Transformers - Son of Primus

13: Thinking Process

Several hours later...

Stripes waited while Ratchet examined him. His arm had changed into some sort of scanning tool. He was running it over Stripes' Chassis.

"Hmm... From what my scanners say, you are in tip-top shape, despite what others have told me what's happened to you. I'll need to go over a psychological test with you later. I have a feeling you've got Sudden Spark Syndrome..."

Stripes looked at the medic with shock. "What the hell kind of robot disease is that??"

Ratchet sighed. "It's not anything life-threatening. It's just when... How can I explain this..." He searched the internet for similarities. "The closest equivalent in human terms is 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder', and as I said before, it's just a feeling."

Stripes heaved out a depressed sigh. He walked over to the trailer, sitting down near the end. Optimus and Elita were laying in the trailer side by side catching up with each other. Ratchet insisted Optimus shouldn't be moved for a few days at the least, saying he needed to run a few more tests on him. So they were basically stuck here for a while.

Nikki popped back into Stripes' mind. He was still thinking about her, even after the dream. He looked up at the night sky again, the full moon shining it's weak rays down on the earth, lightly illuminating the outlines of the desert.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Stripes turned to see Darius walked up and sat down beside him. "You must be thinking hard about something. I can tell."

Stripes smiled. "Really? What makes you think that?"

Darius laughed. "Carlos, Come on, man! It's written in that look you have on your face! I could spot that look even when you were human, hanging out with Jackie Rourke!"

"You mean 'Jack' Rourke." Stripes corrected. He hated it when Darius referred to his best friend as Jackie. He thought it sounded too much like a girl's name. Darius however, disagreed. "Anyways, you are right. I am thinking hard about something. Or someone, in this case..."

Darius sighed. "Its Nikki, isn't it? Look, if this is about what I said..."

"It isn't." Stripes replied. "...I'm just wondering how she's doing at the moment. I was at the funeral they held for me, I had to watch her cry... She was so broken that day..."

Darius looked at Stripes with a puzzled look. "You mean nobody saw you? Nobody saw the giant robot walking around..."

"I was in vehicle mode, you dodo." Stripes said with a deadpan.

"...Oh. Right." Darius tried to cover up his error by looking up at the sky and acting like the words never left his vocalizer.

Stripes continued. "...Just Wish I could have told her 'I'm right here, you don't need to cry.' I wanted so bad to comfort her, tell her everything was alright. Of course, I couldn't do that, because of the obvious."

Darius sighed. "Yep. Then I had to make it worse by accepting that offer from that 'Mustang Cop' that Razor introduced me and Cross to. I didn't even think twice about it, or even think, 'hey, is this reversible?' But I guess that was my choice, so now I have to live with it, nyeh..." He grumbled.

"Look on the bright side, mate." Crosshairs said. "If you didn't go through 'the change' you wouldn't have been there to help us against Lockdown."

Darius turned to Crosshairs, irritated. He felt like saying something sarcastic, considering what Crosshairs and Drift did earlier. Then he stopped himself and re-processed what would come out of his vocalizer. "...That's a good point, I guess."

It then hit Ratchet. "Wait a minute! Did you say, 'Mustang Cop?' "