Predatory

Death Take Me!

 I made sure to be bright and early the next morning...perhaps a little too early. It was practically nighttime still. Here I was, standing in the combat room, peering out the large window at the dark sky. The window took up most of the long wall, it also faced the direction in which the sun would rise. 

I shifted my attention to my situation. Tarn wasn't even close to being here yet, so should I do some light training while I waited? I decided it wouldn't hurt to do some light stretches, and maybe a short practice. I slipped my bag off my shoulder and placed it by the door. Then I rooted about in it for a few ticks, before pulling out my datapad. I plugged in my audio frequency capacitor and went to my go to training playlist, which was musicals....again. The opera may be over, but I still held parts of it with me it seemed. The first song on the list was of Human origin, (Ok, who was I kidding, most of the songs in my playlist were human), the song was "Til I Hear You Sing" sung by Ramon Karimloo. I loved this song, I loved the singer too. He had quite a bit of talent I must admit. 

I began doing some warm up stretches, and some light bar work. Thankfully there was a table in the room that served the purpose quite nicely. Then I moved on to practice on pointe.

 The Madame had always been strict, no ballet unless it was on pointe, and practices would always go on for four to five mega-ticks with no breaks. The memories I had with her had never been anything but painful. I could remember practices alone had hurt so badly that I had sometimes thought dying might be preferable. However my desire to live had outlasted the temporary pain. Some of the other young femmes hadn't been as strong willed as I. Some had literally danced themselves to death, others went insane and killed themselves, still more had run away. It had only been a few that had stayed. And they were some of the strongest bots I had ever met, and probably who I would ever meet again. 

I shook my helm, I couldn't think of them right now. That thought would only distract me from my purpose. the song switched, and I began to lose myself into my dance. 

It was  a strange form of training for combat to the onlooker, but the type of ballet I had always been trained in, was purposefully designed to max your body to the limit. It looked beautiful sure, but it was meant to hurt and break the weak. Especially if done for long periods of time. I would know. The Madame used to make me dance so long that my peddes would bleed. It had hurt so badly, I remember crying one of my first times, but then she had smacked my face and looked me in the optic.

"Pain is just the feeling of weakness leaving the body" she would say. And then add another mega-tick to my practice time. I had quickly learned to mask the pain. 

While her methods were most definitely horrible, I knew that without her training or her shelter, I would not be alive today. And for that I would remain eternally grateful, despite the painful memories that came from her establishment. A few songs passed, and my peddes were just beginning to hurt. I kept going despite the pain, twirling and leaping about the room, completely lost in song. I felt the sparkbreak, the confidence, the happiness, the despair of each of the songs as they changed. Time began to run together, but it didn't matter if I had been dancing for eternity or just a few moments. The war, the death, the sadness, the pain....it all seemed to melt away whenever I began to dance. Not that it didn't exist, it just didn't matter. As if I was on the outside looking in. It was a wonderous feeling, and so freeing, better than drinking easily. 

I probably would have ended up dancing for forever, until a flash of purple caught my optic. Suddenly I was jarred back into reality. I skidded to a halt. Sunlight had filled the room, and there, standing in the doorway, was Tarn. He was watching me curiously, and holding my datapad. He must have been flipping through everything I had loaded into it. 

I suddenly realized I was still in the middle of a pirouette, and straightened, wringing my servos behind me. I looked down, extremely embarrassed. How long had he been there?! He had told me to meet him before the sun was up, so....? 

I looked back up at him. He didn't say anything. And neither did I. We stayed like this for a few moments. But then he began chuckling, as if he found something particularly amusing, he turned out of the door, gesturing for me to follow. I reluctantly complied, just praying that he wasn't too angry.

 I grabbed my bag on my way out of the door, and promptly wished that Tarn was angry with me instead of the fate I was about to meet. Because around the door, and watching me from behind the one way glass, was Megatron and the rest of the DJD. I. Wanted. To. Die.

My servo began violently shaking, easily worse than yesterday. I didn't even try to hide it, mostly because I was paralyzed in a mixture of embarrassment, terror, panic, and the urge to run very far away, curl up in a hole, and die. 

Megatron was smiling good naturally and began clapping. He was quickly joined by Helex, Tesarus and Kaon. Vos was staring me down with his arms firmly crossed.

 Not that I had enough time to really register this, because shortly afterwards my vision clouded over, and I blacked out from panic. This was shaping up to be a fun day.

Hello again friends! How are you all doing? I hope you all had good days! It took me a while to figure out how to write this chapter, but I hoped it turned out well! How do you think the DJD are going to react to meeting Dreadflight next chapter? Hehhehehe.  Anyway, I'm sure I have no idea how things are going to go.....none at all. 😉 My dog is making sure I remember to feed him. Looks like I have to go do things now. -_-.  Thanks for reading and talk to you tomorrow!

~swordsandroses