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wyntir_knightTitle: The Devil You Know
Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters
Rating: R
Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.
Author's Note: Day 15 and I'm halfway through. Not only that, I have now beaten my wordcount from last year. It all makes me happy.
I thought that I would take the opportunity at this time to explain why I decided to write a fanfiction with no canon characters in it. Well, the truth is, I've always been facinated with the idea of Cybertronian colonists and refugees. I mean, we know they existed, but they're never really covered in canon, save for a few footnote entries (and of course, Padragon -- did I spell that right?) I've wanted to tell this story for a while, but I knew that I couldn't tell it the way I wanted to if I did it through canon characters. The only way that would have worked is with the characters discovering the colonies after the fact, and I didn't want to do that. So OCs it had to be. So the question ends up being, is it still fanfiction if it doesn't contain anything really canon and only borrows from the universe? I don't know.
25227 / 50000 words. 50% done!
Chapter 10
Arclight ran forward, skidding to a stop on her knees next to Strobe. Before she had stopped her forward momentum, her tools were out of her wrists and arms and the bag of supplies was at her side. Without a word, she began to work frantically to close off the fuel lines in a desperate attempt to stop him from leaking out.
“Twostrike!” she called. “I need you over here.”
“I can’t,” he said as he backed away from the scene. “I can’t do that.”
“You said you had basic field medicine!” Arclight bit out, not looking up from her work on Strobe. “Now get over here! I need your hands.”
“You don’t understand! I can’t do that,” he whispered, his optics wide with dread as he watched the life’s fuel pump from Cobalt’s severed arms and legs.
“It’s not a request!” Arclight growled as she tied off another line.
Twostrike tried to back further away but was shoved forward roughly by Windsaber.
“Get over there and help her,” the Decepticon growled.
Twostrike fell to his knees next to Arclight.
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered.
“I need you to tie off the fuel lines in his legs. You can do that, right?” she said.
“I guess so, but shouldn’t we be clamping them off?” he asked.
“Yes, and we should have him in an ER right now, but we don’t have either,” she snapped. “Now tie off those lines before he leaks out!”
“Y-yes, ma’am,” Twostrike said as he moved to the stumps where Strobe’s legs had once been.
They worked together frantically until, finally, Strobe stopped leaking.
“There, now I can get a look at the damage,” Arclight muttered.
She pressed her temple bringing a diagnostic visor down over her optics. Then, with gentle hands, she did a thorough scan of the Decepticons. Amazingly, he was still alive, and still moving. His mouth still opened and closed in that silent scream and he continued to twitch as if trying to move his nonexistent limbs. His internals were damaged terribly; wires had been wrenched loose, circuit boards had been cracked and scorched with electrical burns and his fan and processor were overclocking terribly. She had to find a way to calm him or he’d be facing a total cascade failure.
She was contemplating what to do when Strobe’s vocalizer suddenly kicked in. His mouth opened again and he let out a thin wail that quickly turned into a gut-wrenching scream. Everyone jumped as the woods suddenly fell silent save for his wracking cry. A dark cloud of fear fell over everyone; the scream was like a beacon, pointing directly to their location and the Neutrals looked fearfully toward the woods, moving in nervous groups until Waverunner ordered them to all sit down.
“Shh!” Arclight whispered soothingly. “Calm down, Strobe. You’ll be all right, but I need you to calm down.”
Strobe continued to scream heedless of the danger or Arclight’s voice. Then, the tone of his cry changed, and words began to form in the scream.
“The t t t trees!” he cried out. “Make them stop stop stop stop stttttttttooooooooppppppp!”
“Make who stop?” Wndsaber demanded.
“The tree e e e e es! The dark dark dark darkness in the trees! Make them stop!” Strobe cried out.
“No one’s hurting you. You’re safe now,” Arclight said soothingly. “Who did this to you?”
“It diiiiiiid! It hurts hurts hurts! The watcher!” Strobe screamed, the last word a wail that rose in pitch until it was far beyond the normal range and his vocalizer cracked and snapped dangerously.
“What watcher? Who’s watching us?” Cobalt demanded.
Strobe’s mouth moved but only static came out as his vocalizer continued to struggle to function.
Windsaber stepped forward and took Strobe by the shoulders, wrenching him up, forcing him to look him in the optics.
“Strobe! Who did this to you?” Windsaber demanded. “I order you to answer me!”
Whether it was the order or the tone, Strobe seemed to come to himself momentarily. In a sudden moment of lucidity he looked at Windsaber sharply.
“There’s something in the trees,” he gasped. “It’s in me. The Worm. Please. Get it out! There’s a worm in me that’ll kill us all if you don’t get it out!”
Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the moment of lucidity was gone. Strobe’s head lolled to the side and his vocalizer shorted out in a thin wail again.
“All right, let him go,” Arclight ordered. “I need to do what I can to fix him and I can’t do that while you’re holding him.”
Windsaber continued to hold Strobe, looking into his optics keenly, as if hoping that maybe he could glean some wisdom there.
“Move!” Arclight finally demanded. “Unless you want him dead?”
“How dare you?” Windsaber growled.
“Do you want me to fix him or not?” she demanded, meeting his optics defiantly.
Without another word, Windsaber put Strobe on the ground gently and stepped away, allowing Arclight to do her work. But as she worked he watched her, a malevolent gleam in his optics.
With gentle fingers Arclight worked at the clasp that held Strobe’s chest closed. As she touched the release, the Decepticons suddenly began to thrash and roll on the ground, desperately trying to escape her.
“No no no no no no!” he screamed. “Not again! Not again! No no no no noooooooooo!”
“Strobe, calm down!” Arclight said as she tried to hold him down. “I’m just trying to help you!”
Strobe let out a short bark of laughter.
“Yeah, that’s just what they said too!” he said as he continued to try to throw her off.
“Twostrike! Will you please hold him down before he hurts himself any worse than he already has?!” Arclight ordered the Neutral.
Twostrike stared at the scene with large, frightened optics before coming to himself. He reached out with his massive hands and used his greater weight to hold the Decepticon down. At the feel of Twostrike’s weight lying across him, Strobe began to fight even harder than before, screaming out obscenities in five Cybertronian dialects and three versions of the spacers tongue.
“Stop it!” Updraft cried as he ran forward. “You’re killing him!”
He grabbed her arm, trying to pull her away from Strobe’s writhing form.
“I’m trying to save him! Now let me go!” Arclight snapped as she shook updraft off. “Twostrike, I need you to turn his head to the left … no, left! Your left!”
Finally, the big Neutral did as he was ordered to and Strobe’s neck was barred for Arclight. With a less than gentle touch, she opened a small cover just beneath his helm and jabbed a long cylinder into the opening. Almost as soon as the device made contact, Strobe collapsed, suddenly offline.
“Okay, get off him, Twostrike,” she said. She touched Strobe’s helm and chest gently and felt the gentle beat of his systems as they worked weakly to keep him alive.
“What did you do to him,” Windsaber demanded.
“I needed to put him into recharge,” Arclight explained as she finally opened his chest plate. “I couldn’t do anything for him while he was hysterical like that.”
“So he’s just recharging?” Updraft asked as he stood and came up to stand behind Arclight. “He will be all right, right?”
“I don’t know,” Arclight replied as she examined the blackened and sparking components in Strobe’s chest. “I’m not a surgeon.”
She looked up and saw the desperately sad look in Updraft’s optics as he looked down at his comrade.
“I’ll do what I can, though,” she said to Updraft as she turned back to her work.
Everyone except Twostrike and Updraft moved away, giving her the space she needed to do her job as best as she was able. Arclight only continued to listen to the ensuing conversation with half her audios, focusing almost all of her attention on her work.
“What do we do now?” Waverunner asked Windsaber.
“We continue on to the city,” the Decepticon replied shortly.
“That’s ridiculous,” Cobalt argued as he came up to the pair. “You’re mech is injured. Gravely injured. We need to get to the rest of the ship. The part that I saw may be the remains of the med bay.”
“Unlikely,” Windsaber replied. “We neutralized that portion of the ship early in the conflict.”
“Neutralized? Conflict? You mean that you disintegrated that portion of the ship while you were butchering us!” Cobalt yelled.
“Oh don’t play the injured innocent,” Windsaber dismissed. “You know full well what was on that ship. After all, you were the one guarding the delivery. And don’t pretend to not have fluid on your hands either. After all, I do believe that you were at the battle of the Helix Towers.”
“Helix Towers are irrelevant,” Cobalt growled. “You attacked civilians with no warning.”
“No!” Windsaber yelled. “We attacked a military transport that was in breach of our treaty. It was you Autobots who destroyed Helix Towers, even though it was filled with Neutrals. But you didn’t care about that did you? All you care about was that it was filled with Tarns.”
“Sir?” came a small voice from their side.
“What?” both Windsaber and Cobalt demanded.
A minibot stood there, no taller than fifteen feet, coloured green and orange. He looked like he transformed into a small communications console.
“Sir, if I may,” he said slowly, “My, uhm, my name is Circuit, sir, and I think that Strobe may be infected with some form of virus. I’m a programmer and I think I may be able to help him. With your permission, of course.”
“You want to go rooting around in my mech’s program? I don’t think so,” Windsaber snorted.
“What’s the matter, Decepticon? Are you worried that the sparklet might find something you don’t want out?” Cobalt sneered.
“That is precisely what I’m worried about,” Windsaber snapped. “And don’t pretend that you don’t have your own secrets that you want to keep hidden.”
“Sir,” the programmer said. “Strobe mentioned a worm. If he meant that literally then he’s being eaten alive from the inside out. I might be able to help mitigate the damage.”
“Strobe was out of his mind with pain. He didn’t know what he was saying,” Windsaber replied. “And I will not have you anywhere near him.”
“But, sir!” Circuit argued. “I swear to you I will only look for any hostile programs. I won’t look at anything else. I this is a viral problem, then Arclight won’t be able to help. I’m sure she’s a fine medic, but she’s no virologist.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Arclight said from her position over Strobe.
“Elaborate?” Windsaber demanded, but one look at Updraft’s stricken face told him all he needed to know.
“Strobe’s dead,” Arclight said sadly.
Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters
Rating: R
Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.
Author's Note: Day 15 and I'm halfway through. Not only that, I have now beaten my wordcount from last year. It all makes me happy.
I thought that I would take the opportunity at this time to explain why I decided to write a fanfiction with no canon characters in it. Well, the truth is, I've always been facinated with the idea of Cybertronian colonists and refugees. I mean, we know they existed, but they're never really covered in canon, save for a few footnote entries (and of course, Padragon -- did I spell that right?) I've wanted to tell this story for a while, but I knew that I couldn't tell it the way I wanted to if I did it through canon characters. The only way that would have worked is with the characters discovering the colonies after the fact, and I didn't want to do that. So OCs it had to be. So the question ends up being, is it still fanfiction if it doesn't contain anything really canon and only borrows from the universe? I don't know.
Arclight ran forward, skidding to a stop on her knees next to Strobe. Before she had stopped her forward momentum, her tools were out of her wrists and arms and the bag of supplies was at her side. Without a word, she began to work frantically to close off the fuel lines in a desperate attempt to stop him from leaking out.
“Twostrike!” she called. “I need you over here.”
“I can’t,” he said as he backed away from the scene. “I can’t do that.”
“You said you had basic field medicine!” Arclight bit out, not looking up from her work on Strobe. “Now get over here! I need your hands.”
“You don’t understand! I can’t do that,” he whispered, his optics wide with dread as he watched the life’s fuel pump from Cobalt’s severed arms and legs.
“It’s not a request!” Arclight growled as she tied off another line.
Twostrike tried to back further away but was shoved forward roughly by Windsaber.
“Get over there and help her,” the Decepticon growled.
Twostrike fell to his knees next to Arclight.
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered.
“I need you to tie off the fuel lines in his legs. You can do that, right?” she said.
“I guess so, but shouldn’t we be clamping them off?” he asked.
“Yes, and we should have him in an ER right now, but we don’t have either,” she snapped. “Now tie off those lines before he leaks out!”
“Y-yes, ma’am,” Twostrike said as he moved to the stumps where Strobe’s legs had once been.
They worked together frantically until, finally, Strobe stopped leaking.
“There, now I can get a look at the damage,” Arclight muttered.
She pressed her temple bringing a diagnostic visor down over her optics. Then, with gentle hands, she did a thorough scan of the Decepticons. Amazingly, he was still alive, and still moving. His mouth still opened and closed in that silent scream and he continued to twitch as if trying to move his nonexistent limbs. His internals were damaged terribly; wires had been wrenched loose, circuit boards had been cracked and scorched with electrical burns and his fan and processor were overclocking terribly. She had to find a way to calm him or he’d be facing a total cascade failure.
She was contemplating what to do when Strobe’s vocalizer suddenly kicked in. His mouth opened again and he let out a thin wail that quickly turned into a gut-wrenching scream. Everyone jumped as the woods suddenly fell silent save for his wracking cry. A dark cloud of fear fell over everyone; the scream was like a beacon, pointing directly to their location and the Neutrals looked fearfully toward the woods, moving in nervous groups until Waverunner ordered them to all sit down.
“Shh!” Arclight whispered soothingly. “Calm down, Strobe. You’ll be all right, but I need you to calm down.”
Strobe continued to scream heedless of the danger or Arclight’s voice. Then, the tone of his cry changed, and words began to form in the scream.
“The t t t trees!” he cried out. “Make them stop stop stop stop stttttttttooooooooppppppp!”
“Make who stop?” Wndsaber demanded.
“The tree e e e e es! The dark dark dark darkness in the trees! Make them stop!” Strobe cried out.
“No one’s hurting you. You’re safe now,” Arclight said soothingly. “Who did this to you?”
“It diiiiiiid! It hurts hurts hurts! The watcher!” Strobe screamed, the last word a wail that rose in pitch until it was far beyond the normal range and his vocalizer cracked and snapped dangerously.
“What watcher? Who’s watching us?” Cobalt demanded.
Strobe’s mouth moved but only static came out as his vocalizer continued to struggle to function.
Windsaber stepped forward and took Strobe by the shoulders, wrenching him up, forcing him to look him in the optics.
“Strobe! Who did this to you?” Windsaber demanded. “I order you to answer me!”
Whether it was the order or the tone, Strobe seemed to come to himself momentarily. In a sudden moment of lucidity he looked at Windsaber sharply.
“There’s something in the trees,” he gasped. “It’s in me. The Worm. Please. Get it out! There’s a worm in me that’ll kill us all if you don’t get it out!”
Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the moment of lucidity was gone. Strobe’s head lolled to the side and his vocalizer shorted out in a thin wail again.
“All right, let him go,” Arclight ordered. “I need to do what I can to fix him and I can’t do that while you’re holding him.”
Windsaber continued to hold Strobe, looking into his optics keenly, as if hoping that maybe he could glean some wisdom there.
“Move!” Arclight finally demanded. “Unless you want him dead?”
“How dare you?” Windsaber growled.
“Do you want me to fix him or not?” she demanded, meeting his optics defiantly.
Without another word, Windsaber put Strobe on the ground gently and stepped away, allowing Arclight to do her work. But as she worked he watched her, a malevolent gleam in his optics.
With gentle fingers Arclight worked at the clasp that held Strobe’s chest closed. As she touched the release, the Decepticons suddenly began to thrash and roll on the ground, desperately trying to escape her.
“No no no no no no!” he screamed. “Not again! Not again! No no no no noooooooooo!”
“Strobe, calm down!” Arclight said as she tried to hold him down. “I’m just trying to help you!”
Strobe let out a short bark of laughter.
“Yeah, that’s just what they said too!” he said as he continued to try to throw her off.
“Twostrike! Will you please hold him down before he hurts himself any worse than he already has?!” Arclight ordered the Neutral.
Twostrike stared at the scene with large, frightened optics before coming to himself. He reached out with his massive hands and used his greater weight to hold the Decepticon down. At the feel of Twostrike’s weight lying across him, Strobe began to fight even harder than before, screaming out obscenities in five Cybertronian dialects and three versions of the spacers tongue.
“Stop it!” Updraft cried as he ran forward. “You’re killing him!”
He grabbed her arm, trying to pull her away from Strobe’s writhing form.
“I’m trying to save him! Now let me go!” Arclight snapped as she shook updraft off. “Twostrike, I need you to turn his head to the left … no, left! Your left!”
Finally, the big Neutral did as he was ordered to and Strobe’s neck was barred for Arclight. With a less than gentle touch, she opened a small cover just beneath his helm and jabbed a long cylinder into the opening. Almost as soon as the device made contact, Strobe collapsed, suddenly offline.
“Okay, get off him, Twostrike,” she said. She touched Strobe’s helm and chest gently and felt the gentle beat of his systems as they worked weakly to keep him alive.
“What did you do to him,” Windsaber demanded.
“I needed to put him into recharge,” Arclight explained as she finally opened his chest plate. “I couldn’t do anything for him while he was hysterical like that.”
“So he’s just recharging?” Updraft asked as he stood and came up to stand behind Arclight. “He will be all right, right?”
“I don’t know,” Arclight replied as she examined the blackened and sparking components in Strobe’s chest. “I’m not a surgeon.”
She looked up and saw the desperately sad look in Updraft’s optics as he looked down at his comrade.
“I’ll do what I can, though,” she said to Updraft as she turned back to her work.
Everyone except Twostrike and Updraft moved away, giving her the space she needed to do her job as best as she was able. Arclight only continued to listen to the ensuing conversation with half her audios, focusing almost all of her attention on her work.
“What do we do now?” Waverunner asked Windsaber.
“We continue on to the city,” the Decepticon replied shortly.
“That’s ridiculous,” Cobalt argued as he came up to the pair. “You’re mech is injured. Gravely injured. We need to get to the rest of the ship. The part that I saw may be the remains of the med bay.”
“Unlikely,” Windsaber replied. “We neutralized that portion of the ship early in the conflict.”
“Neutralized? Conflict? You mean that you disintegrated that portion of the ship while you were butchering us!” Cobalt yelled.
“Oh don’t play the injured innocent,” Windsaber dismissed. “You know full well what was on that ship. After all, you were the one guarding the delivery. And don’t pretend to not have fluid on your hands either. After all, I do believe that you were at the battle of the Helix Towers.”
“Helix Towers are irrelevant,” Cobalt growled. “You attacked civilians with no warning.”
“No!” Windsaber yelled. “We attacked a military transport that was in breach of our treaty. It was you Autobots who destroyed Helix Towers, even though it was filled with Neutrals. But you didn’t care about that did you? All you care about was that it was filled with Tarns.”
“Sir?” came a small voice from their side.
“What?” both Windsaber and Cobalt demanded.
A minibot stood there, no taller than fifteen feet, coloured green and orange. He looked like he transformed into a small communications console.
“Sir, if I may,” he said slowly, “My, uhm, my name is Circuit, sir, and I think that Strobe may be infected with some form of virus. I’m a programmer and I think I may be able to help him. With your permission, of course.”
“You want to go rooting around in my mech’s program? I don’t think so,” Windsaber snorted.
“What’s the matter, Decepticon? Are you worried that the sparklet might find something you don’t want out?” Cobalt sneered.
“That is precisely what I’m worried about,” Windsaber snapped. “And don’t pretend that you don’t have your own secrets that you want to keep hidden.”
“Sir,” the programmer said. “Strobe mentioned a worm. If he meant that literally then he’s being eaten alive from the inside out. I might be able to help mitigate the damage.”
“Strobe was out of his mind with pain. He didn’t know what he was saying,” Windsaber replied. “And I will not have you anywhere near him.”
“But, sir!” Circuit argued. “I swear to you I will only look for any hostile programs. I won’t look at anything else. I this is a viral problem, then Arclight won’t be able to help. I’m sure she’s a fine medic, but she’s no virologist.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Arclight said from her position over Strobe.
“Elaborate?” Windsaber demanded, but one look at Updraft’s stricken face told him all he needed to know.
“Strobe’s dead,” Arclight said sadly.
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the people history stepped on
Date: 16 Nov 2007 03:07 (UTC)As a Browncoat, I am all for reading about "the people history stepped on", to quote Joss Whedon's description of the characters depicted in his Firefly universe.
I will give your novel a good read over the weekend, I promise.
Good on you: 25k in 15 days! With RL going on in the meantime, too! Keep it up!
Re: the people history stepped on
Date: 16 Nov 2007 03:38 (UTC)And don't worry about not reading. It's rough and contradictory right now. I mostly post it as a way to keep motivated. I must keep writing because I must keep posting, type thing.
And thanks for the encouragement :D