TITLE:
Pushing Boundaries
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: R-ish for suggestive content
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by
people with a lot more money :)
Author’s Voice of Warning (aka Author’s Note):
English is not my first language; it’s German. This is the best I can do. Any
mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize
FEEDBACK: Loved
BETA: okami_myrrhibis
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Helpful author's note at the end...
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He was floating in an empty space. Above him, there was darkness. Not just black
color, but darkness. A sky that wasn’t a sky. Through
the darkness a light blue sheen seemed to cover the sky. Strings of something,
glowing and alien, appeared within the even darkness, dissecting it, covering
portions, disappearing again from sight.
The sky stretched endlessly to the horizon –
-- where it met the ground. Again not the earth he was used to. A dark blue
with lighter spots, riddled with what looked like schematics of a circuit
board, covered by a glass-like film. Dots and clusters of light floated inside
the dark blue. The clusters looked like pixels, all squares and no curves. The
light that didn’t come from the darkness above reflected in the dark blue
underneath him. Maybe the dark blue was lit from within?
He didn’t know.
It was so strange.
He had never been here before, but still it felt familiar. It was like a world
where he had never been but recognized easily nevertheless. He couldn’t put a
name to it. Maybe it had no name. Maybe the memory was jut enough to recognize
it.
And he was floating. On his back, eyes on the not-sky, back to the not-earth.
He was naked.
Not as shocking as it maybe should be. His skin felt strange and when he raised
a hand, he saw that the texture had changed, too. Not human skin, tanned by the
sun, with a light dusting of hair and the assorted freckles or scars, maybe a
liver spot or two. No, it was a reflection of the circuit board above. Not a
reflection, no. It was like the circuit board... on him… carved into him in
clear, smooth lines.
He felt no pain.
Strangely metallic looking skin, faintly silver, was the basis.
Runes covered him, drifting lazily.
The circuit board pattern…
He had physically changed into the pre-Protoform shape, as he called it. It
happened mostly at will by now, but sometimes, when he was emotionally very
upset – which hadn’t happened in a long time – or when he was defending himself
– which happened throughout training sessions – he would shape-change.
The runes flowed lazily over his arms and chest, ornate and mysterious, slowing
down until he looked like someone had body-painted the Allspark pattern on him.
And he was still floating.
The lights moved around him as if on an invisible track, like glowing pixel
trains. One or two flitted around like a moth, a firefly, and others remained
stationary.
And the not-sky and not-earth shone.
Weird.
Too weird for words.
He drew his finger along his chest and watched in slight horror and immense
fascination as his skin broke open, all clear lines and sharp edges, like pre-cut
metal or stenciled cardboard, and tiny pieces of
himself drifted along the path his finger had made. They disappeared into the
not-sky or flickered out of existence between the fireflies.
Something trickled through him. Something powerful. Something not him but still inside him.
Will
– it broke apart, flew apart, exploded.
Shards of himself blew into every direction. He could
watch it all, like he was watching a movie, but he also felt it all. Coming
from a common source he spread out. He didn’t hurt, he
didn’t feel anything, just this incredible sensation of being so much more.
He wanted to yell, to shout, to cry, but he couldn’t.
And into this cloud of Will-pieces something intruded. It was strong and sharp
and powerful, pulling him back together, forming him once more. He clung to the
other presence like a life-line, though he hadn’t felt in danger of losing
himself despite the explosion.
::Will:: a voice whispered.
He tried to pinpoint its location, find the speaker, but there was nothing but
the anchoring feeling.
::Will::
Another voice. Different. Not the same timbre.
And then he felt them all, multiple points of contact and he sensed their
existence, like tiny… sparks.
Sparks.
Life.
He sensed them and then he saw them. Attaching themselves to
the Will-shards, to him, and forming a loose circle.
::Will:: the first speaker murmured, closer than the
others, and he instinctively turned to him.
Many Will-shards turned with him, coalescing into his Protoform shape.
::Will::
Where? He couldn’t speak, but he felt the word created through every
letter.
The other sparks were now close. He stared at them, shivering at the realization
as to what they were.
There were eleven.
Two were interwoven, not clear and singular like the others. They were like
twin stars with a single corona around them.
There was another pair, separate, without the corona, but a net of tendrils,
for lack of a better word, held them together. The tendrils grew out of a spark
and something that
Then there was a very bright spark, with a feathery, fine growth reaching
toward something in the distance, a structure that wasn’t a spark but powerful
and man-made and still… spark-like. It had shadows of the other… soul, there he
had said it, but it was different nevertheless.
The other five were singular, no attachments, but of different strength and
structure, of different age and… designation. Will knew instinctively who was
who and it shocked and terrified him that he saw them.
At the edges of his perception was another one, more simple, not as strong, and
some part of him recognized it as the spark of a drone.
Scorponok.
Still alive.
Sam saw this. Well, maybe not ‘this’ this, but something similar. He shouldn’t
be able to…
And wait a minute… Eleven?
Eight mechs. Sam, if he counted him as part of them. Tony,
though he wasn’t as bright and strong, and he hadn’t seen him at first count. Scorponok,
who was a drone and fell into a different category.
::Will?::
Ironhide. He finally attached a name to the speaker, and
Eleven, he whispered without saying a word. Two more.
Two who they didn’t know. Two who could be either
Decepticon or Autobot.
Two…
::Will!:: Ironhide was more insistent and words he
couldn’t translate followed. He felt the Will-parts draw together again, form
his body again.
Two more mechs. On Earth. Hidden.
He was sure they were here. Otherwise he would see all surviving mechs in the
whole wide universe and he was sure there were more than two left.
Two…
Ironhide, there are two more!
Something rippled through him and he felt himself grabbed, stabilized, and
something pulled him closer. He drifted willingly toward the spark closest to
him, fascinated by the beauty of the energy, and strength, the age…
Old, but not ancient. Strong, powerful, warm, caring,
worried…
Ironhide?
He reached out, his hand no longer human but a mixture of Allspark surface and
Protoform shell, and he touched the spark.
Things changed abruptly. Something powerful and faintly painful raced through
him.
And then the world turned completely dark, with no color but the dark non-sky
around him, with nothing but the pixel-trains and the fireflies, and he swirled
in a universe he knew and recognized and wasn’t scared of.
Ironhide.
His body coalesced, the other sparks disappeared from sight, and there were
only the two of them, the beauty of touching and not-Sharing, and then…
The world slammed back into sound, touch and smell without a transitory phase. A physical touch, strong hands resting on his shoulder and chest.
He opened his eyes and knew immediately that he wasn’t human. He had somehow
converted to Protoform and the blue optics, bright blue, worried and anxious,
met his own probably ice blue eyes.
“Ironhide?” he whispered.
The hand on his chest stayed, but the one at the shoulder slid down his arm to
clasp a flailing hand.
“What happened?”
“You tell me,” Ironhide replied, sounding just as rough.
And Will felt the spark inside the mech’s chest, felt the power run through the
old body, felt the core protoform underneath the camouflage, and he longed to
reach out and be part of that strength and power and safety.
A clicking, whirring sound could be heard from Ironhide and the optics
brightened even more. He sounded… intrigued.
“Can feel you,” Will murmured, fascinated, clenching his fingers around
Ironhide’s hand like a life-line.
It felt like if he let go, he would lose himself in a whirlwind of pixel-taxis
and fireflies. He felt like he could come apart any minute now, spread out and
touch every spark and every powerful soul connected to one.
“’Hide…” It sounded like a plea.
Ironhide leaned closer and the hand on
“What happened?” he repeated weakly.
“I don’t know. One minute you were using the training program, the next you
collapsed and powered down completely. Your body… changed, Will,” Ironhide
replied, sounding unsure as to what had happened, what he had seen. “Your
Protoform shape took on the Allspark’s appearance. Your skin looked different,
you were different, and then your power levels rose far beyond what any mech I
ever met was able to contain.”
Lennox slid the hand that held on to Ironhide’s up the mech’s forearm, fingers
splaying over the black metal, feeling ever ridge and nook and cranny.
“What happened?” Ironhide now returned the question.
“I don’t know. It was… like I wasn’t there any more. Like a
limbo, but not… nothingness. There was something there… like being
inside a computer.” He laughed humorlessly. “At least what the movies make of
it. All moving lines and circuit board landscape and…” He stopped, terror
creeping up on him again.
“Will?” Ironhide queried.
“I touched you,” he whispered.
The mech was silent, but he had frozen.
“Right?”
“
“And there were others. I could feel them. They were there when I blew apart
and I was aware of them all. All… eleven.”
“Eleven?”
“Seven Autobots, Barricade, shadows of Sam, faint marks of Tony, an echo
of Scorponok…” Will stopped.
“Will…?”
“Ironhide, there are two more on Earth.”
The bigger mech moved back and gazed into the serious, ice blue optics. “Are
you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I only saw their sparks, Ironhide, not their location. I could feel
them… like part of me…” He stopped, the terror coming back. “Oh gawd… It felt
like… part of me… No!”
“No! I’m not the Allspark! This is impossible!”
A large hand grabbed him and stopped his staggering, holding him in place as
hard optics stared him down.
“You’re not the Allspark,” Ironhide told him firmly. “You carry part of it in
you. A shard. A small piece of what it was. You’re not
the cube!”
“I felt you all… like Sam… just without technopathy…”
“Because that part seems to react to something.”
“So I am that fucking Allspark anyway!”
“No. If you were, you could give life. As it is,” Ironhide teased, “you’re
giving great surges, but not life.”
“How do you know?” he finally challenged.
“You haven’t brought anything on the base to life yet and for all the outer
appearance, you don’t give off the radiance of the Allspark either.”
Will slumped against the wall behind him, for the first time realizing he was still
in the training chamber.
“So what the hell was this all about?”
Ironhide shrugged. “More evolving?”
“Oh great,” came the sarcastic reply. “With a little more of that I
might end up looking like a gigantic, alien Rubikc’s cube;, all runes and
glyphs and other weird writing.”
“You’re still human. The Allspark never was organic, Will. Its influence
changed you, but it never changed what you are: organic.”
Ironhide knelt down and ran a gentle finger over the naked human skin, drawing
a string of glyphs in his wake, the runes dancing around the point of contact.
“Human,” he said calmly.
“Yeah, well, mostly,” Will replied, trying not to think of genetic difference,
of what and who he had become.
He gathered his bag and took out the spare clothes, black sweatpants and an
Army green t-shirt.
“We should talk to Ratchet,” Ironhide said, watching Will’s every move.
“And Optimus Prime,” the weapons specialist added. “About the two sparks you
felt. We might want to request Sam’s help on that, too.”
“He can’t remote-sense you guys,”
Ironhide tilted his head a little, but he didn’t comment.
“As for Ratchet, I doubt he can do anything, ‘Hide. He can’t even scan me, so
that’s not really an option.”
“Will…”
“Listen, this scares me more than anything, but whatever it was… Ratchet can’t
do anything about it.”
“He has your prior scans stored already. He can make a comparison,” the mech
argued. “If you let him.”
Because Will could block scans and mostly did so on automatic, keeping anyone
from intruding into his privacy, from really looking inside. The times he had
relaxed enough for Ratchet to finish a complete scan were few. And right now he
was too agitated to will his defenses down.
“Okay, okay, but he won’t find anything,” the ex-Army Ranger muttered. “And I
hate the poking and prodding.”
They walked out of the training room. The runes were active like never before
and Will pulled on his sweat jacket, feeling strangely self-conscious. He could
feel Ironhide’s gaze on him, but refused to react to it.
“Optimus wants to talk to you,” Ironhide broke the silence.
Of course they had already talked. Unlike Sam, Will couldn’t feel the
communication that went on between the mechs. Short bursts of information were exchanged
that way, but conversation was just like between most humans: verbal.
“Of course he wants to,”
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Will had at least changed into his street clothes before facing Prime. He hadn’t
felt well looking up at the Autobot leader bare-footed and in his sweats. Ironhide
had been secretly amused, though
“I don’t know where they are, Optimus,” Will repeated.
“I could only feel the two additional sparks. I can’t even tell Autobot from
Decepticon. Barricade felt completely normal to me.”
Like part of something. Part of the
Allspark. Part of him.
He chased those thoughts away. He wasn’t the Allspark!
“I can tell relations. I could see the spark bond between Jazz and Barricade,
and I could tell Bumblebee’s connection to Sam, though that looked different
from a spark bond.”
And he could see the connection forming between Hot Rod and Tony, how the young
mech’s spark was attaching itself to the open connection the Extremis had
formed. All were unique, all were barely comparable. He hadn’t seen his own
partnership with Ironhide, but he had felt it.
A shiver raced through him.
“But we know there are two more on this planet now,” Optimus replied calmly,
nodding. “We just don’t know if they were already here when we came, arrived
after my call, or if they are even Autobots.”
“I’ll inform Banachek,” Prime decided. “Then we’ll see about researching this
planet’s satellite images for clues.”
And that would take a while. For humans that was almost
impossible to achieve, but the mechs were faster. And maybe, just maybe,
something would stick out, would help them in locating the two individuals.
“We might wanna broadcast on Autobot frequencies,” Ironhide rumbled.
“It’s a possibility – if they are Autobots. I’m afraid of what would happen
should a Decepticon intercept the transmission.”
“What about Barricade?” Will asked.
The two huge mechanoids looked at him. He shrugged.
“Barricade might be helpful by doing the same on Decepticon frequencies. Might
lure them out, whoever they are, either because they’re Autobots and follow a
Decepticon call to take care of the problem, or because they’re Decepticons… to
do likewise.”
Optimus nodded slowly. “It’s a possibility.”
“If you can get the Con to play along,” Ironhide added. “Which
I doubt he will.”
“Ask nicely,”
Ironhide snorted, but Optimus agreed that it might be the easiest way. He would
have to talk to his second-in-command anyway.
As they left Prime’s office, Ironhide started to gently steer Will toward the
medical area. Will rolled his eyes.
“I’m fine, Ironhide. Ratchet won’t find anything!”
“Let him check you.”
A sigh. “Waste of time.”
And it was, though the medic looked intrigued and was talking to himself –
while in English,
“You owe me,”
“It’s simply about your health.”
“I’m fine, ‘Hide. Really.”
“Humans tend to say that even when they are bleeding or have serious
injuries,” the mech argued.
Oh great. The old argument. Of course
“Yeah, maybe,” he conceded softly. “But it’s different. I am fine. Completely. I never felt better.”
Just rattled from the… whatever it was.
They had by now passed the main entrance of the hangar and stood outside in the
afternoon light. Ironhide knelt down and regarded
“You are important to me, Will Lennox. Your health is part of that. I worry.”
“I’m not fragile,”
“I never said so. Your changes in the past years showed me just how much you
can endure, how resilient you are, but some things can hurt without physical
injury.”
He reached out and gently drew a finger along
“I can read that you’re fine,” he said calmly.
Wonderful,
“I just want you to know that you can trust me. With
everything.”
“I do,” he replied quietly.
The blue optics were intense, then Ironhide suddenly
transformed and opened the driver side door. Will climbed inside and leaned
back, enjoying the ride to God knew where. He could use some alone time,
whatever that entailed, and he was looking forward to spending that time alone
with Ironhide.
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Letting his hand run over the smooth texture, he wondered what had happened to
him. He still couldn’t grasp the reality of this… dream… but it had been there,
and it had shown him more than he had ever wanted to know. Especially
about certain partnerships and bonds.
“I can’t spark bond,” he said softly.
“You’re human,” Ironhide agreed. “Humans can’t spark bond.”
“Then what happened when I touched you?”
Ironhide was silent. Finally, “We shared something new.”
Will smiled dimly. “Huh. Yeah. Something
really new. Freaked me out.”
“Because you touched my spark?”
He had felt the power of the mech’s spark before, whenever they came close
throughout Sharing, but he had never been able to reach… inside.
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
He clenched his hand into a fist. Ironhide would know. He had been the one
touched. For Will, everything he did was new and alien. He slid off the warm
hood and paced a little.
“And it doesn’t freak you out? Terrify you?”
“In a way it does, but I believe every Cybertronian would, even when touched by
one of our kind. I never asked Jazz about what he felt
when he bonded, but I think fear is a factor.”
The weapons specialist transformed and knelt down, looking at his much smaller
partner.
“Did it hurt you?”
“No! No… it was… incredible. I can’t put it into words, really. I now know how
Sam feels every time he accidentally got too close to Barricade and Jazz’s
connection. It’s… almost addictive.”
Ironhide smirked. “Better than Sharing?”
Will laughed. “Yeah,” he said without hesitation. “A whole lot better.”
The mech held out a hand in a clear invitation and Will
would have been hard pressed to decline. He wanted and needed this himself, and
he simply let that need take over as he changed shape.
Ironhide’s hand slid gently over the exo-structure of the Protoform, runes
dancing along the contact, and Will moved closer. Ironhide curled an arm around
his waist, then opened the interface connection at his finger tips and buried
them into the depths of the reformative infrastructure.
Will felt the energon transfer, the rush, but it wasn’t as brief as it had been
in the beginning. For Ironhide it had been a matter of cramming the best into a
small time frame, like all mechs were used to because of the on-going war. It
had taken him time to finally realize that there was no rushing needed. They
had time and while Sharing was still shorter than human sexual intercourse, it
was now a lot more drawn out for the Cybertronian part of the pair.
And Ironhide had learned to tease.
He had no spark, but the connection was better than everything they had done
before. It had him cry out, though he wasn’t aware of making a sound, and he
felt Ironhide’s reaction. It was as powerful as the mech and it pushed and
pulled him along.
Will blinked at the sky, wondering if he would ever get control of his rather
embarrassing reactions to such powerful surges when he became aware of a large
shape next to him.
“’Hide?” he croaked.
A hand moved, fingers running over his chest, and the runes danced around the
huge finger pads. Dimly glowing optics regarded him.
“Whoa, rush,”
“Definitely,” came the lazy, satisfied rumble.
“So that’s a spark bond?”
“It’s our bond,” Ironhide replied.
“Cool.”
He couldn’t really think straight, but what thoughts stuck were ‘whoa!’,
‘again, now!’ and ‘wanna get used to it’, among a lot more downright dirty
ones. The few that heralded a major freak-out were drowned by the incredible
good feeling of it all and Will’s experience in the matter of mech Sharing.
The fingers were almost teasing, if not for the fact that Cybertronians weren’t
sexual in any way like humans. Ironhide had learned that touch was comforting
to his human partner and he applied it when they were alone and safe. Like now.
Will turned, let the finger brush over his back, and he knew the glyphs were
numerous and following the trail Ironhide laid. His
arms were filled with writing and some of it was Cybertronian and clearly
readable. When he had read it the first time, months ago, he had been
embarrassed. Now he simply accepted the fact that his satisfaction and pleasure
was written out for every mech to read.
He nodded off after a while and Ironhide powered down enough to be alert but to
also recharge. They were safe, but the weapons specialist wasn’t fooled into
letting his guard down. The war had taught him to always be ready.
He was.
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They returned to base, both silent, lost in their own thoughts, but in a corner
of himself, Will felt Ironhide’s presence.
It was another new addition.
Something else to get used to.
And somehow it scared him less than all the other changes had in the past.
The base was busy, despite the late hour. Lieutenant DeMarco was checking a
shipment that must have come in barely an hour ago. The trucks or the plan was
already gone, but the crates piled high and the cranes were already moving to
pick up certain goods and place them in storage.
They were already expected by Jazz. He looked serious.
“What’s up?”
“Prime received first reports of possible mech activity on your planet,” the
first lieutenant replied. “If it is of Cybertronian origin, it’s not Autobot.”
Will felt something cold trickle through him. “Decepticon?”
he asked roughly.
“Possible. The reports that look most like it was a mech spoke of human
casualty.”
Ironhide cursed softly in Cybertronian and the flexed his hands. “Where?” he demanded.
“
“Near a town called
The frown deepened. “That’s a little in the middle of nowhere. Not backcountry,
but not strategic placement either.”
“No, but Arcee checked the data we have and what Sector Seven filed away. Looks like they had a storage facility up there.”
Will let his head drop back, staring at the ceiling. “Great,” he muttered.
“What kind of storage?”
“Still trying to find that one out. We have all Sector
Seven data, but we never read every single file.
“Which might have been a first clue,” Will remarked.
It got him a brief smile. “Yeah. But so are many more
files. Some are decoys, others were out of date,
deleted or long-since shut down. Ratchet prioritized looking into the
experiments and the dead shells we retrieved, especially after WiFi’s survival
and the attack on our base before that.”
“Understandable.”
Ironhide rumbled dangerously. “What’s Prime say?”
“Recon team first.” Jazz flashed them a brief smile. “Ya
lookin’ at it. Then, when we know what’s up, the big guns.”
Ironhide looked unhappy, but he wouldn’t argue. He knew it was the sensible
thing to do, but even then, if the signal had been a Decepticon, he didn’t have
to like it.
“Want me to look through the files?”
Jazz nodded. “Help is appreciated.”
“Okay. I’ll find a comfy office and snoop around. Is Sam on it, too?”
“He offered, like you. I think you two can team up on this.” Jazz looked
grateful. “I’m leaving within the hour. Captain Bowman has a flight ready for
me.”
“Good luck,” he only said, then walked off to find Sam.
Ironhide remained behind, heading for Prime’s office.
A Decepticon,
ran through Will’s head. Close to ten years after
He hoped the conclusions were wrong. He would have to view the evidence that
made Optimus assume that what had occurred involved mechanoid presence, and a
hostile one on top of that. And if it was true, they had to take him out as
soon and as fast and clean as possible.
Before
fin for this story...
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First scene inspired by the Saturn ads
For those interested: the video of the ‘floating’ and explosion. It’s a very
brief video; the sequence is right at the beginning. You might want to pause
it, then return to the beginning and let it play again. It’s good quality,
right from the ad agency website.
When it first ran, Sapphire said something along the lines of ‘You don’t have
to do that to
http://www.s-f.com/Portals/12/campa
And here’s the ad from Saturn that started it all and that had the Allspark in
it. I posted it before, but now the quality is really good. Still love the
whole ad and I still struggle to really describe it all to give the CGI
animation credit.
http://www.s-f.com/Portals/12/campa
If anyone has a problem looking at a apparently nude
woman (whose body is CGI and looks like she’s wearing a skintight suit), don’t
click! This would probably be a censored ad in other countries…