Once Rogue has retreated into the motel room for the night, and Knock Out picks up the sounds of the television on, the thud and rattle of the air conditioner, he relaxes as much as he dares. For the moment, she is secure. He sets proximity alarms for the immediate area and cycles into a lower power mode.
Rogue is not the only one alone with her thoughts.
His next steps are businesslike and practical: he sets an algorithm to monitor media bands for keywords like mutant and Sentinel and a half dozen others. He combs through the last five years of news releases and public statements from the government, building a predictive analysis of the most likely areas where monitoring would be high and security aggressive. Unsurprisingly, the higher the population center, the higher that likelihood. He rifles through every witness account and unsecured source to try and determine just what capabilities the Sentinels have, but so much of it is locked away on military servers that he doesn't have access to, and is wary of trying to hack into without proper comms protocols.
But once the pragmatic tasks are taken care of, Knock Out's attentions turn to ones more disconsolate.
He pings out on every frequency he can think of, Decepticon and Neutral alike, wordless markers requesting confirmation and lain in with the glyphs for identity and searching. He tries Earth-based codes that they'd used, leftover carrier waves from the Grid long defunct, even the amnesty channels on the ephemeral chance an Autobot would pick it up. He'd take even Ratchet's deadpan grouchery over the silence.
Please respond, his pings say over and over, disappearing into a void with no echo. Please respond.
Eventually he lets them taper off, then stop.
Knock Out never quite makes full recharge - dozes, really, to use the human term. His self-diagnostics tell him it helped - physically, at least - but he doesn't feel any better for it, and worse for the hours alone. He dismisses the HUD popup politely reminding him that he hasn't eaten recently, and then in a move of spite, nulls the command line so it won't come up again barring critical levels.
He feels pettishly, plaintively better when the motel room's door opens and Rogue is there.
The morning is dewy, the parking lot pavement damp. A fine mist covers Knock Out's paint and his windshield, but the ground underneath him is dry - he hasn't moved all night.
no subject
Rogue is not the only one alone with her thoughts.
His next steps are businesslike and practical: he sets an algorithm to monitor media bands for keywords like mutant and Sentinel and a half dozen others. He combs through the last five years of news releases and public statements from the government, building a predictive analysis of the most likely areas where monitoring would be high and security aggressive. Unsurprisingly, the higher the population center, the higher that likelihood. He rifles through every witness account and unsecured source to try and determine just what capabilities the Sentinels have, but so much of it is locked away on military servers that he doesn't have access to, and is wary of trying to hack into without proper comms protocols.
But once the pragmatic tasks are taken care of, Knock Out's attentions turn to ones more disconsolate.
He pings out on every frequency he can think of, Decepticon and Neutral alike, wordless markers requesting confirmation and lain in with the glyphs for identity and searching. He tries Earth-based codes that they'd used, leftover carrier waves from the Grid long defunct, even the amnesty channels on the ephemeral chance an Autobot would pick it up. He'd take even Ratchet's deadpan grouchery over the silence.
Please respond, his pings say over and over, disappearing into a void with no echo. Please respond.
Eventually he lets them taper off, then stop.
Knock Out never quite makes full recharge - dozes, really, to use the human term. His self-diagnostics tell him it helped - physically, at least - but he doesn't feel any better for it, and worse for the hours alone. He dismisses the HUD popup politely reminding him that he hasn't eaten recently, and then in a move of spite, nulls the command line so it won't come up again barring critical levels.
He feels pettishly, plaintively better when the motel room's door opens and Rogue is there.
The morning is dewy, the parking lot pavement damp. A fine mist covers Knock Out's paint and his windshield, but the ground underneath him is dry - he hasn't moved all night.