#I love texaid

[naaaafam]

Oooh, this is so delicious!!! gjkdkvjd I have so many thoughts and they're all ricocheting off the walls of my skull and colliding in massive explosions (pos)

kfmvjsknvkd The tantrum (the way everyone knows how to fix it, but Felix is the only one willing to try)- the way Felix views dissection (dissection/vivisection can only be done if you have power over something weaker, but to Felix it make him feel like a small part of the world??? fascinating, i love it, i am foaming at the mouth)- the fact that getting back in Vortex is both selfish and a sacrifice- kkgkwkodkvihooekwjvibkeknvj❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

“Felix. Felix Anwyl.” He smiled at them, still breathing heavily from his nose.

ajmcnvjksnn! How many people know? how many people know Felix isn't a pilot? something something need to know basis something something how many people saw this and got filled with dread? something something what was going through the instructor's head when they heard his name? something something He said the thing! (the thoughts are colliding too fast for me to catch them 😭)

Vortex going "Mine" in front of all in sundry kckgjjdbsnxkkbkgof

I love this

More TexAid Mecha AU-AU stuff!

In this chapter - Vortex continues to be an oversized blender, First Aid has Quite Enough of it.

Pls excuse any errors, the tuxedo cat LOVES to sit on my lap and explore my keyboard when I write and I don't always catch everything.

The schedule board was a large, digital board that could be found in almost every major area. It was also available on their phones, easily viewed by all. The medics had one of the deepest levels of access to assess lone workers, and to track who should be where in emergencies.

And the schedule board was wrong.

PILOT: FELIX ANWYL

First Aid groggily rubbed his eyes at the bright light of the phone being shoved into his half-asleep face.

“Whuh?” He sleepily mumbled. His hand flopped around blindly for his glasses before he gave up and grabbed the phone, pulling it closer.

“You’re scheduled on as a pilot today?” Ambulon asked.

“I’m not a pilot.” First Aid pushed the phone away and flopped back down. “I was on the night shift.” He pointedly said.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry!” Ambulon sighed. “I just can’t figure out why you’re on the list!”

“Someone must have made a mistake.”

It was not a mistake.

It was sabotage.

Red Alert glared hotly at them all as the announcement was made. The schedule had been hacked. Anyone with any information was to step forwards immediately.

The only reason First Aid had gotten away with just twenty minutes of grilling was because he’d been in the medical bay for the night shift, and then immediately gone straight to bed – the cameras showed him yawning as he clocked out at the time when the system was apparently compromised.

It couldn’t have been him, and there wasn’t anyone he could have asked.

First Aid felt the cameras trained onto him burning a hole through him, and tried his best to ignore it.

It kept happening. Every morning, his name would be right there on the schedule. They’d tried to remove it only for it to appear again moments later. Whatever it was, whoever it was, were sitting waiting in the system totally undetected. They couldn’t scrub them out. The mysterious morning memos changed too – songs about wanton longing were quoted instead.

A compromised system was unacceptable. In lieu of a functional digital system, they made the switch back to paper. Every morning, a thick ringbound stack of papers would be dumped in the main areas showing everyones shift patterns at precisely 5:30am. First Aids name had finally been scrubbed – but he’d seen correction tape on the pages by Vortex’s name. He was still managing to infiltrate the system.

Pilots feeling brave or lucky volunteered to pilot Vortex, to prove they were made of the right stuff. First Aid watched and winced every time Vortex staggered back into the hangar, doing that grinding tremble that he did when he was laughing, and having the smell of a corpse hit him even from the wrong end of the catwalk.

He’s consuming them, First Aid thought. They’re offering themselves as sacrifices, he’s an altar to them.

Pharma hadn’t allowed First Aid to go back into Vortex to extract the previous pilot (shovelling into a bucket was more apt now) since he’d been stuck inside. He’d not been caught when he’d sneaked into him that evening, but Pharma knew. Somehow, he knew – he’d changed the positioning of cameras in the medics quarters, he’d changed how the doors logged entry and exits. He’d know in an instant if he went. So, he stayed and had to hope that Vortex could see his expression from where he stood behind the gate.

Instead of being the one to extract them, he was often involved in assisting the autopsy. Pharma lead them alongside Ratchet – a way to keep him under watch and on his best behaviour. First Aid never let Ratchet see him step out of line – his disappointment would kill him. Pharma would look at him each time as he catalogued each part, every chunk and shard and unidentifiable puddle, as if to say ‘this is a warning’. As if to check that he was paying attention, that he would see that this would be what became of him if he went near the mech again.

Only First Aid didn’t believe it for a second. They had a deal. Vortex wanted his expertise, and First Aid wanted his body. His expertise was worth nothing if he was dead, if he were rendered to nothing more than mush that soaked into the fabric of the pilots chair and ran into the gaps between the plating.

The day that Vortex’s visor opened and sprayed the remnants of the pilot on the catwalk and the approaching trauma medics was the day that First Aid snapped.

“For fucks sake I don’t care - he keeps killing them!” He swiftly evaded the grabbing hands trying to restrain him. “Look, that cadet’s been scattered all over the catwalk! How are we supposed to autopsy that?!”

“Leave the worrying about that to the pathologists, Felix.”

“I don’t know about your conscience, but I can’t stand it on mine when I know I can do something about it. I’m going to talk to him.”

“Do you want to die? He’ll kill you.”

“He won’t, he promised.”

“And you trust it?” Disgust blended with disbelief. “That AI is rogue, Felix. It’s… it’s broken. I don’t think it will listen to a single word anyone has to say.” First Aid didn’t reply.

“Let me through.” He politely said to the guard. The guard looked between First Aid and the simmering Pharma behind him.

“I don’t think-“

“Let me through.”

“No can do, Felix.”

Pharma had a smugness about him. “See? Now, let’s behave-“

First Aid took a step back, assessing the height of the barrier. He could make that, right?

“Hey-!” The guards arms flew out to catch him as he jumped over, his foot catching and flipping him over. First Aid grunted as his jaw smacked the floor with a crack.

“Stupid boy!” Pharma scolded. “You’re still healing from the last time you got inside that mech! Don’t add to your injuries!”

“I don’t care!” First Aid snapped. “People are dying! We’re medics! Why aren’t you doing what you can to help?!”

“By climbing into death traps? Don’t be silly, Felix.” Pharma roughly tugged him up to his feet. “You’ll achieve nothing if you’re dead.”

“I’ll do a damn sight better if I go see the mech throwing a tantrum because I’m not in it.”

Pharma’s eyes were hard. “Your potential is not to be wasted on some hare-brained scheme. Do not test my patience again.”

First Aid swallowed hard, feeling his legs go numb. Maybe he’d pushed his luck too far - Pharma looked very serious indeed. He relented, relaxing as best he could into his hold, and mumbled an apology.

It seemed to please Pharma. He apologised to the guard for the trouble his charge had caused, and trotted him straight back to the medical bay.

Pharma made a mistake in thinking that was the end of it. First Aid had made the mistake in going to Vortex when he was still full of a disembowelled corpse.

Nobody minded the medic walking with purpose through the pilots quarters. His heart was in his throat, his pulse pounding in his ears, as he hoped nobody recognised him as the medic who kept ending up on the pilots list. Pretend you’re meant to be here.

Pretend.

His target was a supply cupboard that held spare suits. It was still three hallways away when someone noticed him.

“What are you doing?” Their voice was sharp, piercing. “You’re not meant to be here.”

Perceptor. Of course he would pissing notice.

First Aid silently held up a blister package of paracetamol. He didn’t trust his voice to hold.

Perceptor was someone whom he had looked up to when he was younger - a member of The Wreckers, children far and wide knew their names, their faces, their stats on their Top Trump cards. First Aid knew he should have been more starstruck, that he should have asked for an autograph, but the adrenaline was gripping him so tightly he couldn’t think past the now.

Perceptor wasn’t buying it.

He opened his mouth to challenge him, frowning and folding his arms, cocking his hip to the side-

And the klaxon went off.

They both immediately turned to look at the nearest signboard.

FELIX ANWYL stared back at First Aid, glaring and red and flashing next to Vortex’s name.

Giving him a look that promised it wasn’t the end of it, Perceptor rushed off to answer the call. First Aid took a moment to recollect himself before utilising the chaos to plunder the stores and nab himself a god damn uniform. Passing through the crowds was strangely easy – he blended right in to the mass of bodies, and just his luck – another pilot was already rummaging in the cupboard when he had arrived.

“Can you pass me an S?” He asked. They didn’t even look at him as they grabbed it and shoved it into his hands, flicking through the carefully packaged uniforms as they hunted. First Aid quickly thanked him and shoved it into his bag before swiftly walking out.

It was all on camera. He felt them trained on him, watching his every move.

But he felt somehow assured that nobody would know. Vortex was watching. He’d make sure he left no tracks.

Vortex’s response time had tanked. It had never been so low, even when they were struggling to find seasoned pilots willing to enter his jaws. The brass were starting to sweat. Their sponsors and investors didn’t like mechs that inexplicably failed, especially when the mech was supposed to be the best.

Engineers and the maintenance crew confirmed that he was passing all of his tests – there was nothing mechanically wrong with him. His AI was responding as intended. There were no bugs, no faults, nothing out of the ordinary with him.

But First Aid knew what the problem was. Vortex was throwing a tantrum, and it was only the thought of letting anyone else get their teeth into the quintesson invaders before he did that got him out of the hangar doors. His need for blood always won out when it came down to it – and he’d make a show of it if he needed to.

First Aid wore the thin under-layer of the pilots suit under his medics uniform, and carried the thicker armour in his backpack. He stowed it under his bench, always within easy reach - he’d grab it and sprint as soon as the siren went off.

Vortex was always one of the last to launch. Finding a willing pilot to get inside of him was getting harder, and they’d had to start using new recruits. Fresh, green, and who didn’t have a damn clue who he was or about the rumours of his supposed haunting. And new recruits needed showing the ropes, needed to be shown how the helmet worked, needed to have the reason why his name was on the screen explained away.

So he had about three minutes to get to him whilst they plucked someone from the academy. The medbay was a three minute sprint away if you were an athlete. He could do it in five. It would have to do.

The first klaxon since he’d stolen the suit was a night time alarm. He was dead asleep in his quarters a good twenty minutes away – he was only aware that they’d launched when the alarm in the medics building went off alerting them to incoming casualties. He’d shrugged on his uniform and hopped onto the transport, ready to jet off to the medical bay, and silently cursed his bad luck. Vortex would be so mad.

And mad he was. Apparently, the pilot had been mauled before they’d even left the hangar, the mech continuing on with just a slowly dying nervous system connected to it. Blood had oozed from the visor, loudly splattering down Vortex’s chest. The instructor who had brought the cadet up had cried.

First Aid felt the cameras on him. It felt like Vortex was accusing him of something, but surely he was just imagining that. The cameras looked no different.

Perceptor hadn’t said a thing to him. He also hadn’t said anything to anyone – if he did, First Aid knew he’d have been frogmarched up to the top brass, chewed out until he was but a smear on the floor, and kicked out into the cold unforgiving world outside. Pharma had been the one to protect him when he’d been caught with the infant quintesson – he’d been the one to catch him, to pretend nothing had happened and handled his discipline internally. There wasn’t anything he could do when it came to him stealing a pilots suit.

Especially when one considered that Pharma had explicitly told him to not do this. He’d be watching his downfall with a glass of wine and canapés.

It ate away at him, clawing at his insides. What was Perceptor thinking? What was he planning? Was he waiting to see what he would do?

Relief came in the form of a distraction and of stars aligning. It had taken three alarms, three incidents, three deployments of their mechs, before First Aid was able to make it to Vortex. He had always been too far, off shift or dead in sleep in a building where they weren’t alerted to quintessons.

In the chaos of an attack, nobody paid much notice to the pilot who jumped the barrier. Overzealous, over excited. The guards shook their heads at him. First Aid didn’t catch his foot this time, and was audibly wheezing by the time he got to Vortex. He’d said it was a five minute sprint, but he didn’t say a thing about what state it would be leaving him in. He felt dishevelled. His hair was sticking to him. He’d never felt more awake.

The new recruit was there, bright eyed and excitedly drinking in the atmosphere. The instructor had a guilty look on her face as she let them take one last look at the facility, their last look at life.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m here!” First Aid called as he slid to a stop. “I’m so late!” He gasped for breath, trying not to laugh in how giddy he felt. Pharma would murder him. Ratchet would be so upset. But Vortex had visibly shuddered, his canopy trembling, and he couldn’t suppress his giggle.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” The instructor looked perplexed. “I wasn’t aware the mech had a pilot assigned to them?”

“Felix. Felix Anwyl.” He smiled at them, still breathing heavily from his nose. Was he sweaty? He felt sweaty. He felt hot. He couldn’t wait to sit down.

“But-“

“Thank you for your diligence! Your service will be appreciated, cadet!” First Aid said as he jumped into Vortex, the visor snapping down behind him with a sound of finality. The lock loudly slammed into place, and First Aid threw himself into the seat as Vortex remotely began the start up procedures. The harness seemed to buckle itself around him, holding him firmly into the seat as Vortex roughly shoved off the dock and began to sprint.

“Woah- wait wait wait I’m not ready-!” His hands were scrambling for purchase on anything, hands slipping from the sweat of his earlier exertion.

Vortex shook with laughter.

[WELCOME ABOARD, DARLING~ <3]

First Aid lost himself laughing. “I can’t believe I did that! Look at what you’ve got me doing!”

[YOU’VE GOT BIGGER BALLS THAN I THOUGHT, I WAS STARTING TO THINK YOU’D NEVER COME BACK]

[DON’T WORRY ME LIKE THAT AGAIN~]

He was pressed firmly back against the seat as Vortex left the hangar, speeding up now that he was clear. In the distance, First Aid could see smoke.

The quintessons had arrived. They were closer than he thought they’d be – he’d never realised how close they got…

The adrenaline slowly wore off and the reality of the situation quickly sunk in.

He had disobeyed direct orders. He had stolen a pilots uniform, he had impersonated one, and he was currently in a mech he was not trained or cleared to operate.

“Pharma is going to kill me!” First Aid panicked. “Oh, I’m so dead, I’m so dead!” He pulled his hair in despair. “Oh!” He moaned, burying his face into his hands. “What is Ultra Magnus going to say?!”

[RELAX]

“Easy for you to say! You’re already dead! You don’t get court marshalled!”

[JUST PUT THE HELMET ON, I WANT YOU TO FEEL THIS TOO]

Bright blue blood splashed up onto the visor. First Aid scrambled for the helmet.

Pain shot through him and he cried out, tightly gripping the seats. It had been easier to handle when Vortex wasn’t moving, when he wasn’t busy twirling and slashing and slicing and running around, but there was so much data. So much information he had to take in, and he didn’t have the hardware required to filter it for him. He didn’t need to know that the panel on Vortex’s left foot right by the heel was slightly loose because of how hard he’d started to sprint, but it felt as if something were out of place on his own body and it was all that he could think about.

“Sorry about that, babe. I forget it’s a bit much for you squishies.”

Suddenly, the pressure crushing his head lifted. He breathed a sigh of relief, pressing a hand to his chest as if to hold his heart in place.

“How many did I miss?”

“Three.” He carved through another, the scream loud and cutting off with a wet gargle. “Four, if you count that one. Pay close attention – you’re telling me what to do to the next one.”

He was horrified, but he couldn’t look away. His words had stumbled and tripped, unclear and garbled, instructions lost in translation. He couldn’t think straight and Vortex was moving faster than he could keep up with – he had to. There were so many. It suddenly made sense why their pilots always came back exhausted, why their mechs always needed repairs. It didn’t stop.

But he was learning.

“Come on, honey, don’t make me regret sticking my neck out for you.”

“Can I take control?” His hands hovered over the controls, a joystick nudging itself into his palm.

“If it’s you I’ll allow it.”

The next kill was more like a dissection. The quintesson felt squishier than he thought it would, clasped in his hand. He held it up as he carefully inserted the sword with scientific precision, the blade slowly gliding down to reveal the peritoneum – it shone like an oil slick in the light of the slowly setting sun, and he could see one of its pulsing hearts straining against it. He was sure it was screaming, but he couldn’t hear over the thunderous beat of his own heart in his ears and the endless praise pouring out of Vortex.

“It’s got multiple hearts. That’s fascinating.” First Aid commented. “Okay, carefully does it…” he thought back to his first dissection. His little hamster, Lucky. The feeling of joy and wonder that he had had, the quiet worship that came when one engaged with the natural world around them in a way that left them feeling much smaller than when they had begun.

His hands hadn’t been as skilled back then. He’d struggled to get hold of a knife sharp enough without his parents noticing and taking it from him, he wasn’t even tall enough to climb up onto the counter top – he’d seen a documentary on TV about the palaeolithic and flint knapping, and a few days later had noticed a piece of stray flint on the beach. His parents had been happy for him to take it, thinking he was just excited to find an interesting rock. They never found out that he’d whacked it against the boulder that marked the end of their driveway to break off a piece sharp enough to cut flesh. He buried it with the hamster.

The quintesson dropped with a wet squelch, the peritoneum breaking and its internals spilling out over the fields. First aid tutted.

“Damn it, I didn’t mean to cut that deep.”

“There will be more to practice on. Look, the next one’s headed our way~”

“Am I in trouble?”

First Aid staggered out of the mech, exhausted and giddy and dizzy and bleeding. They hadn’t suffered a single hit – they were fast but Vortex was much faster – but the strain of the connection had proven too much again. Red dripped from his nose to the floor, splashing up onto his boots and the shoes of the opposing officer waiting for them to return.

“Yes.” Prowl said. “Yes, you are.”

Pharma didn’t look angry. Somehow, that made it even worse. He couldn’t look at him as he walked by - he couldn’t look at anyone.

He’d saved the life of the cadet, he told himself. He would saved the lives of countless more – if they let him, that was. The silence was heavy and oppressive.

The walkie talkie on Prowls hip crackled loudly. He slipped it from its holder and held it up to his ear, brow creased in a frown.

A series of short and long beeps proceeded to play. First Aid didn’t understand what the hell they meant, but he recognised it from documentaries on the war.

Morse code. Four letters repeated over and over.

Prowl stopped to turn and stare at Vortex. Water was starting to be sprayed on his exterior, glowing blue running down over his visor. A singular red dot pierced through it – a camera inside of his cockpit. He was watching them.

“What’re they saying?” First Aid asked.

“… Mine.” Prowl quickly turned and resumed a brisk pace. First Aid stumbled after him, Pharma catching him in a firm hand. Blood dripped onto his pristine white lab coat, blooming like flowers.

[somerandomcockroach]

I took a break from catching up all the plots wheeeeeeezeeee

[keferon]

im glad that my first submission was enjoyed. this was meant to be a part of it, but i struggle a lot more writing first aids pov than vortexs. its still not perfect, but i figure i should let it out into the wild before it drives me crazy.

some further questions: what exactly are the quintessons made of? are they techno-organic? entirely mechanical? or like...synthetic materials mimicking biology? and whats up with the program that produced vortex? did it shut down? or is it still operating (maybe under shockwave now?) did jazz go through it?

______________________________________________________________

His head is killing him. 

Felix comes to in the unyielding dark of Vortex’s cockpit, squinting uselessly before giving up, letting his head lean back against the seatrest. It pulses in time with his heartbeat- elevated- sending waves of fresh misery through him. But he’s alive, Vortex let him live, and the realization pulls a miserable laugh from him. 

Vortex saved him.

Vortex saved him.

Vortex saved him.

From Pharma.

The thought is like ice water poured over his head washing away any lingering exhaustion. Pharma. What the hell was going on? Why did he-? Had the irritable CMO finally lost it? Or was there something else going on? 

Felix’s stomach churns uncomfortably at the thought of Pharma obeying another- who would order this? Who could order this? To what end? How had none of the other medical staff noticed? Or did they notice and not care?

His stomach lurches again, and Felix fumbles at the restraints- looser, now- and finally manages to hit the quick release clasp, practically flopping forward before he catches himself, swaying pathetically in the dark- pulling his helmet off is a welcome relief, the cooler air of the cabin circulating around his abused head. All of his muscles are sore, each joint something just a little firmer than liquid. The only light comes from the running lights, blinking on like soft red stars against Vortex’s night, and Felix lets himself stare blankly at a particularly interesting assortment of them, trying to will the nausea to subside. 

It does not. In fact, it strikes back with a vengeance, and Felix presses a fist to his mouth to stifle his suffering. It works, somewhat, his gorge settling slightly. He needs to get out of here, out of the blood-and-bleach scented warmth of Vortex before he overstays his welcome. Maybe he already has, and Vortex is just biding his time before he kills Felix gruesomely. Right on cue, he can feel the familiar faint prickling sensation of cameras and infrared sensors being trained on him, the behemoth paying its quarry its undivided attention. 

“Vortex,” he says, or more accurately, tries to say. All that comes out of his mouth is a pathetic little groan. His stomach is churning again now. 

“Vortex.” he tries again while fumbling for the canopy hatch- God, movement was a bad idea- and while it still fails the benchmark of being a word, it at least sounds like Vortex’s name. 

His gorge rises again, and Felix can’t stop the faint whimper as he runs his hands over the instrument panel, looking for the canopy release lever. He is not going to throw up inside Vortex, even if worse things have been thoroughly ground into the panels and seams of the mech. Felix still has some pride. And he doesn’t need to risk Vortex’s wrath any more than he has. 

“Vortex.” and now it sounds like a proper name. Felix can feel the hum of Vortex’s machinery and wiring change underneath his palms. His head spins, and the tug of exhaustion has returned, borne on the back of the enveloping warmth of the cockpit.

His stomach flips again.

“Vortex, open the cockpit.” Felix tries, giving up on fumbling in the dark for the lever. “Please,” he amends, because apparently his manners have left with his health. 

The darkness takes on a vaguely threatening feeling. Vortex must have spent all his goodwill on not killing Felix earlier. 

“Vortex, please-” he gags, pressing his fist to his mouth again, “I- I’m going to-”

He gags again, and this time- thank you, Vortex!- the canopy lifts, barely a few feet before coming to a stubborn stop, the dull halogen glow of the docking bay lights breaching the cockpit. The opaque filter over the canopy bleeds away, returning the familiar blood-red hue to Vortex’s visor. Felix barely makes it to the edge of the cockpit before throwing up, practically lying out over the instrument panel as his arms fail him. It spatters, worryingly dark against the burnished metal of the catwalk. He lies there bonelessly, his throat burning and head spinning. How the hell had his life ended up like this? Cosmic punishment for stealing organs still? Felix had thought getting demoted to nurse and resident Vortex-cleaner punishment enough.

He eventually rolls off of his stomach and carefully (gracelessly) slithers back to sit on the floor of the cockpit, head resting against the instrument panel, staring up at the cockpit ceiling. The dark plating is smooth, almost seamlessly jointed together, only interrupted by the explosion of wires and cording comprising the neural connectors. It’s…almost peaceful, in the cockpit, with only the purr of Vortex’s systems humming through the panel that Felix is resting his head on interrupting the silence. The halogens filter through the red polycarbonate of Vortex’s canopy, staining the light bloody ruby. 

His mouth is dry. Horrifically dry. He needs water. Getting water means leaving the relative safety of Vortex’s cockpit. 

Water can wait. 

Pharma might still be out there, lurking. 

His head swims, stomach vaguely threatening to rebel again. Felix turns his head, pressing his cheek to the warm metal of the instrument panel. It feels pretty nice. This particular piece of Vortex only smells like metal and circuitry, not blood. If he closes his eyes, it’s just pleasantly dark enough to settle into a half-sleep slumped against Vortex’s plating. His skin prickles faintly.

The pang! Of a piece of plating hitting the floor wakes him from his doze, sending fresh gouges of pain rippling across his skull. Felix blinks, headache settling squarely behind his right eye socket and encompassing his entire skull. Where had that come from? Was something wrong with Vortex? Or more likely, had Vortex tired of his presence and was preparing to finally kill him?

The plating sits on the flooring, looking as deceptively innocent as any non-sentient sheet of metal can. Felix huddles back further against the instrument paneling. The canopy was shut sometime while he was drowsing, completely locking him in. Light ripples across the cockpit, and Felix slowly twists around to squint up at the display.

[OPEN THE BAG]

Bag. Open the bag. What bag? 

Felix casts helplessly around the cockpit space, searching- there! In a shadowed cubby against the far wall, which- if he remembers from the pilot’s manual correctly- should not be there. Felix attempts to stand, legs wobbling, before giving up and crawling over to the alcove. His skin prickles again, and he refuses to feel shame underneath Vortex’s mechanical gaze. It’s because of the stupid medical boot. Not him. He pushes the loose plating aside and is rewarded with a screech of metal-on-metal that sends his head throbbing again. Felix sags against the wall with a groan before throwing what’s left of his caution to the wind, sticking his hand into the alcove and dragging the bag out. Vortex does not take his hand off. Not even a finger gets scraped on the exposed metal. There’s not a hint of violence from the mech, and Felix sneaks a glance at one of the cockpit cams. It’s trained directly on him, lens shadowed in the claret gloom. He gives it a weak smile. 

The bag is the heavy black polyester duffle ubiquitous to military installations, and it takes a bit of fumbling for Felix to find the zipper and tug it open. Inside is a fresh pilot’s uniform-the Nomex base-side kind, a small toolkit, a radio, a number of MREs and-

Water. 

Felix grabs the first bottle, twisting the cap off and chugging the water down. It’s warm, with a strange plasticky aftertaste. It’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He drinks another just as fast, water settling heavy in his stomach and washing the taste of bile from his mouth before leaning back against the wall again, the steady rumble of machinery behind it a small comfort. The ex-medic checks the cockpit display, but it remains a steady blank. Another check to the camera confirms that it’s still trained directly at him. Felix gives it a second awkward smile. 

“Vortex- I ah…I- thanks.” He finishes lamely, rubbing his face. His skin is disgustingly oily to the touch. What do you say to a thousand-ton killing machine when it doesn’t kill you? “For-”

Not killing me. 

Saving me from the evil clutches of Pharma.

Giving me water. 

“For everything. Yeah.” Felix cringes at the awkward words. He’s never been particularly well-spoken, but this is just embarrassing. He almost wishes that Vortex would try to kill him again, just for the possibility to escape this torture. 

They sit in silence, Felix’s gaze focused on the floor, skin prickling. His stomach clenches, water threatening to make a reappearance. 

He should’ve known better to drink anything Vortex offered. He slowly stands, one hand against the wall of the cockpit for stability before slowly crossing to the front. “...can you please open the cockpit?” He hazards, one hand pressed to his openly rebelling stomach. 

There’s the distinctive sound of the locking pins dropping. Felix winces as his stomach clenches again.

“Please-” he retches, throat burning as bile forces itself back up his worn esophagus. “I-I don’t wanna-”

The canopy lifts with an almost petulant hiss of the hydraulics, only a few feet again. And again, Felix barely gets his head out of the cockpit before throwing up. The water burns as it leaves, and Felix spits a few times after it to clear his mouth, hand pressed to his cramping stomach. His head pounds under the unrelenting light, and he slips back into the welcoming dim dark of the cockpit. For the second time that day, Felix finds himself sitting on the floor of Vortex’s cockpit, mouth sour and throat stinging, staring up at the ruby wash of light across the ceiling. The canopy hisses shut, locking pins ch-chunk-ing into place with finality. The red light ripples, disturbed, and Felix can’t stop the weary sigh as he lifts his head to read Vortex’s words.

[FELIX-BABY, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SWALLOW]

Felix feels his cheeks heat, and he looks away from the chiding display. He’s not sure which is worse, being called baby by Vortex or the joke. 

“I threw up. That's different.” He mutters, running hands through his sweat-stiff hair. 

The ventilation stutters, on-off-on-off, like human laughter. His cheeks heat more. 

[DRINK MORE. SLOWLY]

Felix gawks at the screen. He must have brain damage- there’s no way Vortex is giving him medical advice. Advice in general, actually. This must be a trick of some kind. 

But he is thirsty. 

He shuffles back over to the bag.

Opens another water bottle. 

He drinks slowly, stealing small sips each time until the bottle is mostly empty and his stomach settles into a kind of low-grade simmer. His headache eases some. Immediate crisis resolved, Felix’s attention wanders back to the medical boot. Why does he have it? His leg doesn’t hurt- he wracks his brain, did he injure it sometime before Pharma got to him? Or did he put up enough of a fight to injure himself? Was that why he was drugged? 

His memories are not forthcoming, but it makes sense. Many sedatives interfere with the formation of new memories; if it was put on at around the same time as the IV, his brain might not have had the ability to recall why.

It leaves only one course of action. 

Felix fumbles with the buckles and straps- thank god Pharma only used one of the temporary, removable braces rather than something more permanent like plaster or fiberglass. Otherwise he’d have to stick his leg into Vortex’s machinery to get it off. He pulls the boot off with little difficulty, studying his leg. A simple check; wiggling his toes, rolling his ankle, flexing his knee. No pain. Not even any cuts or bruises cross his flesh. Which means…Felix pokes around the wads of cotton padding pulled from the brace. There!

A small metal device, no bigger than a coin, nestled into a fold of gauze. A tracker? Or some kind of…recording device? He holds it up for inspection, skin crawling as Vortex’s cameras and scanners snap to it. A surge of malevolence fills the cabin, Vortex’s wrath roused by the discovery. Plating rattles, the low purr of the mech’s engine climbing to a dull roar. Felix draws his legs to his chest, curling against the bag for its flimsy protection, device clutched tight in his fist. Another panel pops loose, clatter of metal half-drowned by the increasing volume of machinery grinding. 

[DESTROY IT]

Felix does not need to be told twice, scrambling to toss the cursed thing into Vortex’s grinding gears. It’s shredded immediately, fragile circuits ripped apart and ground to silicone dust in the face of his fury. There’s a high pitched whine- Vortex’s weapons systems charging, oh god- before it all subsides. The silence is profound against the pain in Felix’s head, the mech’s engines and drives settling down towards their previous quiet purr like nothing happened. The plating stills, returning to inert, the gap where Vortex had offered Felix a place to throw the thing the only break in the metal.

The medic carefully replaces the panel covering the humming machinery, plating hooking into place smoothly, seamless. No response from Vortex. He casts a glance at the cockpit canopy, but there’s no chance that Vortex will let him out, and he’s not about to ask after all of… that. There’s only one thing for him to do, other than try to sleep- which is not happening.

He goes through the bag again, trying to regain some semblance of calm, hands clammy. The toolkit is compact, but it has a surprising number of tools, most of which Felix has no idea how to use. He's a medic by training, not a mechanic. He carefully checks each one anyways to occupy himself, pristine metal warm and smooth against his fingers. Next are the MREs. Still sealed and within expiry date, no obvious signs of tampering. He puts them back in the bag. But the real prize is the pilot’s uniform, fabric stiff with disuse and heavy across the shoulders and chest with patches. Felix pulls the suit out of the bag and half unfolds it over his lap, running his fingers over the patches crowding the suit. Different patches for different bases, various military campaigns from all over the world, rank, even for different specialties. The owner had been cross-trained as a helicopter mechanic.

He lingers over the name, petting over the coarse thread picking out VORTEX over the right breast of the suit. Felix toys with the velcro; his own pilot patches haven’t come in yet…

It’s a dirty thought, stealing a dead man’s name tape for his own use, especially if the dead man in question is watching and prone to fly into fits of rage. Felix might’ve sunk low to reach this point in his life, but Pharma must’ve really dosed him up with something if he’s this out of his mind to even consider such a thing. He shouldn’t even want Vortex’s name emblazoned over his shoulder. But the thought lingers the longer he stares at the patches. 

Pilots typically wear number badges to denote their mech anyway, what’s the harm in wearing a name instead? Vortex is already known better by his name than by his serial number. It’s fitting for his pilot to wear his name too. Vortex seems like the kind who’d like that sort of thing.

Felix hastily folds the suit up, stuffing it back into the bag before temptation can overwhelm sense. His unfortunate predilections aside, stealing from the dead is a violation of numerous ethical codes, and he’s pretty sure Vortex would kill him for even considering taking something so personal from the remainder of his belongings. Even if the mech has been almost…tame towards him so far. Not a pinch or a threat. Even some banter. No, this must be the calm before the metaphorical vortex sucks him in and kills him. 

He casts a reluctant glance towards the exit again, skin prickling. He’s just going to have to wait this one out. It’s not a terrible concept, waiting here in the dark and warm for Vortex to make his mind up. It’s not like Pharma can find his way in. Whatever happens, it’s at least a break to figure out what he does next. Whatever that is.

ANON. ANON LET ME PICK YOU UP AND HOLD YOU FOREVER. ANON I DONT KNOW YOUR NAME BUT I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND FKFKGKMRJFKFNDJKSK

Haha mmm. I'm fine I'm okay I'm normal

Yeah so about Quintessons. I imagine they can be all kind of creatures. Organic, techno organic, straight up just techno. Tf:one, Cyberverse, straight up Pacific rim Kaijus. All kinds of monsters haha

Also, Vortex was the part of the first batch of pilots for Mecha program. The technology was very new and VERY underdeveloped so...yeah, Vortex was part time pilot and part time lab rat.

The whole process of making someone into a pilot was a lot more dangerous and painful back then because no one really knew what they were doing. But after some time it became safer and less painful. So when Jazz joined he didn't suffer as much as Vortex. And when later Blurr joined he didn't suffer as much as Jazz.

(You didn't ask but. I like to think that Vortex knows quite a lot about all kinds of side effects of neural connection. Also about side effects of physical procedures and all kinds of weird fucked up experiments. Just because. You know. He went through it all. A lot of times.)

Previous Next

[dubia-015]

Pretty please let them kill Pharma it would be soooooo funny

[zefferooni]

I've been obsessed with @keferon's mecha tf au, so I just had to draw something (texaid has me in a chokehold help-)

[niechys]

Now how does one know if an ask has been eaten? but I guess nevermind? I also did a few revision so I'm posting it here is stead.

So, this is a bit of my spin on @keferon #tf mecha universe. Basically an au of Transformers francise where some of the characters are human who pilot robot but some are still Cybertronian and how they interact.

First Aid is a medic turned pilot who pilot a mech haunted by Vortex.

I think we haven't explore a lot about First Aid being a freak. So Ima take some time to do just that. This should go back to before First Aid got used to connecting to Vortex.

Also an excuse to write some gore. I totally wasn't going for that but I guess I needed it.

Also probaly lots of grammar errors incoming.

----------------

It was in biology class when he first got to dissect an animal at school. His friends had looked at him weird because he was a little too enthusiastic about it. Most kids were curious alright, but he already knew these stuff. He read in the books and was ecstatic to see the real thing, to cut the real thing apart.

After that He learned to keep it down. To hide the sparkle in his eyes even as he entered medical school. People don't cut things open for fun. Even if he did it for study, he shouldn't be having fun doing it.

---

It started with a soft mumble.

Felix curled into a ball on the pilot seat, knees hugged tight to his chest. Restraint in place but not connected to the neural link, not touching the controls. Watching intently as Vortex sliced through monsters' limbs.

It was one of his early mission as a pilot. Hot Rod was sent out with him. The red mech fighting several hundred meters to his right. The Quintesson had sent monsters with long, jointed legs and tentacle. They looked like someone cross bred a spider crab with an octopus with a hundred arms. Except they are the size of a big building. A bunch of them together look like mountains were moving to meet them.

Vortex's twin blades cut through tentacle, splashing green blood everywhere. Sometimes he wondered if Vortex got his callsign because of this move, twirled the two blades around himself, cutting everything in his path like a tornado.

The blade hit a hard plating on one of the legs. He had to pull back before going for another tentacle instead. Or hacked at the leg until it came off. It wasn't a big trouble for Vortex, but then he heard a small voice from inside his cockpit like a whisper.

"Hit the joint"

"Under there"

"That seam there"

First Aid was still curled up in a little ball on the pilot seat, watching. Something sparkle in those blue eyes behind his visor. Mouth mumbling occasionally, telling body parts or directions.

At first Vortex ignore the words. But when he started looking for the parts First Aid says and hit them, he realized it was more effective. It's like a weak spot had been pointed out.

Amidst the carnages, text appeared on the screen, overlaying the visuals.

[Stop backseating and connect to me]

"Huh..?" Felix asked, looking around as if he could see the ghost talking to him.

[Speaking is slow. Connect to me now or I feed you to big ugly over there]

Not wanting to test Vortex's patient, First Aid reached for the neural link with trembling hands and snap it to the connector on the back of his head.

He felt like he was falling, the next second he was standing outside, face to face with the monster. A threat. A living thing waiting to be diced up. His body made of metal, his sight are not just sight but sensors and infrared and targeting module.

Killed or be kill.

His mother dragging him along as they ran for the shelter.

Scalpel making precision cut on human flesh.

Kill it before it kill you.

His hands deep in someone's torso, Pharma lecturing through the process.

Blade cutting into flesh. His hand gripping the control, forcing it to cut through the bone.

Mangled body of another pilot in the seat he had to pry off.

Tentacle with barbed tip stabbing into the cockpit, into his face.

An alien's organ kept in quarantine.

Onslaught yelling at him.

Blood in his eyes.

Pain flaring through his body

The cockpit shook violently. The monster slammed into him.

'Concentrate'

The impact pulled First Aid back to the present. Vortex's voice echoed in his head. Then he realized he was seeing memories, both his own and Vortex's.

Slowing his breath, he concentrated on the sight before him. The crabtopus monster is still there, tentacle snaking onto his -Vortex's- midsection.

He looked at the tentacle, not where it coiled, but where it came out of the body. His blade stabbed at the base of it, twisted, sliced and the tentacle came free, falling slacked from Vortex.

'You aren't half bad for a medic'

Vortex's voice in his head. He almost panic again before remembering that he was connected to Vortex and not dead. He was still capable of thoughts.

And so First Aid looked on.

The giant monster was before him, preparing to strike again. They didn't just see the enemy. But analyzing it at the same time, even as they dodged the attack and raised blades to cut with renewed surgical precision.

He was seven years old when he cried his eyes out after taking a beetle apart and realized he couldn't put them back together alive. He never wanted anything to be hurt or die.

He just wanted to know how they works. What the inside were like. He wanted to open them up. If he know how they works, surely he would know how to save them, right?

Or know how to kill them better.

The blade penetrated the seams under hard shelled armor, then pried off the shell, revealing tender flesh underneath. The monster screamed, lashing at them with tentacles. They ignored the attack, instead, Vortex stabbed at the flesh repeatedly until the monster went still.

First Aid knowledge informed Vortex's action at the speed of thought. There was no need to think. They combined mind knew how to take this thing apart effectively.

Vortex was bleeding into him. First Aid was lost in a whirlwind of violence. They tore one monster to pieces and move on, hacked the limbs off the other before stabbing it through one of the joint, deep enough that the mech's arm went inside the body and tore out god knows what from the hole.

All the ones in front of them were gone. They turned, there was another monster, half of it on fire, trying to mow down the red mech. They grabbed it, peeled it from Hot Rod's mech and slammed it to the ground. Hot Rod backed away, swaying a little on his feet.

The fire slowly died down leaving a half cooked monster, screeching, writhing fruitlessly while being pinned to the ground with Vortex's blade.

'Where's the heart?'

'I think...here...'

'Haha! look at that, you're right!'

'So that's what it looks like....'

It was still squirming. Vortex step on the head and it cracked open, green liquid splattered out.

Insects are insects. No matter the size.

You can take them apart and never have to feel guilty ever again.

+++++

"---ome in. First Aid come in. This is Hot Rod. Can you hear me?"

'why don't you answer him before I hit that guy too. He's been calling for a while' Vortex speak in his head and he came back to himself.

"oh..."

First Aid took a while to realized Hot Rod was radioing him from his mech. The fire had died down, it seems that the other mech isn't in too bad a condition.

"Hot Rod. This.....This is First Aid. I can hear you"

"How's your condition?"

"I'm...I'm alright. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good. You stole my last kill."

"I...um...sorry...."

"Nah. Also, don't forget to put that down before return to base"

First Aid looked down and saw that the monster's heart was still skewered on Vortex's blade.

'Why don't we keep it as trophy'

"Where am I gonna keep it? It's the size of a fridge"

"Pardon?" Hot Rod asked. First Aid was still on the radio.

"Sorry I was talking to my self. I....I will return in a bit. First Aid out'

With the radio off, First Aid leaned back and let out a long breath.

He just realized he was sweating. His hands squeezed the control so hard that they were trembling. When he could let go, his palm sting.

Vortex put the heart down, using the other blade to nudge it off, then cleaved it in half while First Aid watched.

'You like that, hm?'

"I......well....yeah" he was going to deny it. But Vortex probably saw everything already. "I just want to know, okay?"

'Sure, First Aid, sure' He can just hear the grin in Vortex's voice inside his head. He could only shake his head at it.

On the way back, First Aid feel for the link on the back of his neck and disconnect.

[What. Leaving already?]

"...I...just need some time. That whole thing just now was...."

[That whole thing just now was good. We make such a good team]

"How was that good... My head is still spinning. And how would I know you won't melt my brain"

[Your brain is too freaky to melt. I like it a lot.]

"What do you even mean by that"

But First Aid heard a rattling sound echoing from somewhere in the mech like a deep rasping laughter.

He couldn't sleep that night.

------

Once the battlefield has gone quiet, the mechs returned and parameters secured, the science team and rescue squads are dispatched.

They passed the mechs on the way back. Vortex lagging far behind the others, covered in green blood, blades still slicked with what ever was inside the alien guts. Every step shaking the earth beneath.

"Don't you think this is creepy?"

"What?"

"The aliens... they are in pieces.....".

"Well, think on the bright side. Sample extraction is really easy now. They even cut the organs out for us." That would be true. Except for the ones that was turned into mince meat.

"That doesn't make this any less creepy"

"I heard the pilot used to be a medic. Maybe that's why he cut them like this"

"Why did a medic decided to pilot that thing?"

"Beats me. Some people were saying Vortex chose him"

"Poor guy"

--------

Also I want First Aid to interact with other pilots. Hod Rod seems fitting and he hasn't show up a lot so here he is.

[thebirdkiwi]

OTP ask; TexAid 1, 3, 6, 9, 13

Vortex is a bit too lightweight and Aid knows how to deactivate his own fuel intake chip so... yeah that's cheating but First aid prefers being the caretaker in the situation anyway 3) Since they are both in gestalts they both have difficulties to be on their own. more Vortex than Aid tho, because after Aid went to Delphi he got used to be on his own. 6) First Aid. He gets so much into his own head and his work that he doens't even know what month is it. Also I like to think that Vortex thinks as their anniversary the day they met back in Cybertron when working for the same hospital, while First Aid counts the day when they got together once they found each other on Earth. 9 )Both, but different kind of "animals". First Aid would bring home stuff like broken machines he finds along the street, Vortex brings crocodiles, capybaras and once he brought a whole ass human at home one day. (His name was Piotr, he was a truck driver and wasn't very happy to be "rescued")

13) Vortex. It's his favorite little game to give Aid so many compliments until Aid dies of embarassment, all blushing pink and hidins his face while smoke comes out his vents.

[randycider]

someone said mech pilot jazz au playlist so here’s my take (and the YouTube link)

I prioritized music that I think people might have not heard before, because I love exploring new music from fandom playlists so I hope this can offer a similar experience :] (AU by Keferon here on tumblr!)

The loose order I did was:

Hold It Down -> daphne did it : Jazz to mech!Jazz to JazzProwl

The Perfect Girl -> Thank God I’m Not You : Shockwave, Swerve, and Blurr vibes (kinda separate, kinda together)

Factories -> Far Beyond : Texaid vibes

But ofc feel free to interpret however, I just love music!

[transingthoseformers]

Texaid mentioned RAAAAHHH. I do love the mental image of Vortex just having this completely wrong reputation. Yeah sure he's a sadist and a torturer and all that, but he's got like -30 experience in relationships of all kinds.

First Aid is disappointed for 4 seconds before being like "I can teach him 😏" and whoo boy does he ever. Vortex gets taken for a riiiiiiide

EXACTLY LMAO EXACTLY

Like. That reputation cannot be a good baseline for starting relationships, and a lot of the other decepticons he WOULD start relationships with would probably be. Just as interesting as Vortex, if not worse

But also ohh. Ohhhhh yes. We need to let First Aid's freak flag fly HIGH more often

[silence-ofthe-llamas]

I feel I’m VERY late to the party with the mecha AU considering how bone deep Pacific Rim runs within me but I’m chomping at the bit. Gnawing at it. I LOVE YOU ALL. I’ve reactivated my tumblr for this. Good god. @keferon my leige. I'm meant to be SLEEPING.

Anyway, I’m a general nuisance, I wont be following much of the pre-established lore too closely because of who I am as a person, bone app the teeth.

TexAid for the soul is more potent than Chicken soup.

First Aid wakes up in an ice cold sweat.

It’s not the first time. He’d lost count, actually – it seemed that every morning was the same now. He’d wake up, he’d shudder, he’d carefully extract himself from his damp-with-sweat duvet, he’d shower, and then he’d pretend that everything was perfectly fine and normal.

His function first and foremost was one of a medic. He trained to work with live patients. His expertise was with the living, not the cold stares of the dead.

But lately, all he’d been dealing with were corpses, and it all came down to one reason.

Vortex.

Superstition wasn’t something that he bought into, but the theory on base was that the mech was haunted. At the start, he didn’t believe it – mechanics were plagued with stray code, oddly executed scripts. There was nothing supernatural about it. All of the pilots said that they felt another presence within their mechs with them – there wasn’t anything special about Vortex’s AI. If one wanted to look at it that way, all of their mechs were haunted.

But Vortex was different. Of course he fucking was, why wouldn’t he be. No, no, nothing was allowed to be normal. Ever. Firstly, there was the staring. The mechs weren’t meant to stare, but whenever he went close to Vortex, he could feel his piercing gaze against him. It wasn’t normal. They should have been offline without any human input, but Vortex stayed stubbornly awake and studied his every move. Sometimes he’d swear he could hear his internals humming, the rumble of moving parts, his plating trembling and straining against the dock as he tried to move. If someone got too close to him, he’d hear the hum of weapons systems warming up. It was part of their onboarding process that they were warned against approaching him, now. He’d cut them down without a second thought.

There was also the small fact that he had a tendency to kill his pilots. And it wasn’t even an exaggeration – their means of slaughter always came from within. The cameras that filled the insides didn’t show any breaches, no weapons were brought on board, the vital signs monitors from the pilots and their own helm-mounted cameras showed no foul play of an external parties part. No. It was… Vortex. The mech showed his displeasure in a shower of blood and moving parts – and that was if he was being nice. If they weren’t power washing the remains of a digestive tract from his floor, they were manoeuvring a live body that acted like a dead weight, the pilot a stuttering mess, mentally shattered and broken. They’d never managed to get any of them back into active duty – a lot of them First Aid had no idea what had happened to them. They were simply shipped off somewhere, never to be heard of or seen from again. The worst part of it was that they were all missing fingers, as if they’d been cleaved right off by sharp metal as they reached out for something.

An alarm ripped through the base, and he gagged on his morning coffee. He knew what that meant – deployment. And with deployment came another victim, courtesy of Vortex, and all that horrid stench and morbid fascination that sent his spine tingling and brain firing to the point of insanity that paired so closely with it.

Ambulon frowned at him. “Jittery this morning, Aid.”

“I just know I’ll be on Vortex duty again.” He groaned.

Ambulon patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you, Aid. Pharma only does it because he trusts you.”

Yeah, right. It’s so I haven’t got an excuse to be by the morgue.

You steal one Quintesson body…

He briefly remembered the smell of the grave dirt as he’d re-interred them into the ground instead of the stone cold morgue, and quickly smelled his coffee instead.

The deployment seemed to last an age. First Aid managed to get through all of his deskwork before they returned, and Vortex staggered into his bay. First Aid was waiting patiently by the gate as the docking station clasped around him, holding him in place as cables came down from the ceiling to plug into him.

“How many bets this guys dead?” Someone behind him asked, elbowing the one stood next to him. First Aid ignored them, focusing intently on the mech.

He could see blood behind the glass. It was leaking out down the side – they were more than dead. They’d been eviscerated.

The visor lifted with a loud hiss, and First Aid took a deep breath. He held it so he didn’t have to inhale the initial stench – that part was always the worst, having been left to fester within him – and carefully studied the scene before him.

Organs hung down from the ceiling. Scraps of fabric hung limply from the still locked harness.

“What did he do to them?” First Aid quietly asked himself as he stepped forwards with a bucket.

There was a rule - you never got inside Vortex on your own. First Aid followed it religiously, and he could hear someone behind him, and so he felt perfectly comfortable in getting inside.

Only the visor snapped shut with a sickening crack as their leg was cleaved clean through, the scream barely muffled by the glass.

“No!” First Aid flew to the glass of the visor, pounding against it. “Are you okay?!”

What a stupid question that had been. Of course he wasn’t okay. The smell in the air burned at his throat and turned his stomach, and he looked down at the dismembered leg.

He couldn’t breathe. Or he was breathing too much? He didn’t know, but his chest ached and his head spun and he felt like ice had been injected straight into his veins, every hair stood on end as panic gripped him. It took every ounce of self control he had to not scream from terror when he heard pistons loudly slam into place, firmly locking the visor.

Oh, god, have mercy.

Emergency exits. These things had them, right? He’d had to pull a barely conscious pilot from one once – he’d gotten trapped in it in a malfunctioned ejection sequence. The button would be big and bright red, surely – and with a protective cover so they didn’t smack it by mistake in the middle of a fight and end up launched into the face of a Quintesson. His eyes scanned wildly, breath catching in his chest as he tried to suck in air that didn’t make him want to vomit, hands hovering over the dash. Mental images of the pilots missing their fingers played in his head like an omen.

There. Bright red. The words were worn off, the plastic scratched. The metal around it was worn and faded from use, and the plastic cover was long gone.

Blood crusted it. He smacked it anyway.

Nothing.

He looked back to where it should have been, hyperventilating. What did that mean? The techs had never found anything to be wrong with it before. Everything was functioning as normal – it was why Vortex was still even allowed to be operated. So why didn’t the emergency escape open?

Red light flooded the cockpit. His teeth chattered together as he slowly turned to look at the display that had lit up, white text running across it.

[LEAVING SO SOON?]

“I’m just a medic.” First Aid pathetically said. He almost bit his tongue.

[TAKE A SEAT]

Tears prickled his eyes as he unbuckled the harness and sat down. He tried to ignore the wet squelch as he sat in what remained of the previous human who sat there.

“What do you need from me?” He tried to sound strong as he asked.

The screen remained blank. The lights slowly dimmed, leaving him in the dark with only the sound of Vortex’s hot systems for company. He tried to calm his breathing, timing it to the rhythmic thunk of a nearby fuel pump, and wrung his fingers together.

It would be okay. It would be okay. Everything was going to be okay-

The chair suddenly flew backwards, and First Aid shrieked. His throat felt raw with how hard he’d screamed, clinging on tightly to whatever he could get his hands on. He studiously kept his limbs away from the console – he had a theory on how they’d lost their digits, and he was not keen on finding out if it was true. The chair snapped back upright again, and he whimpered, tears pooling in his eyes and his bottom lip trembling. The mech shuddered, a grinding sound rumbling through the cockpit and rattling his bones.

[PLUG IN] the screen instructed. A cable fell from the ceiling.

Helmet. He needed a helmet. They had the required port for that cable. He scanned the floor, ignoring the rising nausea as he searched for the helmet from the previous pilot.

There. Behind the chair. He picked it up, and had to look away when he realised the head was still inside. He shook it out, humming loudly to block out the sound of it hitting the floor, and kept his eyes closed as he put it on and ignored how much it stank of organic metal. He reached up for the cable, and gently guided it to the port-

Agony. Burning agony. His back arched as he screamed, hands clutching the helmet as if willing it to stay on despite how hard his legs kicked and thrashed. Electricity coursed straight through him, setting him aflame as his brain tried to catch up with his body.

It hurt. It hurt so much.

First Aid gnashed his teeth together as he fought with his conflicting emotions. He wanted to know why. Why Vortex had trapped him in there, why he had gone to this length to do this to him, why him. But he also wanted to run, to run so far away that he was nothing more than a distant memory. He didn’t want to know why Vortex had taken such an interest in him.

But oh, oh he did. He did want to know what he’d done to catch the AI’s attention.

The pain slowly subsided, the fried nerves numbing to the raw energy that charged through them, and he cracked his eyes open.

[GOOD BOY <3]

“Oh, god, I think I broke something.” First Aid whimpered. He suddenly understood just why so many pilots came to them with nerve damage, with extensive burns, and why most of their heads were metal. The connection was. Intense.

“Don’t be such a pussy.” A voice spoke directly into his head. First Aid gasped, sitting up straighter. It was strangely human, yet equally as mechanical.

“What-!”

“I just want to talk, but it’s so irritating to have to wait for you to read the screen. Removing the barriers is so much easier, isn’t it? Now, to business...”

First Aid gasped and whined as he felt pressure in his head, white not points of pain slowly pressing through his brain. His eyesight flickered and faded in and out, his sight shifting from the inside of the cockpit to the chaos right outside – chaos that he couldn’t even hear – and he was glad to see that the man who had been right behind him was receiving medical attention. What a relief. Humour that wasn’t his and that he didn’t recognise pulled at his lips, and he felt a strong urge to smile so wide that his lips split and cracked.

The pressure on his head increased, and he felt his eyes cross, reality slowly slipping through his fingers like thick slime. Red dripped from his nose. Where was he, again? Why was this happening to him? What was even happening to him- Awareness snapped back to him in time with a loud bang on the glass. He heard his name, muffled. Someone was calling to him. He should go to them, right? “Don’t move, I haven’t finished looking at you yet.” First Aid felt phantom sensations of ice cold hands pressing against his skin, a shudder running up his spine. He felt a prickle run down his arm, chasing the feeling of the tips of someone’s fingers running down the bare skin. Obediently, he held still despite how curious he was to go and look. “I can tell you like the good stuff.” An invisible hand patted his cheek and the mech shuddered, loud and clunking. “God, I’m so lucky I found you.” “Found me?” His chest felt weird. His everything felt weird. It was difficult to keep his eyes open. “I’ve been watching you. On the cameras, when you’re in the hangar with me, your files. Fascinating. How wonderful you are to me.” “That’s a bit creepy. You could have asked first.” “I don’t like being told no.” “I would have liked it more if I’d known it was happening.” Why was he so readily admitting this? Where were his carefully constructed walls and defences, keeping the abnormality at bay? He felt like he was an open book and Vortex was just turning to the pages he wanted to read. “Maybe I’d have done something if I knew I had an audience.” The mech shuddered again, harder this time.

“Come on, baby, talk to me wont you? I’ve been so lonely.”

“Maybe if you stopped killing your pilots you wouldn’t struggle so much with that.” He gritted out. Fuck, everything hurt.

“You’ve got a bit of a mouth on you, don’t you.” A sound that felt like anger rumbled through him. “I like it.”

“Can I go now?” He felt woozy. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong, his ears felt wet and his face felt wet and he could taste copper-

As if on cue, there was a loud bang on the visor – someone was pounding it with their fist. A shared stab of annoyance flashed through them.

“Question first. How did it feel to have a Quintesson in your bare hands?”

“How did you know about that?”

“Come on, don’t be shy, you know I’ve seen everything.” He crooned. “Tell me. I’m so desperate to know. I know you liked it – I can feel it.” It felt as if he had someone’s arms wrapped around him, their mouth right by his ear. If he closed his eyes and focused, he could feel their warm breath ghosting over it.

“It felt fucking amazing.” He thought back to it. The warmth of the body – an infant, tiny in comparison to the adults that dwarfed their houses. How thick their blood was, how it dripped down through his hands. The burn of the smell, mineral rich and glowing bright blue.

“You fucking tease.”

“You cut through them every day.” First Aid argued. “What’s so special about that?”

“You can really feel it. I’ve got metal between me and my prey.”

The banging was louder, and First Aid’s vision shifted to be through Vortex’s. There was a big group of them now, he had an audience.

“I should go.”

“You’ll be back, honey.”

First Aid ripped the helmet off, and nausea hit him like a truck as he felt a sharp wrench in his head. He loudly gagged, folding in half, and pressed a fist to his mouth to keep himself from spilling his guts into the cockpit. Vortex was certain to kill him if he made a mess. Sucking in a deep breath, he staggered over to the glass and gently placed his hand against it. It felt like half of his consciousness was somewhere else, somewhere he couldn’t reach.

“Please?” He was starting to feel disorientated, the sudden disengaging scrambling his brain. What memories were his, or the previous pilots? Pain suddenly flashed through him and he screamed, his limbs going numb. He felt warm liquid slowly run down his suit, red blooming amongst the white, bone wrenching from bone-

[LATER, DARLING <3]

Vortex’s visor finally opened, laugher echoing in First Aids head, and he fell out face-first onto the catwalk. He was gasping for breath as he scrambled away, shaking and trembling and swallowing back vomit. His hands flew over his body, checking for injures, for limbs he was certain were missing – intact. He was completely intact. His team had their arms around him and were pulling him away faster, leaving a trail of blood smeared after him – was that his? Or was that the pilots? - and were shouting. All of it was just noise. Pure noise.

Giddiness bubbled up in his chest, and he laughed. It started quietly, a little chuckle. Disbelief at the situation, he thought. Pure, utter relief that he was alive. The cannibal mech had eaten him, but here he was – spat out whole and unharmed. His next laugh was a little louder this time, and Ambulon paused, taking notice. First Aid didn’t see him any more, his whole vision taken up by Vortex and the loud snap of his visor clamping back down into place, a hiss as the mechanism locked it back down. He could have sworn he was smiling, but it was ridiculous – the mech didn’t even have a mouth.

He didn’t realise he was still laughing – and hard – until his stomach began to hurt and he felt light headed. Gasping for breath, he let himself fall back onto the floor, staring blindly up at the ceiling. He could see the red lights of Vortex’s visor reflected on the metal there.

“Felix?” The voice of his mentor pierced through his peals of laugher. First Aid looked up and saw Ratchet running towards him, face twisted in agony. He felt himself start to laugh again, and he had to fight to not start punching himself in the stomach to get himself to fucking stop it. It wasn’t funny. None of this was funny. Why was he laughing.

“Is he hurt? Why is he bleeding?” Ratchet demanded as he knelt down next to him. Ambulons response was inaudible, First Aids ears ringing. He felt something dribble from his mouth, and from the acidic taste in the back of his throat he assumed that he’d finally thrown up. He didn’t remember turning – his airway was clear. Two hands gently cupped his face, forcing him to look at someone.

Ratchet.

“Can you hear me?” He gently asked, tension clear in his voice. First Aid could, but he didn’t know how to respond. He slowly blinked, hands reaching up to clasp at his wrists with trembling hands. The adrenaline was burning off, replacing itself with a leaden heaviness that threatened to drown him. Slowly, he nodded.

Get me away from that mech, he tried to say. They get it and I hate that we understand each other.

Ratchet seemed to hear him. “Help me move him.” He was looking at someone else, but First Aid didn’t want to look away from his face. He committed every detail to memory, every line, every grey hair, every follicle and aged scar and flush of colour. It felt like he was seeing him for the very first time.

The world spun and his stomach clenched as he was lifted unceremoniously onto a stretcher, and he took one last glimpse of Vortex before the oxygen mask was fitted over his face and he couldn’t see anything any more.

09090909

It was highly inadvisable.

But he was doing it anyway.

That taste he’d got of Vortex was like a breath of fresh air to him – he hadn’t realised how stifling the company on base was until he’d met him. Ratchet would be so disappointed in him. Pharma would hang him by his guts. Ultra Magnus would try and make it so he never saw the light of day again.

One moment of feeling his teeth at his throat and he was addicted. He wanted him. He wanted physical scars he could touch and remind himself that it hadn’t been a dream, it was real. Carefully sneaking through the base, First Aid crouched and peered around corners, internally humming the Mission Impossible theme. It felt ridiculous, but if he didn’t distract himself he’d make himself vomit from laughing too much again. He had found a random face mask and slapped it on, hoping that obscuring his identity a little would help him get into character.

They hadn’t found a new pilot for Vortex yet – they still went through the usual procedure of finding one with the right personality and skill set, of testing how well the AI meshed with the mind of the pilot outside of the mech before allowing them to go inside. They had a few candidates, but now it was a question of ‘are they more compatible with other bots?’ and ‘how expendable are they really?’ before they stuck them inside of him.

Like lambs for slaughter. They knew they were going to die – but what else could they do? Vortex was their strongest mech. If he went down, their whole operation would crumble with him. Mechs were expensive and difficult to make, the AI’s complicated and prone to disaster.

Pharma didn’t take his eyes off of him for two whole weeks. He’d fallen out of the mech looking like the pilots whose brains had melted under the pressure, his arm marked with a burn that followed the path of a nerve, mapping it onto his skin. Pharma had stared at it, long and hard, brain ticking over. He wasn’t to go near Vortex again. Not for a while, until they figured out why he’d decided to kidnap him, and why he’d decided to spit him back out. They knew why he’d mangled the other medic. He thought it was fun. He’d said so himself, writing messages in the morning memo. They still hadn’t figured out how he was doing it, but if you were early enough in the day you’d see it before they’d caught it. But First Aid didn’t do too well in following instructions, in listening to orders. The Infant he’d plucked from the formaldehyde to get a better look at was evidence enough of that. The fact he was scrambling to get back inside of Vortex right now was yet another reason why First Aid was to be kept under lock and key - god, if they knew anything about him they’d never let him see the light of day again.

The catwalk that lead out to the mechs was a stones throw away. A guard stood watch, hands firmly on their gun.

God damn it.

First Aid rocked on his feet, wondering how he’d get him to move, when he suddenly felt a prickle on the back of his neck as if he were being watched. He shuddered and whipped his head around.

Nobody. Alone. No eerie glow of a camera – not that there were any over on this side of the hall – and no shadowy figures. He held his breath and strained his ears – all he heard was the cough from the guard and their sigh of boredom. He slowly looked back to the guard, and a faint red glow caught his eye.

Vortex’s visor was on. He was watching.

The sound of something falling to the floor caught the guards attention. He quickly turned and ran out onto the catwalk, looking down at the floor. He quickly looked back up at Vortex and scowled.

“I’m not stupid, Vortex. I’m not going down and getting that.”

Vortex did not respond. The guard tutted and turned on his heel.

Something else fell to the floor, a little louder this time.

The guard threw his head back with a sigh.

“You are the worst.”

He marched off, out of sight, and First Aid saw his window of opportunity. He quickly slipped out, thankful for his socks muffling the sound of his steps, and hid behind the terminal the guard was stationed at before he turned back around and walked over to the terminal.

“Yeah, yeah.” He was speaking to someone on the phone, drumming his fingers on the terminal. “It’s Vortex again. I know, I won’t get close – yeah. He’s dropped two this time.” He paused for a moment, listening to what the person on the other end had to say, before making a sound of disgust. “Go and check? I am not getting close to him!”

First Aid could hear a raised voice on the other side, and strained to see if he recognised it. Before he could pin a face to the voice, the guard sighed loudly. “Fine. I’ll go look. You’ve got my will there, right? Take yourself off of it.”

The guard didn’t look back at the terminal as he walked to the stairs and descended down them. First Aid glanced between the stairs and the catwalk, and quickly crawled over. Peering over the side to see where the guard was, he gained an uncharacteristic burst of bravery before he sprinted towards where Vortex was, visor open and waiting for him.

“Can I?” He asked in a hushed whisper. Vortex didn’t respond. He gingerly approached, noticing that every single camera inside his cockpit was trained onto him. He swallowed nervously, and clambered in.

He should have been used to climbing inside of Vortex. He’d done it enough times. Maybe it was because he wasn’t wearing any of his protective gear? Not his uniform, or his helmet, or even his gloves. Just himself and his pyjama shorts, his t-shirt, and his socks with little bears on them.

Mmm. First impressions. Wonderful.

He should have gotten changed first.

[TAKE A SEAT] lit up the screen.

He slipped into the seat obediently, taking care to not touch the controls. He coyly waved at the camera.

“Did I wake you?”

[YOU DIDN’T. I LIKE YOUR SOCKS]

The bears stared back at him. First Aid tried not to think about the rumbling he now recognised as laughter that rolled through the cockpit.

“Thanks.” He replied, red tingeing his cheeks.

[THAT’S A GOOD LOOK ON YOU]

He pressed his legs more tightly together. “The socks?”

[NO, YOU’RE GOING VERY RED]

[MAYBE I SHOULD CALL YOU LITTLE RED INSTEAD]

The helmet dropped from the ceiling, firmly attached to the cable that would connect organic to mechanical.

[I WANT YOU]

[<3]

First aid scrambled with the harness, clipping himself in place, before putting on the helmet. It burned just as badly as the first time, and he saw as the nerves in his arms glowed with the energy of it – without the proper implants, there was nowhere for the current to go but him.

He whined, squirming in the seat. He ground his teeth together and squeezed his eyes shut, counting down from ten and losing his place three times before the connection settled. Vortex was a heavy and oppressive presence in his mind, and he chewed his cheek as he cracked an eye open.

[LET ME TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT YOU]

The warning wasn’t even a verbal one. He read helplessly as he felt cold hands clasp him once more. Digital fingers made of 1’s and 0’s probed his brain, and First Aid arched in the seat, teeth clenching down over a loud moan of pain. Neurons fired agonisingly and his hands scrambled at the harness, the tips of his fingers raw and torn and bleeding against the rough fabric. Memories were brought to the surface unbidden, dragged out by artificial means, and others flooded in to take their place. He inhaled sharply, eyes going wide as the realisation hit him. Vortex was trying to show him something. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t even an AI.

He’d been entombed in it. In the mech. Vortex had been a real, breathing human being, mocked in a sham trial in the name of obtaining more pilots. Rich men had paid him to do terrible things, and he had taken the entirety of the blame. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of funds, countless hours, blood, sweat, and tears – all for one mech. A prototype, at that.

First Aid blinked as a bright red screen flashed up, text displayed across it. He squinted and rubbed his eyes, grimacing at the drag of sore and exposed flesh against the rough material of his face mask, and blinked.

[LOCKED IN]

“W… what do you mean locked in?” First Aid hesitantly asked. Like… literally, he was locked in? He knew that. He was connected to Vortex’s nervous system – he could feel that there were bolts in place keeping the cockpit well and truly locked down like a fortress, impenetrable except to the override codes the high command kept locked in a vault in their office or the request of the pilot. He felt amusement push at the edge of his awareness, a shudder of a laugh running through the mech, and he clarified.

“I know your dirt, and now you know mine. Do you think high command are going to let you go peacefully?”

Ah. A threat. Of course. Worried he’d run? He wasn’t going to. He was fascinated by this mech – the joy of being caught in his mechanisms was sure to sing in his ears, the pure delight of watching him carefully pick apart his prey like a hawk dismantled a rabbit was like a chorus of cherubs to him. And Vortex knew it, he knew it and he loved it- he was certain of it, the way his mind melded with his, pushing against him and caressing him, a warm blanket around his psyche.

“I’m not going to leave you.” First Aid took a deep breath, the unsettling stench of bleach and cooked meat and rotting oranges filling his lungs. “No, I’m fascinated by you.”

He tensed, eyes briefly widening as he felt a grin that wasn’t his tugging at the corners of his lips, threatening to split his face in two.

“Happy about that?”

“Extremely.” He purred. “I’ve seen what your hands have done, what they’re capable of. I think we’d make a great team.”

“What if I refuse?”

Images flashed in front of his eyes. Bone fragments scattered around the cockpit, blood and guts and gore hanging obscenely from the ceiling. Blood ran thickly on the walls, the smell foul and rotten. First Aid wretched.

“You’ll kill me?” He hated the excitement that bled into his voice, how eager he was to feel the mechanism close down around him, to feel his metal deep inside of him, for his last thought to be about his touch. “It’s a shame you can only do that once, you know. It’s so exciting, all the different ways you could do it to me. You could make me completely unrecognisable, identified by DNA alone. Or maybe flood the cockpit with gas, slowly suffocating me before I realised what was happening.” He bit his bottom lip. “I wish I knew what it all felt like.”

A new image, one of gears and cogs deep inside of him. All sharp angles and straight edges. The presence was probing inside of him, trying to figure out his reactions. He pressed his hand to his mouth and gasped as his teeth pierced his bottom lip without him realising it. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and another. Vortex probed again impatiently. Respond, damn it.

He looked up at the camera, glad that his mask hid his face, the excitement glowing on his cheeks. “I’ll show you.” His voice was breathless. “And if your use for me runs out, give me a little warning before I’m a permanent feature, please?”

“I wont let you run away from me.”

First Aid swallowed hard at the burn of yearning in his chest. “You’d catch me if I tried.”

“Damn fucking right I would.”

He watched the energy sing in his nerves, the pain spreading down his limbs. His digits were starting to go numb. How much longer could he hold out? He never wanted to leave. He felt flayed open and alive. Squirming, screaming, and alive. Red dripped down and stained his pyjama shirt. Damn it. He liked this pair.

“How do you control yourself? You want what I want, you wish you could do it. So why don’t you?”

“I’m a pacifist.”

“Are you? Or is that just what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?”

First Aid whimpered as the pages in his mind flicked, a burning sensation flaring in his arms. He watched the skin there turn red, the connection starting to be too much. His nose felt wet as he thought of it, as the memories Vortex was looking at came to the forefront of his mind. He liked surgery. He liked anatomy. He liked the cadavers and how they felt under his hands, picking them apart and pulling on tendons and ligaments to move them like puppets. Even earlier, his first pet. A hamster. He had told his parents that he’d buried it in the garden all by himself, and they had praised him for being such a grown up young boy, when really he had picked it apart like he had practised on his teddy bears and then blamed on the dog before shoving it into a hole in the ground to hide the evidence before anyone had seen what he was doing.

Vortex chuckled.

“Oh, let me show you how exciting a Quintesson can be. Little Hamphrey hasn’t got anything on them.”

[bayon-ett]

@keferon Hey I’ve been reading your TexAid and Mecha au and all of the short stories people have been adding. I love it!

@spector-author Ive been reading your chapters too! And I wanted to add a few of my own, you inspired me haha.

So my idea is…Everyone here knows of Eddie and Venom right? I was wondering, what if there was an instance where FirstAid figured out how to ‘download’ Vortex to save both of them? I’m also going for a Mark Spector/Stephen Spector vibe. Both those character dynamics were my inspo for this.

I Listened to TOOL while writing this. I just feel like Vortex is that kinda guy. Also the title of the song is fitting. I linked it if anybody wants to listen while they read :D

Story Under the Cut ⬇️

FirstAid woke blearily. And he was, the world was… sideways? He tried to focus on, anything. The cockpit was dark save for the flashing red light every few seconds.

It was quiet. An alarm should be going off with the lights. He should hear the sparking internals of the console.

Concussion. The vertigo, hearing loss, and splitting headache being anything to go by.

Green letters scrolled across the monitor. FirstAid tried to focus his eyes, his vision swimming.

YOU NEED TO RUN!

YOU NEED TO RUN!

YOU NEED TO RUN!

FirstAid blinked.

I CANT-

CANT CONTROL ANYTHING

GET OUT

THEY’RE COMING

FirstAid fumbled around for his seatbelt until he finally found the release button. He slid out of the chair and hit the side of the cockpit with a groan. He struggled to stand up. A sudden wave of nausea made him abandon the idea, gritting his teeth against the pain behind his eyes. The dull red light above causing a stab of pain in his head whenever he opened them.

“Whats iss goingonn-“ He slurred out, trying to remain upright.

DOESN’T MATTER. YOU NEED TO GO.

FirstAid chuckled weakly, slowly dissolving into somewhat manic laughter. Laughter that turned into a groaning and coughing fit.

“Vortex, I’m not m-making it fivestepsss.”

There was silence.

FirstAid tried to move towards the console. Every time he turned his back a certain way it would send pain shooting from his hip to his shoulders.

He drug himself along the console counter, trying to look at the cameras, the pop up display, anything to give him an idea of what was wrong.

FIRSTAID YOU NEED TO LEAVE

WHEN THEY GET HERE THEY’ll BE ABLE TO SMELL YOU

THEY’LL TEAR ME-THIS-THE COCKPIT APART TO GET TO YOU

“Worried about me are you?” FirstAid swiped his hand accross the control screen weakly, smearing blood across it. Where was he bleeding from?

From what FirstAid’s spotty vision could make out it looked like multiple hydraulic lines had been disconnected. The connection between the main frame and the rest of the relays to Vortex- The mecha’s body were not transmitting. A bright ‘SIGNAL LOST’ on the top of the screen.

“Shit shit shit-“

FIRSTAID I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DO NOT LEAVE I WILL SEND YOU TO JESUS MYSELF

“What about you?” FirstAid asked, more of a muttering to himself. Vortex could read his thoughts so it’s not like he needed to really say anything out loud.

ITS BEEN FUN DOLL BUT OUR TIME TOGETHER HAS COME TO AN END

NOW GO

BEFORE I END YOU IN A LESS PAINFUL WAY THAN THEY WILL

The main frame. The main frame was disconnected from the body. So Vortex was stuck in the main frame. If this were to translate to a human body, it would be equatable to a spinal injury at the neck.

FirstAid scrambled to grab the pilots helmet, putting it on gingerly.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?

“Something stupid.”

FirstAid swiped through the control consul quickly, synching his consciousness with the mecha, Vortex’s anger and more surprisingly, anxiety, filled his head.

WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING-

“GIVE ME A MINUTE TO THINK.” FirstAid ground out, “Please.”

FirstAid had never actually fully synched with Vortex. The mecha. Not the way pilots usually did anyway. Vortex controlled it on his own, FirstAid was only along for the ride most of the time. Vortex was in his head regardless.

After fully synching he heard Vortex in his mind clear as a bell, clearer as he’d ever heard him, shouting at him.

His finger hovered over the ‘DISCONNECT FROM MECHA, REURN FULL SYNC TO PILOT’ option on the screen.

FIRSTAID YOU FUCKER I SWEAR-

FirstAid slammed on the button, an electric shock like sensation going through him before everything went dark.

…

FirstAid woke up in the middle of the desert, puking his guts up onto the cold dry dirt. Lovely.

After dry heaving for what felt like forever he sat back on his heels, catching his breath.

He stood slowly, every twist or bend past a certain point making his back smart. He stood stiffly, slowly moving around to try and get a feel of his range of motion. Which was not very much at all.

He looked around, trying to get his bearings. After a few moments of spinning in circles he could say confidently that he had absolutely no clue where he was. No sign of beasts anywhere though. Small mercy that. The mecha, Vortex, was also nowhere to be seen. He sighed, picked a direction, and started walking.

It felt like First Aid simply blinked, and he was… on top of the mecha, elbow deep in the internals of the machine. He had enough time to turn away before retching again, his vision going spotty. He held his head gingerly, his hands smearing grease on his face and in his hair.

He blinked again, and he was sitting in the mecha, strapped in. His hands were on the controls! He abruptly let go of them, the machine stopping in its tracks as he did so. That never happened.

Did Vortex… did he die? For real this time? Did FirstAid accidentally delete his consciousness from the mecha or something? Did he-

He blinked again and was climbing out of the mecha onto the scaffolding. At the base. He was back at base. He almost tripped and fell onto the platform before catching himself.

He blinked again and Ratchet was standing in front of him looking, kind of freaked out. Ratchet never looked freaked out.

“Ratchet?” FirstAid questioned.

Ratchet blinked at him. FirstAid just noticed he was holding onto a wrench. Standing in the corner. FirstAid was crowding him into a corner.

“Who am I talking to right now?” Ratchet asked, searching FirstAid’s eyes.

FirstAid made a face. “Ratchet its me…”

The room spun, and the world went dark again.

…

Thats all I got for now. I’m going to keep adding to this cuz Keferon’s idea is so good! I want to add Ratchet and Vortex’s POV to this little snippet so… that will come soon.

I love everyone’s little snippets/chapters they’re adding to this au and I think its so cool :) This is not proofread so please point out any mistakes in the comments.

[sreabhadh]

Loving the mech AU brain rot everything I've been getting and had a thought. I'm not sure if it's been done, but I was listening to Scylla from Epic this morning and it made me think of Texaid.

To anyone not in the know, trigger warnings for both Scylla and Texaid. (Blood, gore, descriptive viscera, screaming, death etc)

So. Don't know if it's been done before, but Texaid (animatic/s) set to Scylla? Oo, the thought gives me chills. Leaving that thought here in case it tickles some one else's brain like that lol :3

[daddymus-mamatron]

Mmm what Tf ship do you think has the similar dynamic to Kylux? If there is any ofc.

TexAid. It has that toxic flavour that Classic Kylux had. The first ever TF fic I read was a Texaid and it was perfect to draw me into the TF fandom. Buuuuut since it's a rather rairepair, the second closest is Tarnma.

Sadly, Tarnma is much tamer that Texaid. Sure I read a couple of really fucked up Tarnma stuff (the necro fic *chef kiss*) but nothing gets to the level of gore/non-con I love exploring with characters than Texaid.

I know and closely follow fellow Texaid enjoyers but it is dry out there TOT

I'm curious @gingeralehux do you have any input on this?

[somerandomcockroach]

PLEASE bursted out laughing at this scene and rushed to doodle it, FINALLY he got to punch him WHEEEZEEEE (Also Dang ahsgaghda I rushed too fast to notice that he is in helmet at this moment XDDD In my brain for a good cheek punch helmet was on the way pofpwopfogpf)

OH WAIT Felix DID take the cigarette DEAR GOD YES SMOKE TOGETHER TIME

Guys. Hear me out.

Remember when in Cyberverse everyone got their minds transferred into fake artificial digital simulation of an infinite fucking parade while their bodies were imprisoned? Now. Imagine Shockwave trying to pull that kind of move on First aid.

Under the cut:)

First aid feels wrong.

Which isn't weird, but this kind of wrong is brand new. It's not nausea from drugs or weird withdrawals after neural connection. It also doesn't feel like a concussion.

It feels like he's a lab mouse running through a maze.

There's the cheese. There's the electric shocks. There's no way out and never has been.

He thinks it might be the fault of Pharma's new drug. Or his fucking pilot position is finally eating away at him, or Vortex is finally done playing with him and just broke his brain.

There are people running around him, each of whom definitely knows what their place is and where they need to go. Everyone has a purpose and a position and some important job to do. They hardly even talk to each other, just nod and run on.

Amazing synchronization.

First..Felix feels like a kid lost in the mall.

He has. He has to do something, right? What does he need to do? Fuck. What day is today anyway?

He heads over to the schedule board and stares at it like an idiot for a couple minutes. It's Tuesday. The work day is in full swing. All the shifts are here. But he doesn't recognize the names of the employees. All the pilots are accounted for, but his name isn't on their list.

Must be a mistake?

He turns away from the board and looks around the room once more, this time more carefully. He just needs to find someone to ask. Preferably someone familiar.

He can’t recognise anyone.

The feeling of strangeness doesn't get any less.

The uniforms on the people around him are similar. But not the same.

The badges are all another color.

And he's surprised by this, but at the same time some part of his brain tells him that it's all familiar and he's seen it before.

“.... then I thought, we could do something different, you know?”

Felix flinches as Swindle and Onslaught walk past him. They are clearly in the middle of some sort of discussion and don't notice Felix staring at them.

Swindle is wearing a pilot's suit. Onslaught is wearing one, too.

Screw the weird schedule. THIS is wrong.

Onslaught frowns, but when he opens his mouth there's a strange amused respect in his tone

“You slippery eel.”

Swindle smiles. His smile, Felix notices, is not the same at all. He doesn't look like an actor from a commercial. He looks like a worn-out but proud of himself man.

It's wrong, but he's seen it before, it's strange but it's familiar. He wants to go up to Swindle and ask what's going on. He wants to understand the damn schedule. He wants to...

…

First Aid feels wrong.

Which isn't weird, but this kind of wrong is brand new. It's not the nausea from the drugs or the weird withdrawals after a neural connection. It also doesn't feel like a concussion.

It feels like being a lab mouse running through a maze.

You got the cheese. And here's the electric shocks. No escape. Never has been.

It's all the same.

He's not sure where he's going. Everyone around him seems very busy. Running about their own business, not paying attention to him and--

What is he supposed to do? He can't remember what day of the week it is. Shit. Is it Tuesday? He can't remember.

Does he need to find a schedule?

Everything feels weird.

By the schedule board, he almost crashes into Swindle.

“...You realize, if we can both get out of this shit, we can get others out too.”

Onslaught...still looking strange in his pilot suit instead of his usual uniform. Swindle pokes him in the side with his elbow as they both walk past Felix, completely ignoring him

“You just. Think about it. Even if you can't fire Offy from the pilots, you can at least free him from these disgusting experiments.”

Felix wants to go over and say hello. Politely and unobtrusively. And also kindly ask, “what the hell, boss?”

But you see it every day, his brain tells him. Have you forgotten?

It makes him feel wrong.

Here's the board, here's the schedule, just lift your stupid head up and see what you're supposed to be doing.

He looks at the board. It's Tuesday. It's dumb sheets that don't have his name on them. He wants to go up to Swindle, he should go up to Swindle, right?

…

It's all wrong, but it's a new kind of wrong. It's not from drugs or neural connection. And it's almost certainly not a concussion.

He's feeling.... hell, what day of the week is it? Tuesday right? He looked at the blackboard yesterday.

He stops. And makes a titanic effort to concentrate the jelly his head is now filled with instead of his brain.

Today is Tuesday because?...because yesterday was Tuesday? And the day before that, too? This is some kind of trippy shit, not a broken neural connection….

He's not looking for the schedule. He's seen the schedule a million times and he knows what's gonna be on it.

He's not sure where he's even going. The layout of the base is different. Not much, but enough to confuse him. He's still stubbornly checking out every familiar place he can find.

He doesn't get it, he doesn't get it, he doesn't get it, he doesn't get it, he doesn't.

He still doesn't see a single damn familiar face.

Ambulon's gone, Pharma's disappeared somewhere too. No Tailgate or Wheeljack anywhere to be seen. And the layout is a little different and all the badges are the wrong color and Felix can't even read what's written on them because every time he tries all the letters blend into an indistinguishable blur.

He's trying to talk to someone. Anyone. But everyone either brushes him off or straight up ignores him. It's like he's a ghost or a lunatic or all of the above.

Everything is so familiar, but at the same time it isn't and his brain frantically clings to the last possibly familiar thing.

Vortex. He needs to find Vortex.

Even if it is him who is going insane and not everyone around him. Vortex is insane in his own, unique way, but he won't ignore him. He may get a good laugh, but it's still better than blindly poking around every corner by himself.

First Aid feels wrong.

Which isn't weird, but this kind of wrong is brand new. It's not nausea from drugs or weird withdrawals after neural connection. It also doesn't feel like a concussion....

He snaps at himself. NO. Hell no.

Vortex. He needs to find Vortex.

The hangar looks surprisingly dark. The people look unfamiliar. And another schedule board beckons him to come over and check to see if it really is Tuesday, but he ignores everything and heads straight for his Mech.

Vortex hasn't changed a bit. Even the radius at which people avoid him is exactly the same.

And looking at him doesn't give Felix that fucking sense of wrongness.

He sees Vortex a lot. He just knows it. The thought is natural, in contrast to the others. That's good, that... It may sound strange, but Vortex is the most normal thing he can perceive right now.

He feels like he's grown little wings. His feet carry him up to the open cockpit and he barely notices the steps beneath him.

Vortex is here and he will understand and even if he doesn't, at least he won't ignore him. Vortex gets bored too quickly so he never minds distractions, no matter how absurd and...weird..they…

Huh…

Felix almost climbs into the cockpit, but freezes, right on the way in.

It's empty.

He crashes into that realization like an invisible wall.

The cockpit.... is clean.

It doesn't smell of chemicals or scrubbing agent. There are no thin streaks of old browned blood in the seams and crevices. There are no dents or stains on the edge of the visor.

The cameras are dead still and the screens are off.

There's no smell of stale blood or decay.

There's no one here.

But the back of his neck still tingles with the sensation of someone else's eyes staring at him.

“The fuck do you think you're doing?“

First Aid flinches startled and turns around.

There is a pilot standing a few feet away from him with a cigarette in his hand.

“..I’m..”

“I wouldn't stand there if I were you” smiles the stranger eying him with a suspiciously bloodthirsty smile “those things are glitchy as fuck. Might chop off something important.”

First Aid continues to stand just under the open visor. Maybe it's surprise or maybe he's too used to the idea that Vortex won't cut him in half. The pilot in front of him looks.... geez, where has he seen him???

Has he ever seen him at all? That green suit looks awfully familiar.

And the voice. There should be more mechanical notes in that voice, First Aid thinks. It should have more static and reverb and squeaks and rumbles and clicks and that quiet hum that sounds when the cockpit systems are turned on...

First Aid jumps off the Mech.

“Vortex...?”

The pilot casts him only a slightly surprised look at first, but a moment later recognition flares in his eyes.

“What the fuck....AID??”

First Aid instantly takes a swing and punches him in the face hard enough to send him wiping the dust on the floor.

“You!!!”

“Ha,” says Vortex from the floor. “Hahahahah ooooh Do it again! ”

First Aid kicks him. Vortex laughs like he's been told the world's happiest joke.

He sounds…alive. Alive and human and there’s no metal in his voice and

“What the fuck?”

Vortex stops laughing, but still doesn't get up off the floor

“What's the last thing you remember?”

First Aid still does nothing but stare at Vortex stunned. The human Vortex. Victor? Shit

“Until Tuesday, you mean?”

Vortex hums

”Till Tuesday.”

What was before Tuesday?

Another Tuesday. And another and another and another and another.

Someone from downstairs bangs loudly on the railing and berates Vortex for a safety violation, ordering him to put his cigarette away.

Vortex points his middle finger down somewhere and throws the cigarette over the railing.

Oh god. Oh shit.

First Aid swallows nervously.

“Shockwave...he used something...to control you-Mech...I mean. He did something, I think. I remember I couldn’t move couldn’t do anything. And now I’m in this hhhhplace? I don’t really recognise it.”

Vortex twitches the corner of his mouth and finally rises from the floor.

“Well I do.”

He looks like he is sick, First Aid thinks. He looks sick and he looks human and he has arms and legs and eyes and that stupid curly strand of dark hair sticking out from under his helmet and the dark eye bags.

“The bastard made up some sort of dumpster to transfer your consciousness in while he does shit to your body.”

First Aid clenches his hands together

“But there were two of us in the neural connection. And it took two of us to transfer here too...”

It suddenly dawns on him

“Wait. This base, these, everything. This is what the Mech project looked like in your time?? And Swindle and Onslaught and the staff is different and...”

Vortex raises his eyebrows smugly.

“...Here you are ...you're a human...” finishes First Aid.

Vortex pulls a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

From somewhere below, a loud angry bang is heard again

“Tex, you bastard stop smoking in here.”

“Fuck you, Off,” Vortex yells back.

Then shrugs his shoulders

“I've always been human. No matter how hard Shockwave and his science shithole try to change that.”

He holds out an opened pack to First Aid

“Want some?”

First Aid feels awful. Terrible as if from the drugs, terrible as if from the neural connection. Terrible as if he had a concussion times two.

But Vortex is here and Vortex believes him and even if it turns out they're the ones who are crazy and not the world around them, at least they're crazy together.

First Aid takes a cigarette

“Thanks...”

_______________

Previous

[niechys]

Sorry. I like bad endings.

So maybe here's one of the possibilities that things fucked up.

@spector-author is at fault. I blame them. because of this post. (read : thank you your writing is such an inspiration I love the way you write texaid I love the way you write Onslaught now I need to write too because a comment or screaming in tag will not express the emotional response I have to it.)

Again tf mecha au from @keferon consumed my brain

There's a chance of this being incoherent. I'm under some weird stress this might be me coping.

*Shockwave possession arc did not happened.

*Blurr is still out of commission

*No one but First Aid and Onslaught know for sure that Vortex can move without controlling

tw: blood and gore, mass killing, major character death

Seeing the size comparison again, I wonder why did they make Vortex that big...

*When radioing to Vortex, everyone would be calling for First Aid cuz he's the pilot

**obviously this is a non-canon event okay!?!!?

All under cut. It's loooooonger than I thought it would be

I went and add it on Ao3

------------

Onslaught did not think it would come to this.

He knew Vortex didn't make empty threat and was very capable of doing good on said threat. But he had thought that it would not have happened. With Vortex's skill on the battlefield, he was more worried about incident on the base than actual battles. They were not prepared for this.

Vortex's mission control shouted from his screen, the dot on the map and information showing pilot's and mech's status. Vortex had taken heavy damage.

"The pilot's vital sign is weak, sir!"

"Call them back, now!" Onslaught spared one glance at the screen then at the big map in the center of the operation room.

"He might not be able to move sir!"

"If he's still alive, he can get out of there, get the carrier to pick them up"

There were still no respond, but Vortex was still moving. For a moment, Onslaught was hopeful. They are coming back to base, First Aid will be taken to the medics and everything would be okay. Then the sign for the Quintesson that had attacked Vortex blinked out. Onslaught felt dread creeping up in his spine.

"Invader unit down. But....how is he...his vital..."

"What?"

"The pilot vital...Sir..." On the screen, First aid's vital had disappeared. But Vortex's status remain the same. Heavily damaged at the cockpit area, but still operational.

That was when Onslaught felt his blood ran cold. The image of Vortex and his voice echoed back in his ears.

'He dies, everyone dies'

"Why is he still moving!" the officer yelled, starting to panic.

Onslaught looked up. The dot on the center map that represented Vortex was moving and moving faster toward the next Quintesson in the way. There weren't many left now. One of their mechas was down and the rest were still dealing with the rest of the invaders.

Vortex did not spend long erasing another invader from the map. Then he was moving toward the group closest to him. There were another one mecha fighting two invaders and was taking damage. But Vortex was moving in from behind the other mecha.

: Kickstrike report! Vortex is behind you. What is the situation? :

: Kickstrike to base. What is happening? Why is.. :

The radio cut off but not before the blood curdling scream came through.

"Pilot vital sign gone! Kickstrike down, sir!" Another officer yelled across the room.

Then the room fell silent. Onslaught could feel eyes on him, lost and confuse. He almost wish he was as confused as them. But he knew what was happening and now it's on him to do something.

'He dies and I slaughter every single person I can find'

"Tell all the other pilots to prepare for battle. Vortex is now our biggest threat"

"Sir! but Vortex's pilot...?" One of the officer tried to argue, still confused. While they talk, Vortex on the map was already approaching other dots.

"Doesn't matter how or why. Do not let Vortex into populated area, let it take care of the invaders, but after that we will take it down" Onslaught ordered. After a few muttering among themselves, all the officer started barking orders into their mic, telling their pilots to get clear of Vortex and prepare.

Another look at the map, the site of invasion wasn't very far from base. Vortex was flown out with a carrier, but if he chose to walk back it wouldn't take all that long. He grab another officer and give him another order.

"Get the base evacuated. All irrelevant personal are to seek shelter immediately"

"And get all units at base on stand by"

------

Black blade stabbed the mech through its chest. Going right through the pilot in one motion. The blade was as wide as a person was tall. The pilot was sliced in half. Vortex pulled the blade out, kicked the mech in front him aside and walked on. He made a swing on the building nearby. The area was evacuated earlier and it seems Vortex was aware of the lack of population

He looked up, noticing more invaders and other mech, he approach them. Going at full speed and slammed into the closest invader he found. Once it loses its balance, he swung his blades, almost catching the other mecha in the attack. His fellow pilot was quick to get out of the way.

: Backdive to First Aid. What are you doing! You almost hit me! :

There was no answer. Only Vortex looked up at him for a brief moment before grabbing the remaining invader and threw it at him. He couldn't dodge it in time. The invader crashed into him and he went down. Vortex followed, shredding the invader in almost no time.

: Wait! First Aid- no! Vortex- Don't! :

He tried to radio over, but Vortex never answered. The black blade stabbed into the mech's head, pinning him down. Then Vortex stepped on the chest, crushing it along with the pilot inside.

----------

Hot Rod was furthest from Vortex when he was deployed. And he was having fun lighting the invaders on fire and punching them down. He went trough three or four of them when the orders came through the radio.

: Base to Hot Rod. Come in :

: Hot Rod to base, what's happening? :

: New orders, get clear from Vortex, let him get the invaders, after that, prepare to intercept him if he goes to populated area :

: Intercept? What? Why are we intercepting Vortex?"

: Commander's order! And Vortex just took out one of us :

"The hell..." Hot Rod looked up, quickly scanning for enemies and for Vortex.

Vortex was not hard to spot, he wasn't taller than all the building, but there are plumes of dust and smoke about where he was.

At first Hot Rod thought he would just stay and look. But as soon as Vortex appeared to be approaching, he backed away. Doing his best to stay out of sight despite his mech colors. Then he saw Vortex, dragging his blades drenched in alien blood along the street. When he spotted the other invaders he took off running, holding the blades at is side ready to stab.

The invader lurch at him, all tentacles shooting forward. Vortex swatted them away and stab forward. Both blades sank deep into the invader's body before he ripped them apart. Blood splattered everywhere and the organs fell on the street below.

Hot Rod backed away again. The fight, if it can even be called that, felt off. He was deployed with Vortex a few times, he remember how the other fought. This time it was different.

"What's going on....?"

-------------------------

It wasn't anyone's fault. And it was everyone's fault.

But by all account it should have been him. The Quintesson's bladed tentacles should have destroy the control and Vortex should have gone down.

And maybe there would be hope for Felix to survive, hiding inside the metal husk of what remain of Vortex and wait for rescue.

Or they should have perished together. If that happened he wouldn't know. He did not believe in the after life, despite still being 'here'. But he believed that if this body were to be destroyed, then he would be truly gone. The End.

This body was not destroyed. The control system in the mecha was not destroyed. And he was still here.

But Felix was gone.

His body still slump in the pilot seat, bleeding from his nose and mouth. His eyes were still wide open, frozen in terrified stare and glossed over. Body still warm but said warmth were seeping away fast. Half of his torso and the seat were gone, along with a quarter of Vortex's cockpit. But it wasn't enough to bring him down.

Vortex walked on, looking up and adjusting his cameras. There were still more Quintessons. He will kill all of them first. Kill them for what they did to Felix.

And so he did, cleaved and shredded any invaders he found. It went by in a haze of blood and guts. He tried to remember organs names and different body parts. What did Felix called that blob of flesh, that weird looking thing inside the body. He remembered where the heart was and found it still beating as he open up the body. But he didn't wait, didn't look for longer than a second before stepping on it.

There was no point now, Felix wasn't here to watch or look at the carcass anymore.

He will just kill them all.

---------------------------

"How long until it powered down"

Onslaught asked, not in the control room anymore but walking towards the hangar.

"We top up all the mech this morning, It might be another 3 or 4 hours if he's still going at this rate" The technician answered, looking over Vortex's mecha specs. The other officers cringed at the idea. Another 3 hours of the devil itself rampaging through the city?

Vortex was now heading towards the base. There were residential area that wasn't evacuated on the way and the rest of the mechas were trying to hold him back. Only to be crushed by the sheer difference in size.

There were only 3 more mecha left at base that were ready to be deployed. They haven't made one the same size as Vortex anymore. The ones in the same batch had long been defeated and decommissioned. They will have to make due with what they have.

"Are you going to pilot, sir?"

"Looked like I will have to clean up his mess again, still"

"Sir?"

There was still time to change and get ready. And enough time for the others can also get to shelter before Vortex reach the base. For people in the area between the city and here...well hard luck for them since the other mech won't be able to hold off Vortex. Onslaught got in the mech, took a little while to close his eyes and breath. He did not think he had to pilot again, and definitely did not think it would be in this circumstance.

He wasn't too used to newer mechas. They are so much lighter and streamlined. Onslaught let the braces retracted and move his mech out. He walked it a fair distance from the base facing the approaching Vortex. He dragged along one of the other mecha from previous fight.

Vortex toss the mecha down in front of Onslaught.

The radio sizzled to life. Vortex looming ever closer now. Onslaught standing between him and the base. He could hear metal creaking in a long wail.

: I told you, Ons. He dies, everyone dies :

"You really are going to cause me trouble until the end, huh?"

-----

and it can still go on....

if you want me to continue, by all means...

Yes This was why I was asking how long a mech could go on. Cuz if that thing keep walking indefinitely then there'd be nothing left unless someone was able to take him down.

[disformer]

I think one of the funniest revelations to me personally was when I realized that I tend to ship "less chaotic, orderly" Transformer with the exact opposite. TexAid, Vortex and Starscream, Prowl and the Constructions...

And then I realized that in all of my friendships, I'm the wildcard myself xD

I love that for you