Hunched over with one knee planted in the golden sand, Skywarp hovered tensely at his wing-brother's side, the jagged edges of his wings silhouetted against a burning backdrop of battered courtyards and crumbling towers.
Still propped up against the decrepit sandstone wall he'd crashed into, Thundercracker's body was frozen in a strange, tight-limbed position, shoulders drawn up and digits curled inward, clasped tightly around his prize. Audible sounds of exertion escaped him from time to time, the usual vibrancy of his blood-red optics snuffed out— the scarlet lenses reflecting nothing but the golden glare of the ring.
“C’mon, TC,” urged Warp, wings shivering, his vocalizer tinged with a desperate edge. “Come on, come on,
come on—!”
He stopped speaking as TC’s voice, gentle and low, reached his audials. He leaned eagerly forward, holding his breath; straining to catch the words he whispered. But the blue-painted seeker's gaze was focused solely upon the radiant yellow ring, his lip-plates moving in a nigh-silent mumble.
“In blackest day, in brightest night...”
Skywarp's face-plates scrunched up in his confusion, optics flickering brightly in bewilderment as he focused on his wing-mate. But TC only continued to mumble, like a supplicant proclaiming some long-forgotten oath, the tension almost palpably rising in the air with every word that tripped off his vocalizer.
“Beware your fears made into light. Let those who try to stop what's right—“
Abruptly, a booming voice echoed from across the battlefield— punctuated by a malicious hiss that seemed to tear through space like ancient parchment. Its intonations were as dry and brittle as scorched bone, resonant with an unconquerable malice:
“Burn like my power— Sinestro's might!”
Dust and smoke hindered Warp's vision as he turned, optics locking onto the corpse-king— Sinestro, evidently. The dismal figure rose from a pile of debris, his scarlet-hued skin scalded and scarred by marks of battle. Shattered and mangled, the creature shambled forward, a wretched hand outstretched towards Thundercracker's hunched form.
Yet even still, the alien man's empty sockets still burned with seething fury, leaking a river of crimson down his face, fingers hooked like claws, trembling with an unyielding hunger for the ring.
Not bothering to rise, Skywarp allowed a smirk to curl upon his face-plates.
"It's over!" he sneered. "You've lost it all! What're you gonna do without your little ring, huh? Bleed at... us...?"
He trailed off, expression going slack in horror as the former ring-bearer's wine-red skin began to darken and ripple, like an oil slick absorbing the sun's rays, growing thicker and more malleable. Horns of gore-slick bone sprouted from his fiendish brow, curling in wicked spirals, while his limbs and torso stretched to unnatural proportions— tendons and vertebrae snapping as his body violently reshaped itself, muscles bulging with a grotesque, serpentine vigor —until the form before them was no longer a man-shaped being, but a towering Devil, its visage twisted into an expression of sinister glee.
The man’s flesh contorted in ways that defied reality, countenance stretched and twisted, morphing into something truly abhorrent. His reddish-purple skin was reduced to tatters across a broad, goat-like visage, empty eye sockets like two holes that had been dug straight through his skull, pulsing with sickening necromantic light.
With an audible groan of metallic plates, Warp slowly levered himself up from the ground. Wings flaring wide, he raised his machine gun-laden arms, bristling with hostility as he shifted to guard his wing-brother from the infernal horror swiftly coalescing before them. His ruby optics blazed with fierce contempt as he bared his dentae in a burning mockery of a grin, refusing to surrender an inch.
Come on, you son of a glitch, the seeker thought venomously, meeting the creature's dead-eyed gaze head-on. His pedes shifted apart as he adopted a battle-ready stance, knees bent and legs planted firmly in the sand.
Make my day.
A rattle of machine-gun fire interrupted the lethal staring match, the battered body of the Red Baron cresting over a shattered structure, saber in hand.
"Get away from them, you bastard," Isaac spat from within his cradle of steel as he pressed forwards, armored armatures descending down the rubble-strewn slope as gouts of flame spat from his shoulder, booming declarations of defiance blossoming into wine-dark ruin upon the monster's flesh.
The sinister scion of darkness roared in response, a still-mutating arm lashing out, scything through the air, the atmosphere twisting around the sinewy limbs, the skin splitting apart as its strength overwhelmed the mortal shell it inhabited. The Don dipped low beneath that brutal strike, leaning back, chassis skimming the earth like a limbo-dancer as he slid forwards, his bladed buckler ripping at the creature's forearm as he rolled past its assault.
"Lady Watari," the Don called, more breathless than he usually was in her presence as he grasped his saber with both hands, its shining gunmetal edge interposing itself between his ravaged chassis and the monstrosity. "Might I have this dance?"
A grin clearly blazed beneath his helmet as he merrily traipsed along the fine line between glory and disaster. Skywarp instantly sensed this intensity, his wings thrumming with an anticipation that was quickly matched by a sharp grin of his own. "You got it, Don!"
Like two dancers partaking in an age-old waltz, the duo circled their opponent with a practiced ferocity— a pair of ravenous wolves on the hunt, one leading and one following, their steps perfectly calculated to match that of their prey. Forward and back, forward and back...
Skywarp dove in first, body shimmering with electricity as he harnessed his outlier ability, fern-like waves of purple lightning coiling throughout his frame like a living thing as he rematerialized atop the beast's hulking back— fists flying and digging into the fiend's softest places, clawing at his eyes, throat and chest like a mechanism possessed. His hammer-hands crushed and pulped the muscle that bulged out from the beast's hellish skin, talons ripping apart still-growing flesh and throwing it to the desiccated ground behind him, as if trying to fertilize this long-dead ground.
Then came Isaac, his propeller-blade twirling and spinning in a flurry of metal, flashes of warp-lightning igniting it to blaze with cosmic light. He charged forward, striking out with calculated precision, each swing a resounding thud that echoed through the air.
The devil screeched with rage as he felt every strike reverberate through his body, sparks arcing from each and every point of contact, Skywarp and Isaac's combined onslaught tearing deep gouges in his flesh. Reeling with every blow, the creature spun around and blindly snagged the remnants of a toppled stone column, roughly the size of a Mack truck, lifting it up and into the air one-handed in an effortless display of its impossible power.
A sinister grin twisted what remained of the devil's tattered lips as he hefted the column, flaps of decaying skin stretched wide across serrated teeth, glinting in the light like a jagged blade. Vicious eyes, glowing beneath the bony ridges of his skull, locked with Skywarp's own as sinewy muscles tensed. Heaving the pillar above his head, the demon unleashed a roar and hurled the column forward.
His warp drive exhausted, Skywarp could only watch in horror as the column soared high above all their heads, crashing against the tower Thundercracker was crouched beside, oblivious to all but the ring's clarion call.
KRRRK! With a deafening crack of shattering stone, the tower exploded apart, raining rocks and billowing up a choking cloud of debris that poured down upon his wing-brother like an avalanche, burying him beneath its crushing weight.
Still hanging off the corrupted Sinestro’s back like a particularly determined limpet, Skywarp released a bloodcurdling
shriek of furious, grief stricken binary, talons digging deep into the creature's meaty shoulder to secure his hold. His machine guns bellowed as he unerringly targeted the Unmade Lantern's ribcage, unleashing round after round of hot lead that thumped into his thick hide with deafening force. Yet
still Sinestro advanced, utterly unaffected by the punishing barrage.
Growing visibly annoyed with his hanger-on, the hellish creature snarled viciously as he swung his long arm back with the speed of a striking cobra. His scythe-like talons arched in the air, locking tightly around Warp's neck with a powerful snap.
A sickening
pop echoed across the battlefield as the monstrous Sinestro's icy claws punctured Skywarp's throat cabling, the delicate wiring within hissing and sparking as his talons dug crushingly deep into the seeker's neck. His circuitry screamed with pain as it tore upward, slicing through vital fuel lines and ripping out a tide of lurid pink energon. His chassis shuddered violently in shock, showering his metallic chest plates with his own lifeblood, the sand below awash with the vibrantly glowing fluid.
Choking and keening around the claws wrapped tightly around his neck, Warp somehow managed to meet Isaac's gaze, energon-spattered crimson optics blown wide from mingled shock and terror. His luminous pupils spun and expanded like those of a true animal caught in a predator's steel grip, the kinetic movements wild and erratic, brimming with a level of raw emotion that was distinctly
alive.
The creature hoisted Warp up into the air by his mangled, shredded throat, only to slam him back down again as he thrashed weakly about, bucking and writhing like a pinned wildcat, wings bent painfully under his heavy chassis. Snarling, the violet seeker raked at the arm that held him with his own set of talons, rending flesh from bone without mercy— each gouge spilling a river of warm, viscous blood.
And then, the cavalry arrived. Leaping from a half-ruined habitat, Isaac pointed a lance towards that creature's shoulder, that twisted joint bulging with unnatural strength, sinews bursting through the flesh as they waved hungrily in the air, desperate for the taste of terror.
They found none within the Don— he cried out, screaming "Santagria!" as the lance-tip met that mutated, mutinous flesh. For a brief moment, the world was silent save for a subtle, muted
click as the impact trigger activated.
Briefly, the world drowned in a tide of fire and blood. The limb that was slowly strangling Skywarp turned into a detonation of gore, flesh laden with the stench of rot splattering across his chassis, the fallen king's aroma more akin to that of a riverbank of beached salmon, decaying beneath the light of the sun, rather than anything regal.
Snarling, the demon before them wrapped its other clawed hand around the Red Baron, the still-falling Isaac having precious little opportunity to maneuver as it
squeezed, the crack of sundered metal and breaking bones resounding through the battlefield, before it tossed the 'mech and man within away. The Don careened through a collapsed apartment building, disappearing into a cloud of dust and rubble as the half-destroyed structure finished its ruination, swaddling the nobleman in a cradle of catastrophe.
Curling his lip in a sneer, Sinestro turned his back on the downed nobleman and seeker, his every step laced with malice as he neared the mound of rubble that had entombed Thundercracker.
Clutching at the gaping wound of his slit throat, bright energon spilling out from between his digits in sticky trails, Skywarp managed to shove himself upright with a grunt. His form crackled and shivered with a brilliant purple light, and then he was lunging forward like a pouncing tiger— arcs of warp-lightning crackling across the sands, chasing the Yellow Lantern’s retreating figure —vanishing and reappearing in a flash, claw-tipped servos lashing out in a flurry of vengeance for Isaac and his brother alike.
But even as Warp's mighty bludgeoning impacts ravaged the creature's body, leaving what should have been fatal injuries in their wake, Sinestro continued to trudge forward. An ungodly, baleful glow illuminated his gaze from within the dark pits of his skull-like visage, all-consuming hunger for the ring's power galvanizing him with unnatural strength, commanding him to reclaim what was lost.
Until, without warning, Sinestro came to an abrupt stop, jolting Skywarp mid-strike. They both stood motionless and stared ahead at the gigantic cloud of seething smoke and debris darkening the sky above Thundercracker's final resting place, the pile of rubble strewn across the city street they had staked out as their battleground.
From within that boiling cloud, an unnatural yellow light spread across the heavens like a plague, rising from the black smoke that billowed in every direction. Its eerie luminescence pulsated and simmered, illuminating a towering silhouette as it slowly began to take form amid the haze, its massive wingspan curving and stretching over the landscape like an angel of death.
The deathly luminescence of a single, scarlet optic cut through the void of darkness like a blazing star, and the figure's arm rose, the massive gun lashed to it flickering with an unholy light.
"I'm
Batman," growled Thundercracker, and fired.
Wordcount: 2,000 words or something.
Major Injury Summary:
Isaac has a broken wing.
Skywarp has some severed fuel-lines in his neck, equivalent to a sliced carotid artery. He's a robot though so he's not dying.
Thundercracker has a damaged optic/face injury.
