Author notes: Excuse me while reality kicks my ass. *thud*
Do I actually have some reviews to respond to? GASP. Yes, that I do!
Sassbrat: That scene will probably happen in this fic in the later parts. But.. Very much later. Yeeah.. *cough*
Thephoenixqueen: The 'kid' was Mirage. Trackback isn't even.. .. I don't know what I did right with Trackback for people to like him. XD;
Smoking Caramels: The plot bunnies have been viciously gnawing on me while I've been at work, no less. It's been nuts, here! *dizzy thud*
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Walk the silent emptiness
That leads me by my hand
And throw away
What I don't understand as a man
Love, hate
Sex, pain
It's complicating me sometimes
Love, hate,
Sex, pain
It's underestimating life
And I wonder as I tear away my skin
It's taken me so long
To stitch these wounds from where I've been
And mother, please, don't bury me
I'm begging for my life
It's hard to say that I would be complete
Before I die
- 'Love-Hate-Sex-Pain', Godsmack
Souvenir: The Six
Chapter Ten
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"..Uh.. 'Rerra?" Volks gulped from a few feet away.
"..Yeah?" Carerra felt equal parts shocked and terrified, staring at the rambling yellow minibot in shellshocked disbelief.
"I'm scared."
"Me, too."
'Scared' was, for the most part, an understatement; Carerra couldn't recall the last time she had been struck cold in such a way.
As a security guard and an escort, she had been through more than a few dangerous situations and fire-filled skirmishes; granted, there had been more times where things had gone according to plan than otherwise, but her life for the past several hundred stellar cycles had been lived with the expectation that things can and would go wrong.
This, however, was far beyond anything she could have expected. After all, weren't Decepticons supposed to be extinct? The last time she had heard of one had been in history class.
The green minibot glanced to her orange friend to find that the same wide blue optics she must have had were staring back at her; Volks, it seemed, wasn't doing much better.
Then, the yellow mech stopped pacing and turned to face them. "Do you know why you're here?"
"..Uh.." Carerra sputtered, openly gaping at the crazed twitch the mech sported. "Sir, that's what I was trying to ask -"
"Shockwave picked you out, right? Tall purple guy, one really big creepy optic? Lots of claws?"
"Y.. Yeah." Well, that couldn't be good; the name alone sent warning bells through her mind, but she couldn't recall why.
"You're here to be his spark slaves!"
The words sent a cold chill down her spinal strut. She opened and closed her mouth several times, but no sound came out.
Still, he continued to ramble. "That's what I've been for.. Forever, and it's going to hurt like slag! But you have to be careful because he's fragging huge and I tried to get out a few times, but it didn't work.."
"W-wait, what?" Volks, however, managed to get hold of herself faster than she was able to. "Spark slaves?"
Horror began to bubble up in Carerra's mind; the yellow mech was obviously insane. She had only once ever had to deal with a bot that behaved similarly, and that had been to help cart off a hallucinatory asylum patient to a hospital. Still, that particular bot's insanity had been from a prolonged stay and heavy medication that he hadn't needed. "Sir.. Sir, how long have you been here?"
The question had the yellow bot pause in a deeply disturbing manner; he actually jolted in a way that didn't seem natural. "What year is it?"
Carerra turned slowly to stare at Volks; her orange-plated friend stared back. "Oh, frag."
Slowly, hesitantly, Volks turned back to stare at the mech. "G.. Give us a few seconds, sir. We just.. We need a moment, okay?" She smiled in the same way she did with that asylum patient from so long ago.
"He'll be back pretty soon, though." Still, the yellow minibot backed off and even crawled back atop the couch.
As he did so, Carerra took a few steps back; Volks followed until they were both back by the door they had been tossed through.
"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Volks' voice had never sounded so small; her optics had never been quite so wide.
"I.. I think he might be." Carerra gulped and glanced at the mech on the couch; the bot in question sat on the chaise and traced nonexistent lines on the window with a single finger. "He's missing a few cogs, so he's gone through something, that's for sure."
"So.. So, you think.." Volks covered her mouth with one hand; the petite orange frame began to tremble.
"Hey. Hey, Volks." Carerra frowned deeply and grabbed her friend's shoulders in a gentle hold. "Volks, remember when we had to take that one business guy past the Rigel System and we had to stop to refuel? We went to that bar, remember? And that one glitched aftplate tried to attack you?"
Volks stared up at her friend for several quiet seconds. "..Yeah, but he wasn't three times as big as I am and wasn't a Decepticon."
"That's not the point." Carerra tried to smile; even she could tell it was shaky. "You kicked his aft and even got him arrested after. Even if Mr. Crazyaft there is telling the truth, we can handle this. We'll be okay."
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They weren't going to be all right; Hubcap could tell just by looking at them.
He had never seen femmes so small. At least, he couldn't remember ever seeing minibots shorter than he was, even in those seemingly ancient memory files from before his capture. These two were of a size that most would have to be careful with in interface.
Shockwave was anything other than careful.
The two femmes were on the far side of the room, standing and talking quietly by the door. If he strained, Hubcap thought he could probably make out what they were saying; it wasn't a small apartment, but it wasn't large enough for complete privacy, either. However, he didn't really try, far more interested in looking at the stars.
Fake constellations were created anew; if this was going to be the last night he had to make them, he wanted to make as many as he could.
There came a sudden notion, however, that these two may be the last Autobots he ever spoke to. If he was deactivated or handed to another Decepticon, he doubted he'd get any more opportunities that he had under Shockwave.
However, the two were clearly intent on avoiding him by the distance they took. Perhaps they thought he was crazy. Perhaps he was; he didn't know and, for the most part, he didn't care.
Still, he glanced back to the two newcomers. "Oh, my name's Hubcap."
The two femmes stopped and stared; both sets of optics were wide. A few seconds of surprisingly awkward silence passed.
"..Volks." The shorter, orange femme shifted in place. "And -"
"Carerra." The green one frowned.
Hubcap smiled at the responses. Then, he turned back to the window, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from his frame.
At least someone here knew his name. Other than Shockwave, that is.
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Shockwave was going to come back. It wasn't so much a matter of if; it was barely even a question of when. The schedule, as far as Hubcap knew, hadn't changed; he knew exactly when the antlered monster would return.
A glance to the berthside clock told him that it wouldn't be too much longer. He knew he had to do something and do it soon; if he waited for the alarm to sound off, there wouldn't be enough time to warn the femmes of what was to come.
"He's going to be here in ten cycles." The yellow minibot didn't look back at the two newcomers. Instead, his gaze returned to the window and the stars beyond. "When he does, he's going to read on this couch, here, for a little while. The alarm is going to go off when he's done." A moment of silence passed as he tried to remember what else they needed to know. "..He also doesn't like it if you bother him while he's reading, so it's better to just leave him alone and wait for him to be done. Then, he's going to take you to the berth." Or one of them, he supposed.
No response came from the girls.
Just as Hubcap began to think that they had either not heard him or were ignoring him, a hushed gasp came from one of them. Then, what he thought was the little orange one spoke up in a near whisper.
"Thank you."
Still facing the window, Hubcap smiled.
When the alarm sounded several minutes later, he could hear both of the femmes gasp and jump.
With a sigh, Hubcap slid off the chaise and finally turned around. With the way both of the new minibots backpedalled from the door, he wound up meeting them in the center of the apartment. From there, he tried to herd them in to a far corner - relying more on where he used to cower than anything else - with gentle nudges and vague gestures. It wasn't until the door actually slid open did the three minibots really get to where Hubcap thought they needed to go.
Shockwave's great purple form all but floated in; the antlered Decepticon appeared to be in a particularly pleasant mood. A great red optic, bearing a slightly brighter tint than usual, glanced at their direction for only a few seconds. Then, the gaze shifted to the shelf and claws picked out a datapad.
Hubcap frowned to himself. As the two femmes cowered and clung to each other - the taller of the two tried to calm the other down - the yellow minibot stared at Shockwave in baffled disbelief.
Wasn't something supposed to happen? Wasn't Shockwave supposed to kill him or hand him to another Decepticon? Was it going to happen after the usual reading?
Gritting his dentals, Hubcap sat back and waited. His limbs locked up in tense anticipation; he couldn't recall ever feeling quite so anxious for something so terrible.
It felt like the reading session took far longer than usual; it was a small eternity before the alarm went off again. When it did, that great red optic flashed brightly - the same way it always did before an assault.
Claws set the datapad back in it's rightful place on the shelf. Then, cloven pedes took slow, steady steps towards the three minibots. The two femmes - he hadn't bothered to remember their names, fairly certain he would never see them again - took defensive positions and glared with equal parts ferocity and fear up the long distance at a shadowed faceplate.
Hubcap didn't even bother to stand; he frowned at Shockwave's approaching form. "Are you going to kill me now?"
The girls glanced back at him; this much, he had expected. However, the visible surprise on the ever-menacing monster wasn't. A single red optic blinked rapidly as it's gaze turned towards him. "Kill you? Now, why would I do that?"
Hubcap sputtered in shock; slowly, he got to his pedes. "You.. You said you could only have one."
Several seconds of silence passed. That large, slit optic flickered several more times. "That is no longer the case." He sounded amused.
Hubcap openly gaped at this response, boggling at what it insinuated; did this mean that he wasn't going to be painfully deactivated or sent away? A stunned haze fell over his processor; did this mean he was still going to still be kept there? The world spun.
A sudden scream shook him out of his thoughts; the orange femme - Volks, was it? He hadn't thought their names would matter - was being held in one claw, the talons of one large servo wrapped firmly around both tiny wrists. A cloven pede held the green femme to the floor, the smaller frame held firm with her back to the floor.
A pair of very small stasis cuffs were already in Shockwave's free hand; where that even came from, Hubcap wasn't sure.
"S.. Stop!" He found himself yelling the denial without any real conscious decision to do so.
"Stay where you are." Shockwave ordered; he sounded as if he were smiling. The stasis cuffs were clasped around one green wrist and then the other with seemingly little effort on the Decepticon's part; no amount of flailing helped the femme. "Do not interfere, Hubcap."
He always hated how the monster said his name.
"Let go of me!" Volks screamed and pulled at the hold on her wrists. Her pedes and ankles twitched in an odd way; Hubcap thought she might have been trying to perform some sort of martial arts maneuver. Whatever it was that she was trying to do was failing; wide blue optics, panic-ridden and desperate, locked in his direction. "Help me!"
"Volks!" The paralyzed femme on the floor choked out. "You glitched fragger, don't touch her!"
Two strong, polarized emotions warred in Hubcap's processor. The first came from countless stellar cycles of imprisonment and despair; a desperate need to avoid pain at all costs. With new revelations presenting itself, the notion that he could spend at least one night without roving claws along his frame became incredibly tempting to take; he could simply do as Shockwave commanded and back away.
The second came from a distant part of his past, ingrained in gritty memory files and a life almost forgotten; before reality had become nothing but miserable and that of an object, he had spent his existence charming others to like him. There had been the deep need to have others like him; approval and delight were what he had craved. Now, there were two Autobots here; the first he had seen and spoken to for more than a few cycles at a time. The first real chance to make friends.
There was no way to have both; it was either back away or dive in. To either be liked and in pain or hated and free for a night.
Of course, that 'one night' wouldn't last forever; being liked could last for far longer than that.
With that, it didn't take long to make a decision.
"Stop it! Leave them alone!" Hubcap took a few steps forward; Shockwave glared in response. "They.. They need time to adjust and learn! Just.. Please, leave them alone for a night or two, okay? If you want to frag someone, frag me! You've been doing it for Primus knows how long anyway!"
He could handle another night; it wasn't any less than he had been expecting just that morning.
Shockwave continued to stare; as always, his expression was difficult to gauge. Still, the pause was long enough to give Hubcap some hope; perhaps he was considering the proposal.
"..Very well, then."
The same relief that passed through his systems were readily visible on the faceplates of both femmes. A taloned arm reached across the hall, elongating itself - earning surprised gasps from both new captives - to grasp at something on top of the shelf. As it pulled back, a second set of very small stasis cuffs were in hand.
The tiny orange femme collapsed to the floor next to her friend; both twitched in near-complete paralysis.
Shockwave continued to glare in his direction. "Get on the berth."
Hubcap felt as if he had won some monumental battle; he had to hold back a smile as he did as told. There was no resistance, no struggles and no complaints.
However, he still couldn't help the pain-filled cries that came when their sparks met; he never had been able to.
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In this life, I'm me
Just sitting here alone
By the way, I tried to say I'd be there
For you
Don't you worry, please
And don't you leave me
Because I'll surely slip away
Through love, hate, sex and pain
I fall away in to
Love, hate, sex and pain
Love, hate
Sex, pain
It's complicating me sometimes
This love, hate
Sex, pain
It's underestimating life
- 'Love-Hate-Sex-Pain', Godsmack