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Age of the Machine (Market Comodity 3)	By : Scienceteacher Category: Transformers > G1 > Round Robins Views: 6356 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Do not own Transformers/Hasbro, Am not making a dime off of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-A.o.M. part 1
- 2-A.o.M. 2
- 3-A.o.M 3
- 4-A.oM.4
- 5-AoM 5
- 6-AoM 6
- 7-AoM 7
- 8-AoM 8
- 9-AoM 8-1/2
- 10-AoM 9
- 11-AoM 10
- 12-AoM 11
- 13-AoM 12
- 14-Once upon a time
- 15-AoM 13
- 16-AoM 14
- 17-AoM 15
- 18-AoM 16
- 19-AoM 17
- 20-Family Ties
- 21-AoM 18
- 22-Family Ties Pt 2
- 23-AoM19
- 24-Family Ties Pt 3
- 25-AoM 20
- 26-Family Ties Pt 4
- 27-AoM 21
- 28-AOM 22
- 21
- 22
- 23
Chapter contributed by : kuroikitsu

AN: I am a horrible person with College Finals syndrome. I am terribly sorry for making you wait so long for something so incredibly short.... god I fail.

Family Ties

Chapter 1- Awakening

This time it was the sound of a familiar giggle that pulled Zero from his self induced stasis. It was light and airy, but carried a slightly husky tone to it. Zero Cool resisted the urge to online his optics- if he was just dreaming he’d prefer to dream as long as possible.

“I know your awake. Online your optics, silly.” That was no dream. In all the times that Zero Cool had dreamed, fantasized, imagined that Maria and Crash came back, they had never spoken. Zero had never even tried to imagine what they would say. Maria never said anything he wanted her to anyway, and he didn’t want her homecoming ruined by his delusions of what she was ‘supposed’ to do. She got enough of that from the outside world- or so she said. Zero usually saw her making demands rather than receiving them, but she loved Crash, and like him well enough so he had no reasons to complain.

“Maria?” He asked, slowly onlining his optics. Honey hued skin, the exact colour he remembered it when she left, dark wavy dark chocolate hair that had lightened to more of a reddish hew from the sun’s dim rays, and sparkling green eyes, like fresh cut grass- green?!

Maria’s eyes were liquid pools of dark chocolate. 80% Cacao, she used to joke. Those weren’t her eyes. Though the held the same joy teasing glint Maria’s carried, they also held an innocence that hers lost. That Zero Cool saw her lose.

“Whose Maria?” The imposter asked. Her voice, it almost seemed… concerned. Zero averted his optics. This fake had no right to know.

“Not you.” Zero could just feel her gaze narrow at him. It wasn’t angry or even annoyed. It was… calculating, almost cold.

“You’re interesting.” She announced, once she had her fill of simply staring at him. Not knowing how to take the offhand compliment, Zero chose to say nothing. “So, who are you anyway? I’m Anita.” She held out her hand.

Zero thought about giving a smart ass remark or simply not answering her at all. Honestly he did, but her face! Her voice, hell even her attitude reminded him so much of Maria that he just simply couldn’t do that to her. “…Zero Cool.”

Anita laughed again, and despite himself Zero focused completely on how free and light and absolutely endearing it was. “Seems like your previous owner was a Hackers fan.”

“Maybe. I wouldn’t know.”

“Why not? Haven’t you seen it?”

“No, I haven’t.” Zero’s voice held an air of finality that no one would challenge. This Anita was not his owner, had never met his owner, and he owed her nothing. She was getting entirely too personal way too quickly.

“Testy. Are you always that way when you wake up?” Zero didn’t bother to respond. Anita didn’t seem to mind too much, as she continued on, as if he weren’t even there. “I do wonder why you’re here though. I mean, it’s an odd place for someone sleeping to be. Anyone could just come right on in just like I did.”

It was only then did Zero realize something incredibly important. “Nana! Where is Nana?” Zero was nearly frantic. She promised she would be alright, she had been holding him, how could she just disappear? It simply wasn’t possible.

“Zero?” Anita called out to him, her voice strangely soft and gentle. What the hell was her problem? She had just been ranting on and didn’t care about if he wanted to hear it before. Why did she sound so uncertain now?

“What?” Couldn’t she see he was busy anyway? Why was she still here?

“Is that her?” Anita asked, pointing at the other end of their broken down hideout. It used to be a rec center but it had been reinforced sometime after the cold war. It was. Zero would recoginize that long grey and brown hair anywhere. From here, she almost looked like she was just sleeping. Almost, but Zero could still tell the difference immediately. Nana always shifted around when she slept. She had told Zero a long time ago that she had never been a still sleeper, even as a child. And her skin was a little… faded out and she looked kind of stiff. She was dead. So much so her body had begun the process of decomposing. Not enough to really see or smell yet, but she was.

Zero walked over to her and rested one hand against her cheek. It was harder than normal and freezing cold. It felt almost like some of the meat she had defrosting in the fridge before she cooked it. How long had he been asleep? He swore it was not for more than a few hours, 2 at most, when he checked his internal clock. Over a week, his clock flashed back at him.

In that case… wouldn’t Nana be all rotten and gone, gooey to touch and foul to behold? Her soul would have left leaving that blank meat carcass that Zero would never hug again, or help her cook, or braid her hair, or do anything with again. If that was the case, he wouldn’t be able to touch her like this.

“It’s been rather cold lately. I mean, even colder than normal with the sun blocked and all.” Anita commented to herself. Zero supposed she meant to remind him that she was there so he wasn’t completely alone, but at that moment all he wanted was for her to shut up. She was disturbing everything. If she hadn’t come then Zero wouldn’t have awakened to know that Nana wasn’t okay. He could have slept on, in the black darkness of recharge that would come as close to death as he would ever know of it. After all, computers don’t have souls so they never really die. Just become obsolete.

Despite how unwanted her words were, they did provide the explanation he wanted. The cold had slowed down the process. That’s why her body still lay in the second half of rigor mortis, when her joints were beginning to unfreeze. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. His body couldn’t produce tears, and Nana didn’t like to see him sad, and Maria had always said that boys don’t cry.

Faintly, Zero could hear Anita yelling to someone else, but that really didn’t matter. She didn’t matter, nothing mattered. Then, he felt warmth on his shoulder. He glanced up at Anita, who smiled gently at him. “Hey, you’ll be okay. Big boys don’t cry.” And in that moment, for that one second, Zero was about to look into those grass green eyes and see smooth mocha. And for that moment she was just like Maria. And for the first time he was grateful she was there.

“So what do I do now? I’ve never not had an owner before.”

“Well, can’t you just register a new owner?” Anita asked.

“Technically, since Maria gave me to Nana. I belong to Maria again, but we haven’t seen her in months…. I’ll probably never see her again. So now I belong to the factory but it doesn’t exist anymore.” Zero told her.

“So you can’t just register me as your new owner?”

Zero shook his head. “Not without a previous owner’s permission. Or without changing my programming.”

“That’s stupid.” Anita snarled. Now Zero was stuck owner-less. She wanted to help him, but to not be able to do so sucked. “And I barely know enough to download music , much less something as complicated as hacking your system.”

“It’s a failsafe. That way if my owner leaves me with someone temporarily, they can’t steal me. I don’t think the programmers were expecting this sort of thing to happen.”

“Yeah well… Mama might be able to do it. She knows a little about computer programming.”

“I might be able to do what?” Another woman, who sounded remarkably like Anita said out of nowhere.

“Hack Zero so we can become his new owners.” Anita grinned to the woman. She was tall and shapely with that same thick batch of dark chocolate waves and green eyes that Anita had.

“Oh Lord child, I don’t know enough to do that.”

“I could try to do it.” Zero said quietly. It was one of the few things Maria insisted he learned. If the real mech your cloned from can do it than you should be able to too. Hell, you should be able to do even better, you hear me! Maria had told him. Granted, he never tried to hack his own network, but there was a first time for everything.

“Is that even possible?” Anita asked, only somewhat rhetorically.

Zero shrugged. “Logically it should be if I had a computer. Programs don’t have to be off to be hacked, though it would probably work better it I made a virus to change that part of my programming instead…” Zero trailed off contemplating exactly how to go about his new technical challenge.

“Why do you know how to hack computers anyway?” Anita asked.

“Maria… insisted on it. Crash could too, but he wasn’t as good as I was.” His reply was slow, distracted as most of his processor power was focused on his new program.

“’Nita, Zero, before you get too involved in this, care to remember that I don’t have my laptop with me? Or that it’s been dead for a little over a month now?” Anita’s mother told them. “Instead, for the time being, ownerless or not, why don’t you just come with us?”

Zero tried hard to show how interested he was in the proposition. With the way Anita giggled at his face, he doubted he succeeded. “Go where?”

Anita was the one to answer him. “We heard about this group… There wasn’t much to go on accept that they’ve been collecting refugees of both uninfected mechs and any surviving humans. We were interested so we wanted to see if we could find them.”

“If we don’t I doubt we’ll survive much longer. Supplies are getting harder and harder to find.” Anita’s mother corrected.

“But if you don’t come with us, what are you going to do, stay here?” Anita gestured at the building, slowly falling apart.

“Alright. I’ll go with you.” Zero agreed. It was true after all. He couldn’t just stay here and watch Nana decay. Besides, those mechs might have seen his brother or Maria.
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Age of the Machine (Market Comodity 3)