Exploring Breakdown
Title: Asking for Directions
Fandom: G1 Transformers
Characters: Breakdown, Oikodomopolis, Dead End, Wildrider, Drag Strip
Word Count: 2835
Rating: PG
Summary: At his newest station on Cybertron, Breakdown discovers some of the perils of the planet and gets very lost.
Author's Notes: This would be the first time, chronologically, that the Stunticons meet Oikodomopolis. Poor guys.
My Little Table
---
Breakdown looked up hopelessly at the night-black sky of Cybertron, then around the ruined city-square he stood at the edge of. It looked a little more blasted and wrecked than the previous three such squares he'd driven through, and the neighborhoods to the west looked worse still.
He seemed to be going deeper into the mess, not getting out of it. Damn, damn, double-damn. He'd tried to access Cybertron's equivalent of GPS earlier that day, but it had led him into the blasted city in the first place. Then when he tried to check his maps, he found them all scrambled up, even the ones from Earth, so he could hardly make heads-or-tail of them. He couldn't even remember the way they were supposed to be, and that frightened him. Something had gotten into his mind, and he hadn't even noticed it until he needed his maps.
If he'd been on Earth, he would have used the sun to guide himself until he reached an ocean, because once he'd reached an ocean, he could always find his way back to the Decepticon ship. Better yet, he could have found road signs. Here, though, there were no signs, and he didn't know any of the landmarks in this area of Cybertron.
This wasn't helping. This wasn't helping at all. Breakdown transformed back to car-mode and sat there for a moment, engine idling. If he took a straight line towards the less ruined buildings, he'd probably get out of this wasteland. But then there was the matter of finding the Decepticon base again. Calling for directions wasn't an option, yet. Motormaster would be furious if he broke radio silence before they scoured out the Autobot cell in the area.
He was starting to think he would have to chance it if he didn't want to drive in circles until he ran out of energy.
If Breakdown had been older or a more natural flier, he might have thought to fly over the city and at least survey the land as far as his optics could see. But there had never been a need to do that on Earth, and he'd only been on Cybertron for eight months.
Instead, he wandered through the ruined city for hours, not realizing how turned around he was getting until he wound up at the square he'd started out in. By that time, it was fifteen hours into what he'd meant to be a quick joy-ride, and he'd spent most of that time utterly lost. He didn't have the slightest idea of who put the virus into his system that ruined his maps, but it wouldn't kill him. He'd make his way back to the garrison-
And then? He couldn't just slaughter all of the local garrison, he probably couldn't even kill the one who'd done this to him. Shockwave would be unhappy with him.
His engine wailed in his anger and distress, and the building next to him groaned as screws worked their way out of support beams.
The Lamborghini took a different route out of the square, more southerly than straight east this time. At least roaming around like this helped him to rebuild his maps. He did his best to ignore the niggling part of himself that he blamed on Dead End, the part that was currently telling him that he was grasping at straws over things to be happy about. That sort of attitude wasn't going to get him out of this.
Fifty miles away as the Autobot drives through winding city streets, he rolled into an intersection that wasn't as ruined as the rest of the city. He literally felt the difference under his tires a block out, the road changing from ancient, pitted metallo-ceramic that had long ago lost its ceramic portion to a much smoother, pure metal street.
Not as much debris had fallen on this street, and the only real damage to the buildings were heavy scorch marks. At the intersection was the familiar shape of a Cybertronian fuel-station. In the glare of his headlights, its metal shown with an almost green luster.
He stopped in the road just outside of the station and stared at it. The fuelstation was a little old-fashioned looking and definitely made of green metal instead of the greys of the rest of the city.
A door hauled upwards with a rumble of machinery, and a female voice called out softly, "Hey, why don't you come in for a drink, messenger?"
Breakdown cut off an inarticulate shriek before it barely started and darted down the road. Two buildings past the fuelstation, he made a tight U-turn and cozied up to the building next to it. Then he rolled forward near-silently and peeked around the corner of the building.
The door was still open, and no one had come out of it.
"Who are you?" He demanded, flicking his high-beams on to illuminate the inside of the building. It looked like a cross between a commissary and a medical bay, all the tables attached to the walls and most of them folded up for storage. A garage, according to local terminology. He couldn't see anyone inside, not even the glint of opticshine.
"Obviously not the person you were sent to find. And you made me go and break cover, too!" She sounded deeply offended, as if her breaking cover was more important than her not being anywhere in sight but clearly looking at him-!
He cycled air through all of his systems. "Show yourself. Stop hiding inside where I can't see you."
"Sugarwheels, you're sitting on me."
Breakdown didn't know what she meant and rolled back uncertainly on the metal street. He was sitting-?
Oh, Primus.
Pure metal street in the middle of a city full of ceramo-metal roads. Very little debris among the buildings on that street. Intact buildings, a whole set of them around this intersection, when most other buildings at least had their upper levels torn off.
Oh- Oh- OH!
Lightning-fast, he flipped to robot-mode and jetted off of the metal, above the level of the buildings. He stared downward, waiting for Megatron knew what-
- A flash of orange light went by his head, so close that his near optic shut down to protect itself from the light. She'd shot at him! No, an Autobot had shot at him!
"Slag! That was a ranging shot, get down!"
"Like Hell!" He snarled and pulled out his pistol to return fire. Rarely indulged anger burned in him, and he just wanted to rip someone apart.
Then a plasma blast caught him in the face and smashed him back several yards. He shook his head, clearing out the loud red warnings from his forcefield systems about how many more shots like that he could take. Not enough.
Breakdown cut his thrusters and dropped to the street, transforming just before he hit the metal. He flicked his headlights on briefly; yes, the street was as undefensible as he thought it was. With the other Decepticon as the battlefield, he couldn't use his engine vibrations in the fight at all. Better to just run.
"Get inside," Oikodomopolis hissed. "You'll be safer."
"They'll just come in after me," he snarled, engine revving.
A low chuckle came from the building. "Yeah. They will."
Before he had any time to question her sanity, a volley of laser-blasts spattered against his forcefields. He jinked to the left as the curiously quiet-engined Autobots appeared in the distance. Breakdown returned fire, taking out the leftmost car before the remaining two Autobots transformed and ducked behind cover.
"Watch your rearview," Oikodomopolis snapped as a laser-cannon slid out of a building facade and opened fire. "I've got at least three more behind you, and that one you shot ain't dead yet. Get inside!"
As the Autobots behind Breakdown scattered, the Lamborghini executed a sharp right turn into the garage. He bounced off the back wall with his grill, transformed, and whirled to face the open door. "Close it!"
Oikodomopolis didn't reply, and the door didn't close.
He jerked his head up to her ceiling, expression incredulous. "Close the door!"
He heard the patter of metal feet against metal street, the sound of mechs trying to move quietly but who really couldn't. His optics flared bright, and he thought he heard a barely-there giggle before the first Autobot ducked into the doorway and shot him.
One Autobot shooting lasers at him, he could handle. When the first one shifted out of the doorway and the second one came in, he found himself wishing he had a more helpful backup. When the third got inside, an interior door slid open, and he dashed in just ahead of a plasma blast that would have taken his head off.
There was a short stretch of hallway, another door that opened in front of him, more hallway, a door to the right, more hall-
He dodged, ducked, and wove as lasers and plasma blasts skipped past him. Some part of him wondered when Oikodomopolis was going to stop letting people shoot her up-
-The door he'd just ducked through shut behind him. He heard the Autobots start yelling from the other side, then a sudden explosion of weapons fire. The door didn't start glowing with heat, so it puzzled him as to what they were shooting at. And what was shooting back.
"Make yourself comfy. Drinks'll be on in five," Oikodomopolis said cheerily.
He glanced up at the ceiling, not sure why that was more natural than talking to a wall. "You're shooting at them, aren't you?"
"All good Decepticon fuelstations have internal defences to keep out the undesireables." She sounded amused. "I'll try to get the trash cleaned up so you can get out of here as soon as possible."
A panel slid open in the wall and a cube of energon slid out onto the counter. He picked it up cautiously, finding it warm to the touch and buzzing slightly. Energon wasn't supposed to do that. "About that... My maps of the area got damaged. Do you have up-to-date versions?"
"As up-to-date as they get when you don't move for four hundred years. Plug a datalink into the counter." A button began to blink with a red light next to his elbow. "Under there's all the ports. What happened to your maps?"
Breakdown pressed the button, and a panel slid back to reveal more different types of ports than he had realized existed. He ran his fingers over them, trying to find the one his datalink would fit. "I tried to access the planetary GPS, and the next thing I knew my maps got eaten."
The panel shut so fast it nipped his fingertips. His optics flashed, then he glared up at the ceiling. "What's the idea-?"
"You opened yourself up to the datasphere! You're probably riddled with viruses!"
"-What?"
There was a soft hiss from the air vents, and he automatically scanned to make sure she wasn't piping in something corrosive. No, it just looked like she was venting excess carbon dioxide. "You opened yourself to the datasphere, carboy. You said so yourself - you put out a wireless call for some information. We've been fighting the Autobots for how long, and they never told you not to do that? The whole thing belongs to the infowar programs now; they're practically feral, and some of them got programmed to rewrite themselves so they could be better. Whatever genius did that deserves to have his head opened up with no firewalls. Let them eat him."
Breakdown didn't think he understood everything she'd just said. Mostly because if he understood as much as he thought he did, he wanted to curl up in a corner and gibber. Sentient programs in the air, waiting to get into his head and change his mind and he'd just opened up and said 'come and get me!' and not even realized it-
"Whoa, whoa, whoa..." Blunt-tipped cables curled around his shaking shoulders, a loop of one curving up to brush his cheek. "Calm down, carboy. Sit down, drink some energon."
He shook his head; he'd spill it all over the floor like this, he just knew it.
One blunt tip nudged against his mouth. "Drink."
"I-"
The blunt tip seemed to explode into segments, and he struggled as four metal legs clamped down on his face while a probe slid into his mouth. The cables curled tight around him, heavy and constraining now that he wanted them away. Then the probe engaged his fuel-intake port and hot energon poured into him. It somehow managed to be darker than any energon from Earth but not as harsh as what was served in the bars of Cybertron.
"Now, you just have a drink and calm down. A good programmer can fix your head right up, especially if all that happened was your maps got destroyed."
His optics dimmed, and the colors of the room faded to greys. //You're drugging me.//
"Just a few tranquilizers."
//I'm going to shoot you.//
"Actually you're going to collapse into defrag pretty soon now. Sweet dreams!"
He was so going to shoot her as soon as he could lift his arm. Treacherous-
His optics went black, and then the rest of his mind followed.
***
Light, and his berth under his cheek, replaced blackness with felt like the flip of a switch. Breakdown blinked his optics and stared out at the quarters he shared with the other limb-piece Stunticons. Two berths on each wall, one above the other, lockers at the far end, and nothing at all homely about the room. They hadn't lived here long enough to make it into a nest, and they didn't plan to.
"Ah, you're awake." Dead End strode into his line-of-sight. "I suspected the green female had overdosed you with whatever tranquilizer she forced into your systems and you would lay here in a coma."
He fit that together with his memories of what had come just before. "... She brought me back?"
"Oh, yes. She arrived with you in her arms, strode right past Motormaster and the rest of us, and took you straight to the medics. It was quite amusing to watch, especially with Motormaster storming after her. They had a shouting matching up and down the halls of the base."
"Only a shouting match?" Wildrider poked his head into the room. "He almost took her head off! Oh, hey, Breakdown's awake!" He yanked his head out of the doorway and yelled down the hall, "Breakdown's awake! Come and get a look before he can move again!"
"What?" Breakdown tried to get up and deck Wildrider, but none of his motor systems responded to his commands.
"She did say that would be the last part to wear off." Dead End laid a hand on his shoulder. "I suspect only Drag Strip will come. Motormaster has likely gone off-road and gotten himself horribly maimed."
Breakdown glared at Dead End, not liking that faint hint of glee he heard in his brother's voice. "Where's he driving to?"
Wildrider darted into the room, spun around, then flung himself at the berth opposite Breakdown. "He's chasing after that girl. 'Cause she left before he could pound her for drugging you, and Coldspike is all 'dude, I don't care enough to order her back, now go 'way, boy, you bother me'."
Somehow, Breakdown could not possibly imagine the bomber ever saying 'dude'.
Drag Strip sauntered into the room, shaking a pair of dice in one hand. He glanced at Breakdown and smirked. "Yeah, he's awake. You have fun with the vampire, Breakdown?"
"Vampire?" Wildrider asked. "Whaddaya mean 'vampire'?"
Drag Strip shrugged. "I brought her up during the game with Sonar and Strangle. Seems she's got a reputation for ambushing Autobots and sucking all their fuel out. Real effective and good to get a cube off of if you aren't squeamish."
"She was more generous than most of the people on this planet," Breakdown said. "Better energon than the bars, too."
"Yeah?" The dice stopped clattering in Drag Strip's hand as he turned a speculative look on Breakdown. "You think we can keep her?"
"She already left, Dragster." Wildrider threw himself off the bed and tackled Drag Strip at the knees, the two of them hitting the ground with a clang. The wrestling match was inevitable after that. "Totally and completely left. Walking to Polyhex left. Going to shag Astrotrain left. Gone, vamoose, never coming back."
"Going to shag Astrotrain?" Dead End asked.
"She said she was!" Wildrider headbutted Drag Strip, while the yellow racecar drove his knee into Wildrider's abdomen.
"I'm sure he'll be thrilled."
Breakdown made a small sound as he finally managed to sit up. Dead End glanced at him briefly, then stepped out of the way as the Lamborghini lunged at the other two Stunticons. "Wildrider!"
"Hey! Hey! What's this for? I didn't do anything to you!"
"Except for-"
"Shut up, Deady!"
It felt good to be home again.
End
Fandom: G1 Transformers
Characters: Breakdown, Oikodomopolis, Dead End, Wildrider, Drag Strip
Word Count: 2835
Rating: PG
Summary: At his newest station on Cybertron, Breakdown discovers some of the perils of the planet and gets very lost.
Author's Notes: This would be the first time, chronologically, that the Stunticons meet Oikodomopolis. Poor guys.
My Little Table
---
Breakdown looked up hopelessly at the night-black sky of Cybertron, then around the ruined city-square he stood at the edge of. It looked a little more blasted and wrecked than the previous three such squares he'd driven through, and the neighborhoods to the west looked worse still.
He seemed to be going deeper into the mess, not getting out of it. Damn, damn, double-damn. He'd tried to access Cybertron's equivalent of GPS earlier that day, but it had led him into the blasted city in the first place. Then when he tried to check his maps, he found them all scrambled up, even the ones from Earth, so he could hardly make heads-or-tail of them. He couldn't even remember the way they were supposed to be, and that frightened him. Something had gotten into his mind, and he hadn't even noticed it until he needed his maps.
If he'd been on Earth, he would have used the sun to guide himself until he reached an ocean, because once he'd reached an ocean, he could always find his way back to the Decepticon ship. Better yet, he could have found road signs. Here, though, there were no signs, and he didn't know any of the landmarks in this area of Cybertron.
This wasn't helping. This wasn't helping at all. Breakdown transformed back to car-mode and sat there for a moment, engine idling. If he took a straight line towards the less ruined buildings, he'd probably get out of this wasteland. But then there was the matter of finding the Decepticon base again. Calling for directions wasn't an option, yet. Motormaster would be furious if he broke radio silence before they scoured out the Autobot cell in the area.
He was starting to think he would have to chance it if he didn't want to drive in circles until he ran out of energy.
If Breakdown had been older or a more natural flier, he might have thought to fly over the city and at least survey the land as far as his optics could see. But there had never been a need to do that on Earth, and he'd only been on Cybertron for eight months.
Instead, he wandered through the ruined city for hours, not realizing how turned around he was getting until he wound up at the square he'd started out in. By that time, it was fifteen hours into what he'd meant to be a quick joy-ride, and he'd spent most of that time utterly lost. He didn't have the slightest idea of who put the virus into his system that ruined his maps, but it wouldn't kill him. He'd make his way back to the garrison-
And then? He couldn't just slaughter all of the local garrison, he probably couldn't even kill the one who'd done this to him. Shockwave would be unhappy with him.
His engine wailed in his anger and distress, and the building next to him groaned as screws worked their way out of support beams.
The Lamborghini took a different route out of the square, more southerly than straight east this time. At least roaming around like this helped him to rebuild his maps. He did his best to ignore the niggling part of himself that he blamed on Dead End, the part that was currently telling him that he was grasping at straws over things to be happy about. That sort of attitude wasn't going to get him out of this.
Fifty miles away as the Autobot drives through winding city streets, he rolled into an intersection that wasn't as ruined as the rest of the city. He literally felt the difference under his tires a block out, the road changing from ancient, pitted metallo-ceramic that had long ago lost its ceramic portion to a much smoother, pure metal street.
Not as much debris had fallen on this street, and the only real damage to the buildings were heavy scorch marks. At the intersection was the familiar shape of a Cybertronian fuel-station. In the glare of his headlights, its metal shown with an almost green luster.
He stopped in the road just outside of the station and stared at it. The fuelstation was a little old-fashioned looking and definitely made of green metal instead of the greys of the rest of the city.
A door hauled upwards with a rumble of machinery, and a female voice called out softly, "Hey, why don't you come in for a drink, messenger?"
Breakdown cut off an inarticulate shriek before it barely started and darted down the road. Two buildings past the fuelstation, he made a tight U-turn and cozied up to the building next to it. Then he rolled forward near-silently and peeked around the corner of the building.
The door was still open, and no one had come out of it.
"Who are you?" He demanded, flicking his high-beams on to illuminate the inside of the building. It looked like a cross between a commissary and a medical bay, all the tables attached to the walls and most of them folded up for storage. A garage, according to local terminology. He couldn't see anyone inside, not even the glint of opticshine.
"Obviously not the person you were sent to find. And you made me go and break cover, too!" She sounded deeply offended, as if her breaking cover was more important than her not being anywhere in sight but clearly looking at him-!
He cycled air through all of his systems. "Show yourself. Stop hiding inside where I can't see you."
"Sugarwheels, you're sitting on me."
Breakdown didn't know what she meant and rolled back uncertainly on the metal street. He was sitting-?
Oh, Primus.
Pure metal street in the middle of a city full of ceramo-metal roads. Very little debris among the buildings on that street. Intact buildings, a whole set of them around this intersection, when most other buildings at least had their upper levels torn off.
Oh- Oh- OH!
Lightning-fast, he flipped to robot-mode and jetted off of the metal, above the level of the buildings. He stared downward, waiting for Megatron knew what-
- A flash of orange light went by his head, so close that his near optic shut down to protect itself from the light. She'd shot at him! No, an Autobot had shot at him!
"Slag! That was a ranging shot, get down!"
"Like Hell!" He snarled and pulled out his pistol to return fire. Rarely indulged anger burned in him, and he just wanted to rip someone apart.
Then a plasma blast caught him in the face and smashed him back several yards. He shook his head, clearing out the loud red warnings from his forcefield systems about how many more shots like that he could take. Not enough.
Breakdown cut his thrusters and dropped to the street, transforming just before he hit the metal. He flicked his headlights on briefly; yes, the street was as undefensible as he thought it was. With the other Decepticon as the battlefield, he couldn't use his engine vibrations in the fight at all. Better to just run.
"Get inside," Oikodomopolis hissed. "You'll be safer."
"They'll just come in after me," he snarled, engine revving.
A low chuckle came from the building. "Yeah. They will."
Before he had any time to question her sanity, a volley of laser-blasts spattered against his forcefields. He jinked to the left as the curiously quiet-engined Autobots appeared in the distance. Breakdown returned fire, taking out the leftmost car before the remaining two Autobots transformed and ducked behind cover.
"Watch your rearview," Oikodomopolis snapped as a laser-cannon slid out of a building facade and opened fire. "I've got at least three more behind you, and that one you shot ain't dead yet. Get inside!"
As the Autobots behind Breakdown scattered, the Lamborghini executed a sharp right turn into the garage. He bounced off the back wall with his grill, transformed, and whirled to face the open door. "Close it!"
Oikodomopolis didn't reply, and the door didn't close.
He jerked his head up to her ceiling, expression incredulous. "Close the door!"
He heard the patter of metal feet against metal street, the sound of mechs trying to move quietly but who really couldn't. His optics flared bright, and he thought he heard a barely-there giggle before the first Autobot ducked into the doorway and shot him.
One Autobot shooting lasers at him, he could handle. When the first one shifted out of the doorway and the second one came in, he found himself wishing he had a more helpful backup. When the third got inside, an interior door slid open, and he dashed in just ahead of a plasma blast that would have taken his head off.
There was a short stretch of hallway, another door that opened in front of him, more hallway, a door to the right, more hall-
He dodged, ducked, and wove as lasers and plasma blasts skipped past him. Some part of him wondered when Oikodomopolis was going to stop letting people shoot her up-
-The door he'd just ducked through shut behind him. He heard the Autobots start yelling from the other side, then a sudden explosion of weapons fire. The door didn't start glowing with heat, so it puzzled him as to what they were shooting at. And what was shooting back.
"Make yourself comfy. Drinks'll be on in five," Oikodomopolis said cheerily.
He glanced up at the ceiling, not sure why that was more natural than talking to a wall. "You're shooting at them, aren't you?"
"All good Decepticon fuelstations have internal defences to keep out the undesireables." She sounded amused. "I'll try to get the trash cleaned up so you can get out of here as soon as possible."
A panel slid open in the wall and a cube of energon slid out onto the counter. He picked it up cautiously, finding it warm to the touch and buzzing slightly. Energon wasn't supposed to do that. "About that... My maps of the area got damaged. Do you have up-to-date versions?"
"As up-to-date as they get when you don't move for four hundred years. Plug a datalink into the counter." A button began to blink with a red light next to his elbow. "Under there's all the ports. What happened to your maps?"
Breakdown pressed the button, and a panel slid back to reveal more different types of ports than he had realized existed. He ran his fingers over them, trying to find the one his datalink would fit. "I tried to access the planetary GPS, and the next thing I knew my maps got eaten."
The panel shut so fast it nipped his fingertips. His optics flashed, then he glared up at the ceiling. "What's the idea-?"
"You opened yourself up to the datasphere! You're probably riddled with viruses!"
"-What?"
There was a soft hiss from the air vents, and he automatically scanned to make sure she wasn't piping in something corrosive. No, it just looked like she was venting excess carbon dioxide. "You opened yourself to the datasphere, carboy. You said so yourself - you put out a wireless call for some information. We've been fighting the Autobots for how long, and they never told you not to do that? The whole thing belongs to the infowar programs now; they're practically feral, and some of them got programmed to rewrite themselves so they could be better. Whatever genius did that deserves to have his head opened up with no firewalls. Let them eat him."
Breakdown didn't think he understood everything she'd just said. Mostly because if he understood as much as he thought he did, he wanted to curl up in a corner and gibber. Sentient programs in the air, waiting to get into his head and change his mind and he'd just opened up and said 'come and get me!' and not even realized it-
"Whoa, whoa, whoa..." Blunt-tipped cables curled around his shaking shoulders, a loop of one curving up to brush his cheek. "Calm down, carboy. Sit down, drink some energon."
He shook his head; he'd spill it all over the floor like this, he just knew it.
One blunt tip nudged against his mouth. "Drink."
"I-"
The blunt tip seemed to explode into segments, and he struggled as four metal legs clamped down on his face while a probe slid into his mouth. The cables curled tight around him, heavy and constraining now that he wanted them away. Then the probe engaged his fuel-intake port and hot energon poured into him. It somehow managed to be darker than any energon from Earth but not as harsh as what was served in the bars of Cybertron.
"Now, you just have a drink and calm down. A good programmer can fix your head right up, especially if all that happened was your maps got destroyed."
His optics dimmed, and the colors of the room faded to greys. //You're drugging me.//
"Just a few tranquilizers."
//I'm going to shoot you.//
"Actually you're going to collapse into defrag pretty soon now. Sweet dreams!"
He was so going to shoot her as soon as he could lift his arm. Treacherous-
His optics went black, and then the rest of his mind followed.
***
Light, and his berth under his cheek, replaced blackness with felt like the flip of a switch. Breakdown blinked his optics and stared out at the quarters he shared with the other limb-piece Stunticons. Two berths on each wall, one above the other, lockers at the far end, and nothing at all homely about the room. They hadn't lived here long enough to make it into a nest, and they didn't plan to.
"Ah, you're awake." Dead End strode into his line-of-sight. "I suspected the green female had overdosed you with whatever tranquilizer she forced into your systems and you would lay here in a coma."
He fit that together with his memories of what had come just before. "... She brought me back?"
"Oh, yes. She arrived with you in her arms, strode right past Motormaster and the rest of us, and took you straight to the medics. It was quite amusing to watch, especially with Motormaster storming after her. They had a shouting matching up and down the halls of the base."
"Only a shouting match?" Wildrider poked his head into the room. "He almost took her head off! Oh, hey, Breakdown's awake!" He yanked his head out of the doorway and yelled down the hall, "Breakdown's awake! Come and get a look before he can move again!"
"What?" Breakdown tried to get up and deck Wildrider, but none of his motor systems responded to his commands.
"She did say that would be the last part to wear off." Dead End laid a hand on his shoulder. "I suspect only Drag Strip will come. Motormaster has likely gone off-road and gotten himself horribly maimed."
Breakdown glared at Dead End, not liking that faint hint of glee he heard in his brother's voice. "Where's he driving to?"
Wildrider darted into the room, spun around, then flung himself at the berth opposite Breakdown. "He's chasing after that girl. 'Cause she left before he could pound her for drugging you, and Coldspike is all 'dude, I don't care enough to order her back, now go 'way, boy, you bother me'."
Somehow, Breakdown could not possibly imagine the bomber ever saying 'dude'.
Drag Strip sauntered into the room, shaking a pair of dice in one hand. He glanced at Breakdown and smirked. "Yeah, he's awake. You have fun with the vampire, Breakdown?"
"Vampire?" Wildrider asked. "Whaddaya mean 'vampire'?"
Drag Strip shrugged. "I brought her up during the game with Sonar and Strangle. Seems she's got a reputation for ambushing Autobots and sucking all their fuel out. Real effective and good to get a cube off of if you aren't squeamish."
"She was more generous than most of the people on this planet," Breakdown said. "Better energon than the bars, too."
"Yeah?" The dice stopped clattering in Drag Strip's hand as he turned a speculative look on Breakdown. "You think we can keep her?"
"She already left, Dragster." Wildrider threw himself off the bed and tackled Drag Strip at the knees, the two of them hitting the ground with a clang. The wrestling match was inevitable after that. "Totally and completely left. Walking to Polyhex left. Going to shag Astrotrain left. Gone, vamoose, never coming back."
"Going to shag Astrotrain?" Dead End asked.
"She said she was!" Wildrider headbutted Drag Strip, while the yellow racecar drove his knee into Wildrider's abdomen.
"I'm sure he'll be thrilled."
Breakdown made a small sound as he finally managed to sit up. Dead End glanced at him briefly, then stepped out of the way as the Lamborghini lunged at the other two Stunticons. "Wildrider!"
"Hey! Hey! What's this for? I didn't do anything to you!"
"Except for-"
"Shut up, Deady!"
It felt good to be home again.
End