darkskyknight

Lost. Copter got lost once. Well, a few times, you know, been misplaced and all, but only once I got really truly lost. Like...didn't know where I was and how far off it was where I was supposed to be.

Pretty much every copter's nightmare, I guess. Low vis, well, zero vis. Acid vapor clogging your intakes, warping regular vid feed, stinging on your plating. Magnetic storm, too, so standard positioning fixes did nothing. Couldn't find any direction at all.

Jets were worse off than I was--at least I knew which way was up. Remember the vapor off to my right and down suddenly going orange-red--some jet had been flying upside down and tried an Immelmann turn. Right into the ground. Cause I use a different lift mechanism.

Tried to hail a couple of the jets after that. Don't know if my comm got shorted by the mag-bursts so they didn't hear me or if some kinda jet pride wouldn't let them take an offer of help. Wanted, you know, just to have them know which was was up. So we could all get out together.

Except, of course, we didn't know where out was. Just flyin' blind through the storm, pelted by the vapor, buffeted by winds and mag bursts, shoving us in all directions, staggering our flightpaths.

Was awful. Worst flight I've ever been on.

Make it worse? I had injured in my cargo hold. Nothing more upsetting than hearing something screaming and clutching and panicking inside your own hold. Like my own emotions suddenly made more real.

Sounds mean, of course. Don't mean it that way. I mean, I guess they were scared--couldn't see or hear anything in there. Trusting that I could. Trusting I'd get them out safe.

Felt heavier than any cargo I ever carried: bodies, hopes, dreams, the responsibility to save them.

I don't remember how we got out, either. Just...suddenly there was a break and our nav popped up and it was like everything we'd been holding tight to, so tight that our fingers had locked and stiffened, suddenly turned to water, and ran, flowed, released. And we were there. It was like...we had gone to some horrible place where we didn't exist, and suddenly, our grids popping up, our sensors feeding us pure data again, we existed. Again.  Like being lost was almost like...not being.

***

It wasn’t his first combat kill, not really. He’d had dozens of aerial kills, but those had been different. Distant, nothing more sometimes than flashes of light, or blips on his nightsights going from green to white on ground targets; blossoms of shrapnel throwing heat against him if aerial. But this one…up close and personal.   

Garrus-9.  Nightside, and Blackout’s audio locked out to protect him from the force of his own sonicwave generator, so the battle seemed to unfold in strange shows—tracers slicing lines through the darkness, explosions blooming like fast-lived silent flowers.  Shots might have ripped past him, unheard. What you can’t hear, you can’t fear.  He had flown on fearlessly until the round had taken out the actuators for his rudder.

He’d spun down, out of control, slamming into the building with a force that had sparked white across his optics. Pain signals shouted at him, clamoring for his attention, rising to a shrieking chorus as he unfolded into his bot mode.

The Autobot scout had approached, as two icy blue malevolent optics bobbling over the rubble-strewn landscape. Blackout had gathered himself, bracing for assault. 

The Autobot fired the weapon at close range, his face, illuminated by the muzzleflashes, sneering with hate, as if he’d chosen close range to make the rounds hurt.  Blackout had roared—he felt the vibration through his frame—spinning as he stood up to catch the muzzle in a backhand.  A few rounds cut into his armor, leaving scorched traces up his forearms. 

The Autobot dropped the weapon, letting it be swept from his grip, dropping down to attack Blackout’s exposed knee.  The copter felt pain and rage surge through his systems like twinned serpents as his knee stabilizer buckled.  The weight of his massive engine, overbalanced, dropped him hard, but not before he lashed out, striking his assailant.  He rolled to one side, quickly, wincing as the Autobot snatched a rotor.  He jerked it out of the Autbot’s grasp, furious, yanking the Autobot in closer to him, seizing his wrist in his injured hand and whipping the mech backwards against one still-intact wall.

The mech came up with another weapon, a small energon blade, lunging at Blackout, the blade skittering along his forearm plating before sinking into his elbow joint.  Blackout could smell the bitter reek of cauterized cabling and scorched energon, more lances of pain firing along his sensor net.  It seemed to speed the race of rage and power through him.  He squeezed at the shoulder of the smaller mech, gritting his dentae as he felt metal give under his heavy fingers.   The mech lashed out again, with his other hand, his uninjured side, small fingers acting almost like talons raking down Blackout’s arm. 

Blackout clapped his other hand, pinning the Autobot’s hand against him, dragging the hand up, bracing the body with his other, pulling, yanking, tearing at the limb, feeling the servos snap, the cables release in a shower of sparks.  He felt a fierce rush at the rictus of agony on the Autobot’s face, the sparks flickering in the darkness, the hot spill of energon and pneumatic fluid against his armor.  He reached further, fingers wrapping around the throat, squeezing, as his other hand punched against the chassis, bursting the thin armored plates of the grounder. 

By rights, he should have stopped then, and salvaged the mech—drained the fluids, taken the electrical charge of the spark.  He had more than a dozen salvage kits in his storage. But he didn’t stop, instead he wrapped his hand around the spark chamber, pinning the legs with one foot, and squeezed, feeling the core lines rupture, the smaller mech thrashing in frantic death throes as he crushed the spark chamber, the hateful blue light dimming in the optics. 

His first kill. His first real kill where he had to see it happen, and more than that, see himself seeing it.  And feel himself feeling it—the torrent of power and rage and brutality wash through him.  It felt pure and raw and the most alive he’d ever felt. All of his power and strength and speed and stamina and reflexes, used at once.

And…he liked it. 

Pain. He knew...pain.