EP 1.5 That's Not a Knife. (OPEN)

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So Primus answered and sent her an…antihero. Kit mentally shrugged, she’d take what she could get and be damn happy for it. In another time and another place, have two big mechs fighting over her might have been flattering, but clearly these two both went to the same school of diplomacy, and failed miserably. She did not want to be between these two one byte.

Kit was however getting the impression that Big Green was a Decepticon through loyalty rather than predilection for power or killing or violence. His occasional pings of sympathy softened her field a little. Big Green’s obvious capability for violence still had Kit highly alert however. Despite his rage, Kit did find she was scared for her health, but not for her spark, something she would dwell on in the future.

The smell of Pine-Sol went completely unnoticed; Kit’s olfactory sensor was fairly low quality, and practically redundant in her profession.

"OR DID THEY MAKE YOU SOFT WENT THEY BENT YOU OVER AND FRAGGED THE LIFE OUT OF YOU IN THERE?!"

Kit had no idea who Fortress Maximus was; apparently she was much less informed than Big Green. As to Garrus 9, she knew it existed and that was it. What she did recognise was a sensitive topic and knew when things had gone too far.

She tapped Buffalo Dump with her cuffed hands. “I’m sorry too Big Green”. Kit then rotated at the hips, swinging her legs up, and rotating in Buffalo Dump’s grip. She brought her knees up and kicked out with all the strength she could summon, crashing her feet into Buffalo Dump’s face. Ignoring the pain with a grimace, Kit kicked again and broke free.

Kit landed on her hands, and very gracefully all things considered, pivoted to her good foot where she proceeded to hobble as fast as she could out of the way. She moved far to the side, only slightly closer to her rescuer than her captor. She watched expectantly for the brawl.

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The mocking words rang loud and clear across the desert.

Stunned, Maximus froze, his fingertip poised on the trigger of his rifle.

Already tired, already irritable - in his mind something quietly cracked.

A red haze descended. Maximus forgot about the Autobot he was to save. He forgot about the Vehicons, about the war. All of it shrank from his mind, stripping him of everything but the mad desire to obliterate the smirk from the Decepticon's face.

Maximus lunged.

He ran, in pounding strides that closed the distance between them in the pulse of a spark. From the corner of his eye he saw Kit neatly flip out of the way - which meant that his path was clear. No reason to hold back. At the last moment he lifted his rifle and leapt, kicking off on one foot. In midair the big mech whirled, drawing power and momentum into his attack.

With all of his weight and fury Maximus slammed into Buffalo like a meteor.

His outstretched foot rammed into Buffalo's throat, hard enough to hurl him over backwards and drive Maximus into a crouch. With a howl of fury Maximus followed the big Decepticon all the way down, one foot on his chest and the other on his neck, until the garbage bot finally collided with the ground and ploughed backwards on his shoulders, dragging a massive furrow into the earth behind him. Dust billowed up from the impact, swallowing both robots from sight.

Slowly, the dust thinned. Buffalo would find himself lying flat on his back and feel the pressure of a heavy foot on his throat, crushing downwards. Through the haze the black muzzle of the rifle would appear, filling his vision from horizon to horizon.

Maximus leaned down above it, still crouched on his chest.

In a deathly tone he whispered, "What was that you said? I don't think I heard you from all the way over there. Would you care to repeat it?"

A glowing star of furnace light flickered deep in the barrel of the fusion rifle as the big weapon hummed into life, nuclear-red and growing fast.

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The sudden impact against his head sent his audials ringing. The cat-bot's kick was like a zap pony's, unsurprising giving the leap he'd seen — but the pain was. That little glitch's feet had whacked into the one part of his head he tried hard not to smack around, where all the nerves and wires were connected to a tiny sliver. Said sliver was a piece of protoform, knocked loose from his processor casing in a fight long ago, taking a punch from a frontliner similar to Fortress Maximus's build.

It distracted him enough he couldn't move in time. He clutched at the side of his head with a grunt, optics offlining as the optical shutters squeezed tight. He let out a cry of pain, the sound choked off when the Autobrander smashed into his chest like glitchfragging missile. He hit with enough force that B-Dump's chest-hatch buckled, the hollow space behind cleaved in two; B-Dump felt his barrel-turned-flask crush to one side. The smell of Pine-Sol was sudden and sharp, drowned out by the smell of energon in his nose and throat, drops flying out from his mouth as he hit the ground.

Something internal had definitely broke. He could feel sharp pains shooting up his upper torso and neck, and he vented frantically to try and breathe. His head was a spinning blur of light and shadow, a pulsating migraine radiating out from his bad optic. The tops of his fork-tentacles were ground and drug underneath him, pinned to his back and scraped cruelly across the ground via momentum. The sudden blackness was a relief, so much so that B-Dump didn't realize the danger he was in.

"What was that you said? I don't think I heard you from all the way over there. Would you care to repeat it?"

All the Autobrander got was a strangling, desperate wheeze. Energon was trickling out from the orifices on his face, but unlike healthy energon, the blue was clouded greyish-green. Radiating from B-Dump in waves of shuddering strain, his EMF read only one thing: pain, pain, PAIN.

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It wasn’t so much a clash of the Titans, so much as a Fortress of Pain beating the snot out of a Garbage truck in one hit.She almost felt sorry for Buffalo Dump, but he had asked for it.

Kit took the brief respite to examine her gaping leg wound. On closer inspection it wasn’t actually gaping too much. It just felt that way to Kit. Lots of missing skin plating but only a small amount of substructure damage. She was no medic and that was as far as her own diagnosis could go. She rotated her ankle and flexed her toes and felt no undue pain, which was good. The trickle of blue energon down her foot didn’t faze Kit at all, she had a strong spark for most things. It was war and she had seen plenty worse.

The stasis cuffs bothered Kitandcaboodle more than her leg actually. It was the first time she’d ever been slapped with them, a surprise given her history. Without the ability to transform her hands, or spark up her plasma torch made her feel violated. And on Kit, the cuffs looked ridiculously huge too, another indent on her ego.

While the two mechs tussled, Kit started to hop her way over to the headless vehicon.

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Maximus listened to the harsh rasp of the Decepticon's vents as they shuddered to draw breath.

"That's what I thought," he said softly.

He leaned back, and the big rifle whirred. The red star inside its barrel swelled, shining bright at the fission generator burned and the photon shot gathered charge -

- and then -

Nothing.

No explosion. No sudden blast of pain and then darkness. The gun hummed without firing, the muzzle glowing an incandescent red.

Maximus grit his teeth in frustration.

"Decepticon," he said. "You're lucky I listen to the Doctor's advice."

The light in the rifle abruptly died out. With a swift motion the big mech reversed it in his hands and brought the stock smashing down against the side of Buffalo's head, not hard enough to crush his helm, but seeking instead to knock the the Decepticon offline.