Chapter 12: A Good Friend

Artifice decided to break the rules of the Gallery section of the space station and transformed into helicopter mode. He circled around the area looking in all corners, even ones far too small to hide a bot.

Artifice was distracted momentarily by a shadow he saw out of the corner of his eye. By the time Artifice looked up, it was too late. Seemingly from no where a wall was before him. He crashed into it at full speed, sending him to the floor. After he landed, he transformed into robot mode.

Rubbing his head, Artifice thought to himself "That wall wasn’t supposed to be there."

Artifice looked up. He immediately knew where he was. "An Autobot training facility. This is where I was born! Talk about a circuit glitch."

"Artifice, so good of you to come and visit. Gravix is here as well!" shouted an Autobot medic.

"Tiran, it’s good to see you even if this is a hallucination," Artifice said with a smile.

"What do you mean, hallucination?" Tiran asked.

Artifice shook his head. "Awe, never mind. I’ll just have my internal systems fix the glitch."

"Let me check your circuits, make sure everything is fine" Tiran said with a big smile.

"You’d better not" Artifice said, still unsure of what to do.

Tiran shrugged. "All right, suit yourself. We were supposed to go on a tour of Cybertron’s new moons."

"Since when did Cybertron get new moons?" Artifice asked. "The only ones I remember all of us going to visit were Moon Base 1 and 2."

"Those would be the ones!" Tiran said slapping Artifice on the back.

Artifice smirked. "Heh, I’ll play along. We visited those moons a couple hundred years ago. At the rate Cybertronian tech advances, they haven’t changed."

"Artifice, what are you talking about? They’re still finishing up construction," Tiran said with a worried look, finally breaking his happy demeanor.

"You’re kidding me" Artifice replied trying to shake his eerie feeling of uncertainty. Then he thought to himself. "Maybe the neutrals were a dream and this is the reality."

Usually a little suspicious of everything, Artifice felt at home. After all, he was home. "You know Tiran, maybe you better check me out. Besides, what harm could a dream do."

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Artifice awoke on an operating table with his chest plates just being closed.

"What’s the diagnosis?" Artifice asked as he sat up.

Tiran grinned. "Everything is working just fine." He turned his back to Artifice and input a few commands into the computer behind him.

Artifice was starting to become very worried. "Are my data tracks online? I feel as if I’m missing something."

Tiran looked over his shoulder with a worried look once again. "What’s the last thing you remember?"

Artifice rubbed his head. "Well, you said something about us going to visit those moons after we had our system check-ups."

"Ah good, nothing wrong" Tiran replied.

"Something about his smile doesn’t settle well with me," Artifice thought to himself.

"Artifice! What are you doing here?" a voice shouted.

Artifice turned around. "Gravix, I haven’t seen you in ages!"

"It has been too long" Gravix said while embracing Artifice. "What have you been up to?"

"Oh, I just came back from my last bounty." Artifice shook his head in attempts to make his thoughts clear. "I would’ve been back sooner but I had a few run-ins that I didn’t anticipate."

Gravix was not convinced. "Come on Artifice, I’ve known you too long. Are you sure that’s all?"

Artifice had to confess. "Well, I did make a stop at one of the bars to relax."

"A bar huh? You mean that ‘Neutral Ground?’ Waitstate is the best isn’t he?" Gravix asked.

Artifice looked at Gravix as if he were not a Cybertronian. "Neutral Ground? Waitstate? Just what are you talking about Gravix?"