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No one knew why the Morbot was acting the way it did. Not under the commands of Morocco it was saving people like it did the first time they saw it, well better than the first time. It was starting to be genuinely helpful. It seemed to be learning from the Bots how to do its job more effectively.
What they really hadn’t expected was for the Morbot to fly up and catch Blades when his tail rotor got hit during a rescue. This made Blades reconsider categorizing the Morbot under ‘evil’ and ‘potentially dangerous’. Dani noticed this shift in perspective first hand as the usually timid copterbot stopped being so jumpy around the machine. It was a little odd given Blades vowed to never trust the doctor or his creations again after the whole got ‘botnapped and memories wiped’ episode. He had gone as far as creating the cybertronain equivalent of a vaccine to make such none of the Bots would ever be effected by the space dust again.
It was also a shock to Dani seeing Blades be the one to fix the damaged Morbot after it tried to help during Vigil’s return. While Blades was doing repairs he found some interesting lines of code in the Morbot. A personality chip it was making by itself, like a poor ai. Sorting behaviors it deemed fitting for its existence like helping people. Blades decides to keep note of this just incase.
As the months went on it became more noticeable in the mannerisms of the Morbot, it freaked the rescue bots out a bit. A machine that was almost lifelike, except lacking an important part. A spark.
This would change after the final confrontation with the Morocco virus. The Morbot took on the Morbot v2. While losing the fight to virus infected robot the Morbot had bought time for Bots to get to the firehouse in time to still chase down the Morbot v2 and save Cody. Blades took the seemingly damaged beyond repair Morbot to Faxian and tried his best to fix it. It took years due to his attention always being needed elsewhere on rescues, training recruits, and being a medic. But on one trip to Cybertron he brought a part of the Morbot with him to hopefully make out of Cybertronain tech. He was surprised to find that inside of the new part was a spark. Had Primus deemed the Morbot worthy of being a living thing?
Blades wasn’t sure how it worked since he never looked into cold constructs, did this even count as a cold contrust? He couldn’t tell as the Morbot looked up at him. Oh right, Blades had grown taller than Morbot since moving to Faxian. As he looked into the red optics of the new bot infront of him he felt the confusion their new EM field was putting out.
“Hello.” He greets gently, he new what new protoforms were like from his time in training but this wasn’t a protoform. A new sparkling more like.
“I have memories of you.” Their voice was more robotic than Blades had imagined it being, like a text to speech program.
“You do?” The helicopter tilts his head fins back a bit.
“Yes. Data recorded shows I saved you once, you saved me twice. You gave me life. Query; why?” Morbot questions.
“I don’t believe I gave you life, Primus must have given you a spark when I went to Cybertron for some parts.”
“Do not know of Rescue Bot named ‘Primus’. Data recorded says you put part with ‘spark’ inside when repairing my body.”
“Oh… well first Primus isn’t a Rescue Bot. Second I was, I didn’t realize that there was a spark in that machine part. I will have to go check with Ratchet about it. You should stay here.”
Morbot waited near the groundbridge for a few hours until the portal opened again and out stepped Blades.
“So good news! Your spark wasn’t accidentally stolen from Ratchet’s laboratory. Bad news we don’t know what to do with you.” Blades walks over to Morbot while holding a scanner up to them. “Well your body is converting itself to living metal somehow. So you will be able feel things physically, and transform smaller parts of your frame like your arm or servos.” Blades nervously grazes over the cannon arm Morbot had. They felt an even more uncomfortable feeling, self consciousness.
“Query: allowes to still rescue?”
“Well, I guess with some training. We would have to go to the Academy for that. Not sure Heatwave will be thrilled.”
“Would like continue rescuing with team. Will train.” Morbot vowed.
“I will talk to Heatwave about it this Sunday. For now… scrap! Medbay now! Completely forgot to give you a checkup.”
As the sun starts to set Dani returns from a day out. Not hearing or even seeing him was concerning. Sure he could be on a solo patrol or mission but then he would have sent a message. Dani heads down the elevator to the sub floors. Feeling relief to hear noise from the medbay floor. While on Griffin Rock Blades had shown no interest in scientific work like Boulder had, here he had started up some projects during his downtime. She walked into the medbay to find her partner asking a repaired Morbot medical questions.
“What’s going on here Blades?”
“Oh! Dani! Hello.” Blades was glad to see her. “How was your day?”
“It was good, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, well im still figuring it out, Morbot here is well… alive.”
“Alive? Like you and the other bots?” Blades nods in response. Morbot looked down at Dani, waving their left servo in greeting.
“Hey.” She says hesitantly, still suspicious of the machine even with how many times it had assisted with rescues.
“Hello Dani Burns. Query; allowed to stay?” Morbot asks
“I guess.” Dani really couldn’t think of a reason as why not to let them stay. Besides it was more up to Blades to make that call given he was now team leader. “Blades?”
“Sure? I got to go off for night patrol.” Blades took off towards the elevator to get back up to ground level. He disliked night patrols because the lights of Faxian could be distracting however he knew if he didn’t go and an emergency came up he wouldn’t hear the end of it.
Dani took the opportunity to learn more about Morbot. How it came to life and stuff, however it ended up more as her answering their questions about things. The names of emotions, what that tool did, where were they, where was the rest the team, did they save cody? Dani swore she was starting to understand why her dad was just plain tired some days. How he had put up with 4 kids as a single dad she would absolutely not understand but be forever grateful for. Well technically 8 since she noticed Charlie treated the bots practically the same as them when off duty. Plus it wasn’t like the Bots didn’t look up the Charlie for guidance when Optimus couldn’t answer calls.
Dani woke around 5 in the morning, she got out of her room to hear the alarm going off. Big emergency then. Comming to Blades she found out there was problem with the Scrubbers again. She walked over to Morbot who was waiting by the doors.
“Good morning Dani Burns. Query; allowed to assist you in rescue?” Their windshield lowered and they offered their left servo for Dani to get up with.
“Not sure you’re street legal but yeah, I’ll drive there since I probably know the roads better than you.” She gets up and into the driver’s seat as the red windshield closes.
“I can download maps of the city. You may drive.” They transform into a type of car. Their alt mode was faster than Boulder but terribly slower than Blades. The duo managed to arrive at the laboratory a couple of minutes later where one Scrubber was already rampaging around. Dani gets out Morbot and grabs a EMP blaster from its carrier at her waist. It was given to her by Dr. Szeto after moving to Faxian. It wasnt as good at Blades’ upgrade but could temporarily stop a Scrubber for a handful of minutes.
“We should check in the labs to see if they need help down there.” Dani made her way down into the laboratory followed by Morbot where there were more Scubbers causing trouble. Dr. Szeto was downing Scrubbers left and right.
“Glad you are here Dani. Blades, Quickshadow, and Hightide are managing the other escaped Scubbers.” Her tone was calm and assured as ever.
“How many escaped?” Dani asks. “We only saw one coming outside.”
“A dozen I believe. These ones were being built specifically for trash left up in space. Just a few bugs to work out.”
“A few? Sorry Dr. Szeto but maybe we should get Boulder to help you since he has built some machines that work in space.”
“Good idea Dani, but I do believe he is still busy in America.”
One Scrubber manged to get the jump on Dani only to be blasted by Morbot’s srm canon. Which did more damage than good. A burning hole was put into the floor which was starts to catch on fire. Quickly realizing this error Morbot grabbed Dani and Dr. Szeto out of harms way. Dani radios in Blades who takes off towards to harbor to grab water for the fire.
Once the fire was put out and the Scrubbers dealt with Blades made sure Morbit knew that using weapons, especially the blaster cannon wasn’t what reacuers did. It put more people in danger than it helped. Morbot felt guilty, despite being alive for a short amount of time they wanted to show they were capable of helping out.
Morbot had to spent the time since the incident with the Scrubbers at base reading datapads that Blades was writing. Mainly lesson plans for the recruits st the academy, medical talk, and some more advanced rescue training information for him to study. As time goes by Morbot got to meet Hightide and Quickshadow who were pretty reserved. While Hightide did scold Morbot he did also offer to teach him water rescues. Morbot accepted this help and began to train with Hightide.
During the Lunar New Year festival in Faxian Blades and Quickshadow were on patrol while Dani and Dr. Szeto were enjoying the festivities. Mainly Dr. Szeto helping Dani learn more mandarin, the tonal part of the language often tripped her up. As they walked through the streets they could see the orange and white helicopters flying over. Dani rolls her eyes, Blades was definitely paying more attention to the celebrations rather than looking for trouble. He loved this time of year, well any part of the year that had big festivals.
As Blades patrols the city from above he spots Quickshadow a few times. He was thankful the citizens weren’t as accidentally prone as Griffin Rock as sometimes he had to go be Medix’s mentor and teaching other recruits at the academy. While he was on that thought he mulled over the idea of introducing Rescue Bot traditions back into the academy. Heatwave wasn’t a fan bring Cybertronain culture to earth so he’d have to convince him somehow. As he was lost in thought he didn’t notice the firework that was headed right for him.
It hit his tail rotor and exploded, leaving a burn and bending a rotor out of place. He started falling before he realized what had happened. He was thankful over the habor so he would land in the water. But he didn’t crash into the waves of sea. Something, no someone caught him. Morbot had been watching from Hightide’s ship and flown as fast as they could to catch the falling copterbot.
“Thank- thank you.” Blades was in a bit of shock that he allowed his guard down on duty. Heatwave wouldn’t have approved and he had no doubt Hightide would have choice words for him as well.
“Saved. No, rescued Blades,” Morbot sounded proud of themselves.
“Ye- yeah. Good work,” Morbot brings Blades onto the ship’s deck. Where Hightide was waiting.
As Blades fixes his tail rotors Hightide helps him but scolds him for not paying attention, especially since his jet mode should’ve informed him that the firework was flying at him. Morbot waits at the edge of the deck watching the city. Blades walks up to him.
Well, I guess you still want to be a rescuer?”
“I would like to be one.” Morbot turned to face Blades the sun setting behind him. Bathing the heli in golden orange light. Oh, that feeling returned a bit stronger now. It felt… warm.
Morbot’s cannon arm transformed into a servo matching the one of their left side. They extended it towards Blades, hoping he would take it. He did, putting one servo under the Morbot’s servo and one above. Bringing it over the Rescue Bot insignia on his chest. Blades gives a small nod of approval as Morbot’s own chest starts to form the insignia on itself. It’s middle containing a symbol humans made, a heart.
“I love Blades”