For a second, Swerve is so surprised that all he can think of are stupid jokes.
Has he lost himself? Himself?
__________________
__________
He continues his investigation. Partly because he wants to help. Partly so that his presence on Earth has a purpose. A reason. Or rather, an excuse. It doesn't really matter. What matters is not letting Shockwave win over the sponsors, and to do that, he needs to somehow...
He finds a name. Or rather, a whole case. His attention is drawn to the size of the file assigned to this particular person in the system. It's not just physical data and a track record, no. It's requests for materials and reports on development. No pilot does that. This is not an ordinary file, it's documentation more similar to his own... engineering... department?
He digs deeper.
An impressive number of valuable tests. Surprisingly extensive experience in customizing both mechs and implants. More than a hundred successful tests aimed at optimizing drift connections.
And then...
Nothing? "Redirected to military service in the Wreckers division. Demoted to ordinary pilot. Denied access to main laboratories. All projects frozen or transferred to Shockwave.
This can't be right.
Swerve looks at the blueprints and reports and thinks. What the hell, Swindle. You had someone incredible at your disposal and you just threw him to the Quints?
He frowns and flips through the pages of the file. He doesn't know how to fix people, but finding someone who can is within his power.
Blurr frowns suspiciously. He reaches out to scratch the scar on his face but pulls his hand back at the last moment. Then he reaches for the tablet in Swerve's hands. It's... actually a little obvious how screwed up his perception of depth is. His gestures continue to have this strange, indecisive tempo. His hand reaches for the screen with this awkward “I'm not sure when I'm going to bump into it” speed.
“You found... who exactly?”
Swerve dramatically taps his finger on the tablet screen.
“This one.”
“127? A pilot??”
"Exactly! He's not a pilot though...., well, I mean, he wasn't a pilot originally.
"This guy is a scientist! And incredibly talented, as far as I can tell."
Blurr reaches for his face again. Again, he pulls his hand away as soon as his fingers touch the damaged skin.
“Really? Then why isn't his genius being put to use?”
Oh, that's the interesting part, thinks Swerve.
“Because he crossed paths with Shockwave. And I think you know what happens to people who do that.”
Shockwave is smart. As a scientist, yes, but also as a politician. He understands, perhaps even too well, which buttons to push to corner people. How to push and corner them until they find nothing but a solid wall behind them. Some end up destroyed. Others give up, dig themselves into a hole, and hide in it forever.
Some Shockwave buries himself. This is exactly the case Swerve has in his hands.
"As far as I could tell, his projects were rejected because they were too expensive. Which is..Okay, that alone is enough of a reason for our sponsors, but I still have to mention that Shockwave's fingerprints were all over this case. This guy was on his way to becoming a department head, and I'm sure he would have gone even higher from there. If you want my opinion, Shockwave got rid of the competition.
Blurr has a mixture of hope and distrust on his face. And the distrust is much greater.
“What's this pilot's name?”
Swerve scrolls through the images on the tablet and stares at the photo again.
“Perceptor.”
“And is he as good as Shockwave?”
“Not sure. But he's familiar with the concept of medical ethics...”
Blurr falls silent and just sits there for a while, drumming his fingers on his knee.
“You know,” says Swerve, “he may not be able to undo all the damage, but he can definitely help with what you have now. And looks are a social construct imposed by society. Learning to love yourself the way you are is an option.”
“Oh, please. This has nothing to do with my problem,” says Blurr, “I love myself!”
...
“I noticed,” sighs Swerve.
_
“Is it him?”
“No.”
“Yeah... is it him?”
“No.”
“Hmm. And this one...”
Swindle adjusts his cap with the calmness of the most enlightened monk in the world. He and Blurr have been standing in the main hangar for twenty minutes, and Blurr has asked the same question about the same number of times.
He's not angry. He knows that it's a specific Blurr joke to point at obviously incorrect objects and ask, “Is it this one?”
For example, the tool cart is definitely “not him.”
“It's not him either. He's 127.”
“Right.”
“Can you tell me how you found out about this guy?”
Blurr shrugs lazily.
“My friend has a friend. ‘Found out’ is too strong a word, though. I only vaguely know that he's smart.”
“Perceptor is..something,” Swindle rubs his nose. “You'll see.”
“If he's so impressive, why is he sitting in the far corner of your great program?”
Swindle sighs deeply and slowly. Like someone who has just climbed a steep mountain and now has to pretend it was no harder than getting up from the couch.
He raises his finger.
“Officially, his presence created unnecessary and harmful drama in the science department.”
“...”.
"Unofficially, his developments were expensive. And I mean absurdly expensive. The budget isn't infinite. It was either him or Shockwave.“ Swindle frowns and adjusts his glasses before continuing.
”And as much as I hate to admit it, Shockwave isn't someone we can afford to lose. He's a psychopath, but without him, the results drop."
“And when the results drop, cities collapse along with them?”
“Poetic. Did you come up with that yourself?”
“No,” laughs Blurr. “One of your advertising agents did. For the documentary.”
“Mmm.”
“And... hey, what is THIS junk?? Swindler, since when do you keep school projects next to combat equipment?”
“This junk,” Swindler snaps his fingers, “is Perceptor.
On the opposite side of the hangar, a ...mech docks...
Although it's difficult to call this marvel of craftsmanship a full-fledged mech. The frame vaguely resembles a standard training mech. One of those used to instruct rookie pilots.
It's also obvious that the entire design has been modified many times, then disassembled and reassembled. Broken. Repaired. Broken again. Repaired. again.
Blurr's mech could compete for the title of the most beautiful and famous mech in the country.
Perceptor's mech... well, this thing is desperately struggling to even be considered a mech.
Its paint is patchy, its dents have not been completely smoothed out anywhere, its head...
The head is missing. The usual head, at least.
Instead, the mech's shoulders are topped by a hefty laser setup that eerily resembles Shockwave's mask.
If Shockwave was a robot from a junkyard, of course.
“Why does every scientist here have to have some percentage of creepiness... is that a requirement for employment?”
“No,” sighs Swindle, grabbing Blurr by the arm. “They become like that afterwards. Come on, let's say hello.”
Perceptor. Surprisingly normal in places where Shockwave inspires terror. And at the same time strange in completely new ones.
“Don't worry. I wouldn't do anything to you that I wouldn't do to myself.”
“That's not a very high bar,” whispers Swindle. “He tests his inventions on himself.”
Blurr, sitting on a chair, smiles briefly, trying not to move much while his head is being examined.
“I can't give you your eye back,” says Perceptor, “but I can give you your vision. Do you still have the implant in place?”
“Yes. I didn't get rid of it.”
“Good. In that case.” Perceptor takes a couple of steps back and leans his hip on the table. “I can make a smaller version of the main camera to transfer the image directly to your brain.”
“And when you're piloting, you see the world through the eyes of your mech. Your brain thinks the cameras are your eyes.”
“Yeah,” laughs Blurr, “it took some time to get used to."
Perceptor makes a slow “come on” gesture toward him.
“Imagine you have one of those cameras in place of your eye.”
“Oh,” says Blurr, “......OH, I never thought of that. That’s genius.”
“If, of course, you're willing to spend the money on it,” Perceptor raises one finger.
“DUDE! You got me thinking... it is actually INSANE HOLD ON..could this technology help blind people see and deaf people hear?? Or am I missing something?”
Swindle slowly leans on the back of the same chair.
“You're forgetting that even without a full mech, it's still piloting. An abstract deaf person would have to synchronize their brain with a hearing aid just like pilots connect to mechs. It's dangerous.”
“It could be safe if you sponsor my research,” Perceptor adds blandly.
“What I'm trying to say,” Swindle grits his teeth, barely audibly, “is that the technology is very destructive to the brain if used without constant qualified supervision and monitoring of vital signs.”
“I can develop a harmless alternative if you fund me” Perceptor points out.
“Besides,” Swindle shrugs, “a very small percentage of people are actually compatible with drift technology.”
“Give me money,” Perceptor says.
“I WON'T GIVE YOU MONEY,” Swindle explodes, “Not when your projects require more investment than Shockwave's. And that's not how negotiations are conducted.”
Perceptor instantly loses interest and returns to examining Blurr's head.
“It was worth a try.”
Swindle adjusts his glasses. Raises his eyebrows questioningly.
“Well. If we're done here.”
Smiles.
Not a bright, commercial smile, but something much more cunning and restrained. And tired. He pats Blurr on the shoulder.
“Should I give the order to have your bird repaired?
Perceptor raises his hand.
“No, I won’t give you the money.”
Perceptor raises his other hand. Towards Blurr.
“One question. Do you really need it that much? Missing one eye doesn’t prevent you from piloting.
“No. But it prevents me from racing. And I can't afford to be an example of how piloting destroys a career.” Blurr sighs.
“We still need to figure out what to do with your face,” mutters Swindle.
“It's a matter of presentation,” Blurr smiles slyly. “Set the lighting right, pick a good soundtrack and colors. And every viewer in the country will think scars are the coolest thing in the world. As long as it looks cool. We can make it look cool, right?.”
Perceptor adjusts his glasses.
“If you give me money.”
Swerve smiles so hard that his cheeks hurt. Metaphorically. He has no real cheeks, nor does he have pain receptors in them.
He bursts through the door to the dressing room with a loud “GUESS WHAT” and only a moment later belatedly thinks that he probably should have knocked first, otherwise it could have turned into one of those corny scenes where the main character catches his future girlfriend in her bra.
Blurr isn't his future girlfriend, of course. And Swerve isn't the main character. Blurr is just...
Blurr turns around to greet him and
Oh
Oh my
Swerve swallows and tries not to stare too hard. Or at least not too noticeably.
“That suit is new. Cool. I mean cool! Cool new suit!”
Blurr smiles smugly and strikes one of his famous “look how photogenic I am” poses. The suit really (ha) suits him. It's newer. It's fresher, brighter, bolder, and fits him so well that it's immediately clear that the uniform was tailor-made.
Swerve suddenly doesn't know what to do with his hands. He never associated pilot suits with anything revealing; after all, he sees them every day, but this...
He swallows.
“Are you sure they gave you the right size?”
Oh, those stripes remind him of the fashion trends in Cybertronian racing. Back before the war, when he spent all his shanix on good tickets near the exit area, hoping he could get an autograph if he got close enough.
(It never worked; he was too short for them to notice him in the frenzied crowd. )
(It also gave him a good view on a lot of beautiful legs with fashionable stripes and expensive tires.)
“Judging by the look on your face, no mistake was made," Blurr laughs.
Swerve shudders as if he has just woken up and quickly looks up.
And freezes again.
Blurr's face hasn't changed much. No. The scar is still there, but it has become smoother and its edges look much clearer. There are intricate curves that Swerve hadn't seen before. The eye is still missing, but in its place is no longer a crooked hole, but a neat dark eye patch.
It's like pirates and anime fell into a blender and got whipped into a delicate, shiny foam.
“Your face! What the hell did you do to it?”
Blurr smiles knowingly.
“Do you like it?”
“Blurr! What??”
Blurr elegantly turns so that the light falls from the right angle and winks at him. He doesn't even have two eyes to make a complete gesture, but Swerve is still convinced that it's a wink.
“I spent a lot of money on this~”
That makes sense, thinks Swerve. Blurr's scars haven't disappeared, but they look noticeably different. Honestly..It looks less like a real injury and more like...
“Now that's a picture,” mutters Swerve.
“I figured I couldn't get rid of the scars, but I could play around with them, you know. Make them look cool and epic.”
Cut a little here, move a little there. And Swerve has to admit, Blurr used to look like someone who scared children, but now he looks like he was exported from a sci-fi shooter. It's how he would draw a character if he wanted to make their scars artistic and beautiful. Blurr's fans will definitely like it. Swerve, as an expert, can tell in advance.
“It's, um... how? Is it drawn on? Swerve leans closer nervously.
Blurr finishes posing and goes back to looking at himself in the mirror.
“A neat combination of plastic surgery, tattoos, and makeup. And voila, not trauma, but aesthetics.”
“What's with the patch? Are you a pirate now?”
Blurr shrugs.
“The prosthetics didn't look natural enough to be unnoticeable. You know, when every journalist tries to get in your face with a camera, they usually notice quickly if one eye isn't moving the way it should. Plus...” he raises his hand and taps his head “...my eye socket is the ugliest part, so...” He straightens and fastens his collar. “...I decided. Hey. If I can't pretend I have two eyes, I need to double down on being a cool one-eyed guy.”
Swerve doesn't even know how to respond to that.
Maybe because he's trying to process the information.
Maybe because he's looking at those striped legs again.
Hmm.
“You wanted to say something,” Blurr reminds him.
“I. Oh! Yes! I found myself an apartment!” Swerve boasts.
It wasn't easy, considering that he's... not entirely tangible. But he managed to pull it off. The fact that his real body is now much closer to Earth helps immensely.
Blurr giggles.
“You're a ghost. Why do you need an apartment?”
Swerve looks away, embarrassed.
"Well. To live. Like I used to, but you know. More secretly this time."
“You weren't kidding about pretending to be human, huh?”
“You have no idea. First I had to buy a new SIM card and get a phone. Then I had to open new bank accounts with the new phone and get a new ID, and I'm already sick of paperwork.”
“Ah.”
“Exactly, ah,” nods Swerve. “You'll see.”
___
His wheels slide through the cold mud.
His wheels slide through the cold mud, and the wet wind blows around him from all sides, and dirty leaves get stuck in the gaps between his plates, and the light rain completes this cake of sensations like a cherry on top.
The weather is terrible. The temperature could be much more comfortable. The landscape is dreary and gray.
Swerve giggles like a madman. Swerve is happy.
He's back on earth? He's back on earth! He's surrounded by asphalt and trees and water and mud and bricks and a bunch of people who are huddling and shivering unhappily in the cold wind. This isn't metal! These aren't bare, hard corners and the cold clanking of mechanisms! This is organic! These are trees and birds and people and squirrels and the smell of fast food spilling out onto the street.
Was it worth it to run away so quickly, leaving Jazz alone to explain everything to the authorities? No, probably not. Should he have at least stopped by the party celebrating first contact with the Cybertronian race? Maybe.
Did he find the courage to stand before his colleagues in the flesh..erm..in metal, and explain to them that he had been an alien all this time, not a human? HELL NO.
So. He runs away. As soon as their ship lands, he grabs a supply of energon and a few cans of treats and souvenirs and disappears.
Is he a coward? It depends on how you look at it. Tactically, it would be... okay, he's a coward. As if... or... screw it all. “I'm scared” is also a reason.
He's not sure what his plan is.
Find a new alt? One that will run well on almost any road and at the same time won't be too eye-catching. Check.
Find a new place to live? Check. Create a new image for himself. Um... work in progress. Choose a new name. Phew... Get new documents. CHECK! Apply to the Mecha program. Hmm. They always need engineers. Rebuild his human life. Rebuild, restructure, strengthen, and make sure that this time he can stay. Can he stay? There is no naturally generated energon on Earth, but he can always buy it.
Fortunately, energon can be stored almost forever. Or even plant crystals here and see if he can make them grow?
He is in a state of excited confusion. It's like starting a new run in a game you've already played before. Only this time, you're a beginner with the knowledge of an experienced player.
That's great, he decides. This calls for a celebration with friends. And if his memory serves him right, Blurr's apartment isn't that far away...
___
Blurr opens the door and makes a very funny surprised face.
“You're not a ghost anymore!”
“I've never been a ghost,” sighs Swerve. “But if you mean that I'm not transparent, then thank you. Wanna go buy some pizza?”
“Sure,” says Blurr almost instantly. Then he looks out the window and says again, but a little less cheerfully, “Sure. I'll just grab my jacket.”
He must have been dying of boredom here if even such disgusting weather didn't stop him.
“Are you allowed to get up?” asks Swerve. “You're a little... um... shaky?”
“Eh The doctor said I can walk, which basically means yes.”
“Are you sure? Really sure?”
“Oh, relax,” Blurr shrugs. “The recovery time is much shorter if you have metal rods installed. And I have a lot of them, so I'm basically cured."
“That's NOT how metal rods work!”
Blurr just laughs.
“I know, you're just very funny when you're angry. Let's go.”
Wow, thinks Swerve as a handful of wet leaves hits him in the face, I missed this planet.
“Wow,” says Blurr as soon as they get outside, “You drove here??”
Ah. Um. Oh, that. ... Hmm. What... ah.
Swerve tries so hard to keep a straight face that he seems to forget to breathe and blink. It's funny. He didn't know how he would feel when he'll be back on Earth, but now that he's here? Being a secret alien is SO DAMN FUnny.
“... Yeah.”
“Dude, you're a terrible driver.”
Swerve forgets to keep a straight face.
“I WAS BORN TO BE A DRIVER, thank you very much.”
“If your driving in real life is anything like your driving in games, I would never have given you a license,” Blurr says, raising an eyebrow. “This thing has so many scratches, I bet you’ve rubbed every corner and tree with it.”
Oh, you... thinks Swerve. It's covered in scratches because this car went to a damn job and ran around asteroids from aliens!
“I take it you want to walk to the pizza place?” Swerve sighs dramatically.
A complex emotion appears on Blurr's face, the emotion of a man assessing his ability to walk with metal in his joints.
Swerve smiles smugly.
“I thought so. Come on. I promise, I'm not that bad. NO, don't even look at the driver's seat. It's mine.”
“Just letting you know, if you crash us, my lawyer will eat you alive.”
Swerve isn't really listening to him very closely, too distracted by how human hands feel on his Cybertronian frame. He's standing on the street with the wind blowing in his face. But at the same time, he can feel the weight of Blurr in the passenger seat. Very. Very small weight. God, humans are so tiny...
“Yeah yeah. I understand.”
Blurr looks at the counter the way a person would look at someone offering them a drink from a puddle.
“And for that, I got into a stranger's car.”
Swerve is so busy enjoying the wind and the leaves that he forgets to be offended. The salesman recognizes him and smiles wearily. Oh yes. This is life. Earthly weather. Earthly sounds. An earthly store counter with earthly food.
“I love... yes, this one, please. ...The usual, yes. ...Thank you. I love this place."
He takes a bite and melts into the puddle for a few seconds, enjoying the taste and smell. This is it. Not energon. Not metal.
Look at him, an alien robot addicted to dough and cheese.
“Tastes like poverty.” Blurr removes a leaf from his slice of pizza.
Swerve kicks him in the ankle.
Right now, he thinks. Right now, I’ll finish this slice and tell him. Or after the next slice. Probably better to eat everything first and then start talking.
…Maybe. Or not.
Maybe.
Damn, how to even bring up this topic. Hey, want to see something fucked up? Should we talk somewhere private? Bella, I'm a vampire?
He thinks. He plans.
He keeps the conversation going on topics that interest Blurr. Something about Swindle and the new posters? He asks Blurr fifteen times to stop touching the buttons and opening the compartments in “his car”. Then he asks him three more times to stop putting things around the salon. (No, you can't put food here. Or here either. And take that wrapper out of there. And... your jacket? Okay, you can throw the jacket on the back seat. STOP touching the buttons!)
He's not...
He's a fucking coward.
It's one thing when there are no consequences. It's one thing when he's a hologram that can disappear into thin air at any moment and dissolve into the depths of space.
The physical body has... well... stakes.
As a “ghost”, Swerve can look and sound however he wants. As a Cybertronian... well... there is variety, of course, but he can't change his very essence. And he doesn't know what he would do if the reaction to the real him was “fire on command” rather than “wow, cool robot.”
Gaming experience or not. His real body comes with hardcore mode, where a mistake can actually cost him something.
He doesn't say anything. He walks Blurr back to the door, then just teleports to the nearest roof and stares at the clouds like a dramatic anime protagonist.
It's not a big deal. It's nothing. He has time.
He can go to his new apartment first and set everything up there, for example. He can check on Jazz. Although Jazz is probably being forced to write the longest and most tediously detailed report in the universe right now. Swerve doesn't want to participate in writing this monstrosity.
Yes, right. No one needs to know. Not right now.
It's easier and safer that way. More chill and everything.
He wipes the rainwater from his face, vaguely realizing that he probably looks like a wet stray dog, and teleports back to his...
His.
His... um...
The parking space is empty.
For a second, he is so surprised that all he can think of are stupid jokes.
Has he lost himself? Himself?
No.
Wait.
Or was he somewhere else?
He clearly remembers parking here. He remembers walking away with Blurr. And now he's gone.
Stupid? HA HA DAMN. God, how stupid. This will be such a funny story later. “Hey, I got towed while my holoform was pondering existential questions.” Hilarious.
He laughs nervously and scans the nearest couple of blocks just in case. Nothing? Nothing. Oh well. He just needs to find that stupid tow truck and...
And his holoform isn't dissipating.
It should be as easy as relaxing a clenched fist, and for fuck's sake, it's not working. He can't disappear. He can't go back. It's as if something in his brain has gone terribly wrong and his processor has forgotten that, in addition to his human body, he also has a Cybertronian one.
A Cybertronian body that is NOT HERE right now?
Oh. Thinks Swerve. I really....Lost myself?
He looks around in confusion.
Suddenly, separating from Jazz and Prowl and sneaking off to do his own thing doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. Where can he find them now? Where did they go?
And if not them, then who else? He didn't say anything. To anyone! It seemed like caution at the time, but now it seems more like pure idiocy. He thought he was the smartest. Ha. HA! He genuinely thought he was clever!
The wet wind hits his face and Swerve finds himself feeling more miserable than he has in a long time.
There's no chance that this is anything harmless. No.
Someone came. Someone came and... and... and did something to him while he was distracted. Someone came and did something to him, and now his holoform, his consciousness, is here, but where is he?
“Fuckkkk,” he says aloud for some reason. It sounds hysterical. “......fu...... Is this the chapter where Borlb is strapped to a metal table in a government basement?”
Oh Hey look it's Ch 2 of this thing I made for @keferon 's Mecha au. More Texaid because I can not, not love them. This paring has done stuff to me, so I am making all of this, you're problem. Have fun reading.
tw for mild gore
----------------------
All was black, that’s all that Vortex could see as he pushed against the restraints of Shockwave’s weird mind control thing. “Come on. Just. Let. Me. THROUGH!” Vortex pushed and pushed, until he was falling. Down and down, faster and faster until he hit the ground hard.
Or was it really the ground, considering that this was Felix’s mind.
Getting up was disorienting, Felix’s mind was a rush of multiple things happening at the same time and truthfully, it sometimes made Vortex’s head hurt by how overcomplicated Felix made unnecessary things. No matter what, he is in the depth of his mind. The only problem now, finding Felix alive.
The Problem was how? How can you find someone that’s trapped in their own mind, and how does he know he’s not talking to a memory? Uhhg Think Vortex Think, there has to be a-
Laughter filled the area and a tiny figure ran past him. The darkness was no longer darkness, instead, a fuzzy memory of outside. Looking down at the kid-First aid;Felix as a kid, he was holding something in his hands, running closer to other kids. Looking closer he could see that what little Aid was holding was the shedding of a garter snake. Kid happily presented it like a trophy only to be screamed out that he was disgusting, before they ran away from him.
Lil Felix looked down at the snake with a pout. “What’s wrong with the snakie pajama?” Before any more words were said, the world changed around the two of them, well mostly Vortex as now he was standing in a classroom with a teenager Felix cutting open a frog. He was the only one enjoying it, as the others around him were gagging at the smell, or were refusing to dissect it. He heard whispers around them from the ‘popular’ girls.
“Eww is he really enjoying that?”
“What a freak, like dissecting animals.”
“You think he killed animals when he was younger.”
“He should be put in the loony bin.”
Vortex growled at those words, how dare they say such mean things about Felix. Ya He may be a freak, but he’s not a psychopath. If only he can give them a piece of his mind, but he can’t, as it was just a fucking memory.
Just like the last one, The memory was changing into a courthouse. Felix was in prison cloths, and it seemed like he was being sentenced when-
Shockwave walked in, asking the judge if he could take the organ stealer off his servos, and put him to good use of community service as a medic in his company. The Judge thought about it, before giving him his sentence that he would be put into community service by Senator Shockwave’s Mecha program.
The memory changed once again. He was standing in front of himself- His Mecha. Glowing red visor as it displayed “Get inside” only this time it was different, instead of letting him in all the way, no the visor closed shut, blood everywhere, as Felix gasped for air, screaming his lungs out, trying to push open the hydraulics of the visor. But it was fruitless, He would die here, another victim of the cursed Mecha.
But unlike all of the other times, Felix’s eyes snapped directly onto his, a hand outstretched as he weakly called out.
“V-Vortex.”
That got the ghost into action, rushing to his side, pulling him up and off of his mech's closed visor, blood following as his legs were left outside. He placed two hands on his cheeks. “Felix, First aid, Listen to me, it’s all going to be ok, you need to fight him. You need to fight Shockwave off. None of this is real. You are not hurt. I will never harm you like this. This is all him trying to scare you into giving up. So please. Felix. Don’t give up on yourself… Don’t give up on me.”
A hand was placed on his own cheeks, the smell of blood was strong, as Felix smiled. “You came.”
“I,, Of course I came, I’m not an idiot, the only one who’s allowed to control you is me. Got it. No one is taking that away from me!”
Felix laughed weekly, hoisting himself up so he could wrap his arms around Vortex’s neck. “Got any ideas on how to leave the deep corners of my mind?”
“I may know a way, so hang on tight baby.” He grinned, sharp fangs showing. Then they were taking off, out of the fake memories. Felix gained his legs back, and the blood disappearing the moment they came back to the darkness.
Then they were being thrown back into real life. Vortex knew it was real mostly because he felt cold, ghostly, and not solid like he had been in Felix’s mind. The man in question gasped loudly, throwing his head forward, saliva dripping from his mouth. The mech paused, it had been moving before but now it was stopped with no one playing with the controls.
Felix immediately took his hands off, realizing that he had just touched the one thing that had killed off multiple other pilots. Vortex just grinned at Felix’s worry, it was so cute, he really wanted to chomp down on him, perhaps find a way to make him a ghost piloting this mech alongside him.
But no, they had bigger issues to attend too. There was electricity that flowed through the helmet into Felix, making him scream again. Damn it, Shcokwave was not going to let up was he. He will have to break his own rule.
“Felix Pilot me.”
“W-what, Pilot- I’m not going to- AHK”
“You can and you will, I am ordering you to pilot me, While I take on Shockwave. Don’t disappoint me, Aiddy.” His Grin was back to being sharp and full of venom, disappearing into the mecha itself, He was ready to defend Felix with his life. Not to let a single code from Shockwave get anywhere near Felix.
He trusted the man not to fuck him up. Because it was no longer just him on the line, it was both of them. With a yell from the both of them, One piloting the mech like second nature while the other took on the waves of code.
They will stop Shockwave, once and for all.
-----------
This will possibly be the last chapter. But If I think of more, I'll just make a third chapter, hope you all liked it.
For @keferon 's mecha au, in the form of a 2nd person view narration.
Forgive me if it isn't great, it's like—11:38 p.m.? As I'm editing this.
This will be available on my bsky and ao3—I just need to work out the formatting as well as receive my invitation to join.
Word count: 3.3k
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You weren’t new to this job. Like, as a technician with a pay grade.
Even when you were little, your dad let you mess around with all sorts of wiring stuff in cars and shit. Then you grew up, lots of stuff happened, and you became good at what you did. Good enough to earn money.
Good enough to land a job with the government, apparently.
Which, like, ew, but you were running out of options (and food).
You’ve been working as a technician for all sorts of stuff for the government for years, now. You’ve seen all kinds of shady shit, and you’ve grown used to turning the other cheek. You had to.
You’ve figured out early on that it wasn’t your place to ask. That people would never expect more from you. So long as you keep your head down and do your job, you can always avoid the goddamned heat.
But there is something of a novelty when you get transferred to a secret facility underground where you can find the mechas of the mecha program are stationed. Something of a notion when agents and lawyers and other hardy government officials make you sign papers and papers of non-disclosure agreements and the ilk. Something like a haze settling in the front of your mind as you step foot into the military compound with the others who transferred with you and seeing all kinds of cool shit.
It’s been a couple of years since that fateful day, though. By now, the novelty—well, it’s long worn off.
You shouldn’t have expected anything more from a place that dances with death daily.
Back then, you made sure to memorize each and every available pathway and room, to get around easier. You needed to be hella fast and efficient at what you do. Which means that you’ve seen a lot of things, and you’ve met a lot of people.
Like the prototypes for the next batches of mecha. Like the young pilots fresh outta academy, looking like death came down for them all. Like the complex machinery and wiring that makes up the mechas. Like the mechanics always covered in grease and oil, with a wrench or some other thing in their hands. Like the way flesh and blood poisons the air when the pilots are dragged into the infirmary. Like the medics who look dead and cold inside, while dressed in their typical white sterile medical garb.
You see it. You get to see it all.
However, there will always be one thing that you wished you had never laid your eyes on, never put your hands on. One, giant, cursed, motherfucking ass of a metal robot that has you fearing for your fucking life every single time.
The cursed mecha, you’ve heard people call it. The bloody corpse of a robot that’s the largest of all the mechas in the program. Really old, too. You could never really miss it, even if you tried. You know that thing is one of the most efficient killing machines they’ve got, both against the aliens and against themselves (and us).
You know that that thing, deep down, was a glaring red flag of death, a cursed hex to be stuck with. Something that you could never escape.
You kept your mouth shut, though. Never argued against the decision to turn you into the chief technician responsible for that thing after the other one quit. Just let yourself go through the motions, drown everything out. Lean into the ingrained habits of just trying to get through the day.
But… you then started seeing things.
Freak accidents that have surrounded that mech more times than you can count. The number of times that it’s been blamed on a tripped wire or faulty mechanics or a failed launch. The number of times you’ve seen others like you, other humans, get crushed into pieces, splatter onto the floor and on anyone unlucky to be in blast radius.
You don’t know when it started. You weren’t here for the beginning, so you only had to take the others’ word for it.
But you’ve heard that the mecha’s been acting all crazy like that ever since its first pilot died. A bunch of crazy and terrifying stories. As if it was seeking vengeance for the first pilot’s death.
You don’t want to know more. But you also kind of want to. For survival reasons, of course.
Then…
Then, you made a sort-of-not friend.
See, everyone who wasn’t a technician or wasn’t used to being so close with Vortex all the time, looks at anyone like they’re a dead man walking whenever they even go into a twenty-meter radius with that mecha. Which also means that you get a ton of looks whenever you and your coworkers go on ahead and fix whatever the hell is wrong with that thing. This is also the reason why almost all of you started wearing masks so you wouldn’t be identified that easily (except Jerry, but he’s always hated the feeling of masks on his face). This also has the added bonus of being able to block the smell of blood from both monsters and humans.
But then, you met a little someone. Someone who stopped looking at you like you have a death wish and understood that you were just doing your goddamned best.
Felix—or First Aid, which is his nickname—is a cool kid. A little quiet, as well as a little snappy at times when in the mood, but who isn’t at this point, and in this place?
He’s good company. He cleans up Vortex’s cockpit while you go on ahead and make sure whatever the hell’s malfunctioning gets replaced or fix up a few wires that overextended and broke.
However, what bothers you is that while you don’t mind speaking with him, you are a bit concerned. It slipped your mind, the first few times you met him, but now it’s obvious that he was definitely medical.
Which, like, what the fuck? What the hell is a medic, a surgeon, at that, doing here? Cleaning out guts and blood and organs from—from a cursed mecha?
The one time you asked out of concern, however, just resulted in him grumbling quietly to himself then saying aloud that it was his—his punishment, or some shit?
… You resolved to just never bring it up again and leave it at that.
Regardless, those were some good times. You fixed up some internal shit, avoided the red flag of death, made up for the constant trauma of dealing with that damned thing by smoking, try not to think about how so many new faces were replacing your old coworkers day by day, and have some quiet time with the kid.
That was your day-to-day life. That was how you lived.
Of course, no good things last forever. You should’ve never forgotten that.
---
You find yourself ushered into the underground shelter, your feet hitting the floor in an unsteady rhythm as other people file against each other. Your heart is beating crazily fast, your hands have small tremors, and your eyes feel a little watery. You might be unstable? No—you’re definitely swaying, whether out of fear or stress.
There was a monster attack, near the base. Everyone is getting evacuated. The medics are still in the infirmary, but they’ll come out soon enough. The higher ups are killing the lights, saving the power, making sure that everyone stays as orderly as possible while you all file in.
You can hear the footsteps outside the base, the loudness of the sound even getting through here. The reverberation and the echo suggest that it’s big, and with the many differing patterns, it’s not alone.
This has only happened once in your time spent here, and back then it was only one monster. You feel too vulnerable here. You don’t have enough experience in dealing with these kinds of situations. After all, you aren’t a pilot.
Your ears are filled with cotton, muffling all the sound. You get into the shelter, and immediately find a place to sit down. You sit on the floor. That’s fine, you can just curl in on yourself, protect your vital organs, and deal with this. You can deal with this. It’s going to be fine.
You think you might be having a panic attack? But no, those are supposed to have a lot of breathing, right? Oh, you’re not breathing, shit. Oh fuck, you might be thirsty. You skipped breakfast earlier, so your stomach’s empty. Damn, you should’ve at least eaten something. You dumbass, you need to start eating more, you won’t be able to get anything done then, dammit universe why—
—Someone’s shoving a water bottle against your knees.
You look up. Your hair’s kind of obscuring the view, but you’re pretty sure that’s one of the old janitors you see responsible for cleaning up the blood that ends up on the floor near Vortex’s general area. You feel bad at the thought (no one needs to spend any more time with that thing) but you also feel like your chest is being squeezed.
Oh. It kind of is, actually?
Your back is against a wall, with your knees held to your chest (oh, so that’s why it was hard to breathe). Your head, previously on your knees, was now lifted to look at the janitor clearly. Your hands and arms are holding your legs pretty tight around you, and you can faintly feel your breathing start to slow. Thank god your eyes didn’t start crying, only a little watery.
Huh. You must’ve been out of it for a bit. That… sucks, for the lack of a better word.
The janitor (shit, what’s his name?) doesn’t say anything. He just hands you the water bottle by taking both hands gently, then sits on the floor beside you. Your hands shake for a bit, before you fully uncurl yourself and let your legs plop down on the floor.
Your hands twist the cap of the plastic bottle, and let it fall to the floor. You manage to lift it to your mouth, and then you swallow. Slowly. You may be a mess, but you don’t want to vomit your insides out.
At least the water is cool.
You finish about half the bottle before you stop and move the plastic bottle away from you. You flail around for a bit for the cap, only to see the resident friendly janitor holding it up between two fingers for you. You can’t manage a ‘thank you’—not quite, so you tilt your head and nod to him shakily before taking the cap. You divert your attention for a moment to twist the cap on and letting the water bottle rest on the floor, but after that you lay your head back against the wall and just sigh.
The janitor hums in response.
You feel a lot better now. Sure, you can still hear the alarms faintly going off, but you also can’t hear the huge ass monster footsteps, so that’s a win. You can also see other people milling about, some looking lost while others are terrified, so at least you aren’t alone.
At least you aren’t alone.
You sit there, with the janitor sitting beside you only a bit farther away, and think fuck it, I need a drink after this bull.
---
It’s been a while since he’s stepped into the hangar.
Your hands stop milling about with a rubik's cube you found, and you look up to just. Stare. At the once-medical-now-pilot kid.
You’ve heard stories, about that day. Once you head out of that shelter with the rest and everything started calming down again, rumors started swirling around after one technician found the Vortex mecha out of its place, and a huge hole in one of the walls a bit further in that could let a mecha as huge as him out.
Vortex didn’t have a replacement pilot at the time of the attack, so it sparked a lot of unsettlement and fear into every single heart in the base when they found out it was gone from its spot. Soon, people were saying that it wasn’t just cursed, it was motherfucking haunted, by all the ghosts of all the pilots it’s consumed. You don’t listen to them, much. It’s hard to avoid them though, when the ones who started spreading those rumors where your coworkers. The younger, newer ones. Not the ones who you prefer working with.
It wasn’t until a medical officer found Pharma locked in an empty patient’s room, screaming profanities at the wall towards every higher up you can ever think of, that the truth was uncovered.
That some poor soul, who was stuck cleaning in the mecha’s cockpit when the attack started, put on the helmet and started piloting the cursed mecha, and killing every single of those damned monsters attacking the base. He was lucky. Unlike his predecessors, he managed to survive fully intact, not a scratch on him, and no damage to his mental psych other than some slight shakiness and other responses akin to someone in high stress, not one losing their goddamned mind.
And the reason why Pharma was screaming, was because the guy was medical. And the rest of the higher ups decided to turn him into a freaking pilot and stick him into Vortex’s cockpit to keep on piloting the mecha.
When you heard the news, all you could do was put your head in your hands, scream internally within your mind while whispering out loud, “First Aid, what’ve you done?”
This was akin to a death sentence. You-you honestly just feel sick for the kid. Like, they’re just letting a surgeon pilot that mecha? Pilot Vortex? He may not come back alive! He’s a once in a million miracle, but it may not happen again.
They say that, if First Aid dies, then they’ll finally, finally dismantle the mecha and melt him down to put him to better use. To save both money and the sanity of everyone who’s ever worked with it, as it has become more of a liability.
You actually scream. It’s muffled against your hands, but you do scream. Loudly. When you find yourself alone.
Higher ups are now getting you to actually teach this kid the basic maintenance needed to maintain his mecha, in case he gets cut out of contact. You’ve never had to teach a pilot before, since all of them don’t come back. You don’t fight back, you don't want to, not when you’ve got something more important to do.
That something, is to make sure this kid knows everything he needs to get back alive.
So, when he looks at you, dressed in that pilot uniform fitted for him, looking like death as well as lost, you nod, and let him walk with you to the mecha.
When you both get started, with you guiding his hands while he grapples the basics, you feel the hairs of your neck stand up.
---
The kid fell asleep.
The kid. Fell asleep.
The kid fell asleep.
In the fucking mecha.
You feel like a vein is gonna pop out of your forehead soon with all the trauma and stress working with First Aid can be.
You can only stare from a safe distance, into the visor of the mecha, one that has always freaked you out since day one. Your arms were crossed and your body in a wide stance, but you still feel awkward and small and afraid.
If you focus hard enough, just squint your eyes and let yourself see, you think you can faintly make out First Aid’s body there, slumped in the pilot’s chair, dead to the world.
You groan quietly, and ignore the feeling of being watched. The kid told you a bit, about how the mecha might not be cursed, just haunted. You raised a brow at that and reassured him that there were no such things as ‘ghosts’, but…
It’s getting a bit harder every time, whenever you approach the mecha and feel the hairs on your neck raise into goosebumps.
It’s bone-chilling, to say the least.
It sometimes feels malicious, sometimes it feels curious, and other times you can’t discern the emotion at all.
It’s frightening, but…
… But you can’t do anything about it.
Just like you can’t do anything about First Aid sleeping in a haunted mecha, or whatever’s going on with Pharma, of all people.
It’s so very frustrating.
But you’ll make do.
---
Vortex is gone.
Your hands itch with the handcuffs placed on them, in this bright room with a window to the side and a door to the right in front of you.
First Aid is gone.
You feel your brain being muddled, trying to comprehend whatever the hell happened in the hanger when you left. Trying to reconcile what they told you with what you knew.
They’re both gone.
Your eyes feel dry. You haven’t blinked in over a minute. Your throat is scratchy all of a sudden, and you wish you were curled up on the floor rather than in this state of numbness.
They told you that you were losing your job. That-that they were letting you go, after you couldn’t tell them anything they wanted.
You didn’t want to tell them anything. You saw the scientist they had outside—Shockwave has and always will be a suspicious unfeeling maniac who ignores morality in favor of results. Values logic over empathy, violations over failure. You’ve been here for long enough to know that. To have seen that.
Still, a tiny part of you is still afraid. And confused. And angered and—betrayed. They left without saying anything, left without saying goodbye.
You feel horrible, really, but you can’t give in. You can feel the way everything’s brewing underneath the surface. First Pharma, then First Aid and his wounds, and then with the cursed mecha just walking on its own without its pilot on the wheel?
There’s something fishy going on. Something the government doesn’t want anyone to know about, and you know that they know that you must know something.
And, despite it all, you find that they would never be able to make you say it. They can make you scream, to beg, to plead, but you won’t let those people find them. You won’t let them come to harm.
As you turn your gaze up and on the person who entered the room, with that singular yellow eye on you the instant he saw you, you felt something settle in your bones, making you feel alive again.
That’s right—they can make you bleed, but you’ll never let them hurt that kid. Hurt those kids, if what happened to Ambulon is true.
Maybe Ratchet had a point in throwing your lot out from the government’s side.
Maybe quitting might be the best for you, and everyone by far.
As long as they’re safe, you don’t find yourself to care.
It is with great honor we present this report to you. It has taken much time for us to sort through the data, and we have been distracted as of late.
The train was never late.
Salt could count the number of times that the Overseer had delayed the trains on one hand. The Overseer AI, LARK, seemed to have a great deal of pride in keeping the public transit systems of NEST-03 running smoothly - Salt wagered the construct had some kind of fixation on all things being orderly and on schedule, though she would have expected that from DOVE, or even SPARROW. In her 10 years of living in NEST-03, the train had only been late twice - which is what made the message currently taking up half the screen of her PDA so fucking annoying.
[Your scheduled transit has been delayed due to equipment failure. You have my deepest apologies, I will be rerouting you a private coach as soon as I am able. :c]
The emoticon was LARK’s own little quirk, a bit of humanization that the AI adopted early in her development. Salt thought it was annoying, but at least she was more personable than the other Overseers she’d interacted with.
Salt sighed, running a hand through her ashen hair. It was hot out - the desert surrounding NEST-03 offered little in the way of anything but sand and blistering heat, and she was going to be late, which might impact her rank.
Of the remaining HAZED, salt was the 6th, and the highest ranked HAZED that didn’t have the backing of any company. She’d fought hard to pull ahead of her corporate counterparts, and the advent of the third-generation dive system only made things harder. She didn’t care about her rank, but money was money, and a better rank meant better pay. She’d have to make some calls.
A few taps on her PDA later, and a energetic male voice poured from her PDA’s speaker.
“Yo, Salt! What’s with the call, I thought you were working?”
“Wish I was, Bosco. LARK just delayed the trains.”
“Bullshit.”
“Wish it was. Can you tell the HANSA team I’m running late? I gotta walk to the hangar.” She was trying to hide it, but she was getting annoyed.
“I’ll see what I can do, the GS team is gonna be pissed, though.”
“Hari can shove it.”
Bosco laughed, a bright thing.
“You want me to tell her that exactly, or…?”
“I’ll leave it to your judgement, make sure MIDAS is ready, okay?”
“I’ll do what I can.” Another laugh, and Salt ended the call.
Salt rolled her shoulders, and fumbled around in her pockets for a small white box. With practiced ease, she tapped the bottom of the container, producing a cigarette. With just as much fluidity, she lit the thing, inhaling the fumes as she tried to figure out what to do. Another message from LARK flashed on her screen.
[Do you really plan on walking? :c]
Salt typed a reply.
[id rather not thanks]
[Perhaps I can reroute you onto a different line - Kannazuki’s transit rails are still operational! I can give you a day pass due to the critical nature of this mission! :D]
[what are we even looking for again]
[Due to the nature of this mission, the cargo is classified! I will inform you more as needed. Would you like me to contact Kannazuki? :?]
Salt wasn’t happy about using the corporate rails, but it wasn’t really a choice.
[yeah sure whatever]
She still had to walk to the terminal, which sucked. NEST-03 was a rat’s nest of corridors, housing units, and transport systems - one could easily get lost if they went too far deep into the sprawl. The whole colony felt like it was made of wet sand, every new structure simply piled on top of the next, often canted at odd angles and curving around infrastructure like the roots of a great tree. There wasn’t much shade on the level she was on, either, much of the catwalks were exposed to the desert sun. Salt wanted to ditch her pilot jacket, the well-worn thing obviously designed for more temperate climates, but that would just expose her arm.
Salt’s left arm was a prosthetic, a spartan thing made of dark metal and circuitry. It connected to her body via a socket made of the same material, her olive skin terminating into the smooth plates that formed her shoulder joint. The forearm of the prosthetic was rounded, covered in multiple small connector ports and terminated in a simple approximation of a human hand. She’d had the arm ever since she became a HAZED, the dividing line between her life as a soldier and everything that came before. She’d become used to it’s quirks over the years, and even though it felt like just as much a part of her body as anything else, it still came with its own set of drawbacks - in this case, how damn hot the thing would get if she let it out in the sun for too long.
In any case, she’d be in AC soon. The Kannazuki transport terminal was much closer than the hangar, and the corporate-types loved their climate-controlled transport. Two cigarettes and a brisk walk later, and she was at the station.
The corporations had carved out their own zones, and liked to pretend they weren’t actually part of the NEST. A few prim-and-proper types gave Salt confused glances as she ascended up to the platform, but she didn’t pay them much mind. She did stick out, after all. Her jacket, a mismatched pair of BDU pants, and a sports bra didn’t exactly mesh well with the sea of business casual and corporate security fatigues. One of the security types tried to stop her, nearly raising his rifle when she didn’t pay him any mind - another stopped him before he could do anything stupid, however, pointing at the message they received on their armor’s commlinks. LARK had eyes everywhere, even if she didn’t always spread information the fastest.
The boxy form of the train pulled in, and Salt pushed her way to an open seat. The train ride would be a bit longer, but at least it was colder here. She’d just gotten comfortable when someone called her name.
“Sera. Why are you here?” The voice was distorted, harsh. Salt knew it immediately, and winced.
The source of the sound, a tall figure wearing a full pilot suit and darkened helmet, didn’t wait for her to respond, sitting down next to her. Salt looked away, but it’s not like she could ignore them. After a few moments of awkward silence, she finally spoke.
“Same as you, Astray. I’m on my way to work.” A reluctant reply.
“I see.”
Another moment of silence. Astray was taller than Salt, with a lithe form that did little to convey any real information about the person under the suit. Salt had never seen them out of it, but even so, something about their proportions seemed a bit off. Salt couldn’t place it, but looking at them made her uneasy, like she was seeing something she wasn't supposed to see.
“Who are you working for now?” Astray asked - the vocoder of their helmet crackling with each word.
“Hansa, mostly - LARK pays well and MIDAS needed repairs.” Salt stared out the window, watching the sprawl of the nest pass by them.
“MIDAS always needs repairs.”
This was an accusation, but not a new one. Salt scoffed, changing the subject.
“Kannazuki let you off your leash yet?” She already knew the answer.
“All of my operations are under Kannazuki’s jurisdiction, and will continue to be until I’m ordered otherwise.” Astray paused, the blank face of their helmet refusing to betray any emotion. “So, no.”
The pair didn’t speak much more, until Astray spoke up again.
“Sera, I could get you more consistent employment if you wanted, you know that, right?”
Salt clenched her metal fist, fighting the urge to punch the other HAZED in the stomach.
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.” Astray spoke.
The embers of anger died off as quick as they came. They had had this conversation before, and Astray was anything if not stubborn. Whatever, it wasn’t worth the energy. Salt turned away from Astray, lit another cigarette, and the train slowed to a stop.
Not the kind that haunted houses, nor the transparent apparitions in movies.
He saw them as stains, persistent and vivid. You could scrub and wash them as many times as you wanted, but they would never truly disappear. They might be softened, hidden, or slightly faded, but never gone. A color so deeply ingrained that it became a part of your life forever.
Orion was his ghost, the stain that had tinted his mind and soul. Over time, it had become almost easy to forget, but it liked to creep into small, everyday things: the way he held his pen, the way he tapped his thumb against his fingers when he was nervous, or something as simple as readjusting his pillow before going to sleep. It was him. All of it belonged to him and had rubbed off on Shockwave. Orion lived within him like an indispensable parasite, a magnificently horrible symbiote.
Shockwave also lived within Orion, a mutual exchange that made them one. But Orion was no more, and neither was the part of the scientist living within him. He had become an incomplete puzzle, the pieces scattered into the void. He searched in vain for them, had kept his body, telling himself that if he let them bury him, there would be no chance of ever getting them back.
Orion was his other half, his missing piece. He missed him in a way no one could understand, vital, obsessive.
The gaping hole he had left in his being was so deep it could never be filled. By no one. By no therapy or condolences.
Orion was his ghost, haunting him day and night without ever stopping, again and again. He saw and heard him everywhere. In the mirror, in the corner of his eye, in the back of his mind. Never had a being been so far away and so near at the same time.
But Shockwave had a plan. Infallible, built on a mixture of hatred and grief. Not only would he avenge Orion, but he would bring him back. He had risen through the ranks, sacrificed more than one life to reach his ultimate goal. He would be willing to sacrifice a thousand more if necessary. All of this, he was doing for him, for Orion; they would be happy again, whole. Everything would be perfect, just like before.
----------------------------
Something was wrong. Orion... no, this THING was staring at him with a mixture of fear, confusion, and shock.
"What have you done...?"
What had he done? Everything, he had done everything for this day. Sacrificed everything. And yet... the void in his soul wouldn't close.
The new being who had just been born wasn't Orion. It had his voice, his mannerisms, but it wasn't him. It spoke in an older way, shared memories no human could have. It had a deeper connection with the alien race he had recently joined, one that an average human couldn't have unless their name was Jazz.
"Optimus," they called it, not Orion, just another ghost, one given a physical form. Shockwave couldn't look him in the eyes, no, optics, without his heart squeezing with all the pain accumulated over the years.
He felt empty... The only thing that had driven him all these years was Orion, and now he was there without being there. A constant reminder that Shockwave had failed, that Orion was gone for good...
Orion was no longer Orion
And Shockwave wasn't even sure he was himself anymore
Just a ghost of who he once was.
.................................................
Here's the Shockwave angst I promised! I hope you like it and that I did him justice!
-🦇🐧
Oooohhhhh.....oh yeah...lemme jus-
HELppp
I mean it very affectionately. You are a moNSTER. I say it but you could as well just visualize me giving you a medal sykfrujfdykdegnd
I love how it flows. I LOVE how it reads almost-almost like a poem but not really but so close. The way you string the words has this 🤌🤌🤌 factor youknow. Mwah.
AND! The puzzle fukvstjkbu the puzzle pieces so thoroughly mixed and blended into each other and then changed and twisted both into something completely unrecognizable? DELICIOUS ThANK YOU
“Speaking of Mechs.” continues Blurr, ”That thing's evacuation system sucks. What if you were stunned by the fall? What if something short-circuits and starts a fire???”
Swindle just clenches the glass in his hands. Feels the cold moisture of condensation dripping down onto his fingers.
“Then I'd burn.” he doesn't say
Under the cut⤵️
——————————————————
It's Swindle's birthday.
He thinks it is.
He's pretty sure.
Since he was taken into the program, it's always hard to tell. It's like time flows differently here. He had a calendar, but Brawl put it somewhere a while ago and then forgot where it was. And they're not allowed to have phones yet. Though Swindle assumes Onslaught managed to steal one from someone anyway.
Shit. Where's the calendar?
Swindle remembers the date, but can't remember the month.
There's a strange static tingling sensation in the back of his head. If he turns his head too fast, it'll grow into an unpleasant pricking pain.
The last time in the lab was disgusting.
He can't remember what month it is. He's not even sure why it bothers him so much. Not that birthdays mean anything within the walls of the program.
He stops in the middle of the living room and looks around with a meticulous eye. He's already checked the beds, desk, and nightstands...hah.
“Hey have any of you seen my calendar?”
Vortex, sitting on top of the bunk bed shakes the ash off his cigarette right down into Blast Off's lap.
“Nope.”
“TEX YOU'RE LITTERING ON MY BED.”
“I could have ..torn it up” offers Brawl from across the room.
Swindle turns on his heels and angrily rests his arms at his sides.
“You tore it?”
“I might have,” Brawl scratches the back of his head.
Swindle pinches the bridge of his nose
That's fine. Not that he cares that much. Not that any celebration at all would save the crappy day.
He has some new “experimental” medical procedure scheduled for later, which generally means suffering. Or if he's lucky, some critter will attack the city and instead of squirming on the slab, he'll have to go cuddle with huge nasty beasts. Which is slightly better than the actual procedures. He'd like that to happen. If only his head would also stop buzzing....
“Happy birthday to me” Swindle thinks, sticking his Mech hand under the plates of a particularly ugly monster and pulling something disgustingly oozing green blood out of there. He can see the faces of the random gawkers who didn't have time to evacuate. Ooh, some of them got that nasty stuff on their faces. Swindle has no time to feel sorry for them.
The monster did attack, but it's entirely possible that this monster ended the last meager supply of luck Swindle had. Because somewhere. Something. In his head begins to hurt again and the world in front of his eyes begins to slowly blur and..
ahh FUCK….
The monster grabs him knocks him to the ground and Swindle can literally feel in his bones that something's wrong, but the data from his Mech doesn't give him any useful information. Which isn't that uncommon. These things are glitchy as hell and aren't designed to recognize anything but the most basic popular malfunctions.
The word “error” shines mockingly in his face. Blurring in his eyes and reflecting in red on his uniform.
Error, error, what the hell is this error. He needs to know what's wrong so he doesn't accidentally kill himself, but all this bucket offers him is oops. You're in trouble teeheee~
He can hear the sound of Blast Off's giant cannon in the distance. And the loud rumble where Vortex and Onslaught are trying to get out of the ring of monsters.
His Mech is unresponsive. His damn machine refuses to move and Swindle isn't quite sure if it's the Mech that's the problem, because his head feels like a piece of raw rotten meat and maybe the error meant that what's broken is him.
The monster leans over him, trying to rip off whatever it can rip off and thank god this thing apparently isn't smart enough to realize that the Mech is controlled from the head because it's aiming straight for his chest.
He needs to get out. If he can't get this thing to move, he needs to get the fuck out of it before the alien gets him.
He manages to open the emergency hatch and quietly slip out and ohhhh the world is spinning, this is not bloody good.
He manages to take a few steps before a loud B A N G comes from somewhere above and IS THAT A TRAIN???? Who in their right mind would think of using a fucking train as a throwing weapon???? Is that Brawl? It's got to be Brawl. Oh, Swindle is so gonna kill him.
Because (sadly) in addition to the monster, the train and Swindle, there's also physics involved in this circus.
So while the monster is effectively brought to rest and knocked sideways with a hole in it’s head, the train stops its forward motion and starts its downward motion.
Right onto Swindle's head.
He just has time to think that dying from a train falling out of the sky is a pretty creative death. His legs are shaking, his head is buzzing and he only manages to take half a sluggish step in an attempt to avoid the inevitable when a loud “MOVE” comes to his ears and something yanks him to the side.
The tug sends fire down his spine and head. The ensuing landing reverberates with pain in his shoulder and sides. He barely has time to process the first two sensations until a moment later he hears a rumble so deafening that he thinks his eardrums are about to burst.
Swindle props himself up on his elbows and hisses in pain as the movement causes the back of his head to sting.
“Ah I'll fuckin' kill him...”
A voice comes above him
“Ouw dude. You okay?”
There's.. Some teenager hovering over him. And behind him is lying...the wrecked train...right where Swindle himself was standing a second ago.
The strange teen frowns worriedly and pulls Swindle upright and drags him somewhere else
“Come on, it's best not to be in the open during monster attacks”
“Ah” thinks Swindle ”right. Without Mech you're a pathetic tiny piece of chop begging to be stomped on by Brawl.”
He tries to focus on balance so he doesn't hang too much on this kid.
They find the nearest unlocked door, which turns out to be the entrance to an underground bar.
“So” says the stranger, letting go of Swindle and shaking the dust off his hair ” You're a pilot! That's so cool, but you're kinda small for a pilot.”
Swindle sighs sullenly.
“I'll let you have that one comment about my height because you helped me, but next time you're dead.”
“Helped? I saved your ass.”
“Helped a lot” says Swindle grudgingly. “Thanks.”
The teen laughs and climbs into the bar. It's a mess everywhere, people clearly evacuated in a hurry and threw everything in haste.
“What's your name? Oh, or, wait. Do you guys use code names? I've heard pilots call each other by call signs, but half the time those call signs sound so dumb, I don't see how they can respond to that.”
He waits for the kid to cut off his flow of words to take a breath. Man, what a chatty boy.
“You can call me Swindle.”
“Kay” the kid pulls out a couple glasses ”I'm Blurr. Would you like something Swindle? I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty good at mixing cocktails.”
Swindle looks around the room suspiciously. The bar, even though it's underground, looks pretty good. Too good, in fact. The place is clearly not for the poor.
He walks over to the bar and climbs onto a bar stool. There's no one else in here but them, but the electricity is on so he doesn't doubt for a second that they're being filmed by a security camera right now. Maybe a few even.
Blurr throws him an expectant look.
Swindle pretends to go through his pockets. As if there could be money in them out of nowhere. Then he makes a comically confused face and spreads his hands.
“Oh, no, I think I left my millions at home. What's the cheapest thing you have?”
Blurr snorts.
“Ice is free.”
“I'll take the ice then” nods Swindle.
There is a loud rumbling sound above them. It must be Vortex having fun again bouncing on the aliens that have fallen to the ground, crushing their heads.
Swindle is just. He takes off his helmet, takes a glass of ice and presses it to his head enjoying the way the nasty buzzing recedes.
Blurr waits for the rumbling to recede before speaking again.
“But really. You're a pilot but...uh. Are you even old enough to drink?”
Swindle sends him his best grumpy look. It's not exactly a joke about his height, but it's damn close.
“Are you old enough to pour?”
“Sure,” says Blurr too fast for it to be true. If Swindle had to guess, he'd say the guy in front of him is no older than seventeen. The tattered jeans and the T-shirt with the F1 logo printed on it definitely don't help. And, hey, those headphones look very expensive. So do the sneakers. Kid's clearly from a wealthy family.
Blurr pulls out a bottle of syrup from somewhere and pours it straight into his mouth. Doesn't miss, which is amusing. Doesn't wince, which is frankly impressive. Swindle feels the unbearable sweetness just looking at him.
It suddenly hits him
“Hey, do you have a phone?”
“Sure,” Blurr pours himself more syrup. Swindle twitches.
“What's the day today?”
Blurr's mouth is full of an unimaginable amount of sugar, so he just pulls out his phone and turns its screen toward Swindle and oh...oh. He was wrong about the date. And the month, too. It's not his birthday. His birthday was a week ago...
Does that mean he must be nineteen now? Yeah, that makes him nineteen.
Blurr takes the phone back and slips it into his pocket.
“Your face looks funny.”
“I just realized it's my birthday today,” smiles Swindle.
“Oooooooohh~~~” rejoices Blurr ”Congratulations! It's kind of poetic that you almost died just today. Can you imagine how funny the numbers on your tombstone would have looked.”
Swindle chokes on air.
“That's certainly a very appropriate comment, thank you...”
“Sorry haha said without thinking.” Blurr reaches under the counter again and pulls out a bottle from there “Hey, they have more syrups!”
There's another loud rumble from upstairs.
Blurr presses his head into his shoulders and stares up at the ceiling as if hoping to see something through it.
Swindle puts his elbows and head on the tabletop
“Don't worry, it's just Brawl.”
Blurr doesn't take his eyes off the ceiling
“ You can tell that by the sound of falling concrete?”
Swindle lazily dangles his feet. The chair is high and even the toes of his shoes don't reach the floor.
“Brawl is the loudest. And the heaviest, too. He's always crashing into everything, throwing things and breaking things too. You can hear him a mile away.”
He pauses to listen
“And that kch-ooooooooomm is Blast Off's cannon. It's some super rare experimentally advanced one, so it sounds like something out of a space movie. He couldn't stop bragging about it for half a year when he got it.”
Blurr chuckles and leans his elbows on the counter, relaxing.
“ And this...uh...what's this?”
“That's Vortex, he's our local lunatic. Best not to listen too much to what he does, it's almost always disgusting in ways you would never even consider.”
Blurr makes a disgruntled face and is silent for a couple minutes.
“It's weird hearing you call them by their names. I mean, I kind of always knew Mechs were run by people but you guys are never seen, so most of the time it's just.. Huge robots and huge monsters. You know what I mean. I was actually surprised when I saw you get out of that Mech.”
Swindle just nods. Because, what else is there to add.
“Speaking of Mechs.” continues Blurr, ”That thing's evacuation system sucks. What if you were stunned by the fall? What if something short-circuits and starts a fire???”.
Swindle just clenches the glass in his hands. Feels the cold moisture of condensation dripping down onto his fingers
“Then I'd burn.” he doesn't say
Blurr doesn't seem to notice his glum mood
“Oh, hey. If it's no secret, why did you go into piloting in the first place?”
Because he had no choice? He can't answer that, that information isn't for civilians.
Because he didn't know what he was getting into until it was too late? That's not vague enough either.
Because he was up to his neck in debt and barely into college before a smiling man showed up on his doorstep and offered him good money if he agreed to a couple tests...?
“I had to do it for the people.” Swindle decides to repeat a line of propaganda.
“Ohhhh.... That's...a good reason. The monsters are disgusting, of course. But the reason is cool.”
Swindle just. Holds his glass of melting ice, listens to Blurr's mutterings, and enjoys the peace. This random teenager is not his superior or colleague and has nothing to do with the organization at all. Swindle doesn't have to remember to salute or follow orders or fear being reported to his superiors.
He can just. Be.
Just him and his free ice and his saved for free life.
That's. Sweet.
Blurr's drinking syrup again.
...and a little disgusting.
—————————-
Brawl jumps out of bed, hits his head on a shelf hanging on the wall and drops everything on it onto Blast Off's head
“Swindle!!!” yells Brawl.
“Why are these books sticky???” shrieks Blast Off.
“You don't wanna know~” giggles Vortex.
Swindle sighs.
“You're alive!!!” ignores Blast Off Brawl's complaints. And a second later runs up and pulls Swindle off the floor in a crushing bear hug.
Behind them, Blast Off, with his face wrinkled in disgust, gathers all the dropped books back onto the shelf.
Swindle wheezes pathetically and slaps Brawl's arm with his palm, either to reciprocate the gesture or to beg for mercy
“Br...khaaaaah...Brawl I can't breathh.”
“OH. I'm uh. Here. Wait.”
Brawl puts him back on the floor and runs back to the shelf.
Onslaught, who has peeked into the room, puts a hand on Swindle's shoulder
“You've been gone a long time. Boss said you tried to escape.”
His tone isn't judgmental. And not pressuring. Not even questioning, but Swindle knows Onslaught wants more information. Swindle clutches a piece of napkin with a phone number in his pocket and smiles weakly.
“I've found a...friend? I think?”
Onslaught nods. In a manner that only he knows how to do. Not giving an opinion, not encouraging or condemning. Just taking in the information. Swindle admires him for that.
Behind them, Brawl pulls some piece of paper out from under the books that have just been put away and drops them again
“FUCK!” yells Blast Off. Vortex just starts hooting like a hyena.
“Hey Swindle I found the calendar!” yells Brawl waving the paper.
Swindle frowns in surprise.
“It's a different calendar...”
“I found you a new one.” nods Brawl.
“...Why...is it...it's torn in half?”
“It had stupid flowers drawn on it, so I ripped them off. And I accidentally ripped off more than I needed.”
“Ah,” says Swindle, clutching the calendar, ”That's...Thanks. I forgive you for losing the previous one.”
Behind them, Blast Off is trying to strangle Vortex with a jacket.
------------
Blurr waves his arms happily like a hyperactive windmill.
“Swindle!!!”
Swindle smiles and adjusts his glasses
“Your party can be seen from across city.”
“I know~~” primps Blurr “Are you hungry? There was a snack table around here somewhere.”
“I didn't bring any money.” lies Swindle.
“Hey man, it's a party. Help yourself, it's free.”
Swindle, busy shoveling food into his pockets, nods.
“I've had a rough week. Actually, it'd be cool if you didn't tell anyone you saw me here. I'm kind of not supposed to be here.”
He doesn't elaborate.
Blurr is a civilian. In his mind, a rough week is rude people or an exam or bad weather. Swindle's bad week is strap marks on his wrists and double vision. It's nausea from injections and sleepless nights because Vortex won't stop screaming in his sleep.
Blurr doesn't know that. With him, Swindle can pretend to be somewhat normal.
-----------
“Heeeeey“ says Blurr ‘I haven't seen you in a long time~"
“That” thinks Swindle ”is a pretty standard phrase for both of them.
Blurr looks older. Taller too. He was taller than Swindle before, but now that difference is starting to look almost comical. He's also flaunting a cast on his arm.
“Did you get hurt?”
“Didn't make a turn at training” waves Blurr off “It's no big deal. Wanna go find something to eat?”
Blurr is always trying to feed him, Swindle notices over time. Offers him drinks or snacks or whatever.
“ I like your uh..cap?”
“I got a promotion” Swindle smiles proudly “Me and the guys were made a special group...actually you're not allowed to know more than that, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say we are officially cool.”
He purposely adjusts his cap by the brim so Blurr can get a good look at it.
Blurr makes a delighted sound. Something between a “wow” and a giggle. He generally makes a lot of sounds all the time. Tapping his fingers on every hard surface, stomping in place like he's always late for something, laughing, whistling, clicking his tongue. A human orchestra.
__________
Onslaught sits down next to Swindle and clutches his hands in his lap in front of him. This makes the bed legs squeak pitifully. Onslaught has grown surprisingly large. He can almost rival Brawl in height already. Most people find that intimidating, but Swindle just thinks Onslaught is like a wall. A big, solid concrete wall that's so good to hide behind.
“Be careful with what you tell this guy.”
“Don't worry” says Swindle ”He's not the type of friend you tell secrets to. He's just a fun dude who's great to hang out with.”
Onslaught hums.
“And who feeds you for free.”
“If that's how you're trying to ask me to share, you're not doing a very good job.”
Vortex snaps his fingers as he walks past them
“Hey Swindler, the lab is closed for today. It's your day off.”
“Wha...”
Onslaught tilts his head.
“Vortex. What did you do?”
“I spat in their dna sample vault” proudly proclaims Vortex “and didn't tell them exactly where.”
-----———————-
Blurr frowns.
“Hey...are you okay?”
“No” thinks Swindle.
“My friend died” he says instead.
He's not okay. He feels like an animal caught in a beartrap, trying to chew off its own paw to get free.
Except the trap is closed around Swindle's head and it's not a body part he can afford to lose.
There's been a lot of talk. Even more rumors. Swindle listened but tried not to believe.
And then one of pilots, Shockwave… was taken to the lab and brought back a different damn man and it felt like Swindle had the rug pulled out from under his feet with hot coals underneath.
Because Swindle's boss, with his stupid, rehearsed smile, started writing reports about how “human personality flaws are something that can be fixed. That challenging behavior is something that can be repaired with tools.
Blurr freezes.
“Who?”
“Vortex.”
Because of course it's Vortex. Talented but difficult to handle. Powerful but uncontrollable.
They wanted a pilot who would be a beast on the battlefield and a loyal dog on base. And who else would be a more ideal test subject than him?
Vortex was being very rude that day, even by Vortex standards. Yelling and swearing and throwing things around. Kept saying that no shitty lab could make him “a fucking puppet.”
Scratching the stitches on his head until he started leaving a trail of blood behind him.
He went on a mission.
And never came back.
The reports said it was all the monsters' fault. That Vortex was unstable. That the accident had nothing to do with the new technology. But it was nevertheless suspended.
Swindle is both bitter and amused by this. Vortex would eat the same monsters for breakfast any other day. The bastard was unkillable.
“Oh my god” says Blurr “I'm so sorry to hear that.”
He says something else. Probably comforting. About how Vortex died protecting people, maybe. About Vortex being a hero.
“Vortex,” thinks Swindle, ”loved life. He loved adrenaline and danger and pain and thrill and fear, but he never wanted to die. They did something to him. Something that made him go over the edge.”
Vortex got his head in the trap and ripped it off to escape it.
Swindle knows him and the others are next. And knows that no one but themselves can help them.
---------------------------
Blast Off seems...very quiet. He could never stop complaining about Vortex before. Yelling about the garbage. Resenting the unmade bed and the cigarette ashes.
Vortex's bed remains unmade.
Blast Off regularly cleans everything up, but never wipes away the little circles of ash from the places where Vortex used to put out cigarettes on the furniture.
Onslaught puts his hand on Swindle's shoulder and squeezes. Not hard. Just enough for Swindle to register the gesture as important.
Standing nearby, Blast Off lights a cigarette and leans on Onslaught.
“Ons told me about your plan. I want to join in.”
“What kind of plan? Can I get involved?” inquires Brawl.
Onslaught sighs.
“Repeat after me - I don't know, they don't tell me anything.”
“I don't know, they don't tell me anything.”
“Good job” nods Onslaught “From now on, every time they ask you any - listen. Any! Question about us, you will answer them with this phrase.”
“Got it,” grins Brawl.
Swindle smiles.
“Gentlemen, it's time to violate all that is written, and rewrite all that is violated.”
__________________
Blurr lazily takes his eyes off the phone. He's wearing a racing suit and tons of hairspray. He's shiny and gleaming like a fine collectible figurine that should be on the shelf of an expensive exhibit. He's also bored.
“Sorry buddy, the interview is long over, if you have any questions you'll have to pay for the session.”
Swindle smiles.
“How about one tiny little question?”
Blurr makes funny big eyes.
“SWINDLE!!! I haven't seen you in a thousand years! You...oh I didn't recognize you haha sorry. Nice coat. You quit being a pilot?”
Swindle proudly adjusts his glasses. He's wearing a brand-new, ironed shirt that's exactly his size. Nice neat tie, expensive coat. Swindle isn't surprised Blurr didn't recognize him immediately. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize himself. After all those years of wearing the pilot's uniform, he felt almost attached to it. And yet here he is.
“You could say I moved.” he winks snarkily, “Up. All the Mechs you see on the streets now are my Mechs~”
Blurr completely forgets about his phone.
“REALLY?? Oh man congrats to you!”
“Thanks” nods Swindle ”You want something to drink? I'm buying.”
———————-
Onslaught adjusts his tie. It's still, years later, a little strange to see him in a uniform instead of a pilot's suit.
“You do realize it's going to be hard to find a person like that, right? We need someone famous enough to be effective and dumb enough to want to save mankind instead of sunbathing on a yacht.”
Swindle adjusts his glasses and leans back in his chair.
Someone outgoing so they can quickly befriend all the right people. Handsome enough to have their face printed on a poster. Smart just enough not to say too much. And not associated with Mecha program so they can't be accused of trying to get promoted through their acquaintances.
Someone who already has everything but still willing to put themselves at risk for the cause.
“Heh” giggles Blurr ”sorry, my head is all cloudy, I thought you said you were an alien.”
Part one
Holy shit I actually managed to finish it…..Oh. My god.
Under the cut⤵️
Is it stupid to miss someone who doesn't even exist?
Probably yes, but hey, Swerve already has several degrees, might as well get another one. A degree in Stupidity or something. Who cares?
For the first few days after waking up from his coma, he feels like he's going crazy. Everybody has realistic dreams, right? The ones where you can scrutinize every angle, memorize every face and smell and sound. The ones that make you lie still for a while after waking up, grasping at every thing you can. Trying to memorize everyone you meet, imprint them in your head.
Because apart from your mind, they don't exist anywhere else. So that's your only way to keep them.
It never works. Obviously. Details slip away. Impressions fade. Just a couple days, and you won't be able to recall anything but the main events from memory.
Wait, hell, not days. Cycles.
His life is a weird, pathetic, fantastical circus. Earth term. Heh. There are no circuses on Cybertron, haha!
But Swerve remembers. And the word circus, and the smell of asphalt, and rains that were made of water not acid. Remembers the English language. Can speak it fluently, even if you wake him up in the middle of the night.
Remembers his work schedule and remembers which company makes the best details. And Tailgate with his bright blue uniform and Wheeljack with his endless experiments and Swindle with his expensive coat and of course...yeah, no, don't think of Blurr, don't think of Blurr, don't. Don't.
He'd heard about it. Read about it, too. Mechs waking up from comas and doing wild things. Some forgot how to speak at all, some gained a new skill, some lived a whole life while they slept.
Articles tell Swerve, don't worry, what you've experienced isn't unique. The doctor tells Swerve that the same thing has happened to others before you, it will be okay, it will pass.
Swerve isn't sure he wants it to pass.
He's been in a coma for who knows how long. The medic said it was caused by an internal trauma that decided to suddenly get worse. One minute he's recharging , the next he's gone. Internal injuries are insidious.
So it turns out. One day he just disappeared from the world because he was busy slowly dying in his room and no one noticed until a thief tried to sneak in. The only one who came to him was a Mech who wanted to steal his stuff. Huh.
That feels revolting. Swerve liked to think he had enough friends. Or at least enough good connections. Enough those who should have noticed his absence, right?
Apparently not. His shifts at work were reassigned, his contacts never texted him first, his...
His small persona wasn't important enough for anyone to notice his disappearance.
Would his human coworkers notice? Would Tailgate have noticed? Or Jazz? Swindle?
Jazz would have noticed, he was always surprisingly attentive when it came to his friends. And he was friends with just about everybody.
Swindle would probably get upset about the money he'd lost.
It's amazing how much his brain-- wait, no, his processor. How much his processor could create to entertain him. It's a more elaborate world than the most complex series Swerve has ever known. And that scrap had forty-six seasons and fifteen encyclopedias!
People, Earth, a bunch of new languages and rules and all for the sake of the end being like, OOPS! ...it was all a dream. Hilarious. Worst plot twist ever. Swerve hates it when stories go in this direction even more than when they kill off their characters.
In his humble opinion, death is better than the revelation that none of the experiences made sense or had any value. In terms of writing scripts obviously. Haha.
He's busy roaming haphazardly through his own memory. He's looking, comparing, trying to find inconsistencies or things that don't make sense. All the stuff that usually gives away the fact that what happened was a dream.
Most of his memories are occupied by--No. Frag.
Don't think about Blurr, don't think about Blurr, don't think..
He's thinking about Blurr. A lot.
Blurr occupies a surprisingly important role in his comatose dreams.
In the time he spent just looking at him, you could hand-build an entire Mech. Maybe even three. Swerve remembers picking up every bit of merch he could reach with his paycheck. Watching hundreds of videos and buying every new themed drink even if it was a flavor he didn't like.
Then spent a surprising amount of time resenting Blurr for not living up to his fantasies.
Blurr's behavior hadn't helped either, of course, but now, looking back at the past himself Swerve thinks that.. Oh wow. You weren't just annoyed at him. You blamed him for ruining your beautiful fantasy. You were having so much fun entertaining yourself with thoughts of this marvelous image, and he came along and corrupted it. Poisoned the well you drank joy from.
But that's not quite true, Swerve thinks.
Blurr was more complicated than that. But exactly how, he'll never know. All he has are his memories, and those memories are cut short at the most interesting point.
Swerve knows this plot twist. The asshole character that no one loves at the last second turns out to not be what everyone thought, but it's too late.
Oh no, he's not an evil jerk, he's actually traumatized. Oh no, he wasn't bad, he was actually secretly helping everyone. You thought he was awful? Well now you're going to feel awful reading fanfics.
Serevus Spayne didn't actually betray the main character's dad, no no, he was in love with him! Bam. Drama.
Swerve isn't a big fan of this stuff. He likes his characters developed properly. But he can't deny the appeal of a character leaving behind a bunch of questions you thought you knew the answer to.
Uggh.
The doctor was wrong. These thoughts don't go away. These memories don't dull.
Swerve just boils in them, constantly getting stuck in his own head. Sometimes he puts English words into his speech and everyone looks at him strangely. Sometimes he reflexively says some inside joke and no one gets it and he's left standing there with an awkward smile. Because. Guys, you don't understand, if my coworkers were here they'd think it's hilarious. I promise, in my fantasy world, it's funny.
When he gets a job on one of the Autobot ships, he accepts it thinking it might be a good distraction from his thoughts.
When he happens to see Prowl with a tiny human on his shoulder in the corridor of that ship, he thinks he's lost his mind.
The whole thing. The whole load-bearing structure on which his picture of the world has been held suddenly gives a lurch. Living your life in a super realistic dream is wild, but meeting a character from your dream in real life??
Freaking cursed.
Jazz looks puzzled by his reaction, but all Swerve can think about are two things.
One, if Jazz is here, does that mean everything else was real, too???
Two - holy shit, Jazz is tiny.
It never occurred to him. But he didn't really know what size humans were. Well, sure, he could measure it in numbers. But he was among humans himself. And about the same size. He was generally even shorter than most of them.
If Jazz is so small, he can't imagine how tiny Tailgate would be. Or--
He can feel his spark freeze. In fact, he can almost hear the sound of a string breaking in his processor. Does that mean Blurr is real too? Real and just as tiny and currently dead? Because Swerve was there but was too convinced it was all just a dream to help?
He's going to get sick.
He needs to talk to Jazz right now.
____________
Swerve taps his fingers nervously on the countertop. Come on. You're good at talking. Talking is your greatest skill. All you have to do is tell someone else about your comatose hallucinations and hope they don't think you're crazy.
They're sitting at a table at the bar. More specifically Swerve and Prowl are sitting at the table, and Jazz is sitting right on the table. (God he's so small).
“So uh. I got injured a while back and...uh...well, it got worse, turned out important systems were affected and I kind of. I was in a coma. For a really long time.”
Jazz frowns
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
He speaks in a mildly wonky Common, Swerve notes to himself. He waves his servo a little too cheerfully in response.
“'Ay it's no big deal really. I saw a whole other world while I was asleep and like. See, I thought it was just my fantasies, but it seemed very real and...”
Swerve mentally crosses his fingers.
“And it was about this planet called Earth and about people who were building their own inanimate huge robots to fight huge aliens and their boss wanted to launch Mechs into space, so he picked the best of the pilots named Jazz and sent him on this test mission and...”
Jazz looks at him with huge eyes before switching to English in surprise.
“Mech, what the hell?”
“...And we lost him...” finishes Swerve with a sad smile.
Before thinking for a bit, and adding.
“I'm going to show you a trick I can do.”
And then projects his holoform onto the table in front of him.
This. It's weird. Not in a way that would tilt it in the direction of unnatural. More like walking around in his comfy indoor pajamas right in the middle of the street. Being human is familiar to him, but being human amongst huge Cybertronians? Strange. And a little creepy.
Prowl looks confused.
Jazz looks absolutely frantic.
“SWERVE????”
Swerve doesn't even manage to respond, only to smile in relief before Jazz rakes him into his arms. In his holoform, Jazz feels right again. He's taller than Swerve and oh boy, he's alive and unharmed. To think everyone thought he was dead, staying up nights trying to find what was left of him, and he was on the other side of the universe the whole time?
Swerve chuckles into Jazz's shoulder. Then picks him up and spins him around a couple times just because he needs something to get his energy out. Man, it's nice to hug people. Warm and soft, eight out of ten.
Jazz pulls away but still stays standing very close. Swerve can literally see the happy stars in his eyes.
“Dude, I'm not complaining but what...how???? You just kinda..."
Swerve laughs and twitches his eyebrows playfully.
“I still speak English, you don't have to torture yourself with Common.”
“Oh thank fuck.” Jazz throws his hands up dramatically “you're my favorite person right now.”
There is a polite click of the vocalizer resetting above their heads.
“I” Prowl says “very glad you two are happy but I'd like some explanation”
Swerve presses his head into his shoulders guiltily. Prowl has the unique ability to always sound like you've done something wrong in front of him.
Although Jazz doesn't seem to feel the same way?
“Short version - I sleepwalked my holoform to another planet.”
He pauses dramatically.
“The long version is...”
Jazz raises his hand
“What's a holoform?”
Swerve sighs.
“It's a holographic avatar that I can project using a holomatter generator. Sort of like a remote controlled game character.”
Jazz whistles impressed. And then immediately turns back to Prowl
“Have you been able to do that all this time too?“
Prowl hums
“I can create an avatar, but it takes a lot of practice to make it at least believable. And to fully perceive the world through it takes even more. It's a whole new technology. What Swerve does is essentially an art form. Sophisticated and impressively detailed may I add.”
Swerve shrugs shyly. He's still using the holoform to stand on the table next to Jazz. Looking up to speak to Prowl isn't exactly comfortable, but Jazz definitely looks like he's been missing the human presence. Swerve isn't human, but he might as well be.
“Thank you. Yes! Uh. Anyway, it seems while I was in a coma my processor projected my avatar onto Earth and I...let's just say I lived there for a while.”
Jazz laughs
“Dude. So you're telling me you were basically sleepwalking the whole time?”
“ I was.”
Prowl frowns.
“But the range limit of the holomatter generator is only four hundred miles...”
“.... I had a lot of practice...”
Jazz claps his hands.
“You learned a whole other language! Got an ID!. You had a job!!!”
“I got carried away,” Swerve admits.
Jazz scratches the back of his head, still looking very amused
“How many degrees did you get? Haha wait no, I have a better question, did you pass your driver's license?”
“Two. And I failed my driver's exam.”
“Dude you are literally a car without a driver's license!” collapses Jazz on the table with laughter.
Swerve blows the hair out of his face
“Says you who retook the physical several times. You couldn't pass the "being human" exam.”
Jazz just wheezes incoherently in response. Prowl looks alarmed.
“Don't worry, that's him getting excited. So...where have I been...”
Swerve nervously shoves his hands into his pockets
“...Do either of you two know where Earth is?”
Prowl twitches his door wings
“No. Since Jazz was teleported we don't have much clues.”
Swerve grimaces. Scrap. Of course nothing's going to be that easy. He's also been, like,....teleported.
He stands there for a couple minutes and just feels fifteen different emotions rise up in his head at once. A crooked, unsteady smile creeps across his face.
He's thinking.
Oh hell, yeah! I knew it wasn't a dream!
Then he remembers the mess he left behind.
Oh, no, it wasn't a dream.
Jazz puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Swer... Swerve? Dude, are you okay?”
“Ah frag..” Swerve says weakly ”it wasn't a dream.”
Jazz looks...puzzled.
“Is that bad?”
Swerve remembers his friends. Remembers the Mecha program. Remembers fire and smoke and screams and rumbling and crackling flames. Ashes flying through the air and the smell of burnt wires. He remembers blood and debris and...
“It's...complicated.”
This wasn't just a stupid plot twist he'd dreamed up because he'd watched too many shows. This wasn't a hallucination or a disembodied fantasy that just happened to linger in his head. This was real. His friends exist out there somewhere. His work and his collections and his little apartment...
And Blurr. Was real. Or still is? Swerve doesn't know. Blurr wasn't a product of his imagination. He was real and what he did was real and Swerve left him there alone, bleeding and trapped in rubble and tiny and...
Hahahahah oh fUCK.
He doesn't like this plot. It's too much. Too much to handle, too complicated, too ambiguous.
It's also probably too late.
But he can't leave it like this, right? Blurr went into the damn burning building just because of the possibility that there might be someone alive in there.
And Swerve doesn't even have to go through the flames. He has to look. He has to try at least.
Jazz glares at him with a worried look on his face
“ That expression you have...”
Swerve puts the smile back on his face.
“I need to get to Earth.”
___________________
Swerve is not an idiot.
Or maybe more accurately an idiot, but with several degrees.
He's well aware that finding Earth in space with only a description of it is impossible. Which leaves him with two options.
Ask the Quintessons. Or look for it himself.
The first sounds like death. The second like coma. Swerve has exquisite enough taste to know which is better.
He just needs to do some preliminary reserch.....
Jazz, now back inside his Mech looks doubtful.
“You're not going to die suddenly and for no reason, are you?”
Swerve laughs.
“Pfffff what, no of course not, would I kill myself hah. No no, look I'll just put myself in stasis for a bit. Send myself to Earth. And try to figure out where it is from there. Get the coordinates. If I'm lucky, I can see what Space Bridge the local Quintessons use. All you'll have to do is wake me up after a while.”
“It's not harmful?”
Swerve makes an uncertain gesture with his hand...servo.
“If I have enough fuel. And an additional connection to an external generator.”
Jazz tilts his head
“ Why are you so eager to get to Earth? Don't get me wrong, I miss it too and want to go back, but.”
Swerve bites his knuckles.
“ I have some unfinished business?”
“Pshhhh you sound like a ghost.”
Swerve only laughs in response.
_______________
Concentration is tricky.
Swerve tries to think about Earth. And not to think about the fact that he doesn't know where it is. If he's already been there once, he might as well go there again yes? In theory? Perhaps?
Except for the possibility that his sleepwalking just takes him to random planets. That would be very inconvenient. It would be a whole new level of lost
Shit. No. Earth. Think Earth.
What's he even gonna do when he gets there? How far away is it? Swerve is very talented with his holomatter generator, but if it's really far away... maybe he should reset some settings.
He mentally starts going through his options. Does he need tangibility? Probably not. Come to think of it, it would only make him more vulnerable and take a lot of energy. Yeah, the tangibility has to go. What else? Touch, too. Sight and hearing should stay, that's not even a question, but colors and textures are not really necessary.
The amount of detail and picture quality can be reduced as well. His holoform will become colorless and grainy and will probably ripple with static, but he'll survive it.
After he finishes making changes to his holoform he thinks about his old stuff left in his house. Then about the posters. Then reminds himself that he needs to focus on the goal or he'll never find Blurr and...oh FUCK his phone! Where was his phone when he disappeared? Was it found?? There were so many personal things on that phone, he's hoping the phone was burned under the rubble. Either that or the arriving investigators will find his browser history and he'll go into another coma from pure embarrassment.
He blinks dazedly when he realizes he has loads of rocks in front of his eyes. Oh..Did he screw up? Did he end up on the wrong planet? Is it a cave or--
Then he notices the odd shape of the “rocks” and. Oh, no. It's not a cave. It's charred concrete debris.
This is the place where he was last.
He hastily looks around. Anxiety creeps up the back of his neck, makes him feel like something slippery and cold is crawling over his skin. There is nothing but ruins all around.
Blurr is not here. The place where his Mech was lying is empty.
Which means he was at least found and dragged out. Dead or alive.
Swerve's bites his knuckles. Okay.
All right.
He's got things to do.
_______________
He's trying to stay out of sight. Which isn't hard, considering he's just a hologram. At first, he just sneaks around in the quiet areas. Then proceeds to do a facepalm and start teleporting. Think, Swerve. Did you read all those comic books for nothing? Superheroes who couldn't really use their superpowers creatively always annoyed him. And he does, in fact, have a superpower. Gotta get creative, right?
He stops and looks at himself again. His holoform is going static and is a dull white color. He thinks for a bit, and then shrinks himself. Thinks some more, and makes himself almost transparent. There's no way he could pass as a normal human right now, so he'd better just do his best to avoid being seen by anyone.
He looks around thoughtfully. Hmm. Even if he's going to be absolutely tiny, he needs to make sure no one sees him, otherwise the whole base will think the Quintessons are now spying on them through holograms or something.
Breaking the rules feels...it's exciting.
All his ..human life here he hadn't thought about it, but if he threw away the rules he was used to about what people could or couldn't do...
He looks up in a sudden rush of sly genius. All people look under their feet when they walk, but how many look up? And how many of them notice the barely visible tiny holoform hiding just behind the blinding lamps?
The answer is probably none.
Swerve projects himself onto the ceiling and mentally pats himself on the shoulder for his impressive intellectual accomplishments. A creativity degree should definitely be a thing.
A degree in spying on the Quintessons' ships wouldn't hurt him either.
Fortunately sneaking onto their ship turns out not to be that difficult. Swerve makes himself absurdly tiny and hides in the darkest corners that no one would ever think to look into. Why hasn't anyone thought of using holoforms for spying before? Could he be the first to think of it? He doesn't know, but he mentally decides to patent the idea.
Finding the Space Bridge is surprisingly easy. The local Quintesson fleet is clearly used to being the dominant force in space. And that's generally logical. Even if humanity collects a mountain of money from somewhere to throw a dozen Mechs into space - there will be thousands of monsters waiting for them. In such a situation, you don't have to hide, the guards are enough.
Well done, well done, don't hide, Swerve thinks, copying the coordinates and address of the space bridge to himself. You have absolutely nothing to fear here, he thinks, so stay where you are and don't move. Please and thank you.
Once the coordinates are obtained, he... has some freedom to explore. And he uses it for probably the most boring-sounding thing in the world. He returns to his usual workplace.
It’s simple. As damning as the Mecha program was, Swerve loved his job in it. He loved his position in the assembly shop. And he missed his friends.
He quickly teleports through several rooms, continuing to hide close to the lamps. Tailgate is here. Alive and unharmed. Wheeljack is too, though his face has some scars added to it. It's great to see them again, even if he can't talk to them right now. No one will probably react well to a grainy unexplainable hologram. He's just glad to know they're okay and honestly, the last thing he needs is paranoid Onslaught installing extra signal jammers.
It takes time to find Blurr. Partly because Swerve is terrified of what he might find if he started looking. So he goes to check the death lists first, and only after flipping through and re-reading them three times does he finally exhale in relief.
Blurr's name isn't there.
So his smug, shiny ass must be around here somewhere.
He checks the hangar. Flips through the Mech launch logs and feels an uncomfortable knot begin to form in his chest. Blurr's Mech has never been repaired or launched even once since the incident. Its plating has been replaced with new, well polished, and put in a prominent place where anyone who wants to can take a picture of it. But all the internal systems are destroyed. This machine hasn't been used for anything other than being a beautiful exhibit.
That's...something's wrong.
He checks offices and schedules as well as eavesdropping on a few conversations and ends up secretly following Swindle, who is arguing loudly with someone on the phone. He says something about deals and how he doesn't need anyone meddling in his business. Then he talks about how he's got everything under control and the person on the phone is “a dumbass who's making drama out of nothing” and that “he doesn't need anyone's handouts". Then he sighs and says, “you know how celebs are. Dumb and dramatic. You can't take their words literally.”
Then drops the call and for a couple seconds looks like he's just had a large bill taken right out of his hand. Curses again, but in a quieter voice. Leafs through his contacts and stops at the one signed 'free ice'.
“Blurr? Where are you? Wha...ah, no wait. No, the advertising agency called. No, liste...Can you shut up for one second?Where are you?
Uh-huh....... Uh-huh.Okay.
Give me half an hour...okay, yeah.”
This is it, Swerve thinks.
He shrinks himself further and teleports under the collar of Swindle's coat.
He wants to take a look. Just. Just a peek. Make sure everything's all right. Then he can go about his original mission in peace. He watches Swindle get in his car and drive off somewhere. Swerve doesn't recognize this part of town. The houses here are much nicer than where he lived. The streets are cleaner.
He tucks himself further under the coat collar. He's not going to be a stalker or anything, but he's worried and he doesn't have time to wait for Blurr himself to show up for work. Just one little look and that's it.
Swindle's car stops outside a beautiful, shiny hospital. Swerve nervously tries to bite his knuckles, but remembers he's disabled touch in his holoform. Shit? Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shi
Blurr looks like a mangled corpse.
Okay, not really. His left side that faces the door to the hospital room looks like a mangled corpse and that's the first thing that catches Swerve's eye when he's inside.
Blurr is pale and thin and his hands are covered in bandages. The left side of his face has been turned into an absolute ugly nightmare. A piece of his ear is missing. In the place of the left eye is a creepy empty hole.
Suddenly Swerve realizes why Blurr didn't show up for work. You can't even show him to his coworkers like that, not just to the public.
Blurr turns his head and the spell breaks. His lips stretch into a cocky smile.
“'Got bored without me Swindle?”
Swindle doesn't show the slightest emotion at the gruesome sight. He casually pulls a chair over to the hospital bed and sits down.
“Shockwave is trying to sneak a new project into the program. And he's slowly swaying investors to his side, using you as an excuse. Tells everyone you're a poor martyr he can save if only he's given the green light from above.”
Blurr wrinkles his nose.
“Not that he's wrong. The doctors say I need to pick a new career because with this...” he jerks his head to the left implying his damaged half, ” neither racing nor piloting is an option for me anymore. I'm out of your project.”
Then he stops talking for a few seconds and raises an eyebrow curiously.
“You wouldn't have come here in person just to say that. Why are you really here?”
Swindle adjusts his glasses
“Have I ever told you why I made the contract with you?”
“Because you like money” Blurr says without hesitation.
Swindle lets out a quiet chuckle.
“Fair point. But money wasn't my only priority.”
He pauses for a second. Gets up. Draws the curtains in the room. Checks to make sure no one is outside the door.
Goes back to his seat.
“You didn't see what the Mecha project was like before. Brutality and absolute disregard for human rights multiplied by a thousand. People were desperate and no one cared to maintain any decency.”
He raises his hand when Blurr rushes to say something.
“No no, listen to me. If you think things are bad now, you're right. But it used to be much. Much, much worse.”
Swindle sighs and adjusts his glasses again
“Vortex was taken as a boy. He wasn't even out of high school when they shoved him into the lab. Me and Onslaught were pulled right out of the college exams. The others were no better, although they were usually a little older. My point is that it was allowed. It's what the superiors could do and no one told them no.”
Blurr tilts his head and gets a little all turned around to see Swindle better with his right eye.
“But you... found a way to change that, didn't you?
Swindle rubs the bridge of his nose
“I have no power over my own superiors. But Onslaught and I have come up with a plan. Look. I'll put it in simple terms for you. Above me is my boss, and above him is another boss, and so on but at the very end of that chain are people from the government. The investors. So we figured out a way to cut through the chain of command and influence them directly. Make them worry about us. It's a kind of social shield. Onslaught is a genius.”
Blurr blinks.
“Why are you telling me all this.”
Swindle takes off his hat and just. Crumples it in his hands. The back of his head shows numerous scars and the glint of tiny metal implants barely visible behind his hair.
“You're that shield right now, Blurr. You can't leave.”
Blurr's eye widens
“Is that why you insisted on ‘befriending’ me with all those bullshitters?”
“I needed to make sure that in their minds we weren't just a military unit. To keep them thinking that we're as human as they are. So I gave Project Mecha a face.” He tugs on the hat again, “Your face.”
Blurr runs his fingers through his hair
“Shockwave can't do whatever he wants cause...because of me his efforts would risk going public and people wouldn't like it and it would ruin the reputation of our investors-and-they'd-cut-off-his-funding.”
Swindle puts his hat back on.
“Exactly.’ That's why he's being so persistent right now. He knows you're vulnerable and he wants to capitalize on the opportunity. Make you part of his new project and tell the world about it. Make publicity his weapon, too.”
The lamp above them flickers faintly. Blurr takes a breath. Long and tired and exhausted and. a bit doomed.
Swindle puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Please. Don't leave. At least not now. And don't let Shockwave get to you. That would open the way for him to get to the rest of the pilots you represent.”
They just. Sit in silence for a while. Blurr quickly taps a finger on his knee. A rapid tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
Swindle moves his hand away and gets up from his chair.
“There's a press conference coming up. I need you to be there. I've told everyone who needs to know that the problem is exaggerated and you're fine but they need to see you.”
Blurr smiles sourly.
“My lawyer is going to charge you such a handsome sum for that stunt.”
Swindle laughs, but his cardboard advertising smile doesn't reach his eyes.
“We’ll see about that. Seriously though. I need you there.”
Blurr bites his lip.
“I..don’t know...”
Swerve...doesn't know what to think of that.
Blurr shows up for the press conference. Late, but he makes it. Just as Shockwave is presenting his new project in his amazingly well-pitched voice. Blurr swings the door open and waltzes lazily inside, skillfully pretending not to notice the many cameras and eyes instantly directed at him.
Swerve, whose memory is still fresh thinks for a second that no, no this can't be the same person. Past Blurr looked like a wreck. Past Blurr was tense and tired and hunched over. Present Blurr couldn't look more alive. His shoulders are squared proudly, there's that cheerful springiness and grace in his stride. He moves with ease and confidence. Smoothly.
The left side of his face is neatly covered with fresh white bandages. Carefully, without leaving the even the slightest gap through which his injury could be seen. His hands are hidden under a fancy jacket. He smiles wide and bright and squints playfully toward the table.
The very embodiment of nonchalance. The few pilots sitting in the audience roll their eyes.
Swindle breathes out a barely perceptible sigh of relief. Swerve, once again using Swindle's collar as a tactical cover, can't help but let out a silent triumphant laugh. Maybe slightly more nervous than he is supposed to be.
Blurr sends Swindle a sly, sharp smile and even knowing it wasn't meant for him, Swerve feels his cheeks heat up.
Ah, damn it.
Swerve breaks the rules. He tells himself that peeking is fraught with consequences when it comes to military organizations, but he can't stop himself from being curious. And from worry, too.
And now that he knows where to look, he sees things he'd rather not see.
Blurr ... is crumbling.
Swerve doesn't know all the details and consequences, but that incident did leave a mark.
But every time Swindle calls him and says “I need you at some place in two hours” he gets up and assembles himself into a human being. Like a goddamn puzzle. Tapes and covers the burned half of his face. Covers up the bruises and hides the stitches. Fixes his hair and sets off on shaky legs to pretend he's fine.
He smiles so bright and carefree, laughs so sweet and beautiful that no one would ever think that even standing up sometimes hurts.
And continues to act like a jerk of course.
The only difference is that this time Swerve mentally gives him the presumption of innocence before he starts judging.
Blurr does a lot of things that seem rude. He also does a lot of things that are actually rude and figuring them out without resorting to alien superpowers would be nearly impossible.
When the pilots see Blurr sitting right on the table while negotiating with investors, they roll their eyes and make comments about his terrible manners. Or when he stops showing up for even the most basic, rudimentary training.
Or when he develops that stupid habit of leaning his elbows on people standing next to him.
It's the model behavior of a rich, spoiled brat.
It's also an inconspicuous way to stay upright.
Employees say “that dumbass has never heard of personal space.”
Investors say, “I think he likes me.”
Blurr leans on Swindle's shoulder and through a charming smile says “Don't move or I'm gonna fall.”
Swindle also keeping up the smile discreetly holds him back, pretending it's a friendly half hug.
Swerve feels like yelling at both of them, but he's not sure what for exactly. For one thing, Blurr in his condition is very VERY VERY contraindicated to even get out of bed, let alone participate in social activities.
On the other hand, without Blurr, everything is going down the pit.
Without Blurr, all the government sees are dry reports and spreadsheets. Without him, all the high command has is numbers and a sense of impunity. Swerve is sickened by how easily people tend to forget that numbers represent other people.
Most pilots are able to draw a parallel between deteriorating working conditions and Blurr's sudden fondness for staying home instead of working. But they think the rich jerk got scared and ran away. Considering the way Blurr has always behaved at work - Swerve can't even judge them too much for it. They assume Shockwave getting more freedom is the cause of Blurr's absence, not the result.
Blurr's influence only becomes noticeable when it slowly starts to fade away. It's like switching from expensive tea to a cheaper one. The awful flavor only becomes noticeable in contrast.
Blurr doesn't lead the development of new technologies or go out to fight in the field. He doesn't make plans and reports, he doesn't participate in drills, he doesn't cover anyone's back in battle.
But he's the one who puts his hand on the government's shoulders when they're about to sign the next piece of paper. He's the one they have to look in the eye before they have a pen in their hands and a document authorizing Shockwave to stick more needles in people's brains.
It makes a difference. Small one. But still.
It turns a disembodied imaginary “combat units” into a tangible person.
From “do you want to accelerate the combat training of new soldiers” to “are you willing to tell the living, breathing guy standing in front of you that shoving poison under his skin is an idea you approve of.”
More importantly (And Swerve actually admires Swindle for this) Will you be able to explain anything to your families later on, when this same guy is on TV all over the country saying that's what you did to him?
There have been two fronts here all this time, Swerve realizes.
While the pilots were protecting people from monsters wearing teeth and armor, Blurr was protecting the pilots themselves from monsters wearing ties and lab coats.
After another conference, Shockwave stops Blurr in the hallway.
“Good show.”
Blurr laughs. Soundly and proudly.
“Thanks darling~ Sorry I interrupted you. Your speech sounded like something important, but I don't really know much about nerd stuff.”
Swerve, hiding on the ceiling again, snorts.
Shockwave doesn't move. Doesn't give any indication at all if he's offended or upset or whatever.
“It must have been hard getting here with your injuries.”
Blurr shrugs and lazily turns his head around distracted.
“It's just a few bruises here and there. Not the end of the world.”
Shockwave nods slowly. His voice and posture and all, Swerve thinks, looking very uncomfortable.
“Of course it isn't. But hardly good for your career.”
Blurr freezes.
No, Swerve thinks. Shit. No, don't listen to him, don't listen to him, don't listen to him, don't
“Your brilliant achievements have always been a source of admiration to me” continues Shockwave “it would be a pity to lose them.”
Blurr makes an indifferent face and tucks his hands into his pockets.
“Like I said. Not the end of the world.”
Swerve imagines choking Shockwave. Dropping a lamp on his head. Maybe jumping on top of him himself. Shut up, he thinks. Shut up, shut up, stop fucking talking.
Shockwave with a nice, slow gesture pulls out a notebook from somewhere and flips a couple pages.
“Multiple burns, cracked ribs, poisoning from carbon monoxide and combustion products of toxic chemicals...”
Blurr visibly shivers and looks away.
“...loss of vision on one side...” Shockwave continues reading, ”and partial hearing loss. Finally, the impact of neural link malfunctions. And this, if I'm not mistaken, is on top of the already existing memory problems?”
Shockwave takes a step closer. Not fast enough to make it look threatening, but enough to hover.
“It may not be the end of the world, but it is the end of you.”
He writes a set of numbers on the same page, tears it off, and hands it to Blurr.
“You are broken. I can fix you.”
Blurr frowns, but takes the piece of paper.
“That fixing would involve giving you consent to mess around with my head, wouldn't it? It's brave of you to think I'd go for that.”
Shockwave tucks the notepad into his pocket.
“I can assure you, neither I nor anyone else is interested in your brain. I just want to give you back what you're truly valued for.”
Blurr flinches.
“I don't need your help.”
“ If you say so,” Shockwave agrees easily. Nods, slowly and smoothly. Then starts to walk away “But you do need your fame.”
...
“By the way, you might want to wipe the blood off.”
Blurr waits until Shockwave's back disappears around the corner, then quickly pulls a tissue from his pocket and brings it up to his nose.
____________________________
Swerve wakes up looking up at the ceiling of his room. The high, metal ceiling, of a metal room on a metal spaceship.
Holy shit...
Jazz pokes him gently on the forearm
“Are you alive? You've been gone for like quite a while...Did it work?”
“Hey Jazz” frowns Swerve “what do you know about Blurr?”
Jazz laughs
“What are you fanboying over him again? Still??? Dude's smug and arrogant. Good boss though. I was hired to perform at his parties before I became a pilot.”
Swerve sits up and rubs the back of his head.
“Ah...”
“So it worked?”
“Wha...ah! Yes! Yes, it worked! I managed to get the number and codes from the space bridge the Quints used on you. We just need to find another space bridge and we'll have a pretty much direct route to Earth...well. Or rather, to the Quint ship that's located near Earth. You get the idea.”
Jazz rubs his hands together happily.
“I'll take it.”
Swerve jumps to the floor and heads to grab an energon cube. Man, these holoform exercises are burning energy like crazy.
He stares at his metal hands like an idiot for a couple minutes. Just...Contemplates how non-human they are.
He has eight fingers again instead of the human ten. Huh.
Prowl downloads the information he's gotten and immediately runs off to plan a route to the nearest working space bridge and for a while Swerve is just.
Left to himself.
He tries not to think about Blurr. What would he even say to him? Hey, look, I'm sorry I accidentally set you up, see, I'm actually an alien who was sleepwalking and thought you were fictional, surely this won't affect our non-existent strictly professional working relationship? Nah, screw that. If he's going to sound crazy, he needs to at least come up with a good presentation for his insanity.
....
Is it weird to think humans are beautiful if you're not human? If you're kind of human, but only in your soul and only half human?
He looks at Jazz and Prowl.
“You two get along really well.”
Jazz chuckles, sitting on Prowl's shoulder.
“Right now, yes. But we got on each other's nerves quite a bit when we first met.”
Swerve looks up at Jazz's chattering legs from his height and thinks. This is working somehow.
On the other hand, Jazz is the exception rather than the rule. He's friendly with everyone, he's easy to get along with, he's the soul of any company and most importantly, he was a little too much into robots before he discovered they could be alive. If anyone could find common ground with the Cybertronians, it would definitely be Jazz.
_____________________
”Are you a ghost?”
Swerve shrieks in fear and gets covered in static. He hadn't planned on talking. He hadn't planned on being noticed at all. Blurr was supposed to be asleep! And Swerve just wanted to close the curtains and leave, because there's some noisy party going on outside and bright illuminations are very bad for a patient already suffering from neural connection withdrawal.
He freezes in place like that dude from Jurassic Park. Like if he's still enough, he won't be noticed. Oh, or was that from another movie?
“I'm just uh” he awkwardly reaches up and closes the curtains “Lights. Bad for...you...now.”
Blurr chuckles. It sounds suspiciously joyful. His whole posture and facial expression. He looks very relaxed for someone who had a ghost materialize into the room out of thin air.
Swerve traces the line of the IV with his gaze. Oops, that looks like painkillers.
“Yes I am. Uh. A ghost watching the curtains. And now the curtains are fine, so I guess I'd better go?”
Blurr squints amusedly.
“You can walk through walls?”
“Uh, I can teleport into the next room?”
He backs up his words by making himself disappear and reappear in another corner of the room.
“Cool!” says Blurr cheerfully.
Swerve is involuntarily infected by his mood and makes a couple dramatic bows as if he were some kind of magician.
“ Show me more?”
“Hehehe okay eh” Swerve spreads his arms like he's presenting something and then makes himself the size of a soda bottle and teleports to the edge of Blurr's bed “Ta daaaa~”
“Wooooo look at you, you're like an action figure~”
Blurr immediately makes an attempt to touch him, but fails to reach and drops his hand back on the blanket.
Swerve chuckles and steps closer. It's funny to see the usually incredibly agile Blurr struggling with something so simple and ridiculous.
“They really drugged you huh?”
“It's not the drugs” snorts Blurr ”...it's my eye.”
He raises his hand once more and hesitantly pulls it towards Swerve until it bumps into his hair
“... depths Per…percen.. ah, shit. I can't tell how far away things are.”
Swerve just. Lets Blurr fidget at himself, while starting to feel really bad at the same time.
"If you can't tell how far things are, how are you going to drive?
Race???”
He must have a plan right? Something? Let’s-prove-Shockwave-wrong tactic???
Blurr drops his hands back on the blanket
“I won't.”
He freezes when the all too close fireworks rumble outside the window. Then points to his head.
“With this. I can't drive, I can barely walk at all, and I look like horror movie material. Pathetic heeh.”
Swerve sits down quietly cross-legged on the blanket.
“Well...at least you're alive....”
Blurr shakes his head.
“If I had died, it would have been epic. You know? Dharm...dramatic! It would be big news and everyone would be talking about what a hero I was or...or something...”
“...”
“Swindle would be so angry, but he'd figure out a way to make money out of it. He'd make a commercial about how people should be heroes. I'd be remn..remembered for being cool and brave and stuff.”
Fireworks can be heard from the street again. Swerve notices that there is a thin slit between the closed curtains through which a slim, flickering strip of multicolored light streams into the room.
Blurr frowns and leans back against the pillow, looking up at the ceiling.
“I've turned into a boring wreck. My records will be beaten, my career forgotten , and all the guys from work will remember me as a brat. In a--in a--in a way, it's worse than death. Shockwave's right.”
Swerve isn't sure what exactly would be an acceptable gesture of comfort, so he kind of just. Places his hand on the blanket covering Blurr's lap.
“Hey, don't say that. I think what you're doing is great.”
“Liar” smiles Blurr crookedly ”You hated me. I saw your posters collection.”
Oh shit. The ones he ripped off the walls and destroyed in a fit of fan frustration? He didn't even hide them, just shoved them in the back corner. Aw, man...
Swerve folds his arms awkwardly across his chest.
“I can be mad at you and think you're cool at the same time. I'm a multitasker.”
“You're a very specific kind of ghost.” says Blurr. Then, apparently inspired by the painkillers, decides to drop the conversational equivalent of an atomic bomb on Swerve's head “You died because of me?”
Swerve stiffens.
“I...Wwhat?”
“You know.” he makes a gesture with his hand that's ..unclear what it's supposed to mean. “You were working there with everyone else, and then there was that fire and I was sure I saw you down there under the rubble.”
He's silent for a couple seconds before he hesitantly continues
“And then no one could find you so most assumed you either burned or ran away. And now you're here with all your weird ghost stuff, so you must be dead.”
Swerve has.No idea what to think about it. And what to say? He's been so busy blaming himself for Blurr getting hurt that it hasn't occurred to him to think about what it looks like from Blurr's own perspective.
“Actually” says Swerve ”I'm an alien.”
“Heh” giggles Blurr ”sorry, my head’s all cloudy, I thought you said you were an alien.”
Swerve wants to run around and bang his head against the wall.
Instead, he gets up from the hospital bed. Carefully.
“You're high. I'm not going to explain things to you while you're high, you won't understand or remember them. Go back to sleep. It's the middle of the night.”
“You'll tell me later?”
Swerve hums quietly and pulls the curtains all the way closed.
“If future, sober Blurr would want my company.”
---------------
Jazz looks at him. Very intensely.
“Are you going to tell me who this mystery person you keep coming back to Earth for?”
Swerve snorts.
“What makes you think it's anyone in particular?”
“You're right, you're right~” raises his hands in surrender Jazz “So are you going to tell your friend the whole thing?”
Swerve crosses his ..metal arms over his metal chest.
“Is it that big of a deal? He thinks I'm a ghost or something.”
Being a ghost...somehow better, he thinks. If you're a ghost, it kind of automatically implies you're human. Or was a human.
“Sooner or later, he'll put the facts together~” says Jazz in a chant.
Swerve laughs.
“That's unlikely. He's got a pretty bad memory.”
_______________
His plans to stay out of anyone's sight combust with a dramatic pop the next time he projects himself to Earth. He doesn't plan to interfere, he doesn't even plan to linger. He just wants to see what's going on.
He actually just quietly sneaks into the hospital to make sure nothing's happened to Blurr since last time, but when he finally finds him then...oh shit, is that Pharma in the same room with him??? This can't be good.
They don't speak, but Pharma has clearly locked his eyes on Blurr and starts making his way towards him with the relentlessness of a industrial metal press.
Swerve does some rough math in his head. If he briefly gives his holoform back its detail and voice, will that be enough to fry his processor? He's not sure.
Pharma gives a believable impression of a shark getting close. The staff, as if sensing something untoward is about to happen, leaves the room in a hurry.
Blurr looks indifferent, but Swerve's attention is drawn to the way he squints tensely. Man, the lamps are too bright in here.
Pharma smiles sweetly and reaches out for a handshake
“Mind some company?”
Swerve's mental processes fly out the window. Oh no no. Not Pharma. Not in his fucking fanfic. He quickly changes his work clothes into a slightly more business-like looking shirt. Thinks for just a moment and adds a cap to his head to blend in more strongly with the attendants and hide his face to an extent. And then projects himself around the nearest unoccupied corner and runs out of behind it looking as anxious as he feels.
“Blurr!!! Sir, there you are!!! I've been looking everywhere for you!”
Pharma wants to say something, but Swerve doesn't even let him start. He stands in front of Blurr separating him and Farma expressively waves his hands trying to keep his head down.
“The guys you were talking about didn't bring the new hydraulics! It's a disaster, we'll have to use the one on the old models!”
Blurr, to his surprise, backs up his act almost instantly
“Really? But I thought there was nothing to take from the old models?”
“That's exactly the point! I got the paperwork this morning and...oh those assholes are going to screw it up if you don't step in as soon as possible!”
Pharma tilts his head
“Can it wait? We were actually talking here!”
Oh no, thinks Swerve I'll show you who's talking.
“Sir, no offense but this is a matter of extreme urgency. Are you implying that the safety of your patients is not important?”
“What do you mea...”
“Old faulty hydraulics, that's what you want?” raises an eyebrow in horror Blurr.
“No I'm just...”
“I had a better opinion of you, to be honest.”
“I...” opens his mouth Pharma “...WHAT...?”
Swerve shakes his head.
“And I thought his profession was to help people, can you imagine?”
“Wh..”
Blurr rolls his eye.
“Any idiot can get an important position these days.”
“Wait..”
“Tell me about it. Especially doctors.”
Pharma looks like he's about to start pulling the hair out of his head.
“Can at least one of you shut up??”
Swerve adjusts his cap in a businesslike manner
“Sir, I understand you're a bit detached from reality spending so much time in your department, but you need to take better care of your reputation.”
He raises his eyebrows knowingly
“Wouldn't want the rumors about you to turn out to be true. You know what I mean?”
Pharma doesn't even answer anymore. Pharma just looks like a discarded fish.
“…..Wha....there's rumors?”
“Of course” shrugs Swerve ”Ask Norman, he usually knows everything about everyone. And about your interesting tricks with safety, too.”
He leans in conspiratorially, effectively pulling all of Farma's attention to himself
“So if I were you, I'd stay out of any more things you don't understand.”
Pharma wants to say something. Swerve can tell by the look in his eyes. Pharma tries to come up with a witty and context-appropriate response, but this whole conversation has no more context than a typical episode of Teletubbies.
“Where does this Norman guy work?” finally finds the ground beneath his feet Pharma
Swerve shrugs.
“Block C, if he hasn't been transferred yet. He's already been fined several times for spreading harmful information you know? The guy can't keep a secret.”
Pharma throws his hands up angrily and storms away. Probably looking for context. Or revenge.
A quiet cough sounds behind Swerve's back.
“So. Should I be worried about Norman's health?”
Swerve feels the hair on the back of his neck shiver and slowly turns to face Blurr while still looking somewhere on the floor.
“Uh...only if you're concerned about the fate of fictional characters. I made up Norman's wife, she'll be upset if he gets fired for gossiping.”
Blurr chuckles. Then goes silent. Then, after a couple seconds, starts laughing again. That's a good look for him, Swerve thinks. It's not like Blurr's usual velvet-smooth laugh that he uses at social events. It's more like a quick, jerky giggle, and in Swerve's subjective opinion, it's pretty damn cute. He can't help but grin.
Blurr snorts one last time, cutting off the laughter.
Then he reaches out his hand to him.
Swerve reaches back, expecting a handshake, but Blurr ignores his hand and instead goes for his cap and lifts it by the brim.
Swerve, not expecting this, freezes with his hand outstretched.
Blurr freezes as well, still holding the cap in his hand and looking...like he's rethinking his life. A little.
Blurr shifts his gaze from Swerve to the cap in his hand. Then back to Swerve.
“You're real???”
Swerve awkwardly waves his hands in front of him
“Ah not.., not really. Do you know why Pharma was looking for you in the first place? He doesn't work with patients anymore, he's been reassigned to the research department, right?”
Blurr shrugs.
“Last time I saw him, he said I might have implant rejection in the third ..uh..what? stage? or something? I think he's trying to get me in for a checkup.”
Swerve twitches.
“Third??? How are you still standing???”
He then quickly reaches up with both hands to Blurr's head and tilts it so he can see his face better. Using one thumb, he pulls his lower eyelid slightly and mentally catalogs. Temperature normal, pupil normal, eyes are steady, no darkening or trace of blood on the eyelid. Implants? He puts both palms up and gently feels the places behind Blurr's ears. No signs of rejection or malfunction.
“No no no” sighs Swerve ”You're fine, it's only stage two. I mean, second sucks too, migraines and all, but you just need to rest and no bright lights and...” he finally notices his hands are still on Blurr's head and pulls them back as fast as if he's been burned ”I MEAN I'm uh...sorry, I didn't mean to, I...”
Blurr laughs quietly.
“I'm glad you're back.”
_____________________
He wakes up in his quarters and can feel his face burning.
When he goes out to get the energon, Jazz throws him a look.
“Is something wrong? You're all kinda...shaky.”
“Hhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuu” imitates signs of life Swerve “Say, doesn't it bother you that Prowl isn't human?”
Jazz smiles
“ Oh, I went crazy when I found out. But we figured it out.”
“Like...on a scale from ‘bad grade in school’ to ‘an asteroid is coming to Earth’ how crazy was it?”
“Worried about what your human friends will think?”
Swerve swings back and forth on his heels
“Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff. Whatnooooo, no of course not. I'd be worried if I planned on telling them at all.”
Jazz frowns
“No offense, but keeping secrets isn't your strong suit.”
Part 2 of Drift/Deadlock and Hot Rod playing air hockey with their remaining brain cells!
Ratchet desperately plays referee.
———————————————————————
The morning Sun was poking Ratchet in the eyes. He scrubbed one hand over his face while the other groped down the side of his recliner for the lever to drop his feet.
There was one more blanket on him than what he’d gone to sleep with.
Daw.
Ratchet needed something bitter immediately to compensate.
Rolling out of his chair with a patented old man grunt, Ratchet was about to get coffee when he realized there was a distinct lack of nitwits harassing him.
Ratchet could hear Hot Rod and Deadlock outside and turned heel to enforce some basic self preservation. He paused, and grabbed a broom for good measure.
Sitting crisscross on the pavement, Deadlock was rolling Hot Rod from one hand to the other and back again. The pilot alternated between somersaulting, sliding and swinging back and forth all while not breaking conversation.
“So you caught on fire and just kept fighting anyways?”
“Yup! Turned out to be an awesome way to get out of any grapple instant-“ Hot Rod huffed, tucking into another roll, “-taneoulsy!”
Ratchet cleared his throat and Deadlock instantly closed his hands around Hot Rod like a kid caught playing with something he shouldn’t have.
“Watcha got there?”
“Nuthin.” Said Deadlock.
“Nuthin.” Said Hot Rod, muffled.
Deadlocks face was twitching more and more the longer he tried to keep an innocent expression. He didn’t even bother trying to suppress the way his finales wriggled in clear amusement.
Hot Rods red mop of a head popped up between Deadlocks thumbs.
“Mornin Ratch! How’d ya sleep?”
Ratchet put the broom down, for now.
“I slept surprisingly well. And don’t call me Ratch.”
“Deadlock gets to call you Ratch! He also calls you HRUMF-“ Hot Rod was unceremoniously cut off. Deadlock frowning down at his re-clasped fists.
Ratchet couldn’t quite make out what his mech was muttering but it sounded suspiciously like “Little snitch.”
Before Ratchet could tell him to let Hot Rod go, both of Deadlocks finales snapped back with a twinned sharp CLACK.
“EUAGH.”
Deadlock whipped one hand away, shaking it vigorously while the other held Hot Rod upside down.
“He licked me!”
“And I’ll do it again!” Hot Rod yelled, tiny fists raised in victory.
Ratchet got the broom back out, “Kid, put him down. Gently. And Hot Rod, stop fucking licking people.”
Adequately humbled by threat of bristly doom, both dipshits complied.
Hrmph.
“Okay, Roddy, you know the drill before I’ll let you you head back to base.”
Hot Rod sighed in overdramatic resignation before plopping his butt on an often forgotten picnic table that got more use from spiders than humans. Deadlock rested his chin on his un-licked hand and watched curiously.
Ratchet appreciated that, though he wouldn’t admit it. Deadlock was always quiet and thoughtful while Ratchet worked. Kid had an uncanny talent for anticipating what Ratchet needed and picked up on when the bioengineer worked beyond his limits. Well, tried to work beyond his limits.
Since Deadlock started living with him, Ratchet never got away with overworking anymore. He was a big fella with a fearsome temper that dissuaded most folks from pushing him. Previous challengers that tried to force Ratchet to maintain a work-life balance usually gave up on him around the same time the first throwable object goes sailing towards their face.
Deadlock just snorted and put his foot down.
Literally.
He put his foot on top of a piece of particularly contentious machinery that had been driving Ratchet up the wall, refusing to move until he agreed to a “Power Nap” that ended up lasting 6 hours.
Ratchet snorted at the memory and pulled out a pen light as he started Hot Rods physical.
“Do not encourage him.” If Ratchet got any satisfaction from Hot Rod wincing as he checked his pupil dilation, then that was his business.
“Okay, but what if I was in a roll cage? It’d be heftier to throw AND safer. Ratchet! You could even design one so it’s definitely up to spec!”
Ratchet was going to get an ulcer from second hand stupid.
He pinched the bridge of his nose very hard before speaking, “You want me to make you a human sized hamster ball so Deadlock can bat you around like a spoiled house cat?”
“Yeah!”
“No!”
Hot Rod mumbled dejectedly to himself while Ratchet tested his range of motion. Once satisfied, Ratchet moved onto the question’s section.
“Alright Roddy, any headaches?”
“No.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“Balance issues?”
“You saw me do a whole gymnastics routine on a giant vampire-space-robot.”
“Hrmph. Light headedness?”
“No.”
“Lapses in consciousness?”
“Sleeping count?”
“Hot Rod.”
“Joking! And no.”
“Blurry vision, ringing in the ears or sensitivity to light or noise?”
“Nope, nope, and nope! I’m fine Ratchet!”
“I’m fine Ratchet? You know how many currently dead pilots have said that to me?”
“Well, Pharma signed off on-“
Ratchet slammed the penlight down on the cracked wood table with more force than necessary, making both the pilot and the mech jump.
“Pharma is a conceited piece of SHIT and the only thing his ‘Sign Off sheets’ are good for is WIPING. MY. ASS.”
Ratchet forced air through his nose. Both Deadlock and Hot Rod frozen in place, wide eyed and tense.
Shit.
Ratchet broke the unintended stare down by scrubbing a hand over his face. He should really shave.
“Sorry. You’re not in trouble. It’s just-“
“Pharma.” Hot Rod finished. “It’s okay doc, I get it. You got waaaay higher standards than him. S’why I keep coming back. I trust you. And I know no matter how bad things get you’ll always have our backs, and we’ll have yours.”
It was moments like these that reminded Ratchet of why he wanted to fight for people like Hot Rod.
“Plus,” Hot Rod leaned towards Deadlock and yell-whispered dramatically. “He’s been a huge asshole ever since Ratchet dumped him.”
It was moments like these that reminded Ratchet of why he wanted to strangle people like Hot Rod.
“Stop phrasing how I left the mecha program like that. It wasn’t just Pharma I had issues with.”
Ratchet tucked his penlight away and ignored the murderous plotting he could feel wafting off of Deadlock. Don’t kill my “ex” coworker was still a rule in effect until further development.
“Last question. Any weird pressures?” Ratchet did finger quotes around the last two words and waited.
Hot Rod was about to automatically say No again but stopped short, and visibly did a mental check of himself.
“Uh, kind of around my stomach and the top of my thighs?”
Ratchet hummed, “Alright, pull up your shirt a little.”
Hot Rod did as he was told, just above the waistband, Ratchet could see some mild day old bruising.
“Yep, that’s what you get for flinging yourself through a car window instead of using the door ya dingbat.”
Ratchet straightened up and appraised the pilot one more time.
“Alright, make sure you put some ice on that when you get back. Otherwise you’re good to go.”
Hot Rod pulled his shirt back down and broke into a grin.
“Thanks Ratchet! See you guys again soon! Don’t do anything awesome without me until then okay?” Hot Rod pointed back to Deadlock for that last bit and waited until he said “On my life!” before finally driving off with a wave goodbye.
—————————
They had each finished their breakfasts, oatmeal and horrible alien blood respectively, when Ratchet said “I need to talk to you about something.”
Deadlock tensed, plating pulling in close before loosening again. Kid probably thought he was in trouble but could tell immediately that Ratchet wasn’t upset with him. He wasn’t sure how the mech did it, but damn if it didn’t make talking to him easier.
“What’s up?” He wiped quintesson gunk from his mouth.
“You gotta be careful with Hot Rod. You really cannot feed into any crazy ideas he has because he will get hurt and it will be by accident.”
Deadlock pinned his finales back and crinkled his nose. “I was careful Ratch. I did everything the way you taught me. I didn’t pick him up by the head, didn’t squeeze him too hard or nothin. And I was ready to stop at any second the moment he said anything hurt!”
“Kid.” Ratchet rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s the thing. He can’t.”
Deadlock tilted his head, “What do you mean?”
———————————————————————
It’s getting real late again and I’ve already resigned myself to making this a three parter.
This time on the Trio of Friendship and Bad Ideas: Deadlock gets to play with a human slinky, Ratchets looses his sanity and something is up with Hot Rod.
Secrets of the mecha programs side effects will be revealed! Next time.
- SSTP
The way I legitimately can't stop smiling while reading this.....
The way your writing feels like a beam of pure joy flashbanging me through the screen. I can't evenKTYLGMNFHD I DONT FUCKING KNOW WHAT ARE YOU ADDIND IN YOUR WRITING BUT THIS STUFF IS ADDICTING PLEASE KEEP IT UP 👁
Also the mental image of Roddy being a human equivalent of a fidget toy for Deadlock is so entertaining I couldn't resist drawing it jfyjncfh
Roddy still doesn't have a design...oh well........
