"Gibberish?"
"That's right. He said something to me when I had him cornered. Nothing nice, by his tone, but I couldn't understand an iota of it."
"...that's... troubling, Bumblebee."
"What I find troubling, Ratchet, is that Buzzsaw tried to see how high an Autobot can bounce last night, and I will bet you my left cannon that the Decepticon in that internet video is Rumble. I don't have to close this circuit for you to figure out who else is skulking around, do I?"
"Ironhide, Frenzy apparently broke ties with them long ago and was here with Barricade. It's not too much to suppose that perhaps after all this time, Rumble and Buzzsaw may have done the same. It's entirely possible they are here on their own. Let's hope this is the case. With so few of us here--"
"--and one of us glitching so badly that he can't tell his aft from his faceplate--"
"That was uncharitable, Ironhide. We don't know his full situation."
"We don't even know his slagging name. I'll be charitable when he stops running from his own people. Prime, if what I fear is true, and he is here..."
"Then we will need a defensible position. I had hoped to have more of us gathered before another confrontation with the Decepticons, but it seems we may have little say in the matter."
"Should we regroup, then?"
"Not yet. We must find the newcomer first. He is too tempting a target by himself, and I am in no mood to see another death so soon."
Nobody knew when exactly the hulking blue-grey vehicle had appeared, parked illegally on the curb in eastern Topeka.
The Eyesore hadn't seen this much action since the last illicit rave. Cordoned off with yellow police tape, crawling with bomb technicians, police, some curious onlookers and passers-by, and a couple of reporters perched smartly in front of cameras on what was otherwise a slow news day, the half-built shell of a building was practically abuzz with activity. Half-bored, matter-of-fact activity, but still more than the abused wreck was accustomed to.
Somehow, without anyone really noticing any movement, the grey vehicle had moved closer, across the street from the Eyesore.
Subtly, the atmosphere changed.
A child, young enough to still be held on the mother's cocked hip, began crying. One of the reporters developed a horrific stutter and had to wave for the camera to cut. The onlookers glanced nervously about, expressions drawn tight and wary.
One police officer stumbled out beyond the construction fence in a full-blown panic attack, and this seemed to touch off a chain of reaction. The onlookers were first, hurrying away unnerved, muttering and tugging on equally unnerved spouses, friends, children. The team of bomb techs milled uncertainly about in the interior of the building, their work forgotten. A police squad car, occupied by the first panicking officer, peeled out of the parking lot as if desperate to escape.
The bomb techs were next, equipment hastily crammed into cases and thrown into the van. Followed by the reporters, after seeing the wide-eyed, aimless fear on the faces of the remaining cops. And only when the last of the squad cars had departed did the grey vehicle deign to move.
Massive tires crawled up and over the curb. The vehicle rolled unhurried across the parking lot and through the construction fence, flattening a section of the sturdy partition as if it were no more solid than a sheet of wet cardboard. And with the same indifferent aplomb, the vehicle moved through the wide lobby doorway --which had been cleared of rubble-- and vanished into the dark interior of the Eyesore.
Long minutes passed.
At length the hulking grey vehicle reappeared. It prowled back over the crushed section of fence and into the lot. Right at its rear bumper, scratched, dented and covered with dust, fitfully revving and grinding, a small purple car followed. First the armored vehicle, then the purple compact, rolled out of the lot and into the street, one steady, the other erratic.
One block behind, Terry Darling sat in his car, ignoring the cooling pizzas sitting in the passenger seat as he watched the two vehicles leave the Eyesore and move down the road. Slowly he released his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, as well as a shaky breath, and fumbled for his cell phone.
"I think we're a little lost."
Nic and Whiplash had stopped at a gas station somewhere out in the Rockies. At least, at some point in the distant past it might have been a gas station, or roadside convenience store at the very least, but it was weather-beaten and crumbling now, the only sign of human presence they had come across all afternoon.
She folded her hands behind her back and thought that there were worse-looking places to be lost in. Aside from the blemish of the abandoned store, the view was gorgeous. The hillside dropped sharply away from the other side of the road, treating them to a wide vista of mountains limned gold in the reddened setting sunlight.
Their wild flight out of Denver had taken them far off course. She had no idea where the interstate was now, and every turn on state highways seemed to lead them down smaller and more obscure paths. Route markers meant nothing to her, less to Whiplash, and after wandering like a couple of befuddled tourists through increasingly rural country, they had agreed a short break to get their bearings wouldn't be too amiss.
The soft rattle and rasp of mechanical limbs behind her made her turn around. Whiplash felt safe enough here to stretch out of his vehicle mode, and as he came to stand beside her he looked down to meet her eyes. Nic gave him a small smile. Hearing his disembodied voice ring in her helmet was okay enough, but it was nice to have a face to talk to for a change.
"What we seek is further westward, correct?" he said, taking in the Rockies with a sweeping gesture. "And do the road systems extend beyond the mountains?"
"There are roads everywhere," she replied. "It's easy to get turned around. Like we are now. I was kind of hoping this place would have some maps, or at least a working bathroom." And food. She was beginning to wish she'd thought to buy snacks to stash in her pack. At this point, she'd have given a vital organ for a bag of Cheetos.
Even better, her cell phone was one blip away from battery death, and only picking up a weak signal for fractions of a second at a time.
Whiplash shifted, gears quietly whirring, six long metal 'toes' splayed like a pair of tripods in the weedy gravel. "This planet's geomagnetic field... is it mixed?"
"...mixed?" Nic blinked. "Um... it's got a north and a south. I'm not sure what you mean."
"Mixed-- no, that was the wrong word." He crossed his arms, one hand coming up to brush across the front rim of his helmet plates in what had to be an absent gesture of frustration. "Is it constant? Perpetual."
"Fixed?" Nic guessed, and he nodded. "As far as us humans know, it hasn't ever changed. Why?"
"Some planets routinely shift their magnetic fields. I once scouted a planet that randomized its poles every five breem. It was very disconcerting." Again he indicated the mountains and setting sun. "But since it is stable here, I can use it to navigate, to some extent. We simply make our way through the roads until we find human habitation, and from there we can reorient ourselves."
Nic nodded. "Good plan. But-- I thought your sensors were damaged or something."
Whiplash favored her with the peculiar scrunching of faceplates that she had come to recognize as a smile. "Earth's magnetic field is very strong, and my body is made of metal. I can feel it even in recharge."
"So," Nic said, climbing atop a large boulder that sat at the side of the road, "other than our Decepticon problem, what do you think of Earth so far?"
Whiplash moved beside the boulder, carefully grazing a finger over the light dusting of lichen and moss that clung tenaciously to the stone. "Very... full." He looked up, her perch on the rock putting them eye-to-optic. "There is life everywhere here. No space is empty of it. Even the very air... I have never seen organic life thrive in such a way. There is so much that it would seem there is no room for anything else."
"There's room." Nic rested a hand on the sweeping curve of armor that made up a sort of combined collarbone and shoulder guard. "We make room."
He glanced down at her hand, the shutters around his optics clicking, and his face scrunched at her again. "You seem to do that a lot."
Nic withdrew her hand and shrugged. "Humans are kind of touchy-feely. Some of us are, anyway. If it bothers you..."
A heavy metal hand settled gently, briefly on her shoulder. "It does not." He turned back to regard the mountains. "I'm simply unaccustomed to it."
Nic bit her lip, weighing his statement in her mind. Just how long, she wondered, had he been alone? Considering his age it could be on the order of thousands of years. Nic felt she'd probably go batty after only a few days cut off from human contact... and to be constantly hunted on top of that, well, she'd be downright paranoid--
A stray nagging thought. Oh boy.
Whiplash was still staring intensely out at the mountains as if they would part and reveal where this Optimus Prime was hiding. She kind of wished they would, too.
"Whip, I just had a thought about that last little run-in we had," she said. "Something about it doesn't sit right, now that I think about it."
He turned to look at her, head tilted curiously. "Sit... right?"
"I mean it felt a little off. Like it wasn't like when Rumble and Ravage came after us."
A rattling shrug. "They each have their own methods of attack," he said. "That one chose to toy with me."
"No, I mean... he was too nice about it."
That got her a look that was unmistakably are you nuts? "He only waited too long to attack. We escaped before he could isolate us."
"Whiplash, he had us cornered a couple times. Even if he were under orders not to go robot when there's humans around, he could have just run us off the road and be done with it. You said yourself Decepticons don't give a damn about killing humans, so why be so careful?"
By the pause and the busy whirring of internal gears, she knew she had him there.
She went back to the memory of the gesticulating teenagers in the Camaro. "And the more I think about it... that girl that was in the passenger seat, I'm sure that was the girl who tried to ogle you at the truck stop, and she was definitely human."
Whiplash gave a sharp shake of his head. "It would take only a moment for that Decepticon to see you interact with her, then use her image to mislead you."
Okay, he had her there that time. But-- "You said he was asleep. In recharge or something."
"I don't know when precisely he came back online," he retorted peevishly.
"What if those were real kids in that car?" Nic replied. "Not projections."
"I cannot imagine any Decepticon would allow it."
"So what if that wasn't a Decepticon?"
She'd never literally heard someone's thoughts grind to a halt before.
But then he waved dismissively and paced a few steps away. "If that was an Autobot, he should have said something. He would have identified himself. He was certainly close enough, as you have pointed out."
"It's just a theory."
"Nic," Whiplash said, turning to face her, his tone tense, "they are called those who deceive for good reason. Some of them are maddeningly cunning. The rest are just mad. I have been on the receiving end of their lies before. Lies that were so real to my processor I wanted to die in them. No, the risk is too great. Both for the data I carry and for you."
With a sigh, Nic sat down on the rock. He made a good point, and even if she were right, what were they supposed to do about it? That yellow Camaro was long gone by now, and whatever Whiplash was doing to mask his presence likely hid him from friend and foe alike.
Idly, she flipped open her phone. One tiny signal bar finally lit up, and the screen informed her that there was a voice message waiting. "This data, your ship's logs," she said, deciding as she dialed that a subject change was in order, "what's in it?"
"I don't know." The agitation had left his voice, his reply a simple statement.
The phone's signal failed, the call to her voicemail dropped. She tried again. "You don't know? You haven't looked at it?"
"I have tried," he admitted, and she was surprised to hear a twinge of guilt coloring his tone. "But Rodimus must have asked Perceptor to encrypt it. The algorithms are unmistakable. Without the decryption key or a high enough clearance, it is unreadable." He paused thoughtfully. "You might be able to hack it, though."
Nic looked up at him, blinking. "Uh, what?"
"You developed a sophisticated manual glyph system to encode your personal data recordings. Are you not a skilled cryptologist?"
"Manual glyph sys-- Whip, I just have messy handwriting, that's nothing at all like--" She broke off when she realized he was chuckling. A close approximation of the human noise, at that, instead of the weird electronic warble. Nic crossed her arms. "Wiseass robot. That was at my expense, wasn't it?"
"Perhaps." Whiplash was nine and a half feet of mechanical innocence as he moved to stand beside the boulder again. "It begs the question as to why you desist on using a deliberately indecipherable system if your recordings aren't intended to be secret."
Dialing the phone again, she tried to hide a grin as she poked the little device against his armored hip. "Insist, not desist."
To her surprise, his reaction wasn't an annoyed muttered curse, but a massive flinch. Nic recoiled, startled, wondering if she'd poked at something she shouldn't have, and Whiplash suddenly reached down.
"Your communicator," he almost barked. "Let me see it."
Immediately, Nic put the cell phone in his open palm, whereupon his hand closed into a fist around the tiny-seeming device, holding but not crushing. Whiplash seemed to scowl down at his hand, and between his fingers Nic could see little arcs of electricity dance from his metal skin into the phone and back again.
After a moment, he did let out that swear word. "Cybertronian intrusion signal."
Nic shot to her feet, nearly falling off the boulder in the process. "What!? Do you mean--"
"This is how they have been tracking us!" Whiplash let the phone drop, and with a sharp ring of singing metal, unsheathed a blade to skewer it before it could hit the ground.
"Oh, god, Whip--" Nic jumped down, horrified. "I didn't know, I swear!"
"You couldn't have." Grinding the shattered phone under one toe for good measure, he crouched, armor plates already shifting. "We must leave this place at once--"
And that was when the ground beneath them exploded.
Nic abruptly found herself sliding to a stop some ways down the hillside with no memory of having been thrown there, gravel and weeds scraping at her exposed face. Her riding leathers were no longer quite so brand-new, having done their job of protecting the rest of her body from just such a spill, and she pushed herself up slowly, sucking air back into her lungs.
Another explosion threw a spray of dirt and pebbles down the slope. Nic ducked, shielding her face, and pulled herself to her feet. The hum of charging weaponry filled the once-calm mountain air.
Nic scrambled back up the slope. "Whiplash!"
Lennox bit off a curse as the steering wheel spun of its own accord, jerking his hands away before they could be forcibly snapped off. "Hey-- a little warning, big guy, we talked about this--"
"Ironhide?" asked Epps, grabbing the door handle for support as the truck swerved down yet another country road.
"I'm picking up weapons fire. Cybertronian signature." The gravelly rumble of Ironhide's voice filled the cab. "Very close. I suggest you ready your guns."
Whiplash reversed the transformation sequence, picking himself up and bringing a cannon online. A snarl drew his attention up, where Ravage was perched atop the abandoned human construct.
He was actually starting to miss Rumble.
Ravage's jaws gaped wide, and the barrel of a concussion blaster extended from within. Whiplash dove to the side, and both robots opened fire at once. The exchange threw dirt and debris flying, and only when Ravage relented to let his preferred weapon recharge did Whiplash dare to look for Nic.
She appeared at the crest of the hill, across the road, looking a little scratched but largely unharmed. "Run," he ordered, determined to keep it that way, putting himself between Ravage and her.
He turned back around just in time to catch Ravage's swinging tail with his face. Whiplash flailed and fell backwards, more embarrassed than hurt-- if his sensors had been working properly, that blow would have never landed. His combat evasion protocols clamored for input that wasn't coming.
A heavy paw slammed down on his chestplates, one of the sickle-bladed talons slipping underneath and slicing into some sensitive wiring. Whiplash let out a snarl of his own, suggested to Ravage that he should develop a virulent rust, and lashed out with his blades. Ravage only clenched his talons tighter, curving blades digging deeper, and Whiplash jerked convulsively as something within him cracked and flashed painfully offline.
A primary transformation cog. Transformation lock.
Horrorstruck, he swung a cannon up and fired, directly into Ravage's opening maw, right into the concussion blaster. As Ravage gnashed and reeled from the blast, he reached up and gave the barrel a savage yank, twisting it off its mountings with the satisfying crunch of shearing bolts and snapping wires.
The miniscule victory was short-lived. A coilgun lifted from Ravage's shoulder, swinging out to bear dead center on Whiplash's chest.
Before it could fire-- there was Nic. Hands wrapped around the barrel, one foot braced against Ravage's leg and pulling for all her worth. Amazingly, the gun wrenched aside as it fired, and the projectile buried itself in the earth only a handspan from his head.
For her disruption, Ravage's reprisal was as swift as it was uncaring. Lifting the foot that held Whiplash pinned, he swung, sending the human flying into the nearby trees.
Whiplash was out from underneath and on his feet before Ravage could return his attention to him. He vaulted up and over the Decepticon, giving the coilgun a vicious kick for good measure, and raced to where Nic had been flung.
He found her lying next to a tree, groaning. Fluid-- dark and red, how odd-- traveled from a gash on her forehead in a slow viscous smear down the side of her face as she lifted her head.
"I told you to run," he said, reaching down to her.
"And you thought I would?" she retorted. "Shit, Whip, your chest--"
Swinging a glare over his shoulder to Ravage, who had turned and was stalking towards them, Whiplash briefly touched the mangled and bent chestplate. "It is not serious," he half-lied. "I can still run."
So he gathered her up in his arms and did so, deeper into the trees and rock-strewn hills.
Here, his small size proved the advantage. He could maneuver the uneven ground with much greater ease than the larger Ravage, even use the trees and rocky outcroppings as shields against pulse blasts and more rounds from that brutal mass driver.
Ravage took down smaller trees in his path without a thought and grazed larger ones, sending splintered wood flying, thundering through the undergrowth after them. Whiplash pressed on, hoping that Nic's leak wasn't severe; he doubted humans had internal valve shutoffs, and she was so small, how much of her (lubricant? coolant? some sort of energon equivalent?) fluid could she lose before function loss occurred?
Suddenly he burst from the cover of the trees into a wide, open valley. At the other end of it, some distance away, a bit of paved road was visible, and Whiplash's wheels ground angrily against each other. Sensor-blind, transmission-deaf, and now unable to transform--! He would count it a great miracle if he managed to reach Prime in possession of all his limbs!
He didn't dare stop. He'd gained a bit of distance thanks to the terrain, but Ravage was coming-- noisily. Whiplash ran, legs fully extended, his stride at its longest over the gently sloping grassy land.
The high-pitched crackle and whine of an approaching missile (missile! When had Ravage gotten that?) made him drop in order to evade, twisting as he did to land on his back with Nic still cradled carefully against his chest. The missile hit the ground nearby, spraying fire and dirt into the air. Whiplash curled protectively around his friend. Lifting one arm away from her, he fired repeatedly, forcing Ravage back into some evasive action of his own.
Nic rolled off him and stood, touching gingerly at her wound. It still seeped worryingly, the red stain reaching under her jawline and down her neck now.
"Are you all right?" they asked as one. Neither could answer as a projectile from the coilgun glanced over the top of his helmet plating with a sharp sting. Nic let out a yelp and ducked, covering her head.
"Maybe you can electrocute the bastard," she suggested as he got to his feet.
Continuing to fire to keep Ravage on the defensive, he knew what she was referring to-- the cables that hung suspended from tall wooden posts. They carried electrical energy, one of their main sources of power (Primus, didn't humans know how unstable and dangerous that stuff was? He could think of one incident in which Powerglide had stepped on a generator in a Nebulan colony-- the warrior had been able to do nothing but stare dumbly at his own hands for a solid orn). Such lines crossed this very valley; he had seen them when he had emerged from the trees. Several converged in the center, inside a wire-fenced enclosure of a bizarre array of large devices and constructs. Even at this distance, he could sense the faint tingle of powerful electrical current.
"He would never stand still long enough," he replied between shots, and muttered subvocal imprecations at how little damage he seemed to be doing to his enemy. He simply didn't have enough--
--power.
"Nic," he said. "Take cover. Please."
"Whiplash-- what're you-- hey!"
Running again, Whiplash made for the enclosure, where the hum of electricity was concentrated, and hastily he made some internal reconfigurations-- deactivating grounding shunts, overriding as much feedback as his naural network would allow, rerouting subprocessors to the right systems. As he vaulted the fence he hoped Ravage would keep his missiles to himself, if he had any left in his payload. One premature hit and this lunatic excuse of a plan would go straight to the Pit.
He turned and looked for Nic. For once, she had done as he asked, and was crouched at the tree line, and Ravage was ignoring her, stalking towards him. With a grim nod to himself, Whiplash brought his left cannon online, and unsheathed the single unbroken blade from his right arm. And with one quick thrust, he drove it into the nearest humming cylinder.
Raw electricity slammed into his systems. For one tiny fraction of a nanosecond, it felt excruciatingly good.
And then it was just excruciating.
His systems screamed warnings. Ignoring them, he forced the power to pool in his cannon, charging the weapon far past its original parameters. It isn't enough. More. Ravage was closer now. Whiplash felt an entire subset of relays blow and fought savagely to keep pulling the energy into his wracked and agonized systems. Converters balked. Heatsink sensors warned of impending failure. Ravage was very close.
Cannon primed. Sucking even more power, as much as possible for as long as possible. Unbelievable pain. Ravage tore away the link-wire fencing and snarled.
Systems failure imminent. Spark powercore overload. Initiate stasis lock.
Now.
Whiplash fired. The blast erupted from his overheated cannon blue-hot and pure. It struck true.
And he fell, systems going dark one by one around him, until he was aware of nothing but the anguished vibration of his own spark, and then... nothing.
Half-hidden behind a tree, Nic couldn't breathe.
She could barely see; the light from Whiplash's cannon shot left bright dancing spots in her vision, and she barely registered the explosions and magnificent sprays of fire and sparks that followed.
When she could see through more than a squint, it was the sight of Ravage tumbling to a stop on the scorched grass that made her leap to her feet. Immediately she looked for her friend.
Whiplash stood in the power substation next to the blackened, smoking husk that had been a transformer. Before she could even call out to him, the robot shuddered, staggered, and dropped, clattering like some great metallic marionette with strings cut to the concrete slab.
Nic's blood ran cold and she grabbed the tree for support. "Get up," she whispered. "Get up. You have to get up."
He didn't. But neither did the wreck of black metal that was Ravage. The Decepticon suddenly thrashed, letting out a bone-thundering grinding sound, and Nic ducked back behind the tree. But no further sound came, save a low, drawn-out mechanical whine, which pitched to a stop.
Nic's heart pounded hotly in her ears as she got back to her feet and chanced a look back out. Ravage wasn't moving.
Neither was Whiplash.
And there was a pair of figures approaching the downed robots. Oh shit. Oh shit. No, no, no--
She was running before she knew it, screaming. "GO AWAY! GET OUT OF HERE!" The two men turned to look as she came at them. "GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
As she passed Ravage, aiming for the substation where Whiplash lay, one of the men moved to intercept her. She twisted, trying to evade, but he was too fast-- she found herself lifted off her feet from behind, two strong arms around her arms and middle. Someone was saying something to her, but she was past listening.
Nic exploded. Thrashing like a woman gone mad, she aimed her boot-clad heels backwards and struck her captor's shins. She couldn't make use of her elbows but she threw her head back, feeling her skull connect with a sharp crack and a cry of pain from behind. The arms abruptly released her, and she wasted no time making good her freedom.
She was almost to Whiplash when a large black truck came plowing over the grass from the other end of the little clearing. Her heart plummeted and she froze in place as it shook apart at the seams, unfolding and shifting, until a towering monolith of gleaming black robot glared down at her. Its arms flexed, and from each there sprouted a cannon, both of them bigger than her entire body.
It was too much. Her head swam, panic, injury and lack of food catching up to her. It was just too much. At the very end of her limits, the only thing she could do was pass out.
"Ironhide, damn it--!" Lennox's castigation died premature as suddenly the mechanoid swung both cannons skyward and fired continuously for a good three or four seconds, and instinctively the two human soldiers followed the trajectory.
There, far above in the darkening evening sky, the unmistakable knifelike silhouette of a UAV-- what the hell? thought Lennox-- suddenly flashed, changed shape and spun about in the air, not quite avoiding Ironhide's fire. A wing was struck, and though it tilted crazily for a moment, the airborne robot did not fall, instead wheeling around and flying swiftly away.
"Laserbeak, you strutless coward!" Ironhide bellowed, firing a few more shots. "Get down here and I'll tear you a new exhaust port!"
"Laserbeak?" Lennox muttered incredulously. "Epps, get the girl. 'Hide, knock it off-- which one of these is the new guy?"
Grumbling, Ironhide ceased trying to bring down the entire sky and stomped over, keeping well clear of the power substation which was still smoking and spraying sparks. Squatting and retracting his cannons, he reached in, underneath the lines, and grabbed the leg of the blue robot. Slowly, the smallest robot Lennox had yet to see was dragged clear. "Hmmm. Stasis lock. He's badly damaged."
Epps came up, holding the unconscious redhead draped in his arms. His lip was bleeding where the girl had head-butted him, but he didn't seem to pay it much mind. "What about that thing--" He indicated the other inert robot with a jerk of his head-- "is it dead?"
Ironhide chuckled darkly, still hunched over the still form of the newcomer Autobot. "Amazingly, yes. Very impressive. Or stupid. I just contacted the others. Ratchet's incoming." He carefully gathered up the blue robot, who looked even smaller against Ironhide's bulk. "I can't wait to hear this report."
Lennox relaxed, though somewhat uneasily, slinging his gun back over his shoulder. The girl, with a head wound and out cold, and the robot about as offline as they could get, apparently. Mission accomplished... he only hoped it wasn't for nothing.