stainless | Nova Black 3/? (Reply)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17

Nova Black sighed with relief as the door clanked shut behind her. No one else would hear, unless of course they'd bugged the room. But Neutrals didn't do that kind of thing, and she doubted anyone could get bugs past the bot this space belonged to, even if they wanted to.

"You wanted to see me, Eclipse?" Grandeur asked. His golden face stared at her over one broad, maroon shoulder. The paint on his shoulder and arm was pitted and flaking, exposing the metal beneath.

How long has he been here? It wasn't the first time Nova had wondered. She'd never met anyone who talked about the Settlement without him. He'd always been here, as far as anyone knew.

Still, he was in better shape than the bot she'd bought her new paint job from. And he'd revved straight into her argument with Brightbolt and made them both back off. However old he might be, he functioned as well as anyone else around here.

"You defended me back there. I wanted to thank you." She walked over to him. "And I wanted to know why."

He turned. "Are you always this suspicious when you're thanking someone?"

"I apologize." She shrugged, and then glared. "Then again, it has kept me online."

To her surprise, he nodded gravely. "I imagine it has."

He was silent a long moment. "You're not the only one, you know."

So he does know Brightbolt's right about me, Nova thought. Now that she'd confirmed her suspicions, she had a choice to make. She could try to deny it, hoping he'd come to doubt. Or she could simply avoid the issue in the interest of not admitting it openly.

Or she could be honest. Sometimes it did pay to tell the truth. Especially when the damage was already done. And not having another lie to tend would let her relax.

"Of course I'm not. Very few robots on Cybertron were built Neutral."

She stared intently at his frowning face. "You knew someone, didn't you?"

"I did. I lived in another settlement then. I think he did more for it than anyone else ever had."

"You're not there now?"

"It's not there now."

Nova winced. "Let me guess. That's one of the ones they blew up a while ago."

"They came after him." He shook his head, looking down at the floor. "He told us all to pack up the energon and go. We didn't want to leave him to them. But in the end, we wanted safety more."

Nova tapped her audio receptors. Had she heard that right? "You mean he stayed there? He didn't even try to get away?"

"No, he didn't. I -- I went back myself, a couple of days later."

"Gone back? But you'd run headlong into --"

"No. They'd left. We'd all gone, and there was no energon left because we'd taken it all with us. After they slagged my friend, they had no reason to leave anything standing."

Nova nodded, remembering. It had been a long time since she'd gotten to smash something for the hell of it. The closest she'd come to doing that recently was blowing up that empty cache.

Which was nothing like heading out with Colossus to wreck everything in their way. Especially since Colossus' fists were almost half as big as Nova Black was wide. She smiled. She could only best him in a fight because she was faster --

Focus, dammit, she reminded herself. The last thing she needed right now was to let her processor wander and start grinning like an idiot while Grandeur talked about his dead friend.

Fortunately, her red and gold friend was looking away, lost in his own memories. "They leveled every structure in the settlement. I came back to craters. And what little was left of my friend."

"I don't suppose you'll tell me who he was."

The big bot bared his dental plates. "Soundwave himself couldn't pry it out of my processor."

"Understood," she answered. Inwardly, she snickered. Soundwave? Like any bot out here had ever met anyone that important. Much less knew what anyone that important was or wasn't capable of doing.

"I saw his body where they'd left it. They'd stripped it of weapons and armor, torn out everything else they could use, and left the empty shell."

"That sounds about right." She grimaced. She was lucky Bane wasn't the type. Still, if some other group of 'Cons had hunted and caught a renegade nearby, her luck might run out sooner than she'd expected.

"But I still don't understand. Only Autobots are stupid enough to be martyrs."

"We tried --" He hesitated, his optic strip flashing -- "I tried to tell him to come with us. Or to fly off somewhere else once we'd all gone and disappear. He insisted on staying. He wanted them to deactivate him."

Grandeur buried his face in his broad, red hands, remembering.

"I never understood it myself. Everyone knew by then, and no one cared. Surely there was some other way, some better way, to protect us, than dying like that." He lowered his hands.

"I thought about it for a long time, afterward. All I could come up with was that he was ashamed of what he'd been, and thought he deserved it."

Ashamed? Nova wasn't sure even how to lie in response to that. She could understand being ashamed to serve with 'Cons like her former comrades. But ashamed of himself? That she couldn't understand. What was there to be ashamed of in being built a war machine? And what shame could be so great it would make anyone give up his spark over it?

She lowered her head, hoping the expression looked solemn.

After a long moment, she looked up. "So why are you telling me this? I'm nothing like your friend."

"You're not? You could have kept the signal dampener to yourself. Or sold it to us, if you didn't need it. Instead, it's covering all of us." He laughed. "I'm not calling you a hero, but I think this place is rubbing off on you."

Nova's optics flashed. True, she had done that. But she hadn't come to Settlement Four to save anyone but herself. "You don't know anything about me. If you did --"

"Have it your way." Grandeur shrugged, his wide red shoulders creaking. Nova glowered.

"Well, if this is how you're going to be, I hope that story scares some hesitation into you, at least."

"Hesitation?"

His joints squeaked in irritation. "Yes, hesitation. Are you trying to annoy Brightbolt into an open fight with you? He's right, you know. If you go around lasering everything, the Decepticons will eventually notice that as surely as they'll notice the things you're trying to cover up."

"Brightbolt?" Nova stood up, hands on her hip plates. "You mean to tell me -- after a story like that -- that you think me coming to blows with Brightbolt would be a problem?"

He nodded again, that same grave slowness in his movement. "Yes, I do. I know you don't like the bot, but that's no reason to misjudge him." His optics gleamed again. "Getting Brightbolt angry enough to actually fight you would be just as bad as your former comrades finding you."

Nova snarled, the plates inside her mouth grinding against one another so hard it hurt. "What? Brightbolt is a barely functioning, vain glitch who deserves to be taught a good, old fashioned --"

Grandeur loomed over her, his wide, red hands reaching out to shove her back down. "I saved your circuits back there, and damn if I'm just going to stand here while you act like some punk just off the assembly line in Kaon. Decepticon-built or not, right now you're going to sit down and listen to me."

Nova cocked her head. "All right, you have my attention."

"Brightbolt was a scout in the war, many stellar cycles ago. His unit was tracking a group of Decepticons, fearing a potential ambush. He never found them. While he was looking for them, they found the rest of his team."

Nova lowered her head again. She wasn't sure she could keep from smirking. "I take it that didn't go too well for his unit."

"No. By the time he'd returned to help them, they were all dead."

"So that's his problem. He's angry that he failed them." She chuckled.

"Let me finish," he answered, shaking his head again. "They'd managed to inflict some casualties on their attackers, and the surviving Decepticons were badly injured. When Brightbolt returned --"

Her optics irised wider. "He defeated them?"

"No. Not defeated. Massacred."

"Brightbolt?" Now Nova felt sure her audio receptors were malfunctioning. "Our Brightbolt?"

"He went berserk, furious with himself for failing his friends. He tore the living sparks out of two of them, and wasn't much more merciful to the third. He left them in pieces, Eclipse."

"And you know this how?" She snorted. "I don't suppose he told you about it himself."

"He did, but others verified it."

Nova's wings twitched. She'd liked the first story better. That one was at least mildly realistic. "Oh really? An Autobot acting like that? Wouldn't that offend his vaunted sense of honor?"

"Oh, for the love of Primus." He buried his face in his hands, shaking his head. "I don't know why I even try --"

"Finish your story," Nova snapped. She didn't believe it, of course. Still, pretending to believe it might keep the big bot happy. If he wanted to fill her audio receptors with stories, she'd let him. He might just pay her back for letting him do it by helping her out of worse jams.

And as preposterous as it sounded, it might just be the truth. If it were true, knowing the whole story might come in handy sometime.

"I -- apologize," she amended as smoothly as she could. "I only meant I can't imagine that kind of thing from an Autobot."

"Neither could the one who did it."

Nova stroked her chin. That, at least, was believable. Maybe there was something to the big bot's story after all.

"Brightbolt was horrified when the frenzy left him. To his processor, he'd acted just the same as the Decepticons his friends had died fighting. Fighting like a war machine, he'd acted like a war machine. Although he still believed in the Autobot cause, he decided the only solution was to give up the war. If he never fought, he'd never again become what he despised."

"So he came here."

"And you're telling me I should be frightened of an avowed pacifist?"

The golden-faced bot shook his head. "Pacifist, yes. But he turned his back on the war, not the cause. He has no love for Decepticons."

He leaned down to stare into Nova's optics. "And I don't think he'd make much of a distinction between current and former ones, either."

"No, probably not." The bright yellow light from his optic strip hurt to stare into, but Nova held the bigger bot's gaze. "Your point?"

"Nothing much. Just that if I were you, I wouldn't tempt him." He tilted his head. "If you can help it."e.