[IDW] A Perfect Storm 12/16
Jun. 24th, 2019 06:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22Title: A Perfect Storm
Universe: TF G1/IDW
Characters: Blurr, Jazz, Bluestreak, Ricochet, Prowl, Rodimus, Drift, Ratchet
Pairings: Blurr/Jazz, Blurr/Ricochet, Blurr/Ricochet/Jazz, Ricochet/Jazz, Bluestreak/Jazz, Drift/Ratchet,
Rating: M
Enticements: Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Twincest, Mechpreg, Canon Typical Violence
Description: Blurr happens to enjoy life on post-war Cybertron, but when a serial murderer starts targeting former Wreckers, Blurr ends up saddled with a bodyguard who rubs him in all the wrong ways. Or right ways, if you were to ask Ricochet. Let the battle begin.
Commission for MamaBlurr.
Chapter Twelve
“That’s not funny!” Ricochet snarled as he covered Blurr’s frame with his own, the stench of discharged plasma filling the hallway. They had the cover of the wall, but he doubted that would last for long.
Blurr groaned and grabbed his shoulder, where energon trickled out between his fingers, his arm hanging limp at his side. Dislocated, Ricochet guessed. Or worse. The shot might have nicked a vent, giving the way Blurr’s vents audibly gurgled.
Frag, frag, frag.
“You’re in the wrong line of work, my friend!” A voice shouted from the depths of Blurr’s quarters, the accent thick, like a mech from the southern hemisphere.
Ricochet didn’t trust it for a second. Whipstrike was Special Ops. He could sound like whatever he wanted to sound like.
“I ain’t gettin’ paid for this!” Ricochet hollered back, because if Whipstrike was going to taunt, Ricochet was going to play his game. He could be more annoying. It was a natural talent.
He turned his gaze down to Blurr, who was still clutching his shoulder. “You all right, Zippy?”
“Hate that fragging nickname,” Blurr muttered, and he swayed a little where he stood, energon dripping freely down his arm to splatter the floor. He practically had no armor, the idiot.
Ricochet swallowed down a spike of worry. Now wasn’t the time. “Not when I say it,” he purred, trying to distract.
He tapped his comm, speed-dialing Jazz for some backup because he could really use it right now. He got nothing but static. No, scratch that. He didn’t even get static. He got dead air, which meant his comms were hitting a solid wall of non-communication.
“Damn it,” Ricochet snarled, as Blurr echoed him, hissing a curse as well. “He’s got a comms block up.”
“Yeah. I noticed.” Blurr leaned back against the wall, his optics darkening with a slow anger. “Must’ve activated it when I opened the door.” He met Ricochet’s gaze. “What’s the plan?”
“We make for the lift and get the frag out of here.” Ricochet glanced over his shoulder. It was a relatively straight shot to the lift, but there would be a delay waiting for it. No rampwells either. Who designed a high-rise without rampwells?
"Help isn't coming, Blurr! You might as well stand and fight!" Whipstrike hollered, affecting another accent as blasterfire streaked through the doorway, whizzing past Ricochet and Blurr's hiding spot to splatter against the far wall, singeing an ugly wall print.
"What the frag is he aiming at?"
"He's not." Ricochet batted Blurr's hand away, and tried to get a good look at his shoulder.
Torn, scorched armor peeled away from the wound and a mixture of fluids pumped sluggishly from ripped lines -- hydraulic fluid and energon both. Frag, frag, frag. Ricochet fruitlessly patted down his subspace, but he'd left his kit in the safehouse. He didn't have his emergency sealant.
"Hiding out there won't save you!"
Why the frag would he--
"Why wouldn't it?" Blurr asked, distant to Ricochet's senses as he snapped his head up and glanced around.
He spied the device as bright red lights flashed rapidly at him. No time to think, just react.
Ricochet grabbed Blurr and shoved him to the floor, throwing himself over Blurr just as the bomb exploded above them, sending shards of metal and debris raining down on their frames. A billow of scorching heat singed Ricochet's aft, peeling some of his paint away, and he hissed as his dermal net shouted pain until he overrode the sensors and dampened them.
Frag but he hated fighting spec ops mechs. Especially ones who've had ample time to prepare and danced on the wrong side of crazy.
"He's rigged the damn hallway with explosives," Ricochet snarled as he pumped out a scan and registered more devices, popping up around them in all directions, blocking off every route.
He pulled Blurr to his feet, relieved the Racer wasn't protesting, and shielded Blurr with his frame. He shoved Blurr ahead of him, toward the lift, toward the exit, toward something that wasn't Blurr's own apartment.
Laughter pealed out of Blurr's habsuite as another device exploded in front of them. Blurr tumbled backward, red-orange flames billowing in their direction. Ricochet got an armful of stumbling Racer, the air reeking of incendiaries and scorched metal.
Ricochet hooked an arm around Blurr's abdomen and dragged him to the nearest doorway, smoke filling the air and choking his vents. He slammed them shut as one of the apartments came into view, the locking panel glowing a baleful orange at him. Pfft. Locks.
He slammed an elbow into the access, shattering the protective panel and crumpling it inward. It gave an angry blat at him, but the door didn't immediately slide open. What the frag?
"Security measure," Blurr said, his voice thick with static. He coughed and leaned into Ricochet, one hand touching his forehead where the blast had left him streaked with soot. "Tampering with it doesn't make it short out."
"Of course. Because nothing's going to be easy today, is it?" Ricochet asked.
He shoved Blurr up against the door, shielding the Racer with his frame, and frantically scanned the smoke-clogged hallway for another option. Not that there was one. He knew it. He'd cased this entire building when he'd taken the job. This floor had three apartments, a lift, and a row of windows.
They were three stories up. They couldn't go out the fragging windows. Worse still that they were transteel and not a more easily shattered material.
Blurr shakily reached for a thigh compartment and pulled out a blaster. Ricochet hadn't known he walked around armed. He wasn't supposed to. There was technically a 'no-weapons' agreement across the board.
"Stop trying to kill me!" Blurr hollered as he readied his weapon, though visibly trembling.
Ricochet doubted it had anything to do with fear, given the anger and battle-lust pouring into Blurr's field. And something else, something buried deep beneath the layers. It had the flavor of fear, but not quite.
"It's not my fault!" Blurr added, his shout echoing in the eerie silence of the hall.
Despite the laserfire, the explosions, there was no other noise. The ambient music was gone. There was no shouting from the other rooms. No alarms screamed. It was like they were in their own bubble of madness.
Ricochet tapped Blurr's arm and gestured for him to crouch. They were exposed, here against the door. They needed to find cover somewhere, or at least get low. Make themselves smaller targets. Ricochet triggered his own special ops protocols, and his biolights all went dim or out, making him little more than shadow. Too bad Blurr glowed like a damned blue beacon. Why were Racers so pretty?
"Nothing is ever anyone's fault." The voice floated out of Blurr's apartment, dark and dead. Gone were the pretend accents. Now he had none. No inflection, no accent, nothing. "I'm re-establishing the balance of the universe."
Fantastic. Trained and the wrong side of crazy. The only thing worse was zealotry.
"We ain't reasonin' with this one," Ricochet muttered.
He glanced around, clocking the incendiary devices. At least a half dozen, according to his sensors. Rigged to blow by timed proximity or remote trigger, he'd guess. Fire crackled nearby -- probably the stupid decorative drapes were aflame. He hoped there wasn't anyone in the other apartments. Or worse, that Whipstrike hadn't killed them already.
Blurr crouched, one hand on his blaster, arm still dangling loose and freely leaking. "I'm fast. I can run in there and take him down."
Ricochet wrapped his hand around Blurr's upper arm, squeezing tight. "Like frag you are," he hissed. "I told Jazz I'd keep ya alive, and the last thing I'm going to do is lie to him." He tightened his grip, until the metal creaked and threatened to dent. Damn fragile Racers.
Blurr glared at him. "I wasn't asking permission."
"Stop hiding, Blurr! You're a Wrecker, aren't you?" The shout sounded closer.
A rapid beeping preceded the explosion of another one of the devices, but luckily on the other side of the hall from them. Ricochet ducked and pulled Blurr down further anyway, shielding them from debris. Smoke, thick and black, filled the hall.
Blurr coughed, his vents sputtering. He wasn't made for war. He’d had no business being a Wrecker. How had he survived?
"I'm the bodyguard here," Ricochet hissed and released Blurr, pulling out his own blaster in the same motion. If Blurr was going to insist on being reckless, then Ricochet would just have to beat him to it.
He darted away from Blurr, across the open space of the hallway, firing blindly into the apartment. Something shattered. Low whumps indicated blastershot contact. Whether or not they landed on Whipstrike, he couldn't be sure.
Ricochet tucked and rolled, pressing his back against the frame beside Blurr's door, opposite where he'd covered Blurr earlier. He crouched, keeping low, painfully aware of the explosive above his head.
A literal blur of blue darted past him, into the open doorway. That idiot!
Ricochet snarled and threw himself after Blurr, giving chase, sensors exploding into the apartment as he tapped into his mental layout and hoped Whipstrike hadn't taken the time to rearrange the furniture.
"Find cover!" Ricochet shouted as he threw himself behind the low frontroom table. He flipped it up, hiding behind it.
Boom! Orange-red light flashed through the room, and a waft of heat flooded over the top of Ricochet's head.
Blurr's startled cry of pain sent a lurch of anxiety through Ricochet's spark. He peered around the edge.
His engine growled as he caught sight of Blurr clattering to the floor, rolling to a stop at the feet of a mech a bit smaller than Ricochet himself, his gray-black armor as unlit as Ricochet's and his face hidden behind mask and visor both. He looked nothing like either of the two pictures Jazz had transmitted to him, but he had to be Whipstrike.
He had to be, because he’d crouched near Blurr and pressed his blaster to Blurr’s forehead, fingers curled tight around the trigger.
Ricochet tensed to leap out.
"Don't!" Blurr yelped, his optics flashing bright and terrified, his vocals striped with static. "I'm sparked!"
Ricochet froze.
Whipstrike did, too. His blaster didn't move, his finger poised on the trigger, but he didn't pull. "You're lying," he said, low and raspy. His hand trembled.
"You're what?" Ricochet demanded, the words echoing around his head, enough he thought he should reboot his audials because surely he didn't hear what he thought he just heard. Surely, it was all a ruse to get Whipstrike to pause. It must be a distraction.
Blurr's expression never wavered, and the fear Ricochet had tasted earlier, the not-quite fear, he recognized it now. It wasn’t a fear for oneself, it was fear for another person.
"I'm not lying," Blurr said, his entire frame frozen, his vents whining. "I'm sparked. And if you're talking about balancing the universe, how does that equation add up if you kill me and an innocent sparkling?"
"There's no such thing as innocence," Whipstrike spat, but he wavered. He didn't pull the trigger. He stared and stared at Blurr.
Kind of like the way Ricochet was now. It was too far to read Blurr's field, but his tone bled sincerity.
"What do you mean you're sparked?" he demanded, his processor whirling from the absurdity of the situation. This was hardly the time. He needed to focus, but what if Blurr was telling the truth? What if he was sparked? What if it was his?
"Innocence exists for someone who’s never seen a sunrise, I think," Blurr replied, and he slicked his lips out of nervousness. It had to be. His optics darted in Ricochet's direction -- no, toward where he'd dropped his blaster when he hit what must have been a landmine.
It was almost brilliant. It was the perfect tactic when fighting someone with Blurr’s kind of speed. Ricochet hated Whipstrike that much more.
Whipstrike growled. The barrel of the blaster pressed harder against Blurr's head. One shot. Processor. It wasn't a killing blow. Not entirely. With a spark, Blurr could be rebuilt, reborn, with most of his memory gone of course. But the sparkling wouldn't survive. Not without a processor to direct the frame. Besides, it didn't matter. Whipstrike's next shot would undoubtedly take Blurr's spark.
Ricochet wasn't fast enough.
But.
But Whipstrike was focused on Blurr. He wasn't looking at anything else. He wasn't paying attention.
Ricochet eased out from behind the table and crept closer to them, there on the other side of the room, rucked up against the hallway leading toward the main door. The berthroom was just to Whipstrike's right, though the door was fragging closed.
He could be a distraction. They outnumbered Whipstrike. They were both trained mechs.
"Look, I'm sorry you were abandoned and left to die," Blurr started to say, and his words came out fast, clipped, starting to slur together. "War sucks. None of us liked it. A lot of good mechs died, and a lot of bad mechs lived, and that's just the unfairness of it all. Killing me, killing my friends, that's not going to change the past."
Whipstrike's visor flashed. "I don't care about fixing the past," he said. "It's about what fair!" The last was a snarl, and his head snapped up, his gaze unerringly finding Ricochet as though he'd spotted the movement in his periphery.
Damn it.
"Don't move!" Whipstrike snapped.
Distraction. He needed a--
Ricochet's lip threatened to curl into a smirk. He ignored Whipstrike and looked at Blurr. If the trick to keeping Whipstrike engaged was to question his motives, then Ricochet would do just that.
"How are you sparked?" he asked.
He gripped his blaster in both hands, and he'd had it trained on Whipstrike from the moment he stood, but he pretended it wasn't important. Not compared to this question.
"This isn't the time!" Blurr hissed, but his gaze darted to his blaster again, and to the fact Whipstrike had lifted the barrel of the gun away from Blurr's head by a few inches.
"I will shoot him," Whipstrike threatened, but the resolve in his tone seemed to have wavered. His gaze kept shifting to Ricochet, perhaps assessing him as the bigger threat.
Good.
Ricochet pretended not to hear Whipstrike. "Is it mine?" he asked, playing his part, amping up the distraction. He only needed a moment.
“It doesn’t matter!” Blurr snapped, and he jerked beneath Whipstrike, maybe intentionally, maybe not.
Whipstrike startled and swung his attention down toward Blurr. Ricochet snapped up his blaster and squeezed off a shot, the rapport of the laserfire echoing through the apartment. But Whipstrike was faster than he thought, twisting back to avoid the shot, his finger twitching to pull on the trigger aimed at Blurr’s head.
Blurr moved, again with that preternatural speed, twisting beneath Whipstrike, enough to throw him off balance. The laserfire streaked past Blurr’s head, missing it by a thin margin, and scorched the floor.
“Frag you both!” Whipstrike snarled as Ricochet leapt across the room, firing again, slamming into Whipstrike’s shoulder this time as Blurr snatched at Whipstrike’s ankle, throwing him off balance.
Whipstrike tumbled to the ground, landing on top of Blurr, and limbs flailed, gray-black and blue intermingling. Curses split the air, the dull thunk of metal impacting metal. Ricochet vaulted the couch, blaster drawn, spark pounding in his chassis.
Blurr hissed in pain as Whipstrike got a good blow against his damaged shoulder. Ricochet skidded into reach just as Blurr landed a solid kick to Whipstrike’s chassis, shoving the mech backward into the wall with a harsh crack. Static fritzed through Whipstrike’s visor, energon snaking out over his chassis from the blastershot he’d taken earlier.
There were a lot of things Ricochet could do. He could disarm Whipstrike. He could take out a few limbs, prevent him from being a danger in the moment. He could show mercy.
Ricochet had never been a merciful mech.
He lifted his blaster and squeezed the trigger, a burst of laserfire erupting from his blaster and slamming into Whipstrike’s chestplate, on a central seam, right over his spark.
Ricochet squeezed again. And again. Until Whipstrike’s chassis was a smoking ruin, and the light behind his visor flickered to a dull black. He hung there, pinned against the wall, until he gradually slid down it, crumpling into a mass of scorched plating on the floor.
Ricochet stowed his blaster.
“We could have restrained him,” Blurr said, from the floor, his vocals crackling with static.
“Killing him was kinder.” Ricochet moved to Blurr’s side, helping him slide away from Whipstrike’s corpse and the stench of an expired spark. “He’s been harmed by the Autobots enough. He didn’t need to suffer a trial, too.”
"If you say so," Blurr groaned and clutched at his shoulder, his fingers trembling. Whether it was from the adrenaline rush or the energon loss, Ricochet wasn't sure.
But a ping on the edge of Ricochet's awareness informed him that the comms were working now. So he tapped his brother's speed-dial, and Jazz picked up within a half-second.
"What th' frag is goin' on?" Jazz demanded, sounding harried and a touch panicked.
Ricochet laughed, aloud and across the comm. "Found yer killer. He's a scorched mess on Blurr's floor right now. But if you're feeling grateful, you could send a medic."
"A medic?" Jazz echoed, and concern bled into his vocals. "What happened? Are you okay? How's Blurr?"
"We're both alive, Jazzy, geez. What kind of bodyguard do you take me for?" Ricochet lowered himself down with a grunt, cycling several steadying vents. "Just get yer aft over here. You can interrogate us later."
He ended the comm on Jazz's spluttering, and waited to see if Jazz would immediately ping back. He didn't.
Good.
"Jazz is on his way. With help," Ricochet said.
"Better late than never." Blurr slumped in Ricochet's arms, his field shrieking exhaustion and pain. He curled into Ricochet, field seeking comfort as of its own accord. "Frag, this sucks."
"Yeah." Ricochet twisted his jaw, debated for half of a second before he gathered his courage and said, lightly, "So you're sparked?"
He waited for laughter. For a snort of disbelief.
Instead, Blurr squirmed. "Yeah," he said, and shuttered his optics, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. "I was actually telling the truth."
Wow.
"And?" Ricochet prompted, because every time he tried to poke his processor, he got a dial tone. It didn’t compute.
"It could be yours. Could be Jazz's. It's hard to tell with twins. Doesn't matter really." Blurr sounded so casual, so blase. Ricochet wanted to shake him, get him to react.
Anger flashed hot and sharp through Ricochet's lines. He swallowed it down with a restraint he didn't usually bother to use. He hoped it was just the energon loss, and not that Blurr was indifferent to the little one growing in him.
"When were you going to tell me?" he demanded, because he couldn't shake a mech who was sparked and injured.
Blurr lifted his head and glared at him. "Maybe after I figured out whether or not you were the one killing my friends?"
"Seriously?" Ricochet reared back, nearly dropping Blurr. "You actually thought I was responsible?"
"I don't know anything about you!" Blurr sat up and pulled away, though not far, because Whipstrike's corpse smoked nearby, and he had one useless arm and damaged legs. "You're Jazz's twin. So? That doesn't get you an automatic pass. You were also a Decepticon for most of the war. We fragged. That's all."
"I deserved to know," Ricochet said through clenched teeth, his insides twisting with a cavalcade of emotions, some of which he didn’t know he had. "You think I'm that much of an aft that I'd not want to know about my sparkling?"
Two weeks, most of it spent sharing a berth, and they still knew so little about each other.
Blurr struggled to his feet, and Ricochet stood to support him, a bit surprised Blurr didn't jerk away. "Like I said, I barely know you. I wasn't going to take a chance. Get over it."
Ricochet squared his jaw. "Fine," he said, but he caught Blurr’s gaze and he held it, sliding his field against Blurr’s with determination. "Then we'll fix that."
Blurr's optics narrowed. "I'm keeping it." He yanked away, and Ricochet didn't fight him.
"That's not what I meant." Ricochet folded his arms. "You don't know me? We can fix that. I'm not walking away from this."
"Right. Pity dating. No thanks." Blurr turned as if to stomp away, but he wobbled, and Ricochet grabbed him before he could collapse. He didn't need another fall. He was already covered in dents, and the snuffling of his vents was worrisome.
"You got a big fragging problem with assumptions, Zippy." Ricochet squeezed Blurr's arm, alarmed a little by the coolness of his armor. "You think I go around fragging mechs I pity? Because I'm not that kind of mech."
Blurr shook his head and swayed in place, to the point Ricochet had to slide an arm around his waist to keep him upright. He touched his forehead with his uninjured hand, his field slithering around his frame like it was too much trouble to stay close. It was disconcerting.
"I can't think about this right now," Blurr said. His vocals crackled with static, words slurring on the latter. "It's too much."
"Yeah, sure."
He had a point about that.
Ricochet looked over at Windstrike's corpse, turned ashen gray, visor dark, bleeding all over Blurr's apartment floor. In the distance, sirens grew closer and louder.
Ricochet tugged Blurr closer to the couch and sat him on it. He grabbed one of the pillows and held it to the jagged tear in Blurr’s injured shoulder, directing him to hold it in place with the other hand.
"Call me if you need anything," he said, and huffed it out into the hallway, his thoughts churning. He might as well disarm those bombs before emergency services arrived. It would give him something to do beyond thinking about the sparkling growing in Blurr's tank.
Primus.
What a fragging mess.
***
Universe: TF G1/IDW
Characters: Blurr, Jazz, Bluestreak, Ricochet, Prowl, Rodimus, Drift, Ratchet
Pairings: Blurr/Jazz, Blurr/Ricochet, Blurr/Ricochet/Jazz, Ricochet/Jazz, Bluestreak/Jazz, Drift/Ratchet,
Rating: M
Enticements: Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Twincest, Mechpreg, Canon Typical Violence
Description: Blurr happens to enjoy life on post-war Cybertron, but when a serial murderer starts targeting former Wreckers, Blurr ends up saddled with a bodyguard who rubs him in all the wrong ways. Or right ways, if you were to ask Ricochet. Let the battle begin.
Commission for MamaBlurr.
“That’s not funny!” Ricochet snarled as he covered Blurr’s frame with his own, the stench of discharged plasma filling the hallway. They had the cover of the wall, but he doubted that would last for long.
Blurr groaned and grabbed his shoulder, where energon trickled out between his fingers, his arm hanging limp at his side. Dislocated, Ricochet guessed. Or worse. The shot might have nicked a vent, giving the way Blurr’s vents audibly gurgled.
Frag, frag, frag.
“You’re in the wrong line of work, my friend!” A voice shouted from the depths of Blurr’s quarters, the accent thick, like a mech from the southern hemisphere.
Ricochet didn’t trust it for a second. Whipstrike was Special Ops. He could sound like whatever he wanted to sound like.
“I ain’t gettin’ paid for this!” Ricochet hollered back, because if Whipstrike was going to taunt, Ricochet was going to play his game. He could be more annoying. It was a natural talent.
He turned his gaze down to Blurr, who was still clutching his shoulder. “You all right, Zippy?”
“Hate that fragging nickname,” Blurr muttered, and he swayed a little where he stood, energon dripping freely down his arm to splatter the floor. He practically had no armor, the idiot.
Ricochet swallowed down a spike of worry. Now wasn’t the time. “Not when I say it,” he purred, trying to distract.
He tapped his comm, speed-dialing Jazz for some backup because he could really use it right now. He got nothing but static. No, scratch that. He didn’t even get static. He got dead air, which meant his comms were hitting a solid wall of non-communication.
“Damn it,” Ricochet snarled, as Blurr echoed him, hissing a curse as well. “He’s got a comms block up.”
“Yeah. I noticed.” Blurr leaned back against the wall, his optics darkening with a slow anger. “Must’ve activated it when I opened the door.” He met Ricochet’s gaze. “What’s the plan?”
“We make for the lift and get the frag out of here.” Ricochet glanced over his shoulder. It was a relatively straight shot to the lift, but there would be a delay waiting for it. No rampwells either. Who designed a high-rise without rampwells?
"Help isn't coming, Blurr! You might as well stand and fight!" Whipstrike hollered, affecting another accent as blasterfire streaked through the doorway, whizzing past Ricochet and Blurr's hiding spot to splatter against the far wall, singeing an ugly wall print.
"What the frag is he aiming at?"
"He's not." Ricochet batted Blurr's hand away, and tried to get a good look at his shoulder.
Torn, scorched armor peeled away from the wound and a mixture of fluids pumped sluggishly from ripped lines -- hydraulic fluid and energon both. Frag, frag, frag. Ricochet fruitlessly patted down his subspace, but he'd left his kit in the safehouse. He didn't have his emergency sealant.
"Hiding out there won't save you!"
Why the frag would he--
"Why wouldn't it?" Blurr asked, distant to Ricochet's senses as he snapped his head up and glanced around.
He spied the device as bright red lights flashed rapidly at him. No time to think, just react.
Ricochet grabbed Blurr and shoved him to the floor, throwing himself over Blurr just as the bomb exploded above them, sending shards of metal and debris raining down on their frames. A billow of scorching heat singed Ricochet's aft, peeling some of his paint away, and he hissed as his dermal net shouted pain until he overrode the sensors and dampened them.
Frag but he hated fighting spec ops mechs. Especially ones who've had ample time to prepare and danced on the wrong side of crazy.
"He's rigged the damn hallway with explosives," Ricochet snarled as he pumped out a scan and registered more devices, popping up around them in all directions, blocking off every route.
He pulled Blurr to his feet, relieved the Racer wasn't protesting, and shielded Blurr with his frame. He shoved Blurr ahead of him, toward the lift, toward the exit, toward something that wasn't Blurr's own apartment.
Laughter pealed out of Blurr's habsuite as another device exploded in front of them. Blurr tumbled backward, red-orange flames billowing in their direction. Ricochet got an armful of stumbling Racer, the air reeking of incendiaries and scorched metal.
Ricochet hooked an arm around Blurr's abdomen and dragged him to the nearest doorway, smoke filling the air and choking his vents. He slammed them shut as one of the apartments came into view, the locking panel glowing a baleful orange at him. Pfft. Locks.
He slammed an elbow into the access, shattering the protective panel and crumpling it inward. It gave an angry blat at him, but the door didn't immediately slide open. What the frag?
"Security measure," Blurr said, his voice thick with static. He coughed and leaned into Ricochet, one hand touching his forehead where the blast had left him streaked with soot. "Tampering with it doesn't make it short out."
"Of course. Because nothing's going to be easy today, is it?" Ricochet asked.
He shoved Blurr up against the door, shielding the Racer with his frame, and frantically scanned the smoke-clogged hallway for another option. Not that there was one. He knew it. He'd cased this entire building when he'd taken the job. This floor had three apartments, a lift, and a row of windows.
They were three stories up. They couldn't go out the fragging windows. Worse still that they were transteel and not a more easily shattered material.
Blurr shakily reached for a thigh compartment and pulled out a blaster. Ricochet hadn't known he walked around armed. He wasn't supposed to. There was technically a 'no-weapons' agreement across the board.
"Stop trying to kill me!" Blurr hollered as he readied his weapon, though visibly trembling.
Ricochet doubted it had anything to do with fear, given the anger and battle-lust pouring into Blurr's field. And something else, something buried deep beneath the layers. It had the flavor of fear, but not quite.
"It's not my fault!" Blurr added, his shout echoing in the eerie silence of the hall.
Despite the laserfire, the explosions, there was no other noise. The ambient music was gone. There was no shouting from the other rooms. No alarms screamed. It was like they were in their own bubble of madness.
Ricochet tapped Blurr's arm and gestured for him to crouch. They were exposed, here against the door. They needed to find cover somewhere, or at least get low. Make themselves smaller targets. Ricochet triggered his own special ops protocols, and his biolights all went dim or out, making him little more than shadow. Too bad Blurr glowed like a damned blue beacon. Why were Racers so pretty?
"Nothing is ever anyone's fault." The voice floated out of Blurr's apartment, dark and dead. Gone were the pretend accents. Now he had none. No inflection, no accent, nothing. "I'm re-establishing the balance of the universe."
Fantastic. Trained and the wrong side of crazy. The only thing worse was zealotry.
"We ain't reasonin' with this one," Ricochet muttered.
He glanced around, clocking the incendiary devices. At least a half dozen, according to his sensors. Rigged to blow by timed proximity or remote trigger, he'd guess. Fire crackled nearby -- probably the stupid decorative drapes were aflame. He hoped there wasn't anyone in the other apartments. Or worse, that Whipstrike hadn't killed them already.
Blurr crouched, one hand on his blaster, arm still dangling loose and freely leaking. "I'm fast. I can run in there and take him down."
Ricochet wrapped his hand around Blurr's upper arm, squeezing tight. "Like frag you are," he hissed. "I told Jazz I'd keep ya alive, and the last thing I'm going to do is lie to him." He tightened his grip, until the metal creaked and threatened to dent. Damn fragile Racers.
Blurr glared at him. "I wasn't asking permission."
"Stop hiding, Blurr! You're a Wrecker, aren't you?" The shout sounded closer.
A rapid beeping preceded the explosion of another one of the devices, but luckily on the other side of the hall from them. Ricochet ducked and pulled Blurr down further anyway, shielding them from debris. Smoke, thick and black, filled the hall.
Blurr coughed, his vents sputtering. He wasn't made for war. He’d had no business being a Wrecker. How had he survived?
"I'm the bodyguard here," Ricochet hissed and released Blurr, pulling out his own blaster in the same motion. If Blurr was going to insist on being reckless, then Ricochet would just have to beat him to it.
He darted away from Blurr, across the open space of the hallway, firing blindly into the apartment. Something shattered. Low whumps indicated blastershot contact. Whether or not they landed on Whipstrike, he couldn't be sure.
Ricochet tucked and rolled, pressing his back against the frame beside Blurr's door, opposite where he'd covered Blurr earlier. He crouched, keeping low, painfully aware of the explosive above his head.
A literal blur of blue darted past him, into the open doorway. That idiot!
Ricochet snarled and threw himself after Blurr, giving chase, sensors exploding into the apartment as he tapped into his mental layout and hoped Whipstrike hadn't taken the time to rearrange the furniture.
"Find cover!" Ricochet shouted as he threw himself behind the low frontroom table. He flipped it up, hiding behind it.
Boom! Orange-red light flashed through the room, and a waft of heat flooded over the top of Ricochet's head.
Blurr's startled cry of pain sent a lurch of anxiety through Ricochet's spark. He peered around the edge.
His engine growled as he caught sight of Blurr clattering to the floor, rolling to a stop at the feet of a mech a bit smaller than Ricochet himself, his gray-black armor as unlit as Ricochet's and his face hidden behind mask and visor both. He looked nothing like either of the two pictures Jazz had transmitted to him, but he had to be Whipstrike.
He had to be, because he’d crouched near Blurr and pressed his blaster to Blurr’s forehead, fingers curled tight around the trigger.
Ricochet tensed to leap out.
"Don't!" Blurr yelped, his optics flashing bright and terrified, his vocals striped with static. "I'm sparked!"
Ricochet froze.
Whipstrike did, too. His blaster didn't move, his finger poised on the trigger, but he didn't pull. "You're lying," he said, low and raspy. His hand trembled.
"You're what?" Ricochet demanded, the words echoing around his head, enough he thought he should reboot his audials because surely he didn't hear what he thought he just heard. Surely, it was all a ruse to get Whipstrike to pause. It must be a distraction.
Blurr's expression never wavered, and the fear Ricochet had tasted earlier, the not-quite fear, he recognized it now. It wasn’t a fear for oneself, it was fear for another person.
"I'm not lying," Blurr said, his entire frame frozen, his vents whining. "I'm sparked. And if you're talking about balancing the universe, how does that equation add up if you kill me and an innocent sparkling?"
"There's no such thing as innocence," Whipstrike spat, but he wavered. He didn't pull the trigger. He stared and stared at Blurr.
Kind of like the way Ricochet was now. It was too far to read Blurr's field, but his tone bled sincerity.
"What do you mean you're sparked?" he demanded, his processor whirling from the absurdity of the situation. This was hardly the time. He needed to focus, but what if Blurr was telling the truth? What if he was sparked? What if it was his?
"Innocence exists for someone who’s never seen a sunrise, I think," Blurr replied, and he slicked his lips out of nervousness. It had to be. His optics darted in Ricochet's direction -- no, toward where he'd dropped his blaster when he hit what must have been a landmine.
It was almost brilliant. It was the perfect tactic when fighting someone with Blurr’s kind of speed. Ricochet hated Whipstrike that much more.
Whipstrike growled. The barrel of the blaster pressed harder against Blurr's head. One shot. Processor. It wasn't a killing blow. Not entirely. With a spark, Blurr could be rebuilt, reborn, with most of his memory gone of course. But the sparkling wouldn't survive. Not without a processor to direct the frame. Besides, it didn't matter. Whipstrike's next shot would undoubtedly take Blurr's spark.
Ricochet wasn't fast enough.
But.
But Whipstrike was focused on Blurr. He wasn't looking at anything else. He wasn't paying attention.
Ricochet eased out from behind the table and crept closer to them, there on the other side of the room, rucked up against the hallway leading toward the main door. The berthroom was just to Whipstrike's right, though the door was fragging closed.
He could be a distraction. They outnumbered Whipstrike. They were both trained mechs.
"Look, I'm sorry you were abandoned and left to die," Blurr started to say, and his words came out fast, clipped, starting to slur together. "War sucks. None of us liked it. A lot of good mechs died, and a lot of bad mechs lived, and that's just the unfairness of it all. Killing me, killing my friends, that's not going to change the past."
Whipstrike's visor flashed. "I don't care about fixing the past," he said. "It's about what fair!" The last was a snarl, and his head snapped up, his gaze unerringly finding Ricochet as though he'd spotted the movement in his periphery.
Damn it.
"Don't move!" Whipstrike snapped.
Distraction. He needed a--
Ricochet's lip threatened to curl into a smirk. He ignored Whipstrike and looked at Blurr. If the trick to keeping Whipstrike engaged was to question his motives, then Ricochet would do just that.
"How are you sparked?" he asked.
He gripped his blaster in both hands, and he'd had it trained on Whipstrike from the moment he stood, but he pretended it wasn't important. Not compared to this question.
"This isn't the time!" Blurr hissed, but his gaze darted to his blaster again, and to the fact Whipstrike had lifted the barrel of the gun away from Blurr's head by a few inches.
"I will shoot him," Whipstrike threatened, but the resolve in his tone seemed to have wavered. His gaze kept shifting to Ricochet, perhaps assessing him as the bigger threat.
Good.
Ricochet pretended not to hear Whipstrike. "Is it mine?" he asked, playing his part, amping up the distraction. He only needed a moment.
“It doesn’t matter!” Blurr snapped, and he jerked beneath Whipstrike, maybe intentionally, maybe not.
Whipstrike startled and swung his attention down toward Blurr. Ricochet snapped up his blaster and squeezed off a shot, the rapport of the laserfire echoing through the apartment. But Whipstrike was faster than he thought, twisting back to avoid the shot, his finger twitching to pull on the trigger aimed at Blurr’s head.
Blurr moved, again with that preternatural speed, twisting beneath Whipstrike, enough to throw him off balance. The laserfire streaked past Blurr’s head, missing it by a thin margin, and scorched the floor.
“Frag you both!” Whipstrike snarled as Ricochet leapt across the room, firing again, slamming into Whipstrike’s shoulder this time as Blurr snatched at Whipstrike’s ankle, throwing him off balance.
Whipstrike tumbled to the ground, landing on top of Blurr, and limbs flailed, gray-black and blue intermingling. Curses split the air, the dull thunk of metal impacting metal. Ricochet vaulted the couch, blaster drawn, spark pounding in his chassis.
Blurr hissed in pain as Whipstrike got a good blow against his damaged shoulder. Ricochet skidded into reach just as Blurr landed a solid kick to Whipstrike’s chassis, shoving the mech backward into the wall with a harsh crack. Static fritzed through Whipstrike’s visor, energon snaking out over his chassis from the blastershot he’d taken earlier.
There were a lot of things Ricochet could do. He could disarm Whipstrike. He could take out a few limbs, prevent him from being a danger in the moment. He could show mercy.
Ricochet had never been a merciful mech.
He lifted his blaster and squeezed the trigger, a burst of laserfire erupting from his blaster and slamming into Whipstrike’s chestplate, on a central seam, right over his spark.
Ricochet squeezed again. And again. Until Whipstrike’s chassis was a smoking ruin, and the light behind his visor flickered to a dull black. He hung there, pinned against the wall, until he gradually slid down it, crumpling into a mass of scorched plating on the floor.
Ricochet stowed his blaster.
“We could have restrained him,” Blurr said, from the floor, his vocals crackling with static.
“Killing him was kinder.” Ricochet moved to Blurr’s side, helping him slide away from Whipstrike’s corpse and the stench of an expired spark. “He’s been harmed by the Autobots enough. He didn’t need to suffer a trial, too.”
"If you say so," Blurr groaned and clutched at his shoulder, his fingers trembling. Whether it was from the adrenaline rush or the energon loss, Ricochet wasn't sure.
But a ping on the edge of Ricochet's awareness informed him that the comms were working now. So he tapped his brother's speed-dial, and Jazz picked up within a half-second.
"What th' frag is goin' on?" Jazz demanded, sounding harried and a touch panicked.
Ricochet laughed, aloud and across the comm. "Found yer killer. He's a scorched mess on Blurr's floor right now. But if you're feeling grateful, you could send a medic."
"A medic?" Jazz echoed, and concern bled into his vocals. "What happened? Are you okay? How's Blurr?"
"We're both alive, Jazzy, geez. What kind of bodyguard do you take me for?" Ricochet lowered himself down with a grunt, cycling several steadying vents. "Just get yer aft over here. You can interrogate us later."
He ended the comm on Jazz's spluttering, and waited to see if Jazz would immediately ping back. He didn't.
Good.
"Jazz is on his way. With help," Ricochet said.
"Better late than never." Blurr slumped in Ricochet's arms, his field shrieking exhaustion and pain. He curled into Ricochet, field seeking comfort as of its own accord. "Frag, this sucks."
"Yeah." Ricochet twisted his jaw, debated for half of a second before he gathered his courage and said, lightly, "So you're sparked?"
He waited for laughter. For a snort of disbelief.
Instead, Blurr squirmed. "Yeah," he said, and shuttered his optics, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. "I was actually telling the truth."
Wow.
"And?" Ricochet prompted, because every time he tried to poke his processor, he got a dial tone. It didn’t compute.
"It could be yours. Could be Jazz's. It's hard to tell with twins. Doesn't matter really." Blurr sounded so casual, so blase. Ricochet wanted to shake him, get him to react.
Anger flashed hot and sharp through Ricochet's lines. He swallowed it down with a restraint he didn't usually bother to use. He hoped it was just the energon loss, and not that Blurr was indifferent to the little one growing in him.
"When were you going to tell me?" he demanded, because he couldn't shake a mech who was sparked and injured.
Blurr lifted his head and glared at him. "Maybe after I figured out whether or not you were the one killing my friends?"
"Seriously?" Ricochet reared back, nearly dropping Blurr. "You actually thought I was responsible?"
"I don't know anything about you!" Blurr sat up and pulled away, though not far, because Whipstrike's corpse smoked nearby, and he had one useless arm and damaged legs. "You're Jazz's twin. So? That doesn't get you an automatic pass. You were also a Decepticon for most of the war. We fragged. That's all."
"I deserved to know," Ricochet said through clenched teeth, his insides twisting with a cavalcade of emotions, some of which he didn’t know he had. "You think I'm that much of an aft that I'd not want to know about my sparkling?"
Two weeks, most of it spent sharing a berth, and they still knew so little about each other.
Blurr struggled to his feet, and Ricochet stood to support him, a bit surprised Blurr didn't jerk away. "Like I said, I barely know you. I wasn't going to take a chance. Get over it."
Ricochet squared his jaw. "Fine," he said, but he caught Blurr’s gaze and he held it, sliding his field against Blurr’s with determination. "Then we'll fix that."
Blurr's optics narrowed. "I'm keeping it." He yanked away, and Ricochet didn't fight him.
"That's not what I meant." Ricochet folded his arms. "You don't know me? We can fix that. I'm not walking away from this."
"Right. Pity dating. No thanks." Blurr turned as if to stomp away, but he wobbled, and Ricochet grabbed him before he could collapse. He didn't need another fall. He was already covered in dents, and the snuffling of his vents was worrisome.
"You got a big fragging problem with assumptions, Zippy." Ricochet squeezed Blurr's arm, alarmed a little by the coolness of his armor. "You think I go around fragging mechs I pity? Because I'm not that kind of mech."
Blurr shook his head and swayed in place, to the point Ricochet had to slide an arm around his waist to keep him upright. He touched his forehead with his uninjured hand, his field slithering around his frame like it was too much trouble to stay close. It was disconcerting.
"I can't think about this right now," Blurr said. His vocals crackled with static, words slurring on the latter. "It's too much."
"Yeah, sure."
He had a point about that.
Ricochet looked over at Windstrike's corpse, turned ashen gray, visor dark, bleeding all over Blurr's apartment floor. In the distance, sirens grew closer and louder.
Ricochet tugged Blurr closer to the couch and sat him on it. He grabbed one of the pillows and held it to the jagged tear in Blurr’s injured shoulder, directing him to hold it in place with the other hand.
"Call me if you need anything," he said, and huffed it out into the hallway, his thoughts churning. He might as well disarm those bombs before emergency services arrived. It would give him something to do beyond thinking about the sparkling growing in Blurr's tank.
Primus.
What a fragging mess.
