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rosecolouredmind · 3 years

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Savior

Nicholas Scratch x Reader

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Part Four:

The Angel of Mercy

First, it was his soul.

Nick never regretted the fact that he was born a warlock. He had powers, longevity, and led a lifestyle of envy. So, when he came of age, he signed on the dotted line in the Book of the Beast. Ever since then, the word ‘regret’ had never once entered his vocabulary.

There was a slim chance he’d ever be called upon to do something untoward, and if it did happen, well...what’s one sin in exchange for a life of frivolity and debauchery?

But next...it was his heart.

Lust, power, knowledge; dedicating his soul to the Dark Lord came with massive perks, and he wasn’t exactly complaining when one of them manifested in the appearance of Sabrina Spellman.

No...Sabrina Morningstar.

He couldn’t explain exactly how or why. His devotion, his loyalty; It had been stolen away by yet another Morningstar, his heart charmed and mind swayed. The powerful capabilities the young witch displayed did nothing but endear him to the demure, compassionate mor(t)ality she fought so hard to keep.

Sabrina Morningstar-Spellman was both the enticement and innocence of the flesh of the lamb... and it would have done Nick well to remember that the lamb is but the spawn of the Beast.

Suddenly, Nick found himself dancing a little too closely with the Devil; twin stars he pledged himself to ended up with him finally learning the word regret once the last pledge left his lips:

Nicholas Scratch, for the love of his life and the containment of it’s keeper, volunteered to be the flesh acheron.

And now, Nick found himself trapped in an everlasting Hell even the darkest of his nightmares couldn’t have begun to manifest.

The Baphomet and the lamb; the Degraded and the Pure. Both were sides of the same twisted fate he’d found himself a part of, desperate to escape. His mind had long since melted into a pool of chaos and intense fear. He’d tried countless ways to just end it all, if only Lucifer were so kind. He no longer had a life to speak of; just endless suffering and eternal doom. His life wasn’t supposed to be like this…

Not like this.

Nick thought himself a pretty gifted warlock, and had long since placed protection charms upon his mind and body should anything or anyone with malicious intention attempt to try him.

He doesn’t know what he was thinking at the time he convinced Sabrina, the coven, and himself that it was a good idea to use his own body as the flesh acheron, but he does admit that hubris and naivete played a part. And at the moment of that final “I love you” to Sabrina, he accepted his fate and was determined to face it no matter what happened to him.

Unfortunately for Nick, you can’t guard against the Devil.

Lucifer made quick work of him, and Nick soon found himself in a never-ending cycle of pain and torture he couldn’t have even fathomed beforehand. Suddenly, his life’s outlook was being eternally violated by the Dark Lord without reprieve. And from what it looked like, it was only a matter of time before he completely broke and the Dark Lord once again took up his mantle of dominating Hell and eventually Earth. All that would be left of Nick and his sacrifice would be any empty shell of a person who no longer knows how to exist as one.

So when the lamb arrived and saved Nick from the Baphomet, he supposed he should have been grateful. Happy, even. Nick had gone to Hell for Sabrina Spellman, and she’d gone to Hell to save him.

But as time still seemed to stretch on without end, he started to break.

Though it wasn’t exactly her fault, Sabrina could never understand what her father put him through because of her. Coupled with her lack of even really trying, her wish for him to just sweep everything under the rug and go back to how things were left him feeling more than a little resentful.

The resounding silence of his once scrambled mind did nothing but make for a much effective echochamber of his worst memories; memories which were exceedingly numerous and fresh. Nick looked for something, anything to fill up or dull that silence; most of which were methods not exactly healthy for him and definitely not healthy for his relationship.

It didn’t take long for the Morningstars to steal away Nicholas Scratch, and it was with resounding disgust that they spat back out all three parts of him they’d taken, broken beyond recognition.

Now stuck dealing with his many issues alone, the tortured boy clung to the only achingly fleeting memories that kept him grounded in rationality instead of spiraling into illusions of the dreadful abyss looming in his haunted mind. And as he replayed the images of the illuminating figure who reminded him that he was still human and that his heart was still beating, to his displeasure he’d found that he wished he had more.

She visited exactly 12 times.

Twelve blessed encounters, each one increasing his fervor more than the last; her presence was like a drug to Nick, a sustenance that he would easily admit to himself he couldn’t go without any longer.

While (Y/N) did explain to him that her powers were limited inside Hell and there wasn’t much of a chance she could directly free him, he couldn’t stop himself from pining after her whenever she was absent. At first, images of Sabrina had been what kept him going. He constantly reminded himself that she was probably doing all she could to save him, and when she actually did, he told himself that everything would finally be okay again.

Nick and Sabrina picked up exactly where they left off, eager to get back to each other again. He reminded himself, Satan be damned, he loved her; otherwise he’d have never sacrificed himself for her to begin with.

Nick had gone to Hell for Sabrina Spellman, was tortured by the Devil himself, and at the time, he had no regrets.

But things couldn’t go back to the way they used to be. He couldn’t go back.

That doesn’t mean that Sabrina didn’t try to help him in whatever way she could, but once she revealed her new royal status, Nick’s remaining feelings of responsibility towards the blonde Morningstar withered away along with the rest of the kinders of their relationship.

Nick was back amongst his coven, friends, lover; but he still felt so achingly alone and afraid all the time. He wanted to feel something, anything other than the despair Lucifer Morningstar so thoroughly imprinted into his being. Despite the love he told himself he felt for the little Morningstar, the literal spawn of his trauma, the only beacon he could rely on to keep him sane was the memory of you.

And as he reminisced on your serendipitous encounters, to his shame, he couldn’t help but compare.

After a while, it had become hard for Nick to separate the daughter from the father, the lamb from the Baphomet. In his intense resentment, he’d gotten to the point where his mind was becoming absolutely blank as it gave in to the invading presence of the sheer evil he’d been fighting against for so long…

And then an angel descended, and he’d nearly cried out in tears and praise for the false God.

It had taken him a while to realize that Lucifer’s presence couldn’t be felt anymore, and even longer to convince himself that it wasn’t a trick. He would close his eyes and see his demons warping beneath the surface, twisting his psyche into a weak, chaotic mess. He would open them and still see red, the color of a neverending hellscape created specifically to terrorize his soul and break him apart piece by piece, rebuilding and breaking again until nothing original was left. He saw despair, and he felt it as well. A gloom so deeply settled into his being that it would have been impossible to get rid of; a shell of the person he’d once been.

So no, Nick couldn’t tell you if his eyes were ever open or closed, because it made no difference to him at all. And one day in that eternity of Hell, Nick finally came to realize he regretted being all alone...

So, pray tell, when a lonely, broken boy suddenly feels someone wipe away his tears, what ever should he say?

He could only posture himself and pray.

The warmth and comfort his angel brought him blessed him with a near orgasmic experience, abruptly tugging him from the brink of despair. For a moment, he questioned if she, if he — was even real, or if Lucifer was really trying that hard to live up to his name as the harbinger of lost home and doom. But when the blessed hands caressed his face, and those saintly eyes pierced through the darkness forever in his view to meet his own, all he could feel was intense relief -- and shame.

Shame over who he was, where he’d gotten himself, and how he’d gotten there.

Surely someone who dedicated their life and soul to the Devil himself didn’t deserve the presence and grace of a literal angel in the darkest moment of his life?

So, with his eyes wide open once again, he cried. He cried at her grace, and at her mercy. Even after she coaxed him down from his delirium and explained who she really was, he wept at the sheer exuberance he felt that she even appeared -- let alone helped him -- just when he was forgetting what it felt to feel anything but pain and suffering. She was his angel, godly or not, and he thanked his lucky stars that it was his fate to be able to meet her in that moment.

Soon, between visits, it became her face, not Sabrina’s, that he’d found had kept him going. (Y/N) had become his symbol of hope, his new god, his only savior. Disillusioned with giving his life to people who only harmed him, (Y/N) became his new religion as he found himself praying to the stars and the Fates for her speedy return. Every time he was graced with her presence, he understood that whatever was written in the stars for him couldn’t have been so bad if he was able to meet her in between the lines.

And when Nick found himself finally out of Hell and in Sabrina’s arms again, he was fully prepared to keep his newfound faith close to his heart and out of the sight of others. Everything that had happened to him was incredibly personal, whether it be his time with you or with the Dark Lord. But when Sabrina revealed her new status as Queen of Hell to him and effectively admitted that everything he’d been through -- his sacrifice, his loss, his pain -- was all for nothing, Nick felt as if time had stopped and his heart had caved in.

He tried his hardest to be okay; with his life, with his coven, with Sabrina. He began coping in the only way he knew how, which admittedly did more harm than good. But without your presence to pull him from the brink, Nick found himself spiralling down the dark depths of his memories with no foreseeable end and without support. Eventually, the pent up resentment and mind games the Dark Lord still insisted on playing with him even after his escape got to him, and he lashed out. The Morningstars took everything from him; his heart, his body, his soul. The coven, Sabrina; no one actually understood him or the anguish he had experienced -- still experienced -- every second of his existence since that final pledge left his lips. The increased sense of isolation brought up his darkest thoughts and feelings, and soon he found himself not only cut off from Sabrina, but from the rest of the coven as well.

As the witches found themselves caught off guard by the arrival of the pagans, Nick instead would find himself staring up at the night sky, alone, searching for his hope.

And while the witches were more concerned with the moon, Nick was waiting for the stars.

As it was predestined, one very particular night Nick felt a very particular warmth bloom across his chest. He smiled, and smiled as wide as his face would allow at that. Because as he watched a very particular star fall from the sky, he knew finally:

The person he placed his faith in didn’t let him down.

Author’s Note: Here’s part 5! Next chapter should be out next Sunday.

Please ask to be tagged! Reblogs, comments and asks are appreciated as well but not required 🤠

Tag list:

@insomniac-nerd-posts-things

@jemandderkeinenusernamenfindet

@sophia-of-sass-gard

#caos #nicholas scratch x reader #nick scratch x reader #sabrina #the chilling adventures of sabrina #sabrina spellman #ambrose x reader #prudence x reader #x reader #savior

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msrosey · 4 years

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Ok- What if Shadow was Good and Amy was anti. Would Amy be the one who makes first moves or is it still Shadow?

This spawned far too much world building, i apologize in advance

- set during the Dark Arms invasion, with the usual anti-Amy behavior where she hates Sonic and has her trusty warhammer. Twisting her a little bit so she’s not as childish, but still as messed up. Reminder that anti-Amy goes as Rosy the Rascal!

- there’s no official anti-Shadow, so let’s just say the canon divergence here was that Maria /didn’t/ die via GUN raid and instead lived a longer life that was ultimately cut short by her condition. Shadow then never gains his gloom and doom persona and instead is more of a caretaker to her, albeit one with a MAJOR guilt complex for his creation not being able to cure her, and went in suspended animation until the Black Comet returns.

Now onto the show!

AO3, for those that prefer!

Of all the things Rosy thought would end the world, alien invasion had been worrying low on her list. Inter-dimensional police force with the proper permits to take them all in? Pfft, sure. That freak echnida deciding the best way to destroy the emeralds was to blow up the planet? Wouldn’t have bet money on it, but why not? Even the idea of one of Robotnik’s helper bots going postal was more likely then, well—this.

From the flying headquarters, Rosy could see the plumes of smoke rising from patches of scorched city. Flying dark specters zoomed over the land below, all light cast in a bloody sheen from the planetary sized comet hanging in the sky.

She pressed closer to the glass, smiling at the view. Red always was her favorite—

“Amy,” a voice snapped behind her, haughty and suffocatingly uptight. Like the little twerp it belonged to. Rosy rolled her eyes. Still, she turned and gave the fox her signature crooked smile.

“Tails,” Rosy crooned, leaning against her green war hammer. “I was just stopping to smell the sulphur flowers. Something up?"

The fox looked annoyed, but Rosy knew that was typical for the stuck-up brat. “You may address me as Miles. Have you been paying attention to the meeting at all?"

Rosy batted her lashes, fixing her gaze on him and ignoring the crowd of people around the conference room. “Of course, Tails. Alien invasion. Comet’s gonna destroy the planet. Yada-yada-yada, I’m not good enough to fix it myself!” At the last part she mimicked talking with her hand in the fox’s signature serious tone.

Miles narrowed his eyes, but didn’t rise to the bait. Boring. “Yes, this endeavor will require all of our strengths in order to succeed. And you’re aware of your part in the mission?”

A tingle ran down her back at the reminder, putting every single spine on edge. Rosy's grin turned manic. “Yep! I’m gonna hurt Sonic! Mangle him, bash him, crush him up, up, up!”

“Quite,” Miles said, raising a brow. “Your portion is critical, since as long as Sonic is guarding the remaining Beryl for Black Death on Demon Island, our plan stands little chance of succeeding.”

Thoughts of brutally maiming the hedgehog of her nightmares spun around Rosy's head, making her feel flushed. The planet’s destruction was one thing, and a thing she didn’t care much about, but Sonic— Well, the end of the world just wouldn’t feel right if he wasn’t absolutely bloody destroyed. She would have just tried on her own, as she always did, but these Black Arms were quite the heavy customers...and who was she do decline an offer from Miles Prowler to step aboard his exclusive gunship?

He gathered an interesting group as well. Her gaze trailed over to the museum curator, Rogue, whose poofy purple dress was splattered in the green blood of the aliens. Probably had a fun run in with them when they were going for the last stash of emeralds in the Central Museum. Besides her was Knuckles, whose drive to destroy all the emeralds would have made him a genuine threat…if he wasn’t such a total wimp. Vanilla though, Rose knew she’d have to keep an eye on. As if to prove it, the leather clad rabbit was already looking at her, permanent sneer fixed on her scarred face.

Ugh, assassins. Always so eager to intimidate. Rose rolled her eyes as Miles. The rabbit had eyes on her for a while, which would account for why Rosy had been so on edge since setting foot on the ship…unless, of course her internal tracking was picking up—

From beside her, someone cleared his throat.

“Um, excuse me, Sir Prowler?” Doctor Kintobor was already wringing his hands, voice trembling. “I understand that the Black Arms need to be defeated, but maybe we can just…move them to another planet? I do so hate causing any harm to a sentient…um, sentient species. They do deserve to live too...”

Miles looked about to cause harm, but also like he severely doubted that the doctor was sentient. “Their lives are not worth more than our own. And this Black Comet of theirs threatens that. Or do you have a better plan, Doctor, hmm? Maybe ask them nicely to commit genocide in the next solar system?”

Doctor Kintobor flushed at the laughter that filled the room. “Oh, um, I suppose.”

“Besides, we have it on good intel that the Dark Arms have planned this invasion for some time. They will not be easily dissuaded and we only have one real source on their behavior,” Miles continued, casting a dark eye around the room, “And on that note…” His eyes landed on hers. Rosy tensed. “Vanilla, restrain her."

Rosy barely had enough time to call out cowards before the floppy eared assassin tackled her down, breaking her connection with her hammer. Metal clasps rose from the floor and locked her in place, leaving her to thrash. Beryl enforced metal, cause he was a wimp. Stupid Tails and his stupid inventions!

“Apologies for the rough treatment, but we all know you can handle it,” Miles continued, posture immaculate. “And we couldn’t take the risk of you attacking our next guest.”

Touching her. People were touching her! Rosy struggled against the rabbit holding her down, baring full fangs at the room.

“Um, maybe we should be, a little nicer…?” Rosy heard Dr. Kintober say weakly. “We do need her to take out Sonic and help defeat the Black Arms.”

“Correction,” Miles said cooly, “We need her and our guest to do that. And she already has a proven violent predisposition towards those of his species. You can see how we'd rather not take the risk, Doctor.”

Species...

Rosy’s head swam as the pieces began to connect themselves. She knew she’d felt something, she knew, knew, knew, one of them was on this ship. A—

The doors of the gunship conference room opened and a familiar silhouette filled the doorway.

“Sonic!” Rosy roared, bucking the assassin off her with one sharp movement. Her hammer flew across the room and slammed into her chains, breaking them into so many fine pieces. Emeralds, Beryl, whatever you called them, always were weak against some solid willpower. Rosy launched herself over the table and towards the figure, weapon in hand. Her mind raced with thoughts of the extra special smash she’d been saving up for him.

Just as Rosy got close enough to really savor the impending violence, a bright purple light filled the air. And when it disappeared, so did the rest of the room.

She blinked her eyes, rubbing hard as she found herself…atop the gunship? Tail’s stupid Anticyclone. Wind buffeted her sideways and Rosy dig her hammer into the steel hull to keep balance. How did—

“Sorry to alarm you, but a fight inside would have crashed the gunship,” someone said behind her. Rosy spun, launching out with her hammer. The hedgehog - because it was a hedgehog, her instincts were always right - only moved, speeding away on…hover boots?

“Aw, did you get some new toys, Sonic?” Rosy cooed, crouching low to keep from sliding off the ship. Stupid Tails was starting evasive maneuvers. How cute. “You know how I love breaking your new toys.”

“I am not Sonic—“

“But you’re a hedgehog!”

She rushed forward at the next tilt of the ship, this time managing to surprise him enough to get close. Then another purple light and he was gone. Rosy pouted, turning to look around the surface of the ship. “No fun, disappearing all the time. Don’t you want to play?"

Something dark zipped by her, knocking her hammer from her hands. Rosy watched it sail over the edge of the gunship, disappearing in the grey smoke fumes below. “Hey!”

The blur came to a stop a few feet away, his form more clear. A black and red hedgehog, although with spines a little too raised to be her Sonic’s, even with another of his color switches. Rosy glared. “That wasn’t nice! I just wanted to hurt you!”

The hedgehog looked at her with odd eyes, tilting his head. “Why?”

Rosy made a face. “Why, what?”

“Why do you want to hurt me? Is it because I resemble this Sonic of yours?” His voice was even, betraying none of his emotions. It put Rosy on edge. No one was that calm without a plan. He continued, “What has this Sonic done to inspire such vengeance? To drive you to violence? Is he worth it?”

“Worth…” Rosy wasn’t sure whether to laugh or attack him for those words. So she did both. “Who cares about worth!"

The dark hedgehog only dodged her punches, keeping that same face of unruffled intent. “So you attack for the sake of it? For…fun?”

Now he sounded like that wuss echnida. Pacifist was just another word for coward. Rosy snarled. “Stop running away! I hate it when you run away. Stand and fight me, already!”

“No,” he said simply, ducking another attack. “Because I’m not your enemy. Why is Sonic?”

Why was—why was—Sonic? Now Rosy did laugh, this time pausing her assault to do so. Why was Sonic her enemy? Why? In this horrible dimension where everything went wrong, someone actually had the nerve to ask why? An odd empty feeling filled her gut.

Why was a stupid question to ask about enemies. How was always the more enlightening. Memories began to trickle in, images of a burning forest and screaming hoglets. Memories she’d long ago forced herself to forget. Her fists clenched. The answer ripped itself from her throat—

“Because he’s Sonic!”

This time her attack took him by surprise, and he only barely managed to slide out of the way on his stupid cheat hover boots. Her fist left a distinct imprint on the hull of the ship and Rosy could faintly hear Miles cursing a blue streak from the pilot deck. Whoopsie, another toy smacked around by an uncaring hedgehog.

She thought he’d be used to it by now.

The memories roused by the thought only fueled her rage. Not her normal simmer, no, this time it was tinged with that ugly empty desperation from so long ago. Rosy flew at the hedgehog again, screaming. “Because he never takes anything seriously!”

Another kick, this time sloppy enough that he had more than enough time to move out of the way. Rosy slipped in the empty space where he'd just been, falling a sharp ways down the hull until she managed to launch herself back up. The lack of contact with him was beginning to grate, remind her of the times when…

“Because he’d ruin everything and just keep running from it!” It was getting darker, her steps harder to place. Meanwhile the other hedgehog looked as if he could do this all day with his stupid cheating hover boots and weird emerald powers. He didn’t even look as if he’d broke a sweat.

Just like—

Amy-Rosy-Rosy cried out as swung again, “Because he ruined everything and wouldn’t even take me seriously!”

That caused something to bloom on the other hedgehog’s face, but Rosy was past the niceties of taunting. And that had been quite enough stalling. She feinted for his legs - stupid, stupid hedgehog legs - and just as he leapt out of the way, she grinned. He caught it, frowning in response, just in time for her hammer to soar from the clouds below and catch him.

In the gut.

Rosy grinned. Always nice to get a little cheap shots in. That always managed to humble a hedgehog. He fell back, sliding against the entirety of the ship’s top hull. Her hammer still with him, only to return to her open hand. She smiled at the sight of him laid low. “Aw, was that too good an answer for you?”

He groaned. Rosy giggled a little, flush with pride. From here she could almost pretend it was Sonic, finally stopped. What a thought. She leaned against her hammer, still smiling. “Let me give you some advice, new hedgehog. People are basically awful and are always going to find a reason to hurt others. You might as well stop giving them chances."

The gunship swerved again, but Rosy moved with it, making an odd little dance towards the hedgehog. He was already rising, but that was fine. That just meant she could smash him some more. She readied her warhammer as she got close, humming a senseless tune, “And pop goes your—“

The world went sideways. Rosy had enough time to catch the brief sight of long ears flapping - how did all of them know how to fly with no wings! Cheats! - just as she was kicked off the edge of the gunship. She dug in her hammer on the side, metal screeching, but there wasn’t enough side left. Vanilla’s stern face looked down at her as she fell.

No fun, Rosy thought, I didn’t even get to break Sonic first.

Her ears popped at the pressure of air around her and Rosy felt her gaze track over to the giant comet in the sky, still glowing. What a lovely color. At least her last sight would be —

Red.

Red eyes staring right at her, an odd look in them that Rosy hadn’t seen for longer than she could remember. The hedgehog was just above her, so close she could see the sweat flying from his brow His spines were being blown astray and his hover boots were struggling to boost him forward but still, his face was determined. He had her hammer in one hand and the other hand, outstretched...towards her.

Rosy only stared.

There was no—no reason—saving her? Her? No one had ever—

His fangs were bared in strain as he stretched his arm further.

Just as they broke the cloud cover and the gunship was almost just a dot in the sky, Rosy found herself doing something she hadn’t done since she was a hoglet and watched her entire family burn because of a mad boy’s boredom.

She reached out for help.

His face seemed to turn more determined at that, lunging forward with another roar of flames from his hover boots. Hand trembling, her gloves barely brushed his before—

A bright purple light filled everything she could see and Rosy blinked to find herself back on the gunship, this time in the conference room. The near abandoned conference room. She watched Dr. Kintober duck behind a chair with a squeak. Normally she’d punish such overt wimpiness, but instead Rosy just stared at the hand still holding hers.

“Here,” he offered, holding out her hammer, “Sorry I had to borrow your weapon, a jump like that required more chaos energy than I had.”

Rosy blinked as she accepted it. Giving her hammer back? The one she’d just used to crack several of his ribs. The question was on her lips before she even realized, “Why?”

He seemed to realize her question was not quite about the hammer, judging by the light in his eyes. Rosy wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen that before, a gaze so…soft. Calm. As if it carried an infinite patience capable only of someone who truly—cared?

An odd thrum set itself up in Rosy’s chest, like the beating of an organ that had long ago turned hard.

“Because,” he said, “I made a promise a long time ago to give everyone a chance. And it looked like you needed one.”

Rosy opened her mouth to say something, not exactly sure what, only for the conference room door to slide open. More than several guns pointed out from the doorway. “Step away from Shadow the Hedgehog, Amy Rose! If you do not comply, we will be forced to shoot!”

The dark hedgehog in question scowled at this, turning towards the doorway. “I told you I had this handled! There’s no need for anyone to get hurt.”

“You got hurt,” Rosy pointed out. A strange feeling accompanied the words, an unfamiliar clench in her gut.

The hedgehog - Shadow? - didn’t even look away from the nozzles of the gun, still firmly planting himself between them and her as he answered, “I’m a living weapon. It doesn’t matter.”

Rosy furrowed her brow, something about his words hitting her weirdly. She didn’t…like them? She also didn’t like the guns, but somehow the fact that they were pointing at him was…bad?

Well, only one way to fix that.

Huffing, Rosy shoved past him, moving to the front of the conference room. The guns followed her only to pause when she did, sitting herself into the chair originally marked for her. There was a short silence.

“Well? Don’t we got an alien invasion to stop?” Rosy called out, crossing her arms. She pouted at the clear sounds of disbelief from beyond the doorway, only stopped by Shadow clearing his throat.

“Yes, there’s new intel we need to review. It’s rather time sensitive,” he said, folding his arms and managing to look like he'd hadn't just returned from an impromptu skydive. Rosy touched her own spines in a rush of insecurity, flattening the ones that stuck out the most. How did his already go back to normal?

Rogue was the first to come out, tripping oddly over the first step. Rosy paused from her grooming to snort. Knuckles probably pushed her, the wuss. He got his comeuppance by being the next shoved through the doorway, courtesy of Miles. Who was still brandishing his gun. She raised a hand and wiggled her fingers at him. He sneered. Lovely kid.

Dr. Kintober slowly rose from under the desk, still shaking. He looked between her and Shadow quickly, something calculating in his gaze. Rosy shot him a sickly smile that sent him ducking back behind his chair to hide. Nice to see she still had it.

As everyone began to filter in, with the obvious lack of Vanilla who likely knew better than to show her face so soon, Rosy slumped back in her seat and resolved to watch the proceedings. All were sending her strange looks she ignored, except for one.

Shadow’s face was cast in an odd sheen from the sky outside and Rosy found herself holding her breath when his eyes passed over hers. The light made his eyes glow stronger, that same rare softness staring back at her. He gave her a small smile as the seconds stretched on and Rosy turned away sharply, blood pumping fast.

Miles continued with his plan and Rosy ignored the odd suspicious glance at her, mind too busy picking apart the swarm of thoughts raging in her head. Red was always the color of destruction, of violence and rage and —

So why was the red of his eyes soothing?

#kuuzir0se #shadamy #shadow the hedgehog #amy rose #shadow x amy rose #mine #have i mentioned I Love AUs #please put more in my inbox #msrosey fics

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fringchound-a · 4 years

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The Black Forest Zone V2.x

god this took longer than expected, helloooo three weeks of compiling

Since the original lore I wrote for it is both ancient and frankly lacking in any real diversity, I figured a rewrite and redevelopment was in order, capitalizing on a lot of things I’ve developed over the last ... however long it’s been since I originally made it. A lot of things will stay the same but be added on to, and a lot of things will be changed or added. All of it will have decent explanations attached. I’m debating on making an historical timeline for it, but that’ll be in another post, I think.

So let’s get started on the tour, shall we! Further details are below the cut, and I’m sure I’ll add to them over time, and a reminder I mixed the lores from all three pieces of media so it doesn’t conform to just one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Black Forest is one of the six known Landings, also known as a Visitation Zone. Like many, it was mutated by the Landing and has become sentient on some level, encompassing all of the infamous Black Forest and some small swatches of land around it in the southwest of Germany. A few small towns have been swallowed by the sea of rapid-growing trees, but nearby cities are widely unaffected.

It is the proverbial ‘Elephant in the Room’ for the government, and they have spared no expense to keep its presence quiet. There is no news coverage about it and it has been taken out of all historical texts and maps published in the country show the area as fertile agricultural flatland instead. People heard talking about it are ‘investigated’, though they are known to disappear regardless of verdict of intent. In a futile attempt to put the Zone out of mind, a twelve-foot tall security wall made of concrete eight feet thick was erected around it, topped with rolls of razorwire and crowned with anti-climbing spikes. As expected, it does little to put the thing out of peoples’ minds, and as a result of its invitation to the illegal class known as stalkers, military presence is thick around the main or noticeable entrances and exits into and out of the Zone.

Due to its inherent personality of Quietly Active and Playful, the Black Forest has become nothing short of one of the more treacherous Zones. After mutation, it grew native trees almost overnight in massive sizes so tightly knit together that barely any sunlight can penetrate the canopy, casting it into an eternal green gloom unaffected by normal seasonal changes. It is a labyrinth of massive trunks and vast roots that change location and orientation at any given moment. A good Forest stalker can still navigate fairly decently, though extreme caution and vigilance is recommended, since there are other dangers the Forest hides than just shifting landscaping.

Originally known for being both the cradle of darker folklore [including the Grimm Brothers’ original tales] and notorious for being haunted, it is safe to say that being changed by the Landing has only made the haunting worse.

Locations of Note

The Fringes are the area around the Zone’s perimeter. They are a thin ribbon starting at the inside of the security wall to the barrier. A majority of them are flatland border-forest, sporting scrubby foliage, short bushes, and small clusters of average-sized trees. The fauna from the fringes is the most normal in the Forest, as fringeanimals are the least physically mutated of anything to come out of the Zone. The only human presence that has staked any claim to this land are bandits, and that is due to the lack of influence from the Forest itself. While stalkers use the fringes as a path between the civilized outer world and the primal inner world, it is the bandits that call the fringes ‘home’. There are no anomalies in this crucial outer ring of the Forest Zone.

The Barrier, also known as The Wooden Highways, is an eerie surreal place that encircles the inner Zone entirely after the fringes have ended. Noticeable against the flatland outer ring, this thin second ring around the Forest is composed almost entirely of truly gargantuan trees that no one remembers how they got there. Known affectionately by native stalkers as the Tree’s Cemetery, it’s surmised that this is where all trees in the Forest go to die, adding their own roots into the complex system that makes up the pathways between the fringes and the Forest Proper. No light from above can filter through, leaving the world in this thin ring in total blackness, and any artificial light is swallowed in the vastness of the space between tree trunks. The roots of these trees are large enough that a group of four or five can stand shoulder-to-shoulder across the widest portions, and high enough off the ground that the world below the roads is shrouded in mystery. This is also the last of the fringes, where the influence of the Forest begins to take hold. All that is known about the ground far below is that it is a breeding place for Fractures, and besides their occasional scurrying and mutterings, there is virtually no sound in the barrier. No other animal or mutant lives in this part of the Zone besides Fractures, and people only use it to pass back and forth. Only one anomaly has ever been encountered in the barrier and it is an imperative tool to use on the Wooden Highways; Flashbangs.

The Forest Proper is the vast tract of land within the encompassing circles around the perimeter. It too is an eerie place, eternally covered in low light due to the tight canopy up above, and where the influence of the Forest is in full effect. The trees in the Proper aren’t nearly as big as those in the barrier, but they are still overly large and alive, and have a habit of moving around at their own whim and wills. Due to the canopy, weather hardly ever penetrates in, the occasional raindrop or snowpile falling through to the forest floor when the cover above becomes too heavy or saturated to block it out. The only places the canopy opens to the sky above is over towns, hamlets, Castles, and the crags. Of the dozens of towns that used to pepper the Forest before the Landing, only three remain at the Zone’s good graces with the Forest backed up on and through them. Their original names have been lost to time, but they are known by the locals as Northtown, Central, and Southtown. Not very creative names, but descriptive and therefore easy to remember. They still exist mostly as trading and market hubs at the behest of the Zoners who live in small villages, or ‘hamlets’, across the span of the Proper. As there is little need for money, a bartering system is set up that is fairly easy to follow for those new to the economic workings of the Zone. The Forest Proper has a surprisingly diverse ecosystem for a Zone. It is home to a large variety of mutated animals and plants, both benign and hostile. Some can be found only in certain areas, while a fair few others migrate around the Zone and can be seen at nearly every corner. Several rivers and creeks run throughout the Proper, funneled through the security wall at various heavily-guarded drainage points. How water flows as it does to get from one side of the wall to the other is a wild mystery, given how the Barrier supposedly slopes down and encompasses the Zone in a bowl. Running water is attractive to many living in the Forest, and most hamlets will take up residence on a river or creek, provided there are no ruins there before. Anomalies here are widespread and plentiful, it’s advised to walk with caution.

The Inner Circle is a thin ring around the Landing Point, where the Central Anomaly formed, somewhere in the western foothills. The trees here are very close together, leaving very few to no gaps between them. It is dark and ‘blue’ in this portion of the Forest, and very quiet. No animals, mutated or not, live here, and all native stalkers tend to avoid it like the plague, if they can. The only people known to frequent this area are the Cult of the Cage, a group of fanatics that have devised a strategy to move without consequence through it. Predator Trees spawn and grow here and while small packs are known to roam the Proper, it is here where their population is highest in number. No anomaly spawns in the Circle, likely due to the proximity to the Central Anomaly, though Shades and Ghosts have been known to spawn just outside its borders.

The Central Anomaly, also known as The Tree Cage, is the place in the Forest where the Landing happened. The trees around the space all lean to one side and bow out at the center, just far enough apart to show a hint of the space between them as a lure to any brave and capable enough to navigate the Inner Circle without incident. However, on entering, the ring of trees closes with all the speed of a flytrap and stays closed for a time before opening back up. Stalkers plenty have disappeared in the Cage and as a result, no one knows what exactly it hides and protects. Rumors are plenty, but the fact is that no one actually knows and it’s very likely that no one will ever know.

The Crags is the adoring name for the mountain range around which the Forest sits. The names of it and its peaks are forgotten with the Zoners, and very few outside the Zone remember them much at all due to media blackout and historical censorship, knowing they exist purely because they tower over much of the landscape and the security wall. Central backs up against them on the western slope, and a few hamlets here and there dot the base on all sides. Trees cease to grow in abundance up the sides, dotting the mountainsides with stubborn copses of uninfluenced trees and brush. Considering the rich diversity of the Proper creeping around the crags, there is a distinct lack of it on them. The only wildlife present are Satyrs and small clusters of songbirds and ravens, and the only anomaly that has been picked up are Vortexes. Castles are frequent along the full range of the crags, though only along the lower slopes and bases, rarely above the halfway point.

Castles

Castles are a very strange phenomena in the Forest. There are ruins scattered across the Zone in various states of decay or preservation, depending on whether or not they had been found and taken care of by historians and archaeologists.

When the Landing happened, Castles became their very own thing. If it had a solid foundation still in place, it gained its own level of sentience and started to act of its own accord and whims. In a sense, they became miniature Zones, functioning within the bigger Forest. Whether or not this was a will of the Forest itself or something that happened spontaneously without influence is still undetermined.

Acting as independent Zones, Castles have their own unique personalities and rules from one to the other, none of which are controlled by the Forest in any way. All influence of the Forest disappears at the borders of a Castle’s defined foundation, whether it be the edge of a yard surrounding them or the walls of the main structure themselves. All animals and anomalies don’t intrude on them either. Even the pathways to a Castle are controlled by them, and if the road and paths are cut off, it’s best to leave it be. A complete path or road leading up to a Castle is the only way to tell if they are friendly. As Castles are their own entities, they also make up their own tests and traps, as any good Zone will do.

A Castle’s Voice is very distinct from the rest of the Forest, and Guides have said it’s really more of a dialect of the Forest’s own Voice. They sound like settling wood and stone at such immense volume that it sounds like it comes from everywhere, with the occasional mutter of both being moved. The latter is likely due to the fact that Castles are constantly building themselves up [or rebuilding, as might well be the case], and the shuffle of stone and wood is their innate ability to move materials by sheer force of will into place. The process is slow-going, but they have all the time in the world to do so.

Castles are tricky creatures, as they do not like to be intruded upon, even if friendly. They all have a condition for those looking to take shelter on or in them, and unfortunately for most, it’s only the Guides who can properly understand what that condition is at any given time. Since they have the ability to hear what the Forest is saying, Castles are hardly different to them. While Guides can technically interact with any friendly Castle, they each have one specifically linked to them that they can talk to and access without having to jump through too many traps or tricks.

There is one ruin, however, that no one is sure of, not even the Guides. An ominous black stone foundation on a rocky spire on the east slope of the crags, it looks like talons gripping the mountain, earning it the name The Dragon. It has cut its bridge off, and deeper diving into the history of the area shows no record of it anywhere, leading Guides to believe the Forest constructed it on its own. One thing they know for certain is that it is very subtly moving, spire and all, up the mountain.

Quirks

The First Rule: Greed Is Punished. Before being changed by the Landing, the Forest was at risk of deforestation. The residual emotion at the time of the Landing was distress and upset, and much of that taints the way the personality developed. She is a plentiful Zone, for better or for worse, but the reminder of being taken from with little return remains. As such, the act of Greed is punished by her, in different varying ways. Usually, the offender ends up dead on the spot, or hopelessly and purposely lost to die of exposure. Even Zoners are not exempted from this rule, and hamlets and towns that have broken it by action are simply swallowed into the deep greenery without so much of a word. Stalkers are held even further in account, as they are only allowed to carry five artifacts at a time in a trip, no more. Language while outside hamlets and towns in the Proper are slotted in with actions as well, and that is where it gets touchy. Asking permission to take something one Needs will resort in her providing for the asker, so long as Thanks is given for it. But even saying that one Wants something without appropriate trade, or simply taking things without asking, will result in punishment.

Second Rule: No Fire. As expected of anything made predominantly of wood, fire in the Barrier and Proper is strictly forbidden. Ignoring this rule doesn’t necessarily bring punishment directly to the breaker, but the resulting flailing of nearby Patrol Trees to put even the smallest flame out can end in them being unintentionally beaten to death. The only exception to this rule is in hamlets and towns under strict supervision, and of course in the influence of Castles. Campfires in the higher reaches of the crags have also resulted in no action.

Third Rule: No Real Names. The Forest’s Playful nature really shines here. Being the origin of many dark and frightening folkloric tales, it takes after the better known stories that giving your real given name to something otherworldly gives it power over you, and most of all, gives it power to hurt you. Tagnames and call-signs used in the Forest are partially due to the military being known to hunt down families of captured stalkers and mostly due to the Forest’s use of real names. The only people immune to this rule are Zoners, but they also understand the Zone on levels better than most other people traversing it and know how to avoid the events triggered by the use of birth names. While no immediate punishment comes from using real names in the influence of the Forest, consequences can come later, either from long-term exposure in the Zone or the closer to the Inner Circle one goes.

Fourth Rule: Stay Silent. Silence is key to survival. Many things in the Forest are attracted to sound, such as Predator Trees, Ritters, and Shades. Towns and hamlets are exempt of this rule and it is safe to be loud while in them. However, it is not in the vast Zone between them. The Forest has been known to waive such rules in the event of asking for necessities that require loud sounds like hunting, but stalkers from other Zones have noted that compared to the constant noise of human life in their native Zones, the Forest is eerily devoid of manmade sound. Natural ambiance is commonplace, however, and sounds like songbirds and animals and the occasional creak of trees in the wind give it some life. The Forest does not directly take any retribution for being loud, mind, but silence has its merits, like sneaking passed sleeping Predator Trees or hearing when blind Ritters come tapping along.

Fifth Rule: No Electronics. Less of a rule written by the Forest itself and more of a rule spoken between stalkers, electronics include any device that draws power continuously, usually from a battery. The radiation that made the Zone does strange and horrible things with electronics and it is not uncommon to find the unfortunate many who don’t heed the warnings twisted in the landscape with their precious devices growing out of them.

Sixth Rule: The Water Ritual. Water is drinkable in the Forest, but only those bodies used in hamlets and towns are safe from this rule. Water in uninhabited space can be dangerous, another rule written in the spirit of faerie tales. Stalkers and Zoners alike pat the surface of still bodies of water and watch the reaction to it. If the ripples act like they are supposed to and the reflection of people, animals, and landscape acts normally, the water is safe to drink or disturb. If it reacts in any way other than naturally [ie Ripples from the opposite shore from the patting, reflections look skewed or move around without reason], it is unsafe. The rule applies even to water that was deemed safe in a prior visit, as the nature of Zone water changes regularly. Not patting the water to see if it’s safe results in everything from being poisoned to being sucked into the water and disappearing. Flowing water, like rivers and creeks, can be deciphered merely watching them, staring at ripples around stones or fallen branches to determine if it’s safe to interact with.

Seventh Rule: No Straight Lines. This seems to be a rule with most Zones, as even foreign stalkers talk about it. No one is quite sure why Visitation Zones are against people walking in straight lines to their destinations. All that is agreed on is that doing so has dire consequences, between people disappearing entirely before reaching their goal or being struck with sudden fatal ailments on the way there. The Forest is known to mimic peoples’ voices to warn arrogant stalkers trying to break this rule before striking them down. It is best to take a roundabout way to get to a destination. Even if you can still see where you are trying to go from different angles, a meandering path to a new arrival point is better than a straight line.

The Voice: All Zones have a Voice, a sound used to show their presence to those in and out of it. The sound of a Voice is said to be enveloping, drowning out everything else around it when it talks. All people and creatures in a Zone can hear the sound of its Voice, and regulars and natives to a Zone can even hear it when away from it. The Forest’s Voice is the sound of creaking groaning wood. Only Zoners and Guides can actually hear the words it’s trying to use, however.

Weather Patterns: Most, if not all, Zones have volatile weather, one of very few things that are actually consistent. Whether it’s the energy of a Zone or the way the land or reality itself warps while in their space, something as simple as a cloudy day can swirl into torrential rains, and a drizzle can turn into cyclones. The Forest has a habit of taking rain and turning it into violent hail and thunderstorms that sweep across most of the western half, very rarely the eastern. The east tends to get blizzards with ice and wind, however, while the west merely gets large amounts of snow.

Zombies: Visitation zombies are a very strange breed. Closer to the classic zombie of legend, they are merely the recently dead within the influence of the Zone who, for whatever reason, come back to life with a single task in mind. Usually, the task is the last thing on their thoughts before death, and they will make their way to a location fresh in their memory while muttering this last bit of agenda. Once there, they will decay as normal before finally dying for good. Fresh zombies tend to have some semblance of language and motor function. After about a week, it all begins to degrade until they can’t speak and their reaction time slows. The military detail around the Forest has a tendency to leave zombies stumbling through the cordons well enough alone after realizing they’re zombies. It’s probably the only thing even they don’t have the will to stop.

Change: There is very little actually consistent in any Zone. Everything is subject to change, even when it seems unchangeable. In the Forest, all inhabitants -be they stalkers or Zoners- have learned that if it looks different, it probably is different. Even things like anomalies, normally regular fixtures, can change purposes without noticeably changing appearances. It’s good to keep such things in mind while traversing the Forest, and all travelers carry rocks with them in place of the usual bolts found in other Zones; since there are no gravity-based anomalies that require weight recorded, rocks are used to test the environment for changes, as well as being easy to replenish without leaving an environmental mark.

People/Factions

Zoners are the people who live in the Zone who were original to it before the Landing. They are a quaint folk who are born into the Zone and mutated by it, and have adopted a pagan lifestyle several centuries old in order to adapt to the lack of modern amenities. They worship the Zone as nothing less than a god, and it seems to work in their favor, as the Zone provides them everything they need from space to materials to workable crops at a fair trade from them. After stubbornly refusing to evacuate after the Landing, the Forest covets them so long as they maintain The First Rule. They share a special bond to their Zone and are the only ones trusted to defend it. In the rare cases of military and government involvement in the Forest, it is Zoners who are first to stand firm against them and push them back out. Although they have unsettling wide smiles and their eyes tend to glow in the dark, Zoners are very friendly toward stalkers, provided they don’t bring ill intent with them and understand the balance of The First Rule. They are a reminder that even people born from the fabric of the Forest are not exempted of the rules, assuming the ruins of arrogant hamlets and swallowed towns fail to instill the same warning.

Stalkers are a fairly universal breed from Zone to Zone. Designated as ‘daredevils’, the ones that go into the Black Forest live up to the moniker. The Forest swallows more and more of them every year, but the allure of such a dangerous temperamental Zone brings more than twice that amount to the door. Native stalkers tend to be more likely to help greenhorns to the Forest out, and veteran stalkers of other Zones pick up on the quirks of the Forest fairly easy enough to survive. It’s not uncommon to see new faces filtering in and out of the Forest, though. As a whole, stalkers are a pretty decent helpful bunch, and the majority of the clan are beloved by Zoners for their ability to bring necessary supplies they can’t ask the Forest for to them. The ones who aren’t decent live in the fringes as bandits.

Guides are a particularly special handful of stalkers who have garnered the Forest’s favor through sacrifice. Sacrifice of everything from time to sanity to their own bodies, Guides are capable of understanding their Zone on a more intimate level than the standard stalker. They are imperative to others’ ability to navigate the twisting ever-changing Forest, as they can feel changes and hear anomalies and the messages beneath the Forest’s Voice. They are also the only individuals capable of speaking to and opening Castles safely, something not even the native Zoners can do. There are two different stages to becoming a Guide. Threshold Guides have given enough to hear the Voice’s message as well as the thrumming pressure of anomalies. Fledged Guides, or simply just Guides, are properly ordained by the Forest into its embrace, usually given a gift/mutations to better serve their Zone. As expected, Guides are not very common. For the sheer volume of the Forest, there are only nine ordained Guides and one Threshold to date.

Bandits are a fixture in almost every Zone nowadays and are generally the same, greedy little opportunists who like to reap the rewards of others. The bandits of the Black Forest have gotten smart about it, bypassing The First Rule of Forest life by staying on the fringes. Since the central influence of the Forest doesn’t reach into the fringes as much, bandits regularly exploit the lack of punishment. To any proficient stalker of the area, they are fairly easy to avoid. Despite their disregard of the coveted First Rule, bandits in the Forest maintain a sense of loyalty and duty to their gangs and above that, the Zone. As the Forest doesn’t fully influence or control the fringes, it’s up to them to keep an eye out for noticeable damage and especially fire. They have been known to stomp out all ties in order to band together with stalkers in the vicinity and work to put out any fires that start. Afterwards, they return to their expected deviancy, but it is surprising to realize even they can be human sometimes.

The Cult of the Cage are a group of fanatics that aren’t seen much outside the Inner Circle. They worship whatever the Tree Cage protects, though it’s unclear if even they know what it is. It probably wouldn’t change their minds or beliefs even if they knew. The exact reasons for their worship are unclear, but it is obviously not out of greed or arrogance, as the Forest would have killed them off if that were the case. They’re known for being undetectable to all but the Forest itself, silent and quick. They don’t carry firearms, but do carry crossbows they’ve managed to silence. Unsurprisingly, they have found a toxin to use on their bolts that, if untreated, can be deadly. While their ballistics are used on the outer edges of the Inner Circle into the Proper, they are also trained in close-range combat for any fighting that might break out in the Inner Circle itself. While they are fanatical, the Cult is not in any way conscripted into protecting the Tree Cage. Individuals can still think on their own away from their brethren and outside shared rituals and prayers, share little in common with each other otherwise. A few of their numbers have been spotted recently wandering the Forest Proper, and given their uncharacteristic politeness, are assumed to be missionaries to their religious cause. The Cult is held in suspicious regards but so long as a member doesn’t start a fight, those who wander from the Inner Circle are generally left alone.

Fauna and Flora

Fauna

Fringeanimals are among the least physically mutated animals in the Forest. They are typically domesticated dogs and feral cats who were born in the fringes, though there are reports of local fauna like foxes and rabbits that also slot into this category. While they are born in the fringes, they are not trapped on the fringes; seeing fringeanimals in the Forest Proper is not uncommon at all, and they make their homes in hamlets and towns, where they are regularly spoiled and treated like one might a common pet. They don’t seem to mind this, at all. Fringeanimals are best known for their friendliness to non-hostile peoples, willing to jump in to defend trapped people or lead them to a safe spot. They are also known for being incredibly intelligent to the point of sapience, and it’s not uncommon to hear them responding in a conversation, capable of picking up on and learning multiple languages at once. While they don’t speak human languages, they still use their own vocalizations and body language to interact. They are also born with a deep-rooted connection to the Forest and can tell when things change or shift, making them invaluable companions to those in and out of the Forest. It’s a common practice for stalkers and Zoners to leave an area if a fingeanimal is trying to warn them away from it.

Livestock has been widely unchanged physically. Only found in hamlets and towns, the familiar shapes of native cow breeds, chickens, pigs, sheep, and the occasional goat are a welcome reprieve from the weirdness of the majority of the Forest’s wildlife. Zoners use them for everything from food to farmwork, and while a few of the animals may accidentally mutate physically in a generation, the only constant mutation they seem to have is the ability to over-produce milk, eggs, and wool. It only works in this way, and slaughtering an animal for food does not yield more meat.

Songbirds don’t look like they have any physical mutations on first glance, small and fluttery as their brethren outside the Zone are. They live primarily in the crags, having moved back into the area after the initial violent changes at the start of the Zone settled, and they are never seen in the Forest Proper. However, they can still be heard down in the Proper, and that is because they have an innate ability to warp and amplify their own soundwaves to be heard for miles. Like all songbirds, they are skittish around larger animals and can be seen fluttering around their mountainous home when disturbed.

Ravens are another bird that moved back into the Zone after fleeing it during the first changes. They have mutated just slightly, gaining another set of eyes and serrated beaks with a disturbingly human-like cackle as a call. Their main population is in the crags, but they have been seen further into the foothills on all sides. They are also non-hostile to people and animals, known for hanging around and begging food from humans when not snuffling around on their own, not unlike standard corvids outside of their Zone.

Owls are perhaps the only documented bird that lives in the Forest Proper as well as in the crags. They don’t look much different than their normal counterparts from the ground, since they live in the branches high above the shifting forest floor, but distance tricks perception. Owls are immense in size, standing at ten feet tall with wingspans that can grow to fifty or more feet. Their mutation gives them the sheer size to capture cherubs, their main prey, and carry them off to be eaten. Despite their gigantism, they seem to be smart enough to dislike the idea of eating or the taste of humans and will generally avoid and observe them from their lofty homes. Even if they are non-hostile, humans and fringeanimals will try to stay well out of their way and hunting parties will abandon cherub herds if owls are present.

Cherubs used to be deer. In some ways, they still maintain the original mannerisms as skittish herbivores that travel in herds. They’ve grown to stand close to nine feet tall at their shoulders, colored various shades of white and off-white with massive iridescent eyes. Their build has changed drastically, with prominent rib structure leading into naturally caved stomachs, long spindly legs, and long slender necks topped with thin pointed heads. Their antlers have changed orientation and make-up, from bone to a weird mushroom-like tuber. It grows along their backbone in shoots and across their shoulders in intricate coral-like fans, the tips displaying multiple colors that fade to white or cream near the base. Every part of a cherub is edible, save for the bones within the body itself, and one cherub can feed a group of six for the better part of a week or two. They are one of two of the only animals the Forest grants permission to hunt, and the only animal it sends to be hunted when a request for Needing food is made, as long as only what is needed is taken and no more. Their name derives from the fact that cherubs are the only known animal in the Forest that is immune to Silver Thread, which can grow across their fans and glitter in light, giving the illusion of wings. Hunters typically avoid those with it growing on them, since Silver Thread can kill anything else in short amounts of time.

Fractals were foxes once. So named for their ability to change outlines and shape in swirling clouds of multi-colored matter, they also pose no threat to humans. They have a tendency to float in the general direction of anomalies and artifacts, occasionally resuming their original forms as small foxes. They don’t seem to have any corporeal form, which lets them float through objects, animals, and people. When they do so, it’s said that they ‘feel like what white static sounds like’.

Bounders live in trees. Their disproportionately large hindquarters are the only things left from their previous rabbit forms, and the actual animal is only about knee-height on an average human at their biggest. Their front legs sport claws on their toes with protowings along the undersides of their arms, and their tails are long with tufts of feathers at the tip. Although they’re relatively harmless herbivores, bounders have been known to cause deep gouges in anything that provokes them. Despite their defense, they are a favorite snack of many of the Forest’s inhabitants.

Satyrs were goats at one point and to some extent, still sort of are. Although their warped squished faces have grown eerily humanoid and their bodies are disturbingly primate-like, they share no genetic background with either. Their eyes are large and have the square pupils that denote them as goats, along with the telltale horns curving back on their heads around the base of their leaf-shaped ears. As expected, they like to headbutt things, provoked or not. Their bodies look remarkably like long-limbed primates of some sort, their arms and legs ending in four-toed feet and hands. They stand at the height of an average human and can walk hunched but upright on their legs, or on all fours without any trouble. They can scale cliffs, unstable rockfaces, and trees without much thought or issue. Which is good, since they live primarily in the crags and bound and swing across the more treacherous terrain higher up to reach their primary food sources. Satyrs are neutral animals, though at times their goaty nature makes it feel like they’re vindictive or doing things solely for their own entertainment. This is not the case, even though stalkers and Zoners have both returned with welts from being headbutt by them.

Fractures are one of two human mutants in the Forest. The lesser of the evils, the first populations of them were turned from Zoners who angered the Forest in its earlier years. Their villages and towns were swallowed and remain as crumbling ruins in the depths of the Zone, and the people were transformed into Fractures. Since then, Fracture nests are fairly common and they are the only living thing to inhabit the Barrier. Fractures walk primarily on all fours, with an elongated curved spine and excruciatingly long limbs. One arm is twice as long as the other, the fingers tipped with large hooked claws. Fractures are relatively skittish and if they see anything from far off that might be a threat to them, they will turn tail and gallop back toward their nests. They will attack if something is too close to them and they will retaliate if attacked first, usually pulling more and more of their brethren hiding in the woodwork around them to help. While they are not much of a threat by themselves, as they are a common nuisance of a mutant, they can easily overwhelm an adversary with numbers. They still retain the ability to speak, but have since lost the ability to intelligently converse. As such, they parrot phrases and words said around them and will repeat them regularly.

Fracture Eaters mutated from German horses that are native to the Black Forest region. As their name suggests, they are the only known predator of Fractures and their presence works to keep the population down. Fracture Eaters are about the size of a small horse and retain much of the original posture and build. From far away, they even look like a horse. Up close, it’s easy to notice the long snakelike tails behind them, as well as the clawed finger-like paws that replaced their hooves. Their mouths open unnaturally wide to the jaw joint, displaying rows upon rows of sharp triangular teeth that point backwards toward their throat, and their eyes have moved more toward the front of their skulls. They even issue a strange roaring noise when the hunt begins. Despite looking like a nightmare and being actively carnivorous, Fracture Eaters are very social animals with packs of their families around them and prefer the comfort of non-hostile parties. They still retain a fondness for human contact and it isn’t uncommon to be nudged by one or several until pets are given, making purring and nickering noises when paid mind. They are still able to be ridden and trainable, and several hamlets host games showing off their prowess with the creatures. Fracture Eaters generally stick to the forested areas around hamlets and towns, keeping a firm eye on the landscaping for their next meal.

Ritters are easily the most terrifying mutant in the Forest to date, as well as being the second human mutant, named after one of the more frightening folktales of the Forest’s dark past. Like Fractures, Ritters are changed after their hamlet is swallowed by the Forest as punishment for breaking The First Rule. Unlike Fractures, Ritters are rare to encounter, but they leave a lasting impression of the Forest’s anger. Ritters tower over all but owls and cherubs, standing upright at eight feet tall. They carry themselves on four spindly legs ending in three long fingers each; one for balance on the inside, two on the outside for gripping and navigation. An elongated skeletal humanoid torso is attached by its hips at the center of its legs. The head is large and sits on a swiveling long neck. There appears to be no face at first glance, a thick flap of skin covering where its eyes should be like a helmet, and hunting and feeding are the only times it opens its mouth, splitting its head from ear to ear and filled with needle teeth. Their arms are long and lanky with long delicate fingers tipped with curved claws, which they use to feel their way around. It’s the only way to tell when one is nearby, as they make a distinct rapid tapping noise against trees and rocks. They are pale in color, sickly green-grey fading to pallor. Their ‘helms’ and the tips of their extremities are a darker grey speckled with dark pine green. Being completely blind, Ritters are easy to avoid by standing perfectly still and waiting for them to pass if expected. As they only travel alone or in groups of two or three maximum, it’s easy to keep track of them. However, noise attracts them and the louder a noise is, the easier it is for them to zero in on the source. When hunting, they let off a shriek and become unexpectedly nightmarishly agile, capable of moving around the terrain with the ease of a spider. It’s harder to escape them head-on, but hiding and keeping perfectly still can cause them to pause and try to relocate their prey. If they can’t pick up its trail again, they cease the chase and continue on their way. Ritters do not wander far from the place they lived as humans. Stalkers and Zoners avoid the ruins of towns and hamlets for this reason. There are still outliers, though, so any proper Forest stalker knows to listen for tapping, no matter where they are.

Flora

Patrol Trees are massive trees that move around in the Forest Proper on their root systems. They don’t appear to have any real aim in how they move, meandering in packs. They aren’t inherently malicious, simply moving around as they will. They pay no mind to what’s in front of them, under them, or behind them, and unintentionally smash their way through animals and people on their way. Hamlets and towns are specifically guarded by the Zone, so that any migrating trees are ushered around habitation on their way through. Patrol Trees also act as guardians for human settlements, anchored around them to cover them when inclement weather comes, as well as beating their massive branches on out-of-control fires. They are also the ones who extinguish fires in the Forest itself in much the same way, pummeling them with little regard to who or what is sitting around it.

Predator Trees are also massive trees that move around the Zone using their root systems. Their intent is more sinister than the Patrol Trees, however, and their ability to hide among other trees makes them extremely dangerous to anyone and anything that lives or peruses the Forest. Predator Trees are considerably more aware of their surroundings and the potential meals in them. They will stop and change course abruptly to go after anything they deem edible, which doesn’t leave out a lot. When caught, they either pull their victims under them using their roots, or simply smash themselves down on top of them until they’ve eaten. They are attracted to loud noises and are ferocious in their pursuits. Unless beaten away by Patrol Trees in charge of guarding settlements, they have no issue entering inhabited spaces for a meal. They are viciously territorial and act in a way like a rogue guardian force of the Forest itself. They have been known to jump straight up and take out low-flying aircraft, prompting an air traffic ban over the Forest for safety. There is very little someone can do when being chased down by a Predator Tree besides run away, though knowing where you are in relation to deterrents is helpful. Using Patrol Trees is a common tactic, since they are nonplussed at being shoved and attacked and will retaliate, as well as climbing up slag piles around the crags, where the roots of the heavy monsters can’t get a good grip. Hiding in Castle courtyards helps too, provided the Castle is friendly and is told what is happening; most Castles will issue a sign they understand and unless the building is intruded on, will give asylum to those escaping the wildlife. Predator Trees originate from the Inner Circle, where they protect the Tree Cage and whatever it holds. It is there the highest number of them can be found, which makes any trek to push to the center extremely difficult, between the trees and the Cult of the Cage. It isn’t uncommon to see a Predator or two wandering the rest of the Forest, looking for an easier meal.

Whipsnaps look like the tree roots that make up much of the Forest’s floor, save for a slightly different pattern that distinguishes them as different. It’s such a subtle shift that makes this act of camouflage dangerous for greenhorns and even seasoned stalkers who don’t pay attention. Whipsnaps do not activate until disturbed, laying nestled into the weave of tree roots. They are easy to avoid if you see them, but if they’re stepped on or nudged, they react by wrapping tightly around whatever’s close and dragging them away. Once thought to be the roots of Predator Trees, it’s now known via plenty of survivors and observations of them that they attach to a bulb partially buried under the roots and ground surface. Proficient Forest stalkers and Zoners will purposely activate a root to drag them to the bulb, which surfaces to feed, in order to stab it, which will kill its network in the area. Given that whipsnaps are fairly common, it’s a losing battle but one necessary for survival.

Moss Pools are exactly as they sound, bottomless pools of moss. They’re fairly large in size and very easy to spot, since not only does the inviting vibrant green of the moss stand out against its surroundings, but tree roots will also grow around it like the sides of a pool. People not paying attention to where they’re going run the risk of falling into one, but they don’t grab or lure or really do anything other than simply exist. Sadly, no one knows where they go or even if they end up anywhere, as no one has been pulled out of one or found after falling into one.

Sleepers are unusual simply on the basis they obviously evolved from kudzu, a non-native plant in Germany, much less the Black Forest. Though the leaves are a bit larger, it looks at first glances exactly like kudzu and even appears to act like it, taking over anything in range at a fairly alarming rate. While the Forest is already actively pruning it on its own and has it relegated to ruins, it has been mutated to be a different threat to anything that breathes. Sleepers smell like mild mint, and has been attributed to the smell of wintergreen more than anything. The stronger the smell, the more damage it does, since the smell comes with a cloud of unseen spores that, when inhaled, releases a sleeping toxin after about five or ten minutes that hits suddenly and heavily and unless removed from the area, permanently. Once the victim is out, sleeper clusters in the area move to cover and consume it in order to fuel its slow assault against the Forest. They’re easy to avoid, either by sight or by smell, and easier to pass through since they don’t have the speed to take down moving entities so long as a filtering mask or respirator are in place.

Corn was an hilarious accident, as well as a good lesson in asking the Forest for something not native to the land. Although it was grown with appropriate tribute, the warped nature of the Zone caused it to gain a quasi-sentience and ability to mobilize itself, wherein it disappeared into the depths of the Forest Proper. While some hamlets and Northtown have growing corn in their farms, these are from seeds brought from outside and given blessing rather than the Forest making them as it normally does crops. Corn is startling to come across, to say the least, rustling around and running aimlessly, but overall, it’s harmless and still edible. Catching and harvesting ripe ears does not seem to hurt the stalks themselves, and they regrow their fruits fairly quickly, making them the perfect gift for any starving stalker in the Proper.

Anomalies

Flashbangs are the most common and generally useful anomaly in the Forest. They are easy to spot by the faintly glowing orb bobbing in mid-air. They occasionally drift around, but it’s slow and easy to predict some of their paths. They’re fairly easy to trigger, everything from tossing rocks at them to clapping works. Once activated, it’s best to stand a decent distance from them, as they ignite with an intense heat that burns the immediate blast area around them, making a loud bang and growing considerably brighter. Their bright white light is ideal for seeing in dark places and makes them necessary especially in the Barrier, where normal light can’t penetrate, and the bang is loud enough to activate any other flashbangs in the area. They stay lit for about fifteen minutes before dimming to nothing and recharging for five minutes. Only when the glowing sphere returns can they be reactivated. Flashbangs are the most common anomaly in the Zone known to change, as well, and has a pretty obvious tell on whether or not it’s a flashbang or simply looks like one at a glance. The glow on a standard flashbang has a hint of pale blue to it, while mutated flashbangs are a different shade of blue or a different color or lack a color altogether. The effects differ from mutation to mutation, and the only way to tell what it’s actually doing is to throw a rock at it and activate it from a safe distance.

Quicksands are not so easy to spot. Perfectly circular pools of what looks like bare soil is the tell, and they’re known for sucking in limbs that interact with them with such ferocity, it would take nothing short of amputation on the spot to be free of one. The pressure created on the inside of the tube that makes up a quicksand anomaly can suffocate a victim and potentially crush them. Quicksands are useful in their own way, and all long-term inhabitants of the Zone will use them for trash cans or garbage disposals. Since they’re activated by touch, all it takes is a rock in the middle to set one off and once it’s done sucking the rock down into its sandy depths, the ground solidifies while it recharges for ten minutes.

Vortexes are the resident teleporters. They are distinguishable by the distinctly warped spiral in reality and also one of the rarer anomalies. The outcome is randomized and no two end locations are the same place twice, popping users out either in the Forest or even out of it. While not harmful to stalkers trying to use them to get around easier, they can cause nausea and dizziness for a short time to greenhorn users. They take fifteen minutes to recharge.

Faerie Doors/Circles are a rather infamous Forest exclusive, another throwback to its deep folkloric history. Like in stories, faerie doors and circles teleport the unwitting victim walking through or into them to an alternate parallel existence where they are the only ones inhabiting the space, trapped in endless forest with no other civilization. They are seemingly-unnatural arches made with branches [Doors] or circles of mushrooms, flowers, or misplaced saplings on the ground [Circles] that appear randomly in front of a traveler. Throwing rocks at them does not activate them, as only a human body going through them can, and the disappear when someone walks through them. If not engaged, they disappear and reappear in a different place. They are easy to avoid, simply moving carefully around them and continuing on. Most deaths caused by doors and circles are less the phenomena themselves and more of a different Forest hazard trying to avoid them.

Silver Thread, or Platinum Thread in some regions, is a caustic nearly-invisible fiber that grows in strange places. The dim light catching its fine existence causes it to glint like pale precious metals, thus earning it its name. Despite its delicate appearance, silver thread is deadly to the touch. It has been known to penetrate clothing and safety suits somehow and causes sudden organ failure as well as rapid-growth cancer cells. It’s hard to avoid and due to the inability to handle it, causes stalkers and Zoners to take wide detours. Only cherubs are immune to it, growing it across their spines and fans.

Burnt Fuzz seems to be a fixture in any Zone, clinging to metal and wood alike and slowly eating away at them. Except in this case, when it feeds both Patrol and Predator Trees, what devour it gladly and with extreme prejudice; while it’s a commonly-shared phenomena, the Trees’ diet have made it much more manageable in the Forest. As with all variations of burnt fuzz, it burns to the touch and drapes over anything it can find.

Ghosts, Orbs, or Will’o’Wisps are so-named because of Zoner belief that the balls of floating light are the dead souls of those who were lost to the trees. They have no actual sentience, meandering aimlessly through the Forest Proper and are easy to avoid if spotted first. When interacted with, they envelop their victim in a sense of warmth and comfort, playing good memories or writing pleasant stories to keep them in a stupor until they die of exposure. It’s easy to pull a victim out of one’s influence, and they will regain their senses fairly quickly, depending on how long they were hypnotized. There are rare cases where a rescued victim will seek out and return to the world crafted for them.

Shades are another delve into the Forest’s favorite faerie stories and as such, shades are the most terrifying ‘anomaly’ encountered to date, being almost entirely independent of the Forest outside creation. They only inhabit the fringes and interior of the Inner Circle and are one of many things in the Forest attracted to sound. The rule concerning using call-signs only and disregarding real names were based almost entirely on shades’ existence, as they are a product of the Forest attempting to wheedle names out in order to get into peoples’ heads. Encountering a shade is encountering a figure from the victim’s life, good or bad, demanding their real name. It’s strongly advised to never give in, no matter what sort of tactics it resorts to in order to get what it wants until it gives up and goes away for the time being. There is no other way to activate a shade outside attracting it to you, and there is no cool-down period for this particular anomaly.

Artifacts

Artifacts in a Visitation Zone are essentially refuse left by the visiting aliens after the Landing. All of their uses are as of yet unknown to humans, but they are the reason Visitation Stalkers exist as a whole; collectors pay good money for whole artifacts and the temptation is great. Artifacts in the Forest hardly differ from those Visitation Zones’ hauls anywhere else in the world, save for one. They call it the Screw, on account that it looks like the pointed threaded tip of a construction screw. Sometimes, the grooves between the threads gives off a faint glow, but other than a glorified nightlight, its actual uses are as much a mystery as all the other artifacts pulled out of Visitation Zones. It fetches a fairly high price among scientific communities, but since it’s a common artifact to the region, local collectors won’t pay much for it. It’s better to peddle it to foreign ones.

#Roadside Picnic #S.T.A.L.K.E.R.#stalker oc #Black Forest Developments #i'd been developing this one in snippets over the last few years; figured i should finally compile the damned thing together #it took three weeks to get it all together and im sure i missed bits and pieces #i'll either add them later or make new posts for them; i put the main details under a readmore for a reason

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moderndaydemeter · 3 years

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Carp Fishing – 2020 Park Lake, Mayhem!

This time last year, as I write this in January, I remember being critical of the constant doom and gloom coming from various media outlets about a possible ‘pandemic’ that was about to hit our shores.

Strangely for me, I had my fishing head on and actually had 3 bites during the course of that month, on a notoriously difficult lake, so you can understand the reason for my winter keenness!

Mother nature dealt a cruel blow with the river bursting its banks and going straight into the lake, colouring it up in the process and pretty much putting an end to some action that was to be had.

It wasn’t until well into March that I was to receive my next bite in the form of Mr Angry and then not long after that, we were all about to experience something that we never thought would happen in our lifetime, with the lockdown.

After the sterling efforts from the Angling Trust, I decided to not bother with the park lake and instead spend some quality fishing time at my other syndicate with my son. We spent most of that time carrying out some much-needed maintenance with a few burn ups that every kid enjoys! Throw in a couple of carp for good measure, he seemed almost as happy as he would be on his Xbox!!

Eventually, though, my thoughts were that I needed to be back at the park lake. This was to be my 3rd season on White Swan and I was determined to fish it my way, as I wasn’t really happy with how the past seasons have gone. Don’t get me wrong, I have always had my feet firmly on the ground as despite there being in excess of 200 carp swimming around the 26 acre lake, you’ll be hard pushed to actually see more than 70 of them grace the bank. I’ve fished a lot of circuit waters over the years and this is without doubt the hardest of them all. Over the past two years I was of the opinion that if the fish were showing over me and I wasn’t getting a bite, then I was getting ‘done’. I also knew that if I wasn’t creating chances after applying my watercraft, then they weren’t feeding on what I was giving them. Simple, I know, but not necessarily easy to work out when you are there doing it, it was more about reflecting on those experiences.

We’ve all done it, where we listen to others and we find out what the going method is and we try to deploy it, but the truth is, others might be better applying that method than we are, so that was my reason I wanted to apply some changes.

My rigs were the first thing I changed, together with my lead arrangement with the latter being inline and the former moving away from pop-ups to bottom bait rigs. I also went against the norm and used long hook-links as the shorter versions had been used extensively. Finally, I moved away from the ‘bits and pieces’ approach and just fished bait, but applied using a catapult or a throwing stick at night as the gulls would just get the better of you if attempted in the day.

With the new restrictions in place, we were back after the lake closed for its annual spawning break and, as you can imagine, we were all desperate to get fishing again, although it still didn’t feel right, but we were lucky to not be stuck indoors for any longer.

My first piece of action was a few weeks into June. It was one of those glorious June days, where the sky was a solid blue and the lake was slowly moving in a multitude of directions from the gentle breeze. The carp were also evidently showing and feeding in the first bay out of the car park. With no one around, I was pinching myself as to why that was the case?! Simon, the head bailiff said I’d be mad not to go into a swim called ‘Jays’! The swim had only just been vacated so I didn’t fancy dropping into it, so, with prior knowledge of a swim called the boards a few up, I moved into there.

Applying the aforementioned plan, two rods were put out against a solid weed bed, one on a very hard, well established clay spot and the other, a slightly softer silt area.

The fish remained in the area and, unlike usual with White Swan, no one moved next to me or opposite! The following day arrived with the customary overcast summer conditions. The odd bubble was popping to the surface, keeping my mind wandering together with the odd head and shoulder from a number of different carp, simply lovely!

Late that morning, the silt rod’s tip pulled down and the music to every carp anglers dream was to pierce the airwaves as the ATTS alarm screamed. My mate Ian literally walked into the swim as I was connected to a dark common rolling on the surface of the crystal clear water. At 27lb, I was delighted to get one with my new, but non-revolutionary ideas put into practice.

I had a couple more trips that month but the fish were on the move again, as is so often the case with there, so it was more a case of learning and watching rather than catching.

My drought continued well into August, although I wasn’t fishing as hard with other important things with the family to attend, so it wasn’t anything to start questioning with what I was doing, angling wise.

I found myself moving swims a lot. I suppose I was kind of chasing them, but at the same time introducing my bait with the help of a couple of mates that were also on the same stuff.

I really wanted to get the bait accepted by the fish, as do so many other anglers on there and that generally involves a bit of pain in trying to establish areas and it usually doesn’t pay its dividends until September.

I was mucking about in a swim called the beach, after seeing a couple of fish show over the subsequent trips. This swim is notoriously difficult to get a bite out of and in the past it has required a lot of preparation work in order to achieve that.

There was a large weed bed positioned in front of it, very encouraging, roughly about 30-40 yards out that made this swim far more favourable than its usually productive neighbouring swim, called the woods. The only explanation I could think of as to why the woods swim wasn’t producing was the lack of weed present in front of there as otherwise, I would have probably given the beach a steer.

I did a fair bit of weed clearing for the left hand rod. I was happy with the spot, a firm silt area, but the line lay leading up to it, not so. I was getting quite paranoid about it actually, so I decided to try out the new Mirage Platinum Fluorocarbon to somewhat ease that paranoia, which helped, as in my opinion, it is the best carp fishing mainline Gardner Tackle has produced to date. It’s versatility, sinking properties and strength were streets ahead of the nearest offering, but I still needed to do my prep work to get the best out of it and that was painful to say the least aided with the Gardner weed rake! But, they say time put in, equals reward!?

After a couple of short trips in the beach, I was on the move again, as the fish were showing in pretty much the furthest areas from where I was fishing. With my patience dwindling, I again found myself jumping from swim to swim in an attempt to be on the fish, feeling more and more detached from actually getting amongst the carp.

It was on one very sunny afternoon that I saw a group of fish in front of the beach again, in fact I was desperately looking for anything to move onto as I was so bored with what I was doing at the other end and had another night to fish at my disposal. This really was a gift, they were at multiple levels, some on the surface and some feeding on the bottom.

Another angler was fishing a swim to the right of this and out of respect, I didn’t cast a lead in the lake until the activity had settled down. He was going later that day, so that eased my conscience despite the area being the beach’s water.

The spots were easy to find and two rods with good line lay were positioned. I’d baited those spots on numerous occasions, so I was feeling confident and as the beautiful day moved into night, I pulted a good few hundred baits around the zones and then proceeded to throw the ball for Barney my lab, up and down the path behind, to wear us both out for the night!

There were still fish slopping out in front of me and the lake was quieter than usual, so I was really hoping that I would be in with a chance, overnight.

However, nothing. Where were the fish, I thought as I made the first cuppa of the day? There wasn’t a breeze on the lake. Both Barney and I took advantage of the lack of people and the tranquillity of the early dawn by standing at the edge of the swim, eyes peeled! If something was to show, we would have seen it and it wasn’t long as a very large, dark looking chunk showed a good 150 yards over the other side of the lake, which wasn’t ideal, but it was still in the middle area of the lake, which I took as a positive.

Thankfully, what seemed against the odds, the swim came alive at just after 8am. Sheets of bubbles were evident in multiple areas indicating a few fish and before long this was complemented with the signs of carp just breaking the surface with their heads.

I rang my mate Phil and said ‘it’s got to happen, they are all over me, mate!’ He was at the other end of the lake on the start of a campaign that required a healthy dose of commitment! I was now getting nervous about the whole situation, as I only had a few hours left before I needed to pack up and to leave the swim without a bite would have left me in a state of bewilderment. An opportunity like that doesn’t happen often, so you have to make it work. Eventually, the right-hand rod just ripped off and without so much as a thought, I bypassed my waders and jumped into the shallows to connect with the fish that sought sanctuary of the weed beds before finally being greeted by my net. My dog looked at me as if I’d lost the plot when I started punching the water as a show of immense satisfaction!

Phil came around to help with the photos, recognising the fish as a ‘proper’ one in the form of the 2nd Big Fully and he did a masterful job with the camera. With its heavily plated scales glimmering in the faint sun, it truly was one of the country’s stunners!

I couldn’t wait to return, and a couple of mates had said to get back into the beach as they were still showing in there, and it was free, so it was rude not to!

Sure enough, the activity was almost as frequent as when I had last had the 2nd Fully and I hadn’t ruined the chance of any action from a successful couple of casts with the weed rake and positioning of the baits.

My mate Paul was over the other side and he doesn’t miss a thing. He knew I was in with a chance and the excitement was running away from me, although, I had a niggling doubt that the fish were ‘doing’ me. I wasn’t overly happy with the hooking from the rig when I caught that last fish and the next morning, with not so much as a line twitch, one of my rigs had the hook firmly embedded into an extremely hard hook bait. That was enough, I knew that they were on the bait, but changes needed to be made. With a family holiday due the following week, it was time for some reflection.

My good pal Gary was keeping me informed with what was going on and he was doing a grand job of locating the fish and not letting on to the other anglers.

I had a couple of nights ahead of me early September and with Gary in the Oaks, he suggested I go into a swim known as number 8 as the fish were showing very close in. I found a couple of really nice clear spots in the weed, pretty much where he said they were showing. During that session, we saw a few but they were more in front of the swim to the left of me. For the first time, the area I was seeing them could be fished from the left side of the swim, because a tree had come down in the summer, giving you far greater access.

Just before setting off home, after a non-productive couple of nights, I had a good plumb about towards the zone that I kept seeing them show whilst drinking shed loads of tea with Gary and Sam that morning. I found a gem of a clay spot about 45 yards out, which was surrounded by Canadian pondweed, apart from a nice channel leading up to it that with some further work with the weed rake, I could get my line really down on the bottom. I knew that the line lay from the swim next door wouldn’t offer me anywhere near the advantage from 8 due to the really deep margin and I doubted anyone would go in there as it wasn’t popular, but in all fairness, the spot was directly in front of that swim, so I needed to be mindful of that possibility.

With no one angling around me on that late Sunday morning, I put in the remainder of my bait, consisting of chops and whole boilies via the Spomb and then just hoped I could get in there the following week.

The next week came around and with literally nothing else bar work going on in my world, I couldn’t think of much else than getting back into 8.

I knew the swim had been fished but not from where I was intending and thankfully, it was free when I arrived. At that time of year on Dinton, it helps if you’ve got a campaign you are working on, as they respond to prepared areas, however, keeping a popular swim like 8 unoccupied was never going to be easy, especially if it kicked off. I’m not traditionally one to have preconceived ideas, but I needed to stick to a plan.

I’d tweaked the rigs, keeping the long hook link, exchanging the material from tungsten ultra-sink to 25lb Mirage, coupled with size 6 spinner style Mugga’s. I still kept with the heavy inline bolt-bombs using a big loop in the hook link to ensure some movement, but I wasn’t too concerned because of the hard areas I was fishing.

With both rods positioned and ample bait applied with the pult alone in the dark, I popped down 2 swims to my right for a cuppa with Phil. I literally sat down and my remote signalled 2 beeps which had me flying up the path! The rod tip was pulled down and the bobbin was tight to the alarm as without taking any line from the spool! My initial thoughts were that the fish had already got into the weedbed behind, but I had no issues in guiding it towards Phil with the waiting net. A nice 27lb common was really the tonic I needed. The hook was exactly where I’d wanted it, in fact I needed forceps to take it out!

Nothing further happened that trip, although I was able to apply more bait to the areas, hoping that I could get in there again the following week, but as it happened, I couldn’t get down because of work commitments, so I returned nearly two weeks later. We were now into the prime back end of September and with the rain just starting to come down, I was most grateful to get the dog under the bivvy quick before he really started to pong in the confines of no8 again!

The spot felt that I’d caught the fish from my last trip felt good and with not too much effort with the weed rake, I was once again happy with the line lay.

I was persisting with the right-hand spot, but I wasn’t overall happy with this one, but moving it closer to the other rod would have been cutting my nose off to spite my face.

Keeping things the same, with rigs and tactics, everything felt good and once that rain stopped the fish showed where they were and I couldn’t have been in a better position! Almost exactly the same time as the last bite, my left-hand rod signalled a couple of beeps. Taking my time, I put the waders on and held the line with the rod still on the alarm only for it to slightly tension and then slacken off. Without hesitation I lifted into what was clearly a carp that again, was not in any weed and after a fairly disparaging tussle, it was seamlessly scooped into the net. I practised my much needed honing skills at self-takes, before returning the small common at just over 21lb. The hook hold was again perfect and, although it wasn’t cold, the bites were as if we were in the depths of winter, very strange.

Lining up the cast in the dark to the silhouetted treeline horizon and hitting the clip perfectly, the lead came down with a satisfying thud and the line was sunk beautifully.

I retired confidently for the night, although the fish could still be heard rolling on the surface with nothing else competing with the noise, making it very hard to sleep.

Like a true keen carp angler, I was up bright and early with a tea in hand and the dog sleeping on my bed as soon as I got off it, the lazy git!

Beep, beep from the left alarm and the line pulling up tight yet again, no line coming off the spool, but I was on it and before long I had a far better fish in the net that gave a much better account of itself!

Joe, an angler a few swims down from me was on his way to work early that morning, so before he carried on up the path, I gave him a quick lesson in how to use my digital SLR in ‘P’ mode before he suggested he used his own camera, which was something that the likes of Kardashian’s are used to looking at! At that point I decided he didn’t need any more of my photography training skills and I shut up and left him to do a superb job!!

The fish was another typical Dinton stunner that had put on over 5lb in a year at 35.07. They were munching all right!

sea fishing reels

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black-strike-otp · 7 years

Text

part 66

♫♪ The sky is coming down, and time is running out, but I’m not leaving here without you now. They can say what they will do; I’m a fighter and a fool, but I’m not leaving here without you now~ ♫♪

It’s here. You all asked for it. Enjoy.

No bot had a single complaint to utter. It was sedated and calm in the command room of the Rising Star. Blackout enjoyed the silence as he brushed over the information on his datapad idly between cutting into the quiet with a few words to the crew. He’d get a quick agreeable response before there was a quick movement of digits upon keys as bots relayed orders. The conversation was muted throughout the room, if there at all.

With so much focus, they might even catch up on inventory and get a good heading on their next destination. Guard had specifically brought up scanning the star maps to make for the nearest heavy port for refueling in hopes of finding an Autobot ship to hand off their prisoners too. Of course, he’d need to remain hidden somewhere in the depths of their own ship to not rouse suspicion, and there was always the risk that they may meet up with less sophisticated bots than those who honored the great Optimus Prime. Not that any of that made a difference to Blackout. Autobots offlined the same.

“Increasing thrust on the ship by 13%, commander.”

“And we’re sure these readings are accurate?” Blackout drilled, lifting his helm up from his datapad as he leaned forward in his seat.

“Ran the numbers 87 times, sir, between myself and some of the bots here in the room, the rotations, the medic, Guard-”

“Understood,” he chuckled. “You don’t need to name everyone.”

“Yes, sir.”

Turning slightly in his chair, the dark shaded mech gestured to a femme looking up at him from her console. “Are these recordings on the energon storage accurate?”

“Just as you requested, sir,” she piped up. “We check as ordered by the jours.”

“Interesting. It doesn’t appear that our thief has been taking extras.”

Some of the bots in the room exchanged looks.

“Maybe they didn’t make it through the battle,” someone nervously brought up.

Blackout could not agree or disagree. After leaving his private datapad lying about during the fight, he returned to look for it and found it upon the floor of the bridge. Turning it back on, he’d discovered some bot had cleared massive amounts of data, messages, and documentation of the ship’s cargo. He never got around to asking Guard about the mysterious message he’d sent him, but figured that because of how busy the elder mech was and how he needed to focus on recovery at the time, it could wait.

Maybe he should bring it up later, since he’d been back on his charge again.

While grazing on the current report, the doors opened into the room. Routine as usual. Unlike the Nemesis, bots came and went where they pleased; the rank system did not discourage anyone from coming in to complain or hand off messages.

Only, instead of being directed or going first to one of the others in the room as was a bit more typical, the frantic mech came staggering towards Blackout himself. He was cycling air so fast that visible lines of heat were dancing around his frame.

Dropping his datapad from his faceplate slightly, the ebony mech brought up an optic ridge towards the newcomer. Other bots in the room who had been murmuring went silent as everyone turned their optics towards the seeker.

“Mech-”

“Blackout,” the bot gasped, cutting him off. “We’ve got... a situation...”

Abruptly Blackout placed his pad down on the arm of his chair and rose to his pedes. The motion was fluid and swift, causing a few bots in their chairs to tip over or scoot back.

“Explain,” he urged the young bot with sternness. “Slowly if you must, mech, don’t skip over details, catch your breath.”

“The... The Revenge... Revenge II, sir.”

As the mech coughed for a moment, trying to steady his ventilation system, the dark commander leaned forward slightly. A swift phantom’s gloom fell over his optics, blanketing them in darkness.

Part of Blackout wanted to tear the answer from the mech’s throat and insist him to speak despite his previous encouragement to speak carefully. Novastrike had been issued over there earlier; she was supposed to be verifying some things and checking up on the wellness of the bots and stability of the vessel.

“Something’s wrong over... over there,” the mech went on with a huff. “A flier returned after accompanying Nova... Novastrike into the ship. Nova sent her back... and she returned with a... a message from the commander-”

“The message?” Blackout curtly egged on the panting mech on.

“To get the nearest commander’s attention and let them know there was... was nobot at the hanger bay.”

That was suspicious. There should have been member’s of the Rising Star standing guard outside to make sure there was no unauthorized entry onto the ship.

He opened his mouth to comment his own curiosity, but the messenger continued: “Guard was the first to be contacted. He... he went over to the Revenge II. There were slaggers from the... Revenge II, free of their confinement area. Myself and the other two... two seekers that aided in bringing Guard over helped fight them off, they were... were assaulting Novastrike-”

“Is she alright?” Blackout broke in; the words spilling out of himself before he could stop it.

“She’s fine,” the herald anxiously puffed. “I mean, not perfect... she looked beat up... up by the time we got there. Guard asked me to come and get... you. And other bots; to get help.”

“How many prisoners were out of their cells?” Blackout demanded, a deafening rumble echoing through his chassis.

The mech shrank back, swallowing loudly as his voice quivered and raised with fear as he replied, “I- I don’t know, sir. Novastrike was saying that the prison was completely empty, and... and we didn’t run into any crew from the Rising Star while going down the halls.”

Empty? How could a jail filled with surrendered bots be empty?

“Do not let any bot back on to this ship,” snarled the former Decepticon Hound, turning his optics to meet every bot’s in the room. “No one boards the Rising Star, and no one leaves after I head over. Any bot that attempts entry without the passcode-” he hesitated- “‘moon goddess’ does not enter; apply force if necessary. Close up the vessel, lock the hatch, seal what remains of the docking bay. Shut this ship down to outsiders.”

“But sir-”

“I don’t want to hear it right now,” he growled much louder than he’d anticipated.

Seeing the bots in the room cringe further back from him, the massive mech inhaled slowly and let it out. He was Blackout; the Decepticon Hound, terror to bots, destroyer of planets. He had to be that mech now; he had to control his emotions, no matter how furious he was. Focus on the objective, act like the leader he was supposed to be.

“My apologies,” he rumbled, managing to keep a clipped tone. He watched the bots begin to steadily relax in the room and incline themselves forward attentively towards him.

“We can’t allow any bots on board the ship unless they are in dire need of medical attention,” he reported. “And even then, under heavy surveillance. This may all be a ploy for whoever is in charge of this jailbreak to come over and take control of the Rising Star or bring warfare directly among us all. That’s an order.”

“Yes, commander,” many voices chimed in unison.

“I’ll fly over now and inspect the situation myself, and make sure that those from the Rising Star that are over there are accounted for, no matter what their condition.”

His last words in that sentence felt like they weren’t said by him. They were hollow; detached, distant. A fusion compound of buzzing, savage fury and a quieter, spark-skipping terror riddled his insides like bullet holes. It bothered him of course the condition he might find his comrades, but there was already confirmation on Nova being injured and it was a sharp pang to his spark. The Pit-Spawn monster inside of him roared; calling for blood to be spilled that had him teetering on the edge of madness.

“What can we do?” one of the femmes asked quietly.

Faltering for a nanoklik, he turned his optics down. Thoughts were swirling; he couldn’t concentrate completely. His optics flashed as he tried to hold back the corrupt beast with gnarled teeth and bared fangs inside thrrashed; claws outstretched and ready to rip and tear and devour everything in its path.

“Keep each other calm, and the Rising Star on course,” he decreed in a sharp voice. “Make sure the medic has all the help she needs and has her room prepped for occupants; search the cargo bay for supplies, have some of our best fighter’s on standby at some of the most obvious locations of access and in command, protecting the cargo, with the medic too.”

There were muttered affirmations and nods all around the room as he looked up.

“‘Raider, take the helm,” he finished in an eerily quiet voice.

“Aye, sir.”

Placing his servo on the courier’s shoulder, Blackout gave him a brief nod. Although the mech looked frightened still, he nodded numbly in return and moved out of the way to allow the Satanic demon to pass by.

For Primus himself, no bot in the room would dare step in front of that mech; for his optics spoke of danger and death and the stride in his steps were calm and calculated. A steady pace, and a steadier gaze of blackened-red. One could only dare to consider the swirling mayhem of nightmares fueling the maelstrom of thoughts going through such a menacing bot’s thoughts.

< I’m coming for you, > Blackout spoke through the bond, his voice harsh. < Be ready. >

There was no objection from the bug. However, there was a very brief sense of the minicon being startled by the sudden intrusion into his thoughts.

Taking lengthy paces between each step and walking briskly and with haste, the obsidian brute found his way to the medic’s bay more than halfway through the ship in record time.

The medic seemed shocked to see him storming through the door before it even opened all the way.

“Blackout?” she implored with consternation in her voice. “What’s going on- what are you doing here? I just got the strangest message-”

Overlooking the femme, he moved his optics slowly upon the room. Ah, there.

Stepping around the surprised femme with her digit pointing out at him, Blackout hurried over towards Scorponok. He offered a slight chatter as though not fully awake and aware of his surroundings, but was quick to cling to Blackout’s armor as he stepped around and turned his back to him. Fanning his blades out wide, the scorpion latched on and scaled sections of Blackout’s armor before sinking himself into the larger mech’s frame; transforming into his backside.

“Blackout you can’t just take my patient,” the medic scolded him, following after him now as he made for the door. “Now, wait just a nanoklik-”

“I can’t wait!” he snarled, spinning on the femme. His silhouette fell over her; swallowing the startled and fearful femme’s frame up in blackness nearly as dark as Blackout himself.

“The longer I wait, the more danger she’s in!” he echoed with thunder in the depths of his voice. “Stand down, femme; somebot will get to you with information I assure you, but I must go and I need my partner with me.”

Slowly, the femme went from cowering beneath the shade upon her to standing up. A look of understanding was in her still terrified optics as she made a nod in answer. It was, truthfully, all she could manage. It felt like her voice had been stolen from. She couldn’t speak a single word.

Whirling around, the gigantic mech was out of the room before the femme could manage to take in a breath. He could feel Scorponok’s hazy thoughts probing his processor for more detail as to what was going on. In answer to his curiosities, Blackout fed him what line of thoughts he could manage through the red fog that was penetrating him; eating at his vision.

A foreboding growl reverberated through his chassis as he tore down the hall in a sprint. He had to get over there, fast.

The startled scream of horror and dismay ripped out of Novastrike’s crackling vocalizer as Guard lurched forward. His pede only just shifted, as if he was going to turn, before another shot went off, right after another; blasting through the air and adding to the stench of the slaughter a new, fresh tinge of blood and ozone from the weapon going off.

He dropped to his knees with shock written all over his faceplate.

“NO!”

Nova went to lunge forward, as if she could do something, anything for the old bot.

The small mech stepped forward from behind with a fiendish, twisted, ugly grin that changed back and forth between that and a nasty, loathsome frown. His derma peeked between his lips as he raised up what appeared to be a hand-held weapon and slammed it into the back of Guard’s helm as hard as he could.

Grunting with pain, the elder bot slammed chassis first into the floor, narrowly missing striking his helm against Novastrike.

She reached out impulsively to place her servos on top of his helm. As if she could protect him with her petite servos. Looking up, she met the optics of the mech with tears shimmering in her gaze and mouth hanging open just barely in a small shape of an o.

“How could you?”

Narrowing his optics, Neutroboost released a sharp vent in response. He turned his optics slightly towards the moving piles of offlined bodies all around them and to the mech standing close by that had handed over the massive rifle. As he did so, Novastrike’s optics moved to follow his. It was like a rippling ocean of butchered body parts and deceased bots as the crew of the Revenge II began to emerge from their hiding spots beneath all the dead.

Novastrike’s lower lip trembled as she blinked on her tears, covering her arms over as much as Guard’s helm as she could. The sound of his ragged breathing in her audios tore into her spark sharper than a dagger.

“It wasn’t in my original plan to offline you, ancient mech, but I can’t say I won’t regret it,” Neutro hummed, glancing at the rifle in his arms. “Nice work, Scavenger. This did just the trick.”

The bulky mech standing just a few feet from Neutro that had emerged from the carnage first grunted in response.

Blinking at the tears in her optics, Novastrike took a step back from Guard and raised up her firearm. “You monster-”

Something flashed off to her left and the small femme howled with pain as the sniper shot struck her arm. It nearly tore her arm completely off; armor shattering and her rifle flying and dropping a few meters away.

“Ahhh, no, we’ll have none of that,” Neutro stated with a grin of all teeth as he raised a pede to push it into the middle of Guard’s backside.

Biting her lower lip, Novastrike frustratingly threw her arms down; her right one dropping further and dangling by wires as she hissed: “Why are you doing this?”

“Because none of you would listen to me!” the commander bellowed, leaning forward. His optics looked like that of a wild, insane mech. They shifted and brimmed on and off drastically with light.

“I warned you, all of you, a million times that having that demon on the ship was a bad idea. And not only did you ignore me, you gave that thing a promotion! You all were tricked by it, and now the entire ship is tainted. Well, it’s time for a much needed purge of the ship. I’m going to set things right, I’m going to protect every bot from you and that plague.”

“So you joined forces with the murderous looters?”

Neutroboost shrugged vaguely. “They’re going to help me restore order on to the ship. I agreed to help them escape, in return for a favor.”

The large mech standing on part of the mountain of the dead growled impatiently, speaking in a thick voice: “Neutroboost, kill the femme and let’s get on-”

“I’m not done speaking!” Neutro shrieked in response, turning to face the mech with the massive gun he held.

Nova shifted her optics on to the pirates of the Revenge II. The large bot who had spoke up made sure to look to one mech in particular in the room off to the right, who passed him a short nod. He appeared heavily battle scarred, with more recent gashed on his faceplate and a massive sword hanging across his back.

They had a new leader calling the shots.

“Neutroboost, listen to me,” Nova spoke quickly; desperately as she turned back to look at his warped expression. “They’re playing you. They don’t want to help you; they’re not returning your offer, they’re using you. They know if they remove the biggest threats on the Rising Star, they’ll have full control of-”

“Oh, shut up.”

“You don’t have to do this-”

Lowering the heavy gun, Neutroboost fired into Guard’s spinal strut. The old mech cried out weakly with pain.

“I said shut up.”

Trembling all over, Novastrike gave a quick nod of her helm with understanding. He didn’t even realize they were using him. He couldn’t tell that they were letting him play leader temporarily to achieve their own goals. He couldn’t tell they’d already changed their hierarchy and were letting him fix their problems for them. He was delusional.

Delusional and hurting the one and only mech who still believed in him; after all this time and all faults and prickliness.

“I’m going to fix that damn ship, and every bot on it,” Neutroboost stated firmly, bringing up his oversized weapon. “I only wanted to remove you first, you stupid femme, but you had to ruin it and pull Guard into all of this. Now he’s going to offline, and it’s all your fault.”

“No, Neutro, please-”

“Say it’s your fault,” he sneered, offering a malevolent grin. “Say. It.”

“Listen to me, please-”

“Say it!”

Hiccuping, the little femme sucked in air loudly as a sob escaped her.

“It’s all my fault.”

“That’s right, it is,” Neutroboost cooed in an encouraging voice. His optics moved down to Guard’s still form and he grimaced, stomping his pede on the aged mech as he sneered, “Not that I care. You’ve done nothing but ridicule and taunt me by putting that beast in charge. You don’t even care about the crew anymore. All you care about is that stupid creature and this vile whore.”

Lifting his helm slowly, Guard released a pained grunt. Energon was beaded up on places on his faceplate where metal fractured and there was a small puddle on the floor from having escaped his mouth. He dragged in air which cycled in through wet energon that had to be coating his ventilation system.

“I never put Blackout in charge to mock you-”

“Yes, you did!”

“You are a jealous, blind fool!” Guard snarled loudly. “I am capable of caring for and loving more bots than just you, Neutroboost. You’ve never been able to deal with that. You’ve always wanted to be the most important, the most pampered spoiled mech on the ship and you couldn’t stand it that there were more bots than just you I gave attention to!”

Curling his lip up, Neutroboost slammed the butt of his gun into Guard’s helm, smacking the old mech’s face into the floor.

“You don’t know anything about me,” he jeered coldly. “Not anymore.”

Forcing his helm back up, Guard spat energon onto the floor. “You’re right,” he rasped, “I don’t. Because the mech I knew on Cybertron wouldn’t stab his friends in the back.”

“You’re no comrade of mine.”

“No, you’re right. I’m not. I’m going to be the nightmare that haunts your every dream; the figure you swear you see out of the corner of your optics but when you turn isn’t there; the judgmental feeling you have for yourself every time you drink yourself into a state of stupidity with highgrade.”

Shock rippled over the younger bot’s faceplate. He stammered awkwardly as he spoke: “How-How did you-”

“And if you think I’m going to give you Pit,” he snarled, “Just you wait: Crookedwing will never forgive you. He may have pitied you from the Well if he is able to look upon us, but now, he is going to hate you.”

“You dare to speak his name around me-” Neutroboost challenged, pressing the hot tip of his artillery into the back of the elder bot’s neck.

Groaning quietly, Guard raised his azure optics up to meet Novastrike’s shocked gaze. Everything in her sights was bleary and unclear with the tears leaking out out her optics and sliding down her faceplate to drip to the floor.

“It’s going to be alright, Novastrike,” he rasped quietly.

She gave the tiniest shake of her helm, as she wept, “No, no, please-”

“Shhh,” he grunted, flinching as the muzzle seared into the cables on the back of helm. “It’s going to be fine, but you need to be strong.”

Nova opened her trembling mouth, but no sound came out. But she didn’t know how to be strong. She didn’t know how she could fix this.

One of the bots in the room made a noise like rattling gears and metallic warbles. It caught the small femme off guard and she turned her audios and then her optics towards him. One of his optics was blank and lifeless, and the other had a mark that ran over his face that appeared to have barely missed blinding him of his only good optic.

A beam of strange light escaped his optic, and a projected holographic image of the ship’s surveillance floated through the air in front of him briefly, before one of the many squares enlarged over all the others.

“Looks like we got company,” the mech whispered in a strangled metallic pop of static.

She inhaled sharply.

Ripping his visuals off Novastrike and Guard, Neutroboost glanced at the fractured light that created the screen. A grimace pulled at his hideous snarl.

“Well, what are you lot waiting for? Go greet out guest.”

The bots of the Revenge II looked between each other. Although she couldn’t pick up on their every word as they spoke so softly, the white-armored femme could read the mech’s lips as he mouthed: ‘how much longer are we going to listen to this guy?’.

‘Just go with it for now’, the pack leader mouthed back.

“GO!” Neutroboost demanded as his temper flared, stomping his pede on the back of Guard’s backstrut and causing him to gasp with agony.

The majority of the bots in the room began to file for the door. They walked over the carcasses of those lives lost like they meant nothing at all. Bodies crunched; energon bubbled up and was flung up from pedes, speckling each other, the wall, the floor.

“Neutro, please, let Guard go,” Novastrike begged, daring to take a step towards the mech. “Please you said it’s me you wanted in the first place. Just him go; leave Blackout alone-”

Giving off a tisk of disapproval, the mech grinded his heel into Guard’s spine. There was a hideous ripping noise. Sections of metal suddenly popped upward and sparks fluttered out of torn circuits.

“You’re not giving the commands around here, femme,” Neutro boosted with a barbaric grin. “I am.”

The lowered hatch was void of occupants. Every room Blackout looked into vacant of residence. The ship looked completely barren; a ghost ship in all matters of speaking.

Having come too fully now, Scorponok seemed just as uneasy as the titan himself. Although his fleeting needles of pain and the fog of his discomforts bleed into his thoughts, Blackout could feel how alert and how on edge he was. He seemed to be feeding on his master’s concerns as much as he was fueling them.

< We are being watch, > the bug stated with paranoia.

< I thought that too, > he replied through the bond.

< No, we are being watched, > the scorpion repeated with certainty. < I’m just saying that. Look up and slightly to your left. I’m picking up on something. >

Listening to his minicon’s directions, Blackout raised his helm up and scanned the ceiling. For a nanoklik, something moved against the ceiling, but it was gone the moment he tried adjusting his optics to get a better look in the darkness.

< What is it? >

< A drone, I believe. My sensors are picking up on their wavelength, but it’s sketchy and all over the place. >

< Plug it into me, I’ll take care of it. >

< I don’t mean to belittle you, Blackout, but this might overwhelm your sensory output. Your frame doesn’t have the capacity of perceptive mine does. I don’t think they’ll harm us; they’re very weak on their wavelength, most likely being controlled by someone. Essentially walking camera feeds. >

Grumbling, the massive mech unfurled his smaller wrist blades and shifted his other arm into a cannon. His optics moved across the hall as he made his way with a little more care down the passageway.

If someone was watching them, they were just waiting for the chance to attack.

Inspecting the walls and ceiling, each and every door they passed, Blackout looked for trace signs of anybot being on the ship. Safely tucked in its chamber his spark wobbled and quaked. The light of his very soul seemed to grow murky with unease. A sour bite of fear laced his glossia. He hadn’t experienced that sensation since the very first few years of his life, and he swore to never taste it again.

Boldly or perhaps, stupidly, Blackout chanced pinging Novastrike’s private channel. Anything to settle the foul flavor in his mouth; anything to let him know she was okay, that she was online somewhere on this ship, that she hadn’t been left behind only to be dragged into the Well of Allsparks without him.

A quiet chime captured Blackout’s attention and he tensed up, catching the glare of light off to his left.

In an explosion of action, Blackout snapped his arm outward; blades spiraling in a vortex of sharp light and harsh lines.

The mech’s shielding camouflage flickered off as his blade sliced through a portion of his chassis. He slammed backwards into the wall; a single optic blazing with fury towards the Hound as his other lifeless one stared hauntingly.

Turning fully and swiftly, Blackout swung his arm to take off the mech’s helm and be done with it.

Light blinded him part of the way through the sweeping motion and he grunted. His blades struck metal but he could tell the difference between the dimensions of a chassis and a wall; and it grazed along the wall and tore into it with ease, pulling back close to his side.

As his vision returned, a pede struck him hard from behind, nearly shoving him in the wall.

Grunting, the obsidian mech flared out his rotor blades. Scorponok expelled from his backside with a shrill screech, smacking the mech square in the chassis.

As the mech howled with surprise and agony whilst drills punctured him and a tail penetrated his sides and arms, Blackout turned to see the crowd of bots coming from every direction.

A sadistic smile flashed across his faceplate.

Firing his cannon at the front line of bots coming his way, Blackout sent energon and metal scattering in every direction; flying off his enemies. Those behind trampled their own comrades who would fall or trip up with agonizing screams of pain as the explosive cannon-fire tore into them.

The first bot came without range and Blackout arced his rotors, taking off the mech’s blaster arm. Howling with pain the mech reached to his side for a grenade. Too slow; the larger mech snapped his pede up into his abdomen. The very moment he doubled over, Blackout took off his helm with a swipe and kicked him into the bot coming up next.

Rotating, he skidded his blade against the thick armor of a femme who jumped back to avoid him. She offered a pleased grin.

Grinning in return, Blackout fired his cannon at the smug-faced femme’s leg. She gasped, stumbling forward and into his next swing as he split her helm open. Portions of her processor and snapping circuits showered everywhere.

Two went from him on either side at the same time; peppering him with energon blasters. Firing at one, Blackout left himself exposed on the other side. The bot came in low; firing at his leg.

Nuisance. He waited until the crouched mech came too close; keeping his focus on the mech to his right. Faking a thrust towards the bot so he stumbled back, Blackout pivoted to the one on his left and raised his leg, slamming the mech so hard he went airborne.

Before he could even crash into another, Blackout fired at the mech’s chassis thrice; extinguishing his spark.

Wincing as a shot grazed his helm, Blackout brought his arm up shield himself from the trained optic of someone to his left. The crack of his cannon went off as he fired at the nearest bots; blowing holes through armor. The closer the enemy, the sooner they met a gruesome end; the colossal giant slamming his arsenal against them and firing, sending them hurtling back into the crowd.

Screaming a spine-chilling roar of a battlecry, the dark armored mech flicked up his chassis cannon and popped off a few shots at the nearest mech.

Another dodged beneath his spiraling steel rotors and whipped around to get to his backside. Angling his frame, he flicked out his larger rotors. The flat end unfortunately whacked the bot, only encouraging him to step back.

Snarling, blades flicked inward to reveal his servo as Blackout pivoted to grab the mech by his servo. He ripped off his helm much of the mech’s helm with a sharp pull and yanked; dragging him by the cables and remains of his attached neck cables to throw him into the throng. A few bots scattered or were caught under the weight and fell to the floor.

Another jumped for him. Midleap, Blackout fired at the mech’s chassis.

He was thrown backwards and crumbled against the wall as a frag grenade rolled out of his servo.

The explosion nanokliks later sent shrapnel through the corridor. Bots bellowed and cried aloud. Blackout just barely managed to cover his faceplate from the majority of the shards with his arm as they reigned upon him.

Sidestepping, he slammed into the nearest bot. They stumbled heavily but had no time to recover as the mountainous mech raised his leg high and stomped on the mech, sending him into the ground and crushing his leg.

Another bot mistakenly squashed his helm as they made their way in to make for a glance-blow of their blade against Blackout’s shoulder. He barely flinched away from it; striking with his servo to grab the blade with ease. It sliced into his digits as he pulverized and snapped off a section of the dagger.

The bot looked mortified.

Slamming his fist into the mech’s face with the full, brutal force of his weight he staggered back into the hoard with gurgling cries of pain as a portion of his blade had been wedged into his face.

Twisting as he bent over, Blackout narrowly missed a throwing blade to his helm. He fired off another barrage of cannon blasts into the group as he reached over his back.

Five bots in the front were instantly decapitated as he flung his larger rotor blades around from the side. They fanned out with a snap of his wrist; twisting into a tornado of never-ending points and edges.

Electricity crackled around the savage Hound’s frame as a sudden blast of energy whipped out from him. The deafening noise it created rang down the hall as bots fell back over each other.

For a moment, Blackout could see Scorponok on the floor, spearing a mech through the helm.

As bots went to recover themselves, the obsidian giant continued his rampant onslaught. Bombarding his massive firepower upon the swarm and assaulting the first bots to try staggering to their pedes. The extension of his larger blades gave him all the more space between his assailants and himself to sever limbs and cleanly slice from helm to aft anyone who made a sad attempt at fleeing or fighting.

Well, perhaps cleanly was the wrong word. There was nothing so clean as the splatters of various liquids and oils spewing from bots, the energon that seemed to flow for miles on the floor, the crumbling remains of metal frames and softer protoforms demolished beneath his massive pedes.

As a bot darted by and over their chums to get to him, Blackout pulled his rotors back and allowed the bot an open shot at him. When they showed the smallest bit of hesitation at the odd maneuver, Blackout transformed his cannon and grabbed the mech by the helm and slammed him into the floor.

Raising the bot’s helm up and then bodily flinging them skyward, he smashed them back into the floor. As they gurgled and flailed, he released them and stood at full, snapping out his leg and kicking off their helm.

Something sharp and hot connected in the space between his shoulder and back. Wincing, a growl ripped its way free of the enormous mech as he turned to see the bot that aiming their weapon to him.

They moved to shoot again and Blackout swung his arm, using his rotors to block off the spray of his attack. Springing up from the floor a few yards away, Scorponok came upon the combatants side with a trill and dove his drills into the bot’s side, nearly grinding him in half.

As three more opponents came staggering around some of their offline, disposed, and floored comrades still trying to get to their pedes, Blackout arched around with his rotors and dispatched of them in a single swoop.

Some of the bots were crawling on their servos and kneepads, running or clawing on the floor, anything they could do to escape and flee the wrath of the Hound.

A malicious, cruel bellow of laughter that would make Unicron himself leak with fright spilled out of Blackout.

“Come and face me, you filthy, weak cowards,” he taunted, firing his cannon and taking out the leg of one of the retreating bots. “I’ll exterminate all of your sparks; whether you stand with courage and a false persona of honor or offline like the burned out useless tinfoil scrap fraggers you all are! All of you will die; every single last one of you for lying a digit upon what is mine!”

No sooner than the majority of the mob of bots left the room and they were alone did it sink into Novastrike’s spark that this had to be her end. The nanoklik Neutroboost stepped fully on top of Guard and recoiled his leg only to boot her square in the helm, knocking her to the floor as her vision fizzled in and out and she gasped with pain.

“You’re all a bunch of oblivious slaggers,” Neutroboost mocked with a toxic look of gleam glowing on his faceplate.

Rolling over to her side, Nova resisted the urge to curl up into a ball. Her vents hiccuped again as she wept, wiping at the tears blotting her face as she tried to stand up again.

“Ahh, tut, no, stay down.”

A pede pressed against her backside. She instantly dropped flat on to her chassis, trying to hold back the choked wail that settled somewhere in her throat.

“Novastrike, listen to me.”

Turning her helm slightly, she managed to catch the warm light of Guard’s optics. He was smiling at her; sweet and filled with tenderness despite the energon dripping from his back on the floor, from his helm, from his mouth and face and the reeking scorch marks on him.

“You’ll be okay,” he stated gently. “You’re very brave, and very smart, and very kind.”

“Quit talking,” Neutro warned, pressing his bulky gun against the mech’s helm.

“Just do what you have to to survive,” the old mech spoke, feverish and quickly now as he went on, “And tell Blackout that he did all he could; he’s a good mech. He’ll help protect you, he’ll help take good care of you.”

“Guard, please-” Nova whispered.

“It’s alright, young one. Just follow your spark. Everything will be fine,” he murmured, offering a sad smile.

Sneering, Neutroboost lifted his pede from Novastrike and pressed it into Guard’s helm. “I said shut up-”

The old mech bucked up and Neutroboost flipped backwards and on his aft. Nova’s optics went wide as Guard grabbed the nearest piece of metal caked in dried energon and threw it at the first bot to react. It slammed into their mid-chassis and they doubled over with pain.

Using her only good arm, the little femme scrapped herself up to her pedes and made a bee-line for her rifle. She tripped over her own pedes and slipped, crashing on the floor just a few inches away.

She looked back, spotting Guard trying to wrestle the weapon from Neutroboost’s arms.

Turning her helm back, she crawled forward; outstreching her digits as they wriggled in the air for the butt of her gun.

A shot went off. Novastrike’s ears followed the sound and she whipped her helm around, spotting the missed shot passing by Guard and Neutroboost by inches.

Just another inch

Another shot went off.

Come on, she almost had it.

Another.

Her digits brushed the butt of her gun.

There was a cry of pain that she couldn’t ignore. Turning her helm towards the duo wrestling over the weapon, Novastrike watched as Neutroboost pushed forward; smacking the weapon into Guard’s faceplate. As the old bot began to fall sideways, Neutro slammed the weapon into his helm again and snatched it out of his digits.

“Neutroboost, don’t!”

Raising the weapon, Neutroboost smashed it into the back of Guard’s helm again. And another blow. The gun flipped around in his servos as Novastrike reached for her rifle.

A thunderous bang went off.

With her digits shaking, Novastrike dropped her rifle.

Tears sprang up from her optics as Guard sagged back on the floor. His faceplate struck the floor with a metallic clank. There was a brief flicker of blue and then it winked out. The old mech’s mouth still slightly open as a gray coloring began to wash over him.

Wretched, loud sobs broke free of the small femme’s chassis as she clutched at her chassis. She sucked in the terrible, deathly odor of the room and gagged for air as another loudly choked wail left her shuddering frame.

Neutroboost kicked and shoved Guard’s frame that had pinned part of his legs off and stood up, brushing at his chassis. He passed a glower upon the offline mechs lifeless husk of a shell and punted his pede against him so that he rolled completely over on his face, blocking the sight of his deadened optics from Nova’s view.

“Only one thing left to dispose of,” he murmured, flicking his optics towards the tiny femme.

Servos shaking, Novastrike weakly reached out for her gun.

One of the few bots still in the room glided the few steps between himself and her in only three steps. Swallowing the distance, he kicked her rifle so that it bounced on the floor and clattered off to the side.

“You offlined him,” Nova blubbered, drawing her good arm against her faceplate to wipe away the stains. “You killed him, he’s gone he’s- he’s-”

“Dead, deceased, departed, kaput, no more, fallen, yes, I know,” the commander agreed. “But have no fears, princess, you’ll soon be joining him.”

Blinking her optics, she turned her optics away from Guard. As much as it hurt her; tore at her very being to do so, she did.

And placed her broken, fractured, agonized expression on Neutroboost.

He raised the enormous gun up with a hefty huff and a gleefully twisted grin.

“I’m going to enjoy this moment,” he purred, snapping out his leg and kicking Novastrike.

She released a breathless squeal as she flipped end over end. Her broken arm hit her rifle, and together they rolled over the slight inclination of the floor and slid into one of the escape pods.

A loud bang resounding outside the door.

Every bot in the room turned her faces towards the door.

Another thud followed.

The lead bot of the rogue group turned to look at the remnants of his crew, and he turned a glaring look towards Neutroboost.

“Get rid of the femme, now,” he hissed with fury as he gestured to the door. “We have something far more pressing and dangerous to deal with.”

With a mixture of rage and terror, Neutroboost glanced around the room with frustration. His gaze went back to where he could barely see the outline of Novastrike’s backside lying inside the escape pod.

“Eject the pod,” he snapped.

“What?” the mech snarled in a baffled voice. “How is that at all enacting revenge?”

“Because,” Neutro viciously growled in return, “She gets to offline a slow, miserable, exhausted death in space. Alone, separated, dying without energon, with only her thoughts of how much of a worthless failure she is as her lasting impressions on her existence. Now do it.”

Sneering at the commander, the boss bot jerked his helm at some of his nearest allies. The one closest turned and hustled over to the escape pod’s terminal and began tapping in a few commands.

Blurry-eyed and helm aching, Novastrike lifted her helm and glanced over her shoulder. She couldn’t understand at first that the latch to the pod was coming down until she heard the distinctive locking mechanism click.

Breath hitching, she threw herself against the panel of glass, staring out towards Neutroboost with terror.

“No,” she choked weakly, banging on the glass. “Neutroboost, please, please with what ounce of mercy you might still have in your spark don’t-”

The last thing she saw was his cruel smile as she was suddenly thrown back as the pod ejected out into space at break neck speed.

“WHERE IS SHE?!”

Blackout’s digits ripped into the mech’s helm as he slammed it into the wall. The mech was gurgling on his own energon as he tried to speak. With Scorponok’s barb threateningly pinching the back of his neck cables and sections of his processor exposed, he had no easy way out of this situation.

This was the fifth mech Blackout had interrogated, and thus far, all of them were sickeningly loyal to their cause and unwilling to divulge. He didn’t have time to search the entire ship.

Gasping, the mech managed to slur out through the energon in his maw, “Evac.”

“Evac?” Blackout repeated in a snarl. “The evacuation chambers? Where are they?”

Numbly, the mech pointed down with his servo. “Lower level,” he spat. “Far right. Big corridor. Can’t miss.”

“Thank you,” the Satanic mech growled. “And as a reward, you’re going to offline quickly.”

“No, please-”

Giving a quick nod to his bug, Scorponok impaled his stinger through the mech’s neck and up in his helm until the end came poking out one of his optics.

Tugging his tail free, the scorpion went to scurry after Blackout. Although Blackout always had the stride to overtake any bot really, the bug had never seen him literally sprint to a destination in his life.

Until now.

As the inky black mech made his way down to the lower level, there were further bots waiting for him.

He raised his cannon and blasted them as he went. The nanoklik one was within distance of his arm he snagged them. The first he bent back at an angle and cracked their backstruts as he jerked them down and his knee-joint up. The second he crushed their helm. They fell down, still online up until Scorponok jumped down the stairs and on what remained of their face.

A blast went off and showers of something hit and splashed outward from Blackout’s chassis. Holes began to form from the acid. He didn’t feel a thing.

Grabbing the next bot by the helm, he slammed his face into the wall until it crumbled inward. Offline.

As another bot managed to grab his arm, he extended his blades and took their arm as he spun his own arm around and then rammed his rotors into their chassis until they too met a gory end.

Assaulting the small group with a battering of cannon fire, Blackout came in closer and closer. Bots fell beneath the endless bombarding of shots, and as he came in close enough, he grabbed a femme by the throat and hauled her in the air. Her optics were saucers of fright as she gagged and wriggled, grabbed at his arm wildly.

Blackout flung her into the door to the evacuation room.

As Scorponok scurried past, the minicon dropped a round of missiles into the group. Thunderous blasts exploded into the air. Coughing and gasping, a mech waved at the smoke in front of his face only to squeal as he was ripped up from the floor. The mech beside him screamed out in fear as glowing red optics looked down upon him, and parts of his ally began to fall to the ground as they howled with agony.

Blackout slammed a fist through the mech’s chassis armor and smashed his spark in front of the mech’s optics.

Weak-kneed with fear, the mech slumped against he wall behind him. He turned his helm at the click to his right and screamed once more as Scorponok’s drill whirled to life and stabbed into his leg.

Turning his helm to the door, Blackout bared his derma and let out an animalistic snarl. <Finish up here, Scorponok, I’ll go ahead in. >

A feeling of understanding swam through the bond to him from his minicon.

Stepping up to the door, he looked up and down for a control panel for entry. Locked, and no access panel; it must have one on the other side.

Ignoring the howls of fear and screams of pain just behind him, Blackout curled his servo into a fist and hit the door.

Nothing.

He hit it again.

A small section warped inward.

Again.

The crease of the two panels that made up the door snapped inward.

Gripping the space between the doors with his digits, Blackout released a roar as he tore; ripping one panel off completely and shoving the other back into its slot in the wall with a grinding of gears and metal.

Blasters ignited in the room immediately, raining hail from an arsenal upon him. Energon splattered forth from his armor. A section of his chassis popped lose, dangling partly and clattering to the floor as he rushed forward.

The room stunk of the dead as he crushed them beneath the weight of his pedes. Meeting his first adversary head on, the pair went blow-for-blow as they clashed. The mech wasn’t nearly as beefy as Blackout, but almost as tall.

Their blaster went off as Blackout jerked their arm up to the ceiling. Fragments fell upon the duo. He twisted the arm back until it snapped even as the mech hammered Blackout’s side and tore off armor plating.

“Bastard-” the bot growled.

Slamming his pedes forward, Blackout forced him back further as he yanked with all his might. Strands of circuits frayed and he ripped off the mech’s arm and threw it as hard as he could at the next closest mech.

Whipping his helm forward, the bot slammed his forehead against Blackout’s. Recoiling with surprise and pain, the large bot bared his derma wider. He grunted, the light of his optics growing so fierce and bright it sucked up all the darkness and black around his face as he snarled, ripping downward with his other servo and taking off the mech’s other arm from the shoulder.

Bringing the arm back, he swung and hit the mech in the helm so hard with his own arm he shattered half of his face. The mech staggered and fell to the ground, coughing violently on energon nanokliks before Blackout stomped on his helm.

Phasing his arm back into a cannon, he fired upon one of the bots until they toppled back, offline, and then focused his concentration on another. Debris went soaring; his own energon dripping to the ground in thick globs.

A thunderous crack went off and Blackout stepped back from the ricochet. He looked down at his chassis to see the enormous hole driven in him. The edge of his spark chamber was just barely visible on his right side.

Turning his blazing optics up, he snarled viciously. It only grew more furious and twisted as he saw who was holding the weapon that fired upon him.

Screaming, a bot came charging from Blackout’s left with a dagger of sorts. He fired at the bot’s helm, taking them out as he charged Neutroboost.

The mech’s optics went wide as he went to heft up the weapon once more. Before he could pull the trigger, Blackout body slammed him into the wall. The gun dropped on the floor.

Blackout went absolutely berserk. He pummeled his fists into the mech’s chassis until it began to sink inward. Neutro snarled and gurgled, clawing and snatching at his face and his helm. The big mech was completely oblivious to the blasts hitting his backside. He couldn’t feel them. All he could see was the face of the bot in front of him.

There was a shrill sound of something rocketing through the air and Blackout hissed with pain, retracting just an inch from the smaller mech who managed to snake his slimy little frame out from beneath his arm.

“Get back here!” Blackout shouted, whipping around to grab Neutroboost by the shoulder. “I’m not through with you yet.”

Raising the mech up in the air, he slammed him into the wall and threw him against the floor. He picked him up again as Neutro cursed and flailed his limbs, slamming him back into the floor before chucking him as hard as he could into the adjacent wall.

A shrill metallic chatter entered the room, and some of the firepower that had been placed on Blackout decreased as Scorponok came in to discharge his missiles upon the quickly vanishing crowd.

Marching across the floor, Blackout ceased Neutroboost by the throat and smashed him into the wall before throwing him again.

The bot skidded across the floor, wheezing. He reached up to clutch his throat, turning his optics up as Blackout casually stomped towards him.

A rumble, dark and evil escaped the ebony mech. As he moved to approach Neutro his steps grew slower, spotting a shape on the floor that appeared too familiar. The armor was discolored though, not the same hues he was used to.

Blackout removed his optics from Neutroboost entirely as he stopped at the figure. Gently pressing his servo to the mech’s side, he turned him over slightly.

The giant mech retracted swifter than lightning.

He stared at the blank, lifeless blackened optics as Guard as they stared out.

His helm came up very slowly to look upon the small mech.

“You did this,” he said quietly. A fact, not a question.

Coughing, Neutroboost sneered at him as he took very slow steps towards him.

“You offlined him,” he said softly. “You killed Guard.”

Looking around, Neutro spotted a stray gun on the floor. He threw himself towards it but Blackout moved in a flash; grabbing him by the neck and wringing him.

“You murdered him!” Blackout shouted like thunder, feeling an unusual painful sting in his optics as his vision became obscured.

Grimacing, Neutro slapped a servo over his face and clawed him; dragging marks against his face.

Pivoting, Blackout threw the mech into the wall so hard it snapped inward with a squeal of metal on metal.

Neutroboost’s helm lolled on his shoulders. He gargled and clawed at Blackout’s arm and shoulder as he was picked up high and shoved into the wall.

“I should have killed you days ago; months ago; years ago,” he snarled, his voice dripping with venom and hardly distinguishable through the gravely notes and thickness as tears glittered against his optics.

A raspy laughter gagged out of Neutroboost’s throat.

Growling, Blackout pulled the mech back and rammed him into the wall, over and over again. Neutro’s helm bounced against the wall as he let out a warbled wail as he was shaken like a ragdoll.

“Guard was a better mech than any of us could have ever been, and you took his life!” Blackout boomed at the lowest range his voice could hit. “You butchered him like he meant nothing! He’s lying down in a puddle of his energon surrounded by friends and enemies in some Primus forsaken piece of trash ship! You assassinated him! You had him slain like an old turbofox you bastard, you piece of slag, you useless scum how could you!”

“Easily,” Neutro just barely managed to wheeze.

Optics widening, Blackout showed his derma in a sickened scornful snarl as he slammed Neutroboost back into the wall once more, buckling him into the metal with the force of the blow.

“That mech was a better mech than you’ll ever be!”

Wham.

“Guard could have done so much better than you!”

Wham.

“This is how you repay him for his gratitude?”

Wham.

“He meant everything to the bots on the Rising Star; to me, and you eradicated him; you offlined him you sick sparkless glitch!”

Wham.

The light of Neutroboost’s optic flickered, barely online as he slipped in and out of a fog of consciousness. He offered a slight grin, but his derma were coated with energon that was dripping out of his mouth and over his chin, down his chassis and collecting on the floor.

Growling, Blackout leaned his faceplate into the mech’s. He vented sharply, leaning back as he suddenly looked around the room with quick sweeps of his gaze. Scorponok was wrangling a servoful of bots off to his left, but...

“Where’s Novastrike?” he demanded, spark twisting with agony as he dug his digits into the mech’s neck. “Where. Is. She.”

A faint, gurgled chuckle roamed out of the mech as his helm flopped to the right.

Blackout turned his helm slowly and with confusion to the mech’s gestured side.

An escape pod was missing.

Optics turning unbearably bright with the dawning realization, Blackout growled as he shoved Neutroboost into the wall and released him.

The mech could barely manage to keep himself on his pedes. He looked up and his optics grew wide as the rotors splayed out.

Neutro flinched as they came towards him.

Metal screamed loudly as it ripped wide open. Shuttering his barely-glowing optics open and closed, Neutroboost looked down at himself, awed that he felt no pain.

Then he realized the zigzag hole in the wall beside him.

Having already summoned Scorponok through the bond, the bug leaped up and caught himself on Blackout’s backside. He scaled up and shifted beneath the mech’s rotor blades, attaching himself and linking up with his host.

Emitting that same ominious rumble of thunder, Blackout’s servo shot out and clutched Neutroboost by the throat. They closed in tighter, crushing cables in the mech’s neck as he gagged.

Flinging the mech, Blackout sent him hurtling against the fall wall. He slammed into it and crashed on to the floor, twitching with life.

Passing a final glance towards Guard, Blackout felt the pang in his spark bloom all over again. Liquid blurred his vision as he turned his gaze away and leaned back, slamming his shoulder into the wall once. Twice. Third time’s a charm.

Breaking through the wall, Blackout fell into open space. He floated for a moment before engaging his transformation sequence, and shooting off into space before any of the remaining bots on the ship could scramble to the hole fast enough to even consider firing upon him.

Dried tears clung to Novastrike’s faceplate. Her entire body throbbed with pain. She couldn’t say how long she’d simply floated in space after the thrusters on the escape pod finally sputtered off and died. She looked out the glass a few times to see stars pass. At some point, she was pulled into the planetary gravity of a world she didn’t know and simply circled.

Blinking on and off her optics, she remain curled up on the floor of the pod much too large for her. She was empty inside and yet full all at the same time. Her body ached, her helm ached, her spark most of all ached the worst.

Sniveling, she glanced to the window as a shadow appeared and disappeared as the pod rolled. There was a strange humming outside of the pod she couldn’t distinguish very well.

A loud clang had her flinching and unwinding herself to try crawling over to the window to peer out.

Having transformed, Blackout magnetized his pedes onto the escape pod. He reached for the escape latch on the exterior of the ship and pulled, sending the door shooting upward.

Flinching slightly, Novastrike pulled away from the digits at first that extended over the hatch. She glanced after a nanoklik to the dark black. The armor needed no further inspection, she knew exactly who this was that came after her.

Gently taking hold of his digits with her only working arm, Blackout cautiously and slowly pulled his arm out from the pod and brought her out to look upon her.

His optics were dull she observed. Their usual light seemed much darker and less intense. The barrier she had worked so hard to break down over the years seemed to be up again to a point; his expression slightly guarded.

Novastrike’s lip wobbled, and the barricade that hid his true emotion disappeared in a flash as concern and pain flashed across his faceplate.

A fresh wave of sobs ripped out of Nova’s aching, dry throat as Blackout pressed her into his shattered and broken chassis, rumbling quietly. She tucked her face as much as she could against his chassis, as if he could shield her from the truth of what had happened.

She could feel the slight shudders running through the large mech as he clutched her a little tighter in response. He made no sound as he began to cry, curling his digits around her in the emptiness of space, where her cries went unanswered by any gods there may be.

#quid pro quo au #OTP AU #OTP Lit #Badass OTP #Sad OTP

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