Chapter 9
"Close your eyes"
"He spoke to you. He spoke to you."
Hawkmoon was still reeling from the whole 'cortical patch' thing, so she didn't give his words all that much attention. "I'm going to-"
"Save us," Nightbeat whispered reverently. "You will save us all. You must."
"... What?" Her processor went blank, a snow-white canvas broken only by streaks of discoloured confusion.
There was a commotion - a small one by most standards, but it was there. The other mech, thus far unseen, ambled into view. He was of a lightweight build - a twig, really. Rather frail for a Cybertronian. His optics were narrowed into two pinpricks of purple light. "What are you rambling about?"
Nightbeat continued to stare. At her. At her. And he said no more. The look on his faceplates was all horror and humility. He was ecstatic. He was terrified.
She'd broken him, somehow.
He lifted an arm, transformed his servo into a cannon and shot point blank. Right into the other mech's helm. Energon splashed. Sparks flew. Metal and circuitry crunched. The slender mech fell over, dead.
Hawkmoon seized up, vents whistling. Her optics went wide.
"You're not a Seeker," Nightbeat muttered. In the lull after the brief explosion of sound, his voice reached her crystal clear. "You're not even Cybertronian. You aren't Cloudbreaker at all."
"What- What did you do?!" Her struggles renewed. Nightbeat's weapon retracted and folded back up into a five-fingered servo.
"No one can know." He looked at her, but when he spoke it felt like it was more to himself than her. "The Vosian Weapons Division wants you scrapped - no matter your true identity. The High Iacon Council would have your chassis flayed open and spark pulled apart. And the Prime... Zeta Prime would destroy you. But you cannot - you cannot - be destroyed. Vector Prime spoke to you."
He reached to the side of the berth and pressed something. The restraints around her limbs and wings opened. Hawkmoon leapt at Nightbeat, catching him by surprise and raking her talons down his faceplates. He yelped, stumbled back and pushed her back at the same time. She landed on her pedes, knees bending to both absorb the impact and ready herself for another leaping assault.
"Wait!" Nightbeat held up one servo, the other clutching at his bleeding faceplates. The energon seeped past his digits and ran down his front as streams of electric blue. "I can help you!"
"You're a fragging murderer!"
"Killswitch was unreliable! He'd buckle under the slightest pressure!" His servo fell away, letting her see the damage she'd dealt. His optics were still there, but the rest... her talons had bitten deep. "But you're a warrior, aren't you? I saw what you did. I saw it all."
"You saw nothing!"
"You're an organic, but you gave up your flesh for steel. And almighty Primus bathed you in his love... he gave you so much more." Nightbeat straightened up. His faceplates had to be hurting, and yet he acted as if they were no more than a ruined paint job (Knockout would have been horrified). "This... this is fate."
"You're a killer," Hawkmoon snarled. She inched back, trying to get the berth between herself and him. A gun would have been handy - for the symbolic threat alone if not as a weapon.
"So are you."
"Don't you dare compare us." She wasn't a bad person, she wasn't, she just... she just had to do hard things to keep people safe. Keep them breathing. "You're a monster."
"Look, I'm sorry, but I can help you. Really. You want to go home, right?"
Hawkmoon didn't say anything. The mech before her was twisted and cruel and utterly despicable, but the words he uttered were so sweet and tantalizing.
"You want to join the Seeker Elites. You want-"
"Shut up."
"Here." His optics flickered and there was a ping from her comms system. His message carried files, and a lot of them - how to forge new identity-codes, an updated dig-map, some information on the Vosian Weapons Division, a record of someone designated 'Cloudbreaker', and a location on the other side of the planet.
"I have a friend there," Nightbeat explained. "She can help you. I've already sent her a message. She'll get you into the Elites. Trust me." He took a step forward.
Hawkmoon lunged, again, on pure instinct. She would've called it muscle memory, but she didn't even have synthetic muscles anymore. Nightbeat raised his servos to ward her off, but even with a new body and lack of weapons she hit all the right places. She cracked his elbow joint, tore open some paneling on his chassis, scored a nasty hit across his shoulders, and-
Nightbeat tried to fight back. His servo transformed, though he was unwilling to use it - and the sight of a firearm was not enough to dissuade her. She'd faced worse.
Hawkmoon disassembled his defenses. He could fight, that was clear from the get-go, but she was Risen - and even if she'd only lived a fraction of a Cybertronian's lifespan she spent that life day and night perfecting the art of killing other living beings. Death was - or had been - her mentor. She knew what it was like to die. She knew how to end others.
It gave her an edge that surprised even herself.
Her talons flashed, moving with expert precision - she'd tangled with Eliksni often enough to know all their moves off by heart, she'd fought with Red Legion butchers and felt the bite of their prosthetic meathooks, she'd been on the receiving end of Thrall pounces too many times to count, and she fielded all that hard-earned experience into pure action.
It ended with her claws embedded in Nightbeat's neck, fingers wrapped around his spinal strut and all the wires and crucial energon lines that went with it. He stared up at her with bright, desperate optics and a mouth held open in a silent scream.
She squeezed - enough to emphasize that she could kill him, right then and there.
"If you ever come for me again," Hawkmoon snarled, "I'll rip out your spark and crush it - slowly."
His optics flashed; he understood. If he didn't... well, she'd made clear what would happen then.
Hawkmoon pulled away and flicked the energon from her digits. She scowled at him - at the murderer she was allowing to run free. Her optics never drifted from him, even as she made her way out of the sole doorway. After that... she raced her way through a puzzling complex of long empty corridors decorated with only the dimmest of lights. It felt like an age before she found the sun, glaring through a crystalline window. Hawkmoon smashed it open with a well-placed blow, climbed through, and jumped. She transformed in midair and shot away.
No one fired at her. No one made any attempt to catch her. Fort Scyk was still as lifeless as when she'd first arrived.
Good.
She flew fast enough to break the sound barrier - then slowed down just to do it again. Hawkmoon loved the explosive crack of sonic booms and knowing that it was her speed that caused it. It was thrilling. It gave way to the realization that she wouldn't have gone back to her old Exo body even if it were possible. The freedom of flight was simply too addictive. She adored it.
And by the Traveler, did she fly. Fast and hard enough to scour everything not metal from her alt form. Dust, dirt, and other detritus was torn away by razor-sharp blades of howling air. It felt incredible. But it couldn't extinguish the fire searing away at her insides. Her anger thrashed against the walls of her spark and activated not-quite-developed combat protocols.
"Frag you," Hawkmoon hissed. The Enforcer was all that was on her mind. He'd effectively destroyed what meagre supports she'd built since her arrival. She couldn't go back to Phosphora and Overwatch. If one Enforcer could come after her, then others could - and if Nightbeat could kill a hapless bystander, no hesitation, then... well...
It ruled out Complexius and Knockout too. Hawkmoon actually thought about messaging the latter, but it would've been so very unfair to him. She couldn't do it. Not to any of them. Not to anyone.
She still couldn't believe someone had died. That... what was his name, Killswitch? had been murdered.
"Frag!" Hawkmoon cursed. She rolled through the air once, twice, a total of five angry spins. Damn it all! She'd been coddled into a false sense of security, then tossed in the deep end. Cybertron's dark recesses had finally reared up to meet her. And she hated it. "Oh Gecko, why?!"
She didn't know where to go. She didn't know who would help her - forget Nigthbeat's offer, that fragger was a murderer!
A traitorous corner of her processor whispered, so are you.
Gecko whispered things into her audials.
"You're on a rampage and I'm not comfortable with it."
"I don't think this is why the Traveler chose you."
"You know I'll never leave you, right?"
"But sometimes… I don't like the look in your eyes."
"I'm here. I'm still here."
"Are you still here?"
"I don't want to lose you to this."
"I love you."
"Stop."
"Please."
"This is wrong."
"I can't..."
"Please, I can't watch you-"
"-murder your way across the entire Reef!"
But she couldn't hear past the roaring of kinetic weapons and mindless Scorn.
Her engines choked. For a long, long moment she was free-falling - like a stone plucked out of the air. With a panicked realization she re-engaged her thrusters and careened away from the rapidly-approaching ground. It was her turn to choke - on a sob that wouldn't let go.
He was gone. Her Gecko. Her Ghost. Forever.
Without knowing it, she flew to her stargazing spot in the wilds outside Stanix and transformed just before landing. She didn't stumble, didn't fall, didn't fail in any way. It was perfect. Her new body was perfect. It was everything she could ever have wanted - agile, hardy, and... lethal.
She was starting to regret that last part.
"I want to go home." Hawkmoon collapsed and hugged her legs close. "I want to go home! Traveler, please... Mara... Primus... please..."
No one heard her. No one was listening. She had nothing of worth - nothing to sway uninterested gods.
Nothing.
Hawkmoon looked up - at the sky above, into space, in the vague direction she'd decided Earth was. Well, it wasn't totally true. She had some shanix to her name - a local currency. Just some pocket change Phosphora had given her for the night out with Knockout and his pals. Enough to get some energon, whenever she needed that - which wasn't urgent or anything, judging from her fuel levels. Maybe... maybe enough to give her a start?
No. What she was was unmistakable. Seekers weren't common. And if Enforcers - even if only privately hired investigators like Nightbeat - were looking for her, then they'd find her. She was too unique.
Too lost.
She needed new ident-codes for a start, no matter what she did.
With a gruff curse thrown out, she rummaged inwards and pulled apart the file Nightbeat had sent labeled 'NEW IDENTITY'. Opening it was easy, but going further in was fraught with fear - what if there were vicious viruses within, waiting to pounce? None did, thankfully. Much to her surprise (and chagrin), everything looked both genuine and helpful.
Most of it was very illegal, however. Hawkmoon didn't even need to look it up to know that. It was ridiculous - how did an Enforcer of the law know so much about... actually, that made sense. Of course Nightbeat would know every loophole. Maybe he'd done it all before himself. It wouldn't have surprised her.
Changing her ident-codes came down to memorizing instructions and then activating a foreign programme designed to hack into deep-rooted coding to scramble things up and allow her to realign it all to her liking. She turned every number she could to a seven - it was lucky, after all. And she needed all the luck the universe had to offer.
The rest of the identity thingymajig was... well, again, relatively simple. Using the newly added programmes as much-needed crutches, she hacked into a security-mainframe in the planet-wide network to add a personal file. Most of it she left blank, focusing solely on the essentials.
Designation: Hawkmoon (sometimes it still brought her a smile).
Place of creation: Vos (was there anywhere else for a Seeker?).
Age: Seven vorns (she actually had to look up Cybertronian lifecycles for that).
Place of residence: ...
Scrap.
Place of residence: Unknown/none. There. That would have to do. She still hated Nightbeat. He'd... tortured her. Torn out her memories - her memories. And then, to top it all off, murdered a mech in front of her.
But... but why?
Why had he helped her?
What was it he said? She spoke with... someone called Vector Prime? She didn't remember anything like that, so... Oh. The formless voice stranded in the Vex Nexus.
Traveler above, that was plain ridiculous. She'd met a mythical Cybertronian figure after having been tricked by a Worm God and devoured by a Wish Dragon. Nonsense. In retrospect, anyways. It had been nothing but terrifying going through it all in person. Who was Vector Prime? Who was the Zeta Prime he mentioned too? Who was...
She was, again, lost. With nowhere to go and no one to turn to.
Maybe, if Nightbeat's gifts were reliable, then maybe his contact... whose location was in Vos?! "No. Not a fragging chance. Not a damn chance!"
The stars looked down on her, unblinking. Judging. Frustrated and unimpressed.
Had she anywhere else to go? Oh, she hated him. Despised everything about him. Murderer. Madman (or madmech). Sicko. He'd broken into her mind, read through her memories without her consent, and then killed a guy. That was...
But she was desperate. So, so, so desperate. On an alien world in an alien body with other aliens likely to come after her under the belief that she'd stolen an alien weapon of some sort. Splendid. Lovely. Fragging incredible.
"FRAAAAG!" Hawkmoon kicked a portion of rock loose. She swiveled about in the direction of Vos.
Fine.
Fine.
FIIINE.
If she lived or died, at least she'd be brave about it. If it was a trap, she'd face it head on, back straight and helm held high. If not... then maybe she'd one step closer. To getting back home.
Frag.
AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!
Thin Line has one of my favourite lore entries in Destiny, and was the basis for the Gecko memory. The tragic stuff always hooks me.