Indigo Wires

[Pee-Dee]

Month 2, Week 2, Day 3. Follows from "There's One Born Every Minute". Private.


Pee-Dee follows along after Flame, off to the side and parallel. She makes no attempt to hide herself, but she also doesn't make an attempt to look like she's in hot pursuit. She's ambling, if a motorcycle could be said to amble.

[Flame]

Flame just wants to go home. Back to Ship, back to the medical ward where he has a place and a purpose far removed from being Onslaught's entertainment. Far removed from the Autobots he fears and hates.

But he is being pursued. He slows, then staggers to a stop, very nearly tripping himself in trying to keep an eye on the motorcycle following him. He can't very well lead anyone back; Spinister would certainly kill him for a traitor. The noise and light of the fair is far enough behind that there aren't any of the humans nearby to question why Flame's sidearm is suddenly in his hand.

"Leave me alone!" he says, struggling for the calm to steady his trembling hands and level his shaking voice.

[Pee-Dee]

Pee-Dee transforms and shows her empty hands. "Well, 'Cooperation' is my middle name.¹" She takes several steps back, not taking her optics off Flame and his gun. Then she pauses, tilts her head slightly. "Only... Will you be all right if I do?"


1. Predator 2[/size]

[Flame]

"Wh… what?" It isn't that Flame doesn't understand what the motorcycle says to him. It's that he doesn't grasp the wherefore of it. Why ask that question? No-one asks him how he feels. Why would they? How he feels doesn't matter, when he feels at all.

It's only now that he realises he can't see an Autobrand on her. He believes this is a female, at least, going by comparisons with his division commander. But the lack of a brand and the show of concern, more than her femininity, are what bemuse him. Though surely the concern is feigned; this is some tactic of Xaaron's to catch Flame out. She came with him, after all. The gun remains in Flame's hand, but his hand remains lowered for the moment. His finger is still on the trigger.

"What do you want?" he demands, voice raspy and flat.

[Pee-Dee]

"Cleaner streets, better schools, and a good hockey team.¹" The answer scrolls from her vocoder before she really thinks about it. To another Junkion, the meaning would be fairly clear: 'nothing under your power to control'.

But this is a Cybertronian, so Pee-Dee tries to find the right words to say what she means. "Why do I have to want anything?"


1. Dragnet

[Flame]

Flame stares. He has no idea what a hockey team is. Clean streets, better schools, he can understand, but these things have nothing to do with this moment.

"I can't – that's – no," he stammers, shaking his head, "you followed me. What do you want with me?" As if that answers her question somehow. She must want something or she wouldn't have pursued him. "You want to kill me, is that it?" The question comes out with a numb certainty. After all, Xaaron sent her, he assumes. Xaaron wanted him executed once already.

…No, not this Xaaron. The other Xaaron. The idea that there is more than one Emirate Xaaron is unadulterated cruelty on part of the universe.

[Pee-Dee]

"If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you," Pee-Dee points out in what she feels is quite a reasonable tone of voice.

"I..." she seems to be struggling with finding the words. But Cybertronian is hard for her at the best of times. Eventually, she gives up and resumes speaking English. "I want to know if you'll be all right. Onslaught-" The words she uses next are not either Cybertronian or Tellurian. She pauses, then tries English. "Sorry. I don't think that translates. Um. He shouldn't have done that."

[Flame]

Flame is terrified and paranoid. He's certain that someone who wanted him to let down his guard would deny killing intent to achieve their ends. And she was with Xaaron. But no-one asks Flame anything like this. No-one vouches for him. Not even Autobots.

She doesn't wear the brand.

Briefly, Flame marvels at the simple fact that she is standing there decrying Onslaught's behaviour. In the next instant, however, he remembers his place. Nervous again, he shakes his head firmly and presses his lips together.

"No," he says, "no, he – it was supposed to be that way. No, better. It went poorly. My fault." Always his fault. What would Spinister say? That thought sends Flame reeling, looking around into the darkness with his face drawn in horror, as if the Mayhem might appear and catch him not shooting at someone who is with Autobots. All that time and effort spent on training and he can't even do that. Uncertain, Flame lifts his sidearm again only to lower it, and again. This is all so confusing.

[Pee-Dee]

Pee-Dee mentally runs through several different takes on this scene, trying to figure out her next line.

(Chibi-Pee-Dee: "You're a lying liar who lies!"
Chibi-Flame: D: D: D: *shoots her*

Chibi-Pee-Dee: "Onslaught is still a knave and a wastrel."
Chibi-Flame: "M-maybe? No! He is a good man! I am horrible!" *cries*

Chibi-Pee-Dee: "Want to go watch a movie?"
Chibi-Flame: "Hooba-jooba-what?")

"Oh," she says doubtfully. "Well, if you say so."

She offers him a smile that doesn't flash her sawblade teeth. "Want to go see a movie? There's a drive-in theater a few towns over that's going to be showing Aladdin."

[Flame]

The request – or is it an offer? – stumbles Flame again. He tilts his head to the left as he regards Pee-Dee, unsure what to make of her. He's only sure that if he accepts, he will be in trouble. Deep, potentially fatal trouble. Going anywhere with her would be fraternising with an Autobot and Spinister will kill him. He just knows it.

"I – I can't… I can't," he laments, eyeing the darkness again. "He'll know. He always knows." How can he hide himself? He's a tank. A red and orange tank. He can't hide. But he never actually says that he doesn't want to see a movie, either. He doesn't know what Aladdin is, but the thought of even a while away, free, no tasks to be done and no Decepticons to abuse him, is a sweet one, like fine ethanol wine. Sweet and dangerous. She's dangerous. And sweet to make that offer. No, poison, he tells himself. It's a ploy so Xaaron can have him arrested and dragged back to trial.

But it's the wrong Xaaron.

[Pee-Dee]

That's not Onslaught he's talking about.

Pee-Dee's wheels shiver as she catches his fear. It looks like they're alone in the dark, but she knows better than most that doesn't mean anything. Junkions look like Junk for a reason.

She looks at Flame's haunted expression and listens to his hurting voice. Then she reaches back into her packs and pulls out a dvd. She spins the silvery disc on her finger, catching light on it.

"Better to light a match than curse the darkness¹," she says, stepping forward to offer it.

She leaves out the response: 'Be careful you don't light a fuse.'¹


1. Law and Order[/size]

[Flame]

Starlight on silver. A flicker in the dark. Flame looks at the disc, fascinated and wary. His arm shakes; his hand trembles as, looking again around them, slowly, he lifts it to take the disc. He still expects her to shoot him, or to snatch it back, or for Spinister to appear and kill him.

"There are things… in the dark," he rasps with his fingertips only a few inches from that little sliver of reflected stars. "Things that need to hurt you." Tentatively, pistol hand by his side, forgotten, he closes thumb and two fingers on the edge of the disc gingerly, as though it's made of spun glass. "Go," he urges quietly.

[Pee-Dee]

"I'm gone," Pee-Dee breathes, the words more radio signal than audible voice. She steps back, steps back again, red optics never leaving blue, then turns, runs, transforms-

Spiked motorcycle wheels tear up dirt as she disappears into the night.


Fade?

[Flame]

Flame watches Pee-Dee leave, still as a statue, afraid to move. He still wonders when she'll come back around bearing weapons, and he watches the night around him for signs of vengeance coming down on his head; several minutes pass in silence broken only by the wind rustling through corn stalks before Flame so much as blinks. For the moment, he thinks, he is safe. And he takes this moment to look at this gift.

It could be a trap. A virus, a hack.

it could be something she wanted to share. A movie, she called it. He checks the darkness one last time before clutching the disc solicitously to his chest and turning. He still wants to go home and pretend this horrible little world and its horrible little people never happened. And in spite of himself, he wants to know what's on the disc.

---

OOC: Fade.