Fic: Fireworks
Time for some Lennox fun!
TITLE: Fireworks
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved
SUMMARY: Lennox playing with his abilities...
Arizona in summer ranked among the hottest places on Earth. With temperatures spiking, most people stayed indoors and air-conditioning was running 24/7. Out in the desert at the Yuma Test Site the danger of heat strokes rose with every mile. Violent monsoon storms usually followed the heat waves, but right now the weather was clear skies and hot sun.
Will Lennox had no trouble when it came to heat - or cold. His hybrid body had no difficulties at all; no sweating, no thirst, no heat cramps. He carried water, but not to stop dehydration. A backpack full of food and water, a map, a cell phone, a collapsible tent and a sleeping bag completed the outfit.
The human Prime had set up camp at his usual site, a place he had come to often, but today it wasn’t to work on attack or defense techniques. It wasn’t always about fire power. It was also about control. While he could run these session closer to bas, he felt better when he didn’t have to think about possible consequences. If he slipped here, nothing but rock and sand would suffer the blows or explosions. He didn’t want to damage or destroy half the base.
Lennox currently sat with his back against smooth reddish-white stone, playing with a low energy output. The tendrils of white and blue licked around his fingers, like tiny snakes twisting and curling between each digit, then crawling up his lower arm to the elbow. He felt no heat, no electric tingle. It was a smooth touch, sometimes even accompanied by a playful string of runes.
He formed a bubble, the tendrils pulling back into the whitish-silver globe, then charged it with more energy. Will transferred the bubble to the other hand and let it grow, expanding the surface until the silver was more dominant, then he collapsed it back into tendrils. This time, with more energy, a web of energy covered his arm almost up to the shoulder joint. He reached into the web and pulled, extracting strings that clung to his fingers like sticky spaghetti.
Lennox let the strings curl around one finger, then flung them away. They snapped forward like a whip, but he thought them to stay and they did. It was amazing. It was sometimes actually scary. If he thought them ‘go’ they would detach and detonate not far away in a tiny plume of dust.
He formed a tiny, dense marble of energy and rolled it over his fingers like playing with a real marble ball. As it came to rest in his palm, the energy dissolved and the marble seemed to sink into his palm, surrounded by a string of runes that disappeared with it. The ones on top of his fingers were as prominent and deeply burned golden as always. And other rune would move and disappear,
Will had no idea why. He had never tried to find out because scanners didn’t work on him, but he wondered sometimes.
Letting the energy inside him rise once more, Lennox watched it creep over his skin, his clothes, covering his arms and curling around his wrists. Like veins the energy lines pulsed, silver and blue, shaping dark silver disks in his palms. He felt the power, knew this was enough to blow up a mid-size car without leaving larger trace, and he spread his fingers.
The energy hummed, web-structure connecting each finger to the next across the gaps.
It was eerily beautiful, watching the tendrils of energy rising like they were alive, swirling and dancing, licking over the human hybrid’s body. Scavenger had come to check on their regular visitor; one of them usually did. Driving by the known camp site, normally at a discrete distance, making sure nothing had happened. It wasn’t baby-sitting, just a healthy dose of safety measures firmly in place. Lennox was one of the five Primes and he was a possible target for Deceptions. He had been on Soundwave’s list before, so they wanted to make sure was doing okay.
He was also a training partner and good friend. All five respected him greatly and all five had trained with him, going through different settings and within different parameters. Scavenger felt proud to be part of the development of Avatar Prime. He could see the progress and he knew Will could see it, too. He wanted to be able to defend himself and rely on no back-up, though that was almost impossible to achieve. Everyone needed back-up some time, even the most powerful. But the human had to learn and learn he did.
Normally Will was working on his offense and defense skills. He rarely just played with the power at his disposal. Scavenger knew it wasn’t a game, just another manner of training control, but he found this more fascinating than explosions.
Staying at a distance, he watched.
After a while a motorbike came to a stop beside the Constructicon. The hologram disappeared and Arcee transformed. An elegant mech, not to be underestimated, she barely reached to his knee joint. Scavenger knew better than to think being taller meant he was stronger. Arcee was a troubleshooter and he knew her reputation.
“This is amazing,” she now said.
He nodded. No aggression, just beauty.
It was mesmerizing.
His scanners were able to pick up the energy signature and readings easily. Unlike the hybrid himself it was possible to scan his output. Right now Will was really pouring a lot of his energy into the bubbles he was forming and Scavenger wondered when he would lose control.
He didn’t.
He let the bubbles expand until they burst into tendrils of light that were several times the size of the human in his organic form. The tendrils twisted and snapped around, then seemed to calm down and swirled into one thick string, then knotted together and shrank back down.
Scavenger would have gaped if he hadn’t had more control of himself.
And then everything turned into a shower of tiny sparkles that fizzed through the air and sent up tiny puffs of dusts as they hit the ground.
Now Scavenger did gape.
Arcee made a surprised noise, optics flaring. The readings were off the scale for a moment, then leveled.
Lennox turned his head and Scavenger was looking into two very bright blue eyes that had nothing human to them. Only slowly the blue receded, though the pinprick of blue remained.
“Checking in on me?” Will asked with amusement apparent in his voice.
“Yes. This was impressive, Will.”
Lennox shrugged. “Still getting the hang of it. Should I ever need a second job, I could work as a fireworks display.”
Scavenger chuckled. “Probably.”
Will wriggled the fingers of his right hand and more energy sparks danced like little fireflies around it. They disappeared without a popping sound, but Scavenger was able to detect a sizzle.
“You have a growing control over this,” he told the hybrid.
“It need to. I keep growing into more and I can’t just stop training.”
The Constructicon nodded. “Would you mind if I recorded this?”
“For Ratchet?” was the wry reply.
Scavenger chuckled. “Ratchet isn’t the sole instigator of all things medical. You fascinate us, too.”
“I’m so glad I do,” Will muttered darkly.
“Will, you are special,” Scavenger told him seriously. “What you are is something no one has ever encountered before. You said yourself that you keep growing into things. Scans of what we are able to truly scan, recordings and analyses, might help you understand more.”
Lennox regarded him long and hard, the blue growing brighter again in his eyes. Finally his shoulders slumped a little and he let tendrils of silver flicker over his fingers as he flexed them.
“Okay. Scan if you want.”
“Thank you,” Scavenger said seriously.
And he started recording and scanning.
Arcee stayed for the whole time, as fascinated as the engineer. She let one of the tendrils touch her and a soft whirr of delight escaped her as the energy did nothing more than tickle her sensors. It was like a sheathed sword, dangerous but controlled, and she knew it.
As did Will.
As did Scavenger.
“You are an amazing being, Will Lennox,” the troubleshooter said when Lennox pulled back the energy tendrils.
He shrugged. “Thanks, I think.”
Arcee smiled. “You’ll grow with every day. Just keep at it.”
“I will.”
“And if you want to try out some new moves, you know where to find me,” she added with amusement in her voice.
Lennox laughed. “I’ll call, Arcee, should I feel the need for an ass-kicking.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She transformed after saying good-bye and headed back to the main base.
*
Will didn’t return to base when night fell. He had set up camp with the intent of at least four days to himself and Scavenger had respected that. The Constructicon had driven back to the others not long after Lennox had ignited a camp fire and warmed up one of the MREs.
The night based uneventfully and Lennox was awake throughout most of the dark hours. He wasn’t tired, despite the use of so much energy, and it was a good sign. His body was learning to work with what was available without exhausting him. He went through a round of shape-shifting, all stages he was able to, and was surprised to notice that he had excess energy in protoform shape. It was as if he had charged up instead of depleting.
Cool.
He went through moves Jazz had shown him, deploying the weapon in his arm. Actually, it shaped out of his forearm upper plating and didn’t pop out of any hidden compartment. He knew more was possible if he could just find the triggers for it. So far, no luck.
What he had managed was to shape razor-sharp armor over his fingers that resembled claws and talons. It was a small success and Long Haul could attest to the armor-cutting abilities of the claws. He had dissected the Constructicons chest armor, digging deep into the metal.
As dawn approached, Will packed up his things for the day, zipped the tent shut and went for a brief run. When he came back an hour later, Lennox had breakfast, then prepared for the new day.
Two more days alone, all by himself and the occasional visitor from the Constructicon base, and he would fine-tune his abilities.
Energy licked over his hands like cool fire. Silvery-white with a glacier blue core, the fire turned into tendrils of light, twisting over the rune-covered fingers.
Will smiled a little to himself, feeling the thrum of the energy inside him. Bubbles rose to hover over his hand and let them rise further until they popped out of existence in a tiny shower of sparkly light.
It was Long Haul who came for a brief stopover throughout the day.
By the end of his fourth day, Will felt he had gotten a lot better at controlling the energy, reabsorbing it almost painlessly even in human form. At least as long as he didn’t charge the energy bubbles at battle-strength. That took his protoform to painlessly reabsorb it.
Ironhide was waiting for him at the end of the hiking trail that led from the camp site out of the mountains. Lennox smiled and tossed his gear into the Topkick’s back, then climbed in.
“Had fun?” Ironhide teased as they bounced over the potholed road back to the Constructicon base.
“Tons.”
“What did I miss?”
“Fireworks.”
Ironhide chuckled. “Who did you take out?”
“Not even a rock. A few kernels of sand suffered, but the landscape wasn’t rearranged.”
“Control?”
“What I trained I had control over.”
Ironhide bounced over a small hill, then went down the other side, tilting sharply once or twice. Lennox didn’t worry. Ironhide had never gotten stuck or turned over.
“Good,” the mech rumbled. “Where to?”
“First the base. I want to drop my stuff off. Then: home. I think I had enough alone time.”
It was a good plan and one Ironhide agreed completely.
TITLE: Fireworks
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved
SUMMARY: Lennox playing with his abilities...
Arizona in summer ranked among the hottest places on Earth. With temperatures spiking, most people stayed indoors and air-conditioning was running 24/7. Out in the desert at the Yuma Test Site the danger of heat strokes rose with every mile. Violent monsoon storms usually followed the heat waves, but right now the weather was clear skies and hot sun.
Will Lennox had no trouble when it came to heat - or cold. His hybrid body had no difficulties at all; no sweating, no thirst, no heat cramps. He carried water, but not to stop dehydration. A backpack full of food and water, a map, a cell phone, a collapsible tent and a sleeping bag completed the outfit.
The human Prime had set up camp at his usual site, a place he had come to often, but today it wasn’t to work on attack or defense techniques. It wasn’t always about fire power. It was also about control. While he could run these session closer to bas, he felt better when he didn’t have to think about possible consequences. If he slipped here, nothing but rock and sand would suffer the blows or explosions. He didn’t want to damage or destroy half the base.
Lennox currently sat with his back against smooth reddish-white stone, playing with a low energy output. The tendrils of white and blue licked around his fingers, like tiny snakes twisting and curling between each digit, then crawling up his lower arm to the elbow. He felt no heat, no electric tingle. It was a smooth touch, sometimes even accompanied by a playful string of runes.
He formed a bubble, the tendrils pulling back into the whitish-silver globe, then charged it with more energy. Will transferred the bubble to the other hand and let it grow, expanding the surface until the silver was more dominant, then he collapsed it back into tendrils. This time, with more energy, a web of energy covered his arm almost up to the shoulder joint. He reached into the web and pulled, extracting strings that clung to his fingers like sticky spaghetti.
Lennox let the strings curl around one finger, then flung them away. They snapped forward like a whip, but he thought them to stay and they did. It was amazing. It was sometimes actually scary. If he thought them ‘go’ they would detach and detonate not far away in a tiny plume of dust.
He formed a tiny, dense marble of energy and rolled it over his fingers like playing with a real marble ball. As it came to rest in his palm, the energy dissolved and the marble seemed to sink into his palm, surrounded by a string of runes that disappeared with it. The ones on top of his fingers were as prominent and deeply burned golden as always. And other rune would move and disappear,
Will had no idea why. He had never tried to find out because scanners didn’t work on him, but he wondered sometimes.
Letting the energy inside him rise once more, Lennox watched it creep over his skin, his clothes, covering his arms and curling around his wrists. Like veins the energy lines pulsed, silver and blue, shaping dark silver disks in his palms. He felt the power, knew this was enough to blow up a mid-size car without leaving larger trace, and he spread his fingers.
The energy hummed, web-structure connecting each finger to the next across the gaps.
It was eerily beautiful, watching the tendrils of energy rising like they were alive, swirling and dancing, licking over the human hybrid’s body. Scavenger had come to check on their regular visitor; one of them usually did. Driving by the known camp site, normally at a discrete distance, making sure nothing had happened. It wasn’t baby-sitting, just a healthy dose of safety measures firmly in place. Lennox was one of the five Primes and he was a possible target for Deceptions. He had been on Soundwave’s list before, so they wanted to make sure was doing okay.
He was also a training partner and good friend. All five respected him greatly and all five had trained with him, going through different settings and within different parameters. Scavenger felt proud to be part of the development of Avatar Prime. He could see the progress and he knew Will could see it, too. He wanted to be able to defend himself and rely on no back-up, though that was almost impossible to achieve. Everyone needed back-up some time, even the most powerful. But the human had to learn and learn he did.
Normally Will was working on his offense and defense skills. He rarely just played with the power at his disposal. Scavenger knew it wasn’t a game, just another manner of training control, but he found this more fascinating than explosions.
Staying at a distance, he watched.
After a while a motorbike came to a stop beside the Constructicon. The hologram disappeared and Arcee transformed. An elegant mech, not to be underestimated, she barely reached to his knee joint. Scavenger knew better than to think being taller meant he was stronger. Arcee was a troubleshooter and he knew her reputation.
“This is amazing,” she now said.
He nodded. No aggression, just beauty.
It was mesmerizing.
His scanners were able to pick up the energy signature and readings easily. Unlike the hybrid himself it was possible to scan his output. Right now Will was really pouring a lot of his energy into the bubbles he was forming and Scavenger wondered when he would lose control.
He didn’t.
He let the bubbles expand until they burst into tendrils of light that were several times the size of the human in his organic form. The tendrils twisted and snapped around, then seemed to calm down and swirled into one thick string, then knotted together and shrank back down.
Scavenger would have gaped if he hadn’t had more control of himself.
And then everything turned into a shower of tiny sparkles that fizzed through the air and sent up tiny puffs of dusts as they hit the ground.
Now Scavenger did gape.
Arcee made a surprised noise, optics flaring. The readings were off the scale for a moment, then leveled.
Lennox turned his head and Scavenger was looking into two very bright blue eyes that had nothing human to them. Only slowly the blue receded, though the pinprick of blue remained.
“Checking in on me?” Will asked with amusement apparent in his voice.
“Yes. This was impressive, Will.”
Lennox shrugged. “Still getting the hang of it. Should I ever need a second job, I could work as a fireworks display.”
Scavenger chuckled. “Probably.”
Will wriggled the fingers of his right hand and more energy sparks danced like little fireflies around it. They disappeared without a popping sound, but Scavenger was able to detect a sizzle.
“You have a growing control over this,” he told the hybrid.
“It need to. I keep growing into more and I can’t just stop training.”
The Constructicon nodded. “Would you mind if I recorded this?”
“For Ratchet?” was the wry reply.
Scavenger chuckled. “Ratchet isn’t the sole instigator of all things medical. You fascinate us, too.”
“I’m so glad I do,” Will muttered darkly.
“Will, you are special,” Scavenger told him seriously. “What you are is something no one has ever encountered before. You said yourself that you keep growing into things. Scans of what we are able to truly scan, recordings and analyses, might help you understand more.”
Lennox regarded him long and hard, the blue growing brighter again in his eyes. Finally his shoulders slumped a little and he let tendrils of silver flicker over his fingers as he flexed them.
“Okay. Scan if you want.”
“Thank you,” Scavenger said seriously.
And he started recording and scanning.
Arcee stayed for the whole time, as fascinated as the engineer. She let one of the tendrils touch her and a soft whirr of delight escaped her as the energy did nothing more than tickle her sensors. It was like a sheathed sword, dangerous but controlled, and she knew it.
As did Will.
As did Scavenger.
“You are an amazing being, Will Lennox,” the troubleshooter said when Lennox pulled back the energy tendrils.
He shrugged. “Thanks, I think.”
Arcee smiled. “You’ll grow with every day. Just keep at it.”
“I will.”
“And if you want to try out some new moves, you know where to find me,” she added with amusement in her voice.
Lennox laughed. “I’ll call, Arcee, should I feel the need for an ass-kicking.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She transformed after saying good-bye and headed back to the main base.
*
Will didn’t return to base when night fell. He had set up camp with the intent of at least four days to himself and Scavenger had respected that. The Constructicon had driven back to the others not long after Lennox had ignited a camp fire and warmed up one of the MREs.
The night based uneventfully and Lennox was awake throughout most of the dark hours. He wasn’t tired, despite the use of so much energy, and it was a good sign. His body was learning to work with what was available without exhausting him. He went through a round of shape-shifting, all stages he was able to, and was surprised to notice that he had excess energy in protoform shape. It was as if he had charged up instead of depleting.
Cool.
He went through moves Jazz had shown him, deploying the weapon in his arm. Actually, it shaped out of his forearm upper plating and didn’t pop out of any hidden compartment. He knew more was possible if he could just find the triggers for it. So far, no luck.
What he had managed was to shape razor-sharp armor over his fingers that resembled claws and talons. It was a small success and Long Haul could attest to the armor-cutting abilities of the claws. He had dissected the Constructicons chest armor, digging deep into the metal.
As dawn approached, Will packed up his things for the day, zipped the tent shut and went for a brief run. When he came back an hour later, Lennox had breakfast, then prepared for the new day.
Two more days alone, all by himself and the occasional visitor from the Constructicon base, and he would fine-tune his abilities.
Energy licked over his hands like cool fire. Silvery-white with a glacier blue core, the fire turned into tendrils of light, twisting over the rune-covered fingers.
Will smiled a little to himself, feeling the thrum of the energy inside him. Bubbles rose to hover over his hand and let them rise further until they popped out of existence in a tiny shower of sparkly light.
It was Long Haul who came for a brief stopover throughout the day.
By the end of his fourth day, Will felt he had gotten a lot better at controlling the energy, reabsorbing it almost painlessly even in human form. At least as long as he didn’t charge the energy bubbles at battle-strength. That took his protoform to painlessly reabsorb it.
Ironhide was waiting for him at the end of the hiking trail that led from the camp site out of the mountains. Lennox smiled and tossed his gear into the Topkick’s back, then climbed in.
“Had fun?” Ironhide teased as they bounced over the potholed road back to the Constructicon base.
“Tons.”
“What did I miss?”
“Fireworks.”
Ironhide chuckled. “Who did you take out?”
“Not even a rock. A few kernels of sand suffered, but the landscape wasn’t rearranged.”
“Control?”
“What I trained I had control over.”
Ironhide bounced over a small hill, then went down the other side, tilting sharply once or twice. Lennox didn’t worry. Ironhide had never gotten stuck or turned over.
“Good,” the mech rumbled. “Where to?”
“First the base. I want to drop my stuff off. Then: home. I think I had enough alone time.”
It was a good plan and one Ironhide agreed completely.