Ep 1.5 - Las Vegas - Police Brutality - (closed)

[Deleted]

Red Alert had a complicated love-hate relationship with long-distance space travel. On one hand, the silence and solitude presented to him by the vast emptiness of space was like a balm to his perpetually-worn nerves, which only wore further when he was subjected to more active, chaotic environments that bombarded his sensory-receptors with an overabundance of stimuli. He could, for once, enjoy a moment of quiet---or rather, as close to quiet as he could reasonably ask for. Save for the steady stuttering thrum of the ship's engines and other such noise-making systems, the only other sounds on-board the small shuttle came from Red Alert himself--- his footsteps, the quiet shift of plating as he moved about, the ever-present pulse of his spark, and etc. Honestly, it was a welcomed change from the explosions, gunfire, and the million other nameless sounds that usually assaulted his audials and overwhelmed his processor on a daily basis.

However, for all the good this temporary reprieve did for him, its effects were not lasting, and when he submerged himself once again into the world of active-noise he, more often than not, found himself worse off for it. It took time for both his mind and his senses to readjust to the dramatic influx of noise after having gone without for so long, and while the process itself was not an unreasonably long one, it was none the less an unpleasant experience. Sounds seemed louder and harsher, his audials had to reacquaint themselves with the noises they had once been accustomed to, and his processor struggled to filter through the drastic increase of sensory-input (a task which was not unlike a drowning man trying to swim up a waterfall, in terms of difficulty.) Given this, one would be correct in the assumption that Red Alert's first few hours spent on Earth weren't particularly pleasant ones. New planets, particularly ones that sustained an abundance of life, provided a flurry of unfamiliar sights, sounds, and scents that he had little choice but to take in all at once, which (needless to say) made adjusting to the difference in sensory-input all the more difficult for him.

To make matter's worse, he his shuttle's engines had decided to throw a fit once he finally entered Earth's atmosphere, and he was forced to make an emercency (definently NOT a crash) landing little over a mile away from (what was, according to his audials and the internet) a heavily populated city. The probability that someone saw his decent from the sky and subsequent landing was slim at best, but still, those odds were too high for comfort, as far as Red Alert was concerned. He was not about to take chances and risk being discovered by the native population; especially when he was so...addled.

So, he abandoned his shuttle and took to the road, intent on sending out a call to his fellow Autobots (...wherever they were stationed) as soon as he placed a safe enough distance between himself and the spacecraft. As he drove he did his best to maintain a constant speed, to stay in a straight line and not veer overmuch in one direction or the other, but the task proved to be easier said than done. He found himself drifting periodically, nearly coasting entirely off the road in one notable instance, when his processor locked-up for a few startling moments as it struggled to filter through the torrent of sensory-information flooding his receptors. The way he perceived the world was not unlike a badly-synced stop motion film; he would hear and see things moments after he had traveled past them, his processor would lock but his body would keep moving, so when awareness was granted to him again it seemed as if he had jumped forward by minutes in only an instant.

In this disoriented state, he hadn't even noticed the police-car trailing behind him until the delayed ringing of its sirens pierced through the chaos in his processor.

[Deleted]

The distinctive ‘whoop whoop’ of police sirens sounded off again as a dark-plated Saleen Mustang shot past the Bot in the opposite direction, swung a dime-stop U-turn, and raced up behind the faltering mid-mass grounder alt. Barricade didn’t have a brow to arch, but his holo-avatar did, one perfectly sculpted dark half-moon lifting over the top a pair of giant copper shades. He supposed there were more ridiculous ways to kill Autobots, but this felt vaguely like kicking turbopuppies. A past time he was not above, mind you, but not very sporting really.

His target was not, exactly, doing very well with protocol one. Having not yet scanned in a native car, Barricade was granted a clear look at the new bot’s Cybertronian alt: modded military frame, common as dirt – you didn’t have to be a body engineer to see the Guardian lineage in the squareish industrial strength framing. A stamp and spark one- a million assembly line cold-construct. Barricade knew them best as the half-insane functional-lost in the sublevels of Tarn, burning out on circuit speeders and assisted law-bot suicides. Autobot colors – they liked their reds and primary colors, those foppish fucks. He was also driving the wrong way on the Interstate which suggested to Barricade that the stupid gearhead had crashed landed in the immediate area and not yet recovered their, probably, not abundant senses.

Fucking Autobots.

“Can’t fly to save your godsdamned lives,” said Barricade, switching gears and gunning his engine. Sirens wailed up to full volume, his alt whipping up directly behind the disoriented Cybertronian then swinging around to his left, coming up on what would be a human blind spot and cutting close to the Bot’s rear quarter panel. A very clear – pull the fucking fuck over fuckface move. “Pull over immediately.” The voice through the loud speaker was irate English, female, vaguely accented though in no readily identifiable idiom. “You are going the wrong way. Pull over right now.”

This was going to be fun.

[Deleted]

Those sirens (which, to Red Alert, had seemed to have literally come out of nowhere) nearly startled him right off the road. The sound had registered in his processor before its source did, which left Red Alert to wonder for a brief, baffling moment, why he could hear sirens approaching when before him he could see nothing but empty road.


Then his processor caught up with his optics and a Ford Mustang spontaneously popped into existence in front of him, though by the time this sensory information finally registered in his over-clocked mind the other vehicle was already behind him. Disoriented by this cognitive lag, it took Red Alert a few moments longer than it reasonably should have to put the disorganized bits of sensory information in their proper order and figure out what the frag was going on.


When he realized he was being flagged down by a law-enforcement vehicle, he mentally swore a curse so vulgar it would have made a Wrecker proud, before quickly weighing his options---or at least attempting to. It was difficult to follow a single coherent train of thought when every sight sound and scent within nearly a mile and a half radius of himself was simultaneously clawing at his processor, but still, he managed (somehow) to form at least three possible plans of action:


Option 1: He could attempt to play along and bluff his way though the situation.

Option 2: He could just incapacitate the native law enforcement officer and go about his business.

Option 3: He could try to out run the other vehicle.


Each choice had their own unique set of drawbacks, each their own set of risks which Red Alert was loathe to take---in the end, however, his decision fell on Option 1, as if it failed, he would still have the other two options to fall back on.


Having made his decision, he pulled over to the side of the road with deliberate slowness, as to allot himself enough time to load up and project a hastily-made avatar. With no time to be picky, or to even really put much consideration into his avatar choice, Red Alert went the practical route and picked a random human male who had an abundance of photos with which to form a detailed avatar.

[Deleted]

The dark-plated Saleen pulled over almost directly behind the other vehicle – a space of about 10 meters between the battered and still so very Cybertronian tailgate and the cruiser’s front fender. He loitered there for a moment just kind of… marveling for a moment at the fact that this dumb gearslip was still in his Cybertronian alt mode on a public road on a first contact planet. He wondered just how hard this Autobot had hit the ground on re-entry for that to seem like a good idea – possibly they’d just drunkenly, shell-shocked and fritzed, staggered out of whatever crater they’d made and made a bee-line for likely looking highway in hope of finding an alt… then forgot and just started driving on it.

Like they’d missed a turn on the Transcontinental Expessway or something.

“Are you going to kill them?” Reflector asked, his voice originating from the camera attached to the Mustang’s frame.

“I’ll get around to it,” said the holo-avatar.

The driverside door popped open and the not-policewoman stepped out, slamming the door shut behind her and making her way toward the not-car. She circled the backend of the mech’s alt mode, as if looking for a license plate and, of course, finding none. One hand on the holster, the holo-avatar moved to the driver’s side… where there wasn’t a door really, just senor panels and he was really curious how the frag this bot was gonna play this off. Maybe he was a transport type designed to take mini-con passengers, or cargo, in which case he could probably reformat his interior enough to fake a cab with a holo-monkey inside.

But considering how… not together this bot was, the infiltrator wasn’t placing any bets any time soon. Barricade’s avatar held up a finger horizontal and twirled it – a clear indicator to roll down the window.

[Deleted]

Had Red Alert not been in such an abysmal state of cognitive overload, he would have heard that brief exchange between Barricade and Reflector, realized immediately what was going on, and reacted accordingly. Unfortunately, that was not the case, as he could barely hear himself think, let alone catch the snippet of conversation going on behind him. All he heard were disjointed, unintelligible sounds that he could only assume were supposed to be words, or at the very least, vocalizations.


“A??-??e? ?y??-??u?? ???g??-??-??-?g? ??t?o?? ??k???-??-???l??? ?t????h??-??m? “


“I?’??l?l??? ???g?e?t?? ??a?r?o??u???n??d??? ?to?? i???t?.”


The last part was a bit more intelligible than the first, but that meant little since, without context, it was useless information. Honestly, at the moment, most of the information surging through Red Alert's head was more or less useless to him---and not just because he couldn't focus on any one thing without being waylaid by the bombardment of stimuli that seemed to be doing its damnedest to tear his processor in half.


When the false-organic approached his side, twirling her finger to silently request that he roll down his window, he did not immediately comply. Both because it took a moment for the gesture to finally make its way to the forefront of his mind, and because he didn't want to reveal his interior until he had given it a passable holo-cover. Once this task was accomplished, the 'window' panel slid back to reveal his rather bored looking avatar, who's eyebrows were raised slightly in silent question, as if curious as to why he had been pulled over.


Thankfully, it was nighttime---the darkness helped obscure some of the avatars more artificial-looking parts, such as the hair, which never looked real, even with ample preparation.

[Deleted]

“Wow.” The not-policewoman slid her shades down her nose just far enough to visibly look the trench-coated CW-costar up and down. The Autobot had an upper-level holo-matter projector, high-fidelity, probably solid to the touch however briefly, and the hair looked horrible. The hair always looked horrible on these older models, but at least humans only had that one patch on their head generally. “You pick that one yourself or did Google magic just betray you? Nevermind, you’re clearly suffering from a lot of cognitive trauma due to landing on your head at atmo re-entry speeds so I’ll keep this short and simple.”

Barricade’s holo-avatar smiled and leaned into the open window, leaning on the door, arms folded in the doorframe. Her eyes flickered, glowing immediate brilliant Cybertronian blue before fading, as though the electromagnetics of the holo-matter pressed physically to the sensor arrays in the other bot’s door panels wasn’t enough to spell out his species. Then Barricade’s door panels split apart and twin mounted blasters snapped into place, taking obvious target lock.

“If you move, I’m going to shoot out your under carriage and rip your spark casing out through your dashboard,” said his avatar sweetly. She jerked her head toward Barricade’s actual body, parked and idling behind. “And good job on the alt mode, I can tell you’re really good at this, Sparky. Reflector?” The mini-con deployed instantly from Barricade’s frame work, leaping the distances from Cade’s hood to the Autobot’s roof instantaneously. “Like I said. Don’t move.” Reflector swung onto the edge of the open door window, scanning the Bot’s interior, clearly looking for a data jack. “And don’t scream. I know you Bots do that, but it’s kind of annoying.”

[Deleted]

...Of course it was a trap. Of course. It wasn't bad enough that his ship had suffered critical engine failure half-way into the planet's atmosphere, it wasn't bad enough that he had crashed landed roughly and had his helm violently introduced to the ship's front control panel. It wasn't bad enough that the moment he stepped out of the smoking crater that was his landing site, he was immediately assaulted by the foreign stimuli that bombarded his sensory receptors in a metaphorical blitzkrieg of sights, sounds, and scents.


On top of all that, he just had to be discovered by a Decepticon less than ten kliks after hitting the road, while too fritzed out of his mind to realize what was going on until it was too late. Either he was suffering from an extremely poor string of bad luck, and this entire series of events was simply a coincidence, or Primus and/or the universe had a vendetta against him.


Then, to make matters even worse, Reflector jumped onto the edge of his open door panel and conducted a scan, his intent clear enough that even Red Alert, in his state of cognitive-overload, was able to discern it. The little mech would have to drill through several layers of armor plating, not to mention some rather important bits of circuitry if he wanted to gain access to a jack---and given these were Decepticons he was dealing with, Red Alert did not dismiss the possibility of Reflector taking that route.


His holo cast his eyes towards the heavens briefly, before flickering out of existence, as it was no longer needed.


...Alright, Primus. Message received.


He resolved to figure out what in the seven hells he did to piss off Primus later, assuming he survived this encounter. For the time being, he would play along, bide his time, and hope an opportunity for escape presented itself. There really wasn't much else he could do, as the not-police woman so helpfully pointed out. Nothing overtly, at least. Though it was bogged down by a massive cognitive overload, his mind was still a valuable tool---one which was sharpened slightly by the knowledge that he was, in fact, in life-threatening danger. His defensive subroutines kicked in, his fight-or-flight response narrowing his mind's focus from everything within a 1.4 mile radius of himself down to something a bit more manageable, so he could actually pay attention to the situation at hand. It wasn't much, but it was enough.


It had to be.

[Deleted]

::No jack,:: said Reflector in comm. ::Shouldn’t do this here. If he’s got firewall that I need to break, he could start spasming. Need to go somewhere else.::

“Drive,” said Barricade’s holo-avatar. “Off the road, three-hundred meters, park behind that.” Here the avatar jerked her chin toward a very run down and very abandoned gas station not far off the road. At some point it had been a pit-stop and auto-repair yard if the shelled husks of dead vehicles were any indicator. Normally, he’d have called that the perfect place to rip out a bot’s engine block and leave the shell for later salvage, but since this dumb clunker hadn’t picked an alt mode, he’d have to be a bit less careless. “Go slow. You can’t out race me, spaz. Yes. I recognize you and if you don’t recognize me, it’s Barricade. Hi. I’ll shoot out your engine block and tear your brain module out, maybe post mortem, maybe not. Or you can do what I say and maybe I won’t have to lobotomize you.”

Reflector kind of glanced at his partner, then looked at the Autobot’s holo avatar.

“He’s not kidding,” the mini-con said quietly. Cade’s holo-avatar did not visibly react to the other Con’s tone which was audibly anxious and far too quiet. “Just… do what he says,” he said, then swung up onto Red Alert’s roof and bounded back to Barricade, landing on his roof and crouching behind the bigger mech’s lightbar. ::This is gonna get messy,” he said over inter-Con comm, not sounding pleased.

::Messy is what I do,:: said Barricade, then, aloud, “Drive, Bot.”

[Deleted]

...Barricade, huh? The name wasn't familiar to him. Frag. That meant he had nothing to go on with this mech, no prior knowledge that could help him in any way in this situation. The only thing Red Alert knew about the other mech was what he had been told, and what he had observed himself. That small bit of information told him only that this Barricade was a class-A fragger who liked to talk, and there wasn't anything useful he could do with that.

He had no choice but to play along and make up a plan as he went. That he didn't have a plan already was as frustrating as it was unusual, and Red Alert wasn't sure which was more to blame for his lack of preparedness; the lack of information at his disposal, or his inability to think clearly thanks to the combined forces of cognitive overload and head-trauma. He supposed it was an even mix of the two.

Seeing how there was little else he could do, Red Alert followed the other mech's demand and drove to the long-abandoned gas-station, though he was far from in any hurry to get there. Upon reaching their destination, and taking notice of the rusted husks of the vehicles which had been abandoned there, Red Alert couldn't help but think he had just strolled into a graveyard.

At that moment, he found himself hoping just a bit more intently that the distress signal he sent out would reach someone other than the Cons---preferably before he ended up like one of the many gutted vehicle-shells which had been left to rust away into nothing at that godforsaken pitstop.

[Deleted]

Red Alert rolled to a stop and the Mustang behind him promptly stood up in the Nevada sun. At his full height he still did not clear the roof of the auto repair garage between them and the road. It may not have been overtly evident looking at the infiltrator – but he’d been on the road for a good while now – finish slightly dusty, making the sun where it planed across his armor catch matte and yellow. He gave the other Bot the benefit of his smile before his battle mask snapped closed across his mouth and with a metallic rattle he disengaged the weapon-lock on the gyro-flail in his right wrist.

It slid from the join between his forearm and the mounted tire kibble there, uncoiling from the subspace within and slithering to the ground, the dark metal length of it jointed and ugly, like a spine pulled out of at the roots. Cade’s other arm split apart, his onboard blaster whining active as he level it at the parked Autobot.

“Stand up or I start shooting out your tires.” Reflector scrambled to his carrier’s shoulder, nervously taking up vigil at the back of Barricade’s neck and peering out from the space between the Con’s collar faring and jaw. “Personally, feel free to sit there and die. I haven’t gotten to maim anyone…” He thought about it. “…well, recently enough for my taste. So what’ll it be, spaz?”

[Deleted]

Good God, the mech just did not stop talking. There was only so much self-satisfied smugness Red Alert could tolerate from one person within a short amount of time, and the Barricade was stepping dangerously close to that line. The security mech knew he was in no position to try to silence the Con, at least not without suffering some sort of ramification onto himself, but damn if he didn't want to tell that condescending prattler to just shut the hell up. Fortunately, his sense of self-preservation (or as Red Alert liked to call it, common sense) prevented him from speaking out against his mouthy detainer (no matter how satisfying it would be to do so) thus earning himself a brand new head-wound to go with the one he earned during his unceremonious landing.

Instead, Red Alert once again did as he was ordered (to his eternal chagrin) and transformed. Once he was on his feet again, he turned towards the other mech and preemptively held up his hands, before the Con could open his mouth again to tell him to do that too.

That's when he noticed the flail.

Red Alert honestly could not hold back his vocalization. The words came out of his mouth before he could even attempt to hold them back.

“...A flail? Really?” He said flatly, having been made both incredulous and the slightest bit unnerved by the unusual weapon choice.

[Deleted]

“Yeah,” said Barricade. His smile didn’t match the still Autobot-blue of his eyes. Reflector made a face at Red Alert. This kind of ‘Why? Why would you do that face?’ that might not have been immediately detectable to the Autobot on account of Refelctor having a camera of a face. “Really.”

And that’s when he shot out Red Alert’s kneejoint. He waited a little bit for the screaming to subside and, when it didn’t do so fast enough for his liking, he took one step forward and with a whip-lash crack brought the flail down across the Autobot’s other undamaged leg. The razor-sharp edges bit deep into the lower leg down to proto-mass, lashing around from ankle to knee and with a viciousyank Barricade almost effortlessly hurled Red Alert directly into the side of the warehouse. The impact dented the wall, but didn’t quite put the Autobot through the structure.

Reflector scowled at his partner. “Don’t kill him before I jack in…”

Barricade largely ignored him and wandered over to crouch in front of the Autobot, grabbing the security officer by the face and dragging his head up to look at him. The serrated edges of his claws didn’t do the Bot’s mesh any favors, the flail lazily retracting back into the Mustang’s wrist, the razor edges bumping over the other mech’s leg, licking fine silver cuts in the paintjob. He smiled again at the Bot.

“Open a data jack, Red.”

That he would rip one open himself if not obeyed... was relatively implicit.

[Deleted]

Red Alert could not honestly say he regretted his words, as regardless of what he said or did, he was fairly certain Barricade was going to cause him grievous bodily harm. He was right, unfortunately, and as was usually the case when he was right, Red Alert sincerely wished he wasn't.

His left leg buckled as his knee-joint was shot out, a shower of sparks and fluid spraying from the destroyed joint in short, disjointed spurts. Pain radiated from the wound, hot and sharp, and Red Alert could not help the scream that forced its way through his gritted teeth as ruined knee-joint made its distress known.

Before he could swallow back the pain long enough to even think of fire-walling his dermal-sensors to suppress the pain and make it more bearable, the use of his second leg was taken from him as well, even more brutally than the first. The spikes of Barricade’s flail were just as sharp as they looked, and when they bit into Red Alert's leg, they cut deep, slicing straight through his lightweight armor down to the sensitive proto-mass beneath.

With a seemingly effortless movement, Barricade yanked his weapon to the side, its spikes tearing deeper into Red Alert's leg as the force of the pull sent him crashing into (and nearly through) the wall of a nearby warehouse. The flail's spikes, hooked as deeply into his plating as they were, were reluctant to release their hold, and as the momentum of Barricade's pull propelled Red Alert forward, a few ragged chunks of plating stayed with the flail, and were flayed off his leg in spectacularly gruesome fashion.

The world went black for a moment as white-hot agony burned through the dermal-sensors in his ravaged legs, delicate proto-mass and fragile circuitry lying raw and exposed. So consuming was the pain that he could not even manage to scream a second time---all that made it through his vocalizer was a short, choked noise which quickly gave way to static as his back slammed roughly into the warehouse wall.

As Barricade approached, Red Alert's vision began to lag once again, and he found himself registering a series of disjointed still-images, as opposed to a fluid live-feed. Images stilled and froze, Barricade appeared to be five steps away one moment, two the next, until finally he was standing right before him. The other mech's flail added insult to injury by slicing thin, jagged lines into his already-damaged leg as it was retracted, and Red Alert was alarmed to find that, when he tried to jerk his leg out of the way to avoid the aforementioned additional injury, he could not move it. Likewise, he found that he could not jerk his head out of the way of Barricade's grasp as the other mech seized him by the face and dragged him forward. His alarm furthered still when the pain radiating from his legs suddenly ceased, then appeared again, then repeated the process. Likewise, his other senses and even his thoughts began to freeze up in a similar fashion, in a synchronized pattern. Red Alert's optics brightened with horror as he realized what was going on, and worse yet, that he was helpless to stop it.

His over-clocked processor could only handle so much. It had barely been able to cope with the cognitive overload presented by the bombardment of stimuli his visual, olfactory, and auditory sensors had been receiving, and now, with the additional wave of tactile stimuli, it had finally had enough. Red Alert's body seized up, then went limp, his voluntary systems shutting down as his neural-net locked up. His sensory receptors likewise halted, his processor refusing to receive any more information from his neural-circuitry until it could sort out the mess of input it already had.

His optics failed him last, freezing up on the last image they saw, which hung in his mind like a photograph. His last thought, before he could think no longer, was that he did not want Barricade's smile to be the last thing he ever saw.

[Deleted]

“Good job,” said Reflector blandly. “You killed him. I’m not a mnemosurgeon, you know. I don’t extract from dead drives.”

“He’s not dead.” Barricade retracted his flail, the serrated edges folding into the length as it wound back into the sub-space holster in his arm. He shook motor-oil off his claws, dirty energon flicking all over the stunned Autobot. “He just shorted out because he’s a desk jockey of the highest order and can’t take a hit.”

“I thought he was an Autobot security specialist.”

“He was. Once.”

Reflector gave off a small pulse of EMF that suggested a washed-up has-been of a security officer was nothing he wanted to be out here for, but Barricade continued on ignoring him. He just grabbed Red Alert by a collar faring and yanked the Autobot forward, throwing the mech face first into the dirt where he lay like a corpse. Reflector hopped of Barricade’s shoulder, swinging down from the Mustang’s elbow and landing in the dirt nearby while the bigger Decepticon crouched on top of the other mech. He observed, nervously, as the infiltrator twisted both of Red Alert’s arms up into the middle of his back and viced them in one hand, pinning them while, with his other hand, he reached up and tore the mesh off the back of his neck – exposing a manual data-jack.

Reflector cringed. Barricade tossed the metal aside and glanced at the mini-con.

“You’re up. I’d watch it though.”

“Defense viruses?”

“Probably, but post-Exodus I think he’s mostly glitched to the point of psychosis.”

Reflector tilted his head, camera lens rotating. “You knew him?”

“I knew enough. He’s a dead-weight spaz, but he’ll have data worth stripping him for. So get moving.”