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Nemesis Calling	By : KoiLungfish Category: Transformers > Beast Wars Views: 5638 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Nemesis Calling
- 1
Title: Nemesis Calling Author: href="mailto:spacepriest@dial.piex.com">Koi Lungfish Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations from Beast Wars ((c) Hasbro, Ltd). Used without permission. Text (c) 2003, Koi Lung Fish (Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.) Subject: Rampage has Depth Charge at his mercy. Continuity: Beast Wars.
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.” - Aristotle, Politics

Depth Charge awoke to agony; deep-shot, soul-wracking agonies of guilt and shame, the nightmare echoes of his failure, the consuming flames of vengeance rendering down his mind into drops of pain; all his comforts, all his familiar demons. There was new pain this time, though; like splinters shooting through limbs, knives in his joints, like blades sawing his muscles-cables, cracks in his struts; relay damage, temporary immobility, just a matter of time until he could move. His remora gun was gone, and deep inside his chest he felt splinters of metal driven into sensitive circuit-tissue; fused, broken, useless, like his limbs.
Until someone came to rescue him, he would lie helpless and hurt; bait for X.
Memory stabbed him in the forehead: the battle with Rampage, the explosion and then – the long fall into darkness and silence.
He did not lie now where he had fallen then, that was certain; the dank, silent cavern, lit from high above by a jagged gash in the roof – in those pale rays he lay prone and paralysed, sprawled in the chilly light like a toy put on the shelf against later play – this place was new to him.
“Ahh, you’ve awakened! So glad you could rejoin me!”
The voice, however, was as familiar as was his own.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Depth Charge groaned, as red death melted out of the gloom, into the patch of cold light.
“What, from a little pinprick like that? Oh, it hurt, friend, that was pain beyond your puny mortal experience, but it was worth every scream.” He raked his hand across his shoulder, exposing the spark casing and the eternal scintillation within. “Maim me, and I straighten; snap me, and I mend. Shatter me in pieces, and I freeze back together. You didn’t kill me … you freed me.” A bleak snicker. “As you have always done.”
“You’re talking scrap.”
“Ah, Fishface, you continue to hide from the truth.” Rampage seated himself on the ground at Depth Charge’s hip, crab-limbed pauldrons stretching out in a provocative display of faux-dismemberment, a mnemonic for his wake of destruction. He picked up Depth Charge’s right hand in his own, stroking silver fingers as if fascinated by the play of thin light on battered metal. Depth Charge winced as the crab forced his fingers to flex – a child-thing exploring the articulation of a new doll, a monster-cub playing with its half-dead food – each movement sent slivers of anticipain up his arm. “Alone at least, friend. Now we can finally play in peace – oho, what fun we’ll have!”
Depth Charge fought to move, finding only fresh agonies in his weakness – echoes sounding, memories coming to life, the long-dreamed nightmare becoming waking hell – the repeat of a bloody, broken night: Omicron rising. His spirit, lost, sank into the stark marsh of imprisoned torpor that he had struggled for so long to escape; sank back down, into the foul arms of the undine called captivity. The cold currents of defeat dragged him down into harsh mire, to be forgotten in the frigid ground, a nameless, faceless victim throttled and buried in secret. He turned his face away from the crab, his neck protesting in molten hisses against the movement, the pain numbed by the chill of the black ice encroaching upon his spark; he lay still and silent, and waited for X to start breaking his fingers again.
Crab hands grasped his head and forcibly turned him to stare into green optics alight, or so it seemed in queer illusion, with concern.
“Why stop fighting, friend?” Rampage asked. “Where has your rage gone?”
“Slag off,” Depth Charge replied sullenly. “It’s over. You knew it would happen, one day, same as I did. One of us had to fall – and it’s me.” His voice sank into dark water. “Why should I fight? You’ve won, X. I was your victim from the start. I’ve chased you back to the beginning.” He turned away again, exposing the thick muscle-cords of his neck. “Why don’t you finish what you started on Omicron?”
Rampage bowed his head, nuzzling Depth Charge’s abdomen, the spark-case shielded beneath mercurial armour, witch-crooked crablegs making arabesques above his cripple-arched shoulders. “Oh, you fear me so,” the crab growled contentedly. “Yet beneath the fear, the sweet fear, what is this I feel from you? What is this feeling?”
“Just do it!” Depth Charge screamed. “Kill me!”
Rampage raised his head and leant over Depth Charge, staring down into his bloodstained optics. “So eager for death, so soon? I thought you were made of harder metal, Fishface. Still, I can hardly blame you … what was it like, friend? You were my masterpiece of pain, that wonderful night … you screamed like a coward, Fishface.”
“Yeah?” Depth Charge found his rage, his fire flickering and sputtering in its terror-drowned hearth; the last gasp of smoke before the dirt-ridden tide drowned him eternally. “I seem to remember this coward dragging your twisted carcass back to Cybertron in a stasis box!”
“And I seem to remember nailing your screaming body to a wall!” Rampage slid his hands around the manta’s throat as if holding him beneath water to drown, filling the sky: black angel pinioned with severed wings. “I seem to remember ripping your limbs off! I seem to remember breaking you open! And, oh, most of all, I seem to remember you begging for mercy!” The crab’s optics, green as envy, lit with unwholesome joy. “Oh, tonight you will scream again, dear friend … tonight, and tomorrow, and forever afterwards. There is no death for you, my dearest playmate – only the tender care of my loving hands.”
Depth Charge dimmed his optics, sick to delirium with fear; he had no defence, no power, no strength in his limbs. Only his anger, his shield of wrath, his soul-fire, that was all he had to preserve him, and in his hopeless fear, it sputtered out. In the void, the absence, the darkness behind the hearth, in the sour, stifled ashes of who he had once been, he saw the part of him long drowned in the ocean, and begged Rampage, “Kill me!”
“Is it truly death you desire?” the crab chuckled. “Ho ho, what is this you feel, buried under your terror?” Again, he put his head to Depth Charge’s abdomen, rubbing forehead, exognaths and face-mask against the manta’s fauld, abrading the lames over his spark-casing. He spoke more softly, “What is this you feel? What is this that you alone feel for me? Not hate, no, I know that well … not fear, not pain, not disgust … what is this? This – this hungry feeling?” A surge of movement; Depth Charge groaned as Rampage planted a knee on his abdomen and grasped his throat, forcing the manta to stare up at him. “What is it you feel, friend? What is this – this wanting?”
Depth Charge drew breath for courage. The question that had haunted him since Rampage bought his soul with coins of agony, round and bright as his mech-fluid spattered in torture’s testimony across the silent walls of Omicron; it burst from his vocaliser; “Why me? Of all the mechs in the universe, why me?”
“Because you freed me.”
“… talking slag again.”
“No, Fishface. You exasperate me with your craven stupidity. Do you want me to tell you what makes you special, friend? Do you really want that?”
“Yes,” Depth Charged lied, his craving for the secret outreaching the screams of his rationale. “Why me? Why did you spare the others and leave me alive?”
“All those lonong ong days in captivity on Omicron – I could feel your spark, every time you passed my cell, every time you escorted that – that crate they kept me in – just as I can feel it now. I could taste your soul … and its taste … like all the others … the fear, the hate, the contempt and the disgust … but you, oh, you, that one special flavour, that hint, that taint … that streak of hunger.”
“No!”
“Your ability to deny what you know is the truth astounds me, Fishface.” The crab leaned down, breath-close, optic to optic. “I feel your emotions, their heat against the chill of my void-spark. When you spoke to your friends, I felt the seed of contempt buried in you; when you fawned and scraped to your so-called superiors, I felt the resentment you drowned. When you feared me, you longed to be as fearsome as I, to be free of your fear … and when you heard me scream, when you heard the sounds of my unending torture called research – though you knew not what I was nor why I cried – you alone were outraged.” Rampage closed his optics, gently resting his forehead against Depth Charge’s cheek. “When all around me heard only the howling of a monster, you alone heard the screams of a victim. You were my silent friend, my only friend, the black-burning star that shone me to freedom. Your rage gave me strength, my friend, that outrage, that defiance you smothered as your tried to shoehorn yourself into the shape of a good little Maximal. I felt your rage when you stood guard outside my testing pit – ah, yes, now you begin to understand! What did you think you were guarding? What lie did they spoon-feed you? – yes, I felt your rage, your deep dark rage, and I knew you were just as much a prisoner as I was. I wanted to set you free … now, do you understand?”
Silence; aghast, stricken, Depth Charge could find no words, no rebuttal and no denial – there was nothing for him to say.
“Why the killing? Why the torture?” he managed at last, voice thickened by revelation. “Why?”
“There you go again, Fishface, out of the light and back into your pit of stupidity and ignorance. I wanted each and every being on Omicron to understand just how it felt to be me, the thing locked away and ignored – to be hurt, to be used by something unstoppable, something cold and uncaring … and then I found you, my friend.” His tone turned from whimsical to confiding. “I tried to explain, but you didn’t understand me, not when I tried to put my life into words. So I used the only language I knew – the language of torture and pain – until I felt my agonies reflected in your spark, and I knew that you understood.” His optics were pinpoints, narrow stars of viridian fire. “I can’t dream, Fishface. I don’t sleep. I don’t feel fear, no, nor hope. That’s why I need you, my echo, so I can taste my own feelings in your spark. You feel for me. Dream for me. Even if you only dream of killing me.”
“I don’t dream about killing you … I dream about being you!” Depth Charge confessed, the ability to finally, finally open the festering wound in his psyche a deep relief, even if he was opening his wound to the butcher bacterium that had infected it from the start.
“And?”
“And being … like you.” The enchaining weight of guilt forced the words from him; the rank pus of shame oozing from his soul-wound.
“Like me? Tortured, alone and despised? Oh, sorry, you’re already all those things – yes, just like me.” A malicious light smiled in his optics, green as spite. “Like me … you want to be free of your Maximal programming, free to embrace the thirst for death in your soul.” His optics lit with encouragement. “Admit it, friend, free yourself – you long to feel my spark in you hands. You want to see me suffer, and die.”
“Yes!” the manta hissed, his optics hot with frenzy. “I want you to suffer back every ounce of pain you’ve inflicted, before I send your diseased spark into the Pit!”
“And you’d enjoy seeing me suffer.”
“So what if I would? You deserve to suffer.”
“And then what?” Rampage urged. “After I’m dead, gone, finally wiped from existence – then what?”
“I – I –” Vile wells of panic spilled over in Depth Charge’s mind, flooding the careful barriers he’d constructed to keep out such thoughts, leaving only a void of dark water; endless marshland.
“Who are you without me?” the green-eyed monster screamed. “What about the Maximal Elders? Don’t you want justice from them? Don’t you want them to pay for letting me escape – no, for letting me exist?”
“Yes!” The fervour swept him like a tidal wave, a sudden current in the still swampland – renewed purpose, life given fresh meaning – salt water flowed into the estuary. “After you, them! Your crimes are the worst, but they must be brought to justice also.”
“But they won’t be so easy, hunter, not like me, your devoted playmate. I’ve done everything for you – I leave my signs, I make my trail clear and bright for you – but they will hide. They will cower in their citadels, sending minions to keep you at bay. Then what will you do?” The tide turns back, out into the drear ocean, the fenland’s foulness flowing into the stone-sombre sea. “What about Primal and his crew, sent to abandon me in a wasteland? What about them? Don’t they deserve justice for participating in this fraud, this farce? Don’t they deserve justice for not killing me in stasis?”
“They deserve justice,” Depth Charge growled; low, reluctant to admit the strength of his conviction, unwilling to agree with his prey. Borne on bitter currents, the marsh-murk muddies the boundless ocean. “And I will bring it to them, just as I will bring it to you.”
Rampage sighed in exaltation, even as Depth Charge descended into the desolate ocean depths on fen-born currents, silent and strangled. “Oh, friend, your condition improves by the minute! For a moment, you were almost free.” The crab lowered his head, faceplate to faceplate with the manta. “Let it go, friend. Let it all go, and hunt me. Hunt me across the galaxy … or would you rather be the hunted one this time? Wouldn’t that be grand? I could follow you to the ends of the universe, follow you through your slaughterhouses and your bloodbaths, follow your trail of wreckage – sorry, justice.” His optics closed to just a slit, a slice of jealous-green hellfire burning in the pit of his skull. “Don’t you want to see the mech-fluid of those who made me dribble between your fingers as you crush the life from their worthless bodies? Don’t you want to silence their sanctimonious cretinism? Don’t you want to know what it’s like to feast upon the pulsing, screaming sparks of your victims? Don’t you? I know you do.”
“You – are – sick!”
“Is that denial? Are you hiding from the truth again? Come now, friend, tell me the truth – wouldn’t you love to eat my spark? Wouldn’t it be the ultimate revenge, to feel my trembling, wailing soul fall burning into yours, to die inside you? To expire in a burst of heat – ah, you cannot image the delight of consuming a spark! It is a delicacy you must taste for yourself.”
“Never!”
“Oh, stop denying yourself, friend. You want me to suffer, you want to extinguish me with as much pain as possible – what’s more fitting than to devour the spark that cannot die?” His voice lowered to a whisper, a confidence. “You’re with your own kind now. Stop pretending you’re a Maximal; you’re like me – a monster! Admit it!”
“X, you slag-sucking son of Starscream!”
“What about the Predacons? Wouldn’t you kill them to get to me?”
“Yes.” Seething, hungry voice.
“What if I’d still been in stasis when you found me here? What if Primal and his fools had tried to stop you from destroying me? Would you have killed them to kill me?”
“I –”
“Why the Predacons and not the Maximals? When it comes to the spark, they’re all the same – wretched, mewling, screaming parcels of sweetmeat!”
“I would never –”
“You hate them, don’t you? I feel it! You hate the rat, you hate the cat, you hate the ape, you hate the fuzor, you hate the spider … oh, you hate and despise them, don’t deny the truth I can taste in your spark.”
“ – never –”
“The truth!”
“Yes!” Depth Charge howled, then, hissing, “I came to kill you, and if they stood between us, I would have killed them too.”
“And enjoyed it?”
Depth Charge dimmed his optics; the truth swelled in his throat, choking him, as it had choked him for years; whispered confession to the father of his torments, “ … and enjoyed it.”
“See? We’re as alike as can be, friend! Admit it – free your spark – let go.”
“I deserved you, X,” the manta panted. “A sick, filthy monster …”
“Monster me, monster you – we are murder-brood,” Rampage soothed, stroking his cheek. “I polished the mirror of your soul until you became my reflection … my dark mirror, friend, there’s still Maximal filth on your shining spark, but I can change that. Let me free you.”
“What … what are you going to do? You’re not going to kill me?”
“I’m going to make you stop denying your self, Fishface, even if I have to tear you into tiny little pieces to do it.”
“Fine. Torture me again. I’ve been waiting for it,” Depth Charge seethed. Rampage stroked his cheek.
“I know,” he confided. “You called yourself my victim before, but now, I’ll do for you what you did for me – I’ll turn victim into victor, Fishface into friend. Then, playmate, we can play together the way we were meant to.” He propped his chin on his hands, elbows either side of the manta’s face. “We can play such wonderful games together … hide and seek and catch and kill … and always a banquet awaits behind every screaming face. Oh, friend, you won’t believe the gardens of wonder that await you outside your Maximal cage. I’ll open your optics to the darkness inside you – I’ll fuel your rage until you thaw free!”
“What are you slagging talking about?”
“What do you despise most in the universe? Me? Right! Yet you want so badly to be like me – even to the point where you dream of being me, you my reflection – you need me and you hate me … now, I shall make the hatred go away.”
“You want me to stop hating you? What’re you going to do, hurt me until I enjoy it?”
“Mmm, a very tempting idea, friend! This is going to be a new sort of torture … to torture you with good feelings … now, how can I do that? Perhaps … like this.”
Rampage slid his fingertips across Depth Charge’s chest – barely a touch, barely a whisper of a touch. His epidermis prickled, twitching, sensors keening into micro-sensitivity. Devil-hot fingertips ran slowly across ocean-cold fleshmetal – launcher, cuirass, gorget, the hollows and the cords of the neck – the muscles, shuddering beneath the shivering skin. The tempting warmth of the fuel-pulse, buried in the cool, cool flesh, oh, the hot thick arteries entombed in cold muscle, like the hot thickness of rage immured beneath cold Maximal discipline … the id-warmth of desire enshackled in the iron manacles of fear. The taste of that mating, that fear-need, that dark nectar of terror and lust that dripped from Depth Charge – it was his sweetmeat, his ambrosia, his soul sustenance. Fingertips caressed the line of the jaw, where determination falters with the quiver of a masked lip, then across the scar-hide, the veil of indifference.
That had to go, for starters. His friend had hidden behind that shield of ignorance for too long, muzzled like the dangerous beast he was – now it was time for things to change! Now it was time for the tooth to be bared, for the fang to be flashed, for the beast to break his bonds and ravage the cosmos. Tit for tat, though – if one went naked, then so should the other.
His exognaths pulled back, and the mask receded from his broken face; the uneven cheekbones, the bent nose, the cheeks engrained with the lines of an agonised grimace. His mouth; a lopsided, brutal slash of torn, chewed lips that drew back to expose shark teeth, needle teeth, the teeth of a predator.
He bent Depth Charge back, pressed his head against the ground; his friend filled his vision, masked and caged behind Maximal armour, the rage in his optics screaming for freedom. Shark teeth sank into the mask, phallodentata rupturing faciahymen, face deflowered with a rending of fleshmetal: sparks, mech-fluid and the repression of a scream.
Depth Charge’s face; kukri cheekbones, patrician nose, strong jaw cleft at the chin – a Maximal face, proud and noble, perverted by the spit-moist decadence of his awe-full mouth, his prince’s lips of tarnished silver, now naked to all advances.
Rampage knew beauty in wreckage, in destruction, corruption, and here it was incarnate; the fool prey infected with the predator’s seed, the lush bloom of decay in the refined garden of order – soon, this caged beast, his day finally dawning under blood-lit skies, would be unleashed to rebirth!
A sense of grace as fingertips hushed troubled lips; finally, he had found a wellspring of warmth in the cold silver body, the kiss of spring in winter’s tomb. Soft, soft, so strange and new was this soft-warm-need. Was this what he’d been forced to despise? Was this what he’d been made to fear, and to hate in himself? This heat, this cauterisation of the howling gulf within? This, this need that had left him writhing on the ground in private pain, unable to shape an outlet for his hunger - this could be eased in the mouth of his friend?
Rampage drew his thumb across Depth Charge’s corrosion-coloured lips, feeling the heat, the moisture of the tongue-womb within; violated with his digit that pseudosex, slipping inside, into sweet warmth – spike of pain, flow of mech-fluid! Rampage pushed back the sybaritic lips to expose shark teeth, needle teeth, the teeth of a predator.
“Oh, dear friend, we are so alike we are almost one and the same,” he murmured, running his thumb across the blade-tip of a fang. Fleshmetal sundered, mech spilt like genofluid into Depth Charge’s mouth; stained lips with electrum, coated glossa with the taste of life. Swallowing - automatically, compulsively, obsessive his desire to consume Rampage’s life. “Ah, sweet, isn’t it? The taste of ecstasy!” This time, there was no denial; not with a mouth full of life-fluid, no, he couldn’t deny it now, not as his pale glossa licked, as his rich mouth suckled, as Depth Charge’s optics dimmed in bliss; the taste of liquid life, the forbidden fruit - hungry for Rampage, the manta fed upon the proffered wound. Mech-fluid, gold and silver, he lapped from the ragged cut; in Depth Charge’s hunger, Rampage saw his own thirst reflected. He pressed back the head of his friend, his playmate, his only warmth, smoothing merciless fingertips across the teal-silver brow; running his bleeding thumb across moist lips, stain of gold; lips licked, taste of silver lines the throat; optics bright, hungry, eager. “You want more? Oh, there is more … more and more and more than you could ever drink.”
“This won’t work, X,” Depth Charge protested weakly; drops of Rampage’s mech-fluid wept from his mouth. In response, Rampage grazed Depth Charge’s lips with his thumb, and chuckled as the manta strained for the wound.
“You’re already breaking free,” he hushed, once more painting his friend’s mouth with his own mech-fluid. “Let go of everything you’ve been taught; it’s all lies. They told you it was wrong to hate, wrong to despise, and they told you mech-fluid is bad to drink. Who was wrong, friend?”
Rampage leaned in, exognaths rippling in anticipation; soft explosion of breath as lip meet lip, gentle gasping of amazement at new sensations; taste of mech-fluid shared between mouths. Rampage licked Depth Charge’s lower lip, the ripe fleshmetal swollen with corruption, and drew it between his teeth; bit down slowly, slowly, gently piercing the softest skin until the sweet life flowed. Mech-fluid and spit, essences mixed between mouths, becoming hungry, tasting deeper, meeting of glossa, tangling like snakes in heat. Depth Charge’s mouth seemed as hot as the heart of a star, his inferno rage smelting the shackles of his ice-sealed spark.
“Soon,” the crab murmured into the manta’s mech-wet mouth, “You will be free.”
Depth Charge’s limbs trembled as he strained against his paralysis; his fingers quivered, curled like arthritis. “I’m already free!” he growled. “Or I would be if I could move.”
“You need me – deny that!”
“I need you as much as I …” The denial died in his mouth, smothered in mech-fluid, and the rage-fires of his spark claimed another inch of his twisting soul. Even in the iron and the ice, he knew he needed Rampage; needed the call of his nemesis to guide him in the bleak marshland, but there was no admitting it; Maximal shackles closed his throat, choking him with shame, dragged him under the still ice-water.
Rampage crooned, a soft, sinister sound, a comforter filled with raven down; his mech-stained hands cupped the manta’s face. “Let it go,” heed, ed, gentle as the kiss of death.
With a shudder and a wrenching in his soul, the tearing of an old and petrified soul-shackle, Depth Charge gasped, “I can’t!”
“You can, friend, you can! I feel the fire in you, you know it’s the truth, you feel it too!” His cry of concern knifed Depth Charge in the spark; his nemesis, calling freedom, calling to his soul-fire.
“I – I – help me!”
“How?”
“I don’t know – I – I need you!” Gasping, beached and stranded on shores of new emotion, the manta clawed the face of the crab with crackling, smouldering fingers, pressed cheek to cheek, pleaded lip to lip, ice breaking. “I need you – I need – you needed my strength, now I need yours – spark to spark …”
“Spark to spark – as I knew you first,” Rampage rejoiced, and then his crooked face twisted in a grimace of confusion. “Err … how?”
Depth Charge felt a rush of heat to his face, a twist of confusion and embarrassment; uncertainty tumbled anxiety, left him weak and baffled. “I’m … not sure.”
“You’ve never done this before either?”
“Not in this body … you mean you’ve never done it at all?” Now it was Rampage’s turn to look uncomfortable. “You have been deprived,” the manta mourned.
“Keep on like than and I’ll deprive you of a few limbs, friend,” Rampage growled playfully, running his fingers around the curving edge of Depth Charge’s chest gun, causing the manta to sigh. “What do I do?”
“We need to connect – output probe to input vent – ought to be simple, but – these slagging bodies!” Depth Charge guided Rampage’s hands back to his launcher; the crab allowed his fingers to roam freely across the quicksilver cuirass. The froth of feeling he sensed in the manta fascinated him – a heady brew of fear, and pain, and that strange, sweet hunger, that dark ambrosia, so different from all other emotions he had tasted before. “Reconfigured with the DNA of our beast-modes. I don’t know which probe goes in which port anymore.”
Rampage lowered his head to run his glossa around the rim of the manta’s launcher, enflaming that toothsome spark-wash and coaxing a whimper from Depth Charge’s throat. “I surprised you’re so knowledgeable on the matter. Had someone on your mind, friend?”
“Rattrap –” Depth Charge began, interrupted by the crab’s sudden surge of motion, a violent lunge that left him smothering the manta with his body – clasping him in a fanatic embrace, pinning his limbs in pining hands, breath to breath, bodies encoupled like lovers – in his bitter-green optics a challenge to speak.
“If there is someone else …” His growl was bone-brittle, stone-hard, brutal with threat; the green-eyed monster roared from the red-wet-hot caverns within. “Their pain will be deeper than the void in my spark!”
“Rattrap wouldn’t shut up about the effects of the change.”
“And what did you do?” Malachite eyes blazed with a desperate cry: Mine!
“Ignored him.”
Rampage lowered his head, resting his head against the manta’s chest; his body bled the tension of jealousy. “What did you want to do?” he murmured, patter-soft as foul rain on rank marshland.
Mercury fingertips traced the crown of his head; bitter, viscous silence filled the air. “I wanted,” Depth Charge growled, hungry and ashamed, fingers clenching; Rampage nuzzled into the manta’s grip, “To hurt him, and to keep on hurting him, until he fell apart in my hands.”
“So nearly there,” the crab rumbled, glossa lapping his friend’s fingers. “Tell me how to free you.”
“I said I don’t know!”
“The spider and the fuzor manage.”
“True.” Depth Charge arched his neck, groaning as the crab kissed the mouth of his launcher.
“Perhaps it would be simpler in beast mode,” Rampage mused, feeling the manta’s hands once again stroke his head, ing ing him down, down, deep into his heart.
“Mantas and crabs aren’t compatible species,” Depth Charge replied tersely.
“I’ll make you compatible,” Rampage threatened. Nestled face-first into the womb of death, Rampage plunged his glossa into the manta’s launcher, into his friend’s tender, hidden places. Depth Charge cried aloud in delight, clasping him closer. In the razor-filled darkness of the manta’s ribcage, the crab tasted hot, sticky life, and lapped eagerly. “Even if I have to rip you open … especially if I have to rip you open.” A delightful thrill of fear trembled through Depth Charge’s body. He pushed Rampage’s face from his chest, and the crab bit his fingers; hot mech-fluid flowed from damaged joints, living memory of the joy of murder. “I suppose I could just tear pieces of you off until I find the place where it hurts the most.” Ripples of panic, fear, and need spilled through Depth Charge’s spark; Rampage groaned in baulked eagerness, “I want you.” Again, Depth Charge trembled, fear mingled with desire coursing through him. With a cry of frustration, the manta arched his back, wrapping his legs around Rampage’s waist and pulling him close.
“This feels right!” Depth Charge groaned; sparks and smoke burst from his joints, damaged body protesting at the forced movement.
“Your pain … oh, how it hurts you to move,” Rampage purred in delight, lowering his head to Depth Charge’s abdomen, licking and nuzzling over his spark. He felt Depth Charge’s gratification increase, and then his pain; glancing up, he felt Depth Charge’s hand descend upon his forehead; weak and trembling, but guiding him down, down to the crux of his limbs.
“There,” the manta gasped, as Rampage’s long glossa lapped at the joints of his hips, probing around his batticuli; his legs kicked involuntarily, vitalised by Rampage’s frenzied mouth, driving pain up into his body; pleasure, pain, the thin line he walked between them became thinner and thinner, finally folding into itself, tumbling him into an abyss of sensation.
“Pervert,” Rampage mumbled between his thighs.
“Screw you.”
“Oh, no.” Rampage rose from below, saliva running from his mouth in sticky threads. “It’s you who’s getting screwed.” Then, laughing, “As soon as I can work out what to ram in where.”
“I don’t think so,” Depth Charge returned, struggling to prop himself up on his elbows, tattered remains of his fins flexing beneath him. Smoke plumed from his joints; his flinch of pain spurred Rampage’s sigh of pleasure. “Crabs don’t have the right equipment for that, so if anyone’s getting rammed, it’s you.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, let’s see what you’re hiding in here first,” Rampage growled, bowing down again to coat Depth Charge’s inguinal with slaver; the manta writhed under his glossa. “Go on, release it. Let’s see what Transmetalisation did to your structure.”
“Not structure, Rampage – claspers,” the manta snickered, as the plate opened with a snap, and Rampage was startled to suddenly feel intense pain the sides of his neck as the twin organs dug into his fleshmetal.
“Barbed! The slagging things are barbed!” he roared, trying to pull free without ripping his neck open, as Depth Charge laughed without shame. “That settles it – I am not having those inside me.”
“I thought you liked pain.”
“I like your pain. Now release me or I’ll tear them off at the roots.” He grasped the base of the claspers with a threatening squeeze. Depth Charge winced, and Rampage felt the barbs in his throat withdraw. His grip softened, becoming a caress; the gentle, wordless sounds Depth Charge made, staring blinding into space, were soul-kisses sweet as sparks.
Smirking crookedly, Rampage lowered his head, maw gaping open to envelope Depth Charge’s slender claspers. The manta’s optics brightened with lust, then flamed with pain, and he screamed “No – not your teeth! No no no - auuuuslaaaaggitX!” as Rampage slowly dragged his tooth-points up the length of the pale twin organs.
“I thought you liked pain,” Rampage mocked, licking the mech-fluid from the manta’s claspers. In a sudden, crackling movement, Depth Charge grabbed him by the head and forced him down, until the tips of the manta’s claspers were pressed against the back of his maw.
Oho, dear friend, I’ve found your sweetest meat! Rampage rejoiced, lashing the paired shafts with his glossa, writhing it like the death throes of a decapitated snake. This time, the manta’s lust-cries were screams, throat-ripping howls of ecstasy; Rampage shuddered with joy as Depth Charge bayed his name until it echoed through the cavern, an entropy-ridden reflection of their rising delectation. Rampage laved and flicked the twin organs, now mindful of his teeth, now setting the tips of his fangs against Depth Charge’s sensitive, swollen claspers to make him wriggle and gasp. He devoured his friend’s mech-fluid as if it was his last draught of energon before execution, and all the time the manta’s hands were at his head, encouraging him, all the time keeping him close. Possessive, obsessive manta hands, stroking his forehead, entwining with his exognaths, lacerated fingers lactating mech-fluid that spattered his cheeks, running into his mouth – the sweet delight, the taste of Depth Charge, his own personal manna from heaven.
Pain! Rampage flinched at the sudden stabbing agony from his own batticuli, a sense like damage, a corkscrew twisted into his fleshmetal. Barely aware of the manta’s concerned caress, though had he noticed it he would have rejoiced, he forced the batticuli plating open, releasing the trapped, cramped appendages beneath.
“What are those?” Depth Charge asked, staring.
Rampage searched his databanks. “Gonopods,” he replied drearily, gazing enviously at the manta’s elegant, streamlined claspers. “I think they’re my reproductive organs, but I’m not entirely convinced.”
Depth Charge continued to stare in a mixture of awe, disgust and amusement. “Neither am I,” he muttered. Rampage grimaced as his quadripartite appendages finished their complex unfolding. “Looks more like a torture device. How fitting.”
“We’ll see how well they fit, then.”
Depth Charge looked down again, and his optics flared. “I don’t know if there’s an duct on my body large enough for those,” he flinched.
Rampage smirked darkly. “I’ll find one … or perhaps just rip a new one into your quivering flesh.”
“That is not happening.”
“You’re in no position to argue,” Rampage chuckled.
“I can almost move my legs.”
“And when you can? Will you run away from me … or towards?”
Open and vulnerable, Depth Charge looked up into his face, and there was indecision in his optics. Rampage knew he was winning; that victory was almost in their grasp – soon, Depth Charge would be free!
Rampage leant down and smothered the manta’s formless words with his kisses, slowly coiling glossa round glossa, as if he could taste the answer there; fleshmetal sank against fleshmetal, antenna stroking launcher, strong thighs clasping armoured waist; eager hands roamed eager limbs. As the crab relinquished Depth Charge’s rich mouth, the manta turned optics like sunset upon him and whispered the eternal truth of their bond; “I need you.”
“Where?” Rampage asked, frustrated and baffled by all the new, strange feelings, all the odd organs and soft, sensitive places – all the new things to learn!
“I don’t know!” Depth Charge groaned, folding Rampage’s left hand around his claspers.
“Hmm .. what about the fuzor and the spider? They must have worked this little puzzle out by now,” Rampage grumbled, running his free hand across Depth Charge’s body in search of a viable input port.
“Hah! Right! I’ll just call them up and ask them, shall I? ‘Hey, Silverbolt, where do you stick it to the widow?’ I’m sure he’d appreciaaaah!” Depth Charge went into rippling convulsions as Rampage probed a moist duct.
“What’s this?” Rampage wondered.
“Atrophied cloaca …vestigial waste disposal unit,” Depth Charge gasped, panting as Rampage’s finger slid in deeper. “Nnnn … Rampage!”
Ahh, dear friend, you are a veritable feast of sweetmeats!
In silent, panting concordance, their bodies slid together; Rampage clasped his hands behind Depth Charge’s pelvis, cradling the manta as he clung to his shoulders, wings flexed against the barren ground for stability.
Depth Charge lay himself down, forgoing the fight, fulfilling his the last act of his nemesis calling; the role of the victim, chasing his victor across time and space to finally be lain down and be put to death. Inch by inch, Rampage claimed him, pronounced dominance over his body as Depth Charge lay open and helpless in his arms: their union a crescendo in their symphony of hatred and desire, the culmination of obsession in possession.
“I’ll make you free, my friend,” Rampage whispered, exognaths palpating Depth Charge’s neck as shark-teeth penetrated epidermis, ectodermis, muscle, fuel-vessel; mech-fluid flowed between needle-teeth, stained broken lips, coated the whispers with gold and silver; “I’ll free you.”
Death … freedom …it seemed to Depth Charge they were one and the same; the world had fallen into chaos, white had become black and black became white – the rough beast, so tender. Perhaps in death he would find freedom, be released from his rage, the fire Rampage sought to turn into a soul-pyre for his Maximal past, his now-dying life.
Deep inside, the manta felt the throbbing of Rampage’s gonopods – the pulsing rhythm of the pleopods that pistoned within them – like a second fuel pump pounding his mech-fluid, a fuel pump which sent animal exhilaration coursing through his body, his fleshmetal cascading with incandescent heat.
Life-heat roared up from his spark, forging through his cold-still fleshmetal, as if it could burn through him and into Rampage, his rage-fire, the inferno from his spark, roaring for its cold twin, the chasm-spark of his green-eyed nemesis. Rampage moved in him, moved with him, moved him like an earthquake; the howling void whipped his rage into a frenzy, a cataclysm that consumed him from the inside outwards. Fire was his mind, and fire was his soul, a burning figurine moulded in the hands of the devourer. Depth Charge felt his hunger, his rage, so long buried in the ice of his life, felt the ice sunder and breach, felt the soul-pyre rise into a firestorm, consuming all he was and all he had ever been.
“Rampage!” He screamed the name of his nemesis, nemesis calling, nemesis calling across galaxies that he might die in the cold and hungry arms of Death-in-fleshmetal, and Rampage crooned his nemesis call of death and hunger and desire. The fire within, the beast within, the body within, all infernescent, all coalescing into the black sun of soul-death, soul-fire; the melting of the ice, the smelting of the steel, the end of his life – the death-song of the nemesis call in climatic crescendo – the heat of freedom – their victory!
“What is this?” Rampage cried, hand spread across Depth Charge’s abdomen, feeling heat, the blood heat from the core of his spark. “What is this feeling?” His voice fell to a humbled whisper. “Is this love? Is this love?”
Optics blank, body arched in tension, all mech-fluid seeming to boil, Depth Charge cried the sweet truth: “It is love!”
In those words, he tasted freedom. Depth Charge surrendered, relinquished his soul and let his Nemesis, his victory, claim him completely. Rampage filled him, his body, his mind, eclipsed the sun and enshadowed the moon, swallowed the cosmos in his eternal hunger. Depth Charge felt the moment quicken in the speeding of their breath, in the trembling of their hands, in the soul-smelter of their pulsating loins – oh yes, especially there! Nothing in his past-life could ever had prepared him for this, this living death of unselfhood, where even his name vanished into the gulf of ecstasy. Past and future disassembled, the world faded, life withered; all else died, and everything that remained was Rampage, Rampage, there was only Rampage – the whole universe was his reflection, the nebula his optics and all matter his hands – and in the petit mort of orgasm, Depth Charge united with his god of pain, with the universe’s reflection – one with Rampage, one with the victor, one with X, one with eternity.
In the black and white explosion of sated obsession, Depth Charge ceased to exist.
He surrendered his soul to his victor, crying out in pain and passion; black orgasm, spark suborned, life discarded, all law flung to chaos and all bonds shattered; white genofluid gushed from his claspers, thick milt spattering the chest and abdomen of the living everything that killed and rebirthed him. Again, he cried out, and again, as his body spasmed, pelvis jerking, offering himself completely to Rampage. Depth Charge abased himself in word and act, opened all the doors of his self for Rampage’s penetration, and lost himself in the god-universe of Rampage that flooded into his soul.
Depth Charge died in his arms; Rampage felt like his spark would burst as Depth Charge’s soul folded into itself, became a living mirror, all his desire, all his need, all his loneliness and pain and hunger reflected back – so warm, the understanding, so deep, the sharing of lust. Depth Charge debased himself in warm spurts of fish-milk, crying his name as if calling to Primus himself, clinging to him, hot-needing-alive! Needing him, needing Rampage, needing nothing but Rampage, so long despised, so hated, so rejected, so alone.
In that moment, as Depth Charge’s mind turned inside-out in orgasm, Rampage felt truly alive. That he, the worthless, the scorned and abused, could make Depth Charge – his friend, his echo, the one who feared and loved him, his very life – could bring him to his point of self-negation, this terminal ecstasy, this uroboros of mirrors reflecting one other into eternity – this was life! This was the vitality he had never experienced, for in the immortality of his spark he could never know the liberation of selflessness, the deliverance of the little death.
Depth Charge’s spark opened to him, inviting him into the life-warmth of a mortal soul, and he plunged in, past the cold iron cage of Maximality now smouldering in ruins, into the blood-heat of Depth Charge’s core. Therein, he felt the terror, the absolute fear of his victim in perfect surrender; felt the pleasure, the bliss of his lover in his arms; felt the pain, the agony of the soul tortured by his hands; felt the hunger, the unquenchable need – the need he could now name. Depth Charge, his silent friend, his echo, his Nemesis and his animus – the one who gave his life meaning, the one who freed him, the one without whom he had no reason to live – Depth Charge, who would follow him to the ends of the universe when even the Furies gave up the chase, who would kill to possess him – Depth Charge loved him.
“Free!” Rampage howled as his body echoed the manta’s euphoric abandonment in frenetic, drenching thrashes. “You are free! Oh my friend, oh Depth Charge, I love you.”
He was lost, lost and gone into Depth Charge’s eros and thanatos, as Depth Charge was lost in him; and in that moment, as they became one another, their reflections were perfect; pure mirrors for one another’s hopes and fears and desires and needs – yin and yang, one and the same – at last, complete.
Spinning down from coital hyperspace, coalescing back into reality, Depth Charge’s thoughts, tangled and dizzy, shocked to the core, slowly fitted back together. His smelted, melted soul cooled from incandescence to the smouldering ember-glow of the banked furnace; his eternal rage roiled like lava, his hunger hot and deep, his soul burnt clean.
I am free! he rejoiced, and near to wept, for at last the iron and the ice were gone, his throat unchoked, his limbs unclasped. He stroked the head of his liberator, his victor, the head sunk to his breast in exhaustion; Rampage trembled fitfully, all spent.
In the cold light of the sky-rip, in the gathering gloom of the evening, quiet they lay, and calm, as the storm summoned its strength; the bleak sky-storm without, the ravenous fire-storm within. When darkness shrouded them, that all light was the glimmer of optic flame upon precious mech-fluid and the ivory needles of the moist shark-smiles, only then did they stir, and speak.
“Where to now, friend?”
Depth Charge stroked Rampage’s face; the broad, strong ridge of his left cheek, the low, sharp edge of the right. “Wherever you go, I will follow you … friend.”
Jealous emeralds gazed into the blood-glow of rubies; jade and garnet mirrors reflected one soul-hunger away into dark eternity.

Author’s notes & addenda: Ambrosia: (from Greek, ambrotos “immortal”) Food of the gods – something very pleasing in taste. Arabesques: (from Italian, arabesco “in the Arabic style”) Ornamental, consisting of intertwined flowing lines. Batticuli: Armour for the pelvis, especially the groin. Calling: 1. A loud cry or shout. 2. A st urg urge towards a way of life or vocation. Claspers: (from clasp) Paired abdominal appendages of the male ray or shark, used in copulation; sometimes barbed. Cloaca: (from Latin, cluere “cleanse”) Urogenital passage. Coital: (from Latin, coire “go together”) Concerning sexual intercourse. Cuirass: (from Latin, corium “leather”) Armour comprised of a joined breastplate and back-plate. Glossa: (Greek, “tongue”) Oral sensory organ. Gorget: (from Old French, gorge “throat”) Armour for the throat. Green-eyed monster: (Metaphorical) Jealousy. Electrum: (from Greek via Latin, electron “amber/electrum”) Alloy of gold and silver. Epidermis: (from Greek via Latin, epi “upon” + derma “skin) The outer layer of skin or tissue. Exognaths: (from Greek, from exo “outside” + gnathos “jaw”) External part of the mouth parts of crustaceans, viz, the part not fused to the cephalon. Fauld: Armour for the abdomen, usually of horizontal lames. Genofluid: (from Greek, genos “race” + Middle English fluid) Internally produced fluid containing genetic information. Gonopods: (from Greek, gonos “semen” + pous “foot”) Of crabs; modified male pleopod serving for transmittal of sperm to female. In particular, four pleopods, two tubular, inside which two more function as pistons to propel the sperm to the female crab’s gonopores. Inguinal: (from Latin, inguin “groin) Of the groin. Kukri: (from Nepalese, khukuri) A curved knife broadening towards the point. Lames: Narrow strips of metal riveted together. Milt: (from Old English, milte) The semen of a male fish. Mnemonic: (from Greek, mnemon “mindful”) A device which assists in remembrance. Pauldron: Armour for the upper arm. Pleopods: (from Greek, pleon “more” + pous “foot”) Of crabs, an appendage attached to an abdominal segment. Quadripartite: (from Latin, quadri “four” + partitus “divided”) Consisting of four parts. Scintillation: (from Latin, scintilla “spark”) A flash or sparkle of light.
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Nemesis Calling