Descent

Rating: General

Warning: None

Characters: Arcee, Cliffjumper

Summary: Taking the tricky way down.

Written for tf_speedwriting community, for the prompt "Sinkhole".

It had been there one moment and gone so suddenly the next that the entire battle field had paused in shock.

There was never time later to figure out what exactly happen, though the rumors ran rampant. A structural fault caused by tunneling in the underlevels; a planned attack carried out by a hidden bomb; Cybertron itself protesting the war being carried out on its surface. Many swore that the ground under them had shook before the collapse; others insisted they had felt nothing more than the usual trembles and shifts of their world's inner workings.

Whatever the cause, where the Academy of Science and Technology once stood was a giant, gaping hole that sunk straight down into the underlevels below Iacon. It was a dangerous, unstable place, constantly shifting and groaning as the wreckage inside settled itself. Most mechs avoided it.

If they were smart, a state of being Arcee occasionally questioned in herself and her companion.

"I came here once," Arcee said, "Before." She hooked her hands into the twisted metal that made up the walls of the shaft.

Some places couldn't be traversed; nothing more than slick sheets of alloy and synth-crystal that had once been the walls of one of Iacon's proudest structures. The rest was strung with thick tangles of pipes, tubes, and rails, providing plenty of hand and foot holds. As long as you were careful.

"Yeah?" Cliffjumper asked from below her. They'd decided to let him go first, so she wouldn't get knocked off with him if the moorings of their haphazard climbing rig proved too weak to support his weight. "I saw pictures, but it never looked like my sorta scene. Too stuffy."

Arcee smiled into the wall in front of her, the fond expression unseen by its recipient. "Well, I did notice it was rather lacking in bar fights and dance parties."

"Ha, I knew it," Cliffjumper said, then swore sharply. There was a harsh screeching sound of metal grating against metal and the scrambling of feet trying to find purchase.

Arcee froze and looked down between her legs. The hole was nearly pitch black; the only light came from the ambient surface light around the rim. With the gain turned all the way up on her optics, she could the dim, grainy top of his head, shoulders, and wide spread arms clinging tightly to the sides, but the angle made it impossible to really see what happened.

She held back her questions and waited. If she fell, Cliffjumper could catch her. If he fell, there was nothing but open air. Not that the fall would automatically kill him - Cliffjumper was built to withstand serious amounts of blunt force trauma and while he wouldn't exactly be walking away from a several hundred meter drop, he could survive it. Assuming, of course, that he didn't land on a pipe or steel support beam at the wrong angle, or a bed of thick, razor edged crystal shards –

"Whew," Cliffjumper said finally and Acree's hands eased their tight clench, "That got the old fuel pump going."

"What happened?" she asked.

"Ugh, railing I was standing on tore loose," he said. He adjusted his hold and lowered himself slightly, undoubtedly testing the area just below him. "Aaaand... took the rest of my foot holds with it. Why are we trying this way again?"

"Because right now, it's the only way to get into the catacombs without running into a whole lot of Decepticons," she said, deciding this would be a bad time to add the 'in theory' part. They were still going to have to cut through the sides to get at the place where the catacombs butted up against the shaft. While dangling from the sides. Without any safety equipment.

She scanned the area around them to locate a better path. "And the catacombs are the only way to get out of Iacon. Climb to the left, I see a way."

He accepted the modified map she sent him via intercom with a grunt and began pulling himself sideways along the wall. "So what brought you to the Academy back in the day? I never figured you for the scholarly type."

"I performed at ceremony they were putting on," Arcee said, engaged in her own sideways climb, "All of the performers got invited to a tour of the facilities afterward. It was a nice place."

"Performed, huh? Stunt driving?"

"Dancing, actually."

There was a pause.

"Reeeally now..." Cliffjumper said with a great deal more interest.

Arcee rolled her optics and felt along a length of bent support beam until she could find an edge that wouldn't cut her fingers off. "Down, mech. Traditional dances only, very prim and proper. That was a... long time ago, too."

She couldn't keep the sting of longing out of her voice and Cliffjumper went quiet, giving her some space. They climbed in that silence until they reached the new path Arcee had spotted and continued their descent.

"So how do you think it fell?" Cliffjumper said at last.

"I never really -" She broke off and both of them hissed sharply through their vents as the proximity sensors they'd left up near the rim sent them warning alerts.

Arcee looked around, accessing their situation. They were far enough down to be invisible to ordinary optics in the darkness, but not if the Decepticons in question were clever enough to use flood lights and they were still well in range of most weapons.

::If we can make it over there -:: she commed Cliffjumper, sending him an image capture of a ledge of out-thrust metal they could hide under. Another ping from the sensors informed them the Decepticons were almost upon them.

::No time!:: Cliffjumper sent back, ::Don't move.::

Arcee pressed herself as tightly as she could against into the tangled wreckage, turned off her optics, closed her vents, and powered down her engine to the lowest setting. She was small enough and similarly colored enough to their surroundings to be near invisible, but Cliffjumper –

Muffled sounds of transformations and voices up along the rim reached her. She waited, watching her chronometer and ignoring the slow, steady rise of her internal temperature.

After painfully tense while, the words "- kind of idiot would go down there-" drifted down, followed by the sounds of the other mechs fading away. Soon after, the proximity sensors alerted them that the area was clear again. Arcee stretched open her vents in relief.

"So what's it mean when even the Decepticons think what you're doing is stupid?"

Arcee resisted the urge to kick him in the head.

END