Hunter Green (Part 8)

Hmm, I'm not sure how I feel about this one.

Title: Hunter Green (Part 8)
'Verse: G1 Transformers.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Same as before.

Where am I?

It’s dark.

… No pain.

Did… did I fail?

Primus no…

He came online with a start, the glow of his optics the only illumination he had. Rising, he fumbled for the light switch with a shaky hand, and as the room brightened, he settled back on the berth, and attempted to curl in on himself. The light helped, but it did not chase away the sickened terror he’d felt. Hunter cycled air in a sigh. It seemed like he’d be skipping another recharge cycle. Mindful of the cameras in his room, he lay down again and tried to go into recharge once more.

========================================

Skyfire dropped the datapad he’d been scanning and shut off his console. It had been a long, frustrating day, compounded by the concerns about Hunter he’d gotten from Ironhide and surprisingly, Red Alert. Their security officer had stalked in, expression unreadable, and given him an abrupt little talk, which could be summed up as ‘He’s acting strange during recharge. Look into it.’

Coupled with Ironhide’s suggestion that he talk to Hunter about his time with the Decepticons, and the fact that he’d been going over the data Hunter had given them for hours, and had found no reason for the A.I.’s seeming development into a sapient individual, separate from Prowl, Skyfire was a very tired mech indeed. Even the news that the rest of the Ark were no longer shunning the youngling as before, thanks to Perceptor’s little stunt in the rec room, did little to cheer him, though he counted the fact that Red Alert no longer referred to the mech as an ‘it’ as a minor victory.

The jet decided he’d catch some recharge before attacking the problem again when a sound caught his attention. Turning, he froze as a felinoid bot sauntered over and dropped a datachip, then bounded out the door and vanished from his sight. Picking up the chip, he slotted it into the datapad and was stunned at the recorded message that played.

Two hours later, he was at the coordinates given in the recording. Waiting. Not long after, the sound of a jet’s engine was heard passing overhead, and a seeker darted towards him, transforming as he landed.

“Good evening, Starscream.”

“Take it and scram. I didn’t come to chat.” He caught the package carelessly thrown at his head, and raised an optic ridge when the seeker turned to leave, grumbling about playing delivery drone and stupid younglings who couldn’t even kill Megatron properly.

“And you’ve succeeded how many times, Screamer?” The seeker started, turned and glared at the Porsche who’d suddenly appeared by Skyfire’s side.

“Shut up. And you, I thought I said to come alone.”

“I’m not quite as reckless as that.” The larger jet smiled amiably, and Jazz snickered before something struck him.

“You called him youngling. You knew?”

“Any researcher worth his circuits would come to the same conclusion, given the data.” A sneer, but the seeker hadn’t left yet, and Skyfire decided to test his luck.

“The data he took couldn’t give us that conclusion; we pretty much came to that end ourselves.”

“Well, yay for you. Of course the data that youngling took wouldn’t have been too useful. He got the surface files, our early work, stuff we gave Megatron to convince him the A.I. was just an A.I., just one that seemed to have gained more autonomy than expected. Everything else got buried behind as many protections and decoys as we could. Then, the mighty Megatron was so eager to see the effect of ‘Prowl’ on you lot, that we were given only the barest notice he’d been placed on the roster and couldn’t fix things so the youngling could get those without making it pathetically obvious.”

“You… manipulated things so he would get sent into battle that day, hoping he’d run? Why are you helping us?”

“And here I thought you were smart, Skyfire. I knew he’d run. Soundwave’s a telepath, remember? Youngling’s good at playing the obedient drone, but we put your tactician through the Pit, and he knows it. Fragging glitch nearly deactivated himself a second time before we managed to restrain him.” Starscream sneered, but his tone wasn’t quite as condescending as it normally was.

“And for why I’m doing this, I’m making sure you know what he’s become. Can’t you guess what would happen if Megatron found out the truth about him? He’d create a little army of children, and once wiped of their previous memories, they’d be easy to convince into obedience to him. I know you Autofreaks see us as low down scum, but there are some things I won’t stoop to.”

“What will happen if Megatron finds out? You’ve put yourself in danger.” Behind Skyfire Jazz stifled the urge to snort at the jet’s words. As if the Seeker was that much safer normally.

“Pft. Megatron is still out of commission. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, the mech needs me and my trine. And he needs Soundwave.”

Reassured, Skyfire subspaced the package and nodded. “Starscream, thank you.”

The seeker sniffed, “Just keep the brat out of battle, and out of Megatron’s sight. If I spot him out there, and mind you I will be able to tell, I’ll terminate him.” And then he took off, blasting them with a cloud of dust from his backwash.

“Jerk.” Muttered the Porsche as he slammed his air vents shut to avoid getting them clogged.

“He always was rather abrasive.” Skyfire agreed, expression resigned.

========================================

The fresh information was a big help. Looking at it, Skyfire saw that many of their their theories about Hunter had been correct, and now that they had the corrected data, they could prove them. Clustered around the terminal in Perceptor’s lab with him were Perceptor himself, Ratchet and Wheeljack, the last having joined them after having his curiosity piqued by what he’d seen in the Med Bay previously, and the three were softly discussing what else this could mean.

That Hunter was a real individual in his own right was obvious, even without the data, but Starscream and Soundwave had, contrary to what Hunter had been told, formulated a few hypotheses as to how and why his sapience had arisen. Rising from his seat, the jet left his fellows to it and went back to his own lab, where Hunter had agreed to be at this time. He had a few things to talk to the youngling about, and Hunter seemed to deal better with him than with Smokescreen. As such, dealing with Hunter’s issues was a task that fell mainly on his shoulders, though he consulted Smokescreen often.

“Good afternoon Hunter.” The addressed mech looked up from the tank he was peering into and smiled back in greeting.

“Afternoon, ‘Fire. What did you want to talk about?”

Skyfire settled into a chair, relaxing against the backrest. “First off, I hear you’re not recharging well.”

His only reply was a shrug as the mech took a seat across him.

“Will you tell me why?”

“Things. Memories. I’m managing.” Hunter responded casually, as if it were not an issue any longer, if it even had been in the first place.

“Suppressing your response to ‘things’ with Prowl’s programming is not ‘managing’.” Skyfire wondered if he should have brought up the subject of Hunter’s admittedly short past earlier, but Smokescreen had been adamant about letting the youngling have time to process his new surroundings and situation first, and Perceptor’s findings had kept him rather occupied with research.

“Prowl used the programs.”

“Prowl thought he needed them to do his job effectively, and for all I know of his beginnings he might have. But he was learning not to rely on them, until circumstances prompted him back into their use, and look where that landed him.”

“In trouble with Ratchet every time his logic processors crashed.”

“Good, you can learn. Next, I’d like you to stop using the suppression programs, I know it’s difficult, but you’re still a youngling and your mind needs the chance to develop its emotional responses properly, and that won’t happen if you keep up the programs.”

“And, it will help Prowl as well? Since I’m learning while in his CPU.”

“… Perhaps, we don’t really know what will stay when we transfer you to the new body.”

“New body?”

“How else would you remedy this situation, Hunter?” Skyfire laughed at the nonplussed look on the smaller mech’s faceplates. “We have two functioning minds in one chassis; the obvious solution was to create a second one for you. Wheeljack is particularly enthusiastic about the project. Don’t worry; Ratchet will check that it won’t explode.”

At the mech’s continued silence the jet released a patient cycle of air. “Hunter, how many times do I have to say this? We’re not going to delete you. You’re very real, not a program, and we’d long since come to that conclusion, even if you have trouble believing us. To that end we’ve also recently acquired more data to prove it.”

The Datsun perked, curious now. “How? You were having trouble making further headway earlier.”

He clicked in consideration. Should he reveal his source? The other researchers and the Prime knew, as did Jazz, since the Special Ops mech had gone with him, and all had sworn not to tell anyone else. It couldn’t hurt, and might even reassure the youngling.

“I received additional data from Starscream. It seems he and Soundwave both kept quite a few pertinent details from the databases and Megatron.”

Hunter was quiet once more, and Skyfire talked on.

“In any case, yes, when the Decepticons uploaded their A.I. program, it worked like it should, rendering Prowl’s CPU and battle computer at their disposal. But then you occurred. I’ve examined the original A.I. that you’re supposed to be, and when compared to how your programming is now, that A.I. either doesn’t exist, or it’s been modified beyond what the ‘Cons created.”

“What?”

“Perceptor thinks this is why reprogramming doesn’t work. The spark creates the bot; gives them their basic personalities and abilities, which get modified as the bot develops. Modifying the original personality causes the Spark to try to undo it, or rewrite it to the initial one. Wiping the personality data seemed to result in a non-responsive shell, even with a new personality uploaded, and those were normally disposed of. So far no one’s waited to see if the spark can effect a comeback, though thanks to our observation of you we think it is possible that it would have happened eventually.” Skyfire had to shutter his optics at the possible loss of so many lives to such an act, which the others told him had been tested during the start of the war, in an attempt to spare lives and bolster their numbers.

“Starscream theorised that Prowl’s spark created you after being unable to connect to Prowl, though his presence was detected, and found an A.I. active in his place. With the A.I present, the spark had something to work with, allowing you to become aware much faster than a completely wiped bot might.”

“So… His spark thought the A.I. was Prowl, but reprogrammed, and tried to fix him, only it worked on the foreign program, resulting in me.”

“Simply put, that appears to be so.”

When the black and white mech resumed his silence, Skyfire mused that it was a good thing he was a researcher, and as such had a lot of patience to draw on.

“Hunter, Ironhide spoke to me as well.”

A sharp glance, which smoothed over until Skyfire raised a disapproving optic ridge and Hunter dipped his head sheepishly, acknowledging the non-verbal rebuke.

“It’s well past time you talked about these things. Without the suppressions active, mind you.”

“I don’t need to talk about it.”

“You do. What Prowl went through at the hands of the ‘Cons would necessitate some form of therapy, even for him. Not to mention what you went through.”

“They only hurt Prowl, not me, except in training, and that was to be expected. Starscream and Soundwave… They were my primary watchers. And they were not unkind to me when I was with them.” Skyfire couldn’t help but be relieved at that, Starscream’s assertion that there were things he wouldn’t do replaying in his processors.

“Nevertheless, you still saw what they did to Prowl. You knew what he was thinking, feeling and experiencing during the process. I cannot believe that you came out of it unscathed.”

Hunter sounded tired of the subject. “What do you want me to say, ‘Fire? Yes, I saw the memories. The first time I came online as a sapient being I was screaming. Having the mech that was the cause of much of that screaming looming over me prompted more screaming and an attempt to get away, and when that didn’t work I tore out this chassis’ energon lines with my bare hands. I fell offline from energon loss and when I woke again, I was restrained and someone was talking in my head, telling me not to panic.”

“Soundwave.” Hunter nodded.

“He told me I would not come to any harm if I didn’t fight them. Prowl’s tactical programming took over after that, and I took what his battle computer calculated was the most advantageous course of action. I played the good little ‘Con A.I. who’d become aware. It worked. They trained me. I got hurt. I learned fast to avoid getting more hurt. We went into battle. I turned on them. I escaped.”

Skyfire moved to wrap a now tense Hunter in his arms, like he had the first time they’d talked, but the Datsun flinched, violently, and the jet stilled.

“You asked me to stop using the suppression programs.” There was a shaky little smile on the mech’s face. “I don’t use them all the time. Honest. But some days they’re all that keep me from acting like this.” Abruptly, Skyfire realised that the programs had long been restored to full functionality, and that Hunter had been using them, at times without their detection.

“There is no shame in trauma, mental or otherwise. When you use those programs, you can’t deal with these issues, and we can’t realise you need help. Don’t make things harder for yourself.” The mech did not answer him right away, looking at the ground as if it held the secrets of the universe.

“The mechs of the Ark can’t see me like this. Bluestreak can’t see me like this. He worries enough as it is.”

“Do you really think none of the other mechs would understand what it’s like?”

“They don’t need to see Prowl shaking like a sparkling.” Hunter was going to be stubborn, and Skyfire relented.

“If it’s easier for you, use them, but only when you really have to. But in this lab, with me, I ask that you please do not.”

“Yes sir.”

“I told you not to call me that. Now, I’m going to hug you. It won’t hurt, and you are safe here, understand?”

“Yes si- ‘Fire.” This time, the mech did not shy away when he approached, and Skyfire could tell he was making the effort to relax into the hold and accept the comfort offered.

“We have to work on this as well.” Optics shuttered, the black and white mech nodded.

“It’s difficult. My instinctive behaviour is geared towards the well being of the Autobots, acting like this while they associate me with Prowl doesn’t compute as beneficial. And the ‘Cons despised weakness.”

“They cannot hurt you here. You don’t need to be Prowl or a ‘good little ‘Con A.I.’ for us.”

“Yes ‘Fire.”