I just wanted to be human. Ch. 11 A SPG Fanfic

Suggested listening:
Song: Disc Wars
Album: Tron Legacy
Artist: Daft Punk
( or just the whole album, whichever one)

Chapter 11: Precious Time

Rabbit's eyes twitched, suddenly gasping awake. Wide eyed he began to take in his surroundings. He was sitting on a bench in the back of the van. Jon had been laid out on the bench across from him. Hatchworth and Micheal were in the front cabin. They were on the road. He stared out the small round window in the back door, watching the dust fly out from underneath their tires. Holly was miles away now. They were almost safe, almost.

How long had he been shut down? He only recharged about 60% of his power. It had been 2 hours, giving spine only 20 minutes left.
"Micheal!" Rabbit struggled with his buckles.

"Oh hey... you're awake." Micheal yawned and turned to look over his seat. "You feeling better?"
Rabbit tripped over his belts, crawling closer to the cabin. "What did you need to tell me so badly?" He asked as he watched the automaton intently. The question had been floating in his brain since they left. He desperately wanted to know what Rabbit found out, but he knew the bot needed to charge. It was a long and painful wait.

Rabbit fell to his knees but stayed there on the floor, able to at least give Micheal eye contact. How to explain everything. To explain that Micheal's ex, whom he trusted, was the villain. A cruel and malicious woman who played them all like fools, especially Micheal. Rabbit pouted, bringing his eyebrows to a burrow as he thought. He didn't have time to protect Micheal's feelings. Spine was running out of time.

"HollygavespineavirusandnowshestryingtokillhimandIhavethecodetostopitbutIneedtodirectlyconnect." He blurted so fast that it made Micheal's head spin.

"Okay I... only understood part of that."

"Holly is the one that gave Spine the program." Rabbit stated in a cold manner. He let the fact sink in before continuing. "At this moment she's deleting all of his programs." The van shrieked to a halt in the middle of the road. Hatchworth and Micheal staring at each other in disbelief, then turning to Rabbit who gave them an awkward smile.

"You mean she is... she's the she?"

"I got video e-e-evidence. From Spines own mouth. It was all on her computer." He held his breath forming another pause, letting Micheal understand the stakes. He could see the instant pain in the man's face, like all the oxygen had been knocked out of his chest.

Micheal held his head low. "I introduced them to each other...." Covering his face with the palm of his hand. "I told him he could trust her..."

Rabbit gave him a pat on the shoulder, frowning. "You thought he could... She wanted something from him. She used him..." Rabbit waited till the human seemed to be breathing again. "She promised him real emotions, what he wanted more than anything..."

Micheal barred his teeth, then slammed his head against the dashboard. The two automatons stared at him in confusion. This behavior seemed strange and very irregular for a human. "... It's my fault..." Micheal wallowed, letting the intense pain flow over him. The pain was more tolerable than the guilt. "...this is all my fault..."

"This doesn't matter now! And you know Spine would never blame you." Rabbit stood, hunching his neck over to not hit it against the ceiling. "In 20 minutes everything about Spine will be gone and the only thing left is her and this virus." He announced to the group. His tone was firm. "If we don't act now then we have time for a pity party and cry-fest. But I'm not gonna place blame until I've exhausted every outlet!" They stared at him uneasily. Very rarely did they see Rabbit so angry, so passionate, so... serious.

"What are you going to do?" Micheal let out a heavy breath and rubbed his eyes. He had an idea of what Rabbit's plan of action was, but a part of him hoped it wasn't what he was thinking.

Rabbit came back down on one knee, placing a firm hand on Micheal's shoulder. "She built in a fail safe, a disable code, a way to shut it down. I just have to in-in-initiate the sequence."

"By plugging yourself into his matrix..." Micheal pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to increase the physical pain to distract him from the overwhelming sensation of guilt.

"We will never get him to the hall of wires in time. The program is actively destroying his reserves." Rabbit stood now, not wasting any time as he began to unpack the connector wires coiled in the back. "He can run off my power... I'll feed into his system, find the program, disable it, and then disconnect."

"And if for some whatever reason you can't, and you pick it up?"

Rabbit paused, gripping the wires in both hands. He folded his lips over each other and thought. It had crossed his mind several times. Doing the calculations he had a 78% chance of not contracting the virus, but that 22%. "I have to try.... If you had let me do it when I first wanted to-"

"Then you would have had no chance because you didn't even have the code, or know what it was." Micheal kicked the dashboard angrily and climbed over the seats to the back. "I knew I'd never be able to keep you talked out of it forever... at least now I know there's a chance." He began to untangle the wires. "So yea.. Thanks for waiting all of 24 hours Rabbit. I'm sure that was really hard for you."

"Exhausting..." Rabbit chuckled. He stretched and rotated his joints, preparing for however long he might be sitting still. "But I knew that eventually I could convince you." He plopped down on the bench, pulling Spine back into his lap. Waiting for Micheal to get things ready, he gave Jon a quick glance across from him. When this was over, if he fixed Spine, would Jon forgive him? He knew nothing except that his brother attacked him. That would be a long conversation.

"Fine fine... but I'm telling you this now, if I even have a sniff that there's trouble I'm going to yank you out of that network so fast."

"Sniff? Do we robots smell when networking?" Rabbit smirked.

"You know what I mean. I'm going to time you. 20 minutes." Micheal plugged the connector cable into Spine, ready to plug into Rabbit's port.

"Better make that 16.... we've already wasted it..."

"Well then you need to work fast." The human paused before finishing the connection, a brief moment of doubt. Raising his eyes, he stared at the eager bot. Would this be the last time he saw Rabbit and knew it was him? With Spine they didn't know when the last time they interacted with the real Spine. Is this what it looked like? "Listen I-" His words were shaky, it felt like a good bye. "If this doesn't work.... if you get infected I'm.... I'm sorry. Tell Spine that I'm sorry..."

Rabbit stared blankly at him for a few seconds before that jester smile curled to his lips. He gave Micheal a gentle pat on the head, "Don't worry Micheal. Humans makes mistakes. That's why we love you. And this time a Robot made a mistake... And that's why you love us."

Micheal would have pointed out the hole in that logic, but doing so would correct what he did love about the bots. They had lived such gruesome scenes, outlived their friends, their creators, and yet they still had this air of innocence about them. Unsure of the world or how it works. Or maybe that's what they lead him to believe, hiding a much darker and painful side. He never really thought before of how deeply they hurt, how painfully alone they would be without one from the group. They had just gotten Hatchworth back. To lose Spine was utterly unbearable. It only made sense that Rabbit would risk his own conscious life to save his brother. So that he would never have to face that pain alone.

"You're wasting precious time here..." Rabbit humphed.

"I- just- ergh..." Micheal cleared his head. "I know I can't do much but... I'm gonna stay here and keep an eye on you."

Rabbit gave him a nod, signaling he was ready. Clenching his jaw tightly, Micheal forced the cable into the port. Rabbit's body jumped and then went rigid. His eyes dimmed as his consciousness traveled the circuit highway into Spine's mainframe.

Micheal sat back in awe. It was moments like this that really showed how robotic they were. That underneath the playful humor and human like responses, they really were just machines.

".... good luck friend..."