A Race Through the Night
Chapter 11
Quite Right
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers.
Huge thanks to my sister enmused for beta reading for me! I know this update is really late, but school just started up for me, and I've actually had this chapter ready for a couple weeks, but this was my first chance to update.
I want to offer my utmost appreciation and thanks to everyone who is reading this story, and also to the new fav's and followers this story has gotten since my last update! I adore you guys, and I would love to hear what you all are thinking. Your input and feedback really is my motivation in writing, and I look forward to seeing more of you guys! As always, read, enjoy, and pop in for a review!
It was the middle of the day, but the skies were hardly any lighter than if it were midnight. Ever since the exodus, Cybertron had been cast into a seeming eternal darkness; in all meanings of the word. Along with the darkness, the acid rains came far more frequently, giving the whole planet a general feeling of depression and despair.
Or it may have just been his mood.
Granted, he'd only been running all over the planet in the pouring acid for a bit over eleven joors. So, almost a whole rotation, but still, all things considered, that wasn't really too long right? After all, she could be anywhere, and there was always the possibility that she was just staying a step ahead of him, not that that would make much sense what with his being the fastest mech alive.
Then again, on that point, being the fastest mech alive meant that in the eleven joors he'd been searching, he'd actually covered the same amount of ground as a regular bot would in an orn, so he really ought to have found her by now.
What if she'd been hurt by the DJD, or Swindle, or Overlord, or whoever else she'd managed to slag off? For the matter, she wouldn't have even had to have run into someone, she wasn't fully recovered, so what if she'd gone into stasis lock in an alley somewhere? He wasn't sure why it bothered him so much, if he'd had half a processor, he'd've just been glad to be rid of the excruciating-death-just-waiting-to-happen.
But he had given her his word that she'd be safe until she was recovered enough to take care of herself.
Blurr zipped through another broken down warehouse in Altihex, just as he had gone through every alley and building in every city between Iacon and Altihex. He had no way of knowing that she'd come back to Altihex, but that was where she'd been when he found her, and that was where she had a promise of a medic, so it was basically the only lead he had to-
Wait, was that a piece of internal wiring laying on the floor there? The flash of blue speedster came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the particularly trashed warehouse. He crouched down beside the large, empty shipping crate and picked up the gleaming strand that had caught his optic. It kinda looked like internal wiring.
He examined the area surrounding the strand. There was a faint imprint of where a bot might have sat down, leaning against the crate. The bot would have been about his height, maybe a bit on the light-weight side? It wasn't a lot to go on, but it was definitely something, so he'd follow it through. The ground was wet and held the mould of his footprints pretty well, so he was gonna assume that that meant that it would have held her imprint for longer than normal.
Now, he knew that he was no detective or scout, so he was going to leave off his Surelock deductions at that, while he still sounded somewhat intelligent in his helm at least. Not that sounding intelligent in his helm gave him any reason to assume that he wouldn't sound like a half-wit trying to show off.
In any case, the imprint sort of seemed to fit Nightracer, so he was going to assume that she had been here with a medic, since his scans did no good; residual energy from her EM field was long gone, especially with the acid rains mixing up signals. The original arrangement with Swindle and the medic was that they would meet in Altihex and then they'd take the medic back to the ship where he'd get Energon and supplies to fix her up properly.
Since the only place he knew of her knowing of with all of those things was his ship, Blurr supposed that would be the best place to continue his search, so he stood and up and started running again, ignoring the burn of the rain on his plating despite his efforts to stay under cover. Did he expect to find anyone on his ship?
Honestly, no.
He didn't take very long to get to the ship, as in his various boredom runs and scrap-hunts he'd come to know his way around this run-down dump of a city. He wouldn't have had to go through any of this if the Autobots hadn't left him, but at the same time, he wasn't sure he would have enjoyed going with them to continue the fighting for eons more on some other unfortunate world. Cause as miserable as scrounging through life just to survive was, he was weary of all the killing and death. Living to survive wasn't near as miserable in his opinion as living to kill was.
Blurr flipped open the panel to open the main cargo door to the ship, mashed in the code and raced into the hangar. He wasn't sure why he was in a rush either, except that he was always in a rush, whether he actually had a goal or not.
At least that's what he'd been told. Other Autobots always told him to chill, slow down, relax, quit being such a hurry. Everyone said he was always in a rush, so he just assumed he was always in a rush, but really he wasn't going any faster than normal, he was just like that. No bot seemed to get that though, they called him a freak, or a spazz, or all sorts of other things he didn't care to recall. They told him to slow down, but they didn't understand just how much it physically hurt him to do so.
The light blue speedster shook his helm. His guardians had always told him to ignore what other bots said about him, that he wasn't a freak, he was gifted, which Chromia had always reminded him made him better than them, which meant that they were just jealous because he could do cool stuff that they couldn't. Ignoring other bots' words was always way easier said than done though.
He was getting distracted, and he didn't feel like going down that mental track anyway. It just made him want to punch something. Or run. He took a deep breath and started zipping down the halls, popping briefly into each and every room that he had access to, just in case.
Telling himself to stop thinking along a certain trail was usual one of those easier-said-than-done sorta things too. The Autobot messenger huffed, peeking into the quarters he'd given to Nightracer.
He ought to have known better than to have said what he'd said to her. He of all mechs ought to have known better, cause he had to deal with plenty of bots judging him just because he was different and she was no different and as much as he'd always hated those sparkless bot who judged others for their differences, he'd been just as sparkless as any of them. It was easy to tell when someone was being judgemental when that someone wasn't yourself.
Blurr started pacing in the hall, hardly even noticing the shrill whistle of the whooshing air in the small hall in his wake. What was he even thinking? As if she'd forgive him. They weren't even on the same side of the war, which even though there wasn't really a war here any more, still made a big difference in a bot's mind, and even with all of that set aside, he'd basically told her she was rip-off bot with less than half a spark.
The thing with him being different was that he had the bright side of seeing that he had a cool ability that he really loved and made other bots jealous and won him galactic medals, so he could tell himself that to cheer himself up. But her being different was just... not really all that fun, no matter what angle she looked at it from. She had been brutally torn apart and split into like a zillion other bots, and all she could do was wonder if she was somehow inadequate compared to whoever it was she used to be.
He wondered briefly if she remembered anything from before she was shattered, because that would just make the whole thing that much more painful and depressing. The mech shook his helm again, skidding to a halt right where he was, fans not even cycling after pacing in a circuit through the whole ship about fifty times.
Great. Now not only was he distracted, he was stalling. Not even stalling very subtly, if he bothered to think about it for a fraction of a nano. The very first place he should have looked for her in was the med-bay, because obviously she'd take the medic to the med-bay to repair her, cause it wasn't as if there were medical supplies in the cleaner-drone closets, which he actually knew that there weren't since he'd looked in every cleaner-drone closet on the whole entire ship at least a dozen times by now, not to mention reorganizing each every time he looked in one.
Just in case, right?
Blurr sighed again, fiddling with his thumbs at high speed nervously. He attempted to steel himself to zip off to the med-bay to apologize and meet the medic and apologize more and see if there was any way he could help out with her repairs and apologize and- He cut himself off again mentally. That amount of apologizing might possibly be considered a tad overkill, and he'd probably go about rambling like an idiot until she hated his guts.
Okay. Overthinking it would just leave him too discouraged to try, so he really needed to shut up and quit scaring himself in his helm.
A blue blur flew through the halls, coming to a stop at the second time passing the med-bay. At long last, he just pushed through the excessively extravagant and over-abundant self-subspacing revolving doors on this ship. The door spun around on itself rapidly after he'd gone through, giving the sudden, spark-crushing silence a dramatic flare with his entry.
Nightracer was laying on the berth, which was tilted so that the sniper was half-way sitting upright. Her unusually large ruby optics widening at first sight of him before narrowing in displeasure. It was obvious that while she was awake, she was heavily sedated and a bit... What was the word he wanted? Discombobulated.
By her expression, the sedatives were definitely not making her more amiable towards him.
"I'm gonna assume you're the glitch that called her a shatterspark?"
At the annoyed mech's words, Blurr noticed the green and purple Decepticon for the first time since he'd walked in. Also at his words, Blurr cringed in sync with his spark, his own guilt washing over him in exponentially growing waves.
Nevertheless, the blue speedster took exception to the Decepticon medic's tone, quirking an optic ridge and leaning to one side, crossing his arms. "And I'm gonna assume you're the glitch that raised the price on Swindle which got her half of the damage she's got now because she had to fight Overlord to scrounge together a payment for you?"
The two mechs glaraed at each other for several klicks while Nightracer glared at the both of them, looking angry, yet confused from the amount of sedatives and painkillers in her.
Finally the bright green medic grunted at him, apparently calling their insulting match at a draw for now, uncrossing his arms and going back to checking his patient's vitals and condition. "Name's Hook."
"Blurr." He snapped back, appearing at Nightracer's side in the blink of an optic. He smiled apologetically at her, but addressed 'Hook', "What all have you done to her? I'm betting she's still awake because she threatened to kill you if you tried to put her into medical stasis?"
"Slow down, mech." The medic muttered, adding more under his breath so that Blurr couldn't hear it, "I operated on and replaced her t-cog. Did what I could to help her spark-chamber and other internals without putting her all the way under. And for your information, she just requested that I didn't put her under and that was that."
"Will she be okay? Can you even fix everything that's wrong with her without putting her in stasis? I thought she had a lot of relatively in depth stuff needing done to get her back up and running-" He stopped, his optics going wide as he thought about what he'd just said, "Oh scrap, I'm sorry, Race, I didn't mean that like that, I just want you to be fully repaired, not running again. Argh, why I can't I ever get anything out the way I mean to?!"
A small smile touched her features before she seemed to remind herself that she was supposed to be mad at him, at which point her glare deepened more than before and she attempted to cross her arms, then winced as she disturbed a fresh weld. The femme settled back down to how she'd been previously.
"You're a jerk." She informed him sternly, her words slurring together slightly. "And soon as this dude fixes me, I'm outta here cause of it, so no trying to convince me otherwise, Blurry."
He could tell that she was trying really hard and with no small degree of frustration to sound as angry as she no doubt was with him, but the meds in her system just made her sound like a cute, put out youngling. A grin fought to make an appearance on his face, but he managed to keep it at bay, though his deep blue optics twinkled in his handsome faceplates.
"Your stupid optics are laughing at me." Her engine growled, and her optics shone with the same cold, betrayed wrath that they had when she'd stormed out of Ironhide's flat at the beginning of that rotation, reminding the speedster of just how badly he'd screwed up, and just how important it was that he not patronize her.
He gave another apologetic smile, not really anything more than a faint upward quirk of his lip-plates, forcing himself to speak at a slower pace for her. It didn't matter that it hurt, because this was important and he actually cared enough to make sure she could understand him.
"I know, Race, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, for... for everything. For being me. Cause I can be a really jerk sometimes, and I-I don't even notice when I'm doing it till I've said something awful and then I think about it later and realize that I was and..." Blurr trailed off into a ramble as he tried to slow down and failed, "Aaaaand I'm talking too fast for you to process a single word I'm saying, aren't I? I'm sorry about that too, but I just can't slow down right now because it hurts and it takes so much focus and I'm stressed out because I'm a total aft and it doesn't matter how much I apologize, cause all you're probably hearing is 'nwoeghawhdogethoksngonaseughg' and, and-"
To his utter surprise, the teal femme reached out and touched his nervously vibrating hand, her ruby optics clear and sharp, the fog of the sedatives completely gone, her voice no longer slurred and her harsh, Kaonian accent strong again, "Blurr, you're right. You betrayed my trust and exposed things that no bot save me and my creator know about."
The mech, and the silent medic who was attempting to seem disinterested and invisible, both winced minutely at how she spat out the word 'creator' like the vilest of curses. Blurr's armor was pulled tight to his frame and his shoulders hunched over like he was trying to hide from her stinging tone.
She let out a short, empty laugh, "I say you betrayed my trust. For a mech who never had it to begin with, I gotta say, I'm impressed. It'll take a lot more than 'sorry' to make that right." She locked optics with him, her gaze piercing, "But don't ever, ever, apologize to anyone for being yourself. Knowing who you are is precious and it is not something you apologize for. Take it from a bot who doesn't even know what she is, much less who."
Blurr just blinked at the femme, shocked to hear such fierce conviction from the same femme who just an orn ago was running in utter terror from her own pedefalls. She sort of sagged into the berth when she was finished, but the cloud of sedation never came back to her optics. She was fully coherent and unaffected by the drugs, maybe because his babbling snapped her out of it?
"What?" Nightracer asked finally, quirking an optic ridge at the staring speedster and the medic who was now fiddling with wires and other components in her knee, pretending he was minding his own business. "You actually thought the sedatives would work?"
"Well they did for a little while." Hook said dryly, his processors well occupied with all of things she'd talked about during the relatively short time that he'd managed to keep her out of it. The only reason he didn't pump more into her was because she'd reached the maximum safe dosage.
Honestly though, the medic wasn't entirely sure he could take in much more of what she had to say. Basically, this ship was the only safe place from the DJD on the whole planet, and he might as well have sold his spark when he accepted Swindle's offer to fix this femme.
Unfortunately, this ship was also the first place he'd been where no bot knew or cared who he was... or used to be before- Yeah. He wasn't thinking about that. There was fuel here to last a vorn, and enough room to house a crew of at least a hundred bots; two luxuries he hadn't seen together in a decavorn. Pit, there were even wash-racks... with cleanser to boot.
He soldered the last wire that had been cut when she got that wound in her lower thigh. It was obvious that she'd seen a medic recently, but it was also obvious that that medic had been more concerned with keeping what was left of her spark on this side of the Well, and had thus failed to notice that her self-repair systems were nearly burnt out.
Hook frowned minutely behind his red visor. He'd done what he could for her repair systems, but the damage would take time to heal. They were just worn out. From what he'd heard in her drugged up rambling, she hadn't stopped running - or getting shot at, damaged etcetera - for a vorn straight. Which meant her self-repairs had been healing surgery-worthy injuries for as long.
Put simply, her whole body was fried and her spark wasn't strong enough to utilize the little power available that it needed to recover.
"Can't give you anything else for the pain, not without overloading your systems." The green mech snorted, "Not that that matters, since there's nothing more I can do for right now."
"Whaddya mean, 'for right now'? I thought you're supposed to fix her and get her back up to full functionali-"
Hook cut the speedster off with a glare through his visor. "She's at full functionality. She's just not fit to go running through acid getting blasted by Megatron's pet executioners."
The femme in question laughed quietly, her voice oozing sarcasm, "Oh, okay. That's cool with me, I mean, he's a pyschopathic mass murderer, but I'm sure Tarn's just a really great guy at spark, why don't I just call up the DJD and let 'em know I need an orn or two sick leave. Like, 'Yeah, hi Tarn, I'm sorry, could you just tell the guys not to try and kill or torture me for my sins for a bit, 'cause the local medic says all this running for my life is bad for my health.'"
Blurr snickered for about half a nano before he realized that that probably wasn't the most appropriate response, at which point the light blue mech crossed his arms and glared at Hook along with Nightracer, though his face kept twitching spasmodically.
He just smirked at the racer, an expression that made the annoyed femme level him with a flat glare. The medic's mind was made up though, and he didn't particularly care if his patient hated him for it, it wasn't exactly like they were chummy to begin with. He was a mercenary medic.
"That's not my problem. I have more work to do before your free of my care, I'm staying on this ship until I'm done with you, and if I have to bolt you to this berth I have no qualms against doing so."
"Where will you stay onboard? We don't really want- I mean, we don't have space to house you, or the supplies, so you really wouldn't want to stay here when you aren't working on her, cause..." The Autobot trailed off at the look Hook gave him, and he realized that trying to lie to the mech was stupid, given the size of the ship and the location of the med-bay, since he would have had to pass all of the quarters to get to the med-bay from the cargo hold, and the amount of med-grade Energon alone attested to how false his lies were. Finally, Blurr just darted to the other side of the room, running a hand over his helm spike, muttering, "Good one, Blurr, just great, now you're outnumbered by Cons on your own ship, wonderful planning there. Oh wait, there wasn't any planning, because you've somehow managed to be the fastest mech alive while simultaneously being the slowest mech alive."
Behind him, the blue mech heard Nightracer giggle, "You should get a medal for it."
For another breem or so, the three of them were enveloped in an awkward silence, disturbed only by the sound of Blurr pacing through the med-bay reorganizing everything and the quiet tinkering of Hook as he tidied up his own tools, occasionally growling at the speedster for attempting to move something.
"I think it's only fair to let Hook stay here as long as he feels necessary. We have room and fuel to spare." Nightracer suggested tentatively, subconsciously glancing to Blurr for confirmation. "And short of the usual DJD-related, life-threatening situations, I'll try to be a good patient."
In the blink of an optic, Blurr was in front of her, hands on his hips, skeptical expression evident, "Oh, really, who died and made you captain? The mech's a Con, he should be in a cell under interrogation, not running loose in the ship eating our fuel and using our supplies."
Nightracer smirked at him, watching as his visage remained solid and unmoving. "By that logic, I'll just go lock myself in a cell to rust and starve then. Or can we all just stay on the same ship without imprisoning or maiming each other?"
"Fine." The speedster pouted, sounding remarkably child-like.
"Fine." Hook mimicked, shaking his helm at the both of them, "Since we're apparently voting on this with the finesse of sparklings."
She smiled, "Fine."
Three Orns Later: Maccadam's Old Oil House
Behind the bar, a small orange and beige femme rocked her wheeled feet back and forth as she leaned against the counter, trying to convince an over-charged customer to give the high-grade a rest for the night and go home. Her pretty, round blue optics showed a vague hint of exasperation, well-hidden from her cheery voice.
At last she just straightened up and patted the counter next to the mech, then rolled off to serve another customer. She smiled brightly at the trio she was currently serving at one of the booths, laughing and sharing the latest news and rumors.
After a couple of klicks the little femme bobbed her helm at the three, winking and saying, "I'll have that back for you, Lickety-split!"
That last part they echoed with her, laughing uproariously afterwards. She giggled, zipping back over to the bar to start on their drinks. That group always got the daily special, no matter what that happened to be. She cleaned out three of the tall, pyramid-shaped cubes and started mixing the drinks.
"Hmm." Lickety-Split popped her helm around the corner, the triangular attachments on the sides of her helm bouncing slightly as she hollered, "Hey, 'Stash? Could we get some morra the sweetened mercury out here? The special's been a real hit tonight!"
She skated over to the one-mech band on the little stage in the corner, still after all her time here having to stifle a giggle at the odd looking bot. He transformed into a musical keyboard, so he had little white and black keys for his abdomen and metal strings down his back. His pedes were pedals, and his helm had pipes of different lengths and sizes sticking straight up from the sides and back of his helm.
"Hiya, Tusks! How's it goin'?" She chirped bouncing up onto the little stage and turning up the volume on the speakers he was hooked into. "We've got folks requesting the remix of 'Lil' Bo Beep'."
The gold-accented ebony mech rolled his yellow optics, his gold faceplates the image of resignation, his harmonic voice heavy with distaste. "Again? They always ask for 'Lil' Bo Beep'. Why can't they ask for the Iacon Philharmonics, or the Orchestrations?"
She just laughed, bouncing back off the stage, stacking a platter full of empty cubes on her helm and four more balanced on her forearms. "C'mon, you know the Orchestrations are creepy, and the Philarmonics are too drowsy. It's Bo Beep or the Kaonics, right?"
"One of these vorns, our clientele is bound discover better taste." Tusks responded wistfully, playing out the intro to the requested song - if one could call it a song.
Lickety-Split grinned, giving the same reply she always gave him when he brought this up, "Yeah! Just like I'm gonna win the Ibex Cup and run away with my knight in shining armor, right?"
An audio-splitting shriek cut the air, instantly throwing the bar into silence. She was about to check it out, make sure the bouncers were doing their jobs or whatever, when a pair of hands wrapped over her mouth and another pair locked around her shoulders, crushing her. A loud clatter sounded as all five platters of dishes she was holding shattered at her feet.
The orange femme tried to scream or fight the bot's hold, but his grip was too strong for her to even make a sound. She kicked and flailed to no avail, her pale blue optics wide with fear.
Her four-armed captor chuckled at the terror no doubt radiating through her emotional field, not to mention the fact that she was shaking in her armor.
A second mech stepped into her view, and the screams of the whole bar as they recognized him seemed small and no more than mildly shocked when she compared them to the sound of pure, unbridled terror she would have made if she could have.
"Oh, my dear waitress, you needn't be afraid." The dark purple war-mech purred, his silky voice mesmerizing. His face-plates were a perfectly formed Decepticon insignia. "We only want to talk about a very special friend of ours. I believe you may have met her a few orns back? Do try to recall."
The little waitress's engine let out a long keen and her processors were hiccupping. She was pretty sure if her optics widened any more or her armor clamped down any tighter, she'd probably pass out on the spot. This was Tarn, the leader of the DJD, and he came here especially for her. She was worse than dead.
Hot pink coolant tears were streaming down her face relentlessly, and she had a feeling she was going to glitch from fear in another klick or so.
"Oh, Helex, put the poor femme down." Tarn requested, clicking his glossa in disapproval, "That's no way to treat our friends, is it?"
When her captor did as he'd been ordered, she swayed, her balance unsteady and her pedes hardly holding her frame up. The dark violet leader of the DJD stepped towards her and stroked her chin, wiping coolant from her face, "Come now, Lickety-Split, save your tears…"
At his touch and the use of her name, the femme glitched and crumpled to the floor. Behind and to his right, Vos hissed and clicked in the harmonious flow of the Primal Vernacular.
"Quite right." Tarn replied coolly, cocking his helm at the unconscious waitress, an amused glimmer in his optics, "I daresay she recognized us."
