Arcee has too much time to think.
Oh, and the idiots on the Nemesis get to realize they didn't devote enough time to thinking.
AN- Slight warning for an implied mention of suicide-by-purposeful-risks.
There really were only a few appropriate responses to this scenario.
Wordlessly, Knock Out and Smokescreen seemed to decide on Wild Panic as their reaction and then proceeded to do just that.
"Oh-OH-"
"PRIMUS, he's just standing there! What'd we do? What'dwedo?"
"We're fragged, we're fragged, we're-"
"Slaaag-"
It was embarrassing, really. And there was zero doubt that their entire embarrassing outburst was forever recorded. Who knew what Soundwave did with all the potential blackmail he had.
That wasn't really important in the moment.
Finally, Knock Out managed to get his processor working on doing something other than cussing and replaying the memory of when the silent con had handed Airachnid her aft in front of everyone.
"What'd we do?" Smokescreen asked again, trying to balance the forge and get his servos into weapon mode without dropping the thing. "Shoot him?"
Good enough plan. Knock Out pointed the immobilizer and triggered it.
The blue streak of light was absorbed into the center of a groundbridge that tore open only a nano after he'd started to fire the thing. The green vortex disappeared, taking the relic's shot with it. Behind where the bridge had just been, Soundwave let his head fall ever so slightly to one side. It was the first movement he'd made.
Ugh- Knock Out shivered. Uncanny.
Watch out for the quiet ones-
"Slag," he repeated the rookies earlier comment with wide optics.
Laserbeak disconnected with a whine from Soundwave. Scrap, that's what he'd done in the fight with Airachnid too, wasn't it? The medic didn't want to stay to find out. He tried to fire the immobilizer again, almost dropping the Apex Armor while he was at it; the con just bent away from the beam. How was he so good at this whole dodging business? Was Knock Out really telegraphing that badly?
...he probably was. Soundwave was notorious for reading bots; both their verbal and nonverbal cues.
So they'd need to do something unexpected; something that all Knock Out's time with the decepticons wouldn't give away.
"I've got this!" Smokescreen yelled in the sort of excitement signalling he'd just had another stupid plan.
The medic cast the briefest of glances to rookie and then chucked the Apex Armor at the con in the hallway to force the mech to break concentration and grab it. Then Smokescreen was grabbing him with two fingers he'd let off the handle of the forge and tugging them both through Soundwave.
Oh. Primus. That was not something he ever wanted to do again. Going through walls and doors and bots cuffed on berths were all far preferable to running through a mech that made Knock Out's plating crawl.
He glanced behind them to see Soundwave holding the armor, his upper body twisted 180 degrees to look at them.
If a blank, reflective visor could portray emotion, it seemed to currently be rage.
Above them, Laserbeak was flying, trying to hound their incorporeal selves.
If it wouldn't feel like tempting fate, Knock Out would probably be taunting.
"What now, genius?" he yelled at his companion instead after they slid into a separate room.
"I don't know!" Smokescreen shot back. "You're the one who knows this ship!"
Oh, so now he wouldn't take the credit for this misadventure. He saw how it was.
"Kid? Raf?"
"He can't hear us!" Knock Out interrupted. "The Nemesis is shielded from communications unless they come from one of the con terminals."
Smokescreen pulled up short. Around them, the warships intruder alerts system was ringing incessantly.
"Wait, really?" the younger mech asked.
It took effort to resist rolling his optics. Effort Knock Out didn't bother to put in.
The panic had turned into another look of scheming enthusiasm.
"I got it then!" he proclaimed.
The next moment and both the two of them and the stolen relics were falling through the Nemesis and into the sky below.
When the last insecticon fell dead, the compound was engulfed by horrid silence. The autobots filtered closer to Optimus, giving Dreadwing a wary berth. The seeker still had his sword out, the tip resting atop a broken slab of concrete. The ground was stained with energon from Airachnid's hoards, fluids spilled from M.E.C.H.'s tankards, and even the occasional sign of blood.
Arcee went to find June immediately. The woman wasn't in the building the two-wheeler had dumped her in, which was probably a good thing since that shelter was completely totaled now. She wasn't with Fowler; as became evident when she found out he was also moving through the compound away from Optimus. The human agent noticed her and tapped her pede with his gun.
"Hey, you-" he looked up at her and she looked back. "Care to give me a lift?"
"I'm looking for June," Arcee said.
His shoulders jerked once in amusement.
"What'd you think I'm doing?" Fowler asked rhetorically.
Good enough for her. She picked up her new load and kept moving over the scrapped base gingerly.
The place had already looked like a wreck when they'd first shown up. Now, after the bombardment of insecticons, it was basically a scrapheap. If somewhere in this mess the humans had been hurt then...
Then what? a part of Arcee snapped at herself. What, exactly, would she do?
After Tailgate, she'd gone on increasingly dangerous solo missions; ones a part of her hoped each time would be the last.
After Cliff, she'd planned to drive until it was impossible to keep burning her treads. Jack had interrupted that plan.
After Tailgate, she'd tried so hard to forget everything that had happened in that interrogation room.
After Cliff, she'd fell into the idea of revenge instead of running.
And then Airachnid had landed into her life again. She'd forced Arcee to look back and collapse in the past; but Jack had made her keep driving forward. Debilitating pain turned into angry vindication. An anger she'd first turned on Starscream when finding out what he'd done and then on Airachnid every time they met each other on the battlefield.
Until the cave.
Until she'd had the other femme on the ground, ready to kill her and end the nightmare, ready to put Tailgate to rest-
Airachnid hadn't looked worried.
She'd looked ecstatic.
When you extinguish my spark, make it hurt-
You know I would extend the same courtesy to you
Did she say it just to psych Arcee out? To trip the two-wheeler up and give herself time to escape? To make Arcee second guess herself every time she moved in for a killing blow and in doing so keep herself alive?
Or did she truly mean for some sort of agony?
Arcee thought it was the former. Airachnid had become very similar to Starscream in her mind; both were incredibly willing to save their own plating and psyching the two-wheeler out had allowed the femme to escape alive. But where she'd stopped herself from killing the seeker, she had only recoiled from the insecticon out of brief disgust at doing exactly what Airachnid wanted. Bumblebee had made her come to her senses with Starscream; the look of horror in his optics made her think of Cliff-
Cliff, with the brightest blue optics she'd seen-
Cliff, casually leaning against the berth she'd trapped Starscream on while she was busying herself with finding the best tool to terrify him-
Cliff, who only liked a fair fight but honestly would rather be friends with someone than kill them-
The shame Bumblebee had made her feel paid off; when Airachnid had been planning on gutting her, it was the damned seeker that got her out of fatal danger. If it was the opposite killer finding Arcee like that? She didn't doubt the insecticon queen would only pretend to honor some deal on keeping her alive long enough for her to start hoping- and then Airachnid would proceed to pull her apart. Or maybe she'd just cut fast.
One clean slice.
A pointed spike, coated with acid, on an extra limb.
Right over her face and chest so that the acid could do its work and crawl down to the spark while energon hit the wall behind her-
Just like Tailgate.
It sickened her, but sometimes Arcee came out of recharge at night hoping, as disgusting as the hope was, that Cliff had gone out quick. She shouldn't be hoping that, thinking that, shouldn't but- but-
Airachnid had fragged with her head all that time ago. Arcee had never gone back to herself. There were thoughts and wishes and growls she never would've let run free in her processor before that now ran rampant.
If Bumblebee looked at her with that look while she was preparing to kill the other femme, Arcee wouldn't stop like she had with Starscream.
She didn't think Cliff would want her to either.
She wanted to think that at least.
So why hadn't she done it? Why hadn't she been able to kill the monster?
Was it all the hopeful pacifism Optimus indulged in? Was it her falling for Airachnid's trap and second guessing her own thirst for revenge? Was it disgust at the idea of giving Airachnid what she wanted?
make it hurt
Even remembering the way Airachnid's face lit up with glee saying that made the two-wheeler want to shiver. Sure, she knew the glitch was a sadist. There was a special amount of joy she took in interrogating Arcee and Tailgate that went past professionalism. But she'd never figured the other femme would be so excited at receiving agony. Not that it was inherently fragged up but Arcee didn't want to be the game piece in getting Airachnid her daily kicks. It was worse than being a contributor in helping Miko hit her adrenaline quota.
Knowing how easily the insecticon queen played with people's heads, Arcee still believed it was an attempt to throw her off.
But thinking that didn't make the scene get out of her head.
Much as she wanted to kill Airachnid, she was losing her vengeful vivor.
She wanted the monster dead.
Before, she'd wanted to be the one to do it. She wanted to end it and spit out a 'this is for Tailgate'. She wanted to rest easy at recharge.
Arcee didn't think she wanted to do it anymore.
It was too messy. It would haunt her. It would make her think she'd just played into Airachnid's plans and no amount of second guessing would make those piercing words she'd said in the cave go away.
She hadn't fought Optimus when he'd assigned her a job away from where the fight against the femme would be going on (although it hadn't taken her long to go exactly where she was subtlety told to stay away from; it was too hard to resist when she felt personally responsible for keeping June safe...for keeping everyone Airachnid set her sights on safe).
So if the femme's goal had been to psych her out, she'd succeeded; Arcee had felt distinctly uncomfortable fighting Airachnid closely after the incident in the cave. She still brought out all the fear, all the memories, all the despair- but no longer summoned forth the uncomprehending anger. Not if that's what Airachnid wanted; not if that was what she considered a victory.
But that in no fragging way meant that she'd stand back and let the maniac land a single digit on anyone else.
Seeing those heads in her ship had sent Arcee reeling, spinning, sick-
Seeing Breakdown in pieces on the ground of that forest months ago dredged up more memories of Tailgate; another blue mech torn apart. She hadn't exactly liked the ex-con back then, but it still hurt for her to see. In reaction, Arcee did what she did best while stressed; she attacked the con responsible.
Just like Airachnid to have ruined even that method for coping for her.
So what would she do if somewhere in this wreckage, her humans were crushed by some fallen building or burned by one of the explosions?
Would she run or rage?
Arcee didn't know. She desperately hoped she wouldn't have to find out.
"There!" Fowler interrupted her unsettling reverie and pointed towards the ground.
Scrap, she'd let herself go drifting. She was supposed to be on top of that.
"Ju...Jack? Miko?"
Those IDIOTS. Arcee had heard they'd followed over the comm lines earlier, but it still only sank in when she saw them both. Jack was supporting his mother, who looked like she was leaning heavily on his weight. Miko was trudging a little ways behind them, dragging something far too large for the teen to be trying to move.
"Arcee?" Jack looked up. His face was streaked but it lit up seeing her.
The two-wheeler dropped into a crouch, letting Fowler slip from her servo and run to help the others. The human left his gun behind on the concrete and Arcee picked it up after him; he was next to Jack in a sparkbeat, trying to help the two Darby's back to her waiting servo.
For some reason, Miko was moving slower.
There was something very disconcerting about seeing the girl without her usual energy. It reminded Arcee of how the teen had gotten after Bulkhead's injury.
Sullen, angry, borderline dangerous.
But with an edge of something else this time. And June kept flashing worried glances back at her. The human woman wasn't good at hiding her emotions; she was guilty about something and that something related to the teen trudging wordless.
Not the priority here. Arcee leaned down closer.
"June," she spoke and drew the woman's attention. Scrap, she looked even paler than before. That sweater she favored was wrapped on her arm and stained with something dark. Blood.
At a bit of a loss for how much worry to show vs how much calm, Arcee tried for a tiny smile. "You're looking good."
"Flattery will get you nowhere, Arcee," June smiled back. With Fowler and Jack's help, she managed to get on top of the two-wheeler's palm and plopped down to a seated position. Arcee was pretty sure the motion was less voluntary and more a sign of the nurse's exhaustion.
"I thought I told you to stay in cover."
"'Cover' seemed like a relative term at the time," came the reply.
Judging by the state of the building Arcee had chosen, the answer was fair enough.
Finally reaching the others, Miko dropped her weight and climbed up to join them. The usual spunk failed to manifest.
While Fowler started asking June quick health questions (and the nurse picked on how out of practice his emergency protocols were), Arcee looked at the thing the girl had left on the ground.
A complex beacon/activator that looked to be of decepticon origin. The type of device that could be wired to bombs and mines to manually set them off.
In other words, something she was 99% sure belonged to the one con wandering around out there.
"Where did you get that?" she asked with a nod towards the controller.
The three humans clammed up.
It was June that spoke next. "It was...dropped. By the blue guy."
So it was Dreadwing's. Arcee used her free servo to pick the thing up and closed her fist around it and Fowler's gun both.
"Well, if he hasn't already turned on the rest of us, I'll be sure to wrap it up in a bow and give it back." She stood up after the comment and carefully raised the humans to rest against her torso.
Her stride with Fowler when they were searching for the others was brisk, containing franticness.
Her walk back was slow and careful; she had precious cargo in her servo and she dared not ever put that cargo in danger.
Woe be to anyone who tried to do so.
Whether they attempted to psych her out of killing them or not.
