Ep. 1.5 - Bots vs Order - (Closed)

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((OOC: Group thread with Arcee, Shiftlock, Jazz, Bluestreak, Hotrod, and Flareup.)

A dozen different priorities and concerns raced through Arcee’s aching processor. There had been some debate on the necessity of the Acting Commander participating in the mop up mission. Arcee quickly stomped on any objections from her fellow Autobots. The two-wheeler refused to be holed up in the base as often as Optimus was prone to do. Her best thinking was when she was on the move and not staring at battle reports and logistical statistics on the base monitors for hours on end. Besides, she tended to argue with her comrades if she was stuck idling in one place for too long.

Arcee revved her engine with added power to climb over a particularly rough patch of terrain. The mop up mission at least provided her a chance to stretch her tires and leave behind the depressing base for a little while. She maneuvered a side mirror towards her current company.

“Jazz and Bluestreak will join us when they complete their current task,” she informed the wrecker, Shiftlock. “Grab any personal belongings still on board and we’ll see what we can salvage.”

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Shiftlock dropped down into vehicle mode, breathing a sigh of relief. The base didn't bother her as much as being in robot mode did. Any excuse to be out of it was good enough for her.

"Good thing I opted for thicker tires. Black top this ain't," Shiftlock commented, digging up a spray of dust and pebbles behind her as she followed Arcee into the rough terrain. "Sorry if I slow you down, I'm too low-slung for offroading." Her glyphs were unnerved-apologetic, though far more unnerved the moment Arcee had transformed just a short time before. Two-wheelers still rattled her. She couldn't shake it. Not just yet.

"Fortunately, this should be a quick snatch-and-grab. The only thing left on that pile of slag ship is a couple of mementos of my squad." And Shift hadn't fully convinced herself she could stomach bringing them back.

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"Okay," Hot Rod called. "I'm coming up."

She'd just spent a few minutes and a significant chunk of fuel trying to escape from the pit trap she and Flareup had excavated. Well, the pit had already been there - they'd just cleared the debris and enhanced the steepness of the walls. Hot Rod was satisfied that nothing short of a flier could get out. She climbed up the wire Flareup tossed down for her and scrambled to her pedes, grinning.

That was their last pit trap. The area was scattered with them: anyone who tried to approach would run right into them. Their One was safe.

"Okay," she said, and grabbed a few fronds of native greenery. "Let's cover these up."

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It was mostly a matter of using the existing underground terrain. The hive under/with Contour had spent time mining for the Order, and remembered enough to recognize that this sort of terrain often contained voids in the rock where underground water had dissolved it. The hive's burrower had sensed them in her subterranean survey and drilled small entrances that Flareup, Hot Rod, and the deployers had used to check them out.

"We think that might look suspicious," Flareup said. There wasn't all that much local greenery around in the arid environs. "They don't have to fall down that tiny hole - the explosives Firebreak set will shatter the ground to make a bigger sinkhole and hopefully half-bury them too. I think we could get another camo drape. And maybe find something interesting to act as bait..."

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The uneasiness radiating from Shiftlock’s field barely registered with the preoccupied Acting Commander. With her processor only half-focus on the mission at hand and the other half devising upcoming patrol schedules, Arcee merely responded to her companion’s apparent vocalized discomfort by cutting her speed a degree and navigating across more level ground.

“You might consider getting a few adjustments to your suspension for high clearance,” Arcee suggested offhandedly. “A great deal of our missions and battles occur in remote locations on this planet.” A slight trace of humor leaked across her frequency-“I’m afraid humans haven’t built roads to every corner of Earth for our convience.”

A few turns weaving around the growing number of rock formations, Arcee was then forced build up enough momentum to clear a raised rock shelf.

“While you’re grabbing your belongings, I’ll begin searching for any possible replacement parts needed back at the base.” The two-wheeler stated as she scrolled through her supply list.

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"I'm going to have to have adjustments in everything eventually," Shiftlock replied with a note of annoyance. "The Veloci-Cons forcibly upgraded me for maximum road performance. Clearance didn't matter too on Velocitron, ninety five percent o' the slaggin' planet's road there now. Can't say I really care to see that much pavement again."

Coming up to the rock formation, the orange femme had a much better idea for getting through the increasingly rough terrain. "Looks like I'll have to take to the air from here. I have to admit, there's a real advantage to bein' a nimble little two wheeler. I wouldn't get your hopes up for a lotta parts, I don't even know if half of them are compatable. The colony had some divergences from tech we'd find back home." Oversteering and sliding to a stop in the dirt, Shiftlock disappeared into a cloud of her own dust. A glowing energy-grapple shot out of the cloud, hooking into the cleft of a tall pile of rock with Shiftlock zipping out of the dust and upwards after it. Jamming the knife in her other hand into the side of the rock, she called down, "You just keep goin', boss, I'll follow after and keep a look out. Sound good?"

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Hot Rod lay sprawled in the dust, clutching a slim leg with a grimace of pain.

This sucked. She was out in the open and exposed, no cover if some 'Con were to fly past. She wanted desperately to transform at least, be on her wheels in case she needed to make a quick getaway, but that would have defeated the purpose. She was supposed to look vulnerable, an easy target. Something interesting, Flareup had said.

"Oh, my poor busted leg," she said aloud. "Oh, help." She blew sand out of her vents, and kept a careful optic on the closest pit trap.

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While quite small, the aerial deployer flitting from rock to rock was not precisely invisible. Her coloration was distinctly emergency services orange and her quadrotors put out an audible, if quiet hum. The glow of the grapple caught her optics from afar, and she dropped behind a rock, rising up only to peer around the area for other unidentified targets. The cloud of dust obscured things, for now.

She sent out a tiny tactical update and the hive went on alert as one.

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Arcee merely transmitted an acknowledge glyph in the wrecker’s direction as they went their own routes. Her navigational tracker bleeped, when the two-wheeler was a half mile away from coordinates of the crashed shuttle. Putting on a burst of speed, Arcee chewed up the remaining ground in no time. Racing over top a final rocky ridge, the blue femme’s cycle mode swerved in a tight arch, absorbing the impact.

The crash trench stretched out, running east to west, before Arcee. The edges of the shuttle’s bulk appeared in the distance to her left. Locked on her final destination, she turned to follow the trench.

"Oh, help." Startled Arcee slammed on her brakes, transforming. She caught a glimpse of a slim transformer, before accelerated beeping reach her audios. Her spark clenched, shifting her into full combat awareness.

“Wha-“ Too late. A ripple of explosions assaulted her sensors and blinding her optics as the ground gave out beneath her and sending her on a downward slope…

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The explosion was kind of hard to miss.

Having pulled herself up to the top of the clump of boulders precariously stacked against each other from the plowing action of her shuttle's crash landing, Shiftlock was in a good place to get a quick view of what had happened.

The dust and debris from the explosion were climbing upwards, obscuring Shiftlock's view into the pit, but she could easily see the body of another Cybertronian near it.

Wow, really? the Wrecker thought to herself. Why didn't they just stick an ingot of energon under a box trap.

A visor slid down over her optics while a mask snapped up over the rest. Her plates shifted and vents sealed to prevent the intake of dust. It was one of the augmentations of the Velocitronian medic that she truly appreciated; what wasn't covered by roadways was endless desert, and powerful dust storms blowing through high speed races were simply a fact of life - and a part of the challenge. Any bot that stayed for more than a few cycles on Velocitron had these crucial modifications made to prevent dust and sand from clogging intakes and ruining joints and seams.

She followed Arcee's tracks up the side of the new canyon, and right into the pit. Couldn't be helped. Looks like she was just unlucky enough to drive right into that. Always the way it goes - first to the fight, first to get shot.

Shiftlock quickly pinged Arcee's Ident-Sig to see if she was still online, then broadcast a transmission to the "bait".

>> To Unidentified Cybertronian: Requesting Name, Status and Affiliation. Your actions are presently classified as hostile. You are on a neutral non-aligned, inhabited planet, and hostile or subversive actions against the populace will be considered in violation of the Tyrest Accord. Failure to identify or further hostile actions will be met with deadly force. Awaiting your response. <<

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As soon as the explosion went off, Hot Rod was on her pedes with a whoop of triumph. "Gotcha! Hail to the Order, mecha!" She scrambled to the edge of the pit to peer at her quarry, keeping a small but sturdy bit of vegetation between her and the pit just in case of any retaliatory laserfire.

She only got a glimpse of a grumpy-looking blue two-wheeler through the rising rock dust before an open transmission lodged in her comm. Hot Rod squeaked, ducking back behind the rocks in startlement, before actually examining the contents of the message.

Sounded legit. But Elita said that you shouldn't always take things at face value.

>> To Other Unidentified Cybertronian: We're soldiers of the Order of Solus. Who are you that we should respect your authority? <<

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Flareup had very rarely met other Autobots since apprenticing herself to Chromia, and the ones she had met had been, like Chromia, refugees out of contact with any command since they very fall of Cybertron itself. At first she had been gullible. Over-trusting. And after That One Time With The Fake Autobot Distress Signal, Chromia had ordered her not to obey anyone without the right recognition codes.

These mechs looked like Autobots. Indeed, they looked very suspiciously like Autobots. But they didn't click in to Flareup's rusty friend/foe recognition algorithms.

"They're probably fake Autobots," one of the deployers sent helpfully in a short burst to Hot Rod. The hive were Autobots. They'd know, right?