(no subject)
Wip Wednesday! Got "transmission" as a prompt and got no hits, so I'm adding onto the zom-bots story! I was pretty excited for this prompt since I immediately knew how I wanted to incorporate it but, Idk, I'm struggling to get to the point of this fic. I can so clearly see the end but I feel like I'm trudging through cold molasses to get to it. I think it'll be easy to edit once I finally get this first draft finished, at least, not that I know why I think that, lol. Anyway, once again posting everything I've got so far:
If Drag Strip had realized just what it was that had the Autobots all in a tizzy, she'd have stayed in jail. Not that it necessarily would've done her much good, judging by the shrieking she could hear echoing from inside, but maybe they all could've barricaded themselves in. Maybe she'd at least know where her team was--
No time to worry about that now. A shadow had appeared above her and she rolled out of the way just in time-- if there was one thing this weak little Autobot-styled frame was good for, it was running away. The thing that had tried to jump her-- used to be an Auto-Trooper, by the look of what was left of it-- landed in an ungraceful, sparking heap with a squeal of rending metal and no attempt to brace its fall. She thought that might be the end of it, given the state it was in, but its one remaining optic glared at her from behind the broken glass of its visor and, with a shriek, it swung its arm out at her.
Drag Strip wasted a precious fraction of a second reaching for weapons she didn't have but still managed to stumble back and out of its reach. But she stumbled too far and right into the arms of yet another of the things.
This one was smaller, thankfully, and the gyros in its arms didn't seem to be fully operational anymore. These used-to-be-mechs were missing more than physical parts, too, and instead of disabling her, it snapped its jaws and then started to gnaw on the side of her helm. Its dentae scraped and dented the stupid-looking audial structure she'd hated since waking up in this frame, the crunch of metal echoing through her struts. Drag Strip snarled and drove her elbow back and into the gasping hole in the thing's side, making the bare wires there spit sparks.
It didn't seem to notice.
Fighting down panic and struggling past the cascade of error alerts popping up in response to the feedback screeching in her left audial, Drag Strip twisted in the thing's hold, throwing her admitted meager weight against its weakened joints. Her metal dragging against its was almost as bad as the sound of feedback but at least it meant she was getting somewhere. At least until it shifted its hold so that the broad lengths of its arms were pinning her to its chest as it hunched over her, still gnawing, and the frame might not be all that big but it was certainly bigger than her.
Then the thing grunted and hissed, the closest she'd heard any of them come to expressing anything like an emotion, and jerked its head between its grip on her audial structure and her shoulder kibble. Whatever its aim was, it seemed that it didn't have the space or leverage it needed. It hissed again and reared back, one arm coming away from her chassis so that the thing could scrabble at that kibble, could grip and pull.
She had just felt a sharp twinge in her shoulder joint and was calculating the best way to throw her weight when a pipe slammed against the side of the thing's head. It stumbled, just a little, just enough, and she was able that time to twist out of its one-armed grip. She landed in a crouch and aimed a kicked back at its ankle and another at its knee, barely denting its plating but throwing it off-balance just the same, before somersaulting out of reach and spinning around to take stock of what had happened.
Her rescuer-- ugh-- wore the same frame type she did but with a helm variation that managed to look even stupider, like she'd plopped some archaic transmitter onto her head. She was also done up in the classic red and white of an Autobot medic, though she seemed just as comfortable handling that busted pipe of hers as she probably was handling a scalpel, bringing it down again and again on the thing as it struggled to get back to its feet.
"Get clear!" the medic barked, taking a firmer grip on the pipe and twisting her body like a wind-up.
Drag Strip backed up, not sure what else she was supposed to do. The medic spared her a glance, smiled a grim smile and then let loose with one final blow, breaking through the thing's helm and sending it crashing to the ground at last. Still brandishing the pipe, she shuffled and side-stepped her way to Drag Strip, stopping the jab the jagged end into the open helm of the other thing still squirming where it had landed when it missed Drag Strip earlier.
"So, you can subdue them," Drag Strip murmured, attention zinging sharp between the two things now lying still and sparking. She flinched when the medic reached out and started pawing at her without so much as a by-your-leave but managed to keep herself from lashing out. This sort of attention was common among Autobots, she'd already had the misfortune of learning, and she didn't need this medic clocking her as anything but.
"After a while, yeah," the medic said, sounding distracted as she felt across Drag Strip's frame. She kept sending the things skittering glances but most of her focus was riveted on Drag Strip's left arm, not the kibble or the shoulder but the long crack in the forearm. "Well enough, anyway. What's this?"
"I had to dodge out of a horde of them," Drag Strip said, sneering down at the damage. It wouldn't have happened if she'd been in her own, true frame, with its sturdier armor. She shrugged, trying to play off her disdain like it was just embarrassment. "There was a wall."
"Better condition than I'd have expected," the medic said more to herself than to Drag Strip. She ran a fingertip along the crack, end to end, and the tingle of a deep scan buzzed under Drag Strip's plating.
That was too presumptuous to ignore and Drag Strip yanked her arm back, cradling it to her chest, as she glared in offense.
It seemed to get through to the medic, who reset her optics and focused on Drag Strip's face for the first time. She offered a customer service sort of smile, the way Autobot medics liked to do, but no apology.
"We should be able to fix that up easily enough," she said in a soothing tone that put Drag Strip's nerve circuits on edge. "It's just surface damage. And the rest of you looks to be in fantastic condition." Excitement lilted in her tones, incongruous with the gore surrounding them and the chaos echoing not so far away. She reached out and took Drag Strip gently by the elbow.
Drag Strip shook her off with force and took a step back. She was somewhat undercut when she put her foot down in a puddle of oil and it nearly went out from under her. The medic's optics flared and she jumped forward with her arms out like Drag Strip was going to collapse.
"Would you--!" she got her balance back, feet set, and squared her shoulders, batting the medic's hands off of her yet again as she did. Over-familiar Autobots! "What makes you think I'd trust you to do anything to me?"
The medic, holding up her hands like she was talking down a bomber, tipped her head at that, face going carefully neutral even as her optics gave away her puzzlement. Drag Strip swallowed a curse. Of course, an Autobot wouldn't question one of their own medics. Autobot medics were there to help, after all, besides being authority figures.
"I mean," she said, endeavoring to look more flustered than frustrated, "I don't even know what's going on out here and where did you even come from?" She gestured broadly towards the bits and pieces of the things that had once been mechs. "You haven't tried to take a bite out of me yet but how do I know you're all right?"
A long pause passed between them as the medic took a respectable step back, arms still held akimbo, and seemed to consider what she was about to say next. She must be young, inexperienced, to give so much away. Autobots were soft things, broadly speaking, but Drag Strip didn't imagine she'd be able to so easily read the likes of Red Alert-- the only Autobot medic she'd dealt with directly, granted, and not someone she could think much about if she wanted to avoid giving herself away. Or purging.
"My name is Minerva," the medic said at last, negotiation slow. "I'm one of a group of survivors. We barricaded and holed up in the Academy. I'm out here looking for supplies-- and for other survivors."
"Other survivors," Drag Strip said, heavy with skepticism. "This far from the Academy."
"I heard you scream."
Drag Strip bit down on a denial. She didn't think she'd screamed but this body was hardly hers on a good day and this wasn't a good day. And if Minerva had heard someone else, Drag Strip wasn't about to get dragged along on some fool mission to find them. She scoffed just the same, casting a critical look over the young medic.
"They sent you out searching on your own?"
"I was with a group," Minerva said. She averted her gaze and started fidgeting with her hands. "And we found some-- a few people. The others didn't think it was any good coming out this way but..."
Autobots and their self-righteous hero complexes. Of course. It was unusual for one to have broken off from the group like this, though, Drag Strip was willing to give her that much. Probably wasn't with anyone very high-ranking, to have done it, and that was as good an opening as any. It would be risky business rubbing elbows with too many Autobots, as any one of them might recognize her from the stunt rally, but the rabble would be easier to navigate than any commanders.
The wailing and gnashing of the things still shambling just out of sight seemed to grow louder and Drag Strip flattened her plating to keep it from rattling. Minerva looked off towards the noise and, yet again reached out to clutch at Drag Strip's arm.
"Well," said Drag Strip, drawing Minerva's attention back to her. "That sounds like as good a cue as any to get moving."
Minerva lit up at that, ridiculous thing that she was. Her grip tightened on Drag Strip's arm and she tugged, short and sharp, before letting go to take the broken pipe from where she'd left it in the thing's helm. She cast Drag Strip a grim look over her shoulder.
"My group cleared out a lot of these things from our way earlier, so we should have a pretty clear path to the Academy. Still, stay close to me," she instructed. Her optics ran over Drag Strip from helm to toe like she was reassuring herself that all of her was still there. "And don't try anything risky."
Drag Strip carefully didn't scoff.
Minerva was right, at least, that their path was relatively clear. Well-- of anything moving. The streets were littered with broken bodies and what looked like spare parts, still leaking energon and other fluids. Drag Strip skirted around the first few heaps before she realized Minerva walking confidently past them all and followed her lead. A chorus of clanking and inarticulate cries still echoed around them wherever they went but Drag Strip didn't spot so much as a shadow of one of their shambling pursuers.
Or she assumed they were being pursued, at any rate. Minerva, who seemed like she knew something of what was happening, kept looking back like she thought Drag Strip might've disappeared since she'd last seen her. She was clingy too-- grabbing at Drag Strip's arm and pulled her close whenever they turned a corner, all while brandishing that pipe of hers.
"We could probably scare up a few weapons from a few of these guys," Drag Strip said, rolling her shoulder to shake off the tingle of yet another deep scan. She bit down on her temper when Minerva looked at her like getting better armaments was the wildest idea she'd ever heard. "You don't have any inbuilt weapons either, right? We might find something that would fit both of us that you can integrate. Then I could watch your back too."
Something flickered across Minerva's face but Drag Strip wasn't in a mood to try to determine what. It didn't seem to matter much anyway, once Minerva shook her head and answered, "Right, you wouldn't-- no. No, we can't. The exact means of transmission aren't clear just yet but we know that it isn't safe to handle infected parts, never mind integrate them. If we do, well..."
She glanced around and her optics flickered when she spotted what she was looking for. She nodded towards it and Drag Strip turned to squint into a corner where a few of the things were piled together. She couldn't help the sickly rev of her engine when she saw-- herself, at least in this form. Almost, anyway. The yellow paint had probably been more vibrant when the bot was alive, granted, as was Autobot fashion. Dulled by the blowback of a collapsed spark, however, it wasn't that far off in color from Drag Strip's. Aside from the hole that had been blown through the side of its head, the corpse looked like it had come fresh off an assembly line. A faulty assembly line, anyway-- one leg had clearly been a different color from the rest of the frame. A scavenged part.
"Transmission," Drag Strip repeated, spark contracting like a star the moments before supernova. The fingers of her right hand twitched but she stopped herself from grabbing at her injured arm. "This..." She looked around at the corpses with fresh optics. "They're doing this to each other?" She thought of the things pawing at her, chewing on her. "Is that what they were trying to do to me?"
"Yes," Minerva said in the soothing tone Autobot medics were so fond of, as if soft words made reality any less harsh. "Whatever this... this virus is, it overrides the victims' processing centers and drives them to spread it further."
Drag Strip spat a mouthful of static, reset her vocalizer and opened her mouth again. Before she could give herself away by demanding in her most colorful language just what the frag kind of nonsense the Autobot Science Division had been getting up to now and who had been stupid enough to allow it to escape containment, she was interrupted by a shriek that rose to a fever pitch before cutting itself off with a gurgle. It wasn't very far from them. It was very familiar.
Wildrider.
Drag Strip didn't realize she'd turned towards the sound until she felt Minerva's iron grip on her arm.
If Drag Strip had realized just what it was that had the Autobots all in a tizzy, she'd have stayed in jail. Not that it necessarily would've done her much good, judging by the shrieking she could hear echoing from inside, but maybe they all could've barricaded themselves in. Maybe she'd at least know where her team was--
No time to worry about that now. A shadow had appeared above her and she rolled out of the way just in time-- if there was one thing this weak little Autobot-styled frame was good for, it was running away. The thing that had tried to jump her-- used to be an Auto-Trooper, by the look of what was left of it-- landed in an ungraceful, sparking heap with a squeal of rending metal and no attempt to brace its fall. She thought that might be the end of it, given the state it was in, but its one remaining optic glared at her from behind the broken glass of its visor and, with a shriek, it swung its arm out at her.
Drag Strip wasted a precious fraction of a second reaching for weapons she didn't have but still managed to stumble back and out of its reach. But she stumbled too far and right into the arms of yet another of the things.
This one was smaller, thankfully, and the gyros in its arms didn't seem to be fully operational anymore. These used-to-be-mechs were missing more than physical parts, too, and instead of disabling her, it snapped its jaws and then started to gnaw on the side of her helm. Its dentae scraped and dented the stupid-looking audial structure she'd hated since waking up in this frame, the crunch of metal echoing through her struts. Drag Strip snarled and drove her elbow back and into the gasping hole in the thing's side, making the bare wires there spit sparks.
It didn't seem to notice.
Fighting down panic and struggling past the cascade of error alerts popping up in response to the feedback screeching in her left audial, Drag Strip twisted in the thing's hold, throwing her admitted meager weight against its weakened joints. Her metal dragging against its was almost as bad as the sound of feedback but at least it meant she was getting somewhere. At least until it shifted its hold so that the broad lengths of its arms were pinning her to its chest as it hunched over her, still gnawing, and the frame might not be all that big but it was certainly bigger than her.
Then the thing grunted and hissed, the closest she'd heard any of them come to expressing anything like an emotion, and jerked its head between its grip on her audial structure and her shoulder kibble. Whatever its aim was, it seemed that it didn't have the space or leverage it needed. It hissed again and reared back, one arm coming away from her chassis so that the thing could scrabble at that kibble, could grip and pull.
She had just felt a sharp twinge in her shoulder joint and was calculating the best way to throw her weight when a pipe slammed against the side of the thing's head. It stumbled, just a little, just enough, and she was able that time to twist out of its one-armed grip. She landed in a crouch and aimed a kicked back at its ankle and another at its knee, barely denting its plating but throwing it off-balance just the same, before somersaulting out of reach and spinning around to take stock of what had happened.
Her rescuer-- ugh-- wore the same frame type she did but with a helm variation that managed to look even stupider, like she'd plopped some archaic transmitter onto her head. She was also done up in the classic red and white of an Autobot medic, though she seemed just as comfortable handling that busted pipe of hers as she probably was handling a scalpel, bringing it down again and again on the thing as it struggled to get back to its feet.
"Get clear!" the medic barked, taking a firmer grip on the pipe and twisting her body like a wind-up.
Drag Strip backed up, not sure what else she was supposed to do. The medic spared her a glance, smiled a grim smile and then let loose with one final blow, breaking through the thing's helm and sending it crashing to the ground at last. Still brandishing the pipe, she shuffled and side-stepped her way to Drag Strip, stopping the jab the jagged end into the open helm of the other thing still squirming where it had landed when it missed Drag Strip earlier.
"So, you can subdue them," Drag Strip murmured, attention zinging sharp between the two things now lying still and sparking. She flinched when the medic reached out and started pawing at her without so much as a by-your-leave but managed to keep herself from lashing out. This sort of attention was common among Autobots, she'd already had the misfortune of learning, and she didn't need this medic clocking her as anything but.
"After a while, yeah," the medic said, sounding distracted as she felt across Drag Strip's frame. She kept sending the things skittering glances but most of her focus was riveted on Drag Strip's left arm, not the kibble or the shoulder but the long crack in the forearm. "Well enough, anyway. What's this?"
"I had to dodge out of a horde of them," Drag Strip said, sneering down at the damage. It wouldn't have happened if she'd been in her own, true frame, with its sturdier armor. She shrugged, trying to play off her disdain like it was just embarrassment. "There was a wall."
"Better condition than I'd have expected," the medic said more to herself than to Drag Strip. She ran a fingertip along the crack, end to end, and the tingle of a deep scan buzzed under Drag Strip's plating.
That was too presumptuous to ignore and Drag Strip yanked her arm back, cradling it to her chest, as she glared in offense.
It seemed to get through to the medic, who reset her optics and focused on Drag Strip's face for the first time. She offered a customer service sort of smile, the way Autobot medics liked to do, but no apology.
"We should be able to fix that up easily enough," she said in a soothing tone that put Drag Strip's nerve circuits on edge. "It's just surface damage. And the rest of you looks to be in fantastic condition." Excitement lilted in her tones, incongruous with the gore surrounding them and the chaos echoing not so far away. She reached out and took Drag Strip gently by the elbow.
Drag Strip shook her off with force and took a step back. She was somewhat undercut when she put her foot down in a puddle of oil and it nearly went out from under her. The medic's optics flared and she jumped forward with her arms out like Drag Strip was going to collapse.
"Would you--!" she got her balance back, feet set, and squared her shoulders, batting the medic's hands off of her yet again as she did. Over-familiar Autobots! "What makes you think I'd trust you to do anything to me?"
The medic, holding up her hands like she was talking down a bomber, tipped her head at that, face going carefully neutral even as her optics gave away her puzzlement. Drag Strip swallowed a curse. Of course, an Autobot wouldn't question one of their own medics. Autobot medics were there to help, after all, besides being authority figures.
"I mean," she said, endeavoring to look more flustered than frustrated, "I don't even know what's going on out here and where did you even come from?" She gestured broadly towards the bits and pieces of the things that had once been mechs. "You haven't tried to take a bite out of me yet but how do I know you're all right?"
A long pause passed between them as the medic took a respectable step back, arms still held akimbo, and seemed to consider what she was about to say next. She must be young, inexperienced, to give so much away. Autobots were soft things, broadly speaking, but Drag Strip didn't imagine she'd be able to so easily read the likes of Red Alert-- the only Autobot medic she'd dealt with directly, granted, and not someone she could think much about if she wanted to avoid giving herself away. Or purging.
"My name is Minerva," the medic said at last, negotiation slow. "I'm one of a group of survivors. We barricaded and holed up in the Academy. I'm out here looking for supplies-- and for other survivors."
"Other survivors," Drag Strip said, heavy with skepticism. "This far from the Academy."
"I heard you scream."
Drag Strip bit down on a denial. She didn't think she'd screamed but this body was hardly hers on a good day and this wasn't a good day. And if Minerva had heard someone else, Drag Strip wasn't about to get dragged along on some fool mission to find them. She scoffed just the same, casting a critical look over the young medic.
"They sent you out searching on your own?"
"I was with a group," Minerva said. She averted her gaze and started fidgeting with her hands. "And we found some-- a few people. The others didn't think it was any good coming out this way but..."
Autobots and their self-righteous hero complexes. Of course. It was unusual for one to have broken off from the group like this, though, Drag Strip was willing to give her that much. Probably wasn't with anyone very high-ranking, to have done it, and that was as good an opening as any. It would be risky business rubbing elbows with too many Autobots, as any one of them might recognize her from the stunt rally, but the rabble would be easier to navigate than any commanders.
The wailing and gnashing of the things still shambling just out of sight seemed to grow louder and Drag Strip flattened her plating to keep it from rattling. Minerva looked off towards the noise and, yet again reached out to clutch at Drag Strip's arm.
"Well," said Drag Strip, drawing Minerva's attention back to her. "That sounds like as good a cue as any to get moving."
Minerva lit up at that, ridiculous thing that she was. Her grip tightened on Drag Strip's arm and she tugged, short and sharp, before letting go to take the broken pipe from where she'd left it in the thing's helm. She cast Drag Strip a grim look over her shoulder.
"My group cleared out a lot of these things from our way earlier, so we should have a pretty clear path to the Academy. Still, stay close to me," she instructed. Her optics ran over Drag Strip from helm to toe like she was reassuring herself that all of her was still there. "And don't try anything risky."
Drag Strip carefully didn't scoff.
Minerva was right, at least, that their path was relatively clear. Well-- of anything moving. The streets were littered with broken bodies and what looked like spare parts, still leaking energon and other fluids. Drag Strip skirted around the first few heaps before she realized Minerva walking confidently past them all and followed her lead. A chorus of clanking and inarticulate cries still echoed around them wherever they went but Drag Strip didn't spot so much as a shadow of one of their shambling pursuers.
Or she assumed they were being pursued, at any rate. Minerva, who seemed like she knew something of what was happening, kept looking back like she thought Drag Strip might've disappeared since she'd last seen her. She was clingy too-- grabbing at Drag Strip's arm and pulled her close whenever they turned a corner, all while brandishing that pipe of hers.
"We could probably scare up a few weapons from a few of these guys," Drag Strip said, rolling her shoulder to shake off the tingle of yet another deep scan. She bit down on her temper when Minerva looked at her like getting better armaments was the wildest idea she'd ever heard. "You don't have any inbuilt weapons either, right? We might find something that would fit both of us that you can integrate. Then I could watch your back too."
Something flickered across Minerva's face but Drag Strip wasn't in a mood to try to determine what. It didn't seem to matter much anyway, once Minerva shook her head and answered, "Right, you wouldn't-- no. No, we can't. The exact means of transmission aren't clear just yet but we know that it isn't safe to handle infected parts, never mind integrate them. If we do, well..."
She glanced around and her optics flickered when she spotted what she was looking for. She nodded towards it and Drag Strip turned to squint into a corner where a few of the things were piled together. She couldn't help the sickly rev of her engine when she saw-- herself, at least in this form. Almost, anyway. The yellow paint had probably been more vibrant when the bot was alive, granted, as was Autobot fashion. Dulled by the blowback of a collapsed spark, however, it wasn't that far off in color from Drag Strip's. Aside from the hole that had been blown through the side of its head, the corpse looked like it had come fresh off an assembly line. A faulty assembly line, anyway-- one leg had clearly been a different color from the rest of the frame. A scavenged part.
"Transmission," Drag Strip repeated, spark contracting like a star the moments before supernova. The fingers of her right hand twitched but she stopped herself from grabbing at her injured arm. "This..." She looked around at the corpses with fresh optics. "They're doing this to each other?" She thought of the things pawing at her, chewing on her. "Is that what they were trying to do to me?"
"Yes," Minerva said in the soothing tone Autobot medics were so fond of, as if soft words made reality any less harsh. "Whatever this... this virus is, it overrides the victims' processing centers and drives them to spread it further."
Drag Strip spat a mouthful of static, reset her vocalizer and opened her mouth again. Before she could give herself away by demanding in her most colorful language just what the frag kind of nonsense the Autobot Science Division had been getting up to now and who had been stupid enough to allow it to escape containment, she was interrupted by a shriek that rose to a fever pitch before cutting itself off with a gurgle. It wasn't very far from them. It was very familiar.
Wildrider.
Drag Strip didn't realize she'd turned towards the sound until she felt Minerva's iron grip on her arm.