Kendrix's eyes were filled with blood. Shockingly, this also meant he couldn't see a damn thing. Nevertheless, he rolled off of his back from where he'd fallen onto his hands and knees, trying to push himself up while Proxima knitted his sinews back into something approaching muscle.
This is bad. We're backed into a corner here, in more ways than one.
Yeah, kinda picked up on that, Kendrix replied, barely able to muster the coherent thought to do so.
Nova's in a bad way. I think he's still defragmenting. His focus is way off. You need to get back in there.
And do what?! Last time it took a Nova Bomb just to break even with the bastard, and even if I felt like I could pull another one like that out of my ass, I'd hit Nova with it too.
Well, there is an alternative.
What are you talking about? Kendrix groaned as he finally found his way to his feet.
He was nearly yanked back to the floor as a massive weight suddenly appeared in his hands.
Big gun.
Kendrix hefted the scorch cannon back up, before putting it into position on his shoulder.
Big gun. he agreed.
The artificial meteor screamed across the room in what felt like an instant, taking Bludgeon full in the back. The mechanical samurai snarled in pain as ochre light blazed across his form. With a single strike from his closed fist, he sent the already reeling Nova to the ground, motionless.
"You are the most irritating specimen of vermin I have ever encountered. That much I grant you…" the Decepticon uttered as he shrugged off a cascade of sparks and drops of molten armor, back still turned to Kendrix.
Then, in a movement that defied all bounds of physics, Bludgeon whirled around and closed the distance between them in a fraction of a second, his gigantic form looming to fill Kendrix's newly-cleared view before the Guardian could ever hope to react.
"...but an insect blessed by Primus is still an insect."
One taloned hand closed around the scorch cannon, crushing its depleted frame into scrap. The other closed around Kendrix's face.
Then it ripped his skull from his body.
Shitshitshitshitshit-
Proxima flashed in existence next to where Kendrix's headless corpse slumped to the ground. It would be messy, but she could revive him. She needed to revive him. Then everything would be-
"Finally out in the open, are we?"
Proxima froze. How could she have forgotten?
A pair of talons closed around her, holding her shell in a pincer. She tried to vanish, to transmat to safety, but some power kept her locked here. A Dark one.
Bludgeon held the Ghost up to take a better look, eyes blazing a hungry emerald.
"When I first heard the Hive telling stories of undying warriors guided by fragments of a sleeping god, I laughed to myself at their bestial superstition. But in the centuries hence, I have seen truth in much I once thought impossible.
"I have been here since the beginning. I shadowed the Hive as they picked through the remains of this system. I saw their first skirmishes with your kind and your puppeteered corpses, saw as that heap of hovels you call a City sprouted up like a weed in ash. I watched your assault on the Hive's fortress, watched as thousands of "immortals" were slaughtered like the pests they are. They died. I lived."
"And yet you waited until now to reveal yourself," Proxima said in a strained growl, still struggling to escape. "What, was the big bad robot scared of a few bugs?"
"I am not some child to be driven about by nettled pride, little Light. Do not waste your words on me."
Bludgeon turned Proxima over in his hand, eyes lazily roving over her form as if she was some shiny piece of scrap metal. She was pretty sure she hated being looked at that way.
"I remained hidden because, while I am certain one of your ilk would make a curious trinket for a time, you were never what interested me about this system. You and the wretches you shepherd have never grasped the true mechanism of things. Their flesh demands much of them, distracts them, and you lack the clarity to see beyond their needs. What use could I have for such entities? Even that poor excuse for a Cybertronian you so kindly brought to me is beginning to lose his charm."
Bludgeon raised his other hand, talons dancing with green flames, their glow mingling with the fire already in his eyes.
"I think I shall set you all aside now, in fact. This… indulgence has distracted me for too long, and I must return to my work."
The hand moved towards Proxima, thrumming with inevitability. She knew it could touch her, hurt her, break her sturdy shell and send the Light that was her flesh scattering to the stars, never to be whole again. So she fought with all she had, fins shaking, body flashing with transmat, fear writhing inside her like so many hateful worms.
"What is your name, little Light?"
She didn't want to die.
"I must know the name of every thing that is to fall to me."
She didn't want to die.
Fear was a new feeling for Proxima. Even in the days before the City, when she and all her kind were still new shapes on reality's fabric, she had never known fear like this. The fear of ending.
But it wasn't just that fear, was it? No, there was something else. A fear of lack. Of loss. Of losing those she loved. This fear devoured the first, grew fat on its flesh. It curled up inside her, folding itself into a chrysalis, only to hatch out as something entirely different.
Something new.
A brilliant ray of light shone from Proxima's eye, stabbing through Bludgeon's metallic skull. The samurai screamed, instinctively releasing his grip on her shell to claw at his face in animal pain.
"My name is Proxima," she answered, the truth of her words hammering down through her Light to pierce Bludgeon's mind as she shattered through the data within his processor.
Eons of memory stretched out before her eye, bricks of dark glass stacked into a sharp, looming pyramid, built like an ancient tomb or hateful temple. Proxima struck out with the spear of her will, her Light, and felt as it bluntly refracted into the mind's sterilized architecture, images rushing past her like a torrent of blood from a fresh wound.
She was in a slum surrounded by bulky metal buildings of alien design.
She was in a knife fight, another bot before her, his young optics filled with hunger and fear, just like hers. She cut him down, and she wasn't afraid anymore.
She was training, fighting, becoming strong, becoming sharp, just like the sword she now wielded.
She heard an idol, whispering to her from the bowels of a forgotten, unholy temple. She found it, the black coldness of its horned shape swallowing her doubt, her weakness, granting her a blessed equilibrium.
She saw a bot giving a speech, his gunmetal gray plates bound over bulging component flesh, his voice calling for change and justice and death. He was a fool, she knew, but a strong one. His strength would be the vehicle of her ambition.
She saw a world on fire, glorious war tearing across its shape like the death-throes of some ancient beast.
She saw a little ship, fleeing into the stars, chasing a lantern it could barely perceive. She followed it.
She saw a nest of insects, a hive, their logic blunt and primitive, their runes and minds blazing green with the hunger of flesh.
She was nearly at the pyramid's summit, now.
She felt her idol pulsating, shadowed dreams striking against her mind with unerring regularity. Like a drumbeat.
Like a heartbeat. Then-
Pain. Precious, luxurious pain. Oh how she'd missed-
Proxima tore the connection apart with a heave, shaken by the visions she'd experienced, the visions that were already half-forgotten like some strange dream.
Her eye snapped back to Bludgeon, ready to fight or flee-
-just to be drawn down to where an abyssal-black blade had sprouted from the samurai's side.
There was something in Nova's eyes that Proxima had never seen there before. The flash of comprehension, the glint of a focused will, maybe. Whatever it was, it did not falter as the Autobot twisted the dark sword's hilt, alighting it with screaming green.
Bludgeon overcame his shock. He roared in pain and defiance, but it was not enough. His cry was silenced as he was swallowed by a gangrenous rift of his own sword's making.
The samurai vanished, leaving no trace but the faint echoes of his wrathful screams, leaving Nova standing alone in the dim light of the cockpit.
The robotic man let out an unmistakably satisfied burst of exhaust, then fell to the ground unconscious.
Kendrix opened his eyes. After an instant, realization struck, and he leapt to his feet, the Void already coiling into being within his closed fists.
"Relax! He's gone," a tired voice sighed.
Kendrix turned to see Proxima's drooping form floating over Nova's sleeping body, bathing it in occasional flashes of Light-directed glimmer as she repaired the robot's apparently minor wounds.
Kendrix slowly released the Void, then reached for his helmet. Feeling a rush of gratitude that his head was still where his hands expected it to be, he gulped down a few breaths of the bitterly cold Antarctic air, trying to slow his heartbeat as the adrenaline of his resurrection began to fade.
"What happened?" Kendrix asked through his exhaustion, finally calm enough to speak.
"When you went down, Bludgeon… caught me." Proxima slowly answered, sounding shaken. "I ended up hacking into his mind, to try and get him off me. Then Nova took the opportunity to run the bastard through with his own sword."
Kendrix looked over to where the dark blade lay, forgotten in the aftermath of the brawl.
"Activated one of those rifts inside of him, and the guy just up and vanished."
"Dead?" Kendrix asked hopefully.
"Ken, we're lucky, but I don't think we're that lucky."
"Probably not," Kendrix admitted with a sigh.
"On the bright side, seems like this sword is what he was using to get around. Without it, he should be restricted to just flying around in vehicle mode, making it much easier to track and avoid him."
"Three cheers for that," he murmured. "How's Nova doing?"
"A little beat up, but nowhere near as bad as last time. I'm already about done patching him up. Seems like he's mostly done defragmenting too. There's still a massive amount of corrupted data, but it looks like my program is running out of stuff it can actually fix."
"Hope he can manage with what he's got," Kendrix said worriedly, glancing over Nova's strangely calm-looking form.
"He's a tough kid. He'll be ok."
"I'm… pretty sure he's way older than both of us."
"You know what I meant."
"Yeah, yeah."
"He's waking up."
Sure enough, Nova's body shook slightly as power thrummed through his form. Kendrix stepped back as the giant robot pushed himself into a sitting position, eyes flickering awake.
"Hey man," Kendrix said as he made eye contact with the Cybertronian. "Proxima told me you sent Bludgeon packing. Good work, and thanks for saving my hide."
Nova let out a tired but joyful whir and gave a massive thumbs-up.
"Now that everyone's back up, we should probably leave." Proxima interjected. " Rasputin's definitely gonna be getting antsy by now, and we don't want to give him even a shred of a reason to point his warsats at us. We're tough, but we're not orbital bombardment tough."
"What? But we've barely found anything!"
Proxima shook out a negative. "I downloaded every scrap of data I could find in the ship's computers, including logs, schematics, and navigational data. I'd like to stay here too, but I don't think we'd learn much more from the ship itself, given how damaged it is."
Nova let out a dejected sigh.
"Look Nova," Proxima said, her voice soft with empathy as she floated towards him. "I can't even imagine what you're going through right now. But if we don't play Rasputin's game, he won't ever let us come back here. Once we're out, I'll parse through the data and send him a copy of whatever I think we can trust him with. That should buy us enough good faith for a return trip. Ok?"
Nova looked at her, a look that wasn't quite grief showing in his eyes, and nodded.
O-K-.
"Alright. Everybody ready?"
"Wait," Kendrix said, an edge of uncertainty in his voice. "What about Bludgeon's sword?"
"What about it?" Proxima asked, confused.
"Well, if we just leave it here, Bludgeon will know exactly where to find it, and he'll just come back for it."
"If Bludgeon tries to come back here, he'll have to fly, and Rasputin will blow him out of the sky before he gets anywhere close. Plus, he probably has a tracker or something in it. If we take it back with us, he'll be able to find us again no problem."
"Then we destroy it." Kendrix argued. "Take it apart, see what we can figure out. We need as much info on his capabilities as possible, right? Besides, I don't think I want to leave it around for Rasputin to come find either."
"Ugh, fine," Proxima grumbled, flying over to scan the massive blade into transmat. "You're just lucky you don't compulsively hoard firearms like every other Guardian on the surface of the Earth, otherwise I wouldn't have near enough storage space to take this with us."
The trio made their way back to the hangar they'd entered from, with Proxima vanishing to rest and to let Rasputin know they were going to head out. Nova transformed back into a jumpship, and Kendrix clambered up into the cockpit.
Once he'd secured himself into the pilot's seat, Nova swept out into the harsh white light of the Antarctic day.
After a minute or two of silence, Proxima began speaking.
"I cleared things with Rasputin, told him we'd be in touch with the data shortly. Made sure to let him know how valuable a second, longer excursion would be."
"Good," Kendrix said with a nod. Nova didn't respond.
"There's… there's something else." Proxima began, hesitantly. When no one spoke up, she continued. "I was able to find one more uncorrupted entry in the ship's log. Nova… do you want to see it?"
A sharp beep echoed out from the jumpship's console. The message was clear. Proxima began beaming the data into Nova's database, while also projecting the image and audio into Kendrix's HUD for his benefit.
::"Orion Hope" Captain's Log
::Final Entry
Things aren't looking too good. My energon supply is running low, and I can't afford to sap much more from the ship's reactor, otherwise I'll never get it fully repaired. Bludgeon really did a number on it. I'm honestly amazed it held together during the fall from orbit. It's a miracle I didn't die on impact.
Best I can tell, I've landed in the middle of a massive tundra. Navigation tells me I'm fairly close to this planet's southern magnetic pole, but beyond that I don't have a great sense of where I am. Radio chatter is very infrequent, but it's there. There's definitely people living on this planet.
But I haven't been able to decode any of the transmissions, and no one's responded to my hails or the ship's emergency beacon. Either I'm being ignored, or the inhabitants aren't familiar enough with Cybertronian tech to notice me. I'd hoped someone would come to investigate the crash site, but it's been two weeks and I haven't seen a single living thing.
I'm down to my last resort here. I need to make a break for it, head north, see if I can find any signs of civilization, or an energon deposit I can reach. It's not a great plan, but…
I can't help thinking you're still out there. No one should have survived a fall like that with your injuries, but… I can feel it in my spark. I know you're out there.
So how about we make a deal. I don't give up on you, and you don't give up on me, yeah?
We'll see each other again, 'Swipe.
I promise.
::End of Log
AN: Sorry it took me so long to get this out. My schedule has gotten really busy lately and a lot of stuff has been moved around, meaning the time I'd normally spend writing has been set aside for other activities. Currently trying to find a new niche so I can start writing more regularly again.
Sorry again for the wait, and I hope you all are still enjoying!