Remnant - I

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Darkness....

Darkness was something Shockwave knew better than many, in every factor of its existence.

Darkness of mind was particula Ignorance, hatred, fear, and the worst of them all, fanaticism. Poisons that brought darkness to a billion minds, and then billions of Sparks. And then, to Cybertron itself, over a time whose length only made it all the more pitiable. All the more pitiful. All the more pathetic.

Darkness of the mind infected the Spark, creating failings and inconsistencies…

A slave gladiator turned liberator turned tyrant.

A law keeper turned revolutionary turned idealistically founded, and foundered, guerilla.

A senator who tried to fight for his people, and was robbed of Spark and limb both, and rendered a mere puppet...

Even when his freedom seemed nigh, as the Decepticon cause's end drew in a similar line, he found darkness in his new master's monstrous machinations. Only a puppet. Always a puppet. Blinded, mute, lame- Consumed by the encroaching dark for so long. Death, finally. Release. His first choice in a time as uncountable as it had been intolerable.

Now, he lay left in that darkness, most of his systems reading inoperable - if they responded with feedback at all. His optic and limbs were of the 'unresponsive' varieties unfortunately. Primus' sense of humor, he supposed.

Still, he could only lay in the darkness.

Waiting, with naught but treacherous thoughts for company in this last, oh-so-lucid dream. The sparking, cracking, echoing dream of a Spark sputtering. On and on it stretched, interminable but inevitable, steady system failures cascading across what was left of his broken form and robbing him of one function after another.

But not, oh so importantly, so fatefully, his reception units.

Those, seated in his nearly ruined head, had been left blessedly untouched. Or at least more or less fully functioning. And from them, he received… Something. Sonorous stimuli of some sort. Signals encoded strangely in gibberish. Staticy and weak. But…

No, not gibberish, and certainly not encoded.

Open transmissions…?

Archaic. Primitive. So nearly ancient and outmoded his internal systems had not been able to process them - surely it was another joke that his primary system's failure was the only reason his secondary had been in use, which could read the echoing signal at all. A signal which lacked the rebounding interference or over-laced junk transmissions routine for even rudimentary, basic encryptions.

And it was certainly not gibberish - the transmissions, weak as they were, were regular. With regularly detected sounds and response layouts. Statements, responses. One, two. It was a strange language, though - he neither recognized it or Cybetronian routines within it.

Organic…?

Once he laced his understanding of Human technology to it, he rapidly discerned its type, if not what it contained - radio broadcasts. Electrical, primitive, utilizing transmission over air to communicate over relatively short range.

From there began the complex - but intriguing - art of identifying sound formats, recognizing them, and cataloguing the regular responses for tonality cues. From it came meaning for a handful of words. A baseline. From which he began piecing together grammar around the recognizable phrases and typified responses.

Troublingly, he first began to piece what he suspected were calls for aid - surrounded, as they were, by flurrises of communication chatter. The callers varied, but the initial receiver never did, always answering with the same phrase he pieced together after cycles - 'what is the problem?'

The responses varied tremendously, but the response was always the same - and its verbage, determined by cycles of analysis and a not-small amount of guess-work.

Time passed - hundreds of cycles spent cataloguing the unknown language. Soon, he began to master its parlance, but…

Then, the signals began to shift and change. A cleaner, more electrically based, point to point connection compared to the open-air radio transmissions from before. Which was intriguing. With this change came so much more traffic - and a rapid shift from the precise one, two of broadcasts to more varied items. Variance brought clarity, now that he had the basis he had built up over so long, but the sheer amount was… Confusing.

What was happening…?

Curiosity gnawed at him…

As a transmission crossed by his prison, wherever he lay, he grasped onto it. Followed it. Traced it. He found a device - weak encryption, simple electronics. His infiltration was almost rote - as if the machine were made to be infiltrated. Or at the least, not to keep him at bay in any effective way.

Primitive, then.

With it came a bevy of information - art, music, pictures to place words to. It was as if he'd been handed the keys to the lingual kingdom. He set to his studies with a hungry efficiency. And with it, he rapidly mastered what was left of the language that he had not already. And with that came… New possibility.

A chance at escape, if they could help him…

But would they?

Could they? Their technology was so primitive, after all.

Finally, as more systems began to falter, he reached out with a simple, "Hello. I am dying. How are you?"

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Ghira stared unblinkingly at the Scroll in his hands with confusion etched across his face as if it were stone shaped by a sculptor's hands. His Scroll had been buggy and jittery for an hour, so he'd sat down in his tent with a manual laid out next to him to reformat it. Which was annoying, sure, but you were meant to reformat Scrolls bimonthly to make sure Atlas wasn't accessing them and mining for information. Then, when that hadn't worked and he'd resigned himself to calling Kali and dealing with her teasing over his poor grasp of technology.

Which was… All well and good, he supposed.

But then, that message, "Hello. I am dying. How are you?"

The words blinked pale green on a pitch-black screen, and nothing he did would boot it back to the primary screen. He couldn't even call Kali on the damn thing now! All he had was a space below the simple little words to type back. Which couldn't be a good idea in any universe. But if he didn't fix it, then Kali would never let him live it down. His third Scroll in just one month…

He'd never live it down.

And besides, he was getting rather tired of reformatting his Scroll constantly. Or replacing it. All because Atlas kept backdooring them.

So, he sighed, scratched at his neck, and typed, "Look, I know you're a spy backdooring my Scroll."

"A spy?"

"We had briefings about them." Ghira rolled his eyes, "About you. Why do you guys keep trying to access our scrolls? You have to know it's a wasted effort by now. Or is that why you're doing this new trick?"

"This is a trick?"

"Obviously."

"How is this?"

"Is that a joke?" Ghira blinked, shook his head and snorted. Who was this joker? Some bored worker on a ship out there somewhere? "We're in a war with your Kingdom. And suddenly, someone takes control of my Scroll and asks me to come help them? It's obvious."

"War?" They asked, "What war?"

"Oh, Grimm take you."

"Take me where?" They responded instantly, adding, "I am sorry. I do not understand. And I am dying. Can you help me please?"

"Where even are you?"

"I can provide coordinates to my location." They answered simply, moving on before he could do more than roll his eyes. "Further, once I am repaired, I would be willing to offer limited rewards as thanks for your assistance."

"Rewards?"

"You said you were engaged in conflict." Whoever was on the other end of this back and forth answered. "Once I am repaired, and given the proper supplies, I would be willing to supply you with a number of weapons. Or defensive items."

That… Actually made Ghira pause.

Even high rank Atlesian agents wouldn't offer to equip them - certainly not with weapons or proper combat equipment. Doing that would legitimise their fight too much, he knew. So the easiest way to shut up and drive off a spy was just to ask for weapons, armor, tech. All the fine things Atlas would never let a dirty Faunus just have. If news got out about it, it would ruin whatever officer had dared to put such a plan in motion. And if they had anything on hand to 'prove' their honesty…

Before Ghira could think any further, the promised coordinates appeared on his Scroll and his eyes narrowed. "That can't be right."

"It is."

But it couldn't be… It shouldn't even be possible! He checked and double-checked his map to be sure and then responded, "That's the southern coast of Menagerie. Past the Grimm Peaks. Uncharted land, even by Atlas."

"What is Atlas?"

"Is that a joke?"

"Was I joking the first time you asked me that?"

No… And suddenly, Ghira's instincts were screaming at him that this wasn't what he'd assumed it was. An Atlesian couldn't be on the southern coast, let alone past the Grimm Peaks. Only a few of their explorers could even get there, and that was over land routes, not sea. Leviathan class Grim lurked to the south of the small continent, you couldn't sail. So they'd have had to come from the northern coast, or Menagerie itself to the west. Neither of which were possible - it was all too defended, and the eastern coast could only be reached by passing the northern, which would have been spotted and interdicted.

How was this possible…?

It wasn't, was the easy answer.

Yet, somehow, someone was there…

"I can't promise anything." He finally responded, after several long moments of thought. "But I need to call someone about this. So can you… Give me back my Scroll?"

"Very well." It said, "Thank you. Goodbye."

And just like that, his Scroll was back to normal. He flicked through a dozen menus, testing it, reading, whatever he could do to check that all was working properly. Everything was working perfectly. Even better than it had been before he started having all these troubles with it. He opened the map, and all his data was there, untouched aside from one addition on the southern coastline, just past where the Grimm Peaks rolled up to split off a tenth of the continent away from the rest.

He'd always wanted to go there, too…

But every time he mentioned it, Kali gave him that look and asked, 'And what's out there for you?'

Nothing, had been the answer before. Just Grimm and the excitement of discovery. Now, though...

He closed the map, frowned, and opened his contacts. The number rang twice before she answered it, "Ghira? What is it?"

"Sienna," he sighed, leaning back on his bedroll and tapping a finger on his knee anxiously, "I… Might have a lead on something interesting. But I'll need some of your rangers. Ones that know the way past the Grimm Peaks."

"What the bloody hell is out there?!"

"Something interesting." He reiterated, "My instincts say it's… Something big, too. Maybe even something game-changing for us."

"It better be." The woman growled, "My rangers have a lot on their plate… But I'll trust you, Ghira. Let me make a few calls and I'll let you have a rendezvous point. It'll be on you from there, though. Communication is shit at the best of times out there."

And yet, his new friend had made contact easily enough…

"I understand." Ghira murmured, "I promise, this'll be worth it."

"It better be." She sighed, "Take care, Ghira."

"Mhm." He nodded and ended the call, closing the little silver thing and setting it on the ground beside him.

What the hell was he getting into now?

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