drone and he needed something that could think. He knew that without the assistance of another soon his fate was sealed. He was staying in stasis far longer each time he went on standby. It had been over a year since the last time he was active. His holoform no longer reported to him in any way, and yet it was seemingly able to keep things alive. Seeker wasn't sure what was directing it. Seeker had not been able to operate at the same time as the holographic projector due to some system damage he could never trace down. Too many lost pathways. Too much damage. Too much lost time.
Seeker's supplies were nearly gone. This forced him to decide to hibernate until something triggered a change in the status-quo, because he had made all the repairs it was possible for him to make. He only hoped the secrets he had learned in his search would be worth the cost on his systems. Before shutting down for a long sleep, Seeker rerouted the power line from his plasma gun to his portion of the power grid. He needed to make sure he would have energy to survive long enough to find help, if there was to be any help for him.
What vexed Seeker most was that he no longer remembered who was ally and who was enemy. If he got it wrong, the Prime might forebear his destruction long enough to listen and perhaps forgive but the Fallen certainly would not. Even if he got it right, it wouldn't protect him from the Fallen because of the amount of time that had passed since his last report. He couldn't risk picking the wrong side to find, or be found by. So far his stealth armor had kept him under the radar, even with his holoform working a real job for the authorities as much as not.
The last system re-write had proven to be less than effective, just too many systems failed to respond. What he would give for just an hour with a top-rate medic. But in his state and situation it would be as fruitful as to wish for another all-spark to fall into his grasp. Seeker would wait. Seeker would bide his time and succeed where all others failed. Seeker would survive, after all it was what he was made for.
-=>*<=-
When the last stream finished playing, the tendril ceased its paralyzing hold on Optimus and moved back to the still body and started yanking at a power cable connected to HammerLane's primary reserve .
~"I know not how I was able to survive to report all this. I've been loosing a struggle with my very spark ever since the encounter in Flagstaff that left me crippled. I am so weary, so very weary..."~ Catches released and slowly the cable came free, arcing a little before it was pulled far enough from the socket to break the circuit.
~"All my attempts to selfrepair have failed, even the means to keep me alive. I know not how my holoform persists outside of me, but he has won this struggle for survival. At least I have finished my Geis, I can finally rest."~ Seeker took one last scan around before asking the question,
~"Has my sacrifice made the difference?"~ Seeker did not know if it were stasis or oblivion he was entering, and at the moment he did not have the ability to care. The last lingering thought was simply this, ~"Who will mourn Seeker?"~ This time when the single red optic dimmed and faded, it did not return to warm and life right away.
-=>*<=-
HammerLaneOSv2.12d System Status Update
Spark Containment: Nominal, running on externally supplied power.
Main Power Reserve: 22.8% remains, charging from external source.
Reserve Power: 3% remains, charging from external source.
System Core: Offline, damaged, operations reduced.
Laser Core: Offline, damaged, operational at 70% nominal.
Neural Core: Warmboot Cycling, damaged, crash imminent due to conflicts, attempting to purge conflicts with restart
NOTICE: Power sufficient for Laser Core Restart is available.
NOTICE: Power sufficient for System Core Restart is available.
Primary Solar Receptors: Damaged, obstructed, operating at 21% nominal
Aux Solar Receptors: Offline, unable to deploy
Power Flow: Receiving from external source
Main Power Reserve: Total capacitance reduced due to damage
Emergency Core Reserve: Damaged, depleted
Primary Life Support Circuit: Damaged/inoperative
Aux Life Support: Online, nominal
NOTICE: NammerLaneOS has been modified and restarted since last report.
NOTICE: HammerLaneOS has been operating under Emergency Protocols since 2008,Ma,15,2350.2225zulu
NOTICE: No data available prior to 2008,Ma,15,2350.2225zulu
WARNING: System Core is unable to crash to Non-Volatile Stasis, total power loss will result in Spark Containment Failure!
WARNING: Neural Core is damaged. Some entries may be corrupt or missing.
