NOVA STORM'S BEST AND GREATEST INBOX

[binary_runaway]

Hey, hi, this is Nova Storm! You found me but you also really super didn't, haha! Do the thing so I can do the other thing back, okay?

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[asceticamnesiac]

Monk stood silent as he gave her space to vent, tensing up as she mentioned what happened to Skywarp. Maybe the latter was fine now, but Monk had had a feeling she had been omitting something when she told him how she was.

But even as he listened to her words, he was caught up in his own thoughts. He'd been right. Chill and Skywarp had acted like it was nothing, but he was right. Monk could barely spend time on Ekosi without being in danger, and they went to the heart of council space. He wasn't much for strategizing or making plans but even he could see what a bad idea this was.

"You shouldn't have gone," he muttered eventually, as if this was an immutable fact. He looked up, meeting her gaze. "None of you should have. I'm grateful for the outcome whether it was for me or not, but it wasn't worth the risk."

"I'm sorry about Skywarp, I wouldn't have expected her to run like that, or to push you away. Whenever we have spoken she has always put you above all."

[binary_runaway]

Bitter, sour hate flooded up Nova Storm's throat and choked off the snarl that wanted to come out. Her vents were coming fast and ragged and she slammed her pede into the wall again and again, denting it almost in the shape of-

"Yeah!" She gasped, vents rising to a shriek that wasn't coming out of her mouth for once. "Yeah, I know it was dumb! It was dumb and reckless even with him planning everything out and- and yeah!" Slam, crunching metal and flaring optics, "We were potentially trading living people for some dead afterburner I never even actually met who can't even care anymore or get mad about it, but- but lines in the sand, no more, it-"

She shook her head and jerked it up again, baring her teeth, but it wasn't really at him at all. "I messed up, and she left! I always mess up, and you- you don't! Things are easy for you, it's effortless, cause you're better than me! You've always been better, and-"

She stumbled back as the shriek drowned out the too fast whirl of her twin spark, Skywarp's spark, then lurched forward again, terror and guilt and grief all wrapped up in snapping teeth. "You still aren't good enough! You're better and it isn't enough!"

[asceticamnesiac]

Nova Storm was repeating the very thoughts Monk had been turning over in his head since Chill showed him their 'prize'. That no matter how much he had cared for Starscream, it wasn't worth losing the five of them to secure him a more honorable death. True, he had faith in Starscream's planning and strategy, but clearly it hadn't been enough. Then Nova Storm turned the conversation on it's head, throwing those same assumptions back in his face

"Stop."

Monk was standing dangerously still, his hands slowly clenching into fists, bristling. He had taken more than enough of her vitriol at this point. The floor began to vibrate with a quiet, rumbling hum so low it was felt more than heard.

"You think it is easy? You think I am faultless because I can I remain calm when I am wronged? For the last 300 years I have performed rites for the dead, and consoled the living. I started with nothing, and I became the person they needed, day by day. I learned how to move past my own thoughts and be a pillar for others, to tap into the part of me that could do that; and it is something I have tried to do on this ship, for you and others. Yet every day I am less and less of myself, and it is harder and harder to do what I have done for so long. Do not act like you know who I am, when I myself do not know in full."

He let out a sharp bark of a laugh, knowing he wasn't following his own words right now, though the part about it being harder was true. Their escapade had shoved his past in his face, and he was keenly aware of how out of balance he was.

"I am tired of you using me as an object to further your own self pity. If you regret your actions, then fix them."

[binary_runaway]

Nova Storm slammed a fist into the wall. "You don't get to tell me to do anything! Not you, not Prime, not anybody! She told me to listen, even Star told me to-"

All of the mess of emotions combined with a furious, fearful drive to make him stop, this was her hab! Her space! He was making it worse, here! Skywarp was gone and he was here in her place, accusing her of the same things everyone always did, and-

Her plating flared wide in a threat display and she snapped her teeth again. "You want me to stop? MAKE ME!"

An instant later, Nova Storm burst into motion. Her jet boots had an unreasonably fast kick, launching her at Monk faster than even she could keep up with, without her wings to stabilize her flight. She'd been practicing day in and day out, but it wasn't enough, it was NEVER-

[asceticamnesiac]

Just as quickly Monk was moving, keyed in on her attack. He'd fought plenty of flier's who relied on their thrusters in close combat. He snatched her arm out of the air, using her own momentum to turn and slam her into the floor.

"No one can tell you to do anything, can they? Even those you care about! Or you would have listened to them instead of whining about how you didn't!"

He flipped her onto her front, pinning her to the ground, a savage smile on his face. Now this, this was easy. Effortless. Taking down one enemy after another, knowing exactly where to cause them pain, where they're weaknesses were- and Nova Storm had an obvious one.

CRACK CRACK

A sound like lightning cutting the air snapped around them, the priming warning of a devastating attack. Monk pressed his hand into the small of Nova's back, between the welding lines of her damaged wing struts. Everything shook like a earthquake was rattling the room as Monk held back the sonic boom that would have followed. The momentos on the counter clattered and bounced, and Monk himself winced at the vibrational force trapped in his arm and chest. He'd forgotten how bad the recoil was when he did this, and all of Starscream's lectures on the matter poured into his mind. Still, there was some value in literally rattling your enemies when intimidating, or threatening, or torturing them for information. He gritted his teeth before speaking, instinct and practice keeping his voice steady despite it all.

"I can't tell you what to do," he said levelly, "so stop and yield of your own accord. Or would you rather I make you?"

The thrumming vibrations were only getting stronger, and it was only then Monk stopped to consider whether or not this was a bluff. It hadn't been, when he started.

[binary_runaway]

Nova Storm didn't answer at first except in the form of shrieks. She didn't consciously feel the fear that made her thrash under Monk's hands and her vents whistle in her audials, but she didn't have to. This was what her and Skywarp had fought about, about refusing to listen to signals her body gave her when something was a threat. Not listening-

Her optics were wide and white with terror at the threat to where her wings had been, at the feel of a weapon charging, aiming for her wings, pinned like a bug.

"Say not a word. Say not a word and you'll see her."

"Let me go let me go let me gogogogogogo-" Built into a rising scream of outage and terror. She bucked again, kicked and howled and attempted to scratch, heaving for vents that weren't coming, but she refused to give in refused to taint her room her safety with the shame of it with the memory of this room no longer being hers.

"You want me to show my throat?" She hissed and spat out static. "Make me!"

[asceticamnesiac]

Monk didn't budge as she fought against him, scowling down at her. Of course she was being stubborn. This was Nova Storm, and from what he had seen she could never see when she was digging her own grave, even now. Literally in this case, seeing as a fully charged blast would do much more than injure her back.

"That's not what I said," he flatly replied, echoing his own words from when she had last hounded him on the network. The noise began to die down, but he winced as he moved back, holding his arm tight to his chest as he did. He had definitely forgotten this feeling. He was too distracted to notice how far back he was standing.

BAAAM

As Monk stepped against the wall between the two rooms, the energy still built up rang through the structure. He'd suppressed the sound as much as he could and so it didn't bring the wall down, but several of the weakened panels around the door came loose and fell to the floor. He took a deep breath as he stoop up straight and stared her down, his body still trembling.

"Still think I'm so perfect now?"
That spiteful grin crossed his face again, looking both wholly out of place and precisely right for a ruthless seeker. "I said stop using me in order to feel worse about yourself. I won't give you the satisfaction of playing into your hand."

It didn't last long though as he continued to breath deep, trying to calm himself down, fading fast into a pitying frown. Nova Storm was struggling from someone leaving her, and here he was throwing aside everything he had just preached was his job. So much for consoling the suffering. The regret sank in hard, his grip on his arm tightening.

"Isn't it exhausting to live like this, lashing out at everything? at yourself?"

[binary_runaway]

For long moment, Nova Storm wasn't answering, couldn't answer. Until that last part. She froze, optics going if possible even wider and more colorless. Then all of those moments ended.

This, far more than even the threat, made Nova Storm sag and fall out of the tense resistance to anything and everything being said to her. She dug her fingers into the floor and reached out desperately through the bond for reassurance, but Skywarp wasn't just far away, she'd muted her end the same way Nova Storm had her own. Skywarp wasn't going to --couldn't-- send back warmth through the bond in response to Nova's own stubbornness and guilt and hate dragging things up as proof that her own inadequacies justified it all, to all of these things being told to her in the one place that was supposed to always be safe to hide from them in.

There was nowhere left to run from what he'd said, what the prime had said, too, and something brittle cracked in her head with an almost audible sound. She always had needed physical fights with Skywarp to ever admit she'd been wrong.

Nova pressed her helm into the floor and she shuddered and croaked out, "...Yes. Yes, it's exhausting."