Author's Note: Written as a last-minute entry in the Allspark June/July '09 Challenge; theme: Kup's war stories. I threw this together in about two hours and I couldn't think of a title, and then the chorus from Don McLean's "American Pie" suddenly popped into my head...

Risky And Why?

Cybertron, the year 2000

"I remember that there were about five or six Ikyaks—"

"There were seven."

"Right. There were seven, an' they were comin' down from all sides of the mountain, an' there we were, stuck in that minin' pit. Mind you, this was before those creatures knew not to mess with Cybertronians, so to them we were a meal waitin' to be crunched on."

"I've still got a bite scar right over here—"

"Wait till after the battle details fer that, Kup."

"Right, right. go on."

"So, they were comin' down the sides of the pit next, an' we were so low on energon that we maybe had about two shots each."

"I had one."

"—We were so low on energon that Kup only had one shot. I had one an' a half, if that. Everyone else had two. So, we all made a break fer the mine shaft. Kup an' I were the last ones to reach it, an' that was when the entrance caved in!"

"Oh noooo," groaned a voice from near the bar's side counter. "How convenient. Whatever did you geezers do?"

Kup, Ironhide, and their audience at Maccadam's all looked at the young bot who sat on a barstool, swirling a shot glass of energon in one hand. Kup scowled. "Respect your elders, lad. They're the reason you're alive to walk around today."

Ironhide pointed at the youth in warning. "Yeah, you turbo-revvin' young punk. You don't know how good you got it, gettin' to go to Earth fer the openin' of Autobot City while other 'bots are gettin' ready to dig in against the 'Cons here. An' you know it's only 'cause of us old timers that there're free places left on Cybertron." He slouched slightly and grumbled into his drink. "Not fer much longer, at this rate."

"Ah, c'mon." The youth grinned. "We can stop those lousy Decepticons. We have plenty of fresh new recruits with updated systems and weaponry to help back up the aging veterans who need to stop and clear the rust from their intakes."

"Hot Rod. Shut. Yer. Yap."

Kup slapped Ironhide's shoulder. "Anyway, as we were saying, it was the two of us versus seven of them, and they were twice our height."

"That one guy, who jumped over the piece of shuttle, was at least three times," Ironhide put in helpfully.

"Yeah, he was, wasn't he? Had a set of teeth on him, I tell you. That bite wound still acts up from time to time--"

"You can go into it when we get there. No, they were just circlin' us at first, sizin' us up, an' prob'ly thinkin' we were no match fer 'em. Well, we were sizin' them up, too, an' we were makin' a plan on the best way to use what shots we had."

"The best thing to do in that situation is take your surroundings into consideration. You never know what you might improvise with. In our case, there were the pieces of the shuttle. The ones that contained fuel tanks and our last salvaged energon cubes."

"Why didn't you use the cubes to power your weapons?" Hot Rod called.

"I said shut it, Roddy."

"Anyway," Kup said harshly, then continued, "Moving with precision that only comes from years of battle experience, we spilt up and each lured them close to where we wanted them. I took the fuel tank half, Ironhide took the energon cube half. At the very last possible second we fired and then dove for cover! Both explosions exceeded the radius we had calculated, but we had calculated the distance we each needed to be out to avoid getting caught in it. Six Ikyaks down, just like that." He snapped his fingers.

"But the big guy wasn't happy at all," Ironhide added after a long sip of his drink.

"Nope. He went right for Ironhide. I always used to tell him that bright red paint job made him scream 'target!'. I told him he should try something more stealthy, like black."

"An' I always told him I don't do stealthy."

"Finally bit him in the skidplate, though. Or almost did."

"This crazy bucket of bolts shoved me out of the way. S'why he's got the scar to brag about."

"Yeah, and no thanks to you and that wild shot. You had enough time to get the trajectory right for a hit in its eye."

"You moved."

"No, I didn't."

"So anyway, this thing's got a good hold on Kup, an' me shootin' at it got it more mad. I did make that shot for its eye, but that turned out to be 'an' a half' I had left. Nothin' else around to use as a weapon, so I transformed an' rammed its foot. It had a really girly scream. Or maybe that was Kup as he fell."

Kup shoved him, nearly upsetting his whole chair as well. "I did not scream. That was a triumphant battle cry. And I didn't fall. It let me go, I grabbed it by the lower lip, and I punched it in the nose."

"Then you fell."

"Then I jumped. There's a difference. So, neither of us had a weapon charge anymore and we still had this monster wanting to eat us. We both ended up driving in circles around the pit, trying to disorient it. It couldn't keep up with us, that was for sure, and it was starting to look dizzy. I decided we should hit its legs at the same time, knock it over, and give it another few punches in the face."

"But it wasn't really that clumsy." Ironhide leaned his chair back on two legs, keeping his mug in hand while crossing his arms.

Kup shook his head. "Not as much as we'd hoped. It was dizzy, maybe, but it still wanted lunch. When we rammed it, it was smart enough to throw its weight forward. We hurt it, but it was able to reach and take swipes at us. We needed a way to stop it for good."

"There was one more piece of shuttle left. Nothin' explosive in it, but we went fer it."

"What it did have was lots of broken scrap in it. Since this thing was so intent on eating metal mechs, we gathered up a bundle of scrap, put together a makeshift slingshot, and waited for it to come charging and roaring at us. Then we really gave it something to chew on!"

He and Ironhide traded smirks, then burst into raucous guffaws at the joke.

"It decided it didn't like metal for meals after that," Kup continued after they had calmed down. He also paused to take a drink. "It ran whimpering into a corner, since it couldn't get out of the pit too easily. We let it be and went to dig out the others."

"They'd heard all the noise an' thought we were scrapped, an' thought they were next. They couldn't believe it when we told 'em what had gone down."

"Neither can I," came the remark Ironhide had expected.

Which he answered by chucking his empty mug at Hot Rod's head.

At least the punk had had the sense to make the comment without facing them, and the mug bounced off the back of his helm without doing much damage. Hot Rod rubbed the spot and smartly decided not to turn around then, either.

Kup picked up the story once more. "When the last Ikyak saw how many more of us came out of the mine, it couldn't run away fast enough. It found a way to get out of that pit and away from us. That just left the dilemma of our shuttle being in even fewer pieces than before. We didn't have any other equipment to call for a rescue, so we explored the mine. About a week into the tour we found a cache of energon and a glitchy communication station. Those temporary ones never hold up well. But we fixed it and got a message out." He finished his drink in one big gulp. "Never saw that particular Ikyak again, but he had friends who hadn't heard of the lunch that fought back."

"An' then over time they finally spread the word around, an' that's why to this day Ikyaks don't mess with Cybertronians. 'Course, it'd be nice if they'd chomp a few Decepticreeps now n' then."

"Next time we ought to try getting the natives to differentiate between Autobots and Decepticons."

Ironhide nodded, scooted his chair back into place, and looked around the table for his mug, then remembered he had used it as a projectile. "One more round," he sigalled the barkeep. "Might have one more tale to pass on before callin' it a night."

He and Kup were discussing which one to tell next when an odd sound came from outside the building. Most of the other patrons didn't acknowledge it, but the two veterans looked at each other with sudden paranoia. After a few nanokliks of no noises other than the chatter in the room, and with a barmaid coming their way carrying a tray of mugs, they went back to their discussion.

Half a breem later the front door was kicked off its hinges and laser shots began to fly into the room. Most of the patrons scrambled under the tables or behind the bar. Hot Rod ended up throwing himself toward the nearest table, and came up on his elbows face-to-face with Ironhide. The older mech grabbed him by one shoulder. "Back wall, hidden exit. Go!" He practically hauled the youth past him in the indicated direction. "Don't look back, don't stop to shoot! Just GO!" He roared out the last word and surged to his feet, firing both his rifle and a second gun that Hot Rod wasn't sure he had seen on the mech before. Yet he did as Ironhide had ordered, and joined the chaotic tumult of mechanoids escaping through the back of the oilhouse.

Meanwhile, inside, Kup had fallen in with the hastily but efficiently assembled defense line, standing among the other veterans whose first thoughts were to stand and shield. How easily one old story could suddenly become a lead-in for a new one.

"Can we hold it?!" he shouted to Ironhide over the noise.

"Dunno! I was hopin' there wouldn't ever need to be a stand here, of all places! They just don't care about anythin', do they?" His face contorted into a snarl and he let out an infuriated battlecry. There was no such thing as neutral territory anymore. A bot couldn't even just have a drink and recount the old days…

Perhaps this was it. Perhaps this was just one of numerous last stands across the planet, the end of the neutral zones, and they would finally have to flee and leave Cybertron in the hands of the Decepticons.

"Not on MY watch!!" Ironhide shouted out loud. He broke from the line and charged at the Decepticon across from him, leading with his rifle first and his fist second. His punch had all the wrath of having his quiet evening shattered behind it. That Decepticon wasn't going to be getting up again.

The others picked up on his fervor and the brawl was over soon enough, but not before most of the oilhouse had been demolished and burned. Ironhide was one of the last to emerge through the doorway, his fist clenched tight around his rifle and his mouth set even tighter.

Cybertron, the year 2006

"…And that's the last time I saw Ironhide before I left for Earth. The next I saw him… or what was left of him… was after the fall of Autobot City." Kup looked over his audience at New Maccadam's with a solemn gaze. "Best of the best warriors I've ever known. He still had a lot to live for, that cantankerous bot did." He nodded with conviction and raised his glass. "A toast." As the others raised their mugs, he murmured quietly, "It should've been me."

End