Keeper - Movieverse fic, chapter 2
Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.
Fic rating: T, violence
Summary: Dark fic, 07Movieverse, not 09 compliant, no longer a oneshot. Starscream takes a small Decepticon, barely hatched, under his wing. How unfortunate…
Author note: 1) After some consideration, I lowered the rating of this fic to "T." It didn't seem...violent enough for M, and I didn't want to be misleading. But if anyone feels otherwise, feel free to say so! And 2) Yep, after quite a while, I finally picked up this ugly bunny again...Guess I didn't like leaving "Descent" writhing in pain after all. Instead, I'm going to make him suffer a bit more before getting someone to come and try to save his sorry aft. :( I'm too soft on these characters.
Hope you enjoy!
Keeper
2
Red optics flickered as the one who was called Descent groaned, and his internal programs hummed, trying to catalogue the damage and trying to calculate how much time had passed since he'd slipped into recharge. He got up a little unsteadily from the berth, and ended up falling on hands and knees on the floor. He winced, and then shook his head, and stood up, staggering a bit...and then he doubled over, his hands going around his throat.
"Blood," he murmured dazedly.
He appeared to want to cough, or retch, but of course that was out of the question. He steadied himself, straightened up, and frantically looked around. He made his way to one wall of the room, hands resting against the layer of metal covering the window. "Damn it," he said. "Still closed." His gaze lingered almost fearfully at the door to the left, as though expecting Starscream to open it any moment, but he relaxed when he saw the other door.
He walked up to the door, always keeping the door to the left at the edge of his viewing screens, and his spark giving a funny pulse. It would almost always be locked from the outside, but sometimes-
And then it slid to the side.
His optics widened in shock. "No way," he said. "I am not this lucky." He had good reason to believe that. But, not one to let a rare opportunity go to waste, he went out the door, and into the halls, sticking to the shadows.
It was strangely empty. He strained to hear the members of the alpha trine. "Thundercracker," he murmured, coming upon that familiar frequency. "There's the least of the three evils accounted for. But where's the other two?"
A sound at the other end of the hall interrupted his searching. It wasn't Starscream or Skywarp, he knew that. Silently, he went to the source of the sound, and found two seekers whose names he didn't know and would likely never know talking to one another.
"-wants us on patrol."
"Patrol what? The only thing here is dirt and rock. Why in the great fires of the Pit did we come here anyway?"
"Lord Starscream wanted to check out this planet. Something about an emergency beacon. Whatever. Who cares what we're doing here? Do you really want to pass up a chance to go outside? Do you know how long we've been cooped up on this stupid ship?"
They started heading out, still talking to one another.
They had landed somewhere. They had actually stopped their aimless wandering of space and had landed somewhere.
A rare smile graced his features. Keeping silent, and keeping to the shadows, he followed the two outside...
And was greeted with an alien, rust-red planet, underneath a green sky. Feelings of confusion, disappointment, and something like recognition each passed quickly.
He slipped away from the two oblivious seekers, and transformed, landing briefly on all fours before stumbling. He got up, shook off the sand, stretched, and walked around slowly in a circle, occasionally tripping over his feet but getting back up again.
He became sure of his steps quickly, once the feel of his alt-form once again became familiar to him. "Just like old times," he said, jumping lightly and being very pleased with himself when he landed properly.
Then he ran on all fours across the terrain, leaping over the scars of the planet, becoming a blur against the red sands, grey-silver lines held against darker metal glinting in the moonlight. He ran as fast as he was able, away from the ship. It was colder here than he was used to, but the cold didn't bother him anymore. The rush of this planet's air against his frame felt pleasant, and the feeling of earth, for lack of better term, against his feet was refreshing after who knew how long of being trapped on that ship.
The seeker ship was soon a tiny dot in the distance. He kept running, not knowing how far he'd be able to get before someone realized that he was gone. He enjoyed his momentary freedom so much that it was easy for him to forget that he'd once cursed this second form. He just wanted to run, and to keep on running...
But then he had to stop suddenly, barely catching himself in time, as the ground underneath gave way to...well, to nothing.
Backing away from the edge, he shifted back into his more familiar bipedal form, and overlooked the edge of the crater. "That would have been a nasty fall," he muttered. "Okay, class," he continued mockingly. "What have we learned today? Earth's gravity, more or less, still applies here. Okay, what can we take from that? That we're definitely not on Mars. So where the hell are we? We can't be that far away, can we?"
He sighed, and looked upward. His programs had woken him automatically, so it must have been night-time. Nocturnal life had been strange to get used to, but you couldn't change what you were. He couldn't remember the last time he even caught a glimpse of a planet up-close, so he'd have to give this place a benefit of the doubt. He couldn't see any sun, though logic dictated that there must have been one around. The only light that illuminated the red sands came from the stars and the three moons in the sky, and, looking past those, he saw it. It was so small, and so indistinguishable from the other lights surrounding it that he couldn't say how he could tell, but he knew that that tiny light was that ever-faithful blue planet. "I'm coming back," he murmured. "So don't think I'm dead, 'kay?" He reached up tentatively, as though if he reached far enough, he could actually touch it.
Then the scream of a jet engine tore through the air, the alien sky experiencing thunder without lightning. He flinched at the sound. He tore his gaze from the skies and whirled around, facing the direction of his prison. "Too late to run," he said, seeing the dark shape in the distance coming closer at an alarming rate. Despite his words, his programs were running frantically, his scans were looking for a place to hide, and his processor was already mid-way through a transformation command. He and his body relaxed marginally when he saw which seeker it was.
The being was slightly smaller than Starscream, and his frame, silver tinged with blue, glinted slightly in the moonlight. Thundercracker transformed into bipedal mode in mid-air, the engines running silently at his back and at his legs keeping him aloft. "Descent," he said, looking down at him tiredly. "You know, I told Starscream that you'd behave while he was gone. I told him you'd behave yourself enough to be trusted with unlocked doors. Do you really want me to have to tell him otherwise?"
He was momentarily shocked. "So that's why..." he said quietly. Then he shrugged, glaring at the seeker. "That isn't my name," he replied loudly. His voice seemed small, though, as he stood before this giant, in the vast emptiness of this alien planet. He then turned his back, and started to walk away, even though both of them knew that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Thundercracker effortlessly flew in front of him, hovering just a metre above the ground, forcing him to stop.
"Be careful, Descent," Thundercracker said, his head tilted to one side. "There are those who aren't as nice as I am. If you talked to Starscream like that, he'd pound you to the ground and rip out your vocal processors."
The youngling merely glared at him again, sidestepped and kept walking. Thundercracker hovered higher in the air, did a lazy back flip above the crater, and then continued to hover slowly, keeping in pace with the smaller being.
"You know what the problem is?" he said conversationally. "The problem is that you're spoiled."
"What?" he demanded, not stopping in his futile trek.
"You heard me. You're the first young one we've had in a long time, so everyone would have doted on you anyway. But when Starscream adopted you, you were given so high a rank that you don't know what it's like, being a seeker, having to climb up and earn your place." There was nothing cruel or mean-spirited in Thundercracker's voice; he said these things like he was merely pointing out simple facts of life.
"It's not like I asked him to," his charge hissed. "I was born 'less than a spark-less drone,' as he put it, and I would have been happy to live and die that way."
"Sure you would have," Thundercracker said, hovering in a circle around his charge, looking at him with a critical optic. "I don't believe you. No one could be happy being one of those things; the body that you have now is an improvement. Not that great of a step up, but still good."
"And now you want to rip me apart and stitch me back together, is that it?"
"Now, don't be like that," Thundercracker said. "You know that the change won't happen without your consent-" He was answered with a small, disbelieving noise, but Thundercracker continued regardless. "And I don't see what your problem is, anyway. A rotorcraft form isn't as good as a seeker frame, but you're too small for anything else, so unless you never want to fly and want to be stuck on the ground and dirt for the rest of your life-"
The smaller being abruptly stopped in his tracks, and Thundercracker had to double back, and once again hovered in front of him.
He was glaring up at him yet again, and Thundercracker's shoulders slumped. This time, he powered down his engines and actually did land, wincing a bit at the alien feeling of dirt hitting his feet. He bent down, not quite at optic-level, and said, "You can't tell me that you actually like being a ground-pounder."
"So what if I do?"
"You younglings," he said, in the most soothing voice he could pull off. "You have such strange ideas. Your form now is far inferior to what you are being offered. Upgrading yourself would be what is best."
"I didn't ask for 'what's best,'" the youngling snapped, his optics bright. Thundercracker's optics shuttered in surprise. "I was happy being the person I was. I didn't ask to be this way! I didn't ask for any of this! When this first happened, the only thing I got to keep was my name; the only thing I got to choose was this form. Starscream already took away one, and I'm not letting him take the other. So you can take your 'upgrades' and stuff them up your-"
"Yes, you definitely have to watch what you say," Thundercracker said, sighing. "One of these days Starscream'll get angry enough to rip out your vocalizers."
The youngling shook his head. "There's just no use, is there?" he asked, now quiet. "Because no matter what I say, or what I believe, it won't make a difference."
There was a long stretch of silence, broken when Thundercracker said, "We'll talk about this another time. You've had your fun. Now let's go home, hm? If we get back quickly enough, Starscream won't have to know you've ever been gone." He reached out a hand. The smaller being looked at the offered claws, and backed away almost immediately. Thundercracker straightened, knowing very well what was going to happen next.
He wouldn't be able to escape. The terrain was completely open. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and even on all fours and at full speed, he wouldn't be able to outpace Thundercracker.
He bolted, transforming even as he ran.
Thundercracker took to the air, hovering in place for a moment, just looking as the small form bounded across the red sands. "I'm too soft on him," he muttered to himself. "Okay, kid. Five, four, three, two, one. Time's up."
Then he transformed, and went after him.
Fic rating: T, violence
Summary: Dark fic, 07Movieverse, not 09 compliant, no longer a oneshot. Starscream takes a small Decepticon, barely hatched, under his wing. How unfortunate…
Author note: 1) After some consideration, I lowered the rating of this fic to "T." It didn't seem...violent enough for M, and I didn't want to be misleading. But if anyone feels otherwise, feel free to say so! And 2) Yep, after quite a while, I finally picked up this ugly bunny again...Guess I didn't like leaving "Descent" writhing in pain after all. Instead, I'm going to make him suffer a bit more before getting someone to come and try to save his sorry aft. :( I'm too soft on these characters.
Hope you enjoy!
Keeper
2
Red optics flickered as the one who was called Descent groaned, and his internal programs hummed, trying to catalogue the damage and trying to calculate how much time had passed since he'd slipped into recharge. He got up a little unsteadily from the berth, and ended up falling on hands and knees on the floor. He winced, and then shook his head, and stood up, staggering a bit...and then he doubled over, his hands going around his throat.
"Blood," he murmured dazedly.
He appeared to want to cough, or retch, but of course that was out of the question. He steadied himself, straightened up, and frantically looked around. He made his way to one wall of the room, hands resting against the layer of metal covering the window. "Damn it," he said. "Still closed." His gaze lingered almost fearfully at the door to the left, as though expecting Starscream to open it any moment, but he relaxed when he saw the other door.
He walked up to the door, always keeping the door to the left at the edge of his viewing screens, and his spark giving a funny pulse. It would almost always be locked from the outside, but sometimes-
And then it slid to the side.
His optics widened in shock. "No way," he said. "I am not this lucky." He had good reason to believe that. But, not one to let a rare opportunity go to waste, he went out the door, and into the halls, sticking to the shadows.
It was strangely empty. He strained to hear the members of the alpha trine. "Thundercracker," he murmured, coming upon that familiar frequency. "There's the least of the three evils accounted for. But where's the other two?"
A sound at the other end of the hall interrupted his searching. It wasn't Starscream or Skywarp, he knew that. Silently, he went to the source of the sound, and found two seekers whose names he didn't know and would likely never know talking to one another.
"-wants us on patrol."
"Patrol what? The only thing here is dirt and rock. Why in the great fires of the Pit did we come here anyway?"
"Lord Starscream wanted to check out this planet. Something about an emergency beacon. Whatever. Who cares what we're doing here? Do you really want to pass up a chance to go outside? Do you know how long we've been cooped up on this stupid ship?"
They started heading out, still talking to one another.
They had landed somewhere. They had actually stopped their aimless wandering of space and had landed somewhere.
A rare smile graced his features. Keeping silent, and keeping to the shadows, he followed the two outside...
And was greeted with an alien, rust-red planet, underneath a green sky. Feelings of confusion, disappointment, and something like recognition each passed quickly.
He slipped away from the two oblivious seekers, and transformed, landing briefly on all fours before stumbling. He got up, shook off the sand, stretched, and walked around slowly in a circle, occasionally tripping over his feet but getting back up again.
He became sure of his steps quickly, once the feel of his alt-form once again became familiar to him. "Just like old times," he said, jumping lightly and being very pleased with himself when he landed properly.
Then he ran on all fours across the terrain, leaping over the scars of the planet, becoming a blur against the red sands, grey-silver lines held against darker metal glinting in the moonlight. He ran as fast as he was able, away from the ship. It was colder here than he was used to, but the cold didn't bother him anymore. The rush of this planet's air against his frame felt pleasant, and the feeling of earth, for lack of better term, against his feet was refreshing after who knew how long of being trapped on that ship.
The seeker ship was soon a tiny dot in the distance. He kept running, not knowing how far he'd be able to get before someone realized that he was gone. He enjoyed his momentary freedom so much that it was easy for him to forget that he'd once cursed this second form. He just wanted to run, and to keep on running...
But then he had to stop suddenly, barely catching himself in time, as the ground underneath gave way to...well, to nothing.
Backing away from the edge, he shifted back into his more familiar bipedal form, and overlooked the edge of the crater. "That would have been a nasty fall," he muttered. "Okay, class," he continued mockingly. "What have we learned today? Earth's gravity, more or less, still applies here. Okay, what can we take from that? That we're definitely not on Mars. So where the hell are we? We can't be that far away, can we?"
He sighed, and looked upward. His programs had woken him automatically, so it must have been night-time. Nocturnal life had been strange to get used to, but you couldn't change what you were. He couldn't remember the last time he even caught a glimpse of a planet up-close, so he'd have to give this place a benefit of the doubt. He couldn't see any sun, though logic dictated that there must have been one around. The only light that illuminated the red sands came from the stars and the three moons in the sky, and, looking past those, he saw it. It was so small, and so indistinguishable from the other lights surrounding it that he couldn't say how he could tell, but he knew that that tiny light was that ever-faithful blue planet. "I'm coming back," he murmured. "So don't think I'm dead, 'kay?" He reached up tentatively, as though if he reached far enough, he could actually touch it.
Then the scream of a jet engine tore through the air, the alien sky experiencing thunder without lightning. He flinched at the sound. He tore his gaze from the skies and whirled around, facing the direction of his prison. "Too late to run," he said, seeing the dark shape in the distance coming closer at an alarming rate. Despite his words, his programs were running frantically, his scans were looking for a place to hide, and his processor was already mid-way through a transformation command. He and his body relaxed marginally when he saw which seeker it was.
The being was slightly smaller than Starscream, and his frame, silver tinged with blue, glinted slightly in the moonlight. Thundercracker transformed into bipedal mode in mid-air, the engines running silently at his back and at his legs keeping him aloft. "Descent," he said, looking down at him tiredly. "You know, I told Starscream that you'd behave while he was gone. I told him you'd behave yourself enough to be trusted with unlocked doors. Do you really want me to have to tell him otherwise?"
He was momentarily shocked. "So that's why..." he said quietly. Then he shrugged, glaring at the seeker. "That isn't my name," he replied loudly. His voice seemed small, though, as he stood before this giant, in the vast emptiness of this alien planet. He then turned his back, and started to walk away, even though both of them knew that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Thundercracker effortlessly flew in front of him, hovering just a metre above the ground, forcing him to stop.
"Be careful, Descent," Thundercracker said, his head tilted to one side. "There are those who aren't as nice as I am. If you talked to Starscream like that, he'd pound you to the ground and rip out your vocal processors."
The youngling merely glared at him again, sidestepped and kept walking. Thundercracker hovered higher in the air, did a lazy back flip above the crater, and then continued to hover slowly, keeping in pace with the smaller being.
"You know what the problem is?" he said conversationally. "The problem is that you're spoiled."
"What?" he demanded, not stopping in his futile trek.
"You heard me. You're the first young one we've had in a long time, so everyone would have doted on you anyway. But when Starscream adopted you, you were given so high a rank that you don't know what it's like, being a seeker, having to climb up and earn your place." There was nothing cruel or mean-spirited in Thundercracker's voice; he said these things like he was merely pointing out simple facts of life.
"It's not like I asked him to," his charge hissed. "I was born 'less than a spark-less drone,' as he put it, and I would have been happy to live and die that way."
"Sure you would have," Thundercracker said, hovering in a circle around his charge, looking at him with a critical optic. "I don't believe you. No one could be happy being one of those things; the body that you have now is an improvement. Not that great of a step up, but still good."
"And now you want to rip me apart and stitch me back together, is that it?"
"Now, don't be like that," Thundercracker said. "You know that the change won't happen without your consent-" He was answered with a small, disbelieving noise, but Thundercracker continued regardless. "And I don't see what your problem is, anyway. A rotorcraft form isn't as good as a seeker frame, but you're too small for anything else, so unless you never want to fly and want to be stuck on the ground and dirt for the rest of your life-"
The smaller being abruptly stopped in his tracks, and Thundercracker had to double back, and once again hovered in front of him.
He was glaring up at him yet again, and Thundercracker's shoulders slumped. This time, he powered down his engines and actually did land, wincing a bit at the alien feeling of dirt hitting his feet. He bent down, not quite at optic-level, and said, "You can't tell me that you actually like being a ground-pounder."
"So what if I do?"
"You younglings," he said, in the most soothing voice he could pull off. "You have such strange ideas. Your form now is far inferior to what you are being offered. Upgrading yourself would be what is best."
"I didn't ask for 'what's best,'" the youngling snapped, his optics bright. Thundercracker's optics shuttered in surprise. "I was happy being the person I was. I didn't ask to be this way! I didn't ask for any of this! When this first happened, the only thing I got to keep was my name; the only thing I got to choose was this form. Starscream already took away one, and I'm not letting him take the other. So you can take your 'upgrades' and stuff them up your-"
"Yes, you definitely have to watch what you say," Thundercracker said, sighing. "One of these days Starscream'll get angry enough to rip out your vocalizers."
The youngling shook his head. "There's just no use, is there?" he asked, now quiet. "Because no matter what I say, or what I believe, it won't make a difference."
There was a long stretch of silence, broken when Thundercracker said, "We'll talk about this another time. You've had your fun. Now let's go home, hm? If we get back quickly enough, Starscream won't have to know you've ever been gone." He reached out a hand. The smaller being looked at the offered claws, and backed away almost immediately. Thundercracker straightened, knowing very well what was going to happen next.
He wouldn't be able to escape. The terrain was completely open. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and even on all fours and at full speed, he wouldn't be able to outpace Thundercracker.
He bolted, transforming even as he ran.
Thundercracker took to the air, hovering in place for a moment, just looking as the small form bounded across the red sands. "I'm too soft on him," he muttered to himself. "Okay, kid. Five, four, three, two, one. Time's up."
Then he transformed, and went after him.