[TF] Safe Mode
Nov. 4th, 2021 06:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: This fic was written for the Redacted Fanzine.
Title: Safe Mode
Characters: Hot Rod, Drift, Ultra Magnus, other Wreckers in passing
Rated: T
Warnings: canon-typical gore and violence
Description: Hot Rod wakes with a terrible headache, which is a small price to pay for his recent mission failure.
His head hurts.
Hot Rod onlines to a slate-gray ceiling, the hum of the Xantium around him, the quiet beep of machines, and a hole in his memory so wide a Decepticon can stroll through it. Primus, it always takes too long for his processor to cycle up properly.
Drift leans into view, optics bright. “About time your lazy aft woke up.”
Relief washes out an odd sense of unease. Drift’s presence is a good sign that everything is going to be okay.
“What hit me?” Hot Rod struggles to sit up, frame creaking and aching, and Drift offers an arm to steady him.
“Those charges packed a Pit of a punch,” Drift says, his hand firm on Hot Rod’s elbow. “Got you and your team out with nothing but scratches and dents.”
Oh. Right. The mission.
Coherence filters through the fog. Orders came down from Prime. Springer was furious; Ultra Magnus resigned. Hot Rod and a handful of others had been sent to infiltrate a Decepticon communications relay and recover some security codes.
A simple mission. Hot Rod’s first mission as lead.
Of course it had gone wrong.
“Anyone die?” Hot Rod asks. Dreads the answer.
“Nope.” Drift tugs him from the berth, and Hot Rod stands on shaky legs. “Up you get. Magnus wants a debrief.”
Exhaustion layers through every strut. His head pulses and pounds, the lights flaring with every other blink. “Can’t an invalid get some rest around here?” Hot Rod grumbles, but he lets Drift stagger him out of the medbay.
Hot Rod cycles his optics, still woozy, and for a moment, his spark stutters in his chassis. The walls are splashed with lurid streaks of fresh energon, dripping and pooling on the floor. Scorchmarks blister the gray metal. The air reeks of discharged plasma.
Hot Rod reels. Cycles his optics.
The gore vanishes.
Primus, he must have gotten hit harder than he thought.
“Top Spin came back with stories,” Drift chatters beside him, in one audial and out the other, as Hot Rod focuses on walking through the throb in his head, and the wobble in his knees. “He says he took out more than Twin Twist, and they’ve been bickering about it ever since.”
“Mmm,” says Hot Rod.
His chronometer tells him it’s second-shift. They’re coming up on the rec room, laughter and noise spilling from the open doorway. Hot Rod yearns to join the fun, rather than the tedium of a disappointing debrief. He peeks in to see who he can entice into a drink later.
His vents catch.
Ravaged frames litter the floor and tables. Energon paints the walls. The furniture lies in shattered ruins. The stench is awful, like a battlefield left to rot. Empty optical sockets stare back at Hot Rod from the heads lining the counter, mouths agape, denta shattered.
Hot Rod gasps and pitches back, into Drift’s side, but in another blink, the gruesome image is gone, replaced by Ironfist in a rousing debate with Whirl while Top Spin and Twin Twist are arm-wrestling yet again, Perceptor standing over them and taking copious notes.
Drift steadies him, hands on his shoulder. “You all right?”
Hot Rod shakes his head, blinks a few more times, but the rec room remains full of laughter and wafts an enticing aroma of whatever sweet treat Whirl’s been experimenting with this time. Night purge echo maybe? He’d gotten hit pretty hard.
That would explain why the hall lights keep flickering and going dim, too. His optics are having trouble calibrating. Should probably get that looked at.
“Fine,” Hot Rod says.
Primus, his head hurts.
“Took a harder knock than you thought, huh?” Drift says, clicking sympathetically. He pats Hot Rod on the shoulder, all gentle optics and gentler smile.
“Guess so,” Hot Rod says, shaky, his spark squeezing smaller and smaller, making it harder to ventilate. “Come on. You know how Magnus is about tardiness.”
“Don’t we all,” Drift drawls.
Hot Rod’s knees wobble, and he has to focus on walking, thinking about each step one by one, Drift’s chatter a buzz at the edge of his attention. There’s an uneasy squirm deep in his tanks, and he can’t put a designation on it.
They pass the training room, and Hot Rod doesn’t plan to peek inside, except he hears a shout, one that has nothing to do with harmless sparring, but one of agony and terror. He whips back toward the door, spark hammering in his chassis, and stumbles into the frame.
It’s Nyon.
The Senate’s titans in the distance, cables snaking toward the ground, siphons wrapped around the twitching frames of their victims. Fire licks upward, orange then yellow then white, so bright it sears Hot Rod’s optics. The screams of the dying are drowned out by the roar of the flames as buildings shatter and crumble, as the whole colony turns to ash and misery.
The heat of the backdraft slams into Hot Rod’s face, forcing optical fluids from his ducts. He staggers, gasping, unable to draw a vent because the air is too hot, too thick, too full of debris. Rust and energon coat his tongue until he chokes on it.
“Roddy?”
Drift spins him away from the training room and cups his face, orbital ridge drawn down with worry. “You all right?”
“Tripped,” Hot Rod lies, spark hammering, his vision flickering in and out of focus. There are three Drifts, then two Drifts, then one, blue optics staring at him with concern.
Pain spikes through his head, and Hot Rod fails to conceal a wince. He’s going back to medbay once he’s given his report. This can’t be normal.
“Clumsy as always,” Drift says with a chuckle. “Wanna spar later?”
Hot Rod doesn’t want to go anywhere near the training room. He steels himself, turns his head, glances inside.
Quiet and empty. No corpses. No fire. No Nyon.
What the frag is the matter with him?
“Sure,” Hot Rod says.
He slides out from under Drift’s hand and keeps going, the doors to the bridge at the end of this long hallway. Has it always been so close to the training room?
Hot Rod racks his memories, but the pain makes it hard to think. Debrief first; rest later. He keeps going, Drift’s chatter turning to static at the back of his mind.
One foot in front of the other.
The bridge is quietly busy, computers beeping and booping as the Xantium soars toward their next destination. Springer sits in front of the navigation console, which is a little odd. Why’s Springer here? Should Springer be here?
Ultra Magnus waits with a curl to the corner of his mouth that suggests a smile, relief crinkling the corners of his optics. “You look better than the last time I saw you,” he says. “It appears Drift retrieved your team in the nick of time.”
“Yeah,” Hot Rod says, wincing. The failure sits heavy on his shoulders, but heavier on his spark. “We’re lucky.”
Ultra Magnus nods, and his smile stays plastered at the corner of his mouth. “Were you able to locate the security codes?” he asks, but his mouth doesn’t move.
Hot-white pain lances through Hot Rod’s head. He sucks in a vent, touching his temple, as his vision wavers. His knees wobble. He looks at Ultra Magnus to excuse himself, and Ultra Magnus smiles that plastic smile before his face starts to slide, derma melting and sloughing off, revealing the protometal beneath.
Hot Rod gasps and backs away, slamming into another frame. He whips around, and there’s Springer, smiling at him from a face that’s twisting and distorting. He reaches for Hot Rod, and Hot Rod smacks his hands away. He blinks and blinks, but there’s a reek in the air now, one of rot and discharged plasma and charred energon.
It’s not going away.
Hot Rod flees from the bridge, back into the hallway. The long, long hallway without any doors, only wide enough for a single mech now, little pools of light fighting in vain against an enclosing dark.
His head hurts. His vision flickers.
Xantium shudders around him and then lurches hard to the right, throwing him into the wall. Hot Rod’s shoulder goes crack, the pain bursting through his neural net. Alarms flash, lurid orange and red as they shriek, the intercom droning static at him, just like his comm.
Heat banks his aft. He swears fire licks at his armor so Hot Rod runs from the burnt energon and the plasma discharge and the scorched fluids, and the energon dripping down the walls. He reaches for his blaster, but it’s not there.
Drift, however, is.
He offers a hand to Hot Rod, and the light beaming down on him is warm and welcoming. His optics are blue. So very blue. Have his optics always been blue? His shadow stretches long and far, a shadow with arching wings Drift does not have.
He opens his mouth, and Hot Rod hears static as a black, oily substance spills from Drift’s feet and rushes straight for him. Hot Rod’s spark pounds. He turns to run, and that’s when it hits him, slamming with all the force of a concussion grenade.
Hot Rod spasms, crashing into something solid, head bouncing and seeing explosions of light that vanish into the dark. He’s burning, from the tips of his feet up his spinal strut and to the base of his neck. He tries to scream, and the cry catches in his intake. He can’t ventilate, can’t see, can’t--
His head hurts.
Hot Rod onlines to the slate gray of the Xantium medbay, consciousness returning in gradual stages. There’s a hole in his memory so wide a Decepticon can stroll through it. Primus, it always takes too long for his processor to cycle up properly.
Hot Rod groans. His head feels like someone shoved a hot poker through it.
Drift leans into view. “About time your lazy aft woke up.” He smiles and just like that, relief chases away any lingering unease.
Drift’s here. Whatever happened... it’s all okay now.
-End-
a/n: This fic was very experimental for me, but I still enjoyed the practice and experience. I hope you enjoy it, too. ^_^
Title: Safe Mode
Characters: Hot Rod, Drift, Ultra Magnus, other Wreckers in passing
Rated: T
Warnings: canon-typical gore and violence
Description: Hot Rod wakes with a terrible headache, which is a small price to pay for his recent mission failure.
His head hurts.
Hot Rod onlines to a slate-gray ceiling, the hum of the Xantium around him, the quiet beep of machines, and a hole in his memory so wide a Decepticon can stroll through it. Primus, it always takes too long for his processor to cycle up properly.
Drift leans into view, optics bright. “About time your lazy aft woke up.”
Relief washes out an odd sense of unease. Drift’s presence is a good sign that everything is going to be okay.
“What hit me?” Hot Rod struggles to sit up, frame creaking and aching, and Drift offers an arm to steady him.
“Those charges packed a Pit of a punch,” Drift says, his hand firm on Hot Rod’s elbow. “Got you and your team out with nothing but scratches and dents.”
Oh. Right. The mission.
Coherence filters through the fog. Orders came down from Prime. Springer was furious; Ultra Magnus resigned. Hot Rod and a handful of others had been sent to infiltrate a Decepticon communications relay and recover some security codes.
A simple mission. Hot Rod’s first mission as lead.
Of course it had gone wrong.
“Anyone die?” Hot Rod asks. Dreads the answer.
“Nope.” Drift tugs him from the berth, and Hot Rod stands on shaky legs. “Up you get. Magnus wants a debrief.”
Exhaustion layers through every strut. His head pulses and pounds, the lights flaring with every other blink. “Can’t an invalid get some rest around here?” Hot Rod grumbles, but he lets Drift stagger him out of the medbay.
Hot Rod cycles his optics, still woozy, and for a moment, his spark stutters in his chassis. The walls are splashed with lurid streaks of fresh energon, dripping and pooling on the floor. Scorchmarks blister the gray metal. The air reeks of discharged plasma.
Hot Rod reels. Cycles his optics.
The gore vanishes.
Primus, he must have gotten hit harder than he thought.
“Top Spin came back with stories,” Drift chatters beside him, in one audial and out the other, as Hot Rod focuses on walking through the throb in his head, and the wobble in his knees. “He says he took out more than Twin Twist, and they’ve been bickering about it ever since.”
“Mmm,” says Hot Rod.
His chronometer tells him it’s second-shift. They’re coming up on the rec room, laughter and noise spilling from the open doorway. Hot Rod yearns to join the fun, rather than the tedium of a disappointing debrief. He peeks in to see who he can entice into a drink later.
His vents catch.
Ravaged frames litter the floor and tables. Energon paints the walls. The furniture lies in shattered ruins. The stench is awful, like a battlefield left to rot. Empty optical sockets stare back at Hot Rod from the heads lining the counter, mouths agape, denta shattered.
Hot Rod gasps and pitches back, into Drift’s side, but in another blink, the gruesome image is gone, replaced by Ironfist in a rousing debate with Whirl while Top Spin and Twin Twist are arm-wrestling yet again, Perceptor standing over them and taking copious notes.
Drift steadies him, hands on his shoulder. “You all right?”
Hot Rod shakes his head, blinks a few more times, but the rec room remains full of laughter and wafts an enticing aroma of whatever sweet treat Whirl’s been experimenting with this time. Night purge echo maybe? He’d gotten hit pretty hard.
That would explain why the hall lights keep flickering and going dim, too. His optics are having trouble calibrating. Should probably get that looked at.
“Fine,” Hot Rod says.
Primus, his head hurts.
“Took a harder knock than you thought, huh?” Drift says, clicking sympathetically. He pats Hot Rod on the shoulder, all gentle optics and gentler smile.
“Guess so,” Hot Rod says, shaky, his spark squeezing smaller and smaller, making it harder to ventilate. “Come on. You know how Magnus is about tardiness.”
“Don’t we all,” Drift drawls.
Hot Rod’s knees wobble, and he has to focus on walking, thinking about each step one by one, Drift’s chatter a buzz at the edge of his attention. There’s an uneasy squirm deep in his tanks, and he can’t put a designation on it.
They pass the training room, and Hot Rod doesn’t plan to peek inside, except he hears a shout, one that has nothing to do with harmless sparring, but one of agony and terror. He whips back toward the door, spark hammering in his chassis, and stumbles into the frame.
It’s Nyon.
The Senate’s titans in the distance, cables snaking toward the ground, siphons wrapped around the twitching frames of their victims. Fire licks upward, orange then yellow then white, so bright it sears Hot Rod’s optics. The screams of the dying are drowned out by the roar of the flames as buildings shatter and crumble, as the whole colony turns to ash and misery.
The heat of the backdraft slams into Hot Rod’s face, forcing optical fluids from his ducts. He staggers, gasping, unable to draw a vent because the air is too hot, too thick, too full of debris. Rust and energon coat his tongue until he chokes on it.
“Roddy?”
Drift spins him away from the training room and cups his face, orbital ridge drawn down with worry. “You all right?”
“Tripped,” Hot Rod lies, spark hammering, his vision flickering in and out of focus. There are three Drifts, then two Drifts, then one, blue optics staring at him with concern.
Pain spikes through his head, and Hot Rod fails to conceal a wince. He’s going back to medbay once he’s given his report. This can’t be normal.
“Clumsy as always,” Drift says with a chuckle. “Wanna spar later?”
Hot Rod doesn’t want to go anywhere near the training room. He steels himself, turns his head, glances inside.
Quiet and empty. No corpses. No fire. No Nyon.
What the frag is the matter with him?
“Sure,” Hot Rod says.
He slides out from under Drift’s hand and keeps going, the doors to the bridge at the end of this long hallway. Has it always been so close to the training room?
Hot Rod racks his memories, but the pain makes it hard to think. Debrief first; rest later. He keeps going, Drift’s chatter turning to static at the back of his mind.
One foot in front of the other.
The bridge is quietly busy, computers beeping and booping as the Xantium soars toward their next destination. Springer sits in front of the navigation console, which is a little odd. Why’s Springer here? Should Springer be here?
Ultra Magnus waits with a curl to the corner of his mouth that suggests a smile, relief crinkling the corners of his optics. “You look better than the last time I saw you,” he says. “It appears Drift retrieved your team in the nick of time.”
“Yeah,” Hot Rod says, wincing. The failure sits heavy on his shoulders, but heavier on his spark. “We’re lucky.”
Ultra Magnus nods, and his smile stays plastered at the corner of his mouth. “Were you able to locate the security codes?” he asks, but his mouth doesn’t move.
Hot-white pain lances through Hot Rod’s head. He sucks in a vent, touching his temple, as his vision wavers. His knees wobble. He looks at Ultra Magnus to excuse himself, and Ultra Magnus smiles that plastic smile before his face starts to slide, derma melting and sloughing off, revealing the protometal beneath.
Hot Rod gasps and backs away, slamming into another frame. He whips around, and there’s Springer, smiling at him from a face that’s twisting and distorting. He reaches for Hot Rod, and Hot Rod smacks his hands away. He blinks and blinks, but there’s a reek in the air now, one of rot and discharged plasma and charred energon.
It’s not going away.
Hot Rod flees from the bridge, back into the hallway. The long, long hallway without any doors, only wide enough for a single mech now, little pools of light fighting in vain against an enclosing dark.
His head hurts. His vision flickers.
Xantium shudders around him and then lurches hard to the right, throwing him into the wall. Hot Rod’s shoulder goes crack, the pain bursting through his neural net. Alarms flash, lurid orange and red as they shriek, the intercom droning static at him, just like his comm.
Heat banks his aft. He swears fire licks at his armor so Hot Rod runs from the burnt energon and the plasma discharge and the scorched fluids, and the energon dripping down the walls. He reaches for his blaster, but it’s not there.
Drift, however, is.
He offers a hand to Hot Rod, and the light beaming down on him is warm and welcoming. His optics are blue. So very blue. Have his optics always been blue? His shadow stretches long and far, a shadow with arching wings Drift does not have.
He opens his mouth, and Hot Rod hears static as a black, oily substance spills from Drift’s feet and rushes straight for him. Hot Rod’s spark pounds. He turns to run, and that’s when it hits him, slamming with all the force of a concussion grenade.
Hot Rod spasms, crashing into something solid, head bouncing and seeing explosions of light that vanish into the dark. He’s burning, from the tips of his feet up his spinal strut and to the base of his neck. He tries to scream, and the cry catches in his intake. He can’t ventilate, can’t see, can’t--
His head hurts.
Hot Rod onlines to the slate gray of the Xantium medbay, consciousness returning in gradual stages. There’s a hole in his memory so wide a Decepticon can stroll through it. Primus, it always takes too long for his processor to cycle up properly.
Hot Rod groans. His head feels like someone shoved a hot poker through it.
Drift leans into view. “About time your lazy aft woke up.” He smiles and just like that, relief chases away any lingering unease.
Drift’s here. Whatever happened... it’s all okay now.
a/n: This fic was very experimental for me, but I still enjoyed the practice and experience. I hope you enjoy it, too. ^_^
