Author's Note: The plot and all original characters belong to me, while Hasbro and other companies (whose names I can't remember for the life of me) own the Beast Wars. So don't sue. I'm just a broke college student who can't even remember what a twenty-dollar bill looks like!
Shards of Remembrance
by Dierdre
Darkness.
That was all there was, at first.
No sight. No sound. No taste, smell or touch.
Not even a sense of self.
Only a darkness deeper than hibernation or coma. Deeper, even, than death.
Protoform spark stasis.
The ultimate silence.
The peace of oblivion.
~Warning: Malfunction to orbital stabilizers. Repair or planet fall is imminent. ~
The barest flicker of…something. Quickly submerged and subdued.
Silence.
~Second warning: Malfunction to orbital stabilizers. Repair or planet fall will occur in 2.1 cycles. ~
The flicker flared again. Brighter this time.
What is…?
Unimportant.
Silence.
~Warning: Planet fall commencing. Attempting to control and stabilize descent. ~
The distant feeling…Feeling?… of heat, and violent turbulence.
Curiosity. And something else. Fear?
The darkness was more distant now.
I…
I? What is I?!
~Attempt unsuccessful. Impact in forty-two nano-clicks.~
Frustration. What the slag's a nano-click?
A pause.
Slag?
Vicious shaking. Heat. The high-pitched hissing shriek of melting circuit boards and super-heating metal. Still no sight. Movement; an impossibility.
~Impact in ten nano-clicks.~
What is happening?
~8.~
Death. What is death? And why…
~5.~
No! I…
~4.~
I am afraid.
~2.~
Please…
~1.~
Suddenly, the horrible feeling of impact, of incredible pressures exerted upon the body, and pain. Pain! Once an unknown concept, now rendered far too familiar. Sounds of tearing, screeching, melting and warping metal.
Finally, silence and cessation of movement.
The knowledge of self, so recently regained, faded quickly. Only pain remained.
That, too, was soon buried. Smothered. Drowned in welcoming darkness.
Oblivion reasserted itself, and silence reigned.
My first conscious awareness was of light. A thin stream that cut across my face and stabbed into my left eye, painfully bright even through the tight-shut lid. With a moan that sounded strangely like a growl, I twisted my head back until the light fell away. Ah, that's better.
I became aware of sound. A great deal of sound. Loud and frightening, yet somehow familiar. Weapons fire, my mind whispered.
My intellect reached out; searching for the peaceful void I had so recently departed. I felt a strange longing to return there, to wrap the darkness around me like a blanket.
My body, however, had other ideas.
I stirred, stretching out my stiff limbs, and yawned. I felt… wrong somehow. My jaw had stretched far wider than I seemed to think it should, and my limbs seemed to bend in all the wrong places, without the faint, but ever-present, sound of whirring servos expanding and contracting.
My mind felt sluggish, each thought gliding across my core processor like oil in mid-winter. Thusly, it was a moment before these apparent body changes concerned me. And another span of time before I realized I couldn't stretch out all the way. My clawed feet were pressing up against something warm, metallic, and concave. Strange. I wonder…
Wait a nano. Since when do I have clawed feet?
My eyes snapped open; the slash of brilliant light nearly blinded me. I ignored it. I don't have claws! I whipped my head up and around to look… and yelped as I bashed my head hard against something metal.
I shook my head, trying to rattle away the stars that danced in front of my vision, and looked again, more slowly this time, over my body to where I knew my feet to be. Yep, I had clawed feet. Three-toed and scaly, wickedly clawed feet! And that wasn't all…
It was a little difficult to see, what with the odd angle I was in, but I could make out enough. Powerful, yet strangely proportioned hind legs. Long, supple neck And… feathers?
Oh. Dear. Primus.
While my mind was still reeling from the shock of this discovery, something completely alien awoke in my processor. I became aware of strange emotions and primitive thoughts that were not my own. I felt a pressing desire for the open sky, and the simple, yet overpowering, needs to eat, to live and to create little copies of myself. It was confusing, it was frightening and it threatened to overwhelm me.
With great difficulty, I pushed down the foreign thoughts and emotions with my sluggish, but still more intelligent, mind. I forced myself to think logically.
I was in a stasis pod, that much I knew, one that had apparently made a rough landing on some planetoid, judging from the slashed, half-melted lid and the sunlight streaming through the opening. Something must have happened to the ship; stasis pods were only supposed to be ejected during attack or massive systems failure. The noises outside suggested it had been an attack, and at least some of my fellow Maximals and their enemies had survived.
In which case, I had to get out of this metal coffin and do what I could to help my comrades.
My body, actually my beast mode, was not happy about being in such a predicament. My energon pump was beating a rapid staccato rhythm in my chest and my breath came quickly. Air flowed in and out of my organic lungs, a very unusual thing to have, glided over my voice modulator and out past my gasping jaws and lolling beast tongue, creating a strangely beautiful trilling noise. Something long and feathery, which felt suspiciously like a tail, twitched around my hind legs. My odd wings, each tipped with three stubby fingers, twitched in an instinctive fear response, searching for safety in the open air.
Don't be afraid, I told myself sternly, searching the pod lid with my deformed hands for a latch, a button, something. Yes, it's small, yes, it's completely enclosed, but no, it's not closing in on you, and yes, you will find a way out! There's no need to panic.
My beast form, whatever it was, was not convinced.
Suddenly, there was a particularly intense burst of weapons fire, a piercing cry of pain and an explosion that was much too close for comfort. My stasis pod shuddered violently, as if something, or someone, had been hurled against it. The smell of burnt circuitry and melted wires wafted in through the slashed pod lid.
Be calm. Be…
Another explosion, deafening in its intensity, sounded nearby. The rear section of my pod was flung into the air; its weight settling at the head. It spun around like a top for a short eternity, while I was tossed and pummeled about, before slamming back to earth with a loud clang.
That did it.
My rational mind faded away, replaced by my beast form's instinctual fear. I screeched, hissed and trilled like the animal I was, kicking and clawing at the pod lid with my powerful hind legs. My wing/arms flapped ineffectually at my heaving sides, my warped hands with their sharp little nails digging furrows into the still-warm metal. I was in a state of raw panic, the basest form of terror that runs too deep for words.
I don't know how it happened, but suddenly the lid of my metal prison popped open. I burst out with a shriek of relief and fell to the hard, dusty earth in an undignified tumble of feathers and awkward limbs. Free! I flapped my strange wings frantically, my panic-blurred eyes taking in very little of what was going on around me. I longed for the sky. With every fiber of my being, I craved it.
Success! My feet lifted from the ground as my wings cupped the air and forced me upward. I embraced the gloriously blue sky like an old friend.
Free…