Adult-FanFiction.org : Movies

Accordance	By : completetheory Category: S through Z > Transformers (Movie Only) > Transformers (Movie Only) Views: 2612 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
Crosshairs turned to rap on the side of the house, leaning in to eyeball Tessa's room. "Tess! Get downstairs, get to Bee and get outta here. Somethin big is comin' and Hound's fat ass is still round back."
He was happy to hear her comply without an argument, though he suspected he'd need to work harder to get Cade and Shane out. After the former had held off Lockdown for a few hot seconds, he thought he was some kind of giantkiller. It was so unattractive.
"So, what is it?" Crosshairs flicked down his goggles and took a look off in the distance, "I can't see *shit* in the dark like this..."
Drift closed his eyes, which seemed counter-intuitive to Crosshairs, but--
"There." Drift turned forty degrees to their left, pointing one sword into the darkness of the field, "That direction."
"You're guessing." Crosshairs was dubious, jumping down off the porch as Bee squealed out of the garage, miracle of miracles with Cade and Shane as well as Tessa in tow. He took a quick appraisal of the situation - not accusing either of them of overreacting, thankfully - and peeled out in the opposite direction. With Tessa, and the other humans, out of the line of fire, Crosshairs was used to having to worry only about himself, but he looked over at Drift and contemplated advising a full retreat, until Hound came around the other side of the house.
"Sitrep! Whoa, fuck." Hound realized the ground was shaking through his feet only a second after the request, looking up and then all around, putting out the bullet he was smoking hastily. In the dark, Cemetery Wind wouldn't need a target half so audacious. They could snipe a Cyb via eyes alone, their reputation was terrifying.
"The hell is that?"
"You've got a million guns, don't tell me you're nervous." Crosshairs was bouncing on the heels of his feet, toes spreading deeper into the dirt, "I vote we all run and come back later to get Tessa's computer. In daylight."
The barn door opened, and Galvatron stepped out and straightened up, his glower unamused - Hound turned a gun on him out of habit and then lowered it with an indistinct mutter.
From the direction Drift had indicated, something enormous loomed out of the shadows, easily as big as the farmhouse, with glowing red eyes. Its mouth filled with the same fire, illuminating a jagged maw and tongue as thick as a Cybertronian's arm.
"Grimlock?" Crosshairs stood, frozen half in confused relief, "Boy am I glad it's--"
Drift tackled Crosshairs to the ground a moment before the inferno rushed over them both, then scrambled up and tugged the sniper along with him, "Move!"
"--Not him? It's not him?" Crosshairs skipped back a step, leaned against the side of the house and then ducked aside as the Knight swung the rigid end of his tail into the house and cut through the second story, bringing the whole thing down like paper mache. "Hell!"
Hound was spooling ammunition into the end of his gun, muttering increasing as his fingers shook. Fighting was expected, fighting legendary Knights was not. Galvatron had no such reservations - he leaped forward to meet the titanic reptile and caught Grimlock's jaws in his hands, parting them and setting his feet as Drift and Crosshairs scrambled for cover.
"Heika, be careful," Drift was on his feet again, swords out, but not willing to jump at the Knight for any price. Galvatron's shoulders were trembling with the effort it took to hold the beast back, realizing with an immediacy what he could not have known before - that Optimus had not engaged bare hands for a reason, had relied on speed over strength. Fire began to pool at the back of Grimlock's throat again, making Drift's warning timely, and Galvatron's eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen.
Hound paused in loading, clearly considering the value of letting Grimlock take care of their Galvatron problem, or letting Galvatron take care of their Grimlock problem, and then looked over at Drift and Crosshairs boxed in between the rubble of the house and Grimlock. There was no time to coordinate a plan.
Grimlock unleashed a molten howl across all three of them. Crosshairs' coat leapt up instinctively to shield him, fanning out and releasing a shriek of tortured metal and burning rubber as it did, and Drift turned his face away and lowered one hand against the grille of his chest. Galvatron moved--to shield Drift with his body.
Galvatron was incandescent, the only thing burning brighter than his body was the ring of fire around his emptied chest. Not for nothing: Drift rolled out from behind him intact, pushed off against the rubble of the house and lunged at Grimlock, blades spitting sparks as they made contact with - and bounced harmless off his armored throat. Drift's swords were not of the legend, Drift's pistons were not Optimus's - Drift's mien was not nearly so ruthless. Drift narrowly avoided being decapitated by Grimlock's snapping jaws as he trailed a white-gold shower of sparks down the reptile's neck to his chest to his underbelly, then leaned forward with all his fruitless weight and no power to pierce.
Galvatron's body was giving off enough heat to distort the air around him, and all told it was fortunate that the Knight hadn't just atomized him. Meanwhile, Crosshairs was experiencing too much pain to move, his coat completely ablaze and sending agony signals to his brain that overwhelmed even his awareness of his surroundings. The sniper made no resistance when Strafe dive-bombed from above, scooped him up and fled. Drift looked up in time to see the barbed tail vanish into cloud cover, tapped into his comm, {Leave this channel open. Crosshairs, do you hear me? Leave this channel--} He swung up over Grimlock's back, scaled to the base of his neck and hacked without effect at the armor there, "Crosshairs--" {Crosshairs!}
"Leave him!" Galvatron roared, and it was hard to say in the melee if he was advising Grimlock or ordering Drift - too many hims. Grimlock brought a taloned foot down on the Prototype, who reformed in a flurry of cubes to one side.
Seeing what had happened to Crosshairs, Hound finally decided to pull his thumb out, shooting a considerable amount of lead into Grimlock, who was not particularly concerned, and barely seemed to notice he was being shot. "Now that is rude," Hound complained, snagging a mortar shell and shrugging around to find his launcher, "Makin me waste the big ordnance."
He didn't get a chance to fire it, though - Slug and Scorn came charging out of the underbrush, massive, bearing him down between them. Scorn twisted to look at Drift with malevolence, and Drift backed away a step, seized with terror for himself and for the potential life inside that he conveyed.
"Drift, go!" Galvatron barked, and Drift, faced with the prospect of three enormous Knights, skipped back a step, turned, and fled in Bugatti form. Galvatron was too close quarters to risk missile-fire on any of his attackers. He had one optic on Grimlock, one on the two Knights engaged with Hound, but there was really very little he could do to fight. If he hadn't been buying Drift time, he'd be leaving, and he was contemplating it when Scorn broke away from subduing Hound, skidding into him, and bit down on his shoulder. Initially it was merely annoyance, but as he looked over and something darted across his field of vision, he realized...
Nano-deployers, carriers of information, what Brains had anthropocentrically called chromosomes... injected syringelike into his body, leaking out in swarms from Scorn's ludicrous oversized mouth.
For the first time since escaping Joshua's control, Galvatron lost mobility, and reformed into the Freightline Argosy he had coded. He was paralyzed, and could only observe as black-suited humans ventured toward their subdued prey. At some unheard signal, the Knights all dispersed, Hound was dragged away, battered and vehicular, via towtruck, and Galvatron's headlights flickered as he heard an old familiar voice.
"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this."
---
Drift hit the highway at 130, panicking more than he had ever before, barring perhaps when he had fled the ruins of Chicago in the wake of Megatron's death. The only thing that slowed him down even slightly was the thought that he did not want to draw local law enforcement's attention, and even then, he caught himself repeatedly creeping to 80, pushing to 90, and then forcing himself to slow again.
He wasn't sure how fast Grimlock was, or how much time Galvatron's resistance could buy him, but after a moment he tapped into Bumblebee's communication channel.
{Bumblebee, Crosshairs - and Hound, and Galvatron - have been attacked, by Grimlock and the other warriors. I don't know why, or what has become of them, but Crosshairs at least is still alive.} His communications channel with Crosshairs was open, though it was transmitting only snow, not very reassuring - but better than dead air.
Bumblebee took a second to reply, keying into Foreigner, {It's urgent - urgent, urgent - emergency!}
{Agreed,} Drift managed, not expecting detailed instructions from the semi-mute Cybertronian, even in a non-battle situation, {Be advised they may pursue you as well. You must keep Tessa safe.}
{--bad company--oh, somebody double-crossed me--!}
Drift paused. He couldn't be sure, but he could get close. He shared the emotional weight of Chicago that was visible as a hole blown through Galvatron's chest - could picture it in his mind's eye even now. Someone who could look however they wished, with a bright ring around their empty heart... Generate potential new life only to immediately put it at risk?
{No, Bumblebee. This was not Galvatron's doing. ...Besides - the Knights attacked him with equal fervor.}
He just didn't know why. If the legendary warriors were angry at them for forcibly enlisting their help, why wait so long to seek revenge? It couldn't have taken them two months to track from Hong Kong to Texas. If they weren't angry, what motive to attack them? It seemed random, and even animals did not attack at random. Were they sick? Starving? They had not seemed in poor health.
Contracted by the force that had hired Lockdown for Optimus's removal, their Creators, seemed doubtful, as they had been prisoners of the same eventual intent.
He racked his processor for answers, and found nothing. It seemed so random, the sudden and brutal attack, but the intent was not to kill or Crosshairs would be--...
{Crosshairs, can you hear me?}
Nothing, nothing but the steady static. Drift imagined that Crosshairs, bereft of Galvatron's shielding, would be in considerable pain. If even Galvatron had needed time to recuperate, Crosshairs would need longer still. And they would not capture him alive if they intended to kill him. The samurai told himself that again and again, though it didn't stick.
Drift was back where he had started after Chicago, but worse. The soft stirrings of secondary life were beginning to key into his own systems, siphoning a shy trickle of power.
The hatchling was viable.
Deep vents. Try not to panic. It was what they had planned for, only they hadn't planned for Galvatron, Hound, and Crosshairs to need rescuing. Bee was in the field, could be contacted, if he needed it, but not relied upon. Drift tweaked his wheels and glided onto the off-ramp, pulling down an otherwise abandoned street, and transformed in front of an empty shelled-out factory. He touched his upper chest, not sure what to feel for, but there was no detected motion, only a steady, albeit modest, extra drain on his reserve power, as if he were running his air conditioning on high.
Drift ducked into the empty factory, and with the comfort of four (admittedly flimsy brick) walls, he relaxed for the first time, finding his center. A cursory examination of his torso's interior revealed the same motionless skeleton at the bottom of the egg sac, but Drift was no longer worried. Probably the hatchling just needed a little time to orient to Earth's gravity. Still, he wished he had access to a medical opinion, or even Galvatron, whose personality had a way of - galvanizing him.
"Don't worry," He told the hatchling, "Don't fret, little one. I don't know if you can hear this, but I will see you safe, and we will both survive."
He closed up his chest again, giving himself a few minutes to think of a plan. An incoming message from Bumblebee - in text format - interrupted his planning.
{Nothing @ farm}
Drift sighed, relieved. Bumblebee must have found somewhere for the humans to stay - perhaps safely in one of Joyce's facilities. He wouldn't go back to check a dangerous place with Tessa in tow.
{In the absence of - other leaders - you are again in command.} Drift said, aloof. Not mentioning that one of those leaders, at least, was Galvatron. Bumblebee didn't acknowledge what Drift felt was generosity, given their mutually antagonistic history, but he didn't push the point, either. At least he wasn't insisting this was definitely a trap on Galvatron's part, or that it had anything to do with his own Decepticon heritage. Small mercies.
{ETA 8 hr} came the next message. {bringing help}
Drift didn't know who qualified as help to Bee (who was left? They were all alone, now), but he didn't have much of a choice. He slid back against the far wall and closed his optics, the better to focus on the static signs of life from inside.
---
When Galvatron could move again, the first thing that he did was run a full systems' check to ensure that the invading nano-deployers had all been destroyed by his own components. Only then did he transform, and take stock of the containment - a transparent cube. Crosshairs was slumped immobile in the far corner away from him, and he didn't spare the Autobot a second look, pressing his hands experimentally to the nearest wall. Beyond the seeming glass, a room that was veined with machinery, grotesque aortal tubes and cabling.
Crosshairs let out the softest engine grumble as he came to, and didn't try to get up right away. His back still felt like it was melting off, and what little green paint remained was blistered and peeling. It would heal in time, if he got time.
Looking up to see he was enclosed in a glass cage with Galvatron did not convince him that he would. Galvatron ignored the Autobot's poor attempt to feign continued unawareness, instead making a slow inspection of the perimeter of their enclosure.
Temptation begged Crosshairs to ask why Galvatron didn't simply punch through the glass, but obviously unconscious people didn't give tactical suggestions. Being assaulted and kidnapped could easily become a triumvirate of atrocities, if Galvatron decided to work out his frustration on his fellow captive. He kept quiet, and hoped Galvatron's attention would remain elsewhere indefinitely.
There were no humans in the room, but there was a camera positioned at one corner to keep an eye on them, and Galvatron spent some moments looking at the camera as if to divine their jailers through it. He looked down, and then up, a thorough investigation of the entire room. The ceiling of the cube was of the same material that he apparently had compunctions about punching, but the floor was some sort of metal, shiny and reflective. Galvatron seemed to be considering, but he was nothing like the Megatron that Crosshairs had expected, to roar and bullishly attack any obstacle in front of him.
He flinched when Galvatron's head turned toward him again, and sucked in a long cooling vent. Please please please please--
"I'm surprised you're still alive." Galvatron's involuntary transformation seemed to have reset his own burn damage, in some incomprehensibly superscientific defiance of currently-understood biology. Crosshairs reluctantly shifted to his knees, in part hoping the position would endear him.
"Where are we?"
"I couldn't guess." Galvatron said mildly, "But we are being watched."
"Is that why you didn't just punch the friggin glass out?" Crosshairs blurted, "Shy?"
Galvatron's fingers trailed down the nearest wall as if reminded of its existence. He rolled his shoulders, and then - with an air as though he was humoring Crosshairs, he drew back and struck the glass a blow that vibrated through the material to the floor.
Instead of shattering, the glass spider-sheared and deformed under the force, remaining intact, and - unbelievably - began to re-consolidate into its original shape, the damage 'healing' before Crosshairs' disbelieving eyes.
"What the fuck is that about!" He demanded. The door (more of a garage door than an actual door) slid open, apparently in response to the attack on the glass.
Joshua Joyce stood there, arms folded over his chest.
"That is an experimental polycrystalline Transformium micro-alloy."
The Autobot leaned up to the glass closest to the human, utter confusion on his face, the first spring bloom of emotion before summer's betrayal. "What? Joshua, you've got to let me out of here - Optimus is gonna be so pissed, if you--"
But Joshua wasn't even really looking at him - his eye was on the magnificent silver creature with his back to the human, still looking at the 'healing' glass.
"Galvatron." Joshua thumbed his lapel, "I am monologuing, if you don't mind?"
That earned him a brief head turn in his direction, half over his shoulder, and then the titan's attention was back on the glass. Not a mark showed, as if it had never been attacked. Joshua cleared his throat, navigating around the glass - deciding to compromise to save face and move himself into Galvatron's line of sight.
"Frankly, I'm disappointed that you haven't killed the Autobot, here. I thought that was Decepticon specialty."
Galvatron showed his teeth, the soft ripple of a growl emanating from somewhere chest deep.
"Do your own drudge-work, Joshua."
Crosshairs swallowed coolant with a nervous back and forth look, trying to figure out what was going on here, "I just want you both to know that I'm offended."
Joshua drew close to the glass, looking up at Galvatron, "So, you're saying that it's beneath you. Is that it?"
Galvatron exercised restraint, and didn't answer.
The CEO sighed, more like a put-upon father than a supervillain, and took off his glasses to clean them on the inside cuff of his shirt. "They did warn me you'd be difficult. That you wouldn't yield as easily as the Dinosaurbots."
"Inventive name," Crosshairs shot, "How long'd it take you to focus group that?"
"Two weeks." Joshua's eyebrows went up, "We've named them all, too. They're going to be big with the kids. Kids love that shit. Themeparks and t-shirts and bedsheets."
The Autobot's expression was dark, "I thought you learned better, Joyce. You were lucky to survive fucking around with the Seed the first time."
Galvatron stroked the glass panel with absent thought. "Mr. Joyce is a torturer. Such people do not 'learn', they merely pretend until they feel safe to be authentic again."
Joshua's expression twitched, looking up at the titan with challenge, confident outside the cube. "Torture? That's--that's cute, it's like you think you're a person. Do you know what you are, Galvatron? You... are a commodity. A product. You've been registered and trademarked. You belong to me, you don't have personhood, you don't have rights. You're an object. And in time, I will make you understand your position here: I will bring you to heel."
"You'll try." Galvatron allowed. He couldn't say better men had. Sector Seven had contained him, had given him sore humiliation, had unwittingly slowed him to a critical point. Joyce was the first to try to enslave his mind - he had served the Fallen and Sentinel Prime as needs must, willing.
He had not met the man who could bend him.
Joshua put his glasses back on, still devouring Galvatron visually, unpleasantly intense. "You know... When I look at you, in a kind of... Frankenstein way? I see a monster."
Galvatron's eyes burned without fear, and he wordlessly pressed a palm to the glass, the shiny silver reflective surface showing Joyce to himself.
"...Funny."
The little CEO walked around the cube again, passing closer to Crosshairs this time, and then stopped by the doorway.
"You have a lot of spirit," Joshua conceded, "But - the same weaknesses that humans have. Attachment. You value things - outside yourself. Things you can't protect."
Crosshairs started to get up, but Joshua's next comment froze him completely.
"Once I involve Drift, you'll be more compliant... heika."
The garage door thundered closed behind the small man, and Crosshairs turned to look at Galvatron.
"Fuck. Fuck. This is all your fault, you--" He yelped as Galvatron's hand closed around his collaring with more than necessary force to get his attention. "Okay! Okay, I'm sorry."
"Quiet." Galvatron murmured, and then, "Cf’tagn. F’geb naflokhu... Te-goth yoisogtahh d'ah ebtlrah."
Crosshairs' blank look made Galvatron stare incredulous.
"You don't speak your mother tongue?"
The Autobot folded his arms, defensively. "I know how to ask you to say it in English." He followed Galvatron's eyes to the camera in the corner, and realized. "Oh. Well, fuck me."
"Don't you know any other Cybertronian?" Galvatron searched Crosshairs' face, seeming truly shocked by the revelation, that this Autobot's generation was so divorced from his culture, his heritage, his people, that he should be lacking such a fundamental aspect, "Only human languages?"
"Nomo yusda langa Cybertronian. Mai tang tumaj Kriol, hey? And Inglis. I learned that when I first touched down. Some people - some humans. Weren't afraid of me, they spoke that. I don't think Joyce's translators will parse it, either."
The silver Cybertronian gave Crosshairs the same blank look for a moment, and then growled, "Neither can I."
Crosshairs glared, anger overpowering his caution, "Gimme a list."
"Several old Cybertronian dialects. American English. Swahili. Bantu." Galvatron flexed his fingers, "Apt, and other deployer-specific dialects."
"What makes you think I know deployer languages?"
Galvatron turned away from him, contemplating giving the nearest glass panel another punch in lieu of assaulting the Autobot, which he had to admit was tempting. But wasting energy didn't sit well either, and he gathered himself, controlled his emotions. Joyce didn't know about the infant, yet, nor had he captured Drift - that much was obvious from the fact that he had not actually used Drift with immediacy to force Galvatron's compliance.
"Hey," Crosshairs from behind, sounding abruptly the sum of his sparse thousand years, sounding injured, sounding upset, "Where's Hound, you think?"
Galvatron regarded him from over one shoulder. He felt anger melt away, though sympathy did not surge readily to replace it. Sympathy for Autobots had not historically been encouraged. "Perhaps dead already," It was the only kindness he knew how to give.
---
Drift's attention must have slipped, at some point, wandered away from awareness as he focused on listening for noises, because the sound of the factory's front entrance noisily banging open jerked him into mindfulness.
"Yo, are you in here?" Bee's remixed voice echoed into the building, walking bipedal, accompanied by a well dressed human with - Brains perched on their shoulder. This was not what Drift had envisioned when Bee had texted about getting help, but he knew better than to assume they would be unhelpful just from looking at them. He decided not to criticize immediately, standing up and reprioritizing.
"Tessa and the others are safe?"
Bee nodded with a nonspecific drop sound, then gestured down to the human and Brains.
"I'm Dutch," The human said by way of introduction, "Brains you know. He's filled me in on the way over. Forgive a possibly inappropriate - I didn't think many of you were left alive."
The familiar pain climbed Drift's spine and curled into his every vent slit. He stroked a sword-handle, wondering if Galvatron would prefer he go to ground, protect the last child of Cybertron. Galvatron had ever put his body down as collateral: he fronted every battle, he sacrificed dignity, comfort, his very flesh for his children. And in turn he inspired an entire legion of same-minded warriors, who would, who had, laid down their lives in countless number to attempt transmuting his dreams of restoring Cybertron into reality. Drift knew what Galvatron would say, perhaps what he would even order. He was to try nothing, to guard this potential little one in every way available to him.
To sacrifice Galvatron, Promethean, yet again.
I'm sorry, Heika. I must be true to myself.
"This is the twilight of our people." He confirmed, sharing nothing of his thoughts, "Whether a new day awaits us - we'll see."
Brains was shifting, comfortable on Dutch's shoulder but waiting for dismissal. Drift knew this one well, small blue ex-Decepticon, whose own sense of self had led him away from a group's path and that same group's protection. Brains had been sorely used, was tired of war, and was actually visibly holding pieces of himself together. Whether he could even still transform was a valid question.
"I need you to find this." He held up an arm and projected an image of Galvatron's Argosy, slowly rotating in three dimensional space.
Brains' pokerface was impressive. "Yeah? You after Galvatron. Give me a second."
"Don't strain," Dutch cautioned protectively, shifting as Brains swung down into his arms to transform, and answer Drift's query with a lightning-quick database search.
"Lessee here.... Didn't roam too far, from what I can tell. Drove a straightaway to--ooh. KSI. I tell you, automatic license plate readers are something else. Better living through technological espionage! I'm pulling up google maps for you now, Drift, tho I can't think you wanna go here for Galvatron."
"Actually..."
Bee moved to block the door, gesticulating aggressively toward Drift, "I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong!"
Drift didn't want a physical altercation, slowing and drawing up close to Bumblebee without touching. "Do not push this issue with me, Bumblebee. I defer to your command so far as it does not interfere with my values, and no further."
The Camero's lamina bristled up one end and down the other in a long warning ripple, blasting Janet Jackson vindictively, "That's the way love goes - like a moth to a fire..."
"Have you no opinions of your own?" Drift readied himself for attack, knowing how tightly Bee was wound, how heavy the burden of command was on the other warrior, and his quickest response to challenge, "Or will you recycle pop culture to the end?"
Bee let out a static burst of fury and started forward.
"Oh please--don't, Bumblebee," Dutch had already begun to back away, Brains climbing back up to their shoulder, "You're better than this." The comment, oddly impassioned, made Bee hesitate.
"Optimus." Bee managed, gesturing less aggressively, more dire. His main argument, an appeal to greater authority.
Drift's eyes blazed. "Once I believed in Optimus Prime. Several atrocities later, I no longer keep that faith as firmly as you. He has lost his way as teacher, Bumblebee. He is not content to inspire the greatness in others, he believes that Truth sources only from inside of him--"
"Decepticon trash!" Bumblebee interjected, frantic, arms morphing to blasters, as a human would make a fist instinctively, but far more deadly. Drift drew both swords as deterrent more than invitation. He was aware of the internal processes that warned him of the siphoning potential life inside, but he did not appeal to Bumblebee with it, because to bare himself that way to someone who was this devout could result in a far greater pain. And he knew that he could best Bee in combat. He had done it before.
"The origin of suffering," Drift gave it deliberate calm, "Is your terror of change. You cannot accept that you have lost your way. That you may not be Good. That your Optimus is not God."
Bumblebee lunged at him, and he leaned heavily to the side, met one of the blasters with both swords and carved its aim upward in a shower of sparks. He closed fearlessly with his opponent and headbutted Bumblebee, heralding another discordant burst of static, a jumble of noises incongruent and meaningless. Bee was a commercial void incarnated, groping for meaning in emptiness. Drift felt deep sorrow for him.
"I too deified the Prime," Drift ducked out of the building as Bumblebee reoriented in pursuit, "I believed deeply, and with deep faith there is deep pain in disappointment. Even now - I do not deify Galvatron, I do not dare do that. Bumblebee, listen to me--what have we become under Optimus? What, above all, have Optimus' actions indicated that he cares for?"
Bumblebee came up swinging, connecting just under Drift's chest, and he felt the rattling force of the lamina there clamp tight in protection. He gave no indication he was listening to Drift's appeals. The Camero's other hand presented itself in a fist that Drift dropped his sword to catch and twist back, taking the opportunity as it came.
"Bumblebee! If you kill me here--" And Drift did not see it as a likely outcome, but it was necessary to act as though Bumblebee had that choice, "--What changes? What changes? Is Optimus made more correct over my cooling carcass? Is there such a magic that makes Truth from death? Teach it to me!"
The Autobot's physical resistance ebbed uncertain, and he faltered, transforming his other blaster back to a hand. His eyes, big childish eyes searched Drift's face.
"Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards, every one... when will they ever learn? when will--..."
And for once, Drift did not believe the watery puppy eyes were a ruse, and embraced the weeping warrior carefully. "Shhh. Bumblebee..." He could see now it would be a cruelty to force command onto this one, just because Bee had indicated he wanted it - he was not like a child, he was a child who had been forced to grow up far too soon. Drift's entire generation was, though he could more readily find sympathy for the ones who had been given the most responsibility.
"You must take care of Tessa. Do you understand? She needs you now. It is your duty as a guardian - not a warrior, not a soldier. You protect the weak, Bumblebee. You always have. That is your strength. Anything else is secondary."
Bumblebee glanced up, and then away, embarrassed, but Drift let him go without further comment. He returned to the factory, retrieved the map-chip from Brains, and paused, looking over Dutch.
"I would offer to help," Dutch said, "But I have been trying to distance myself from alien conflict. And conflict in general, it's just not good for me."
"I understand. Your pacifism is noble," Drift was steady, "I would not ask anything of you. Go with Bee and this will be the end of your involvement."
- 3
- 4
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Accordance