Interception

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW/G1 Forlorn Hope AU
Sixshot, Terrorcons, nameless Autobots
vague OC hi-then-die character death
PREVIOUSLY
FH-3
Relapse
Transgression
First
Rescue
Half Truths and Shadows
Coping Mechanism
Kiss
Of Mice and Terrorcons
Best Plan Ever!!
Two Sides
Perspectives

“Load,” Sixshot said, as the door to the Terrorcons’ quarters shut behind him.  “Have a mission.”

“We do?”  Hun-Grr said around a mouthful of metal chips, surreptitiously wiping his crumbed-up hand down his leg.  “First I’ve heard of it.”

That would be because Sixshot had just managed to stare it out of Banzaitron.  It had taken thirteen solars, but it turned out that staring umoving and unblinking at Banzaitron for his entire dutycycle day after day brought results.  Finally.  And it wasn’t much of a mission, but it was a mission. Which meant—Sixshot not sitting around feeling like he was slowly going crazy.  Time to do something…he could actually do.

“Not much of a mission,” Rippersnapper muttered. “Always send us to some stinkin’ slag hole.”

Cutthroat shrugged. “Better’n sitting around this stinkin’ slag hole,” he said, pointedly, eyeballing Blot, who was on his knees scrubbing at a stain on the floor.  Only justice in this world was that even Blot eventually got ‘clean up after Blot’ duty. “Least we get to kill something.”

“I like missions!” Blot blurted, clutching the wet rag. “Get to go to cool places and do stuff!  You know…other stuff than cleaning.”  He drooped. 

“Yeah,” Sixshot said. Just because he felt he had to say something.  He moved forward, holding an input rod out to Hun-Grr.  “Specs.” 

“Hey, uh…thanks,” Hun-Grr said, a little nervously, as he slotted the rod into the main display console.  A schematic of an Autobot courier ship popped up. 

“Courier!” Cutthroat whined. “Means we can’t kill them.”

“Told you this would suck, somehow,” Rippersnapper muttered.

“No.” Sixshot tipped his head to Hun-Grr, who read off the objectives. 

“No way, Cutthroat,” Hun-Grr took his cue. “Just keep a few heads intact.” 

Sinnertwin sidled over to the console, not-so-subtly wrapping one arm around Sixshot’s waist, leaning his head against Sixshot’s rib strut.  “So, what’s the tactical plan?” 

One of Sixshot’s vertical stabilizers twitched at the unexpected touch, but he mastered himself before lashing out at the Terrorcon.

“Well,” Hun-Grr began scrolling through the options Banzaitron had laid out.  Huh, Sixshot thought. Mechs actually pay attention to those things?  In Sixshot’s experience, most battle plans sort of imploded after the first return of fire. “Looks like we’re the diversion, while Sixshot gets the real job done.” He sounded a little disappointed.

Sixshot leaned forward, toggling the plan forward. “This one.” This one had him as the diversion and the Terrorcons infiltrating the ship in three teams.  “Would separate you, though.”  Problem if they needed to combine.  But, on the plus side, Sixshot wouldn’t have to hold back.  He was…not good at holding back.

“Faster, though.”  Hun-Grr considered the two plans. 

Sixshot nodded. There was that.

“I like missions!” Blot beamed up at Sixshot, twining his damp fingers around Sixshot’s right arm.  Ummm, all right. 

“Frag,” Rippersnapper said. “If we can pull this off…?” He didn’t need to finish the thought for the other Terrorcons.  If they could do this right, it could change everything.  More respect, better missions.  No more like that one run through the sewers of Bantel-Viam.

And with Sixshot’s help?

Sinnertwin leaned forward to glare around Sixshot’s torso at Blot.  “Mine,” he hissed.

“Mine, too!” Blot said. “I’m totally on the rotation list.”  He purred, bending to lick Sixshot’s wrist. 

“Yeah,” Cutthroat said. “Not just yours, Sinnertwin.” 

Not…anyone’s, Sixshot thought.  Well…. Jetfire....

He growled, at his own stupid train of thought, twitching out of their grasp.  “Mission.  Devil King leaves in three cycles.”  He slipped past them, headed toward the door, turning to meet Hun-Grr’s optics, which jumped guiltily to his face from…his aft? 

Oh, this mission suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

[***]

“You know he’s doing this to help us out,” a voice echoed through the docking ramp as the Terrorcons boarded the Devil King.  “Cause he likes us.”

“Likes me best.” 

“In your dreams.”

“Would you shut up and load?”  Unmistakably Hun-Grr’s voice. “He can hear us, you know.”

The chatter squealed to a sudden, embarrassed halt.

Sixshot buried himself ostentatiously in the pre-flight checklist.  It had been the first time he’d flown the Devil King since Mumu-Obscura.  Since before…Jetfire.  So much had happened since the last time he had touched these controls.  Everything felt familiar and strange, both at once. 

He had a brief, wild thought as the Terrorcons settled themselves in the cargo bay, of Jetfire perching in the jumpseat behind him.  His wings would nearly scrape the inner sides of the cockpit cabin, perhaps one white knee would jut to one side of Sixshot’s pilot’s chair. Watching Sixshot pilot the craft, maybe asking questions, or just talking in that soothing, deep voice of his.  Sixshot shook his head, dispelling the image before he turned to look. 

Losing it, Sixshot.  Not good. Need to focus. This is exactly why you wanted a mission—get this out of your head. Do the one thing you’re good at doing.

Hun-Grr stepped up into the cabin. “Ready to go,” he reported.   

Sixshot nodded, keeping his optics on the controls, running through the last of the pre-flight diagnostics. 

“Hey, uhhh,” Hun-Grr said, unevenly. “I don’t know if you heard the others yapping before….”

“No big deal.”

“Yeah, well. Honestly. We did want to thank you.  You know.  You fought to give us this opportunity to, you know, prove ourselves and…yeah. Thanks.”

Not for you. Was for me.   Banzaitron had insisted on the Terrorcons, like some sort of bizarre ‘make you regret getting what you want’ punishment. “Banzaitron,” Sixshot muttered.  “Thank him.”

Hun-Grr made some disbelieving sound, but added, quietly, “I’ll make sure we’re prepped for departure. And we’ll make you proud.”

Hun-Grr’s words actually rang some guilty echo in Sixshot’s processor. He shook that off, too. Focus. Concentrate. Mission. 

[***]

There was a reason, Sixshot realized, that he normally worked alone. Coordinating attacks meant…coordination. Meant talking.  Too damn much.

Though he had to admit, the Terrorcons held their own. Hun-Grr kept them on a tight timetable, keeping Blot with himself to take the courier himself, while sending the other three to cause generalized mayhem on the ship.   Blot kept a running commentary of whatever apparently grabbed his attention, Hun-Grr kept calling out time hacks, Cutthroat broadcast his latest dire bodily threat, while Rippersnapper just cursed randomly and Sinnertwin got in arguments with himself.  It was…interesting. He did not need to, thankfully, squeeze a word in edgewise.

Sixshot, meanwhile, had outflown several dogfights—one disadvantage the Autobots had was that all of their ships were piloted, not sentient.  The only aerial Autobot he’d ever met had been…Jetfire.

He was begin to get sick of everything coming back to Jetfire. 

He poured his irritation into his attack, cutting short the toying phase, flipping behind them, blowing their wings, their engines methodically, zipping away just long enough for them to think he was just going to leave them crippled, before dashing back and punching through the power core, demolishing the ships in the excruciatingly slow explosions of zero-gee vacuum.  The strange flashes he’d always had, the visions of violence that had blazed over his sensors, folding the present into a brutal future, roared to life, demanding to be made real.  It felt as if something uncoiled itself, spreading through his systems like energon, or the roots of some vile organic plant, honing his reflexes, sharpening his aim, turning him into a moving maelstrom of destruction.

He dimly heard the Terrorcons do another time hack, checking coordinates.  Then. //Sixshot?//

//…on.//He was not used to this. At all.

//Status?//

Oh.  Right.  //Available.//  He could break off from the last three pitiful little strafers at any time.

//Done here. You can stop, uh, diverting.// Hun-Grr said, hesitantly.

Sixshot muttered, part of him resisting, hating, the idea of leaving an enemy alive. His job was to destroy. Eradicate.  //Fine.  Courier?// 

//Retrieved, and for the moment intact.//

//Not for much longer if he doesn’t keep his slaggin’ mouth shut.// Sinnertwin snarled. 

So not Sixshot’s concern.  Dead or alive, as long as the cortex was intact, Banzaitron would call this mission a success. //Right.//  He wheeled away from his latest target, after firing one final shot at the afterburner, crippling it if not destroying it.  A short hop back to the Devil King and then a sweep back to retrieve the Terrorcons and….

//Watch out!//  A burst of cursing and then some hot popping sounds and then a howling series of crunches.  //Fraggit! Sixsh--!//

The courier ship’s main gun shot a blast of blue-white energon, faster than Sixshot could evade, that tore through his armor, punching through  into his stabilization systems.  His systems lit up, white with pain. His heavy, modified alloy armor could not feel—but the sensors under it were agonizingly alive and they screeched to life, blinding his vid field, dampening his audio, reducing his world to the confines of his frame. 

//Sixshot! You all right?// The concern in Hun-Grr’s voice cut through everything. Frag. 

//Fine. Close enough.// Sixshot shut down those systems  with brutal efficiency.  Get that looked at…later. Now, though, he had more important things to do. Pain was something for later.

//Sorry! Really.  The courier, he kept tapping something out on his arm and Cutthroat thought that it was just to be annoying but it turns out it was some sort of code…thing…and….//

//Courier’s dead.//  Better be. 

//Yeah.  Uh, Cutthroat doesn’t like being wrong.//

Well, neither did Sixshot. //Head’s all we need.//

//Head’s intact.  Blot grabbed it.//

Good enough.  Sixshot fired his one remaining thruster, launching at the ship, forcing a transformation as he swept by the barrel of the gun, tearing it from its mounting, ignoring as best he could the wobble from his damaged leg.  Sparks fizzled in the vacuum of space as he ripped the gun free, swinging it to bring its heavy mounting down on the hull of the ship like a club, aiming for the comm arrays.  //Be right with you.//