Mabaya 29 Breaking Point

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R
IDW Mabaya AU
Perceptor, Drift/Deadlock, Turmoil
violence, graphic imagery

“Really now,” Turmoil cocked his head.  “All this way, for a demonstration of your sword.”  The words were light, mocking, everything that Turmoil was, but Turmoil was no fool.  He’d stopped outside of Deadlock’s lunging range, bringing his cannon to the fore. 

“I’ll make it worth your while.”  Deadlock swung the blade in a smooth heavy arc.  Not threatening, but promising. 

“Interesting choice of battlefield, Deadlock.”  Turmoil’s optics raked the corridor. “Or should I say…Drift?”

Deadlock twitched at the name. “Not who I am anymore.” If I ever was.

Turmoil’s voice took on a dangerous sneer. “You don’t deserve to wear the name Megatron gave you. Gutter-crawler.” The epithet was tacked on as an afterthought, a deliberate gibe.

Deadlock felt his mouth flatten, hard enough to bruise. He knew what Turmoil was doing: strategic application of insult and force.  Prodding at his weakpoints the same way he did in the interrogation rooms—pick and pry, until you became your own worst enemy.

It was, after all, how Turmoil had ascended to command. How he held it. “Drift, then,” Deadlock answered.  “Gutter crawler.  Who is going to kill you.”  His own attempt, cack-handed and awry, to pry up some of Turmoil’s almost serene persona.

“Such confidence, Drift.”  His optics flicked up the length of the glowing, coruscating blade. “Pretty.” As though that were an indictment. 

“Works well enough,” Deadlock said. 

“Oh, I know.” Turmoil gave an indulgent chuckle. “You honestly don’t think I didn’t recognize that for what it was, do you?” He shook his head. “You always did read caution as cowardice.” He moved to one side, telegraphing the movement, watching Deadlock’s reaction. “In fact, I may know something about that sort of sword that you don’t.”

“Know how to use it,” Deadlock muttered. “That’s enough.”

“Is it.”  Turmoil lunged forward, the back of one hand swatting at the blade, testing. Blue flame crackled, slamming into Turmoil’s hand.  The servos fired, the hand curling in, snatching itself away from the blade. Turmoil: Cautious. Cunning. “Do you know what happens if you die holding it?”

“As long as I take you with me? Don’t care.”

Turmoil chuckled. “Sweet image, that. You and I, bound together in death.” A low swat, a feint, testing Drift’s guard.  He blocked it, easily. The blow hadn’t been intended to land.  He should have known that, should have kept his skill disguised.  At least a bit longer. Deadlock growled at himself. Letting him get to you. You’re better than this. Wing would expect better of you.

You owe Wing better. 

The thought resolved in his cortex, like a lens of diamond.  Wing deserved his best.  He felt the heat of his anger fall away, only the purity of his purpose remaining, solid and strong. Stop Turmoil. Buy Perceptor time to escape. Save a life…for all the lives he had ruined. Paltry recompense, but perhaps, in giving his own, he could gain some measure of redemption.

Maybe Perceptor wouldn’t hate him.  That would be something. That would be enough.

“Worth it.”

Another laugh, this time obviously goading.  “I suppose. But only if you’re certain that I actually die.”  He tapped a hand on his chassis. “I have proved remarkably hard to kill.”

Too true.  He rocked, warily, refusing to let his center of balance settle.  Just like Wing had taught, the constant rolling motion. “I’ll make sure of it, this time.” It had been a mistake, before. A misreading of Wing’s principles: even Wing killed in combat. And Turmoil…even talking with him was combat. 

“I hope you do,” Turmoil said.  “If you fail,” he tsked. “Just imagine, trapped in that pretty sword of yours.  Knowing, feeling everything.”  His optics flickered, amused. “Together forever. Just…my way.”  He spun on one toe, faster than anything his mass had any right to move, whipping a hand at Deadlock’s head.

Deadlock blocked it with the flat of the blade.  It needed, Deadlock thought, to be done right. They both knew it would end only one way, and neither was rushing headlong, being careless, ceding any advantage to the enemy.  He saw Turmoil’s chin tuck as he noticed the flat of the blade, and what it could have been. Did I miss, Turmoil? Deadlock asked, silently. Do you think I can’t do any better? Or are you questioning why I skipped the opportunity to remove your hand?

Deadlock felt a familiar smile spread over his face, mind, body, everything stirring to life, blazing up brightly, almost incandescent. One last blinding burst of light and life, he thought, every moment crystalline clear, every sense sharp enough to hurt. And he would take this life,  this blinding white mass of energy, and he would shape it into a weapon, hurl every particle of his being toward the end of this journey. From the gutters…to the dark maw of space. So far and yet…in some ways he had gone nowhere at all. 

Turmoil swept in, like a gale, one arm, one leg, aiming for Deadlock. He could only dodge one, leaping back over the leg, letting the hand strike on the spaulder he managed—barely—to turn into it. Metal squealed and he felt the shock of pain, as the force rippled through him. He bent with it, not fighting, letting it snap him over to one side, turning the momentum into energy to fuel the arcing slash he came up with in a recoiling blow. 

The sword bit, with a resounding screech of metal, into Turmoil’s side.  Sparkfire flared from the cut, Turmoil giving a grunt of pain. 

“Archaic,” Turmoil spat, but with less conviction. He shoved the blade aside, yanking it from his body. He tried to wrest it from Deadlock’s grip, but his own energon slicked the blade under his hand.

They fought, after that, in a grim, determined silence, dropping words as weapons.  Turmoil’s limbs lashed out, fast, in half-feints, designed to wear Deadlock down, keep him on the edge of anxiety.  The blade flashed, blue fire blazing along its length, eager for the fight, eager to end this.  However it ended, it would be over, Deadlock’s anger, anxiety, everything he had wrought would finally…he hoped…be laid to rest.

He was ready.

[***]

The Decepticon guard was slowing Perceptor down. Part of him was screaming to abandon the dead weight, to bolt for the escape pods, but another part told him, grimly, that he had committed to this.  He would finish what he started, or die while attempting it.  He had given up too much already, to yield this last bit of principle. Not now, not at the very end. 

Still, the racing chronometer seemed to echo in him, as though he were hollow, and time ran through him.  He hustled, as best he could, the mech’s weight a drag on his shoulder.  Here, he thought, rounding a corner. The escape pods just ahead.  And by now, Drift would be gone, free of this place. That mattered, too, more than anything. If he could save Drift…it was all worth it.

Even the harmonic sickness that he could feel slowly overtaking him, dragging on his limbs, greening out the edges of his vid field, turning each fast movement into nauseating vertigo, until he felt with each step that his feet would fall off into space.  Just a little bit farther, he told himself. Just a little bit more.

A burst of light and sound before him.  White hot, shocking him with memory, like a lance through his cortex.  He halted, rigid, trapped in memory, his chassis bursting with remembered pain. He knew that sound. He knew that light.  He knew.

Turmoil.

And he knew that cry, recognized it, of involuntary, inchoate agony. Not the muted echo of memory escaping from his own vocalizer, but Drift. 

The sound of the mech beside him falling, clattering to the ground, was a dim tinny sound, as his whole being seemed to shatter apart and coalesce around one word, one thought:

No.

NO!

He had given too much to let it end here, let it end this way. 

He staggered, lurching to the side, as though past and present collided within him, knocking him off-balance.  No.  No.

He moved without thinking, snatching the blaster from the guard’s hip, shuffling forward, one shoulder dragging along the bulkhead—the ship’s solidity the only thing keeping him upright.  And he needed its bland, blank mass as he approached, his vid field clearing.

Turmoil lay slumped on the deck, sparks and energon guttering from half a dozen wounds.  He was missing his left arm, charring black smears along the truncated shoulder.  And barely visible, around him, a too-limp bit of white armor.  Drift, half his side blown away, Great Sword still clutched in feeble fingers, half the actuators blasted off, the arm itself stripped down to the titanium underframe.  His optics were cracked, one finial snapped from his helm, energon spilling over his white frame, bubbling from his mouth. 

Turmoil moved, dragging forward, awkwardly, posting on his one arm.  “Mine,” he said, his voice the frayed edge of dark velvet.  “Mine.”

Perceptor had a brief flash of thought—that Turmoil, too, had been reduced, stripped down to one basic concept, one mere syllable to encompass his entire being, essence become monomania.  Turmoil’s hand reached for the sword, wrapping around its blade with a kind of trembling triumph. “Forever, Deadlock,” Turmoil hissed, his voice harsh, dry, a predator’s naked aggression, finally unmasked from its false civility. 

Drift’s red optics flared, his hand clutching weakly at the hilt, a token rejection, one foot striking numbly against the chassis as it loomed over him.  He tried to speak, a sound so clogged with static that Perceptor had to run it through his audio queue a half-dozen times before he could make out the single syllable: “Drift.”

Turmoil simply brought his weight down, laughing, wetly, as his mass overpowered the damaged pistons.  “Mine,” he said, and his darkness seemed to cover Drift entirely, the red optics guttering dim.

Perceptor fired, sick and numb. One clean, hard shot, everything he had, all the will and strength he could summon. His awareness followed the bolt of energy, as if riding along its light, feral, brutal, wanting nothing more than to kill. He’d die, and be happy for it, if only…if only Turmoil died with him. 

 

[***]

It took…too long, Perceptor thought, to haul the dark mass of Turmoil off Drift’s frame.  But he’d done it, his vid field smearing, his balance gyros revolting.  He’d thrown—somehow—the guard into a pod, slapping some code into the destination, setting it free. Done.  For good or ill, he had saved that life.  And now he was setting about saving Drift.

Drift was…a shattered wreck, barely responsive, his optic shutters merely fluttering when Perceptor addressed him. The only sound he made was a high, thin keen of pure pain, as Perceptor hauled him free, lifting him into his unsteady arms.  He fumbled, clutching the sword, laying it atop Drift’s frame, closing one of Drift’s hands around it, hoping, mutely, helplessly, that the sword could comfort where he could not. 

He staggered, burdened, to a pod, trying not to look at Drift, not to catalog the damage. Just…moving.  Forward. 

He fell into the pod’s seat, letting Drift sprawl over his lap.  It was cramped—a pod designed for one, the two of them crowded together.  But Perceptor didn’t trust his shaky energy reserves, his ebbing strength, with programming two pods. And besides, if this failed, if this was their last moment…he’d rather be with Drift, dead, floating lost in space. Together. 

“Almost,” he murmured, wasting a klik to stroke a soothing hand down the ruined white frame.  The red optics tried to focus, some incoherent syllable choking from the vocalizer.  Perceptor ground his mouth plates together in hard resolve, punching the launch codes for the pod. 

He rocked forward, as if summoning strength, curled over the battered body, forcing his vision to clear, his cortex to work.  After a long—too long—moment he looked up, his hands flying with a haste born of desperation, tearing through the rudimentary programming of the pod’s comm systems, dredging the ancient Autobot retrieval and distress codes from somewhere in his cortex.  His hand trembled as he hit ‘enter’. Now…he thought, his visual field fading to a sickly green, he could rest. It was in the hands of others.  Or fate.  Or destiny. He had given up trying to control.

He bowed over Drift’s body, too late to save him from the damage, but letting himself press against it, the sword between them, clinging onto everything he’d ever wanted from this world.

Comments

[mieka-writes.livejournal.com]

whoa...

talk about 'what will you die for?' and 'what will you kill for'

[boreal-forest.livejournal.com]

;_______;

Gah... this one stung, in such a good way.

I loved this. Thank you for sharing.

*hugs*

[mmouse15.livejournal.com]

The tension in this chapter is so incredible, I was on the edge of my seat crossing my fingers, hoping Perceptor could do what he needed to do before everything blew up.

The thought of Perceptor and Drift and the sword together in the pod is wonderful, and your imagery is fabulous.

[kamiraptor.livejournal.com]

;_;

Wow. Just everything.

Your imagery is always so clear, and here it gave me chills. Picturing Drift's white and light being smothered by Turmoil's dark, then Perceptor with his shaking energy, programming the pod, and he and Drift together in there... it's strong, emotive, and beautiful.

I really want them both to live through this!

[playswithworms.livejournal.com]

aAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! *runs around in circles* Wow, what a chapter! \o/ Both of them ready to die just buy the other time to get away, and the fight - the memory of Wing becoming Drift's purity of purpose. I love how Drift and Turmoil are both reduced to a single all-encompassing/consuming syllable.

Ha, Perceptor even saved the guard, too, after all that. And they're away! Rather the worse for wear, poor fellows *pats*