Universe: This Fic is loosely based off of War for Cybertron -where most of my internal visualization stems from- with bits and pieces of mix-verse and head-cannon. I suggest reading the one-shot under my profile, Seeker's Inception, for further backstory into this fic.
Author's note: This is a fic that first spawned from plot bunnies while playing one of my favorite old games: Ace Combat 5, and soon expanded into something so much more. I associate the song Blurry by Puddle of Mud with my OC Razgriz. It may have been the promotional song for AC5, but before the game ever came out it was always my favorite for her. I've had stuck this OC stuck in my head for years. I just hadn't posted before now because felt I didn't have the writing ability do her or the other seekers justice. Updates may be sporadic.
Rating: T for mechanical gore and mind games. Rating may go up.
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers.
The Demon of Razgriz
By: Shadowolf27
"Out of the way Breakdown, or find yourself a scrapped heap under my thrusters!"
Breakdown dived to escape a madly cackling Wildrider astroseconds before the Stunticon plowed his alternate form through a hollow energon tank. Wildrider turned wide and tore bumper first through the only un-mangled side of the containment, sending the unstable structure crashing to the ground in a shriek of metal.
"Watch where you're going, Wildrider!" Breakdown sneered. His engine shuttered from the close call and his yellow optics warily tracked each of his teammates on the field, making sure no one else was about to sneak up on his six. Satisfied he wouldn't have to dodge anymore armored vehicles that could put a Wrecker to shame; he transformed into a sleek hover vehicle and joined the demolition derby.
"Do we really have to spark-sit these slaggers? I know they don't have a lot of processing power, but this doesn't take any." Skywarp sat atop the roof of the plant's observation deck, dangling his legs over the edge with his thrusters occasionally scraping loose chunks of jagged glass from the mostly destroyed window below.
"You would know, wouldn't you?" Thundercracker muttered, earning a shrug from Skywarp. He too was on top of the deck, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, dutifully watching the Stunticons weave in and out of their own cosmic dust clouds.
Thundercracker wasn't so much curious as he was concerned about why they were 'spark-sitting' the Stunticons. He saw no purpose in destroying decrepit energon factories that had dried up vorns ago when time could be better spent searching for live energy deposits. It wasn't the first time he was questioning the integrity of his assignments; a multitude of previous deployments had been filled with seemingly menial tasks. It was possible Megatron could be losing site of the Decepticon's priorities, and his own leadership skills.
It shouldn't have disquieted Thundercracker, he was a drone made for the sole purpose of taking orders, not meant to question Megatron's cause or actions- but a dark feeling in the pit of his spark refused to settle no matter how much time passed.
The back of Skywarp's thruster knocked against the inner roof of the deck with loud clang. "This is so boring! Why does Megatron keep sending us out to bust up these old energon plants? This is worse than that time we had to patrol that backwater Autobot outpost for three orns."
Thundercracker's ruby optics glinted, unamused by his wingmate. "If this was you're doing, I don't want to hear about it."
Skywarp smiled innocently up at him. "It wasn't my fault this time, honest. I haven't had time to slag anyone off."
"Then why do I not believe you?" Starscream inquired dully while turning over a small golden sphere in his servos. The object's metallic surface was carved with elegant symbols that had lost their meaning to time, scrawled in the language of the Ancient Primes.
Thundercracker eyed the artifact with skepticism, but knew better than to ask Starscream how he came across such a thing or what he intended to do with it. His optics dulled with forced disinterest and he looked away, observing the Stunticons but not recording their actions.
Skywarp looked between Starscream, who was doing his best to look bored, and a stiff Thundercracker before clicking his glossia. "Because you never do?" Skywarp provided. After a pause he added, "Hey, TC?"
His trinemate didn't look up, his processor lost in thought.
"TC!"
The cobalt seeker gave him a sideways glance, annoyance glinting in his ruby irises.
"What's up? You've been functioning differently the last few orns. Did you download a virus?"
"I'm functioning within acceptable parameters, and I haven't contracted any viruses. Unlike someone, I don't go poking around foreign systems."
"Oh, come, on! It was completely my business to go rooting through Bonecrusher's personal computer when there were rumors flying around he wanted my head on a pike. How was I supposed to know the slagger didn't know what fire walls were?!" Skywarp groused as a memory file of virus after virus uploading into his processor played in the back of his mind, the slagging things had practically sprung on him like scraplets from the poorly maintained systems.
Fully remembering the incident, but not particularly caring to relive Skywarp's glitching form rambling incoherently in misery; Starscream doused his cobalt trinemate with a light scan that made Thundercracker glare.
"His systems are fine," Starscream quipped.
Skywarp's wings twitched high over his shoulders, annoyance mixed with temporary acceptance written over his facial plates as he rested his chin in his fist.
"So," Skywarp began after a moment of quiet filled only by the squealing of metal below as the Stunticons worked. "Does Megatron think the Autobots will use this rusting facility for anything? I don't see the point in this."
"If you're so eager to find out, then why don't you go down there and help so you can ask Megatron in person sooner?" Starscream placed his trinket in subspace and began pacing the roof with his claws clasped behind his back.
Skywarp grumbled into his claw, "No thanks. Where's the fun in attacking something that doesn't move?"
"Incoming!" Drag Strip announced gleefully, shooting off an inclined pile of debris and sailing uncontrollably into the support structure of the observation deck.
The seekers jumped from the rattling building before Motormaster clobbered the weakened base, collapsing it as the trine transformed into tetrajets midair.
"Watch where the frag you're going!" Starscream snarled over the Decepticon frequency.
Drag Strip only laughed in manic joy and backed out of the rubble with chunks of metal and wire cascading off his frame.
"Come on Starscream. Come and join the fun!" Wildrider whooped.
"I would hardly count your menial task as 'fun'," the Air Commander sneered.
"slag-for-processors is just jealous he doesn't have an indestructible force field. He would end up a crumpled scrap heap with that shoddy armor," Breakdown rumbled teasingly.
"Breakdown: less talking and more destruction," Motormaster reprimanded.
"On it boss."
Thundercracker followed Starscream in a lazy loop around the perimeter with Skywarp falling into close formation at his side. Light emitted from the very core of the planet, reflecting off their sharply angled armor and the glow of their thrusters that blazed through the haze of Cybertron's permanent twilight.
A crunch of metal and a chorus of whooping laughter rang through the Decepticon rec room, though the metallic chortles of amusement hardly registered in Thundercracker's audios.
He took another sip of his energon cube while leaning against the far wall, watching his wingmate humiliate a fellow 'Con over the rim of his fuel. Swindle was lying in a crumpled heap, energon leaking from his optics and an injured shoulder joint after becoming the latest victim of Skywarp's. The black and purple seeker that was doubled over, engine revving with laughter, had rigged one of the energon dispensers to shock a victim's systems into a temporary glitch before promptly launching a rocket into their face plates- or whatever appendage the unguided weaponry happened to hit.
Most of the Decepticons already knew about the contraption, being past victims themselves, but the reconfigured machine had stood in the corner of the rec room, untouched and mostly forgotten- until now. Swindle, who had only returned a few joors ago, unknowingly activated the machine while under the false pretense of retrieving some much needed fuel.
"That was perfect, absolutely supreme!" Skywarp's metallic laughter triggered the Decepticons circling the spectacle to join in with insulting whoops directed at Swindle.
"Frag you, Skywarp!" Swindle spit a glob of energon out of his mouth onto the floor and tried to stand, but Skywarp stomped him back into the ground with a gleeful smirk.
Skywarp aimed a small blaster mounted on his arm in Swindle's face, tapping the gun's nozzle against the merchants face. "Where do you think you're going in such a hurry? We're only having a little fun."
With a snarl Swindle procured a blaster from subspace and sought to blast the source of his humiliation in the face plates. Skywarp knocked the weapon away before a shot could be fired, pinned swindle's arm to his own body, and stabbed his pointed fingers through the already injured shoulder of the smaller Decepticon. The wound shred like paper under Skywarp's needle like claws, and Swindle grabbed at the arm that was now protruding from his chassis.
"You're not attacking your superior, are you? Face it Swindle, I'm better than you," Skywarp stated gleefully just before ripping his hand cleanly out, taking nothing with it but staining energon and causing Swindle to snarl in pain.
Thundercracker couldn't help but calculate that his trinemate would be singing a different tune if the other Combaticons had been present. They wouldn't have tolerated such treatment of one of their own without a few lost limbs.
He didn't know why Skywarp found such amusement in tormenting his coworkers, there was nothing in his base programing that would compel him to create useless devices for the sole purpose of entertainment. Thundercracker never questioned it anymore, he was just glad the pranks were never aimed at him, not directly anyway. He'd also had enough experience that he could spot Skywarp's handy work a mile away and deftly avoid the traps.
Thundercracker took another swig of energon, keeping an eye on the Decepticons in the vicinity, but not paying them any particular mind. Everything was normal, nothing had changed in vorns, and again it bothered him. Yes, they were winning the war, the Autobot's inferior frames proving to be nothing more than cannon fodder for the Decepticons that were mostly created from military structures; but an unsettling feeling in the pit of spark refused to be chased away. Megatron's tactics were growing less confrontational; he was sending soldiers to destinations that hadn't been touched in stellar cycles. High ranking ones like himself, no less. It wasn't logical.
His logic processor told him everything was fine, the Decepticons were winning; he was overreacting, and the intangible, disquieted part of his spark was a mere glitch. He shifted uncomfortably, removing some of the weight he had been pressing on his wings by leaning against the wall.
"TC, you ok?"
He had noticed Skywarp's approach, but had ignored him until he spoke. Swindle was long gone, slapped in the back and nearly tripped on his way out while leaking energon and throwing curses at every 'Con in the room whether they joined in his humiliation or merely watched passively from the sidelines.
Thundercracker gave Skywarp a dubious look to which the purple seeker added, "You've been…off lately. Don't deny it because I can feel it through the bond. Something's been bothering you."
Thundercracker continued to glare, his annoyance blatantly flickering through the trine bond.
"Did someone say something to get under your plates? I'll teach them a lesson if they have." Skywarp looked giddy at the prospect of dealing out his own flavor of punishment.
"No, just, thinking." Thundercracker drained the last of his energon and collapsed the cube to stow it in subspace.
"We'll, stop it. Your thinking is making my own plates itch," Skywarp grouched and slid closer, thunking his back against the wall and crossing his arms.
Thundercracker crossed his arms as well, expanding his wings over his trinemate's shoulder possessively as he continued to sort out his thoughts as to what foreign discomfort was niggling at his spark. The nearness of Skywarp helped a little, but not much, especially when Skywarp kept sending physical glances and unappreciated prodding through the bond to try and get Thundercracker to tell him what was on his processor.
Thundercracker was about ready to blast him for his pestering when the communication indicator on his HUD lit up.
:Lord Megatron requires your presence for a mission: -Soundwave
A data packet came with the Communication Officer's chillingly monotone voice that gave a brief description as to what was expected of him.
"Brilliant," Thundercracker muttered as he unpacked the compressed file in his processor.
"What's that?" Delight crossed Skywarp's features in hopes that Thundercracker was about to spill his thoughts.
"I'm needed for a mission."
Skywarp's wings collapsed behind him and he wilted on the spot. "But we just got back. Why haven't I been contacted, too?"
"Apparently only I am needed." Thundercracker frowned, already uncomfortable with the mission parameter's orders.
"That's fragged up. Starscream or I should be going with you," Skywarp snarled quietly and pulled away from Thundercracker.
"I agree, but with the trends of how operations have been proceeding lately, I should be able to manage."
Skywarp produced an empty cube from subspace, already walking away to fill it with energon. "Fine, whatever. See you in a few joors."
The metallic tang of spilled energon and the acrid scent of scorched metal wafted into her olfactory sensors like a familiar perfume. Below the shadow of her wings, Razgriz circled a freshly abandoned battle field, her distil sensors cast over the landscape in search of life. Not even a heat signature blipped on the radar as she circled like a hawk while her processor crudely crafted an aerial map of the jagged terrain.
She swooped low and transformed twenty feet from the ground. Her wings slid up her spinal strut and her body unfurled from a tetrajet altmode into her root form. With vorns of practice, she dropped gracefully to the ground in a crouch on her heeled thrusters. Her sensors flared wider, seeking out hidden opponents or potential threats. Nothing but residual charges clinging to the landscape from mechs long gone spiked her net. It was unlikely she would find anything; the battle field had all the signs of a hit and run, a chance meeting that had surprised both sides and resulting in a messy, and quick fire fight.
The chance of finding Energon or other useful materials was a depressingly low, but she had to keep looking. Skirmishes between the two main warring factions had slowed to a sporadic trickle which meant less raw materials sitting around. There had been a lull in the war for the past Vorn and it had made savaging, an already poorly productive profession, even harder to live by.
She couldn't remember the last time her systems functioned beyond sixty percent, and she was beginning to experience complications from extended energon deprivation. Three mega cycles, was her chronometer's chipper reply in the form of a stream of numbers.
"Nobody asked you," she grouched under her breath while picking her way over the landscape while dutifully reading sensor feedback.
Silence reigned supreme as she scoured the field. Without a factory or bunker nearby, there was nothing but the occasional draft of artificial wind brushing past her sensitive wings. Her violet optics brightened when an interesting signature spiked across her net. Razgriz followed the source behind an outcropping and found a pile of bodies, seekers to be exact if their identical body designs were anything to go by. The lifeless frames painted a uniform black and purple lay sprawled across the ground like pathetic, useless garbage. She wasn't surprised no one had bothered to remove them. They were just drones, after all.
Her servos searched their darkened frames, looking for anything useful. Maybe a weapon or standardized repair equipment. Heck, she'd even take some polish from one of these suckers. It was highly unlikely the drones carried any cosmetics; it would be rather comical if they had, but she really could have done with a repainting and wax job. Her onyx armor was beginning to turn grey, and the crimson patches on her wings, arms, and knee plates were fading. Part of the problem was her energon deprivation, leeching the color from her. The small yellow cockpit adoring her chest was mostly clean, its upkeep almost as important as her wings because of the sensory equipment it protected, but it could have used a little touch up itself.
Razgriz turned another seeker on its back, expecting her search of its subspace to be just as fruitless as the last when it lashed out at her. She shrieked in surprise as its claw gouged a hole in her side and its other hand transformed into a small laser cannon. The drone stopped abruptly, its weapon humming at a point between her optics for the fraction of a second before lowering its weapon upon recognizing Razgriz glaring down at it with distaste.
"Or-or-d-ders?" it ground out through a sparking vocal processor.
Without a flicker of remorse Razgriz aimed the blaster on her arm and shot the drone through its cracked spark chamber. She didn't know why the things always thought of her as their superior. It was a mercy on her part to end their miserable existence rather than let them rust, waiting for a master that would never return.
Razgriz rummaged around the seeker carcasses and found a few useful scraps for patching up leaks, but not much else. She left the carnage to rust, her spark heavy with the lack of any salvageable energon. She could have siphoned their lines, but she didn't have the tools, nor did she have the will to resort to cannibalism. A flashing icon on her HUD, an incessant reminder of her low energy levels, mocked her.
Her pedes pulled her across the vacant land, its features war torn with old battle scars marring the husk landscape. Razgriz vented heavily, a rush of hot air escaping into Cybertron's chilled atmosphere. If her bad luck continued to hold out, it would be long before she joined one of the billions of unmarked graves littering the planet. Sometimes she wondered why she was even trying, digging her thrusters against the motions of her hollow life in a constant struggle to survive. Most of the time she felt on autopilot, so much so that she would often worry she had given in to her drone programing. It was still there, lurking in her systems. A strain of code that had failed to break her personality construct through sheer chance.
A small part of her refused to give up, baring its fangs at her origins. It may have been caused by her relative youth of several vorns, surviving as a flicker of hope clinging to the depths of her spark.
Her pede slipped on a wet substance, the viscous liquid smearing over her sensitive thrusters. Razgriz jumped back, startled, and peered down at a fresh puddle of processed energon. She bent down and placed a servo in the mess, feeling the warmth that still trickled from the liquid. She looked further ahead, noting a splattered, glowing blue trail heading in one direction. Her battle computer pushed to the front, onlining her weapons and warming her system. Her sensors recoiled from their wide search to become more sensitive to only a few yards from her position as she slowly followed the trail.
After only a few steps she sensed a beating spark. Its unprotected energy pulsed weakly on her scanners, spiking erratically on her display. She crouched lower and masked her spark signature, nearly snuffing out her presence entirely. Her thrusters clicked softly as she traced the source, crouching around Cybertron's natural protection.
It wasn't long until she saw him; a mech slumped with his back against a wall for support and sitting in a forming pool of his own energon. The blue life blood flowed in streams down his battered frame, glowing against his armor in the twilight. His cockpit was fractured, the sensitive wiring inside exposed and sparking and the wings on his back were slumped, stained with burns and punctured through from laser fire.
She would have thought him an Autobot with his cobalt coloring, but his wings were proudly displaying the unmistakable symbol of the Decepticons. His build was large for a seeker too, different somehow, yet still essentially the same as the other drones. He groaned; a garbled cough grating from his vocalizer filling with fluids.
Razgriz crept closer, keeping her frame hidden behind a pile of rubble. The seeker was close to falling into forced stasis, one he would likely never wake from without medical help. She calculated the probability of his functionality, wondering if he would have the energy to attack her, or if he would recognize what she was and remain placated like the others. Her spark pounded as her logic processor screaming at her to either end his life and search his corpse, or move on- but something kept her rooted as an old memory file edged to the front of her processor.
When she wasn't even a vorn old, and her caretaker was still online, she had tried to bring a damaged seeker home. Her youngling processor thought she had found a flier just like her, somebot she could be friends with without Archer yelling at her about getting too close to others. The thing had followed her demand to follow her 'home', and she had naively presented it with pride to her caretaker as her new friend. Archer had snarled, his red optics narrowing before he plunged his claws into the drone's chest, ripping out its still beating spark before her very optics. It had been the day she learned about what seekers really were: abominations, slaves, and that somehow she was different. It caused the view of her place in the world to suddenly change.
Razgriz felt like a youngling all over again as she crept up to the seeker and stopped to hover so close that she could have reached out and touched him. Still, he didn't seem to notice her.
"Hey? Anybot in there?" she chuckled humorlessly and tapped his shoulder.
The seeker jolted at the contact and instinctively grabbed her wrist in a vice. His optics looked up at her, glowing ruby irises fritzing behind their glass casings. There was pain and anger behind them, something a drone shouldn't have been able to convey.
Her battle computer screamed along with her logic processor, the programs feeding her how much pressure was being placed on her wrist and how much more force was needed before it snapped or a line ruptured. Equally, it told her how to pry away from his grip and send a blast through his spark casing. Pain was flaring from the slowly crushing armor around her wrist, but she held still.
"Do-on't t-tou-ch m-e," the seeker ground out between misfired surges of electricity within his frame.
His grip, wet with his own energon, slipped from her wrist to land uselessly at his side with a wet slap. His optics, full of struggling emotions, followed soon after- going dark as his systems forced him into stasis.
Razgriz stayed crouched over the seeker, observing his unconscious shudders of pain that rattled his armor. His spark was struggling to hang on even while his pump spewed his life energy, further staining the ground around her pedes. The seeker hadn't looked at her lifelessly, waiting on her command like so many others. It had spoken directly to her, even threatened her. There had been intelligence in his dulled optics, a burning fire radiating from his fight with his own systems.
Her logic processor was snarling at her before she had formed a complete thought, but it went unheeded. He was different, the seeker had recognized her the same way any other normal bot would. She wanted to speak with him more, to find out if there really was another seeker like her.
Razgriz wasn't a medic, but she made due with her meager skills. She had never worked on damage this extensive, but she did her best, sticking to the basics. She staunched the flow of energon cascading off his frame and roughly patched critical wiring. The medical files she had were outdated, but extensive, including a detailed file on seeker physiology. The only thing holding her back was her inexperience and lack of proper tools.
You can't save him, even if you want to. You don't have enough energon reserves to sustain him or bring him out of stasis. Her logic processor chided her, listing all of the reasons this was a stupid idea while her sensors tallied up the damage she was finding, calculating the chances of his continued functionality. All of the numbers pointed towards his inevitable deactivation. She ignored the data and turned a blind eye to her logic processor, she was still going to try.