Chapter Text
Prowl POV
I onlined with a pounding in my helm, my processor felt like it had been bashed in by constructicon, and I would know, I've had to deal with it several times over the course of the cybertronian war. I run a systems check just to make sure everything's working in order, I am moderately disappointed to see that my TacNet is running at only 12% capacity compared to its usual 50% that I have it on normally.
I feel my memory sequence boot up and I freeze for a second, battlefield, quintessons, Optimus's Battle Cry, chaos, the space Bridge, explosion.
I stand up immediately and get into a, sloppy, but necessary combat pose with my rifle. From my shattered memories of the past few joors I can likely deduce that I had fallen into a quintesson space bridge, great, now great, just my luck. Once I finally get over my self-deprecation I begin to look around me, expecting something, a cell, torture room, experimentation chamber, but what greeted my optics was so much worse.
I'm still in the main control room connected to the space bridge but instead of being swarmed by quintessons like I expected to be, I am instead surrounded only by their desecrated corpses, some look like they've been mauled and chewed up others have obvious marks in them and holes that appear to be from a blaster from a make I do not know. A shiver runs through my frame as I try to imagine what had happened here, at the side of it my TacNet spirals, as much as it can at 20%, and tries to come up with a answer for the anomaly in front of me.
What could have killed these- what could have killed the one species that has no natural predators in their entire recorded history, creatures that have taken down Optimus Prime?
I stand up and begin to explore the Outpost, most of the equipment inside is still intact, so with a bit of jerry rigging I should be able to contact the Ark, or at least the Lost Light, maybe even the Nemesis if I get unlucky enough. I shiver at the thought of the uncomfortable beds in the nemesis, I had to spend three joors looking for a pillow for my door wings, and even then it it was very thin and uncomfortable. No respect for comfort.
I dragged myself out of my low processor daze, why am I even thinking about pillows???? I should be focusing on survival.
I hold my rifle tight in my servos as I quietly clear each corner of the quintesson facility, the farther I go into the facility the more my horror grows, I can feel my spark pulsing erratically in my spark chamber, I can feel my TacNet trying to spit out half probable probabilities at the horrors that greeted me with open arms and unguarded secrets.
The hallways and rooms were filled with corpses, some were rotted and abandoned in a hurry, others look like they have been killed days ago, one even had blood still sluggishly flowing out of it, fresh kill, hours old.
Eventually I enter the containment area, where the quintessons keep their test subjects and prisoners, not that there's much of a difference to them, I've seen bots come back with missing limbs and optics, and in one horrible case, a missing spark chamber, I shutter quietly at the memory of the funeral for the poor Seeker.
That's not even acknowledging those bots that never came back at all.
My vents freeze as I taken the sight before me, one of the containment rooms, the larger ones meant for dangerous creatures, my processor reminds me of the time Optimus was rescued from one before, luckily before they did anything to him. But the walls were inches thick, completely blast resistant, last time it took Megatron's fusion cannon to break down the door.
I stare in horror, at the sight of a shredded room, claw marks dragged across the walls like energon stains at a crime scene, I can almost imagine the sound it would have made, the clawing screaming sound of metal being torn open like paper. The part that catches my eye the most however is the door, the absolutely mangled door, that looked like it had been shredded clawed and beaten into from the inside.
My TachNet suddenly spins up something, something I had not bothered to question in the horror, what made the claw marks? What broke out of a quintesson cell? What is currently loose on the same planet as me?
Eventually after wandering around for a while I managed to find the exit of the facility. It opens up into a large organic field, implying that I am on a organic or at the very least techno organic planet. Of course, because Primus hates me, that or Unicron finds my life particularly entertaining, either could work.
And both options are as horrible as they are unlikely.
I exit the facility hesitantly, my rifle at the ready, I don't know what's out here, and just because all the quintessons inside are dead, doesn't mean there are in a few stragglers or Scouts outside.
I hear screeching in the distance, quintesson screeching. I quickly raised my rifle in the direction of it, using what little access I have to my TacNet in order to calculate how quickly it will be here. But as I calculate, a thought pokes into my processor, that's not a normal quintesson screech, it doesn't sound like it's hunting, or even alerting the rest of its kind. No, this feels like a warning, like a cry for help that will never be answered, like a feral beast making one last hail primus attempt to try and survive. My confusion is soon answered as I see the quintesson escape the mess of organic matter.
I raised my rifle to take the shot but freeze, the quintesson is not alone, the cybertronian- no the creature, it is beautiful in the way a smelter or well trained army is. Dangerous, so very dangerous, yet there's a beauty to its power. It moves with a grace that feels disportionate to its larger frame. It's frame is white and black with striking accents of red and blue that catch the light in such a way it could not be mistaken for anything other than a warning, like the crystals and Praxus, so sharp they'd cut you if even laid a digit on them. It's frame is made up of rounded edges and it's upper half resembles an impurata, however it's lower half, it's lower half could only be compared to that of a predacon from ages long past, it's legs are digitigrade and both it's servos and peds are complemented with razor sharp claws. Claws that my processor matches to the marks left inside The quintesson facility.
A humorous part of me that is trying to cope with what I'm seeing remarks that all it's missing is a tail.
Every part of my processor screams as I look at it, it tries to rationalize it, maybe an impurata victim that escaped Cybertron and hid out on this planet and has just been hunting quintessons ever since.
That image is shattered almost immediately, what I once thought was a visor and an oddly shaped faceplate that separates into a wide unhinged jaw like a coilsnake. It's teeth cause my processor to lag, they're not blunt like cybertronian teeth, it's not modded in the way some cybertronians do. No, these are razor sharp, each individual one looks like it have been sharpened for vorns before being placed expertly into its mouth and some twisted form of art, some horrified part of my processor starts trying to figure out how those teeth work.
My processor is interrupted when I'm once again reminded of the horrors of this creature as it pins down the quintesson while it's on all fours, claws tearing into the quintessons armor like it was made to do this, it reminds me of Bluestreak to complaining it took six shots in order to pierce their armor in battle.
I feel myself freeze, all of my pistons locking in place and my energon freezing through my cables. I watch frozen as that serrated jaw leans down to the quintessons neck and bites, it lifts its helm up slightly. With no resistance whatsoever, it completely severed a chunk of flesh off the quintesson, then it swallows it like nothing happened, it continues this pattern for ages, I couldn't tell you how long.
After the creature had finished mutilating the quintesson it looks towards me finally, it's a maw finally snapping closed. A part of my processor tries to rationalize it as nothing more than a visual malfunction in my optics, but it's still covered in the evidence of its actions, green acidic internal fluid covers the front of its body.
I feel my fuel tank try to purge at the side of it, it just sitting there casually, like it is not just caused my processor to fry itself in the name of preserving what little sanity I had left.
It tilts its head as if questioning at me, a part of me thinks it's inviting me over, however the rational part of my processor overrides it with the idea that it's most likely a threat. It makes a sound I can only compare to music, not at all like cybertronian language, smooth and fluid, with notes stopping and starting again with different pitches, once again it is in its own Twisted way beautiful, I quietly think.
I get no warning as my processor shuts down from the shock of what I've witnessed, I can only pray that it full and has no desire to attempt eating me, and most likely succeed.