Beast Wars Anonymous:

Beast Wars and all related belong to Hasbro. The story, its original contents and ideas, and any original characters belong to the author and cannot be used or reprinted without the author's permission.

To Touch the Sky
by Amanda Flowers (SamusStar@aol.com)

The great red hand reached up, up, into the twilight sky, and wrapped itself around the image of the moon.

Fancy that.

He could crush the moon.

Just imagining it amused him. His gaze wandered over to the other, slightly paler and farther away, but yes, indeed, within the reach of his omnipresent arm: nothing but a speck between his parted thumb and forefinger.

He fantasized just for a moment that he was one like Unicron, and squeezed his hands, grasping nothing but air.

Below his feet tide was rolling in, and directly before him a delicate Cybertronian frame was slowly washing out to sea. Soon it would fade into the distance, be nothing more than a mark on the water's edge, and, finally, simply part of the night. A passenger on strange constellations, on the edge where the sky's darkness and the ocean's darkness were the same.

She had been lovely, slightly wily. It had been good tracking her down silently, good assaulting her suddenly. Her fear at that moment had been palpable, warm as fire, thick as the churning sands beneath his feet. It had been good seeing terror blossom in her optics, seeing her frantic search for an impossible retreat. It had been good to split her open slowly, feeling her mech fluids drip down his arm as he held her suspended before the dying sun, the scent intoxicating and delighting. It had been good to rip plating from her struggling body like bark from an aging tree. It had been good to snap her legs apart, while she screamed... It had been good to watch the blue glow die from her eyes.

And it had been good to at last devour her waiting spark, feeling its warmth and true life inside of him, if only for a moment.

Yes, she, now floating beyond reach, would never know how much he had truly loved her. Her pain had been a feast for the senses.

Click.

He sighed deeply.

"You know, Depth Charge, you and I never talk anymore."

"I'm not here to talk , X. I'm here to take you down." The hefty blaster nestled itself closer into its target's blind spot. Its presence should have been as a death knell in X's aural sensors, but he was never afraid of dying. "I should probably offer to take you in peacefully," the hunter continued, "but I'm almost hoping that's not gonna be an option."

A pace. A pause, a nanoclick--maybe two, maybe ten.

"No...sometimes you are the fun; sometimes you just ruin it. Tonight, you're ruining it again."

"Fun?" Depth Charge did not share X's idea of what was fun. "Yeah, I know your fun . How many innocent lives have you ruined today, mutant?"

"Oh, just one. But...it was a good one."

It may have been the pervasive scent still lingering in the air, or a glimpse of the shattered parts still littering the tongues of faraway waves, or some kind of sixth sense, some prior knowledge, but, the hunter knew.

"You...you slag-sucking son of Starscream..."

"Say that like you mean it."

And in that instant there was a blur as a thousand things happened at once, as plasma blasts lit the air; as metal limbs flailed, punching, slashing; as the songs of missiles interrupted the rhythm of the waves; as titans warred on the edge of the beach.

Depth Charge emerged from his starhopper, and slammed the hatch. It was a closet of a vehicle--just barely enough room for him in the cockpit, room for one more in the hold in the back. He stepped down the short stairs and onto the cold metal floor of the hangar, gazing up at the glaring fluorescents, then down... at a familiar figure, narrow, blue and silver, barely as high as his waist. Frustration echoed on his face.

"I wish you'd quit following me around like this."

"What?" The precocious female played innocent, almost bold-facedly lying to the mutant hunter. "I don't follow. It's coincidence."

"I bet it is," Depth Charge replied sarcastically, taking another step away from his ship. "You just happened to be at the last three colonies I've visited. This your idea of an extended vacation plan?"

"Maybe," she responded coyly, her optics raising to take in all of the other Maximal's frame. It was his height that was the most startling; the way he enveloped any room, even the loud public hangar, by gazing over its other occupants. The colors of his paneling were impressive, as well, layered teal, blue, black. He was never unarmed; blasters were strapped where there was room to strap them. His yellow, mask-like vocal receptor betrayed no emotion, but his orange optics were probing hers, quizzically but unamusedly. She decided to be honest. "Hey, if your sensors can home in on one lousy spark, you think I can't keep tabs on your ship?"

"One lousy..." Sudden anger overtook him, but he took a deep breath, calmed himself down. "This isn't just any spark, Skylark. This... this is..."

"Hey, I know what it is. Remember? I saw it. On Tegmen Three."

"Yeah: how could I forget? And you've been a bug in my ducts ever since."

She watched him go, out the double doors on the far wall, the only moving figure she would focus on. Skylark stood a moment to think, watching the doors slam shut again, paying no mind to the sounds behind her of landing and refueling ships. She folded her blue limbs into themselves, slid wings from her back, and, as a jet flies, flew away.

How short the days seemed here. Yet all the citizens acted older than those of the last colony, as if a fifteen-megacycle day was somehow equivalent, as if the passing of a sun was the only true way to measure age, and not the passing of each single cycle. It was a shame--he liked the young ones the best. They were always taken with projects left undone; they had so much fear, so many helpless pleas. Some even had fight left in them, and would struggle fiercely; they were entertaining, too. It was important to interrupt the ones with plans. The purge had been good on Tegmen Three, where the colonists were relatively unweaned and their energon mines and research projects were all ripe for harvest. Oh, the researchers...they were always fun. Some never left their labs at all; sunlight was their first torture. That would teach them to clone; that would teach them to try to improve... The best purge by far had been Omicron, nearly four stellar cycles ago. If it wasn't for that...little mistake...

X learned from mistakes. Perhaps mistakes would make an endless existence interesting. The knowledge of his own immortality was often a burden. Why should he already feel so ancient?

X leaned against the outcropping rock. The ocean was behind him, somewhere, and before him was the very edge of this colony, primarily residential. He was nearly out of their range; if he zoomed his optics in, carefully, he could detect some movement. Easy targets, but, not particularly fun. His optics panned the noonday sky, seeking youth...and finding it. Familiar, even. But, wait, then... He could wait a little longer, for he had nothing but time.

Depth Charge had found her again, and by accident. She was sitting on a rock overlooking the beach, contemplating the waves as they rolled under the low sun. The air was more her element, yet the blue on blue before her captured her own colors neatly. The genesis of wings on her shoulder blades barred her vision slightly from behind, but his low voice did not startle her.

"Ya know, I could have sworn I had this beach evacuated two megacycles ago. And told the other colonists to lock down and stay on alert. But looks like you, the tourist, didn't get that info."

"They never tell tourists anything," she muttered.

"I'm telling you now. I have it tracked. It's somewhere on this coast."

"That's fine."

He stepped in front of her view of the water, blocking out the sun and casting a shadow over her so harsh it took a nanoclick to adjust. "Get indoors," he demanded.

She stared up at him.

"You think you're gonna be some kind of help? Is that it? Pint-sized wrist-blasters and a long-gammed kick are gonna take down Protoform X?"

"Worth a try," she answered, trying to convince him, trying to convince herself.

"You trying to impress me?" Depth Charge paused. "I'm sorry about your mentor, but this isn't the way to fix it."

"He was more than my mentor!"

"Oh. This your rebound? Cute. Always go in for a taller man..."

Skylark was aghast. "You think..."

"Sure I do." His optics widened suddenly. "It's close. You get inside, or you'll be scrap before sunrise."

"You know for sure?" She thought a moment. "It. You ever think maybe it's just a freebot? Like you and me."

"Sure. Times when X is a slagging civil freebot. Usually at a trial, with a squadron of lawyers. Those are times I wake up screaming."

Skylark looked confused. "So you're saying..."

"Protoform X is Maximal stock. Maximal mess-up. I'm supposed to bring it in functional. Like I really have a choice." Depth Charge glared at her. "All gung-ho about taking on X by yourself, and what you know about him couldn't even fill a floppy."

"Tell me about Protoform X."

"Tell you..." Pain flickered across his normally steel-cold gaze. "I couldn't even begin to tell you."

Skylark had the momentary notion that she had finally found a chink in the hunter's plated armor. Maybe they were wrong: those who had said it wasn't possible to know him, who said he was obsessed, and cold-hearted. She wanted to ask him so much more, about all the places he'd seen and about people he'd known, and what his quest was like, what it was like to witness things he saw... She wanted to ask about Omicron...about... And, maybe, maybe even he had been right, maybe she saw something in him that fascinated her, and, maybe, someday...

All that was processed at lightning speed, and gone just as quickly when Depth Charge interrupted it. "All I can say is, what you saw Tegmen Three ain't a fraction of what I saw on Omicron. Everyone lost that day. Not just you. And I..." He grew somewhat softer. "Listen to me, and listen good. If you value your spark, you'll get inside tonight. And don't try to follow me."

He walked off down the beach, leaving deep prints in the dry sand. Five paces. Six.

"I'm not following you," Skylark called back. She hadn't moved at all.

"Get inside!" He took another step. "I'm not looking back."

He didn't.

He walked off far beyond the horizon, while Skylark, reluctant to leave or move at all, sat and watched the setting sun.

"He's very cold, isn't he?" asked a voice, very different, but oddly familiar. Warm.

"Yes," she answered absently.

"He has good reason to be..."

She turned and saw the giant hulk of the being who had shattered her entire world, and all the fight in her was blown away on the ocean breeze.

"Did you love her, hunter?" X's next blow, somewhere between a punch and a shove, was caught roughly by Depth Charge's extended arm.

"No." Depth Charge grunted with the force of the blocked blow.

"Pity. I did."

"Loved her 'for dinner,'" the hunter supposed, freeing his arm from the lock in which it was now held.

"No. Completely," X responded.

"Bully for you." Depth Charge brought up his knee, knocking into his opponent where his armor was limited. X's green optics reflected the pain. With the lower part of his leg, Depth Charge caught onto X's knee, tripping him, sending him sprawling into the pounding surf. Without another blink he brought around his giant plasma rifle and fired--once, twice, three times into X's legs, then four into his chestplate. He aimed the weapon at the mutant's head.

"For high crimes against Cybertron and the Maximal government, for the murders of the citizens of Omicron, Altair, Denabola, Tegmen Three...and Primus only knows what else... I'm placing you under arrest."

"About time."

The next blast silenced any further remark.

The great purple claw nearly blended in with the night sky as it reached up, framing itself around the single, silver moon. A cratered moon, different from the smoother satellites of that world so long ago.

The giant crab made one motion, clamping the claw slowly as if to crush that moon...and remembered.

"You are coming back, old friend. You are coming back... And, maybe this time..."

A tiny streak of light raced across the sky, like a starship's tail.

No, not yet. But soon.