Sad Max: Mistery Road 2: Feardome

[wreckers]

Who: Verity and Prowl
Where: Far, far on the outskirts of Cybertron
When: A little over a month after this and this
What: Cybertron itself intervenes in Prowl and Verity's ongoing snit fit.
Warnings: Everything. TBD but this is planned to be a disturbing thread.


In the end, Verity left. She counted thirty four days that blurred into broken channel static where nothing changed within her self-imposed exile inside the four sterilized white walls under the continuous glare of fluorescent lights and constant watch of well meaning but overwhelming caregivers. Even when she was cleared to leave, Verity stuck around. Tinkering with her suit learning how to fix things instead of breaking and stockpiling information of whatever she could cherry pick from the near dead network. And still, she left. There was note - handwritten with soft curving letters in blue pen with two Xs and two Os at the bottom under the name from who it was from.

Ratchet
The code is a cipher - X3. The answer was on his shirt.

I'm sorry. -Verity xoxo

The sun rising light between the pitch black spires of this broken old city was a melancholic sight that weighed heavy like a stone settled in the spaces between her freshly mended ribs behind sore lungs. She watched the sunrise as she rolled a motorcycle retrofitted from a transport vehicle designed for minicons. Verity took one last look at the clinic white against the dust covered city before she shoulder the rucksack on her shoulders, nudged the kickstand up with her boot and stabbed the key into the ignitions. The engine roared to life and soon tired devoured the asphalt beneath it until tarmac turned to flat black dirt. Verity rode out, further and further until old Iacon sank beneath the horizon like a sunset set stark against the early morning.

Night was closing in around her and she hadn't stopped once. Out late Verity thumbed open the visor of her helmet and let the cold wind sting her eyes and whip between the spaces of her helmet through her sweat matted hair. With no destination in mind beyond 'the hell away from here' Verity had her flimsy ideas that changed on the hour what she was going to do when she needed to stop. Less than a mile in front of here there was a dark mass in the single headlight that almost looked like a forest. Better than passed out under a rock, she reasoned as she pressed down on the gas. Speeding down the expanse of the Cybertronian wastelands with a whole lot of nothing on all sides, Verity had tunnel vision on the mirage like wilds ahead of her and never felt for exhilaratingly alone.

And then she saw it.

First it came as a red flicker in the corner of her eye she chalked up to exhaustion - something catching the reflective surface of her helmet visor. Then it was in front of her and her blood froze and her heartbeat slowed to a crawl. Hunter O'Nion stood directly ahead of her only a few hundred meters down. Face deathly pale, expression slack even at this distant and eyes hidden under a that damned constant mess of ruddy hair of his. Verity swore, rammed the heel of her boot on the breaks and yanked the hand grips sideways. The front wheel wobbled and the back pulled the other way as the motorcycle rolled on his slide and sent Verity sliding on the dirt. The motorcycle slammed against a jagged rock pushing out of the ground and Verity came to a stop, rolling over until she could shakily crawl on her knees.

Helmet yanked off and tossed aside. Verity wildly looked around and against all her better judgement, spoke aloud to the empty night where all she could see in every direction was the wind picking up thin clouds of earth near the edge of the wilds.

"Hunter?"

Comments

[pffft]

A pair of white dots appear on the horizon behind her. To the distracted mind, it'd be a few minutes until they'd be noticeable at all, but to someone with a careful eye could pinpoint that the white dots were particularly bright. Bright, and getting brighter, and larger. Headlights.

Prowl had pursued as soon as Verity left the city, purposefully keeping himself a few miles behind to avoid detection. Tracking her was simple for a mech with his senses, and he'd navigated the wilds with Optimus before. A clunky old machine they'd patched together from old city parts would break down or run out of fuel long before he did. At worst, this would be a waiting game.

Detecting that Verity had come to a stop, Prowl begins to pump more fuel into his engine, and flares open his air vents. Digging tracks into the metal flakes of the ground, he accelerates, kicking up more dust and dirt. As he approaches, the headlights flick off and he diverges from his path, melding into the darkness and the sharp stones, engine still erupting in a deep snarl.

[wreckers]

Nothing but a dry, dead wind over the flat outlands answers back and Verity is left with the sinking feeling her head might not be as properly screwed back on as she thought when she left the clinic. Heart still an erratic beat that went up into her throat, she fought down the beginnings of a fainting spell pushes back on her knees after grabbing her helmet beside her.

"Shit." Verity inspected her helmet against the still running lights of her motorcycle. There was a small crack on the sensitive padded tech chassis inside the helmet. That was going to screw with the HUD system, but nothing that could be repaired. Smoothing her sweat soaked bangs back, Verity put her helmet back on.

That was when she saw on the horizon a set of distant headlights coming at her like the eyeshine of some kind of animal coming her way. The sweat on the back of her neck froze on the skin. Prowl. Because who else? Verity turned quick on her heel and raced back to her toppled over motorcycle. Seeing Hunter spooked her, but she knew that had to have been exhaustion intermingled with grief. Prowl on the approach was definitely not a desert mirage. When they suddenly cut off she was given all the more incentive to move.

Throwing the kickstand back up after muscling the bike back on its tires, Verity saddled up. After she made sure everything was still in one piece and the engine kill switch was turned off, Verity choked the engine hard enough that the tailpipes were licked with the heat of a blue afterburn as she sped away on the shockwave of a thundering engines roar. Pulling a tight circle, she drove east towards a natural dale furrowed low in the rocks just a mile or two from the wilds. Verity reasoned she could lose him in the valley before doubling back. Prowl was good, but she knew he would have to sacrifice speed for caution if he wanted to follow her as far out as into the wilderness.

[pffft]

Easily snaking through the detritus scattered along the field, he watches Verity as she scrambles onto her bike. The heat of its afterburners and of Verity's panic are as clear as day to his sensors. He lingers back as she guns it towards a valley, noticeably avoiding using any gunfire this time around. The bike had him beat in initial acceleration, but that didn't concern him.

Prowl trails closer behind, running trajectory predictions as she sped on ahead. Combat algorithms ran at a thousand miles a minutes, sinking into a comfortable and familiar routine as the pursuit began. Prowl follows her, but swerves up at the high end of the valley rather than attempt to squeeze inside. At the first opportunity, the engine releases a heavy snarl as he accelerates past her towards a large stone a few dozen feet away- a ramp.

The undercarriage of the armored truck is what Verity would see as it actually launches off the side and lands ahead with a heavy thunk. Apparently caution wasn't on Prowl's mind lately.

"You're making a mistake."

[wreckers]

Verity is riding practically blind through a narrow canyon that weaved into the sloping landscape that could barely fit two motorbikes riding abreast and put her fraying nerves already on edge. All the while with Prowl in hot pursuit stalking her without running lights. The only thing warning her of his impending approach is the smell of burning rubber and the roar of his engines that doubled in size and thunderous, terrible sound that made her teeth rattle. However, Prowl miscalculated on two notes.

Hands tight around the engine grip, she feinted back around with a narrow circular turn. Verity was calm and in complete command of her next move when she killed the lights and switched to night vision on her helmet's' HUD - risky, but it didn't slow her down. And secondly, she wasn't below him anymore.

"Heads up, prick."

The light comes back on - and Verity is on the other side of the ravine. Choking the engine, Verity comes tearing out over the other end of the valley with one wheel kissing the dirt as it comes launching over edge. Where Prowl just landed the back wheel hits the roof of Prowl's vehicle mode and the front striking down on the trunk hood. Skids marks mark up white paint when she guns it down off Prowl's back. She breaks, her bike sliding horizontal until she pulls it to a stop.

Were it not for her helmet, Prowl would see the grin stretching wide across her face...and how it immediately fell away when her headlight shone behind him. Eyes. All of them a terrible yellow light clustered together connected to dark shapes amazing several hundred yards away staring both of them down. Something in the distant screeched, gutteral and beasital and like a warcry it spurred the rest to hurl towards them in a horde. She only knew them by reputation but she knew exactly what they were looking down: Insecticons.

"...Run."

Verity puts everything into one last burst of bike fuel as flames sputtered out of the tailpipe and she drove at a reckless, breakneck speeds towards the cover of the wilds.

[pffft]

Prowl didn't need to be told twice. Tires shriek as the armored grill spins around and reverses his position in one fell swoop. Although his movements were well controlled, the Wastelands had never been inhabited. Those Insecticons weren't supposed to be there. Moreover, they'd managed to slip past his sensors.

Prowl's profile flares up as an assortment of weaponry rises out of the smooth metal chassis too absurd to be anything other than Cybertronian. He doesn't point it as the bike speeding away, but at the horde fast approaching.

Quickly catching up to Verity as she sped towards the wilds, he began to pick off stragglers that managed to fly ahead, methodical bursts of energy shots ringing off with weighted reverberation. Attention split between the Insecticons and following Verity, the pressure is placed off her.

"You've found quite the escape route," he snips sarcastically.

[wreckers]

"You're welcome!" She barked back at Prowl when he pulled up his vehicle mode alongside her.

Whatever bad blood stood between them was moot point now with an Insecticon horde closing in on them. Verity scarcely had any idea how they landed themselves in this mess, and that Prowl seemed to be caught off guard put her even more ill at ease. You don't just stumble into an Insecticon nest without any kind of red flags along the way. Not a riddle that needed to be solved until they were out of the woods, or in this case into the woods.

"On your right!"

Verity shouted when one of the Insecticons broke away from the back and charged in a dead run towards Prowl in an attempt to flank him. She hits the breaks to pull back behind Prowl; out of his the spread of his fire but close enough she could drive behind him onto his right side. Her ion rifle detaches from the armor slot in her thigh Keeping one hand steadying her bike, she unloads several rounds into the oncoming Insecticon. She sees a distorted, rotating jaw filled with metal teeth and yellow segmented eyes in the light of rifle fire before it collapses into a heap to be overtaken by its oncoming pack. It's sickening, and she immediately wants the image of that thing out of where it burned itself into the back of her mind.

Speeding down full tilt, Verity pulls up back beside Prowl and motions to a space between the seemingly impenetrable wilds. She leans down in the seat of her bike and rides the last engine burst ahead, disappearing between the gnarled techo-organic underbrush.

[pffft]

Navigating his guns round around her was almost intuitive as she swung to his side and emptied a clip into the lone Insecticon's face and sent it careening into the ground.

"That was unnecessary," he replies unapologetically, his tone calm despite being chased by a massive horde of killer robot bugs. It was only a slight deviation from the usual brand of danger, really. Retracting the weaponry back into his frame, the underbrush crunches under him as he bashes through like a blunt projectile. A smoother chassis was less likely to get snagged.

With the snarled brambles beginning to scratch against his armor, hot tongues of orange-red flame begin to cloud his senses. There's a brief moment of something he will refuse to call panic as the tires shriek to a stop, slamming into the thicker underbrush with a crunch of plant life.

The sensation was gone. There was no actual fire.

[wreckers]

Verity balanced one hand on the steering handle and in the pale yellow glow of Prowl's headlight threw up the deuces; that was twice now she covered his ass either with a warning or support fire. Two fingers up until she lowered her index finger went down and now she was flipping him off. Two for the favors he owed her and one for where he could shove it. She turned back and driving headlong further into the underbrush.

It was then Verity spotted a darker patch of earth breaking up the tangled mess of overgrowth in what at first appeared to be some sort of small glade. What she immediately registered as her own panic sinking into her chest hit her when it became clear that wasn't what it was at all.

Verity yelled something over her shoulder back at Prowl, and only hoped he could hear her even as he swerved wildly through the brambles. She didn't have time to wonder before pulling a sharp right onto a denser path - away from the massive sinkhole right in front of them.

I OWE YOU SO MANY TAGS

[pffft]

Prowl grinds to a stop, small stones kicked up into the air and into the sinkhole. Its only until the hallucination had passed that he realizes how close he'd avoided making this trip last a lot longer than either of them planned.

The SUV pauses at the edge of the sinkhole as Verity turns onto the denser path, before tentatively backing up and following her, his engine seeming to betray his change in mood.

"We need to stop."