A short TF: Prime fic co-written with Riversrunthroughme.

Enjoy!

Smack Talk

Earth - Philippines - Foot of Canlaon Volcano

So 'choose your battles' was a lesson Knock Out had reiterated for orns now, not necessarily one that Breakdown had been inclined to take note of ("I have iyou/i around for that.") but in the last few weeks the Deception trooper had found himself in the perplexing situation of being out of favor with his superiors and – more troubling still – having to choose his battles iwithin his own ranks/i. He felt relatively certain these were not the battles Knock Out had been referring to… or maybe they were and he'd just never noticed. Knock Out did double talk like a slagging pro and Breakdown was disinclined to notice.

He kind of regretted it now.

The energon signal was a stray untapped vein, previous inaccessible until seismic activity in the area (namely, a volcanic eruption) cracked open the whole damn thing and laid open the energon-rich layer beneath. The eruption itself was still going and, really it would have been better to wait until things settled, but he was not in a slagging position to argue when Lord Megatron made it clear he was to make himself scarce. Whether or not Breakdown got his aft blown up in a volcanic explosion was not his concern.

Which was why he was here… less than 100 meters from a lava flow… his processors preoccupied with questions of loyalty.

*Bulkhead's presence was equally idle, having retreated from the Autobot base when it simply got too damn crowded. Optimus most certainly had things under control, meaning that his powerful bulk was more in the way than anything else, and he'd excused himself to check up on an energon signature he'd picked up on yesterday. No sense crowding Ratchet when the medic looked to be on the verge of punctuation his speech with improvised weaponry. He liked his helm just the shape it was, ithank you.

Coming to the precipice of the rocky outcropping overlooking the site, Bulkhead transformed into bipedal mode and scanned the area with casual optics. He froze, optics spiralling wide when he spotted the familiar figure amidst the threads of magma and earth. No doubt Breakdown had already seen him too, and with a grunt, he leaped over the side of the cliff, slowing his descent by dragging one hand through the rocks on the way down. Landing with a loud thud, he absorbed the shock with a roll and came up with his fist already transformed into a club.

"Breakdown, fancy meeting you out here. Thinking about taking a super-heated bath? Because I'm feeling generous - I'll even make sure none of that lava gets in your optic."

After the usual spark-deep surge of rage (the typical reaction to the appearance of any Wrecker) Breakdown was mildly surprised to note that even the simplicity of hating Bulkhead had been complicated by MECH's interference. He didn't have the processing power for this kind of stupid slagging stuff. He decided he was going to ignore it in favor of putting a series of dents in Bulkhead's bowling ball head. With a lazy shift of circuits, his right arm reconfigured into the usual Bot-bashing battle hammer he always carried into a brawl. He paced lazily to Bulkhead's left, idly swinging his arm, battle-tech coming online as the circled away from a fissure in the ground.

"It's amazing," drawled Breakdown, "but just looking at you makes me regret having my one optic left." He stopped pacing, as if thinking. "Huh, I guess I'll just have to slag you to fix that."

Breakdown charged. Fine. He was pretty fragged back in the Con ranks but here, this was easy and easy was precisely what it was looking for right now. It was probably careless of him, but as he attacked, hurdling full force at the ugly green Wrecker, Breakdown didn't notice the rumble and split of the earth around them, the whole plate of earth threatening to give way beneath two separate two-ton mechs. Them slamming into each other didn't much help the situation and with a heave, the earth began to fragment.

"Whoa-whoa!" Bulkhead shouted even as he recovered from that bodily slam, dropping onto his hands when the ground literally moved beneath his pedes. Molten rock spat up in orange globules from the new fissure, and the Wrecker regained his footing cautiously. After deliberating for a moment, his thick jaw set and he took a step forward, already swinging, before stopping with optics when a new crack in the ground appeared.

Meeting Breakdown's steady gaze, he forced his systems to back down first and transformed his club back into a hand. "I... don't think this is gonna work," he admitted over the ominous rumbling of the volcano. His sensors didn't detect any pressure accumulation great enough to signal another blow out, but they sure as slag weren't anywhere remotely safe to stand, let alone brawl.

"What?" growled Breakdown, pretending not to care about about the nuclear slagging reactor of natural energy rumbling beneath them. "Can't take the heat, Bulk?"

Course, while he said all that, he certainly hadn't moved an inch. The hairline cracks spider-webbing through the ground beneath them – Breakdown had been scouting energon on this dirtball long enough to know structural weakness when he saw it and he certainly slagging saw it. His scanners indicated a massive heat buildup beneath the rock shelf they were currently precariously occupying and – hilariously – it was not dissimilar from treading on thin ice. Moving to walk off this Primus bedamned chunk of stone was barely an option, much less attacking and whether both of them were admitting it or not, neither Bot nor Con dared move.

Breakdown cycled his vent with irritation, a deep pulse of rage sliding through his spark. "Well, that's just slaggin' great…"

Gritting his dentals, Bulkhead looked over their superheated predicament and quickly realised that they wouldn't be able to move until the magma had cooled at least a little. If it had any solidity to it, the cracks and fissures would hold against their mass whilst they both beat a hasty retreat. Until then, however, there was nothing they could do except look at each other.

Joy.

"Don't think that either of us calling in a ground bridge would help us much," the Autobot murmured with a frown, hands dropping to his sides in a loose-but-ready stance. A thought occurred, and he looked up to grin at Breakdown. "Don't worry: maybe Silas will send one of his MECH friends to pick you up again."

"No," said Breakdown, flip as anything, "they only show up to kidnap me afterI kick your aft so hard your circuits get scrambled." He grinned right back at the Bot, wobbling slightly as the ground beneath him shivered and fractured some more but held, still held. "So now what, Bot? We stand here until the aftershocks stop and hope to Primus the whole place doesn't blow?"

Actually that was pretty much it exactly, but whatever.

"Much as I hate to agree with you on anything," Bulkhead began slowly, shifting his weight fractionally to see if the movements really were that dramatic (they were), "I think that's all we can do. So, uh... Yeah. I guess we just stand here."

"Fabulous," gritted Breakdown in much the way most mechs say 'slaggin slag this fragger to the Pit'. He was luckily distracted by his extreme misfortune by yet another rumble from and a temperature spike on his energon sensors… because panic distracted you pretty well from feeling sorry for yourself. It looked like several deposits were heating up and nothing spelled 'S-L-A-G-G-E-D' like super-heated energon, but it would take more than heat to blow the vein. It would take direct contact with the molten magma beneath and proximity scans indicated only a 40% risk of vein rupture.

But on more serious quake was all it would take to pump the volcanic Molotov into the ground below… that or one of them caving something in. Great. Maybe it was the prospect of impending explosion, but suddenly Breakdown felt it was imperative to mention something to Bulkhead.

"Hey, Bulk, just in case we both get fragged right now, I want you to know… you're still the sorriest excuse for a slaggin' Wrecker that your miserable division ever welded together." Then, as an afterthought, "And I don't owe you slag for what happened with MECH, by the way."

Bulkhead cocked his head with narrowed optics, smiling in a way that would have been warm were it not obvious that he was simultaneously imagining throwing Breakdown into the lava and than bouncing rocks off his melting helm. "Oh I don't know about that, B-Diddy. I mean, with your pirate patch, you actually look vaguely dangerous now." A thick shrug, deceptively casual. "Disney-level dangerous, but you should probably still write MECH a 'thank you' for it. Bet Megatron was pleased with your upgrade."

Breakdown – who'd never Googled 'Disney' anything and was not even remotely anywhere near a mental space where a P-Diddy reference would mean anything to him – tilted his head at and the Bot and thought 'What the actual frag?' He suspected he was being mocked the way you suspect you're mocked when people talk in another language around you… that and the only mutual language between two mechs like them was a dialogue of hate and snarkery.

"Do you hear yourself?" demanded Breakdown, totally deadpan as another tremor shuddered through the ground and his spark surged with some measure of anxiety. "Can I play that back to you? Because it sounded like you just devolved for minute there and your vocal processor stopped you speaking proper languages – Oh, slaggit!"

The ground under his right pede had just given way slightly, sinking about half a meter and cracking, dropping Breakdown to one knee as a complex network of fracture spread beneath him and the whole shelf groaned ominously. Suddenly, this whole thing was less ironical and more… spark-clenchingly doomish. The Con glanced at Bulkhead.

"Any bright ideas, Bot?" Bright yellow optics narrowed. "Your lot can't exactly afford to lose another one of your ragtag gang, can they?"

"Hang on a minute, I'm thinking," Bulkhead relied with a frown, scrutinizing the ground in search of the safest possible route out of here. If there was one. "And don't start something like 'I'll come back next week, then', alright? If we're going to get out of this, we're going to have to shelve the slag for now. Again."

After a few long minutes, he gestured to the area to their left, paradoxically closer to the volcano. "Alright. I think we're standing over a chamber that's letting off diapirs right now - that's why it's so unstable. Over there it's just melted rock. It'll support us until Vesuvius up there cools off." He met the crimson optic fixed on him with a grimace, Breakdown's astute comment about the Autobot's dwindling presence on this planet striking anew. "We're going to have to jump it at the same time, though, or one of us is slagged."

Breakdown glanced toward their supposed escape route. Now obviously, his first suspicion was that it was highly unlikely that Bulkhead would make two efforts to keep him online, as it had more or less be made clear in the last couple centuries that he would 'put his slagging spark out' (to paraphrase) as payback for everything Breakdown had done during the war. Frankly, this was not an unreasonable response. Breakdown killed Bots for far less – fun, for example. The Con shot Bulkhead a sidelong look.

"Why do you keep doing that?" demanded Breakdown irritably, a spark-deep rage pulsing through every circuit. Not at the situation really, but specifically at Bulkhead for messing with the simple dynamics for their rivalry. "You could have just jumped, you glitch."

Bulkhead gritted his dentals and lifted his hand in a calming gesture - more for himself if he were honest. "Look: One of the big things that makes Autobots different from 'Cons is that we can see when a death is dishonourable or just plain pointless. We've been going head-to-head longer than some species have been alive, and I'll be slagged before I see your spark go out from a hot puddle or being butchered alive by MECH. That right belongs to me. So yeah, I'll keep saving you from the stupid death so that I can inflict a memorable one."

"This is why you're going to lose the war," said Breakdown. He cycled his vents briefly, making a last scan of the area before supposing at relying on Autobot sentimentality was a pragmatic enough strategy. The Con nodded finally. "Fine. We'll call a truce and slag each other some other day." There are worse things than agreeing to kill one another at a better time and place. Knock Out would have said this lacked… style. Or something. Breakdown just agreed it didn't feel right. If he were feeling complicated, he might has asked himself if he would have jumped... but that wasn't a line of thought he was inclined to pursue.

Breakdown slowly straightened up, the pitch and tremble of the ground still treacherous as ever but setting his scanners to gauge the load-bearing integrity of the ground around him. After a moment he shifted his foot out of the fissure into which he'd half sunk and carefully repositioned for the jump. He glanced at Bulkhead. "On three?"

Bulkhead nodded sharply, optics narrowing. Before the first number had left his vocaliser, though, he looked back to Breakdown. "Wait - on three, like 'one, two and three we jump'? Or, 'one, two, three' and then we jump?"

"What?" The Con snapped, agitated as you could get in the face of imminent explosion. "I don't –" Breakdown glared like Bulkhead was doing this on purpose. "Okay, the…second one. We jump after you say three."

"Alright," Bulkhead affirmed, rocking his weight fractionally on his pedes as he prepared to leap. Just as he was about to utter the 'one' of their dreadful little countdown, however, the sensor that he had trained on the magma chamber below him picked up another diaper being released and beginning to rapidly ascend. A big one. "Scrap - three. Three!"

"What! ARGH!"

The pocket behind them blew with the force of a small box of C-4, blowing a geyser of molten magma a good hundred meters skyward and utterly destroying the fragile slab of rock they were occupying. The whole thing pitched forward with a tremendous heave, going to pieces even as Breakdown lunged for safe ground. He shouted the whole way, "LEARN! TO! COUNT! SLAGGER!" before hitting the ground just inches from the edge of a now substantial sink hole of lava and rapidly disintegrating earth.

Bulkhead landed heavily and pitched his shoulder down to roll off the worst of the force, though he still ended up lying on his back whilst his gyros found 'up' and the ground stabilized. With a groan he pushed himself into a sitting position, one hand moving to rub his helm. No dent that he could feel, thankfully. He looked across to Breakdown to see how the other mech had fared.

"Primus, I hate you," said Breakdown, but he sounded perfectly cheerful about it. The massive Con trooper pushed himself easily back to his feet, glancing with interest at the molten pit to his immediate right. He gave a kind of dismissive 'huh' and cast his rival a sidelong look and in no way gave away more than his usual mix of amused contempt. A brief scan confirmed what he'd already known when he shipped out here – the slagging energon vein was too slagging unstable to mine because it was slagging exploding. Preliminary consensus achieved.

"So…" Breakdown shot the Bot a look. "… is now the time to 'inflict a memorable death' on each other, or did you want to hold off on getting slagged?"

"I think I'm done for now," Bulkhead grumbled back, also pushing himself to his feet and cricking out what felt like a boulder in his neck. A strange silence drew out between them, neither mech particularly keen to be the first to expose his back. Finally, and with an irritated sigh, Bulkhead 'blinked' first and began to retreat to safer ground so that he could transform and drive back to base.

Before collapsing his body down, however, he hesitated and turned back to face Breakdown. "I've gotta ask - why didn't youjump when you had the chance?"

"Don't visit my intentions, Bulkhead."

The Con walked away from the Autobot, as though he had no intentions of answering, but the question kind of gnawed at him and rather without his own consent Breakdown found himself pausing. When a moment had passed and Bulkhead hadn't yet transformed and raced off, Breakdown half turned to look at the Wrecker. He searched his processor for the right phasing and after a while settled for a reply that didn't fry his logi-tec to say aloud, however reluctantly.

"Like ya said before: if either of us get slagged, it better be the other guy doing it." Then without another word Breakdown transformed, folding into the dark blue armored truck of his alt mode. He hit the gas and accelerated out of the area, perfectly content to keep the whole encounter entirely to himself – last thing he needed to was complicating his life again. His slagging thought processes were scrambled enough as it was.

~ Fin ~

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