A Race Through the Night
Chapter 2
"Enforced Asylum"
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers.
Huge thanks to my amazing sister and beta, enmused!
Anything spoken by Blurr will be in italics and best read at high speed.
Clasping on the last piece of her shoulder armor - a shield over her upper arm that consisted of one of her alt-mode's doors - Nightracer shivered, shooting a peevish glare at the mercury spout. In spite of the trials of her life, cold washing had still managed to maintain a surprisingly high rank on her list of things she hated.
The teal and charcoal femme left the washracks and stepped out into the empty, pale blue walls.
The silence seemed nearly tangible. She was alone. Fate deems that she meet someone - the first person really - that was actually genuinely nice to her. Kind without hidden motives of some sort or other. No secret agendas.
And how did she react?
She shoved him away - rudely - refusing to accept that he was even real. Of course, given her history and her former alliances, it was no shock to her that the speedster's hospitality had confused her.
Nightracer looked around in curiosity before spinning on her heel and heading off in a random direction. She ran her hand along the smooth ship walls as she went about her aimless exploration. So far, she hadn't seen a single door. A couple breems later, she still failed to locate a door.
According to her chronometer, it was the middle of the second night cycle. All she really wanted right now was to find a berth to recharge on. She didn't actually feel like exploring the whole entire ship with its elusively invisible doors. Yet here she was.
The washracks' door had been left wide open; apparently the only reason she'd been able to locate it. Blurr needn't have concerned himself with locking the doors. The sniper laughed quietly. Locked or not, she couldn't even find the doors on this messed up ship, much less open them.
The femme jolted in surprised fear, a groan of metal echoed through the ship, followed by a series of crashes that seemed to come from above her. And below her. Nightracer bit her lip, "B-Blurr?"
She peeked her helm around a sharp corner before stepping around the bend cautiously, her armor tightening around her frame. She moved slowly and quietly along, working extra hard to keep her pede-falls silent in the echoing halls.
"Blurr, is that you?" The femme called again, her voice wavering faintly.
What if they had found her again? Already? For all she knew, the next corner she turned would reveal the magenta mech with the abysmally void black optics ready to charge the life from her. Or any one of them, really.
At some point in time, she had started running. It had become a sort of state of being for her. Her acid-mottled pedes pumped beneath her, her every step jarring the injuries that she'd only been able to fix on the surface. The laser burns on her arm where her other door had been blown off and her burnt side would heal gradually on their own, as would the damage caused by rain. Her t-cog however, would require a little more invasive attention before her self-repair nanites would be able to do anything even remotely of use.
Which left her running, lost and aimless through an unfamiliar, invisible Autobot ship.
Eventually, if she lived long enough and was allowed to stay long enough, she would have to tell the light and dark blue speedster who she was running from. And then he would evict her like everyone else she had sought shelter with. Because everyone knew that she was a dead mech. Everyone also knew that anyone that protected her, or stayed too long in her company, would be just as dead as she would be.
The ship's eerie creaking and moaning continued, seeming to grow louder as she ran. She could hear pedefalls rapidly approaching her from behind as she swung around corners faster and faster, still trailing her servos over the walls. They were beginning to ache and she glanced down at the them only to find that she'd worn through the acid-burned remains of the thin armor on her servos and was now beginning to leak life-En from her servo-tips.
Yanking her hand away from the wall, where she'd left a smeared trail of life-En leading her pursuer straight to her, Nightracer whimpered and ran faster. She was right. They'd found her.
"Scrap..." She hissed desperately, swinging left down yet another corridor. The pedefalls didn't even hesitate as they followed her. They weren't gaining on her... yet.
They'd found her again, like they always did, and she couldn't even find a door to hide behind.
Coolant was beginning to stream from her optics as despair gripped her spark. The irony of her life never failed to amaze her. Well, mostly just leave her quaking in a continual state of terror as of late. Trapped in what was promised to be an 'asylum': a safe haven, she was going to be butchered for not pulling the trigger on a sparklings' establishment.
She hoped Blurr had gotten away and run like he'd seen Unicron himself. Honestly though, she had doubts that even Unicron could be worse than who she was running from.
Swinging around a corner too late, and slamming into what felt like a wall, the femme screamed as said wall spun away with the impact. The mobile wall collided with her dorsal plating with a crash as it flung her onto her face into a dark chamber. Dazed and terrified, Nightracer struggled to refill her forcefully emptied vents, her spark pounding heavily.
After about a klick, she pushed herself up onto her elbow and looked around with wide optics. The dimly lit room had the same silvery blue walls, but they were engraved with sprawling glyphs and plastered with images of racing posters, news pages, and awards. One wall was dedicated to shelves of gold, cyberrylium, cybertonium, and obsidian trophies. Against the other wall was a large berth with a soft violet light shining down on the berth's occupant.
The berth's occupant that was currently staring down at the intruder sprawled on the floor in front of his door, crying and dripping life-En from the servos of her left hand.
Nightracer squeaked and sat up, scooting back against the wall where there had been a door moments ago. Her engine let out a pitiful whine as the femme pressed her trembling self against the invisible door.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to come in here and wake you up!" She blurted out with a sob as her pedes scratched against the floor in a desperate attempt to get farther away from the mech, in spite of the wall behind the sleek hood of her alt-mode perched on her back. "Please, I don't care what you do to me; just don't make me go back out there! Please! They've found me, they'll kill me if you make me go back out there... Please..."
Her sobs wracking her frame, Nightracer just shut her optics and whimpered, shaking her helm and curling up into a ball, waiting for the mech to shout at her and push her outside to her death. Better her than them. It was a rational assessment with a rational solution.
"Uh, there's no one else on this ship, I just checked for life signs and there weren't any, so I have no idea who or what you're talking about." Blurr said, his rapid speech still making her processor lock up momentarily as it struggled to keep up. He held out a hand to help her up, giving her a reassuring smile, "Look, I get that you're stressed out, but I promised not to hurt you and I'm a mech of my word, and besides that, if I wanted to hurt you do you seriously think I wouldn't have done it by now?"
"B-but they'll kill you too-!" She moaned, holding her own hand to keep herself from reaching out to the mech. Everyone had an agenda. She just didn't know what his was yet, and she couldn't afford to trust. Trusting people only ever hurt her and everyone else involved.
Blurr straightened and ran a hand over the top of his winged helm, pacing in a quick circle groaning, "Scrap, this femme cries so much... I'm a messenger, a racer, not some... some Con-consoler!"
After that he crouched beside her and awkwardly patted her back as she sobbed in his arms, hiding her helm in his chest-plates. A comically bewildered and uncertain grimace plastered on his sharp, fine features, the blue Autobot mumbling sarcastically with a hint of resignation, "Sure, whatever, I'll just give you a hug then while you stain my freshly polished chassis with your coolant. Cause that's totally what one normally does with bawling fugitives when they burst into your quarters in the middle of the night babbling about nameless, invisible pursuers."
She took several deep vents, willing herself to calm down before pulling away from the Autobot to wrap her arms around her middle. Worrying her lower lip with her sharp fangs, Nightracer whispered, "... Sorry..."
"How long have you been running away from these people you're so scared of? And when's the last time you got a full night's recharge?" Blurr questioned, looking over her trembling self briefly, his deep blue optics showing mild concern behind the suspicious expression he held.
Her large ruby optics roamed the dim berth room in search of the enemies she knew were here, replying distractedly, "... Half-vorn running... Maybe an orn? ... Or two? Not sure..."
The mech was quiet for a klick before he wiped her tears away with a soft polishing cloth; he took her injured hand in his and examined it carefully before taking off the worn servo-armor. With quick, not quite track-able movements, he wrapped each of her servos in a light mesh, his touch gentle in spite of the blurry speed with which he worked.
"There's nothing to worry about, Nightracer, just relax. The ship is empty. There's no one on board, hostile or otherwise - well except for us obviously."
Blurr clicked the mostly useless blue servo-armor back on her hands to hold the mesh in place, reaching up to wipe the new coolant stains from her face. She noticed that at some point - probably as soon as she'd stopped crying on him - the mech had polished the coolant off of his own chassis already.
"H-how do you know?" Nightracer asked tremulously, her spark pulse just now beginning to regulate.
"Because I just ran through every single room on this whole ship, just so that I could say so and you actually believe me and stop crying all over everything." There was a smile on his face, and his tone was kind, leading her to smile back at him faintly. He was plainly still peeved about being woken, but she could tell that he wanted her to know he wasn't mad at her.
The teal, blue, and gray femme turned her gaze past her elbow sheepishly. "Sorry."
"Would you quit apologizing for every single teeny little thing that you do?" Blurr blurted exasperatedly, appearing in front of her in a flash, making her flinch away in surprise. She really needed to get used to the mech materializing right in front of her. "It makes me feel like some big scary monster that's scaring the living spark out of you, which makes feel like an awful Autobot."
His face drew on a slightly desperate expression as coolant started to roll down her face again, his hands hastily swiping at the tears with the polishing cloth. "I'm not gonna hurt you, I already told you that, and I'm not mad at you either, I just want you to stop crying, please, cause I haven't got a clue what do with crying bots."
"If there isn't anyone here, what was I running from?" Nightracer asked quietly, her wide optics staring deep into his.
Blurr laughed, his rich tenor clearer and smoother than any Decepticon laugh she'd heard. It was kinder and... genuine. "This ship is really echo-y and gets sort of spooky at night when you're on your own; you probably just heard your own footsteps and panicked and started running, making the echoes louder and louder." He averted his gaze to stare back at his reflection in the mirror on his wall. "Trust me, I've been here a while. It's easy to let it mess with your processors."
After a brief moment of contemplative silence, the blue mech shook his helm roughly. Standing up, holding his hand out again and smiling down at her, he said, "Anyway, if you really haven't had a good night's recharge, you need to let yourself rest up. C'mon I'll show you to one of the other berth rooms for you to crash in, 'cause I really don't think locking you in the brig is necessary, do you? Didn't think so, 'cause obviously no one likes to be caged up, so you can have a room instead. And I'm no medic, but I sort of know a little tiny bit from experience and observation, so tomorrow I can see if I can do something about your busted t-cog, 'kay?"
Nightracer nodded slowly, her optics pleading, "C-can... can I-"
She looked away. She was so pathetic. Why couldn't she be strong, like the legend she was supposed to be a copy of? She rubbed her arms, hugging herself tightly, starting again at the mech's expectant, querying gaze. "Can I s-stay here?"
"J-Just for tonight!" She added quickly, desperately, the empty silence of the rest of the ship and the thought of having to sit alone in it for at least another two joors terrifying her already shaken spark. "I'll stay right here, and I swear I won't make noise... just- please d-don't leave me alone out there..."
Vexation, incredulity, confusion, distrust, and finally resignation flashed across his faceplates faster than she could track before the mech quirked his optic ridge up briefly, sighing, "Sure, cause why not, right? It's perfectly safe and normal to let a potentially dangerous Decepticon with legendary assassination skills spend the night in your quarters."
Blurr snorted, gesturing wildly at her with one hand as he argued with himself, "Oh, sure, of course, cause you can really say no to those abnormally huge, pitifully pleading optics. I mean seriously, look at those optics! They're worse than a hungry turbo-pup! ... Or, or a scraplet!"
He peeled his lips back at her awkwardly in what was likely supposed to be a smile, but was more of a gruesome grimace, his optics shifty, as though he'd just been caught doing something horribly embarrassing. "Ehh... yeah, no, I was totally not just talking to myself just then, cause that would be stupid, right? Yeah." His already far-too-fast speech tripled in speed as he got himself flustered, chuckling nervously, "Anyway-sure-whatever-you-can-stay-here if-you-really-really-want-to so-yeah-good-bye-good-night-whatever..."
Blurr sighed, turning his back to her and holding his servo up, declaring, "You know what? I'm just gonna shut up now. Yeah. Shut up while I'm still ahead. Or before I'm dead of humiliation, or whatever."
When the femme didn't respond, he glanced back over his shoulder to find the worn-out sniper already deep in recharge where she sat propped against his door, her helm tilted slightly to the side. A small, relaxed smile rested on her lips, her chassis rising and falling with the soft vents of sleep.
He sighed again, smirking faintly as he carefully scooped the femme up in his arms - taking care not to wake the exhausted Decepticon femme. Blurr deposited her gently on his berth, making sure she was as comfortable as he could make her. Moving to the end of his now-occupied berth and seating himself on the cold floor, the Autobot speedster leaned his helm up against the foot of the berth.
Not long after he'd gotten himself situated, Blurr too slipped into a light recharge.
Thank-you all for your continued reading, reviewing, and support! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter as much as I did, and I can't wait to hear what you all are thinking about this story!
