A Race Through the Night

Chapter 1

Invisible Walls


AN. Okay, so I said this story would be a bi-weekly thing - or at least I meant to say so... But hey, who am I to ignore the nagging of the voices in my head? They simply refused to be quiet in there, so here is the first chapter! Read, enjoy, fav, follow, and review! Your input really does boost my writer's motivation.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers, I own only my OCs and my plot.

Huge thanks to my beloved sister and beta, enmused. Seriously, her stuff is amazing, go check it out!

And, so you all know - no spoilers - there is a person in this chapter who speaks in solid italics. For the best effect, read everything this person says at top speed.


Her last hiding place had been nice. Really nice. Nicer than normal. She'd been there for nearly an orn and a half. She'd had Energon every day for the first time in far too long, and she'd even had a decent-paying job. Granted the Energon was over-processed low-grade, and basically her only pay was a roof over her helm, but considering how the war was going, she was going to call that pretty amazingly decent.

She jogged to a halt, leaning heavily against the grimy, steel alley walls, trying to get her frame cooled down a little. The rain burned on her armor, slowly eating away at her protoform beneath the gaps that her armor couldn't protect. Already the acid had been busily attacking her armor, leaving her paint patchy and mottled. The sniper's red optics, wide with fear, scanned her surroundings wildly. Nowhere to hide!

"Quit panicking!" She hissed to herself, her spark beating faster in its casing as she heard the dreaded pedefalls approaching again.

Her helm slammed back against the wall as she stared up into the sky in despair. There was nowhere to hide and she wasn't sure how much longer she could run. No matter where she ran, or how well she hid, they always found her.

Half a vorn she'd been running.

Was there even any point in running away? Whether she ran or not, they would catch her eventually. She'd been running for what seemed like a life-time. Her friends had probably been told that she'd gone with one of the escapee ships to start a neutral colony far away from the War.

Coolant started to spill down the gray battle mask she wore for no other real reason than that she'd had it for as long as she could remember. With the painful reminder of part of why she was running to start with, the femme snapped the mask down, not meaning for it to have gone up in the first place. If only she had gone with the neutrals. If only. But fate wasn't to be so kind to her.

She looked over her shoulder with tear-blurred optics, a short whine rising from her engine as she started running again, whispering desperately, "Primus, help me!"

Of course, she knew that the ancient being at the core of their planet could do little to help her, but maybe, just maybe, as the source of all life he could keep her alive. She wasn't ready for the Well yet.

Her pedes felt like lead as she forced herself to go on, her frame long since past mere exhaustion. Laser-fire shot by her, narrowly missing her helm, making the femme bend down as she ran, her transformation cog having been damaged nearly a quartex ago, making it impossible for her to transform.

"C'mon, femme!" One of her pursuers sang, "We only want to play..."

Another hot blast of weapons fire brazed her side, pushing a gasp of pain from her vocalizer as she staggered on, not daring to glance behind her for fear of who she might see. Life-En, coolant, and acid rain flowed over her frame in a strangely beautiful mess of blue, pink, and red. Actually, she was probably just about to pass out, and when she woke up the first thing she'd see would be the inside of a cell. Or a torture chamber.

If she woke up.

She swung around another corner, skidding a couple feet over the wet roads before regaining her balance enough to stumble on, her vision obscured by the myriad warnings from her HUD. Up ahead she saw the abandoned shell of the warehouse Megatron had ordered destroyed nearly three vorns ago.

Maybe she could hide there.

At the very least it would get her out of the corrosive rain. She put on a burst of speed, her destination being the only thing on her mind. Half a block away, the femme let out a muffled scream as all of a sudden there was a mech right behind her, wrapping her arms behind her in his grip and clamping a firm hand over her mouth, ducking into what looked like a solid wall.

She struggled against the grip of her new assailant kicking and biting and pulling away from him as much as she could, her vents heaving sporadically as terror started to wipe out all rational thought. She'd managed to stay free for so much longer than she'd ever hoped; she couldn't let them catch her now!

Three breems passed and at last the femme went limp in her captor's grasp, giving in to the despairing thoughts that told her that there was no point in resisting. She'd always believed in destiny - or she thought she did. But that could have been a lie too. She just hadn't ever thought that she was destined to die like this. As a captured fugitive who wasn't even supposed to exist.

Another three breems passed and the light blue mech let go of her. Scrabbling away from the mech the astro-second she was free, the sniper backed herself straight into a corner, letting out a frightened squeak as she felt the cool metal wall against her dorsal plates. Coolant welled up in her ruby optics and she whispered almost inaudibly, "Primus, help me, I don't want to die..."

The blue mech was in front of her in less than and astrosecond, pacing back and forth so fast she could barely keep her optics on him, rambling, "Nonononono, don't cry femme, please don't cry..." He ran a hand over his helm in an annoyed and stressed gesture, "Scrap, I don't know how to deal with anyone crying, much less crying Decepticon femmes! Who're you running from, why are they chasing you? Please stop crying I just saved your life, so I don't know why you're crying anyway, but I'm not gonna hurt you I promise. Just- stop crying, for goodness' sakes, I can't deal with this!"

She blinked, her processors struggling to keep up with how fast the mech was talking. Finally he stopped long enough for her to actually look at him. The first thing she noticed had her pressing herself deeper into the corner, her ruby optics widening a fraction further as they landed on the red insignia planted on his chest. She whimpered, shuttering her optics and biting her lip hard.

Autobot.

Now she knew she was going to die.

"Oh sweet Cybertron, she's a Con. You just rescued a Con from other Cons who're trying to kill her." He rolled his optics, "Brilliant... but that makes no sense unless she's made Megs mad, which means she's dangerous and oh slag she's probably gonna kill me. Only that doesn't make sense either, cause why would she be crying and trembling in the corner if she wanted to kill me? Oh! She's leaking: she's hurt, I need a medic, but I'm stuck here on this Con-infested dying planet all on my own, cause Optimus and Ratchet and Magnus and Wheelie and- and everyone's gone, so it's just me and a leaky, crying femme and I don't know what to do!" The mech said all in less than a klick, taking a deep vent and opening his mouth again, "Why oh why oh why didn't they wait for me, or le-"

"Shut up!" She screamed, holding her aching helm in her hands and sliding down to curl up in a ball in the corner the pacing blue Autobot had trapped her in, purposefully or not. She whined softly.

Fate hated her.

It hated her because she wasn't supposed to exist. She was a mistake.

"Oh sorry sorry sorry, I'm rambling aren't I? I do that when I'm nervous, I just talk faster and faster and faster until everyone around me just wants me to shut up, cause unless they scream at me I just keep talking and-"

"Stop!" She moaned, pleading, "Just stop talking... please..."

"Sorry, shutting up now, totally shutting up-" The blue mech cut himself off and forced his blurry pacing to stop. He sat down beside her and hugged his knees to his chest. "Sorry."

In spite of herself, the teal and charcoal femme smiled, lifting her helm enough to glance up at the Autobot beside her who seemed to live at lightspeed. The way he sat there quietly without moving looked almost painful.

The mech seemed nice enough, but it was most likely a facade. Decepticons killed Autobots. Autobots killed Decepticons. That was just how it was. At this point though, she wasn't so sure that dying would be so bad. An Autobot blowing her helm off her shoulders would definitely kinder than what they would do to her when they caught her.

She leaned her helm back against the wall and sighed deeply. "So... Is this is the part where you kill me?"

That being said, she wasn't very keen on being 'one with the Allspark' just yet. She wasn't entirely sure why though. The Well frightened her now. Especially now. She wasn't even sure she would go there. But that was a thought line to follow up later.

She shuddered. This mech was playing the nice guy, but he would off her just when she was least expecting it.

"Kill you?" The mech repeated incredulously, shaking his helm vigorously enough that the odd spike that swept back along the top his helm whistled as it cut through the air, "No, I'm not gonna kill a crying, trembling, scared femme right after saving your life, how dumb would that be? Why would you expect me to do something so mean? Who were those guys chasing you anyway? Who are you, what'd you do to make them wanna kill you?"

She sighed again, looking around her curiously. This was no ordinary building that the high-speed mech had pulled her into. It wasn't even a building. That must be why she didn't notice it. This was a space-ship. Unfortunately, it seemed to be in a poor state of repair.

"Is this your ship?" The Decepticon sniper asked, deliberately ignoring the mech's questioning.

"Yes- I mean no- I mean yeah, I guess it's mine now cause no one else knows about it cause it's got a fully functional cloaking-device." The blue mech scowled, "Not that anything else is fully functional, otherwise I would have jetted out of here with all the other Autobots... who sort of left me here for dead." The mech frowned, his lip plates pulling on a bitter smirk, his tone going surprisingly sour, "I don't need them anyway, it's not like they cared enough to notice when I wasn't with them. They were probably glad to be rid of me, cause they're all slow."

"But you never answered my question. My name's Blurr, cause I'm super super fast and I do everything super super fast, faster than a Cybertronic race horse, if there was such a thing as a Cybertronic race horse that could run faster than the speed of sound, but you probably already know that, cause I'm really famous, cause I'm the fastest Cybertronian alive and have the medals to prove it." The mech - Blurr - said smugly, his whole chassis puffing up with pride, "So I'm Blurr, who are you?"

She supposed it wouldn't really hurt much at this point to tell the mech. It wasn't as though she could really give an informative answer in any case. If she was going to die soon anyway, she might as well have a decent conversation first. Even if this guy didn't kill her, her pursuers would find her eventually.

"That's just the thing." The femme whispered, "I'm not sure I know."

"Oh."

She looked up in curiosity at the single whispered word. Blurr's silence didn't last long though, "But that makes no sense, everyone knows who they are! It's not like you don't have a name, cause that would be absurd, cause everyone has a name, or at least a designation of some sort."

"Not necessarily," The sniper gave an empty laugh, "But you can call me Nightracer."

"Whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa, you're Nightracer? Like the super-awesome living-legend sniper?" Blurr suddenly looked incredibly wary of her, and as he got more excited he - she hadn't thought it was possible - started talking even faster than he was already, "Like-the-one-who-took-out-whole-armies-with-no-backup-of-any-sort? Like the Nightracer-I-should-be-thanking-Primus-I'm-still-alive-to-be-talking-to?"

She looked down at her gold twin sniper rifles, each of which were equipped with self-restoring power cells that were physically impossible to drain. She sighed. Hearing this reaction from mechs and femmes, Autobot, Decepticon, and neutral alike was getting really old. Because she could only ever give the same, self-depreciating reply.

"No..." She sighed again, "Just the copy."

"Oh." The mech said quietly, soon shrugging and continuing unphased, "Who're you running from though? Why are they chasing you?"

Nightracer stood up abruptly, hissing as the motion jarred her injured side and arm. Her whole frame burned from the acid still sitting on her armor and under her plating. She dusted off her hands and began examining the flat sheet of metal where she knew there was a door. Yet she could see no evidence of a door, just a perfectly flat Cybertonium wall.

"How do you get out of here, Autobot?" She asked briskly, brushing off his questions again. That was not a topic she felt like breaching with a stranger. Definitely not an enemy stranger who was still most likely planning on killing her or turning her in.

The mech leapt to his pedes and zipped over to her, making her jump in fright as the blue mech seemed to materialize at her shoulder, crossing his arms over his chest with a determined frown. "Nope nope nope nope nope. You're still a Con, and I'm not telling till you tell me who's after you and why."

The teal and charcoal sniper scowled, stepping away from the mech who was vibrating beside her, charging the particles in the air. "So I'm your prisoner here."

"I kinda'd rather refer to it as a sort of enforced asylum for your own well-being, but I s'pose if you wanna look at it like that you could." He shrugged indifferently, "Just sayin' calling it an enforced asylum is way more optimistic in my opinion. And when you're being chased by En-thirsty mad-mechs optimism is probably a really nice thing to try and keep up, rather than just focusing on the whole about-to-die-a-painful-death-thing. But-"

Blurr flashed away for a moment, leaving her to stand there staring blankly at the space he had just occupied, until he reappeared and shoved a cube of Energon in her hand before disappearing again, calling over his trail of blurry after images, "-I brought you some Energon and-"

"-some high-grade if you drink and-" She blinked as a smaller cube of highgrade appeared in her other hand. Shortly after the two different Energon cubes were joined by a microfibre cloth, a polishing cloth, universal color-enhancing cleanser fluid, and a first aid kit. "-some cleaning supplies and some doohickeys for your wounds and if you want to take a shower, the wash-racks are down the hall two lefts and a right or maybe two."

The blue Autobot stood beaming and vibrating in front of her, waiting for her to react in some way. She wobbled slightly under the pile of supplies the mech had dumped in her arms, shifting in a futile attempt to balance the pile.

"Um... I don't drink..." She muttered finally, dazed at the hospitality she was being shown. She was a Con, she was a hunted fugitive, and she wasn't even supposed to exist. He should be trying to kill her, not giving her a bigger meal than she'd seen for vorns, with hard-to-come-by highgrade and enough cleaning supplies to bathe an army.

"Duh of course you don't drink, what was I thinking?" Blurr laughed, taking the highgrade from her hand and nearly toppling her armful of stuff as he ran back to wherever he'd gotten it from, hollering, "I don't drink either, I just thought, you know, you're a Con, and the stuff was in here when I found the ship, so I figured what-the-Pit maybe she'll drink it for me."

She stared after the mech before shaking her helm and running a location scan. It came up with no results. The sniper frowned and tried a different scan, also coming up with nothing. The ship's walls must have some form of frequency reflecting materials integrated into the metal.

Nightracer shuttered her optics and took a deep breath, trying to get her muddled processors straightened out. She must have tripped while she was running and hit her helm. She was unconscious and dreaming. That explained everything.

The femme dumped the load on the floor in front of her with a crash of shattering glass, making her hiss as shards of the cube cut into her feet. Why her dreams thought it necessary to make everything from glass shards to laser wounds hurt so much was beyond her. She frowned. If she was dreaming, then all she had to do was find some way to wake herself up.

Blurr returned just in time to see her slap herself in the face with vicious force, making the running mech skid to a screeching halt to stare at her like she'd gone insane. She yelped at the self-inflicted pain before growling and kicking the pile of cleaning supplies halfway across the room in frustration.

"Uh... You alright? That looked like it really hurt a lot, why'd you slap yourself like that?"

She groaned loudly, rubbing the side of her face. Ignoring the mech, she mumbled, "Okay, so I'm not dreaming apparently. If I'm not unconscious, maybe I've just gone crazy. Not the best case scenario, but it could be worse." She started pacing thoughtfully, "Don't know why I had to hallucinate a hyper-fast-forwarded weirdo Autobot in an invisible spaceship with no doors..."

"Hey that's offensive! I just saved your life and all the thanks you can give me is calling me a hallucinated weirdo Autobot?" He jumped in front of her abruptly and snapped his fingers in her face, "I'm not fake, I'm right here in front of you and if you don't like it, you can just get off my ship and let those freaks outside kill you if you'd rather, but I refuse to be insulted out of house and home!"

"Be better than your constant babbling on and on." She retorted sharply, "Washracks are down the hall, two lefts and a right, hallucination?"

Blurr glared at her in annoyance before nodding and zooming off down one of the halls, then a moment later he came back and shot down the next corridor and the next. At long last, when the mech had probably been to every room on the ship, he came back and crossed his arms huffily.

"I'm not a stupid hallucination!" His foot blurred as he tapped it rapidly in impatience, "Leave if you want then; the door's open now, I don't even know you, so it's not like I care if you wanna go die out there all alone in the acid rain. But if not, feel free to look around cause every where you're allowed to be is open, everything else is gonna be locked. If you want me just run around the ship shouting my name and I'll come around eventually. Good cycle Con."

She stared at the light and dark blue after images for a klick before emitting a distressed moan, trying to keep the coolant from spilling from her unusually large red optics. Sighing heavily, the femme started tip-toeing down the hall the mech had indicated, constantly glancing around in paranoia.

A bot tended to be more than a little paranoid when they'd been running from who she was running from for half a vorn. Especially when every time she stayed put too long, she got to see her fate enacted on those around her while she ran like the fake she was.

Half a vorn of evading a team of walking torture-devices with the knowledge and continual reminder of everything that she could never be had worn on her. On her self-esteem, on her will to go on, on her patience. She'd shot her loyalties to oblivion when she'd killed her supervising officer. Two sniper bullets in the helm and three in the spark.

She hadn't wanted to kill him. That hadn't been her plan. Her plan was to simply shoot his pedes out of under him so she could run free. But her programming had had different plans apparently, because when the smoke had cleared, Bludgeon was leaking out of five well-placed holes in his chassis. Her lip-plates trembled as she really let herself think about everything that had happened.

"I didn't want to kill him!" She shrieked into the empty corridor, her vents shaking as she cried against her will, "I never asked for any of this!"

The teal and charcoal sniper collapsed to her knees just outside the washracks, sobbing with no restraint. Her hands balled up into fists as she glared at her knees, repeating brokenly, "I never asked for any of this."

At long last she rose, her coolant supply dried up. Her frame was still trembling and her balance was unsteady. But sitting on the floor in a strange ship alone while the acid slowly ate away at her protoform was not going to change anything. She clenched her jaw resolutely. She never asked for any of this, but that didn't change the fact that she was here.

She was alone in this world, living under the shadow of a femme whose life had long since faded into myth and legend. She was alone, she was guilty, and she was hunted. But she was not going to sit around, waiting to rust in her own coolant. She never asked to live, but she sure as the Allspark wasn't going to ask to die either.