Transgression

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Drift, Wing
tformers100 table war prompt weapon

 

Drift followed Wing carefully, curious, up the seemingly-never-ending staircase leading to the surface.  Wing didn’t speak, his wing panels taut with some sort of excitement.  Drift had no choice but follow, his feet ringing on the steel stairs, optics following the heavy sheath of the Great Sword. 

Wing paused by the heavy blast doors, resting one palm for a moment on the central seam, head bowed as if in prayer.  He turned to Drift. “You must obey me out there. We must not be spotted.”

Drift cocked his head at the strange intensity in Wing’s voice. He nodded, rubbing one hand idly over his chassis.  Not…really in a hurry to repeat that experience.  Wing gave a curt jerk of his chin, before palming the lock. “Unfortunately,” Wing murmured, “you need an access code to operate the door.” He looked over his shoulder. “You need me.”

“Yes,” Drift said, bordering on impatience. Got the point.

The door ground open, the mechanisms slow, monolithic.  No need for quick exits, fast getaways here, Drift guessed. Things could just…roll on open at their leisure. 

Wing stepped out into the strange, enveloping silence of the planet’s night.  Drift followed, his footplates barely making soft schusses on the sandy soil. 

Two moons rode high in the sky, bright orbs, casting silver light down upon the night blue landscape, barren silicate and stone, stretching  in jumbled plates of land, jutting there into high cliffs while down there, the ground seemed to split into a series of dry islands.  Wing’s white seemed to almost glow in the moonlight, his gold optics little stars. “Follow.” Wing’s voice was hushed, and  he fired on his nacelles, taking to the air, Drift flung himself to follow, skimming over the ground, chasing the white, fleeting image.

Wing led them to a narrow arroyo, down a split in the cliffs, where the moonlight ceased to penetrate, the air growing darker and darker, until his optics seemed to glow like flames.  Drift began to have some…mild misgivings. What was this about?  Taking him someplace to attack him?  Wing could wipe the walls with Drift without stressing a servomotor.  He didn’t need the darkness as some sort of curtain of secrecy, either. 

Wing dropped to one knee, his hands scraping into the dirt, tugging out, Drift saw, some sort of…something wrapped in a tarp or cloth.  He pulled one edge back.

A gun. 

The gold optics turned to Drift enreating. “Show me.”

Drift blinked. “Show you?”

“How to use it.” There was something like a tremor in Wing’s voice.

Drift gave Wing a disbelieving look. “It’s…a gun.”  He reached over, lifting it from the pale cloth.  It was a strangely familiar, strangely comforting weight in his palm, his wrist already compensating for the topheavy weight of the barrel. “Pretty much point and shoot.” 

His optics studied the design, naming the parts as he went. Strange how, whoever made them, however alien they looked, there seemed to be no real variation on basic design.  Why innovate when what you have is good enough? Kills enough efficiently enough? 

“Show me.” Wing insisted.  He pointed down the darkened canyon. “How far away can you hit?”

Drift felt a grin spread slowly over his face.  “Really?”

Wing nodded, optics earnest.

Drift considered the landscape. He pointed. “See that little tower of rock?” It was a good distance away. Mid-battlefield range.  He brought the gun up, with the water-smooth, practiced ease of someone who has done the gesture thousands, tens of thousands of times in his life, until the gesture was as natural as ventilation. His finger curled itself into the triggerwell, a key finding its lock, and the gun sent a burst of green pulse energy down the barrel.

The small tower burst into chips of stone. 

Drift lowered the gun, even as he was assailed by memories: the loud chatter of strafing guns, the heavy thoom of artillery, the high buzz-whaps of pulsefire.  He could almost smell it: burnt energon, scorched coolant, the strange smell of hot metal.  It felt, more than this place, like home.

Wing looked…delighted, in awe.  “Show me how…?”

Drift snorted, bringing himself back here. With a  weapon in his hand. And Wing.  He was…for a klik, sorely tempted. Until reality hit.  No way off this planet. Alone, without resources, and with only one gun? He’d be choosing between slow death by starvation and quick death by the slavers.  He needed to stay. Get some resources. Get, for once, a plan. But first. This was...unbelievable.“Really. You don’t know how to use a gun?”

The wings rustled nervously against Wing’s back. “No.  It is…forbidden.”

Oh? This was…interesting.  “And you want me to teach you.”

“Yes.”  The gold optics dropped their gaze to the gritty ground.

“Even though it’s forbidden.” 

Wing writhed, hands twisting together. “Yes,” he breathed. 

Drift fought a laugh.  Something about Wing’s earnest intensity just forbade mockery.  He juggled the gun, holding it out by the barrel, toward Wing. Wing’s ventilation hitched, palm opening for it, hesitating, aware that this was a moment of transgression. He met Drift’s gaze, a nervous smile on his face, as he wrapped his hand gingerly around the grip. 

Drift laughed.  “Not like that. You’re not going to break the damn thing, trust me.” He reached over, curling Wing’s fingers firmly around the pistol grip.  “Not a sword.  Aim doesn’t come from the wrist.”  He could feel the tremble in the wrist, and knew it wasn’t from weakness, but the concrete realization that Wing was transgressing rules he’d probably helped put into place.

That, Drift thought, is what comes from having stupid ‘laws’. 

Wing hefted the pistol experimentally, pausing, after a moment, to slide his other hand over the barrel, as if he could know it better by feeling it, by having its parts—barrel, magazine, bolt, safety—living in his sense memory.  Maybe there was some truth to that—Drift could dismantle any firearm in the Decepticon forces, possibly blind.  Wing revolved his wrist, looking down the gun’s barrel.

“Eh!” Drift swatted Wing’s finger out of the trigger well. “Don’t ever point that at anything you don’t want to get shot.” 

Wing tensed, his nacelle pinions slicking back in alarm, optics wide.

 Drift grinned, feeling, just about for the first time, almost at ease.  “Don’t worry. Safety’s still on.  But it’s a bad habit.”

Wing nodded, slowly, revolving the gun to face down the canyon.  “How do you…direct it?” 

“Aim,” Drift corrected, indulgently. The tables seemed pretty squarely turned, Wing depending on him.  He tapped the front of the barrel. “Post sites—you sit whatever you want to hit on top of that.”  He rotated his wrist.  Sure enough, there they still were. Huh.  The technicians here had kept them intact. Probably not knowing what they were. “Most shooters get these.”  He tapped the tiny node. “Integrated targeting array.  Easy.” He snorted. “Lazy.” 

“This is how you fire?” Wing held the gun up, attempting to line a shot up on the post sight. 

“How I learned.  Do it a few…thousand times and everything else just feels…wrong.”

“Ah,” Wing said, looking over, the gun still held out.  “Like a sword maneuver.”

He wouldn’t know. “Probably.”

“But you have this modification anyway?”

Drift shrugged. “Some situations where your optics could be disabled, yeah. Targeting array still works.” 

“Oh.”  Wing shot him a curious look, teetering on the edge of asking a tacky question.  And falling over that edge, apparently. “Has that happened?”

Drift looked down the moonlit canyon. “Yeah. Couple of times.” 

Wing dropped his gaze back to the pistol.  A long, awkward silence.  “And…?” Wing curled his finger into the trigger well, bracing his hand with the other. Drift corrected the grip, suddenly acutely aware of his hands on Wing’s. And Wing…apparently felt the same, his EM field brushing against Drift’s.

Drift grinned, stepping back. “Line up the shot.  Pull the trigger. That’s…about it.” 

Wing nodded, vented slowly, lined the gun up.  His fingers wiggled, restlessly.

“Go on,” Drift said.  “It doesn’t matter if you miss.  It’s your first shot.” 

“I—“ Wing looked over.  Then back down the long line of the barrel. “It’s not that.” 

Huh.  Wing, Drift thought, needed a little push over that line.  All right. 

He stepped in behind the jet, bringing his arms up alongside Wing’s, his chassis bumping against the Great Sword as he dipped his head between Wing’s shoulder and helm. His finger curled in over Wing’s on the trigger.  “Line it up,” he whispered.  Wing nodded and Drift could feel the nervous tremble against him.  “Good,” he said. He stroked his fingertip along Wing’s first joint before covering Wing’s hand with his own.  “And,” he said, and he hooked his finger, pulling back on Wing’s, pressing it into the trigger, slowly and evenly, until the trigger gave. 

A bolt of energy shot from the barrel.  He didn’t know what Wing was aiming at—if it hit or not. Wing started, shoulder pinions flaring.  Drift caught the recoil.  It was…astonishing to him that someone would know so little about something that was such a huge part of the war. Part of him.  “See?” he said. “Not so hard.”

“Loud,” Wing said, sheepishly. 

Of course.  And the memories were stirring stronger now. Battles, war.  Winning. It had consumed him.  Should consume him.  What the frag was he doing here? Wasting time. 

He stepped back. “Now,” he said. “Try again.  And try not to be surprised.  No one’s ever died of the noise.  Don’t be the first.”

Wing nodded, resolutely, jaw set. A long cycling vent of air, and the finger fired the trigger.  Drift grinned, recognizing the burst of excitement, the surprised smile on the jet’s face.  And…the dismay. “I missed,” Wing said. He sounded stunned.

“It’s…your first shot.” Did you think it was easy?  “I’ve been fighting you for how many weeks?” And…yet to get a hit in. Except this hit: the warm revenge of Wing’s dismay—something he wasn’t instantly good at. 

Wing accepted Drift’s implied charge with a bow of his head. “Yes.”  He raised the gun again, lining another shot.  “I will get better,” he murmured, determined. And Drift had a moment’s flash: Wing, with a sword, swinging it clumsily, for the first time, the same dogged determination.  And he saw himself, suddenly, back on Cybertron, a refugee from justice, paying for asylum with the Decepticons with the same fierce determination.  He remembered Megatron’s words--all those speeches about a better Cybertron, that those who loved Cybertron would sacrifice for the future, fight for her and for her future.  Totally different, he thought, looking at Wing, thinking of the thousand minute changes he should make--his stance, the position of his left hand, his ventilation, blink rate....  Totally different.

 But then...the same.

 

 

Comments

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

Now that was interesting. Drift solidly the one in the know, and still not entirely sure what to make of it.

I love the last two paragraphs the most.

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

This has got a cool kind of Victorian-romance vibe going -- the nobleman's son and the servant who was a soldier, going out behind the barn at night to shoot at targets.

...am now imagining Wing in knee-breeches with white socks, and a little felt cap, and lace at the collarbone. He seems rather pleased with himself. :3

[anavidbookworm.livejournal.com]

I think I like this role reversal between the two of them. I'm sure it helps Drift to do something he's good at instead of always being on the receiving end of instruction.

I am curious why Wing wanted to learn to shoot. Did he want to learn something new or did he plan to use this knowledge for a specific purpose?