WTF? A Grunt's Guide? After Two Years?!
Ayup. I'm trying to get old stuff ressurected in the hopes of getting my writing groove back. This first new addition...isn't one that I'm terribly proud of. But it's a start I suppose. Since ff.net won't let me uploads docs due to updates...or something like that, I decided to post it here first. So this be Part 26: Metroplex.
A/N: Yeah, I’m not dead. I’m sorry this isn’t one of the better ones, it’s mostly to help me get back to finishing these up. I have a few more in various states of completion, and this time it shouldn’t take over a year to update!
Part Twenty-Six
He remembered a child once asking him what it was like to be him. The first word that came to mind was ‘boring.’ However, that was hardly the proper response to a curious human staring at a living battle station. So he had gone on for some time about how his body functioned as both robot and city, making sure to keep his young audience enthralled.
But no, really, it was boring as anything.
For one thing, privacy was a foreign concept. When people were constantly running through one’s insides, one did not have a lot of ‘alone time.’ The term ‘multi-tasking’ as well took on a whole new meaning when it came to the giant Autobot. With Perceptor running formulas through one end of him, Ultra Magnus ordering up a dozen screens at once at the other end, and Sideswipe painting a part of him somewhere in-between, it was a wonder he hadn’t developed some serious neural issues by now.
Depending on who had evening monitor duty, he could sometimes find a good chatting companion. Blaster was always good for a late night chat, as was Springer or Hot Rod. Blurr was a bit too much for even him, and many of the others were simply too tired or too involved in their own thoughts to offer much in the way of conversation.
Thus, the one day where he was able to ‘stretch out’ as it were came as a very welcome surprise.
Apparently there was some big… something or other going on not too far away that required every last bot on base. Assured that a robot the size of… well… Metroplex needed no real protection; Ultra Magnus had allowed him to stay by himself. He was alone. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, he was alone!
And he was bored!
One would think he would revel in being left to his own devices for a while. Yet he was so unused to the feeling of ‘alone’ that he had no idea what to do with himself. There were no Decepticons after him; they were all involved in the skirmish with the other Autobots.
He tried counting how many trees he could see, how many rocks, how many animals. He’d tried watching the clouds. He’d even tried dozing off for a little while, after closing up all his entrances tightly of course. Yet no matter what he did, the buzzing in his audios of ‘nothing’ haunted him. Itched him where he was unable to scratch. In the end, the giant Autobot decided there was only one thing to be done.
Bring himself to the action if the action would not come to him.
It had been a while since he used his vehicle form, and the gears groaned a bit from disuse. However it also felt refreshingly nice; like a good long stretch after waking up. If nothing else, he would enjoy the exercise. It was alright that he couldn’t exactly move that fast in vehicle form; from the sounds of it, the battle wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.
True enough, when he arrived, everything was still going full force. There were a good number of wounded on both sides, but not enough for anyone to call a retreat or draw. As he was not exactly small or stealthy by any means, Metroplex’s arrival was duly noted by one and all right away.
“What the….” Megatron’s optics were wide as he saw the giant transformer moving itself forward and into the battle. He could already see his second-in-command’s nervous twitch. This was not good. There were few places to retreat to at this location, and besides, they really needed this energy source. They couldn’t just abandon it just because some bored behemoth decided to crash the party.
“Decepticons!” he cried out to his troops. “Concentrate all fire on that… that thing!”
What?! He was most certainly not a thing! Stewing in his indignation, the fortress didn’t notice his faction running away from him until they were halfway across the field. Now what could possess them to leave the circle of protection he could offer?
His thought process was abruptly cut off as a rain of lasers and missiles came down upon him. It took but a nanoclick and he was eagerly returning fire. This was what he had come for! The others be slagged, this was fun!
As time wore steadily on, and the Decepticons and their missiles grew steadily greater in number, this exercise became less and less fun. Small scorch marks turned into larger burns, and dents into gaping holes. It wasn’t long at all until Metroplax understood why it was that his fellow Autobots chose to attack the enemy from the side rather than alongside the enormous fortress.
It was simply safer that way.
Murphy’s Law of Warfare: Density of fire increases proportionally to the curiousness of the target.
Corollary: Odd objects attract fire. Don’t stand next to one.
A/N: Yeah, I’m not dead. I’m sorry this isn’t one of the better ones, it’s mostly to help me get back to finishing these up. I have a few more in various states of completion, and this time it shouldn’t take over a year to update!
Part Twenty-Six
He remembered a child once asking him what it was like to be him. The first word that came to mind was ‘boring.’ However, that was hardly the proper response to a curious human staring at a living battle station. So he had gone on for some time about how his body functioned as both robot and city, making sure to keep his young audience enthralled.
But no, really, it was boring as anything.
For one thing, privacy was a foreign concept. When people were constantly running through one’s insides, one did not have a lot of ‘alone time.’ The term ‘multi-tasking’ as well took on a whole new meaning when it came to the giant Autobot. With Perceptor running formulas through one end of him, Ultra Magnus ordering up a dozen screens at once at the other end, and Sideswipe painting a part of him somewhere in-between, it was a wonder he hadn’t developed some serious neural issues by now.
Depending on who had evening monitor duty, he could sometimes find a good chatting companion. Blaster was always good for a late night chat, as was Springer or Hot Rod. Blurr was a bit too much for even him, and many of the others were simply too tired or too involved in their own thoughts to offer much in the way of conversation.
Thus, the one day where he was able to ‘stretch out’ as it were came as a very welcome surprise.
Apparently there was some big… something or other going on not too far away that required every last bot on base. Assured that a robot the size of… well… Metroplex needed no real protection; Ultra Magnus had allowed him to stay by himself. He was alone. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, he was alone!
And he was bored!
One would think he would revel in being left to his own devices for a while. Yet he was so unused to the feeling of ‘alone’ that he had no idea what to do with himself. There were no Decepticons after him; they were all involved in the skirmish with the other Autobots.
He tried counting how many trees he could see, how many rocks, how many animals. He’d tried watching the clouds. He’d even tried dozing off for a little while, after closing up all his entrances tightly of course. Yet no matter what he did, the buzzing in his audios of ‘nothing’ haunted him. Itched him where he was unable to scratch. In the end, the giant Autobot decided there was only one thing to be done.
Bring himself to the action if the action would not come to him.
It had been a while since he used his vehicle form, and the gears groaned a bit from disuse. However it also felt refreshingly nice; like a good long stretch after waking up. If nothing else, he would enjoy the exercise. It was alright that he couldn’t exactly move that fast in vehicle form; from the sounds of it, the battle wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.
True enough, when he arrived, everything was still going full force. There were a good number of wounded on both sides, but not enough for anyone to call a retreat or draw. As he was not exactly small or stealthy by any means, Metroplex’s arrival was duly noted by one and all right away.
“What the….” Megatron’s optics were wide as he saw the giant transformer moving itself forward and into the battle. He could already see his second-in-command’s nervous twitch. This was not good. There were few places to retreat to at this location, and besides, they really needed this energy source. They couldn’t just abandon it just because some bored behemoth decided to crash the party.
“Decepticons!” he cried out to his troops. “Concentrate all fire on that… that thing!”
What?! He was most certainly not a thing! Stewing in his indignation, the fortress didn’t notice his faction running away from him until they were halfway across the field. Now what could possess them to leave the circle of protection he could offer?
His thought process was abruptly cut off as a rain of lasers and missiles came down upon him. It took but a nanoclick and he was eagerly returning fire. This was what he had come for! The others be slagged, this was fun!
As time wore steadily on, and the Decepticons and their missiles grew steadily greater in number, this exercise became less and less fun. Small scorch marks turned into larger burns, and dents into gaping holes. It wasn’t long at all until Metroplax understood why it was that his fellow Autobots chose to attack the enemy from the side rather than alongside the enormous fortress.
It was simply safer that way.
Murphy’s Law of Warfare: Density of fire increases proportionally to the curiousness of the target.
Corollary: Odd objects attract fire. Don’t stand next to one.