Flash - It's The End of the World as They Know It

[Deleted]

The small, partially mangled and very easily crushable cassette was not inspired to confidence by the bellyflop. Nor the cacophony of bangs, vibrations and whines that she was pretty sure weren't natural.

On the one hand, Fairwinds didn't want to hurt Air Raid's feelings - especially now he was all conscious and flying again, thanks to her. On the other, she didn't want to have taken out two scavengers, bullied the third into some pretty rad repair work and established a reputation as a fearsome Decepticon in her own right amongst the grizzly survivors of Cybertron just to get rendered a red smear when Air Raid accidentally pulped them into the ceiling.

"Not to be a fender bender or anything," Fairwinds began slowly, squinting up at the shuddering wreck of Aerialbot, "But don'tchya think we should walk outta the twisty, bendy, full-of-sharp-and-impaling-bits tunnel before we get back in the air?"

[Deleted]

"Nah, nah, nah," said Air Raid. Though his optics were hidden you could hear the glint in them. "I got this covered. I got a Three Step plan to cover this."

So, probably concussed. 

But he sounded eager, and back to brimming with his old swaggering confidence. His engine was a steady red light behind him, and though parts of him still rattled his aerial frame thrummed with throttled-back power. 

Pike sniggered and sidled backwards a step or two. He silently calculated the possibility of him digging this odd Autobot and Decepticon pair out of a ditch a little further down the road. Oh, he was going to enjoy watching this. 

"Welp," he said. "You two have, uh... well, good luck with that. Yeah."

"Come on, Windy!" said the Aerialbot. "We are gonna wreck this tunnel. Not my best choice of words."

[Deleted]

Fairwinds looked back at Air Raid, then at Pike, then back at the Aerialbot vibrating with a thudding sort of clankiness in front of her. Though his frame was dented, scorched and a little mismatched from the crude repair work, the Autobot exuded total confidence. Bit fuzzy around the edges where something important and delicate had been knocked in his brain module, but totally certain of himself.

And totally awesome.

"Yeah we are!" Fairwinds squealed. She made a run for the jet's obligingly dipped wing, thrusters glowing briefly in an aborted jump-assist. Then she scraped to a stop again, as if thinking better of climbing into a concussed Aerialbot in an unmapped and structurally compromised tunnel, that was in no way made up of straight lines.

"Hey, you wanna big gun? We could use a big gun so glitchscraps like Pike and Co don't shoot us down again." Not missing a beat, she hopped 180 and squinted up at the watching scavenger as if he had a canon he'd been deliberately hiding from her tucked in his subspace.

"Weapons: gimme. Or your face." Meaningful, threatening glower. "A Mark 4 Atomizer if you've got one - Air Raid can take it." She tipped her helm back over her chassis to said mech. "You don't get to keep it afterwards, cuz you're a stinky Autobot and I'd get told off. Kay? Kay."

[Deleted]

"Awww," whined Air Raid. The white jet wobbled, its wingtips drooping. "Nobody ever let's me keep an Atomizer. Not even after I assured the base commander that I had learned my lesson and would never again claim that target practice was an indoor sport. Whoa. I'm wobblin'."

Pike meanwhile had been watching the exchange between the Autobot and the Decepticon innocently. As soon as Fairwinds had turned her back to speak with Air Raid he had begun to discreetly sidle away, one foot scraping after another. Now he froze in mid-step and gaped at her.

"What?" blurted Pike. "You want my- what? Not my Atomizer! Oh, come on!"

The scavenger clawed at the air, a tragic expression on his face. "Do you know how many mechs I had to scrap until I finally got my hands on one of these? I have lost track, but I assure you it was a lot! And then I ran into some deserter who said I could have his gun over his dead body, so I took him at his word and drilled him right through the optic! That was a really big day for me! You can take my Atomizer over my dead- uh."

Pike froze, one fist still clenched in the air. All at once he seemed to remember just who he was talking too. His optics darted.

"- my dead, dead partners' bodies," he said nervously. With a ripple of subspace he shunted a heavy-barreled weapon into his hand and reluctantly held it out to Fairwinds. "It's a Mark 3, by the way. I spit on the Mark 4 and its increased recoil. Treat this gun well. I call her 'Psycho'. Keep her spotless, don't let her get dirty or suffer prolonged exposure to acid rain. She likes it when you shoot people in the processor, so try to get in some nice clean headshots. Not that you really need to bother - you hit someone with a gun like this and they basically explode into a misty energon shower."

[Deleted]

The cassette's optics brightened in sympathetic understanding, undeterred by Pike's flinch when she boosted up to land on Psycho. She lay an energon-smeared foot across the scavenger's hand. "I promise to take real good care of her. But you should be pleased: she's gonna be a Decepticon Atomizer, now!"

Fairwinds straightened with a sniff, looking over Pike's shoulder at precisely nothing. "You just can't imagine the epic scale of destruction she's gonna be a part of. The glory and the body count. There's gonna be poems and songs about the number of sparks she'll send to Primus."

She scuttled up the mech's arm, ignoring his shiver as the wicked curve of her beak grazed against his jaw. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "And maybe, just maybe, she'll find herself in the hands of one of Lord Megatron's closest circle, maybe even those of the warlord himself. Psycho could be right there, barrel to the optic of an Autobot commander who thought zie could best her with a jerky Mark 4, and blast a turning point towards victory right through hir helm."

Even quieter now, long glossa rasping over the words. "Maybe she'll even lay a shot on Optimus Prime..."

After waiting a nanoklik for that profound statement to sink in, Fairwinds hopped backwards to land neatly on the Atomizer Mark 3. Grinning, she thumped her curled pede once against Pike's knuckles.

"It's gonna be beautiful, mech. She's gonna make you proud."

More likely Fairwinds would take it apart, keep the springy bits and sell off the components for passage after the Nemesis. But Pike didn't need to know that, and neither did Air Raid.

[Deleted]

Behind them, the battered white jet gave a confused internal squint. It had occurred to Air Raid that he should probably raise a word of protest against shooting Optimus Prime. That was- bad.

He said nothing however. Right now merely hovering in place was taking most of his concentration as it was.

Pike stared at Fairwinds. His optics had glazed over at the notion of the monster weapon finding its way into the hands of Megatron himself. Now he simply looked moved, as if old Decepticon sentiments of bloodthirst and conquest had once again stirred in the black pit of his spark.

His grip loosened on the stock of the gun.

"She's all yours," he said. He sniffed. "Blast an Autobot in the back will you, and think of Pike as the obnoxious bastard evaporates into a fine mist."

"Well, we aren't going to get to shoot any Autobots if we just hang around here," said the white jet. It waggled its wings. "Wait, wait. Wait. That didn’t come out right. Oh wow. My head hurts. Let's go, Windy! We gotta find something awesome to blow up with that thing. And then I gotta do a barrel roll, just for additional style points."

[Deleted]

"Nuh-uh! Same time or you suck fenders!" Fairwinds crowed, bouncing on her hydraulics for Air Raid to drift over and open the wonky canopy of his cockpit. She remained on her perch as she directed Pike to place Psycho and herself inside, beaming up at the scavenger.

"Nice to meet you, Pike! Hope you don't get dead like your friends I killed," she called, securing the Atomizer into the straps the Aerialbot had provided. Pike might have sputtered, raised a fist or waved them off - Fairwinds really didn't care. Team Awesome were online and back in the air.

"Alright Air Raid! Onwards to fame, fortune and a med-kit!" Fairwinds patted his dash with the edge of her remaining wing. "Shall I plug back in? Or would you rather I hang out your undercarriage with Psycho, here, and pick off anyone else who tries to mess with us?"

[Deleted]

"You can do that?!" shrieked Air Raid.

The white jet rose unsteadily into the air, propelled by his anti-grav thrusters. Dust whirled across the ground beneath him, whipping up in clouds. Pike scurried away and leapt behind cover as the jet pointed its nose upwards and blasted through the collapsed freeway above their heads. Rubble crashed to the ground behind him as he smashed through more rebar before finally punching up through the debris field and into the open sky.

Dust streamed from his wings as he levelled out and shook himself off. All around them the city outskirts lay in blackened ruins. A thick haze of smoke still drifted across the night sky, bourne aloft by fiery updrafts from ignited conduits. Polyhex was closer than ever now; Fairwinds would be able to make out the distinct outline of spires and towers against its burning skyline.

Around her, the replacement canopy rattled ominously as the wind tore at it. Whatever nuts and bolts held it in place were holding - for now.

Despite his injuries, Air Raid did a victory roll as he blasted over the speedway.

"Seriously, you can hang out beneath me and snipe bozos with that badass gun?" he cried. His voice was slurred, but full of glee. "Holy Primus! I almost hope another scavenger mob tries to look at us funny on the way into Dead End. I wanna see you headshot a jerk at high velocities, gangster-style. Bakoom!"

---

Resuscitating the great aerial broventure and start of an epic cross-faction romance <3.

[Deleted]

"Aw yeah, they won't know what hit'em!" Fairwinds cried, bouncing like she wasn't leaking fuel over sparking lines and onto Air Raid's interior. "Death and dust - that's what we are. We're already legends. D'ya see the look on pixelchip's face? You're gonna be a Seeker Elite and I'll be cooler than Laserbeak by the time he's finished telling it! Reputation, mech, shall precede us."

Truth was, Fairwinds was missing a pretty significant limb, and the Atomizer Mark 3 was nearly as big as her. The recoil alone would send her through the flimsy canopy now keeping the elements out of Air Raid's cockpit, quite aside from the damage the backblast could do to his wonky undercarriage.

His confidence was an infectious and joyous high to ride, however, and Fairwinds scrabbled back onto his instrument panel to watch Cybertron stream past them. The sight of twisted overpasses, skeletal towers and ribbons of caustic smoke from chemical fires was becoming unnervingly monotonous. It put a heavy feeling into the cassette's spark, weighing her frame down onto her tucked pedes.

She looked up to speak to the cracked top of Air Raid's canopy. "After this is over, and you and me go our own ways back to our factions and the fight, I hope you don't get dead. I wanna see you sometime in the future with all your insides inside, and your wings flippy-twisty-ready, and your processor hinged sane and without the cracks of PTSD shattering your psyche."

Fairwinds bowed her helm, considering, then decided that that pretty well summed it up. "I mean that." Then, as a hurried afterthought, she added, "Not that I like you or anything."

[Deleted]

Touched, the damaged Aerialbot sputtered and dawww'd.

"Hey, you know what?" he said. He waggled his wings. Things in his airframe creaked and groaned. "I don't care if it makes me a traitor for saying it, I don't care if Optimus Prime himself descends from the Ark in a beam of Matrix-light and lays some almighty Autobot law down on me... you're pretty okay yourself, for a Decepticon. Psssh, you're awesome. If I crash and die before we get to Dead End and you're stranded out here in the badlands with no energon, then I want you to take mine. No, seriously. I know I kind of yelled at you back in that wrecked building for drinking my lifeblood, but that was before you iced those scavengers and got me patched up. So I mean it. It's yours."

He spoke with rare earnesty. The words were rambling and a little incoherent, but sincere.

"Just... maybe don't peck my face. If I can't go out in a raging fireball, riding some airjerk into the ground with his fuel pump clenched in my fist and explosions going off in the background, then I want to at least leave a hot corpse behind for my wingmates to mourn over. Like Slingshot. That smug bastard."

Air Raid snorted.

"Anyway, if we both survive this and meet up again some day on some foreign planet, we gotta go flying again. Properly this time - you without a busted wing, and me without a busted... everything. We'll do inverted spins and I'll write your name in smoke across the sky: SCAREWINDS. You know. Not that I like you or anything too, am I right."

[Deleted]

"Sounds awesome. Sign me up," Fairwinds trilled, making to flare her wings in delight and almost toppling instead. She really should have picked what was left of that dismembered limb up...

There was a pretty suspect whistling noise coming from the floor, and the cassette announced as much to Air Raid. Figuring it was just a growing hole that needed a messy patch job to preserve the pressure inside the canopy, Fairwinds slid down off his console and snooped about. It turned out to be less of a hole and more a long crack where Pike had done a pretty poor job of welding back an entire plate.

Never trust a murderer with a gun to his face to do a half decent job. Primus...

"Gonna peel off a bit of this, um, dangly thing and use it to seal up this split before it turns into a gaping maw that tears you apart," Fairwinds announced, circling her beak around said dangly bit protruding from beneath his console. "Nuthin' to worry about. Might tickle."

Air Raid didn't seem to feel her pulling away the melted coupling array. Either he was that hardcore or his sensor suite in this area had been completely obliterated. Either way, Fairwinds decided that whilst she was down here with her beak-laser anyway, she might as well leave her mark.

He'd said he wanted a hot corpse, after all, and what was hotter than a piece of internally placed cross-faction graffiti?

Whilst she was burning in her name and a small doodle of questionable morals, she asked: "What's our ETA, Captain Kick-Aft?"