Anniversary Bingo Challenge Response: Fall (part 1 of 4)
Greetings all,
I'm a little nervous about being first to post a challenge response, but my muse seems to have jumped on this when I saw the bingo card.
This fic hits all seven of my chosen prompts, and I'll post a chapter a day - four chapters in total. Comments are always welcome!
Title: Fall
Author: zea_taylor
‘Verse: G1
Rating: T/PG-13 (I think)
Warnings: Major destruction, Civilian deaths, Angst, Cybertronian profanity.
Summary: The fall of Praxus is deeply traumatic, and not just for the tactician visiting his home city at the time.
Author’s Note: Written for the prowlxjazz community’s Anniversary Bingo Challenge - celebrating the community’s seventh birthday. Each chapter is inspired by one or more prompts, posted by wicked3659. Comments and suggestions for improvement are always very welcome!
Part One
Prompts: Crystal Gardens, If you want to live - run
The crystal vibrated under Prowl’s expert touch. He ran his servos along the long, angular shaft in a gentle caress and angled his door-wings a fraction to gauge the result. He could already feel the response spreading through the outcrop, the resonance building as he’d planned. It had taken perhaps six breems to get to this point and ease the living crystal out of dormancy. Now his work paid off, the hum rising through his pedes and then reaching the point where his audials too could revel in the soft music. It wasn’t a simple melody. A pulsing beat rose and fell as the different shafts in the outcrop each responded at their own resonant frequency. Prowl’s hands never stopped moving, stilling a resonance here, strengthening one there, playing the entire outcrop as if it were a musical instrument rather than a living, growing part of Primus’s creation.
A scuffle by his pedes almost broke his concentration. He glanced down, and his instinctive frown softened. The mechling couldn’t be much more than a new-spark. His grey plating still looked soft, his delicate door-wings rising and falling with every emotion that flickered across the small faceplates.
Right now, the dominant expression there was awe. The mechling leaned forward, letting his servos hover over the humming surface and then resting his shiny red chevron against the shaft of a crystal at Prowl’s ankle height.
Prowl adjusted, tapping gently to excite that crystal more strongly, damping another to avoid a discordant resonance. The little one’s optics were irised wide and burning bright, his processor swept up in the wonder of the moment. Bending down, Prowl caught one of the tiny servos in his own, stroking it across the surface and letting the infant revel in the music of his own creation.
The mechling’s genitors had caught up by the time Prowl soothed the growth back to rest. They caught up their excited offspring, watching appreciatively as Prowl demonstrated a skill he rarely had cause to display.
The hum dropped to the limit of audial reception, and then lower, until only the door-wings of those present could detect the ripples in the air. The infant’s wings twitched and flexed, a frown on his faceplates as he strained to recapture the sensation. One of his genitors soothed him, stroking his helm even as Prowl lifted his servos from the final crystal, bidding it silent thanks and a fine rest after its work.
He nodded a greeting and farewell combined to the two adults. They nodded in return, murmuring thanks but feeling no need to break the sense of tranquillity with unnecessary chatter. The right to use the Crystal Gardens, whether for music or for quiet reflection, was one of the oldest in Praxus. Most Praxians learnt to coax the crystal outcrops into rhythmic music before they could even transform. Few were formally taught, learning instead through instinct and the basic guidance of their genitors.
Prowl was one of the few whose genitors could secure private tuition. It was small hardship for him to share the results with an eager mechling and his appreciative guardians.
He felt calmer after the decabreem of intense concentration. His wings flexed behind his back, their movement an involuntary reaction to his emotion. He caught himself and startled at his own openness, a frown flickering across his faceplates before they settled to a rueful smile.
He wasn’t on base now. The Autobot Army wasn’t going to expire of shock if he expressed a little pleasure. And Prowl would rather sign a dozen requisitions than admit it, but Jazz was right: he’d needed this break.
Ahead of Prowl, the towers of Praxus rose from the city platform, glittering in the perpetual Cybertronian night. Somewhere behind him and to his left, he could hear the mechling’s soft voice babbling and the low throb as an unskilled fist made contact with the nearest crystal growth. Everyone had to start somewhere.
Maybe Prowl himself had to start relaxing under duress, but it was certainly doing him good. Three orns into his enforced vacation, he was finally managing to set the war aside, if only for a few breems at a time.
His door-wings flared and froze, the thought bringing with it the tension he’d been trying to shrug off. He forced the sensory panels down with an effort. Sorrow showed in his slight frown as he wandered deeper into the Gardens, seeking solitude.
It wasn’t hard. Once the Gardens, on the edge of the city platform and away from the watchful optics of genitors, would have been thronged with carefree youths. Today, the mechling and his two guardians were the only others Prowl had seen. The war sweeping their planet was touching even neutral Praxus. Mechs were working longer and harder, trying to balance out the shortages not even a neutral city state could escape. Younglings were staying home, or banding together in energon bars to debate the two causes. Already Prowl had become embroiled in two impassioned arguments since his homecoming. This evening he’d come to the Gardens instead, hoping to set aside his Autobot colours and the approval or approbation of his compatriots.
He was a Praxian who had chosen to renounce neutrality. More than that, he was the most senior amongst the hundreds of his country-mechs who had sworn themselves to Optimus Prime’s cause. He was one of Prime’s lieutenants, using his Praxian enforcer-trained processor to direct a violent conflict. No matter how just the fight, that was never going to be an easy concept for some to accept. His mere existence was an affront to the many who clung to Praxian aloofness, as if ignoring Decepticon atrocities would somehow make the crimes less real.
The tension was returning. Prowl shook his helm, easing his door-wings back to rest against a sturdy shard as he settled onto a new outcrop. He could almost hear Jazz scolding him. His fellow officer - his friend - had worked long and hard to manoeuvre Prowl into this sabbatical. He shouldn’t be wasting the other mech’s efforts like this.
“Prowl!”
For a moment, just a moment, Prowl imagined his thought had summoned the mech’s voice. But Jazz wouldn’t call just to check on his friend - not after persuading Optimus to ban Prowl from any Autobot contact for the duration. Even if he chose to break that order, Jazz had never sounded like this. The Ops mech’s comm-voice rang with strain, his usual suave demeanour abandoned like the mask Prowl knew it to be.
“Jazz?”
“Prowl, you’ve got to get out of there. Don’t hesitate. Just go.”
“Jazz, explain: Go where? Why?”
“Away. Out of the city. There’s a major Decepticon assault. Primus…”
The other’s comm-voice trailed off. Prowl was already on his pedes, striding towards the park’s main entrance.
“You need my tactical input? You’ll send a shuttle for me?”
“We thought they were heading for the Tagan Heights. The industrial complex. We were wrong. We wont get back there, not in time!”
“Jazz, you’re not making sense.”
A throbbing note almost distracted Prowl from the bewildering conversation. He reached out without thinking to run a servo along the nearest crystal and calm it as he passed. It was only as he did so that he realised his door-wings were picking up the same vibrations troubling the outcrop… and then his audials heard it too.
Something big was moving nearby. Something big… or many somethings, each brimming with power. A flash caught his optic, a burst of light and flame from one of the city’s tallest towers, expanding in eerie silence as the sound lagged behind in Cybertron’s thin atmosphere.
“Praxus.” Jazz whispered the word. “Primus, there’s an armada moving on Praxus.”
“But…” Prowl stared. This didn’t make sense. Praxus was neutral. More than that, it was defenceless. Even personal firearms were forbidden within the city limits. Prowl himself, armoured plating notwithstanding, was reduced to bare servos in a fight. Jazz didn’t need to be told that. Jazz probably knew how Praxus stood better than its own ruling council.
A second tower burst into a rosette of flame, and a third, and now the sound caught up, its crashing roar almost louder than Prowl could bear.
“I need to get to the Council. I can help coordinate…”
Coordinate what? Praxus had no city weapons, no defence force, not even bunkers to shelter its people from the waves of Seeker-bombers overhead.
“Prime’s online with them. You just need to get out.” The other mech paused, the sound of raised voices just audible behind him. “Frag! Prowl, you’ve got to get moving!” Jazz’s voice lost its shocked edge, became harder and more desperate. “They’re taking out the bridges. Run, slag it! If you want to live - run!”
Prowl could count on the servos of one hand the number of times Jazz had given him a direct order. His comms cut off. His pedes obeyed the barked command before his processor caught up.
They turned, taking him away from the gate back into the city, away from the screams and the shattering of titan-sized crystal shards. He ran back into the Gardens, towards the edge of the city platform, his plan no more than half-formed.
He was perhaps half-way through the outcrops when he heard a cry and spun around, battle-poised, to face the cowering couple sheltering their infant between them. The two were similar to Prowl in frame, but they’d be slower. Their engines wouldn’t have Prowl’s fine-tuning, nor his vorns of pursuit experience. Just getting them moving might take too long in itself. The horror on their faceplates mirrored his own, but without the context and understanding. Their bewilderment and terror had frozen them in place, crippling them.
Prowl had klicks at best. The howl of Seeker-flight was everywhere now. A projectile fell, somewhere deep in the Gardens, and crystal splintered into clouds of jagged snow. Pain rained down in a thousand stinging shards against Prowl’s plating. The sound hurt more, a hundred natural outcrops ringing with the screams of their shattered peers.
He took a step forward before he could second-think the impulse and snatched the keening infant from its genitors’ arms. Transforming around the mechling, he tore away, only half aware of the two adults on his tail. They would travel faster without the burden. Prowl had the speed. He could sacrifice a fraction of it to get this family to safety. If three lives were all he could salvage from this massacre, it was better than nothing.
The wall ahead of Prowl marked the boundary of the city platform. Beyond lay the wastes that separated city-states. Leagues of structures and ruins, scaffolding and pipework filled the no-man’s-land, all layered on top of one another in a mismatched jigsaw. No one knew how deep the fretwork construct went. Only the foolish and the desperate ventured amongst the crevasses and voids that underlay the great cities.
Prowl transformed, the mechling held against his chestplates with one firm servo, and swung himself over the wall, hoping and preying that his bearings were right.
Jazz had said the bridges were being bombed. He was right. As Prowl looked to his left, he saw the main Iacon road crumble, debris and a hundred thrashing mechs falling together into the bottomless deeps.
His optics tracked the unfolding horror and he tore them away with an effort, focussing instead on the narrow pipe under his pedes. It wasn’t a bridge, as such. Every city needed an infrastructure to bring in power, energon and raw resources. Some of that vast network of ducting rose from below, supporting the platform and linking it to Primus below. Other structures radiated, most beneath the main bridges, or, in a few rare cases like this one, as single pipes, barely a mech’s arm-span in width, traversing the void.
Beyond enforcers, ever alert for smuggling, and the smugglers themselves, probably no more than a handful of mechs knew these conduits existed.
There was a thump behind him, a vibration under his pedes. Prowl half turned to see the two pale-plated genitors drop over the wall. Taking the infant had motivated them, but they were still shaky, moving with the rigid awkwardness of shell-shock. They stared at the narrow pipework and the void to either side with profound dread.
Prowl knew instinctively that they hadn’t seen the Iacon road blasted into the depths. They’d never have come this far if they had.
The mechling was still keening. The infant squirmed, reaching for his genitors and Prowl tightened his grip. He transformed with care, stretching a belt across his small passenger and making sure his hover-impellers straddled the curved surface beneath. The two civilians stared at him, aghast as he edged out onto the precarious bridge with their offspring. Both shook their heads, huddling closer together.
“I can’t,” one of them called, and he might have been whispering or screaming. Prowl couldn’t tell above the ringing terror, the shatter of crystal and the ever-closer thunder of carpet bombs shaking the platform to its struts.
“You can.” He kept his own voice level, calm. “For the infant.”
That stopped the protests. The two held one another close for a moment and then eased apart. The taller of the pair stepped out and transformed, following Prowl. “For Bluestreak,” he agreed.
“Blue,” the second echoed, half in confirmation, half in prayer.
The bombardment that shattered the Crystal Gardens into dust behind them came just as both genitors committed to the crossing.
The Seeker strafing run that peppered the pipework, and the mechs crossing it, with laser fire seemed to follow moments later. Prowl tuned out the pain with a sharp command to his internal repair system. Fire spilled from the torn metal pipe under his impellers, the surface energon leak flash-burning and the larger reserves below starting to smoulder.
Prowl accelerated, his focus on the crossing absolute.
He felt rather than saw the moment that the second of the two un-armoured mechs following him was knocked aside and fell into the depths. He heard the second genitor’s cry, and felt his own spark clench in helpless grief.
His impellors howled, struggling for purchase as the conduit bucked and twisted under them. He was at close to top speed, the crossing reckless even by Jazz’s standards, when the pipework gave a hard shudder and tore loose from the city platform.
He was alone on the pipe, its one fixed end cantilevered against the distant wastelands, when he heard the endless thunder and the cries of a hundred thousand mechs falling into the depths, with their city falling around them.
There were just mechanometers to go in this never-ending crossing. The solid promise of a landing was almost within reach when he saw the braces holding the pipe fail, and felt the conduit tipping downwards, determined to dump its last passengers onto the ruins of their home.
The mechling had fallen silent, shocked into immobility. Prowl whispered an apology to the little one, and then another into the night.
“I tried, Jazz,” he told his distant friend, as the world dropped out from beneath his impellers. “I tried.”
I'm a little nervous about being first to post a challenge response, but my muse seems to have jumped on this when I saw the bingo card.
This fic hits all seven of my chosen prompts, and I'll post a chapter a day - four chapters in total. Comments are always welcome!
Title: Fall
Author: zea_taylor
‘Verse: G1
Rating: T/PG-13 (I think)
Warnings: Major destruction, Civilian deaths, Angst, Cybertronian profanity.
Summary: The fall of Praxus is deeply traumatic, and not just for the tactician visiting his home city at the time.
Author’s Note: Written for the prowlxjazz community’s Anniversary Bingo Challenge - celebrating the community’s seventh birthday. Each chapter is inspired by one or more prompts, posted by wicked3659. Comments and suggestions for improvement are always very welcome!
Part One
Prompts: Crystal Gardens, If you want to live - run
The crystal vibrated under Prowl’s expert touch. He ran his servos along the long, angular shaft in a gentle caress and angled his door-wings a fraction to gauge the result. He could already feel the response spreading through the outcrop, the resonance building as he’d planned. It had taken perhaps six breems to get to this point and ease the living crystal out of dormancy. Now his work paid off, the hum rising through his pedes and then reaching the point where his audials too could revel in the soft music. It wasn’t a simple melody. A pulsing beat rose and fell as the different shafts in the outcrop each responded at their own resonant frequency. Prowl’s hands never stopped moving, stilling a resonance here, strengthening one there, playing the entire outcrop as if it were a musical instrument rather than a living, growing part of Primus’s creation.
A scuffle by his pedes almost broke his concentration. He glanced down, and his instinctive frown softened. The mechling couldn’t be much more than a new-spark. His grey plating still looked soft, his delicate door-wings rising and falling with every emotion that flickered across the small faceplates.
Right now, the dominant expression there was awe. The mechling leaned forward, letting his servos hover over the humming surface and then resting his shiny red chevron against the shaft of a crystal at Prowl’s ankle height.
Prowl adjusted, tapping gently to excite that crystal more strongly, damping another to avoid a discordant resonance. The little one’s optics were irised wide and burning bright, his processor swept up in the wonder of the moment. Bending down, Prowl caught one of the tiny servos in his own, stroking it across the surface and letting the infant revel in the music of his own creation.
The mechling’s genitors had caught up by the time Prowl soothed the growth back to rest. They caught up their excited offspring, watching appreciatively as Prowl demonstrated a skill he rarely had cause to display.
The hum dropped to the limit of audial reception, and then lower, until only the door-wings of those present could detect the ripples in the air. The infant’s wings twitched and flexed, a frown on his faceplates as he strained to recapture the sensation. One of his genitors soothed him, stroking his helm even as Prowl lifted his servos from the final crystal, bidding it silent thanks and a fine rest after its work.
He nodded a greeting and farewell combined to the two adults. They nodded in return, murmuring thanks but feeling no need to break the sense of tranquillity with unnecessary chatter. The right to use the Crystal Gardens, whether for music or for quiet reflection, was one of the oldest in Praxus. Most Praxians learnt to coax the crystal outcrops into rhythmic music before they could even transform. Few were formally taught, learning instead through instinct and the basic guidance of their genitors.
Prowl was one of the few whose genitors could secure private tuition. It was small hardship for him to share the results with an eager mechling and his appreciative guardians.
He felt calmer after the decabreem of intense concentration. His wings flexed behind his back, their movement an involuntary reaction to his emotion. He caught himself and startled at his own openness, a frown flickering across his faceplates before they settled to a rueful smile.
He wasn’t on base now. The Autobot Army wasn’t going to expire of shock if he expressed a little pleasure. And Prowl would rather sign a dozen requisitions than admit it, but Jazz was right: he’d needed this break.
Ahead of Prowl, the towers of Praxus rose from the city platform, glittering in the perpetual Cybertronian night. Somewhere behind him and to his left, he could hear the mechling’s soft voice babbling and the low throb as an unskilled fist made contact with the nearest crystal growth. Everyone had to start somewhere.
Maybe Prowl himself had to start relaxing under duress, but it was certainly doing him good. Three orns into his enforced vacation, he was finally managing to set the war aside, if only for a few breems at a time.
His door-wings flared and froze, the thought bringing with it the tension he’d been trying to shrug off. He forced the sensory panels down with an effort. Sorrow showed in his slight frown as he wandered deeper into the Gardens, seeking solitude.
It wasn’t hard. Once the Gardens, on the edge of the city platform and away from the watchful optics of genitors, would have been thronged with carefree youths. Today, the mechling and his two guardians were the only others Prowl had seen. The war sweeping their planet was touching even neutral Praxus. Mechs were working longer and harder, trying to balance out the shortages not even a neutral city state could escape. Younglings were staying home, or banding together in energon bars to debate the two causes. Already Prowl had become embroiled in two impassioned arguments since his homecoming. This evening he’d come to the Gardens instead, hoping to set aside his Autobot colours and the approval or approbation of his compatriots.
He was a Praxian who had chosen to renounce neutrality. More than that, he was the most senior amongst the hundreds of his country-mechs who had sworn themselves to Optimus Prime’s cause. He was one of Prime’s lieutenants, using his Praxian enforcer-trained processor to direct a violent conflict. No matter how just the fight, that was never going to be an easy concept for some to accept. His mere existence was an affront to the many who clung to Praxian aloofness, as if ignoring Decepticon atrocities would somehow make the crimes less real.
The tension was returning. Prowl shook his helm, easing his door-wings back to rest against a sturdy shard as he settled onto a new outcrop. He could almost hear Jazz scolding him. His fellow officer - his friend - had worked long and hard to manoeuvre Prowl into this sabbatical. He shouldn’t be wasting the other mech’s efforts like this.
“Prowl!”
For a moment, just a moment, Prowl imagined his thought had summoned the mech’s voice. But Jazz wouldn’t call just to check on his friend - not after persuading Optimus to ban Prowl from any Autobot contact for the duration. Even if he chose to break that order, Jazz had never sounded like this. The Ops mech’s comm-voice rang with strain, his usual suave demeanour abandoned like the mask Prowl knew it to be.
“Jazz?”
“Prowl, you’ve got to get out of there. Don’t hesitate. Just go.”
“Jazz, explain: Go where? Why?”
“Away. Out of the city. There’s a major Decepticon assault. Primus…”
The other’s comm-voice trailed off. Prowl was already on his pedes, striding towards the park’s main entrance.
“You need my tactical input? You’ll send a shuttle for me?”
“We thought they were heading for the Tagan Heights. The industrial complex. We were wrong. We wont get back there, not in time!”
“Jazz, you’re not making sense.”
A throbbing note almost distracted Prowl from the bewildering conversation. He reached out without thinking to run a servo along the nearest crystal and calm it as he passed. It was only as he did so that he realised his door-wings were picking up the same vibrations troubling the outcrop… and then his audials heard it too.
Something big was moving nearby. Something big… or many somethings, each brimming with power. A flash caught his optic, a burst of light and flame from one of the city’s tallest towers, expanding in eerie silence as the sound lagged behind in Cybertron’s thin atmosphere.
“Praxus.” Jazz whispered the word. “Primus, there’s an armada moving on Praxus.”
“But…” Prowl stared. This didn’t make sense. Praxus was neutral. More than that, it was defenceless. Even personal firearms were forbidden within the city limits. Prowl himself, armoured plating notwithstanding, was reduced to bare servos in a fight. Jazz didn’t need to be told that. Jazz probably knew how Praxus stood better than its own ruling council.
A second tower burst into a rosette of flame, and a third, and now the sound caught up, its crashing roar almost louder than Prowl could bear.
“I need to get to the Council. I can help coordinate…”
Coordinate what? Praxus had no city weapons, no defence force, not even bunkers to shelter its people from the waves of Seeker-bombers overhead.
“Prime’s online with them. You just need to get out.” The other mech paused, the sound of raised voices just audible behind him. “Frag! Prowl, you’ve got to get moving!” Jazz’s voice lost its shocked edge, became harder and more desperate. “They’re taking out the bridges. Run, slag it! If you want to live - run!”
Prowl could count on the servos of one hand the number of times Jazz had given him a direct order. His comms cut off. His pedes obeyed the barked command before his processor caught up.
They turned, taking him away from the gate back into the city, away from the screams and the shattering of titan-sized crystal shards. He ran back into the Gardens, towards the edge of the city platform, his plan no more than half-formed.
He was perhaps half-way through the outcrops when he heard a cry and spun around, battle-poised, to face the cowering couple sheltering their infant between them. The two were similar to Prowl in frame, but they’d be slower. Their engines wouldn’t have Prowl’s fine-tuning, nor his vorns of pursuit experience. Just getting them moving might take too long in itself. The horror on their faceplates mirrored his own, but without the context and understanding. Their bewilderment and terror had frozen them in place, crippling them.
Prowl had klicks at best. The howl of Seeker-flight was everywhere now. A projectile fell, somewhere deep in the Gardens, and crystal splintered into clouds of jagged snow. Pain rained down in a thousand stinging shards against Prowl’s plating. The sound hurt more, a hundred natural outcrops ringing with the screams of their shattered peers.
He took a step forward before he could second-think the impulse and snatched the keening infant from its genitors’ arms. Transforming around the mechling, he tore away, only half aware of the two adults on his tail. They would travel faster without the burden. Prowl had the speed. He could sacrifice a fraction of it to get this family to safety. If three lives were all he could salvage from this massacre, it was better than nothing.
The wall ahead of Prowl marked the boundary of the city platform. Beyond lay the wastes that separated city-states. Leagues of structures and ruins, scaffolding and pipework filled the no-man’s-land, all layered on top of one another in a mismatched jigsaw. No one knew how deep the fretwork construct went. Only the foolish and the desperate ventured amongst the crevasses and voids that underlay the great cities.
Prowl transformed, the mechling held against his chestplates with one firm servo, and swung himself over the wall, hoping and preying that his bearings were right.
Jazz had said the bridges were being bombed. He was right. As Prowl looked to his left, he saw the main Iacon road crumble, debris and a hundred thrashing mechs falling together into the bottomless deeps.
His optics tracked the unfolding horror and he tore them away with an effort, focussing instead on the narrow pipe under his pedes. It wasn’t a bridge, as such. Every city needed an infrastructure to bring in power, energon and raw resources. Some of that vast network of ducting rose from below, supporting the platform and linking it to Primus below. Other structures radiated, most beneath the main bridges, or, in a few rare cases like this one, as single pipes, barely a mech’s arm-span in width, traversing the void.
Beyond enforcers, ever alert for smuggling, and the smugglers themselves, probably no more than a handful of mechs knew these conduits existed.
There was a thump behind him, a vibration under his pedes. Prowl half turned to see the two pale-plated genitors drop over the wall. Taking the infant had motivated them, but they were still shaky, moving with the rigid awkwardness of shell-shock. They stared at the narrow pipework and the void to either side with profound dread.
Prowl knew instinctively that they hadn’t seen the Iacon road blasted into the depths. They’d never have come this far if they had.
The mechling was still keening. The infant squirmed, reaching for his genitors and Prowl tightened his grip. He transformed with care, stretching a belt across his small passenger and making sure his hover-impellers straddled the curved surface beneath. The two civilians stared at him, aghast as he edged out onto the precarious bridge with their offspring. Both shook their heads, huddling closer together.
“I can’t,” one of them called, and he might have been whispering or screaming. Prowl couldn’t tell above the ringing terror, the shatter of crystal and the ever-closer thunder of carpet bombs shaking the platform to its struts.
“You can.” He kept his own voice level, calm. “For the infant.”
That stopped the protests. The two held one another close for a moment and then eased apart. The taller of the pair stepped out and transformed, following Prowl. “For Bluestreak,” he agreed.
“Blue,” the second echoed, half in confirmation, half in prayer.
The bombardment that shattered the Crystal Gardens into dust behind them came just as both genitors committed to the crossing.
The Seeker strafing run that peppered the pipework, and the mechs crossing it, with laser fire seemed to follow moments later. Prowl tuned out the pain with a sharp command to his internal repair system. Fire spilled from the torn metal pipe under his impellers, the surface energon leak flash-burning and the larger reserves below starting to smoulder.
Prowl accelerated, his focus on the crossing absolute.
He felt rather than saw the moment that the second of the two un-armoured mechs following him was knocked aside and fell into the depths. He heard the second genitor’s cry, and felt his own spark clench in helpless grief.
His impellors howled, struggling for purchase as the conduit bucked and twisted under them. He was at close to top speed, the crossing reckless even by Jazz’s standards, when the pipework gave a hard shudder and tore loose from the city platform.
He was alone on the pipe, its one fixed end cantilevered against the distant wastelands, when he heard the endless thunder and the cries of a hundred thousand mechs falling into the depths, with their city falling around them.
There were just mechanometers to go in this never-ending crossing. The solid promise of a landing was almost within reach when he saw the braces holding the pipe fail, and felt the conduit tipping downwards, determined to dump its last passengers onto the ruins of their home.
The mechling had fallen silent, shocked into immobility. Prowl whispered an apology to the little one, and then another into the night.
“I tried, Jazz,” he told his distant friend, as the world dropped out from beneath his impellers. “I tried.”