Part 3 – And Hell Will Follow
"I am a monster, you know. One of the dangerous ones." - Darkest Minds (Alexandra Bracken)
The sun had disappeared from the sky, hidden behind angry, roiling black clouds. The warmth of the past few days had dissipated all in an instant, and cold hung in the air, frost touched the rusted skeletons of old vehicles, a chill pervaded the air. Daylight filtered through the black, but it was weak, faint, and the world was hung with the shades of gray typically reserved for dawn.
If he stood without doing anything for long enough, his mind would take over, transforming the world to a sea of black, broken only by the red sky overhead. A black figure covered the sky, hiding the light from view, save for the dark red that seeped between the feathers of its outstretched wings, turning them a bloodless burgundy. He didn't understand it, or his longing for the light the figure was blocking. He knew it would be seen as weakness, they would cut him down before he knew what it meant. Weakness was mercilessly eradicated, only the strong were allowed to stand.
It was something he understood and quietly accepted. Reality was not something he was foolish enough to find faults in. But he was weak right now. His hatred of all that lived, all that existed, was so total, so dark that he could be nothing else. Such blackened rage bespoke of an entity devoid of any goodness, and hope or any desire save that of death itself. Everything he had ever cared about, if he had ever been capable of such a thing, had died, betrayed him, destroying and being destroyed by him.
This was his reality.
"How do you fare, Scout?"
He only vaguely recognized the voice in his head. His memories of Autobots were much stronger. And he loathed them for it. Somehow, he felt that if he could just destroy them, the memories would go too. He didn't want to remember them. Those memories made him weak and vulnerable, and he hated them.
{I am no Scout!} he shrieked, his mind unable to find the source of the voice, so instead he lashed out by punching a pyramid of wooden dinghys.
He shattered one, sent the others cascading over one another, crashing to the ground. The Serpents at the pyramid's base squealed and scattered to avoid being crushed by the weight of the debris.
His anger not spent, he ripped one dinghy from the ground and hurled it, narrowly missing the she-creature waiting patiently behind him. The wood exploded around her when the little boat hit the metal crates behind her, but she did not flinch, not even when splinters struck her.
Bumblebee hated her. He hated the voice. He hated this place. He hated the sky, the wind, the Serpents, the piles of nondescript crap, the dirt, the thunder in the air, the lightning in the sky, the rain preparing to fall, the feel of grit and sand in his joints, the color of the she-creature's eyes as they lit with a mysterious excitement. But he most of all hated, hated, hated the Earth and all that lived and breathed upon it, most especially the Autobots. Why? He didn't know. The question itself made him feel claustrophobia and he recoiled from thinking on it.
"I believe he is ready," the voice spoke through him and he hated that too.
"Good," the she-creature had a lilt to her voice when she was pleased, and a soft hiss at the end of her sentences, "Then it is time we set him free."
{You have no say in what I do!} Bumblebee snarled, trembling with the unsustainably powerful fury that threatened to burn through him, burn him into a puddle, burn him to the ground, {I do as I please!}
"And what, dear Scout, would please you?"
The words had barely left her vile mouth, slipping off the end of that silver tongue, when he had her pinned against the outer wall of the control center, his hand wrapped around her throat, his elbow digging into her exposed belly as her body futilely tried to curl around and strangle him off. He knew he had her by the nerves at the base of her skull, his thumb dug in and turned her violent struggles into feeble, meaningless spasms and uncontrolled twitching.
{Call me 'Scout' again, and I rip your head off and feed your body to your brothers and sisters.}
A scorching pain raced from the base of his skull, up and down his spine, along his limbs, an electric fire searing through his veins, burning, flaming, until he was forced to loosen his grip on the she-creature and take a staggering step backwards, creating a space between herself and him.
The agony continued to notch up, a white-hot flame bursting across his senses, driving him to his knees, throttling him, dropping him to the ground until he was gasping with it, unable to cycle air, unable to move, unable to even think.
"Touch her again, and I kill you."
The voice, voice in his head, snarling and growling, telling him what to think and who to be. He hated it. He hated them all. He wanted them all dead. Starting with the Autobots and ending with the she-creature. Everything, everyone, it was all so despicable, so utterly disgusting and hateful and he just wanted death; wanted it, craved it, burned with need for it. And the voice was holding him back!
He screamed then, but not from pain, not from fear. It was a death scream, a feral wail of ancient, unquenchable thirst, a desire, a demand, a voiced need for blood, a scream from Hell.
The she-creature recovered quickly. Slithering out of his reach, she curled her lower half into a tight knot and raised the upper half of her body off the ground, her eyes gleaming with more pleasure than seemed appropriate for the situation, considering she had nearly lost her head seconds before.
"You are ready," she purred with pure delight.
Bumblebee convulsed, seething inside with pain of caged madness, the white circles in his eyes turning unnaturally dark, a pounding in his head sounded like the drums of war. He swayed on his knees where he'd been forced, sensing the exhaustion of his master, that other mind speaking in whispers to him, using his voice against him. The voice had lost its power over him.
Now Bumblebee was in control. He turned to the she-creature, the storm in his mind beginning to calm, letting fragments of thought enter hesitantly through cracked doors. She was Lachesis, and he had demands to make of her.
{Where is my prey?}
Sideswipe knew he shouldn't have driven off alone. He knew, of course, that Fixit was probably right. He was damaged, needed time to heal. But everything was hooked up again, he could feel that his body wasn't even trying to transform. He was stuck like this, no good to anybody, least of all himself.
He was angry, he was scared, and he was tired of trying to hide that, of trying to keep everybody calm while Strongarm slowly fell to pieces. He couldn't help her, he couldn't help them, couldn't even help himself. There was nothing he could do, and it wasn't like a clearing in the woods constituted a base of operations anyway. He might as well go for a drive, pretend he was patrolling, that he was being useful. At least it was something to do.
Surprisingly, Strongarm hadn't argued with him about it. Even Fixit had said a long drive might be just the thing, getting his body used to the idea of working again. Just so long as he didn't try to break any speed records. He wasn't sure it was true, but he saw that Strongarm, at least, understood. Not that her understanding was necessary, not that it had ever mattered to him what she thought.
He still owed Fixit an apology, but right now he was hurting too much to remember what for.
Sideswipe wasn't really paying attention to where he was going, or how fast he was getting there. Just so long as he didn't have to look at what had happened to his team, so they didn't have to see what had happened to him, so he could just -if only for a moment- be free. Like he used to be, before all of this.
Sideswipe had never felt any need to be of service to society. He wasn't a Warrior like Bumblebee, had never trained in any academy -much less a police academy- as Strongarm had. Hell, he wasn't even the brawler Grimlock had been. He was an aimless slacker and he damn well liked it that way. Nothing had ever felt like it was missing from his life, except for the fact that Cybertron continually came up with more laws to prohibit any and all kinds of unauthorized fun, even if it wasn't hurting anybody.
Nobody had called him to be here. Hell, nobody had even wanted him here.
But seeing his first human... that had awakened something inside him. Not so much a desire to be useful, or even a need to protect, and certainly no want to serve. But humans were so small, so fragile. They couldn't defend themselves, and Decepticons would stomp all over them, break them into little pieces and use their bones as tooth picks or hood ornaments.
Sideswipe had known, without having to think, that he could do something to protect them.
Like it or not, his core was Autobot, his spark beat with sympathy for the powerless. He would guard them not because he wanted to, but because he could. If he had to join the army to give the humans a fair shot at existence, so be it. That's what being an Autobot meant, doing things that maybe you didn't want to do because it was right, and Autobots chose that sort of life. Every time.
Sideswipe knew now what he was, and what he was called to do. He didn't have to like it, but there it was, plain and simple and inarguable as that. Only now... now that had been stripped from him. He couldn't protect anyone now. In fact, the people he cared about could get hurt protecting him. They could be hurt because he wasn't able to do his part, to play his role in this team. They might die.
Why was I given this chance, shown this path, if I was never meant to be on it? Why am I even here!?
What was the point in knowing his purpose, in finally feeling like he needed one in the first place in order to be happy, when he couldn't fulfill it? What was the point in caring about others when he couldn't do a damned thing to help them? What did any of it matter if it came to this, Serpents driving out and killing the Autobots, leaving the Earth open for the Decepticons to take over?
He realized his engine was starting to overheat. He was going too fast, and had been for too long.
With a frustrated growl, he pulled over to the side of the road and cut power. His engine hissed, something beneath the plating popped, crackled, heated metal almost immediately beginning to cool as the pressure was relieved. He let the ache of it spread through him, glad he could feel it at least.
Then he realized that he could hear something else. He sat still trying to listen, but the snap of his cooling engine was loud, and the only thing he could hear above it was the slow rumble of distant thunder across the sky.
He didn't like thunder. He'd never heard anything like it back home, to him it seemed unnatural. It was loud, ominous and he didn't understand how it worked, and somehow it was all the worse because the humans always wanted to get indoors whenever a storm came and he didn't know why.
The sky was so dark, everything was faded to gray. He didn't like the way the heavy clouds blocked certain types of light and seemed to coat everything in a fog, softening and stretching outlines until one object just bled into another seamlessly. He didn't like it, because it made every shape a menacing one. He couldn't recognize things visually, and it drove his optics mad as they fought to identify what he was seeing. Cybertronians weren't meant for this kind of lighting or weather.
And then... the rain. Water falling from the sky. At first little puffs of mist, then harder, faster, heavier, destroying vision and running into every crack and opening, flowing over and through him like energon spilling from the sky, hissing when it slid in and made contact with the hot engine, popping and snapping against him as it sizzled into nothing. He didn't like it.
But what he liked even less was the sudden, too-bright headlights that snapped on and cut through the gloom. He winced at the brightness, trying to see the vehicle behind them. There was something familiar, but he couldn't make it out through the rain. So he took a guess.
"Strongarm?" No answer. Headlights were too low to the ground anyway.
He heard the low growl of a living engine, the Cybertronian pulse of spark beneath the combustion. But there was something... wrong with it. Something unnatural. And it had nothing to do with the rain.
Sideswipe slowly, quietly, shifted gears and prepared to run.
As though sensing his intention, the Cybertronian engine roared. The headlights wavered for a moment, and then the vehicle was racing towards him, a yellow-black streak slipping through the dark.
Sideswipe reversed, backing quickly until his tires hit the road, then swinging around to face the other way. Before he could switch gears, the other vehicle slammed into him. Metal shrieked against tearing metal as the front of the oncoming vehicle hit Sideswipe in the back left fender.
The force of impact sent him sideways, rubber squealing against pavement, leaving sharp black lines. He rocked clear of the other vehicle for a moment, then it slammed into him again. It was going to flip him. It was going to roll him onto his back, rendering him more helpless than he already was.
He reversed, feeling every bit of his assailant's front tearing along his side, puncturing his door frame at one point, tearing the paint right off him. He turned and launched himself free, wobbling at little but managing to even out on his shock absorbers as he fled. In his rear view, the headlights flashed.
Call Strongarm. Do it now. She needs to know about this. She needs to-
The crushing force as his assailant slammed into him from behind rattled the thoughts around in his head, and he fumbled, trying desperately to remember how his comm unit even worked (knowledge which had never escaped his mind before this very moment). In his scramble to remember, he finally put a face and a name to the beast that was trying to tear him apart.
"Bumblebee! What are you doing?" he thought of a better question as Bumblebee moved up and hit him from the side, trying to drive him off into a ditch, "Why are you doing this!?"
All that he got as a response was an ominous hiss, followed by an inarticulate buzz. Then he felt the tires on his right side lose their ground, hanging in the air for a moment before he was forced over the side. He tumbled into the ditch and rolled, smashing into shrubs on the way down, finally coming to rest on his roof at the bottom of the ditch, his wheels spinning helplessly in the air.
Above him, he heard Bumblebee's engine growl.