Transformers: Survival of Defective Products

Chapter 21 is complete.

On the way back, Zhen Tianzun didn't say much.

This made Yin Liuxi even more uneasy than if he had said something sarcastic to her on the spot.

After the door closed behind her, she finally couldn't help but speak first: "I didn't mean to not send it."

Zhen Tianzun sat down on the sofa in the living room and looked up at her.

"I see. You disappeared while watching the game."

Yin Xiang sat down to the side and defended himself, saying, "I was so engrossed in watching that I forgot the time."

"So now I have to rely on the match schedule to guess who you were so engrossed in watching?"

The vector was momentarily speechless. He wanted to continue explaining, but the words inexplicably caught in his throat.

The living room was quiet for a few seconds.

Zhen Tianzun leaned back on the sofa, his tone still indifferent.

"It's one thing for you to wander off normally, but at least you remember to send the last message. Today you didn't even send that. How am I supposed to know if you forgot because you were watching the game, or if you actually lost your mind halfway through?"

...To be honest, she had always treated sending that "goodnight" message as a casual, slightly indecent habit.

But now that Zhen Tianzun said that, she belatedly realized that after a while, that thing was probably no longer just a bunch of nonsense, and the other party probably didn't find her annoying.

The vector opened its mouth.

This time, they didn't argue back.

After a two-second pause, she said softly, "...Okay, I forgot this time. I won't do it again next time."

Zhen Tianzun glanced at her, neither saying "it would be best" nor continuing to provoke her, but his expression clearly still carried a hint of lingering annoyance.

The vector felt uneasy under his gaze, so it simply lowered its head and opened the terminal.

A few seconds later, the top of Zhen Tianzun's own frequency band vibrated.

He glanced down at it.

[I didn't die, I'm back. Goodnight.]

The living room fell silent for a moment.

Zhen Tianzun raised his eyes and looked at her, as if to say that her method of healing was still lacking.

In the end, he only gave a cold snort.

"Goodnight is fine, the previous sentence is superfluous."

Yin Xiang crossed his arms, stubbornly insisting that he was in the right.

"Didn't you ask to confirm that I wasn't dead?"

Zhen Tianzun stared at her for two seconds, then didn't reply.

He casually turned off the terminal, his tone flat: "From now on, just say it directly if it's late. Don't make me guess."

The vector motion paused.

A few seconds later, she gave a soft "oh".

Zhen Tianzun thought her reaction still sounded arrogant, so he added, "If there's a next time, I'll just go to the arena and drag you out."

Vector couldn't help but mutter under his breath, "Didn't you already do that today?"

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"……No."

-

After this little incident, her life went on as usual, very busy.

The work on Red Spider's side continues, her assistant's work hasn't stopped, and there are still new terms, processes, and concepts being crammed into her brain module, which she has to look up whenever she has free time.

Zhen Tianzun's combat training continued as usual, usually scheduled for the evening, where she would sleep, dragging her exhausted mecha.

She had to run around the arena, and she also had to gradually fill in the gaps in her understanding of the rules and common knowledge of Cybertron.

On this basis, she managed to squeeze out two more odd jobs for herself.

One was outside the arena.

The post-match cleanup, moving supply boxes, and registering the most basic consumables were tedious, tiring, and not very dignified tasks. The advantage was that the payments were made according to the time period, so they didn't clash too much with her original schedule.

Another one was at an energy replenishment bar outside the Qingqiu City technology zone.

Her main duties included guarding the station, dispensing energy drinks, replacing empty supply boxes, and doing some basic registration. There weren't many Shanks, but they weren't far from Red Spider's area, so sometimes when she came out from there, she could cover a short shift.

The combined income from the two jobs was far from enough to turn her life around.

But at least, she finally saw some Shanks money coming in of her account.

She even started paying back Zhen Tianzun's money little by little.

The amount is not large; it can be described as very small.

Every time Little Zhentianzun glanced at the transfer record, he would let out a faint hum, probably thinking that she had to make such a big show of it with such a small amount of money.

But he didn't refuse to accept it.

Let's assume he's accepted the vector and continue paying it off stroke by stroke.

After she had slowly saved up some money, she finally had the energy to consider another matter.

Her vehicle form.

Her mecha is now complete and stable; she can handle daily activities, combat training, and long-distance travel without any problems. The only thing she's stuck on is transformation.

Every time she transforms halfway, the folding links and hinges become noticeably stiff, as if she can't catch her last breath, and then she gets stuck in a strange shape for a few seconds before being forced back into robot form.

Once, after she finished moving two boxes of supplies outside the arena, she was sitting down to rest when Knockout glanced at her as he passed by and suddenly asked, "Your mech seems to be in pretty stable condition lately."

The vector opened a small vial of energy liquid and casually hummed in agreement.

"The vehicle mode still doesn't work." She paused, then added, "Everything else is fine, but it always gets stuck halfway through the transformation."

He had been about to walk past when he heard this, and he stopped in his tracks.

He turned his head to look at her, quickly glancing over at her with a professional look in his glasses.

"Of course." He said in a flat tone, a little critical. "It's already quite impressive that the tech team was able to repair you from the point of near collapse to your current condition."

"As for making your transformation links run smoothly again like a living machine..." He dragged out his words as he glanced at her, "that's the medic's job."

The vector motion paused, and he looked up at him.

"Does that mean it can be repaired?"

"It's not a big problem." Knocked down, arms crossed, speaking slowly, "Minor adjustments, minor invasiveness, and by the way, we'll shift a few overly technical treatments towards a more natural, lifelike approach."

He paused, then added, "On the condition that you can afford it."

After hearing what he said, he went back and actually checked his account balance.

She stared at the string of numbers for a long time after calculating the final result.

That's enough.

But after this, the little bit of savings she had just managed to accumulate would be wiped out again, leaving her in the same predicament as before.

Well, this money has to be spent.

She can't live without a vehicle mode forever. She can always earn more money.

She eventually took Shaniks to find the one who would defeat her.

After reviewing her meager budget, he first made a couple of unceremonious mocking remarks. Then, he slowly lowered the price quote by one notch.

"Don't look at me like I've gotten a great deal. I just can't stand seeing a machine that's been repaired to a decent condition get stuck at this last step."

After the two men finished their work that day, they took her to the operating room.

"Stand still." Knockout's tone remained leisurely as the light lens focused on her waist, leg pivots, and the deformed links on her back. "This isn't major surgery, it's at most a minor invasive procedure. If you're nervous about this, I'll wonder how you survived those massive body modifications before."

The vector's lips twitched.

"I'm not nervous," she insisted. "I'm just more acutely aware of how poor I am."

Knockout seemed amused by this remark, chuckling a few times, but his movements didn't slow down at all.

"Don't worry, it's not at the point where you have to sell parts yet." He said, pulling up the projections of the links in those microcards one by one and zooming in on them.

"It's not a big problem." His tone was less sarcastic than usual. "It's just that a few parts were handled too technically. The structure is correct and stable enough, but it's not smooth enough for a living organism."

He paused, his gaze shifting from the projection back to her, scanning her up and down.

"But to be honest, the mecha you've repaired to this level of completion is actually quite good-looking. The lines aren't bad either. At least it's not the kind of thing that makes me want to redo it immediately."

The vector was stunned for a moment.

She didn't really understand this kind of evaluation; she just felt that the focus of attention in knocking down this machine was indeed different from others.

"...This is just a consolation prize before the arithmetic?"

"That's a professional judgment," Knockout replied slowly. "Don't interpret everything in such a tasteless way."

The surgery itself did not last very long.

The procedure was described as minimally invasive, and it really was just a very small adjustment. Several links were re-opened, the load on the pivot was corrected, the local folding sequence was re-pulled, and the deformed connections of those segments that were just a little bit short of completion were gradually smoothed out.

When he finished, he packed up his tools and said in a casual tone, "That's enough."

After the vector stepped off the inspection table and stood firmly, it did not move immediately, but first tried to get a feel for the deformation in its mind.

He knocked her down, leaned to one side, and crossed his arms to look at her.

"What? You're not planning to keep this 'half-vehicle mode stuck and then bounced back into a robot' spectacle, are you?"

Ignoring his words, Yin Vector looked down at his hands, slowly moved his shoulders and waist, and then tried to activate the deformation link.

At first, she instinctively tensed up a little.

This time, however, the folding went smoothly, and the hinges meshed perfectly.

The energy pathway continues to move forward steadily.

...No card.

She remained quietly in her complete vehicle form, right in front of Knockout.

He knocked her down and stood to the side, watching her rare moment of stunned silence, a smile slowly creeping onto his face in the mirror.

"Congratulations," he said. "You are now a complete, transformable living organism."