(no subject)
Wip Wednesday and my internet connection has decided to go all wonky. I might post what I've got before bed but it's probably gonna have to wait for tomorrow. Watch this space.
ETA: Aaand we're back! Much later than expected but there you go. I'm not saying it's because I forgot but only because it's probably too obvious, lol. Anyway, got "administer" last week and I thought I knew right away what I wanted to do with it but I struggled to make it happen. I still don't love how it made it in, tbh, but at least it's there. And the bright side of hat struggle is I had to write more than expected! Continuing the zombots story as I have been and, as usual, I've included the full draft so far. It's getting long enough I should probably stop doing that soon, tbh, but whatever.
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.
"You can't," Minerva said with a thin whine of subvocal panic. Her optics were spiraled wide and bewildered, the light of them dancing at the edges.
Drag Strip bristled, which was at least better than trembling. She bared her pathetic flat teeth at Minerva and gave her arm a sharp tug. "You don't tell me what to do, you little--"
"I am telling you what to do," Minerva shot back, seeming even more surprised than Drag Strip at the gall. She gathered her bearings and continued, just short of hitting that same soothing tone, "I know it's hard but there's nothing we can do for them now. We have to keep going, to save as many as possible."
"How are you going to lecture me about saving as many as possible while you're leaving someone behind?" Drag Strip asked. Her spark burned, as much with humiliation as rage. If Wildrider had gotten himself into a spot, it was his own job to get himself out. Every Decepticon knew they'd have to take responsibility for their own failings eventually, if they weren't clever enough to make them someone else's problem. But Wildrider, the others-- they were her team. "Didn't you come back for me when you heard me scream? What's the difference?"
Minerva spluttered a moment before finally spitting out, "You didn't scream like that! You heard it! What do you think is left to save?"
"Do not," Drag Strip hissed. Her processor was churning over that last scream and the lack of followup screaming but she brutally deleted every pessimistic thought thread as it appeared. "For all we know, he was able to--"
Minvera's big, round optics jumped from Drag Strip's face to past her helm and Drag Strip would've snapped at her for the rudeness if the sheer terror on Minerva's face didn't make it clear what it was that had arrested her attention. Drag Strip spun around and couldn't help but swear when she saw the crowd of those things spilling from around a corner. In another time and place, it would've brought a smile to her face to see so many Autotroopers dented and dirty; she hardly saw them now. Even with the veritable wall normally pristine white plating soiled almost beyond recognition, familiar deep grey and silver caught her attention and held. Wildrider-- what was left of Wildrider-- stumbled towards her without seeing her, jaw slack and sparking on one side and the thick metal of his neck shredded. Drag Strip recalibrated her optical input to take in the full crowd and noticed with no small amount of dread that despite the damages, these things were in better condition than those that had attacked her earlier.
Drag Strip glanced back at Minerva, trembling and terrified even as she took a firm grip on her pipe. She only didn't laugh at the sight because she might not stop laughing and she wasn't about to die such a stupid death.
Shoving Minerva on ahead of her, she barked, "Run!"
To her credit, Minerva ran. Holding her pipe in one hand and taking a firm grip yet again on Drag Strip's arm with the other, she set a pace that even Drag Strip struggled to match. Of course, even if the two of them were cosmetically alike, medics were always built a little different. And Minerva had probably been fueled on a lot better than Drag Strip had lately, to boot. Drag Strip didn't remember the most glaring difference between them, though, until Minerva pulled them around another corner and onto a street clear enough to drive on.
"Grab on!" Minerva shouted, giving Drag Strip a final, unnecessary tug before spinning down into her alt mode and revving her engine. Drag Strip threw herself over Minerva's roof just as she was taking off. Theirs wasn't a frame meant for hauling like-sized passengers, even if Minerva was a medic, and Drag Strip found herself flailing as she tried to stay on without compromising any of the external sensors that told Minerva which way to go. She might at least have felt relief except for the cacophony of grinding and rending that made her look back over her shoulder.
"You have got to be kidding me," she said in a sort of awe as a solid third of their pursuers transformed to keep chasing them. They were much better drivers than walkers.
"None of the others did that!" Minerva said, sounding scandalized by this turn of events.
Drag Strip hadn't taken a lot of time to examine the corpses as they passed but she could remember well enough what they'd looked like. Some of their helms had been bashed in, like Minerva had done to the two who'd attacked Drag Strip, but most of them had been shot. And Minerva had been part of a group, hadn't she, before wandering off on her own.
Now watching the things bearing down on them, Drag Strip asked, "Did you give them a chance to try?" When the only answer was silence, she snorted and said, "Great. I can't wait to find out what else you lot killed them too quick to learn."
"Like you would've done any different?" Minerva snapped, then turned off her vocalizer with a distinct click.
Well, if she was too embarrassed to talk about it, Drag Strip wasn't going to complain about it. What she would complain about-- and, in fact, did complain about-- was Minerva's driving.
"How good of a grip do you think I've got up here?" she demanded, flexing her blunt fingers in the transformation gaps she'd managed to latch onto as Minerva's tired shrieked around a turn. Oh, how she missed her claws. "You're not even shaking them!"
"I'm more worried about outrunning them," Minerva said, frustration sharp in her voice as she wound past debris. "If we can't stay far enough ahead, the others won't be able to risk lowering the barricade for us and then this is all for nothing." Quieter, like she didn't mean it to be heard, she said, "I won't let it all be for nothing."
Drag Strip bit down on the instinctive retort and just said, "Fine. I guess the sooner we get back, the sooner you can administer me something for the processor ache you've given me anyway."
She looked back over her shoulder for something to do, hardly grunting when Minerva swerved again. They were putting a respectable distance between them and the horde. It was almost more exciting than sickening now and Drag Strip's hands flexed, aching for a weapon she didn't have as her spark flared with the urge jump into the fray.
Minerva bleeped in alarm and braked hard, nearly sending Drag Strip flying. She scraped over Minerva's roof, their plating clashing in a short, squealing spray of sparks, and her dentae clacked and scraped together.
"What--" she started, only to cut herself off when her processor caught up to what she was seeing in front of her. More of them, all in a condition not unlike those now quickly catching up, not nearly as many but scattered across the road. Not even two hundred meters beyond them, Drag Strip could see the barricade.
They were so close.
"No," Minerva said; quiet again but maybe she hadn't meant to be this time, because she said louder, heavy with anguish, "No."
Minerva transformed back into her root mode with just enough forewarning for Drag Strip to catch herself instead of falling. The next thing Drag Strip knew, she was being hustled aside, out of the road and onto the walk, Minerva firmly between her and the horde. Drag Strip didn't know where Minerva had tucked away the pipe while in alt but it was in her hand again now, a comical sight as their pursuers rolled out of alt and onto their feet and joined with the others now shambling towards them. Despite herself, Drag Strip found herself seeking out Wildrider from the lot.
"You need to run when I tell you to," said Minerva, pulling Drag Strip's attention back to her. "Be ready. I--" her vocalizer whined feedback and her grip on the pipe tightened. She tried again, "I'll cover you for as long as I can. I think... I think they'll focus on the nearest, slowest target." She started shouldering Drag Strip in the direction of the barricade, optics locked onto the things, which responded only sluggishly now to their movements. Perhaps they understood that their quarry had no hope of escaping them. Over the clanking of their footsteps, Drag Strip heard Minerva talking low to herself again. "There are other medics. I'm not so special. S-someone else can--"
She cut herself off with a scream when a pink and white blur leapt from the roof of the building behind them, into a thinner patch of the horde. She wore the same frame type they did, which made the realization that she was missing her left arm all the more jarring, though the wound was clean and dry. A laser sword burned bright blue in her remaining hand.
"Arcee!" Minerva shouted, a curious mix of relief and horror. "You shouldn't be out here!"
The new bot, Arcee, didn't dignify that with a response, instead barking, "Go!"
ETA: Aaand we're back! Much later than expected but there you go. I'm not saying it's because I forgot but only because it's probably too obvious, lol. Anyway, got "administer" last week and I thought I knew right away what I wanted to do with it but I struggled to make it happen. I still don't love how it made it in, tbh, but at least it's there. And the bright side of hat struggle is I had to write more than expected! Continuing the zombots story as I have been and, as usual, I've included the full draft so far. It's getting long enough I should probably stop doing that soon, tbh, but whatever.
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.
"You can't," Minerva said with a thin whine of subvocal panic. Her optics were spiraled wide and bewildered, the light of them dancing at the edges.
Drag Strip bristled, which was at least better than trembling. She bared her pathetic flat teeth at Minerva and gave her arm a sharp tug. "You don't tell me what to do, you little--"
"I am telling you what to do," Minerva shot back, seeming even more surprised than Drag Strip at the gall. She gathered her bearings and continued, just short of hitting that same soothing tone, "I know it's hard but there's nothing we can do for them now. We have to keep going, to save as many as possible."
"How are you going to lecture me about saving as many as possible while you're leaving someone behind?" Drag Strip asked. Her spark burned, as much with humiliation as rage. If Wildrider had gotten himself into a spot, it was his own job to get himself out. Every Decepticon knew they'd have to take responsibility for their own failings eventually, if they weren't clever enough to make them someone else's problem. But Wildrider, the others-- they were her team. "Didn't you come back for me when you heard me scream? What's the difference?"
Minerva spluttered a moment before finally spitting out, "You didn't scream like that! You heard it! What do you think is left to save?"
"Do not," Drag Strip hissed. Her processor was churning over that last scream and the lack of followup screaming but she brutally deleted every pessimistic thought thread as it appeared. "For all we know, he was able to--"
Minvera's big, round optics jumped from Drag Strip's face to past her helm and Drag Strip would've snapped at her for the rudeness if the sheer terror on Minerva's face didn't make it clear what it was that had arrested her attention. Drag Strip spun around and couldn't help but swear when she saw the crowd of those things spilling from around a corner. In another time and place, it would've brought a smile to her face to see so many Autotroopers dented and dirty; she hardly saw them now. Even with the veritable wall normally pristine white plating soiled almost beyond recognition, familiar deep grey and silver caught her attention and held. Wildrider-- what was left of Wildrider-- stumbled towards her without seeing her, jaw slack and sparking on one side and the thick metal of his neck shredded. Drag Strip recalibrated her optical input to take in the full crowd and noticed with no small amount of dread that despite the damages, these things were in better condition than those that had attacked her earlier.
Drag Strip glanced back at Minerva, trembling and terrified even as she took a firm grip on her pipe. She only didn't laugh at the sight because she might not stop laughing and she wasn't about to die such a stupid death.
Shoving Minerva on ahead of her, she barked, "Run!"
To her credit, Minerva ran. Holding her pipe in one hand and taking a firm grip yet again on Drag Strip's arm with the other, she set a pace that even Drag Strip struggled to match. Of course, even if the two of them were cosmetically alike, medics were always built a little different. And Minerva had probably been fueled on a lot better than Drag Strip had lately, to boot. Drag Strip didn't remember the most glaring difference between them, though, until Minerva pulled them around another corner and onto a street clear enough to drive on.
"Grab on!" Minerva shouted, giving Drag Strip a final, unnecessary tug before spinning down into her alt mode and revving her engine. Drag Strip threw herself over Minerva's roof just as she was taking off. Theirs wasn't a frame meant for hauling like-sized passengers, even if Minerva was a medic, and Drag Strip found herself flailing as she tried to stay on without compromising any of the external sensors that told Minerva which way to go. She might at least have felt relief except for the cacophony of grinding and rending that made her look back over her shoulder.
"You have got to be kidding me," she said in a sort of awe as a solid third of their pursuers transformed to keep chasing them. They were much better drivers than walkers.
"None of the others did that!" Minerva said, sounding scandalized by this turn of events.
Drag Strip hadn't taken a lot of time to examine the corpses as they passed but she could remember well enough what they'd looked like. Some of their helms had been bashed in, like Minerva had done to the two who'd attacked Drag Strip, but most of them had been shot. And Minerva had been part of a group, hadn't she, before wandering off on her own.
Now watching the things bearing down on them, Drag Strip asked, "Did you give them a chance to try?" When the only answer was silence, she snorted and said, "Great. I can't wait to find out what else you lot killed them too quick to learn."
"Like you would've done any different?" Minerva snapped, then turned off her vocalizer with a distinct click.
Well, if she was too embarrassed to talk about it, Drag Strip wasn't going to complain about it. What she would complain about-- and, in fact, did complain about-- was Minerva's driving.
"How good of a grip do you think I've got up here?" she demanded, flexing her blunt fingers in the transformation gaps she'd managed to latch onto as Minerva's tired shrieked around a turn. Oh, how she missed her claws. "You're not even shaking them!"
"I'm more worried about outrunning them," Minerva said, frustration sharp in her voice as she wound past debris. "If we can't stay far enough ahead, the others won't be able to risk lowering the barricade for us and then this is all for nothing." Quieter, like she didn't mean it to be heard, she said, "I won't let it all be for nothing."
Drag Strip bit down on the instinctive retort and just said, "Fine. I guess the sooner we get back, the sooner you can administer me something for the processor ache you've given me anyway."
She looked back over her shoulder for something to do, hardly grunting when Minerva swerved again. They were putting a respectable distance between them and the horde. It was almost more exciting than sickening now and Drag Strip's hands flexed, aching for a weapon she didn't have as her spark flared with the urge jump into the fray.
Minerva bleeped in alarm and braked hard, nearly sending Drag Strip flying. She scraped over Minerva's roof, their plating clashing in a short, squealing spray of sparks, and her dentae clacked and scraped together.
"What--" she started, only to cut herself off when her processor caught up to what she was seeing in front of her. More of them, all in a condition not unlike those now quickly catching up, not nearly as many but scattered across the road. Not even two hundred meters beyond them, Drag Strip could see the barricade.
They were so close.
"No," Minerva said; quiet again but maybe she hadn't meant to be this time, because she said louder, heavy with anguish, "No."
Minerva transformed back into her root mode with just enough forewarning for Drag Strip to catch herself instead of falling. The next thing Drag Strip knew, she was being hustled aside, out of the road and onto the walk, Minerva firmly between her and the horde. Drag Strip didn't know where Minerva had tucked away the pipe while in alt but it was in her hand again now, a comical sight as their pursuers rolled out of alt and onto their feet and joined with the others now shambling towards them. Despite herself, Drag Strip found herself seeking out Wildrider from the lot.
"You need to run when I tell you to," said Minerva, pulling Drag Strip's attention back to her. "Be ready. I--" her vocalizer whined feedback and her grip on the pipe tightened. She tried again, "I'll cover you for as long as I can. I think... I think they'll focus on the nearest, slowest target." She started shouldering Drag Strip in the direction of the barricade, optics locked onto the things, which responded only sluggishly now to their movements. Perhaps they understood that their quarry had no hope of escaping them. Over the clanking of their footsteps, Drag Strip heard Minerva talking low to herself again. "There are other medics. I'm not so special. S-someone else can--"
She cut herself off with a scream when a pink and white blur leapt from the roof of the building behind them, into a thinner patch of the horde. She wore the same frame type they did, which made the realization that she was missing her left arm all the more jarring, though the wound was clean and dry. A laser sword burned bright blue in her remaining hand.
"Arcee!" Minerva shouted, a curious mix of relief and horror. "You shouldn't be out here!"
The new bot, Arcee, didn't dignify that with a response, instead barking, "Go!"