Picket Fences out In Space - Transformers Series

8. Sudo Root part 5: Exorcism

Previously they had been separated from one another; trapped into a giant fungus creature at points equidistant to one another, forming a triange. Nightbeat freed himself and the others, ripping them free from mind-bending hallucinations and the tendrils of the creature that, by all apperances, was trying to assimilate them. They then journeyed together towards the mysterious central location that Nightbeat believes must be of great importance to the creature. Dex sat perched on Sky Lynx's back, holding the sides of the dragon's neck for stability. Nightbeat limped alongside them.

"Nightbeat, you're hurt. Why don't you ride on Sky Lynx's back, too?" Dex asked.

Sky Lynx spoke up before Nightbeat had a chance. "Actually, I'm afraid that I can't carry much more than your weight, Dex. I was injured myself, falling out of my mushroom bed this morning. Sorry, Nightbeat."

"I'm fine," replied the blue-and-yellow bot, who was very clearly not fine. He stumbled, and braced himself against the wall of the tunnel. 

Then, Nightbeat's ears twitched. He heard something behind them. From the ground, thick bundles of fibers sprouted, which then coalesced into the figures of the villagers—just like the ones that swarmed the trio when they first arrived on this planet. There were dozens of them shambling out of the earth. They moved as waves do, their backs falling and their fronts rising up from the ground, continuously forming eyes and arms as quickly as they crashed back into the dirt. "Sky Lynx, run!"

Sky Lynx looked over his shoulder. "Ah, they have returned! Maybe now we can finally talk about the visions I had."

"I don't think they're open to civil conversation at the moment," Nightbeat corrected. "If they catch us they'll choke us and imprison us again. You have to get away."

"But what about you?" pleaded Dex, the waves of fungus roared ever nearer.

"There's nothing to do about me. Go back to Cybertron. Get the army. Send a search party. Don't let them get all of us. Now go!"

Sky lynx thought for a moment, and then complied, galloping away at the best pace he could muster.

Nightbeat continued to limp along behind his companions, until he found himself in more pain than he could handle. He lost his balance and fell to the floor, knocking off the lid of his energon canteen, spilling some of its contents onto the floor. The purple, oil-like substance spread out into a puddle. The puddle pooled, until making contact with an ember-colored stone embedded in the wall. The solution ignited with a roaring and brilliant flash, totallyincenerating the villagers.

"Nightbeat!" cried Dex, as they watched the flames illuminate the tunnel behind them, to soon be followed by the thunder of the explosion. Panic overtook the small bot. "We have to go back for him! Oh I wish you could carry him!"

The Dragon had made up its mind. "Maybe it can." Dex did not know what Sky Lynx meant by it.

Nightbeat coughed as the smoke started to clear. Soon he could make out the outline of Dex, straddling Sky Lynx's dragon like form. Only, Sky Lynx appeared shorter, somehow. Then there was another figure emerging from the darkness. It appeared to be Sky Lynx's lynx mode, walking independently of his dragon mode. It was only as the dragon came closer that it was clear that that was not actually Sky Lynx's dragon mode, but a new, bird-like form. Nightbeat shook his head. "An animal duo-con. You, know, I would have expected that to come up in conversation before now."

"Not exactly," said the bird-robot, as he helped Nightbeat onto the back of the lynx robot. "This bird form is the real, irreducible Sky Lynx. This is what I really look like. The Lynx form is a remotely suggested drone, over which I have nearly complete agency. We have been combined for so long that it can be easy for me to overlook the possible utility of...disunion." The lynx robot converted to its shuttle crawler mode, which Nightbeat mounted.

"Remotely suggested?" Nightbeat asked, looking at the bird robot as they continued their march. "Not remotely controlled?"

"I have less precise control over the lynx when we are separated. It doesn't exactly have a 'mind of its own,' so to speak. It would be more accurate to say that it has its own instincts, but lacks any memory, intentions, or foresight. It affords me greater physical mobility and expression on the stage, so integration was necessary for my career as an actor some time ago. Now that we are separated, however, I lack the means of joining us back together again."

After another hour of traveling, Nightbeat motioned for them to stop. "This is it. And there it is." Imbedded in a red, pulsing pillar stretching diagonally across the cave, was a crystal roughly the size of Nightbeat's hand. "It appears the Mushroom hivemind doesn't want us to find the thing we came here for."

"That's got to be the gem the bounty was for!" announced the bird robot. "But why would the planet not want us to get it? What does a mushroom know about jewelry?"

"Maybe the collective read our minds while we were awash in the mushroom mindscape," Dex speculated. "It knew that if we ever found the jewel, we wouldn't have any reason to stay and keep looking."

"A reasonable hypothesis. They did seem to want us to stick around, what with the trying to integrate our bodies into their own. But I don't think that's all there is to it..." Nightbeat got up from his rolling platform mount and limped over to the object. He poured the remaining energon from his flask onto the vine, drawing a dripping circle around the shimmering red crystal. He stepped back, and tossed a loose ember-colored stone from the floor towards it. A round hole was blasted through the pillar of fungus matter, rocketing the prize into Nightbeat's waiting hands like a football.

The blast was over, but the earth around them continued to tremble. The now-cored, red, fibrous pillar snapped with concussive force, starting a trend throughout the caverns of roots, convulsions happening all around, dirt coming loose from above their heads. Nightbeat seemed disappointed. "I guess it was just the heart. I thought surely the heart would be in the huge central mass I saw earlier, but it turns out the stone, way off center, was the heart all along. This is barely an appendage of the huge monster. I guess that's slightly less contrived?"

"It wore its heart on its sleeve, Nightbeat," corrected Sky Lynx. Dex's eyes glowed more intensely at the idea.

Dirt fell from the ceiling at an ever-increasing rate, all the while the floor too was collapsing. They were going to be trapped, it seemed. The mazes of tunnels were too disturbed, and they could no longer support the weight of the tunnels above them. Wordlessly, the party hunkered down and joined hands, expecting to buried again, but unwilling to again be separated in the process. Dex held onto Nightbeat with all of their might. The roaring was coming for Dex again. First the roars of vacuous space, then the roars of the Noid, now the roars of this whole planet falling in on itself; Dex would not suffer through it in solitude again.

And then things got quiet.

And then there was light. A light shone through a new opening in the ceiling. Dex finally let Nightbeat go. After dusting themselves off, Dex, Nightbeat, and the rocket ship form of the bird robot left the lynx robot, and the whole planet, behind.