A HOUSE DIVIDED
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." -- Matthew 12:25.
Warning: Dark themes, violence, implied slash.
Chapter 1: All Who Take The Sword
"…for all who take the sword shall perish by the sword."-- Matthew 26:52.
The Stunticons limped back home in defeat.
It wasn't the first time they had lost a battle, and Dead End knew it would not be the last. It wasn't even the worst possible outcome, since they were all still functional, but he was just as certain that that wouldn't last for long.
Motormaster was in the lead, since none of them wanted to be near him when he was in a cold fury over their failure. The four other Stunticons drove just behind him. They kept perfect pace with each other, no one falling back or edging forward, nothing that would make them stand out.
Injured and tired though they were, they maintained that exact line over mile after mile through the desert; matching each other when it came to driving was instinctive. The highway stretched ahead of them, wide and empty. The humans must have heard of the battle, Dead End thought, though they're probably getting the news of the Autobots' win right about now. Which should be reason enough to reopen the roads and come after us.
And the raid had been a disaster. They hadn't been able to grab more than half a dozen cubes of energon, which had looked even smaller and fewer in the emptiness of Motormaster's trailer. After that, they had been outnumbered and outgunned so badly that Motormaster had had to call a retreat even before Megatron did. He'll take it out on us later, Dead End had thought wearily.
The highway cut through cliffs that cast sharp-edged shadows in their way. The land around was a deserted stretch of stones and dust, featureless except for the uneven rise and fall of hills. Like a metaphor for our lives, Dead End thought as he kept one optical sensor on their surroundings and the other on his own diagnostics. His core temperature was rising as his systems struggled to deal with the wounds he had taken in the battle, as well as keeping a normal pace of just over a hundred miles an hour.
On one side of him, Drag Strip was trailing the odd wisp of smoke from his engine block, but he said nothing. None of them dared to make a sound, but their radios finally crackled into life when Wildrider spoke.
"Tire's going," he said.
Wildrider always had more tire blowouts than the rest of them, thanks to what was crazy driving even by Stunticon standards, and replacing it would take only a minute or two. But it would hold them up, and worse, draw Motormaster's attention.
Dead End heard a heavy, muffled popping sound as the tire finally gave way. Wildrider slewed to one side and over the hard shoulder, the guardrail buckling when his hood crashed into it. There was a heat-shimmer of a forcefield taking the brunt of the impact.
"Keep driving," Wildrider said over the radio. "I'll catch up."
Motormaster braked, eighteen wheels screeching as he came to a halt. Here it comes, Dead End thought as he stopped as well. Wildrider had already transformed and was unscrewing his tire hastily, as if hoping he could complete the replacement before he had the slag beaten out of him.
The semi reversed slowly. Breakdown and Drag Strip had halted as well, and although they blocked the highway, Dead End doubted they would have been able to move unless Optimus Prime himself had been barreling down it.
"Drag Strip." Motormaster's voice was cold and utterly emotionless. "Unload the cubes."
Transforming while carrying a volatile substance like energon wasn't to be recommended; it could make an already unhappy existence that much more miserable, but significantly shorter. Drag Strip transformed as well and hesitated, looking as though he would have preferred to jump over the guardrail and into the ravine next to them rather than approaching the big semi.
"Do it!" Motormaster snarled.
Wildrider had the ruined wheel off by then. He tossed it down and slapped a spare tire into place.
Drag Strip's mouth tightened, but for once he had the good sense not to say anything. He stepped up to the rear of the trailer as it opened, then scooped out two handfuls of cubes that looked pathetically inadequate. Dead End transformed, then stepped over the ruined guardrail and sat down on a large boulder, not caring whether that would scrape his paint. If he was going to be beaten up – and considering what kind of mood Motormaster was in, that wasn't an if – he could at least rest for a moment first.
Motormaster transformed. Dead End stared off into the distance and listened to the sound of Wildrider tightening lug nuts, Breakdown's internal fans whirring, heavy footsteps coming closer. He could sense the leaden, paralyzing fear that came over the gestalt bond from his teammates, but all he felt was a tired resignation. If the Autobots didn't slag him to the Pit and back, Motormaster would. It isn't the first time and it won't be the last. Let's just get it over with.
He would have liked to hope that it wouldn't be too bad, but he knew better than to hope for anything.
"Breakdown." Motormaster's voice was quiet, which meant an imminent beating – at best. "I ordered you to get into the factory and wait there while we drove the Autobots towards you or until they came closer by themselves to rescue their pets. Then you were to disrupt their engines and allow us to pick them off. Why didn't you do it?"
"Th-there were too many humans." Breakdown took a step back, though there was nowhere to go. "They were looking at me--"
Dead End heard a clang of metal against metal and a gasp. "Is that as bad as them looking at you?" Motormaster said in a tone of clinical curiosity. "Well?" There was the sound of another sharp blow. Breakdown had probably been bracing for that one, since he tried to answer the question.
"N-no. Yes." His voice was breathless, taut with pain. Dead End felt the effects of that as well, like cold quicksilver sliding through the gestalt bond, and he knew it would only get worse. He could have blocked it out had Motormaster been the one being beaten up (ah, wishful thinking) but it was far more difficult with one of his other teammates; they shared too much.
"No or yes?" The clang had turned into a crrnch, as metal began to give way under Motormaster's fist.
"Which answer's right?" Breakdown said frantically over one of the private radio channels they used.
"What does it matter? He's going to hit you no matter what you--"
"Try maybe," was Wildrider's contribution.
"Say yes!" Drag Strip snapped.
"Yes!"
"And yet you continue to function," Motormaster said, "rather than running off like you did before. So it can't be that bad." The blow was followed by the ugly, rattling thud of metal crashing against rock. Evidently Breakdown hadn't been able to keep standing. "Can it?"
Dead End turned his head despite himself; he didn't think Breakdown was in any condition to care about anyone looking at him now. A glistening mixture of half-processed fuel and lubricant trickled from one corner of Breakdown's mouth and the side of his jaw was mangled, probably dislocated, but he managed a shake of his head. Motormaster finally turned away from him.
"Wildrider," he said.
"Hey, boss," Wildrider said perkily.
Dead End didn't know whether that was Wildrider making a calculated attempt to get all of the pounding at once and have it done with, or whether that was Wildrider simply being as insane as always, but Motormaster's arm lashed out so fast that it was a blur. Wildrider struck the ground and rolled over, managing to catch the guardrail with one hand just before he would have gone over the edge. Dead End didn't think he would be doing anything with his other hand; that arm had taken the brunt of the blow and his fingers were twitching in an uncoordinated, spastic way.
Motormaster reached down, grabbed him by the spikes on his helm and hauled him back on to the road before dropping him in a heap. Dead End looked away again. He could tell what was happening from the sound of the kick, Wildrider's whimper, Motormaster's voice saying something about stupidity and recklessness that had given their position away to the Autobots.
He fought an urge to double over as the gestalt link transmitted the pain Wildrider could no longer control, though the next sound was the harsh rasp of metal on dusty asphalt as Motormaster moved away. Drag Strip was holding the cubes like a shield before him, aware that no one was going to hit him while he carried what little fuel they had, but Motormaster only sneered. "I'll deal with you when we're back in the base," he said, lips peeling back in a smile that made Drag Strip flinch.
And now it's my turn, Dead End thought. How nice. More to the point, how even-handed. No one misses out when Motormaster's in a--
A hand grabbed his shoulder. "Pay attention, Dead End, or one of your teammates will have to explain things to you." That was Motormasterese for close yourself off and I'll hurt Wildrider or Breakdown or Drag Strip in your place, so they'll hate you as well as me. "Why don't you even have your radar on?"
Dead End had expected to be berated about a lot of things, such as his inability to care what was going to happen to them (since he already knew what would happen – they would die soon and painfully). Or the fact that when the fighting had started, he had found a quiet corner where he could study his reflection in a broken piece of glass and ask what was the point of any of it. He remembered explaining to his reflection that whatever fuel they stole was just going to be used up and then they would be back where they started (except probably worse off from battle wounds), and his reflection had looked back at him in a sad kind of way, as if wondering why no one else understood that.
At which point two things had happened. Motormaster had yelled at him over the radio to get out and fight, and a stray shot had hit the glass, shattering it into a hundred splinters. Dead End remembered thinking that that had been a metaphor for his life as well. He'd expected to be called on the figurative carpet for that, rather than for… radar?
"Um, radar?" he said.
The problem about trying to roll with a punch was that if Motormaster saw him doing it, the punishment would be that much worse. And Dead End really didn't care enough by then to make the effort. His vision went black for a moment as his optics offlined, and he thought his gyros had been scrambled as well, before he realized he was actually falling. The backhand had been hard enough to spin him around, so his palms hit the road and spared his face a second impact, but Motormaster's foot thudded on the small of his back at once, pinning him down.
"See those?" he said grimly.
Dead End's optics came back online. Half of his face stung with heat and there was a crack in the unbreakable glass of his visor, but he didn't need the zoom enhancement to see the specks in the sky. Ignoring the pain and humiliation, he turned on his combat radar.
Aerialbots.
Exhaustion swept over him – why couldn't the 'bots leave them alone? Weren't they going to die soon enough? Wasn't it enough that Motormaster had beaten them already? – but he said nothing as the weight on his back lifted. He picked himself up dizzily, tasting coolant in his mouth from a broken line, as Motormaster transformed.
"At least there's just four of them," Wildrider said over a private channel, though he sounded more tired than optimistic.
They'd managed to take down the Aerialbot leader during the battle, but Dead End thought that this only showed the futility of even such a small success. We've just made the rest of the mosquitoes angry enough to track us out here. He drew his compressed-air rifle, but realized in the next moment that that was useless too. At the speeds the Aerialbots were moving, not to mention their altitude, hitting them would be difficult at best.
He tried aiming for a point just before where they were, but they split off in defensive maneuvers that were clumsy but effective. Drag Strip had shoved the cubes back into Motormaster's trailer by then, and the thunder of a powerful engine drowned out the sounds of the jets as the semi began to move.
"Stunticons, head out!" Motormaster roared.
Well, that was an option too. Dead End subspaced his gun and transformed, enduring the pain as he did so and not sure whether it came from him or one of his teammates. Tires thudded down to the ground as his engine revved. Drag Strip was nowhere in sight, and Dead End thought for a moment that he had raced ahead at a speed amazing even for him, but a quick check of the radar showed he was far closer at hand. Wildrider and Breakdown, still recovering from the discipline, were a little slower, and Dead End radioed them to tell them that he would bring up the rear.
Though Motormaster was slow as well, for some reason. Dead End didn't believe he was holding back on their account, and since their definition of "slow" was ten miles above the speed limit, they were still covering ground.
The Aerialbots were much faster, though. They streaked overhead, all firing at once. Laserbolts spattered harmlessly off forcefields but gouged smoking craters in the road. The Stunticons maneuvered around those easily enough, Dead End nearly skidding on two tires as he veered hard; even Motormaster didn't get his wheels caught in any of the ruts. The Aerialbots swept back for a second try.
Then they split up suddenly. The white Harrier and the red Phantom swooped low while the other two kept their distance and continued to fire.
Dead End slammed his brakes, skidding to a stop. Breakdown sped ahead, engine racing, giving off jagged dissonant vibrations that made Dead End feel as though his own joints were loosening.
Or maybe that's the Aerialbots targeting us, he thought. Warnings began to flash in his HUD as his forcefield weakened from laserfire, but he knew that from the sky, the only thing the Aerialbots would see would be the bright spatter that told them the initial strikes weren't working. Then they'd switch to missiles.
Correction: now they switch to missiles.
The grey F-16 wheeled, burning altitude, and loosed a missile straight at him. If he had been in better condition, Dead End would have used his thrusters to leap up and physically intercept the plane, but he couldn't afford it now. He took aim at the missile and fired.
Fast though it was, his processors calculated vectors and velocities in nanoseconds and his gun snapped out a burst of compressed air that deflected the missile at a sharp angle. The missile rammed into a cliff and detonated, burying a lower road with tons of rock and debris.
The F-16 shot overhead, then came back for another pass. While the Stunticons had been in the city, the Aerialbots wouldn't have dared to engage them with that kind of persistence in case humans were harmed in the crossfire, but in the open spaces, things were different. And they couldn't form Menasor, not with the cubes still in Motormaster's trailer.
But Motormaster had other plans. The back of his trailer flipped open abruptly and a yellow arm hooked around the trailer's roof. Bracing himself, Drag Strip took aim with his gravito-gun and fired.
The black F-15 plummeted like a stone but fought the fall, turning it into a far-too-fast descent. There was a sudden shadowy rush of scorched air above them as the F-15 came in at an angle, howling incoherently – Dead End couldn't tell whether in fury or fear or both. The Harrier's flight faltered as the effects of Breakdown's engines hit it, but the Phantom fired two missiles before yawing wildly to one side.
One missile struck the highway just ahead of Motormaster and detonated in a cloud of thick, choking fog. The second one exploded off his forcefield.
Motormaster jolted violently, spilling Drag Strip on to the ground before he disappeared into the mist. Wildrider's tires screeched as he halted, transforming a second later. He groped for his scattershot gun with his good hand. Dead End didn't think he could aim very well in his condition, but since the gun would fire a beam of lasers that spread out widely, he was sure to hit the red jet.
Breakdown skidded away from the cloud of mist before them. Motormaster wasn't even visible within it, and Dead End suddenly knew that the mist was going to kill them in some way. Is it poisonous? Corrosive? He activated all his sensors, dragging in wisps of the vapor through his intakes.
Flammable, he thought just as Wildrider fired.
The beam of lasers fanned out, striking one of the Phantom's white wings and the growing cloud of mist simultaneously.
Dead End threw himself down, an arm going over his head reflexively. A wave of boiling heat, almost solid, rushed over him as the mist turned into a fireball; he felt his paint scorch and blister as his forcefield finally went down. A hoarse roar rang in his audials, though he thought that might have been just the echoes of the explosion.
Keeping his optics offline, he checked his radar. The other Stunticons were still alive, to his mild surprise, though the Aerialbots were active as well. That's only to be expected. Still, they had been scattered by the explosion and seemed to be retreating, though he felt sure that that was a feint; they would undoubtedly regroup in moments and close in for the kill.
He let his optics go back online and sat up. The air was thick with smoke, but a red flash in the grey was Wildrider getting up groggily, shaking his head.
"Dead End?" Breakdown said over the radio. "You two all right?"
The side of Dead End's face still hurt fiercely where Motormaster had hit him, and he supposed there would be further punishment once they were back in the base. What was the point in being "all right", even by their loose definition of the term? The Aerialbots might as well have deactivated him and saved Motormaster the trouble. He struggled to his feet without answering.
"My elbows are scraped down to the primer," Drag Strip muttered. "Lost my grip when the fragging 'bots fired--"
The smoke was starting to clear, and Dead End caught a glimpse of the Aerialbots in the distance, two of them trailing dark plumes. Wildrider spotted them as well and grinned, though when he spoke Dead End could tell he was too tired to laugh. "Guess we kicked their afts but good," he said.
"They…" Breakdown hesitated. "I think they did what they came to do."
The tone of his voice was warning enough; Dead End turned sharply. "What's happened?" he said aloud.
"Where's the boss?" Wildrider said, so quietly that Dead End would not have heard him if they had not been standing still.
Dead End stood where he was, not moving, one optic on his radar as Wildrider stepped forward unsteadily. His sensors registered a slight wind that felt cool against his scorched chassis and sifted away the last of the smoke.
Breakdown was on the other side of the highway, his paintjob smeared with dust and soot from the fire; Drag Strip didn't look much better, but he was on his feet as well, looking around in puzzlement. There was no sign of Motormaster.
Drag Strip froze suddenly. Dead End followed his line of sight over the pitted and burned lanes that still showed tire tracks where something heavy had skidded hard. The guardrail just ahead was twisted and broken, but the grey paint scraped against it was visible now that the smoke had cleared away.
Breakdown hurried to the side of the road and glanced down over the edge. Drag Strip, for possibly the first time in his life, was slower. "How badly is he damaged?" he said, without looking to see for himself.
Wildrider nearly knocked him into the ravine as well as he bounced closer, took a look and let out a long, low whistle. "Think we'll need to call the 'Structies to get him out?"
"Yeah," Breakdown said, leaning over with both hands braced on the intact portion of the guardrail. "I tried him on the radio… he's not responding. Still, he's not dead."
Drag Strip took a step back and a faint glow began behind his visor. Dead End remembered that long afterwards, remembered it as the moment when the nightmare began, when Drag Strip said the words that started them all down a road they had never traveled before, a road which would divide them and lead them alone into dark places.
He said, "Not yet."