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(Yay I'm on a roll with this! Looked over by the lovely Ice Fata, please enjoy!)
Smokescreen heard more than felt the dagger slide into his left shoulder.
A deep cracking noise filled the sudden quiet, crystal skin splitting with a buttery ease beneath the sharp tip of the blade. The pain flickered into life within moments, hot on the heels of the impact. He screeched, swinging round, the blade that was lodged firmly in his body wrenched from grasping fingers. The blue Crystaline lunged forward, his adversary back peddling so that the fairy's long lethal talons tore open the shins of his attacker in a quartet of energon spraying lines.
The hooded Necromancer went down with a cry, his black cloak fluttering about him and hindering what little he could move. The shadowed oval where his face should be fell away, revealing an ebony face with fearful violet optics staring up at the looming, snarling Crystaline with a Mercuricorn Blade sprouting from its shoulder.
"Swindle!" Another hooded Necromancer shouted in concern, a bow with Mercuricorn blood dipped arrows aimed and primed.
Smokescreen roared, smashed glass and a horrible shriek rolling in the Kaon gloom as the poison began to seep into his body from the lodged weapon. The air stank of dark magic, putrid and sulphurous, catching the back of his throat. He was vaguely aware of ducking away from the flying arrow that had been loosed through his burning pain, swiping the shaft out of the air and snapping it in two with a show of fury with needle teeth bared.
They needed to die.
But it was the thought of home that stopped him, making him spin on his talons and burst into a run, away from danger, away from certain death.
His sweet little Shardling and his Twins, though not of his magic, nor even species, were undeniably his, would be left all alone if he Shattered. He knew his King would never fail him and raise them as best as he was able with the Saboteur Jazz as help, but he also had a curse to deal with and an army to run. That left very little time to nurture growing creatures of their calibre.
All this flashed through his mind as he ran, dodging arrows and throwing knives, hunted like a turbo fox. The poison was beginning to sizzle in his veins, an obsidian web leaking through his shoulder from the dagger still imbedded within him. It was creeping towards his core much slower than what was average, a possible byproduct of remoulding what had once been a vital tool for the Mercuricorn that had owned it.
He took the next left, towards an old bolt hole he had made back when he was no more than a Shardling. As he had grown he had draped it in magical illusions, a speciality that ran in his crystal line so that it had been his private place.
He ducked into an alley, bounding up the walls as shouts ran by below him, dark cloaks swirling in the smog ridden streets, black ghosts haunting shadows.
Exhausted and suffering, Smokescreen dropped into an abandoned apartment through a window that was magicked to look like a wall. It still held a treasure trove of trinkets from when he had been still living in Kaon with his Family, local offerings or boons from gardeners that had once looked upon the Crystaline's as holy nature sprites tending to Primus's sleeping body.
He sank down next to a half stunted shrub of Tarnian Tender, plucked from the travelling market many vorns ago that he had lovingly grown and guarded jealously for nearly a hundred vorns. It was bent and weak now, nothing like glorious golden shrub he had abandoned in search of what remained of his family after a particularly brutal attack on the city.
He turned with effort onto his uninjured side, puffing clouds of methane in the pain spreading from his shoulder, crystals floating into air as he leaked yet more of the nurturing gas into the room. He felt cold, yet he was being roasted alive simultaneously as he thrashed a little when a spasm took him, his kicking sharp talons severing a rouge crystal shrub clean in two. He whined like a dying whale, his claws flexing uselessly against an enemy within himself.
Vision began to fail him, dark curtains drawing his immortal life to a close. He reached into subspace, a useful ability picked up from the Cybertronians he worked with, wincing as he pulled a long opaque crystal from his subspace.
"My King." He hissed, choking as another fit gripped him sending him half rolling in an uncoordinated flail. "Prowl..."
His vision faded as the scrying crystal dropped from his limp talons.
===Iacon===
==Prowl==
He was in a meeting with Optimus when the sense that something was wrong curled over him like a wave. He visibly shivered, his metal doorwings shooting up in alarm at the magic based input, his chevroned helm jerking to spy the glimmering crystal on the Prime's desk. The Crystal King reached out, his clawed metal fingers shaking as a dread filled him. He did not hear Optimus call him nor feel the binding runes flare, he only had optics for the crystal.
White fingers caressed the mineral, an electric jolt washing into the king as a vision captured him, foggy milk coloured methane smoke swirling into his helm to paint a distressing picture.
Smokescreen was unconscious, sprawled near where the scrying crystal had rolled from his lax fingers, a shiny silver dagger embedded deep into the shoulder with black Darkness spreading slowly but surely towards his Kin's star core.
The vision was swept away, leaving him groaning with a deep seated distress, Optimus worriedly asking what was wrong as the Crystaline braced himself on the table, panting a harsh cloud of methane as his arms shook with his weary weight.
"Prowl, do you need to see Ratchet?" Optimus repeated when his Second in Command looked at him owlishly.
"Ratchet...?" The Crystal King parroted in a daze, before a sharp plan snapped into his mind like a thunderbolt from on high.
He swept from the room, the Prime anxiously following him with a deep rumble of displeasure when the fairy silenced him with a wave of his servo.
Prowl burst into the Medical Bay, a frightening snarl on his face as he grew more and more annoyed with the whole situation.
Ratchet, never one to back down from a challenge, came at him with a wrench in hand from a tool box he had been cleaning, his own expression of contempt fading into shock when Prowl locked down the medical bay with his personal access codes. "Excuse me?! What the frag do you think you are doing?!"
The Praxian did not reply, levelling him a sour look before demanding him softly, "Summon Him."
Jerking like he had been shot, the medic composed himself before he sneered, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You know very well what I am talking about." The Crystaline snarled, bursting from his metal skin, trapped star at his core blazing, lighting him from within. "Summoner Ratchet."
"Ex-Summoner." The CMO growled, his familiarity with magic glaringly obvious when he did not react past the mess that the Crystaline made of his floor.
He did react however when Prowl charged him, long deadly talons curling around his collar flaring and lifting him from the floor, "I will not watch one of my kin die before me when I have the power to prevent it. Summoner Ratchet, you will call your familiar."
"He's not my familiar! He's Unicron Spawn!" The Mage retorted, though his servos did drop the wrench to grasp at Prowl's wrist.
"He may be one of the Dark Saints and a blight upon creation, but I need him right now. Summon him." The tactician barked furiously, needle teeth bared and vents flaring open to raise his back spikes.
"Oh, I'm already here." A voice cooed, giggly and excited.
Optimus jerked away from the doors as a curl of black smoke fluttered out from a drone beside him, the Prime wincing as the Matrix recoiled at the odd negative energy.
Prowl dropped the resigned looking Mage with a pleased snort and turned to the cloud. It didn't take shape, nor did it come any closer. "Dark Saint Wheeljack. You're looking well."
"Phshaw, looking well yourself Prowl." The smoke giddily swirled, a pair of blue optics and a creepy slasher smile of the purest white peering out from the depths. "How long has it been?"
"Not long enough, Slayer of Primes." Prowl replied neutrally. "But circumstances call for your aid."
The smoke fluttered, until a dark raven like bird was perched on a life support, "You kill one Prime and suddenly its 'No goodies for you, your a spawn of Unicron'."
Even though the bird was generally expressionless, the gathered mechs and mythical creature could tell that the Dark Saint was pouting.
"I am more pleased that you are not being influenced by your more temperamental kin. The Dark Thirteen were always such a pain to deal with before you all lost your bodies." Prowl rumbled, clearly not amused.
"No fun as usual Prowl." Wheeljack jeered, the raven dancing on the spot. "Now what need would you have of me? I'm busy you know. Ratchet has me put to work doing inventory."
"I am fully aware that You and Ratchet have a binding agreement, as unwise as summoning you was." Prowl began, clicking his talons on the floor irritably. "But in payment for the safe return of my injured kin, I will give you what you've always wanted, ever since Prima banished the dark Primes from their frames to live as formless ghosts."
The raven dissipated into a swirling mass of excitement, the formless face returning with narrowed eyes but the slasher smile broadening eagerly as Ratchet tried to protest in the background, a curl of darkness rendering him voiceless as his summon silenced him with a flick of its eyes.
"And that would be?" Wheeljack prompted, playful and deliciously eager.
"A body to call your very own." The Tactician replied silkily, extending a taloned hand in offering. "Do we have a deal?"
A servo, skeletal and all things wrong formed in the whisk of frothing dark, curling around the crystal talons. "You have yourself a Deal, Crystal King Prowl."