shadow_vector | Assorted PG Drabbles

Once again, I hit y'all with 5 at a time. Continuity/Characters vary, listed on cuts.

Slipping away

Cold had pitted his joints, clotting the fluids to bulge in his hoses. His audio was dead, liquid nitrogen and clumsy handling having shattered the fine connections. The circuits behind his optics functioned only marginally, feeding him slow, static-fuzzed images, one every minute, so that his life seemed to snapshot out in slow-motion. Or perhaps his cortex merely raced in frantic anticipation of the flashes of reality, constantly disquieted by all that had changed in movement and light from frame to frame.

And then it seemed that nothing changed, everlasting day, everlasting cold, everlasting…pain. Was this death? Megatron didn’t know.

Temptation

The vision tempted him, like a ghost running before him, pausing, turning to see if he was following, taunting him, beckoning him. Wing, always bright, sometimes too bright to look directly at, his smile dazzling like the sun.

And Drift knew he was dead, had seen, had sat by his cooling frame all night. Wing…was gone.

Yet sometimes Drift could hear the echo of his laugh or see the light seem to flare off his white armor or the blue flash of his swords, beckoning Drift like an angel of war with wings of pain, trying to call him home.

Old Shield:

Things Sideswipe had lost count of: the number of battles he’d fought; the number of Decepticon confirmed-kills he had, and the number of times that Ironhide’s words had welled up from some deep area in the back of his programming to save his aft.

Cover blocked fire; concealment did not. And neither, ever, were safe, guaranteed.

He’d hated Ironhide back then, flinched at that grating voice, sneered at the heavy battered black armor as he clomped past, so unlike Sideswipe’s own lithe, silver frame.

“You know nothing, old wreck,” he’d said back then, trading hard words for Ironhide’s hard-won lessons.

Belonging.

We play it too safe here, Wing thought, hiding in our perfect little city, our tight, closed, safe system. Everything has a purpose, everything has a place; nothing, nothing goes to waste.

He paced, restless. His hands glided to the pommels of his short swords, for something to do. Another and another run through the practice forms. Like he couldn’t already execute them flawlessly.

Wing sighed. He knew what he wanted: to leave the city again, to be outside under an open, promising sky. He didn’t belong here. Life was light and movement, this was still and cold and dark.

Menacing

Banzaitron leaned back in the chair, optics bright from under the red mask of armor. “Really.” It was all he needed to say. Just like all he needed to do was tilt his head, tap one finger against the tread of his upper arm.

Sixshot caught the threat, letting it bounce off his neutronium armor like a dud round. “Really.”

Banzaitron’s gaze didn’t waver, though the amusement faded to a grimness. “I will find out, you know.”

“So?” Sixshot’s optics were flat and dead, betraying nothing. Not that there was nothing to betray.

“Just…giving you notice.” Banzaitron grinned, optics bright.