End of All Hope

[stainless]

Title: End of All Hope
Characters/Pairing: Unicron and two OCs, Bladewing and Vaportrail
Verse: G1
Wordcount: 2,500ish
Rating: PG-13 for doom 'n' gloom
Warnings: OCs, oh noez! Aside from that, not much. It's Unicron destroying everything, so it's gloomy as all get-out, but...
Summary: The little bit of TFTM where Unicron attacks the Decepticon-controlled Cybertron always interested me. I never felt the 'Cons
did enough in that, when all Cybertronians suddenly had a common enemy. I kept hoping Galvatron would break free of Unicron's control and the Autobots and Decepticons would take the bastard down together, but no.

This is my answer to that oversight. OC-centric.

Title comes from me watching a whole lot of this. You might want to play that song as you read, because damn.

Thanks to eaten_by_bears for beta.

"Decepticons! We're under attack! Scramble!"

They rose into the air, engines roaring with speed born of desperation.

A great beast rose above them, its form mechanical like their own, its body impossibly broad, towering over the cities. Its head was almost as large as a moon, its optics a flourescent, angry green. Horns rose from either side of its head like horrid mockeries of the greatest of the planet's towers, and wings sprouted from its back.

But worst were the demon's hands, clutching and clawing. Hands that spanned city blocks and reached mercilessly down to tear at the ground and uproot it, splintering it into scrap.

The Decepticon who spoke first was no one, a freshly promoted Subcommander of one of the wings of Seekers flying forth to meet the beast. "Let's get this thing," she snarled. "Whatever it is."

She did not wait for the others to respond, but sped toward the creature at full throttle, her weapons systems sending heat surging through her frame as she fired, again and again, swerving wildly to avoid colliding with the creature's huge body as it moved. She could hear the others behind her: the shriek of their engines, the high cry of their lasers, the stabilizer-shattering percussion of their bombs as they detonated against the monster's frame.

"It's no use!" whined another voice, staticky with dismay. "Just shot one of my cluster bombs at that thing. Barely even scratched its paint!"

The first one cursed. Her strafing, also, had done nothing.

"What the hell do we do now?" called a third, sliding into formation behind the other two.

"I don't know. Commander Shockwave. This is Subcommander Bladewing of Wing Five, come in, Shockwave."

A crackling, staticky shriek was the only answer. She cursed again.

"Comm link's dead," she said slowly. Shockwave oversaw the Decepticons' defense from the ground. If that thing's hands had torn through the wrong place... Her chassis vibrated in a deep shudder, and she muttered a brief prayer to Primus that that hadn't happened.

She dove to avoid gouging fingers - and the friendly fire of the grounded Decepticons as they fought futilely to sting at the hand that tore at them. Then she fired again, hearing the screech of her unit's fire as they followed suit. Again, the monster's plating showed not even the barest nick.

"I say we get the slag out of here," came the whining voice. "If we can't hit that thing, we're all dead anyway."

As they watched, another wing circled the fiend's head. The monster waved its hands in front of its face, dazzled by the purple light of the Decepticons' laser fire so close to its optics.

"We can't hurt it, but we can distract it," Bladewing called, resolute. "We join Wing Three. Up by the head. Come on!"

A yellow craft sidled up beside her. Her engines growled. Of all the mechs in her unit, he was the last one she wanted to deal with. "Distract it for what? Some other wing gonna come in and not hit it? Subcommander, we're dead. I say we fly the hell out of here!"

"I don't have time for your insubordination, Vaportrail -!"

"But he's right," answered the jet next to Bladewing. "What good is our distraction going to do, when -"

Bladewing dove, diverting all of the power she could to her weapons systems. "Look! There!"

"Who the hell is that?"

"I don't know, but there's only one Decepticon with a cannon like that."

"That thing can't be Lord Megatron," Vaportrail scoffed. "He's gone. He's gone and Shockwave's dead and we're slag-for-processors if we even -"

Bladewing resolutely ignored him. Her engines rumbling in concern, Bladewing watched the newcomer transform into a massive, powerful gun. "Doesn't look much like him, but maybe that thing is Megatron."

It was too much to hope, and her spark seethed in her chest. Shockwave was gone. Dead, probably, plucked from the command tower by those loathsome, terrible fingers. Why should she hope for Megatron now, for the Decepticons' Emperor, flying in to save them like something from a story? Decepticons did not wait for saviors, not even for the greatest of their own. Whether this thing was Megatron or not, whether he could damage this thing or not, the Decepticons could not hide behind him. If they would live, they would have to save themselves.

Accelerating wildly, she led her wing in an elaborate series of loops and dives, wheeling around and around the monster's face, barely avoiding its widening maw. As she watched, two of the slower Decepticons, one from her wing and one from the other, were caught inside the massive mouth and swallowed.

Bladewing's tanks roiled. She'd heard of Cybertronians being eaten before; the multiverse had some strange and massive beings in it. But she herself had never even left Cybertron, and something about such a death appalled her, sending shivers of disgust and fear through her circuitry.

But the Decepticons were a warrior race, and weakness in their ranks spelled doom for any who surrendered to it. And this might well be the final test of its strength. She rocketed past the creature's optics, firing blasts of bright lavender directly into them and then zooming away just in time to avoid a searing blast from the cannon, its heat singing her aft.

Nothing.

The blaze of purple flame had, if possible, done less than her unit's bombs. Whatever awesome firepower that cannon possessed, it was as if the beast were entirely immune to it.

She heard a keening cry, desperate and haunting, from the cannon as it transformed, running toward the monster in hopeless, mindless rage. The giant laughed, scooping the small mech up in one great hand, opening its mouth, and dropping him in.

"That's it," called a hated and familiar voice. "You all can stay and die if you want. I'm getting the slag out of here."

Bladewing dove after him. "Coward! You can't leave us! Not now. Not when the Empire -"

"There is no Decepticon Empire. There never was. There never will be."

She heard the whine of the others' weapons systems behind her, and her engines roared in grim satisfaction. "Maybe you're right, traitor, but you're still going to die for -"

Her voice fuzzed out in incredulous static. A huge ship arrived, all alien twists and curves, its nose a wickedly long spear, aimed directly at the behemoth.

"Whose is that?" someone called.

"I'm getting a visual. I can't see too well out here, but it looks like it's full of - Autobots?"

"Just great. That ship is huge. Anyone that monster doesn't kill, those 'Bots will."

"Wait," Bladewing answered, willing herself to keep calm. "They're not firing on us."

And indeed they weren't. They flew - slowly, but steadily - toward the face of the beast, where Wings Five and Three had congregated.

The fiend laughed, supremely unperturbed. A jet of green, noxious smoke belched from its great mouth, directly toward the strange spacecraft. Bladewing's comm reverberated with cries of anguish as the Decepticons watched the vile green light envelop the craft.

The titan ceased blowing its corrupted breath.

Incredibly, the Autobot ship came on, undamaged and gleaming.

Bladewing's engines stalled. The Decepticons were war machines, built for conquest and for battle. They'd poured forth in droves, in the skies and on the ground, to defend the home they'd so recently wrested from Autobot control. And now here they were, facing the greatest enemy they had ever fought, fighting and dying and barely leaving any damage on the fiend to show for it... and yet the Autobots came on.

Autobots. Machines not even built for war.

She roared in rage and disbelief.

And still, the strange ship came on, the monster glaring its hate at it, its hands reaching to grab and crush it. The ship, slow-moving as it was, was faster than the monster's grasping hand - but only barely.

She thought of Vaportrail, his insistence that all was lost, that no Decepticon with functioning logic circuits would stay, and stand, and fight.

Her spark crackling with sudden purpose, she hailed the other Decepticon wings. "Clearly, those Autobots have a plan. Someone has to make sure they survive long enough to execute it. Decepticons - all of you - follow me!"

"Us? Help them?" came the gravelly voice of another wing's commander, a massive destroyer bristling with weaponry. "Their war with us nearly consumed Cybertron. What you ask is treason to Lord Megatron's memory."

"If I'm not mistaken, Lord Megatron is boiling away in some vat of acid in that thing's fuel tanks. There won't be a Cybertron to fight for if we don't do something."

Snarling in frustration as she looped around the creature's horn and fired at what she hoped was one of its audio receptors, she hailed the mysterious ship. "Autobots. This is Subcommander Bladewing of Wing Five of the Decepticon defense forces."

"We hear you, 'Con," snapped a youthful, angry voice.

"Then you can tell me whether or not you have a plan," Bladewing snapped back, trying her best to ignore a dying wail far too close beside her. "And I can tell you whether it's worth risking my unit to give you a chance at pulling it off."

"Subcommander, we -"

"Worth risking your unit?" said another voice, this one considerably older. "Seems to me your unit's dead if you don't."

A streak of yellow raced past her. Slag, she thought, heat roiling through her weapons systems. She'd hunt down that cowardly little traitor and -

No. Not now. Now there was no time for discipline or for revenge.

"Galvatron took the Matrix," said another of the Autobots. "Seems to me Decepticons are the reason we're in this whole mess to begin with. And they don't appear to be doing a damn thing against this monster, either. Who's to say they won't abandon us?"

"Autobot," Bladewing answered, "listen to me. I can't speak for everyone on the planet. I can't even speak for the cowardly scrap in my own unit. And I probably like you less than you like me. But we are Decepticons. We are built for war. We are built to fight - and built to die fighting. We can do so in the hopes of bringing the enemy down - or we can do so because we must, and Cybertron can perish with us."

"We don't have a plan, 'Con," the young voice answered. "We never got that far. But we have a ship, and for some reason that thing hasn't managed to incinerate it. If you can keep its hands off us, maybe we can retrieve the Matrix somehow and destroy it."

"Its optic!" called a feminine voice. "It looks like glass. Fragile. Or at least more fragile than the rest of that thing. Maybe we can -"

"- drive the ship through it," Bladewing finished for her.

The beast raised its great hand, intent on swatting away the irritating ship that had refused to melt in its flaming breath.

"We'll do our best to buy you time."

Her engines lurched as she cut the communication link with the Autobot ship and reactivated the link to her own kind. She'd spoken for everyone in the Empire, even those who a moment ago had said they'd never aid an Autobot. Some of those Decepticons outranked her. Many, if she didn't miss her guess. Their Emperor was the only one who could command them all.

And he was in the belly of the beast, quite possibly already melted down.

"We attack the creature's hands," she called, not even bothering to announce herself again. "That ship is our last hope, and the beast must not be allowed to crush it. We must keep those hands busy any way we can."

"But we can't even hit it -"

"Not alone we can't, but together, maybe -"

"We attack together," Bladewing called. "We fire as one, and we keep firing. Lasers, missiles, bombs, cannons, guns. Anything. Everything. For as long as we have ammunition and fuel. We sting that thing's hands with the fury of the Empire, so that those Autobots can have their chance."

The silence deafened her. She did not need to hear the others' doubts. Would their cousins manage to damage the monster at all? If they did, what would that achieve? Would they only anger it further, sending it into a spiral of rage, leading it to crush anything in its path? Would even those whose sparks quailed have their chance to flee if that happened?

And, worst thought of all, if these Autobots found whatever power they would need to fell the beast, would they turn on the Decepticons who had helped them? The bitter war between their factions had gone on for longer than any could remember. It was all they knew. Would they save their world now, only to hand it to their worst enemies?

The monster's great fingers swiped at the Autobot ship, catching it near the rear thruster, knocking it off course.

The Decepticons watched in terrible silence as the craft struggled to right itself.

Then, as it sped toward the monster's face again, thousands of voices answered Bladewing's call, a chorus of gathering thunder. "Yes, Subcommander."

Bladewing raced toward the titan's palm, diverting all of the fuel in her tanks to her thrusters and her lasers. This was the end of days; she'd never need anything else. She heard the others' engines roar, a storm rising to smite a god.

"For the glory of the Decepticon Empire! For the remains of our planet! For the future of our world!" she called. Her voice rang over thousands of communications links, the clarion call of an avatar of hope and vengeance.

Lavender flame poured from her weapons, its heat coursing out of her in a brilliant flare of light. "Decepticons, attack!"

Comments

[eaten-by-bears.livejournal.com]

Heh. Already told you that I like this one. You really manage to capture Bladewing's urgency and desperation. It's thrilling, in a way.

[snowdropexplodes.myopenid.com]

A great twist on the "epic last stand" storyline, and I really like Bladewing's philosophy and passion as a fighter.