Knock Out onlines sluggishly, his protocols pinging back slowly like his circuits are made of cheap cooper foil, lines re-pressurizing with the quiet whiss of hydraulics. His sensor net comes alive, swamping ambient feedback data into his processor which he promptly dumps to a side cache to deal with in a moment. His gyros inform him that he is, in fact, laying on his side. Why is he laying down?
Memory banks come online next, supplying Jeopardy, Nevada as their last locational ping, although now they're refusing to update a new position, as if he's lost connectivity to imPort-friendly satellite he links up with for telemetry. It's happened before, so he sets an absent repair algorithm on the task and shunts it to the back of his processor for now. His optics finally decide to join the boot-up party and shutter a few times before he gets full vision back.
That... is an awful lot of green.
For a moment he thinks that only half his visible light spectrum calibration is working, but no, he's just looking into a sea of green stalks. Knock Out pushes himself to a sitting position and tries to figure out what the Pit is going on.
He's sitting in a circular depression of flattened corn, the dirt concaved in gently like a shallow bowl. He hasn't fallen here: the flattening is too uniform and even. Even sitting, his height is enough that his head clears the top of the corn rows, giving him a view of sloping fields underneath a late afternoon sun. About a thousand feet to his right, there was a large white farmhouse on the top of a hill. And to his left... another depression in the corn, smaller than his own but no less artificial, and a very familiar figure inside of it.
Waking up is far more difficult than she remembers it being in a very long time. The strange ground beneath her is the first clue that things aren't as they're supposed to be, pieces of something tugging at her hair and scratching her skin as she shifts slowly, trying to get her hands beneath her even as she struggles to open her eyes. Everything in her feels heavy, thoughts weighed down as much as her body, and it's only at the outcry that she comes crashing out of the fog and fully into waking.
"Knock Out?" Her words come out slightly slurred as she looks around blearily, catching sight of him above the— the corn stalks? No, that... That doesn't make a lick of sense. Virginia didn't have corn, not like this anyway. And he lived in Nevada, which definitely didn't have corn like this. "Sugar, what's going on?"
Are they dreaming? Is this some weird side effect of the nanites, or some other strange goings-on from the Porter? She'd learned to take things in stride since arriving on that odd version of Earth but even this is beginning to push things past her level of easy acceptance.
Corn stalks yield, crunching, under his steps as he moves closer to her. "I don't know," he answers her question honestly, glancing around to determine that they're the only two who appear to be in this predicament. "I just came back online. Still trying to get my bearings. Are you all right?"
If the Porter's acting up (and what else could this be, other than some new ordeal?) then surely someone's posted on the network about it by now. Knock Out queries internally for the familiar comm line only to pull up short, realizing that his neural link with his imPort communicator -- the one that routes the network through his processor -- seems to also be offline.
He accesses his subspace to retrieve the actual device, but finds the spot where it should be... empty.
"I don't have access to the imPort network," he tells her. "And my device is gone too."
"I'm okay," she answers absently, patting herself down with gloved hands to be sure she was all in one piece. The absence of her phone was noticed immediately at his next words, which made her start. She'd just been texting someone, and she distinctly remembered returning the device to her pocket.
"So is mine. It was just in my pocket..." Which, speaking of. Looking around at all the green, she's even more confused. There's too much of it. "Why is it summer all of a sudden?"
Perhaps not summer, but at least spring. She knows that corn is planted and harvested in warm weather, which her thick coat was definitely not made for.
Something unsettled works its way down his struts, coiling in his tanks. He doesn't like this. Even when the Porter acted up and threw uncanny scenarios in their way, their possessions had remained. And she was right: it was winter, or at least, his chrono told him it was supposed to be. Any place that grew corn this expansively should have been buried in snow at this time of year.
In fact the only time he'd ever found himself in a different month was when...
... he'd been Ported through that first time, when he became an imPort.
The repair algorithm he'd set to reconnect to the government satellite responsible for the imPort network blinks up its result on his HUD: Error: Connection not found. Suspected Cause: Satellite not present.
"There's a house," Knock Out says tersely, lifting an arm to point in the direction for Rogue's benefit; the corn stood taller than she. He'll lead, pedes pressing flat a path for her to follow. Green stalks brush past him, getting caught in the seams of his armor.
A week of being holed up in that warehouse wasn't exactly the most comfortable situation she'd ever been in, but Rogue never once even considered complaining. If she wanted, she could stay in a hotel with a proper bed and a bathtub and even television; Knock Out had no trouble getting funds for whatever she needed. What she really needed though was just to be with him. It's not something she'd explicitly spelled out for him at any point, but somewhere along the way they've both accepted it as fact. They were together in this, no arguments. (At least, not yet.)
But as cozy as that warehouse was starting to seem (a sure sign they'd been there far too long), it was time to move on. They'd held out hope that all of this was just another in a long string of Porter flukes and now reality was setting in. They had to face facts and that meant getting back on the road. Which would be a whole lot easier if she hadn't accumulated so much stuff.
"How the hell did there get to be so dang much of it?" she grumbles mostly to herself while trying to roll her clothes into even tinier balls so she can cram just a few more items into her overly stuffed backpack.
The week had seemed paradoxically ages long and over far too quickly. It was easier to look at each day that passed as a collection of smaller tasks: acquire food for Rogue, visit the stores for supplies they would need, monitor the media and police frequencies for anything that might raise an alarm (nothing, thankfully, had come up). Return to the warehouse and wait out the rest of the day until it was time for sleep, begin again in the morning.
And each morning brought a little more confirmation that this was no ongoing Porter glitch, until it was an unspoken acceptance between them. Which meant it was time to decide their next move; not a step that would simply occupy their time while they waited and hoped for this to wear off, but a concrete step toward making this their new normal.
But, priorities.
"Surely you don't have to carry all of it at once," Knock Out said absently in response to Rogue's grumble. He'd produced a polishing cloth from somewhere and was scrubbing at a stubborn stain he'd picked up while moving some of the old warehouse equipment out of the way during their stay. The oily residue was not lifting easily; he scoured harder.
"We'll just get a crate or something for the excess."
"A crate?" she questions with a glance up at him, a discernible element of exclamation in the words. "I can't carry around a crate every time you're in this form, especially not if we have to move quick."
Coming to the unfortunate conclusion that it's just not going to all fit, Rogue removes a few shirts from the bag, debating for half a second before setting two aside. She's survived with far less, she just feels a bit guilty for having wasted the money in the first place. She should have been thinking of this problem from the beginning instead of allowing herself to become comfortable in their situation.
Knock Out frowns in genuine puzzlement at Rogue's opposition to the idea, not connecting the issue she was presenting. He paused in his attempted buffing to give her a perplexed look.
"But you can't fit everything you need into that little bag," he disagrees. "We'll get a crate, something with a lid that's secure. Why would you need to carry it around? Just leave it in my trunk, I'll subspace it when I transform and just take it out if you need something."
The route they'd decided on took them well away from the coast, meandering through the mountains before picking their way northward. Rogue's astute observation that they would need to be careful what areas they traveled due to his memorable alt mode had led them to changing the route he'd originally planned on their way to upper New York State, where they were headed. The changes had lengthened their trip by several days, a mix of highways and smaller roads, but it was a smart precaution and he'd agreed with it.
Knock Out was currently picking his way along a hilly two lane road somewhere in West Virginia, slower than he would have liked, but the evening had turned chill and conjured a heavy fog that had settled in all the low areas of the road. While he was not limited to purely visual navigation — his sensors picked up much more than what could be seen by the naked eye — the forest on both sides of the road was host to all kinds of wildlife. The last thing Knock Out wanted was to accidentally run over something trying to scurry across the pavement.
It was late, just after midnight. Rogue had fallen asleep a while ago, and he'd thought he might as well drive through the night and get them that much closer to their destination. He'd clicked the radio to mute, made sure his cabin temperature didn't reflect the dampness outside, and settled in to monitor their route. The frequent changes in the road's elevation had his engine working stronger than usual, especially on the uphill climbs. While he didn't lack for power, this alt mode wasn't exactly built for mountainous terrain.
It's funny how sitting in a car can be so exhausting. It wasn't something you normally thought about, but Rogue had certainly begun to notice it as the days stretched on. Their brief stay in the warehouse had given them both a reprieve from life on the road, but they're both aware of how dangerous it would be to stay in one place too long.
She'd tried to stay awake, assuming they would stop somewhere and properly rest before continuing on in the morning, yet night had fallen and taken her with it. With the seat tilted back slightly, the miles passed while she slept, and before long the dreams set in. Like so many other nights, memory blended with fantasy, both borrowed from others and borne of her own mind. She was back at the mansion in her first year there, laughing and pretending life was normal. Bobby was there, laughing with her, attempting to be closer, to touch her... The dream blurred without her notice and suddenly he could touch her, his lips and hands on hers and so many other places.
Her heart rate increased slightly as she slept, the vibration of his engine helping to ease the dream along in a very pleasant direction. She shifted in the seat, lips parting as her breath quickened just a little, and then a little more. It was at a particularly climactic moment in the dream that she woke, her consciousness bobbing up to the surface and struggling to catch up to the real world. With the darkness and quiet around her, she didn't quite realize where was she, and then an uphill climb sent that vibration right through her so all she could do was sigh perhaps a bit too loudly and shift again in the seat.
For Knock Out's part, he was already looking forward to reaching New York where, assuming they had no trouble gaining access to the mansion, there would be privacy to move around in his normal form. It was nothing he would say to Rogue, of course... nothing to cause her more worry, or worse, guilt. But he held the possibility in high anticipation.
It was not that he intended to surveil her while she slept, but there was some element of inability not to when she was ensconced in his alt mode. Before becoming an imPort, he'd barely deigned to let anyone ride in him like a common carriage — reserved mostly for kidnapping hostages, to be honest — and even in the Porter world Knock Out had been extraordinarily choosy about whom he let do so. Rogue had been among that handful.
As a medic his scanners were essentially permanently engaged, and in lieu of having an EM field read for humans, he generally maintained a low level audit on her and thus was aware of any major changes in her physiology. Especially in this displaced world, where an honesty between them was needed that they hadn't quite managed to attain yet, it helped him learn and hopefully, do better.
Besides... Rogue's dreams, like his own, were never reliably peaceful.
This, though. Absently he'd registered her heart rate ticking upward, her pulse increasing, and thought at first it was a reaction to some illusory threat. But then she'd started moving against his seat like she was seeking something with soft breathy sounds, and as he started another uphill climb and his engine once against dropped from overdrive to gain torque— oh.
Oh.
Mirth and mischief bloomed through his own field, though she had no way to feel it. When it seemed like she was properly awake, he remarked coyly, "I'd ask how you slept, but I believe you just told me."
Reality has a nasty way of crashing in at exactly the wrong moment, doesn't it? Suddenly very awake and all kinds of flustered, Rogue jerked upright and fumbled with the control to right the seat as well. Her face flushed and she really hoped he wasn't able to see her turn bright pink in her embarrassment.
"You're hilarious, sugar," she remarked a bit breathily and with little amusement of her own, her pulse racing from the rush of being caught in this particular predicament. And, perhaps, for other reasons as well.
The last few days had been spent exploring the mansion. Knock Out had been both surprised and fascinated by the level of tech hidden away in the garage and the various areas. He'd also been taken aback at how much of the mansion had heavy-duty shielding built right into the construction. Most of it was buried in the foundations and the walls, hidden behind expensive wood paneling and plush carpet in the household areas, but it was certainly there.
His sensitive scanners had protested; too much interference meant that he had trouble tracking Rogue when she left his line of sight, and even his communication with the holoform was tenuous, causing it to glitch in and out of solidity from time to time when he accompanied her through the areas he couldn't fit in his native size. But with her blessing, he'd dismantled some of the technology and stripped it down to components, pursuing a vague line of thought that he might be able to re-purpose it.
For her part, Rogue had been a hard read since arriving to Xavier's. More than once he'd turned around and she was just not there, causing his spark rate to jump up in worry and send the holoform zipping through various areas until he located her again. When he'd tried to ask her what about this place was so obviously causing her stress, she hadn't wanted to answer and, uncertain how to address it, Knock Out had not pushed the topic.
Still, he worried.
But at night, Rogue hadn't wanted to be away from him, not even in as guarded as place as Xavier's was proving to be with its technology, its security, its shielding. Even the promise of a real bed could not entice her to stay in the living spaces of the grand house. Instead she'd brought a mattress down to the garage where there was a comfortable expanse of room for them, even with him in root mode.
Except she hadn't stopped at one — determinedly dragging one after another down the levels with help from the holoform, until a pile of them rested on the concrete floor.
He should be comfortable too, she said. They'd since been laid out in the middle of the garage, bunched and pushed up together to create a padded area big enough for both of them. After a week of sleeping sitting upright in an old factory, this new alternative was sublime.
Knock Out is curled loosely on his side, optics dark, biolights dimmed in slumber. In the factory they'd been at risk of being stumbled upon even on the abandoned property, so he'd never fully powered down there. Here, he feels assured that they're safer, and the difference in his recharge is plainly evident. Whereas before he'd simply gone still and quiet, like a machine going into standby, now he seems genuinely asleep and peaceful, quiet save for the muted purr of his engine behind red chestplates.
Being back at the mansion... To say it was bittersweet would be an understatement of exponential proportions. The drive up to the building had her heart in her throat, the grounds overgrown but still beautiful beyond measure. By the layers of dust they found in the garage and throughout the rooms, it had been years since anyone set foot inside, but by some miracle, the security measures were much the same in this world as her own. She'd guided them inside and shown Knock Out as much as she could—
But it was so hard. The comical stories of her teaching days mixed with memories of fleeing in the night, taking only what they could carry, the students crying in fear as they lost their home. The familiar halls she knew like the back of her hand were dotted with furniture she didn't recognize, rooms were rearranged, and she had no place here. And, above all else, a pervasive dread and thread of terror crept through her veins with every second that passed, all centered around the one room she purposefully avoided.
Finding small joys became her lifeline in the days they spent there. With security still in working order, they were able to relax without fear of being ambushed, and it was good to see KO working with technology again. And truthfully, she did enjoy sharing these glimpses of her past with him, trying to her best to focus on the good times before the war had ruined everything in sight. But those dark moments still threatened to claw their way to the surface, again and again pulling her attention from her friend and causing her to wander off while lost in her own thoughts — she felt immeasurably guilty for causing him to worry, but she couldn't bring herself to explain. Not yet.
It was the comfort she found in his presence that brought her to drag that first mattress to the garage, suddenly appearing with it from the connecting hall. But the moment she'd seen him there, she'd decided, and she was grateful for his holoform's help. There were no pillows quite big enough for him, though she did drag down quite a few larger couch cushions as a substitution. For her part, she has just one blanket and pillow; it's far more than she had the last time she was in the mansion.
In the dim light of the garage, she wakes slowly, the bad dreams chased away by the quiet sounds of his engine that she's come to associate with safety. She can see his dimmed lights, a subtle reassurance that he's still alive and well. After spending a few minutes watching him in such a peaceful state, she doesn't even think before moving, wrapping the blanket around herself and slowly crawling across the sea of mattresses to the hollow space beside his curled form. That quiet purr is louder here, soft and soothing, and she lays down on her side to listen to it.
Up close, Knock Out smells faintly of polishing wax and sweet, clean oil with an almond-like bitter undertone, and something less definable that might be his metal itself. He doesn't move much in recharge — the occasional position shift or flicker of expression, as if he dreams no differently than humans — but never enough that his frame would be in danger of doing her harm. While sleeping on his side was the most comfortable position for him due to his kibble, it also makes him look smaller and somehow, that much more human.
It's a while longer before he wakes, giving Rogue a chance to enjoy the tranquility, and he comes online with an indulgent slowness that he hasn't felt since Jeopardy. He knows she's there almost immediately, even before his optics come back on, sensor feedback informing him of her placement. His systems do an auto-check, realigning small platelets that have been pressed out of their optimum positions during sleep, and his armor seams expand briefly like a stretch, then settle into their normal placement.
Knock Out's optics light, diffuse and warm, and he offers her a drowsy smile. "Good morning."
She watches him while he sleeps, peering up at his large form while listening to the sounds of his slumber. Even when he does shift slightly, she doesn't feel even a flicker of fear that he would move so much as to hurt her — she trusts his systems to sense her there, whether or not that trust is misguided. So she notices when he begins to wake, and when he finally gives her that drowsy smile, she can't help but give him one back.
"Good morning," she replies, thinking that she should move away so she might better see him but far too comfortable to actually do so. "You slept well."
The sounds of Knock Out working on something are what finally bring Rogue out of her deep and dreamless sleep, the result of the emotional and physical rollercoaster she'd been on earlier. She can see from the windows at the far end of the room that it's still daylight, though perhaps only just. There's a fogginess in her mind that she can't quite shake as she rises from her blanket cocoon and it is so very tempting to make a cup of coffee. She hadn't had any that day, after all...
What a day it had been. Her muscles feel like they'd been through a deep massage, relaxed but just this side of bruised from the intense stimulation. And lord if she didn't have to hide her blush at the memory of what he'd done to her body and what she'd managed to do to his. It was all so crazy, and so deliciously wonderful. She sure as hell won't forget this day for the rest of her life.
Knock Out's working peaceably on the handheld scanner at his makeshift worktable, carefully soldering transistors into place with the tip of one finger transformed into a micro-welder. The scanner was perhaps 3/4 built by this point, having come together more smoothly than he'd anticipated. He only hoped it would do the job he needed it to do when the time came.
After they'd returned to the garage and cleaned themselves up, Knock Out had addressed his bashed pauldron plating. A collection of tools withdrawn from his subspace that seemed to be specifically for bodywork, pushing and pressing the metal back into position. It seemed like familiar work to him, even if somewhat awkward on his own shoulder for reach, but now the normally smooth curvature had been manipulated back into a semblance of its normal roundness.
"Self-repair will take care of the rest," he'd explained, applying a thin layer of nanite gel from his repair kit over the roughest spots. "It's the equivalent of a deep tissue bruise. Nothing's broken, just... tender. Give it a few days and it'll be like it never happened."
He'd rested too, worn out from their earlier exertions, but not gone fully into recharge, too many thoughts spinning through his processor. When they seemed disinclined to leave him be, he'd changed tactics and buried himself in work again.
"Rest well?" he asked, when he saw Rogue getting up from her nest of blankets.
"I did, thank you," she replies with a smile before neatly folding the blanket and placing it back down on the mattress. It's not the same as actually making a bed but it's close enough to satisfy her southern sensibilities.
Crossing her arms comfortably over her stomach, she moves closer and peers up at him. "How's the scanner coming?"
She doesn't understand 90% of what he's doing but she's fairly certain it's what he's working on. He'd patched up his shoulder earlier (thank goodness) and that was the other project he'd mentioned.
Knock Out nods when she says she'd slept well, reaching for another transistor without taking his eyes off where he is working. "It's going well," he answers. "I should be able to finish it tonight."
Aligning the component where he needs it, the white-hot solder arcs brightly where he applies it. "When we leave here... unless you have an objection, there are two places I want to check. One in Nebraska, and one in Montana. On my Earth, both sites were high-yield energon mines. I know it's a long shot, but if there are any trace readings there... it might give me some insight."
The delivery of the information is calm, almost practiced. "I apologize... I know it will be a long drive for you."
They left Xavier's — and its complex wake of emotional turmoil — early in the morning, heading west.
Knock Out was both sorry and not to see the gated mansion slip out of his rearview mirror. While it had the distinction of being the most comfortable place they'd stayed in terms of space, amenities, privacy and provisions... it also carried unfathomable baggage for Rogue. That even with what she'd revealed after they'd broken into Cerebro, he felt like he'd barely scratched the surface of.
No amount of technology and security balanced out the thought that she might slip into that frenzied state again, triggered by something he could neither predict nor mitigate.
Still, they left Xavier's with the intent to return at some point. Even with its potential pitfalls, it was too valuable a site to be completely abandoned. Knock Out had a new box of tech and a new working (hopefully) scanner. Rogue had the supplies she'd gathered and chosen to bring, all packed away in the heavy duty tote in his subspace. They were as ready as they could be to set out once again.
Their destination was the northwest corner of Nebraska, in the Pine Ridge region, and if they had no luck there, they would carry on northward to Montana afterward. But their course — painstakingly and vigilantly charted with every scrap of information at their disposal — would be far from a straight western shot. Instead, Knock Out was taking them on a route which would minimize their proximity to large city centers, while at the same time sticking to highways that were not major transportation (and thus more heavily patrolled) corridors. The end result added several days to their travel time, but there was no way around it. At least with Rogue's gathered supplies, they could make the interim rests as comfortable as they could.
After a day of driving, they'd made good time and had followed the state highway along the Ohio/West Virginia border and the Muskingum River, past Marietta, OH where Knock Out eventually turned off to county roads. Even though he could have continued to drive, they'd agreed that an early stop for the night. The evening was clear and a perfect temperature. Away from the cities, stars had even begun to wink into existence, even though sun had only just begun to dip.
"I suppose any of these barns would work," Knock Out says idly, paging through satellite map images on the screen set into his dash console. "But there's supposed to be an abandoned cement factory around here somewhere, I thought that might be a little more generously built and a little less... bovine."
Leaving Xavier's was bittersweet for Rogue. So long ago it felt like another lifetime, the mansion had been her home, the one place she'd felt at least moderately accepted. But with everything that happened during the war... It's not as hard to leave it behind as it once would have been. The home she longs for now is across the universe and lost to her now. Perhaps forever.
She reads while they make their way across the country, just as they'd planned. Thanking her lucky stars that she hadn't been cursed with motion sickness, she selects one of the many books she'd brought with them and reads it aloud, her voice filling their shared space and blending with the gentle sound of Knock Out's engine. She's not sure whether he really enjoys the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, but it helps to pass the time well enough. And she does enjoy it, though she's not sad when they prepare to settle in for the night either.
"Less bovine would be preferable, thank you, sugar," she agrees with a laugh in her voice, closing the book and setting it in her lap so she can stretch her arms out in front of her. It's the best she can do in the confined space, unfortunately. "It's looking awfully pretty out there. I think we might be able to get in some good stargazing if the mosquitos don't eat me alive."
Rogue's voice is soothing, and he's able to split his attentions between driving, monitoring (he remained tuned into local radio even when the speakers themselves were off) and listening to the tale. He knows who Sherlock Holmes is (or at least the trope of him) by Earth media and culture absorption, but he doesn't know the stories themselves, so this is new for him. He hasn't entirely got a solid grasp of the technical and cultural differences between various eras, so sometimes he has questions about why characters don't do this or that, or why something that seems obvious to them as readers seems to escape the notice of the protagonists.
They're far enough off the main roads now that they haven't seen any other vehicles for little while. They do pass farms in various states of upkeep — some well-manicured, but others clearly abandoned — and overgrown driveways off the chipseal road. He keeps the river on their left and finally finds an old paved road with a faded sign indicating they had found the entrance.
"A-ha," he says triumphantly, as if they'd accomplished some great feat. "Well, we're far enough away from any cities that there should be little in the way of light pollution out here. You'll love Montana though... 'Big Sky Country' indeed."
The old road meanders a little but eventually spreads out into a sprawling overgrown compound with huge cement structures still standing. Knock Out brings them closer and then parks.
"There! No sharing with cows required. Though it's not the first time and let me tell you, getting that smell out of my upholstery was a challenge and a half..."
Answering Knock Out's questions helps to pass the time as well; she does her best to explain whatever he doesn't quite understand, though there are some things that she doesn't have very good answers for. The Victorian era had never been a specialty of hers, but hopefully that didn't impede his enjoyment of the stories.
"Oh lord, sugar, let's definitely steer clear of cows," she says with a grimace. "I don't think either of us would enjoy smelling like them for days on end. There are plenty of other options out there." And if all else failed, they could just sleep under the stars for all she cared. Anywhere but with the cows.
Opening the door, she steps out into the fresh evening air, breathing in deep and being grateful for the lack of eau de bovine in the air. She takes just a few steps away from him, peering up at the large structure he's found them for a night "This is nice, Knock Ou—"
Her voice cuts off with a gasp as one of her greatest nightmares comes back to life and a Sentintel lands in front of her, swooping in from out of nowhere. Panic and fear grip her chest as she takes in the sight of its transparent faceplate and metal limbs, one hand already stretching out toward her with deadly purpose. She doesn't even think then, years of instinct kicking in as she throws herself to the side and runs. There's no contest between fight or flight for her — flight, it's always flight, with her heart pounding in her chest and adrenaline pushing her toward the compound.
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Memory banks come online next, supplying Jeopardy, Nevada as their last locational ping, although now they're refusing to update a new position, as if he's lost connectivity to imPort-friendly satellite he links up with for telemetry. It's happened before, so he sets an absent repair algorithm on the task and shunts it to the back of his processor for now. His optics finally decide to join the boot-up party and shutter a few times before he gets full vision back.
That... is an awful lot of green.
For a moment he thinks that only half his visible light spectrum calibration is working, but no, he's just looking into a sea of green stalks. Knock Out pushes himself to a sitting position and tries to figure out what the Pit is going on.
He's sitting in a circular depression of flattened corn, the dirt concaved in gently like a shallow bowl. He hasn't fallen here: the flattening is too uniform and even. Even sitting, his height is enough that his head clears the top of the corn rows, giving him a view of sloping fields underneath a late afternoon sun. About a thousand feet to his right, there was a large white farmhouse on the top of a hill. And to his left... another depression in the corn, smaller than his own but no less artificial, and a very familiar figure inside of it.
"Rogue!"
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"Knock Out?" Her words come out slightly slurred as she looks around blearily, catching sight of him above the— the corn stalks? No, that... That doesn't make a lick of sense. Virginia didn't have corn, not like this anyway. And he lived in Nevada, which definitely didn't have corn like this. "Sugar, what's going on?"
Are they dreaming? Is this some weird side effect of the nanites, or some other strange goings-on from the Porter? She'd learned to take things in stride since arriving on that odd version of Earth but even this is beginning to push things past her level of easy acceptance.
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If the Porter's acting up (and what else could this be, other than some new ordeal?) then surely someone's posted on the network about it by now. Knock Out queries internally for the familiar comm line only to pull up short, realizing that his neural link with his imPort communicator -- the one that routes the network through his processor -- seems to also be offline.
He accesses his subspace to retrieve the actual device, but finds the spot where it should be... empty.
"I don't have access to the imPort network," he tells her. "And my device is gone too."
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"So is mine. It was just in my pocket..." Which, speaking of. Looking around at all the green, she's even more confused. There's too much of it. "Why is it summer all of a sudden?"
Perhaps not summer, but at least spring. She knows that corn is planted and harvested in warm weather, which her thick coat was definitely not made for.
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In fact the only time he'd ever found himself in a different month was when...
... he'd been Ported through that first time, when he became an imPort.
The repair algorithm he'd set to reconnect to the government satellite responsible for the imPort network blinks up its result on his HUD: Error: Connection not found. Suspected Cause: Satellite not present.
"There's a house," Knock Out says tersely, lifting an arm to point in the direction for Rogue's benefit; the corn stood taller than she. He'll lead, pedes pressing flat a path for her to follow. Green stalks brush past him, getting caught in the seams of his armor.
"Perhaps we can get some more information there."
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But as cozy as that warehouse was starting to seem (a sure sign they'd been there far too long), it was time to move on. They'd held out hope that all of this was just another in a long string of Porter flukes and now reality was setting in. They had to face facts and that meant getting back on the road. Which would be a whole lot easier if she hadn't accumulated so much stuff.
"How the hell did there get to be so dang much of it?" she grumbles mostly to herself while trying to roll her clothes into even tinier balls so she can cram just a few more items into her overly stuffed backpack.
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And each morning brought a little more confirmation that this was no ongoing Porter glitch, until it was an unspoken acceptance between them. Which meant it was time to decide their next move; not a step that would simply occupy their time while they waited and hoped for this to wear off, but a concrete step toward making this their new normal.
But, priorities.
"Surely you don't have to carry all of it at once," Knock Out said absently in response to Rogue's grumble. He'd produced a polishing cloth from somewhere and was scrubbing at a stubborn stain he'd picked up while moving some of the old warehouse equipment out of the way during their stay. The oily residue was not lifting easily; he scoured harder.
"We'll just get a crate or something for the excess."
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Coming to the unfortunate conclusion that it's just not going to all fit, Rogue removes a few shirts from the bag, debating for half a second before setting two aside. She's survived with far less, she just feels a bit guilty for having wasted the money in the first place. She should have been thinking of this problem from the beginning instead of allowing herself to become comfortable in their situation.
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"But you can't fit everything you need into that little bag," he disagrees. "We'll get a crate, something with a lid that's secure. Why would you need to carry it around? Just leave it in my trunk, I'll subspace it when I transform and just take it out if you need something."
apparently I only write tags on Sundays at like midnight whoops
always worth the wait!
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Knock Out was currently picking his way along a hilly two lane road somewhere in West Virginia, slower than he would have liked, but the evening had turned chill and conjured a heavy fog that had settled in all the low areas of the road. While he was not limited to purely visual navigation — his sensors picked up much more than what could be seen by the naked eye — the forest on both sides of the road was host to all kinds of wildlife. The last thing Knock Out wanted was to accidentally run over something trying to scurry across the pavement.
It was late, just after midnight. Rogue had fallen asleep a while ago, and he'd thought he might as well drive through the night and get them that much closer to their destination. He'd clicked the radio to mute, made sure his cabin temperature didn't reflect the dampness outside, and settled in to monitor their route. The frequent changes in the road's elevation had his engine working stronger than usual, especially on the uphill climbs. While he didn't lack for power, this alt mode wasn't exactly built for mountainous terrain.
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She'd tried to stay awake, assuming they would stop somewhere and properly rest before continuing on in the morning, yet night had fallen and taken her with it. With the seat tilted back slightly, the miles passed while she slept, and before long the dreams set in. Like so many other nights, memory blended with fantasy, both borrowed from others and borne of her own mind. She was back at the mansion in her first year there, laughing and pretending life was normal. Bobby was there, laughing with her, attempting to be closer, to touch her... The dream blurred without her notice and suddenly he could touch her, his lips and hands on hers and so many other places.
Her heart rate increased slightly as she slept, the vibration of his engine helping to ease the dream along in a very pleasant direction. She shifted in the seat, lips parting as her breath quickened just a little, and then a little more. It was at a particularly climactic moment in the dream that she woke, her consciousness bobbing up to the surface and struggling to catch up to the real world. With the darkness and quiet around her, she didn't quite realize where was she, and then an uphill climb sent that vibration right through her so all she could do was sigh perhaps a bit too loudly and shift again in the seat.
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It was not that he intended to surveil her while she slept, but there was some element of inability not to when she was ensconced in his alt mode. Before becoming an imPort, he'd barely deigned to let anyone ride in him like a common carriage — reserved mostly for kidnapping hostages, to be honest — and even in the Porter world Knock Out had been extraordinarily choosy about whom he let do so. Rogue had been among that handful.
As a medic his scanners were essentially permanently engaged, and in lieu of having an EM field read for humans, he generally maintained a low level audit on her and thus was aware of any major changes in her physiology. Especially in this displaced world, where an honesty between them was needed that they hadn't quite managed to attain yet, it helped him learn and hopefully, do better.
Besides... Rogue's dreams, like his own, were never reliably peaceful.
This, though. Absently he'd registered her heart rate ticking upward, her pulse increasing, and thought at first it was a reaction to some illusory threat. But then she'd started moving against his seat like she was seeking something with soft breathy sounds, and as he started another uphill climb and his engine once against dropped from overdrive to gain torque— oh.
Oh.
Mirth and mischief bloomed through his own field, though she had no way to feel it. When it seemed like she was properly awake, he remarked coyly, "I'd ask how you slept, but I believe you just told me."
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"You're hilarious, sugar," she remarked a bit breathily and with little amusement of her own, her pulse racing from the rush of being caught in this particular predicament. And, perhaps, for other reasons as well.
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The last few days had been spent exploring the mansion. Knock Out had been both surprised and fascinated by the level of tech hidden away in the garage and the various areas. He'd also been taken aback at how much of the mansion had heavy-duty shielding built right into the construction. Most of it was buried in the foundations and the walls, hidden behind expensive wood paneling and plush carpet in the household areas, but it was certainly there.
His sensitive scanners had protested; too much interference meant that he had trouble tracking Rogue when she left his line of sight, and even his communication with the holoform was tenuous, causing it to glitch in and out of solidity from time to time when he accompanied her through the areas he couldn't fit in his native size. But with her blessing, he'd dismantled some of the technology and stripped it down to components, pursuing a vague line of thought that he might be able to re-purpose it.
For her part, Rogue had been a hard read since arriving to Xavier's. More than once he'd turned around and she was just not there, causing his spark rate to jump up in worry and send the holoform zipping through various areas until he located her again. When he'd tried to ask her what about this place was so obviously causing her stress, she hadn't wanted to answer and, uncertain how to address it, Knock Out had not pushed the topic.
Still, he worried.
But at night, Rogue hadn't wanted to be away from him, not even in as guarded as place as Xavier's was proving to be with its technology, its security, its shielding. Even the promise of a real bed could not entice her to stay in the living spaces of the grand house. Instead she'd brought a mattress down to the garage where there was a comfortable expanse of room for them, even with him in root mode.
Except she hadn't stopped at one — determinedly dragging one after another down the levels with help from the holoform, until a pile of them rested on the concrete floor.
He should be comfortable too, she said. They'd since been laid out in the middle of the garage, bunched and pushed up together to create a padded area big enough for both of them. After a week of sleeping sitting upright in an old factory, this new alternative was sublime.
Knock Out is curled loosely on his side, optics dark, biolights dimmed in slumber. In the factory they'd been at risk of being stumbled upon even on the abandoned property, so he'd never fully powered down there. Here, he feels assured that they're safer, and the difference in his recharge is plainly evident. Whereas before he'd simply gone still and quiet, like a machine going into standby, now he seems genuinely asleep and peaceful, quiet save for the muted purr of his engine behind red chestplates.
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But it was so hard. The comical stories of her teaching days mixed with memories of fleeing in the night, taking only what they could carry, the students crying in fear as they lost their home. The familiar halls she knew like the back of her hand were dotted with furniture she didn't recognize, rooms were rearranged, and she had no place here. And, above all else, a pervasive dread and thread of terror crept through her veins with every second that passed, all centered around the one room she purposefully avoided.
Finding small joys became her lifeline in the days they spent there. With security still in working order, they were able to relax without fear of being ambushed, and it was good to see KO working with technology again. And truthfully, she did enjoy sharing these glimpses of her past with him, trying to her best to focus on the good times before the war had ruined everything in sight. But those dark moments still threatened to claw their way to the surface, again and again pulling her attention from her friend and causing her to wander off while lost in her own thoughts — she felt immeasurably guilty for causing him to worry, but she couldn't bring herself to explain. Not yet.
It was the comfort she found in his presence that brought her to drag that first mattress to the garage, suddenly appearing with it from the connecting hall. But the moment she'd seen him there, she'd decided, and she was grateful for his holoform's help. There were no pillows quite big enough for him, though she did drag down quite a few larger couch cushions as a substitution. For her part, she has just one blanket and pillow; it's far more than she had the last time she was in the mansion.
In the dim light of the garage, she wakes slowly, the bad dreams chased away by the quiet sounds of his engine that she's come to associate with safety. She can see his dimmed lights, a subtle reassurance that he's still alive and well. After spending a few minutes watching him in such a peaceful state, she doesn't even think before moving, wrapping the blanket around herself and slowly crawling across the sea of mattresses to the hollow space beside his curled form. That quiet purr is louder here, soft and soothing, and she lays down on her side to listen to it.
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It's a while longer before he wakes, giving Rogue a chance to enjoy the tranquility, and he comes online with an indulgent slowness that he hasn't felt since Jeopardy. He knows she's there almost immediately, even before his optics come back on, sensor feedback informing him of her placement. His systems do an auto-check, realigning small platelets that have been pressed out of their optimum positions during sleep, and his armor seams expand briefly like a stretch, then settle into their normal placement.
Knock Out's optics light, diffuse and warm, and he offers her a drowsy smile. "Good morning."
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"Good morning," she replies, thinking that she should move away so she might better see him but far too comfortable to actually do so. "You slept well."
It's an observation, not a question.
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What a day it had been. Her muscles feel like they'd been through a deep massage, relaxed but just this side of bruised from the intense stimulation. And lord if she didn't have to hide her blush at the memory of what he'd done to her body and what she'd managed to do to his. It was all so crazy, and so deliciously wonderful. She sure as hell won't forget this day for the rest of her life.
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After they'd returned to the garage and cleaned themselves up, Knock Out had addressed his bashed pauldron plating. A collection of tools withdrawn from his subspace that seemed to be specifically for bodywork, pushing and pressing the metal back into position. It seemed like familiar work to him, even if somewhat awkward on his own shoulder for reach, but now the normally smooth curvature had been manipulated back into a semblance of its normal roundness.
"Self-repair will take care of the rest," he'd explained, applying a thin layer of nanite gel from his repair kit over the roughest spots. "It's the equivalent of a deep tissue bruise. Nothing's broken, just... tender. Give it a few days and it'll be like it never happened."
He'd rested too, worn out from their earlier exertions, but not gone fully into recharge, too many thoughts spinning through his processor. When they seemed disinclined to leave him be, he'd changed tactics and buried himself in work again.
"Rest well?" he asked, when he saw Rogue getting up from her nest of blankets.
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Crossing her arms comfortably over her stomach, she moves closer and peers up at him. "How's the scanner coming?"
She doesn't understand 90% of what he's doing but she's fairly certain it's what he's working on. He'd patched up his shoulder earlier (thank goodness) and that was the other project he'd mentioned.
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Aligning the component where he needs it, the white-hot solder arcs brightly where he applies it. "When we leave here... unless you have an objection, there are two places I want to check. One in Nebraska, and one in Montana. On my Earth, both sites were high-yield energon mines. I know it's a long shot, but if there are any trace readings there... it might give me some insight."
The delivery of the information is calm, almost practiced. "I apologize... I know it will be a long drive for you."
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Knock Out was both sorry and not to see the gated mansion slip out of his rearview mirror. While it had the distinction of being the most comfortable place they'd stayed in terms of space, amenities, privacy and provisions... it also carried unfathomable baggage for Rogue. That even with what she'd revealed after they'd broken into Cerebro, he felt like he'd barely scratched the surface of.
No amount of technology and security balanced out the thought that she might slip into that frenzied state again, triggered by something he could neither predict nor mitigate.
Still, they left Xavier's with the intent to return at some point. Even with its potential pitfalls, it was too valuable a site to be completely abandoned. Knock Out had a new box of tech and a new working (hopefully) scanner. Rogue had the supplies she'd gathered and chosen to bring, all packed away in the heavy duty tote in his subspace. They were as ready as they could be to set out once again.
Their destination was the northwest corner of Nebraska, in the Pine Ridge region, and if they had no luck there, they would carry on northward to Montana afterward. But their course — painstakingly and vigilantly charted with every scrap of information at their disposal — would be far from a straight western shot. Instead, Knock Out was taking them on a route which would minimize their proximity to large city centers, while at the same time sticking to highways that were not major transportation (and thus more heavily patrolled) corridors. The end result added several days to their travel time, but there was no way around it. At least with Rogue's gathered supplies, they could make the interim rests as comfortable as they could.
After a day of driving, they'd made good time and had followed the state highway along the Ohio/West Virginia border and the Muskingum River, past Marietta, OH where Knock Out eventually turned off to county roads. Even though he could have continued to drive, they'd agreed that an early stop for the night. The evening was clear and a perfect temperature. Away from the cities, stars had even begun to wink into existence, even though sun had only just begun to dip.
"I suppose any of these barns would work," Knock Out says idly, paging through satellite map images on the screen set into his dash console. "But there's supposed to be an abandoned cement factory around here somewhere, I thought that might be a little more generously built and a little less... bovine."
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She reads while they make their way across the country, just as they'd planned. Thanking her lucky stars that she hadn't been cursed with motion sickness, she selects one of the many books she'd brought with them and reads it aloud, her voice filling their shared space and blending with the gentle sound of Knock Out's engine. She's not sure whether he really enjoys the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, but it helps to pass the time well enough. And she does enjoy it, though she's not sad when they prepare to settle in for the night either.
"Less bovine would be preferable, thank you, sugar," she agrees with a laugh in her voice, closing the book and setting it in her lap so she can stretch her arms out in front of her. It's the best she can do in the confined space, unfortunately. "It's looking awfully pretty out there. I think we might be able to get in some good stargazing if the mosquitos don't eat me alive."
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They're far enough off the main roads now that they haven't seen any other vehicles for little while. They do pass farms in various states of upkeep — some well-manicured, but others clearly abandoned — and overgrown driveways off the chipseal road. He keeps the river on their left and finally finds an old paved road with a faded sign indicating they had found the entrance.
"A-ha," he says triumphantly, as if they'd accomplished some great feat. "Well, we're far enough away from any cities that there should be little in the way of light pollution out here. You'll love Montana though... 'Big Sky Country' indeed."
The old road meanders a little but eventually spreads out into a sprawling overgrown compound with huge cement structures still standing. Knock Out brings them closer and then parks.
"There! No sharing with cows required. Though it's not the first time and let me tell you, getting that smell out of my upholstery was a challenge and a half..."
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"Oh lord, sugar, let's definitely steer clear of cows," she says with a grimace. "I don't think either of us would enjoy smelling like them for days on end. There are plenty of other options out there." And if all else failed, they could just sleep under the stars for all she cared. Anywhere but with the cows.
Opening the door, she steps out into the fresh evening air, breathing in deep and being grateful for the lack of eau de bovine in the air. She takes just a few steps away from him, peering up at the large structure he's found them for a night "This is nice, Knock Ou—"
Her voice cuts off with a gasp as one of her greatest nightmares comes back to life and a Sentintel lands in front of her, swooping in from out of nowhere. Panic and fear grip her chest as she takes in the sight of its transparent faceplate and metal limbs, one hand already stretching out toward her with deadly purpose. She doesn't even think then, years of instinct kicking in as she throws herself to the side and runs. There's no contest between fight or flight for her — flight, it's always flight, with her heart pounding in her chest and adrenaline pushing her toward the compound.
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