Chapter 55
'Where are we going, Demona?' Jolt asked, faithfully following her as she rolled off the boat and left the docks without pause. Sundance was deep in recharge in her floorboards. Demona could feel the red plates of her armor expanding and contracting with each intake. The feeling was a warm one, it eased her worn spark and gave her hope.
'There are only a few Seekers left on earth,' Demona answered, taking a right turn, 'we'll go through them one by one if we must.'
'And if he's offline?'
'Do you trust me, Jolt?'
It wasn't until they were at the first red light that he responded. He stopped then shifted forward a few more inches to make contact with her alternate. 'With my life.'
She smiled. Her tone softened, 'I know what I'm doing, mech...'
They drove on for a time in silence. She could tell that he was deep in thought over something, but upon entering Gears' junkyard he came back to the present, 'Demona? Is Gears hiding a Seeker in her home?'
Demona transformed, shifting so smoothly that Sundance remained at rest. She curled her fingers around her sleeping sparkling and spared a minute to look down at her. She still couldn't quite wrap her processor around the fact that she was now a 'mother', that this small wonder was her young one. She lifted her eyes to Jolt when he changed forms. He turned his electric blue optics to her and said, "I am still confused."
She offered him her hand with a small smile, "There is something here that will help us if he is offline."
His gaze brightened when she opened her hand and he took it. Demona looked towards the caved in garage and lead him towards it, "This is where Sundance was born."
He blinked when she used her toe-claws to push away some of the debris until a tiny sliver of alloy caught her eye. Without a thought, he knelt and reached for it. She followed his example, "Although the Cube was destroyed, the surviving shards still carry the essence of Primus. This has the power to online a downed mech."
There was a look of awe in Jolt's optics as he turned it gently in his palm. Demona watched the piece shine in the sunlight, "I believe...that Megatron was revived with an All Spark shard...there was word of the humans failing to protect another. That is the one that brought my creator back to life..."
"Demona," he started softly. She felt his fingertips brush over her cheek, "why are you so set on this...plan?"
"It's the only one we have," she explained, "even if it is strange and confusing...I must believe in it, Jolt, I must believe that something can save my home and my family."
When he didn't reply or move, she turned her optics to him, "I will not let this planet die. I will not let it be torn to pieces by our war like Cybertron. Before I arrived on Earth, I knew nothing but black skies and the silence of a dead world. I will die protecting this if I must."
Pain shined in his optics when she spoke the last sentence. He looked as if he were about to start up with his over-protectiveness when Sundance came awake with a yawn. She stretched out in Demona's palm, wrapping her tail around her thumb lazily. Her little optics blinked online, and she smiled up at her with a squeak.
"I want her to live a life of peace, Jolt...I don't want her to grow up fighting and hiding, like us."
He stared down at the little one, that same painful longing in his gaze. His hand reached towards her almost hesitantly, fingers hovering over the red dragon. Sundance trilled happily when she saw his blue armor and stretched out towards him, wrapping all four sets of claws around his pointer digit. She turned her head to gaze up at Demona, Mine.
'Perhaps someday,' Demona soothed through the bond. Sundance nuzzled into her hand cheerfully.
"We should get moving," Jolt told her, tone quiet as he watched the youngling, "we don't have much time."
"No, you don't," a cold voice whispered behind them.
In an instant, Demona's battle routines kicked on and she took her sparkling and placed her in her hold for the first time. Her claw blades slid out into the light. Jolt slipped into a stance beside her, the blades of his whips extended out of his wrists, sparking with blue electricity.
Demona felt her optics widen when she found herself staring into the crimson optics of a femme, her pearl-like white armor shaped into menacing angles and sharp edges. She felt Jolt tense up in shock beside her, but he never left her side. Sundance shifted and turned inside her hold, afraid. How the slag did she...why couldn't I sense her!
Demona quickly ran through all of the decepticons she had encountered in her life, but no signature or face matched this one. She was an all-new foe, mysterious and alien. Demona could feel it in her spark that this unknown decepticon was deadly.
"Who are you?" She asked, spinning her claw-blades.
"Greetings Demona," she said, voice smooth like silk but cold like ice. Demona's frame tensed.
"I've heard much about you, you are quite popular among the ranks...they call you 'The Red Blade', the 'Slayer'..." the plates of armor on one arm shifted and pulled back in a liquid-like motion to form a thick, slightly curved white blade, "but they call me 'The Reaper'."
A red-tinted visor flipped down over her optics, not too different than the one Jazz wore. Saboteur, Demona thought. Her spark pulsed at the realization. This wasn't just any pawn, not just any common foot soldier.
"My designation is Paradox," she opened her arms, "and I have come to reap your spark and send it to The Pit."
Getting attacked from both sides...While I was at my sister's this weekend, I was trying to hash out the details on meeting Jetfire, when Paradox just kinda 'poofed' up out of my imagination, much like Demona had before I wrote The Guardian. I really like her character, or how she is in my head, anyway...We'll see if anything happens with her.
Holy crap I'm tired...that's all you're getting today, folks, sorry.
Demona and her family, Paradox, and the story belongs to me. Transformers does not.
