Back in the Salvation, Pixel scampers through the network of shafts, moving far too quickly to likely be noticed by passerbys. At some point, he shoots to the side before stopping at a single vent. The screws to this particular grate had been stripped down due to being forced from their connections quite frequently, so Pixel was able to kick the grate loose with ease.
The panel was forced forward rapidly, a projectile that slammed into the back of a bot’s head with sharp accuracy.
“Oh!” the bot, who had been kneeling on the floor, shouted.
Pixel snickered before lowering himself on the ground, then noticing the mad scrawling etched into the wall opposite him. Equations and variable with characters Pixel could not understand were dashed across its surface, scratched by a hand. The marks were clear and legible, implying that their author was at least semi-intelligent in its field, yet shaky and rough when paid close attention to, suggesting the author had a shaking hand while writing it.
And the bot kneeling before Pixel, rubbing the back of his hood in search of a tear or dent in his head behind it, had a hand that shook as if it was malfunctioning.
“Come on,” Blight muttered. “I almost had it figured out!” He turned, saw Pixel with his singular eye, and turned back to his work. After a moment, his processor registered the minicon’s identity, and he whirled back around, stumbling to his feet. “Oh, um, hi, uh, Pixel!”
Pixel blinked.
“Oh, um,” the field medic stammered, trembling slightly. “You probably want to know what, uh… what this is, don’t you?”
Pixel blinked.
“I’m trying to create a formula that will both act as a stimulant and an inhibitor, depending solely on the color of paint its target has!” explained Blight, waving his arms at the formula, as if he expected it to magically make sense to Pixel. “It’s fascinating, right?”
Pixel then heeded the crude drawings in the margins of the wall, and pointed at one.
“Oh, don’t worry, there’s no one living in the room next to me,” Blight waved off, before frowning. “At least, I think there isn’t.”
Pixel jabbed his arm forward more, pointing “harder.”
“Oh, this?” Blight neared the illustration Pixel was bothered by, a picture of a cubic minicon being disassembled by four different dinobots, each one digging their teeth into an individual limb. “That is… That’s not you. Yeah, definitely.”
“S-P3ctruM?”
“What? Oh, no, I don’t think there’s any spectrum to this piece, you’re looking into it too hard.”
Pixel folded his arms together, a cross look glowing from his face-screen.
“Okay, I know how this looks…” Blight sighed, shifting his cloak around his neck. He paced across the wall, coming to a side where the drawings were much less clear and a lot more concerning. He stopped by a strange equation, one that did not appear to involve the formula he was attempting to create using math in the place of science.
He fingered this equation, “B + J.”
“I don’t think I actually remember writing this one, Pix,” he noted. “It doesn’t seem to have an answer. What do you think it means?”
However, Pixel was staring wide-eyed at something else, something he found even more worrying. A single sentence, written directly above the inexplicable equation, read:
“The False Prime shall be REBORN.”
“Okay, I definitely don’t remember writing that-”
Pixel grabbed the shaft door and held it high over his head, about to strike Blight with it.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Blight resisted, shielding himself with his arms. “Slow down, Pix! I honestly did not write that! I mean, I had to have, the door was locked, but-”
“D3m0n!” shrieked Pixel, waving his weapon in the air.
“I am not possessed, I just-” Blight bumped into a small shelf to his side, knocking over and emptied glass flask holding only the smallest drop of glowing red liquid. Pixel caught the glass before it shattered across the ground and studied it, before looking back at Blight.
“It was one drink,” Blight sulked, bringing himself to the ground. “I just made it super concentrated because I feel super… stressed. Tense. I can’t sleep, I can barely eat, I’m just-”
Pixel blinked.
“You’re right,” he sighed. “I wasn’t thinking properly. It’s just… it’s Caedia. I feel like half of me really wants to try to restart our friendship, but the other half…”
Pixel blinked.
“I’m at war, Pixel,” groaned Blight. “Which is gross, because I hate war. I keep telling my two sides to get along, that there are more important things to do, things that, like, actually matter, but forcing these two sides to get on the same ship is just not going to work. They’re not a crew, and can only ever pretend to work together. Really, they still hate each other, and want to do anything else other than be productive. Do you get what I mean?”
Pixel nodded.
“I thought that if I couldn’t clear my head around this whole problem,” Blight continued, “maybe I should muddle it.” He glanced at the scribblings again. “That was definitely the wrong move.”
A second passed between them, and neither said a word or made a movement. Then, Pixel stood up, stumbled over to his friend, and held out his hand.
Blight blinked. “Thanks, Pix,” he grinned. “You know, among other things, you’re actually a really great listener. Maybe you should stop messing with people, then you could actually be a really good-”
As Blight received Pixel’s hand, the minicon suddenly snapped towards the door, dragging the flailing Blight behind him.
“Wait, Pixel!” he shouted. “Where are you taking me?!”
Pixel cackled happily and raced out into the hallway, sliding the protesting field medic behind him.