Title: and the glass zone shatters
Summary: On this side of the mirror, the Decepticons have a higher tolerance for humans. The Autobots, on the other hand, don't really give much thought to the skin-jobs beneath their feet... [Shattered Glass/Mirrorverse Transformers Prime AU]
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Transformers Prime.
A/N: Please remember to leave feedback. Thank you editoress and nellasaur and wherearemychips at tumblr for their feedback on this.
ETA: Some minor edits below with names, Cybertronian lingo/slang and times.
Chapter 1
"Status report?"
"Drones have engaged, I'll be joining them shortly, Soundwave will explain the rest once you reach the bridge, Sir—"
Starscream steadied himself at the sudden vibration, his optics snapping to a surveillance screen. Soundwave was fixated too, yet also at a keypad and swiftly typing, checking an energon reading that had plummeted.
Smoke from the battle clouded the screen's image, but it was clear that the drones had won and were returning to the Nemesis.
"Scratch that Lord Megatron, the enemy's been taken care of," Starscream spoke into the commlink again. He growled, "Along with the energon, it's useless now—"
"Enough, I'll be at the bridge soon enough—then you can rant about the indignity of it all to your spark's content."
Despite himself, Starscream smirked. "Perhaps my Lord should stop and rest first? I know it can be exhausting after cracking your first joke—"
Starscream cut himself off when he saw that the drones weren't alone.
The autobot prisoner was battered and bleeding. It looked like he caught the brunt of the energon explosion. The blue mech fluid that dripped from injuries sustained shone stark, even bright against the red armor. The horn on his helm looked lonely, as if it were…missing its partner...yes, if Starscream imagined a pair of horns, saw the 'bot less dented and cracked, it looked a lot like—
Starscream's optics widened.
Soundwave raised his head from recording the loss of energon and the battle, bent it back down to continue typing—snapped it back up when he registered and recognized that particular autobot.
"Huh, Scream—"
And the seeker's claws were already snapping out even as he dimly registered Cliffjumper's voice turn mildly amused on the familiar, diminutive title (yes, it was definitely him).
"—long time no se—"
Soundwave barely heard the bridge entrance hiss open, he was already leaving the keypad and reaching for Starscream—futilely.
Cliffjumper was cut off by a horrible gasp as Starscream's claws sank into his chest and twisted just right...
Before the seeker leaned forward, Cliffjumper caught the blank fury in his red optics, a fury he dimly recognized, though it differed, as if it had only grown deeper over time. Close to his audio, Starscream whispered, "You should have listened—"
And as Starscream's claw roughly twisted again in his chest cavity and made him groan, Cliffjumper could feel that claw around his spark start to tremble.
"—when I told you that I knew nothing..."
Starscream squeezed, and the spark went out. He whipped back his claw, stained in mech fluid that was still warm, more of it splattering on the floor. Cliffjumper fell forward, dead.
Soundwave blared a siren's warning, but too late on either side: Megatron slammed Starscream to the ground. Belatedly Soundwave realized he should've been paying more attention to the hiss of the opening bridge door heralding their master's entrance.
"Unless I give the word, you do not kill a bound prisoner!" Megatron thundered, looming over his Second. "Not even to settle old accounts," he growled in a lower voice.
Starscream coughed, his frame shuddering as he struggled to rise. His eyes flashed at his superior, incensed. "Why?" He spat out his own mech fluid, adding to the blue on the floor. "Cliffjumper deserved no mercy or honor, and there would've been nothing to gain from him—"
The Second's voice cracked, becoming shriller as a very bitter smirk crossed his face. Head tilted curiously, Starscream looked up at Megatron, whose optics had darkened. "—oh, but that's what you wanted, isn't it? You wished to interrogate him—"
Starscream's claws dug into the floor with a horrible screeching noise, his arms starting to tremble again.
Megatron looked down at his Second with a cold glance.
"You cannot let your emotions cloud your judgment like this—"
"I would do it again!" Starscream shouted in a voice made even shriller by growing rage and pain, defiance warping it further. Megatron's fist clenched tighter and the scowl on his face deepened, but Starscream shouted still, standing up and gesturing wildly. "And again and again—it was the same, he did the same to Jetfire, he deserved nothing less or more than that—I would do it again—"
Starscream instinctively flinched as Megatron's fist snapped forward. He heard a clang and then—the seeker cracked an eye open, then the next as he saw Megatron's fist embedded in the wall very close to his face. He stared up at his Lord blankly, who looked back at him just as impassively.
Megatron swiftly removed his fist from the wall. He commented in an oddly calm, mildly questioning tone, "And yet, my dear Starscream, the dead have failed to return due to your actions."
Starscream exploded again. "I slaggin' know that—don't you dare talk about Jetfire like—"
"You are the one who brought him up," Megatron reminded him in that same eerily serene voice. Starscream sputtered, incoherent with that still growing anger, his claws clenching and unclenching as if holding back attack.
Megatron's optics looked him up and down, unimpressed. "You don't look the calmer for it either."
"That wasn't the damn point!"
"Then what was?"
Their commlink crackled. Breakdown's voice was urgent: "Requesting emergency groundbridge for Knock Out and I right the frag now!"
Soundwave swiftly activated the ship's groundbridge. Megatron ordered the drones to remove Cliffjumper's body. Starscream stood at the ready, knowing at the moment that whatever his leader wanted to do with him over the revenge taken against all sense of order and honor would wait.
The familiar portal of light expanded, and out came Breakdown and Knock Out, who didn't look too severely damaged—except for the human sitting inside his vehicle mode.
"What the hell is going on?" A brown haired woman hissed, clenching a gun tight in her hand despite the handcuff around it, and the other.
"Just get the slag out!" Knock Out snapped, his door popping open, and the woman was out like a light.
Knock Out and Breakdown transformed, and the larger 'con scowled at Starscream, who wasn't disguising his shock at all, very conspicuously gaping at the human. And Soundwave somehow seemed even quieter, even more still.
Even Megatron stared. Until he said, "I assumed our 'no-contact' policy was clear enough to ban pets."
Knock Out weakly chuckled at his leader's only invitation to explain, and began with the autobot drones.
###
Earlier:
Knock Out tsked. "No sense of style, what are those Autobots thinking when they're designing their little drones?"
Those 'little' drones were actually larger than the Decepticons' own, but an uninspired bulk and clunk to their every step, though none of them were exactly a slouch in speed.
Still Knock Out lost them as soon as he could, playing the waiting game in some parking lot. Either they'd lose interest or—
Out of the corner of his hidden optic sensor in his rearview window, Knock Out saw a female human run over, a gun raised in her handcuffed wrists.
Oh for the love of—
The woman struck with the butt of the gun and what had to have been all of her body weight and a helluva adrenaline rush, breaking through his side door window.
Knock Out noted to self to look into stronger glass upgrades.
I will not crush her keep cover I will not crush her keep cover—
Playing around with human and Cybertronian language, Knock Out noted with some humor that the human was a fellow 'con in her own way. She quickly slithered inside the broken window, carefully treading around and hastily brushing aside glass shards. Then she slunk down and tried to hotwire him.
Keep the slaggin' cover I will not crush her—goddamn, how dare some skin-job try to hijack him like any normal non-sentient car. Granted, he was devilishly handsome, even had some previous skin-jobs gaping and coveting while on this planet—actually, why hadn't anyone tried to hijack him before?
Knock Out felt the handcuffs rub against his insides again as the woman struggled to hotwire him. He realized with no small amount of irritation that his very first hijacker probably wasn't even thinking of what a sweet escape car she'd get—just anything with wheels at the moment would've been fine for her, little tasteless maggot...
His other rear view window optic sensor noticed the 'bot drones come back around—with Bulkhead and Arcee in tow this time.
C'mon Bonnie, just give it up and hijack some other car, an ugly one for all you give a damn—
Arcee headed unerringly in his direction, Bulkhead and the drones following her.
To the pit with this.
Knock Out revved his engine.
"Sit back, seatbelt on—"
And Knock Out sent said seatbelt wrapping around the runaway con, snapping her up and back against the seat, tying her down.
"—mind the shots, and enjoy the ride!"
"The f—?"
At least the convict kept some sense about her and didn't immediately fire her gun once he shot out of the parking lot before Arcee and the rest could corner them.
Knock Out swerved back and forth across different streets, searching for the most abandoned, but the autobots remained tight on his trail. So far his pursuers kept their cover, as they tended to do. Though they didn't draw a line at the 'bot drones popping out guns on the sides and blasting away.
"Stay down—"
The human twisted against his seatbelt, aiming her gun out his broken window.
"Scrap, don't—"
She fired at the autobots. They were too surprised at the sudden human appearance that the bullets struck true, though not leaving behind much impact.
Great, the skin-job's engaged the enemy, now they're gonna slaggin' think she's with me—
Finally Knock Out momentarily lost them down a tight corner into a dark alley. Figuring he only had a couple of seconds, he skidded to a halt, his seatbelt snapping away from the human convict.
"Wh—"
"Scram, Fleshie!"
She bolted out, clutching her gun tight, yet she gaped at him. Knock Out noted that her too soft optics were very green, and odd, small round symbols dotted her face.
"Best keep this between us," was all he said before tearing away, wheels screeching. The human had run down another alley.
Even when the 'bots finally caught up seconds later, Knock Out thought he'd successfully ditched the skin-job—until a pair of the drones peeled away from the main group and headed down another alley. Her alley.
Knock Out swore as he twisted back.
He activated his commlink. "Hey, Breakdown, gonna need some backup!"
"Don't let the party start without me," his partner responded, part-joking, part-eager, and part-dead serious.
"Just to shake things up, there's a little skin-job we'll have to play keep-away with—I'll explain later..."
Breakdown sounded really caught off guard, an instinctive shocked bark of a laugh crackling across the commlink. "This, I can't wait to hear."
The drones were bearing down on the running human, still handcuffed, that couldn't help with her speed at all...
Knock Out blasted forward, striking one drone and forcing him into the other, flipping it.
The human retreated, ducking as the drone flew over and crashed ahead of her. As that one got up and transformed along with its twin, Knock Out realized to his dismay that the skin-job wouldn't be out of his way any time soon—they were in another alley that was rapidly getting crowded by Cybertronians blocking all safe exit for a human.
To her credit, the convict seemed to realize this as she still edged backward, gripping her gun tight in shaking hands even as her eyes darted around for any escape.
Fixing her with one hard look and just pinpointing her location at the moment, Knock Out mentally took a breath then pounced, flicking out his electric prod and swinging at the drone farthest away from the human.
The second drone hung back, shooting. The other drone may've dodged his prod's strike, but Knock Out shoved him into the path of his twin's blasts.
With one optic Knock Out watched the drone shoot its own comrade; with the other, he noted the human dashing past a hanging electric sign and behind a dumpster for some cover, but carefully positioned so as to flee if that cover quickly turned into an obstacle.
"Hey, Paint-job," and Bulkhead's fist shot out by way of greeting, a strike Knock Out barely deflected as his attention was snapped back to the fight and away from the skin-job's shelter. "Where's your buddy Breakdown? That fragger's never far behind when you're involved—"
"Five energon cubes says he'll be here in a nanoclick to wipe the floor with you." Knock Out offered the mock-friendly wager as he deflected Arcee's silent strike, her electric knives sent flying off course, one embedding in the wall not far above the human's dumpster...
His concentration broke again, unused to minding a sentient being so slaggin' small. Knock Out's attention only returned in time to see Bulkhead's fist fly and—
Knock Out was thrown down, but he swiped the legs out from under Bulkhead with his electric prod as he fell. The medic rolled back up quickly, but couldn't press his attack against the large autobot as Arcee shot at him with his blasters. He retreated, dodging and deflecting her lasers. Knock Out hadn't forgotten the other drone that had shot its own twin by accident—nor how handy that trick was, especially with the impulsive drone immediately going straight for his back. Knock Out leapt out of Arcee's line of fire, her shots now taking down the drone that had tried to take his back.
But Knock Out's landing turned awkward when he realized he was about to slam into the human's dumpster. Scrap it all, he skidded and tripped—and Bulkhead immediately disarmed him and wrapped him in a humiliating and down-right painful bear hug. Knock Out had heard better than his own servos straining, cracking as Bulkhead squeezed tight and hard—scrap, his optics were flickering—
"Little fragger-!" Bulkhead shouted as something shot through one of his optics, shattering it. Nice to know I'm not the only one in need of some glass upgrades, Knock Out thought a bit light-headedly, even as he swiftly broke out of Bulkhead's grip at the first chance and knocked the larger Cybertronian back down with a particularly nasty elbow strike.
Knock Out picked up his electric prod, then turned in the direction of the shot, expecting to find his partner—but instead he looked back down at the dumpster, the human's gun raised and still aimed at Bulkhead, frozen in shock at her shot working so well.
Before he could really comprehend, Knock Out glanced at Arcee's sudden noise—the medic ducked as Breakdown threw the two-wheeler past him.
Yet his partner didn't look pleased, his optics gaping at the human—who had suddenly aimed her gun at him, her eyes widening even more.
"Idiot, he's with me!" Knock Out snarled at her, and she flinched, readjusting her aim behind them—Knock Out followed her line of sight, at Arcee and Bulkhead getting back up.
"You didn't mention the human was armed," Breakdown said with forced lightness as he dashed for Bulkhead, fist raised.
Knock Out dashed after him, his own prod raised. "Excuse me if I was a little preoccupied!"
But the medic's optics widened as Arcee's blast shot straight past him for the human's dumpster.
Scrap. Even as Knock Out instinctively skidded to a halt and tried to double back, he hoped the blasted skin-job he actually slaggin' owed ran in time, since he wouldn't make it—
The human did flee her shelter, throwing herself on the ground as the dumpster blew up. Arcee did not let up, and Knock Out gave out a feral hiss as he stepped in front of the skin-job, deflecting the blasts with his prod.
The human scrambled to her feet and tried to run off again, but in all the wrong directions.
"Not so close—no, the other way, you stupid—"
The convict stretched up her arms as far away from her body as she could, holding them as far apart from each other as they could—and drove them in the path of a deflected laser blast. The shot cut through the handcuffs' connecting chain easily, and miraculously, not a hair was scorched on her small body.
"—er, genius." Knock Out felt profoundly stupid for not thinking of shooting her handcuffs' chain off earlier.
But as Breakdown was suddenly tossed straight into him and the partners rolled painfully over and over each other on the concrete, Knock Out figured he could be forgiven for his lapse of judgment in this case where everything happened so fast and he was not expecting any non-agent humans at all.
If we actually get up alive in the next nanoclick, we're getting out of here, even with the skin-job.
"Breakdown's mine, but his buddy? Capture or—?"
"No ransom; Prime said last time it's better to leave Megatron without his doctor—"
Knock Out and Breakdown scrambled to disentangle. The medic's optics widened as he saw the human run toward them—idiot, safety was the other way, there were less Cybertronians clogging the alleyway now, and with the 'bots otherwise occupied, her path was surely clear enough to—
Knock Out groaned as he heard the sounds of more 'bot drones approaching.
The human raised her gun again, but not for any lucky shots against Cybertronian optics—this time she shot at the electric sign Arcee and Bulkhead passed under. Sparks shot out from the ruined sign, falling over the autobots along with some broken shards. The 'bots were caught off guard for a few seconds—it was all the distraction the 'cons needed.
Breakdown sucker punched his rival while Knock Out slashed across Arcee's face and down her torso, thoroughly ruining her paint job among other dubiously more critical things.
"That's enough, we're done," Knock Out said, gesturing to the autobots' incoming reinforcements.
Breakdown nodded, but then frowned. "The human—"
"She's coming too!" The medic snapped loudly enough that said human heard him. He shifted back to vehicle mode and drove up to the convict that was dashing toward him. His door opened and she jumped in, his seatbelt wrapping securely around her again.
Knock Out tore out of the alley with Breakdown in his own vehicle mode racing after him as the 'bots shots fired after them. Bulkhead cursed Breakdown's name, his expletives soon mixing with Knock Out's own curses at the human to stop firing at the enemy, it was no good now. Breakdown's own curse was brief and sudden as he hailed the Nemesis for emergency groundbridge.
###
"…and that's about it." Knock Out squashed the urge to wince at how foolish that sounded, but really, he was still having trouble believing that actually happened.
Soundwave seemed like a statue, Starscream's face was firmly planted in his clawed hand, and Megatron's arms had crossed against his chest by this point.
"'And that's about it?'" The human repeated incredulously, her soft optics looking like they'd short circuit any minute. She kept a death grip on her gun, though it hadn't been aimed at any of the Decepticons on board the Nemesis. "For the last goddamn time, where the hell am I, what's going on-?"
And then she stabbed a finger at the puddle of mech fluid Knock Out and Breakdown had been wondering about since they arrived, but hadn't really found the time to question it with the unexpected skin-job appearance. Curiously, Starscream flinched as she began to shout, "And what the hell is that, is that blood, is that robot blood, is—" and then her finger darted back to Knock Out and Breakdown, waving frantically at their own mech fluid dripping from scrapes and gashes. "—I know it's not theirs, they're not bleeding to death, that looks like someone bled to death—"
Starscream twitched again, and opened his mouth to speak—but he flinched and instantly deflated as Megatron raised an arm for silence.
"Human, be still, and we will explain," Megatron said softly, but the human flinched as if he'd shouted it. Granted, her fleshy audio receptors were small—perhaps no matter how hard he tried, Megatron's voice would always be loud to her kind. But still she stayed quiet and seemed attentive.
Megatron's optics lingered on her for a second. Then, he spoke.
A/N: The above human convict is not an OC—this Mirrorverse fic will have some crossover elements, especially with the human characters. The above crossover character's supposed to sorta properly give up her name in the next part, but she's from LOST, another show I don't own. I needed the convict to try to highjack Knock Out—the idea intrigued me too much. I had her try and succeed without shooting her gun at the windshield since one of her first thoughts would be to preserve ammo, and I think adrenaline rush combined with stronger-than-she-seems (she's been a convict on the run for a while) would enable her to break his window with just the force of her body and a strike of the gun. But if that seems pressing it, she could still pull the trigger and shoot out his window. And as for Cybertronian glass v. human gun (not even shot) and human adrenaline—well, I thought I'd make a gag about it. Maybe it's carelessness, underestimating human weapons; maybe the glass weakened when he reconfigured to human car alt form, and he can readjust the strength later; maybe when taking up a disguise alt form he got more of a perfect match with a human car than he thought—either way, KO's glass broke, and I plan to keep it that way. But since that was able to break, I figured the human convict could get an admittedly lucky (in terms of strength, not aim, the experienced convict's got accurate aim) shot and actually break through Bulkhead's glass optic. At first I thought just crack it with her shot, that was enough distraction for Bulk, but I couldn't resist this twist on making him lose an eye to a human like his rival in the canon 'verse.
Is it 'Knock Out' or 'Knock Out?'
Is it 'Jetfire' or 'Skyfire?'
This mirrorverse's Starscream and Cliffjumper's history should be explained later.
Please leave behind some feedback. Hope you enjoyed.