#can you tell this is another texaid post

[anony-man]

Ratchet, over the comms: First Aid, I’ve got another package here with your name on it. Did you order something for the medibay again?

First Aid: Not recently, no. What’s inside?

Ratchet, rustling through the open box: Looks like spare parts, but there’s no return address. Primus, they’re in rough shape. There’s energon everywhere, and… is that—is that a brain module?

First Aid: No return address? What the hell are you—oh my god, not again.

[gravedwe11er]

My brain's been completely consumed by @keferon 's mecha pilot AU lately, especially all the texaid things, and I just had to add my own two cents to the pile! So, here is Felix/First Aid's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day (followed eventally by a much better one).

cw for gore and violence, as well as the usual things that come with Vortex being Vortex

He’s still scraping out the remains of the latest unlucky bastard, the sharp stench of cleaning agents mingling with the iron-sweet tang of blood and making his nose burn, when the enemy-incoming alarms bathe the whole hangar in red. Immediately, the usual post-battle calm turns into a frenzy of shouts and barked orders, dozens of footsteps rushing to and fro.

It hasn’t even been thirty minutes since they’d come back from the last fight.

Swearing to himself, Felix wills his hands to stop shaking as he finally succeeds in prying out the - god, is that the guy’s finger? – from inside the pilot’s harness. He throws it out of Vortex’s cockpit in the vague direction of the catwalk, not bothering to see if it landed in the glorified body bag they give him for these clean up jobs. Ten pilots ago, they still used to bring a stretcher in a show of, what- misguided optimism, maybe? Now, they can’t even be bothered to pretend.

The floor is still filthy, bodily fluids splattered liberally all over the cockpit, but Felix can hear the next pilot/sacrifice marching up the catwalk and prepares to make himself scarce, content at least in the knowledge that all the more solid bits of the last one have been disposed of. He gets up on unsteady legs, eager to get out of this stinking grave when the blood red plexiglass of the cockpit suddenly slams shut in front of his face. The hydraulics hiss as they complete lockdown procedures, entombing him inside.

His blood runs cold.

There’s frantic banging on the glass, from the outside in, from the inside out. There’s shouting, from the pilot, from control, asking what’s going on, telling him to get out, get out now. There’s a sharp, heavy gaze pressing down on him, with all the suffocating weight of a rockslide, and Felix feels oh so very small.

Beneath his clenched fists, words coalesce into being on the glass screen, white on arterial-blood red; it makes him think of bone shards in an open fracture.

TAKE A SEAT

Felix starts, jumping away from the glass. Stumbling backwards, he gapes, mind reeling, before forcing out, “Please, I don’t- I’m a medic.”

I KNOW

“I’m not- I’m not a pilot,” he whispers, pleading with the cursed thing, shivering like a leaf under the thing’s crimson lights. Something in the machinery around him hisses, a stuttering staccato of a sound, and Felix somehow tenses even further as the screen in front of him changes again.

I DON’T WANT ANOTHER PILOT. I WANT YOU ; )

His heart stutters in his chest. “Why?”

BECAUSE YOU’RE PERFECT

The letters blink out, only to be immediately replaced, bigger than before. More forceful.

TAKE A SEAT

He does. His hands shake like never before as he puts on the pilot’s helmet, still reeking of the previous pilot’s blood and sweat and fear. Dozens of others have died here, at the behest of this deadly war machine, corrupted AI or cursed or whatever the hell is wrong with it. All in the name of humanity’s survival. Felix is sure he’s going to join their ranks today.

Through the haze of oncoming panic, he idly wonders which one of his colleagues is going to be mucking his entrails out of here, when all’s said and done.

The machinery around him comes alive and his head swims, wisps of his-but-not blinding agony and fear and malevolent glee flitting through his mind as the neural connection settles. Felix feels a pressure on the inside of his skull, almost like a greeting, a jaunty knock on the gates to his brain as a voice echoes from inside-outside-everywhere.

“Let’s dance, baby!”

The mech lurches, enormous frame shaking and hydraulics hissing as it disconnects from the docking station, heading for the hangar bay doors with almost a spring in its thundering step. For a moment, Felix considers trying to stop it, grasping at the controls, dragging the cursed thing back into dock and forcing it to spit him out. Then he remembers the bloodied fingers on the floor, or stuck in sharp gaps between internal plating, and shoves his clammy, shaking hands under his thighs.

The stuttering hiss of what’s probably the ventilation system rings through the air, almost like a choked off giggle, as an intrusive presence hums amusement-approval in his head.

The next seconds or minutes or hours are something of a blur, a waking nightmare soaked in adrenaline and cortisol. Vortex walks itself out of the hangar doors, side by side with other mechs, who look like children next to its imposing size. It does so under its own power, without Felix’s input, and this shouldn’t be happening, none of this should even be possible. Felix is no technician, and definitely no pilot, but he knows the mecha aren’t autonomous, can’t be autonomous, but it’s moving anyway and there’s someone else in here, someone else in his head and he’s laughing at him and-

Then he sees them. The world snaps into sudden clarity.

Felix never thought they could really be that big. He’s read reports of the destruction they bring, seen the wrecked cities on TV (and may or may not have taken a good look at a few pieces of them in the labs without permission), but- he didn’t really get it. Not until now. He kind of wishes he could go back to that, honestly.

The monsters, the quintessons, roar as they notice their group of mechs, who suddenly look so terribly small in comparison to the quints’ lumbering, many limbed forms. Almost immediately, their somewhat nonchalant destruction turns into an organized assault as the group of about two dozen charges right at them.

“Oh god,” he wheezes out between short, terrified breaths. “No, no no, get away, get me away from here-“

Suddenly hearing a chuff of laughter from what simultaneously sounds like the inside of his head and behind him, Felix jumps in his seat as he feels the phantom of a breath on his ear. “Aww, are you scared, Felix? Don’t you worry, darling.”

For a moment, everything stills, the mech around him like a coiled spring, a calm before the storm. An overwhelming wave of foreign bloodlust crashes over him, setting his blood ablaze as the war machine leaps into a run, Felix trapped inside and powerless to stop it. With the thrumming wail of integrated weaponry charging up, they meet the quintessons head on.

“We got this.”

As the fighting begins, Felix somehow manages to stray so far into panic he’s almost feeling calm again. Vortex lunges and parries and strikes, the presence in control of the mech clearly a skilled pilot, and Felix watches with a growing fascination as the monsters fall apart into bloody pieces under its – his, Felix thinks - servos. He sees the thoracic cavity of one open up underneath Vortex’s arm-blade, and his mind, conditioned from years of dissections and med school, snaps into action. Oh, looks like a dual cardiovascular system, with the secondary brain here, and the primary would most likely be- Almost immediately, he feelsthe thought being picked up on, examined, and the ghost/mech/whatever it is sends interest-glee-let’s-see-for-ourselves through the neural connection before changing the trajectory of his strike. The sword cuts clean through where Felix thought the primary brain would be, and the thing seizes in Vortex’s grip before going limp.

There’s a near-deafening buzz of mechanisms all around him, crimson light flaring bright. “Ha! That’s what I’m talking about!” sings through his brain, praise-delight humming along his nerves, and Felix can’t help but let a tiny, nervous smile twitch at the corners of his mouth.

“I told you you’d be perfect, baby,” purrs the voice inside his head, and he could swear he feels two hands, cold and intangible, settle on his shoulders, as the battle rages on.

The alarms flare on the late end of breakfast period, turning Felix’s once slow morning into a mad scramble. He races past other pilots and various personnel, stumbling into his quarters, shoving his uniform on before running out again, already feeling out of breath. All the supplementary pilot training he’s been going through, and, if he’s honest, flunking through, doesn’t seem to have done his physical condition much good. Still, it’s not like it matters much, and both he and his superiors know it, but appearances must be kept up nonetheless.  Or so they say, at least. Can’t let the public know their most efficient mech is somehow piloting itself, apparently.

He finally gets to the hangar, his fellow pilots giving him a wide berth as he heads towards Vortex’s cockpit, doing his best not to trip over his feet in his haste. A small smile strays onto his face and, out of the corner of his eye, he sees some of the others stepping further away from him.

Felix is not a very popular man these days, though it’s not like was much of a social butterfly before either - always too awkward, a little too odd for most people to enjoy hanging around. The frequent twelve-hour shifts in the medbay, sneaking off to the research labs and Vortex cleanup duty after he was caught certainly didn’t do him any favors.

Now, though? It’s like he’s got the plague. Most of his former colleagues are dismayed at his sudden reassignment, the sudden changes in their schedules leaving them crankier than usual, though it’s not like he was all that close with them before. The various base personnel keep out of his way, seeming to consider him as cursed as the mech he pilots, his very presence a potential bringer of bad luck. Meanwhile, the actual pilots view him as an intruder into their ranks, exempt from the usual camaraderie that comes with the job.

He can’t deny that it stings a little, even though he’s pretty used to the feeling of rejection. Still, it helps that he's never really alone anymore.

It’s a thing he’s heard about from some earlier tests, from other mech models around the world, those types who tried their hand at connecting two people together to fight as one. How their minds, even when disconnected from their machines, still have a thin little thread connecting them for days, weeks after. He looked it up, after their first mission, when the distant feeling of a presence would linger in the back of his head; gleeful and pointed and anticipatory. It used to unnerve him before, but now, like everything else he sees as he steps into the open cockpit, it’s just- familiar.

Somehow, Vortex has become a balm on his eternally shredded nerves, the capricious, sarcastic bastard comfortably fitting himself into Felix’s life and making it- well. If not better, then definitely more interesting.

The gaze of Tex’s camera eyes never gets any less sharp, or less heavy, but he no longer feels like he’ll buckle under the weight of it. The inside of the mech is as clean as can be, because though he might be a pilot nowadays, he’s still a doctor by trade and he refuses to spend hours at a time sitting in a walking biohazard. The glass clicks shut behind him as he hops in, locking him securely inside as a string of ridiculous little white hearts and smiley faces scrolls across the red screen.

Felix snorts a quiet little laugh, laying a hand on the plexiglass, a building anticipation both his and not making his nerves buzz. “Hey Tex. Ready to go?”

YOU KNOW IT, BABY

“Then let’s dance.” Felix borrows the other man’s usual phrase with a small smile, buckling into the pilot’s harness and putting the helmet on his head in a newly familiar motion.

It takes a few moments to ride out the initial discomfort of the establishing connection, but then Vortex - or Victor, but that name is mostly as dead as the owner of it - is there, their minds snapping together like puzzle pieces. Delight, excitement and the ever-present bloodthirst washes over their shared thoughtscape, and Felix sends greeting-happiness-anticipation in return, feeling, as is usual for him these days, much better with Tex’s dark presence in his head.

“Let’s fucking dance, darling.”

He never would have thought they’d end up here, like this - hell, he didn’t think he’d survive their first battle together. But survive he did. Against all odds, against all previous expectations, Vortex had let him go then, with a winky face and a jaunty ‘come again soon!’, aching and terrified, but alive. And then he survived the next time, once command seized on the obvious opportunity to lessen their losses and sent him back into the jaws of the beast again. And then the next. And the next, until suddenly, he’s got dozens of successful missions under his belt and he’s still not dead.

People have questioned him about it, over and over. He never knows how to answer, to describe the understanding they’ve found with each other, so he simply keeps repeating the same thing – it just sort of works.

Once the bay door opens, orders coming in through the comms in Felix’s helmet and scrolling across his visor, they disembark, long strides taking them out into the foggy morning air. Three other mechs on their heels, they make their way to the coords where the quints were reported to make landfall, anticipation-excitement thrumming through them like an electric current. As always, there’s a thread of anxiety running through Felix’s body, but he doesn’t let that stop them, steadying himself against Tex’s ironclad confidence and working to keep his breathing steady.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to fully shake that, no matter how many times they do this – it’s a very sensible fear, after all. He’s going right into the heart of danger, protected only by a breakable veil of glass and steel, mind-in-mind with the ghost of a dangerous man.

Perhaps one day, a single missed strike might lead him to bleed out right here in this cockpit, mirroring the fate of the mech’s first and last true pilot. Maybe he’d join Victor in here too, another ghost in the machine. Maybe humanity will lose, and they’ll both be torn apart by the writhing hordes of quints, ground into so much shrapnel along with the rest of their species.

Or, maybe one day, Vortex will get bored of him, splaying Felix’s blood and sinew across the interior of his cockpit like a particularly macabre painting, yet another victim of his moods joining the already sizable collection. It’s definitely a possibility, though he doubts it more and more each passing day. They’re way too tangled up in one another now, and maybe he’s flattering himself, but - he thinks Tex might miss him, if he was gone.

Not today, though. Today, they fight like they’re dancing, perfectly in sync, Tex’s skills made all the more lethal by Felix’s ever-expanding insight into the biological makeup of their enemy. They shoot and hack and slash, aiming for weak spots, quintessons dropping in their wake as they tear through them like wet tissue paper. A well-aimed punch saves a fellow pilot from being skewered, Felix sending a wave of gratitude through their connection – though Vortex himself couldn’t care less about the lives of others, he knows Felix does, and the fact that he’s willing to do this, just for him? Well. It means a lot, to say the least.

Cold, there-but-not arms wrap around him from behind in a ghostly embrace, a chin laying down on top of his head. Felix leans into it as much as he can, a smile on his face, and he feels Vortex’s feral grin in his head as they dive back into the fray. Together.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed!

As always, endless thanks to my beta @jayden-writes, sorry for putting giant robots on your plate, again. I appreciate you.

[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.