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shadow_vector2010-12-19 03:58 pm
niyazi-a.livejournal.com) wrote in shadow_vector2010-12-19 03:58 pm
Preparation
PG
IDW/G1
Sixshot
Warnings: refs to hallucination/vague ref to psychotic breaks.
Wordcount: 843
Time: 53 minutes
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
tf_speedwriting prompt 'two minutes to midnight' which somehow led to...Sixshot getting ready to destroy something.
Sixshot worked his way with practiced speed through the armory. He reached for charge-packs for his pistols, stowing them in the small panniers on his legs, then hesitated over grenades. Incendiary or fragmentation? He had a preference for the high-heat incendiaries, but that was mostly because his modified armor allowed him to walk through it unscathed. Shrapnel was a nuisance and nothing more, but he admitted to…something like vanity at the effect of walking through a wall of blue-hot fire.
And he needed this. More than he wanted to say. He needed to restore his own equilibrium. Needed to do what he did best—arguably, the only thing he could do. What he had been built precisely to do.
He snatched two racks of HE grenades. And a sonic disruptor, he thought, turning down the aisle. Natives had comm—primitive, but still with some interstellar capabilities. The siege armature should have taken care of most of that, but…he didn’t have his success rate without taking precautions. Siege armatures had failed. Which was why there was Phase Six to begin with.
Though, honestly, by the time anything like help could hear and respond to a plea, even on FTL boost, he’d be done and gone.
And bored. Again.
He tilted his head, considering the disruptor. He was aware of the passing time, but after all, there was no real deadline for this. And every klik he delayed was a klik more pathetic, miserable life for the grubby and recalcitrant natives of Alsargit-5.
Well. He didn’t know how grubby or recalcitrant they actually were, or ‘pathetic’ and ‘miserable’ for that matter, either. Those were Banzaitron’s words. Justifying, for some reason, the commencement of Phase Six. As if Sixshot had to agree or that Alsargit-5 had to be somehow proven worthy of death, or at least, no longer worthy of life.
Sixshot…didn’t care. Sinners, innocents, criminals, the pure, everyone died in the end.
Everyone but him. And even he could be stopped, shut down. He felt the failsafe program’s presence in him like a prickly weight. A reminder of his servitude. Just as his heavy neutron-star armor and sealed spark chamber isolated him from every other mech. Marked out, different.
And he used to care. He did. He remembered when he took fierce joy in destruction. He remembered when it was a joy to pit himself against challenges on that scale. One mech versus an entire planet. When every opponent he faced was a valued, honored rival, worthy of remembrance. But the outcome was never in doubt, even back then. Merely an exercise in testing his limits and finding them…limitless.
It was not as liberating as it sounded.
Then he had gone through a phase where he’d approached the non-challenge of mass destruction as some sort of art. He had challenged himself to destroy planets more swiftly, or limiting himself to one kind of weapon (the inhabitants of the Bernays Moon had had to wait as he shot each one, individually, with a steel-bolted crossbow), or with an abstruse system of penalties or process—right to left, or boustrophedon, or spiraling out from some significant landmark. Their fear did not thrill him, nor did the carnage disgust. It was simply…the work of war. As natural to Sixshot as venting his cooling system.
Now, he just did it because it was something to do. No longer thrilling, no longer even interesting. Merely a rote exercise of his already accepted abilities. Merely, he thought, keeping in form. And even that, for no good reason.
He did it, he found, because he could do it. And very few other mechs could. Only two others, and one was...permanently insane, and Black Shadow? Well. His time was limited, even if his abilities were not.
Yes, it had taken a toll. Friendships had attenuated, then shredded. And then… the visions. Well, he didn’t think they were actual visions. More a glitch of his cortex, feeding him information a half-klik faster than reality. Knowing the outcome before he even started, until he could see a mech, for example, and his cortex would feed him the image of the mech’s head, torn into a scream, energon blade lodged through one sputtering optic, before Sixshot’s hand even moved to his dagger.
And that glitch or...madness fed on these missions, as much as kept it in abeyance. Enough brutality and it behaved, letting him have possession of his faculties at other times. Too long without a mission and the visions would spread, until he could not look at his own hands without hallucinations of maiming.
He put the sonic disruptor back on its shelf. He wouldn’t need it. Let them call for help. In fact, he’d let them know he was coming. Let them send a pitiful cry for help, scattered into space like seeds of weakness.
Maybe the Autobots would answer. Maybe they’d come. Maybe that would finally glut the dragon of violence perching on his cortex, that would feed and sate the burning in his sealed spark chamber.
And maybe, maybe, that wouldn’t be boring.
IDW/G1
Sixshot
Warnings: refs to hallucination/vague ref to psychotic breaks.
Wordcount: 843
Time: 53 minutes
For
tf_speedwriting prompt 'two minutes to midnight' which somehow led to...Sixshot getting ready to destroy something. Sixshot worked his way with practiced speed through the armory. He reached for charge-packs for his pistols, stowing them in the small panniers on his legs, then hesitated over grenades. Incendiary or fragmentation? He had a preference for the high-heat incendiaries, but that was mostly because his modified armor allowed him to walk through it unscathed. Shrapnel was a nuisance and nothing more, but he admitted to…something like vanity at the effect of walking through a wall of blue-hot fire.
And he needed this. More than he wanted to say. He needed to restore his own equilibrium. Needed to do what he did best—arguably, the only thing he could do. What he had been built precisely to do.
He snatched two racks of HE grenades. And a sonic disruptor, he thought, turning down the aisle. Natives had comm—primitive, but still with some interstellar capabilities. The siege armature should have taken care of most of that, but…he didn’t have his success rate without taking precautions. Siege armatures had failed. Which was why there was Phase Six to begin with.
Though, honestly, by the time anything like help could hear and respond to a plea, even on FTL boost, he’d be done and gone.
And bored. Again.
He tilted his head, considering the disruptor. He was aware of the passing time, but after all, there was no real deadline for this. And every klik he delayed was a klik more pathetic, miserable life for the grubby and recalcitrant natives of Alsargit-5.
Well. He didn’t know how grubby or recalcitrant they actually were, or ‘pathetic’ and ‘miserable’ for that matter, either. Those were Banzaitron’s words. Justifying, for some reason, the commencement of Phase Six. As if Sixshot had to agree or that Alsargit-5 had to be somehow proven worthy of death, or at least, no longer worthy of life.
Sixshot…didn’t care. Sinners, innocents, criminals, the pure, everyone died in the end.
Everyone but him. And even he could be stopped, shut down. He felt the failsafe program’s presence in him like a prickly weight. A reminder of his servitude. Just as his heavy neutron-star armor and sealed spark chamber isolated him from every other mech. Marked out, different.
And he used to care. He did. He remembered when he took fierce joy in destruction. He remembered when it was a joy to pit himself against challenges on that scale. One mech versus an entire planet. When every opponent he faced was a valued, honored rival, worthy of remembrance. But the outcome was never in doubt, even back then. Merely an exercise in testing his limits and finding them…limitless.
It was not as liberating as it sounded.
Then he had gone through a phase where he’d approached the non-challenge of mass destruction as some sort of art. He had challenged himself to destroy planets more swiftly, or limiting himself to one kind of weapon (the inhabitants of the Bernays Moon had had to wait as he shot each one, individually, with a steel-bolted crossbow), or with an abstruse system of penalties or process—right to left, or boustrophedon, or spiraling out from some significant landmark. Their fear did not thrill him, nor did the carnage disgust. It was simply…the work of war. As natural to Sixshot as venting his cooling system.
Now, he just did it because it was something to do. No longer thrilling, no longer even interesting. Merely a rote exercise of his already accepted abilities. Merely, he thought, keeping in form. And even that, for no good reason.
He did it, he found, because he could do it. And very few other mechs could. Only two others, and one was...permanently insane, and Black Shadow? Well. His time was limited, even if his abilities were not.
Yes, it had taken a toll. Friendships had attenuated, then shredded. And then… the visions. Well, he didn’t think they were actual visions. More a glitch of his cortex, feeding him information a half-klik faster than reality. Knowing the outcome before he even started, until he could see a mech, for example, and his cortex would feed him the image of the mech’s head, torn into a scream, energon blade lodged through one sputtering optic, before Sixshot’s hand even moved to his dagger.
And that glitch or...madness fed on these missions, as much as kept it in abeyance. Enough brutality and it behaved, letting him have possession of his faculties at other times. Too long without a mission and the visions would spread, until he could not look at his own hands without hallucinations of maiming.
He put the sonic disruptor back on its shelf. He wouldn’t need it. Let them call for help. In fact, he’d let them know he was coming. Let them send a pitiful cry for help, scattered into space like seeds of weakness.
Maybe the Autobots would answer. Maybe they’d come. Maybe that would finally glut the dragon of violence perching on his cortex, that would feed and sate the burning in his sealed spark chamber.
And maybe, maybe, that wouldn’t be boring.
no subject
Too incoherent to say anything more, but yep, shiny prose and interesting themes well-explored make ultharkitty happy.
no subject
Sixshot is delightfully messed up. Not in the fun way like, oh, say, Vortex, but still, pretty nifty to poke at. :D
(Oh look, sexy gif!)