Nature of the Beast One-Shot: Joy Ride
Based on a little a'almvus "folktale" from the NotB Universe I've created. Enjoy! :3
Not a deca-cycle went past in Joy Ride's existence without finding herself in a peculiar situation. Once, she had been atop a spire with a skydancer having a bizarre debate over the palatability of polonium while the dancer had tried to teach her clumsy butt how to dance. Another time she had woken to find herself wedged under a berth at home with a clearly over-energized cyber-cat that wasn't hers, three cubes of A-class high grade beside her (empty), and a barely legible story-plot about said animal scrawled up her left arm – she still had no explanation for that one, but the cat had been okay afterwards, thank the Allspark, just unsteady and suffering from slurred, hiccup-y vocalizations for a few joors. No one nearby had claimed it, so she had, and had named the cat Tipsy in honor of their meeting. Another time, she had strutted around one of the local public archives, neck craned, randomly flapping her arms and barking like a rust hound much to the confusion, consternation, and mild alarm of the archivists. Her favorite peculiar situation had been when she had danced armor-less in the Temple of the Blue while singing an off-key rendition of "Ignite Our Path!" according to a befuddled and possibly traumatized young acolyte after the fact. She'd been banned from the Temple indefinitely after that particular fiasco – no surprise there; priests were such stiffs. Her only regret was that she'd been too over-energized to remember it clearly herself. Complete memory or not, that situation had landed on her top five list, right up there with the time she'd nicked her washer fluid line by accident, causing the fascinating side-effect of foaming at the mouth, and had, out of pure curiosity, roamed around Hyuvae for a solar cycle as if nothing at all had been amiss. That one had earned her some very strange looks but not quite the reaction she'd been aiming for.
When held up against that kind of repertoire, coming online to find herself shackled to the floor of a dark room, one arm bearing a small gash, without the foggiest idea of how she'd wound up there was, quite frankly, dull. There was no originality to it at all. It was the equivalent of staring at a blank canvas.
"Chained to the floor in a dark room," she tutted through a chuckle. "How very cliché! All you need to do now is start sharpening a weapon out of sight, amiright?!"
No one answered her. No one started sharpening a weapon. Perhaps they were too prudent to answer, or perhaps they did in fact harbor some originality.
Annoyance soon prickled in her spark. Any humor dwindled once she realized just how tight the clamps were. Whoever had put them on had done a poor job too – her left wrist joint had been left in a less-than-ideal position and now suffered a dull, ceaseless ache. Very sloppy. Definitely an amateur, but an amateur who had no desire to see her up and leave. For the owner to be absent despite that desire was interesting enough to halt her boredom...for a few moments.
"Y'know, if you want me to stay," she hollered. "maybe make sure the a'almvus you chained up isn't bored out of her cranial chamber?!"
Still no answer. She mumbled that they weren't doing themselves any favors. They really weren't. Like clockwork, the boredom began to mount. With it came creativity. Wincing through the pain, she began to shimmy her left wrist against the shackle. The horrid noise of metal scraping on metal made her wince further but she kept at it. There was the chance she might be able to weasel her way out, or at the very least get her wrist into a better position.
A form drifted into the room out of her peripheral vision. Or perhaps it had been there the whole time.
Joy Ride grinned and shimmied her wrist more, putting more effort into it. The form moved into her direct line of sight. Tall. Orange optics set into a youthful, narrow face design that she could discern through the dark, with little sweeps on the sides of his helm like the cheek plumes some turbo-hawks had. It was not a visage she could pull from her memory banks. He was certainly dramatic enough that that she was surprised he elicited no recognition. She liked 'bots who had a flair for the dramatic. It was those rare sparks who could turn a mundane moment theatrical that made life so engaging. He seemed pleasant enough too, if somewhat on the lurk-y side of melodramatic. He said nothing to her. His twin orange orbs floated around her, always careful to keep just on the visible edge of her peripherals, watching her shimmy her wrist. There was no emotion in there. Complete impartiality. It was as unnerving as it was intriguing. To see such a detached demeanor – she wondered if he was actively maintaining it or if it came naturally to him. She found herself watching him in the same intent way he was watching her.
"You can't escape, you know."
What an unusual voice print he had. Soft, quiet, and smooth, yet in that smoothness was a twinge. She could not tell from whence it stemmed. Anxiety? Excitement? There was no indication.
"Oh, no, I'm well aware of that," she laughed. "I was just bored is all. But now that you're here why don't we have a little chat, eh? Get to know each other? Swap some stories? Maybe have a cube or two? Explain why in the Allspark I'm chained up?"
Orange orbs widened in the dark. She saw his strange wings lower and then rise. She couldn't tell if he was a flier or not. Very unique design. She liked it. A shame he wouldn't let her get a good look at him. She was fascinated by him. And he seemed fascinated by her. Or perhaps baffled. It was hard to tell with someone so intent on retaining an impassive expression.
"...you honestly have no idea what's going on right now, do you?"
"Well, if I did I wouldn't be asking now, would I?" she huffed. "So? Care to elucidate my present situation, Sir Melodrama?"
He lunged. A blade was thrust towards her neck cables fast enough for it to whistle softly. He was nearly on top of her. His optics were so close she could see the little details of his tv're and the little individual parts that made up his helm, chassis, and some of his arms. He wasn't very intimidating up close. Kind of scrawny actually. His armor was light and his thin legs and arms were somewhat out-of-proportion to his body.
"I'm going to kill you," he said softly. "Then offer your spark up to the Unmaker and have all the power I could ever want."
"Oooooh! So that's –" then she laughed. "Well, I correct my previous assumption about this whole thing – this will be interesting!"
He thrust the blade closer, enough to prick a wound in one of the cables and cause a tiny flare of pain. She heard his fans begin to whir. Interesting. He was angry at her; she wasn't sure why. It wasn't like she'd insulted him or anything. If anything that statement to him was more of a compliment.
"Why are you not afraid?!" the mech demanded.
Joy Ride stopped laughing and assumed a serious expression. "Honestly? Because you're trying too hard. Tone it down a notch and I might start taking this seriously."
That made him pull back, his anger traded out for a baffled expression so acute she bawled in laughter. The mech really was quite an entertaining figure to her. Like a windshield wiper he swept from one extreme of expression and emotion to another. Very engaging. Quite humorous to watch too. But her captor, rather than be pleased at her fixation or laugh with her at his absurdity, bristled at her mirth and pulled away, fuming as he moved behind her. She heard him begin to sharpen his weapon and a few other sounds she could not identity. It sounded almost like he shuffling items around. Tools maybe? What tools did one even need for a sacrificial murder other than a weapon? It wasn't like he was about to perform a delicate surgical operation or anything. The noises soon ceased. Her captor came back into her line of sight. His expression was blank again. Blade in hand, he knelt and slashed the blade across her right arm. She wasn't expecting it to hurt as much as it did, nor did she expect the pain to linger and intensify. She let out a cry. Her captor, taking the noise as a cue, began to draw images on the ground around her, using her fuel as his paint. He started an outer rim and worked inward, scrawling foreign glyphs in and around the other rims and lines that made her sight burn when she tried to look at them.
Then the chanting started.
"Blg'vah tcv dh'kre tcv vrdaew. Tcv vh grzorh shvb'ey chtyalu."
He repeated it as he continued to draw. She did not understand what he was saying but the words made her spark quiver and tremble in her chassis. It was like a prayer, sort of, if a prayer were twisted and made foul. Her limbs felt weak of a sudden, and the pain in her arm grew more intense still. The mech finished his ground work and extended his gruesome drawings to her body. The symbol he began to draw on her chassis made her whole body scream and burn. Twin horns.
"Vh maq fruy'ghen k'yap fruy'ghen."
"Vh maq fruy'ghen k'yap fruy'ghen."
"Vh maq fruy'ghen k'yap fruy'ghen!"
The symbols, all of them, began to glow and darken while he kept up his chant. Pale blue become virulent, pulsating violet. Her captor lunged. A knee pike wedged itself into her lower abdomen to minimize her squirming. His hands went for the seams in her chassis. He wrenched the panels apart in a grunt of effort.
She screamed. It did not do the pain justice.
"Uv'jlor cxenax, nygh'ven Evzaun ghav'nai. Htun'ryug gnaeut hivhanto'ey!"
Her scream cut short.
Joy Ride had been expecting light. That was what the priests always said came after. What she got instead was a great expanse of murky black in which she hung suspended but that somehow let her lie on her side as if on solid ground. Groaning, she forced herself up. Nothing existed within it that her perception could discern. Her own hands, so close to her view, were obscured so heavily she only knew they existed because she could feel them. Bringing them right up to her faceplates did little to help that, but she could see, just barely, that her limbs were now transparent. She was dead alright but someone had clearly messed up her due process. Probably that melodramatic punk. Somehow. Oh well. At least being in the wrong place meant time to observe her surroundings. The more she tried to look the more the murk set in. Smiling a little in realization, she let her sight pan idly around her rather than actively searching for anything. The Unmaker was said to be fickle and tricky like that.
Frightful whispers began to percolate into her audials. It took some time to translate the speech; it was foreign to her, like listening to the clicks of gears and the whispers of fine textiles in an open window. But eventually it began to make sense. The whispers and clicks became wails.
"Another? Oh, Primes..."
"Help, oh, help her!"
"The daughter is doomed! Doomed! Like us!"
Out of the gloom a few pinpricks of light appeared. They should have emitted more light, they should have looked like small stars, but the darkness seemed to suck any light up and out of them. One of them came up to her, forming a spectral shell around itself as it did. A tall femme, robust, powerful in build and proud of stature. Or it would have been a proud stature had despair not caused her backstrut to curl. But there was defiance in her still. She could see it – a fire bubbled in her. A forge-femme no doubt, just not one she knew. The other five did not form a shell, but they clustered around the forge-femme as if she were the only thing keeping them alight. For all Joy Ride knew, she was. The priests always said the dark of the Unmaker's realm could devour light.
"Oh, good! The welcoming committee!" she laughed. "So? Where's the bar?"
"Laugh while you can, sister," the forge-femme warned. "It doesn't last long here. 'Least not the sane kind."
Joy Ride put her hands on her hips and scoffed, "Who said I was sane? Has someone here been spreading rumors?"
The forge-femme eyed her as if she were a piece in a bahlik'cva puzzle that did not fit anywhere.
"Well," she huffed, "if you won't tell me where the bar is I'll just look for the exit."
The spark flew in front of her, halting her course after only one step. There was no exit, the forge-femme warned. She was trapped there, like the rest of them, until the end of time. She would be humiliated. Tortured. She would die here in perpetuity to keep her killer functioning. She would eventually be forgotten about, lost to the minds of the living and lost within the empty void of the Anti-Spark, the very grave of all that was good in the universe. It was for her own good to simply yield. Unicron did not find the same glee in torturing one who had surrendered to him. Sorrow was not as potent an emotion for him to feed on. Joy Ride laughed at her.
"You are not frightened?" the forge-femme demanded.
"Not in the least!" she crowed.
"Why?"
She looked the spirit square in her optics and through a broad, mad grin and a gleam in her optics and said, "Because he ain't got no clue who he's dealing with! I'm Joy Ride, glitches!"
"You name will cease to have meaning here," one of the sparks wailed. "Forget it now to save yourself the pain later!"
"Pshah! Watch. And. Learn," she declared wagging a digit.
Helm high, Joy Ride strode off into the murk in a proud swagger. She could feel a gaze, a hateful, spiteful gaze upon her from everywhere but she could feel it concentrated in a certain place. Towards it she headed. There was no way to tell if she really were moving forward at all but that bothered her very little. A path-without-end illusion from the Unmaker of all beings was almost charming if he really was trying that out on her. She decided in the end he couldn't be; the sense of that malignant glare grew stronger with every few steps until, at last, it began to make her awareness pound and burn to such an extent her vision began to warp. Fear began to nibble and bite. She refused to indulge it. That would make him mad, she bet, just probably not enough to get his attention. That would require a little more effort on her part, but luckily she knew just the trick to remedy that hurdle.
Joy Ride turned around, half bent over, stuck her aft in the air, and sang "Nah-nah, nah-nah, nah-nah!"
The void around began to stir. Shadows clumped together until a horned visage filled with fangs formed before her. It looked both surprised and displeased. She couldn't help laughing even as a dark wave knocked her off balance and sent her tumbling. She picked herself up, grinning as wide as the horizon back home. That seemed to irritate the Unmaker further.
"Insolent dust mote," the voice was strangely soft but the power in it made the murk and her see-through body vibrate. "I shall enjoy breaking you."
"Awww. Did I hurt your feewings?" she cooed, holding up her digits in a profane gesture.
The fanged visage turned from scowl to outright snarl. There came a great creaking groan of metal and a loud woosh from the murk. A great clawed hand swept towards her faster than should've been physically possible, swatting her back into the gloom with such force she felt a shock wave ripple out from the impact. She hit the ground-not-ground in a terrible thud and skid. Her welcoming committee met her and began to wail and fuss. For a moment all she could do was lie there in the pain, the whole world throbbing. She felt like she'd been struck by one of Hyuvae's bullet trains at peak velocity. And yet despite the pain she sported no damages.
Joy Ride started laughing.
This was going to be fun.
Grinning through the grimace, she accepted the forge-femme's hand. Some of her hunch was gone now but her optics were wide, wide! Surprise. Horror. Amusement. Utter confusion and wonder, they all swam and collided in her gaze and expression. She could see her mind freeze and crash for a moment.
"You're mad," she concluded.
"Ha! You think that proves I'm mad? I'm just getting warmed up! HEY!" she hollered startling the group, "COSMIC CRANKSHAFT! THAT ALL YA GOT?!"
The void roiled and trembled. She could sense his annoyance was beginning to boil over. She cackled. Then she started singing.
"Nevermore shall sorrow fall
to pester mirth and glee,
laughter twirls in storms and squalls
to the beat of the a'almvi!
Hail there! ye broken forts
adrift on empty seas
hear my voice – come! cavort!
in the arms of the a'almvi!"
The murk's noise rose to a thunderous rumble. "SILENCE!"
She flashed another rude gesture, "Make me you oversized skid plate!"
The visage formed again to loom over her, snarling. Joy Ride dropped her shell, zipped up to it, reformed, and tapped one trod against his nasal bridge. "Tag! You're it!"
A growl percolated out through the rows of fangs. She tapped him again, "Tag! You're it, you're it!"
The visage surged forward, howling. She zipped up and around to avoid it and kicked him just for the heck of it. It didn't do anything – it was like kicking a fog bank – but it definitely made him madder. The Unmaker took on full form in his fury to loom over her, a skyscraper.
"Pestiferous boil!" he screamed. "You try my patience!"
"Like you had any to begin with!" she laughed.
Joy Ride darted out of the way as a trod crashed down. "Now, see, you're just proving me point here," she observed matter-of-factly.
The same trod crashed down again. It was easy to avoid.
"You know, you really gotta work on anger management," she noted in her best sage voice. "Getting mad so easy – it makes you look kinda silly. Pathetic even."
She wasn't quite sure what exactly in those statements triggered him so badly, but he lifted his hands and shot arcs of purple lighting at her while roaring his anger. They were not so easy to avoid. Pain made her shell and spark spasm. The arcs became bindings. One coiled around her neck and forced her helm down. Two more clamped down over her legs. Another set bound her hands behind her backstrut. Finally, black smoke formed a gag over her mouth. She hardly let any of that slow her down and began to hum another bouncy song, a drinking song taught to her by the jovial barkeep MacAdam in Iacon. The Unmaker gritted his denta, growled, and faded back into the gloom. Joy Ride merely hummed louder, starting another tune whenever one ended, bobbing her helm to the beat as well as she could. Her welcoming committee she noted after a time were not so prone to wailing their despair, their light was brighter, and the forge-femme's backstrut uncurled just a bit – she even joined in on a song she recognized. Joy Ride's smile under the gag only grew.
It did not feel like much time had passed. It could've been a few joors, it could've been whole centuries. But she finally she sensed the Unmaker's aggravation reach a turning point. The black murk at the false horizons was literally boiling. At the same time she felt attention of another sort, on the scale of her welcoming committee but much more concentrated. The black murk to the east (she assumed it was east) condensed into a figure. It was normal looking enough save for the fact it had a long neck, a reptilian helm, clawed trods, and a tail. A mech though. She could tell it was a mech. His chassis bore the violet horned glyph that melodramatic afterburner had drawn on her. He was much more interesting to look at. Scowling, wincing at her singing, it approached her and removed the shackles from her trods and cut the chain that held her helm in place. He left the neck collar on.
"Oh, wait, wait, lemme guess," she said. "I get to go to solitary now or something? For Primus' sake, is he really that mad at me? I wasn't even trying that hard."
The figure scowled deeper. No answer came. He snatched one of her heel struts and started to drag her to she knew not where.
"Y'know, a bored a'almvus is a recipe for trouble," she hinted. "Just answer the question. Or I'll start singing again."
The serpent-mech craned his neck to look down at her briefly, "My master grows tired of you."
She shifted into a slightly less uncomfortable posture, "So...what, you're tasking me to the cosmic garbage chute?"
"There is no such thing," the figure said, violet optics darting back to her to glower. "Though in your case I sincerely wish there was."
She did not say anything. Not out of fear; she sensed he wasn't quite done speaking yet. He was pausing for dramatic effect. She approved. That was how drama was properly done.
"My master has ordered you to be returned. Good riddance. You are obnoxious."
Her optics went wide. That – well, that certainly hadn't been the outcome she'd been expecting. Not that she was complaining. She started giggling. The serpent-mech turned, eyed her, hissed, and picked up his pace. The murk began to lift and brighten the longer he walked. The empty void became a sea of stars, singing together in an electromagnetic choir. One star out of the sea burned the brightest to her sight – a great blue-white thing that sang louder than them all. Her escort was headed for it. The closer he got, the more uncomfortable he acted. He reached the edge of the light, an expanse of grey-white light that swirled with light-speckled fog, and paused. A blink later and the fog began to scintillate. He began to remove her bindings in such haste his hands slipped. He kept eyeing the greater light ahead, never letting his sight stay on his work for more than a moment.
A roar made the fog vibrate. The ground-not-ground began to shake. In a pattern. Her escort quickened his work.
Out of the light a great bronze hoof stamped down. Then another, bringing with them an imposing creature that made even the fiercest of Predacons look cuddly. To look at him instilled both fright and awe.
"The Grim-Guardian..." she breathed.
"YOU DARE INTRUDE HERE, HERETIC?!" screamed the warden in a voice like an exploding star.
Her escort put the bindings down and scrambled back. "Just dropping this one off, I swear!" The Grim-Guardian stamped one hoof down and roared. At that point, her escort dropped his shell and fled. The Grim-Guardian snorted in approval.
"Thanks for the lift!" she called. "That was fun! Let's do it again sometime!"
Her escort only fled faster. She laughed.
A shadow fell over her. The Grim-Guardian peered down at her in an amused, puzzled manner. "What in the world did you do for him to expel you so swiftly?" he wondered in a much softer voice.
She shrugged, "Apparently the Lord of Chaos has super thin mesh?"
The Grim Guardian chuckled.
"Soooo," Joy Ride drawled, "are you gonna let me in or...?"
"You may enter if you wish," he admitted slowly. His gaze then twinkled, "though there is another option open to you."
Her interest perked.
"As much as my progenitor would enjoy your presence here, he considers it a net loss. A spark as jovial as yours would be wasted confined. So, should you accept, my sister and I shall forge a new frame for you, and you may enter it."
She let that possibility hang in her mind, not quite believing it. Then her agape mouth became a blooming grin.
"Gimme that bod, then!" laughed Joy Ride. "I ain't done yet!"
Author's Note: I had the idea for this little folktale when getting the "lore" down for the NotB sequel. Trust me, the information here will end up tying back to the main series though it is intended as a stand-alone short story.