lyric 29

Slowly Lyric began to boot, her systems as usual, flooding her vision with a report of her status, but the first thing she actually took in was the soft petting of a servo on her helmet, brushing her chevron lightly, giving her soothing sensations and safety.

Taking her time, knowing she was safe and alive, she booted fully, onlining her optics and visor, only to be met with the orange ceiling of the ark.

Predictably Jazz's face hurried into her vision, he was saying something, but it was still fuzzy to her, her systems were still adjusting her audio capacity.

Jazz grabbed her face, kissing her on the cheeks, on the nose, on the forehead, and on the chevron, clearly showing his worry.

The sound focused more and she could now make words better.

"...confuse her." Prowl's voice came while Jazz pet her helm like it was about to break. "and be mindful of her shoulder, Ratchet said not to move it much."

"Ah know..." Jazz whined, rubbing his cheekplates against Lyric's "but Ah can't help it, Ah need ta know mah lil' girl is okay."

"M'fine..." she managed to mumble, feeling oddly tired.

"Yer not fine" Jazz said, sounding a bit more strict now that she had responded. "Yer shoulder joint got broken, yer lucky Ratchet had the part he needed ta replace it."

"My shoulder broke...?" she asked drowsily, making to look to both her shoulders.

"It is fully repaired now" Prowl spoke, coming more into vision as she turned her head towards his way. He was sitting in a chair with a datapad, it looked like they had been there for a while. "Although you are to take it easy and avoiding moving it too much, while you get used to the new part."

She nodded lightly. Working on refocusing her sensors, soon she felt the faint sting from her shoulder.
"You have a terrible timming." Prowl continued calmly. "Your transformation systems came online at the worst location. It was incredibly dangerous."

"You...knew this was going to happen?" she asked dazedly.

"Yeh..." Jazz answered this time, having resumed to simply stroking her helm in comforting caresses. "We knew it woulda come up sooner or later, we jus' didn' know when."

"So...what did I turn into...?" she asked curiously, looking between the two as they exchanged uncertain glances.

"We do not know as of yet, your frame couldn't finish the full transformation due to you falling and getting caught on tree limbs. You will have to execute the transformation on your own next time."

That didn't sound very right... "On my own?" she repeated.

"We'll be there with ya all the way sparkles. Ya dun gotta worry none." Jazz assured readily.

"No I mean- was this supposed to have happened automatically? As in, with no warning?"

"Yes, that is essentially how all first transformations work, after the first experience you will have a menu available for you." Prowl agreed.

"But... I got that menu from the beginning." she said, blinking. The two looked taken aback for a moment, and uncertain.

"Maybe its a program glitch?" Jazz suggested.

"Lyric... what did the program look like, and what did you activate exactly?" Prowl asked, looking tense as he thought.

"Uhh..." her mind was still foggy, she tried her best to remember it. "Well I couldn't translate the glyph... so I pressed it out of curiosity-" she felt like shrinking at the way Prowl's lips spread thinly. "and it gave me this menu. It had a lot of various frames for femmes, some of even mechs. It gave me the schematics of both bipedal mode and vehicle mode. I figured it was some sort of information list or something, so I picked one, I thought I was just opening a file but... next thing I knew I started feeling weird and started changing."

The two adults stood still, taking in what she said.
"Ratchet...?" Prowl slowly called, bringing his mate to sit back down on the empty chair beside him, Jazz looked on in absolute shock at his creation, it looked as if he was about to have one of Prowl's crashes.

"What? Whats wrong? What did I do?!" she asked, making to sit up with some effort, taking note of the growing panic in the air.

"Ratchet!" Prowl called again, this time more urgently, ignoring his creation's questions for now.
"WHAT?!" the medic shouted from what Lyric realized now, was the private room they were in, he strode in through the door, a scowl on his face as he took in the scene. "What the frag is going on? You, lie back down" he ordered, pointing at Lyric, who all but ignored the order.

"We require that you make an extensive software scan to Lyric immediately." Prowl said with some urgency, holding his mate steady on the chair.

Jazz was mumbling something in cybertronian, just one word, but Lyric didn't know this one.

"Why?" The medic asked suspiciously, but moving to his scanners none the less.

Prowl gave Lyric a glance, uncertain, before turning back to Ratchet and speaking in cybertronian.

Lyric could only catch a thing or two again, but she knew they were obviously talking about her, and it was starting to worry her.

"What? Whats wrong?" She asked, sitting straighter in the berth, much against Ratchet's will. "Did I do something wrong? Should I not have pressed it?"

"Get her to lie down Prowl" Ratchet ordered calmly, setting up his machine.
Prowl easily moved back to the berth, reaching to push the femme back down, only to have his hands pushed away.

"No! Whats going on! Tell me!" she didn't like this, she didn't like being forced down for some medic exam.

"Its all right Lyric, it is probably nothing serious, but Ratchet NEEDS to make sure, if our guess is right. Please lie down." Prowl tried, noting the rising aggravation in his creation.

"Not until you tell me whats going on!"

"It is easier to explain once we are certain. We could be wrong." He said, managing to push her down now that she wasn't so resistant. "Everything will be fine, you have my word, trust me."

"Certain of what?!" she squeaked as Ratchet prepared to plug her to the machine, she inched away from him wearily. "Whats wrong with me?!"

"Nothing is wrong" Prowl insisted, opening the link from his to her spark, trying to invest on sending her calm and comfort.

"No! Don't you nothing me!"she said a little bit on the verge of hysterics "You can't just do this and tell me its nothing! GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!" she snarled at Ratchet when he got too close with the cable, her engine hissing. "And don't do THAT either!" she yelled at Prowl "don't you try to influence me with those feelings! I am NOT going to calm down!"

"Prowl!" Ratchet barked, annoyed.

"Lyric you have to trust me" Prowl said in a bit more of a hurry now, knowing Ratchet's temper was running thin.

"Trust you?! You're hiding something from me and you want ME to trust YOU?!"

"Yes!" Prowl's momentary loss of control over his emotions stopped her in her tracks, just one word, and he'd said a lot. He calmed, letting out an ex vent. " Please..."

Ever so slowly, she relaxed a little from her tense position, relaxing a little, looking at Ratchet suspiciously.

"Thank you" Prowl said with relief flooding their bond, reaching to pet his daughter's helmet while her optics were fixated on what Ratchet was doing. She moved away ever so slightly when he tried to plug her in again, and then did not resist the second time.

He felt the little jump she gave when the system began scanning her processor, it wasn't particularly painful, just a little startling.

Ratchet hummed, reading the information scrolling across the screen, searching for any anomalies.
After long tense minutes in which only Prowl had moved to comfort his tense creation, reassuring her that everything was fine, Ratchet finally spoke up.

"There it is." he said, narrowing his optics and frowning, squinting at the screen.

Both Prowl and Jazz, who had been in his own state of shock until then, looked up at the medic, expecting to hear the news. Lyric was highly alert, listening in as best as she could, pulling up every file she had to understand anything that might be spoken in cybertronian.

"Is she...?" Jazz spoke up with a voice that didn't even sound like his own.

"Yes." Ratchet said with most certainty. "It would seem she inherited your bit of nasty coding and it just finally activated. We were lucky it didn't while she was under cover really, would have been very troublesome."

"What nasty coding?" she piped up, her voice going a bit higher in pitch with her worry "what are you talking about? Whats wrong with me?" her fans were starting to hum online, attempting to cool her down.

Prowl seemed to snap out of his own state of mind by her voice and returned his attentions back to her, trying to keep her calm and still.

"Nothing is wrong dearspark." he said gently, sensing the fear radiate off of her in waves. "You...ah...I'm afraid it does not have quite a translation in english" he frowned in thought "what you have, is a skill, a trait if you will, a rare talent that does not get passed on easily, something that you seem to have gotten from your carrier, the only one in the autobots known to have it." he explained as Ratchet moved to unplug her, she quickly inched away from him.

"What trait? What are you talking about?" she was confused, oh so confused, why did they like to omit things so much? She wanted to end all the suspense and just have them say it!

"It would seem that earlier, you have not triggered your transformation as we had thought you did." he began. "instead you initialized this skill by accident. You see... you are a-"

"-Sorceller"Jazz spoke up before him, in full cybertronian, and Lyric could not translate what he said, but he said with a firmness that she knew was what prowl had been about to say.

"what?"

"Ah...it is the name we have for it. Its a special type of transformation, instead of taking an alternative mode for moving around like the most of us, you are able to completely change your appearance, in both modes, it is a much higher level of shape shifting than we are normally capable of."

"What...?" she was still disorientated from it all, trying to make sense of things, getting to know cybertronian culture was hard enough... this was even worse.

Prowl turned to his mate, looking thoughtful "it would probably be best explained by giving her an example, do you have sufficient energy?"

Jazz simply nodded, stepping up next to the berth.

"Look carefully girly, cuz we can't do this too many times" he told her, raising an arm for her to look at. Lyric did so, expecting him to do something with it, but then instead, something started to happen to it.

Lyric watched in fascination as the arm began twisting and shifting into a completely different arm, the white and black paint fading and gaining a new color of blue and yellow, and while the arm looked like the proper mass for the rest of Jazz's body, it looked like it did not belong to his body at all anymore, as if he were wearing someone else's arm.

He gave her time to look at it, even offering it for her to have a closer inspection. His previously serious expression softened a little as she took it in, tracing the armor, trying very hard to understand how it had worked.

"Its still part o'meh... jus' disguised" he chuckled, lightly wiggling his fingers as she touched his hand.

"Its like your a shapeshifter for cybertronians...by your standards anyway...how does..." her processor didn't want to take it in "how did you even change the paint?"

"Ah didn't." he said calmly "righ' now its still black an' white, but ah'm coverin' it with some holo paint, if Ah were to go on a long term infiltration mission though I woulda gotten a real paint, less energy drainin'."

"And you're telling me that I...I can do this...?" she lifted his arm a little, looking it over one last time before releasing it. "I can change into anything I like? Anyone?"

"Ah... no. It dun' work that way. Ya can't copy someone's look for example unless ya have every frame specifics from 'em. Normally we make our own models. Or use the most common ones. It takes a real high level o' control ta be able ta copy someone's look jus' right."

And it was implied in his tone that he was one of those select few that knew how.

"More so to the point" Prowl interrupted as Jazz shifted his arm back to what it was supposed to look like. "Sorcelling is a dangerous skill, more so to the user than to those one hopes to elude."

"It has risks?" She asked, almost knowing the answer. Of course it had to have, nothing good ever came without a price.

"Yes, sorcelling is an extreme energy consuming skill." he explained "a simple transformation alone can set one on its reserves." He glanced at Jazz as if wanting him to confirm it.

The saboteur was flexing his fingers, making sure his arm was fully back to normal, he nodded at Prowl's request.

"Not only tha'. But if ya dun' know how ta do it righ' ya can easily break a limb or crush somethin' vital from yer body. Yer lucky ya only got yer shoulder joint broken this time."

"So...what do I do with it...?" She asked uncertainly, feeling for her recovering arm in a subconscious reflex.

"Ya leave it alone." Jazz said firmly, his face reminiscent of the one he wore the last time they had a Decepticon attack, before he got injured. "Yer never EVER ta use it, understand? Its dangerous."

"But you-"

"No." He cut her off firmly. "We're not gonna argue this. Yer NEVER ta use it."

"WHY not?"She countered, feeling a bit of her rebelling fire burning. "I get it has risks and all! I understand that, but once I learn how to do it right it should be fine! You could teach me!"

"No." Jazz repeated. "This is not up for discussion Lyric. Yer forbidden from usin' it, an' Primus help meh if ah catchya fiddlin' with that program!" he warned.

"What are you going to do?! Ground me?!" she barked back, gritting her denta angrily, she did not like the authorative tone he was using on her. "You're not the boss of me, you can't order me around!"

"As a matter o'fact Ah can!" He huffed "Ah'm your carrier an' Ah'm tellin' ya righ' now where the line lies, an yer jus' a few steps from crossin' it missy." he said raising his own voice.

"I think that is enough for today..." Prowl input trying to get in between them, sensing their respective angers rising.

"You might have created me! But you're certainly not my father!"

The words punched the air like a bullet, freezing the two mechs and even the medic who had wandered away to give them some space.

Lyric hesitated for a moment when the silence hit her, realizing her words, for a moment she felt like taking it back, but then everything they had just talked about came back, and it just fueled her anger further.

"Y-you heard me! Just because you created me doesn't make you my father! A father doesn't abandon its child! They don't give their children away to another species to top it off! A father wouldn't bring their own child to life in a time of war! What were you even thinking at that time?! What future could you possibly have hoped for me?! Was I just to be a pet you could take comfort from when you needed?! Because THAT is not what being a parent is about! And that's all you ever do!"

Prowl was now looking at her with shock, his optics pale and unnaturally wide, Jazz wasn't even looking at her, his head low and his visor had gone dark.

"L-Lyric..." Prowl spoke faintly.

"Did you EVEN consider my feelings in all of this?! Or just my health?! You have NEVER asked me how I felt about this change, you never asked me if I wanted it! If I would rather take other actions! Maybe I would have wanted that memory wipe you're going to offer Windy! Maybe I would have rather died! Or maybe I would have even preferred to be with the Decepticons! The fact is you didn't even bother to ask!"

"Lyric... please do not say such things" Prowl spoke softly, reaching to touch her, only to have her move away.

"No! Its the truth and you know it! You didn't even care to ask how I was doing after I got captured!" she tried her best to hold the knot in her throat, to not cry, but her voice was starting to crack. "You never bothered to ask if they had done anything to me! If I was coping well from it! You just put me in my room and let me sleep it off! Pretended that nothing happened! All the while keeping me here as much of a prisoner as I would have been with them!"

Prowl retracted his hand, looking hurt from her words, his optics paled even more as he looked down, and then at his mate, making to move. "Come... I believe its time we leave." he murmured to his mate, dragging the only half there mech out.
Lyric watched them leave, they didn't even look back before walking out the door of the private room...a moment later she heard Ratchet sigh, and make his way out as well, the door closing and leaving her to the silence of the room.

It was crushing, the sudden lack of noise...and it made her realize how hurtful she must have sounded...instant regret came now that they were gone, and she curled into a sitting position, hugging her knees and tucking her head between them, letting out a quiet sob.

What had she done?