Author's Note:
Don't get used to this updating every day. When spring break ends this week I'll lose all my precious free time
Starscream had asked for an update to see if the Autobot had said anything, and Nightstalker calmly informed her easily-irate Lord that these things took time. She said she couldn't promise information today, but his breaking point was coming quickly.
Nightstalker debated the prospect of solid information as she headed back down to the nearly always deserted torture chambers. It was a bit early in the game to actually get some, but with his apprehension to Arachnid's venom . . . She might be able to swing it today.
She entered the code to his door and entered to find him looking at her. "Morning," he said in greeting. Nightstalker frowned, not because he wasn't frazzled—he was clearly quaking in his boots—but because he had said good morning.
He sighed when she didn't say anything but scowl, and he shrugged. "The name's Cliffjumper. I don't think we ever properly introduced ourselves."
Nightstalker rolled her eyes then, wondering why he even bothered. "You want to know the name of your torturer?" She opened the panels of her arm, revealing the three vials of Arachnid's venom.
He tensed up audibly, and his vocals shook a little with his next words. "Yeah, sure I'd like it. I doubt a torturer gets many friends, especially among Decepticons."
"It's a loner's work," she stated.
When she pulled free a vial, so said "Cliffjumper" stated nervously, "You never gave me your name."
"My designation is none of your concern when you have bigger problems." Nightstalker flicked the vial lightly at optic level to him. His lips pressed together.
"Yeah . . ." he whispered. "I sure do. You like Arachnid?"
Nightstalker raised a brow. "Now you're stalling."
He gave a weak laugh. "You're letting me."
"Maybe I am," she conceded, opening the vial. "It lets the fear set in your spark better."
"Got that last night," he concluded, nodding a bit jerkily. "Couldn't get a nanoclick of recharge last night . . ."
Nightstalker smirked at the look on his face. "Don't worry, we're not there yet," she said closing the vial and putting it away. His face visibly relaxed.
"Good!" he said, a near smile of relief touching his face. Nightstalker raised a brow again, surprised at how easy it was to make him happy. "Anyth—"
"But it's definitely happening," she cut him off, making dread pick back up. She opened the door again, bringing in the energon cube. He gave a sigh of resignation then. "I can't have you locking yourself in stasis and dying on me in the middle of this."
"Right . . ."
Nightstalker rolled his eyes. It was like he didn't even know how this stuff went. Taking the tube and forcing the injection to start through his arm, Cliffjumper gave another sigh.
"This is some life you lead."
Nightstalker quirked her brow again. "What's it matter to you?"
He gave the bark of a laugh then. "It matters a lot to me considering I'm your next victim." Cliffjumper shook his head. "I don't know . . . I guess a bot would just want more than something like this. I mean, I guess I can understand Arachnid. She's about as crazy as they get—but it's you I don't understand." His blue optics frowned at her. "You're smart. Not insane like Arachnid. You don't even seem like you're enjoying it. Well, except for that alter ego you turn into when you're doing it . . ."
Nightstalker shrugged, letting a whip out to idly twirl it. "It's my job."
"That it?" He shook his head. "Surely a gal like you wants something better."
Nightstalker scowled, standing straight and looking him square in the face. "Please do NOT tell me you're about to offer me a place with the Autobots." When he just looked at her, it seemed that indeed, he WAS going to. Nightstalker scowled furiously, shaking her head. "Look, there's no place for a femme like myself in war. It was either I did something to help the war effort or get eradicated like the rest. And I wasn't about to sit by and let myself get terminated. So, I did the only thing a femme my size could do—I started in on the torture business."
"Not true."
Nightstalker glanced up to him. "You're telling me my own history isn't true?"
Cliffjumper shook his head. "No, I'm telling you that a girl your size can do whatever she wanted, even become a fierce warrior." When Nightstalker just looked at him dubiously, he nodded his head. "I have a good friend who's about your size, and trust me, she may be small, but that girl's a wicked warrior."
Nightstalker just blinked at him. He sighed again, and she glanced to the cube. Only a little over half empty . . . C'mon, get on with it, she didn't want this small talk business . . . She nervously twirled her whip, wings twitching.
Cliffjumper shifted positions painfully, trying to ease the strain on his sore shoulders. "Look, I'm just saying, don't sell yourself short. You can do a lot more than what you think. A wise bot once told me that a bot shouldn't be measured by size alone."
"Good for you," she muttered. "Not that all this kisses and hugs business isn't just fine and dandy, but this IS a torture chamber, and once that energon cube empties it's right back to where we left off."
His eyes jumped to her arm where she carried Arachnid's venom. "Y-Yeah," he stated uncertainly. "I know. But it's nice to talk to you in between times."
Nightstalker scoffed. "It's like having small talk with your executioner before heading to the guillotine."
"Yeah, it's something you've just gotta do because you want someone to have your last moments."
Silence was the only thing that spoke after that. Nightstalker seethed to herself that she had even wasted time with him on the matter. When the energon cube finished emptying itself into his body, she kicked it aside and recoiled her whip. Cliffjumper froze when she once again pulled out the vial of Arachnid's venom, and this time, she wasn't going to hesitate in using it.
She opened the vial with experienced fingers, drawing out a slim blade of precision to cut him apart with. "Now, you know where we left off. Do you have anything you want to confess before I get started?" She taunted him by waving the venom-dipped point near him, making him cringe away.
After a moment, he finally said, "Yeah, I got a confession. Femmes look sexy in black."
Nightstalker's lips curled in disgust at his smart aft remark. "Cute, but not cute enough." She let the blade rest against the opposite side of his marked face. The old wound was puckering nastily from last night's touch of venom, and it leaked an oozing of energon. Today's wound hissed and spit, his face coiling in pain and fear as she idly trailed it across his face, around his eye, and began to dig it under the edge of his helm. His mouth clamped tight with barely controlled screams as he twitched while pain filled his sensors.
"Plenty more where this came from," Nightstalker reminded him. She dipped the glass-tipped blade in again, a weapon she had created solely for the purpose of using Arachnid's poison. Metal screeched as she scratched lines into him that made him quake in pain as the poison set in, teasing at his mind with fuzzies.
"Feel free to tell me where the Autobot base is whenever you want this to stop," Nightstalker reminded Cliffjumper as he quite clearly bit back all sounds of pain. Nightstalker left no part of him untouched by the venom, decorating his body as she pleased. The hissing of his deteriorating metal never stopped as she drew marks through his chest plating, his arms, his legs, his back. He bravely endured, hysteria locked up until he began to scream, and Nightstalker's lips quirked. Today she would get him to beg.
When there was nothing left but a few drops, Nightstalker looked up at Cliffjumper with a dark smile. "Have a drink?" She laughed when she tried to force his mouth open and he stubbornly kept it shut, twisting beneath her grip and eyes wide with unconcealed alarm. "Fine then," she relented. "Not down the throat, but we'll see how the inner wiring likes it if the outer reacts so violently."
"No!"
Nightstalker quirked a brow at him. "Oh? Then, tell me where you want it. Down the throat? Or in the wires?"
He trembled violently, not wanting it inside him at all. "Put it away," he managed weakly.
Nightstalker clucked her tongue. "That's not the answer I want. Down the throat, or down the wires?"
He looked at her with tormented blue optics, unbelieving at her cruelty. "Y-You c-can't honestly expect me to choose between that?" he stuttered in horror.
Nightstalker shrugged. "Time's wasting. Choose quickly, or I'll choose for you."
Cliffjumper quaked more and more as the time stretched, unable to choose his own poison. Nightstalker just made a grab at his face again, but when he kept his mouth clamped tightly shut, she moved to the exposed wiring of his shoulder. She began to tip the vial.
"No, no! Please, no!"
She held back, flicking her orange optics up to his terrified blue ones. "Oh? You have something to say?"
His azure optics filled with desperation. "Please, you know I can't tell you what you want to know!"
Nightstalker clicked her glossia again and shook her head. "Not can't. Just won't." She tipped the vial again, and his terrified voice drew to hysterical.
"No—please, don't do this—don't do it, please—!"
His pleading voice ended on an energon-curdling scream when the few drops of venom trickled down his super sensitive wiring. He thrashed against his bonds, head jerking and cries enough to send a shiver through the entire NEMESIS. Nightstalker dropped the empty vial to the side, pulling out another.
Cliffjumper's optics saw the fresh vial of Arachnid's venom and despair shuttered in on his face. That was it. He was breaking.
Nightstalker vowed to make it quick and gruesome. "Tell me what I want to know, and I promise I won't have to hurt you anymore. Just one small location, and you won't have to endure this anymore. Just one small place? The continent? The state? The river?" He shivered and didn't respond, but that was to be expected. She shrugged, wingtips quirking. "Fine then." Bringing out her curved blade from her left arm, Nightstalker gave two hacks to his left thigh. Cliffjumper howled out again, jerking in pain when she ripped up a very large chunk of protective metal from above his kneecap.
Nightstalker put her blade back in her arm and tossed his metal aside. She waved the full vial of Arachnid's venom below his face. "Hey. Hey, hey. This whole vial? It's going on those exposed wires if you don't give me a little bit of where to find this base." Cliffjumper's head jerked up in horrified terror. Nightstalker idly removed the cap.
"I—I can't . . . I can't . . ."
"Won't," she corrected him. She kept her eyes on his blue ones that were literally coiling in fear as they watched her move the vial above the exposed wires of his leg.
"Please no . . . dear Primus, I can't . . . No, no, no . . . Primus, please, spare me . . ."
"Not down here he won't," Nightstalker said. "This is my domain."
She tipped the vial. "No, no, no—please, I'm begging you, don't do this, please!"
"Then tell me at least something about this base," Nightstalker sighed. "I promise I'll stop immediately."
His mind crippling terror mounted. "No, please, no—I can't bear it, please!"
Nightstalker slowly began to pour the venom onto his exposed leg wires, and the resounding scream that splintered her mind would haunt her just as all the others did. Cliffjumper bucked and howled, optics cutting off black as the pain overloaded his sensors. The smell of important wires burning stank up the room.
"Oh, Primus! Stop! Stop, stop! Primus, please, stop! The US! The United States! We're in the United States!"
Nightstalker immediately stopped pouring the half-empty vial, but Cliffjumper didn't stop his agonized screaming as he thrashed while the venom ate his leg up, the hissing unheard beneath his anguished cries.
Nightstalker backed up, leaning against the door in front of him as she slowly waited for him to gather control of himself. He continued to twitch and shudder, moaning, "Oh Primus . . . Primus help me, please . . . Primus . . ."
"I think that will be all for today."
He trembled violently as he lifted his head, energon dripping from his multiple wounds and pooling on the ground with hardened lava and murderous poison. She nodded to his horrified, agonized, and desperately guilty optics. "Starscream will be most pleased."
Nightstalker turned and walked from the room as he let out a wail of despair behind her. She left him to bemoan his weakness alone in the dark, snapping off his lights and locking him back inside. Nightstalker accessed her communicator.
"Hey Starscream, we've got progress."
There was a moment before he responded. "What is it?"
"An approximation of where the Autobot base is located. The United States."
There was a pause. "Just an approximation? And how do you know he wasn't lying?"
"Not this one," she said back, riding the elevator up. "That was all truth, you could see it in his optics. He hated himself. And as for approximate, don't worry. Within two days, you'll have the answer. Tomorrow he'll clamp up tighter than ever, but after one more good day of torture, he'll crack."
Starscream made a thoughtful sound across the comm. "I see." He gave a dark chuckle. "Then my new plans may be set in motion. Get this information in these two days, Nightstalker, and you will be rewarded well."
"Certainly," she responded. "Nightstalker over and out."