[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]Unjust Deserts (Open)

[Deleted]

“Ay! Anyone here?” Odessa stalled the vehicle to a stop. Skittering forward a few feet over the loose sand. Stopping the buggy and putting it in park. Hopping out before the behemoth of a “life” pod. He’d take a lookie-loo around. My god was this beautiful. A true sight of Cybertronian technology, and onyl a glimpse of it at that. The tech at the base was shamefully repurposed but this was full technology is all its glory. His eyes darted, unable to remain fixated with every new Gizmo, caught in severe sensory overload. He moved wide eyed and smiling to every piece within reach. Most notably however, was a piece of metal that was hanging on by a strip. He reached for it, with some wiggles and torque, ripped it free from its parents slab. Taking careful note of its structure. It was stranger than Steel. It seemed to have a natural production like Steel. Wherein it would be placed in a mold as a liquid then cooled, but still had minute features of personal craftsmanship. He would had to begin study immediately, but of course out of the eyes of Optimus. It was bad enough he was hording the Energon he found, but now studying their make-up. He didn’t like having to work behind Op’s back, but how could he advance, how could he help if Optimus was always just going to hold his back?

Patting the metal strip in his palm. He continued through the husk. Machinery trying to spur to life, but to stall. Machines who still saw life and thus their duty incomplete, attempting to come to life. Spinning magnetos and other sparks signifying their attempt function. A lack of power or completeness stalling most out. However there was one, a flat piece of metal that caught Odi’s eye. A computer by the looks of it, the flat metal with an overlay of strange symbols. He couldn’t see the screen from his position. All built to cybertronian standards than his own. Which made a strange thought of how different their own sizes were and how they accommodated even for even each other.

Nothing much to get atop of to see what it was about, but he did have access to the internal wiring or its equivalent. Some of those wires also came to Odi’s pockets. So much technology, so little-

An explosion. A thunderous strike of metal against metal. He bolted towards any open part of the Pod that was sufficiently blown open to look back at his compatriots. Horror struck with a vibrant display of electrified particles. A shocking firework display sending Blue to his knees.

“Oh shit.”

Booking it to his Buggy as fast as possible. Damn near tripping over his laces. Strangely enough, it wasn’t the Decepticon that pulled the trigger. Ripping back the top to his box, ever so gingerly placing his brand new Cybertronian components. Taking to the wheel again. He actually hesitated. He was at a complete loss on what to do. He was completely unarmed against an enemy he didn’t know about in a situation he had never encountered against a foe, three times his size. He could drive off away from the carnage and perhaps the option Optimus wanted, but the grunt inside of him wouldn’t allow him to leave an ally behind.

Ripping the steering column to the side. The Buggy spun out into a sharp one-eighty. Raising up ever so slightly on one side on the ride back to his botty friends. He didn’t know what he could do to help, but he wasn’t going to leave anyone behind.

[Raf Esquivel]

Still shading his eyes, Raf had continued to look over the area, hoping to see anything that would look like a large robot. It shouldn’t have been hard to find, really, although there was no telling just how big the newcomer was going to be. They might be small.

Raf had glanced at Bluestreak when the Autobot looked towards him, and had been tickled to see a warped reflection of himself in Blue’s optic. Sometimes it was easy to forget that even though they were just like humans, they were still different, and he often found things like that really interesting.

He was glad Blue had asked him to come out here. It gave him something else to think about...other than Bee.

He really hoped Bee would be ok.

Raf lowered his hand from his eyes as Bluestreak started to talk – and then so much happened so fast.

Bluestreak staggered forward, and Raf almost fell from his perch. It wouldn’t have been a fatal fall, but bones would most likely not have remained intact. Luckily his sneakers had enough rubber on the bottom to catch against Blue’s metallic skin, and he had been able to keep his seat.

“Blue? What’s wrong?”

Raf’s eyes widened as the Autobot’s did, and he knew, suddenly, something was terribly wrong.

Suddenly, Raf’s world felt like it was on fire.

A quick buzzing, and his entire body became electrified. Raf could feel every moment of it – from the hair on his back of his neck standing up, to what felt like lightning literally zipping through his veins. It hurt – not badly, but it hurt all the same. It was like the time he accidentally crossed two wires on a small science kit he had had as a child, when he forgot to take the batteries out – only it was much much stronger. Even little hairs on his arms stood out, like a cat’s tail when alarmed.

Unable to move, Raf saw with clear vision the plasma-like tendrils shooting through Blue’s eyes. He was unable to call out, to move, to do anything.

It was a second stagger by the Autobot that saved him. As Blue went to his knees, Raf could no longer hang on, and tumbled forward, breaking contact with the sniper. He fell hard onto his chest, managing to save his last pair of glasses. The air was knocked out of him, and for a second he lay there, stunned.

There was a heavy crash all around him, dust kicked up and obscuring his vision, as Bluestreak came crashing down beside him. Five feet closer, and the boy would have been under the Cybertronian as he fell.

The shock of the impact startled Raf into breathing, and he took in a deep gulping gasp of dust, causing his throat to spasm, and he started coughing. Still unable to see clearly, save for Bluestreak lying face down just behind him, Raf suddenly heard who he thought was the Decepticon yelling, and a heavy thunder of weapon fire far too close.

Dragging himself to his feet, Raf staggered back towards Bluestreak, what felt like little sparks and lightning still flickering in his head.

“Blue!? Are you ok!?”

Raf moved to Blue’s helm, and moved to look into his friend’s face. Dark optics spoke volumes about the sniper’s condition.

Motion caught his eye, and he looked to his right to see the Decepticon transformed, but not shooting at them. She was shooting at....

Who were...?

“Oh no.”

“Blue! You have to get up! Please!”

Small hands beat against Bluestreak’s shoulder, in an attempt to wake the Autobot. After a second, gasping against the dust, and trying not to panic too much, Raf crawled up onto the sniper’s back, “Blue!”

Raf looked around, desperately. The black cars were getting closer....

His eyes fell on the odd metallic object jutting from Bluestreak’s back. In desperation, Raf ran to it, and grasping it, began trying to pull it out, praying if it were removed, the sniper might wake up. His voice trembled.

“Bluestreak! Get up! You have to get up!”

[Deleted]

For a moment, things seemed at peace. Sparkplug was presenting as a non-threat, Rail was located and well enough to communicate, and the mission was going smoothly.

Then, everything went to the Pit.

She barely had a moment to even recognize Bluestreak going down, when she heard Sparkplug's frantic warning, and she felt her field sieze up without her conscious decision. The cries of the little human especially tugged at her spark. She whipped her helm to the side, frantically trying to get a visual on their attackers, before quickly ducking behind Sparkplug to try and stay away from her wayward missiles.

::Rail, if you can hear me, get out of here! We're under attack, I repeat, run!:: In hindsight, she definitely should not have spent so much time focusing on getting that message out. But the thought of an innocent Autobot being under attack the second he got to Earth also wasn't encouraging. If he could get out of there, get help, then maybe they'd stand a chance.

All of this happened in a moment, but somehow seemed to take forever. She quickly stepped out back in front of Sparkplug, her arm opening up while a standard pistol rose up, her armor plating falling away to expose the weapon and provide support to it. Her servos curled into fists as she quickly began firing at the two projectiles headed over to her and the Decepticon.

Once again, she made the mistake of becoming so engrossed her task, that she forgot her "Achilles heel". Her wings.

Her wings were massive, and they helped to carry her bulk in the air. However, they were also a blaring target for anyone to aim at.

Her entire frame rocked when one of the projectiles began trying to latch onto the slick surface that was her wing. However, she was at least quick enough to grab it and rip it off, but not without creating a large gouge in her wing that began leaking energon. Skystone hissed slightly, but knew there wasn't time to worry about that. She resumed firing her pistol towards the other projectile, but soon her attention was turned towards a drone that seemed to have followed the missiles. One of them was hovering aimlessly near the fallen weapon she'd dispatched, and she quickly scooped it up, gave it a long look, and then easily crushed it. Better safe then sorry. But she knew that until they had a visual on their opponents, they wouldn't get anywhere.

She gave herself a slight running start, then jumped into the air. Immediately, her wings went to the sides of her chassis, which collapsed in on itself until it resembled one long tube, her extra platings going towards the rudder and fans, while the rockets in her pedes slid towards the back of the plane.

In hardly a moment, she was taking off, but her flight was rocky as her injured wing struggled to provide balance to the other wing, since a chunk of it was missing.

She still continued to fire at the projectile headed towards Sparkplug as she flew by, but she couldn't see if she'd gotten a good hit or not.

Can't believe I'm even thinking this, but...I do hope they don't get to her before I get to them.

[Deleted]

Rail could just begin to make out the dust plumes in the distance, getting closer he thought, the faintest glint of reflected light seen only because he was looking in that direction, and then the slag hit the ex-vent.

He watched in horror as the silver mech went down with some sort of electric shock and a spear protruding from his back. It was a trap but not of Cybertronian design. His best guess now was some human faction – of which there were untold numbers – or worse, all of the 8 billion humans, minus at least two. Though still frightened, he was glad to see Sparkplug, the Decepticon, unleashing hell on their assailants. Frag she was modded! He thought.

At Skystone’s insistence that he run, he almost did. He only took one step before stopping. There were two reason he didn’t, running wouldn’t guarantee safety one iota, and Skystone had shown him concern. Concern meant friend, and in this instance duty to a friend was more important than duty to self preservation. And offence is a good defence yada yada yada.

Rail was still scared, bordering on terrified, but Rail was damn good at riding the coat tails of Terror into action. He snuggled up close to the boulder, using it still for cover, but also to steady his blaster hands. He needed better accuracy at this range. Rail started firing at the approaching enemy vehicles. Slow and steady shots that in no way compared to Sparkplug’s arsenal. Rail kept his aim on the low side, if he missed – which was going to be mostly – his shots would still kick up dust clouds making their targeting harder, hopefully.

::Breakaway turning south, possibly two:: He shouted over comms. Rail switched his aim to these targets, figuring they might be going for him.

[Feldspar]

Sparkplug's blanket response cracked across the desert. The sky lit up in a burst of color as hot and bright as a celebration. It was effectively a screen of firepower; and in response the scattering of tiny drones peeled off and there was an answering wobble from the projectile aimed towards her, but it was too little, too late for it to recover or change course.

As it smashed into one of the fireballs, it would glow with an electrical crackle. Yellow light licked along the outer edge before there was a surge of electrostatic discharge. The bolt lanced outwards with a snap, careened from the area around the destroyed projectile and then shot downwards.

It came within a hand-span of grounding out on Sparkplug. The ground nearby hissed and puffed; one of the clumps of brush steamed and curled and then turned black at the tips.

Both tiny drones swept around and avoided the mess and now were hovering safely above and behind Sparkplug. Their tiny cameras were whirring and clicking frantically.

[Feldspar]

The second projectile managed to mostly avoid Sparkplug's attempt at blocking it; it veered towards Skystone's bulk, the tiny drones flanking it. They were barely the size of a human's head, spindly and fragile, and as the weapon hit, one of them swooped in, the camera underneath focused on Skystone's injury.

It wasn't a bad injury- the barbs on the point had not caught hold and had only skipped off Skystone's plating. No doubt her self-repair systems would stop what little fluid leaked out.

The weapon Skystone had batted out was halfway buried into the dirt. Whatever the rocket was using for propellant, it seemed to have fizzled out. It was at most maybe four or five feet long, sleek and skinny.

The drone managed to transmit a few clicks of information before Skystone caught it somehow and smashed it into near powder with her hand. Immediately the other one swooped upwards, darting out of reach and becoming nearly invisible against the rock and the landscape. It did sweep around and track Skystone as she transformed.

At least two more came to help it. They would flank the Autobot lifted off at a safe distance, two above, one below, creating almost a triangle.

[Feldspar]

Odessa, meanwhile could skim the terrain perfectly. The buggy was meant for a landscape like this and while the six quickly approaching Jeeps were fast, they were no where near as quick as he was.

However, there was movement from the one closest to him. The vehicle split off, and there was movement from the right side passenger window.

The sort of movement that was accompanied by a long-nosed weapon. Even over the sound of Sparkplug's barrage, there was a sharp burst of fire; whomever was in that car was actually shooting at Odi. There was a spanging noise from the front fender of the dune buggy and he'd no doubt see the pattern of holes appear. This wasn't with nice Nerf bullets or paintballs.

If one of those things hit the tire, he'd have a sad, sad buggy on his hands.

However, at the speed and trajectory he was going, it might be possible to intersect with that weapon that Skystone had pulled out of her wing. He'd certainly go past it before anyone else did!

[Feldspar]

As Raf scrabbled over Bluestreak's still frame towards the metal pole protruding from the mech's back, a trail of dusty footprints scattered along the silver mech's plating. Even with Raf's frantic urging, the downed Autobot did not twitch. The sharpshooter was entirely unresponsive.

Whatever the device was, it had driven itself least the length of Raf's deep into the mech's back. A few backward-pointing barbs were actually visible along the cylinder. Apparently whatever this was, it was similar to a harpoon in how it had hit and lodged.

As Raf tugged on it, the shaft did not budge. However, a weird but not painful sensation flicked up the young man's arms and through his fingers, as if a hoard of small, light-footed insects were creeping and writhing over his skin.

This close to the item though, Raf would spot a small imperfection. Where the post was burnished and brushed to a rather matte finish all over, there was a tiny section in the side that appeared to be some sort of near-invisible, tight seam, as if there might be a panel underneath that...

[Feldspar]

Inside of one of the SUV's one of the men within shifted a small tablet on his lap. His fingers flew across the screen.

"Holy shit, that's a big one up there in the air," he whistled. "Bet that thing sucks down a lot of robo-tacos. Seriously though, that's one of the biggest ones I've ever seen. Even that blue bastard back in Kamchatka wasn't this big."

"You got a lock on it?"

"A-yup. It's coming straight at us. Triangulating the lock, soon as I have it, we can deploy."

A pause. "Perfect."

"We've got one shooting at us," came a reply over the airwaves.

"No kidding. That white one's lighting up the place like a bad Bay movie."

"Yeah. We're sending in the systems to see if we can net that one down. Also, got a signal lock on that first one that we were tracking since that thing hit. Seems it finally popped up like a gopher when it had friends show up. Sending 571 off to visual lock on it."

In that moment, Rail's shots splashed out across the landscape. One of the vehicles veered sharply, and the human who was steadying his weapon for another shot was pitched sideways into his protective harness, throwing both his aim and his weight off and slamming him against the upper rollbars of the open-topped Jeep.

The second jeep kept going; both the mech's shots had missed. The driver had immediately, warily slowed down though, and the man holding onto the top bars swung what appeared to be some sort of mounted weapon back and forth, but didn't fire. It appeared he was waiting on something.

Two of the miniature drones peeled off and were headed in Rail's direction. The far SUV changed course to follow at a safe distance.

[Sparkplug]

Focused on the incoming projectiles, the first Sparkplug knew of how close Skystone had gotten was when the huge flier stepped up beside her and began firing in concert. It wasn't enough; one of the two missiles got through to the Autobot, nearly discharging before it was smashed loose. It didn't seem to slow her down, however, and for an instant Sparkplug was caught in simple admiration for the way she launched into the air, still firing. She cut an impressive figure.

A pity this wasn't the time for such appreciation. Sparkplug's barrage intensified, and the electrical harpoon headed for her was blasted off-course. Just. The crackle of electricity as it discharged into the ground was a sharp crack that rang over-loud in her audials, having missed her by a mere hand's breadth.

She'd come that close to being taken out, by humans.

"You," she began, flaring outrage almost lifting her off her pedes, "filthy boil-ridden sump-sucking rust-licking malformed strip-screwed slime-coated writhing pustule maggots!"

One of the advancing vehicles was hit by a blaster bolt from Primus-knew-where, veering to one side, but it wasn't alone. She couldn't remember whether killing the native species was allowed under the terms of the treaty. Probably, if the humans were trying to kill them, but all the same, she narrowed her optics and focused on the front ends of the native transports, where the engines were usually located.

Her systems had had time to charge. All throughout her body, threaded into every square centimetre of usable space, burst capacitors and charge accumulators thrummed with energy as they rose to critical. Bars of energy snapped into being between the tips of the three pylons surrounding her cannon muzzle, shaping the stabilisation field, and the central emitter glowed brilliantly.

She fired. This was no staccato string of bolts, as most weapons threw out: what leapt from her core emitter was a continuous line of green-tinged white, searingly brilliant, a solid bar of cutting plasma that swept across the desert, fusing sand into glass and searing apart native plant life everywhere it touched. Energy erupted from the nozzle on the back of her shoulder in a long, roaring, unfocused blast, balancing her small frame against the tremendous recoil of the weapon.

The searing lance of energy swept across the advancing vehicles, aimed for engine compartments and wheels, but if Sparkplug missed and hit the crew enclosures - too bad for them. They'd invited everything she could throw at them, and she wasn't going to hold back a single erg of intensity.

A few seconds later the incandescence died, taking with it its short-lived shadows, as Sparkplug's accumulators entered a new recharge cycle. A clattering from her shoulders announced her internal mechanisms reloading the empty missile slots, with her second and final round of short-range missiles. Her voice rising over the dunes, she yelled, "-festering, filth-caked, scraplet-infested panel scrapings from Unicron's discarded husk wastes! Line up and open wide!"

[Raf Esquivel]

Trying to ignore the sounds of battle taking place not too far from where he stood stop Bluestreak, Raf desperately kept trying to yank the large dart out of his friend. He couldn’t get a proper grip, and the way it utterly refused to budge told Raf there was no way he was going to remove it.

Desperation welled up in his chest. He had to do something! Bluestreak, and the others...they would be taken away.

Taken apart.

Raf couldn’t stand to have that happen. He knew what had happened to the other Autobot, and had overheard people talking about the Decepticon Breakdown. Raf didn’t want that to happen to anyone, not even the new Decepticon who showed up. No one deserved that!

Standing back, huffing with exertion, Raf ran both his hands through his wild hair, setting it off even worse than normal. He eyes ran over the foreign object.
What could he do, what could he do, what could he-

There was a panel.

Raf froze, blinking for a second, as if unsure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. A trick of the light, a warping of the way it bent around the metal.
But no. There was a panel.

Darting forward, Raf’s hands started to scrabble over the panel, looking for some way to open it. If he could open it...get inside...maybe he could do...something...

There was no knob, no latch, no lever. No keyhole.

There has to be some way of opening it. They need to get inside for upkeep. You don’t make a door that never opens. You don’t.

Small fists hammered on the panel, trying to shake something loose.
“Open, you glitchy glitch!”

A few seconds of angrily hammering at it, and the small panel almost seemed to shift faintly, as if settling a little more into the track.

Now Raf started clawing at it, small fingernails tracing the outline, feeling for anything, any little give. His glasses slipped faintly down his face and he angrily shoved them back before going back to tearing at the panel.

There. There.

One fingernail found a small spot, and slid in.

Curling his fingers, Raf started to pry, to pull, still clawing. To the side, more explosions, the sound of a jet taking off. Someone really angry, cursing up a storm.
Biting his lip, Raf pried the door back. A sharp stabbing pain lanced through his left ring finger as the nail tore, but he ignored it.

The panel door now swinging open, Raf was face to face with a whole lot of...computer.
Small lights, diodes, a little motherboard-looking thing. A whole lot of circuits. Blinking, beeping, flashing. It was all very techy looking, metallic grey. There were a few small parts that Raf wasn’t even sure what it was, although he did see a GPS icon. His first instinct was to reach it, and grab a handful of circuits. His arm tensed. Maybe if he tore them out, there would be a way to remove the dart from Bluestreak. If he could save Bluestreak, he would be ok. The sniper might wake up, and....

There was a USB hub.

Raf paused.

All around him, the sounds of battle continued. Yelling, loud noises, the thunderous roar of the jet, Skystone. But the child was still.

His mind, however, suddenly turned. There was a switch. Something almost seemed to turn on. His mind suddenly and smoothly slid from pure panicked defence, to offense.
Raf quickly slid his backpack from his back, and yanked out his laptop. His face, though pale, was utterly resolute and determined. He wasn’t just driven, he was angry.

He was only 12 and three quarters, but he was angry.

A cable quickly appeared in his hands, one end into his computer, the other into the USB port in the dart. There was a satisfying “da-ding!” sound as his computer recognised there was something on the other side.

Ignoring everything else around him, Raf plopped onto his butt on Bluestreak’s back, and started to type.

[Deleted]

Skystone shot through the air, going as quickly as she could. She could already feel the leaking in her wing slow down; soon it would be gone. Her processor was spinning at a million miles per hour. How did this all go wrong, so fast? Did Rail get out?

This wasn’t constructive thought, and Skystone viciously stamped it out. Focus. You’ve got two drones, one above, two beside. They think they’re unnoticed, pretend they are for now.

It wasn’t long before she caught sight of where MECH was located. There they are...just sitting. Why haven’t they tried to shoot me down yet? No sooner had she thought that then she heard Rail’s warning. Frag- She quickly flew up higher into the sky before whirling around, trying to get a better view. Then she saw him. Rail, the injured Autobot, was trying to get into this mess.

Skystone was also peripherally aware of Sparkplug, still leading a one-man barrage against MECH. Skystone was grudgingly impressed with her weaponry, but also filed that away. Not the time or place.

For a moment, Skystone was incredibly torn- which was an unusual emotion for her. Do I pursue MECH...or try and protect Rail, and assist Sparkplug? He was firing rapidly, but his aim was off, and the missiles were headed towards him. Sparkplug was doing intense damage, but with Bluestreak down and a civilian on the ground, who knew if that could do more harm than good, in the end? On the flip side, if she could take out MECH, she could take out the source. Take out the source, sure...but it won’t stop the missiles. It won’t stop more from coming. With this in mind, she flew as swiftly as she could to get back to Rail. She was no Seeker, but she had horsepower. ::Rail...work on your definition of run. I see the missiles, I’ll do what I can about them. Stay as safe as possible.::

[Deleted]

[Im very confused on whats exactly goin on. So I’ll change it later if need be]





First objective was to regroup. Regather your forces, reassess, and then attack a problem. So firstly was to rejoin Blue, Sky, and Spark. Odessa was careful on his accelerator. There wasn’t enough weight to keep the buggy down in flooring the pedal. That still didn’t mean he wasn’t going fast, as a matter of fact, barely able to keep the wheels on the ground as was. He was so preoccupied with putting as big of an engine on the back of a small buggy as he could, he didn’t stop to think if he should. Then again when he made the damn thing, it was just meant to be a fun, joke-y vehicle. Not an actually viable source of locomotion. Mistakes into miracles. One more inch forwards on the pedal and where most vehicles saw a small incline of speed, the buggy jolted, damn did it want to go. Five-hundred horses for wheels that normally have one-fifth the power, and twice the wight. Talk about power ratios out the ass.

Odessa was scurrying off as fast as he could to meet up with his friends, taken aback by the stuttering Blue, and a weighted heart to see Blue hit the dirt. This was somewhat worrying. He didn’t know humanity had this capability up our sleeve. This was beyond what the military held, but then again, Humanity was a race of bare necessities. The military didn’t have a need for such a spectacle of armaments so it stood to reason why he hadn’t seen this form of battle before. As much as it was wreckin’ his bot-peeps, it was rather marvelous to watch.

His race was to join at Sky’s side. Unknowing what he could do, but nonetheless wasn’t going to leave them behind. Maybe score some points for bravery and show his new allies that he r1e2s3e4n5
wouldn’t leave them behind. Wait, What the shit Sky?! His plan ruined as she transformed and rolled the fuck out. Ok cool, but what about us? Hell, he was reminded about Raf too. Ping, pingpingpingping Now why is that sound familiar. Oh right! Bullet Holes! From the crest of a dune came a jeep, One aimed for lil ol’ him. A man from the passenger side leaning out with rifle in hand, putting holes in his beauty.

Odessa swerved opposite the oncoming rider. Hooking a hard turn directly away from the Jeep.
Everything's gone FUBAR, He couldn’t fight back, no weapons. No rifle, no grenades, or even his current prototypes. He had nothing to contribute and no way of calling back for help. This’ll teach him not to go out without equipping himself to the teeth. Reminded him to look up Arizona’s Open-Carry Laws.

Neither was this a good position to be in. While his heading no longer offered any vantage on his wheels, his overly large engine was completely exposed. The only thing he had going for him was to simply just use his terrain advantage and lose his attackers and somehow make his way back to base on his own. That would perhaps be clusterfuck of its own, no doubt that they(and he) were being tracked.

He floored it.

The buggy raising off the ground, but not to an uncontrollable amount. Quickly falling back to the ground with a surge of power. There was nothing left he could do in this situation and nothing he could contribute to helping the Bots. The most he could do was to try and somehow get Raf out of the situation as well…

...but he couldn’t do that if he was dead as well.

He chose to run. Get out of the action zone and return when he loses this tail.

Goddammit…

Sorry Raf…

Sorry Sky…

Sorry Blue…

Go fuck yourself Spark, but hey do something.

Actually, he had a plan…

Odessa turned back towards the zone. He could contribute. He was kicking up a lot of cloud after all.

The plan now was to actually put himself into harms way. He couldn’t attack, but he could misdirect. He’d take the buggy back into combat. Strictly trying to stay in front of the jeep on his tail. Moving back to Spark and Blue while trying to keep his buggy in front of any jeep.

[Deleted]

Rail was going to have some very polite kind words with Skystone when all this was over, provided they were still alive. He seriously wanted to thank her for her concern over his safety. It would have to wait for now as everyone was quite busy fighting for their lives. The simple idea that he, sort of, kind of, maybe, had made one friend already drove him harder to fight.

Full of focus, Rail started trying to think around the issues pointing nasty weapons at him and everyone else, tactical strategic type thinking. Escape was the first order of business. And the simple solution there was…

::Can anyone open one of those portals underneath the drop pod wreckage and we can all get the frag out of here?:: Rail shouted over the comms to Skystone and Sparkplug.

The humans and their off-roaders headed towards him was the second and possibly primary issue. With one of the vehicle slowing down, Rail concentrated his fire on this one as the easier target. The drones were also an issue, there was no doubt in Rail’s mind they were providing targeting info for the taser missiles, like the one that took out Bluestreak. He figured the drones were likely to be radio controlled and began scanning the airwaves for the sort of simple and repetitive radio signals used in RC technology. He was not disappointed to find what he was looking for in the frequencies he was scanning, but surprised by just how many frequencies were in use. It was indicative of far more drones than he was aware of. A second or two later, he had isolated a pair of frequencies he expected were controlling the two drones headed right his way. He chose one of the frequencies and shouted white noise at the same frequency using his comms system. With some luck it might degrade control of at least one drone.

If everything continued to go down hill, Rail was preparing himself to run as well, but probably not in a direction anyone was expecting.

[Feldspar]

Sparkplug's beam shattered across the landscape between her and the approaching SUV's.

The drones near the Decepticon darted through the air behind her. They angled down since they were apparently safe at this moment in time, and were fully focused on relaying her display. If they were transmitting audio as well, someone listening in was absolutely getting a heck of a crash course in transforming alien robot swears.

Dust billowed upwards as the vehicles swerved and braked on the terrain. Even more dust was kicked up by a series of fire.

Braced as she was against the outputting power of her own weapon, the dirt under Sparkplug's feet would feel unsteady. It was sliding slightly underneath her due to her precarious balance she was involved with. Balancing recoil in terrain like this was going to be a difficult thing. It was not like the solid metal sections of Cybertron; this was Earth, and this mudball of a planet shifted and moved under her weight.

Sparkplug's own unfocused, powerful blast burned into the terrain; there was the sharp, acrid smell of burning brush and a long, scorched line in the landscape. When it flashed across the large rocks that peppered the terrain, the beam would score deep, and leave streaks of thick, heavy char.

The stones had held their positions for eons out here in desert though. A few of them had been the ones to chew up poor Rail's pod, so this was simply one more event in their geological lives. They had worked well to when hiding an Autobot from those who came to look for him, but they also unfortunately protected most of the trucks and crew from Sparkplug's intense burst of firepower.

Most of them, anyway. The first one wasn't quite as lucky- it had been slightly ahead of the others, and even though it had swerved frantically to avoid the white bolt...

The left hand side front tire overheated, melted, and ripped off of the rim. This was a tough, hard-hitting vehicle though, well-armored up and with a trained crew. Inside, the driver narrowed his eyes but did not slam on his brakes; he immediately focused all his concentration on pushing the vehicle into a counter-steer. Inside, the men were tossed around. Hands grabbed and braced on whatever they could reach, seatbelts quivered under the strain.

Jouncing, the vehicle juttered to a stop. Oily smoke bubbled upwards, the acrid smell of burning rubber filling the air.

"Jesus," one of them spat. "Novo, that's a nasty new trick."

The slim man dressed in all black had already unbuckled his seatbelt. "It's got to be wasting a ton of energy doing that sort of thing. Okay, all of you, get clear. Now. Sitting like this, we're now a target."

"Got it," was the quick reply as the crew scrambled to do what they were told.

"Do the drones still have a target lock on that thing?" Novo muttered as he swung out of the car. His boots hit the ground; grit and grime swirled up.

"Yep."

"Good. Goddamn use something other than a disruptor on that one.  I don't care if the goal was to bring these things back functional. There's extras here today, RnD will have to deal with it if I come back with a bucket of parts. Take it down!"