Five Times Barricade Got Angry

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

G
Bayverse
Barricade, Blackout, Starscream, Frenzy, Megatron
no warnings
refs to 07 movie, Ghosts of Yesterday.

written for 5_times  prompt 'wrath'. 

 

ONE:

It was the same old argument.  In fact the tedium of having the same fraggin’ argument all over again was part of what was fueling Barricade’s ill-temper. 

“Pointless!” he snarled. “You’re not going to change him. Or yourself.” 

“That’s not the point,” Blackout said.  “I don’t care about changing him. I’m talking about the mission!”

“The mission,” Barricade echoed.  Starscream’s leadership had not settled well with the others, despite the fact they’d jumped on the crew manifest. Possibly the last transport off of Cybertron, they’d figured, possibly better to take chances on a new stake than cling to the cooling ember of a dying world, a dying dream.  “The mission at this point is survival.”  What it’s always been.  Even against the Eshems aliens, the mission had been to survive.  The only difference was that they’d left the planet behind. 

That, he thought, changed nothing.  Not to him.

“Survival is meaningless if we betray who we are and what we stand for.”

“What you call betrayal, some of us call adaptation.” Barricade flared his mouth downward.  There was a limit.  Just…not as rigid as where Blackout put it.  Finding Megatron was pointless if they were too scattered or starved to fight alongside him.

“A longer word does not make it any less disloyal.”

They glared at each other for a long moment, Barricade stifling a growl. 

“I see,” Blackout said, coldly, his mouth angle a thin, tight line, “I am alone in this.”

TWO:

“You have your orders.” Starscream’s voice was cold.  “Find the human.”

“Fraggin’ rodent,” Barricade snarled. His systems still ached from the forced autorepair from his last encounter with Bumblebee, who had apparently appointed himself as the human’s guardian.  “Don’t see the point in chasing down one fraggin’ insect.”

“He is our only link.”

“Because we aren’t looking hard enough.”  There was always more than one way to find something. There had to be. Always more than one lead.

Starscream sighed.  “We do not have time to find more leads.  The Autobots know what we are after and why.”

Barricade hissed at the implied accusation. If he hadn’t fouled up, if he’d gotten Ladiesman217 the first time…oh it was madness to think that way. The salvation of Cybertron…slipped right through Barricade’s talons. 

Starscream’s head tilted.  “It happens,” he said, quietly.  Offering sympathy.

“I know,” Barricade snapped. “Not my first battle.” He didn’t need, or want, Starscream’s sympathy.  It just chafed, like grit rubbed into an open wound, to be patronized. He knew that battles turned, most times, on infinitesimal chance. He just…never wanted to be one of them.

Starscream withdrew.  “Well then,” he said, coldly. “I need not waste my time consoling you.”

No, Barricade thought, but he couldn’t stop the strange hot ache that had nothing to do with his repairs that felt like something suddenly had been ripped out of him. 

 

THREE

“GET. IN.”  Barricade snarled it over audio and comm.  He had never been a patient mech, and right now, with Ironhide bearing down behind him like a tidal wave of old and rancid hate, what little he had was…stored somewhere out of reach. 

Frenzy hesitated, torn between obedience and…whatever animated Frenzy’s processors.  Perhaps having two processors glitched the little mech. Right now, Barricade was not in a speculative mood. Frag. There was no way to snatch the little techling without changing modes. 

“In. Now!” 

Frenzy quailed at the tone of his voice.  “No yell! NoyellFrenzy!  Partnerspartners don’t yell!”

Barricade’s engine revved in fury.  “We don’t have TIME for this!” He squealed his tires, slewing his back end in an arc, snatching the techling with his doorframe.  Frenzy was flung across the front seat, its spindly shins banging against Barricade’s running boards.  Barricade turned the spinning tire arc into a push of momentum, rocketing forward with force enough to fling the small mech against the back of the seat. 

“Ow ow owowowowowowo!” Frenzy howled. It clawed its way upright, sinking its tiny claws into Barricade’s upholstery.

Got your ‘owowowow’ Barricade snarled.  He skidded around one corner, opening his throttle to gain distance. One advantage he had over the Autobot was speed. He intended to make the most of it, especially flat-out.

Frenzy’s little claws sank into the steering wheel in panic as Barricade slammed his brakes to backdrift another turn.  A car leapt out of a parking spot at just the wrong moment, delivering a dinging wobble to Barricade’s right rear fender.  “SLOW!  Drivetoofast!”

 Well, Barricade, he thought, you have achieved some sublime level if something you’re doing is too fast for the little techling. “NOTHING wrong with my driving.” 

“Toofast!”  A bump in the road flung Frenzy in the air. It landed clutching all four arms and both its legs around the seat back.  “Too FAST! Notsafe, notsafetoofast!”

Barricade seethed. “I am TRYING to shake pursuit.  Which wouldn’t be so slaggin’ close if you’d obeyed orders!”

“Frenzyobeyed! Got in!”

Barricade howled with rage, swerving to dodge around a bus. Frenzy struggled to hang on, squealing in fear.

“I got you in. I saved your aft! Next time I’ll just let him flatten you, you irritating little freak!”

Frenzy shrunk back at the volume and the vehemence of his tone as much as the words that Barricade immediately regretted.  He wouldn’t.  He didn’t mean it. Any of it.  But it was too late.  The claws withdrew, Frenzy falling into a ball in the well of the back seat. His voice was small, almost buried in the roar of Barricade’s racing engine.

“Don’t want to be saved if it makes Barricade angry.”

 

FOUR

No.  The word seemed to stir, sludgily, in Barricade’s cortex. No.  A ‘no’ rose back in return.  You don’t say no to me. No one does.  But..he could say nothing. He knew better. As much as he hated, as much as he raged about it, he had to swallow the ‘no’, a bitter, glass-edged lump that tore ragged strips down his patience. 

“Yes, my lord,” he managed to choke out.  Yes. Not no.  He felt Megatron’s optics hard on him, weighing, measuring. A sign that he had not masked his reaction as well as he’d thought. He was bleeding emotion. He tried to shut himself down, clamp down on his emotions.  Emotions are the enemy.  You have enough enemies. 

Too late. Megatron questioned. “You find this…unpalatable?”

“It doesn’t matter how I find it,” he said. Truth. Simple.  Raw.  Ugly.  The humans had some stupid quote, ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’.  How little they fraggin’ knew. Truth is ugly and painful, a bird with no feathers, a gaping wound. 

Megatron gave a snort, half of derision, half of assent. He recognized the truth as well. But, being Megatron, got his hands around something that could cause pain and…wanted to twist.  He couldn’t help it. It was part of his programming.

“You do understand, don’t you? We simply cannot waste the resources on what is at best a salvage mission.”

Cannot waste.  The words fell like tablets of acid into his tank, burning, spreading like harsh poison.  He kept his face immobile, his hands still. No emotion, anywhere.  He knew the right answer, but he also knew the wise answer.  The one that would let him bleed off time and effort of his own to search for Frenzy, without suspicion. Without being monitored.  No he did not understand. “Yes,” he said, burning.

 

FIVE:

They were gone.  They had left him.  Gone to Mission City, leaving him as so much crumpled wreckage on the roadway. He’d crawled to the underpass, legs too damaged to support his weight, presuming they’d come back.  Waiting. And hoping.  He kept his audio channel clear, open to broad reception, straining his hearing across the sound spectrum until even silence seemed to roar.

And then it hit him: they weren’t coming back. They were gone, they had lost—they must have lost or he’d had heard something across commnet—and they had abandoned him.  Perhaps by accident.  Perhaps, however, a convenient, too convenient opportunity. Too good to waste. Get rid of the troublemaker. Get rid of the one no one cared about. 

He felt a rage build, shaking and red like a pillar of fire, searching for a target.

And realized,  suddenly, that there was only one mech left to get angry at.

 

Comments

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

*goes to search for June to make her favorite 'Con happy*

I do love the way you write emotions.