Chasing Fame

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Blurr, Piston
h/c
for hc_bingo prompt 'surgery'
ALSO, ohaithar, do you want some of my headcanon about Blurr?  OF COURSE YOU DO!  In my head, Blurr, like all racers, has had to get extensive modifications, which leads to, just like in modern sports, a sort of competitive 'war' among athletes, each needing to level up to stay competitive.  I also throw out there that Blurr had a bunch of these mods all at once and a side-effect of that is his inability to remember Piston's name. Or...anyone's name really, but he hides it under his rock star attitude. That's...not part of this fic, but I figured, it'll come up eventually and maybe it'll make sense. Or something. This is a story about another mod....

The light slanted in through the windows, creating a neon-yellow patch that slowly brightened across the peeling paint of the dingy ceiling, turning the shadows ashen grey.  It seemed to last forever, growing and growing like some ugly projection of the pain Blurr was in.

He rolled over, trying to find some relief by shifting his weight onto one side.  His ventilation hissed through gritted dentae. 

A shape formed itself  from the dark rectangle of the doorway, resolving into Piston, softly lit by the ambient glow of the Zone’s busy, bustling lights.  “How you hanging in there?” Piston asked, leaning over, lifting a thin dermal plating panel, peering at the newly installed mods. 

“Hurt,” Blurr said, dimly. “You didn’t say it would hurt this much.”

“I did. I told you it would hurt.”

Blurr whimpered.  No. Piston had said it would hurt ‘a bit’. This was way more than a bit. This was ‘every circuit felt on the verge of meltdown’ pain. 

Piston frowned, settling onto the side of the berth.  “Look. I tried to talk you out of it. But you’re a stubborn-afted glitch.” A flicker of a smile.  “It’s why you’re going to make it in this business.” 

“Yeah,” Blurr said, dimly.  It seemed so easy a few cycles ago, a few days ago.  Get the mods, and kick aft at his first biathlon.  Sure, there were steps he’d skipped—finding a medic he could actually afford, who had no problem dealing with racing mods of questionable origin. And he skipped over exactly where and how they’d get a Jumpstarter’s mod to begin with. That was what Piston was for, right?  That’s why you had a pit manager, to take care of the little details.

They didn’t seem so little now.

“He said rejection. Maybe I’m rejecting the mods,” Blurr said, worming up onto his elbows. 

“You’re not rejecting the mods,” Piston said. “Trust me. I’ve seen it.”  He frowned, then opened a catchplate on Blurr’s abdominal paneling. “See?” He waited until Blurr had craned his head to look. “The lines are clean. If you were rejecting, you’d see rusty grease here, and here, at the attachment points of the main mechanism.” 

Blurr took some, limited, comfort in his confidence. It meant he wasn’t dying. But still. It hurt!

“Just remember why you did this.”

He nodded. Right. The biathlon.  He knew he was competitive in both the foot and alt parts of the race. But every time—every trial, every race—he lost valuable millikliks in the transformation. This would help. This would give him an edge.  The race was his first real break and he couldn’t afford—in any sense—to lose. They'd paid for half the surgery on loans as it was.

And he didn't ask where the loans had come from: another thing that was Piston's purview.

“Think how it’ll feel,” Piston said.  “Think about transforming, really fast.  Think about not losing momentum. Think about the slicing through the wind, on your way across the finish line.” He grinned. “A close race, the other guy thinking he’s going to pull ahead at the last instant, but you don’t let him. You power through, because you came too far and worked too hard to let a little thing like pain stop you.”

Blurr nodded. Yes. That was it. That was how it would go. No easy win, but an edge-of-the-seater, the audiences straining, tense, and then bursting into wild screams when the mech from nowhere, the newcomer, came out and upset all the odds.

He’d ruin bookmakers, bankrupt the old tier of bettors. And the new ones, the ones who had taken the long odds on the new blue kid?  He’d make them millionaires, and they’d never forget it.  He cycled a vent of air, a deep one, this time, instead of the shallow, timid vents he’d been taking since onlining. It still hurt, but this time, he could try and feel his legs pumping, the pistons working, and the new wiring singing along with current, in that strange, exquisite pain that long-distance runners know, of forcing your body to its limits, of mastering the different systems—cooling, thrust, force, angle—by sheer will. 

This was it; this was the start. 

Piston stood, his shadow a grey shape cut from the yellow glow of neon. “Couple more cycles,” he said, patting one of Blurr’s legs.  “Couple more cycles and it’ll fade.”  The touch tingled, the contacts hypercharged from the presence of the new mod.

“Then practice,” Blurr said.  “I want to practice.” He wanted to see, feel for himself, the new mod. He wanted to feel the transformation fly by, lightning fast; he wanted to see his time with those precious increments of time shaved off.  He wanted that future. He just had to make it through. Another few cycles. He could do it.  He would.

Piston dug an energon cube out from the side table, handing it to Blurr. “Next time, we can save up for a sensor block.” 

“No,” Blurr said. He took the cube, proud that he was able to keep his hands from shaking. It hurt, it still hurt, but he wasn’t going to let it control him. He was stubborn, just like Piston said. Headstrong. And that, he thought, is what makes champions.  “I won’t need it.” 

Comments

[hopeofdawn.livejournal.com]

I like this--it's very visceral, especially how Blurr embraces the pain at the end. I imagine most pro-level athletes have to learn to do that, honestly--to push themselves beyond their own limits, no matter what it does to you, or how much it hurts ...

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Awesome ficlet :D

[wind-on-wave.livejournal.com]

Blurr... D: So unusual to see him.... before his race-star life. Oh. F-feelings.
Can i hope, that you will continue this cycle? *о*