Something buried... (contd.)
The noise and the light died, leaving only the sound of sizzling components and the faint noises of cooling metal.
Kneeling below her turret’s machine gun, Ironhide looked across at Oceanglide. “That was supposed to be disarmed,” she snarled.
Oceanglide was squatting with his panel-shields raised in front of him, still glowing softly from the heat they’d released. He peered at her from behind them, then tapped the edge of one. “I suppose,” he said, lowering the one in front of his face and looking at her turret, “I misled the system.”
Ironhide followed his gaze, then reset her vocaliser with a staticky noise. “Uh, yeah. Me too.” She got up and tramped back while he chuckled. She’d shoved Armorhide behind some rubble before they’d started shooting, and he was still there, rubbing his helmet. She hauled him to his feet.
“We had best move swiftly,” Oceanglide said, scouring the way ahead with his gaze. Metal dripped from the hole in the wall and ceiling where his counterattack had angled up into the levels above. He indicated the remains of the bots it had gone through first. “I doubt they were alone…”
Ironhide didn’t answer, steering Armorhide along by the treads. Oceanglide jumped off the rubble he was stationed on and took the lead.
A shape swooped towards them from the darkness, red and winged, eerily silent in the soft shadows of the glowing metal. Ironhide froze, giving a high, short beep. Oceanglide looked up, started to drop to a crouch, to raise his launcher…
Shots rang out, purple lasers lancing into the thing from behind. It screeched and tumbled forward, managing to transform to robot-mode as it hit the ground. The next blast took it square in the back, keeping it doubled over. Ironhide couldn’t move; Oceanglide was paused, too, watching the new combat as if contemplating scenery. Why? Why wasn’t he attacking?
In the next instant a darker shadow lunged into Ironhide’s field of view. She saw the red attacker jerk and flail as it was run through.
Oh Cybertron, he followed us. She realised her joints had stopped locking up when she shoved Armorhide away and stepped in front of him. Her machine gun was rattling back and forth on its mount.
Skywarp pulled his sword smoothly out of the red one’s back, already looking to the smaller bots. “Oh, it’s you Minicons again.” He returned the blade to his wing. “I suppose you’ll tell me you just happened to be digging next to these freaks.”
“Not at all,” said Oceanglide smoothly. As if he didn’t have flecks of fluid splattered on his chest. Ironhide could see them when she glanced his way. “They chose to dig next to us.”
Skywarp snorted, turning the corpse over with his foot. Ironhide focused on looking at the dead mech. Its design was vaguely jet-like, but there were symmetrical sections on its wings and arms that were made of the strange, soft-looking ‘flesh’ the others had had. “You’re lucky I was in the neighbourhood.”
“Lucky? Are you hunting these…?” Even Oceanglide couldn’t seem to find the word for these bots.
“No.” Skywarp paused. “Not officially.”
“He’s only doing it for the reward,” Ironhide muttered.
“Reward?” Skywarp looked surprised. He turned the red jet’s corpse over with his foot, scrutinising the shell. “There’s a reward out for these pathetic scraplets?”
“Even ratcatchers get paid,” Oceanglide said dryly.
“Not in my day, they didn’t.” Skywarp gave the broken wreck a last kick and walked away. “You can haul their sorry shells back if you want. The last thing I need is a commendation.”
“We could use your assistance,” Oceanglide said, much more sharply than Ironhide would have dared. “We need to locate-”
“Later.” Skywarp didn’t slow. “I have business.” He was gone when Ironhide looked up.
Oceanglide’s faceplate was unreadable. “Bring Armorhide,” he said. “We’ll find our friends ourselves.” He glanced at her. “I suppose you’d say that ended well.”
She didn’t say it, but Ironhide agreed.
---
Raising a hand to the others behind him. Stormcloud leaned out from the doorway just enough to see what was going on as well as hear. It opened onto a balcony that ran around the open room ahead - all Bulk-scaled, of course, so massive. He glimpsed a couple of colourful winged bots sulking in the far corner. And in the centre of the room someone - a Minicon someone - was talking.
He was dark brown - some kind of car-alt, Stormcloud guessed, and he managed to look cocksure as a Seeker and tight-wound as a winch. “You’re back already? Where are the other two?”
“Slagged!” The lizard-bot cowered on the spot - not from the Minicon, Stormcloud knew. No-one would cower from a Minicon. “The intruders followed me!”
Stormcloud pulled back into the shadows just before the Minicon’s head snapped up at the doorway. “You closed the blast doors?”
The lizard hissed an affirmative. A door somewhere to the right slid open, a Bulk moving around beyond.
The Minicon drew himself up. “It doesn’t matter. Our leader has spoken to me. He’s-”
Something slammed in the distance, making both their gazes snap that way. Stormcloud smirked and looked back at the others. “Ready to crash this club?”