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Wreck and Rule ( sunspark + Lady Alexx )

S

sunspark

Planetoid
Joined
Nov 5, 2015
Wheeljack's first warning that something had gone wrong was a blue-white cyberforming beam that annihilated half the continental United States.

The second was when the Nemesis launched a squadron of Decepticon fighters who had shot down the Jackhammer and run him to ground somewhere the might have once been the American Northeast. He couldn't be entirely sure, the second and third cyberforming waves hadn't affected him, but they'd rearranged the topography of the planet to the point it was unrecognizable and maps were useless.

It hurt to lose the ship. The Jackhammer had been his shield against the void and his only companion for so long that he'd come to think of her as a sort of unofficial Wrecker.

It probably hurt the Decepticons more though, because he'd baited a half a dozen of them into it with a fake distress signal and then blown them all to hell.

Now, he was stranded on an alien planet with no way to escape or call for help. He'd picked up a few Decepticon broadcasts on the public Cybertronian frequencies (though he didn't dare use his own comm for fear of Soundwave), and seen what had happened - from Megatron's perspective anyways. The Tyrant has seized control of some artifact up on Cybertron, killed Optimus - or at least mortally wounded him - and he was touting Earth as the first conquest in his new 'Decepticon Empire'.

Over my sparkless frame, thought Wheeljack as he drove, though what he'd actually do about it was another story. He was trapped, all alone, and short on friends. Hard to call it one way or another if Optimus was really dead. The Prime had looked fragged in the broadcast, but if Megatron had really killed him, there was no way he wouldn't be parading the Lord Prime's greying body around in front of his followers. Bulkhead had looked fine, Ratchet hadn't been present. That gave him hope.

Zipping along on one of the cyberformed highways below him, Wheeljack saw a fleet of Vehicon speedsters, and he transformed to get a better view, his eyes drawn to their destination - the ruins of one of Earth's cities. That was strange, there couldn't be anything of value to the Cybertronians there, so what were they after?

Were there humans who were still alive? If there were, as an Autobot it was his duty to at least investigate, and he transformed and sped after them, keeping out of sight.
 
Having been hidden under a load of rubble, Alexx Jameson has been overlooked when the Decepticons had patrolled the city at first. It was hard, but she had managed to get herself out of the rubble, catching her thigh on a sharp bit of metal as she did, causing a deep wound. Thankfully though, it was nowhere near her femoral artery. She had been limping around the city for a while now, and upon seeing the Decepticons patrolling the ruins, she quickly ducked behind a large piece of building, hissing quietly as the deep gash in her thigh throbbed with the movement. When the creepy robots had moved on, she quickly hobbled towards where she could see some running water flowing from a building.

As quietly and as quickly as she could, she moved over to the running water and caught some in her hands. Bringing it up to her lips, she tested it and when she was sure that it was clean water, she took off her cardigan and ripped a bit off of it, bundling the ripped bit under the flow and making it wet. She then sat herself on a bit of rubble, ripping her jeans a little more so that she could get to her wound, and she bit her lip as she began to clean the gash. A pained hiss escaped her as she did this.

When it was cleaned, she tied the rest of the cardigan around the wound tightly.
 
Wheeljack eases himself along the streets of the ruined city, sometimes taking shortcuts where downed power lines or collapsed buildings have made the roads inaccessible.

His white-red coloring would instantly have made him a target, but he managed to re-scan and touch himself up a bit after he escaped his crashed ship. Now, his black-blue plating might let him pass as a Decepticon, if only to a very cursory inspection. There's nothing he can do about his energy signature, other than keep his fields reined in tightly and hope to Primus that Soundwave is being kept busy.

Once the Vehicon patrol passes, he transforms and looks around, peering into the smashed windows of apartment buildings and the crumbled fronts of shops, but all he sees is destruction. If he has to admit it, it looks a little like Cybertron did before they fled the plant, and that's just as depressing as hell.

He's about to move on when he sees the trail of blood, still red and sticky, and Wheeljack reaches out to touch it, as though he expects it to be warm. It's not, of course, but he follows it anyways, pausing on the other side of the broken wall that Alexx is hiding behind.

"Hey," he calls out, at a loss for something else to say. "You alive in there? I'm not one of them."
 
At hearing such a gruff voice, Alexx froze in wrapping up her leg, fearing that it was indeed one of the Decepticons that had come back. However, from what she knew of the evil aliens, they wouldn’t give a hoot about whether she was alive or not, but still. “What if I am? Who’s askin’?” She asked, her own voice slightly gruff from where she’d been trapped under all that rubble and breathing in the dust.
 
Wheeljack takes that as an invitation to peek over the wall.

He's a bit bulkier than the Vehicons who sometimes patrol the ruined cities, and at just under twenty-five feet, he's as tall as most suburban houses. There's a uniqueness to his features and a softness that comes over his expression when he sees her that sets him apart from the faceless, rank-and-file Decepticons. Wheeljack's plating is scraped and dented, and his grey protoflesh is raked with old scars.

A human. It seems impossible that any of them are left alive, but here she is, clear as day, and the Vehicons woudn't be patrolling if they didn't expect to find something.

"Name's Wheeljack," he says. He's not supposed to reveal himself to organics, but he never cared much for the Autobot Code in the best of situations, and this is pretty damn far from the best of situations. "I'm one of those transforming aliens you hear about, only I'm the good kind."

He reaches down, setting his hand on the ground, palm up. "I get that you got no reason to trust me, but we need to get out of here before our Vehicon buddies get back."
 
Alexx looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. Well he was certainly more handsome than those Decepticons, and she did need to get out of here. She sighed and then looked down at her leg. “You ain’t gonna be squicked by my bodily fluids are ya?” She asked, motioning down to her still gushing leg.
 
“Eh, maybe a little, but my interior will survive, and you won’t if you stay here much longer.” Wheeljack looks down at the wound, but he’s not much a doctor for Cybertronians, let alone humans. If it were him, he’d just weld the leak shut, engage self-repair, and be fragging done with it.

Something tells him that’s not going to cut it here, and he picks her up carefully, trying not to jostle too much as he sets her inside one of his internal compartments. There’s a brief, disorienting flurry as he transforms again, and Alexx finds herself half-sitting, half-laying in the backseat of a Lancia Statos Turbo.

Not bad, considering there were only like two of those cars made.

“Are there any other humans around?” he asks as he takes off at a cruising pace, like he’s on a highway and not a city street. His voice comes from the speakers inside the car, and as he drives he looks around for a hospital. “Figure there must be, if the Vehicons are lookin’ for them.”
 
Alexx shrugged. “I haven’t seen anyone else, and I’ve been wandering around here for a few hours now,” she said. She then pulled her white tank top off, leaving her in just her black bra and showing off her toned stomach. She pressed the top against her wound, hissing in pain and giving a bit of a disgusted groan at the sickening squelch the already saturated cardigan fabric made.
 
“Sure, but that don’t mean no one’s left.”

If he’s trying to convince her or convince himself, he’s not sure. Wheeljack tries to remind himself that it’s not his job to feel guilty that he got dragged into Prime’s war, but it doesn’t work, and he restrains himself from barraging her with questions.

He noses down the streets, wary of another Vehicon patrol, though none materialize. Human hospitals don’t look like Cybertornian ones, but he’s seen enough of human media to know what he’s looking for, and after a few minutes of driving, he pulls into the front of a clinic. Part of the building’s been cyberformed, but the walls and roof are still standing, so there’s probably something useful inside.

“Can you walk? Oh, and hey, you got a name? Mine’s Wheeljack.”
 
Alexx looked at the dash, or what she thought was the place the voice was coming from and then looked at the half-cyberformed clinic. “Alexx, and yeah,” she said. She opened the door and got out, before hobbling into the clinic. There was actually no-one in there and because she knew her way around a medical clinic, she collected all that she needed and then hobbled back to where the car—Wheeljack was parked, and got back in. She put the stuff on the driver’s seat. “There’s no-one in there, so, we should get outta here,” she said.
 
“Not gonna get an arguement out of me,” Wheeljack says.

He backs up, pulls away from the clinic, and takes off down one of the soaring, cyberformed skyways. The raised roads seem like they’re everywhere, their layout without rhyme or reason. The ones on Cybertron led between the cities or important fuel and cargo stations, but here they’re just a confusing lattice.

It must be because Megatron isn’t a Prime, and without the Matrix, it was impossible to control the output of—

Of whatever the fragging artifact or relic he found up there.

Twenty minutes into the drive, Wheeljack hears Seeker engines in the distance, his plating crawling over the length of his frame. If he were human, he’d call the reaction Pavlovian, but instead, he pulls off the road, into a sheltered area under three bridges. An old rainwater runoff, maybe.

He’s going to transform again, and set Alexx down on something. “Here ya go,” he says, though he keeps glancing surreptitiously at the sky. “Let’s have a look at your leg. Not that I’m gonna to be much help, too damn big.”
 
Alexx shrugged and pulled on the hole in her jeans, ripping them even more, and removing her leg from them. She then began to clean it with the iodine, hissing as she did. Yes, it was painful, but she wasn’t going to let this...autobot know exactly how painful it actually was.

Once she had cleaned the wound, she brought a lighter out of her pocket and flicked it on, before running the needle she was going to use to stitch up her wound, through the flame. With that done, she threaded the needle with the dissolvable stitches, and then grabbed a nearby thick stick to put into her mouth.
 
Wheeljack watches all this, trying not to stare and mostly succeeding.

“That’s gonna—” He points with one at, at all of her. “Heal up? All on its own?”

It’s different, with Cybertronians. The frame can’t affect virtually any auto-repairs, and they need a medic to fix them, pounding out dents and replacing frayed cabling and torn plates.

He tries to think of the other things humans need, because they’re so fragile and ridiculous. Food and water. New clothes. Shelter, though she can probably sleep inside his frame and he doesn’t mind being in vehicle mode. It’s a bit of a tall order, and the best thing for her is probably more humans, but he’s at a loss as to where to find some. Though those Vehicons were looking for something.

“Hey,” he says, when she finishes. “You need to rest, or are you up for another drive?”
 
Alexx nodded her head and then began to stitch up her wound, hissing loudly in pain. Though the wound had become numb, it was still susceptible to pain, and the feeling of the needle going through her flesh on both sides, was almost too much for her to handle. Tears gathered in her eyes, but she didn't let them fall and the only noises that were coming out of her mouth were the hisses and quiet grunts.
 
Wheeljack, not entirely up on human biology, assumes she’s only saying yes to the first part, and as she finishes up, he’s going to step back into a clear area and transform again, swinging his passenger side door open.

“Hop in,” he says, as jovially as he can, even while he thinks of where they go that could be remotely safe. “The seats go back.”
 
Wrapping her wound up, Alexx stood and hobbled over to him and getting into the passenger seat. "There's a safe place I know of, it should be out of the way of any Decepti-creeps or whatever," she said, hissing as the bandage rubbed against her wound a little. She closed his door, and then wiped her hands off on her jeans, or what was left of them anyway.
 
"Sure thing," Wheeljack says, turning onto one of the arcing skyways and heading in the direction she indicates. It's not always easy going, because in some places, he has to navigate around cyberformed structures that didn't previously exist, or pull over and hide as squadrons of Seekers fly past overhead.

It feels a little like Cybertron, in it's last days, only lonelier. He's sure he's not the last Autobot, but it damn well seems like it.

"The Decepticons weren't always like this," he says, as a way of making conversation. "Used to be that the movement was about bringing justice to the elite of Cybertron. Mechs who were above the law. Ole Megs saw corruption everywhere, and I don't know where it all went wrong. Maybe he just wanted power from the beginning, and the hijacked their movement."
 
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