Credits:
Pantera/Artemis and Blancwulf belong to Amy K. Cyrway, as does the Predacon Laserbeak and Predacon Buzzsaw concepts.
Inuarai belongs to Jennifer DeSalme
Samiel/Tempest, Harrier, and Phoenix Corps are mine
All other Characters are property of Hasbro, as is Transformers, Beast Wars, Maximals, Predacons, Decepticons, and Autobots.
This fic is rated PG-13 thanks to a bit of violence and mature themes...thanks a lot Sammi...
TIME SETTING: Late Season Three, around the time of "Go With The Flow."
"What kind of creature do we have here?
It feels like love, but it smells like fear...
Look in the mirror, baby, what do you dream?
Look at it harder now and you start to scream
We're finding out what drives your machine!
You...stand...on the edge...of a silver future..."
--Monster Magnet, "Silver Future," from the "Heavy Metal 2000" soundtrack
"Scanning for compatible life forms."
The stasis pod's computer spoke aloud, thought there was no sentient creature present to hear it. The DNA scanner came online, sending golden beams across the landscape, searching for a dominant life form. The creature it selected was canine, though it did not understand the difference between this beast and any other. All it knew was what it was programmed to know: it would find a dominant life form and replicate the DNA in the body of the Maximal that slept inside.
"Replication process...system malfunction. System malfunction."
Sparks flew from the pod's damaged side, broken when the pod had made contact with the planet's surface. The computer, attempting to find a way around the problem, sent out probes through its network of circuits, searching for information that would tell it how to reformat the Transformer within. The protoform was partially online, not aware, but functioning enough for one of the probes to access its memory banks. There...the pattern of an animal...
...and that pattern became superimposed on the half-created canine protoform, melding and shaping the Maximal within...
"Replication process complete."
Inside the pod, the animal warrior stirred, blinking its eyes, as it rested in the grip of a dream.
A female, gold in colour, wearing a headpiece of some sort decorated with thin blue spires, stood before him. She had wings, and she was gesturing to him. He could not take his eyes off her, and he knew that he would follow her anywhere.
"What are your orders, my lady?" he asked.
She did not speak. Her form was hazy; he could not get a good look at her. He squinted, trying to see better, and suddenly realized that he didn't even know who she was or the fine details of her face. Everything was getting darker and darker, and he struggled to force his optic lids open...
...and his lids flew up and he saw the inside of the stasis pod.
He blinked a moment, trying to remember who he was and where. A jumble of images and memories came to his mind.
A name: Harrier.
An allegiance: he had...two? Duke of the Decepticon Empire? Maximal? Both?
Visions. Battles with Autobots. Battles with Predacons. Battles with Quintessons. Girls, bars, laughs and good times. Life of the party, yes, that was him...
...and then a crushing loneliness stabbed through his spark.
The lady...HIS lady. The lady in his dream. Who was she? Where was she? She was his leader...his love...his saviour...
No answers came.
~Find her...I must find her.~
He sniffed, not even realizing that he had no idea what her scent would smell like. A barrage of new aromas came to his nose. Spicy and pungent, tantalizing, they awakened an almost insatiable curiosity. He leapt upwards, forcing the lid of the pod open, and braced his forepaws on the lip of the pod as he thrust his head out, sniffing the wind.
He still had the form given to him by the scanner--he was definitely canine--but while the native wild dogs were grey and shaggy creatures, his coat was short, tidy and snow-white, save for the big brown blotches down his back and over his right eye. Over his rib cage on each side sat a circular VTOL turbine, folded down in a closed position. And on his haunch was an odd purplish spot which, if glimpsed at the right angle, might be said to resemble the sigil of the ancient Decepticons.
He threw back his head and let out a howl, signifying the commencement of the hunt.
***
Little was he to know that he was the object of a hunt himself. "Where is that slaggin' stasis pod?" muttered the white wolf to her companion as they raced side by side across the landscape.
Her friend, a smaller coyote, puffed as she struggled to keep up. "The computer said it landed somewhere around here...Blancwulf, slow down!"
"Can't! We gotta get to it before the Preds do! Or before it ends up like that other pod we found this morning."
"There aren't any Preds in this sector," Inuarai argued, but Blancwulf paid no attention.
Then the howl came echoing across the landscape. Blancwulf skidded to a stop, surprised, and almost involuntarily let out a howl of her own.
"What do you figure that is?" Inuarai asked. "It doesn't sound like any beast I know."
And then they saw the figure loping towards them. Not only was he different from any other canine they'd encountered on this world, but his metallic trim gave him away as another Transformer.
"Looks like the pod did just fine on its own," Inuarai said.
"Yeah, but is he Maxie or Pred?" Blancwulf retorted. "For all we know, the Preds might have gotten to it first, and we just haven't seen them. Hey!" she called out to the newcomer. "Over here!"
The stranger perked his ears and dashed up to them, cocking his head in a comical manner as he studied them. Blancwulf took a sniff and sneezed. He looked, and smelled, domesticated...like a foxhound, she thought. "Maxie or Pred?" she asked.
He blinked at her.
"Maxie, or Pred?" she repeated, a little more insistently.
His eyelids fluttered again, as if he were still trying to find his voice, and then he spoke. "I say, old girl, you don't need to be so huffy about it."
Inuarai giggled. The foxhound had an aristocratic, almost English accent. Both his voice and his looks were ridiculously out of place on this savage world. "Inuarai, MAXIMIZE!" she said, still laughing as she transformed.
"Blancwulf, MAXIMIZE!"
The foxhound looked about, thought a moment, and spoke. "Harrier, MAXIMIZE!"
He transformed--the canine head parting to reveal his hands, a robotic head rising from his chest, the canine hind legs swivelling and lengthening, the upper part of the animal chest moving down to form spotted shoulder guards. His robot chest was covered by a layer of what looked like chain mail, but not before Inuarai saw an unusual symbol...something that looked like the Decepticon logo. Maximal sigils adorned the two strips of white metal on his upper arms.
He moved his right arm down in a sweeping bow and announced, "Duke Harrier of the Decepticon Empire at your service."
Blancwulf blinked. "Decepticons... Weren't they the ancient ancestors of the Predacons?" At the mention of Predacons, the hackles rose on the back of her neck.
Harrier shrugged. "A different branch of the family..." His voice was vague, as if he were uncertain himself. "I say, where is this place?"
"Welcome to the Beast Wars," the white wolf said with a sigh. "I'm Blancwulf, and this is Inuarai. Do you remember anything, or did your memory circuits get slagged in the stasis pod crash?"
"I remember the Axalon," he replied slowly. "I was part of Optimus Primal's crew. We were setting out on an exploration mission. I was tracker and huntsman...and I had my own reason for joining up." His expression grew distant. "I'm looking for my lady."
He had other memories, fainter ones...of wearing the Decepticon logo, of fighting for a unit that called itself Phoenix Corps. Looking at his two Maximal companions, he decided that mentioning those recollections would probably be unwise. As a rule, Maximals did not think highly of Decepticons.
Had he known his lady in person, during the Decepticon days? Part of him suspected that he had...
"Your lady?" Inuarai asked. "Do you think her pod landed somewhere around here?"
"There's no record of another pod on the scanners," Blancwulf said.
"No," Harrier sighed. "She wasn't aboard the Axalon."
"Then you're out of luck here," the white wolf said. "This is prehistoric Earth."
"There's no other Transformers here?"
"Not unless you count the Preds." Blancwulf snarled again.
~Predacons...could my lady be a Predacon?~ From the way Blancwulf was bristling, he decided not to bring up that line of discussion.
Inuarai mused, "Maybe Pantera would know where his lady is. She knows a lot more people than we do."
Harrier shrugged. He had nothing else to do.
"You've got to watch yourself around here," Inuarai advised as they transformed and began heading back to their base. "The place is overrun with Preds...nasty ones."
The little coyote couldn't help but shiver at the memory of what she'd seen at the fallen stasis pod they'd discovered that morning. When she and Blancwulf had arrived, Pantera had already been at the scene...but something else had gotten there well in advance of both of them, and made certain that the Maximal protoform within the pod would never live to see another day. Pantera had hidden the worst of it, but Inuarai had seen enough: the shattered pod lid, the blood and fuel staining the inside of it brown, and the circuitry protruding from a partially or completely severed head...
"I don't understand it," Pantera had muttered. "This kind of savagery is unlike Megatron. He would want the protoform converted into a Predacon. This thing just wanted it dead. I can't understand why..."
"Protoform X?" Inuarai had suggested.
"No. Protoform X...Rampage...leaves a swath of destruction wherever he goes, and he likes to play with his food. This was quick and clean, efficient, brutal but emotionless. Almost surgical. Odds are that Maximal never even knew what happened." Her skin had twitched. "Rampage's psychopathic madness is bad enough. That a rational mind could be capable of such viciousness, that is truly frightening."
Inuarai was shaken out of her gloomy thoughts as their base came into view.
"Tera?" Blancwulf called as she, Inuarai, and Harrier circled the base, which was built around the remnants of Pantera's crashed starhopper.
The main door opened and the elder's voice came echoing from within the ship. "Did you find the stasis pod?"
"One new Maximal here to meet you," Inuarai grinned. "Meet..."
"Artemis," Harrier breathed, as the black jaguar advanced out of the shadows of the hallway.
Pantera's eyebrows raised. She'd given up the name Artemis after her reformatting from Autobot to Maximal...
The newcomer...a foxhound...tilted his head to the side and sniffed. "Artemis? Is that really you?" His mouth opened in a doggy grin. "I say, you've certainly had quite the upgrade!"
The voice was strangely familiar, though Pantera could have sworn she'd never seen the dog-bot before. "Do I...know you?"
"Artemis! It's me, Harrier!" Even as a foxhound, he managed to flash her a charming smile. "Harrier, MAXIMIZE!" And he finished off his transformation with a flourishing bow.
~Harrier. Primus,~ Pantera thought. ~This can't be happening. Harrier's dead.~
She thought back to the last time she'd seen Harrier...the jump-jet Decepticon. He'd been hanging around her headquarters for days, following her around, but when she'd challenged him, he'd had nothing to say to her. She'd been getting impatient, wondering what his motive was, hoping he'd gather together his courage and tell her his reason for being there...
She found out his reason firsthand.
Afterward, she'd inferred that Harrier had been trying to tell her about the Decepticons who'd been planning rebellion...and it couldn't have been an easy decision for him to make, considering that the rebels' leader was none other than Harrier's old best friend, Tempest.
Tempest. That bitch. She'd ruined everything, destroyed the peace that Cybertron had enjoyed ever since the end of the Quintesson Occupation. Artemis had thought she'd finally settled the Cybertronian Wars once and for all. Autobots and Decepticons were united...All Were One...
Tempest's rebellion changed all that.
And the whole thing had started the last night Artemis had seen Harrier...the night when Harrier had pulled her aside for a word that he'd never had a chance to speak. The night when Tempest, armed with a missile launcher, had launched a sudden attack.
Artemis had been knocked unconscious for a week--but Harrier had taken the brunt of the blow. The Autobot medics had said that he'd been killed...
...how had he turned up here?
Tempest. How could she have killed her own best friend?
Harrier, looking not the least bit dead, was grinning up at Pantera from the inside of a Maximal shell.
"Primus, Harrier, how'd you end up here?" she asked.
"I took ship aboard the Axalon."
"No, I mean, how'd you end up a Maximal?"
He grew pensive. "I...I don't rightly know. Do you remember...I was a Decepticon once...wasn't I?"
She nodded.
"I was brought online as a Maximal...part of a group of new sparks supposedly fresh from the factory...but I had these strange memories that the others didn't. Decepticons. Phoenix Corps. The Quintesson Occupation. It's all fuzzy...glimpses here, feelings there...but I'm not supposed to have them. My overseers said I was glitched."
"No," she breathed. "You're not glitched. You really were a Decepticon...and you're supposed to be dead."
He tilted his head at her. "I did some research...trying to figure out why I wasn't quite what they'd programmed me to be. The only thing I found was that there was an extra spark in my shipment when it arrived at the factory for placement into shells. The shipment was delayed due to the box being dropped inside the old Autobot lab. I don't know whether that has anything to do with it or not."
Pantera thought, hard. Could Harrier's spark somehow have survived the destruction of his Decepticon body? She'd heard rumours about a rogue group of Autobot medics, experimenting with spark extraction. Their methods had been condemned by the Maximal elders, but that hadn't stopped the application of the knowledge they'd gathered. Had they experimented on Harrier...supposedly dead?
Regardless, Pantera knew there was no point in wasting time with idle speculation. Harrier was here, and right now, it was more important to teach him to survive in the Beast Wars than to wonder how he'd gotten here.
***
"That should be it," Pantera said, after she brought her debriefing to a close. "Any questions?"
Harrier's head spun with the information he'd absorbed in the last few megacycles. Locations of bases, combat capabilities of Megatron's Predacons, brief descriptions of the other Maximals, warnings about the planet's dangers...but he still had one important thing on his mind.
"Art...Pantera...I'm here for a reason. I'm looking for someone."
"Who?"
He bowed his head, somewhat shyly. "My lady."
The elder looked puzzled. "What's her name?"
"I...I'm not sure. But I've got to find her, I've got to..."
"How come?"
A sigh. "I don't know. I've been looking for her ever since I came online as a Maximal. I hate to think of her, out there alone... She needs me, Pantera. I HAVE to find her!"
"All right." There was no denying the foxhound's agitation. "What's her name?"
"I don't...I don't remember."
"What does she look like?"
"My memory is foggy, but here's what I recall. She's yellow, trimmed with blue...she has ornamentation on a headpiece..." He ran his hands vertically from the sides of his head upward, in an attempt to illustrate. "She's got wings, but I don't remember her transformation...some kind of flying machine or creature...and she looks...like a soldier. A Valkyrie, a goddess of war."
War. Pantera realized with a chill that Harrier was talking about Tempest.
And then Harrier confirmed her suspicions. "Wait. Her name...I think I know. Storm...she was The Storm...Tem..." A pause, a determined look on his face. "Tempest." He looked up at Pantera as if searching for confirmation.
Tempest was dead. After the Decepticon Rebellion failed, Tempest became a war criminal, wanted throughout the galaxy. Pantera had never learned exactly who, or what, killed her--but she'd never forget the day when the Maximal Council of Elders had gone to the morgue to inspect the body.
Tempest's shell had been badly burned out. The sharp wings had hardly been touched, but the engines in her feet had been destroyed and the chest had been ripped to shreds. The face had been mostly undamaged, save for the shattered optic she'd suffered in the Rebellion. Pantera remembered staring down at that still, ruined face, unable to believe that it was finally over. Tempest, her onetime general, her onetime greatest enemy, was no more. In a way, it had seemed strange that the fiery, determined, stubborn and vicious Seeker would die so quietly, with neither a cheer from her killer nor a note of mourning from her former followers. It was as if she'd simply slunk off into a quiet corner of the universe to meet her fate--a surrender that was profoundly unlike her.
Nevertheless, it was over. Pantera realized only now that that had been the day when she'd finally relinquished her identity as Artemis once and for all. Artemis belonged in the past, with the Autobots and Decepticons, with her dear Starscream, with the battles of the Quintesson Occupation and the Decepticon Rebellion. Pantera was looking forward to the future.
Looking into Harrier's eyes, Pantera decided that Harrier deserved a similar future. What good would it do her to tell him that the femme of his dreams was dead? What could he gain from learning that his lady had been a cruel warlord, a war criminal, and his supposed killer? The foxhound was giving her his charming, questioning smile. "Do you know her?" he whispered.
No need to shatter his heart. Better he simply give up on Tempest as a mere phantasm, an illusion...
"No," Pantera told him gently. She paused as he bowed his head. "If you've been reformatted, you're going to be vulnerable to a lot of false visions. A few bugs in the programming. Odds are that your "lady" doesn't even exist...and even if she did, you wouldn't find her here, not while we're stuck on this primitive world."
He nodded slowly.
"Let her go," Pantera whispered. "You have a new life to live. Let her go." She patted Harrier on his shoulder and left him to his thoughts.
A few moments later, the mournful howl of a foxhound rose from the roof of the starhopper and rose into the wild night.
***
Survival of the fittest.
It was the first thought on her mind as she awoke from rest cycle and stalked down the corridors of the Predacon star cruiser to the main control room. Her long twin swords, sheathed in her wings, still bore the bloodstains of the dead Maximal. She cleaned them now, wiping away the traces of her kill without a single twinge of regret. All her life, she'd known no other law than the law of the jungle. The strong lived. The weak died. The strong preyed on the weak. She gave no mercy, and asked for none. Mercy was something she herself had never received.
Her name, now, was Samiel. Once she'd been called Tempest, General of the Cybertronian Forces during the Quintesson Occupation, then Decepticon Supreme Commander during the Decepticon Rebellion...the rebellion that had failed, leaving the Maximals and Predacons in control of Cybertron, leaving her a wanted war criminal, harried throughout the galaxy until she'd cut a deal with the Tri-Predacus Council to reformat her into a Predacon. Now her old Seeker shell was gone, replaced by the form of a metallic archaeopteryx.
She had been sent here to Earth by the Tri-Predacus Council to inquire as to the whereabouts of Agent Tarantulas, Covert Agent Ravage, and Agent Pantera, all of whom had failed to report for many stellar cycles. Primus only knew what had happened to Pantera. Samiel had found Ravage dead and Tarantulas merrily pursuing his own agenda, while some maniacal idiot named Megatron--who took nothing but ambition from his namesake, as far as she was concerned--attempted to set himself up as self-styled leader of the Predacons. Now it was up to her to deal with the mess this egomaniac was making, all the while attempting to eke out a little autonomy for herself. The Maximals were merely an entertaining diversion.
If she were the Tri-Predacus Council, she never would have sent herself here. Didn't they know who they were dealing with?
Of course they did. Of course...because all their other attempts to deal with Megatron had failed. They knew she would succeed and they were willing to take the gamble.
Gamble? What gamble? What could she do to them? She was stuck on this miserable mudball of a planet, having been sent several million years back in time, with no army and no...
...well, she did have an army of sorts. Two other Predacons, Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, had taken a trans-warp shuttle of their own to this time and place, searching for the whereabouts of their brother Ravage. They'd ruined the ship in a crash, and, after they learned that Ravage was dead, they'd attached themselves to her. Old loyalties, from the Decepticon Rebellion.
However, they were not Phoenix Corps.
Briefly, she thought of her old unit--her first true friends. Beretta, Deuce, Chopper...Harrier.
~Harrier...~
She shook her head. She could not afford to waste her time reminiscing. Phoenix Corps was gone, as were her days of glory as a Decepticon leader. She was a war criminal now, wanted across the galaxy for her rebellion against Artemis Prime. She reminded herself that if nothing else, this prehistoric planet was a wonderful place for her to hide while she marshalled her forces and resources. Leaning back in her command chair, she looked around the control room of her star cruiser.
Laserbeak, a black and red male eagle-bot, looked up from the primary computer. "I think I've finally gotten a tag on the renegade Megatron." He frowned. "Megatron's got quite a base set up for himself."
Across the room stood another eagle, almost a mirror-image of Laserbeak save for her more feminine build and her colouration. Where Laserbeak was trimmed with red, Buzzsaw was trimmed with gold. "I think I've broken into the Maximal communications frequencies. If you want to hook up with the Maximals to hunt down Megatron, I've got the channel to call on. That was Ravage's plan, when he left Cybertron."
Samiel snorted. She hadn't thought much of Ravage ever since he sided with Artemis instead of Tempest during the 'Con Rebellion. Still, just because she didn't hold the deceased Ravage in high regard didn't mean his plan was invalid. A temporary peace with the Maximals would serve her well, until Megatron was taken care of. It was unlikely the Maximals would blame her for the dead protoform...she'd been careful to leave no evidence...
"Our first concern is Megatron. What kind of defences does his base have?"
"Aside from his troops, I'd say force-fields, a laser defence grid with auto guns, possibly sonic disrupters." Laserbeak frowned. "I'd have to do a little recon to be sure."
"Hmm. Aside from Tarantulas, no one else knows we're here. I'd rather keep it that way while I can. Still, we're never going to get anywhere sitting around the base...Very well. Make your reconnaissance. But if you're seen...by anyone...I want no survivors left to tell the tale."
***
A dream. Was it possible? Could it be that his lady was no more than a figment of his imagination? The idea left Harrier strangely depressed. He folded his paws and sighed, leaning his back against the side of the starhopper.
An odd scent came to him all of a sudden. He sniffed the air, and his keen nose picked up unusual fragrances on the wind. The smells tickled his nose, teasing, intriguing him. He hopped to his feet, taking a few steps, still sniffing.
"Don't go too far from the base," came Pantera's voice from the doorway. "Remember, the Predacons are still out there, and we've got some ugly ones. Rampage...Megatron...and whatever it was that diced up that other Maximal in its pod."
"Righty-o. I'll be careful."
Pantera sighed as she watched him go. He was still so fresh out of the pod, still suffering from those little mental glitches...and, she realized, she was even more concerned about him than she would be for the average Maximal, simply because she'd known him before. He'd had a hard go of life and he had deserved so much more than to play lackey to that Tempest bitch... She hoped he survived long enough to be able to enjoy the second chance at life that fate had granted him. But she couldn't confine him to the base forever. ~He was an experienced soldier,~ she reminded herself, ~a onetime captain of a Quint-hunter starship, and he's heavily armed.~ That little foxhound shell came complete with a laser-powered double-barrelled hunting rifle, twin duelling pistols, and a short sword.
"Be careful, Harrier," she murmured.
***
"Quite the base indeed," Laserbeak muttered as he and Buzzsaw returned from their flyby of Megatron's base.
Buzzsaw flashed her partner an avian grin. "I always did appreciate a challenge." She turned on her communications link. "Buzzsaw to Samiel. We've got the information."
"Good. I've got your coordinates on the main computer. Come on in to base. Samiel out."
Far below, the little foxhound pricked up his ears, sniffing. Two eagles were passing by overhead, and it was from them that the odd scent emanated. Their odour was a combination of living bird and metal plating, with the distinct aroma of energon...
His beast mode took over and he let out a ringing howl, in the manner of foxhounds who've found the trail of possible prey.
Laserbeak and Buzzsaw paused, beating their wings, hovering in midair. "What was that?" Laserbeak demanded.
"Down there," Buzzsaw said, gesturing with a wing and narrowing her optics. "Let's check it out."
The two birds descended in a screaming dive. Harrier, still thinking like an animal, paced in circles, barking...and then he activated his VTOL engines and rose up to meet them, snapping at them as they went past.
"It's a Maximal!" Laserbeak exclaimed.
"Slag! Samiel told us not to be seen."
"Then we'll just have to take him out. Laserbeak, TERRORIZE!"
"Buzzsaw, TERRORIZE!"
The little foxhound's ears drooped as he noticed the two Predacons diving on him, firing their lasers. He was really in a spot now...and as his robot side began re-emerging, he remembered that he could transform too.
"Harrier, MAXIMIZE!" He transformed in mid-air, still hovering on his VTOL jets, drew his duelling pistols, and began firing a furious volley at the Predacons. "I say, two of you and one of me, not very sporting!"
"You picked the wrong day to be out alone, Maximal," Buzzsaw growled. She came in at him, but he twisted around her gunfire and responded with some shots of his own that clipped her wing and caused her to plow into the ground. But while he was distracted, Laserbeak came up behind him, tackling him and causing them both to fall end-over-end to the soil. Laserbeak and Harrier threw wild punches at one another, neither one really connecting with any vital areas, as they scrabbled to get their bearings. Buzzsaw was staying back, out of the fight.
A new voice. "What's been taking you?"
A voice that was strangely familiar to Harrier...
"Maximal." That was Buzzsaw.
Laserbeak pushed Harrier away from him and backed up.
The cold chuckle and the words that followed it didn't sink into Harrier's mind. "Stand back. He's mine." The foxhound-bot, still on his back, looked up, trying to see who the owner of the new voice was and whether she was friend or foe.
And then he saw her.
Just like his dreams, a vision in yellow and blue...yellow feathers, blue trim. Yellow helmet, blue feathers like pointed spires. Strong wings, martial stance, chiselled features...it was her, definitely her. Other ladies had the beauty of flowers, the grace of nature's creatures, the wonder of the skies. His lady's beauty was that of a precision machine, a weapon built to kill.
Laserbeak and Buzzsaw were retreating, allowing her to come forward. Harrier pushed himself onto his knees, stunned at the suddenness from which she'd stepped out of dreams and into reality. He bowed to his lady, holding up his hands to her...
She punched him across the jaw.
He reeled backwards from the hit, and hadn't even touched ground before she was after him again, spinning around and landing a kick to his midsection. He whimpered in confusion and pain, rolling to his feet; she kicked him again across the face. Fighting her was not even an option; it did not cross his mind. He pulled himself up into a kneeling position, mouthing the words..."my lady..."
But as he'd been collecting himself, she'd been drawing her weapons--a pair of long, thin swords sheathed in her wings. She hissed at him now. "Fight, you pathetic Maximal."
"My lady, I cannot fight you..."
She punched him, kneed him in the gut. He reeled away but would not draw his pistols.
Her optics were baiting, cold. She seemed to be relishing the fight. "Fight or die."
"My lady, I will not harm you." He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Her response was a single slice of her right blade, cutting him open from throat to stomach.
He whimpered in disbelief as another kick set him sprawling backwards. Up on his elbows, he looked down and verified that the damage was not, in fact, a nightmare...he really could see his inner circuitry, his organs... The cut was so clean that there was almost no blood, but the slow ooze of fuel from several cords betrayed the fact that he was badly, badly injured.
~What have I done...~
~I betrayed her.~
He didn't fully understand, but somewhere in his cloudy brain was the sense that he deserved this punishment. And he was sorry, so dreadfully sorry, and it had nothing to do with the pain. It had only to do with her...he'd not been worthy of her.
"My lady," he mouthed. "I'm sorry..."
She stepped on his chest, sending a wave of agony through his body. The tip of her left blade rested in the hollow of his throat.
"Idiot," she hissed, "you should have fought for your life." But she tilted her head, as if intrigued. "Tell me your name, before you die."
"Harrier," he wheezed, the name almost unintelligible.
"What?" she demanded, her voice suddenly soft.
"Duke Harrier," he moaned, "of the Decepticon Empire."
***
Click for part 2
