flaming out (rodimus)
04 December 2018
They always seem to end up fighting someone – yeah, the war’s over, the ‘cons are disbanded or whatever, Megatron’s a ‘good guy’ now but there are plenty of people out there who aren’t too pleased with Cybertron and plenty of still-loyal Decepticons left over and the Lost Light always seems to make contact with them. It’s a wild sort of coincidence, and Rodimus is pretty sure everybody hates it just as much as he does. Except Whirl, maybe, but that’s because Whirl likes any excuse to fire a gun. Kind of understandable.
See, they’d thought, oh, a nice little planet, let’s land for a bit and take in the sights, we haven’t been off the ship a while. Lots of weird shit has been happening. We need a break from all these metal walls. And not twenty minutes later, swear to Primus, they have weapons pointed at them and they’re ducking behind rubble and it’s _awful._“Does anyone else feel like this is seriously unfair?” Rodimus calls over the sounds of it all. “All I wanted was a glass of high grade that wasn’t diluted for once–” He ducks as something zings over his head. It’s not even a shot, it’s a rock. Someone’s throwing rocks at him. This is bullshit.
It’s this handful of pissed-off aliens, organics that have a grudge against Cybertron for one thing or another. Which is not totally wild, you know, they’ve got their reasons, but no matter how nicely Rodimus asked they wouldn’t stop threatening them. It’s not like they owned the place, he’d said, except it turned out that they did, in fact, own the place. Yikes. Now they’re trying to kill them and it’s really a pain in the ass. Next to him, Skids looks at him all judgmentally, like it’s his fault.
Which it might be, a little. For reasons undisclosed. Not researching the planet before he landed on it, mostly.
“All right, screw it,” Rodimus mutters, “I’m going in.” And despite Skids’ sputtered protests, he throws himself over their barrier and transforms, barreling toward the organics. He goes back to robot mode at the last second and tackles one of them, sending them somersaulting back. The organics, as it turns out, are seriously strong, and also they have about six arms each which seems like it’s unnecessary. Rodimus figures out quick he’s sort of outmatched.
He swears, twisting, but every time he breaks free another hand latches onto his wrist or elbow. He tries to shove a knee into the organic’s gut but they just curve away from it, tugging at the joint of Rodimus’ shoulder. This was a bad idea, really, and he writhes and struggles until he’s pretty sure he’s going to overheat himself, fans whirring high, and.
“Oh, wow, hey,” Rodimus says, still flat on his back but staring up at his hands where they’re burning. The alien is screaming and rolling away, swearing in a language Rodimus doesn’t know. “I didn’t think I could still do this! This is awesome!”
He kicks his feet in the air and admires the flames coming up off of them, and off his legs, and off his entire body. The organics seem content to stop firing and point at him while screeching. That’s fine by him. When he stands up and he’s still burning, they scatter, apparently unwilling to meet the same sad fate as their one friend. Rodimus whoops and the flames burn higher around him. Awesome.
“So, uh,” Chromedome asks him on the way back to the ship. “Are you going to turn those off now that we’re safe, or…?”
“Yeah, I don’t really know how. I figure there’s probably a fire extinguisher somewhere on the Lost Light.”