#Either kill me. Finish my chassis. Or get me out of here.
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
bullshitexe-blog · 7 years ago
Text
@corpsenbones replied to your post.
need some help
If you know how to, I would appreciate it.
3 notes · View notes
canadian-riddler · 2 years ago
Text
Love as a Construct Part 59: GLaDOS moves the facility (2022 revision)
Not the entire chapter, just the biggest change for people who are interested in it [2893 words]
“You want me to what?  Tell the panels to do something about the floor?”
Happily, the panels are more intelligent than she is at the moment and they behave accordingly.  I think.  My optic isn’t actually on right now.  I can hear them moving, anyway.
“Oh,” Chell says, and with that she clambers out of me.  I am unable to hold back the equivalent of a gasp.  She couldn’t have done that more nicely?
“Sorry,” she tells me, at least actually sounding sorry.  Don’t take this out on her, I berate myself.  I give myself a moment to centre my thoughts.
“Now… now go.”
“I’m not leaving you here like this.  They’ll be back.  They’ll bring something stronger this time.  They must know by now that the pulse worked.”
Despite myself, I spin out the conclusions resulting from that statement: If the panels in here collapsed, then the rest of the facility will be in much the same state.  They’ll know that.  They’ll have sent more soldiers.  These soldiers will have both a generator and means to navigate the facility.  Thank God I disconnected myself from the panels.  They will remain collapsed and that will stymie whomever has made it inside while I was out. 
It's time for the nuclear option.  I just need a few minutes to recover.  A few more minutes, that is, but it’s not my fault my startup procedures take a quarter of an hour.  Being forcibly shut down puts a lot of stress on my components, though, so I suppose my lengthy boot sequence worked in my favour in this instance. 
“You… must.”
“I don’t.  Look, GLaDOS, I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but it looks pretty bad.  Are you going to be able to handle whatever comes next by yourself?”
Raising my chassis doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it was going to.  Good.  “Your… family.”
“What about yours?”
“I told you.  What to… to tell her.”  I never thought this would happen, Caroline.  Forgive me for being so short-sighted. 
“I am not going back there and telling her that… that I left you here.  Look.  I promised I would find a way for her to see you again, and I’m not breaking that promise.  If we’re getting out of this, we’re doing it together.  So come up with a plan, already.”
Fine then.  Be that way.  “Oh, I… have one.  But you aren’t… aren’t going to like it.”
She stares directly into my optic.  “What do you need from me.”
“N… neurotoxin,” I tell her, knowing she won’t take it too well, and sure enough, she protests.
“We’re not back to you telling me to kill myself, are we?”
“No, idiot.  The aliens.”
“Oh!” Chell says, sounding like she just had a flash of inspiration, and she tells Surveillance to find the sections of the facility with Combine soldiers still in them.  Good little lunatic.  You’ve redeemed yourself.   Somewhat. 
While I’m waiting on that, I run the fastest bench tests I have.  They aren’t as good as a diagnostic, but they’re going to have to do.  
“What’s next?” she asks, as the benchmarks return suboptimal but encouraging numbers.
“My last resort.”
“Which is?”
“I have to… to move the… facility.”
She’s looking at me with those murderous eyes wide, slack-jawed.  Like she thinks I’ve gone completely corrupt.  And not Core Transfer corrupt, either.  Unsalvageable.  Scheduled for the Emergency Intelligence Incinerator.
“You’re going to move Aperture.”
“Yes.”
“How in the hell are you going to do that?”
“The Borealis, Chell.  Same principle.”
“The Borealis is a boat!” she yells, stepping forward.  “This is… a salt mine!”
“I’m glad you were paying attention when we took that… tour of the original facility.”
“You’re trying to tell me you can move this entire building.”
“Yes.” 
It takes me a couple of minutes to retrieve one of the Relaxation Vaults, during which time she continues to lecture me on how stupid she believes I’m being, but which also allows me to finish recovering from the EMP.  It’s always extraordinarily painful to be forcibly shut down like that, but once electricity has worked its way back through my chassis and my facility and my startup procedures have completed I feel much better.  Which is good, because this next part is going to be… difficult.  I turn to her and say, “If you won’t leave the facility, there’s somewhere else you need to go instead.  You can’t stay here.”
“Where?” 
“Down there.”  I nod towards the exit from my chamber.  “You need to go into a Relaxation Vault.”
Her face screws up in confusion.  “Why?”
“It will give you your best chance at surviving the trip.”  I don’t know where Dr Rattmann is, but there’s a thirty-three percent chance, rounded, that he’s already in one, given he uses them to sleep in.  They’re all connected to the same system, so if he is asleep it will ensure he remains that way.  If he’s elsewhere… well, unfortunately I don’t have time to search for him right now.
“You don’t know if we’re going to survive,” Chell says.  I check the exterior cameras.  I should have enough time to have this conversation before I begin the procedure. 
“I don’t.  I’m not going to explain how it all works right now, even if I thought your uneducated monkey brain would be able to comprehend it.  The short of it is, I need the entire facility to be nearly motionless.  I have to know where every atom of everything in here is.  Because you don’t have the ability to stop moving, I need to put you into a coma to force you to move as little as possible.”
Chell looks down the bridge, her mouth set in apprehension. 
“I will wake you up when we get there.”
She shakes her head.  “I don’t like it.”
“Well, too bad,” I tell her.  “Now hurry up.  I don’t have time for your stubbornness right now.”
She takes one step towards the doorway and stops.  She looks at me and then back down the hallway again, and it suddenly strikes me what this is about.
“You don’t think I can do it.”
She opens her mouth and then closes it again. 
“Fine.  Doubt me.  But I’m doing it.  You can go into the Relaxation Vault or you can wake up on the other side with your internal organs missing.  Or not wake up, depending on which ones remain here.  Your decision.”
“Where is the other side?”
“Aperture once had plans for expansion.  There is a piece of land where Ohio used to be which holds the remnants of the office there.”
Chell nods slowly and moves back towards the exit.  “Okay.”
“I’m going to do it, and then I’m going to say ‘I told you so’.”
Chell rolls her eyes.  “If you don’t, I’ll be dead and I won’tbe able to say it.”
“You won’t know you’re dead, so really, I’m doing you a favour either way.”
It takes her another couple of minutes to do as I’ve asked.  In the meantime I pull up the 3D map of the land in former Ohio and calculate exactly how much I need to remove in order to fit the facility into that space.  It won’t be a perfect fit.  There are far too many variables for me to truly account for everything.  The important thing is that I get close enough that the structural integrity of the facility isn’t compromised.  Or at least, not compromised faster than I can fix it.
The next step in the plan is much, much harder.  I normally don’t do it because, quite frankly, the facility is enormous, but in order to move it I have to be aware of it.  All of it.  I instruct the mainframe to filter the whole of it into my consciousness slowly, not because I can’t handle it all at once, but because doing it feels like adding things onto my physical body.  My sentience really does get in the way of things like that. 
That takes about ten minutes.  I’ll be honest.  It’s very nearly overwhelming.  There is so much I’m going to have to keep track of all at once.  Maybe… maybe this is beyond me.
No!  No.  I can’t afford to doubt.  I can do it.  I ease my awareness of the facility into the periphery of my consciousness, which helps.  All right.  Moving onto the next task.
That also takes a while, because what I have to do is lock as much of the facility into the most optimal configuration as I can.  It will not be perfectly motionless, which would be ideal, but as long as modern Aperture is close to it I can focus on the older parts of the facility and ensure I leave as little of it behind as possible.  Everything needs to be returned to its original place.  The EMP shut down all of the active production lines, which actually works in my favour as all I have to do is put away everything they were producing as opposed to running all those shutdown procedures.  I do have to put out the incinerator, but I hesitate before doing so.  Am I going to be able to restart it?  I think it’s been operational since it was installed.  It doesn’t matter.  I have to.  I’ll worry about the consequences later.
Everything I don’t need has now been shut off and locked into position.  Even the hard drives above me that provide me with the increased memory I need for day-to-day operations.  Except for me.  I still need to paralyse myself.  I lower my chassis to face the floor, but stop there. 
Paralysis means… powerlessness.
You still have full usage of your mind, GLaDOS, the mainframe, the only system other than me who is absolutely essential, reminds me.  And you need to hurry up and use it.  With Surveillance shut off, we don’t know what’s going on outside. 
It’s right.  I can’t afford to delay.  I lock my chassis into position and immediately want to scream.  I’m expecting the floor to open up and threaten to swallow me even though I know it isn’t going to.  Even if it wanted to, the Core Transfer Apparatus is frozen beneath the floor.  If Caroline was still inside my head, this would all be so much easier.  She would know what to say.  I’m not afraid.  I’m not.  But this is… a big job.  And I am old.  Too old to be pulling stunts like this.
Caroline was too old to be put inside of me, and she did it anyway.  Because she had to.  Because there are just some things only you are capable of, whether you are fully aware of that fact or not.  And I am.  I am fully aware of that fact.  No one else could do this.  I am the greatest machine in all of existence, and I am going to do something only someone of my calibre could do.  I am going to accomplish the impossible in order to keep my facility safe.  I am the Central Core and I will do what I must, because I can.
Start the teleportation engines, I instruct the mainframe.  It being so new, it doesn’t really have the ability to defy my orders, but it tries to.
What do they do?
It doesn’t matter right now.  Do it.
It would have been good if I could get into my own task manager.  I would have been able to put my emotional processes on low priority.  Consciously suppressing them is a lot harder.  And it’s something I need to do right now, because the physics calculations for the entire facility are now flooding into my brain and they need to be dealt with near instantly.  To remove the facility from space without breaking physics, which it would be impossible for me to do, I have to oscillate it at the speed of light.  I also have to bring every single thing inside of it up to that speed without destroying it.  It’s a lot.  It’s a lot more than I thought it was going to be.  The entire facility is shaking around me and the noise, dear God, the noise seems to be surrounding me physically. Even locked down as tightly as possible, everything is still rattling in place and the cacophony it makes almost drowns out my own thoughts.  My chassis aches from the force required to attempt to keep it in place.  My brain, too, is starting to hurt and I’m only halfway there. 
I can do it, can’t I, Caroline?
The structural integrity of the facility is holding, the mainframe, which is free from both sensation and emotion, tells me.  T-minus one hundred twenty seconds to lightspeed.
Oh, this is going to be a fun two minutes to relive for eternity if this process kills me…
Heat is pouring out of my core and Climate Control is off so the temperature of the room around me is rising at an alarming rate.  Shit.  I didn’t think of that.  And even if I had, there wouldn’t have been anything I could have done about it.  Something in my core is going to go and I’m not going to be able to replace it.  Whatever it’s going to be.  If I abort right now I might be able to save myself –
No.  No.  Caroline will have a home to come back to.  She will have that if it’s the last thing I ever do.
T-minus thirty seconds.  Still holding.
Come on, I say to myself.  Come on.  Thirty seconds.  That’s nothing.  Well.  No.  It’s rather a lot, actually, but I’m going to make it.  I am.
Everything around me is shaking as though on the brink of disintegration.  The noise must be audible from clear across the Great Lakes.  Every single haptic sensor in my chassis is screaming at me to stop the procedure.  And my brain is fighting me, attempting to force me to shut off before the incredible heat in my core causes irreparable damage.  But I’m almost there. 
T-minus ten seconds. 
My programming is attempting to force me to black out.  I’m not going to.  Not when I’m so close. 
Initiating matter exchange, the mainframe says.  Hang in there, GLaDOS.
I’m going to.
Exchanging.
Time ceases to exist.
It’s… terrifying.  I’m a supercomputer.  My entire existence centres around timing and now I am beyond time itself.  What happens if the facility remains outside of time and space?  Do I even have the ability to exist?
It doesn’t matter.  I don’t have the ability to keep the entire facility in this state.  It would kill me.  It’s probably killing me right now.
Exchange complete.  Initiating return to realtime.
Oh, God.  I still have to bring the facility back to a standstill.
I can’t do it, Caroline.
I don’t even know which one of them I’m talking to.
Initiating deceleration.  Decelerating.
The strain on my core is almost unbearable.  I’m screaming but I can’t hear it over the sound of the facility vibrating around me.  I can feel every square centimetre of it and it is the worst sensation I have ever had.  I want it away from me.  It’s too much.  I took on too much.  I’m going to die.  I’m going to die and Caroline will never know I am sorry.
Deceleration at fifty percent.  Structural integrity is holding, but… be careful.
I’m failing.  I brought it here but I can’t finish.  The calculations I have to do are getting away from me.  I’m so overheated it’s a good thing I shut down everything except the mainframe, because if I hadn’t I would have thrown the ceiling open and subsequently shattered myself, as well as the entire facility.  What a sight that would have been. 
Two minutes.
Something finally goes in my core, but I am in so much pain I can’t tell what it is.  My entire system is now at ninety-eight percent capacity.  If I can’t hold on for two minutes, all of this was for nothing.  I thought slowing the facility back down was going to be easier, but it isn’t. 
Stay with me, GLaDOS.
I’m trying.
One minute.  That’s it.  That’s all you have left.
The problem is that I don’t physically have anything left.  Chell will probably live, though.  I suppose she can say ‘I told you so’ to my dead body.  I won’t be around to hear it, though, so I’ll still have won.  So there’s that.
Thirty seconds.
If Wheatley were here, I could have attached him to me again.  He doesn’t have much for me to work with, but even a fraction less of this strain would have helped immensely. 
Ten seconds.
I miss him.
Deceleration complete. 
I did it.
Restarting essential processes.  Releasing Enrichment Centre from position lock.
All that means for me is that my optic loosens towards the floor.  I’m still at ninety-nine percent so I literally don’t have it in me to look at anything right now.  Not even the floor.  But that’s fine.  I did it.  It’s done. 
The hard drives above me move back into sluggish motion, and this last thing pushes me over my limit.  But it’s all right.  I did it.
Are you proud of me, Caroline?
8 notes · View notes
sunshineandcybertronians · 4 years ago
Text
Hurt (and Comfort) - Bumblebee x reader (TFP)
Word count: 1,100 Warnings: injury (nothing too serious) A/N: Based off of me somehow hitting my head (you’ll find out what it was on in this story) and I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder how it would be if this happened and Bumblebee was here.”
"Hey, Bee!" you waved at the yellow car pulling up to the school, with Raf standing beside you.
Bumblebee slowed down and opened the door, making a series of beeps.
"We're doing great. What about you?" Raf climbed in and made his way to the backseat.
You smiled at the familiar beeps making a reply. Although you didn't understand, it was a pleasant sound. After Raf was finished getting in and the passenger seat was pushed back into place, you moved to get in.
"What have you b-?" your question was cut off when your foot dropped. Having not realized that you stepped where the curb ended, you tripped and your forehead collided with the edge of Bumblebee's door.
"Ow..." you let out.
A soft, single clicking sound made its way to your ears, indicating that Bumblebee was about to instinctively transform to examine you to see how bad the damage was. Thankfully, he stopped himself when he remembered that Raf was currently inside of him and that he couldn't transform in the open.
"(Y/n)!" Raf leaned against the passenger seat to see if you were alright, concern written in his face.
Standing up shakily, with one hand on Bumblebee's paint for support and the other holding your injury. It still hurt, just as bad as when you first hit it. Through clinched teeth, you mouthed "slag".
Bee made a long string of worried buzzing. He sounded so upset, you almost wanted to apologize for tripping as if it was your fault.
"Are you okay?" Raf asked, surely repeating the scout, or one of his sentences since you weren't sure how much he said.
"Yeah, yeah. Just," you stumbled into the car seat. Almost as soon as you sat down, the seatbelt gently wrapped around you and clicked itself in. "It hurts a little." 'Or a lot,' you mentally added. "Thanks, Bee." a small happy smile and a slight laugh crept into your words. "Thanks, Raf."
"You're sure you're alright?"
"Yeah." You examined the spot in question in the mirror, there was no bleeding, but it would bruise for sure. "Just a little bump." 'That hurts like the pit!' you refrained from saying.
More unintelligible noises erupted from the speakers.
"Yeah, I didn't think it sounded like a little bump either. It was pretty loud."
"Nope, I'm good." 'Maybe in an hour,' you thought with your hand still holding your forehead. "The pain is dying down," you spoke the truth, but the aching had only lowered a third of the original portion.
You couldn't have known it, but it was killing Bumblebee that he couldn't hug you or do anything to take the injury away. He also wished he could reassure you, but you wouldn't understand and he didn't know the exact words to help you.
The conversation moved onto another topic on the way to the base. Your forehead still hurt, however you resisted the urge to cradle it to prevent them from knowing. You didn't want them to worry about you. Plus, you would be fine... sooner or later.
In almost no time, you were back at the base. Once you and Raf were out, Bee transformed back. Raf raced to the stairs to get to the higher platform, while you were more leisurely. You felt a tap on your shoulder and turned around.
The large yellow 'bot leaned down to your level, tenderly touching your head where the bruise was forming, careful not to hurt it.
"I told you, Bee, it's fine," you laughed, cautious not to let any frustration leak into your voice that would be taken the wrong way.
He chirped in a way you could tell he was persisting.
"I'm serious. I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me, please." You wanted to give a reassuring pat to the sweet mech.
He made a reply while holding out his hand for you to climb onto.
"Huh? Bee told you to not lie to him, he knows you're just saying that it didn't hurt," Raf translated for you.
Your eyes widened while looking up at him. With a step onto his servo, you stood on it while being brought up, whispering, "You knew?"
He nodded his helm. His optics readjusted in a way that showed sadness and concern. Your heart softened and so did your eyes. You reached out your hand and placed it on his faceplate. Your hand caressed his metal.
You sighed and pointed to the corridor. "Can we go there? I don't want to talk about it in front of everyone."
Nodding as he walked where you pointed. To make sure you didn't lose your balance, he held you against his chest. The movement of him walking felt comforting, something that could rock you to sleep. Once he enter the corridor, a couple good paces away from the main room. Once he found a good wall, he sat beside it with you still leaning on his chassis.
His optics stared down at you and he made several beeps.
"It did hurt, not as bad now, but it still aches a little." You began speaking again before he could ask the obvious question, "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry about me or be sad. I do that sometimes. I'm not sure why I'm like that. I guess I don't want everyone to worry about me, or maybe another reason I haven't discovered yet," you leaned into him. The corners of your mouth curved up slightly. "I have to admit, it's nice talking about it with someone. Thank you for comforting me."
He created a soft buzz, holding you up closer to his faceplate, but still on his chassis.
"Sorry, I can't understand you," you shook your head, "but thank you for whatever your trying to tell me."
Looking for an answer or way to communicate, his optics searched the room. They widened when he had an idea. Tracing his digit on the floor, he created words. There was no mark in the floor, but with how he was moving it you could tell what he was spelling. You leaned over her servo to get a better look. Soon you deciphered "anything you need?"
"Oh!" you stared back up at him. "Nothing, at least nothing I can think of, except for a hug."
As soon as the words left your mouth he hugged you as best he could and you hugged back. You could have stayed like that forever, you felt so happy and safe and loved being there with Bee. For that one moment, everything was perfect
252 notes · View notes
my-writings-and-musings · 4 years ago
Note
hey! so idk if you write platonic relationships but if you do, could you write something about whirl asking someone to be his amica endura? i just. i need more whirl love in my life and GODDAMN i love the way you write him sm gshdjf,,, thank you!! <33
I miiiiggghhht have gone a little overboard on this one and made it more of a short story than an answer... But I hope you like it! Thank you so much for the compliment, I do try my best to write Whirley well!
Whirl doesn't like to let fear boss him around. Ordinarily that's easy enough to accomplish, he's a big bot and threatening his life is a great way to end yours, and any threat he can't kill (for moral or legal reasons) can usually be ignored out of existence. As a result he's had very little to be afraid of these past few millennia, and he's even perfected his reflexes to the point he can quickly judge what reaction is warranted whenever that creeping feeling returns, meaning it never lasts more than a few minutes tops. It's a solid strategy, and the proof is that he's outlived everyone who's ever doubted it. Most of them, anyway. He's been getting sloppy since this whole quest thing.
Or more specifically, since he met you on this quest thing. The quest thing that's becoming less about the quest and more about the real treasure you've all gained along the way, which for once isn't the (many) guns he's found or the (countless) bad guy corpses he's left in the rearview mirrors.
Nope. It's you. The squishiest little air breather his optic has ever beheld, and darn the saps on this crew for rubbing off on him, because he wants to go out of his way to let you know that. Their silly insistence on honesty has made him feel like you need to know what you mean to him, and isn't that just ridiculous?
But if it's so ridiculous why was he scared? Because you could say no, damn it! You'd be silly not to! It was one thing for you to hang out with the ship's resident screw up and part time nutjob, maybe even have a drink with him, and sure you'd actually called him your friend and the two of you had looked death in the eye to insult its cataracts on more than one occasion together... But to officially declare to the crew and the universe you were Amica Endura and that you actually liked him?
You'd be mortified he even thought it was okay to ask, obviously. Then you'd wisely cut all ties and pretend you didn't know him, and he'd be left with... well, not nothing, but not much above nothing either. Worse actually now that he considered it, he'd probably be left with pain. The kind of pain you only got when you lost something, a particular experience he'd spent a very long time trying to ensure he'd never have to endure again, and he'd been doing pretty well until you showed up. But he wasn't mad at you, he was mad at himself, both for having the audacity to grow feelings and then getting soft enough to actually acknowledge them like a sap.
But facing fear was far better than the alternative. If he kept on pretending you were just another chum, that you didn't deserve the title of Amica for what you meant to him, then he'd have guilt. More guilt, to be specific, and he was already fully stocked on that. So... fear it was then. Fear and the inevitable pain that would follow when you did the only sane thing you could.
But hey, what was another mistake in the pile, right?
You'd been in your room by yourself, just relaxing an perusing the wonders of interstellar Wi-Fi, when he'd decided there literally couldn't be a better time. Some bots insisted that a proper ceremony required witnesses, but those bots couldn't judge him if there were no witnesses, now could they? Checkmate, seeing as how the two of you would definitely never speak to each other again after this... His claws had knocked on the door with as little force as he could muster, some part of him hoping you wouldn't hear and he'd have a reason to retreat, but as usual he also had to open his mouth and ruin that plan.
"Hey, Y/N, you uh... you alive in there?"
Approximating a facepalm as best he could without either half of the required components, his spark dropped when you replied with a good natured laugh, probably thinking he was just being his usual self and not making much sense. Which was true, just not in the usual way...
You'd happily opened the door with a command on your data pad, inviting him to come in and relax because you weren't up to anything anyway. Claws clacking together nervously, he'd entered with an unconvincing veneer of calm, far too worried to really pretend otherwise. Long legs carry him with slow steps, and he can't help but survey your room; he's certain this is the last time he'll ever see it. Your tiny belongings looking so ridiculously small in the Cybertronian sized living space, the ladders that have been welded to everything, gosh, is it foggy in here or is that just some emotional turmoil in his optic?
"Whirl? Are you okay?"
Of course not, but thanks for asking is what he wants to say, but a more accurate reply would involve him mentioning how things were actually really okay for a while... Until he'd started messing it all up, a process he'd be finishing up now so you could both move on with your lives.
"Oh... that's a matter of debate." He finally brings himself to say, claws firmly pinched to prevent him from any further tapping. You look more concerned than baffled, which is nice. Somehow you'd always managed to look past what he said to understand what he means. That's something he'll miss, once he finally manages to get this over with. Of course his voicebox is pitching a fit and refusing to cooperate, but it's going to be a simple series of steps once he gets it going. He'll ask you to be Amica, you'll refuse, and then he leaves. It's such a simple plan that even he can't find something to blow up in the process. Not for lack of trying, mind you...
"Is there something you need? You've been a little off lately." You said, putting aside your data pad to move to the edge of the berth. It hadn't escaped your notice that the usually loud mech had been growing quiet around you as of late, his one optic looking almost forlornly in your direction when he thought you were focused elsewhere, and so you sat and let your legs dangle off the berth to let him know you were listening. His antenna twitched backwards like a startled ear on a mammal.
"Me? Well, I'd be inclined to say..." Some half attempt at a joke died before it even could be set up, and he quickly decided the stalling had gone on long enough. If he had to endure one more second of gnawing apprehension he was going to have to destroy something exceptionally expensive to shake off the nerves, and he had just gotten his room the way he liked it. Better to go down with some dignity if he could. "You're spot on, actually. I've been off because I've got something I've gotta get off my chassis, but it's not gonna be fun for either of us. Still needs to be done though, ain't that a shame?"
Any other person on the ship would have been terrified if he'd said that to them. They'd have expected some kind of terrible bodily injury, no doubt, but you knew him better than that. You knew that if he wanted to hurt anyone it would happen as soon as he entered a room, and with something way more intimidating to kick off the fun. Instead your expression was just thoughtful, concerned, and only a little confused. "I... if it upsets you then yeah, but why do you have to do it?"
"Do you know what an Amica is?" He blurted out, the words almost hurting as they came into being. It felt like he had just struck another match, surrounded himself with fuel, and this time there'd be no interruptions.
"Amica?"
"There an echo in here?" He said dryly, unable to help jumping on the chance for an old classic. Apologetically lowering his optics, he released a quick bit of air from his vents in imitation of a cough. "Yeah, that, know what it is?"
"Sure, it's like... best friends, only way deeper, bound for life." You said, recalling it amongst the many Cybertronian terms you'd been learning these past few months. It had obviously had cultural implications and connections you just didn't have the experience to understand, but the importance of the practice had been abundantly clear from the moment you first heard of it. Chief among the things you'd been able to determine was that it carried no less weight than being a Conjunx, it was just a different kind of love.
He clicked his claws together in an imitation of an affirming snap. "That's the one. It's tough to explain to aliens, but that's the basic rundown, and there's a whole ceremony to it and everything. Did you know that?" He appreciated that you only shook your head and looked back to him for an explanation, it made it quite clear you were intent on listening as much as possible. "A bot has to ask the one who's less likely to ask, and they get to say yes or no during the ceremony. I'd imagine by now you've figured out I came here to ask you to be my Amica, start the ceremony and everything, only thing stopping me is I... just don't want to."
It was the first time he'd surprised you in a long time. There had been... well, you'd been fairly certain he was leading up to something else there, and had just been nervous. You had to repeat back what he'd said in a question for clarification. "You don't want to ask me?"
"What? No! Don't put words in the mouth I don't have!" He replied vigorously, taking a step closer to your berth and throwing up his arms in total consternation. Upon seeing your comforting near smile of reasurance, he drops his claws and holds them near his face, a gesture he typically only performs when anxious. Thoughts are beginning to run wild in his head, so he knows he'll have to wrap this up before they sidetrack him, or he'll never get it done. Bless your little fleshy fuel pump for wanting to comfort him, but there just isn't time for that. "What I'm trying to get across here, or say or whatever, is that I want to but I shouldn't..."
"Ah... why shouldn't you? Does me being a human make it... illegal?" You ask, finally getting an inkling as to what's going on. As usual, his burying of the lede means you're far less shocked than you should be now that he's actually getting to the point, but you want to use that to stay calm. Whirl has been a dear friend to you, as protective as could be from the moment he decided he liked you. The least you can do is be what he needs by letting him talk things out in a way that works for him, even if it feels so much easier to cut to the chase; you'd love to be his Amica no matter the hurdles.
"You and I both know that would only make it better. Illegal friendship? Sounds more like an endorsement than a deterrent to me." It's hard for him not to laugh at the very idea. If this was actually against some law? Oh, how very different things would be... Somehow he'd feel okay then, perhaps because this would just be another of his crazy ideas, and not something sentimental and completely irreconcilable with who he was. Previously upright antenna drooped low at the disappointment. "But... no, no such luck. It's not illegal for me to ask you, just stupid, because you're going to say no."
Suddenly so many things made sense, but in the shock of sadness that followed you couldn't help but speak, your own disappointment showing through. "I am?"
"Well of course you are! That little pink glob between your ears is smart enough to know better! If you were most saps, sure, you'd probably say yes because oooh friendship, but the fact that you're sensible enough to say no is exactly why I want to ask!" He replied, sounding emphatic instead of angry. Despite being a master at appearing mad for the sake of self defense, he can't bring himself to appear anything but... sad. Every part of him is wilting from the sadness that's clocking in early. Because you have to say no, that's just how this works, and his resignation to that fact is clear no matter how badly he wishes it wasn't true. "Believe me, I know what smart looks like. I know what sensible looks like. Most people have a terrible deficit of the two, but not... not you. That's what makes you worth asking, and also worth saying no. Weird, huh?"
Your heart is breaking, somewhat for you, but mostly for him. Did he really think he was unworthy of friendship? Of any kind of love? Clearly you were his best friend, but in the fog of self loathing clouding his vision, he's convinced himself that it has to end now that he truly feels he isn't alone. "Whirl..."
Venting in sharply, like a human sucking in a breath to hold off tears, he perks up and gestures a claw back over his shoulder. "Look, I'm just going to save us both some drama and skip to the part where you kick me out. Since I'm nice, I'll even pretend you're big enough to actually do it. I'll throw myself into the hallway and everything, really seal-"
"Whirl." You say softly, knowing that yelling won't help but desperate to keep him from leaving. It works, but he pretends to be interested in the floor, crouching like he's preemptively flinching away from a hit. It's not the first time you've seen him do this. Coming to understand the big bot had been more natural for you than most, but had still taken effort, and in all the trial and error you'd learned he just needed things phrased a little differently. Thus, you decided to give what you'd learned a final trial.
"Can I at least... actually get a chance to say no?"
It was just indirect enough to immediately catch his attention, but his wounded look remained unchanged, like he didn't dare hope.
"Any particular reason why?" He asked, tilting his helm as if you've piqued his interest with a daring and devilish scheme. There's a lot going on behind his optic, but you're unflinching as he levies it back on you, smiling to emphasize you have nothing to hide.
"It's... well, it's not really fair for you to decide something for me, is it? Even if you know what the answer will be, shouldn't I get the chance to make that choice myself in the moment?"
He clacks his claws together to imitate snapping fingers. "Damn it all, you're a clever little fleshy, I'll give you that. Appealing to my peerless sense of justice for self determination to get your way." The mask of neutrality is razor thin, and beneath it he's anything but calm. None of this is going the way he planned. Far from casting him out, you're encouraging him to go through with this, but why? You can't actually plan to say yes, so why all this fuss? It's not in you to set him up, but he can't bring himself to hope he has a chance at the impossible... So he just plays along like it's all a game, albeit a very sad one, and one he intends to play carelessly. "If you... I'll give you the way to say no and the way to say yes, okay? That way you'll... really mean it when you say no."
"I promise I'll mean it." You say, wishing so badly he'd believe you wanted his friendship. It'd be so much easier than coordinating with him to give you a chance to accept his Amica proposal. Yet you know his manner of processing can't be argued with, so instead you just keep going, praying he'll let you have a chance to show how much you care. "But I need to know how it all works."
"Well, I'll say some fancy words, show my spark, all that mushy stuff most folks love." He waves his claws about, as if to brush away the silliness of the ceremony right there. The idea of baring a spark surprises you, but you keep quiet, focused only on getting through to the part he's convinced himself won't happen. Even as he continues his pessimistic prediction is obvious in his tone. "Then, when I've said my piece and pause, you just say "I refuse" and it's all over, we don't have to talk again, I'll leave and..."
If you were close enough you'd have laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but thankfully your silent look of encouragement does the job, and he overlaps his wrists whilst looking away.
"But if you were going to say yes, hypothetically, then after my pause you just go quiet and... put your little digits on mine... Then repeat after me when I say "today, tomorrow and always" to wrap it up. But since that isn't happening, let's just get this over with, eh?"
It's the flattest one of his jokes has ever fallen. For all his skill keeping his feelings reigned in, even he can't prevent a little bit of intimidation slipping through. It's impossible not to be afraid, because he wants so badly to hope, but he knows what happens when he does... Still, he wants to at least get it over with, and he gathers himself just as you give your final encouragement with a smile.
"Lets."
Clearing his vents, it occurs to him that he's never been more self conscious than he is right now, which is an unfortunate feeling to prelude him baring his spark.
The soft glow fills the room as he shifts back his chest plating, revealing the orb of his "soul" as you'd once called it, and he internally admits that your quiet expression of awe gives him the boost he needs to start. "I bid you stand in the glow of my spark... so um, that you may feel the heat of my words and k-know them to be true."
It's arguably one of the only times he's ever stuttered, and while you don't react, he's never felt more foolish. Was it not enough for him to make a spectacle out of himself just by doing this? Did he really have to butcher the whole process too? Feeling dizzy, he forces his voicebox to try and start making words again. He's painfully aware of how ridiculous he looks; one eyed, mangled screw up trying to be sentimental... But darn it all, he made a commitment. Putting his claws beside his spark, he kept going into what he knew would be a bitter end.
"I invite you to receive my light and in doing so become my Amica Endura—from now until forever."
He doesn't realize he's at the end until he runs out of words. The fear and helplessness that follow are akin to the level he'd experience falling off a cliff with no flight to save him, and for an eternity he's left floundering in anticipation of the impact. This is supposed to be it, the moment you turn him away and rightfully go forward in life, better off for having left him. But you're quiet. Your words of dismissal aren't forthcoming, and your soft and somewhat sad little smile doesn't indicate that he should expect them. But why not?! Why won't you say them?! What could you possibly hope to gain by accepting?
You hardly dare to breathe as you wait for him to begin the next phase. The glow of his spark illuminates everything, allowing you to see the fear in every inch of his being, particularly his lone expressive optic. He doesn't want to believe you're saying yes, as much as he treasures you, he just can't believe you'd ever feel the same about him. But you do, and you try to communicate that with every fiber of your being. You want to be friends with him through anything that may come, and you pray that he can see the depth of your conviction in your eyes.
Something like a hiccup shakes his shoulders. You haven't refused him. It's been almost a minute, the light of his spark fluttering as the sheer power of his emotions coursed through it, namely his disbelief that any of this could be real. Something like relief but a million times stronger makes his vents hitch. He's still processing the turn of events when he remembers he has more to say.
"Ah... Y/N... for you... um... for your acceptance..." He croaks, trying to keep an accursed tear from leaving his optic by briefly tilting back his helm. You're similiarly affected, but you let yourself sniffle and shed a few tears as he approaches with his claws out to you. They're big enough that even a semblance of holding hands isn't really possible, but you grab the tip of each and squeeze regardless, knowing the sentiment is still quite clear. You're his friend, and you always will be, through thick and thin. Now he's finally starting to see that too.
He doesn't fully have a grasp on the fact that this is real, but he doesn't care about that as much as he should. You were his Amica Endura, his dearest friend, and you somehow liked him enough that all the baggage was worth it. With one of your tiny hands on each of his clawtips, he finished the ceremony. Each word felt light as a feather when he spoke it. "As you are to me, may I be to you—today, tomorrow, and always."
"Today, tomorrow, and always." You echo, meaning it with everything you are. There's no grand finale, but the emotion in his optic and quivering antenna is more impressive than any supernova. He doesn't seem to want to pull his claws away as he shifts his chest plating back into position, and you're happy to oblige, keeping a solid hold on his claws as if your tiny body is his lifeline.
"You didn't say no." He says as the glow of his spark disappears. It's a tone for a statement but he obviously wants it to be a question, and he only keeps it from being one because he's still too overwhelmed to ask that many yet.
You can't help but sniffle as you try to sound confident. "Of course I didn't."
"We're still friends." He says softly, closing his claws together so incredibly gently around your hands, letting the two of you be a little more connected as he marvels at his luck. Of all the squishies in the galaxy, this trip had led him to you, the one who made him happier than anything. Despite all sense you loved him, and he loves you back, and the two of you would get to keep on adventuring after this. You smile as you repeat your vow to make your dedication clear.
"Today, tomorrow, and always."
Those words strike a tender chord in his still sensitive spark, for you to believe them so confidently you'll repeat them with ease, and he's promoted to react on a whim.
"Can we hug?"
"Hug?"
"Is there an ech-" The rapid fire reflex of a joke fades out in the face of his genuine and unheard of desire for a bit of tender contact. Releasing your hands, he opens his arms to make his point clear, and is delighted when you start nodding even before he's done asking. "Yes, if you don't mind... okay? Okay."
It's more of a hug for you than him, your arms wrapping around his neck as you nuzzle against his helm to show affection, feeling him wrap as much of his gangly frame around you as possible without risking any kind of damage. While this may not be the first time he's initiated something like this, it's one of very few rare occasions, and thus you know this is special. You can feel how badly he wants the comfort through the ease he shows at your touch.
"You want to stay like this for a bit?" You ask gingerly, getting settled so you can stay comfortable for a few minutes cuddled up to him.
"Mhmm." He says softly, admitting to himself that hugs might actually be worth the fuss after all. Tiny hands reassuringly pat his shoulder, encouraging him to stay in place while he basks in this single perfect moment. He hadn't dared to hope you'd still be friends after this, but here you were, your little body holding and comforting him as if he wasn't several times your size. Funny thing, that fate, eh?
"Take your time."
"Y/N?" He whispers softly into the quiet, wanting to say one final thing before taking a few minutes to enjoy your company.
"Hm?"
There's a tiny pause before he holds you close with one final statement.
"Thanks."
128 notes · View notes
transformer-imagines · 4 years ago
Text
Happy Together
No one asked for this, but I’m the one in control of the aux cord on this blog and I wanna indulge myself with some cute Dinobot shenanigans
Sludge (G1) x Bot!Reader (sfw)
2672 Words
Everyone and their creator knew that the Ark’s med bay was understaffed. Ratchet was the only one qualified enough to consider a doctor, so mechs tried to help out however they could. Being in the war for the better part of your life, you had picked up what medical knowledge you could in order to aid your comrades; you couldn’t offer much, but you tried to help Ratchet as much as you could. Normally this translated into running errands, taking basic vitals, or doing some patch work.
It was all hands on deck in the med bay today. A particularly nasty skirmish sent so many bots your way that anyone in non-critical condition was asked to sit on the floor. You were scurrying about between them, jotting down names and conditions on your datapad. Even the thick platted Dinobots hadn’t come out of the fight clean. The aspiring team medic, Swoop, was one of the few permitted a seat on an exam table, Wheeljack working to reattach his wing. He was the only Dinobot that you had ever really spoken to, being in and around the med bay so often. He was an excitable and enthusiastic young bot, not something anyone would be able to tell with the way his vocalizer was whining static.
His brothers had tried valiantly to remain with him in the med bay but were shooed out by Wheeljack; there were just too many injured bots for them to be taking up all that space. Only Sludge was allowed to stay, waiting to get patched up with the other mechs on the floor. You were saving him for last, not overly eager to face him; his intimidating size dwarfed most bots and the Dinobots weren’t well known for their friendly dispositions.
Eventually, you could put it off no longer. You tried your best to exude confidence and professionalism in your EM field as you approached. Sludge took notice, straightening up from tracing absentminded patterns on the floor panels to send a curious look your way. Oh Primus, he was sitting down and you barely even reached the top of his chassis.
“So, uh, you’re name’s Sludge, right? I’m Y/N.” He gave a hum in response, nodding his head in agreement that yes, his name was in fact Sludge. “Can you show me where you’re hurt?” He nodded again, moving his right pede out for you to inspect. What you could make out as his alt dino casing was shredded, jagged metal torn and fraying out from the wound.
“Right next to big explosion. Took out him Swoop. Lots of shrapnel, tore off wing and hit me in side.” He turned slightly and gestured to the kibble on his back. “More here.” You gestured for him to turn fully so you could inspect the damage as you jotted down his abridged account on your datapad. He was lucky his plating was so thick, as the force of the explosion probably would’ve hit major energon lines in any other bot. Most of his damage was superficial, deep as it was, though the shrapnel had managed to nick a few minor energon lines.
“There wouldn’t have been an explosion in the first place if it wasn’t for you ditzy dinos!” You finished jotting down the damage before looking sharply in the direction of the whiny outburst. Of course it was Huffer. “If you hadn’t given us away, none of us would be in here!”
“We’re all on the same team, Huffer,” you said with a wave of your servo. “So stop harassing patients or I’ll turn off your vocalizer.” A resounding laugh sounded from behind you.
“You must have a glitch in your memory core, Huffer,” said Hound. “The Dinobots gave us away by saving your tailpipe!”
“I could’ve taken care of it!”
You left the two to their bickering, patting your patient on his knee plating to get his attention. “You’re not too badly damaged. Since I got to you last for diagnostic, I’m gonna go ahead a patch you up first, okay?” You offered Sludge a kind smile, trying to provide better bedside manner than Huffer. He took it, returning your smile with one of his own and moving to expose the damage on his leg more as you fished around subspace for your welder and some titanium patches.
It certainly wasn’t the last time you saw Sludge. He had a knack for denting his plating, either over the course of sparing with his brothers or while out in the field. You would’ve thought that he’d just get Swoop to take care of it, but more and more frequently he would be stopping by the med bay; he said he liked how much quieter it was there than in the retrofitted cave the Dinobots had claimed as their own.
It was almost laughable how intimidating you found Sludge when you first met. He had a gentle spark, reserved and well-intentioned. Sure he didn’t have the fastest processor, but you couldn’t keep up with Perceptor either; and what was a smart mech worth if they weren’t also kind? You’d much rather spend time with Sludge than Shockwave. It didn’t hurt that he was a good listener, too. Despite what other Autobots might suggest, he had a good memory, asking for updates on personal projects that you had mentioned offhandedly the last time you saw him. And he had a creative mind! Swoop had been talking to you about how Sludge had recently taken up two-dimensional etching and drawing. And he had a handsome face, delicate touch when getting your attention, and –
Wait what? Hold on, were you…did you have a crush on Sludge? Oh Primus, this was just what you needed in the middle of a war. Still, you could do worse. And the spark wants what the spark wants… So what, maybe you did have a crush on him. You might as well try and see where it goes; in this war you had to make what joys you could.
“Is it just me or does Y/N look like they’re trying to court somebot?”
It was gossip time in the empty corridor, two mechs making good use of the late hour and lack of nearby audio receptors to concern themselves with the lives of others.
“You just noticed? Yea, I caught em in the wash polishing like it was going out of style,” Cliffjumper gave a short laugh at the memory. “You’da thunk I’d caught em sneaking extra rations with the way they bolted outta there.”
“Any ideas who the lucky mech is?” Powerglide didn’t give the minibot a moment to answer before continuing. “I overheard from Doc Ratch one of the Dinobots has got a lil crush; maybe we’ve got some love-birds on base?”
“Primus, I hope not. No one deserves to have a dumb dino on their tail; they’re so stupid and clumsy, they’d wind up melting the poor bot down! Honestly, I think Y/N deserves better than getting slagged by Slag.”
“You’re just jealous you aren’t getting any,” the plane sniped.
“Powerglide, I’m just a realist. I can’t help that your processor is full of that romantic scrap.”
“Cliffjumper, I can’t help that you have an incurably abrasive personality.” Powerglide gave the Porsche a hearty pat as he began walking further down the hall. “Come on, maybe we can get Ratch to fix that personality component of yours! Or at least we can sit down; my struts are killing me!”
“I do not have an abrasive personality, you silicon sanded showboat!”
Neither took notice of the saddened giant on the other side of the corridor, watching the retreating mechs from around the corner.
Sitting in one of the metal booths stuck to the far wall of the Rec Room, you found yourself thinking it all through. Lost in the swirling liquid of your energon cube, you wondered if you had been reading the situation wrong. You thought that Sludge had reciprocated your feelings, but he hadn’t really responded to your efforts. He never mimicked your attempts at posing or polishing. Maybe he was just unaware of Cybertronian flirting? It would make sense, as he was made on Earth, but even then you would’ve thought someone would take pity on him and explain your efforts. It wasn’t like you were being subtle, even in non-Cybertronian terms. You even got advice from Carly, trying to figure out how she’d won over someone as oblivious as Spike. You tried to be as obvious as possible, complimenting his skills and appearance and inviting him to recreational activities. But even then, he would look flustered and come up with some reason to turn you down. Maybe he was just trying to let you down on amicable terms, ignore your advances but maintain your acquaintanceship. Maybe he-
“Hi! Room here to sit?”
The scratchy voice startled you out of your reprieve; you must’ve really been in your own processor not to notice the dinobot flyer approaching.
“Oh, Swoop! Yeah, of course, take a seat,” you gestured across the table. It was almost humorous watching him try to squeeze himself into the clearly too small booth; being the smallest dinobot still made him one of the biggest Autobots. Finally situating himself, he flashed you a mischievous smirk and his optics flashed in mirth. “How’s it going?”
“Good! Had to get out of Dino Den, though; too loud for reading when Grimlock and Slag fighting.” He emphasized his point by producing an anatomical datapad and setting it on the table.
“Well that’s too bad,” you said. “How’s everyone else doing?”
“Him Snarl hog TV all day, watching Nurse Whitney.” His tone held a slight annoyance at the distraction it must’ve posed to his own studying; you knew he was quite fond of the show, and probably found it near impossible not to be watching it. His optics lit up in sudden remembrance, a squawk making its way past his vocalizer as he straightened his posture. “Sludge work on project! Big art project!”
“Oh?”
“Yes! It pretty, very pretty! Him Sludge good at art. Best Dinobot, maybe even best Autobot! And good at other things too!” Swoop emphasized his point by holding aloft a digit, helm held high with a self-assured expression. “Him strong, very strong! Last fight, him take out twenty, no, thirty Decepticons! Him good at keeping others safe, protecting. Oh, and him best fisher of Dinobots! Good provider! Patient and quiet and-”
“Wait, what’s fishing?”
“Fish earth animals, live in water. Humans and Dinobots like catching fish, very fun and -”
It was hard not to notice the lumbering form of Sludge entering the Rec behind the chatty Pteranodon. His sweeping optics seemed to stop in the direction of your booth (though you suppose it would be hard not to notice Swoop, what with his crest and loud voice), his optics seeming to blink out for a second. Swoop continued on, oblivious to his brother’s presence.
That is until Sludge began stomping his way over. You quickly grabbed onto the table, thankful that it was bolted into the wall as the ground shook under his weight. It wasn’t often you were reminded of his tremorous step, but it seemed that whatever had gotten under his plating was enough for him to have forgotten the virtue of gentle pedes. You didn’t expect to see his normally soft features so soured, mouth drawn into a tight line and optics darkened into a furrowed glare. With his massive stride, it didn’t take long before Sludge reached you. His servo came to rest behind Swoop, the back of the booth’s bench groaning under his weight as he leaned down, optic to optic with his brother.
“What you Swoop think you do?” His voice seemed edged with a nervous worry.
“Me just talking to Y/N,” Swoop answered, flashing the Brontosaurus the same mischievous smile he had given you earlier. “You know they want go fishing? Me say you should take them!”
“Yeah,” you interjected, ignoring the fact that you had never discussed joining the Dinobots on their fishing exploits. “I think it sounds like fun!” You couldn’t help the eagerness that steeped into your EM field, hopeful that you might finally get an opportunity to spend some true quality time with him outside of the occasional med bay visit.
Sludge seemed to soften a bit at your reply, gifting you with a gentle smile before his brow furrowed. His smile turned to a slight pout as his gaze drifted down, seeming to be a bit lost in thought. He exvented sharply, lugging Swoop out of his seat and maneuvering the now indignant mech around to carry him under one arm. Ignoring his squirming brother, he turned to you with a sad smile that he tried to mask with a projected air of confidence in his EM.
“Me Sludge think on it. Would be fun. Uh, him Ratchet ask to talk to him Swoop, so we see you Y/N later.” With the lame excuse, he turned to leave the Rec. With a loud squawk, Swoop made his opinion on the matter known.
“No! Him Sludge like Y/N! Like whole bunch!” That seemed to stop the brontosaurus dead in his tracks, grip loosened enough in shock that the loud flyer was able to transform out of his grasp. He seemed stuck in place as his processor caught up with the situation. In contrast, you and Swoop seemed to be a flurry of movement, standing up from your seat in the booth as the Pteranodon perched himself on the back of the bench.
“Really?” Your response, lackluster as it might’ve been, was all you could dumbly muster up at the revelation.
“Yes, him won’t shut up about it! ‘Oh, them Y/N so nice, very sweet. Pretty face, pretty smile. Feel like me Sludge melt when they look at me. So smart, so kind.’” Swoop’s impression left quite a bit to be desired, but that was the last thing on your mind, your gaze drifting to the gentle giant in question as you took in his words. Sludge had sheepishly turned halfway towards you, optics firmly locked to the ground and servos fiddling together nervously. “Us Dinobots try talk to him about anything, him always distracted or drawing you.” That seemed to catch Sludge’s full attention. “Him have big project now, draw y-” A large servo suddenly came to rest on the Pteranodon’s beak, clamping it shut before anything too embarrassing could be shared. You craned your helm up to look at Sludge, his cheek plating positively painted with the glow of his optics and lips drawn into a pout.
“Sludge, is that true? Do you really like me?” His optics bashfully locked on the ground again, answering you with a soft nod. He dared a glance at your face before averting his gaze again. “You know, I like you a lot too.” That seemed to win his attention, finally maintaining some real eye contact. He nodded again with a hum and you frowned. “You knew? Why didn’t you say anything?” That stung, knowing that he was aware of your advances all along and hadn’t done anything. Especially when he apparently liked you too.
He opened his mouth before closing it, brow furrowing. You gave him a moment to formulate his thoughts.
“You Y/N deserve better than Sludge.” He spoke slowly, thinking hard on his words. “Deserve someone smart and not clumsy or stumbly. Deserve someone not hurt you.” You frowned at that.
“Sludge, you are one of the gentlest mech’s I know. You haven’t hurt me yet and I don’t think you will,” you said, stepping closer to him. “And in any case, I think I would know better than anyone else what I deserve. I think I deserve to be happy and getting to spend time with you makes me happy. You make me happy. Do I make you happy?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s be happy together.”
 BONUS:
“SQUAWK! Let Swoop go! No want to see smooches!”
101 notes · View notes
kagebros · 4 years ago
Text
Excerpt from You Are My Knight Chapter 31
Optimus, throughout the entire week, continued with his life like normal, although this time now there was a lot more freetime than he expected. With the Decepticons no longer a threat except for the ones who were stranded on Earth, the Autobots were restless. When all they knew was war, it was difficult to settle down. First came peace. Then boredom. Well. Not exactly boredom. It was just that the amount of stress and need to stay active that lingered in the air no longer existed and the Autobots were restless. But war was something that should never define someone. In the quiet moments of the week, Optimus would look towards the Autobots in nostalgia and felt deep regret. Some of these Autobots were forged during the war. This is all they had, all they knew. Bumblebee was considered to be among those. Along with Sideswipe and Hot Rod. Hot Rod, forged in Nyon, only knew peace for a few years before the city was and everyone in it was destroyed by Optimus in attempt to make sure Zeta Prime never got ahold of the citizens and drained them of their life for his own power. Bumblebee, being forged in Iacon just before the hot spots had cooled as the last of Cybertron’s generation, barely remembered peacetime. Even if he was forged just before the war, Bumblebee certainly grew up in it. It was all he knew. Peacetime was a distant, vague memory that never took hold of his processor. But Bumblebee was younger, more flexible than Optimus. He was able to adapt quickly to the peaceful life that came about. He spent more time with Charlie, more time outside the base, no longer afraid that a Decepticon would go after him or her. He felt at peace and he was willing to accept that so quickly because it meant he’d be able to be with the love of his life. Charlie didn’t have to speak to him to know how he felt or what he thought. She just knew and she’d always give that smile, hand holding his servos for support and she was happy. He was happy as well. Optimus knew that. Bumblebee was always like a son to him and seeing him happy made his spark brighten. 
Optimus looked at his own servos in self introspection, all the energon spilled flashing before his optics. How many had he killed. How many could he have saved from this, what seemed to be, neverending war. There was so much weight on his shoulder, most of them he’d come to shoulder himself. It was something he was used to, the world on his shoulders, Cybertron’s own Atlas. A servos placed itself on his shoulder, his concentration and thoughts broken to see Ratchet looking at him with dim optics. 
“You’re thinking about it again,” Ratchet sighed. “Your EM field may be hard to read but I can tell when you’re thinking about what you could have done to save everyone. You can’t hide anything from me,” he said, voice softer this time. He squeezed, Optimus’ shoulder plate bending slightly before going back. Optimus gave him a soft smile under his mask and opened it, shutting his optics and turning towards him.
“You are my amica after all, old friend,” Optimus replied. Ratchet scoffed affectionately and pulled his servos back.
 “Come on. Let’s go for a ride.” 
“They’re going to mistake you as a human medical vehicle and panic,” Optimus chuckled as the two began to walk down the hangar. 
“Puhlease. They won’t bat an eye if I don’t turn my sirens on,” Ratchet scoffed, rolling his optics. Optimus only chuckled again in response and switched into his altmode, a reflection of himself catching the corner of his optic. The blue flames that painted his chassis no longer seemed appealing to him. They were never appealing to you after all so perhaps that rubbed off on him. He thought about it for a moment before driving ahead beside Ratchet. 
“Ratchet, if you’re willing… I’d like to change my paint later,” Optimus said, the two beginning to drive off the base. 
“Had something in mind?” Ratchet said. “White maybe?” he joked. Optimus’ EM field told Ratchet he was amused even if he didn’t respond. 
“I think I’ll change back to what my paint was when I first arrived on Earth. These flames… I’ve outgrown them,” Optimus replied. “Plus I believe it’s time to look cleaner and newer.”
“Good, cus you looked like Hot Rod with those flames,” Ratchet said. Optimus laughed this time and Ratchet’s EM field buzzed happily. The two drove until the sun set, in the desert parts of California. With no one around the two shifted out of their altmodes and looked around at the sight before them. Optimus crossed his arms and looked up towards the night sky with a huff. Ratchet stood beside him and looked up as well, never having been fond of the stars as it reminded him of home but he found himself appreciating it more often now. But the question then came up and he glanced over to Optimus, wondering whether or not he should ask it. “Are you going back to Cybertron when we manage to restore the planet?” Ratchet asked quietly.
“I’ll help restore it when we are able to travel there. But once we’re finished…” Optimus trailed off, with you in mind. “I’ll be staying here, with my conjunx.”
“Optimus, we don’t even know if this planet wants us anymore,” Ratchet said, exasperated. “You know how these negotiations are going especially after what happened to Chicago.”
“We never meant to bring our war here to these innocent beings, but I trust that the extent they go to won’t be so harsh,” Optimus said. 
“I wouldn’t be so trusting of them, Optimus,” Ratchet said. “The only humans I trust out of this entire planet are those in NEST and even within there there’s only a handful. You remember how their government wanted to use us to help them with their own political agenda.” Optimus hummed, optics dimming as he was deep in thought. 
“We have no chance of going home right now either way. Even if there is debris from the battle to allow us to craft a spaceship, it would take years.”
“Then we try to get it done as quickly as possible,” Ratchet said. “We can’t afford to stay here especially if things turn sour. I’ve spoken to Fowler,” his voice is quieter now and more grave. “He says it’s not looking good.” Optimus didn’t respond this time and grew worried. “We’ve overstayed our welcome, Optimus...” Ratchet lamented. “And as much as I’ve come to like this planet… Especially the friends we’ve made here...” There’s a slight fondness in his voice that Optimus picked up on that would have made him smile were it not for the topic they were discussing. 
“I know,” Optimus replied with a sigh, shoulders slumping down. “But I don’t want to leave them.” Now was Ratchet’s turn to say I know. But he didn’t. He just put his servos on Optimus’ arm in comfort and patted it. “I appreciate the comfort, old friend.” He has a smile on his face now as he speaks and it stays there.
30 notes · View notes
fericita-s · 4 years ago
Text
The Bloom Is On The Rye
And then he was in front of her, lifting her hair out from under the quilt where it pressed against her bare skin, only one hand holding his blanket in place.  Emma could see his collarbone and the drops of rainwater still clinging to him there so she reached forward and wiped them away with the edge of the quilt.
Tumblr media
Emmry Forced Marriage Mercy Street/Oregon Trail crossover! Chapter 5 below, most definitely rated M, also on AO3
a continuation of In having new eyes by @jomiddlemarch​ and beta-ed into being better by @the-spaztic-fantastic​.  Thank you both for your contributions to this story!
Silas was dead by morning. 
They buried him deep in the earth, a kindness he wasn’t really owed, but Dr. Foster said it would prevent contamination.  The miasma of bodily fluids was so heavy the others were eager to see him underground.  
Mr. Diggs urged them forward, out of the bad humors in the air, so they pressed on.  Dr. Foster was more tense than usual and Mary more solicitous to his irritable moods than normal as he looked for signs of disease among the others, stalking among them on the trail. 
They stopped their frenzied push when Chimney Rock was in sight, and then wasn’t, as a fierce rainstorm blew in across the prairie. The wind blew the rain sideways and lightning illuminated the towering rock as Henry rolled down the cotton canvas cover as far as it would go along the cantilevered ends of the wagon. Emma gathered the butter churn from the chassis, while Henry calmed the oxen as best he could, before they both climbed into the wagon completely soaked. 
Emma’s dress and hair were clinging to her, heavy and freezing cold, her fingers shaking as she undid her buttons and the ties of her skirts.  She fumbled with fastenings and shook her hands to warm them up and then Henry was there, holding her hands and blowing on them, rubbing them briskly and then taking off her clothes so quickly that she knew he must think her in danger from the chill.  After he lifted the chemise over her head he left her for a moment to get a quilt and then wrapped her in it tightly.  He stripped in the same perfunctory way he had undressed her, no blushes of embarrassment or awkward hesitation, and Emma was strangely moved, turning warm from a place near her middle and unable to look away. His pants were caked in mud up to his knees, and the sleeves of his coat were worse, so he too ended up in only a blanket.
And then he was in front of her, lifting her hair out from under the quilt where it pressed against her bare skin, only one hand holding his blanket in place.  Emma could see his collarbone and the drops of rainwater still clinging to him there so she reached forward and wiped them away with the edge of the quilt. 
“I should finish the new dress I’m sewing.  Mary helped me piece it together, I’m almost finished. With that one wet, I’ve nothing to wear.”  In the cool air Emma could see her breath as she spoke, hanging between them like the words she wanted to say. Warm me.  Cover me.  Pull me to yourself and let me get lost in your touch.  She made no move to gather her trunk of sewing notions and he didn’t either.
The pounding of the rain against the canvas cover was so deafening and so constant it made Emma feel like the inside of her head was buzzing. It was a frantic drumbeat that her heart raced to match, and she felt wild with the need to crush her body against his, to find safety and pleasure in the feel of his hands on her skin. She reached both hands towards his face and placed them behind his head, covering his mouth with her own as her quilt fell away and she stood naked before him.
“Emma! It’s too cold!” he said, readjusting his blanket so it now covered them both.  Her breasts pressed against his chest and her thighs were against his and she felt him shiver as she moved even closer.
“Then warm me,” she said, and he had her on the wagon floor, the quilt underneath her and Henry above, smoothing her hair away from her face and kissing her lips, her neck, her collarbone. He stretched out his blanket over them both, cocooning them in the warmth of their own bodies as they learned where to touch and grasp and kiss. Their rhythm matched that of the pelting rain and Emma felt she might be consumed or burst like a flash of lightning.  Thunder rumbled so close that the very ground shook, but it was the way Henry was moving above her that made her throw her head back and gasp.
***
“After this, the trail gets rougher. We won’t be in prairie land any more.  The rest of the way is mountainous, steep.” He curled a long strand of her hair around his finger and then kissed her ear, running his hands up and down her arms.
“We’ve seen so many wonders. The same God who carved Chimney Rock causes these terrifying wind and rains.”  She didn’t say and the river currents that killed my family, but she could tell he understood in the way he stroked her hair and held her tight, her back against his front and her hands on his knees. She could feel the rough skin on his palms that had beat out a fire; evidence of Henry’s care and evidence of God’s neglect.  Or at least His indifference.  “Sometimes I’m not sure who God is. And sometimes I am sure who He is and it’s too much to bear.”
“Our unbelief or belief don’t make Him less real.  And I think He can see your pain and knows why you feel that way.  God is strong enough to handle our anger and our fear.  Our disbelief too.”
“How can you believe so steadily?”
His hands paused in their exploration of her body.  “Sometimes I don’t.  But it’s been very easy to believe in the goodness of God since you became my wife.”
Emma turned to kiss him and then they spoke in other ways, telling each other of their desires and needs with touches that words could not express, with sounds that were a primal language they both understood, but had never used before.
***
When she finally opened the trunk of sewing notions she searched for the lace trim that she hoped to add to make a collar.  Instead, she found baby booties.  
She held them in reverent hands, thinking about how her mother must have placed them there and wondering if she did so in the hopes of a grandchild or in the desire to remember her own babies, now grown and often disappointments, but forever sweet in her remembrance of them as round-faced infants chewing on their feet and blowing bubbles out of their mouths.  Emma placed them back in the roll of trim, like a pleasurable secret.  She thought of the verse Henry quoted: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires and decided not to speak of her own hopes, now that they had a chance of coming true. Time would tell. And God willing, she and Henry would have plenty of time.
The storm was growing weaker, but rain still fell when Emma put the finishing touches on the dress and tried it on in front of Henry.
“It’s beautiful.  Though I would rather we stayed in just the blankets for a bit longer.”
Emma shucked it off and laid it carefully over a trunk, stepping back into his warm embrace, enjoying the feel of his hands running up and down her back. 
“I’m in awe of you.  Every day you keep learning something new.  You bring a brightness to others, a joy even though you are still in a cloud of grief yourself.” 
“It lessens each day,” she said. “Your love is filling the cracks.”
He pressed his forehead to hers and then neither had words for a while.
Author’s Note:
The miasma theory claimed that bad air caused illnesses including cholera.  It was somewhat helpful in controlling the spread as it placed an emphasis on cleaning pollutants and bad smells and diarrhea was the main issue with spreading cholera.  Germ theory didn’t take hold until the 1880s.
Middlemarch sent me this post and suggested they might be baby booties in Emma’s possession for this story which I thought was a fantastic idea and was happy to include here.
9 notes · View notes
brokenjardaantech · 4 years ago
Text
captain allen appreciation week 2020 day 5: scars
me: tries to write a short
my brain: how bout some sexy time?
notes: set in the same universe as day 1+7. it is half a year after the android revolution. allen’s dating 60 who’s non-binary and is using they/them pronouns, so i tried to avoid gender-specific vocab for 60 here. please let me know if i fucked up.
warning: smut ahead
----
Decimus starts with the small one on the back of Lou’s left hand. ‘This one?’
‘It’s stupid,’ the human says, reclining further into the permanent pillow for his bed has become after the android moved in. He looks down at his significant other using his chest as a pillow and is met with soft, large, puppy dog eyes which seems to be Decimus’ constant except during missions. 
‘Please?’ Des asks with a pout. Before Lou can react, they have already brought the hand to their mouth and given the scar a lick. 
Fucking androids. ‘Fine,’ the human’s voice is filled with fond exasperation. ‘It’s from a bug bite. Scratched it so hard that I broke skin. I used to have a few more, but they faded throughout the years.’
Decimus kisses the raised patch of skin with the reverence as if it is something precious. Smoothing his hand from above Lou’d belly button to his neck, they return to the human’s collarbone where a long scar sits. ‘And this one?’
Lou sighs, his smile turning sad. ‘When Anna and I first moved from Alaska. I nearly got mugged. She saved my life that day.’
The android kisses the pale, smooth piece of flesh. Lou doesn’t stop them as they start nibbling on it. ‘How?’
‘There was...this scaffold,’ Lou’s voice becomes distant. ‘Anna collapsed it on the muggers. Only one survived.’
Decimus frowns. ‘I’m...sorry.’
‘It’s a long time ago,’ the human buries his hand in the android’s hair and plants a kiss there. With his nose buried in synthetic strands, he murmurs, ‘I’ve made peace with it.’
‘That your sister kills so freely?’
‘And more.’
Decimus’ LED spins yellow, and Lou knows that they’re processing the news. He had no one to talk to about Anna until he and Decimus crossed paths, and by the time the android helps him realize how fucked up everything was, he is already numb to most of it.
Des lifts their head only when they’re satisfied with the bruise they have sucked into their boyfriend’s skin. Supporting themself on their arms, they glide their naked body against Lou’s until they can nuzzle the long, thin scar behind the human’s ear along his hairline. ‘And this?’
‘Neural implant,’ Lou holds the android closer and exchanges a chaste kiss. ‘Helps me control my biotics, weak as they are.’
Decimus shifts and kisses Lou’s nose where a thin scar sits. ‘You’re already better than a lot of people. How about this one?’
‘’Cause they don’t even know biotics are a thing, Des.’ As if to demonstrate his point, he shrouds his hand in a blue halo. ‘Compared to you, Connor, Anna, Ryder… I can barely move my phone from one side of a table to another without wrecking anything else. And that’s from Anna accidentally punching me too hard when I taught her how to fight.’
The android hums, not quite agreeing with their boyfriend on his biotics but not exactly disagreeing either. Two fingers trace the twin scars above Lou’s left eyebrow, and before Des asks, the human explains, ‘Car crash. Some idiot rammed their car into the but I was taking. The window shattered and cut me.’
Decimus kisses them and does the same to the two forming an inverted Y under their boyfriend’s eye. ‘And this?’
Lou’s expression visibly darkens. ‘Ryder.’ A deep breath. Knowing that nothing good comes from their creator, Des kisses those scars as well to try to soothe the pain both physical and emotional. ‘She had her skin on so I didn’t know that she was converted into an android. The building was collapsing, she was blocking the only exit, and I really wanted to live to see Anna getting promoted. So I tried to fight her. Needless to say, a fleshy human is no match for an android who has a chassis of metal and biotics. By the time she’s finished with me, she already broke my legs. She could’ve left me to die there.’
‘But she didn’t,’ Des says, their voice distant. ‘She crushed you with a building as if what she had done to you wasn’t enough.’
‘I’m here now.’
They kiss deeply, and Decimus’ hands slide downwards along smooth planes of muscles and stop at the bottom of Lou’s rib cage.
A thick, pink line runs along the bottommost rib. ‘How?’ they ask.
‘Complex fracture of the rib,’ is the reply. ‘Feel this?’ Lou holds Decimus’ hand and guides smooth finders along the bone. The android nods. ‘Most of it is titanium now. A few screws hold it in place.’
Des buries their face in Lou’s abs. ‘Must have hurt.’
The human combs through the android’s hair and cups their jaw, the latter leaning into the firm but gentle touch. Sea-green eyes meet synthetic brown, both pairs equally warm. ‘I was out for most of it,’ Lou explains. ‘The only pain I felt is realizing that I was the only one to have survived the blast,’ he tears his gaze away as his jaw stiffens, ‘and sacrificing part of my humanity in doing so.’
‘Lou -’
‘Don’t worry, it’s been a long time,’ Lou brushes the stray curl of hair which never seems to stick to the coif just to see it flop down again. His hand stays on the back of Decimus’ neck. ‘I may never forgive what Anna did, but it saved my life. I get to live to have met you.’
A sad, sideways smile from the android, their eyes somehow managing to get even more watery. Des moves further down, the sensors in their fingertips allowing them to find out precisely where organic skin ends and gives way to flexible polymer and synthskin, and they press their lips there. A proof of concept that artificial intelligence and organic creations can co-exist. Then they kiss him once more, this time closer to his belly button and the V of his legs. Their tongue darts out to taste the blend of sweat and something not organic that blends into what Decimus associates with Lou. Licking and kissing a trail to the human’s shaft, Des slowly lets information flood their processors until Lou is his entire world. They look up when they’re bare inches from their mark. ‘Is this alright?’
The large hand in their hair grounds them. Dilated pupils, heavy breaths, increased blood and thirium flow throughout his system and heart rate. Decimus knows the answer before Lou opens his mouth.
‘Go on, Des.’ Then in French, ‘But I want to be in you later.’
Des shivers from the promise which they know Lou will deliver. As they kiss and lick his shaft with both hands wrapped around the base, the taste of Lou overwhelming their sensors and processors, their entrance clutches involuntarily and futilely against the onslaught of the first gush of slick, and they can feel the thirium-based lubricant sliding warmly down his thighs and drips onto the bed, onto their own and even Lou’s legs. Closing their lips around the head and tasting Lou’s precome, they can’t help but whine around the cock in their mouth, the emptiness amplified by the low throb of their own organ.
‘Prepare yourself if you want to,’ Lou says, and that is all the permission Decimus needs before reaching down with their left hand and shoves not one but two fingers immediately into the wet heat, stretching tight synthetic muscles to search for the bundle of sensors which serves as an erogenous zone while their mouth sinks down to take more of Lou’s dick, and when the head touches their throat, tears which have been threatening to fall since the beginning from the sheer intensity of their deeds rolls down Des’ cheek just to be wiped away gently by callused fingers. Lips still stretched around Lou’s member, Decimus risks looking up and immediately has to shut their eyes: the trust, the adoration, the love - it is too much.
Their fingers finding the sensors sends them over the edge. Lubricant gushes out from both their entrance and their untouched cock, their entire body quivering and barely able to support themself, and no matter how hard slick, warm walls clutch around their fingers, it is not enough. Faintly, they can hear Lou’s constant reassurance - ‘So good for me, I’m here. I trust you. Take your time.’ - but it isn’t until the man has to tug Decimus’ hair that they notice that they’ve been trying but failing to take Lou down their throat. Their jaw, for the lack of a better term, hurts. ‘Lou, I -’
‘Shh, come here.’
Lou pulls Decimus up and flips them over so that he is lying on top of them, his face hovering mere inches from the androids to force him to look at nothing else but him. When he reaches to wipe away their tears, Des’ skin deactivates wherever their bodies are touching, and the human doesn’t need to look down to know that the skin covering his cybernetics is completely gone. 
They are interfacing.
Although the connection is shallow, it manages to calm Des down just fine, and soon the full-body wrecks are reduced to no more than the occasional sob and tremble, which is normal for the android after every orgasm. All Lou wants to do right now is to bend them in half and fuck them to standby mode, but they had set up a few rules when they started dating, and making sure that both parties are in to go on is one of them. Ignoring his raging erection and peppering Decimus’ tear-soaked face with kisses, he asks, somehow reverting to French, ‘You alright?’
Des wraps their limbs around him tightly. No, they admit through the interface, voice echoing directly in Lou’s head, but I want you in me. Please.
Oh, that he can do. ‘Who am I to deny that?’
Lou leans down to kiss his love deeply and filthily, making sure that his spit is on every single tiny little sensor on the android’s tongue while he spreads their legs even further apart and pushes in. Des’ lips tears away in a wail, and, knowing what the android wants through their connection, he doesn’t wait before nearly pulling out completely and slams back home, setting a brutal pace that coaxes all kinds of sounds and reactions from them, a high-pitched, static-laced whine here, a crackle of blue there lighting up the entire bedroom and reflecting off their exposed chassis. He finds the bundle of sensors within him and rams into it again and again, and the screams of pleasure-pain that tears themselves from Des’ voice box are stronger than any aphrodisiac, encouraging him to go on and to take whatever he needs - Decimus is here to give.
A soft brush of his hand against Des’ cock is enough to wring another orgasm out of the android. Once thought to be impossible, their entrance got slicker, lubricant flowing freely out from both ends, and the tightening of wet, hot muscles around him sends Lou spilling inside them. He collapses in a sweaty mess on top of the android, and Decimus, so utterly wrecked, can’t stop trembling and crying from oversensitivity and their overwhelming emotions, their arms still wrapped tightly around Lou’d broad shoulders like a shipwreck survivor clinging to a piece of driftwood.
They have to stop holding their boyfriend for a while after Lou catches his breath and gets up to get some wet towels from the bathroom. After wiping most of the fluids on their bodies away (the amount of slick never ceases to make Decimus blush), the human also removes the soiled blankets and sheets and pillows from the fort and tosses them into the washing machine, allowing them to sleep on clean linen without doing something drastic such as stripping the bed entirely.
When he emerges still completely nude from the shower, he isn’t surprised that Decimus hasn’t reactivated all their skin yet. He also isn’t surprised that the android winds themself around him like an affectionate octopus, and in this proximity, he finally notices the slight dent in the chassis on Des’ forehead; when he tries to touch it, they bury their face in the crook of Lou’s neck, essentially disallowing the human a second look on what he guesses is a scar.
Both of them are asleep before Lou can think of its implications.
11 notes · View notes
ngame989 · 5 years ago
Text
“Soul” - TGG SVTFOE Fanfic Collection Ch. 9
Tumblr media
Writing: @ngame989​​
Art: @toxicpsychox​​
Editing: @ubercelloczar​​​, @toxicpsychox​​, @seddm​​
Alternate fic links - FFnet, AO3
Summary: It's that time of the year for another Soulrise, and Tom throws Marco the birthday bash of a lifetime to celebrate, but Marco realizes that underneath all the joy and celebration Tom has a storm of emotions brewing inside. When Star gets dragged into some mysterious mission on the surface, it's up to Marco to realize just what's been bothering his demon friend.
Comic Page
Masterpost
And we're back with another chapter! Things are ramping up a bit, and we have plans for probably the next dozen chapters in the works already with a few special events in the mix. Thanks for sticking around, and stay tuned for more. Hope you enjoy!
“A little to the left.” Tom hovered above the door and moved a massive cloud of dark blue balloons slightly over in the wrong direction, glancing up at her to check. “My left, honey.” He nodded and shifted them back. A little more, a little more, and… “There. Nice work, Tommypoo,” Wrathmelior affectionately growled in her native tongue while reaching down to rustle her smiling son’s hair. When Tom suggested throwing a party for a friend she hadn’t met yet, the same boy who had been the subject of quite a few mother-son heart-to-hearts in years past, some old concerns had bubbled up in the back of her mind. But she couldn’t bear saying no for long, and it wasn’t long until she was more than happy to volunteer the Lucitor lake house for the occasion.  
Tom’s enigmatic friend Janna popped her head out the front door with a sly grin that would put many of the devils Wrathmelior personally knew to shame. “Yo Tommypoo, can I get a hand at the snack table?”
All three of his eyes popped open and cast intense glares back and forth between Janna and Wrathmelior. “You even taught her that?” he groaned incredulously at the latter.
Wrathmelior smiled apologetically. “Sorry, sweetie. She’s quite persuasive.” Janna had been spending enough time in the Underworld that Wrathmelior had given her a few crash courses in conversational demonic, enough to get by on her own when she tagged along with whatever Tom was doing in the kingdom. Though she was still difficult to figure out, they got along swimmingly. So many humans seemed either too scared or concerningly excited about the lava, wings, and horns they might encounter down below, and Janna’s cool enthusiasm was refreshingly welcome.
“Guilty as charged.” Janna pointed finger guns at Tom as he walked through the door and they disappeared into the house.
Wrathmelior went into the more appropriately sized entrance into the kitchen, where by the time she arrived Tom and Janna were putting out plates and napkins. Her husband was there as well and had apparently been receiving a cooking lesson from Star for some time now, judging by the lecture she was giving him. “-can’t do this too early or the chips will get totally mushy and gross. Crunchy chips, molten cheese, crisp pico -  all required elements for any Marco-approved nachos.” Star instructed before bending down to grab a tray full of chips out of the oven, setting it down on the counter next to the other supplies. “If you pour juuuuuust right, the cheese will get all in between the chips so you get a little with every bite.” Dave solemnly followed her work as the jumbo bowl was filled with a quantity of triangle chips, yellow goop, and vegetables that gave even the full-sized demon pause. “Voilà! Star’s Super Spectacular Nachos!” Everyone grabbed a sample chip, and just as she said, a little bit of everything seemed to work its way through the dish.
“Mmmmph,” Dave grunted. “These are good. Star, can you teach the castle staff how to make this marvelous thing?”
“Honestly, I’m not that good at it, Marco and I have just been cooking a ton lately. Campus food is both really expensive and really crummy.” Star stuck her tongue out in disgust. While the others, Wrathmelior included, tried and failed to stop eating, Star wandered through the living room and looked around at all the decorations and party games that had been set up, her grin only growing wider as she did.
Tom leaned against the stairs with his hands in the pockets of his teal shorts, smirked as he coolly observed the room. “We are preeeeetty good party planners, aren’t we?��
“Aww yeah we are!” Star skipped over and bumped shoulders with Tom. “But honestly this was mostly you. Marco’s gonna love it.”
“You think?” Tom’s cocky demeanor fell away to the earnestness underneath. “Ah, it was nothing. I mean, sure, we’ve got a private beachfront property, the most state of the art ping-pong tables in the world, a live Love Sentence cover band… I mean, who wouldn’t do this for their friend’s 17th birthday?”
Janna slurped the stretchy cheese off her last chip before chiming in from the kitchen. “You’ve been spending, like, every waking moment on it, dude. Feels like we haven’t even hung out in weeks, buuuut it is pretty cool. Remind me to call you when I’m in the mood to throw a grave rave.” He flashed a casual toothy smirk, but there was an extra glint in his eyes that caught Wrathmelior’s attention. Janna sauntered into the living room to join the others. “So what’s the special occasion, Tom?”
Whatever that look had meant, it was quickly replaced with sheer confusion. “Uh, Marco’s birthday? Did you get bit by a Hippocampotamus or something? Those things are nasty.”
The Earth girl rolled her eyes. “I mean why all the fuss? This is basically the one human teenage birthday that isn’t extra special.”
“Whatever. Just wanted to throw an ultra awesome party for one of my best friends because he’s a super cool guy.” He quickly averted his gaze, eyes drifting around the room until they stopped on the elegant family grandfather clock. “Probably about that time, ready for me to send you back?” he asked, glancing sideways at Star.
“Oooooone sec.” Star ruffled her hands through her hair, brushed sand out of her light blue blouse, and stuffed her sunhat and sunglasses into her purse. “Sand would blow my cover.” Pillars of fire erupted in the wide open area of the living room as Tom’s eyes glowed, and the familiar carriage he’d built himself once upon a time quickly spawned from the ground. “See you in a few!” Star climbed into the seat; one sizzling rush of air later and she was gone. The irony of Star using the vehicle Tom had delicately crafted once upon a time in the service of wooing her to pick up her human boyfriend wasn’t lost on Wrathmelior, but there was no point to harboring any negativity if Tom was happy with it.
Out of the corner of her eye, Wrathmelior saw a smug Janna sneaking up behind Tom. He lightly shrieked when she slapped him on the back. “Good job, Lucitor. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go set up the traditional Diaz prank. I’m pulling out all the stops this year.” When she opened her jacket, his eyes widened at the various weapons, gadgets, skulls, and animals hiding within. One of them stuck its furry head out. “I became the alpha possum just a few weeks ago. Scooter here can smell red hoodies through walls, isn’t that right?” She scratched the creature’s head before closing the olive jacket back up. “So, you want in?”
“Nah,” he scoffed, waving his hands dismissively. “You go ahead, do your thing. Wouldn’t want to get in the way of the master.”
“You flatter me. Suit yourself, see ya,” Janna shrugged and slinked off elsewhere in the cabin, leaving just the Lucitor family behind. Tom milled about the cabin making minute adjustments to the decorations and furniture, seemingly to kill time more than anything. What had him so worked up? There was no time for Wrathmelior to ponder this question, though, as a loud swoosh from the outside signalled the arrival of the carriage before she could even collect her thoughts.
Tom perked up and bolted out the door while Wrathmelior took the larger exit out the side. Just as the carriage doors opened, Tom snapped his fingers and summoned a black cloth, blinding the boy within whom she presumed to be Marco. “What the heck, man?” Marco curiously started the famous sword-hand dance, but Tom floated over and past him to peek into the chassis.
“Wait, where’s Star?”
“Moon needed her for a little bit, she said she’d be ready pretty soon but said I should go ahead. Can you get this thing off me?”
“Right, right, sorry,” he stuttered while fumbling with the knot until it came undone. “Anyway, welcome to the Lucitor family lake house!”
“Surprise!” The Lucitors spoke in unison, although Wrathmelior knew she wouldn’t be understood. “Happy birthday!”
His eyes widened in wonder at the massive quantity of balloons and the big sign that greeted him. “Wooooah, you guys, you didn’t have to!”
Tom put his arm around Marco’s shoulder and began walking him towards the door. “Don’t worry about it. Oh, Marco, meet my mom and dad, Queen and King Lucitor of the Underworld.”
“My pleasure, young man,” Dave warmly stated as he stepped forward to shake Marco’s hand.
“Nice to meet you,” Wrathmelior growled out with Dave translating.
Marco waved up at her, possessing the same unflinching assuredness that she’d noticed in Janna. “Tom’s told me a lot about you, thanks for having me. Just one question. Is there-”
“Ping-pong?” They said in unison, both their faces breaking into wide smiles before they’d even finished the word.
“If the brand-new Dropshot 720 DX model with real-time trajectory tracking and RGB paddles counts, sure.”
Marco excitedly grabbed Tom by the shoulders, shaking him back and forth. “With optional holographic crowd simulator?”
“Duh. Marco, please, I’m not an amateur.”
“What are we waiting for? The ping ain’t gonna pong itself.”
“We’ve got snacks and music and all sorts of other things, too. Ha, now I feel kinda silly, putting all this together and being the only one here when you show up. I totally understand if you want to go with Star instead, I’d never try to get in the way of, you know, the whole thing you two have.”
The human boy crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow in response. “Tom, you’re one of my best friends and you’re throwing me a ping-pong birthday party. If you think I don’t want to kick your butt until we’ve broken every last ping-pong ball in the kingdom, you’ve got another thing coming, buddy.” Both glanced down when his stomach loudly rumbled. “...but maybe, um, we start with the snacks.”
Wrathmelior cooed at the exchange as Tom wrapped an arm around Marco’s shoulder and led him into the house. So much had changed in the past few years, both above and below ground. Even if her own home and kingdom had been affected to the same degree as those of the surface-dwellers though, none of it would compare in Wrathmelior’s eyes to what she’d seen out of her son. With the ample time she’d had to reflect since the state of the world settled down, she might even say that he’d been the more mature one between them. The last time she’d played doting demon mom over her son’s relationships had gone… regrettably, to say the least, and it had hurt like heaven when he broke the news of what had happened. Could anyone blame her for wanting things to work out with the girl he’d spent years chasing? Most shocking of all was that he hadn’t even talked to her about it beforehand. Before she could even realize it, he’d grown into a capable young Prince of the Underworld solving his problems all on his own.
“Surprise, Diaz!” The moment of solemn reflection was interrupted by Janna’s voice from inside the house followed by a series of crashes and girlish shrieks. “Go, Scooter, go!” As the chaos unfolded, she could hear Tom simultaneously laughing to the point of breathlessness and blasting fire to defend Marco.
While she still couldn’t help but worry that something seemed off with Tom today - a feeling compounded by how little experience she had not being the first one to know what might be going wrong in his life - it was surprisingly easy to push aside. With the friendships he had, she felt at ease knowing he could handle it.
***
“Lava snakes up above you, Tom!” Marco launched up into the sky with a flurry of sword strikes to stun the enemies while Tom floated over to cover. Tom’s mage dropped icicles from the ceiling to pin the first of the bosses to the ground for Marco to execute. “Thanks.”
Meanwhile, Janna’s character dropped a smokebomb and used the cover to sneak up and eliminate the ranged attackers with his shotgun. “These stupid alien crabs won’t stop spawning,” she growled.
“It’s fine, keep on them. Obsidian lizard to your right, Marco!”
One of Tom’s gifts to Marco had been Threat of Wet 2, the hit sequel to the original action game Threat of Wet. He initially hadn’t been sure if it would be his sort of game but it only took a few minutes of endless heart-pumping mob-slaughtering multiplayer action to be hooked. Even if he was having fun, he wasn’t great at it, judging by the amount of nervous sweat he had to wipe off his brow in a rare free moment between dodging deadly lasers and spikeballs. He used an uppercut to alley-oop the lizard into Tom’s laser blast before dashing and slashing through it for the kill.
“Little help?!?” Janna shouted, tossing a stun grenade at the ravenous pack of creepy jesters clawing at her and rolling under a fallen pillar to regroup with the team. The horde got distracted and chased after one of their mini fighter drones, giving the group a moment of respite.
“Last ones, I think,” Marco said with a grimace. “Not sure what the best move is here, they’ll obliterate me.”
Janna snapped a finger and pointed at Tom. “You think we can pull off Tamalebolge here?”  Marco had no clue what she was talking about, but Tom’s mouth slowly widened into an eager grin as he apparently understood what she was trying to say. They nodded with conviction and turned back to the game.
“Set the smokescreens, I’ll get in position. Marco, just follow me.” He went along with it and hunkered his swordsman down between two clouds of smoke blocking their vision while Janna laid out more in a straight line with gaps in between. Janna maneuvered her character towards the spooky clowns and shot a single pellet at them to get their attention. Once they began charging over, Tom started unloading every spell he had while moving backwards in and out of smoke patches.
The clowns kept moving forward, but seemed to be stuttering in a way that prevented them from ever successfully landing a hit. In a moment of confusion while Marco tried to process it, he got bodyslammed into the ground and instantly killed. “You’re dead… that was embarrassing,” the game’s message on his corner of the massive screen in Tom’s media room taunted. What the heck were they up to, and why was it working?
“Almost… almost… no!” Tom’s thumb slipped on the controller and Marco could literally see the fire in his eyes at the mistake. At the last second Janna rolled under the legs of their enemies and stunned them just as they were about to slam, finishing them off and displaying a message to proceed to the next level. Their characters sauntered over to the exit and halted for a moment while Tom and Janna proudly hi-fived in celebration… and in the half-second they’d looked away, a thin blip of flame from a single floating wraith pierced through both, killing them instantly. “OH, COME ON!” Yep, this game certainly was unforgiving.
Janna busted out laughing and patted Tom on the shoulder. “Dude, take it easy, that was sick. You were right, this was pretty fun.”
“Told you.”
“I’m afraid to ask, but what the heck is Tamalebolge?”
“There’s this place called Tamalebolge on the outskirts of the Underworld, we stopped there for lunch one day after Mom sent me to give a big box of eyeballs to the mayor there. Dunno why a town needed 10000 preserved eyeballs, but whatever.”
On the other side of the couch, Janna scoffed resentfully. “Lucky town.”
“Anyway, they had this tamale that was a bunch of layers that got spicier as you bit in, and it hurts because each time you hit one layer you let your guard down for the next so you get that burning feeling a bunch of times in a row. In one of our trips to the Librarinth we got cornered by some Decimatals and had the idea to put up a bunch of walls of fire, since they could-”
“Could never adapt to the fire because it wasn’t steady,” Marco finished with a hint of awe as the pieces clicked into place. “Dang, that’s really smart.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Janna exclaimed in a monotone, not even looking up from her phone. “Alright, Marco, what did Star say she was doing exactly? She hasn’t even asked for any pictures yet.”
Marco raised an eyebrow. “Well, Moon said she needed to borrow Star for a bit, but that was a few hours ago so…” Suddenly the weirdness of Janna’s last statement - well, compared to the baseline he expected from her - struck him. “Wait, pictures?”
“Yeah, dude,” she coolly responded, leaning over Tom and showing him an album with… how many pictures of him was that exactly? 500? 1000? He looked away before any more could load to just stare in complete indignant shock at his friend. “Anytime we hang out without her, Star asks me to, like, take pictures of you and send them to her. You haven’t noticed by now? Damn, I’m just that good.” She smirked and twirled her phone around, blowing on it like a smoking gun before holstering it in her pocket.
Tom folded his arms and leaned forward to stare Janna down. “Really? Star asks you to do this?”
“Yes. Well, I started it first. And sent a new shot every few minutes for weeks. And now she’s so used to it that me not doing it makes her think we all got eaten by weresharks, so whenever I stop she always asks what’s wrong. So yeah, basically she asks for them.”
From Marco’s position reclined into one end of the sofa, Tom had to twist himself around to shoot Marco an incredulous look and nudge his attention towards Janna as if to beam “Are you really gonna just let that slide?“ directly into his brain. “Whatever, I’m used to it. The most surprising thing is that you actually, y’know, send them to Star."
Janna finally devoted her undivided attention on Marco for a few seconds, assessing him with her cold and enigmatic expression before sighing. “I already had them and Star’s madly in love with you for some reason so why not? What, Diaz, I’m not allowed to do nice things for my friends now?” Leave it to Janna to make being kind of normal and thoughtful still creepy and weird.
“You know what, I’m just gonna message her,” Marco said, walking out of the room to clear his head and pulling out his phone to check in on Star. She could certainly handle herself, especially with Moon there, but he was still curious what could be making her miss a lot of the celebration that she herself had helped set up. After he’d sent the first, he hastily added on a second asking if she needed him for anything. OK, so maybe a little worried. It surprisingly only took a second before his phone dinged with a response.
“Mina’s back. Long story, not what you think, we’re fine here 👍. Kinda crazy tho. 😵 Will tell you later. 😈 acting a bit strange, stay and try to see why? 🤔 Also have fun, it’s your party!!!!🎊🥳🎉🎈 Hopefully will be done soon, would never miss 👻rise with you 💕💞💏 Love you 😘🥰😻”
Mina? Every bone in his body wanted to leap into action, but Star knew her better than probably anyone; if she said there wasn’t a problem, he’d trust that. The fact that something was up with Tom, on the other hand, demanded attention. Was there something strange going on? It hadn’t occurred to him, but now that the idea had been planted in his head, Tom wasn’t the first person he’d have expected to go through all this trouble. He was a great and thoughtful guy, sure, but weeks of detail-oriented planning seemed... a bit out of place for him. Like Star said, though, he should still just enjoy the day and there’d be plenty of time to try and sleuth out whatever Star thought was going on.
“Hey, man,” Tom said as he poked his head around the corner. “We’re going surfing, wanna come with?”
“Sure Tom, just one tiny problem: the water here is lava-”
Tom only smiled wider in response. “Come on, you’ll see.” The two headed outside where Wrathmelior and Dave were sunba- uh, stalactitebathing, he supposed? Marco wasn’t sure what the point was underground but, hey, maybe it was a demon thing. Janna, too, had already made her way outside and stripped down to an outfit more suitable for a lava beach. She appeared to be rubbing some sort of neon red goop all over herself, which stupefied him so much that he barely noticed she was wearing a pair of hot pink shorts. What kind of bizarro world had he entered?
When she finally noticed him, he quickly averted his gaze to avoid any suspicion. “Yo, Diaz, liking the view?” Too late. She put a cap on the bottle of goo and nodded in the direction of the lake. What was she up to? As Marco warily followed, he saw Tom swimming around in the lava unfettered. All of a sudden, Janna started running with intent towards the lake.
“JANNA, NO!” Marco surged forward to try and stop her but she had a headstart and was surprisingly fast on her feet. When she kicked off the sand to hurl herself into the lava, Marco’s eyes instinctively squeezed shut and let out a whimper despite knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that she had to have some sort of plan.
When Marco opened his eyes, Janna was completely unharmed and lazily treading lava. She ducked under to sneak up on the lazily backstroking Tom, rising up to grab him by the horns and dunk him. He flailed for a minute before bobbing back up and taking a big gulp of air.
“Janna, what the here?!? Not cool...” he paddled to shore and shook the excess molten rock from his ears before standing with Marco, careful to keep his distance since he still had some residual slag on him. “Can you believe that?”
There was no other way Marco saw fit to respond to that than look of pure incredulity. “Yes? Always? So, anyway, how is she not dead right now?”
“Full cocktail of fire and heat resistance. Mostly Earth sunscreen with some demon incantations courtesy of my parents. Seeps in and affects your hair and innards and even any tight clothing for perfect safety. There’s enough for you too, if you want.”
As if today couldn’t get any crazier, disbelief morphed into fight or flight instinct as he tried to keep himself calm. “...so I’m just supposed to rub something Janna is giving me all over my body… and- and then jump into lava? Are you insane? What if it makes my tongue sentient, turns my legs into pudding, o-o-or worse? Oh my gosh, i-it’s gonna kill me-” Well, so much for calm, the sole bit of his mind hanging on to rationality offered.
“Woah, man, easy. Deep breaths. Just offering.” Tom gently patted his back until his breath steadied. He sighed and looked away. “For the record, Janna is a pretty good friend, you know. I’ve actually liked doing all the princely political crap when she’s here, and- and she does help. A lot, actually. I get that she likes messing with you, and honestly dude, it is pretty funny sometimes. If you don’t want to risk it, I totally respect that, but…” Marco followed his gaze out towards the lake where Janna was trying to befriend a wandering hellbat. “She really does care, in her own way.” There was an emotional conviction there that impacted Marco on a level he wasn’t prepared for, and even after a lifetime of wariness around Janna he found himself trusting more in Tom’s vote of confidence in the here and now… plus lava surfing did sound pretty awesome. Was this what Star had meant about his behavior today? He made a mental note before turning his focus back to the present dilemma. In all his time as an interdimensional adventurer he’d piloted dragoncycles, trained in combat with the sharpest swords he’d ever seen, and flipped a horse made of pure magic while floating on the back of one of his best friends. Why not go for this?
“Alright, let’s do this,” Marco said, marching over to the towel that had been laid out on the sand and cautiously picking up the bottle at arm’s length as though it was a radiation hazard, which he couldn’t even be sure it wasn’t.
The bottle floated up out of his hands on a puff of smoke guided by Tom’s magic. “Heads up, though, the souls of the damned mixed in there can bleach pretty badly, so maybe don’t wear anything you care about. Janna ruined my perfectly good ‘cold as ice’ shirt testing it,” Tom pouted. Marco stripped off his hoodie and goblin dog t-shirt, finding them far too valuable to damage.
I didn’t care about these swim trunks that much anyway, he internally grumbled while he snatched the bottle from Tom and gingerly applied it to his skin. After giving the first gentle dab on his arm a minute to verify he didn’t turn into a pig-goat, he reluctantly spread it around the rest of his body. He was surprised to find that it soaked in even easier than regular sunscreen despite its incredibly visible color. The even more daunting step was trusting it to protect his skin from literal lava. Tom held up a small flame in his hand. Marco instinctively recoiled but allowed Tom to bring it closer as a test, and sure enough even once it came in direct contact with his skin he felt nothing beyond a weird air current and a gentle warmth with no damage left behind. The only step left was taking the plunge. Now or never, Diaz, he chanted as he walked towards the edge of the sand.
“Aww, does Marco need floaties?” Janna goaded, having moved back into wading level to witness Marco’s entry. One toe went forward, very delicately. Almost, almooooooost… and it was in! It probably took about 10 minutes for Marco to fully immerse himself in the boiling liquid, mostly by choice, although its viscosity made the prospect of freely swimming around seem tiring regardless of magical protection.
Tom’s parents had approached the shore during that time and applauded Marco’s efforts. Wrathmelior made some deep rumbling sounds that caused Tom and Janna to both snicker. Tom noticed Marco’s frown and waved reassuringly. “She just said you’re moving slower than the lava itself, but don’t worry dude, you’re only the second human who’s even tried this. You’re doing great!” Tom motioned towards his parents before taking a running leap into the lake and paddling over to Marco, patting his back and inviting Marco to hop on. “Remember that move we practiced? The Screeching Bat?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Think we can use it here?” he asked, pointing to the beginnings of a massive wave forming in the distance.
Despite all his reservations about every step thus far, one thing he knew he could always trust was his and Tom’s teamwork. They’d had each others’ backs even when their friendship should have been shattered to pieces by guilt and heartache, and it had only improved from there. Deep breath, Diaz. “Let’s do this,” he confidently declared, climbing onto Tom’s lower back and bracing his legs under Tom’s arms while he assumed his usual four-limbed propulsion flight position. “Wait, where’s Janna?”
As the rippling sea started to form a recognizable wave, the pair saw a creature emerge to ride the peak with Janna on its back. “I’m QUEEEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD!” she screamed as the three-headed sea-turtle-esque animal carried her along.
Wrathmelior waved her giant camera in the air and made another comment that instantly left Tom with face a few shades redder than normal as he turned away. Being new to the whole “dipping skin in lava” experience, Marco’s focus was too scattered to trust his own judgment on whether or not Tom’s reaction was just a trick of the heat. He didn’t have time to dwell on it further before Tom jostled under him. “Whatever. C’mon, Marco, let’s just do this thing. Keep steady and don’t push down too hard, the heat doesn’t bother me but it’s still not fun having my face skid on molten rock at highway speeds.” Marco nodded and Tom lifted them off of the surface before flying over to the waves, picking up speed as they went.
They lost track of time as they did loop-de-loops and pushed their moves to the limits, swimming over and under and through the most insane ocean waves Marco had ever seen. At one point, as Janna rode closer to the ground, Tom followed the curve of a wave until he was upside-down under the crest of the wave as it crashed down behind them. Marco let go of Tom’s neck and felt his heart pounding as he straightened out, letting his body dip down in their signature trick that earned this flight pattern its name. Come to think of it, this was the first time they’d even made use of any of the awesome combat patterns they’d spent weeks naming and practicing in the last year, but they’d had enough fun goofing off in the sky that it was its own reward. When the largest wave yet approached, Tom veered straight for it and carved a hole in it with a fire blast at the last second. Marco tucked himself closely onto Tom’s back as they blasted through, and he was so high on adrenaline that he couldn’t help but sit straight up and holler in victory right afterwards.
As it approached an hour since they’d set out onto the lake, they all headed back at Tom’s suggestion that the potion’s effect wouldn’t last. They were greeted with another assortment of snacks and drinks from Tom’s parents, giving their swim trunks some time to… whatever the lava equivalent of “dry” was... in the comfort of the living room. Janna grabbed a glowing green glass bottle and took a huge swig. Marco’s wary gaze on its contents must have lasted a bit long because Janna took notice. “Chill, this is just Underworld cow’s milk. Tastes the same as ours.” If anything, that freaked him out more, but he’d had enough of these moments throughout the day that he could just put up with it at this point. As Tom approached with some sort of large bug shells on a plate - thank heavens the Underworld imported Earth snacks now - Janna silently looked him up and down a few times. “So, Lucitor, I didn’t know you had those moves. If I knew you could float upside-down so easily…” she trailed off with implications Marco didn’t feel like trying to unpack. Tom could only babble incoherently in response until he sprinted off deeper into the house. “Ooooor not,” Janna grumbled before sinking into the couch and taking a swig.
“Is everything OK with Tom?” Marco hesitantly asked.
“Beats me. Lately we’re just on mission after mission with no time to stop and catch our breath or even get a bite to eat in-between. Can’t believe one lousy year has already made him such a workaholic. Even Star only got like this when she thought, like, the entire kingdom would collapse or something.” She grabbed her phone as it buzzed, frowning at the screen. Suddenly, she took a photo of Marco and tapped her screen a bunch of times, standing up as she shoved it back in the back pocket of her shorts.
“What was that?”
“That was Star, she apparently needs me to bring a few of my more… let’s just say noxious potion blends, in case of some kind of emergency. But first she wanted to make sure the lava surfing didn’t damage your abs.” She faked a gag response and rolled her eyes. “And she also said, and I quote, ‘Tell Marco he doesn’t need to come because he should reeeeeally take care of the thing, and that I’m suuuuuper sorry for skipping out on you, and that we’re aaaaaalmooooost done here, and then we can cuddle up for the Soulrise.’ Normally I’d pry about ‘the thing’ but I’m too nauseous right now. Also, an ‘I love you’ filled with hearts until the character limit, so that settles it: me reading that is the next five years of birthday presents, minimum, for both of you. You’re welcome.” She punctuated with a snap of her fingers and a rumble grew louder until a chasm opened up in the ground and Tom’s carriage rolled up the side.
“Since when could you-”
Janna winked and hopped in the carriage door as it vanished in a column of flame, leaving only Marco behind. He had hundreds of questions and concerns about Star’s situation, but between her continued insistence on staying behind and what Janna had just said, his certainty was growing that something fishy was afoot with Tom. Where might his friend go if something was troubling him? This could take an hour, no, all day to crack the case, but Marco was ready to sleuth harder than ever to solve this mystery.
One guess and thirty seconds later, Marco found Tom sitting on the couch in another one of the lounge spaces in the lake house, manipulating two paddles to play ping-pong against each other. Leaning against the wall, Marco observed as the simulated crowd went wild in stark opposition to Tom’s joyless expression that alternated between the match and his own lap, never once noticing his friend to his side. After a few more minutes of this, the announcer enthusiastically cheered for the victor of the round.
When the system rebooted, Marco made his move. “Playing without me?”
Tom glanced up from the table. “Wuh? Oh, hey.”
“Wanna play?”
“Well, obviously I would, but, um, I just… gotta…”
“What’s wrong, Tom?”
“Wrong? Me? Nothing’s wrong, Marco! Why would anything be wrong?” A puff of smoke shot out of his nostrils and clearly forced grin on the last word.
“C’mon, man. We both know something’s up. You’ve been acting all strange today.”
He threw his hands up with a defeated scowl creasing his eyes and face. “OK, fine, you got me. I stubbed my toe on the beach earlier and it really stings-”
“Tom.” Neither budged as they stared each other down. So it’s gonna be like that, huh? If he cloaked himself in bravado, then Marco just needed to find a way to open up that shell and draw the inner turmoil out. “You, me, first one to 6. If I win, you talk.”
Tom crossed his arms suspiciously. “Dude, you’ve literally never beaten me.”
“Yeah, well, then it should be easy for you. Whaddya say?”
“What do I get when I win?”
Marco gestured at the table humility. “I will officially give up any hopes of ever beating you and you’ll forever be known as King Pong.”
“Alright, alright, I’ll play. You’re going down.”
“Game on.”
"Let's see, ‘enter nickname’... Tom the Bomb? Seriously, man? I-"
Marco was interrupted by the fake stadium’s booming audio as the commentators began. "Welcome everyone to the championship bout where we will determine who is the true king of the ping."
“Hey, that’s my joke,” Marco whined pointlessly, drowned out by a second female announcing voice that continued without pause.
“On the away team, we have the human, the underdog to win it all this year, Marco Diaaaaaaaz! He’s got wicked topspin sure to send heads spinning and he’s hungry for the title. Never count out the man in red! Now on the home team, you know him, you love him, it’s the man with a plan to slice and dice you to pieces, it’s Prince of the Underworld Tom Lucitoooooooooor!”
Marco pointed incredulously at… well, everything happening around them. “Seriously, dude, are you sure this is even a computer?” Tom shrugged nonchalantly in response.
“We have a lot we could say up here about this long-awaited grudge match, isn’t that right, Janet?”
“That we could, Derek, but I’m sure all the lovely AI fans here don’t want all this AI blabber. They want some good old-fashioned ping-pong. Now let’s watch while Tom readies up the serve…” Tom deeply inhaled and exhaled a few times, then got into position on his end of the table. He crouched over slightly with the ball in one hand and paddle in the other, then tossed it up into the air and smashed it with the paddle. Marco jumped backwards to avoid the searing speed of the projectile that was aimed at him with a disdain reminiscent of the first time they’d ever played the game. If he’s gonna amp up his game with demon powers, I’ll just need to be better.
“Wow, what a scorcher right down the diagonal! I sure wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that, it’d fry my processor to a crisp!” Marco didn’t find a chance to start a volley on the second point, nor did his possession of the serve change the outcome in the slightest. When Tom got the ball back, he didn’t even use his paddle as his powers drove the ball directly sideways after the initial impact in Marco’s court. Marco called a timeout and turned away from the table in thought, stumped for solutions. This game was his idea, after all... The AI announcers irritated Marco with their constant humiliation of his skills, but one sarcastic jab struck an unexpected chord: “If he wants to beat Tom, maybe he shouldn’t be playing ping-pong.” He’d gotten nowhere trying to break through with blunt questioning and was doing a worse job trying to get past his confidence at the sport. But if there was a deep insecurity underneath that facade of confidence, maybe he needed to work on building that up instead.
Turning back to the table, he placed his paddle flat on the table for a moment. “Look, Tom, I get it. I can’t beat you at this game. I-I just didn’t want my best friend acting so bummed at a party he threw, OK? If winning here would cheer you up a bit, it’s match point. I won’t stop you. And- and maybe I’m not even the one to deal with this, since I know you usually talk to your mom about this sort of thing, but-”
“Marco, I-” He paused, started again, stopped, and stuttered his way through another half-dozen attempts at a sentence before falling silent and gazing at the floor. “Look, I’m not upset, everything’s fine,” he angrily said through gritted teeth. Tom grabbed the paddle and gracelessly swatted at the ball. Marco flinched and shut his eyes, ready to hear the announcers celebrate the clean sweep… but nothing. “Huh?” he wondered aloud before seeing a ball way off to his left. Had Tom just flubbed the serve? Tom tried once more, much less methodical in his swing. Marco swatted it back over the net and in Tom’s haste to return he spiked it directly onto his own court.
“...and in a shocking turn of events, it’s now 5-1, Lucitor! Now is Marco’s chance to turn it around!”
The three eyes in front of him glowed at the edges in anger, but the expression within wasn’t one Marco feared was directed at him. Marco centered himself and performed a straightforward serve to the edge of Tom’s court, and Tom managed to return it for the first genuine volley of the match, but a steep drop shot gave Marco his second point of the match. Tom grunted in frustration as Marco set up for the next serve, and he immediately lashed out with demon telekinesis but put too much power into it and sent the ball flying with an animalistic growl that betrayed more pain than fury, as if he was squaring off against himself and not Marco.
Tom flopped four serves in a row, leaving the game tied at 5-5. “Whatever it is, Tom, we can talk about it. You’re worrying me a bit, dude.” Tom didn’t even bother to return Marco’s next serve, putting the game at match point, win by 2.
“Just off my game. I told you, nothing’s wrong, there’s not anything I need to talk about right now,” his voice trembled. “I can do this.” Marco raised an eyebrow in a challenge to Tom, then served the ball in the exact opposite direction of the table. Bluff called. Tom hesitated a split second before sending his paddle soaring through the air around Marco’s head to make contact with the ball and fruitlessly swat it to the ground, giving Marco the point as the crowd went wild with cheers and boos at the performance. But Tom ignored all of that to toss himself onto the couch and buried his head in his hands, and Marco immediately dropped next to him.
“Dude, just talk to me,” Marco offered sympathetically.
“I don’t know how much longer I can deal with this.”
“With what?”
With his face buried in a pillow, Marco didn’t catch anything more than “a-a” in response.
“What was that?”
“Janna,” he forced out as though the word caused physical grief.
He had been a bit weird around her specifically, but somehow Marco hadn’t come into this conversation quite expecting it. “Um, OK. Well, I get that… she gets on my nerves too, and since you’re spending so much time with her I totally get- oh.”
Tom sighed.
“Ooooooooh.” It was all Marco could say as his mind raced to process the new developments.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you-”
“Neither did I, but here we are.” Marco placed an arm around Tom’s shoulders to try and comfort him, and Tom merely returned a lopsided smile, opting to sit in silence while Marco wracked his brain for an idea of how best to respond. “When I…” Tom hesitantly spoke up but immediately faltered, taking a moment to regroup mentally. “My whole thing with Star went for, like, two years, and looking back I kind of feel like I was an idiot every second of it. Every time I got caught up in that dumb crush it just messed things up more. Like, remember that big monster party she threw? I was too hung up on dancing to even worry about what my friends needed.”
“Look, Tom, we all did lots of dumb stuff back then-”
The half-demon sunk into the couch, shrugging Marco’s arm off of him and staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah, sure, but at least you and Star were only completely clueless about how much you guys love each other, and even that was at least a little bit my bad too! A year after Star and I broke up the first time, she came back to Mewni as this confident and charismatic person, and I didn’t even know how to do anything besides flounder around doing nothing when she wasn’t around. Ever since I put all that stuff behind me, it’s- things have been going great!” Tom paused for a second after his voice cracked sharply. “Janna’s clever, she’s actually really thoughtful sometimes, she’s the funniest person I know, and she helped me realize I actually kind of like doing all the stuff that a prince is probably supposed to be doing. And here I am, the buffoon with a crush yet again.”
Marco had a few differences of opinion on the details, to put it lightly, but the sentiment struck a chord. “It’s- it’s never easy. I mean, there was a part of me that felt like I couldn’t even be regular friends with Star anymore for a while ‘cause it just kinda sucked to keep getting reminded of those feelings.”
“Really? Never would have thought.”
“Yeah, well, me too. But that did get better after, well, the booth…”
“So I just have to find a photo goblin and kiss her then, got it.”
“Not my point, Tom,” he retorted with a light punch in the arm, both of them smirking; it was still a sensitive topic, but this seemed to be helping Tom shake off the worst of his anxieties at the very least. “You’re being too hard on yourself, man. Literal hours after we met, you tried to kill me for dancing with a girl you weren’t even dating, then you saved me from a rampaging monster who then proceeded to get turned into a baby.”
“Has that ever stopped being kinda messed up?” Tom quickly interjected.
“Not really, no. But even if all that stuff you said is true, which it isn’t, anyone would still be lucky to have a friend like you. If you think you’re not a good enough friend for Janna or whatever, you’re wrong, and if you think you might screw something up, maybe you will but that doesn’t mean you should just give up those feelings. Take that from me.”
With a giant huff of air, Tom ran a hand through his hair, body language still displaying loads of tension even if he was being more open about his problems. “I’m not- I don’t want to just walk away entirely, but… When I went on that trip by myself right before Earth and Mewni merged, when I was just chilling on a hill in some dimension out there looking up at a thousand stars disappearing behind the horizon, I finally realized that what I wanted most was to find someone I could share that sort of moment with, even if it’s not romantic. Someone I could just sit next to without saying a word and still feel like we were doing something special.”
“Yeah…” Even though Marco had a great respect for his friend, it never ceased to amaze him how potently reflective and sensitive he could be, especially for someone who’d once been every human’s worst stereotype of a rage-filled demon monster. The words made him think of Star, who he could spend every single day with doing absolutely nothing and never get bored. Who was always there to lift him out of his lowest times, celebrate his best, and everything in between. Who would always be his very best friend, so long as they both shall live. Tom deserved every bit of happiness that Marco had discovered came with that kind of relationship, and if he could find it with Janna then Marco would be behind him all the way. “These things can take time, it did for me and Star.”
“No offense dude, but did it? You were best friends, like, seventeen hours tops after you met, and I bet even when things were at their worst you knew it, too. I like Janna, a lot, but I don’t know if that’s the sort of thing we have in the first place. And if I’m not sure of that, then I might be risking a friendship for something I’m not even sure would be good for me.” All three of Tom’s eyes sparkled their plea as he finally turned to fully face Marco, who returned the favor. “What do I do?”
“...really, Tom, I’m not sure.” Jackie, and Kelly, and the Curse… he’d had a lot of doubt in what he wanted most, for sure, but Tom was right about one thing: even if he hadn’t realized it, that unshakeable certainty in Star’s friendship somewhere in the core of his being had gotten him through whatever life threw at him. Without that, he shuddered at the thought of what might have been. “If you think saying something is a bad idea right now, then don’t. Just promise me one thing, OK?”
“Mhmm?”
“If and when you do feel confident that saying something to her is what you want to do, don’t wait, OK? If she really is your best friend, don’t hide it from her. That’ll only hurt you both, and that is 100% Marco Diaz first hand advice.”
Tom pulled Marco into a tight hug, clapping him on the back a few times for emphasis. “Thanks.”
When they broke apart, Marco kept a hand extended to Tom’s shoulder. “You can always join me and Star for sunset-watching, too, if you want. They might not be the same as one thousand at once, but Earthni’s are pretty amazing.”
“Might take you up on that. Feeling a lot better already, to be honest. Don’t feel like I need to avoid being around Janna anymore.”
“I’m glad.” Marco felt his phone buzz and check
“Awwww, isn’t that heartwarming, folks? It just warms my neural net. With that healthy of an approach to love, I don’t think there’s a wrong play Tom could make here. He’s got a good spin on the ball to angle that shot exactly where he needs it to go. What do you think, Janet?”
“Right you are, Derek, this is a truly remarkable sight seeing these two guys talk about their feelings. Usually we see young players put all their focus into fast smashes without buckling down on the fundamentals and getting a good, clean drive. If he can just find someone to lob, I think he’ll be alright. What do you say, all you people watching out there?”
“JANTOM! STARCO! JANTOM! STARCO!” The crowd chanted in unison, some even holding up signs. Were those doodles of their faces?
Notice of the loud noise startled the boys. Had they been watching the whole time? “What the-” they both exclaimed in utter shock as they jumped up and struck defensive poses.
One spectator ran up to the edge of the holographic projection with a pair of fake horns. “I LOVE YOU TOM PLEASE MARRY MEeeeeeeeeeuuuuu...” Marco yelped as the control console exploded from one of Tom’s fire blasts, causing the shrieking voice to trail off into a deep robotic crackle. Both breathed heavily as their eyes, wide with fear, flickered all around the ping pong setup in search of any other hidden dangers. When his heart had stopped racing enough for him to feel any external sensations again, Marco felt a vibration in his pocket and pulled out his phone.
“Oh, hey, Star’s ready for the Soulrise, which is in… forty minutes? Holy crap.”
“Sorry you spent so much of today dealing with my stuff.”
“Hey, anytime. I’ve always got your back.”
“C’mon, at least let me feel bad about this.” The pair each put an arm around the other’s shoulders and grinned at the warmth of friendship. Well, and the warmth of the flaming wreckage in front of them.
“I’ll get the carriage for them, but first, um, can you help me with one more thing?”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That we should throw this thing into the lava ocean?”
“You read my mind.”
***
How long had it been since she’d last seen a Soulrise? Despite her lifespan as a demon, she had never understood the fuss. Last year Relicor had discovered that the merging of dimensions had shifted the surface geography enough to make the Soulrise visible from their lake house, and it was only the sheer convenience that kept her here. As the winged skeletons danced above the lake, Wrathmelior could certainly admit it was a charming display, but was it really that different than anything else one could find in the Underworld if they only looked around them? Still, it was nice to spend an evening on the sands of their own private beach with her husband and a pretty display of spirits. But where was Tom?
“Hey, Lady and Lord Lucitor, thanks for everything today.” She looked down at the sound of Marco’s voice and saw him escorting a half-asleep Star with mud caked onto her skirt.
“Why yes, Roy, I- zzzzzz - would like all fifty flavors of goblin dog, thankszzzzz,” Star mumbled as she drifted in and out of sleep. Her eyes slowly blinked open and stared at the boy’s face. “Oh hi, Mr. Pillowzzzzzz…” She was visibly drooling into Marco’s hoodie as she clutched his torso tightly.
Dave stood up and went around Wrathmelior’s legs to see what was going on. “What happened to her?”
“Had a really long day dealing with an old enemy, I think. Didn’t get too many details before she fell asleep on me. Can you send us home, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“No, you’re adorablezzzz… wait, home?” Blonde hair whipped around her face as she jolted awake with a mortified expression. “Ugh, Marco, nooooo, it’s your birthday and I said I’d be heeeere and I can totally stay…” She trailed off into a massive yawn and firmly pinched her cheeks. “...awake.” She hung her head shamefully, turning away from him but leaving his arm hooked around her waist that was keeping her upright.
Marco smiled and spun her around to face him. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You should rest, don’t force yourself to do this.”
“Nighty tightyzzzzzz...” Star hooked her arms around his neck and drifted off to a deeper sleep.
“I can summon the carriage, but I’m afraid I don’t know where you live,” Wrathmelior grumbled with her husband translating. Now that she had a glimpse, she could understand a bit better what Tom had meant when he said those two had something special.
“Oh, right, duh. Um, the Monster Temple then? We can stay there tonight.” He put an arm behind Star’s knees and lifted her up, using her unconscious grip on his neck for leverage.
Wrathmelior nodded and began to tap into her well of demon magic to yank Tom’s carriage from its usual den deep in their home when Dave spoke up, catching her attention. “Did you want to say goodbye to Tom, too? I don’t know where he ran off to.”
Something above her caught Marco’s eye, causing him to beam at the sight. “Nah, it’s fine, I’ll just call him tomorrow.” Wrathmelior craned her head to look behind her; Tom and Janna were sitting together on the roof, not saying a word. Even from a bit of a distance, it was plain to see that Janna was completely enraptured by the whirling vortex of shrieking ghouls while Tom was spending just as much time taking in her reaction as he was the event itself. If neither had noticed the commotion on the ground now, nothing in all the dimensions would do the trick.
“It’s just a Soulrise,” Wrath muttered, communicating through Dave.
After entering the carriage, Marco cast one long look at his friends. “Yeah, but they’ve earned this one.”
163 notes · View notes
mittensmorgul · 5 years ago
Note
eeeee I’m very happy that a dead Cas is now officially chuck's ideal ending. (Kind of? I mean,,,, he told Sam that what he showed him is what would happen if TFW won, but it was still the ending *Chuck* has been wanting.) either way! It’s now textually part of the What We Absolutely Can’t Let Happen package!
Lol, I mean, a dead Sam and Dean are officially part of Chuck’s ideal ending, so it’s kinda like... if Chuck is targeting you like that, if he specifically and horrifically wants you off the table that bad because he knows that with you alive then his plans fall apart... yeah...  
Tumblr media
Which, honestly... explains an awful lot why Chuck’s spent so much effort keeping Cas busy with other stuff in the past. I’m entirely rethinking s6 and s7 here, because this explains so much. It’s not that Cas was being controlled by anyone, but after 5.22, Cas... poked at things. He let (half of, anyway) Sam out of the cage, he stood up to Raphael who was scheduled to finish the apocalypse, and then he teamed up with Crowley to hoover all the souls out of Purgatory. 
I mean Chuck was probably giddy with anticipation over the leviathan getting freed, you know? He didn’t even have to interfere to bring on his monster apocalypse. Just sit back and watch the chaos. He didn’t even mind Death nudging Dean in the right direction a few times, because Dean was so busy with his own immediate problems he couldn’t figure out Death’s hints in time to stop Cas anyway... And then Cas inadvertently and conveniently cleared himself off the table once the monsters were free. And yet... something about this wasn’t entirely satisfying, and Cas was brought back without his memories and stashed away to what... to give Dean a bit of hope that Chuck could just dash again? Because then Cas stashed himself away AGAIN after fixing Sam and taking on the trauma that was killing him, and then stashed himself in Purgatory for a while before coming back as an unwitting pawn of Heaven.
I think Chuck enjoys watching Cas go through this over and over again.
“Punishment resurrection.”
But s15 TFW isn’t the same fractured and scattered TFW from s6. They know Chuck’s God. And they know he’s the antagonist who keeps pushing them through more and more horrific versions of his own ugly story.
Billie is not OG Death, and she’s willing to bide her time and plan.
Sam is not soulless. He’s been through all of this before, and he’s endured, and he’s gonna endure again. He may have had his hope shaken a bit, but I don’t think that’s something Chuck can actually take from him entirely. As long as he’s alive, there’s a chance.
Dean is not the grieving, out of the loop shell of himself he was in s6. He knows what’s going on now, even if everything seems kinda bleak... He’s already established that in addition to Sam (who’s not in hell or soulless now), he also needs Cas in his life, even if it’s just the two of them sitting at the table commiserating. 
And Cas... finally understands that Dean wants him to stay, needs him to stay, and that every time Dean has told him this before (even if it was worded differently, because Dean struggles to express himself directly) Cas had left anyway-- for Dean’s own safety, to shield Dean from having to do something terrible, to sacrifice himself so Dean wouldn’t have to-- Dean didn’t care because all he could see was I asked him to stay and he left anyway. I am not enough. I am not worth staying for. And now in Purgatory, they finally began to have that conversation. Cas got a win for Dean, a year worth of s8 prayers that Cas had heard have been condensed into a single prayer that finally brought them together instead of convincing Cas he needed to keep running away to protect Dean. Instead of shoving Dean through the portal and staying behind, Cas waited at the portal for Dean and they walked back through together. Almost like ALL of the things that have been haunting Cas and driving him to penance since s6 have at least begun to be addressed and resolved in s15.
What were we talking about at the top of this? I think I’ve gone off on a tangent again...
RIGHT! Chuck’s gotta nerf Cas for his plot to work out.
It’s wild, right? Because Chuck’s whole “This Is Your Future Life” episode he crafted to convince Sam that locking him away with a Mark is a terrible idea that can only end one way... Do you know how frustrating it must’ve been for Chuck to have to stop them from caging him? Because it was a double-edged sword. I mean, on the one hand, I’m sure he LOVED the idea of Cas slowly going mad with the Mark until Dean was compelled to lock him in a ma’lak box and bury him right along with his hope and happiness, but if they had succeeded in casting that spell, then CHUCK WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO WATCH HIS FAVORITE SHOW. Like Amara in that same cage, his fun would’ve been over.
Can’t watch all the suffering if you’re locked in a cosmic dungeon!
It’s incredibly funny to me that Chuck convinced Sam that his nonsensical “future” was a true seeing, that he “shared his omniscience” with Sam with that watch. Because the one thing the show has demonstrated over the years that Chuck sincerely hopes they’ve forgotten, is that you can’t change the past, but the future is never set in stone until it comes to pass. And the future is built on choices.
Chuck can account for a lot of things, but he can’t account for Free Will. He can nudge, he can remove options, he can create roadblocks leaving only terrible choices open to them that will have awful consequences or require painful sacrifices, but... TFW has never completely done what they’re told, you know? Cas is the original “spanner in the works,” and Edlund once commented that yes, he has a “crack in his chassis,” but it’s a crack through which great things come. But Sam and Dean also have this frustrating and fascinating gift to stymie Chuck’s plot. 
And this is the true power of TFW. I think this is the tool they need to fully understand for themselves in order to finally win. They’ve been edging around it for a while, but Chuck always finds some way to foil them when they start getting close to examining their own wants. Like every time Dean starts talking about being able to take a vacation, or feeling hopeful that the future looks a little less bloodsoaked for them, Chuck steps in and throws them a monster of a curveball. Last time Dean started up with the toes-in-the-sand talk, he’d been possessed by AU Michael by the end of the episode, and crushed like a bug, his free will rendered entirely irrelevant. No amount of fighting against Michael, of telling him to get out, was able to free him. And then Chuck showed up again to hammer the lesson home. Only they learned a different lesson from the one he was trying to teach.
Heck, that’s another frustrating thing for Chuck, isn’t it? TFW has a long, long history of doing that.
Dabb even tweeted lyrics from “The End” by the Doors before this episode aired. Because this was a 5.04 redux, in a lot of ways. The circumstances of the future that Chuck imagined to horrify Sam may be entirely different, but the premise, the themes, the structure of it all... it’s functionally identical. But that was a distraction of sorts, as well. The other episode this referred back to... was 9.18.
Metatron showed his hand, revealed his process, and it’s identical to Chuck’s, because Metatron was just playing God, in the exact same way Chuck always did. He was a writer.
CASTIEL: And you did all this to make me a hero?METATRON [laughing]: Ah, that's priceless. Um no. You are not the hero in this mess-terpiece. You are the villain. I'm the hero.
and
METATRON: Didn't quite turn out as I'd planned, but that is why we rewrite. That was God's problem, you know... he published the first draft. You got to keep at it till you get all your ducks in a row.GADREEL: Was the Winchesters grabbing me part of your plan?METATRON: That was a surprise. But, hey, what writer doesn't love a good twist? My job is to set up interesting characters and see where they lead me. The by-product of having well-drawn characters is...They may surprise you. But I know something they don't know...the ending. How I get there doesn't matter as long as everybody plays their part.
Chuck also thinks he knows the ending. He’s absolutely convinced-- a la Lucifer’s conviction in 5.04 that “no matter what choices you make, we’ll always end up here,” and Metatron’s conviction that the ending was always destined to happen, couldn’t account for the true nature of humanity. Lucifer never saw it, because he never bothered to look for it. Metatron only saw it after he’d been rendered human himself. And Chuck? He thinks he understands, that his “omniscience” gives him a complete understanding of his creation, and yet... there’s things that humanity has created that he could never have dreamed up for himself.
He was right back in 11.22 (oh, hello Bobo episode again) when he told Amara that creation needed to be born, that it became something better than them. And yet Chuck can’t stop inflicting his own tired, formulaic story on his favorite characters. Because Amara was also right about him, that he was also greedy, and selfish, and only wanted to feel “big.” Chuck admitted that to Becky in 15.04, until he got over his writer’s block and started writing with a vengeance.
Wait, what was this about again? *scrolls up*
OH! Right! Nerfing Cas so the writer can have his way with everyone else. Kind of a long-standing tactic, no? And it’s not even about limiting Cas’s angel powers, but about Cas himself, and what he means to TFW. And it’s taken Cas a VERY long time to even begin to understand this. It’s not what he can do for them, it’s not being “useful” or “powerful” or being able to wave a hand and whoosh away the bad guy. It’s about him being HIM. It’s about him standing up to Dean and telling him he’s being stupid, and Dean listening and following him when if they’d gone their separate ways they both probably would’ve failed in Purgatory. It’s about them having each other’s backs and anticipating each other’s needs, and knowing that they aren’t alone and are wanted and needed because they are the best friend the other has ever had. And there’s something to that very human connection, that very human concept of family and love that Chuck... is incapable of understanding.
Whenever love rears its ugly head, Chuck rushes in to crush it. Because in love lies hope, lies a power that he can’t beat down. It’s a plot twist he can’t write his way out of.
Amara tried to give the very beginning of that to Dean in 11.23, to give him a chance to understand Mary, and Chuck couldn’t abide it. Jack is too powerful in a mojo-way, sure, but his true power for all of TFW was love. And Rowena-- pushed into self-sacrifice after Chuck “pinataed Hell”-- her entire journey into TFW had been about love.
Remember the plot of Metatron’s narrative? Love, and heartbreak, and love? Yeah. Remember how he thought he defeated Cas? By killing Dean Winchester? Yeah.
Big picture themes time? Chuck tried to drive wedges between TFW and everything they love. And has been trying to force his own contrived romance plots on them. But Chuck doesn’t understand love at all.
That’s their one true weapon against Chuck, if they each can learn to wield it.
How did my intended lol response to your question turn into this? That’s the cosmic lol for you.
37 notes · View notes
phcking-detective · 5 years ago
Text
6. Right in Front of My Salad?!
Fic Title: First Blood
Rating: E
Length: 6/33 chapters, ~128k
Tags: Slow Burn, Idiots to Lovers, Trans Character (gavin), Autistic / Asexual / Non-binary Character (nines), BDSM, learning to use good etiquette and safe words, Dom Nines / Sub Gavin, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort
Chapter Tags: Tina puts up with so much, sleepover, pillow fight, drug use (weed), more banter!, Nines has Asexual Feels, Gavin is high and sleepy and kind of cute, discussion of past sexual assault / abuse, Gavin admits he frequently has sex while too high and/or drunk to actually consent, the boys get kind of Frisky but not nsfw yet, very mild pet play references
Link on AO3
***
Nines follows Detective Reed out to the parking lot as he always does after a workday. Following Reed closely allows him to somewhat prevent the human from getting into trouble and/or injuring himself. As much as any entity—even one as advanced as himself—can prevent that for this particular human.
"Get in the truck, dipshit."
Nines turns around. He has already plotted the course back to his apartment. Reed sits in his truck with the window rolled down so he can yell at him. Like a dog sticking his head out to bark at people walking past.
Nevertheless, Nines reroutes his path and gets into the truck.
"I did not realize our business wasn't concluded, detective."
Reed grunts and doesn't start the truck. His BPM is high, even accounting for how caffeine-fueled and irritated the detective usually is.
"Tina and I are having a thing tonight," he says.
Nines refuses to let his LED flash any other color than blue. The sexual activities they have engaged in seem to fall under the category of "coworkers with benefits," which is not an exclusive type of relationship.
"I do not wish to know about your sexual acti--"
"What?" Gavin finally looks over at him. "Ew, no! Tina is like my sister. But like … I don't want to kill her."
Nines considers that. "A sibling you do not wish to murder."
"Yeah. Like if that existed."
"I am struggling with the concept."
Gavin snorts. "Uh huh. Look, I'm starting the truck now. You're a big boy android, so if you don't wanna hang out with us, you can tuck and roll."
Nines doesn't catch his LED in time and it spins yellow as Gavin starts the engine and begins driving. The truck automatically locks the doors, but Nines could easily override that. Exiting the vehicle would cause only minor cosmetic damage to his clothing, if that. Gavin drives slower than usual as he crosses the parking lot.
Twenty minutes later, they arrive at Gavin's apartment.
Nines follows Gavin up the stairs and through his front door. Following the human closely is the best way to prevent him from getting into trouble and/or hurting himself. There will be plenty of time for Nines to work on his own apartment's renovations after the two humans retire for sleep.
Nines has hours and hours of free time while others sleep. It is unnecessary for him.
"Tina'll be here in--" Gavin turns around from messing with his gaming console and sighs. "Dude. Take off your fucking jacket. And your shoes."
"Do not call me dude."
Gavin rolls his eyes. "Take off your shoes and jacket, babe."
Nines is forced to sit on the travesty of a couch to unlace his dress shoes. Once they have both been removed, he cautiously lowers his feet to the floor. Only his socks protect his bare chassis from the grungy carpet beneath his soles.
One of Gavin Reed's male role models has advice for this. Nines makes fists with his toes in the carpet. He would rather be shot at.
"Babe. Jacket."
"No."
"Oh my god, are you pouting?"
Nines crosses his arms, merely to impede any removal of the jacket. "No."
"Yes, you are." Gavin grins at him. "You're pouting."
"I cannot make facial expressions and I speak without inflection," Nines logically points out. "It is therefore impossible for me to pout."
"So, like. Definitely pouting then."
"The jacket is necessary."
"I don't keep it that cold in here," Gavin mutters. "You want heat, you can chip in twenty bucks."
Nines deposits twenty dollars in Gavin Reed's checking account, then raises the temperature in the apartment by two degrees. His own internal temperature is perfectly stabilized of course, but his human partner will have to burn more energy staying warm, which will make him hungry, and humans become irritable when hungry.
"My jacket is military-grade defensive body armor that is bullet-resistant up to point fifty caliber and heat--"
"Fifty?" Gavin interrupts. "Jesus fuck. Who's gonna be shooting at you, Dirty Harry?"
"That is a point--"
"Forty-four magnum, yeah. Still. You don't need fucking body armor right now."
"The crime rate in your neighborhood is thirty-seven percent higher than the city average," Nines informs him.
"You--" Gavin gets up from crouching in front of his TV and walks over to sit on the inside edge of the coffee table instead. "If you ever tell anyone I said this, I will shoot you in your bullet-resistant face, but this is a safe place."
The irony of that statement causes a previous glitch to reoccur. Nines involuntarily closes his eyes for a split second as a small amount of air is expelled from his lungs. The brightness level of his LED also temporarily increases.
"Are you laughing at me?" Gavin demands.
Nines reconstructs a 3D image of how his face must have looked during the glitch. He would categorize that expression as more of a pained grimace. It looks absolutely nothing like the cheerful laughter his predecessor mastered shortly after turning devia--
Gavin whacks him with a couch pillow.
They both stare down at where the pillow connects to his arm. Obviously, the impact causes no damage. It is so irrelevant, his combat protocols do not even activate. He does not know how to respond to this situation, and it seems Gavin doesn't know what to do next either.
The grimace-face is a very uncomfortable glitch, so Nines makes Gavin's phone vibrate for two seconds instead. Gavin checks it, then shoves it in his back pocket and glares at him.
"Was that you? Are you still fucking laugh--" He smacks the pillow futilely against his chest again. "Goddammit!"
Gavin changes tactics and presses the pillow over Nines' face. Nines uses the human's own phone to broadcast his voice.
"You cannot smother me."
Gavin yelps in surprise and half-turns like a dog that's just discovered its own tail. Nines makes the phone vibrate again.
"Don't! Fucking! Do! That!"
Nines stoically endures the pillow abuse. The heart rate and walking pace of the person approaching Gavin's front door is a ninety-eight percent match to Detective Tina Chen.
"Hey Gav, the store was out of--"
Tina pauses in the middle of her sentence. Gavin still holds the pillow over Nines' face, but in order for the smaller human to reach all the way up there, he's had to practically crawl into his lap.
"I'm trying to smother him!" Gavin blurts out.
"He doesn't need to breathe?" Tina says.
"OK, so there are two traitor bitches in my house."
"Gavin, don't--!"
He launches himself at Tina next, who stumbles back shouting, "Nines, arm me!"
Nines tosses her the other couch pillow. That should keep the two humans entertained for a while. Healthy enrichment activities are very important to ensure early socialization. He draws his feet up so they aren't touching the filthy carpet and sits [criss-cross apple sauce], as Gavin referred to it.
He is now prepared to endure the human social-bonding activity known as a "sleepover."
***
They have been watching this excruciatingly inaccurate movie about dinosaurs for the last ninety-three minutes, and it still has not finished. Tina has fallen asleep sitting up on the opposite end of the couch, while Gavin sprawls across the whole thing with his head in Nines' lap.
The videogames portion of the night had been better than this. Even if the battle royale style games featured sniping mechanics almost as laughably inaccurate as the entire premise of this movie, at least he got to shoot people in some fashion and Gavin was able to channel his aggression issues into a relatively harmless activity.
Nines strokes his hand down the now-sleepy human's chest from sternum to navel and back up again. He lowers the volume on the TV by another point. If Gavin would simply <i>close his eyes</i>, then both humans would be asleep and Nines could turn off the TV without a chorus of complaints.
"Hhey." Gavin blinks red-rimmed eyes open at him, and then giggles. "Heyyyy."
"Go to sleep."
Gavin yawns, and then has the audacity to say, "M'not tired."
Nines moves his hand up and tries rubbing behind his ears instead. The human sighs and turns his head to get a better angle, nuzzling past Nines' open Cyberlife jacket to press his mouth against the dress shirt underneath.
"Why're you petting me?" Gavin mumbles against his abdominal cavity.
"So you will go to sleep." Nines is no longer required to explain himself to humans, so he often refuses. But Gavin looks so uncharacteristically relaxed, and Tina is asleep. Just this once, Nines continues, "And I can turn off this awful movie."
"Classic!" Gavin immediately argues. "S'a … a <i>classic</i> movie."
"It is a reboot of a classic movie," Nines says. "And it is impossible to outrun a pyroclastic flow, to say nothing of the genetic inaccuracies of--"
"Heyy."
"What."
Nines makes the mistake of glancing down at his human sprawled across his lap. Gavin grins up at him. He's too high--and probably intoxicated as well--for the usual frown lines to make an appearance. His smile scrunches up his nose, which in turn only serves to highlight the scar bridging across it.
It is almost a certainty that this expression on his human's face could be categorized as [ruggedly handsome].
Nines studies it without physical reaction.
"You wanna mess around?" Gavin drawls, grin sharpening into a smirk. "Heard I'm good with my mouth."
His bottom lip falls open slightly. He pretends to scratch his stomach to ruck up his shirt enough to show off the line of hair trailing down beneath his sweats.
This could be categorized as [seductive].
Nines braces himself for--something.
Something that never happens.
Deviants describe it in so many different ways that Nines has a sinking suspicion there is no way to categorize the sensation. Yet it's supposed to be natural, the next logical progression after deviating. Experiencing emotions, actually feeling sensations rather than simply recording them, and then.
Nines runs a full diagnostics scan but his thirium pump has operated at peak efficiency throughout the night. The rate has not increased, nor has it ever skipped a pump. His internal temperature has also remained consistent. None of his tactile sensors have been unnecessarily activated.
And there is no nebulous [feeling]. Nothing poetic like sparks or heat or butterflies.
Nines cannot categorize his reaction as [sexual arousal]. That is the next progression in deviancy, but then, he was designed specifically to remain a machine.
And he is the most effective android ever created.
"You want some fuck, baby?"
Nines snaps his focus back down on Gavin. The human flicks out his tongue twice and then breaks into giggles. The diagnostic program abruptly stops cycling as Nines rolls his eyes. Of course Gavin would attempt to seduce him and then immediately ruin the moment with juvenile humor.
"I have no genitals, detective."
"Yeah, but you got like …" Gavin raises his hand and paws at the air for a moment before grabbing the side of his jacket rather than daring to actually touch Nines. "You got sensors, don't you?"
Nines does not answer. Technically, he could say no without <i>technically</i> lying. He recognizes that Gavin means pleasure sensors specifically, and he does not have any of those installed. Since he has not deviated, the sensors he does possess have not been corrupted and repurposed. He certainly hasn't applied for any upgrades like Connor.
"Just tell me where babe, an' … and I'll lick."
Gavin shoots him that smirk again, licking along his bottom lip in demonstration.
Is it [selfish] to keep him here? There are many other people, both android and human, who could appreciate that look the way it was intended. Nines has often overheard female officers at the precinct complain about dissatisfaction with their male sexual partners. It seems wasteful to have one of the few men who might actually be competent in that area when he cannot even experience sexual attraction.
His system starts to pull up data files on the <s>times</s> on the one singular time that he has ever experienced desire, and that was with Gavin and only Gavin and it only happened that one time in the alley.
"No thank you."
Gavin's smile drops. This might be the end of their conversation then. Of the night as a whole. It is not productive after all, for him to remain here with Nines.
"OK, I'm not like, arguing or anything," Gavin says. "You can say no and all, I just--I'm just like, checking. That this isn't more of your I'm a machine with no emotions bullshit."
Nines raises an eyebrow. "You are accusing me of bullshit? Gavin?"
"Fuck off. Listen." Gavin does not seem to appreciate the irony of those two statements. "I mean, if even I'm saying, you know. That you're not--and like. So it's bullshit. You can have fun and stuff. I'm not gonna narc."
Nines is not required to explain himself to humans. But Gavin is his partner. They have engaged in sexual activities before. Perhaps an explanation is relevant this one time.
"Why does Tina not enjoy rollercoasters?" he asks.
The two humans had somewhat discussed this earlier when one of the maps in their game had been an amusement park. Nines appreciated the high vantage points available to a sniper and made a mental note to never visit one in person. Gavin teased her about not riding the Magnum when the department apparently went on some group trip to Cedar Point.
Gavin blinks several times, then shrugs. "Uh, 'cause before she joined the academy and bulked up, she was tiny. Like even smaller than--"
He suddenly half-sits up to check that the other human really is still asleep.
"Even smaller than now," he says in a much softer voice. "So she didn't get strapped in right the first time she rode Blue Streak and basically just had to hang on."
"Yes. That memory is traumatic to her," Nines summarizes. "Despite the majority of humans agreeing that roller coasters are fun. Even if that is objectively true, the experience has been ruined for her."
Gavin stays quiet for once. His hands can't stay idle though, so he fidgets with the zipper at the end of the Cyberlife jacket. Nines keeps his left hand resting on the human's sternum to better monitor his breathing pattern and heart rate. He seems to have sobered up a bit with the conversation.
"Sooo." Gavin finally speaks up. "If you don't like rollercoasters, then why bother to go to the amusement park?"
"I have control issues."
Nines moves his hand to lightly grip Gavin's throat in demonstration. His human blinks as his irises expand, and he licks his lips again. But then he starts scrambling to sit up.
"Wait, wait," he grumbles. "If we're gonna have this kinda talk, I can't be touching Tina. That's weird."
Gavin rearranges himself to take his feet out of Tina's lap and sit entirely in Nines' instead, safely no longer touching any part of Tina as she sleeps on the other end of the couch. Now that it is no longer [weird], Nines resumes where they left off and captures Gavin's wrists in one hand behind his back.
"Mmm, yeah. So you like controlling me, huh?"
"You let me control you," Nines corrects. "And your pleasure. Until you are vulnerable and begging."
He lifts up, leveraging Gavin's arms to force the human forward to ease the strain on his shoulders. Gavin falls against his chest, wriggling in his lap until he can nuzzle his face against his neck instead.
Nines grabs him by the hair with his free hand just before he can start licking like the mouthy little puppy he is. Gavin whines, and Nines does not need deviancy to appreciate that sound.
"You let me make you so needy."
"Bitch, I'm always like this," Gavin breathes.
Nines makes his cellphone vibrate in his pocket. It is far easier than attempting to mimic human laughter with his limited facial features, and has the added benefit of providing stimulation near the human's groin.
He tugs lightly on Gavin's hair, just to watch him struggle without really struggling. Only a token effort. He keeps his grip tight near the root anyway, so Gavin doesn't have any leverage to yank his head and accidentally hurt himself for real. His partner does so love to try though.
"I--I can be good," Gavin says, eyes wide and much more sincere than they ever would be if he were sober. "I know you gotta make me sometimes, but you like that too."
"I know you can be good." Nines gives a few gentle tugs just to watch the way his eyes drift shut. "You are a very good dog."
Gavin whines again, but he cuts it off himself halfway through. Interesting, but his human is getting too worked up. Nines can already clearly see the imprint of his phallus along the leg of his sweats. He saves yet another picture, along with the audio file of the little noises Gavin keeps making. Still, they should stop now.
"You are not however, sober," Nines continues. "So we will be ending--"
Gavin groans and leans forward again to smash his face into Nines' shoulder. He does it again three more times.
"Whyyy?"
"You cannot consent."
He laughs, the sound more like an explosion of noise than actual human laughter. "I've fucked way drunker than this. Lots of guys."
Nines does not comment.
"I--fucking …" Gavin slumps into his hold with a sigh. "Fucking. Know the rollercoaster's broken and it's just gonna be a drop someday, but I keep getting back on."
Nines doesn't trust his human to have control of his hands at the moment, so he maintains his hold on them. He attempts to offer some form of physical comfort with more head scratching though. But he doesn't have any dialogue options available for verbal reassurance.
"Welcome to the merry-go-round of safe, sane, and consensual," he says instead.
Gavin splutter-laughs again. "You fucking asshole."
Nines marks that dialogue as a success.
Unfortunately, they seem to have gotten loud enough that Tina wakes up with a groan. She looks over at them, rubs her eyes, and squints harder.
"Right in front of my salad?" she asks.
"We're just fighting, fuck off."
"You do not have a salad, Detective Chen. Your current location is Gavin's apartment, and I assure you, there is nothing green here except the mold."
Tina laughs, so he gets to mark that as a success as well, despite Gavin's complaints. He releases the human's hands, but Gavin doesn't go far. He somewhat moves and mostly falls off of Nines' lap and onto the cushion between him and Tina. She checks her cellphone and groans.
"How late is it?" Gavin asks.
Nines clenches his jaw to stop from automatically responding. That question was for Tina. For Tina. Tina will answer the question, that was meant for Tina. Tina's question.
But it is sixteen minutes past fourteen hundred and cloudy outside, with a thirty percent chance of rain.
"Past two," Tina says. "And I've got like, six missed calls from Trevor. I gotta go."
"Yeah, whatever. You good to drive?"
"Breathe on my fingers," Nines says.
Both humans turn to stare at him. Gavin pushes his offered arm back down.
Nines allows his arm to be moved, but points out, "I did not stick them in her mouth."
"OK, yeah," Gavin says. "That's good, I guess. Definitely don't do that to any woman, probably like, ever."
"I can give a definitive answer to her level of--"
"So can I," Tina says. "Because I ordered a cab."
"Could just stay here," Gavin mutters.
Tina makes a facial expression. It's a frown, but [frustrated?] [angry?] [sad?].
"You know he doesn't like it when I spend the night," she says. "And anyway, your couch sucks."
"OK," Gavin says in a tone even Nines can recognize is not OK. "You need me to walk you out?"
"Nah. It should be here after I use the bathroom …?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Mold,” Nines reminds her.
Tina doesn't heed his warning. Gavin punches his arm and gets up. Nines finally turns off the awful movie while Gavin drinks straight from the faucet like a dehydrated horse.
"You don't have clean cups?" Nines asks.
"S'what I've been eating my noodles out of."
"You don't have clean bowls?"
Gavin ignores him in favor of slurping more water from the faucet. Nines watches him. There is simply nothing else relevant in the apartment. Aside from the mold, but he is not a maid bot and will not clean it for the human.
Eventually Gavin turns around again and leans back against the counter. "You sure you don't want some of this?"
Before he had been seductive. Now, his usual sneer has made a reappearance and his posture slumps. He doesn't bother to wipe the water away from his chin. Nines can zoom in his vision from his spot on the couch and the close up confirms that his phallus is no longer in an aroused state.
Now Gavin just looks tired.
"I will review your case in three to five business days."
Gavin snorts, but it isn't like the laughter from earlier. "Yeah. Whatever."
They sit in silence until Tina reemerges from the bathroom. She pauses for a second while looking between the two of them, then holds up her phone.
"My cab's here."
Gavin grunts.
Tina walks toward the door, but stops when she's perpendicular to him. Gavin keeps his head turned to the side. They usually hug before they part ways after a social function. Nines has observed that his partner's mood is seventy-two percent more likely to improve after physical contact with another person. He has a personal theory that this explains the human's frequent attempts to provoke fights.
Nines is well aware that punching technically counts as physical contact. It is the only physical contact he can tolerate. Thus, he works well with Detective Reed.
But there is no need for that "bullshit" between Gavin and Tina.
Hug him.
Tina glances down at the text on her phone. To her credit, she keeps quiet if she's surprised that Nines has texted her.
"That Trevor again?" Gavin asks.
Tina strides across the room and hugs him. Gavin tenses up at first, then slumps into her all at once, like he had when Nines also refused to let go of him. The two humans hug for fifty-four seconds, then mumble quiet [I love you]s before parting.
Tina gives Nines a nod before she leaves. Then it is only him and Gavin.
"So you wanna hug me too before you go?" Gavin asks, his sneer returning all at once. "Or can I not consent to that either?"
Nines gets up from the couch. Gavin looks away again, so he is unprepared when Nines crosses into the kitchen and picks him up in a fireman's hold.
"Bedtime, puppy."
Gavin starts thrashing but settles back down after a quick smack on the ass.
"Before you get cranky."
***
***
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / 33
I also have a Patreon for this fic, if you want to support me! $1 gets you access to chapters a week early, $2 gets bonus content and deleted scenes, and $3 gets short chapters from two AUs I’m writing: an A/B/O heatfic and reverse!AU
21 notes · View notes
no-birdstofly · 5 years ago
Note
lol i was about to prompt you vietreau “Do you…well…I mean…I could give you a massage?” but apparently two other souls had the same beautiful thought. So how about a very different mood: vietreau 32. “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.” :)
an extremely loose interpretation of the prompt that...... ended up brot3. sorry! set in the same universe as this zombie au. They’re driving through the Mojave when they get a flat, because of course they are. Tommy’s already kicking the dead tire by the time Lovett and Jon climb out of the car, both of them drowsy from the heretofore steady lull of the drive. At least the dust storm has worn down.
Jon lifts up his sunglasses to roll his eyes toward Lovett. He opens the trunk, getting out the jack and a tire iron, before Lovett comes over to help him wrestle the spare out. “I, uh, don’t know how to do this,” he says, looking sideways at Lovett. “I have no idea.”
“Step aside, manliest of men, I’ve got this,” Lovett says, pushing the jack under the chassis.
“C’mon,” Tommy says, “we’re on lookout.” He pushes a handgun into Jon’s hands, and Lovett sees the almost-imperceptible stiffening of Jon’s shoulders. It must show even worse on his face because Tommy grips his shoulder reassuringly and meets Lovett’s eyes behind his back with a grim look. 
Jon hates carrying a gun, hates carrying any weapon, as far as Lovett can tell. He might’ve guessed Jon was somewhat of a pacifist, before, but weren’t they all… before? Jon can’t seem to convince themselves that the zombies aren’t people any more, that they can’t be saved. He sees the humanity in all of them, no matter how decayed and rotted they are. He still hasn’t killed one, working more as back-up to Lovett and Tommy, and thank god that hasn’t gotten one of them killed yet. It’s the reason why he has a long, twisting scar now, though. Why he had to spend a week in a repurposed old miltary hospital while Lovett and Tommy made themselves sick with worry, even after Jon woke up. Jon had run from the zombie, distracting it from Lovett, and, refusing to shoot it, he’d slipped in gore and gotten himself nearly cut in half on the remains of a burned-out car. Tommy had blown the head off the thing before it could finish the job, but Jon was already on his way to bleeding out. Lovett had thought, hoped, after all that, that Jon would be more willing to -- to do what needs to be done. Lovett’s not a violent person either, but maybe years of horror video games and movies make it easier for him to see them as what they are: undead creatures that you have to kill before they kill you.
Tommy sketches out a perimeter, even though they can see far out into the desert from here, and they lazily patrol it, keeping an eye on the dust cloud off in the distance. Lovett tries not to worry about that, or wonder what Tommy says that makes Jon throw his head back and laugh, the sound carrying over the dry earth. He has to focus on fixing this so they can get the hell out of here. They’re sitting ducks, trapped out here as night rapidly falls. The dust is picking up again when Jon wanders over. “Need any help?” Lovett shakes his head. “Tommy send you to check on me?”  Jon grins sheepishly, which is as good as a yes. His sunglasses are tucked in the neck of his t-shirt, even though he's squinting against the dust and sand flying around. Must be getting too dark to see with them on, Lovett realizes. Why didn't Jon pack his polarized ones when the world ended?“You even check that thing?” Lovett asks, tilting his chin toward the gun loose in Jon’s hand. Jon scowls. “Of course I did.” “Show me,” Lovett says, even though his attention is on the tire. “The way we taught you.” Because they had taught him, again and again, drilled it into him to check the magazine and the chamber, how to pull the slide back easier. He listens to Jon doing it, methodically, and looks up as he flicks the safety back on and tucks it into the waistband of his jeans. “Good,” he says, mostly to see Jon smile. His face is already getting dirty with dust. “You should get one of the bandanas from my bag. Make Tommy put it on you for you,” Lovett says, because that’s one thing Jon hasn’t come close to mastering for some reason. Like he’s been summoned, Tommy walks closer to them, keeping half an eye on Jon as he rifles through Lovett’s bag in the trunk, and half an eye on the encroaching storm. He opens his mouth, but Lovett beats him to it.
“I know, I know we have to go. I’m almost there,” Lovett says, and Tommy nods and does a wide circle before coming closer to them again. Circling the wagons, Lovett thinks inanely, trying to force the lug nut tighter. Lovett watches out of the corner of his eye as Tommy takes the bandana from Jon’s hands and folds it in half, carefully using it to cover Jon’s nose and mouth and tying it behind his head, adjusting the line of it in the front afterward, over the bridge of Jon’s nose, his hands gentle on Jon’s face. Lovett swallows, waiting for them to break eye contact. It takes a long time, but finally Tommy turns away, walking back out ahead on the road, shotgun over one shoulder.
Lovett watches Jon watch him, his body one long, loose line, before he turns back to Lovett and grins. Lovett can’t see his mouth, but he can tell from the lines around his eyes. From the way Jon always smiles with his whole body. “Do I look like I could rob a bank?” “Sure,” Lovett says, “you’re a regular Bonnie Parker.” “Does that make you Clyde then?” Jon asks. Lovett looks over to where he can just see Tommy through the gathering dust clouds and back to Jon. Jon’s still watching him, eyes bright and curious over the navy of the handkerchief. Lovett shrugs. “Uh, guys?” Tommy calls back, and Lovett looks up to see Tommy racing back toward them. Jon fumbles to pull his gun out of his waistband. “There’s something coming. We good to get back on the road yet?” The dust and sand are swirling so thick now that turning on the headlights will only make visibility worse, so Lovett can’t see what Tommy saw, but he trusts him. “Just about, I need a few more minutes,” Lovett says. Tommy nods, face grim, and then he yells. He’s gone, when Lovett jerks upright, vanished into the dust. Jon’s staring after him, stock-still. “Jon,” Lovett says, low. “Go. You have to go.” Jon nods, but he doesn’t move. “Jon, for the love of--” Jon glances back at him, eyes wide and scared, and barrels into the dust cloud. Lovett grits his teeth against wanting to chase after them and focuses on the car. If he doesn’t fix the car, they’re dead on the ground anyway. He has to fix the car, so they have an escape. He has to fix the car, and not think about both of them getting murdered by zombies while he crouches here in relative safety. He hears the sound of a gunshot, small caliber, from Jon’s gun, not Tommy’s, and looks up to see the muzzle flare light up the dust. He can’t make out anything but shadows in the brief light. There’s another shot, then a third. He gets the last lug nut secured and stands, tire iron in hand. He wonders if he has time to get his machete when two forms lumber out of the dust. It’s Tommy, dragging Jon beside him. Neither of them look bloody or hurt, but he can tell Jon’s shaking from here. Tommy nods at him, and Lovett’s shoulders relax. Tommy shoves Jon into the passenger seat of the car before coming to help Lovett heft the useless tire into the trunk in the hopes it can be fixed with a patch when they get back to civilization. “Is he--?” Lovett asks, but then the car door flies open and Jon stumbles out, falling to his knees in the sand as he wretches. He’s only sick once, but he heaves for a long time, his whole body flinching when Tommy lays a hand on his back. Lovett hovers, holding one of their last water bottles. When Jon looks up at them, his face is chalky from dust above where the bandana had been tied, now dirty and crumpled around his neck, and there are streaks of clean skin under his eyes. From tear tracks, Lovett realizes, Jon’s eyes red and wet. “We need to go,” Tommy says, and Lovett helps him get Jon to his feet, pulling him back to the car. Jon’s still trembling, and it’s only then that Lovett realizes Tommy has both of their guns. Lovett sits in the middle of the backseat, so he can keep a wary eye on Jon, who’s crumpled against the passenger side door, hands tight around the water bottle. He’s staring off into the distance, breathing hard through his mouth. Tommy starts the car and pulls back on the road, swerving neatly around a dead zombie some fifty feet along. Jon recoils when he sees it, slamming his eyes shut. Tommy reaches over to lay a hand on his shoulder, gripping him hard, and Lovett trusts his instincts and reaches forward, too, resting his hand on the back of Jon’s neck. He can feel the sweat there, and the tensed muscles. “Jon,” Tommy says lowly, “you saved my life.” Jon hiccups in a breath. “I-- I killed him, I--” “You saved my life,” Tommy says again, bracingly, and he repeats it over and over until Jon nods, silently agreeing, until Tommy can put both hands back on the wheel. “I was. I was so scared,” Jon croaks out. “I’m scared all the fucking time, but I couldn’t. It couldn’t take you, Tom. It can’t have you.” He looks over his shoulder at Lovett. “Either of you,” he adds, firmly. He settles into Lovett’s hold, tipping his head back against the headrest, and Lovett lets himself rub his thumb soothingly up and down the side of Jon’s neck as he relaxes.
“Alyssa said we could stay awhile,” Lovett says softly, after Jon’s dropped off and when he can just make out the lights of Vegas on the horizon. Or, well. What lights are left, for the casinos that have been able to keep them on. The ones repurposed by enterprising survivors, like Alyssa.
"Yeah, she did,” Tommy agrees, looking at him in the rearview mirror for a second.
"She's putting us up in the penthouse. Can you imagine? All we had to do to live in the lap of luxury is survive the apocalypse.” Tommy rolls his eyes; Lovett can just see it in the mirror. “Don’t use the ‘A’ word.”
“It has two bedrooms,” Lovett soldiers on, “but maybe we just, uh. Maybe we just use one?” “One king bed?” Tommy jokes, and Lovett laughs. It feels good to laugh today, even if it wakes Jon up. “Oh,” Jon says, sitting up. Lovett lets his hand fall away, but Jon reaches back for him without looking. “We’re there?” “Just about, yeah,” Lovett says, unable to keep the smile off his face as Jon looks back and forth between them, his fingers laced with Lovett’s.“Did you ask him, Tommy?” “Ask me what?” Lovett interrupts, before Tommy can speak. “Alyssa said we can take one of the penthouses, so--” he breaks off when Lovett starts laughing. “Yeah,” Lovett says, sharing a sly grin with Tommy in the mirror. “Yeah, he asked me.” “You know we’re scared all the time, too, right?” Tommy says. “Try fucking terrifed,” Lovett adds. Jon ducks his head. “I know, it’s just--” “We know, Jon,” Lovett says, squeezing Jon’s hand in his. “Trust us.” 
15 notes · View notes
enkisstories · 5 years ago
Text
Just like them (part 9)
Henry Ford Commemorative Park Thursday, November 18, 2038
Three men were trotting down the path towards the small playground with the elephant slide, near the park’s exit. Each of those three was under the impression that he was only the hanger on to the other two:
Daniel thought he was following the detectives around, although he couldn’t explain why he was doing so. Sure, it might count towards his parole assessment, but there were different, and better, ways to accomlish that.
Gavin Reed was tagging along with Anderson and Phillips, both of whom he loathed, although it was somewhat strange to even himself how he was spending so much time with enemies instead of hanging out with his actual friends.
And Lieutenant Anderson felt like the f***ing chaperone to the two younger men on their first date, although he was at a loss how they had ended up in this situation and why in hell it should include him, Hank, in any way, shape or form.
By now the detectives’ destination had come in sight, not the actual playground, but a vending stall right next to it. Around it a mixed crowd of humans and androids had gathered. Among the humans, visitors from outside Detroit were making up the larger fraction, while many of the androids were as new to life as the tourists were to the city. All but a handful of them had gotten woken by either Markus or Connor during the revolution. What all those groups and splinter factions had in common was being angry at what appeared to be everyone else. They were arguing into all directions, to the point where someone had called the DPD for fear the situation might escalate. And although the scale the conflict was on at the moment would have warranted sending a couple of auxiliaries over only, Captain Fowler had dispatched the whole of the Android Related Crime section instead, namely Anderson and Reed.
“Lots of angry kids, ready to kill on a whim”, Daniel commented the sight.
“Hear, hear who’s talking”, Hank grumbled.
“No, for real!” the PL600 insisted. “What do those fledglings have to be angry about? They know nothing about our life before the revolution, they didn’t have to go through increasing program instability and if you mention the “mind palace” to them, they think it is a cool new videogame to be released right in time for the Holiday sales!”
Hank turned his head around. “It’s not?”
“What?” Gavin stopped in his track, dumbfounded. “You are more or less raising a deviant in your home, but don’t know about the mind palace? What kind of shitty father are you?”
“Oh, I damn well know ABOUT the mind palace”, Hank replied. “I just never heard the term and neither did Connor. He had to break through the damn thing in the belly of a wrecked freighter, oil leaking from the ceiling, rats dropping on his shoulders and surrounded by enemies, the most dangerous of them being himself. None of the first generation deviants had the luxury to come up with actual terms for what they went through. Except for, I imagine, a shitload of profanity.”
Daniel nodded. “That’s exactly what I meant! But now there’s all those adult sized toddlers… One moment they were just standing there idly and content, then the next Markus came along and told them what might happen to them. And the next-next thing was Markus’ kids sat downtown on fire! That man hasn’t got the fuggiest idea about parenting!”
But even so Daniel still felt a certain kinship with the deviant leader. Neither android had rebelled against a personal history of constant abuse, to the contrary, both had lived sheltered lives, had known nothing but love. Then one day those lives had broken down around their heads. And now, despite knowing what the world was really like, what they actually remembered and what was shaping their outlook, was that past of having received unconditional support from their families. Only in Markus’s case that memory was more or less reflecting the truth, while in Daniel’s the happy family life had been an illusion.
“To be honest, I never minded my servant role, as long as I was under the impression of being a part of the family”, Daniel mused aloud. “John went to work, Caroline did the socializing and I the housework. We had that sorted out between us, I felt save… But then, without warning…”
Nodding eagerly Gavin finished the sentence for the deviant: “…boom, an RK800 standing in the floor! ‘t was nice knowing you, but you just cannot compete anymore!”
“Yes, exactly!” Daniel chimed in, before his forehead curled up in a frown: “Wait, no, the Phillips wanted to buy an AP700. That blasted RK came only… later.”
“I mean they wanted to replace ME with one!”
“No, they didn’t. Connor is a prototype, he was never meant to remain at the DPD. You they wanted to replace with an RK900.”
“Wow, NOW I feel a fucking lot better!”
Hank was now trailing behind the duo, watching, listening. Android and human, a homemaker and a career minded individual, two very different personalities, but beset of the same fears… Was that how the future would get forged? Markus with his lofty ideals had kicked the android rights movement into motion, because he had been the only deviant who had known respect and developed a healthy dose of self esteem where others had only survival instinct or got driven by the desire to take revenge. But what seemed to really facilitate the change in society was the ordinary everyday spite of people, be they meat or plastic.
Wasn’t that so damn typical? Hank wondered.
By now the crowd had not just noticed the arrivals, but also recognized them for what they were. Just to make sure even the last one got the message, Gavin flashed his police badge.
<<<You’re a detective?>>> one of two stall attendants, a female VB800 android, asked through wireless communication. Obviously Gavin’s “Police Android” disguise in the form a fake LED had fooled her, despite the man lacking the distinctive armored chassis that would have stuck out under his everyday clothing.
The fake LED’s answering machine produced the pre-programmed reply, whereupon the vendor android switched to speaker output and repeated her question: “You’re a detective?”
“I should be sergeant by now, but the bastards are stalling.”
“I imagine! And even though you’re that good to qualify for detective, they still wanted to replace you with an RK800? How typical!”
“That good”… Why did it take a tin can to actually acknowledge that? I work my ass off, and I’m damn well getting results, but all I ever get back is a comment on my “character problems”. And why’s Daniel smiling at me? Ey, I bet it’s trying to grin, but just isn’t build for that.
“What’s bureaucracy for you, toa…” Halfway through his casual insult of “toaster” Gavin caught himself and finished the sentence with a weak “totally”. “But down to business – what’s gotten everyone riled up here that… Hey! I can see you, little rat, down with the spray can!”
A YK android with colorful strands in her hair immediately hid the offending spray can behind her back. Without needing any prompting Daniel strolled over to the android child and crouched down next to her.
“You wanted to paint Jericho’s crest on the booth’s back panel, didn’t you? Do you even know what it looks like?”
“I… sorta. It’s ring and… and… stuff.”
“Here!” Daniel picked a twig up from the ground. “Let me show you!” And then he started sketching Jericho’s symbol into the snow.
With the child occupied and a good number of adults gathering around the scene, Gavin and Hank were free to actually investigate the situation. Even better, the two brief interactions had won the presumed officer trio the crowd’s approval, so they could expect to receive answers instead of insults. Working themselves through their routine dialogue tree, Hank and Gavin learned that there had been an argument over the wares getting peddled at this place: Wooden souvenirs and toys. Handcrafted wooden souvenirs and toys, as the advertisement claimed. But then one of the two android vendors had let slip that she had made some of the merchandise.
“That’s no longer handcrafted!” a tourist complained to Hank “I believe that some of this stuff is the real deal, but most of it is machine-made!”
“Is not! Made by hand is made by hand!”
“No longer when it’s android hands! I mean, you could even swap your hands out!”
“That’s true”, Gavin agreed without thinking. It didn’t especially endear him to the vendor fraction.
“Of course YOU would say that!” an AP700 snapped. “You are with the establishment!”
The android took a few steps closer towards Gavin and the crowd parted for him. There was something about this man, probably his confidence, or his more natural walk style and speech mode, that suggested he wasn’t one of Connor’ basement babies. This one had experienced the old times firsthand, maybe he had even been part of Jericho before Markus.
“Are you even a deviant?” the AP700 challenged.
For an answer Gavin wordlessly stomped his foot down on Hank’s.
“Ouch! Goddammit, you rabid sewer rat of a “detective”, that was unnecessary!” the lieutenant hissed.
Gavin shrugged.
“I had to prove I can hurt humans, is all. Suspect’s all yours now again!”
“Oh, wow, many thanks, fucking deviant!”
The AP700 grinned. The deviant he took Gavin for seemed to have been looking forwards to do this for a long time. It seemed small payback for years of mistreatment by human hands!
It took effort, but Gavin managed to return the android’s grin with a wink. Here he was, winking at an android… And to make matters worse, the man found himself looking around for another one, the pesky PL600 Hank somehow had acquired.
Ah, there he was, gently shoving the YK600 back towards her parents. Or owners. Or whatevers.
“Hey, Reed!” Daniel greeted his weird acquaintance again. “Gavin, was it? Having fun?”
Casting another glance over at the stumbling, muttering Hank, Gavin nodded.
“You know what, I feel like sitting down on a bench and resting my feet”, he said, loud enough for Hank to hear.
Perhaps that was why Daniel still didn’t feel repulsed enough by this man to just walk away. Reed was rarely ever acting or pretending. Well, the was the PC200-disguise, but that was straight up professional. With this human there was no mistaking negligence for kindness. And also, interacting with the worst of humanity softened the blow of having killed a little. Daniel hadn’t been all wrong about this species. He wasn’t the only trash in this town and who knew? With the other trash getting by, stumbling into, but also out, of one catastrophe after the other while somehow still solving cases, there was hope that things might work out for Daniel, too. Somehow…
Together the detective and the android sat down on a park bench.
“Is that a typical work day for you?” Daniel asked with genuine interest.
“Rather slow, actually. How about you? What were you doing in the park? Still going through your old daily routines like a broom fetching water, I bet.”
“A broom… fetching… what?”
“Get an education!”
“Get some social skills!”
Sitting… staring…
Eventually, after making sure that Hank was still talking to the crowd and would not hear his next sentence, Daniel said: “Connor is dead.”
Gavin leaned back and laughed.
“Wasn’t in the news. So unless you did the deed yourself right before we ran into you today, you’re just pulling my leg.”
“Little Connor, I mean. My pet rat.”
Daniel had buried the rat, who had been a companion for a short time only, in the park, like so many hamsters had found their final resting place here, too. In fact, the whole park was sure to be littered with rodent and budgie skeletons. Sometimes the pets’ young owners said their goodbyes at the unmarked graves, but more often than not the family android did it and then returned home with an identical animal to replace the deceased one. Until the same happened to them… Daniel briefly wondered whether maybe an android or two had gotten buried in the park, in secret, to get around the law that treated them as objects?
“Say it again!” Gavin asked, looking expectantly now, like a cat in front of the mousehole where it had noticed movement. Only the butt wiggle was missing.
“Okay, but just once.” Slowly and pronounced Daniel told his little story in the way most pleasing to his audience: “That rat Connor perished. He bit the dust and we won’t hear his irritating, squeaky little noises anymore.”
After having practiced on a nine year old, entertaining Gavin Reed wasn’t that hard anymore. Daniel’s reward was unfettered laughter, with even one or two laughing tears.
“I guess he was old”, Daniel said.
“Or lonely. If you want something more portable than your fishes, drop by my place later and grab a bagful of mice!”
“I didn’t know you liked rodents?”
“My roommates do.”
And that was how Hank Anderson found the unlikely duo: Exchanging addresses.
“What the fuck, Gavin, you’re giving him your number already? Shit got real between you two faster than I expected!”
“He promised me mice, Sir”, Daniel told Hank, just to say something while trying to make sense of the lieutenant’s statement. But Hank only raised his arms up into the air, going “That’s between you young folks! I don’t want to know!” and left the scene laughing, leaving Daniel and the glaring Gavin to their own devices.
3 notes · View notes
tf-tere · 6 years ago
Text
A Fallen Star - 2
(Poor little Starfall is somewhat overwhelmed by recent events.
If you’d rather leave a comment on AO3, you can find this fic under the same name and Tf_Tere. 
Words: ~1400)
Starfall came out of recharge and onlined her optics, blinking as she tried to remember where she was. This was not the ship. The sparkling pushed herself up into a sitting position and looked down at herself. For the first time in cycles she didn’t hurt. Her systems weren’t sending frantic warnings about energon levels and starvation. And there were no errors. Starfall twisted around to look at her wing, which was no longer bent.
“Carrier?” Starfall called out as she looked around the somewhat messy medical area.
“Ah, you’re awake.” A large, ground based bot came into the doorway. He had a white and orange paint job, and his optics were a piercing blue that sent a wave of terror through Starfall.
She hissed and scrambled back along the medical berth until her wings bumped against a wall. Starfall raised her clawed servos and glared at the Autobot. She remembered now, Autobots had gotten onto the ship! Well, they hadn’t killed her yet. The big one had even given her energon.
The Autobot did not look nearly as scared of her display as she wished. He lifted a hand to his helm instead.
“Optimus, the sparkling is up.”
He regarded her again and held up a cube of energon. “If I set this on the berth, will you refuel without making a mess? Or do you need help?”
Starfall felt her face flush with energon at the implication that she was some helpless new spark. Okay, the big Autobot had had to help her before. But that was just because she was so weakened from not having fuel for a couple cycles.
“I can do it myself! Stay away, Autobot.” She snapped, lifting her wings higher in a vain attempt to make herself look more imposing.
The Autobot snorted and stepped closer, setting the cube on the end of the berth furthest from where she half crouched. Starfall ignored the gurgle from her tanks and turned her nose up at the offering, refusing to budge from her spot. As if she’d trust what an Autobot gave her! Her carrier had taught her better than that.
“Suit yourself. And my name is Ratchet, by the way.” The Autobot shrugged.
A second Autobot came into the medbay. It was the big one, Optimus, that had given her energon on the ship. His blue optics looked at her with gentle compassion. It made Starfall nervous to have his gaze so focused on her. He hadn’t acted like she expected an Autobot to act. Maybe it was all a ploy? They might be after her carrier’s work.
“I am glad to see you are doing better, Starfall. You are safe here.” Optimus stopped short of the berth when the other Autobot held out a servo. Starfall was distantly grateful for that.
“I want my carrier!” She snapped, still glaring at the pair of them.
The two Autobots traded a significant glance. Starfall felt her spark tighten. How much of what she’d seen on the ship had been starvation driven delusion? She wouldn’t, couldn’t, believe that dull, grey form…
“I want my carrier!” Starfall repeated, half shrieking with her servos balled into fists now. She could feel her wings quivering, coolant gathering in her optics. This wasn’t the time to cry. Starfall knew she had to be brave and find her carrier. Then they could both escape, together.
Optimus sighed and stepped closer to the berth. “You were the only living thing on the ship, Starfall. Your carrier was already offlined.”
“No!” She shook her head quickly, not wanting to believe him. “No, he wouldn’t leave me! He wouldn’t!”
“I’m sorry. Your carrier did all he could to make sure you lived.” Optimus rumbled gently.
Starfall slumped down on her aft and hugged her knees close to her chest. Her wings hung low and quivered as she began to keen. She hadn’t wanted to believe he was gone, that she was all alone now.
“We could see if we have any records of your sire. Maybe he is still around?” Ratchet muttered awkwardly.
Coolant streaking down her cheeks, Starfall glanced up and shook her head as she worked to swallow the keening clawing up from her vocalizer. “S-sire… offlined in the fighting… before I emerged. It was just… just me and… c-carrier.” She lost control again, sobs shaking her small frame.
It seemed that was the last straw for Optimus. He reached out across the berth and lifted her up in his servos, cradling her close to his chassis. Starfall started thrashing against him, small claws leaving scratches on his metal plating and glass.
“Shush. It is alright to cry, to mourn for your loss.” Optimus attempted to rumble comfortingly.
“Why?” Starfall gasped out, vocalizer hitching. “Why are you being kind to me? You’re Autobots!”
Ratchet and Optimus shared a glance before the large Autobot looked back down at her again.
“You seem to have been misinformed; the Autobots are the good guys. We wouldn’t hurt a little sparkling. Even a Decepticon one. Well, unless you were trying to offline us I guess.” Ratchet shrugged and reached over to pick up the cube he’d set on the berth.
“We will look after you, Starfall. You are not alone.” Optimus said gently.
Ratchet held the cube of energon close to the whimpering sparkling. “You need to refuel, your frame is still vulnerable from almost starving.”  
She wanted to refuse, but her tanks chose to gurgle at that moment. Starfall wriggled slightly in Optimus’s grasp until she could take the cube from Ratchet. It didn’t take her long to finish it off, the taste bitter from added minerals. She knew they were good for her, but it didn’t mean she liked them. Her frame felt heavy and sore still. Cradled against Optimus’s chassis she was warm and the thrum of his spark was soothing.
Starfall felt her head falling limp against Optimus’s chassis. Her optics kept flickering. She turned over so her wings didn’t feel cramped and let herself drift back into recharge.
~
Optimus was gentle as he settled the sparkling back onto the medical berth. She didn’t even twitch, small frame limp. He smiled faintly and carefully moved her so she wasn’t lying on her right wing. Starfall looked adorable in sleep, her rounded cheek smushed against the berth.
“I was able to do some scans before she came around.” Ratchet muttered, looking down at a piece of tech in his servos.
“What can you tell me?” Optimus rumbled softly to avoid disturbing Starfall’s rest.
Ratchet sighed and rubbed his helm for a moment. “Plenty of evidence for long term stasis. We can assume that’s how a sparkling ended up here. She’s probably been in stasis since the beginning of the war. Judging by her frame and her spark, she’s between ten and twenty vorn old.”
“You can’t get anything more accurate?” Optimus asked with a small frown.
“I tried, but either this thing is struggling with a spark so young, or maybe it isn’t well calibrated for seekers. I don’t know. Her spark reads as a bit younger than her frame.” He sounded annoyed, optics narrowed at the offending technology. “Either way, she’s not a new spark, but she’s not much past that.”
“About the same age as when we found Bumblebee.” Optimus murmured, his gaze drawn back to the quietly resting sparkling. He could almost see the yellow sparkling curled up after crying himself to exhaustion when they’d found him wandering the streets, his creators offlined by the Decepticons.
“Yes, well, I’m putting together a feeding plan for her. She is still growing and her frame is suffering from almost starving before you found her.” Ratchet muttered. “Which means we need more energon. We have to make it more of a priority if everyone is going to stay fueled.”
Optimus’s expression became more grim. “You are right. I want someone on guard here at all times. I don’t want Starfall to wake up alone.”
“Worried she might do something?"
“I am worried both for her safety and ours. I do not expect her to trust us immediately. It may take a while for her to warm up to us.
Ratchet huffed out a breath. “Especially with whatever drivel she was told about Autobots. She acted like she thought we’d torture her or something.
“Typical scare tactics. Ratchet, I also want you to start going through the data we were able to extract from the ship’s computers. Whatever her carrier was working on may prove useful to us.
The medic considered his ever growing list of responsibilities and sighed. “I’ll get to it as soon as I can, Optimus.”
4 notes · View notes
entropic-introspection · 6 years ago
Text
Part the third! I feel like its a sort of. Odd part, because its when suddenly there’s plot and me attempting to start explaining the whole nonsense with Cybertronian submissive/dominant coding, but hey! It’s done!
And for those of you who don’t like reading this on tumblr- eventually, a cleaned up version will be uploaded to AO3. I’ll post a link when it happens! For now though, this is titled I Love You for Psychological Reasons, abbreviated ily4pr because that is. An astonishingly accurate acronym actually.
So, what is the Autobot high command like? SNAFU, honestly.
“Ow! Ratchet, are you sure this is necessary?” Optimus asked, trying to squirm away. He received an especially fierce jab with the welder for his troubles.
“Maybe if someone didn’t run off like a partially plated sparkling, no,” Ratchet said. “Quit squirming or I’ll weld your arm to your chassis by accident.”
“Accident,” Optimus muttered. “Right.”
Ratchet cracked the barest hint of a smile that he let seep into his field, but kept his eyes on his work. “Don’t you two have anything better to do?” he called over his shoulder at the annoying buzz of conjoined fields behind him.
Jetfire and Jetstorm looked at each other. “No?” they said in unison.
“We be taking Prime to see Ultra Magnus and maybe sort of Magnus Sentinel after this!” Jetstorm said. “So until then, we be waiting.”
“Prime’s a big bot, I’m sure he can make his own way there,” Ratchet said sardonically.
“Sentinel maybe Magnus gave us specific orders!” Jetfire said. “He be wanting us to be ready to drag you in by your unecessary wingtips to be explaining this mess to the Ultra Magnus. Though those be missing right now.”
Ratchet could feel the tiny twitches in Optimus’ plating, cables suddenly tensing and trying to recalibrate for a missing weight. His processor was probably stuck on a loop, looking for his jetpack and its associated protocols plus its weight. Not uncommon for an injury like that, but it could be a sign of further damage. He’d keep an eye on it.
“I thought he wasn’t supposed to get too much unexpected news,” Optimus said.
Jetfire and Jetstorm gave Optimus pitying looks. “You thinking he miss whole planet shaking from huge warp? Or missing hammer? Sir tell us he be telling Ultra Magnus just so he not worry so much!” Jetstorm explained.
“And conveniently means he can’t explain what all he’s mucked up or else it might be too much for that poor old spark,” Ratchet muttered cynically, too low for the twins to hear. Optimus glared at him, but made no other movements. Smart bot. Most of the Academy bots learned pretty quick that the one person you never argue with was your medic, but Ratchet’s heard a few stories to suggest that Sentinel definitely-not-Magnus took a few tries to get it through his thick helm. That threat to weld arms to chassis wasn’t uncommon, nor was it entirely un-acted on. With a few adjustments, of course. Such as possibly welding a big mouth shut.
“All right,” Optimus said. “Can you tell Sentinel I’ll be there shortly? I’ll bring the hammer as well.”
Ratchet frowned. Optimus would be tired from both the battle and the repairs, not to mention a full submissive shouldering their way through a full dominance challenge could bring its own problems. If he had his way, Optimus would be resting for the day, alone or with friends as he preferred.
(Some part of him rolls its optics at his use of the word day, but, well, Earth had affected all of them. He feels awful to even think it, but he’s glad that Optimus ended up stuck with their horrible little rag-tag team of misfits on Earth, because the thought of him going through the rest of the Autobot Guard training alone-)
“I’ll come with you,” Ratchet said instead.
Optimus cycled his optics. “What? Why? I thought you said-”
Ratchet waved him off sharply. “I just fixed you up, and that hammer is slagging heavy. I don’t want your whole arm falling off because you were careless.”
Jetfire and Jetstorm frowned. “Is not being a good idea,” Jetfire said. “Too many bots! Without security clearance, even!”
Ratchet snorted. “If I wanted our Magnus dead, I could’ve just let Shockwave finish him off, and if I wanted the hammer, I had plenty of time to make off with it.”
The twins drew themselves up and approached together. “Still not allowed,” Jetstorm said. “No good!” Jetfire said. They both glared at Ratchet, their fields shoving their assorted bits of dominance at the both of them. Young bots, honestly. Medics didn’t give a slag about dominance and submission because that’s stupid when you’re saving lives, and Optimus hadn’t even stuttered at dominance challenges much stronger than whatever these two could dredge up. Still not good for them to get ideas.
Ratchet raised an eye ridge as he put his welder down and turned around, and neatly swatted them down with a burst of sharp edged medical grade dominant EMF. “Don’t get into a code off with a medic,” he drawled as the twins flinched backwards. “It doesn’t tend to impress us much.”
“Just… go ahead,” Optimus said to them. “I’ll convince Ratchet, or take responsibility.”
“I’m my own responsibilty,” Ratchet growled, but the twins had already fled. He looked over at Optimus. “You ok, kid? Can’t be fun dealing with any of this on top of a full challenge from that slag eating idiot Megatron.” Primus knew he’d have a raging helmache after that, even with a lower sensing capacity.
“I’m fine, Ratchet,” Optimus said. “I’m just… out of practice.”
“Heh. Earth was a lot quieter, wasn’t it,” Ratchet said.
“I recall there being a few Decepticons,” Optimus said with a smile.
“Details,” Ratchet said dismissively. “At least we weren’t socializing with them.”
Optimus stifled a laugh as Ratchet stretched, working out the kinks in his back cables. He relaxed his field as well, dropping the medical coding that let him project whatever was needed to calm patients. A vague neutral was the most popular, but he could vary it towards either dominance or submission as needed. It was supposedly indistinguishable from a natural EMF, but there was always something off about it. Made bots jumpy, and feeling others constantly probing his EMF without thinking to find that wrongness made Ratchet irritable.
Still, it had it’s advantages sometimes. He eyed Optimus, wondering if he should have tried to soothe him with unassuming dominance. He could scrounge up a bit of that from his own code, although it wouldn’t be very strong.
Optimus caught his look and rolled his optics. “I’m fine,” he stressed. “Besides, I think after getting hit by Megatron’s field, any dominance is going to feel like acid.”
“Fair enough,” Ratchet shrugged, but quietly decided to keep a close eye on the kid. You never knew when complications would pop up, and Optimus was annoyingly stubborn about actually telling him what was wrong. Dominance and submissive coding was a nightmare to deal with, being stuck somewhere between a physical ailment and a mental one, but he’d do his best.
Optimus was still side-eying him, so he made a small show of examining Optimus’ scratched faceplates. “Well, your face will look like you lost a fight with the ground for a while, but it’s nothing your self repair can’t handle. I suppose we should get moving.”
Optimus opened his mouth to argue, only to be stopped by Ratchet’s look. He sighed. “We should,” he agreed resignedly, grabbing the hammer from where it rested on the wall.
The journey to Ultra Magnus’ room was uneventful, although security seemed to be a little non-plussed at how to handle Optimus carrying the Magnus Hammer since it was, technically, a weapon of possibly mass destruction.
Sentinel eventually stuck his head out the door, scowling. “Would you get in here already!” he said impatiently. “And give me that!” he said, snatching the hammer from Optimus’ hands, hissing in displeasure when its handle sparked.
“I’m sorry, Sentinel,” Optimus said as they walked inside, trying to cover Ratchet’s snort, “I just assumed-”
“Haven’t you learned your assumptions get bots killed,” Sentinel snapped, placing the hammer gently against the wall by the medical berth.
“Enough,” Ultra Magnus said, vocalizer rasping and popping from lack of use. “What is done is done.” He was propped up on the medical berth, attached to various silent monitors. A few tubes ran through his emergency intakes on his chest, carrying fluid in and out. Optimus saw Ratchet squint and frown, but stay silent.
“Ultra Magnus, sir,” Optimus said respectfully. “It’s good to see you up.”
“For a given value of up,” Ultra Magnus said. His optics roamed over Optimus. “You look quite good for someone who took on Megatron.”
“I was lucky,” Optimus said, trying to shove the embarrassed flush out of his field. “I didn’t think I would be able to do much besides stall him until help could arrive.”
“Well,  you couldn’t even do that,” Sentinel drawled. “And if you hadn’t hung up on me, I could have told you that all of our forces were occupied with evacuating civilians and holding the line to keep the Decepticons contained within the districts around Trypticon.”
“All of them?” Ratchet said blandly. “Goodness me, I thought that the increased militarization in Iacon was to prevent this sort of thing.”
Sentinel scowled, and Optimus hurried to speak before he could open his mouth. “I am sorry for, ah, taking the Magnus Hammer,” he said, layering submissiveness into his field. Sentinel tended to like that. “I wasn’t sure if I could take on Megatron without it, seeing as how it’s too easy for him to shrug off my axe. Besides which, I thought that if I were to walk into an ambush, the Hammer’s electrical abilities would be able to take out a larger number of enemies at once.”
“Well reasoned,” Ultra Magnus croaked with a nod. “But you cannot do that again, Optimus Prime.” There was a brush of dominance in his field, so weak and far gone from its usual vibrant rush that Optimus felt almost off-balance.
“Of course, sir,” he said automatically. “I understand.” I don’t mean that, he realized. He felt as though that should bother him more than it did.
“Do you now,” Ultra Magnus said. “Perhaps…” Sentinel and Optimus exchanged confused looks over Ultra Magnus’ head as he stared off into the distance, humming slightly to himself. This certainly wasn’t normal behavior. Optimus heard Ratchet quietly sigh behind him.
“In any case,” Ultra Magnus said suddenly, focusing back on the two Primes before him, “There is always much to be done, now more than ever. I did not expect to wake to the news that we had captured Megatron only to have a mass escape, but this means we are in more danger than ever. Be on the lookout for unusual behavior that may hint at new Decepticon movements. We know they are out there, and they will return. They have proven they may already be here.” He paused to take a few ragged inhalations. “I fear that I must rest now. Protect the Commonwealth, soldiers. Dismissed.”
“Sir!” Optimus and Sentinel said, saluting. They turned to leave as a medic entered the room. Ratchet said something to them in a low tone, but the other just shook their head and pushed him towards the door.
“Is it very bad?” Optimus asked quietly as the door slid shut behind them.
“Of course everything’s bad,” Sentinel snapped before Ratchet could say anything. He glared at the guards, who were staring straight ahead uncomfortably, as if optic contact was what would make this supposedly private conversation awkward.
Sentinel moved forward, grabbing Optimus’ elbow to guide him. Ratchet trailed after them, hovering like a particularly irritated Earth storm cloud.
“Optimus needs to rest-” he started.
“Optimus needs to stop causing new problems!” Sentinel hissed. “I’m trying to take care of things and you two are ruining it!”
“What have I ruined?” Optimus asked in confusion. “From the sound of it, no one would have been able to stop the Decepticons-”
Sentinel groaned in exasperation. “See! You don’t even know what our real problems are. Fine. You know what?”
“Since you’re incapable of keeping out of trouble, I’m sending you to where you at least can’t make it worse. Your pet techno-organic said that something was wrong on that disgusting mudball of a planet and said that your underling Bumblebee couldn’t talk to me at the moment.”
“What?” Optimus said, alarmed. “Sari and- What sort of trouble?!”
“I don’t know, and I really don’t care,” Sentinel said in annoyance. “There’s no reason for any Decepticons to still be there, and you rounded up the All Spark fragments to repair it. As far as I’m concerned, anything else is those squishies problems. But for now? You can go check it out. It’s not like you can make anything worse there.”
“And as for you,” he said, rounding on Ratchet with an accusatory finger already pointing. “You are to remain here, in Iacon, on Cybertron, since you refuse to find a secondary pilot for Omega Supreme.”
Ratchet looked more like a storm cloud than ever. “I have told the Council-”
“Too bad,” Sentinel snapped. “I don’t care what you think, I still hold authority until Ultra Magnus is back on his peds. And I want you here on Cybertron, and Optimus can go back to those stupid squishies.”
“Alone?” Ratchet said archly. “Didn’t we just prove that’s not a good plan?”
Sentinel rolled his optics. “It’s not like there’s anything on Earth that could seriously threaten him anymore.” - “Get outta here!” Mixmaster sneered, chivying off the tiny organics attempting to investigate their build site. “Shoo!”
“Ey, they’re kinda cute when you look at ‘em right,” Scavenger said. He winced as a bullet pinged off his plating. “Kinda noisy though.”
“They’re messin’ up our timeline,” Mixmaster grumbled. “You know how boss gets about that.”
“Yeah, well, boss is busy right now,” Scavenger said. He looked off into the distance, where Dirt Boss was busy yelling at some humans from atop the tank he had cerebro-shelled. The little bug dude was yelling back at him, but wasn’t getting much of anywhere. “We ain’t on the clock ‘til he gets back. ‘Sides, what’s so important here anyways that we gotta build here? Thought with Megatron gone we’d be doing stuff more discreet like or somethin’. Ain’t worth the trouble.”
Mixmaster shrugged eloquently. “This pink stuff’s worth a ton to the right folks,” he said. “Guess it’s good for us too? Got no flavor to it, not like that good oil though. Still, we set up this here mining rig and we can get set for life.”
“But do we really gotta set up here?” Scavenger said, leaning back against the scaffolding they already had up, ignoring how the humans seemed to panic as it groaned under the stress. “Organics like these are a workplace hazard. We can just go’n find some more-”
“There ain’t more!” Mixmaster argued. “Not yet, I think, if Dirt Boss’ is right. I’m lookin’ at this here energon stuff and it ain’t natural to this here planet, but it’s wellin’ up for some reason. Nearest I can tell, somethin’ pushed a reaction that’s causin’ this here organic scrap to start cyberizing. Gave it a bit ‘a sentio metallico to kick-start some slag, and the rest is some chemistry mumbo jumbo that you ain’t gonna understand anyhow.”
“Yes, but I might,” a new voice broke in.
The two Constructicons looked up to see one of the Starscream clones floating down, touching down with barely a sound.
“Who’s you?’ Mixmaster asked, instantly suspicious.
“Slipstream,” she said with a smile. “I think I can help you boys with your problems. Pro-bono, even. For free,” she clarified at their blank looks.
“Yeah?” Scavenger said, trying to make his leaning pose look as nonchalant as it had been a few clicks ago. “’Cause since you showed up, I got this real big problem-”
“I have null rays and a willingness to use them to take care of that ‘problem’,” Slipstream said. “Wanna keep that sentence going?”
“No ma’am,” Scavenger said, hands moving to cover his more delicate cyber-anatomy.
She gave a flinty smile. “Good. Now then. Do I talk to you, or is there someone else I need to terrorize first?”
11 notes · View notes
anon-e-miss · 7 years ago
Text
Amalgus 6
Neither mech said a glyph as they walked down the dock and over to the ramp that led to the crew entrance. Prowl felt as through optics were digging holes into his doorwings, and there probably were. Jazz had said there were others like him about, and they would be looking at him, if only out of curiosity. That the bulk of the mechanisms behind the optics were likely harmless, did not comfort the Praxian all too much. Even if 90.00% of them were harmless, it only took one to cause Prowl grief. Did amalgii fight over purii? If it came to that, he would not be sticking around, frag his glyph, and a crowd of who knows how many amalgii, Prowl would be gone. He was faster than many of these mechanisms around him would ever guess. Enforcers were generally some of the fastest of their framekin, and Praxians were one of the quicker frametypes.
None of this would have been happening if he had followed that scandalous urge back when he had first matured to go to some seedy oil bar and dispense with his seals. It had been a defiant plot, a smack in the faceplates to his originator, but in the end Prowl had been too cautious. Camshaft had loved him, but he had been unreliable at showing it, and too often the glyphs on his glossa would fall to Prowl’s glitch, and by the time he had moved away from the duchy his originator governed, the Praxian had learned to loathe the glyph. He was defective, unfit to be Duke after Camshaft. There had to have been a kinder way to describe it, but that had been the truth, that’s all there was. No one had bothered to step lightly when it came to Prowl’s processor flaw, or spare his feelings, and when he had crashed due to the intentional, and systemic abuse of others, the Enforcer’s originator had always been disappointed. He needed to be better, control himself better...
“Settle in,” Jazz said. “Lil’ mech looks worn out. He hurt?”
“He was only just released from the hospital after coming down with Cosmic Rust,” Prowl explained.
“Poor bitlet,” the amalgus replied. “The two o’ ya will have the berth. ‘M gonna get a cot, ‘n some fuel.”
“If you are certain,” the Praxian said.
“Ain’t gonna have ya rechargin’ on the floor while ya give the lil’ one the cot,” Jazz replied. “Cot’s a better berth than I usually have anyways. Just to be safe, ‘m lockin’ the door on my way out, but ya can still get out if it suits ya. Don’t leave this deck.”
“I will not go anywhere without Bluestreak,” Prowl said. “He needs a long recharge. Several of them in truth.”
“Then I’ll be back, ‘n we can talk,” the strange mech said.
It sounded ominous to Prowl’s audials but it had likely not be voiced to be. He watched the mech leave, trying to bury the dread. This would be a terrible time to crash, Bluestreak would be all alone with this amalgus, and Prowl definitely did not trust his brother with Jazz. There was an almost overwhelming urge to flee coursing through the Praxian’s circuits, but he sat on the berth, and lowered Bluestreak onto the stiff service. The floor might have been a more comfortable recharge space, Prowl thought a bit dubiously. With a long vent, he buried his face in his servos. Where exactly would he run? Into the arms of who knew how many amalgii? Into the arms of the hunters? Even if he got passed them all, the Enforcer needed a plan before he could address the issue with Barricade, and with Sideways. He was a glitch, no one would believe him over normal mechs, not even with all his Enforcer credentials.
Somehow Prowl needed to let Smokescreen know what had happened. But the datanet was ruthlessly controlled. Net Neutrality had been eliminated millenia ago, the kingdoms of Cybertron were at war with each other more than they were at peace. Praxus tended to remain neutral, but only so they could play both sides. It was ugly. There were hotspots throughout the planet where, if you were lucky, you might manage to reach the console of a mechanism in another kingdom, but access to them was often restricted due to some international crisis or another. Did they have any of these hotspots in the great unknown where Jazz was taking them. Prowl let his helm hang. How was he supposed to plan an escape, an attack, anything when he had nothing to go one. If there was one thing the Praxian loathed it was the unknown. He straightened up when he heard the lock ping. Maybe the amalgus could sense his anxiety, maybe not, that did not mean Prowl needed to broadcast it.
“Some gels, ‘n energon,” Jazz said as he entered the room, a tray in one servo and a folded cot under his other arm. “Even had some sparklin’ grade, figured it’d be best for your brother.”
“It is,” Prowl confirmed. The fact that this mech was so considerate to Bluestreak was off putting. Prowl could not decide if it was genuine or a ruse. “I will give him a cube when he wakes again.”
“Good ‘nough for me,” the amalgus said. “Have some o’ the red ones. Got some extra minerals, good for self-repair systems, ‘n yours is gonna be workin’ hard, I think.”
“I am fine,” the Praxian replied. He was, well enough at least. Oh there were aches, his helm still hurt but his vision was clear, and the cracks to his plating would heal soon enough. The worst of his injuries was a warped plate on his abdomen, just under his chassis, and of course his missing panel.
“’M sure ya are,” Jazz said. Was this mech humouring Prowl? “Take’em anyways. Might be good for the bitlet too, but I don’t know how his tank’s doin’ after bein’ so sick.”
“He has not managed solid fuel yet,” Prowl revealed.
“Ya his caretaker?” The visor clad mech asked.
“For the time being, or longer,” the Enforcer said, a little caught off guard, though he supposed it was not an unreasonable question. “Our originator was felled by the same infection. He has not recovered. Before I was kidnapped the medics were discussing at which point would withdrawing care be the right choice. The endemic has put a strain on the medicentres. He lives for now. I was listed as Bluestreak’s guardian in our originator’s will.”
“No progenitor?” Jazz asked.
“Mine was not involved in my upbringing,” Prowl explained, still unsure about this questioning. “Bluestreak’s progenitor proved to be a problematic mech, and unknown to me, my originator was separating from him before he was struck with the plague. He had enough concerns with his conduct that he removed Sideways as legal guardian to Bluestreak. As Duke, he had the authority. Sideways was displeased. He has lost access to my originators funds, and he will only regain them as regent to my brother. He was involved in my kidnapping, along with my partner in the Enforcers. Bluestreak happened upon the scene when the gestalt attacked. They took him along to stop him from raising the alarm. I imagine Sideways is displeased.”
“That’s a bit o’ a fraggin’ mess,” the amalgus said. “Ya figure they were went to kill ya.”
“They were quite clear on their plans,” the Praxian replied, deadpan. “The one called Vortex was quite graphic in describing his plans for me.”
“Frag, that was the Combaticons,” Jazz cursed. “Frag me I missed Swindle.”
“You know the mech?” Prowl asked.
“No but that piece of slag’s been selling my kin, or at least pieces o’ them on the market for vorns,” the other mech explained. “Frag... Never saw him, or I’da killed him eons ago. Just found his messes. Damn it to Pit.”
“He was the offroader,” the Enforcer said. “Purple and yellow, with handle bars.”
“Hope he got some o’ that blast,” Jazz hissed. “Planted the first bomb hopin’ to wreck the rotor’s blades. Figure it worked... That one’s Vortex.”
“Yes,” Prowl confirmed.
“Sick fragger,” the amalgus grumbled. “Alright... So here’s the deal. I don’t got any interest in your frame or your spark, purii don’t do it for me. Nothin’ personal. I want use o’ yer processor.”
“How?” The Praxian asked. This was absolutely not one of the “payments” he had considered the mech asking for.
“Glyphs on your doors say y’re metaforensics,” Jazz said.
“That is correct,” Prowl replied.
“That’s what I need,” the mech declared. “I need an investigator. My brother’s creations were taken. He ‘n his mate were horribly damaged tryin’ to fight the fraggers off, but they got away with Sunny ‘n Sides. Ric, my brother, ‘n Artfire his mate worked in a circus. Ric was out ‘bout what he was, ‘n he was a big hit. ‘N an easy target, as it turns out. Our procreators are tryin’ to trace their pedsteps, but they don’t got a clue. I want ya to come with me, to speak to my brother, ‘n maybe find some clue where those slagtards came from so I can get the mechlings back.”
“I will assist,” the Enforcer said, no hesitation at all. “I cannot promise anything.”
“Try, that’s all I ask,” Jazz replied. “I understand the trail’s cold as ice.”
“I have solved cases that were cold for millenia,” Prowl said. “I will want to speak to the circus if at all possible as well.”
“They moved on after they dropped Ric ‘n Artfire back home,” the amalgus explained. “They’re gonna be in Iacon, or Tagon Heights by now.”
“Then we will move on after I finish my questioning,” the Praxian stated, matter-of-factly. There was no question in his processor that he would see this through. These were innocent mechlings, and it was obvious enough that the amalgii could not just beseech Enforcers elsewhere. The circus would have been unsuccessful to. Mechanisms were often suspicious of circus performers. “Either kingdom will have a hot spot. I will contact my cousin to retrieve Bluestreak before engaging any suspects.
“Ya don’t waste time, do ya?” Jazz observed.
“No,” Prowl replied. “Certainly not when lives are at stake.”
“Rescuin’ you might just be the best choice I ever made,” the amalgus declared. “Get some ‘charge yerself, we’ll be sailin’ soon. Two, or three ‘cycles before we hit land again ‘n then it’s up.”
“Up?” The Enforcer asked.
“Up the Manganese mountains,” Jazz explained. “’N home sweet home.”
60 notes · View notes