(Untitled)
WHO: Rimmer, Lister for a bit again, Starscream.
WHERE: All over the place.
WHEN: Wednesday night, 7 July, after dark.
WARNINGS: Nah.
SUMMARY: Well that would be a spoiler, kids. >:D
FORMAT: Teal and Bitsy Deers.
( Theft. )
WHERE: All over the place.
WHEN: Wednesday night, 7 July, after dark.
WARNINGS: Nah.
SUMMARY: Well that would be a spoiler, kids. >:D
FORMAT: Teal and Bitsy Deers.
( Theft. )
What -
Initializing boot sequence.
His vision swam into focus, diagnostics scrolling across his eyes as he blinked, trying to comprehend what was going on.
... cell...
He groped around his night-stand, knocking over a few odd trinkets and half-scribbled ravings before he finally got his cell phone.
"H'lo?"
He rubbed his optics, his diagnostics telling him that yes he was at roughly 95% power and that he shouldn't be this tired, and that also that supposed late afternoon quick recharge had turned into a full-on sleep cycle. He promptly told it to shut up.
"Lister? Wh-"
It was at that point that his system forcibly jump-started, energon injectors shooting pure energy into his system as he sat bolt upright.
"He's WHAT?! ... OF COURSE I WILL, YOU DOLT!" he shouted, throwing off his covers and scrambling to find clothes.
"What's his ETA - two hours? For spark's sake...", he murmured. "It won't be a problem. Who the frag do you think I am?"
Well, that gave him a nice window at least. First things first. Starscream opened up the crate marked all over with "DANGER: RADIOACTIVE" and pulled out two bright pink vials. First, he disconnected the cable from the back of his neck, then pressed one vial after the other to the same spot. His hands shook and his vision, for a few moments, turned shockingly pink, sparking on the edges.
His focus narrowed to a razor's edge as his body cycled air faster, faster still. Quickly, he set about his other tasks. Clothes. Flight suit. Helmet... no. No need; if he was going to get killed doing this he had a backup.
He stepped out onto the balcony and closed the door behind him, the evening heat hitting his sensors like a brick. Instinctively he fine-tuned them, turning down their sensitivity and interpreting the information as pure data.
A slight breeze came from the east.
And then he jumped.
Nine point eight meters per second acceleration towards the ground, momentarily caught in the embrace of downward force and then he pushed, all that still buzzing-burning energy from the energon feeding straight to his legs and to the electromagnetic field that gave him enough lift to fight the force of gravity. He pushed himself straight to top speed, the sound barrier shattering as he sped towards Stark Tower.
And there he circled, waiting. Waiting.
Some part of him noted that this was a bit hypocritical of him. Hadn't he reacted as badly, albeit with a much more long-term solution? Wasn't he just as irrational, just as driven to something stupid, something...
He buried it and focused on the ground below.
"Where are you..."
His attention was caught by something on the ground moving fast. Instantly his instincts kicked in. He circled like some sort of predatory bird chasing a rabbit, curious as to what this was, coming in low and behind so as not to alert his target.
... no, it couldn't be. Rimmer? Rimmer, the coward, pushing a machine to the limits of its capacity to reach a destination, to reach a mad goal?
Oh yes, this was quite unacceptable.
He pushed his engines and shot ahead, millions of years of training kicking in. How many times had he done this? Dove on an unsuspecting ground-based target Pit-bent on some key location, disabled and taken prisoner before Megatron? Different intention, but the motion was the same...
He came around and dropped into a nosedive, angling his speed and trajectory just so. He took aim at where he knew the motorcycle's engine would be, and he fired, a thin violet ray to kill the engine; then a second shot to puncture the front tire.
Rimmer was a hologram. He'd survive.
Probably.
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At just under seventy miles an hour, Rimmer and the motorcycle screeched across the asphalt, one rolling over and over again, the other sliding along accompanied by sparks. It wasn't until Rimmer slammed into the pole of a parking meter that his progress was even remotely hampered. It snapped off at the base, showering him with quarters, and flinging him around again. He landed with a teeth-juddering thud in the side of a brownstone, which left an amusingly Rimmer-shaped dent in the side.
The bike wasn't as lucky. Leaving a smear of paint behind it, Lister's new bike was stopped when it crashed into a parked Land Rover, shattering the rear window and setting off the alarm. Somebody in the brownstone was sure to be furious.
Groaning, Rimmer slowly sat up. His clothes were ruined. The t-shirt was in tatters, and the jeans had massive holes in the knees and hips. He was only just barely decent.
Good job, Starscream! Way to start a war in the middle of a residential neighbourhood.
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Casually, almost lazily, he landed, then pointed a single finger at the Land Rover, shooting yet another violet beam at the vehicle. The alarm was silenced.
Then there was the whole 'now what'? He churned it over in his head, thinking. What would a leader do?
But maybe that wasn't the right question. His overclocked processor clicked over the possibilities, and he came, for once, to a slightly different and perhaps more difficult question.
What would a friend do?
He had no idea.
He'd have to improvise.
"You," he hissed, "are going no further. You are going to sit right here on the curb, and you may either sit in silence or speak to me, but in any case you will not continue with what you were going to do."
His eyes narrowed. "And that means even if I have to shut you down temporarily. I do not wish to take such a course of action, but I will, and you know that I will."
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On his hands and knees, groaning in pain (it still hurt like hell, even if it left no lasting mark), Rimmer eventually raised his ringing head and looked at his friend. His eyes were...well, Starscream, you've probably seen this look before in the mirror.
"Get out of my way," Rimmer snarled weakly, trying to push himself upright. "You have no idea what I'm going to do, so get the smeg out of my way."
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"SIT. DOWN."
To make his point perfectly clear, he put his hands on Rimmer's shoulders and pushed down, hard. He stood there, hands in place, simply not allowing Rimmer to stand up.
More quietly, and with less ear-bleeding harshness, he continued.
"Do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't understand how it feels, Rimmer? And do you think that I wouldn't have wanted to go up to that machine up there and throttle her, or fall to my knees and beg?"
[ooc: you saw no HTML fail it didn't exist >8| ]
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"That's all I was going to do," he gritted out through clenched teeth. "Just ask. Just so I'd know. Let go of me. Please. Starscream, just let me go."
He was now shaking; the effect of two and a half hours of non-stop, high-speed motorcycle riding was beginning to take its toll on him. Even invulnerable holograms could feel the effects of that sort of thing. There were even a few dark circles under his eyes, deep bags that showed off his lack of sleep and nutrition.
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His internal systems hummed quietly in agitation.
"That wasn't all you were going to do. I've seen that darkness, I've been there, and I know the desperation it drives you to. For me, perhaps, it was different, but it doesn't matter - it's the extreme it takes you to."
He paused, chewing over his words carefully. He supposed that if all else failed he could disable Rimmer by force. But he didn't want to. Words first.
"I simply somehow doubt that you were only going to ask. Unlike me, you're unlikely to attack her outright, which leaves a few other options. You could only ask, yes. But again, I know this feeling and I know that you're more than likely feeling just a little destructive."
"The difference is where that destruction is directed. If not towards the outside... then it's probably within."
He was taking a wild guess here. Stabbing in the dark. He could be wrong of course, terribly wrong, but it seemed like a logical conclusion.
"You weren't going to just ask. You were going to try to cut some sort of deal, weren't you? She doesn't give something for nothing..."
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Then he shook his head in denial.
"I promised her," he said, his lips barely moving. "Promised her I wouldn't do anything stupid. But...but if she's not coming back, then she's in no position to judge, now is she. Hell, right now she doesn't even know...my name..."
His voice broke.
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Doesn't remember your name? Mine is centuries dead at home. And he died never knowing.
I almost went there too, you know. Almost wanted to die, but you know, I can't, and even if we could, we'd just go back home. That's what really happens when you die here, you know.
What he said instead, was this.
"You're not the only one here, you moron," he finally said. "You leave, and there's people you'll be leaving behind. What about Lister? ... what about me?"
"You're the only person left here who I really consider a friend. Not an ally, not a tool, not a peculiarity."
"A friend."
He tilted his head, emotion welling up.
"What about me, slag it? She left you behind, yes, frag it, but what about the people you'd be leaving behind? You're as selfish as I am."
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"But...but don't you see? I don't matter. I mean it, I really don't." He held up a hand to protest and explain. "Me, I'm just a hologram lost in space back home. Sure I'm miserable, but it doesn't matter. But her, back there in her dimension...her father could get her. Or follow her here. I have to get her out of there. Her father could destroy her while she was there, I don't know...god, Starscream, just let me go, I don't matter..."
A far, far cry from the massive ego he usually sported, making everything about him.
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"And again, you matter to her. What would she do, coming back and finding you gone, having to suffer the way you've suffered? What if she decided to do the very same thing, hmm? Trapping both of you in an absurd cycle of sacrificing yourselves to get the other back! How romantic, how quaint," he snarled. "And before you go saying 'ooh, but she has friends here to help her', I'm certain she has friends at home, too. Many of those same friends, if I recall!"
"And you matter to me and you matter to Lister and to quite a few other people as well."
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He was still holding on to that, in spite of the apologies. Granted, those apologies had come at a time when both Starscream and Rimmer were...not quite themselves. Damn Polymorphs. But that was a wound that still ran deep, and trust was still not 100% restored. And he was reeling from the loss of his entire world, lashing out in anger and frustration because he was a convenient target.
"Do I matter to you? You go off and do...something to yourself, oh yes, you bet your arse I noticed, I'm not totally stupid you know, and you don't even have the sack to tell me what. You play these little supervillain games and shut me out in the cold and I have to wonder if you're going to wake up dead again tomorrow. You keep doing these hideously reckless things and never say a word to me about any of them. Why? If I matter to you so smegging much, why do you shut me out and not speak to me for weeks at a time? Fuck you, Starscream."
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He wanted to hurt Rimmer for that one. To punch him, to shut him off, to... something.
But he didn't. Not this time. He opened his mouth as if to shout, then dropped his shoulders as if in defeat.
What does one say to that? It was like waking up. He really didn't have any excuse.
"Shutting you down for weeks at a time is..."
because I can't stop doing what I do. I can't stop being what I am. Because I learned, this time, and I don't want you involved.
"... and it's..."
He sighed.
"At least, I suppose you do deserve to know what I've done."
He rolled up his sleeve and flicked his left arm, letting the flesh-colored covering split, flip around, and click back into place, revealing a decidedly alien blue-silver metal that faded to white at the elbow.
"Listen to me before you judge," he said. "If you had the chance to become human again, to become what you rightly are, rather than being forced to be what you must surely consider a mockery of your true self, would you take it? Wouldn't you jump at the chance without a second thought, charge ahead and embrace the opportunity?"
He took his left hand in his right, his thumb pushing along the cool metal. "I couldn't stand it. The sounds alone, the constant squishing, the liquid feeling, all of it. I don't want to be human, I want to be myself."
He flexed his fingers, the metal flipping back over and snapping into place, the seams disappearing and the skin becoming uniform once again.
"So perhaps I am a hypocrite. And I am, as well, the worst friend you will ever have. I still came to save your life tonight."
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Rimmer stared at the evidence of his friend's transformation, and gulped audibly at it. Then, he looked up, his eyes rimmed red with grief and confusion and lack of sleep and pain.
"I would," he said quietly. "I would jump at the chance, you're right. How the hell did you do this to yourself? And why the hell would you keep that same face, you goit?"
Ah. So perhaps he wasn't as far gone down the path of despair and madness as might be thought. Perhaps there was still a bit of life in him, if he could come up with something that insulting.
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He folded his arms grumpily. "Besides, wouldn't that raise a few alarm bells? I didn't want everyone throwing a fit."
"Anyway, as to how I did it... you surely recall that I have an immortal spark, yes? I die, and a bit like you I don't go off to some shiny glittery Beyond but instead wander around as a bunch of photons and positrons unable to touch anything or do anything useful except posess people and get a bunch of memories I don't want."
He paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Or did I tell you that part? Well, if you didn't know before you know now."
"Anyway, I didn't mean for this to happen as soon as it did. I'd been working on these bodies for months because unlike the rest of you people when I die I don't get brought back by the Porter a few days later somewhere, I float around until I can find a nice God who's willing to off my poor miserable self so that I can come back minus a few memories and in a body that works. Terribly inconvenient. The idea was to have backup bodies in storage."
He grinned humorlessly. "I didn't expect my brother to decide to kill me so soon. I wasn't even quite finished with this one, I had to spend a week in hiding before it normalized enough for me to go outside."
"So, to sum up: it wasn't easy, and it relies on my powers functioning the way they do."
He tilted his head slightly. "You know, I wonder..."
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"And no, you're not building me a bloody robot body, you smegger. I'd end up looking like you. Or sounding like you, which would be worse."
And then he started laughing at his own joke. A low, steady laugh, almost a chuckle really. But soon the laugh started to turn into hitching breaths, and then flat-out sobs. Rimmer was crouched on the sidewalk in his tattered clothes, his face in his hands, sobbing like he would never, ever stop. It was the first time since it happened that he was able to cry. It was the first time that he felt the dam finally break, that the lost integrity of his world could now be properly mourned. Starscream had opened up some floodgate in him.
And that, really, was what friends were truly for.
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