by K.A. Rose
Transformers characters et cetera © and ™ Hasbro-Kenner, 1984. Used without permission, for non-profit fan appreciation.
This is a short piece originally posted to livejournal.com. Mild slash, ridiculously fluff. Cyclonus/Galvatron. This fanfic is rated PT:VS, meaning it is rated Pre-Teen (content suitable for ages 11 and up) for violence and mild romantic implication.
As a last note, I should remind, it's silly. And owes itself entirely to the fact that Cyclonus is a cat.
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Sensors detected the overclock of gears in his neck long after the last of the Autobots had gone and the smoke had cleared.
Raw pale sunlight slipped down over the crack, the small split in the earth in whose shadows they waited until back-up could come.
There were birds.
There was the creep of insects in the sand up overhead.
There was the creak of gears going too fast in his neck and his chest, and his optic sensors were dilating and picking up every trace movement, and he could feel the tick of clocks and counterweights vibrating through his master's shell, against his arm.
It had taken forever to get Galvatron to call a retreat, and by then there'd been very little to retreat to. Just to hide until the murmurs of Prime and his men had faded away, and the sensors of open and exposed wires stopped wailing, and the sparks crackled and died. Except they weren't going to.
Pain. Pain. Pain.
Cyclonus hadn't been able to hold on to most of the memories from before, not of his old uptime, not of Megatron, of anything he'd been like. But those among the pack that still remembered the old days recounted that Megatron, for whatever else could be said for him, was strong. Knew how to dull out the inner wailings of those censors in his circuits and push on in face of the pain, again and again and again.
If that was so, and Cyclonus sort of doubted it was so, it meant something else had malfunctioned with Galvatron. The wiring of his mainframe was not hacking it. Was not taking it. Was not resetting warning priority trees and routing energy into backups. Was just. Freezing.
And through some fluke, Cyclonus nearly felt it.
He'd heard of this, in meat-creatures. Sympathetic pain. Sensory data inputted into their brains caused certain sectors to light up in response, actually generate the same sensations in their own body. But that's flesh. This is just...
...close quarters.
It had taken forever to get Galvatron to call a retreat. It had taken until there was a gaping wound in the 'bot's upper leg and half a forearm missing, and the pound of internal clocks ticking far too fast, the hiss of broken coolant cables with the liquid leaking down through the edges of optics in something humans would call tears. It had taken dragging him here, despite Cyclonus's own injuries, and binding his leader to him fast, arm across his chest and begging that they lie still until it all passed over.
After a time his master had drifted off into something near standby, and Cyclonus laid them back against the rock wall and watched the patch of sky for movement. Wires snapped and sparked in sharp winces but there was nothing to be done about it, and silence was, if nothing else, an issue of energy conservation.
Pain. Slag, the pain. No commands to shut the sensors off, no way to calm the damage reports that kept screaming and screaming across internal circuitry...
And he would take it. Again, and again, and again. No matter how many times this cannon blitzed straight into the fray, no matter how close to scrapped he would come, Cyclonus would be following after. Or even ahead. Because.
Because that was how he had been built. Rebuilt. Programmed by the great Chaos Bringer, the false moon of Cybertron, to be an ever-obedient, ever-devoted servant, retainer, henchman, bodyguard, and whatever else Galvatron cared for him to be. Forever and always, because that was all he was designed to be. Even in all those stupid moments of his master's madness where threats of discharge or execution were thrown around like paper streamers. Nothing short of total decimation was going to deter Cyclonus, and even then, the surviving parts of his circuitry would try to find a way to be useful.
Humans had a word for this, of a sort. Lapdog?
He'd seen dogs. Little growling flesh-things, quadrupeds. The resemblance wasn't really there. There were a few other things that got closer. Mumbled insults when they figured his back was turned had corroborated one or two of them.
Galvatron grumbled something over the silent channel about letting him go. Cyclonus shook his head and answered, please wait a little longer, lord.
And they did.
For probably entirely practical reasons. It was up in the 95 percentile, surely.
It was failings of posture and damaged back wiring that had Cyclonus lean in and rest his chin on the back of Galvatron's head. It really was. He just wasn't doing anything about it.
Pain. Humans cried about pain. Metals were beyond pain. If you were of sharp design, if you understood your circuitry, you could eliminate pain. Cyclonus could. His master couldn't, so he shared in it anyway, and would keep sharing it, for as long as this went on. As long as it took. It didn't matter. So long as he stayed close. If he stayed close, it wouldn't be so bad.
Galvatron, having drifted back into a stasis again, regained consciousness at the sound of a strange rattling.
What is that? he demanded sharply.
A part loose in my throat, sir, surely, Cyclonus answered, unfazed. And kept purring.
Stop.
I am unable to, surely, lord.
I said stop that!
Sir, please tolerate it for a little while yet. Malfunctions are not intended to sound pleasant.
You're getting that fixed back at the base.
Of course, sir.
end
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Finished at 02:44, 10 April 2005.
No mechanical villains were harmed in the making of this fanfic.