Ep 1.5 (AR) Boys and their toys (closed)

[Deleted]

Week 1, day 5

When it came down to it, Wheeljack figured, a sword for Fort Max would probably end up something like the mech himself. Big, broad, tall, no-nonsense, something to match that obscenely large rifle the warden was packing. Really, give the mech a sharpened hunk of metal and he'd be set. So the blade design he eventually settled on after some thinking and heavy calculations was an entirely different style to the ones that sat on Wheeljack's back. It was going to take a while to make, so he started work on it almost immediately after that first energon raid.

Starship plating was currently their only good source of Cybertonium. Wheeljack had merely set aside a large slab scavenged from Halocene's podship that was yet to be smelted. Outta interest (boredom) he'd read up on human sword making. The techniques were primitive but effective, though a lot of mythology had been integrated into the actual facts and sifting through it all was rather tedious. Wheeljack longed for the cycles of Crystal City's vast digital libraries, with journals tagged so full of meta data that you could download them and watch just about every aspect to an experiment. From the original seed thoughts that sparked off an idea to the actual testing itself.

In his off time and whenever he'd been dropped into the Omega base for one reason or the other, he'd got himself set up. Acquiring the parts and equipment he'd need to forge the blade and just general preparation to get his workshop ready. A forge had been one of the first things he'd got installed via the help of Agent Fowler. Other items such as anvils, hammers hydraulic presses, grinders, etc had came trickling over time as Wheeljack figured out what he needed for whatever project he needed to work on. It was nothing like a Cybertronian workshop, the tech was low key and more than a few millenia off what Wheeljack would have preferred but the war had made him long resigned to things he couldn't have.

The thing that delayed him the most was actually refining the Cybertonium recovered from the podship into an alloy he felt was suitable for a blade. Fowler again had been useful in acquiring additional metals such as silicon, tungusten and molybdenum, some of which were not commonly used in human sword smithing as they were difficult to forge. But without the elements Wheeljack would have used back on Cybertron or at any other space faring civilisation, these materials would be used to supplement them. Eventually though, all it came to was choosing a date to be completely occupied for a couple of cycles.

Forging the blade ended up taking him half an Earth week. What should have been around a cycle at most was drawn out simply because of the massive size of the blade. Working all that Cybertonium into shape took time and care and as Wheeljack stood and worked at his anvil, pounding away with a hammer, his processor sank firmly over to the engineer half of him. Like the Omega base could sense how hyper-focused he was, no one attempted to disturb him because they probably would have been automatically skewered against his lab door had they attempted to barge in. Eventually, it was done, the metal annealed and quenched and he set out to grind the blade, working out its edges. All of it. That...was a lot of sword to grind.

Once the metal had been hardened and tempered, all it needed was a hilt before he could settle on the finishing touches. Whilst Wheeljack's own were slightly decorative, with glyphs inscribed on the bottom of the blade, he figured Fort Max was a no frills, simple sorta mech. The hilt was functional, whilst he'd have preferred a completely non-conductive material, Wheeljack didn't currently have the means to generate a suitable material durable enough to handle Cybertronian strength. So, a metal alloy it was, with low conductive properties because Wheeljack had had to stick his blades in a few machines to kill them for one reason or the other and he'd learnt real quick to reduce just how well his swords doubled as lightening conductors.

Finally, on the home run now, it was just buffing and polishing up the blade before sharpening it. When it was eventually done, Wheeljack was covered with ash, his plating somewhat scorched from handling the forge and his paintjob had been scuffed and scratched from all the metal working. He wasn't exactly a pleasant sight. Despite this the Wrecker was immensely satisfied with the obscenely large blade resting in his servos.

He hauled it up.

And staggered under its weight.

With a great amount of effort and determination, Wheeljack got it to his shoulder. He tread over to the door, poking his head outside for the first time in cycles and set off to find the big mech himself.

[Deleted]

The first bot that Wheeljack would encounter was not the one he was looking for, but was at least a friendly face.

A flask of energon in hand, Wash strolled down the corridor in the direction of the control room. He sipped his drink, looking tired but content. Upon spying the Wrecker he lifted his hand to wave an affable hello, then stopped dead in his tracks.

Mouth agape, he stared at the massive sword resting on Wheeljack's shoulder.

"Holy crap!" Wash backed up a step. He scratched his head and whistled in awe. "Who are you heading out to stab with that? I almost pity the poor slagger."

[Deleted]

Wheeljack patted the blade fondly. "There are some small moons I was thinking the galaxy was better off without," he replied drolly. "On a completely and utterly unrelated topic, don't suppose you've seen Fort Max about?"

The Wrecker eyed the flask of energon. It'd been a while since his last refuel, he'd been so focused on forging the blade itself. There were some cubes he'd stored in his lab but it had been over a cycle since he'd grabbed one. Soon as he had a servo free, he'd drain one he had packed away in subspace.

[Deleted]

By then, Wash had recovered from his shock.

"Fort Max? Haven't seen him, but his locator transmitter reported in about ten minutes ago," he said. "He's over at Rainier Mesa - aka, Area 12. It's programmed into the ground bridge system already, so no need for co-ordinates. Just do a search, pop it in, and the bridge will open to a ridge just above the test site. Max should be right there. Piece of cake."

Wash grinned ruefully. "And just between you and me, it's prrrobably a good thing you're carrying a sword that big with you. He's, uh... not been in a very good mood lately."

[Deleted]

Area 12, ground bridge, got it. Wheeljack gave a dark smirk as Wash informed him about the mood Fort Max was in.

"Thanks. Sounds like I've just got the mood fixer right here," the Wrecker waved off the other bot and moved on, a destination now firmly in mind. He received similar noises of surprise as he moved through the base towards the control room, Autobots parting in his path at the sight of that sword propped up against his shoulder.

Wheeljack lowered the blade carefully to the ground as he activated the ground bridge, dutifully logging his trip as laid down by Optimus and Red Alert. As he tapped away at the controls, he finally refueled on that overdue cube of energon. The familiar green energy swirled into the air as Wheeljack hauled the blade back up again and strode down to the bridge. Crisp energy crackled over his frame as Wheeljack walked through the dimensional tunnel, eventually stepping out into a brown, dusty cliff, overlooking a flat plateau .

The Wrecker's optics began to scour the location for his wayward companion.

[Deleted]

Area 12 - Rainier Mesa - had not been rocked by a nuclear explosion in over twenty years. Even then, that blast had been safely contained within secured underground test tunnels designed specifically for that purpose, thus preventing the release of deadly alpha radiation particles into the environment above.

That did not stop anyone who was not part of the United States Department of Energy from avoiding the site.

Or an Autobot.

Fortress Maximus stood on a rocky slope that overlooked the basin and glared down into the dusty test site. Saw a few jackrabbits.

No humans, though.

Good.

Some ten miles to the northwest was Area 51. The crazies went there instead, with cameras and tents and high-powered telescopes. Rainier Mesa lay empty, just miles of dry and scarred foothills and scrubby little trees. It was visited only by the lonely wind, and by the occasional fighter jet, which would wander into the valley to use its abandoned bunkers for low-level bombing practice.

Not today, Maximus hoped. He really wanted to pound something into rubble.

Maximus glanced south. Down on the flats, secured behind tripled-wired fences and some rather ominous warning signs, was a sprawling base camp - mostly abandoned now, save for dust and tumbleweeds. Within it he saw giant steel-topped warehouses and hangers. Big, dirty white generators. Dusty roads that wound off into the surrounding hills, where they mysteriously disappeared. Telephone poles and slack power lines. Little dormitory houses in rows, like combat-ready suburban neighbourhoods. And in hardened tunnels deep in the earth beneath it were stored-

Actually, you know what. Maximus did not want to know.

As he understood it, these days the base camp served as a training facility for military units and government agencies conducting counter-terrorism exercises. He supposed that, in their own vague way, the Autobots fell under the latter description. Perhaps that was why they had been lent the use of the isolated site for their own exercises.

"Just try not to trash the eastern side of the compound," Agent Fowler had said sourly. "They've got a team coming in two weeks from today who will be bunking down there. From the main road west you can blast whatever you want. Their combat engineers need some wrecked structures to use for their construction and demolition training anyway."

Good.

Quietly fuming, Maximus lifted one hand and flexed it. The fine servos in his fingers hummed without a trace of resistance, finely tuned. He closed the hand into a hard fist and set his jaw. This was it. Time to work out some of the pent up aggression that had been seething up ever since he had made the jarring discovery that the Omega Base was now throwing its doors to convicted cri-

The sound of a ground bridge activating behind him crackled in his audials. Startled, Maximus looked around, just in time to spot Wheeljack stroll from the portal.

He stared. What the hell was the Wrecker carrying?

"Wheeljack?" he said.

[Deleted]

Well, that made things significantly easier. Fort Max hadn't moved all that far away from the ground bridge. Wheeljack sauntered cockily down the slope, arms straining to bear the weight of the blade, though the Wrecker did his best to keep that from showing as he navigated the treacherous ground.

"Fort Max," he greeted cheerfully, drawing to a stop in front of the warden. "Said once you should learn how to swing a sword. Thought I'd give you a headstart, so I built you a mech cleaver 'n all. Like it?"

Though Wheeljack projected complete confidence, he was actually not all that sure how the big mech would react to the weapon. They shared a battle bond through their own violent tendencies but Fort Max had mentioned taking up swordsmanship more as an offhand comment than anything and had never shown any sign of pursuing the thought further. Whilst Wheeljack might have an arrangement to build the Omega base whatever it needed, this, by far, had been the biggest project he'd dedicated his time and efforts to, on a mere after thought moreover. It was quite an...excessive gesture to make.

Had Fort Max been another Wrecker (or Bulkhead), Wheeljack would not have thought twice about it. But Maximus wasn't a Wrecker nor was he Wheeljack's partner (or wasn't he? Bulkhead had Miko now and Wheeljack and Fort Max did spend a lot of their time hunting down Vehicons together). By Cybertronian terms, they had not known each other for very long, not long enough to be regarded as battle brothers. They were, technically, complete strangers to each other.

So why then, had Wheeljack felt the need dedicate his time to such a gift? The Wrecker honestly wasn't certain of anything beyond a general desire to witness more rampant mayhem and destruction. He'd not been blind to the big mech's recent downward spiral, after all he was one of the few mecha Wheeljack bothered interacting with on base, but that had occurred after Wheeljack had decided upon the task. Perhaps...maybe, in a not-so distant future, Fort Max would be useful in reaching a certain one optic Decepticon scientist.

But that was neither here nor now. Banishing thoughts of revenge plots to the deep dark corners of his processor, Wheeljack focused on the big mech in front of him.

It would be good, if Fort Max reached out and took the sword from him because Wheeljack wasn’t all that confident in his ability to hold it out long enough for the other mech to grab onto.

[Deleted]

Maximus turned to face him.

He remembered the conversation they had had down in the Decepticon mine. Wheeljack had spoken of his combat abilities, and offered to teach him a little swordsmanship if he were interested. It was a tempting offer. But Maximus had not expected that the Wrecker would have either the time or the resources to construct a blade.

Stunned, he let his gaze fall to the massive weapon. It was big, it was broad, it was brutishly elegant in its simplicity - a length of tempered steel designed solely to hew a lot of damage at once. No embellishments, no moving parts.

His anger drained. Maximus opened his mouth, then shook his head.

"This is..." he said.

He trailed off, at a loss for words. Instead of speaking he reached out and grasped the sword by the hilt, lifting it from Wheeljack's shoulder. It was heavy, but not so much that he could not wield it in one hand. Immediately he sensed the destructive power it would possess were it carried in a two-handed style, with all of his strength behind it.

This was no ordinary blade. This had been custom designed.

Maximus angled the blade against the sun to study it. He swallowed.

"This is an... impressive weapon," he said at last. "You made this? Here, on Earth? How?"

His red optics fixed upon the Wrecker. The unspoken question lingered behind them: why?

[Deleted]

Wheeljack was relieved to have that weight taken off his shoulder and he basked in Fort Max's obvious awe. It was, after all, a job well done and one he'd put a lot of effort, so he took pride in his accomplishment and the big mech's appreciation.

"Been working here and there on it since that raid," Wheeljack shrugged casually. "This week was one big push to get it done. You're holding a slab of plating stripped from Halocene's shuttle, re-forged, repurposed and given a new lease on life. A lethal one."

As for an explanation...Wheeljack didn't exactly have one. A real one. "It presented an interesting challenge, making it. Low tech tools and materials, you know? I had fun," he added.

Which was a half-truth. Yes he'd enjoyed it. But there had been parts of the forging process which had driven him insane and he'd ended up perched on the walkway, brooding over his life choices and cursing Primus's designation to the Pits and back.

Not that he was ever going to tell anyone. Least of all Fort Max.

"Wanna try it out?"

[Deleted]

Maximus said nothing for a moment. He simply held up the great sword at an angle, as if transfixed by the light that reflected against the flat of the blade. Forged from the hull of a wrecked shuttle.

And given a new lease on life.

"Yes," he said.

Finally he looked down at Wheeljack again, long enough to flash the Wrecker a rare, fleeting smile. "Thanks. This is... appreciated."

He lowered the sword and looked down at the base camp below. It was roughly eight hundred feet beneath them, at the end of a long, rough slope. Maximus took one step back from the edge of the ridge and motioned for Wheeljack to follow.

"This way," he said.

Maximus leapt.

He hit the slope and skidded downwards, his feet extended in a power slide. Dust roared in his wake. When he struck a shelf of rock the big mech leapt again, launching himself into open air. The wind howled in his audials as he dropped through his own cloud of dust, twisted, and struck the basin floor hard enough to crater it.

Without pause Maximus rolled to his feet and jogged to a halt, shaking the dust from his plating. He turned back to the hill and looked up, his optics shielded with one hand while he rested the sword on his shoulder with the other. He was interested to see how the Wrecker would handle the sheer drop and slide down into the basin.

[Deleted]

Fortress Maximus smiled.

Wheeljack blinked, feeling bowled over. Had that just-? Was that-?

What-?

As he was mentally tripping over this little momentary blip in reality, the warden leapt over the ridge and down in a trail of dust and rocks and one more impressive leap. Wheeljack blinked again, optics zooming in as Fort Max left a crater when he hit the bottom.

Not one to ignore a chance to show off and partake in some insane acrobatics, Wheeljack gave an excited whoop, nimbly front-flipped off the cliff and twisting mid-air to ensure his landing on the slanted slope. His pedes and one servo dug into the brown earth, kick up a cloud of dust in his wake as Wheeljack slid down the hill.

When he hit that shelf Fort Max had leapt off, Wheeljack back-flipped off the ridge in one smooth motion with another yell, twisting again so that he was facing forward when he hit the ground. A hard jolt rattled through his frame at the impact, but Wheeljack lightly rose to his feet and confidently swaggered up to join Fort Max, servos casually threaded across the back of his head and a smug grin on his face.

"Soooo," Wheeljack looked up at his companion. There had been a slight easing in tension in the big mech's frame. "What are we murdering today?"

[Deleted]

With a shrug Maximus hefted the sword off his shoulder. He gestured across the basin with it.

"Some of those," he said.

The tip of the sword pointed to the base camp, where long open roads of cracked pavement wandered between rows of abandoned concrete block houses, telephone poles and old hangers, where shipping containers and empty fuel tankers sat in dusty, rusted ruin amidst old steel structures that might have once been warehouses. A stiff and military air hung over the vast complex, while the light winds blew up dust from the parched tan earth.

Maximus swung the sword to the east side of the camp.

"Agent Fowler has asked that we refrain from wrecking any of the structures or buildings on the east side of the complex," he said. "The living quarters there are still used by human military units conducting training in the area. But anything on the west side of the main road is fair game."

He lowered the sword and gave an appraising look back at Wheeljack.

"So, what can you teach me on how to wield this?" he said, with a nod to the blade.

[Deleted]

King of unhelpfulness, Wheeljack gave a lax shrug. "Honestly? You already know a lot. You have basic combat forms down pat and you know what works best for your frame. I could show you a few moves but anything I tell you will probably throw you off, seeing as that's a two handed blade 'n I dual wield."

The Wrecker shrugged again and flashed a broad grin. "Try using the pointy end? Seriously, my best advice is to go out and wreck stuff and see what feels right to you."

Wheeljack nodded towards the base camp and took a few steps forward. "Race you there?"

[Deleted]

Maximus swung the sword over his shoulder and dropped it against his back. The same mag-clips that secured his rifle held the big weapon in place.

"I'm game," he said.

He knew it was a race that he stood no chance of winning. He was fast, but Wheeljack was faster. Both as a robot and as a car.

But he did not let that stop him from transforming into his own vehicle form. The big blue and grey tank crashed into the dirt and rocked on his treads. The sound of his massive engine firing up echoed back from the empty buildings, a loud and reverberating roar.

Dust billowed out from underneath the tank. It was not built for speed. Over the level desert he could accelerate to maybe sixty miles an hour. Not for long, or he'd wreck his drivetrain. But as Maximus surveyed the cracked road ahead he realized that he did have one advantage over the Wrecker. He doubted that it would win him the race, but he knew that this was not about winning. Or losing.

"Meet you over by the dorm houses," said the tank in a rumbling voice.

His drivetrain engaged with a snarl. Maximus lunged forward, his treads throwing up chunks of asphalt. He was destroying the street, but Fowler had said nothing about leaving it intact.

Black smoke swirled over him as he hit second gear. He clipped a street sign and flattened it. His engine bellowed as he charged through an intersection. Maximus knew that his head start was short lived. Wheeljack would likely overtake him in the pulse of a spark and blast off, leaving him behind in a cloud of dust. Directly ahead the road swerved back and forth between the abandoned dormitories. A car could manoeuvre the curves with ease. A tank could not.

Maximus did not even bother to try. When he hit the first curve he barrelled through it, launched off the side of the road and kept going, straight into the wall of a house.

The impact pulverized cinderblocks and sent chunks of concrete smoking and erupting into the air. The tank rolled through the debris as it collapsed around him and smashed out the other side of the dormitory. Rubble was still streaming off his back as he swung his main turret around and blasted through the next dorm in his path. Two seconds later the shell exploded out the last house in the row and kept on going. Four miles away it struck a hill with a tiny burst of dirt and dust.

As he roared over the ruins left in its wake and crushed them beneath his treads, Maximus had to admit to himself… this felt pretty good.

[Deleted]

5 seconds. That's how long Wheeljack remained still to give Fort Max a head start. Only fair to put them on even grounds. Soon as those seconds were up though, Wheeljack had collapsed down into his alt-mode in a whirlwind of moving parts. The roar of a high performance engine filled the air but it was easily drowned out by the rumble of the tank.

Those precious moments had been enough to let Fort Max rip up the remains of the neglected tarmac beneath his treads. This slowed the Wrecker down...by only a fraction. Battlefields never had the luxury of smooth ground and Wheeljack had fought on the worst. He was content to playfully trail after the tank for a bit, figuring that he'd put the pedal to the metal only when they were close to the finish. Whilst Wheeljack had a fiercely competitive streak in him, this was meant in good fun and he didn't feel the need to prove himself.

It was around that point that Fort Max obviously decided that, frag the roads, ignoring the tarmac and pavement as he simply drove straight forward through a house. Wheeljack gave a snort of amusement as he took the corner instead, following the winding road between the houses. There was the loud crash as metal met brick and simply smashed on through. Then Fort Max actually fired his main turret through the buildings.

Alright then. The big guy was having fun, Wrecker style. Wheeljack was almost jealous. Then again, even if he could, Wheeljack would never give up the speed and manoeuvrability of his frame for a tank class frame. In fact, it was time to put that speed and agility to good use. Wheeljack gunned his engine as he followed the weaving path. There was a few close calls as Fort Max simply trampled through the buildings and erupted out the other side just in front of him with a hail of debris while Wheeljack took the corners. The two Cybertronians kept good pace with each other but slowly, Wheeljack pulled ahead.

Eventually, though, they ran out of buildings. Wheeljack skidded to a halt before transforming, sending a billowing of dust up from the ground. He watched as Fort Max cleared the last house, then tilted his head to the side and examined the long row of destroyed dorms behind the tank.

"Nice," Wheeljack commented. "Very nice." He touched the grenade at his hip. "Unfortunately, I only carry one of these with me. That mech cleaver I made you can probably slice concrete. If I use my blades though...well, they won't be lasting very long with that sort of mistreatment and I prefer them to accumulate damage through stabbing Cons. Your show, Max."