Okay the inspiration gremlins have struck again. This leave five outlines in progress that I need to flesh out into full stories. So without further Ado!

Confusion

Knight in Borrowed Armor 1

A Transformers Prime FanFiction

Confusion moved around him. The warrior tried to find order, truth in the chaos around him as he slowly came awake. He felt a stab of fear as he realized what that meant. If he was waking, he had slept, he had betrayed his duty. A sentential could not afford to sleep, not when such great danger followed him. He tried to bring the world into focus. Slowly things began to resolve. There were lifeforces burning around him; attentive and concerned. He was among allies then. But why could he not see? He became aware of time trickling by. The lives swirled around him slowly.

He was nameless he suddenly realized. A pang shot through him. His lady was gone. Perhaps it was simply that too much time had passed and she had gone on to her reward in peace; but by violence, illness, or simply the passage of time, he was alone again with only his duty.

Noise. He realized part of the confusion must be noise. Language, someone was speaking. Humans, he had finished the journey then. He was back on the human plane. But the language was confusing. There were hints of the Empire, tastes of the Gaul. When was he?

Suddenly another wave of input fluttered over him. Light. The warrior was seeing now. In the swirling confusion of all the new input he had been ignorant of his own blindness up to this point. Now he stared up at a tall white ceiling. It billowed in a slight wind. Oddly enough he hadn't opened his eyes. Some outside force had preformed that action for him. A woman in a long white overcoat moved out onto a catwalk directly in his line of sight. Compassion and intelligence shone out of eyes set in a dark southern face.

The woman held out a device for him to see, and deliberately pressed a button. Immediately the world went dark. Now that he had seen the light the warrior was able to recognize the darkness. Thinking back he recalled the sensation of his eyes opening. After a bit of struggle he managed to recreate it. He took a few seconds opening and closing his eyes rapidly, surprised at how fast this body reacted.

This body. There was something very odd about it. There were too many senses for one. The nameless warrior closed his eyes and began to sort the sensations. His hearing was sharp; far too acute for a human shell. He experimented a bit focusing in on a distant conversation. He heard the name of his last Lady mentioned and stiffened a bit. The language was still unknown to him but he could hear reverence in the tone. The warrior struggled and searched for some time before he discovered how to draw a breath. It was quite unsatisfactory. It fulfilled no need he could determine and the knight felt a little disappointed. He preferred a shell that drew breath still. Perhaps this shell was simply the best they had to offer. There were fewer and fewer with each passing year. But the air passed through the body's nose and he determined that scent too was greatly expanded. Then there were the other senses; like sight, like hearing able to detect waves passing by. He could feel an uncomfortable bed beneath him and the unfortunately familiar tightness of bonds on his wrists and ankles. He opened his eyes again.

After a few false starts, things within him surged and complained, he felt his fingers twitch. At the movement there was a slight swirl of fear from the gathered humans. The woman on the catwalk leaned over and gave a command. He tried to turn his head but found it restrained with a strap. In a moment he felt a human at each joint busily unclasping his restraints. So they had been for protection and not confinement, he mused, testing the comfort of the restraints and finding it adequate. The warrior looked down at his hand and received a shock. He could have easily picked up the human that stood by him. This body was large then. That would explain why all the humans were quickly moving away from him now that he was free. A few of them had the look of soldiers, but oddly enough the majority appeared to be scholars.

Carefully the nameless warrior stood. He staggered but managed to retain his footing. He stared in bemusement at the large metal feet below him. There was no doubt a very interesting story behind this. He stood to his full height and felt a pang of grief as he looked down on the humans. This body would separate him from them; make it harder to serve them. He dismissed the depressing thought and stretched out with his body and all his senses.

Too late he felt something leave him, a signal of light. He felt a near instant response, words in a language he didn't know, dread, hope. Silently cursing his carelessness the warrior headed for the large door. He had summoned something, and until he was sure that something posed no threat to the humans he couldn't let it find him among them. He stopped at the door and pointed at it. He heard a voice give a command and the door rolled up.

Before it was even fully open he had ducked out and was sprinting across a paved section of ground. This body was easy to get used to. The warrior noticed the buildings, the machines sitting around what was obviously a military base, and made a mental note to admire them properly once he had determined it was safe to do so. He easily leapt over a metal fence and charged off towards a series of low hills. As soon as he was out of sight of the base he sent out the signal again. He felt several responses now, all unintelligible, but equally as urgent. They were seeking him. He felt another presence and this one commanded his full attention. It was dark and grasping. Curiosity and no emotion. The warrior frowned. He was completely unused to this body, fighting would be difficult, especially as there were no lingering instincts in the mind of the shell.

Suddenly the world stretched beside him. The warrior leapt away as a swirling green vortex appeared. He stood tall as two beings in armor stepped out of the mist. One was a soldier in dark green armor. Strength and loyalty radiated from him like warmth from a fire. The other shone with such great light and lifeforce it was difficult for the nameless one to see his red and blue armor. They both had weapons raised but they were held for defense rather than attack. He raised his hands in what he hoped they would take as a placating manner.

The taller red and blue one spoke to him in the strange double language the human's had used. Metal though it was he had the face of a true warrior. There was both hope and wariness in his blue eyes. The nameless one shook his head in confusion, then turned towards the west and pointed with a frown. He felt something from his new senses. The red and blue warrior seemed to be talking with an ally. He appeared to come to a decision. Very deliberately he sheathed his weapons and stepped toward the nameless warrior. He spoke low and quickly resting a hand on the nameless one's shoulder and gestured at the portal. The nameless one nodded and walked into the mist.

As he had surmised it was a bridge of some sort; very clean and efficient, it didn't seem to be attracting any unwanted attention like things of that sort usually did. He felt space slipping away beneath him and stepped out into the cool confines of a cave. Two more of the creatures were waiting for him there. One, a sturdy red and white, immediately began to poke and prod at him in a medical sort of way. The nameless warrior was beginning to get uneasy concerning the source of his current shell. It only grew when a slim blue female approached him.

He knew that look in her blue eyes; desperation. Desperate hope, desperate fear. She had cared deeply for the one whose shell he now inhabited. The female clearly wasn't sure whether or not she was looking at the one she cared for. She reached out and grasped his hands in hers, talking fast and hard. Behind him the nameless warrior heard the first two creatures return through the bridge and it closed behind them, but his eyes were fixed on the female in front of him. A faint shield glittered over her metal skin, preventing him from sensing her life force as he'd been able to do with the others. He sought out the source of the shield and his eyes fell on a young man.

The human stood uncertainly to the side, glancing between the female and the nameless warrior uneasily. The warrior gently extracted his hands from the female's and touched her shoulder with a smile. He stepped around the confused warrior and knelt before the young man. Here was the source of her protection. From the looks of it he was powerful but untrained, perhaps was not even aware of what he was doing. Still he was a sensitive. The nameless one reached out to him. The human visibly reacted but didn't respond in any coherent way, in fact seemed to be trying to ignore him now. The nameless one frowned. There was much going on here he didn't understand.

A woman approached from the depths of the cave, a Lady; pure and powerful, obviously the mother of the sensitive. He turned to her acutely aware that the eyes of every warrior in the place were intently trained on him. They assumed him to be an ally of some sort but would clearly intervene with force were he to endanger either the Lady or her son. This pleased him. For the first time since he had awoken he spoke. His voice was awkward at first but he soon mastered the task of speaking. She was startled and said something to the others before responding.

"Tu quis es?" she asked.

"Ignosce mihi, domina. Ego miles sine nomine. Porto Epistulam ad posteros imperium," he said urgently.

"English loqueris?" she asked, having understood perhaps two thirds of what he had said.

"Hoc nescio loqui Latine lingua est, qua fortasse manuscript Id Linguam? Agitur enim de vita et morte."

She nodded and conferred with the red and blue leader. The nameless one followed the lady to a large machine. The red and white warrior doctor prepared the machine and demonstrated how to use it. He was glaring suspiciously at the nameless warrior now. Had the he not been so very pressed with the urgency of the mission and the growing fears regarding his shell the warrior would have taken more time to wonder at the world of information the machine opened up. But the doctor had prepared the machine to present him with a way to learn this new language. As he had suspected it was a mixture of the Imperial tongue and that of the northern barbarians. Quickly he studied it, and mastered it. This shell was very useful in that way; it retained everything it touched upon.

He turned back to the Lady and bowed deeply.

"Good Lady. I thank you for your assistance. I am in your debt."

"You are welcome," she replied with a pleased smile.

"But now there are things I must attend to."

The warrior turned toward Optimus. He gracefully dropped to his knees and clasped his hands behind his neck, bowing his head before the Autobot leader.

"Noble Warrior, please accept my most humble surrender."