Of the Ashes

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Trailbreaker, Jetfire, ref to Thunderwing
prompt: Snow Storm for tf_speedwriting advent calendar
AN: LOL my first time writing Trailbreaker. Be kind!

White ash flittered down from the grey white sky, just another visual interference in Trailbreaker’s sensory array. The radiation blasted against his protective forcefield, ionizing his vid feed, pixelating it in gusts.  The stuff was soft, like powder, under his footplates, though the intense toxicity prickled against even Trailbreaker’s pede-sensors. 

The world smelled like ions, the metallic tang of his forcefield blocking any olfactory stimulus other than the ozone sharpness of his own field generator.

//Levels holding steady,// Jetfire’s voice, calm, sure.  Trailbreaker wasn’t afraid—he had faith in his shields, if nothing else—but still, there was some indefinable comfort simply in knowing he was not utterly alone. 

And that someone was monitoring, just in case. It felt like someone cared.

They didn’t care, not really. Not until they needed him. 

Gorlam Prime didn’t need him and made that very, very clear, in every blast of radiated air, every puff of tainted soil under his feet.

A dry wind shoved against him, the radioactive air scouring at his forcefield, like a thousand tiny claws.  It seemed sentient, this toxicity, as though it wanted to get at him, like some fierce predator circling him, probing for a weakness. It screamed at him, howls like hunger and frustration, as though sound itself were a weapon, scrabbling for chinks in his armor. 

It wouldn’t find any. 

//Any luck so far?//

A pause while he pinged his locator to the gridmap. //Getting there.  The attack obliterated a lot of landmarks.//

//Thunderwing,// Jetfire corrected. Always a mech for precision, for finding agency. 

Trailbreaker made an agreeing sound.  It was somehow…personal between Jetfire and Thunderwing.  They’d known each other before the war, or something.   Fellow scientists, back when Thunderwing had anything you might call a mind.

Now, all Thunderwing did, all he could do, was destroy.

He came to the edge of the blast crater, the ground suddenly dropping off in front of him, like a huge bowl had been carved out of the planet, stone burst into dust, metal vaporized, leaving a sort of anti-monument in the land itself, a scar that would defy any healing.

//Big. Must have run into some trouble here.//  Or not.  Thunderwing didn’t seem to apply much in the way of tactics to his firepower. But he was here to report. Not decide.

A contemplative ‘hmmm,’ on the other end of the line.  //Worth looking into.//

Trailbreaker sighed and began his descent.  He was recon—it was a lonely job, but he did it, and did it well. His job was to go where common sense said not to. 

The pulverized ground skittered under his feet, as he half-loped, half-slid down the slope into the bowl of the crater. //Any clue on what he was looking for?//

//None yet.  We’re still working on decrypting the burst.  But he had to be after something.// A note of something almost hopeful in the tone.

//I think he just wants to destroy, at this point.  If you can say he wants anything.//  Which Trailbreaker doubted.  Thunderwing was like a drone with one programmed purpose, a Centurion droid without any limiter or shut off protocol.  But he could understand, and filled in Jetfire’s sudden, recoiling silence:  Jetfire desperately wanted to believe there was something rational inside Thunderwing, some scrap or tatter of the original mech.  So he didn’t push his point—we all had our shields, he thought, things to keep a too-brutal reality at bay.

Comments

[silaphet.livejournal.com]

throat-choking visceral scene setting as only you deliver <3 & Trailbreaker is intriguing.

[playswithworms.livejournal.com]

I like your Trailbreaker! And he's one of the trickier characters to make much of, imo, but I love how you have him thinking in terms of shields here, and being perceptive enough to leave Jetfire his bit of protective illusion.

(Also, ash storm = snow storm, niiiice :D)

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

The description of the toxicity being sentient is vividly bleak here. I like your take on TB, and Jetfire trying to remain hopeful that there is something still inside Thunderwing, and especially that final line about everyone having their shields.

[mmouse15.livejournal.com]

I love your descriptions of Trailbreaker and his shields, and how he draws a parallel between his physical shield and Jetfire's mental shield at the end.