fateandfortune

"Right," she agrees with a worn smile and something like amusement in her voice. Sometimes she forgets that he does have some limitations and is not entirely superior to her in all ways (just most). With another slow, deep breath, she reaches over to pick up the offensive paper.

"The date says it's, uhm... It's July 11th, 2023," she reveals first because somehow that's the easier discovery to swallow. "The article begins: State officials in Des Moines have announced a new—" Her voice falters but she continues on. "...have announced a newly renovated holding facility for Iowa's mutant population, with nearly double the capacity of the previous location. This second facility will allow state authorities to comply with Sentinel Services' updated guidelines on mutant containment, as well as meet the growing number of citizen-reported sightings."

For a long moment after Rogue stops reading, there's only the sound of his engine, the faint clatter-clack of loose gravel kicked up by his tires as he drove. Mutants. Rogue's world. He ran the possibility again, but parameters were too vague. For every data point that suggested this could be a Port-Out situation, another was there to contradict it.

The silence stretches until Knock Out finally says, "We don't know what this is yet. We don't have enough information. It wouldn't be the first time the Porter has played with hallucinations."

"You're right," she agrees softly, still holding the paper but no longer seeing it. And she hopes that so desperately that this is just a hallucination they're sharing. That there's something wrong with the Porter again and that soon they'll be back home in a world that doesn't want to hunt her like a wild animal. But what if...

"My world wasn't like this when I left it. The year is the same but..." She looks out the window at the road stretching ahead of them. "We should find a city. We'll probably get more information there."

Knock Out murmurs assent, and the road flows under them. They come into the town of Melvin before long -- Population: 232, Osceola County, "The Biggest Little City in Iowa!" proudly proclaimed on the signage -- and past a small bank, a grocery store, a library, and alongside a small park with brightly coloured playground equipment. It's every small town America condensed into a single main drag and sole flashing stoplight.

As part of his three years of energon scouting, Knock Out had dedicate-cached extensive maps of North America, ones that didn't require his comm link to be working, so now that he had a point of reference, he is on more familiar territory. He turns south onto Highway 59 and finds it pleasantly light on traffic. More fields of corn roll past on both sides of the highway.

"The closest city of relative size is Fort Dodge," he says after a moment's research. "Approximate population of 25,000... two hours drive away. It's still well north of Des Moines." He could make it in less than two hours, but not if they were keeping a low profile.

"After that... Maurtia Falls would be the closest Porter city, but De Chima's only longer by an hour or two."

"We're so far away from everything," she comments absently, her voice still quiet, tone far more subdued than usual. Despite the reminder that they had no idea what was happening, that their present situation could have all sorts of explanations, she was feeling weighed down by the one possibility that she's always dreaded. So many imPorts dreamt of returning home to their previous lives but she'd never been one of them. Her life had been hell, absolute utter hell, and the world she'd left had been nothing short of a nightmare.

She leans back against the seat, resting her head against the support and turning to look out at the seemingly endless miles of corn surrounding them. "I'd rather try De Chima of the two, if you don't mind."

She'd rather try to go home.

Rogue has never talked much about her world to him, but it's not hard to detect the heaviness in her voice and in her manner, at the possibility she's been returned to it.

"De Chima it is," he agrees.

Two hours later, the afternoon sun has set by the time they reach Fort Dodge, but the sky still lingers a beautiful dusky gold as the streetlamps begin flickering on. Knock Out follows the flow of traffic, winding their way through the downtown core so they can get a measure of the place. It's wide and flat and spread out the way midwestern states tend to be, with a mix of century-old brick buildings and newer, cheaper constructions.

He pulls off the main road and into the parking lot of a convenience store advertising everything from movie rentals to lotto tickets, but Knock Out is focused on one particular poster in the window. "I need you to buy a cellphone. The sign in the window says this place sells prepaid ones."

Those two hours feel like two days, fear and uncertainty churning in a violent storm within her through every mile they travel. She has to make a conscious effort to keep herself from sinking into full-blown panic every fifteen minutes when the realization rises yet again — that she is going to be hunted again. Her days of living in peace are over, gone as quickly as they'd arrived.

But at least she isn't alone. That's what keeps her from breaking down emotionally, what allows her to hold on to the hope that there's something else going on and this isn't what it seems. Because her dear friend is here and she trusts him completely.

She stares out the glass at the convenience store for a long moment, weighing the possibilities and deciding that, yes, she can handle this. She has money, she can use this as a way to find out if the currency is the same here, and if not... well, she can make up an explanation on the fly and they can try something else. She's got this. It'll be fine.

"Okay," she finally agrees, taking a few deep breaths and forcing herself into that calm place she'd learned to find years ago in training. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

Thank goodness she manages to climb out without her knees shaking. Slipping off the coat she's been wearing all this time, she leaves it in the seat, closing the door before pulling off her gloves as well. They're tucked into a pocket before she heads inside, casually wandering the aisles and picking up a bottle of water and a protein bar before approaching the counter. She puts on her best smile and sweetest demeanor as she acquires one of those cellphones, and somehow manages not to keep that smile in place as she hands over the money. The man takes it without question, counting each bill before inputting the total and counting out her change.

The relief as she stepped outside was enough to almost make her cry. It was enough to make her forget about her gloves, her fingers touching the smooth metal of the handle for half a second before she pulls back, startled, and tugs down her sleeve to try again. It hadn't been long enough to make a connection, thankfully, but more than enough to send her heart racing again.

If Knock Out notices anything amiss in the ungloved touch, he doesn't comment on it. Once she's reseated in the driver's side, a thin cord of supple mesh extends from the dash, and as she watches, the end shifts and reshapes itself, altering in micrometers until it perfectly matches the charge port on the phone type she's purchased.

"I'm not a comms mech," he offers by way of explanation. "Or Spec-Ops. And unlike Soundwave -- who can decrypt something just by existing in its general vicinity -- if I'm to get any kind of access to the satellite networks, I'm going to need a back door in. This will probably take a few hours, but in the meantime..."

His radio clicks on, the dial spinning digital numbers on the dash. He flips though stations almost too fast to catch what they are -- although there's a lot of country music even in that short span, but this is Iowa -- until he settles on a news channel recounting the day's events. There's a recap of the same story that she read in the newspaper about the holding facility in Des Moines, a few local crime stories, sports scores, a weather forecast. Knock Out spins the dial again, impatiently.

"Where's the police band? Mm, no, that's CB... here we go." Radio chatter, idle and unhurried, crackles across the speakers. "You know for a species that needs external hardware to detect RF bands, you have surprisingly good spectrum management, grouping everything together the way you do."

He pauses, quiet except for the radio, red lighting from the dash muted. He feels her agitation, her turbulence... both physically because of his sensors, and something deeper. She's afraid.

"Rogue... I won't let anything happen to you. Whatever the Porter's done--" Whether this was some trick, or whether they were really in her world. "--we'll deal with it."

Edited (missed a word) 2020-02-02 07:33 (UTC)

Her gloves are tugged back on as she settles inside again, carefully hooking the phone up to the port he's created so he can get things started. A few hours feels like a lifetime to wait and yet also not very long at all — she'd waited years for answers before, what was a few hours now. But as he flips through radio signals, a dozen different voices pouring out information on things both unfamiliar and not, her anxiety and fear levels slowly begin to climb, like ascending a steep spiral staircase.

At his incredibly sweet and surprisingly comforting words, she leans forward to press her hand to the top of the dashboard, giving him a gentle pat like how she used to back in Jeopardy whenever she'd pass him in the driveway. The words are thick on her tongue when she speaks and heavy with emotion. "Thank you, sugar. I really mean it."

But then she leans back and lets her hand fall, looking around the parking lot. "We should probably get a move on before someone wonders why we're just sittin here."

His engine starts again, backing out of the parking space in front of the convenience store, and turns onto the road again. The lateness of the hour surprises him; at almost mid-July it's basically high summer, and sunset hadn't occurred until nearly 9pm.

Knock Out's set a course for De Chima that swings them southward before turning east so that they'll miss major population centers like Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. They can skirt St Louis if they really need to -- he'll keep an audial on the radio and police frequencies -- but they're going to be passing through during the wee hours of the morning so he hopes it won't be necessary.

He doesn't let the silence fester this time, but he fills it with things that are easy for her to tune out or listen to, depending on what she needs. He keeps the topic away from their shared Porter world, recounting some of the more outlandish Vehicon repairs he'd had to do, sidelining into some scathing commentary on his fellow medical professionals within the Decepticon ranks, and then finally settling onto recounting the sets of events that led to his own arrival on Earth.

"So we've just set down the ship and I discover that what I thought was solid land is actually... a swamp. An absolute bog. My first steps on this planet and I sank about a meter down and it squelched. I wanted to leave right then! Of course Breakdown's having a fine time with it, and off he goes tromping through this decaying mire. Of course we're still in the process of integrating our planetary informational packets, so we've got some of the concepts but not all of them yet, and Breakdown comes back through the muck holding this thing.

'Knock Out', he says, 'I found a dog!' 'What's a dog?' I ask, because I'm still sorting out the fact that your planet is currently using three separate systems of measurement for the same things.

And he answers, 'A puppy! Humans keep them as pets!' and then he wants me to pet it. So I do. It should be noted that neither of us had finished disseminating the subfile on organic wildlife at this point, that kicked in about a breem later."

He pauses for effect. "... it was an alligator."

She's so grateful to him for sharing those stories, far more than she could possibly explain. Silence is hard for her to handle right now, the weight of it pressing down on her chest and squeezing her heart to the fear is even more prominent in her mind. For three years, she'd had nothing but silence punctuated by screams during each new series of tests and procedures, day after day of the same until it all blended together into her own personal version of hell. So to now have Knock Out's voice filling that silence... It keeps her memories from bleeding into the present, grounding her to the here and now so she can stay focused on their situation.

So she listens, and she smiles, and after that oh-so-effective pause she even laughs. It felt so good to laugh, that spark of joy spreading warmth throughout her very being, and all because of him.

"An alligator?" The laughter increases, turning into full-fledged giggles, and her cheeks hurt from smiling so widely. "Oh sugar, that's adorable. What did you think of it when you saw it?"

Because obviously that's the most important question to ask.

He's glad that she's laughing, glad that he's able to keep her in the present. While he doesn't know what she's been through, had no inkling because it's never been a subject they every broached (why would they, when it causes her such distress?) but Knock Out understands the need to occupy one's thoughts with the mundane.

"I don't know, it was kind of cute? In a scaly, toothy sort of way? Breakdown was happy, that was the important part. Not even a groon planetside and he wanted to adopt a pet. I told him he had to put it back, but it was quite the welcome to Earth. Our own little personal mascot for the stay, I guess."

The chorno tells him that they've been driving about four hours while he spins his tales, and that it's after 1AM now. His turn signal flashes right, sliding two lanes to take the ramp that curls up a gentle hill toward a quiet service station. "You should stretch and refill your water," he says as he parks. Not to mention there are other bodily functions that she may need to attend, that Knock Out doesn't need to deal with. At this hour, the rest of the parking lot is empty except for some semi-trucks in the far area, their drivers probably sleeping. The service center is lit though, tended by a pair of bored looking staffers. This clearly isn't a high-volume rest stop.

"We're still a good fourteen hours out of De Chima," he adds after a moment, kindly. "You should try and get some sleep, if you can. My backseat wasn't really built for comfort, but you managed to make it work before." When she'd gotten copiously drunk at one of the Swear-Ins, decided that he was her ride home, and promptly fallen asleep while he drove them back to Jeopardy.

That was the important part. In that moment, she wishes more than ever that she'd been able to meet Breakdown. It's clear just how much he'd meant to her friend, the emotion behind the story dovetailing with every other mention of the lost loved one. He sounds like he'd been happy then, happy with Breakdown, and she would give anything to give him that happiness again.

She's surprised when they turn but now that he mentions it, she has been feeling pretty stiff. Sitting for so long and with such exhausting tension has worn her out as well.

"I sure did," she confirms fondly, remembering that night fairly well despite the ridiculously large volume of alcohol she'd consumed. Even then, she'd trusted him with her life, something telling her that she could do so without worry. "It's honestly a lot more comfortable than some places I've been." Both during the war and back when she'd hitchhiked her way halfway across the continent.

Grabbing the long-empty bottle, she carefully climbed out of the car, her legs stiff and her back aching a bit as she stretched her arms up. After taking a deep breath of the warm night air, she closed the door, giving him another gentle pat. "Don't let anyone steal you before I get back."

It's a joke of course, but there's a tiny thread of actual concern underlying it. She doesn't know what she'd do without him.

The building is empty save for those near-dozing staffers, who just barely perk up at the sight of someone entering. She stops in the bathroom first, taking care of business and then washing her face as best she can. Hours in a car have left her feeling a shade gross but there's little to be done for it besides this — this isn't one of those fancy stations with showers you can pay for. It's good enough though.

Her bottle is refilled at a water fountain and then she buys another one from a vending machine because she needs to stay better hydrated and she doesn't want Knock Out to have to worry about that. She grabs a few more protein bars as well, seeing as they're the only things available that aren't completely sugar, before heading back outside.

Knock Out obligingly folds down his seat so Rogue can climb into the back once she returns, laughing silently in remembrance of that night at the Swear-In when he'd tried to help her and ended up dumping her into the backseat rather ungracefully. Probably she can use her coat as a pillow; the night is warm and Knock Out keeps the cabin temperature neutral, so she won't need a blanket.

Once she's settled, he pulls back onto the highway. The road sign tells him Quincy, IL is coming up a ways ahead, if they stay on Route 61 and keep heading south, which he does. He slips back into conversation, but it's idle and one-sided so she has something to fall asleep to, and once she does, he stops.

Knock Out keeps the radio low, a bare murmur just enough to blend with the tire hum and the air flow slipstreaming around him. The highway has minimal traffic at this hour, the roads are good (better, even, than he recollected - apparently 2023 had their construction priorities straight) and the weather is clear. Outside of the cities, even the occasional oncoming headlights can't dismiss the brightness of a three-quarter moon and a starry sky.

He rounds St Louis and it's 3:30 in the morning. He listens on the police bands but they're quiet.

It's 4:17AM when his security algorithm finally cracks encryption and links up with the satellite network. Everything starts updating, terabytes of download in an instant, including his geographical data.

He swears. Quietly, and in Velocitronian, but he does.

Sunrise comes just before 6AM but Rogue is still sleeping, so he drives. He's picked up Interstate 64 which they can follow all the way to Virginia, but it traipses through the Appalachians so it's not exactly a straight shot.

When he finally feels Rogue beginning to stir against his seat, he checks against his new data and finds them a truck stop where she can get whatever she needs, including a shower and a change of clothes. Attached to the truck stop is Pamela's Old-Tyme Diner, and he hopes that will suit her for breakfast.

"Good morning," he says, when her vitals indicate she's actually awake.

Given the stress of the day and underlying fear and anxiety that had been with her ever since they'd woken, Rogue would have assumed it would take hours for her to fall asleep once she'd curled up in the backseat. Instead, it took less than a handful of minutes, exhaustion pulling at her and the soft rumble of a moving vehicle easing her into blissful darkness. Once asleep, she didn't wake once, didn't even shift position as the sun rose in the sky.

It's still morning when she does finally wake, though the summer sun has been up for quite a while. Minutes bleed into each other as she slowly comes to, liking rising up out of a dense fog, and she doesn't remember at first. Even when she hears Knock Out's voice, it doesn't come to her immediately.

"Morning, sugar," she replies, stiffly sitting up and lifting a hand to her hair to make sure it's not sticking straight up in some interpretation of a bird's nest. Why is in— But then it comes back and she goes still, just for a moment, before pushing through the echoing shock and despair. This isn't the time for that.

"Where are we?"

Knock Out's glad that she slept through the night, and that said sleep appeared to have been restful. With everything that he has learned since the data uplink completed, he grimly suspects those nights may come fewer now.

Which was why he is absolutely not saying a thing until she's had at least a chance to wake up, get herself to rights, and had something to eat.

"Kentucky," he answers her query. There's no trace of fatigue in his tone, despite having driven throughout the night. "Halfway between Louisville and Lexington. We made good time."

Outside the tinted windows bustles a new truck stop, this one considerably larger than the sleepy one they'd visited the night before. At this hour the station is active, vehicles pulling in and out of the gas pumps, people (both lone drivers and families traveling) funneling in and out of the store and restaurant. Knock Out's parked a little away from the cluster of vehicles nearest the main entrance, but other than a few casual glances at his alt mode's distinct European styling, no one appears to be paying them any attention.

"How much money do you have left?"

It's nice to see people again like this, the steady stream of people simply going about their day during a stop in their travels. She watches them while he answers her questions, her gaze drawn time and again to the small children who range from sullen to excited at whatever adventure lay before them that day. Summer family vacations — things she's experienced only through borrowed memories and never in her own lifetime.

There are so many things that she can say that about...

Kentucky isn't far from Virginia, at least; he's right, they have made good time. Taking the less busy roads seems to have been a smart idea on his part.

"Not too much," she admits, reaching into the pocket of her jeans and pulling out the remaining bills. She'd been lucky to have had any on her at all, let alone enough to still have about $25 after what she'd spent the day before. It's more than enough for coffee though, and that's all that matters to her. "Is there something else you need?"

Knock Out was just glad that Rogue had money on her at all. As an imPort, Knock Out had the same kind of electronic bank account as anyone, but it wasn't like he ever dealt in cash or physical cards. He just linked everything to his comm and paid for things by transfer.

And unfortunately despite its expense, the cellphone had been a necessity. Technically they didn't need it now, as Knock Out had cracked the encryptions, but perhaps they'd still find a use for it later.

"Not me," he returns, and the rear view mirror angles by itself to catch Rogue's reflection in the backseat. The jaunty tilt of it heavily implies that of a raised eyebrow. "You need something to eat that's not compressed polymer chains," he added pointedly.

If she hadn't had money on her... Well, they would have been finding out real quick if she could still pick a pocket without getting caught. She isn't especially proud of having that particular skill but war had necessitated that they all find new ways to survive. When they'd still been able to hide in the cities, that had meant stealing money and food and clothes to be able to take care of the kids.

The tilt of the mirror speaks loud and clear. Smiling in mild amusement, she nods at his words. "Okay, okay, you're right," she agrees. "Honestly, something not processed to within an inch of its life sounds really great right now."

Now that she's thought about food, she notices just how hungry she is. The protein bars had sustained her but little else. Real food not out of a foil wrapper is an almost heavenly thought. And yet—

"Maybe they can make up something to go and I can eat out here with you." Because she really doesn't feel like being alone for very long right now. Being alone and without him.

"Out here?" Knock Out asks, surprised. But his mind replays the events of the last day, Rogue's constant stress and underlying fear, and everything he learned overnight while she slept. Is it any wonder she doesn't want to feel alone right now, even for something as innocuous as breakfast? His voice softens.

"There's another option... the holoform. The building is well within my functional range." Some mechs could manipulate their avatars miles away, but Knock Out had neither the extended range equipment for that, nor the experience. But for the truck stop interior and the restaurant from the parking lot, and for as short a time as they'd likely need it, that was easy.

He calls the program up from its file, only to make a perturbed sound. "Wait, it's still got the design for that party. One moment, I have to reconfigure it or it'll stand out too much."

Knock Out lapses into silence for a few minutes, mentally revising the projection's parameters, and then suddenly in the other seat the human-shaped holoform fritzes into being with a ripple of suspended pixels. Rather than wearing the stylish suit that had fit the Swear-In's formal dress theme, the construct is now clad in casual jeans and a navy buttoned shirt. It's an interesting contrast to the red hair and red eyes it still sports, and Knock Out makes a few minor corrections to subtle light refraction and texture rendering before apparently being satisfied.

"Well? Does it pass muster?" the holoform asks lightly.

She's never been more grateful to not have to explain things to him. He doesn't demand explanations for her weird human ways, he just goes with them. Maybe with someone else, he would have acted differently, but their relationship isn't like that. They accept each other's eccentricities, good and bad.

"It absolutely does," she assures him with a smile after giving him a good once-over. "You look good, sugar. A heck of a lot better than I do right now." She pauses a moment, glancing over at the restaurant and then back at him. "I'd be worried about your eyes but it'll be good to find out just how paranoid everyone is around here."

The red eyes are him, even if she'd only seen them that one night, but they're certainly not a normal color for humans. They're not glowing or anything though, so at least there's that in their favor. And heck, she's just glad he's willing to use this form at all; if she remembers right, he hardly ever does.

That sly little grin when she says that definitely carries over from his normal face to a simulated human one, as Knock Out always appreciates being told he looks good. She makes a good point about the holoform's eyes though; he'd just taken the majority of his own features and translated them as close as possible without concern for how much they blended in. As an imPort, it hadn't really been necessary to give it much thought. Here, though...

"I can change them," he says, and almost immediately they alter to an ambiguously dark colour. "Or the hair, or the clothes. It's all just pixels and kinetic buffers to me."

His seats fold down to let Rogue and the holoform out of the back (that's a trick, he thinks, manipulating the thing inside himself - if they weren't in a public parking lot, he'd have just dissolved and reformed it outside standing on the pavement).

He reaches out to smooth a few snarled strands of hair on the top of her head. Like the night they'd danced, there's a peculiar solidity to the holoform's touch; there's no soft give in its 'skin', no temperature. But visually, it looks like any normal person standing there.

"Ready?"

The change is much better and certainly makes her less nervous to head inside the diner. She didn't mind the red that matched his actual form but with everyone being told to report mutant sightings... It felt better to err on the side of caution. People dyed their hair all the time, someone in the diner had bright blue streaks, but eyes were a different matter.

And don't think she didn't notice that grin. She remembers all too well how he likes hearing how good he looks.

Climbing out, she takes a second to try to smooth the wrinkles out of her shirt and jeans, though of course it does absolutely nothing. She needs a full change of clothes, but for now she'll be happy with coffee and something edible. Eggs. Eggs sound wonderful.

"Let's go," she says, some part of her utterly endeared by that simple touch he'd given her hair. It's just a casual action and completely safe for him as a hologram, but the feeling is still there. That lack of fear and no second thought to doing so. For just a brief moment, she's able to pretend that he's a solid person there who knows what she can do and still isn't afraid.

Which reminds her: she tugs off her gloves as she leads the way inside, tucking them into her pocket. She holds the door open for him and then steers them toward a booth by the windows so she can keep an eye on his solid form. The waitress signals that she'll be over in a moment and Rogue just smiles in response before sliding into the booth.

"Thanks for coming in with me, sugar. It really means a lot."

"You're welcome," he replies, settling into the booth across from her. The seat didn't depress; the holoform had no weight, even though it could exert force. But while sitting, it was unlikely that anyone would notice. His eyes sweep around the diner with great interest, taking everything in. While he knew from media what such places looked like, and he had 'seen' the inside of them in the sense that he could scan through glass and brick to register the dimensions of the inside, actually seeing it was something new.

The waitress bustles over with a sunny smile and a practiced greeting, bearing a coffee pot and ready to take their orders. After Rogue gives hers, Knock Out demurs ordering food to stick with just the coffee. "I already ate," he says to the waitress, equal parts apology and charm. "Though if I'd known we were stopping here, I would have waited."

"Happens all the time, hon," the waitress answers, then promises Rogue's food will be right up and leaves them to their business. With the general hubbub of clattering plates, talking patrons, and overhead music, at least they won't be overheard.

"I am nowhere near practiced enough with this thing to feign eating," Knock Out gives a faint grimace, before she can ask.

Even just the smell of the coffee is enough to soothe Rogue's rattled nerves. Coffee and chocolate, the two foods she'd missed most during the war and had indulged in daily after she'd come through the portal. They were things that Hux had enjoyed as well, which made living together all the easier. Their backgrounds and worldviews had been completely opposite at times, but they could still sit together and enjoy a cup of coffee and a giant plate of brownies while discussing their differences.

Wrapping her hands around the mug of coffee, she lets the warmth of it melt into her, letting herself relax that last little bit. It's dangerous to let her guard down at all until they know what they're dealing with but... she just wants to pretend for a little while longer.

"If you ever want to practice, I'd give my unbiased feedback on the performance," she offers, silently urging the coffee to cool faster. Pitching her voice slightly lower to be sure it's covered by their surroundings, she elaborates. "I had a student once who didn't need to eat. He couldn't most times, actually. We had to help him learn how to fake it and figure out ways to pass for normal when absolutely necessary. It was so frustrating for him but I was so proud of the way he kept trying until he got it right."

There's an almost sad wistfulness to the words and she lowers her gaze to the table between them.

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