Oh you like LJ Cuts, Do You?

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Recompense

PG
IDW
Gasket, Drift
no warnings
for 5_prompts: 25:04 we'll bleed together

The mech staggered down the corridor, one hand clutching at the wall to keep upright. The only light in the fetid corridor of the lower gutters was the dim glow of the energon spilling from the mech—dripping off his chin across his chassis, trailing in long wet streamers from his arm. He dropped to one knee, vocalizer giving a staticky groan.

Gasket lunged forward, catching the mech as he fell. 

“Back off,” the mech said, struggling feebly against the hands pulling at him. “I’ll kill you.”

This mech was in no condition to kill anything.  “Easy. Easy now, friend.” 

“Not your friend.”  The mech went rigid, as though insulted. This was what the gutters did, Gasket thought: turned everything upside down.

Gasket laughed. “Right now, mech, you could use a friend.” He straightened, taking the other mech’s arm over his shoulder, holding him up. “I have some basic repair supplies.”

“Save them,” the other snarled. “Don’t need ‘em.”  But at least he didn’t pull away, leaning his weight on Gasket with some relief.

Well, this approach wasn’t working.  Try again. There’s always a way through: a good lesson learned from the gutters, from dodging checkpoints and security blockades. Always another approach. “I’m Gasket,” he said. “What’s your name?”

A flash of hostile red optics. “Why you want to know?”

“Why are you afraid of telling me?” Gasket grinned, stepping up the pace, so that the mech had to strain to keep up.

“Not afraid.”  The mech stumbled, grabbing instinctively for Gasket to regain his balance. “Not afraid of anything.”  Gasket wrapped his other arm around the strange mech, hauling him upright, their optics close.

“No?” He leaned closer, forcing the point.  “Afraid of receiving help, at least.”

“Am not!”  Energon spluttered from the corner of the cracked mouthplate.

Gasket laughed, holding the other mech against him, so the vibrations carried over their armor.  “Then let me help.”

“Why.”  The optics were hard, bitter and worn, but the mouth twitched, uncertain. 

“Because I want to.  Because this place is miserable enough without us helping each other when we can.”

The mech said nothing for a long moment, letting Gasket move him down the corridor, before tipping him into an alcove. He put out a hand to let himself settle slowly onto the ground.  “If you have supplies,” he said, “You could sell them.”

Gasket grinned, optics glowing orangegold in the darkness as he reached to his storage for his repair kit.  “I could sell them. For money.” He met the mech’s gaze, levelly. “Or I could get something more valuable: friendship.” 

The mech flinched back, as Gasket leaned over, already squeezing out a finger-full of repair gel.  He twitched to one side at the gentle touch on his throat, before forcing himself to tilt his head over, opening the wound to Gasket’s inspection.  “Drift,” he mumbled, the vocalizer vibrating against Gasket’s hand. “Name’s Drift.”

“Drift,” Gasket repeated, nodding.  “I have something for the pain, if you want it.” His hand hovered over his storage.

A staunch shake of the head, the white finials cutting in the shadows.  “Can handle it.”

“Thought so.”  He clicked the storage closed.

“Don’t know why you’re doing this.”  Drift held out his arm, exposing the rent hose, inviting the repairs. “Not much of a friend.”

“Because,” Gasket said, bending over to tighten the hoseclamp around the black worn hose, “We’re all we have down here.  We live together, die together, bleed together.”  He looked up. “And maybe, if we worked together, we could make things better.”

Drift sank back against the battered plascrete floor. “Find a way to make it up to you,” he said, quietly.

Gasket nodded. “That’s the general idea.” 

Marginalia

PG
IDW
Jetfire
no warnings
for 5_prompts: 19:01 beyond the edges 

Jetfire tipped back in his seat, swiping a quick, frustrated hand over his optics.  There had to be something he was missing. Something he wasn’t seeing.  He sighed. This wasn’t his strong suit at all, this sort of thing. He was a reverse engineer. Half his skill was in reading the traces of another mind, understanding another’s understanding.

But there was no understanding this.  At this point, he wasn’t even sure there was a mind behind this—the rippling anomaly, the strange stretch of nonspace, where it seemed gravity, light, energy itself just…stopped.

The world did not just…end that way.  The universe did not have margins. But here it was, a long rippling line, dopplering away, beyond which…nothing. Not air, not space, not ions, not gravity. It was a place of not. Of nothing, no-thing, non-being, non-life. And what was beyond couldn’t be measured or contained or understood in any way science could comprehend. 

It made him feel stupid and limited. It made him feel incapable and frustrated. And more than that it made him feel…humbled. That there was space beyond space and things beyond the realm of knowledge, beyond the edges of understanding.  We think, he thought, that we are the masters of this universe, because of our minds, our adaptability. But here is something beyond that. Beyond us.  In every way.

He cycled another vent of air, feeling the cooling over his engine. Science had taught him there was always an answer, that nothing was unknowable.

But then…what was this?

Nothing.

No Place

PG
IDW post LSOTW
Perceptor, Verity
spoilers?
for 5_prompts:  62: 03The history of a place 

The red soil clung to his footplates as he crossed the threshold onto the Xantium’s drop shuttle, Ironfist’s weight over his shoulders.  “Is the shuttle ready to launch?”  The longest sentence he had energy for: the fewest words he could manage.

“Engines on warmup.” Verity’s voice, flat and cold.  What had happened in the Aequitas chamber between them still stood, a barrier of hostility. He could feel it, even over the hot, dead waves of air from Garrus-9 itself washing over him.  He’d told her she didn’t have a right, didn’t understand.  That Justice was a cold hard thing. And he’d teetered on the brink, himself; he didn’t hold it against Verity that she didn’t trust that.

If nothing else, this place was a testament to how easily good intentions went astray. Law became rigid, a thing of cold steel, inflexible, turning justice into an algorithm.

Red dust powdered from his black footplates as he moved, lowering Ironfist into one of the passenger cradles. His hands moved over the webbing, hooking it to tabs on the frame, locking Ironfist’s inert form down. “Have to get the others.”

“What’s left of the others,” Verity said, the hands of her powersuit planted on her hips. 

“Yes.” He ducked his head, in humble admission. He was responsible for their deaths. He was the leader; the one who had known the real objective: to retrieve Aequitas.  And more, to keep the program’s memories from the Decepticons, from the Galactic Council. To bury ‘justice’ too rigidly applied like shame. 

Verity moved to the shuttle door, staring out at the bleak landscape, whose history seemed to have soaked into the very soil, seemed to spread its rancid scent through the air. Her face was unreadable: a taut mask that defied analysis, even if he’d had any skill in reading her human expressions.  “Prison,  huh? Was it any better back then?”

Perceptor stepped closer.  The night was just beginning to stretch dark fingers over the horizon, throwing the shadows into dark smears that didn’t do a thing to erase the memories of this place.  “Probably not,” Perceptor said. “We thought it was justice. Maybe it’s better to know it’s not.”

A breeze stirred, like an exhalation of death, something that only served to remind that nothing else lived, nothing moved.

“What was this, ya know, before?”  She tossed her head, hair sweat-clinging to her cheek, her usual perky ponytail looking tattered and grim. 

“Nothing,” Perceptor said.

“Yeah.” She pushed off the side of the rampway. “Maybe that’s what it should go back to.”

He nodded, agreeing. What was this place? A place with no history, a place with a history best forgotten. His footplates rang on the ramp as he stepped, wearily, down  the angled plane, before they puffed into the dust again.  How long for history to fade, he wondered. What is the half-life of tragedy? 

The reddish soil clung to his footplates and he wondered if he’d ever get completely clean.

On Guard
PG
IDW
Wing, Drift
no warnings
for 5_prompts  38.02 Draw your sword 

“Draw your sword,” Wing said, gesturing with one hand. 

“Why.”  Drift’s hand wrapped over the hilt magnaclamped to his thigh, but he didn’t release it.

“Always so suspicious, Drift,” Wing said, his own bladetip lowering, but the corners of his smile lifting. 

“It kept me alive.”

“And now it holds you back.” Wing stepped back, giving the same up-palmed gesture with his free hand.  “Suspicion is a wall with a very narrow gate.”

“I hate how you speak in riddles,” Drift said, mirroring the jet’s pose, finally bringing his own blade up.  They were using practice blades—the metal grey and battered and dull.  And he could already feel the sword’s weight. It was not much heavier than a gun, and he held those well enough, his servos damped and braced for recoil, wrists straight to aim. But just holding the sword required different settings, the wrist fluid and soft and bent.  And Wing had thousands of years of practice, while Drift had millennia to overcome.

Wing laughed. “No more riddles, then.”  He swung, easily, the sword ringing of Drift’s almost playfully.  “Instead, raise your guard.”

Drift frowned, lifting the blade awkwardly, aware of the scrutiny. Wing was a master at this, one who not only knew in the body how to stand, how to move, the precise angle and force of every blow, but he could explain it, see it.  And he was tireless and patient, as he lowered his blade, reaching over to tweak Drift’s up just a bit higher. “There.”  He gave a nod. “Feel it that way. The sword is nothing if you can’t feel it.” He gave a snort of laughter. “My swordsmaster used to say,” and Wing scrunched up his nose, as though imitating a dyspeptic old mech, “’If you don’t treat it as a sword, a weapon of elegance, it is merely a sharp club.’”  He laughed, the sound pealing around the bell shaped chamber. “It’s good advice.”

“Think I preferred the riddles,” Drift said.  But he studied the sword, tried to feel the angle, the weight.

“This is,” Wing said. “the position from which you launch your attacks and defenses.  Think, between each move, of this position, of this feeling.” 

Drift nodded, stepping forward, then back, trying to feel the sword resettle, his balance mobile but held.

Wing gave an encouraging nod. “Think of it like home.”

The blade wavered and Drift felt the surge of an old envy. “Bad analogy. I never had a home.”

The optics across from him were golden and wide, one hand brushing his wrist. “You do now.”

Black Bowl
PG
IDW post MTMTE 1, RID 1
Drift
for 5_prompts 41.1 Standing in awe

Drift stood, one hand folded over his chassis, feet clenching over the rim of the crater. Before him, the ground fell away, a bowl scooped from the earth itself, the edges jagged and sharp and rusty, clotted with grey powder, as though some garden of barrenness, where bare pipes and wires were leaved with cinders and ash. Something died here, something huge, something that had clawed and fought and refused to give in.

He didn’t know if he feared or respected that.

All Drift knew was that none of the other Autobots came out here. Even the NAILs avoided it: it seemed like a place the sudden renascence of life skipped over, leaving the valley to its desolation, like some bitter cup of despair in the sweetness of new life. 

He stepped over the lip, his feet crunching against the heat-brittled metal, flakes of charred steel crackling underfoot as he made his way down.  It was like some ritual, or journey, and as he progressed, further and further down, it felt like going underwater. Sound seemed cut off in stages, and the light itself seemed to falter, dimming, as though surrendering to shadow, until he stood at the absolute base, the crater ringing him like the petals of some great flower, its petals unfurling high over his head. 

Drift looked down, his legs greyed with ash, unable to read the twisted mess at his feet.  The air was thick with loss, with pain, as though holding in its bowl the unheard screams of a dying planet.

Something stirred within him, a fluttering movement, high in his chassis, near the ache of his newly repaired wound.  It seemed to burn along that channel, and he could feel an echo of the pain of his cold blade, thrust in his own armor to keep the others safe, to put himself down and out of harm’s way. He’d rolled in the pain then, taking it as a cocoon to stop his body, but now, it seemed to enervate him, leaving him wrung out, a husk. 

The others, back in their rough base in Kimia, marveled at the new life, stood in awe before a Cybertron they thought they had killed, hope burgeoning with every sunrise.

But this? This too was important. This too was worthy of awe: the suffering of individuals, knotted together, each striving, each fighting to stay alive in spite of pain, in spite of degredation, despair, hopelessness.  This was, to Drift’s mind, a more important monument of all they had suffered, all they had lost. And it should stay empty and bare, it should be a reminder, a bitter cup of awe, an unhealing scar on the planet’s face, for all those who had suffered, nameless and lost.

a

Comments

[ravynfyre.livejournal.com]

these are all amazing. i am continually and constantly amazed by your command of imagery and language, and these incredible turns of phrase you use that call up the most poignant pictures so effortlessly. no, not your writing being effortless - it's pretty obvious that you put an incredible amount of work into your writing. just the way that the images just... spring so swiftly and perfectly to life in my mind. it's incredible.

thank you.

[acidgreenflames.livejournal.com]

I really liked these little stories! Very well done and thank you for sharing :D