Tempest

4 - Reconciliation

...

...

...

... main_systems rebooting {DESIG. KILO_TANGO - 0298} last_activation (35:11.21 min ago)

WARNING [IMPROPER SHUTDOWN]

ATTEMPT 1 REBOOT/

[STATUS: IN PROGRESS]

[STATUS: IN PROGRESS]

[STATUS: SUCCESSFUL]

/PERFORM ALL_SYS SCAN/

[ANALYSIS: all primary systems and critical functions are functioning ~ emotive processors have been reset and added to main_systems]

/RUN DIAGNOSTIC/

[ANALYSIS: cause of shutdown originated from data core ~ momentarily overloaded from addition of emotive processors to active systems}

/PERFORM DATA_CORE SCAN/

[ANALYSIS: data core is functioning (corrupt?.no) data core is not corrupted and/or damaged]

PROT. 1 {SUCCESS}

PROT. 2 {SUCCESS}

PROT. 3 {IN PROGRESS}

/ ... /

/ ... Oh God. /

...

Tobias sighed, and leaned against KT's chassis which was now lying immobile in the Titan barracks.

He had gotten some help from the few people out in the hangar at this hour. Someone had grabbed a transport cart, and wheeled her in here. They said that they'd get an engineer to look her over when morning came, but there wasn't anything to be done at the moment. He'd thanked them, and opted to hang back with her while they left.

"Why?"

He couldn't really think of a better way to say that. He'd held onto the hope that he would one day reunite with his best friend, only to find that she didn't exist anymore. And now, the only remnant of her may have just gone and gotten herself corrupted or worse. It's like he was taking a beating every day, having his hope ripped away from him with every time he thought he had some.

He reached out, and patted the arm of the inactive Titan. This chassis was totally unfamiliar to him. Considering who it belonged to, he couldn't help but wish that the KT wasn't as big a stranger to him as it was.

Deciding to wait it out until morning, he reluctantly stood up and began to move towards the exit. He had only made it a few steps before he heard movement behind him, and spun around wildly to see that the chassis had jerked violently for a moment, as though someone were waking up from a nightmare.

As he watched, her optic blinked several times, the blue light flickering from within. Eventually it stabilized, and remained on as it rotated around, trying to analyze her surroundings.

He let out a breath of relief and walked back to her. "Glad to see you're still functioning. God, you had me worried for a second there."

Her optic moved towards his voice, and froze when he landed in her line of sight. He waved weakly. "Your whole system shut down because of what you tried. Looks like it didn't work, but I appreciate the effort anyway. But don't do it again, alright? I don't think it'd be wise to put so much strain on your systems."

He spoke dejectedly, and he knew it; but he didn't care. Of course he was glad that this shell of KT was still working, but that didn't mean that the old KT was back, nor would she likely ever be back. He turned to leave, and he couldn't help but think of how much it killed him to see her like-