A Race Through the Night
Chapter 12
Duck and Cover
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers, only any OCs I may in the future make and my plot. A hand of applause to enmused, my beta!
Now, I know I left off on a pretty wicked cliffhanger last chapter, so without further ado, on with the chapter!
"Come now, Lickety-Split, save your tears…" A tenor voice purred, long, large claws stroking coolant from her faceplates gently. Her wheeled pedes were shifting back and forth to keep her wavering balance, and the floor beneath her was slick and grainy with high-grade mixed with glass.
"I daresay she recognized us."
The little orange and beige femme onlined her optics and sat up groggily, stretching with a small moan of pleasure as soft, fuzzy blankets spilled off her shoulders into a heap around her. No way in Pit. Maccadam bought her a new berth.
Honestly, she couldn't believe that mech sometimes. He was all mysterious and secretive, but at the same time he was the kindest, most considerate mech a bot could know.
It was kinda weird for her to have dreamt about the DJD. But at the same time, it wasn't too off, since she'd been having nightmares ever since Nightracer came back to the bar. She stretched again, picking up a soft blanket and snuggling her face into it with a purr of pleasure.
Knock, knock, knock.
Knock, knock.
Lickety-Split frowned minutely, then grinned brightly and twirled out the amazing berth, extending her wheels and spinning around like the dancers in the holovids for a moment before tapping the button to open the door for her guest. At the exact moment that she opened the door, she realized all too abruptly that she had no idea where she was.
At that exact moment, she also found herself face to face with the biggest turbo-fox she'd ever seen, leaning back on its haunches and snarling and growling at her, acid saliva dripping from its jowls as it howled. She fell back on her aft, scooting away from the hulking creature in terror, squeaking in fright as it lunged on its chain, snapping its razor sharp teeth in displeasure at its escaped prey.
The creature's thick metal plating was ruffled up and its optics shone a deep, almost black shade of red, like burning embers in a magma flow, every inch of its stance screaming for the next kill as it impatiently scratched at the floor, leaving deep marks in the smooth surface. The turbo-fox's paws alone were as big as her helm, equipped with claws sharp enough to tear through her like silver jelly.
"Count yourself lucky. He likes you."
She looked up at the red-armored mech, not taking her wide, scared optics off of the fearsome, hungrily salivating creature, "What makes ya say that?"
Kaon smiled at her, shrugging the electrical coils on his shoulders. A shiver ran through her at the utter void of where his optics ought to have been. She judged bots by what she could see in their optics, and this one literally had nothing there. "Most bots are wailing as he gnaws on their sparks by now."
He clapped his hands together twice and the giant turbo-fox stopped pulling against its chain, growling once more at her before sitting down beside its master. "Anyhow, Tarn's ready to see you."
Lickety-Split nodded cautiously, standing up and shaking herself as though to force her tightly clenched armor to relax. It didn't budge. She gave the turbo-fox a wary glance, but it just snarled at her contemptuously, licking its chops and flashing its dagger-like teeth. She had a feeling the pet wanted to have her for morning fuel.
She stepped through the door and went forward as the mech gestured her on, shivering in discomfort as the mech touched her shoulder to guide her in the appropriate direction, his touch sending a zap of static through her spinal struts. If that was just an ordinary touch, she shuddered to think what it would feel like when he actually channelled his power.
Captive and captor traversed the corridors of the Peaceful Tyranny, Kaon's pedefalls echoing loudly over the near silent sound of her graceful skating along and the pet's light padding. She clenched her jaw tightly as they went along, her trepidation growing with every step they got closer to whatever cruel fate awaited her.
She stepped into the immense hall that Kaon had led her to, squeaking in surprise as the door swished open before she could even knock. Every little sound had her on edge, jumping out of her armor at the slightest bit of motion or noise.
"Hello, Lickety-Split." A silky voice greeted lazily, "Please, take a seat."
He was reclining comfortably in a tall chair at the far end of the round, donut-shaped black table. There were six silver seats around the table, rimmed with intricate black filigree. Vos sat stiffly straight to Tarn's left, then Tesarus, who had his feet up on the table while he poked at the blades in his chest, then Helex with both pairs of arms crossed over his chest and waist, then the two empty seats to Tarn's right.
Her spark stopped and her engine hitched faintly when she noticed which seat the purple tank had just indicated. With trembling pedes, the little waitress scooted up to the chair to Tarn's direct right. Kaon sat down beside her, leaning his elbows on the table casually.
Because while sitting beside the most renowned murderer in the galaxy was suicidal, not doing as he asked was a death sentence. As if her very presence here wasn't a death sentence in and of itself. She was terrified and confused and terrified even more as a result. A cozy breakfast with Death was not exactly what she would have expected from the DJD.
"Helex, would you be so kind as to get the morning fuel?" Tarn requested politely.
In spite of the seeming normalcy, the air was heavy with her fear, and their varying levels of boredom, impatience, and anticipation as the four-handed warrior set cubes of Energon before each of them, not even making two trips, since he could just store what he couldn't hold in his inactive smelting chamber.
The beige and orange femme jumped considerably when the light purple giant set down her cube in front of her. Across from her, Tesarus chuckled at her, the grin behind the red 'x' over his face sending a chill through her. She clamped her armor down even tighter.
Tarn sipped at his fuel, inspecting his latest acquisition closely, noting how she sat there, trembling in her armor, glancing at each of them fearfully as she kept a death grip on her hands trying to make them stop shaking. "Relax, femme, drink your fuel in peace. As I said earlier, we only wish to talk."
Beside him, Vos snickered something in the language of the ancients. Lickety-Split was pretty sure it had something to do with her and screaming. She'd taken a crash-course in linguistics before the War broke out. Never really thought about it since then though.
She clutched her cube of Energon so hard she knew it would shatter with just a tiny bit more pressure, but she took a quick gulp of it just to make the mech happy. Or at least keep him from killing her over spilt fuel.
"So…" Tarn drawled, leaning forward and bridging his servos as he continued to regard her closely. "Nightracer stopped by your bar about a quartex ago, yes?"
Lickety-Split shifted her tight grip on her cube. "I-I just serve the drinks, sir, I wouldn't know."
The badge-faced mech's piercing scarlet optics narrowed minutely, but he cleared his vents patiently and plunged a hand into his subspace, sliding a datapad over the short distance between them. "This is an image of the femme. You could say she's a friend of mine, I would like to… reconnect."
"Of course." She said, her wavery voice regaining a touch of its usual brightness as she picked up the datapad and looked at the image carefully. She must be completely glitched, trying to put on her show face in this sort of a situation.
It was a high quality image of a lithe-framed sniper crouched in a battle stance, wielding two golden rifles aimed in two different directions. Large red optics shone with a fierce thrill amidst the fight and she wore a silver mask over her faceplates. The femme's helm, upper arms, hands, midriff, and thighs were a crystalline teal, and the rest of her charcoal armor was marked with light blue accent panelling.
There was no mistaking that the femme in the image was any other than Nightracer.
She had no reason to not sell her out. After all, she had nothing to gain from helping the fugitive and everything to lose from lying to the DJD. Her tanks churned as the memory of having to sweep up the life-En soaked metal strips of that poor mech the last time she'd seen the DJD.
If there was any way she, just an ordinary waitress from Maccadam's Old Oil House, could keep them from doing or worse to another bot, she would. Lickety-Split wasn't sure she could live with herself if she sold the other femme out like that.
"Hmm." The orange femme hummed thoughtfully, shaking her helm solemnly. "M-Maccadam banned her from the bar a half-vorn ago. She… she hasn't been 'round since."
Directly across the table from her, Tesarus quit messing with his blade-filled chest to look up at her with a grin of amused respect. He laughed, a loud, raucous laugh that reminded her of every other mech in the bar. Only crueller. "Lying to us? Little femme's got gears, Tarn."
"Or she's just stupid." Helex huffed with a little smirk, his small pair of arms having a thumb war on the table, the larger pair locked behind his helm.
Kaon just shrugged from where he sat beside her, the pet snuggled up against his pedes, resting its helm in his lap. The optic-less mech stroked absently at the turbo-fox's helm. "Just give the word."
Vos gave a series of clacks and static bursts that she had no hope of ever translating, his masked face giving her no visual tell of what he'd just said, but it made Tarn sit up straighter, his optics gaining a harder value behind their dark light. "Very well, Lickety-Split. Let it never be said that Tarn gave no choice. We really do need to know what our dear Nightracer has been up to. Kaon, be my guest."
The little waitress shrieked, sliding under the table before the now-sparking mech could grab her. His abysmal lack of optics somehow seemed to deepen as the anticipatory grin he bore widened.
She cartwheeled over the other side of the circular table, kicking off the red x of Tesarus' face for leverage, only to screech as the massive tan mech shot up an extending hook from his shoulders, snatching her ankle as she passed him. He stood up, dangling her upside down by her ankle, grabbing her other wildly kicking foot with his other hook after she managed to wheel him in the face a couple more times, leaving rubber streaks wherever she struck.
Her struggling just seemed to please the mech, who chuckled as she continued to squirm, attempting to claw her way free. She even tried biting the hook around one of her ankles, then yelled as loud as she could, all the worst insults she could think of – which mounted up to a rather impressive collection – when the blades in his chest cavity began whirling in a deadly grind of gleaming edges and points. Her spark pounded so hard in its chamber, Lickety-Split was certain it would burst if she were any more scared, but the terror only fuelled her desperate struggling.
Tesarus shook her up and down a couple times, then turned her upright when she stopped wailing.
Tarn slowly rose from where he'd simply sat in his high chair and continued sipping at the last of his morning fuel during her futile attempt at escape. He shook his helm at her, clicking his glossa like a disappointed carrier. "Now, now, Lickety-Split… You really shouldn't have done that."
Unknown Location. Altihex.
Hook marked down the last item in the medical storage, then set it carefully in its place with a contented smile behind his mask. Now this was an inventory he could get used to. There were even half a dozen SPC's in storage. No one carried spark preservation containers anymore.
The constructicon medic stepped out of the closet, bringing a polishing cloth from his subspace and working it over some nicks in one of the three main berths. Pedefalls approaching rapidly alerted him to Blurr's coming, but he didn't look up as the speedster popped his helm around the door cautiously, sporting a gash through his knee joint and scuffs all over his armor.
"What happened to you?" He queried for consideration's sake if nothing else. Still he merely glanced up, assessed the mech, then went back to work buffing the berth.
"Oh, nothing much, y'know scouting the ruins in search of a thingimajiggy to work some on the engine. Maybe you could help out with it some time?" Blurr spewed in his usual fashion, making the medic's processors kick up a notch just to understand him. "Anyhow, tripped on a doohickey and just my luck landed on some dead mech's rusty old sword they left lying around to nearly amputate every poor fellow who happened to be speeding past. Think you can help?"
The bright green mech's engine hummed, and he shrugged disinterestedly. "Fixing you wasn't part of the deal. I'm here to take care of the kid."
Light blue chest-plates sagged for a klick as he thought about the femme, then puffed up with pride, "Well, I just so happen to be the bot in charge of taking care of 'the kid' and that makes my well-being important to the continuation of hers."
Hook laughed outright at the typical, Autobot arrogance, "Ha! I'll believe that when I see it. Autobot, last I checked, you're outnumbered and that means you ain't in charge of anything here."
Blurr just glared at him for a moment before sitting down hard on the med-berth. His face flicked through varying expressions of guilt, anger, fondness, and indignation almost too quickly for the medic to track. At last he just shrugged, "Can you patch this up or not?"
"Oh, I can, definitely." He replied, moving to the next berth over and methodically polishing its surface as well, leaving the mech to fume. Conversationally, he went on, "I don't know why the femme's stuck around, honestly. From what I've heard, you haven't exactly been the most supportive of friends."
"I never set out to be 'friends'. I rescued her off the streets from what I thought was just another gang and gave her fuel. When I learned she was a Con, I kept her prisoner on the grounds that I let her go when she tell me who was after her and what she'd done. I wasn't exactly expecting to get involved with the DJD!" Blurr crossed his arms, his servos a blur of motion as he drummed them on his elbows.
"So then if I put her back on the streets, I'd be indirectly responsible for when the half-starved, mostly broken femme finally got what she's in for, which as an Autobot with morals and decency of spark unlike everybot else she went to, I set up this deal to get you to fix her, and I end up getting her broken more by Overlord."
Hook listened with the occasional hum or engine rumble as he worked on the mech's gashed knee joint. He was deep enough in his rant at this point that the blue racer didn't even notice that the medic had decided to go ahead and fix him while he spilled his spark on the matter.
"And then, with the femme – who I promised that I'd get back into full functionality – laying in my guardian's berth half-dead, the field medic saving her life tells me that it doesn't matter that I promised her I wouldn't send her away until she's fixed because she can't be fixed!" The speedster sighed heavily. "She's too broken."
The green and purple medic looked his patient in the optics after finishing the last weld on his knee, his outward expression unreadable behind mask and visor. His spark twinged sharply as memories of his old team ran through his unwilling processors. He shrugged, "Aren't we all though?"
He took in a deep vent and after a couple quiet, thoughtful klicks, the constructicon clapped his hands together in finality, slipping the welder, mesh, and magnetic styluses back into his subspace. He shook his helm faintly as though it would make the memories go back to the dark corner of his mind where he'd been pushing them since the Last Battle of the Tagan Heights.
"She won't need another check-up for another couple of orns." He slammed his first aid kit into his subspace as well, "I'll be back around then. I need a drink."
Two Orns Later.
Her battle protocols were running and her twin golden sniper rifles were grasped casually, yet firmly, in her blue hands, her sharp claws tapping impatiently on the triggers as she waited for the targets to walk right beneath the red laser-point of her sights. Her unusually large red optics were tinged white at the edges.
She instinctively perched one rifle on her shoulder, feigning mere boredom before blindly firing on the sniper she sensed preparing to shoot her from five simulated rooftops behind her. The enemy sniper's shocked shriek as he fell from his high perch awarded her lazy shot. In the alleys far, far below her, her original half-dozen targets, no more than figures to even her hyper-zoomed vision stepped into sight, tagged with the signal the special ops team had promised her.
Nightracer's masked lips curled up in a smirk she was neither aware of, nor felt, as she took proper aim in astroseconds and gently compressed her triggers repeatedly, her specially trained, programmed, and experienced systems automatically compensating for the dual recoil of the high-powered weapons. All six of the team were offlined before the first had even fallen to the ground.
The teal, blue, and charcoal Decepticon stroked the trigger of her rifle appreciatively, her processors locked in the battle and overriding any negative thoughts she might have, filling her with the pre-programmed thrill and passion for her work. The sniper grinned behind her raised, mint-colored battle mask as she rose and darted across the roof, leaping over to the next and the next, taking out three stray enemies as she went.
Leaping from roof to roof, Nightracer continued until she was in sniping range of the enemy front-lines before crouching down in a relatively shielded position to begin the real work. Ten targets in a breem was by no means shabby work, but her skills would be put to much better use where she was now, about 350 *hics away, for good measure.
(*One hic = One kilometer = Roughly half a mile)
Her rifles had an approximate effective range of 400 hics, but under ideal circumstances she knew she could push that nearly fifty hics farther and still terminate her target, albeit not to her level of satisfaction.
She wondered for a brief moment if her predecessor had been a better shot than she was. Such questioning musings were rapidly quenched however by her whirling tactical and battle processors, which could not afford the processing power to menial doubts.
Faceless figures fell beneath her sights in droves, the mounds of their corpses oddly absent as the targets merely shattered at her shots. The focused Decepticon sniper's wildly gleaming optics narrowed minutely in a moment of confusion before that too was discarded in favor of allowing herself the satisfaction of fulfilling her purpose.
A flash of bright blue tore past in the corner of her optics, bringing the femme to high-alert as she searched for the source of the motion, her ruby gaze poring over her surroundings as her already muted systems stilled completely for optimum stealth.
Nightracer's helm snapped to the side suddenly, her optics locking onto the source of the blue now several roofs away with a grim smirk. Lining up the target in her sights, she searched swiftly and habitually for the Autobot insignia that was a death sentence in her domain. She owned the battlefield; she always did.
Leveling the red laser pinpoint on his spark with a speed attesting to vorns of practice, the sniper cocked her helm slightly as the mech looked down at the laser beam on his chest before staring up at her in shock, fear, and what was - if she was not mistaken - betrayal. Flicking an optic ridge in nonchalance, the femme squeezed the left trigger, simultaneously shooting another target in the distance with her other rifle balanced on her left elbow.
One target crumpled in the edge of her vision and turned to dust, the other directly in front of her... was no longer where he had been. Nightracer scowled. She never missed. So what just happened?
She leaned over the edge of the building and looked down, springing back a step in surprise at what greeted her optics. The blue mech that by all rights ought to have been dead was running up the wall of the building she was perched on. Running vertically, straight up the wall in a blue streak.
That wasn't even physically possible...
As the blue mech seemed to materialize in front of her, the sniper instinctually fired, not even processing the action until the blue mech collapsed in front of her with a cry of pain. The cityscape and battle around her all at once shattered into a million tiny shards of light before those too melted into nothingness.
Nightracer's white-tinged optics widened in troubled astonishment, the white in her vision receding gradually as her tactical and battle computers relinquished their control slightly when the battlefield faded, shifting the focus of her processing power away from the disintegrated battlefield.
Autobot...
She'd shot him and he was still alive. She'd missed. Fractionally. She never missed. Shei frowned down at the blue mech leaking life-En from his chest, just barely above his spark chamber.
"Blurr?"
"You... are a-a really good shot, for a Decepticon." The mech whispered with a laugh that was cut off by a wracking cough that ended in him spitting up a mouthful of life-En beside him where he lay propped up on one arm. Nightracer's brow furrowed at the distinctly non-hyperspeed sentence.
The femme flung her guns into subspace and knelt down beside him hurriedly, examining her handiwork closely. It was a clean shot and she'd only slightly depressed the trigger due to the distance, so the bullet didn't go all the way through. It had also - narrowly - missed his spark and vital internals, meaning the shot was non-lethal and not too serious if taken care of quickly.
"And you are really lucky, for an Autobot." She replied quietly, still trying to figure out how and why she'd missed. Her programming never let her miss, whether she wanted to or not. There was no margin for error, she had prior experience with speedsters, and she wasn't critically injured. "I almost killed you. I never miss, and you're still alive. Can you walk to the med-bay?"
Her spark cringed within her as the full reality of what she'd just done set in completely. This was the first bot to care what happened to her in a long time. She'd almost killed her only friend on this rusted scrap heap they called a homeworld. He'd risked everything to help her, for no reason at all, and she shot him.
She'd almost killed him.
"Sure, I can walk to med-bay." Shoving himself up to his pedes, he gave her a shaky thumbs up, "Faster than you can any day, hole in my chest and everythi-"
Blurr's weak bragging was cut short by a harsh coughing fit that had the already-wobbly mech over-balancing. She stepped in just in time to catch the wiry, slightly taller mech before he ended up on his face-plates. Once he was finished hacking up life-En and internal fluids, the mech didn't protest when she slipped his arm over her shoulders to better support him as he leaned heavily on her.
"Or maybe... Maybe not..." He conceded wearily.
By the time they had trudged to the med-bay as quickly as Blurr could manage, Nightracer was practically carrying the blue racer. Thankfully his choice of careers made his frame surprisingly lightweight: better for speed and agility. Once she'd helped the mech onto the medical berth, she froze for a moment before flinging open cupboards and drawers in search of a basic first aid kit.
Granted, this was not a basic first aid sort of injury, but she had no medical experience. At all. Not even the slightest bit of experience. She didn't even have the anatomical knowledge the average grunt gained purely from tearing mechs apart.
Of course this would happen while Hook was out doing whatever he was doing.
She laid out the first aid kit beside the mech as soon as she'd located it, only for the femme to stand, frozen stiff, alternating her blank stare from the kit to the wound with growing panic. She couldn't do this. She was a killer, not a healer, as evidenced by the fact that the one bot she was beginning for some unknown reason beginning to trust and call a friend was now leaking out with one of her bullets in him.
"I can't fix you! I'm a sniper! I kill people, I can't fix them!" She exclaimed finally, the fist of panic wrapping its tendrils around her, clouding her mind along with the crushing guilt of nearly murdering the mech who'd saved her life about a dozen times already in less than a quartex, "This is Hook's job, and… There's life-En everywhere... I don't what to do! I can't fix-"
A hand locked around her wrist, halting her wild gesticulating. "Femme, shut up and calm down, freaking out isn't going to help anything, I'm not dying - it's not much more than a mesh wound, we just need to stop the leaking - and even if I were dying you shouldn't even care cause you're a Con and I'm a Bot – we've already gone over that – and I've already proven to you that I can't be trusted."
Nightracer blinked at the flat rebuke, glancing at the injury skeptically before averting her gaze. "That doesn't mean I wanted to kill you! We need Hook! Where did he go?"
"I don't know! I'm not his carrier, and I didn't even want him to stay, so I honestly don't care! -Look, I'll talk you through it." Blurr bit out, seeming to be annoyed with her lack of composure. He was obviously making a distinct effort to talk slow enough for her stunned processors to accept. "Okay?"
She still didn't get why he went through all the bother for her. Maybe for the same reason she wanted to tear her processors apart until she could actually control her battle protocols? Because friends did what they could for each other, even when it hurt.
At her slow, wide-opticed nod, the blue mech started calmly, his normal rambling cut short, "First you're going to have to remove my chest armor so you can clamp the severed Energon lines."
She clamped down the urge to complain about having to dip her hands in that much life-En in order to repair him. Like he said, she didn't even hardly know the mech, and besides that he was the enemy. And so far he was just like every bot else, who saw her as a cheap copy of a bygone legend. Why should she care?
Her spark whirled at the thought of how close she'd come to killing him, still hung up on that fact, but unable to express anything beyond the fear that she felt. She owed him. She owed it to him to try. When she'd first met him, he told her that he didn't think she was a monster. She was anything but convinced of that, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to try.
"I don't care if you live or die." She muttered informatively, trying futilely to convince herself as much as him, gingerly removing the armor as instructed, "I just don't need any more lives on my hands."
I don't need any more life-En on my hands either, her processor reminded her stubbornly as more of the mech's life fluids spurted up onto her armor.
"Now use the micro-welder in the kit to seal the ruptured lines."
She frowned minutely, "Micro-welder? On life-En lines? Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"No! I haven't got a clue what to do!" Blurr snapped incredulously, "I'm a racer not a medic! But I was the only one of us not going into hysterics so I'm trying to sound confident so you do something so I don't leak out on the table while you whine about my life-En getting on your freshly paint-and-polished armor! None of this would have even been an issue if my unrestrained Decepticon prisoner-crewmate-thing hadn't decided to shoot me when I tried to bring her fuel!"
"You think I don't realize that!?" Nightracer shook her helm, then held up her hands in placating surrender, her plating tightening against her frame in shame and fear. "I told you before; I can't be trusted."
The femme picked up a couple of small things that looked clamp-like and didn't have wires on them and hesitated for a moment before attaching an excessive number of them to all the severed power lines she could find. Hopefully his systems would pop up a helpful thing saying the Energon flow had been rerouted, rather than simply continuing as normal and bursting the clamped lines.
"That should make the leaking stop until we figure out how to actually fix it properly and replace some of the Energon you lost... Unless you haven't had a notice informing you of a power reroute." She bit her lower lip nervously, "In which case, you might end up bursting all the other Energon lines in your body and you'll be dead before either of us notices."
"So yay." Blurr added quietly.
She scowled, her lips quirking up a tiny bit. "Do you just say that whenever life decides to go to the scrapheap?"
He coughed hard before responding with a light shrug, his clear blue optics going dim for a moment before he, with a small amount of difficulty, drew two cubes of Energon from his subspace. Passing one to her, the mech winced apologetically as a quarter of the cube's contents sloshed out all down her front. "Anyway, all things set aside: I brought lunch."
The teal and gray femme couldn't help but grin at that, choosing to ignore the fuel mixed with life-En rolling down her chassis and into the crevices of her armor. "And, all things set aside: you ought to be dead..." She glanced into the cube of Energon shyly, "But I'm not averse to you, um, not being... dead and all..."
Blurr coughed again, but this time Nightracer was pretty certain it was mainly to fill the awkward heavy silence following that awkward statement. She went on casually, shrugging in a nonchalant manner, "I mean, what would I do if something were to happen to you? I only just figured out the Energon dispensers and I sure as Pit don't know how to fly this rust-bucket."
The mech laughed, holding up his cube in a toast, "To being not dead."
"To not-dead." She echoed, taking an obligatory sip of the fuel and setting it aside with churning tanks, returning her attention to the mech's injury after he'd finished his fuel one slow sip at a time. There was no way she could refuel with the amount of inner fluids all over her. Now that it wasn't pouring said fluids everywhere, she could see that the mech had been right. It wasn't much more than a mesh-wound. At most, he'd be a bit uncomfortable for a few orns.
In fact, she could see the bullet embedded just servo-tip's depth in his protoform. Picking up a pair of extra-long forceps, Nightracer took in a deep vent, willing her tanks to stop insisting that she purge.
"Going to try to - Oh sweet Cybertron..." She whispered, reaching the forceps down towards the offending metal protrusion, biting her lip hard when she got too close to a severed wire, inciting a small flurry of no-doubt excruciating sparks, "Sorry-! Um, I'm going to... Primus help me not purge on his spark-casing... try and get this... out... without hurting you more than it is... oh that is disgusting, why does there have to be so much fluids?"
A moment later she hissed in frustration, watching helplessly as the mech beneath her shaky hands bit down a groan as he forced himself not to writhe in pain. Her armor clamping down and trembling, Nightracer's engine whined.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I got it, but my hands are shaking and I dropped it because I'm a Decepticon monster, not a medic and I shouldn't be doing this, because I'm the reason you're hurt to begin with and for all I know my hands will accidentally purposefully slip and snuff your spark or-"
"Nightracer, stop rambling, that's my job, and it doesn't suit you anyway. What do you mean you dropped it?"
She leaned in a little closer, craning her neck to search his internals with a short whine of her engine. "Um… I mean I dropped the bullet and- and I can't find- Oh!"
The femme winced in sympathy, her cooling fans kicking on as her panic rose. "Um… This is probably going to really hurt a lot. I-I'll try to, uh, not kill you… Again, or I mean, more, oh…"
"That'd be great." Blurr chuckled, brushing off the idea of his possibly imminent termination lightly.
She wasn't much encouraged by that, but she gripped the forceps tightly, trying to make her hands stop trembling. She cringed, her armor flattening against her frame even tighter as she apologized again, then moments later when she picked up the offending bullet. Her bullet. That she shot into him.
More apologies followed as she drew it from his frame with one optic squeezed shut at the rather unpleasant sound that came from his chest as she accidentally brushed his spark chamber with her smallest servo.
Nightracer dropped her own golden bullet into her hand, examining it critically, sighing in relief when she saw that it hadn't been one of her more violent ones. She had some that were filled and coated with acid, so that it would eat through the target and then burst in a spray of acid deep in their internals. Others were explosive, while yet others would shoot out spikes so as to be irremovable.
This was just a classic, which was the only reason she could even have taken care of this much. The knowledge didn't make the uncomfortable burning in her spark go away though. She could have killed him, easily. The innumerable dead she'd taken over the course of the war could attest to that.
But she didn't mean to. She didn't want to hurt him.
Blurr shifted slightly, trying to sit up, but giving up with a grimace. His voice held a bit of static, "Done?"
She shook her helm faintly, her frame still trembling uncontrollably. The sniper picked up a tiny welder that looked somewhat power-line-fixing like and tentatively put two ends of one of the clamped primary lines together. She flicked on the welder and touched it to the line for about half an astrosecond then jerked back, half-expecting the mech to spontaneously combust.
When he failed to scream in agony or start turning grey, the femme's engine whimpered and she inspected the line judgementally, comparing it to the non-severed ones. She put the welder to it for a fraction longer, rotating it under the tiny flame to seal it all the way around, then flicked the welder off again.
"That's one line… out of seven..." She scratched at a bit of dried life-En on her arm, her tanks twisting, "Um… I'm going to unclamp them, and uh, hopefully nothing bad will happen."
All things considered, the injury was minor. She had seen, felt, and inflicted damages far, far worse than this. That knowledge wasn't keeping her from freaking out about it though. She removed the clamps, praying to Primus that she wouldn't kill this mech.
He hissed sharply as the Energon flowed through the new weld, but it held and he didn't die, so she went ahead and did the rest of the lines with a minute amount of increased confidence. About half a groon later, Nightracer set aside the tools and smiled at him tentatively, then frowned in worry.
"I'm so sorry I shot you, I swear I didn't mean to, I just didn't see you and I was lost in the simulation and I almost killed you and I'm sorry." She took in and let out a massive vent, hoping the mech wouldn't hate her for this. She didn't have anywhere else to go and she was running out of the will to keep running. Nightracer sighed. "Does that feel better or worse?"
The speedster shifted experimentally, but quickly stopped with a pained little laugh. "Well it definitely would have felt better minus the whole bullet-in-the-chest thing entirely, but I kinda deserved it for what I said before, which basically did the same thing to you only worse, cause it was pain of words, and this doesn't even really make us even. So I'm gonna say that it feels better."
She smiled, now with a touch of self-depreciation, as she gently reclosed his chest-plates with a muted click when the clasps locked down. The sniper sat down on the edge of the berth, staring into her lap. "I… It's fine. I'm willing to call it even. You didn't say anything that wasn't true. That's why I was running. More than just the DJD, I run cause when I stop running, I have time to remember that I'm nothing more than a mistake. A lab experiment that didn't work out as planned. Just a ghost of a femme Shockwave murdered in the name of science a long time ago."
"No." Blurr said quickly, laying a hand over hers, his expression showing that he was deep in thought. She glanced side-ways at him, "I never should have said that, and you most definitely shouldn't ever, and you shouldn't let other people say that to you, because it isn't true. Race, you're not a mistake, and you're not broken until you believe that you are. You may not be the same bot that your spark once was, but that doesn't make the person you are now any less important, or of any less value than any bot else. The bots who judge you for it are the lesser persons, not you."
She took in his words silently, her shred of a spark quivering in a confused sliver of scared hope that someone cared enough to so earnestly fight for her worth when not even she could bring herself to. She laughed suddenly as a flippant remark slid from her lips unchecked, "So, if I'm the greater person here, does that mean I can be captain?"
Dark blue optics widened a bit, a guilt and sadness burning behind them that made her regret her words. It also made the slice of hope in her spark brighten a bit at the proof that he truly was sorry for his stinging words.
The look in those optics wiped away the bitterness she held towards him faster than she'd ever thought possible. What he'd said about her couldn't be forgiven, yet here she was, willing to risk it anyway. It didn't make sense.
The look flashed by in less than a nanosecond, and he chuckled. "Captain Nightracer? I think I can live with that."
