Ep0.5 - "Allied" - Closed

[Deleted]

It was entirely possible Cleaver was going to forgo her medic-bot sworn oath to protect life and welfare of others by welding his face to a table or something, so Barricade was hastily fleeing the scene of the crime. There were things you did and did not do and irritating medics was one of them and irritating medics of a particularly cantankerous disposition who additionally massed double what you did was also something you did not do.

Barricade resigned himself to the knowledge that in the semi-immediate future, Cleaver was going to find him, bolt him to a recharge slab then take his legs off with an arc welder. He was aware this was, perhaps, dramatic, but the medic had shown an unnatural attachment to her human and another thing you didn’t do was mess with things that belonged to medics lest, again, they busted out their arc welders. The infiltrator cycled his vents, emitting a perfectly synthesized exhale of annoyance, blue optics flitting back up the hall he’ come down.

His tires in his wheel mounts twitched a little, spinning idle, his hydraulics humming a contemplative pitch. Better to let Cleaver cool off and fix her human, then come back to face the dismantling but for a moment he was gripped by the gnawing sense of displacement. Infiltrators always had a homebase to go back to, a touchstone, a contact agent. Right now he had nothing. Frustrated, Barricade pressed the heel of his hand into the side of his helm. He wasn’t supposed to be alone, damaged, confused, glitched, and hapless. This was just not… right.

Nothing was right and for a moment he let himself hate that.

[reflector]

Vents. Primus' gift to minicons, no matter what one of the little bots happened to be good at, one could always rely on a nice vent or pluming to get them out of tight spots. Or in Reflector's case a perfect vantage point to watch the drama unfold. The little bot was silent, scurrying along the inner-workings of the ship as he stalked the larger bot below. But something was different in him, the little mech didn't seem frightened or all that careful, his optic was also glowing a dull ominous red.

Aiming his lens the minicon let loose a powerful, for his size, beam of red energy that sliced through the thin wall that sat between him and Barricade. The beam lanced off the back of Barricade's head, leaving a little burn mark as the tiny bot landed squarely on the back of his 'partner' and positioned himself at the back of the Decepticon's neck.

Reflector was angry, far more then he had ever been in a long, long time. Angry enough that he was facing a fully armed warrior with more then a hundred times his firepower and strength. But even in this uncharacteristic rage he was thinking very clearly, just inches away from Barricade's port he could easily jack in and cause some rather uncomfortable inner damage to the larger bot's systems.

"I'll ask you this once and only once. What are you doing?"

[Deleted]

Startled, Barricade crashed against the bulkhead he’d been staring at, palm slamming flat against the wall, his opposite hand scything up to grab and rip the fragging minicon off his neck and tear him apart for slagging daring the threaten to JACK into his head again –! But he stopped, razor sharp claws hovering inches over the cassette, his palm catching the heat off the small agitated frame.Kill him! said every instinct in his body, the need like a heat down his spinal strut into the core of his being pulse, telling him not to let anyone, anything, any fragging mechanism with a beating, pulsing spark to touch him...

But he lowered his hand, engine growling low and dark in his chest because despite the little bastard deserving it, despite Reflector attacking his current carrier (the one he accidentally linked himself with!), the minicon was young more than anything he was still linked to Cade and you didn’t attack your own. What ‘your own’ meant was up for interpretation, but according to Barricade’s narrow world view the minicon currently threatening to hack his still strip-raw systems was his partner. And he knew what that meant… even if Reflector did not.

“Right now?” Barricade growled, a low engine purr in his throat and chassis, vibrating down his whole dark frame. “Right now, I’m wondering what the frag you think you’re doing, because it looks, Reflector, looks like you’re threating to frakking, hack me out of some fit of suicidal temper. And it is suicidal. So, having skipped pleasantries straight to the threats… how may I help you?”

[reflector]

Reflector pretty much expected Barricade to react like this, it didn't change teh fact that his survival programs were screaming for him to run for the nearest opening in the wall and wedge himself as deep as possible to avoid the larger bot's rage.

"We both owe a great debt to Cleaver. Your far more then I or any other bot here! Now your going to just leave, possibly stealing from her on the way out." It took a lot for the little bot to remain angry enough to continue this coarse of action and even now some of that rage was slipping away. "I'm...I'm not going to let you do that to her. Even if it scrambles my own curcuts in the process!" And with that he hooked into Barricade, though he didn't do anything else, hoping the larger bot would realize that Reflector finally had something he might die for and he could very likely take Barricade with him. "Now...tell me what your doing here and what your plans are...and I'll let you leave."

[Deleted]

“Let me leave,” rumbled Barricade.

He looked over his shoulder at the little minicon, the singular focused optic trying to furiously bore a hole into his head. The burn of an unwanted hardline crackled static up the back of his neck and his mesh crawled with current and homicidal EMF at the little mech’s bearings. He could feel the pressure of a viral spike against the still torn software defenses of his security codes. The hacker could do him damage like this, serious damage and because the little slagger had been in his systems several times already he knew it. Cade had known it, but he hadn’t killed him. Let him threaten. Cade just looked at him.

“You’re going to let me leave. You’re going to hold me here are you, if you were capable, Reflector? You’d keep me here because I owe her guilty conscience a debt? What shall I do, Reflector? Stay? Defend them? Be their indentured warrior until I’ve made up my debt to them? Let’s say I do and the mechanisms that tortured me to the brink of sanity find me alive with her? What if I called down horrors on her because you have some petty idea that Cleaver didn’t rebuild me with nothing but the intention of letting me go?”

Cade pushed off the wall, standing straight, glaring at the minicon, “She built me back up because it suited her conscience and she has gotten what she wants from me. She soothed whatever wound she carries. My leaving is burden off her. I’ve stolen nothing. She just gave me everything and I’m taking it.” His blue stare was calm now, devoid of his former anger. “I am not a parasite. I will not feed off her boundless generosity, Reflector… the way you do.”

[reflector]

Reflector was already deep within Barricade's defenses, since he 'belonged' to the Decepticon it was child's play to slip in and not set off a single warning. If he had the nerve he could have ended the mech, but the feedback would have fried Reflector, or at least from what he understood from Cleaver's little lectures on the topic of these sort of bonds.

There were a few things that stopped him, fear for his life was one, but it was Barricade's words that were the main reasons. They hit harder then any abuse the little mech had ever suffered, which was saying a lot, coming from a Decepticon minicon. He found himself confused, all twisted up inside as he just sat there, crouched on Barricade's neck and hardwired into the larger bot. His spark ached something fierce, starting to wonder if like Barricade he was also causing more harm then good.

[Deleted]

“Come with me,” said Barricade quietly. He didn’t look away from the minicon, the tiny snarl of despairing EMF knotted tight against his shoulder, his anger sending a single, agonizing spike of panic through Cade's still unprotected systems. He ignored it, ignored how the angry minicon threaded through the ruins of his inner firewalls. “What good will you do her? We mechs with unpinned loyalties?” Cade lowered his voice again. “One day, you’re going to cost her, Reflector, and she will not be able to afford it and she won’t deserve it. Come with me and you’ll never have to worry about hurting someone to doesn’t expect it or isn’t ready for it.”

Cade smirked, an unreadably dark look. “Look at you, threatening to burn my mind out of my skull even after all Cleaver sacrificed to save me. You’re already on the brink of hurting her beyond your understanding.” He shrugged a little. “Frankly, we deserve each other, Reflector.”

[reflector]

If a robot could cry, Reflector would have been drowning in tears by this point, his poor paranoid mind warped up a hundred situations where he could easily get Cleaver in trouble. He was after all a Decepticon spy and it was possibly that an Autobot might recognize this and try to hurt him or get Cleaver hurt protecting him. The same thing could happen if a Decepticon realized he was one of their own but never reported in to the war-front.

Reflector felt as if his spark was going to explode, or his processor would overheat, whichever happened first. All he could do was sit there and compute, every single thing Barricade said was true, all except for one little thing.

"I don't deserve you...you don't deserve you, Unicron himself doesn't deserve you." Reflector retorted, his voice weak and fragile, a ghost of the 'mighty' warrior who dropped down on Barricade and threatened to take the murderous slagger out or die trying. He then pulled his finger back, disconnecting from Barricade "And you..." he mumbled "I could help get those memories back, but I won't." he stated as his voice grew just a little stronger "And that is what you deserve, to muddle around in nameless agony, for all you have done and might do to Cleaver." and with that he moved around to sit down on Barricade's shoulder, hunching his back and shutting down his glowing optic. "Let's go..."

[Deleted]

Barricade just nodded and without another word departed for the ground bridge control once more. Most people would have felt one way or the other about manipulating a young, first-link like that but Barricade felt no which way at all. What he said was true and his choice not to sugar coat it let the cassette cling to Cleaver’s rotorblades was no mercy or cruelty on his part. Form followed function and since Reflector linked himself indelibly into Barricade’s unwilling systems, the consequences were hers and his – she lost Reflector and Reflector lost her and it was no fault but their own to bring back a mech like Barricade. He’d only meant it as pretty words when he’d said it, but Cleaver really had given the infilrator everything hadn’t she? Her energon, her time, her trust, her concern, and now, Reflector too.

Possessed by good intentions, Cade thought as he keyed up the ground bridge for New Mexico. He glanced over his other shoulder the one not occupied by the grieving young minicon that he was even now ruining, taking him on the same doomed trajectory as all infiltrators followed. The ground bridge spun up and he walked into it, the shuttle melting away into the whirling tunnel of light and folding temporality. He didn’t look at Reflector.

“Maybe we’ll be in a position to do her good, one day, maybe,” said Barricade, his tone flat. They crossed into the dark of the desert, the groundbridge closing behind them. “If nothing else, we can die unbeknownst to her.”And cost her nothing further. He shrugged. "It's the least we can do."

[reflector]

Reflector said nothing, he knew Barricade was right, he knew that the Decepticon was just manipulating him for his own gains and cared nothing about any of the topics he spouted. But Reflector did care and that was all that mattered. Before the rift opened up he sent two messages out, he doubted he would have another chance without the risk of a Decepticon or some other bot catching them. One was a addressed to Cleaver, explaining why he left and with who as well that he loved the crust covered femme. The second was to his only friend in the world, the human Catherine. He left the message in the inbox of her e-mail, hoping she would find it there the next time she got to the computer. This message just stated that he thanked her for being his good friend and to look out when next she saw him, as Reflector had no idea what side or reason he would be forced to fight for.

With that the little bot broke himself apart, worming his many wires and connections into Barricate, linking up with his partner, staying somewhere he could just turn off his CPU and go on auto-pilot.

(Fin)