Reflections
It had hurt.
Blackout intimately remembered everything about the attack on Mission City. He remembered the smoke, the screaming, the crumbling buildings and debris that had littered the streets in the battle's aftermath. He recalled the heat and the sun and the dust and all the shrieking little insects scrambling about, searching for safety.
The Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low, even before he had come to Earth, had always kept his priorities straight: he was number one, everyone else came secondary and therefore were expendable. With this deeply ingrained thinking in mind, the Decepticon flier had gone into the battle at Mission City determined to win, but he would do so with as little damage to himself as possible. Blackout avoided major fight points, allowing Megatron, Devestator, and Starscream to do the dirty work of dispatching the Autobots while he terrorized the humans a few blocks away. Not that fighting Optimus Prime wouldn't have been thrilling, but considering how quickly the Autobot leader had destroyed Bonecrusher, the Sikorsky found throwing cars around and sawing the slag out of things with his rotors positively – safely -- delightful.
It wasn't like he wanted to be part of this particular mission. Just like he'd never desired to be slapped at the front lines of battle formations on other worlds. Blackout was an officer; he preferred to give orders and watch fights run their course from a point of relative safety, not actively engage in them. So when Starscream, after millennia of abusing the third in command by forcing him to lead massive ground troop advances, ordered the rotor-flier to be part of a search, find, and destroy all who got in the way team bound for an unknown alien planet, Blackout was displeased.
What he found upon landing on the wet, dirty planet was that it was filled and governed by a weak, inferior organic species called 'humans'. They broke easily, their technology was primitive at best, and while there were billions upon billions of them, if the team conducted themselves correctly, they would stand no chance. Barricade and Frenzy had been dispatched three and a half metacycles before Blackout was even ordered to make planet fall – they were nipping at the Allsparks heels, very close to finding the object that would make all the difference in the faction conflict between Autobots and Decepticons.
So Blackout had gone. As per the plan, he dropped down in the small country of Qatar, systems ensuring to scramble the local radar long enough for him to land, get a new alternate mode, and hide. The Sikorsky-built MH-53 Pave Low transport helicopter had been the only vehicle available at the time of his arrival, and only barely satisfied his computers mass requirements for a mechanoid of his size. But, Blackout realized upon scanning and reformatting that the original helicopter had an identification number inscribed along the tail. That would have been a little strange, the newly converted Decepticon rationalized. Two of the precise same Airforce helicopters flying around.
So he killed the other chopper, and disappeared.
He'd sat and waited, concealed, coming out only under the cover of night. Scorponok, his faithful little pet, had kept a patrol routine upon his request during the day, burrowing beneath the sand to detect any unwanted visitors. Blackout had been particularly impressed with his drone's choice of alternate mode: the beast had scanned not only an earth scorpion, but his computers had picked up debris from an old battle field and had managed to tell his reconfiguration systems to take the arachnid shape, but make it look like debris. It was wonderful camouflage for his pet.
While waiting, Blackout learned. Automatically he latched onto the Internet, learning it swiftly and surfing in his free time. It was an obvious advantage to learn about a foreign planet before, well, blowing it up. Knowledge was power, and even the Decepticons knew that. The more he read, the better he felt about his situation on the water-covered mudball. Their weapons were, for the most part, inferior, and when his attack came, all Blackout needed to do was erase their defenses while they slept, download the databases, and then blow the entire base off the face of the planet. That would take five kliks, tops.
Three months later, the order to advance was given, and Blackout was not disappointed. The humans, rather than shooting at him before he got to the base as he expected them to, actually escorted him to the SOCCENT base of their own free will. It had been a pleasant surprise, and the Sikorsky helicopter marked with 4500X on his tail shaft willingly, if not gleefully, followed. The next several moments were lost in history; no one aside from Blackout himself and the surviving human soldiers knew what happened there in detail. It had been easy, but over all the towering Decepticon had failed with the humans got keen to him and cut the hard lines before he could get what he wanted. None survived, but the Pave Low had relayed this news to Starscream after dispatching his pet to track down any survivors and had fled the scene to avoid detection.
More waiting ensued.
Blackout pondered the humans and their weapons systems for several hours before being rejoined by Scorponok – his symbiotic partner was badly damaged and missing half of his tail. This greatly upset the monstrous flier, and after relocating undetected to Australia, he began repairs and maintenance. He worked for days nonstop to get his pet back into functioning levels, and even then, his repair work was mediocre at best. Still, Scorponok felt better. Despite this, Blackout had chosen to leave the arachnid drone behind to recover on his own when the Decepticon second in command had called for them to regroup in Colorado. His reasoning was simple: Scorponok was still in no condition to endure a battle of this magnitude, and Blackout was unwilling to destroy his faithful companion for no reason. It was probably the only show of care for someone other than himself that the Sikorsky had ever displayed.
So he'd gone. Setting his burners at maximum boost, Blackout shot across the Pacific and made it there on near-empty fuel tanks and a little bit late to boot. But he was there, and ready to repeat what he'd done in Qatar.
Things just didn't go that way.
Humans were one thing. Desperate, high-firepowered Autobrats were another. His three teammates were doing a bang-up job of kicking the enemy around, so Blackout had taken it upon himself to bully the local fleshlings. That went all fine and dandy for a little while, but then an opportunity to aid Megatron opened up. Blackout, ever the allegiant, eagerly charged his long-range weaponry and began his stealthy approach from behind while Prime and the Decepticon leader were occupied. Blackout remained unaware of the insects as they strategically congregated around his backside, executing the same devious and sneaky move that he intended to make. They wanted to hit him from behind.
Unfortunately, they made one fatal mistake and he saw one of the targeting devices they used as it crawled along the inside of his left arm. Shifty little bonebags, they were; the Sikorsky had rumbled his displeasure so deep that it rattled the windows on the buildings he was standing beside, and he turned to face the humans to teach them a lesson about sneaking up behind the big boys when they're busy. Something was already coming at him and he shot at it, but it was moving at too high a velocity and Blackout was too shocked to hit it. It was a fleshling on one of their tiny vehicles, and the best he'd been able to do was take a single step back and that's when it all started.
The agony.
Blackout felt his chest start burning and he cried out, warbling in pain as both monstrous hands lifted to touch the armor in alarm. It was intact. His chest armor was not blown open and smoldering, it was intact! How was that --? Mechanics popped and exploded within the MH-53 Pave Low's body, and he staggered hopelessly, the world spinning, until finally he went down face-first onto the concrete. Stasis lock took him in their dark, comforting arms down into a world devoid of pain, and that was how he stayed.
Until he hit the water, that is.
The humans take time to do something as involved as gathering up very heavy metal bodies, transporting them, making it out to an unknown point in the ocean and then dumping them. Blackout had remained in stasis lock, effectively playing opossum, for the better part of five days and nights, his body repairing itself feverishly since those systems had, luckily, not gone offline. It was only better for him that none of the Autobots thought to check any of the presumably dead Decepticons to make sure that they were, indeed, dead. One of them wasn't.
But the fastest way to yank a slowly rebooting DNA-based computer out of slumber and into panic-mode was to submerge it into really cold water. Blackout had come back online rapidly sinking, his body filling up with water, and the first thing he thought to do was activate his emergency water bulkheads. Major circuit areas were enclosed and mostly cut off from outside water flow, sealing the inside of his chest and abdomen as well as his elbows and knees. The rest burned, injuries popping and sparking, but for now the immediate threat had been taken care off. He wouldn't completely short out.
But, the helicopter was still sinking. The sun was getting farther and farther away as Blackout plunged deeper into the black nothingness that was already beginning to press down on his armor. Panic; fear; terror; the surviving Decepticon had denied drowning but was still facing the very real possibility of being crushed by the sheer pressure of the oceans waters. Thinking as quickly as his mind would let him as the darkness began to close in with finality, the Sikorsky turned his back to the surface and prayed his rotors still worked. There was nothing but pitch black below him and the unknown of what was down there frightened the monstrous mechanoid more than any void of space ever could. Reaching back, Blackout snatched the main rotor off of its mounting structure and held it by hand, positioning it below him. The blades rotated into position with a groan and…thankfully, began to spin.
Slowly he rose upward, the rotorblades impeded greatly by the water, watching with concern as the ships above him leisurely began to move away. They were leaving. He had been the last to be dumped. Getting a bearing for where he was on the geographical map, Blackout turned away from the ships and hurriedly switched his propelling system into a faster spin, heading for the Philippines some one hundred feet below the surface.
Blackout's consciousness flickered in and out as he went, but his hands and arms kept his route true, and before he knew it, he abruptly stopped.
Crawling, the Sikorsky left his rotormount half submerged in the surf as he heaved himself up onto the pristine white beach. Salt water poured from every crevice and with that feeling came a shudder of relief: he would live.
He'd had barely enough time to do a quick, inefficient scan of his area before collapsing, one arm curled under his cheek, back in stasis lock before he could even analyze the data he'd manage to aquire.
Blackout lifted his head, jerked back into current reality from his dreamlike state of half aware musing. He had fallen into a semi-sleep situation, drowsing against a wall in the almost suffocating heat of the warehouse that he and his lover had taken refuge in. Speaking of whom…the Sikorsky blinked his optics and peered at the source of his awakening; Barricade had walked over and sat on his leg, obviously thinking about something.
It occurred to the helicopter then that his companion, for his diminutive size, had absolutely no concept of personal space. Either that, or he disregarded it completely, because Barricade had no compunctions about sitting on or getting as close as he wanted to the thirty-three-and-change-foot Decepticon flier. But Primus forbid if Blackout invaded the smaller mechanoids space at any point in time. Barricade's defensive behavior was interesting to watch and think about; the Saleen Mustang took every opportunity to crowd a larger mech as much as possible as if to assert that despite his small stature he was there and just as dominant as they were, but if someone as big as Blackout returned the favor, he bristled and snarled and threatened to cave their skulls in with a single punch. Years of working on the Nemesis had taught Barricade to be wary of attack around every corner, especially from Decepticons larger than himself.
"Do you mind?"
The Saleen turned his head. "No."
Blackout grunted, but did and said nothing in response. He truly did not care that much, even when the modified Ford Mustang leaned back, using the Sikorsky's stomach as a backrest. The pair had never, ever gotten along aboard the Nemesis, but here, being the last two Decepticons on Earth, they tolerated each others idiosyncrasies and were gradually beginning to get used to the entire situation, grim as it was. Shifting only minutely to get comfortable, Blackout lifted one hand, toying with the wheels attached to Barricade's shouldermounts until his companion clearly became annoyed at the action, which took all of approximately two point four seconds.
The Pave Low quirked his crested helm. "Sorry."
"No you're not," Barricade spat, glaring at him vehemently from over his own shoulder.
That little bastard has an attitude the size of Unicron's head. "Who says?"
"You're never sorry about anything."
Blackout let it go. The Mustang Saleen's tone was always sharp and caustic, but he'd been getting better at leashing his explosive temper over the past few weeks. Dealing with a Decepticon he'd previously wished death upon as a companion was difficult at first, but was slowly getting easier to swallow. And even Barricade, one of the proudest warriors in the business, couldn't deny the fact that by their standards, Blackout was highly, highly attractive. A mechanoid that radiated that much sheer force and power…
The Sikorsky MH-53 shifted again, this time placing his wandering hand across Barricade's stomach. Waiting for the violent reaction he didn't get, Blackout relaxed again and let them both drift back into a state of silence.
But something had been bothering him. "Barricade?"
"What?" The police interceptor sounded exasperated.
"Where were you in the battle for the Allspark?"
More silence. Barricade finally lifted a clawed hand and rubbed at his temple out of annoyance.
"What?" Blackout prompted, curious.
"Let's just say…I really hate Bonecrusher."