Terminal

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R
Bayverse (Post ROTF)
Barricade, Frenzy, Simmons
Violence and angst.  character death
For tf_speedwriting 'write a story, ending first' 

 

 

It should never have come to this, he thought.  The gun, muzzle still smoldering in his hand, began shaking.  He clamped his other hand over it, to stabilize it, but that only made the shaking worse.  He felt weak. Helpless. And desperately, desperately alone.

[***]

He had no words for the filthy, reeking animal Simmons, only a series of black fantasies he wanted to visit upon the pale, hairy flesh. For example, stripping that skin to ribbons with his talons. Slowly.  Non-essential areas first. The legs, the feet, stripping off the muscle and fat and skin to reveal the white, brittle bone.  Or gouging his talons through the eyes, aqueous humors trickling hot over his steel digits.  He’d keep the vocal cords intact for as long as possible, let the screams out.  He wanted to reduce this lump of flabby protoplasm to a shrieking, syllable-less wet rag.  He wanted to strip the bones out, leaving Simmons as a mound of shrieking jelly.  He wanted every abomination he could think of visited upon this human.  

But first he had to free Frenzy. 

He should have known, of course. Even without knowing the hows of it, he should have figured that this one would have taken Frenzy.  He was behind, after all, Megatron’s captivity. Stripped of his resources, his aim had gotten…smaller.

Barricade had almost had respect for him with Megatron—a small and imminently breakable human against Megatron, the fiercest warrior they had.  Simmons’s methods were unfair and brutal, but…it was war.  Both adjectives applied. 

What he could not forgive was Simmons’s pursuit of Frenzy. Torture of Frenzy.  Yes, Frenzy was a Decepticon, too.  Frenzy had in fact killed more humans than Megatron himself.  But when Frenzy had managed to datablurt a distress call over an obscure frequency, it had had enough detail that Barricade’s cortex had clogged with rage and fantasies of revenge.

He’d torn across the country, tires sticky with friction heat, driving himself, relentless, heedless of time or wear, arriving outside the delicatessen in the darkest hours of night.

Ghastly.  Flesh creatures eating the flesh of other creatures. Parasites, feeding on each other, finding it a delicacy.  Decepticons were unromantic about salvage but…something about the display of meats offended him—sausages, white rimed with salt looped like entrail garlands. Prosciuttos—entire haunches of smoked pork—dangled over cases featuring three different kinds of salami, glistening off-white smoked turkey breasts, thick haunches of bacon.  Artfully arranged, like some temple to charnel.

Revolting.  He could expect nothing less from Simmons. Salvage was a necessity, not a luxury. It was profane, to revel in autophagy. 

He’d rammed the glass front window in an excess of fury, letting his front ram shatter the glass, bend the flimsy metal framing, annihilating the case of meat.  Glass splinters fell among the displayed meats, puncturing them, glittering among them, and, Barricade hoped, ruining them.

He pushed up, swatting furiously at the chunks of animal flesh that slapped his face.  His weight cracked tiles under his feet.  His optics spread, searching the storefront for Frenzy. He was here.  His one frantic, garbled signal had been precise about the coordinates before it cut off.

Frenzy was here. He had to be.  And if he wasn’t?  Simmons was here. And he could make, he thought, flexing his talons, Simmons talk.

All the more reason to keep Simmons’s vocalizer online.

“What the—Mother! No! I’ll take care of it!” A voice yelled from the back.  Barricade felt his systems stir.  Simmons.  Yes. 

He kicked the meat case, shoving it back against the wall, a side exit.  He heard a hiss as his kick broke a refrigerant line.  Cold air, like steam, began gusting into the room from the underside of the case.  He turned toward the door in the rear of the shop, queuing the command code for his spoke weapon.  No.  He pulled a gun from his storage, a simple pulse gun.  Accurate, and deadly enough. Restraint, he told himself.  Restraint. Get what you want…then enjoy killing him. Measure out every iota of suffering he inflicted on Frenzy, and pay it back in kind. 

The door burst open, swinging on its hinges.  A battered white cardboard box skidded through the opening, followed by Simmons himself, in frayed pajamas, an unbelted white and blue striped robe flapping from his shoulders. A shotgun glared its single eye at Barricade. 

“Back off!” Simmons yelled, his voice echoing off the swinging meat. 

“Make me,” Barricade snarled.  He aimed his own gun right back. 

“Mexican standoff, huh?” Simmons said.  “Nice.  But I don’t got all night for this sort of impasse.  Mother needs her beauty rest.” 

The flippancy nearly sent Barricade over the edge.  His spoke weapon leapt with eagerness in its housing, as if already tasting Simmons’s flesh. No.  Objective. Find Frenzy. Rescue Frenzy. And then…. 

“Frenzy,” Barricade said.  He let the gun’s targeting go to visible laser—a bright red dot glowing on Simmons’s chest.

“Oh? That useless freakazoid?”  Simmons moved one scuff-slippered foot, tipping over the box. The lid flopped open and onto the floor crashed, then rolled, with a horrible clattering noise, Frenzy’s spiked head.  Barricade’s lower optics glued to the sight as the head rolled, bumping, finally, to a stop against his toe plate.  One optic stalk was entirely missing. One of the remaining optics had been drilled through.  The remaining blue eye focused dully, first at the toe in front of it, then scaling Barricade’s leg as though it were a monumental distance.

Barricade swore.  Any words of comfort, even “Got you,” fell like brittle things from his cortex.  Simmons kicked the box again, letting a series of batteries, taped together like a honeycomb, clatter out onto the floor. 

“Might wanna take this, if you like him alive.”

The optic blinked, pleadingly, at Barricade.  Not for the battery, not to be kept alive, but to have it all end.  In that one blink, Barricade saw months of pain and humiliation, an endless, measureless amount of suffering, more than physical.  And more than that, he saw the glow of hope in the optic—not that Barricade would save him, but that Barricade would finally, finally end it. Barricade would give him a proper death, a warrior’s death. 

He fired first at the battery pack, the pulse bolt shattering the casings, battery acid, gone molten, splashing against Simmons’s legs, burning, eating its way through the flimsy fabric. Simmons shrieked, the shotgun clattering to the floor, tearing at his clothes.

Barricade gave Frenzy that one last image—his tormenter suffering.  Not enough—Barricade wasn’t sure there could BE ‘enough’ in this case—but it was something. A fitting thing to take as a last image.

He raised the gun. "Sorry," he croaked, apologizing for...he knew not what. His own failure, perhaps. His own suffering. For not being smart enough, fast enough, clever enough. The war.  Everything.  He fired.

Comments

[mewsing.livejournal.com]

;-;

Never did like Simmons...

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

D:
oh Frenzy! oh Barricade! *whines*
Damn Simmons got what he deserves. Did he never hear of the Geneva Convention!?

also... that description of the deli from Barricade's POV? ...I might wind up hesitating next time I'm picking up cold cuts from the grocery. ._.;