The City That Never Sleeps 3
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Barricade stepped over the broken body of the man, surveying the smoking lot littered with bodies with disgust.
It was the second time this month he had been ambushed by a group of humans intent on capturing him; their reasons unknown. He had done nothing to alert anyone to his presence, driving aimlessly across the continental US at the speed limit with his holographic driver present at all times. Recharge had been spent in not entirely abandoned lots, scattered about with other cars, refuels had been done in the middle of the night without notice at random gas stations, their video recording systems, as always, blocked and deactivated.
The tactician had been anything but careless in the aftermath of the final battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons, not at all eager to garner the Autobots' attentions. More were coming in, and some had already landed. While Barricade was a Decepticon officer to the core, he knew better than to continue a war where all had been lost.
Their leader was gone, the very artifact that would have brought them to glory was nothing but a smear of radiation surrounding the city it had been destroyed in, and he was sorely outnumbered on a backwater planet that was proving to be more annoying than useful.
And now he was being chased by some idiotic fleshling group whose intent he couldn't fathom.
Not so carefully, or respectfully, he sifted through the bodies, trying to find a commander or unit leader that might be connected to some sort of communications or electronic device that could lead him to the culprits. Only to have is processors short when he removed an annoying car from atop two bodies.
One was some nameless lackey, the other…
The other was the woman who'd led the first ambush.
The woman he had crushed underfoot, snapping her neck, and then thrown into the burning warehouse out of sheer spite.
It was not logical, unless the human had an identical twin carrying out her orders, or there was a line of clones she could sent after him and as far as Barricade knew of Earth, they did not have the technology. He couldn't scan the woman to see if her DNA was similar to the other one, he was a scout and a tactician, not a medic or scientist. He hadn't been one before the war, and there was little reason to upgrade, especially now.
His scanners were sensitive enough to know that her body was doing something strange, her heart was stopped and there was no brain activity, yet rivulets of energy ran through her corpse.
The woman came alive with a jerk and gasp, and the crushed bones protruding from her flesh sank back into her skin and healed over smoothly.
Barricade brought out his secondary weapons, aiming at the woman.
She smiled nastily at him, spitting up blood that matched her hair. "Kill me again, robot, it will not stop me from using you."
"And what are your plans for me then, human?"
She cackled, as mad and insane and power hungry as Megatron had been.
When it seemed that no answer would come, Barricade fired a hole through her heart.
After that, the woman would attack him at least once a week, always trying to capture him, always meeting her temporary demise by his clawed hands. Each time, he learned something about her– Her name was Dominique, she hired mercenaries to do her bidding, she was stark raving mad, and she owned her own company.
That last bit was what drew him to a small laboratory outside of New York, somewhat surprised to find the woman waiting for him, her hands glowing as she held a book and smiled predatorily.
He fired on the building behind her, setting it aflame and listened to the panicked screams from inside.
"This ends here, fleshling."
"Oh, no, robot. It begins here." She purred, and then began to speak in a language he barely had time to look up before his body stopped responding. Barricade could do nothing but seethe as she motioned him to follow, his legs moving without his own input.
He would find a way to kill her, once and for all.
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TBC
Author's note: And 'lo! A plot has been born! Kinda. I've been posting this at TF2007Fun, an LJ community, and I'm quite a few chapters ahead. But, those chapters are slightly different as I have tendency to go through and edit them after a couple rereads. Don't expect another quick update like this one, I'm still editing the others. Currently, I'm stuck, I really have no idea where I'm going with this and the plot bunnies have stopped eating my ankles. (Or, conversely, I've had so many plot bunnies biting my ankles that I can't decide which one to go with. Argh.)
Okay, so the creator of the show has mentioned that they do not know the limits of Demona's immortality, or how much damage it would actually take to kill her without Macbeth being the culprit. I am going to go with the fannon idea that unless the Weird Sisters or Macbeth are actually the ones to do it, Demona cannot die– even if you shatter her during stone sleep (which she can't do anymore thanks to Puck), decapitate, or otherwise mutilate.
Call it artistic license.