TITLE: Feedback
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved
BETA: okami_myrrhibis

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He woke with a headache.

A whole body ache.

Everything was a mass of pain.

Sound was… muted.

Sight was… barely there.

Blurry shapes and muffled noises.

He blinked. The world remained blurry and the sound was warbling more than it was clear and audible. Like a dust bomb had exploded around him. Grayish white light.

He blinked again and tried to focus on the shape not far away. It was huge, filling his whole vision. Dark and metallic, if he was any judge. A mostly blind, blurry-visioned judge.

His mind struggled to cope with the pain signals. He couldn't really define the pain, where it came from. It was as blurry as his vision. No sharp pulses, just… pain.

He tried to move and it was simply a twitch of fingers.

Huh. Fingers. Yeah, he had fingers, and he could see them. Apparently he had flung out an arm and he was looking at weakly twitching fingers. His own.

Cool.

He frowned.

His fingers looked… weird. Not like his own as he remembered them. Then again, his mind tried to make him understand, his fingers were there. And they sometimes looked weird and strange and freaky and…

… covered in burned-golden runes and glyphs and squiggly lines.

Allspark code. Yeah, now he remembered.

And with the memory came more. There were scenes flashing through his mind that must have happened and he thought they did, but like after a concussion grenade he felt like scrambled eggs inside and out.

Something moved and he moved, too. Surprised by the reaction of his body, the instinctual movement, he was slightly off-kilter and still blurry-visioned, but he was now crouching down. The animal part inside him was very much aware of how vulnerable he was, how much he had to rely on those old instincts, and they acted accordingly.

There was a mad scrabble to one side, followed by a whine and he forced himself to focus on that. His eyes cleared a little more, but before he could think of getting closer to the shadow, the massive metal thing to his left moved.

Not much, but it did.

Optics lit up. Red optics.

Decepticon!

His mind cleared rapidly and it was like something inside him charged, purged his system, and he was very clear-headed from one second to the next.

Will Lennox reacted again, and again it was instinct, and again he didn't think. Energy flared up and released.

Energy bubbles enveloped the enemy and he collapsed once more..

Something whined shrilly in alarm and there was metal scraping over rough ground; the optics flickered, then went dark again.

Lennox panted, feeling drained, his body starting to shake. His vision was clearing more and more, just like his memory was coming back.

Him and Ironhide on the road, coming back from Yuma. Some kind of trap. Explosions… fire… pain… and then the cry of his partner as something hot and powerful had punctured his armor and buried near his spark.

Ironhide fell.

Energon gushed out of the wound.

Blue optics flickered.

Died.

And then a spark Will knew so intimately like no one else stuttered and died as well.

Lennox had reacted by instinct at that moment, becoming what the Allspark had given him. He had attacked the Decepticon and turned the world into a war zone, his sole intention to kill the one who had injured his partner.

Possibly killed his partner.

His head whipped around, looking frantically for Ironhide and he found a sizable mech not far away, in the middle of a world that had been desert once but looked like alien landscape now.

"Ironhide," he managed, voice rough and weak.

He stumbled over to the motionless mech, runes flaring all over his body, and he wondered why he was still looking like a protoform, why he hadn't reverted back to his human self. But those thoughts were more superficial than anything else. He was only thinking of Ironhide.

The wound was still there, terrible, crusted in sand and energon, but underneath the mistreated armor Will saw the faint glow of a spark. He felt the tiny pulses through the contact of protoform skin on dented armor. He knew Ironhide was still there, still alive, just in stasis-lock to protect himself.

There was movement again and he turned, energy crackling over one hand as his body prepared for defense.

The shadow ducked, red eyes flickering, and the sharp extensions along the symbiote's back twitched and then flattened in fear. Ravage was clearly trying to become one with the ground, to be invisible. Sharp claws scrabbled over the molten ground and he bumped into one of his fellow symbiotes. Lazerbeak, Will realized.

Both looked rather scorched, too. And both were in raw beast mode.

Behind them, the large bulk of Soundwave lay unmoving, and he looked like something had truly fried him.

Soundwave.

Shit.

Hell…

And Lennox remembered the moment the large Decepticon had made a grab for him.

It had been an attack out of the blue, a trap set to snare him and take out Ironhide in the process. They hadn't expected it, they hadn't had any intel on Soundwave being on Earth, and all Will had been thinking was 'shitshitshit'.

All had been over quickly – and then it had begun. Ironhide had suffered such massive damage, he had gone down and remained unmoving. Soundwave had thrown everything at the well-armored weapons specialist; maybe to kill, but definitely to immobilize. He had succeeded, but he hadn't counted on Will's desperation and the development of his powers throughout the past months.

He felt like he was about to be torn to pieces. Every molecule seemed to be flung in a different direction until it bounced back from some kind of soft wall, and then reassembled. He screamed in agony; the pain was overwhelming.

Energy ripped through him, out of him, at the enemy. Anger and fury and pain and desperation and fear for Ironhide combined, igniting something inside him that was howling to be freed.

Lennox shook his head as if to dislodge the scattered memories and stood on shaky legs in his protoform shape, covered in angry glyphs, and still the energy was there; strong, powerful and aggressive. Ready to strike. The symbiotes felt it and kept their distance, looking freaked. He heard their whispers, their communication, all hushed and scared and low-key. All had signs of a very angry meeting with his energy bubbles.

Ironhide was down for the count. Will had no idea if he could contact the rest of the Autobots. Soundwave could come around any second once more. And the symbiotes might not be afraid of him for long, though they looked like they would rather bolt than stay, only their loyalty to their master keeping them here.

Red optics flared once more and Soundwave sat up. It was a slow move, scanners suddenly running on full. Lennox felt them bounce all over his transformed body, reflected back at the damaged Decepticon, and it was with some satisfaction that he noticed the winces. He knew that hurt. Especially someone as sensitive as Soundwave.

And then there was a presence in his mind, scanning, asking, prodding. He tried to escape the searching presence, but was finally caught.

He lashed out.

The presence shattered with a scream of surprise and agony.

The pain subsided, but the defensive powers rose, striking at the enemy. Will's mind collapsed, unable to keep up under the pressure. He surrendered control to instinct, felt everything shift and take on another form.

Approval whispered in his mind with voices he had heard before. The Primes.

Finally he was only encompassed by blackness.

Now very much conscious and one hundred percent in control, Lennox raised his right hand, energy bubbling within his curled fingers. Uneasy chattering erupted between the symbiotes, some high-pitched shrills and a lot of clicking warbles. He had no idea how strong he was, how much he would be able to do, how much Soundwave had recovered, but he would fight to the end. Ironhide was still down, so it was all up to him, since he had no idea whether or not there was any cavalry coming any time soon.

Keeping half an eye on the symbiotes he was surprised to notice that he kind of understood their communication. Unlike Sam he couldn't understand Cybertronian as such, but he caught the gist of things now.

They were truly terrified, mentioning his title as Prime again and again. Some were outright staring at his mark, drawn between submission and flight.

Will tensed, ready to access his considerable powers as Soundwave steadied himself.

tbc...