The Assassin and the Engineer

Nightmares

Crossblade has gotten up early, and was sipping on cube of energon while she stared out the small window in her workshop. She had gotten a good sleep for the first time in years, and the energon has processed nicely. As she tapped her foot and finished the cube, she felt her thoughts drifting to SilverDart.

And SilverDart's effect on GoldenClaw.

The effects of her reckless goal to kill her sister was beginning to take its toll. Goldenclaw has been getting nightmares of if she succeeded and how she would have lived with herself. She hasn't gotten something close to good sleep in days, too haunted by the hushed voices of the dead. To try and work around this, she went to practice aiming with her rifles. Even her skill has been affected.

Crossblade sighed, and set her cube down. As much as she loved the quiet, it was becoming stifling. Crossblade picked up her spear and rolled to a place where she could train. If she was going to be GoldenClaw's partner, she had to fend for herself. She slipped into the small gym, ignoring the Vehicons that used the gym to slack off. She pulled up a basic hologram, and began to run through some drills.

The tolls of the nightmares got so bad that Goldenclaw would sometimes hallucinate. When Starscream took notice of what's been happening to her, the femme nearly snapped and would have ripped him apart had it not been for intervention. She tried to take her mind off of this by aiming at a target dummy and shooting.

When she looked to what she actually shot, she huffed. She missed.

Crossblade panted, but was rather satisfied with her efforts. She had taken down seven 'enemies' in a row, and had only been hit a few times. She grinned, then turned off the holograms. Crossblade slipped the spear back in its holster, then rolled to the training dummies. She propped up a dummy, and took aim with her small blasters.

She had skimmed the dummy's side, but that wasn't good enough.

As a matter of fact, Goldenclaw inspected all of her dummies. All of the bullets aimed for nothing fatal or even at the wall. Heavily annoyed and confused to a panic by this, she decided try and shoot from a different angle. She propped herself on the ledge above the targets and took aim for a dummy behind the head. "There we go...." She murmured, satisfied that she wasn't losing her streak.

What she didn't expect was to see her sister turn to look at her. She looked damaged beyond repair; dead.

The sight made the femme gasp and pull back while shooting. The bullet aimed nowhere near her target. She hallucinated that happening.

Crossblade yelped as a bullet whizzed just past her helm, jumping back. She looked up, and saw a familiar face on a ledge. She exhaled, but began to calm. She walked over the ledge, and climbed clumsily up. She mimicked GoldenClaw's position, but looked over at her. "You alright?"

The femme flinched at the touched and looked to who it was, optics wide and shaking. "....Fine." She let out before placing the rifle on her back. "I...I need to have Knockout check on my optics. I'll be right back." She quickly excused herself while trying to lie again.

As Claw walked away, Crossblade frowned. She walked out of the gym and returned to her workshop. But she did let Scrapper out to play.

Scrapper ran out of the workshop excitedly, his tail of connected chain links wagging. He sniffed the ground, and followed the trail of a familiar scent.

Goldenclaw marched the path to her room, not bothering to look up. She accidentally ran into someone, in which she apologized to before continuing her path.

What she didn't realize yet was that she ran into Soundwave.

Soundwave stepped back, silent as ever. He was going to turn and leave after the femme apologized, but the scared look in her eyes unnerved him. He pointed at GoldenClaw, silently questioning her demeanour.