EP.1.5 - Versus (Open)

[Deleted]

(( Set whenever it needs to be set. Experimental thread. Open to interference. ))

He could smell her.

The trail left in the sands outside of Death Valley hadn't faded fast enough to waste her scent - she'd all but left him a dinner invitation with her name on it.

The sand he'd exsanguinated was loaded with enough residual CNA that he could track her and her overly large friend whenever he felt like it. He chose her first because she had the flavor of a Speedster-class and thus was less likely to be able to overpower him in terms of size and ammunition. One of them was a tank, and the tank did not taste female.

She was moving fast along a stretch of open highway through the Nevada desert. It was one of those patches of road in which you navigated by distance to the next gas station. Nothing but sand and cactus and rocks stretching as far as you could see under the cloudless gray sky.

He didn't mind the heat as flew, cloaked, tracing the highway, seeking his prey.

She'd never see him coming.

It was the way he liked it.

[Deleted]

She was zooming along the road, revving her engines and blowing off a lot of frustration and steam. Testing the wheels of her new Earth vehicle mode, she wanted to get as far away from the rest of the Autobots as possible; they were like sand in her gas tank, salt in the wounds.

She was considering whether or not the red badge she wore meant anything to her anymore. Whether it meant anything to anyone, in light of cold, hard reality. It was just a symbol to slap over a name in a graveyard, no different than the purple one she'd been shooting for so long.

She didn't see him coming.

It was the way she liked it.

[Deleted]

Kickback landed on Shiftlock's roof.

Diving in for the kill, clawed hands out, he made a solid impact with the hood of the Mazda RX7, bouncing the frame of the Autobot against her own wheels. He dug his claws into roof at each corner; his last set of legs were still folded down into jet configuration, blasting an ion trail behind him that forced the car along the road. Keeping his wings spread he was matching lift to downforce.

It would be obvious to her that someone was on her roof; his stealth was blown the moment he made contact, but he was measuring her responses, leaving her a challenge to overcome. How strong was she? Would she be driving him, or would he soon be driving her?

[Deleted]

The sudden weight of an Insecticon on Shiftlock's roof nearly threw her off the road. She was already travelling at over a hundred and twenty down the empty highway and at this speed the impact should have rolled her. It didn't, and it didn't take her long to figure out why.

Pain tingled at the edges of her roof as the scythe-like claws embedded themselves into her frame, locking him into place. She could feel the push of his jet engines and the force of his wings keeping her on the road. Lifting even a little would cause her tires to lose their traction and she'd be carried off into the sky, a mouse snatched up by a falcon and dropped to its doom on the ground below.

He wasn't immediately eating her which was both puzzling and relieving; he wasn't going in for a quick kill, which by all rights he could have accomplished almost instantly. He had the element of surprise but he'd chosen to waste it for some reason.

His loss.

Shiftlock threw herself into a spin, forcing inertia against Kickback's grip and his jet engines.

[Deleted]

Clever Autobot.

Kickback could feel her front wheels lock up and grip hard against the asphalt and her rear swing around to the right, facing them backwards, then two hundred seventy, then three hundred sixty --

The spin interfered with his jet engines, making him suck up plasma wash and dampening the force he was exerting over her tires. His claws held fast, tearing into the roof, splitting the metal a few more inches until the tips pierced through to the interior. He snapped in his wings and cut his engines, extending his legs and slamming them into the ground with a crunch of broken concrete, spread apart, attempting to hold the car in place on the road.

[Deleted]

The sudden harsh stop jarred Shiftlock, pain screaming through her roof and into her frame as the Insecticon pinned her to the road. Her wheels screamed against the blacktop, throwing out smoke reeking of burning rubber as she tried to budge and break free, tires seeking purchase against the road to pull against Kickback's legs. She couldn't do it. His grip was frighteningly strong.

She snarled aloud in a Pavlovian reaction to the feeling of being held fast and peeled open by the wickedly curved claws.

She had to react fast. His mouth was still far too close to her engines, far too close to finding and taking off her head, chewing his way into her spark chamber, gorging on her fuel pump and sucking out every last drop of inner energon.

Shiftlock transformed in his grip, crying out as the claws interfered with the sliding and shifting of her plates, scraping against delicate inner mechanisms and drawing first blood. Half his size she was face down to the concrete, held at shoulder and hips.

At least now she could use her knife.

[Deleted]

Kickback saw the flash of a vibro-blade from the Autobot's right hand, flicked up from the wrist.

"Ah-ah-ah. Bad Wrecker. No energon goodie for you," he taunted, suddenly thrusting her forward, past his head, then up into the air, tossing her upwards into the air a few feet, then wrenching his back legs free, turned and aimed a powerful thrust-kick towards her as she started to fall back down. The impact would send her flying hundreds of feet into the air - not to mention the damage done to her body by the strike itself.

[Deleted]

*WHAM.*

Shiftlock felt her right side dent in.

She silently thanked the Kaonian medic for improving her frame all those millions of years ago. If she had not had the reinforcements she did, the force of that kick would have simply torn her to pieces.

She vomited a burst of energon from crushed internal lines. Her right arm was useless, upper portion bent at a forty-five degree angle. Her right leg was just as useless, her hip cratered inward, fusing the joint into the socket. She couldn't transform. She couldn't stabilize herself. Even the grapple-line was of no use to her in this freefall; there was nothing for miles around to grab onto.

[Deleted]

Kickback crouched and leapt off the road, into the air, bounding across the landscape to keep track of his falling target. He felt giddy with battle lust and disobedience. The Autobot was all his, to do with as he saw fit.

First things first, however; he would need to make sure she wasn't too damaged and that she wouldn't die. He knew enough Cybertronian anatomy and medical technique to see to that.

Outpacing the falling female, he transformed and sprung up, arms open wide to catch Shiftlock like a football before she hit the ground.

[Deleted]

Shiftlock felt herself land, though not as hard as she was expecting. It didn't feel like smashing to death on the ground. Was she experiencing the Afterspark? Had she already died from systems failure before she hit the ground.

Feeling sick with the acid-sharp feeling of her injuries, vents flared open and engine roaring and pulsing heat in panicked gusts misting energon, she turned her head to look up. She wanted to see death coming, and spit in its eye.

[Deleted]

Kickback carefully cradled the horribly wounded Autobot in his arms, minding her broken body if only to keep her from going into stasis lock. He grinned like an idiot and buzzed in elation.

"At last, at last, at last!" he exclaimed in glee. "I get one of my own! Do you have any idea how long I have waited to have my very own pet?"

The Insecticon steadied her in one set of hands and lifted her up, hands under her arms as if she were a doll, in front of him. "I know you're a little beaten up right now and you can't appreciate what good you're doing me, but I assure you that you are making tremendous strides towards my happiness and well-being. I'd apologize for causing you pain but I really don't feel sorry about that."

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(( Slight change of format. Still experimenting. - CAG ))

Shiftlock groaned, for multiple reasons, the least of which was the sensation coming from her injuries.

"Look," she said to the overly happy Insecticon, "Can you just eat me and get this over with? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt."

Kickback tilted his head and looked at her curiously. "What, you've been someone's pet before? That's new, I thought most Cybertronians held each other in a somewhat higher esteem. You at least called them "slaves" or "disposables", never livestock." He narrowed his eyes, his smile turning sharp at the corners. "That sort of label was usually reserved for my kind."

The female vented, splattering bits of energon. "Is this gonna be one of those "I'm choosing you to take out the brunt of all my past trauma" on kind of things?"

"I suppose," he flatly replied, emotions cooling. "I can kill you right now, you realize that."

"Yeah, I'm kind of hoping you'd do that. I dunno about you, Legs, but I'm kinda done, you know. Done with the fighting, the war, the Autobots, the Decepticons. Kinda pointless to keep drivin' the war on when it's just makin' the species die off even sooner."

Kickback listened to her, antenna waggling slightly. The more she spoke, the more his expression lightened, and when she finished, he burst into peals of delighted laughter. "Oh this is just wonderful! I managed to pick the most depressed Autobot out of the whole bunch! Oh no no no, my dear, I'm not going to kill you now, it would be far less amusing. I want to keep you alive. As I said, you're now my pet, and a pet has to be cared for, right?"

Shiftlock gave him a flinty, thoroughly unamused glare.

"Now now, none of that face, my dear," Kickback corrected, waving a finger back and forth in front of her face. "I think you'll find I'm the best set of servos you could have fallen into among the Decepticons. I don't think Knock Out, Barricade or Megatron would be as generous and gentle as I am. Couldn't you tell I was toying with you? You're still alive right now."

"Get smelted," Shiftlock deadpanned.

[Deleted]

"Beat-up, bulky and pleasant as an acid fuel replacement," Kickback mused. "You must have won sooo many beauty pageants back home."

"Oh you think that's bad?" Shiftlock replied, smiling before a stab of pain stole the expression from her face.

The female Wrecker burst into a long, loud string of Cybertronian expletives that could peel paint and reboot the offline.




"Color me impressed," Kickback said quietly, antenna blown back.

"I had a good teacher," Shiftlock stated.

Suddenly she was moving, being tucked up against Kickback's torso as he jumped upwards, transforming mid-leap, fluttering upwards into the sky and carrying her along.

"Well, first thing's first, I need to take you somewhere I can stop your bleeding. I have just the place in mind - and while we're on the way we can decide what your new name will be," Kickback said, reshaping his body into the hexapodian mimic of a Seeker.

"What?" Shiftlock bluntly asked.

"You know, your pet name. I'm thinking... 'Fluffy'. Maybe "Stripes", you are striped after," the locust mused absentmindedly as he climbed to cruising altitude.

"Look, I can just kill myself right now. Just let me get my vibroblade and I'll slit my central fuel line," Shiftlock grimaced.

"Thank you for reminding me, we'll have to have you "declawed". Maybe neutered too."

Shiftlock tried to kick the locust with her good leg, landing a hard blow to his abdomen; startled, he lost his grip on her, and the Wrecker began to fall back to earth. Shift felt a sense of relief; she was beginning to long for death and was hoping the landing would simply crush her into nonexistence. She had nothing left to live for anyways.

A sharp jerk of her left arm rudely crushed her fatalistic dream. Kickback had caught her by the arm, and was soon gripping her firmly again with his four arms.

"Slag. I was looking forward to hitting the ground," Shiftlock grumbled wearily.

"'tch," Kickback chided with a clack of his labellum. "You want out of this war and yet you don't realize I'm giving you exactly that. Look, allow me to help you -- " His right foreleg grasped her badge, snapping it from her chest. He tossed it aside. " -- There, you see? No longer an Autobot. Now you're a "Non-Aligned Indigenous Lifeform". So easy! Already I'm benefiting you."

Shiftlock watched the red insignia get smaller and smaller before vanishing out of sight.

She had thought of doing the same many times before, yet now, watching it tumble out of her field of vision was more distressing than she had imagined it would be. Why? Was there some part of herself that had become more invested in that symbol and its meaning than she had realized? Or was it once more that choice was being made for her?

"I suggest no further escape attempts, Fangs." It seemed that Kickback had settled on her 'new name'. "I'll be forced to reduce you to a torso, and then you won't be as much fun to take for walks."

[Deleted]

"Whatever, scrap-eater," Shiftlock sighed, giving up and letting the bug take her wherever he was going to take her.

"Oh, caste-based slurs now?" Kickback chided with note of almost parental disdain. "You're going to have to do a lot better than that if you want to get me angry. You're not as tense anymore either, no struggling, just flat insults any vehicon drone could vomit up. No pride left, Fangs? None of that famous Wrecker willpower? Has this Autobot given up waging her battles to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons?"

Shiftlock was morose and silent. She had nothing further to say.

"You've broken down rather quickly," He canted his head downwards to look her in the eye.

"Someone got to you before me, didn't they," he murmured in malevolent glee. "What was that you had to say before - "been there, done that"? Oh hohoho. So that's why there's no fight left in you. You're all used up with nothing left to give. The war has wrung out every last drop of you, hasn't it?"

"Just shut up," Shiftlock growled, glowering at him.

The Insecticon chuckled aloud, looking back to the horizon. "Oh, I found you at a fortuitous time, Fangs. I know you're largely tuning me out and not willing to listen to what I have to say, but you're going to listen because you don't have a choice. I'm sure there's a 'captive audience' joke in there somewhere but I'm not in the mood for bad comedy."

"I've been where you are now, and it's not a terrible place to be. You brace yourself for the worst and expect the worst, but it doesn't always happen. What does happen is a long, miserable wait. An unending cycle of monotonous repetition with no company, no hope, and no future. It gives you time to think. You're an empty cup, drained of every drop and licked clean, just as I was."

"I'm going to fill you back up again. You'll deny it, you'll mock, you'll insult and you'll resist, but in the end, you'll want to live again. We're going to find out what you think your purpose is -- and change it."

[Deleted]

***

Kickback carried Shiftlock into the deepest part of the cave. Already there were wires latticing the walls and strange, hexagonal plates with functions she couldn't begin to guess at. The room was warm and humming with electronic, energon-pulsing life. A handful of empty hatching basins were in the process of being excavated and prepared. A dull violet glow permeated the surroundings, giving just enough light to see by.

He set his prisoner down on a nest of wires and locked her limbs against metal restraints.

"Oh, so you took me home with you," Shiftlock commented dryly. "I feel so special now."

"I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't think you were going to be a long-term guest. When you've decided not to try to kill me, I'll take off the restraints. For the moment, however, there is the little matter of making sure you don't bleed out," Kickback explained.

"As long as you don't frag around with my spark," the fembot sourly retorted.

"Do you take me for some kind of overload-obsessed deviant?" Kickback irritably responded. He paused, then immediately added, "Of course you do. You've been a prisoner of Decepticons before - I assume that your time with them included the usual spark torture." He vented through his spiracles as he assessed the damage he'd done to her. It was beautiful in its own way, a testament to his strength, even when reigned in. Had he given her his full impact, she'd be in pieces rather than crippled.

"That's the problem with the Decepticons, really. For some of them, the war simply became justification to indulge sick fantasies or lash out at others for what they'd suffered. We wanted justice at first, but now? ..." He shrugged one set of shoulders as the others began to gently pull back armor plating, looking for leaks.

Shiftlock winced - there was no code blocks for the pain. She braced herself for the worst, but there wasn't much she could do other than see her fate play out in front of her, helpless in her own body. Listening to the Insecticon, she snorted. "You don't have to tell me that. I didn't start out an Autobot."

Kickback's antennae perked upwards, genuinely surprised. "Oh? So you were one of us - let me guess, something about the way things were carried out back then, after the bombings maybe, that made you change your mind?"

"You could say that. Nothing like watching your friends get turned into ammunition shells because they weren't fraggin' gladiators," Shiftlock snarled, half in anger, half from the open surgery going on through her right side.

Kickback traced a fuel leak through the right side of Shiftlock's heat exchangers, which explained the splattering of energon every time she vented. It wasn't a gusher, fortunately, and he was fairly sure he could deal with this particular injury. Something as complex as a broken t-cog, a spark frame crack or a fuel pump injury would be outside of his level of expertise. "We're more alike than you'd want to admit."

"Oh, because I'm a giant bug too?" she snarled in sarcasm.

"No, because we're both from the low end of the caste spectrum. Your accent - Polyhexian. Dead End, I'm guessing, if you're not lying about what happened to your friends. Funny, that, we lived in the same polity and never saw each other," Kickback said, getting up to dig around in a pile of lose metal, scrap and a handful of salvaged and stolen Cybertronian components.

He transformed into a locust, and began chewing on some of the scrap, still vocalizing as he ate. "Give me a klik here - I'm going to have to manufacture some parts. You joke about being a giant bug, but you -are- going to end up with a few Insecticon components inside of you. Not many, but enough to keep you alive."

Shiftlock frame rattled at the thought. "Gross."

"I'd ask you if you'd rather lay there and slowly die, but I think you'd just answer yes. So I'm not giving you the option. You are going to be repaired, I'm going to provide you fuel, and you are going to listen to what I have to say. Consider this... aggressive therapy."

"I already have a therapist, his name is Rung, and he's far more qualified to help me than you are," Shiftlock rebuffed. "Even if he's millions of parsecs away from here right now. You're wasting your time, bug."

Kickback finished chewing on the scrap, his mandibles clicking together. Then, reaching his clawed forefeet forward, the process reversed itself; the micro-disassemblers were whirring to life, millions of tiny manipulators beginning to extrude simple metal components - clamps, pins, tubing.

"I'd be lying if I said that what I intend to accomplish is entirely for your benefit. I simply don't work that way. There's no such thing as a free refueling - unless you successfully steal it, that is." He chortled. Transforming back to robot mode, he picked up the freshly created components, and applied clamps to the fuel lines to make necessary cuts. Shiftlock grunted and braced herself, gritting her dental plates.

"You stand up to pain pretty well. I'm guessing that when it comes to torture, you'd just shrug it off, right down to the bitter end. Wreckers don't usually fear death, either, so I can't just threaten to hurt you or offline you to get what I want." Kickback transformed again.

"But you appear to have largely given up, which tells me you have already been broken. Someone hurt you, deeply, in a way that I have not yet pinpointed. This means I'm going to have to try some other methods if I want you to speak open and frankly to me. I doubt you'll talk to me nicely just because I ask."

"I have no reason to tell you anything. You're a Decepticon, you've injured me, you've imprisoned me, and you want to mess with my mind. Yeah, I'd say that kinda puts us at odds a little!" Shiftlock yelled.

"I love a challenge," Kickback simply stated, a smile on his voice.

The locust approached the pinned, crippled Autobot, his mandibles opening wide.

He bit into her open wound.

Shiftlock screamed, partially in surprise, partially in agony, as she could feel the Insecticon's mandible shearing off mesh and plate, methodically moving side to side, stripping off thin slices of already crushed and oozing Cybertronian "flesh". As the tiny blades, cutters and drills neatly severed segments of plating, pulling it into his maw, she could feel something far worse than being fed upon alive.

She could feel something being fused back on.

Like thousands of white hot acrid needles, the freshly cut mesh, plate and fuel lines were being affixed with new, foreign-feeling substance, burning as it cooled into place, stinging then itching somehow, heavy, rough, alien in nature. Pulsing irritation traveled up through her neurocabling, her processors screaming lines and lines of warning and error code. She tried to struggle and fight, tried to wrench herself free of the horror before it could continue.

Kickback felt her engines revving up and could taste the fresh inner energon spurting from unfinished repairs to the fuel lines. Her heat sinks were radiating into his face with the alluring smell of wounded prey. The panicked revulsion blasting from her wavefield aroused predatory instincts that he fought to quell - if only partially. He savored her frightened agony, quaffing the moment of complete and total control over the Autobot.

His middle arms seized her, neck and thigh held like a vice, preventing her from disturbing his work further.

"Oh no," he hissed smoothly, clicking and buzzing noises permeating his vocoder. "No, don't move. I'm too clossssse to your inssssidessss. Don't teassse me with your ssssquirming. I want you alive alive alive."

Shiftlock's plates fluttered and stood erect from her body like raised hackles, something instinctually terrifying about the sound of the Insecticon's voice. Was this some kind of primal fear, some ancient programming designed to make a Cybertronian run from the old terrors beneath the beneath the planet's surface?

She tried to force herself to hold still, if for the sake of a Wrecker's pride if for nothing else. Her mind refused to admit that she did very much want to live - the flicker of that realization buried beneath the open terror of watching Kickback replacing portions of her right side with what looked like Insecticon body plating.

It did not match her color, or texture. It was hexagonally scaled, matte black, absorbing the light. It glittered with purple lines of glowing light. She could feel it reaching into her innards, tendrils of foreign components linked into her systems. The energon leaks had been fixed, but by this - this abomination?

Kickback released his hold on her, transforming, wiping a trace of energon off his cheek and lips with the back of his hand. He grinned at her.

"... what did you do to me?!" Shiftlock growled in a hoarse whisper.

"I repaired you, my dear. I admit I can't exactly replace missing components like a proper medic, but it will most certainly do." He patted the freshly laid Insecticon mesh. "Do you like it? I think it brings us a little closer."

"A... are you going t-turn me into a bug?!" Shiftlock couldn't stop looking at the eerie mismatched condition of her torso.

Kickback laughed out loud at the question. "I can't do that! Not with out significantly altering your CNA, and that's far beyond my capacity!" He lay down next to her, resting his elbow on the ground and his chin on his upturned hand. "I could, however, reforge your entire outer plating to Insecticon materials. In fact... I could simply fuse you right into this hive."

His optics seemed to hold a demonic glow as he leaned over Shiftlock, whispering softly as he met her eye to eye. "You see, my dear Fang, there are fates far, far worse than death. I could cocoon you into the walls, cable you into the hive, leave you fully aware but fully immobile. I could turn you into a fuel system for the hive, letting you circulate the energon that will feed my hatchlings. You could be my very own, as the humans put it, 'Bride of Frankenstein'."

He patted her cheek. "Or, you could simply talk to me. Your choice."