Flashback - Hungry Hungry Dinos - closed

[grimlock]

The attack on the Decepticon forward base had been so sudden and so destructive that the fires that had broken out during the fighting were still lit, and scorch marks still warm to the touch. The place looked like it had been hit hard by artillery, but no artillery strike had hit it. Bodies were piled high, with some piles containing wounded or offlined cons, and others containing what looked like wounded or offlined cons that had been sent through a grinder. Autobot field commanders had knowledge that the Decepticons had been sending troops and supplies to this location, but the damage caused had not been done by Autobot hands, and it was too chaotic to have been a swarm of scraplets. Something had hit the base that had never been seen before on Cybertron, something created by Decepticon hands.

The base had been hit by the Dinobots.

Grimlock and his crew had been captured by the twisted and sinister Decepticon scientist Shockwave, and manufactured their own escape using the... upgrades they had been given. Autobot high command however, had only heard rumors of these recently appearing monsters. Five massive monsters appearing from behind the fog of war to lay waste to anything in their path and leaving as soon as there was nothing left to fight. No one probably thought that these five monsters might be linked to the disappearance to Grimlock and his four squadmates. Perhaps they were written off as casualties by now. Grimlock didn't care.

The massively huge space T-Rex was in a moment of non-destructive rage, and in a peaceful moment of destructive feeding. The largest set of jaws on Cybertron came crashing down on a pile of Decepticons, and scooped them up in one big mouthful. The beast raised his head to the sky and began chomping and crushing on the 'Cons in its mouth causing whatever Energon that was left in them to come leaking out. He kept it up until all of the life juices had been given up, then spit the left over scrap into another pile before going back got another bite. There was a bit of color mixed in with the gunmetal parts in this next mouthful. There was a scream of terror as an unlucky survivor came back to his senses long enough to realize what was going to happen. The scream was cut short by a loud crunch... then silence followed.

The well of all sparks seemed to get a little more full everywhere the Dinobots went, but there was a special place in it that they had yet to fill. One reserved for Shockwave.

[Deleted]

::What do you mean the base is already destroyed?::

Sideswipe was inspecting his last energon ration and wondering what percentage the fuel concentrate was in this batch and how much of it was expired circuit speeders. A lot, probably. He was thinking more than a lot. The red-armored commando decided he could wait a bit on the refueling, even if not having it meant going without his jet mod. Times were tough, and flying while doped up on speeders was a touch and go thing no matter how high your inter-Autobot badass rating was. Also, he didn’t really want to be impaired when something – probably several somethings, several large somethings – had trampled their way through and dismembered the personnel of the Decepticon bunker he was supposed to be scouting.

“Well,” he said, crouching beside the grayed-out, heavily chewed corpse of what looked like a Genericon. He began rifling through the dead bot’s subspace. “I mean it’s on fire, ceiling’s caved in an’ there’re bodies – chewed up an’ stomped on bodies – all about th’ joint. Oh, sweet. Fifty shanix!”

::What?::

“Nothing, lieutenant.” Sideswipe stood up, rolling the dead robot over, noting the chew-marks. “Someone got here first.” He pocketed the money and a small nanite booster pack, swinging his photon rifle to his shoulder. Place smelled like ozone and motor oil. “Orders, sir?’

::Did you say ‘chewed’?:: Sideswipe looked over his shoulder, peering into the massive ruins of what had once been a wire-root generator facility. Miles and miles of rotted out tower-structures trellised with wiring and massive power conduits, almost all dead now. He shifted his photon rifle, optics narrowing, then hopped down the embankment toward the wire-jungle. ::Sideswipe, I need you to get back to base right now.:: Sides made a kind of lazy affirmative noise, ducking under a large rusted conductor tube, ducking into a parking-garage like structure, also eaten over with dead cording. ::Sideswipe? Get back to base.::

“Sorry, LT, I’m losin’ ya.”

::Sideswipe? Sideswipe, don’t –:: The comm clicked off and Sideswipe followed the sound of grinding metal.

[grimlock]

The grinding metal came from a sturdy blast door that was trying to be opened. A lone Decepticon was frantically trying to pry the door open, but every time it seemed like it budged a little it, slid most of the way back. As much as the 'Con was trying to be careful and be as quiet as he could be, his shaking hands caused the length of pipe he was holding to clatter and clang. The Decepticon himself was a 4-wheeled scout-type with a little extra armor added to him, and large off-roading tires. All the time he was working he was muttering to himself.

"Gotta get out of here. Gotta get out of here. Get outside, get away. Get away from the monsters. Tunnels! Tunnels! Gotta find a tunnel. Monsters too big to fit in tunnels. Will be safe inside of the tunnels." he rambled on. After another push he tried to wiggle his body out of the gap he had created. He could get his limbs through, but his bulky chest wouldn't fit. The added armor he had been given was hindering escape. When he turned turned to get back to his work at widening the door he caught sight of the red Autobot.

"Did they see you? Were you followed?" he asked accusingly as his purple optics scanned in the direction Sideswipe had come from. "No... no, too quiet. They don't do tricks like that. Just destroy everything they want. Look, help me out of here, and if we make it out alive I'll turn myself in to the Autobots. I'll rotate your tires, I'll polish your rims, anything just to get away from those creatures!" The frantic Decepticon pleaded as he continued to try and make the heavy door budge just a little more.

It was with a loud screech that the door opened just enough to be a noticeable difference, and the Decepticon scrambled to wiggle his way out. He wiggled and tried to wedge himself as best as he could through the teeth of the blast door, but it looked like the fit was just off. A good hard shove, a generous amount of oil, or a dent in his chassis could be all that he needed to get free. As things were, it looked like he had just been able to get himself stuck with his pedes just far off the ground that only the tips could find any purchase on the ground beneath him.

The 'Con looked out into the open beyond the door and suddenly froze. "By the pit... no... no no no no! Pri-" There was the sound of loud thumps like the footsteps of a fully formed combiner before the blast door was slammed shut, crushing the stuck Decepticon in half.

[Deleted]

Sideswipe stared at the empty door where, seconds ago, there had been a mechanoid. Sure, a screamy, kind of frothy, kind of shell-shocked crazy mechanoid making sorta inappropriate commentary about his tires, but he’d been there and in one piece and not snatched away into the dark unknown. Also, possibly chewed to pieces. Sideswipe had been in the process of trying to determine whether or not he was going to help a Decepticon when, you know, the horrible crushed to the death thing. On a related note: Wow, hadn’t that shadow been all kind of enormous?

It occurred to Sideswipe that maybe being a Kaon-bred, gutter-spark with twenty different kinds of grenades and a photon rifle – while that was usually more than enough – might not be enough in this case. That in mind, he promptly turned tailpipe and sprinted for the half-collapsed cause-way through which he’d come. He darted through the rotted out complex, pulling that energon ration from his subspace as he ran because, well, he figured he would be needing the fuel if he had to fly the hell out of here.

“Nope,” he hissed, as he hurdled a fallen pillar. “Nope, nope nope.”

He shot out of the building, dove forward, hit the ground tires first in his alt-mode then shot off at speed away from whatever was in there. Screw scouting the threat. He downshifted and tore down the bomb-blasted streets.

[grimlock]

Grimlock moved from one pile of snacks to the next, letting his fellow Dinobots find and ration out the cubed Energon amongst themselves. Out of the five Dinobots, Grimlock had the equipment best suited for extracting Energon in the most ghastly of ways. Some would turn it down, others would cringe, but to him it was all about survival. If you couldn't survive, then what was yours was up for grabs. It wasn't Grimlock's fault that these Decepticons couldn't survive an attack from only five mechs. It also wasn't his fault if some bots were too squeamish to acquire Energon from a second harvest.

While busy consuming another pile of scrap for whatever Energon he could acquire from it when a noise reached his audio receptors. The sound of a running engine meant that someone had happened to hide long enough to think it was safe enough to escape. How very wrong they were. Since Swoop didn't appear to be in the sky and already on top of it, he was going to have to chase the escapee down. The hunt was on!

Grimlock's thunderous steps echoed across the battle torn city aided by small thrusters. The Dinobot leader was modeled after an apex predator, and now he was going after prey. Grimlock saw a red sports car zoom by on a perpendicular street and charged ahead for it. The thundering murder beast roared in challenge as he turned the corner to chase the puny silly sports car.

[Deleted]

WHAT THE PRIMUS SLOTTING FRAG WAS THAT?

Sideswipe’s onboard computers immediately rendered forth a “no fragging match found” in response to his mem-net search for anything that even remotely matched what the frag was thundering after him. The fraggin’ thing was two stories tall and burst out a side alley almost directly behind him, putting the bestial monster almost directly on top of him. Scanners told the commando in detail the nature of the thing coming down on him – massive, metal,teeth, like a ridiculous number of plate-puncturing, alloy-shredding teeth. Giant and top-heavy, swinging it’s wrecking-ball head at his back bumper in an attempt to make him fishtail.

Panicking. Panicking was appropriate.

The thing was also directly on top of him, so he couldn’t afford the time it would cost him to transform and ignite his jet mod. The thing behind him would A: run him over or B: eat him. He gunned his engines and poured on speed, snarling as the giant swung its head again at his rear quarter panel, swerving right to avoid the hit. If this thing took another swipe at him, he was going to have to just risk trying his jet because – while he was faster than this beast’s probable top-speed – the monster behind him, kept battering him and slowing him the hell down.

[grimlock]

Grimlock laughed inwardly. For all the speed some four-wheelers had, not all of them could maintain their top speed while being assaulted by a Dinobot. With every swipe if his massive head there was a chance he could catch the red speedster in his jaws, or send him crashing into something. Any mistake could potentially damn his prey. It was just too bad for the red guy that being out of reach of his jaws wasn't the same as being safe. Grimlock had a trick he had been hiding, and it was a hot one.

The giant space T-Rex opened his massive maw, and instead of a roar, there was a large FWOOSH as a stream of flame came pouring out at Sideswipe. The car would have to work extra hard now to get away to safety, or be melted down into a metalic bonbon with an Energon-y center. Grimlock simply smashed through signs and crushed piles of rubble under his feet in his pursuit of his prey.

[Deleted]

Okay. Now the fragger was frakking up his paintjob and that was not happening. He was not gonna die and he was really not gonna get his finish messed up. (And some part of Sideswipe despaired because he’s pretty much just conceded, despite all protests to the contrary, that he really was related to his brother.) The commando gunned his engine because flames, unlike being smashed by a massive, half-ton head of steel, did not have the same slowing power. Energon poured into his systems, circuits speeders doping his sensor-net against the pain and putting the world into a blurry overdrive. Then the nitro-fueled burn of acceleration hit him and he shot out from beneath the swath of flames, paint just barely blackened along his back, bumper, and rear quarter-panels.

“GO TO HELL, YOU CLUTCH MUNCHING, PRIMUS SLOTTING, SMELT-EATER!”

This rather colorful shout was preceded directly by Sideswipe using his newly gained ground to hit a ramp of debris, launch off the top into a mid-air transformation and throw two proximity grenades behind him directly into the base of the flame where it spewed from the beast’s maw. He hit the ground in his alt mod again, fishtailing, taking off once more, hoping the explosions did their work.

[grimlock]

The chase was getting good, but also nearing its end. The red car was able to speed away from the flames, but not before being blackened in some areas. War was not for those that wanted to remain pretty and have their finish untouched. The other reason that the chase wasn't going to last much longer was distance. There was no way he was going to leave his team behind for a single car. They've had a few escapees before, it wasn't anything new. Whoever he was working for would only be a little more prepared when the Dinobots decided to visit them.

When the red car fought back with words and explosives, Grimlock's processors began to dig something up. The dinobot roared through the explosions as he felt the damage spread across his body. There was something about the words though that stuck with him. He'd heard that voice before. Grimlock jumped off of the same ramp as Sideswipe, pulling the same stunt of transforming into robot mode. When he hit the ground running something jarred in his head, and he knew why the red car sounded familiar.

The memory was fuzzy, but it was before Swoop joined up with the Autobots. He had a red mech in one hand with the other pulled back to smash his face in, and there was yellow mech on his shoulder struggling with him. There may or may not have been a lot of high grade involved. Either way Grimlock knew who he had been chasing. Armed with that knowledge he grabbed the largest object he could find and threw it at Sideswipe.

"FRAG YOU SUNSTREAKER! YOU STILL LOOK LIKE A FEMME AND RUN FROM A FIGHT LIKE ONE!" Grimlock roared, using his voice. So maybe more than one thing got jostled in his memory when he hit the ground, but the important thing was he stopped running after the fleeing Autobot, and only threw one thing.

[Deleted]

First of all. Sunstreaker? Second of all: “WHAT FEMMES DID YOU EVER KNOW!?” Sideswipe snarled.

Wait. The commando slammed on his brakes. Not because he was so interested in investigating what he thought he’d just heard, but rather because the beast behind him had just thrown what appeared to be a girder the length of a transport carrier at him. One technometric ton of metal rocketed over his roof arced down and IMPACT. It obliterated the already ruined ribbon of road, the sheer titanic weight of the metal punching through the concrete and collapsing through the ground ten meters in front of him. The whole road shook, a fissure splintering through the thoroughfare in front of him before the whole road fell in like a sinkhole, following the girder, the top-side of the road, and several transports subselves down and down into a subterranean section of this city.

Sides reversed, swung a one-eighty and transformed back to his root mode. For a moment, he just stood there, back to the meteroric crater of destruction Grimlock had just done to the road, staring at the massive mechanoid like he was trying to piece the front-liner together from scratch. (It was notable that his jet mod was completely active, flared, and ready to ignite and furthermore he was still holding his photon rifle.)

Then, “Grimlock?”

[grimlock]

Grimlock stood and watched the destruction he caused play out. Even by his standards it was pretty damn impressive. He'd bet that if there was some excitable people around that they'd have taken pictures of it... if they weren't scared of being eaten by him. The Dinobot leader had still yet to find the limit to his new found strength, but it looked like it might a very high cap. As memories were coming back to him, Grimlock was only half disappointed in having not his the Autobot. By his recolection, one of the twins owed him money with interest.

"No frag its me Grimlock. Who else is this strong, and this handsome?" it was a joke. Grimlock knew that after the experimentation his robot form didn't look too different, but he was still considered pretty horrific looking, perhaps his emf had been altered in some way as well. It had been vorns since he had seen the twins, but now it seemed hard to remember which one was which. He could remember Frenzy from Rumble, and Buzzsaw from Laserbeak, but Sunny and Sideswipe were harder. What was the way he used to tell them apart? Oh right...

"Wait... you're Sideswipe." he peered at the red Autobot. "Forgot you're the butch one."

[Deleted]

“You didn’t just call me – actually you know what, nevermind. You absolutely would think that. How are you alive?”

Maybe that was a rude question, but gladiators didn’t do tact and Grimlock really had never done tact and that was prior to his having taken on a beast mode that looked to be made of 90% teeth and 10% cannibalism. Oh right, the cannibalism thing. He would get to that shortly because among all the species of the universal ‘cannibalism’ was supposed to be exclusive to the flesh-based creatures chewing the squishy bits off each other and seriously? Seriously? Sideswipe tried to reconciled the big, angry looking bot he remembered from Kaon with the thing that had been chasing him two kliks ago.

"What the hell happened to you?! You just went AWOL. We thought you were dead. You and the Lightening Strike Whozawhat Gang or whatever the frak it was. Why are you…” He gestured extensively up and down Grimlock. “…you know? Like…teeth?” He made mock jaws out of his fingers, chomping them illustratively. “I’m just saying, you have more teeth than I remember and on the subject of teeth, I know the energon shortage is a real thing, mech, but you are chewing mechs apart to get at their in-system energon. You may have taken things a step too far into, you know, Crazy Land!”

A beat.

“I can’t believe you thought I was Sunstreaker.”

[grimlock]

Why did you think I was DEAD? Grimlock replied quickly with a growl. "You see my corpse somewhere?" he growled and flung his arms out in challenge. The large mech stomped over to the smaller one. Hostility and anger emanated from the brute, but none of it was directly aimed at Sideswipe. Once he got close enough he quickly grabbed the little bot and placed him on an exposed floor of a bombed out building so that they were roughly on at optic level together. Even if Sideswipe possibly owed him money, Grimlock still had some respect for him at the moment to not want to talk down to him.

"You want to know what happened to us. Fine, but you have to tell it to Autobot High Command when you return. Straight to Optimus." He spat the name of Sideswipe's leader out like some foul tasting Energon. Everyone knew Grimlock and Optimus didn't see optic to optic on several things. The two often argued, some objects would get a fist pounded into it, and sometimes there would be shoving or shoulder bumping as one left. Now... it seemed a meeting of the two would likely end up in combat. Grimlock had an issue with him, and if recent actions dictated anything, Grimlock was likely to solve those issues with smashing.

"We were told to hold the line, and we did better than that. We cleared the Decepticons out of our sector. No Decepticon activity for a Joor, and still we were told to stay put. Then we got readings of a lot of Energon in the area and went to investigate. Nothing better to do. We followed the signal right into a hive of Insecticons. No big problem, except Shockwave was there." The behemoth of a bot grabbed the building with both hands, causing the whole thing to shake. "SHOCKWAVE did this to ME! SHOCKWAVE did this to ALL OF US!" Grimlock was practically glowing with rage as he recalled the memories of his torture. It got so bad that he even reverted to beast mode. "We took jobs the wreckers would turn down. We made the impossible missions only look difficult. We went out of our way to rescue any captives we here about, and what happened? We get captured, and Optimus writes us off as offlined. We're alive because we were strong enough to survive the torture and escape. I saved Swoop, Slug, Snarl, and Sludge by myself. Meanwhile that DATA CLERK is all talk! He can say whatever he needs to to get you to help HIM, but when you need his help the fragger doesn't help!"

Grimlock let out a roar of anger and spun around. His massive club-like tail connected with a sizable chuck of rubble and sent it flying through a building and leaving a clear hole through it before the top collapsed. He roared up at the sky, a roar of rage, of pain, and of challenge. The Fallen could show up and he'd rip him to pieces at the moment. When he calmed down he turned back to Sideswipe again, still in beast mode. "The others still function... I can bring you to them, if you want."

[Deleted]

Sideswipe was not that short. Grim was three heads taller than him, but literally picking him up and dropping him up one story was just Grim being a jerk because, you know, Grimlock was a jerk. Also, very briefly freaked Sideswipe out. Besides literally thinking that bigger bot was about to grab him and rip him in two for a split second, being picked up by any mechanoid Grimlock’s size was never, you know, frakking socially acceptable, much less when that bot had a rep like Grim’s and much much less when that mech had just been eating other bots. He’d clearly taken a couple notes from the Insecticons.

But any smartassery Sideswipe had in mind died relatively quickly the moment the towering mechanoid started to go off explaining exactly what happened to him. Sides, to his credit, did not flinch while the ex-gladiator quite literally roared at him, stripping the airwaves around him almost bare and funneling enough rage, hate, murderous intent and heat into the frequencies to make the commando’s circuits crawl. He didn’t move, standing, glaring, blue optics focusing and refocusing on the restlessly snarling, pacing Dinobot. In the back of his mind, the gladiator part of him kept talking: Got another three grenades. Put them in his eyes, jet mod, and fly. If he gets violent at you, you frakking blind him and fly.

But, Primus help him, Grimlock was a friend.

In so much as Grimlock was ever a friend.

“Course I want to see them,” said Sideswipe, eyeing the massive beast machine glaring, steaming slightly, at him. He moved to sit at the edge of the bombed out floor, pedes hanging off the edge, resolutely unafraid. “And the Nerd Prime didn’t write you off; you’re on the AWOL list. MIA. It’s everyone else thought you were fragging dead. Nerd Prime, apparently has legendarily said, ‘Right, because it’s that easy’.” Sides bobbed brow ridges, impressed, pulling a gel ration from his subspace. “Just sayin’ you got Sir Turbo Puppies and Fuzzy Feels all irritable. He seems to be of the opinion you aint dead less there’s a body. So there’s that.”

A moment of quiet.

“Shockwave,” said Sides, staring determinedly into the other bot’s beastly optics. “He really frakked you guys up didn’t he, mech?”

[grimlock]

"More than you'll ever know. Hopefully." was all Grimlock could say on the subject. What he had experienced wasn't something he would have wished on anyone, even his enemies. The only bots that should go through something like that were those who would do it in the first place. One thing he learned long ago from working security was how not to abuse power. It was a painfully simple lesson. It was quick, and it hurt, but whenever he had to draw his sword, or fire a blaster he was well aware of what would happen because he'd experienced it first.

The large mech backed away from Sideswipe to give him some room to hop down before turning back the way they had come. "All of us still alive. Everyone feels different about it though. Swoop is taking it the best, but still don't bring the change up. Some of us still not fully used to new strengths." Grimlock warned the red mech. They weren't all suffering the same anger issues as he was, but some of them might not be so wise as to aim away from their... guest when throwing a tantrum. "If you're lucky there might be some Energon cubes still left."

((OOC: You want to wrap it up with them walkin' off into the sunset n stuff?))