(Chapter update… Blah… ahhh… So much stress from RL… I'm tired of my Grandma trying to force religion down my throat, like it's a balm that will make me perfect in her eyes. I'm half considering becoming something she can't stand just to spite her… but I'm already there. After all, I'm fat, I'm lazy, and according to her, internet friends are not real friends… well Grandma, take your religion and your beliefs and go fuck yourself. I'm tired of it.

Sorry. I vented… I… aghghghg. Just forget you read that.

I hope this redeems the previous floppy chapters, even though I got lazy with the fight scenes… I am just not in the current mindset to write out an all out slaughtering mess…

Happy easter.)

Guard us well? We're pit fighters. We don't need guarded from anyone.

The large chunks of metal, the outer shell of Cybertron above us, crashed down into the pits. There was the sound of squealing metal, of spilled energon, as mechs who were not fast enough on their feet were crushed beneath the planets failing crust. The endless expanse of space opened up above us for a split second, before countless Cybertronian bodies began to rain in from the gaping hole above us.

Papa grabbed my arm and jerked me back, throwing his frame overt top of mine and Mimi's as Aanas took flight above us, a loud roar nearly fritzing out my audio receptors. Faintly, I could hear Papa shouting too us. "Get your Mimi to safety!"

"No!" Shadeburner protested in my ear. "I'm not far along enough for this to bother me." He pulled us up first, tugging me to my pedes. His hand pressed to my shoulder, and then in his other hand I watched him drop his whip. There was a spark at the end, and then the flames roared up the length. Over the bond, I felt them arguing fast pace and had an unwilling front row seat to the conversation that took just milliseconds.

'You won't be fighting in your condition.'

'I was almost at the spark separation stage with Nightstrike before we noticed I was carrying! I never took any harm from it, and neither did she!'

'We're not taking the chance! This isn't a one on one fight. This is a warring battlefield that's spilled down into our midst!'

'Fine! If I don't go, then you don't go. We watch each other's backs!'

'You know I have to go, as does Nightstrike. We're battle worthy; you're carrying. By the codes of the pits, you aren't allowed to fight, Shadeburner. You have to understand this!'

'And what? I'm supposed to stay up here unguarded then? In my vulnerable state?'

'No…'

My barbed whips dropped from their compartments. My toxic energon flooded down their lengths, dripping from the hollow barbs. Along with my own personal blend, I flooded my lines with Nixazto, the fast acting metal corrosive acid, and Yfidrus, the spark melting paralyzing toxin. They mixed in my own energon lines before cycling down into the whips, making my lines burn pleasantly with harmless pain. I looked out to the battle; it hadn't reached us yet.

"BlackWind," Papa pulled the mech too him despite the seven foot height difference. Pulling the psychotic mech's helm down to his own, Nitrostreak snarled in his face, drawing a returned snarl from Blackwind. "You guard Shadeburner with your spark, you hunk of slag, or I'll torture you until your fried processor can't recognize up from down."

Blackwind snarled in Nitrostreak's face. "Yes sir!"

Once again, I was scruffed. It was really beginning to piss me off; sure I wasn't in my full adult frame yet, and I was still on the small side, but fragging pits! I wasn't a sparkling!

"Lets go Nightstrike." Nitrostreak said. He cocked his arm back to throw me over the mechs in our way, only for his arm to be grabbed.

I flicked my gaze over and glared at Mavnal. "Let go," I growled.

"No," He said. Using his height to his advantage, he began to pull me up out of my sire's grasp. "This is wrong for a youngling to fight. Nitrostreak, if you seek such energon shed, don't bring an innocent spark into this."

That was enough of mechs trying to control me. I flipped my frame slightly and let my arm mounted blade slide out. Slashing it across the cables of Mavnal's arm, I made the mech let go. Papa had enough of a grip to fling me a ways out into the battle, though not far enough.

"NanoSpring!" I heard Papa bark, as I headed for the shoulder of one of the Pit Mechs. "Boost her!" The mech, engrossed in fighting, still heard my sire. His arms rose up, and I curled my frame to land feet first on his palms. His arms sunk down like the shocks of our alt modes, his fingers curling over my pedes to keep me balanced as I wobbled. Then his arms sprung upwards, launching me forwards into the heat of the fray.

I flipped once in mid air, getting my whips to swinging, and caught sight of my sire still stuck on the platform, looking about to brawl with Mavnal. Mimi and Blackwind were currently being huddled to the back by the femme who had previously spoken of her paintings and their foretelling futures.

My right whip caught on the neck of one unlucky mech with odd wings, a seeker, and my momentum swung me around until it looped around his neck and I clung to his back. Pulling out my claws, I shredded his back before leaping off as he reached for me. My whip tightened around his neck, the barbs digging in, and then moved like a razor as it unwound. Well, unwound while sheering through his neck. I landed on the ground, not bothering on watching his shredded neck tumble away from his helm as the acids ate away at the metals.

I launched at the next mech, dodging a pit mech from my ranking. Slamming my whips into his legs, I shredded the cables, leaving his legs to collapse under him. With his helm in my reach, my whips were temporarily forgotten. I darted forwards, my feet claws spiking into his lower back and injected toxins as I used that spot for a standing point. My hands wrapped around his helm, his mouth open with a scream. I felt his optics shedding tears onto my hand. What a slagging little glitch.

I tore his helm off without a second thought, his energon spurting up and over my upper half. I flicked my glossa across my lips as I flung his helm away, bouncing it off the back of some stupid sap in my way. His energon was nasty. I spat it out of my mouth before I leapt from his falling corpse onto the back of another mech.

I was not so lucky with this one. He was faster then me, and managed to flip me over his shoulder before I could sever his spinal strut from his neuronet. I landed on my back, lashing my whips up to score the mech across his faceplates. The plates began melting grotesquely as he growled at me. He went to stomp on me, and then he was airborne, snatched up and subsequently torn to shreds in Aanas' claws.

I scrabbled to my feet only to be blindsided by another mech, denting the plating around my rib structure. However, as I watched Aanas wheel around in the sky, his optics searching for something, I dispatched the mech quickly enough. Some of these mechs were green; they were worse at fighting then the nobles. Scrabbling successfully to my feet after shoving out from under dead mech, I shook the spark goo off of my digits after successfully jabbing in-between the plates of his armor and splitting his spark in half.

I looked up only to have to flatten myself to the ground as Aanas made a sweeping grab for me. "Mavnal's orders," his voice rang out over the roars and screams of fighting and dieing mechs. "He doesn't want his healing to be wasted."

"And I don't give three slags, two pits, or one flying frag what he wants!" I roared up at him. Rolling to my pedes, I scurried into the throng of the fighting, escaping the dragon while taking several sidelong hits to my frame.

I spotted the gleam of my sire's frame not too far from me as he battled mechs right and left. I soon found myself settling into the monotonous rhythm of it all. If I hit the ground, Aanas was always tearing away the mech standing above me. If I was in an open space, I had to book it for the nearest throng of mechs and throw myself headlong into the violence, lest Aanas' claws catch a hold of my frame. I lost track of the frames I offlined, lost in the throng of battle. I did catch sight of uncle Windstrider once or twice as he swooped in to save my sire from a hit to the helm once or twice.

The floor was slick with energon and cluttered with dead frames and severed body parts. With each mech falling, their life blood mingling and their frames getting trampled down, I lost the ability to distinguish which side the dead frame beneath my pedes belonged too. At one point, I recognized NanoSpring from earlier, his optics long dark and dead.

The monotonous rhythem of it all was simple and plain, boring almost once you settled into the system of killing and getting beat while you were killing. Well, until something broke the rhythm of it all.

My spark seized and spasmed in my chest, fluctuating in such a way that it made me pause and nearly caused my helm to get severed from my shoulders. The pain flared over my frame, a pain I had never known before, and I tracked it frantically through my lines as I dispatched the mech trying to kill me. Mimi was fine, feeling the same thing I was, as was Windstrider, though his side of the bond was rippling, struggling to stay connected as he latched onto me frantically through the bond. I found Papa. Papa was not all right.

My optics found my Papa's frame right about the time that my spark did, and a rage ignited my frame, shoving aside the pain. I heard Mimi's desperate call to me through the bond to save my sire because Shadeburner wasn't able to get to Nitrostreak in time. My legs launched me off of the corpse below my pedes, and then I was launching at the mech hurting and defiling my sire in such a way that called for retribution.

Nitrostreak was on his back, his chest plates caved open. His spark glittered out of the hole, and the mech was scraping out chunks of it with his claws as Nitrostreak broke the code and screamed a shrill and static filled scream. My sire's arms flailed faintly, unable to focus with the attack to his very soul ravaging his movements and the bonds within. The mech, a dark black shade similar to my own coloring, was laughing, and clearly enjoying himself as he defiled my father before my very own optics.

He was also not expecting it when I broadsided him, knocking him off of Nitrostreak. I straddled the mech, facing his chest, and set out to give him a taste of his own medicine. My claws, dripping with acrid acids and venoms, dug through his chassis as if his very chest frame was made out of the soft foam added on the softest sleeping berths out there. Soon, as I pinned his arms with my legs as he thrashed beneath me in a feral fury, I bared his well-guarded spark chamber for the world to see. Out of the corner of my optics, I could see Windstrider providing cover for me as I took revenge for my sire. He even shot at Aanas as the dragon swooped to try and get me.

With one hand, I laid my whip across the mech's legs multiple times, coursing venom through the spikes as it tore, shredded, and infected the metal with my toxic essence. The other hand claws at his spark chamber, shoving away the little springy shavings of metal as I peeled back the metal of his spark chamber layer by layer. When I punctured the sensitive metal, the mech was screaming shrilly beneath me. I ignored his screams; after all, they were music to my twisted audio receptors.

Dipping my claws down, I grasped his spark and stroked it softly before I dug the tip of my thumb claw into the thick and solid plasma life energy. The mech bucked and bellowed in pain as I began to move my claw around his spark, severing the energy in a full three hundred and sixty degree around way. I watched with a sick satisfaction as layers of his life force dimmed and were shucked off, leaving his spark to be an ever-shrinking ball of plasma.

When I reached the core, I stabbed my thumb through his spark, relishing the squeal of pain the mech let out before he choked and his optics dimmed as he died.

I left his frame then, moving back over to my sire to assess the damages. Around us, the battle began to slowly wane, the invading bots being killed off. Dropping down next to my sire, I tugged at him with the bond, feeling his pain still undulating through me. Carefully, I leaned on his chest with one hand as I checked to see how his spark was. What I saw wasn't good.

Along the curve of the glowing orb, there were large gouges of missing spark material. Unlike how I had killed the other mech, Papa's spark was riddled with holes instead of the smooth kill I had done for the other mech. His spark was hemorrhaging energon everywhere, leaking from the holes and gouges as well as the torn housing of his spark casing, and the glowing orb was fading and brightening at random.

Closing my hand gently over his spark, I tried to stop the bleeding.

'Don't, little one. It's no use.' Nitrostreak spoke to me over the bond, his voice faint beneath the layers of soul deep pain.

"I have to try," I grunted, the pain reverberating through me. Pressing my palm a little tighter around his spark, I tugged at Mimi's bond. Mimi was in hysterics. But, I don't blame him; his bond mate was in pain after having his spark shredded and defiled. 'Get Mavnal and bring him here. Papa needs his healing touch.'

'Already coming. Keep him alive, Nightstrike.'

'Yes Mimi.'

I kept pressure on Nitrostreak's spark, the hemorrhaging easing with the pressure. Papa kept speaking to me in little murmurs across the bond, those same words repetitive in his helm and in his being. I did not respond anymore, I just remained a silent statue to his agony. There was a loud thump, and I risked a glance to see that Aanas had landed and was shredding a mech not to far from where I was settled at. His large wings battered at anyone who came close to his frame, and those dagger like teeth tore through the metal of the mech's chest. It occurred to me that no one might have noticed, but it looked like he was actually eating the metal he was ripping apart.

As the frame disappeared mostly, I noticed that it was true. He was eating the mech he was killing.

Mavnal took my shoulder, startling me. "Let me see what I can do." I was pulled away, my hand leaving my sire's spark, and was pulled into a rough hug by my carrier. Mimi was extremely upset, but holding me seemed to help ground him. Blackwind was behind Mimi, staring at Papa blankly.

I turned in Mimi's grasp to watch Mavnal. He leaned forwards on his knees, touching Nitrostreak's chassis. He gently touched the edges of the chamber, drawing a keen from Papa, before dipping a hand inside to gently shift Papa's spark around. He held it for a moment, and I watched him concentrate on what he was doing.

Nothing happened.

Mavnal heaved a potent sigh and gently let go of Papa's spark before standing again. He looked over at us, and I saw deep in his optics that he was upset but resigned. "By Primus will, his spark is destined for the matrix." He murmured. "Spend what time he has left with him. Aanas will guard you… I must tend to the others."