re_alignment_logs | Scarce to be Counted [closed]

Who: White Knight and Six. Rex can come too.
What: ~~where the hell have they been all month~~ Trying to get back on track after a potential disaster may or may not have been averted.
When: Now
Where: Their home base
Notes/Warnings: none

--

He'd been lucky.

Maybe.

White Knight was well aware of how someone changing form could radically alter their behavior. It was why Nanites were a threat of an apocalyptic scale. Absolutely anyone who was infected had the potential to transform and snap, losing their grip on their own sanity and going on a violent rampage. And absolutely everyone was infected. Now, even White was saddled with a daunting maybe. He'd lost control, himself, during that unicorn transformation -- allowed himself to get far too close and friendly to Six. Close enough for contamination. White brought a hand to his face as he thought about it, remembering how one of Six's canine teeth had breached the skin and drawn blood. Even that could have been enough for catastrophe.

He was no engineer by any means, but he'd managed to cobble together a device to detect the presence of Nanites not long after arrival. He had blueprints for all kinds of useful devices stored in the memory of his armor -- after all, he was nothing if not unprepared. He'd tested himself over and over, his fingers nearly numb from various blood samples he'd pricked out over the course of the last month. He had to be sure. He had to be completely sure. But without the high-quality Nanite-specific tech back in Providence, there was no one hundred percent guarantee, and the phrase margin of error echoed menacingly in his mind every time he stared at that negative readout.

Though White Knight didn't have a sterile room like the one back home, there was a room that was off limits to Six and Rex due to potential nanite contamination, and he kept it as immaculate as possible given the limited resources. This was where he spent most of his time now, watching the network and quietly taking in what information he could. They'd started a law committee. That was certainly big news -- though from personal experience, he found it more likely they were simply puppet rulers for the Firstforged. A divide between them and the people; a scapegoat for when things went wrong. He was all too familiar with the position... and how to circumvent the orders of one's superiors and do what's best for the people, not the minority in power.

White Knight thought that the law committee would be the perfect place for him... but not now. Not while there was still a chance that his judgment might be compromised.

After all, he didn't trust anything with nanites.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Six was most certainly a thing with nanites which meant he couldn't so much as touch his former partner. That and quite a bit of shame from his mistake. Honestly, he should've had better control, but he'd gotten lost not to feral instinct but the winged wolf's simple joy of play. He'd been entirely unprepared for it, not having experienced it before.

He knocked on the door to the room. "Knight, are you re-running those tests again?"

Knight glanced over at the door. Though the room wasn't completely white, it was as close as he could get, though it was mostly light-and-dark gray paneling scrubbed to a dull shine. He looked back down at the bead of blood on his finger, ready for another scan for nanites.

"I am," he called. Not that it was unexpected. He was doing this almost every night now, it seemed; His hand was a mess of prickmarks, and it was starting to get weaker. Still, he couldn't stop just yet. There was still a possibility that infection might have occurred. "Last one for the night."

"Last one period," Six said with a scowl. "If all the tests are turning up negative after this long, then you're not infected. At this rate, you're going to slowly bleed yourself out."

"I'll be fine," Knight muttered bitterly. He could hear the scowl in Six's voice but paid it no heed. "Provided I'm not carting around the little man-made plague we happened to bring over."

He brought the next needle closer, ready to draw the next sample from his index finger.

"Knight, if you're not carrying them after so many tests, you're not going to be carrying them." He then glared at the door. "Take another sample, and I'm going to make sure you're infected."

The needle paused over Knight's finger and he scowled, glaring at the door. "I don't intend to potentially contaminate a clean planet," he growled. "It's risky enough with you and Rex here. If any of us loses control like that again, we'll have another planet of EVOs on our hands."

"If you pass out from blood loss, what do you expect Rex and I to do?" Six challenged. "Besides, it's hard for you to do your job when you're preoccupied continually running tests on yourself. Tests whose results you've already confirmed dozens of times over."

"I can manage myself," Knight muttered, looking back down at his weakened hand. These tests were becoming habit now, and Knight wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of simply stopping. Especially when there was still that chance he was wrong.

"Clearly you can't," Six countered. He put his hand on the doorknob, allowing it to rattle a bit. "Put down the needle or I'm coming in there."

"Stay out, Six," Knight snapped, turning to stare at the door. He didn't let it show, but he could feel a swell of panic at the thought if being exposed to Six. "I'm not partial to having my humanity compromised any further!"

Six stiffened for a moment at the accusation--intentional or not--that he was subhuman because of the nanites. However, he shook it off.

"I'll stay out when you stop the cycle," Six retorted. "If you pass out on the floor from blood loss because you keep sticking yourself, what do you expect me to do if not go in there?"

Knight dropped the needle and slammed his fist on the table, scowling. "What do you expect me to do, Six? One of us who knows about the nanites -- one of us has to be clean!"

"You could start by averaging out the results of all your tests from the past several days," Six sapped. "You've must've run them...what? Twenty or thirty times by now? Look at the overall percentage."

"It's not enough," Knight muttered, shaking his head. "It'll never be enough. The equipment we've gathered isn't precise enough!"

"Then stop testing on faulty equipment, and get out here to find or build better," Six snapped. "Avoid eating or drinking anything Rex and I are or work on fixing your armor. Do something useful."

Do something useful. The words echoed in White Knight's mind. He knew, logically, that he wasn't infected -- not after all these tests. But the shimmer of uncertainty kept him at this. So much had changed these past few months, so much had been wrenched from his control. Outside, Cybertron was nothing but chaos and uncertainty, and it was getting more and more difficult to cope. Here, at least, shut in and alone, he had something he could control -- but even that was uncertain, as long as there was that slim possibility that he had nanites in his blood. He couldn't lose control of himself. Not here.

But when he couldn't put down the needle for a moment, when he couldn't get up and fix his armor or work on equipment or make himself useful even as Six urged... maybe even without nanites, he wasn't as in control as he might have imagined.

"God, Six," he muttered, gripping his weak hand into a fist, "this is all I have."

"You have a lot more than you think you do," Six said. The next part was spoken with the bitterness of experience. "Some of us had even less for a long, long time."

Knight kept his breathing steady, kept his eyes fixed on the table. "Everything's spiraling out of control," he muttered. "I lost myself when those... transformations came. I lost control of my mind. What else is going to do that to me?"

Scarce to be Counted [closed]

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knight just admit you have a problem gdit

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