The year is 1988, five years after the first real invasion; Five Years, get it? In five years there's been much, so much. And so little, so hopelessly little that you can't possibly imagine. But if you were alive in 1988, don't expect it to look the same.
Hey, there are shapeshifting alien robots on our planet, and they were fighting a war across the cosmos. They're not anymore. The "heroes" lost. Five weren't there when their clan was burned into oblivion. A sixth was a spy. A seventh followed the spy. An eighth was lost long before the others. You may know this last one as Optimus Prime. By 1984 three of those were dead, leaving five Automobile Robots, or Autobots for short. Prowl, Grimlock, Skids, Perceptor and Optimus Prime. Five and a world against an army and the universe. And for a time they'd won. That would not happen again.
The Decepticons originally saw this world as insignificant, and all of its life with it. It was useless, had no place with them. People too weak and fleeting to be slaves, a world too fragile to be any factory, too small to be a base. All its worth was in the silver egg that was the Prime, and that was lost when the Monger stormed them all. Now there was an Autobot insignia visible from the planet of Mars with a good pair of optics. The Decepticons saw it from a trillion miles beyond the star Proxima Centauri. A ship there was rested in the star's core, drinking its life away. The pilots were laughing. The red dwarf was dwarfed further with every pulsing nanosecond, plasma lifeblood shrinking from the dense elemental skeleton to the prismatic vessel within. It rattled, threatening to buckle, and the star's gravity to compress the kilometer-long starship to the width of a fingernail. The cackling duo had hoped to pass the time by catching up on the nearest sightseeing opportunities.
Instead their external sensors found the charred insignia. Almost falling over in startlement, the Decepticon on the left returned to his three feet and rotated his face on its skull to his comrade. With a single slit pupil he blinked to the fellow Transformer. The vessel shook again, rumbling ever so subtly, and they took their reins.
They forwarded the signal for another quadrillion miles on a low-frequency burst to the next-nearest vessel, a six-mile-long mobile fortress dressed in bloody spikes. It received and acknowledged within one minute. The appropriate response was dispatched. It would have been done on the day the Monger went down, but the world's orbit had been facing away from the nearby scouts, and it took until the two draining our next-nearest star for fuel for anyone to know what had happened. Both the commander and the Trainer survived without capture, but I doubt either was in any position to transmit any sort of signal. This response had been wholeheartedly invited by such a declaration, and considering the minimal number of Autobots needed for a victory with help from local power, they sent double, just for good measure. And unlike Starscream's unit, this group were to absorb themselves into the world on a level rare even for Adapto Sapiens.
They landed separately, as individuals, like a whole team of Mongers. The Mongers are dead, but these were certainly neither. Like a typical Transformer infiltration unit, there were five, marked by individual colors unique to each team. We will focus on one, a silver giant: the leader. Full chromatics: silver-green-yellow-purple. And as Transformers are on a new world, he has no name yet.
He landed in Colorado, quietly, with no fire and no brimstone. Just hit a tree, fall over, tear the dirt a new one. It hit a family of squirrels; they were crushed to death instantly. The bipedal form suited for this world already assimilated, he got to his feet and wiped the viscera from himself absentmindedly. He flicked his wrist in an extremely human gesture of disgust. Just killed you. Eww, gross.
Area 51 was not as top-security as he had hoped. Given, all the real magic happened overseas these days, and now it was just a standard, albeit highly-prepared air base. Two-hundred pilots in the best jets this little nation had to offer. Best nation in the world, some had said. Too bad it was.
Thomas Winston (callsign: "Thunderwing"), was just one of many pilots on base, and it was on autumn nights like these that he wanted to fly. Good thing too, this was when they had been cleared for it. And like some other flyboys, he enjoyed the little white sparkles that despite their great distance and small size seemed so close. The sky was, despite the lights radiating from the base, pitch-black, and the stars looked icy, like crystal. He wanted to fly tonight.
And he also found the time to walk around, free as a kid, gazing up and passing the maintenance techs and fellow pilots he didn't always know but always managed to recognize. Passing the uniform aircraft and the bright orange tech crews, flourescent handheld lights and the white fogs that floated in front of them.
"Ready to fly?" A tech he didn't know asked him in passing. "We got 'er through maintenance checks early. Jackson made sure of it." He nodded and said his thanks, then realized after a moment that they had passed the plane in question. He backpedaled with some lethargy to see. Sure enough, his favorite. He even saw his callsign on the outside of the cockpit when the tech held his light up to it. That had not been there before.
"Thanks again," he commented before continuing on his way.
Some time later, he and some of the other pilots met and got ready for their next exercise. He met the tech again, who now told him his name was Buster. Yes, really, that was what it said on his birth certificate. Winston said he was happy to meet him, and with his help climbed into the cockpit with his name on it.
He did a quick inventory of his fighter jet. Seat, check. Harness, check. Harness cutter was missing.
"Hey, Buster, I'm missing a harness cutter. Was that reported during inspection?" Harness cutters had become mandatory after numerous incidents where pilots were trapped in their harnesses as their planes went down in blazes, obviously. Not carrying one wouldn't fly in inspection, pun intended. Buster shrugged.
"It passed inspection, and everything was in our inventory, maybe it was misplaced, that's all." Winston shrugged. It had only been a few cases, anyway. By the time he reached for it to cut himself loose it could even then already be too late. No worries then.
"We'll get this taken care of when we land." He gave the signal for his cockpit to shut. "Let's fly!" He whooped into the cockpit. He activated his radio.
"Hercules to Thunderwing, all systems clear?"
"Roger, Hercules. Everyone else?"
"All clear."
"Thunderwing to Babbler, we are good to go." On the other end of the two-way, the control tower guy was sending messages to the techs on the ground. The guiding lights came on, and one began pointing Winston down the main runway.
"Thunderwing, you're up first," Hercules told him with insulting encouragement. "Now get your sorry self and that poor excuse for a mop bucket down that runway and up into the air! We wanna get some flyin' in tonight!"
"Roger, Hercules," Winston replied plainly. "Besides, who'd want to be stuck here on the ground with you, anyway?" He grinned, and at this began maneuvering the jet onto the runway. "Making my way down the runway," he added. "Let's launch fast, okay? I need the air."
"Acknowledged," Babbler responded. Winston was starting to look outside now. Just beyond the guide lights, he was seeing stars. Lots of them. And those same clouds forming around the lights and hanging in the air. He loved those. He wanted to go above them, make his own clouds. Leave an exhaust trail behind him that would linger long enough for him to land, step out and see his handiwork.
"You still with us, Twinkle Toes?" Hercules quipped. "Any day now."
"Roger that," he said, clearing his throat. "Am I cleared, Babbler?" He gripped his center joystick. Whose idea was it to make new jet models with multiple sets of joysticks, am I right? His seat was thrumming, and he could have imagined a vague swivel to it. But who makes jets like that, anyway?
"All cleared, Thunderwing. I want to see a storm out there tonight. How'd you get that name, anyway?"
"How was Cosmo Countach named? Or the Henshin Cyborgs? It just happened to sound right at the right time. And you like to babble. How'd you get your name?"
"Touche, Thunderwing. Just reminding you, you are cleared for takeoff." He gripped even tighter. A light came on. He examined it. Missiles active.
"Say, Babbler, was I due to get any sort of missile delivery during this last little check-up?"
"Negative. Strictly maneuvering exercise. Why?"
"Oh, shit," he muttered fearfully. "Abort, repeat: abort! I have missiles!"
"That's not right." A look outside confirmed he was carrying them. He was now on the runway, seemingly stationary but the jet seemed to be getting antsy. He switched to main intercom. "Attention, all crew: we have a bird with active missiles. Repeat: bird with active missiles." He looked outside again, and activated some alarms. A red light shone on the hull, striking what looked like a... jagged, triangular face. Oh, shit, indeed, and worse words.
Winston was trying to get out. No avail. Cockpit was locked in tight, his harness was on tight, all meant to secure the pilot safely in place. Need a harness cutter now?
No, it's not worth the trouble of panicking right now, he thought. Things just went wrong, that's all. No flying tonight, and that's it. He would be removed in an orderly fashion, and he would fly some other night.
A full tech crew were running towards him when the plane turned in place.
"Thunderwing, are you turning?" No need to tell him, he was starting to panic now. He grabbed frantically at every joystick he could. All of them hung limp, like he was simply playing with a pretend-cockpit.
"Babbler, something's very wrong here!" And no need to tell him, either. He was sounding even more alarms. He'd lived through the scares of the earlier decade, as they all had. This was the same, just so much closer. And it would be well-placed, if not misguided.
And just like that, it started.
There was a shot. Something else maintenance had not been informed to be slapping back to the hull was a front gun. But who knows with people these days? The jet turned for this very reason. You can guess how this ends. The techs were mowed down, and their guiding lights shattered.
A missile fired. It hit the control tower, conveniently missing anything too liable to explode, and sending balls of shrapnel bursting in all directions. Babbler was bubbling blood as a fragment the length of your thumb penetrated between his ribs and emerged victorious from the other side.
Winston was screaming now, freely, inside his cockpit, into the radios of anyone who would listen. Hercules, who was unarmed and not piloting a new kind of death trap, leapt from his cockpit and was shot down with the precise accuracy of a round around the size of a tooth in your mouth. He jerked back against the hull and fell at an odd angle. Winston was pounding on the cockpit now, trying to flail and smash and simply battering his arms and hands in the process. He tried to kick, tried to headbutt his way out, but there would be none of it.
Outside, that one plane was wreaking havoc it should not have been capable of. Another missile took out their third pilot and his plane. A group trying to do something as stupid as fire on the plane were taking aim. The plane knew this and fired at them. They ducked, but some not fast enough, and others too fast. Another well-placed missile sent them soaring carelessly. Anyone listening would hear some decent screaming.
"Help! Somebody!" Winston called out into the pandemonium from behind bulletproof glass. No use. That wasn't gonna fly here! And his jet was going berserk. But it wasn't his jet, was it? Guess not. He was trying to get himself into a position to kick the lid off, but trapped in his harness he could not bring his feet up quite far enough. Outside, gunfire was reflecting off every open surface, far more sharply than it should have. Every scream and groan came from three places, every explosion from six.
Another missile fired. This time it flew freely and landed in the hangar, and this time the explosion was quite fantastic. Flames rained down in the night, and they were not normal flames. Bolstered by jet fuel and the... unusual properties of the missile itself, the flame was close to a plasma purple color, and swelled up with a fluid motion that fire should never have.
And just like that, it was all over. And Thomas "Thunderwing" Winston continued to bang and scream and kick, and it took a few moments for the massacre to sink in. Somehow, the jet had taken out an entire air field, and it wasn't even due to be fitted with weapons! Strictly maneuvering exercises? How about maneuvering into shrapnel? And when it hit him, all at once he was exhausted, and would have sank from his seat had the harness not trapped him there.
The plane was moving again. The engines were powering up. It was rolling along, and it wouldn't get far. Not like this, anyway.
Something else happened, too. Winston screamed as the cockpit suddenly lit up like a laser dance party, and a wave of nausea passed through him. The entire plane began to hum, from one end to the other. And he continued to scream and flail with hysteria. The chair was beginning to shift a little...
He was crushed, mashed up into little squishy bits, just like the squirrels. The seat had collapsed and pulped him against the floor, and receded into the body.
Cogs slid into new places, engines flared and were drawn into one big mesh. Wings folded and rolled into themselves like metallic scrolls, and the nosecone sprung straight up and fell inward again.
A limb appeared. It initially had no purpose... until it bent once, at the midsection, and another towards the far end. Five smaller nodes protruded from this joint, and each bent at least twice. One folded perpendicular to the others: a thumb. Another limb kicked out, and two joints emerged. The very end of this one elongated and widened, and was a foot. Two more limbs, and eventually there was a body laying on the ground. The painted name "Thunderwing" was written on one forearm.
A head emerged, a kind of soldier's face, surprisingly human, yet monstrous in its lack of humanity. Triangular teeth of a black color, rusty yellow metal cheeks, a gunmetal and off-white three-pronged headpiece. Two purple eyes flared open and narrowed to slits. Human optic units certainly had their own unique feel.
He got up. Balance was initially a little tricky, and this world's chosen form certainly required some getting to know. But Transformers manage quickly, and he was a quick learner. He flexed his fingers, bent his knees, swiveled his head from side to side.
Within his stomach, he felt a little rumbling. He bent over, and Transformed again. This time, it was different. He simply opened himself up, and from himself was birthed something else entirely. A decoy, pretending, just as Transformers Pretended to be vehicles, or beasts, or to walk like the dominant species of a world.
A perfect impression of Thomas Winston. Thunderwing. It was crude, but an impression enough. It had skin, it had Winston's height and build, it had his hair and eyes, even his teeth. Naked, and revealing primitive parts, but still, one can only pretend.
The humanoid walked toward the tower. Once it stooped to pick up a gun, and shot Babbler to death. He was somewhat grateful for that, after the fragments in his ribs had made his last few minutes so unbearable.
Out in the airfield, the larger Thunderwing began clearing away the wreckage of everything. All of it could be used, but for now all of it had to go.
...
He's running. He can't see where yet.
Now he can. He's on the ground, a gun in his hand. Some sort of forest. It's cold, and it's cloudy. He can hear some birds, but they sound so sad. He's running towards the enemy, and on his own. Each of his steps feels far too loud, although he can't even hear them. He has no idea what's hunting him, or what he's hunting.
Suddenly he raises his gun, and stops. In that order. The birds have all croaked out. In front of him is a wall of trees and leaves, and he turns around. Same thing. He might as well not even have moved. His gun is useless; it is spent, and couldn't do much anyway.
He hears murmuring, some ways away. Can't tell which way. It's so dark all of a sudden, and in his right hand he holds a flashlight. He takes a step forward, that is the best bet. The voices are just scratches on the silence. His steps are echoing mute in his head, which throbs. He can't tell if he is moving or not. But for now, all he can do is keep himself trying to move. He can't feel his feet, they seem to be moving in some circular motion. How does he know that? No clue.
An owl hoots. At least he thinks it is an owl. He jerks in its direction and is surprised to find that his gun discharges. Shocked, half expecting the sound to come from somewhere else, he drops to the ground. He stays there for a while, his breath echoing off the leaves back into his face, hot and fearful. In front of him, the owl lands. Its head has fallen off, and inside are wires. Now they are red and blue worms in the dark, gnawing on the corpse they just came from. None of this surprises him. He lets those worms crawl all over him, knowing soon they will have to get off. Or he will wake up to find they have burrowed inside him. But this is reality. All the reality he cares for.
He is prompted to get up, and stumbles to his feet. His flashlight and gun are gone, and he's been standing barefoot in mud the whole time. The mud is a kind of mustard yellow color, and the sun shines through rainclouds. It starts falling on him, and sticking in clumps. Soon he sinks into some sort of mud crater, and the water fills up around him. He's breathing just fine. Better now, actually. Around him, little owls' heads swim with yellow light in their eyes.
He blinks, and suddenly he is dry again. He is taking his first steps into the forest, and there's some trail of orange smoke overhead. He must head for it. The murmuring is louder now, and just as unintelligible. Sounds like grunting. But grunting has no diction, does it? He knows this. He raises his gun. Suddenly it is behind his back, trained on something he cannot see. That is irrelevant. He can see that there's nothing there, just his imagination.
And suddenly he's back in the forest. His gun and flashlight are firmly in front of him, and he sulks intently through the brush. The murmurs are much more focused now. He can hear syllables, and vowels.
He cocks his gun once. The sun in the sky becomes the moon, and the world ablaze is confined to night. It is still deathly silent; it has to be. How else can anyone find anything?
He cocks a second time. An owl breaks the silence. No doubt it's swimming on a worm's neck. He steps into a bear trap and calmly pulls away the maimed stub of his leg. After a few moments he registers the squeak of the trap, and the satisfying crunchk as he was relieved of one leg. Blood poured everywhere, black and oily. Worms swam among the oil from the open wound, red and blue like wires.
He cocks a third time, hobbling on one leg and floating lazily on the other. Give it a few moments and he'll feel the teeth marks. But not quite yet. His flashlight is beginning to flicker, it's losing juice. And it's casting a shape on the ground below his feet. On each leaf he can see its shape: a ring with two horns emergent from the sides, pronged upward with a slight curve. All of a sudden he is afraid of the ground he walks on.
A fourth time. He is getting much closer now. He is now hovering freely above the ground, and the life in the darkness is waking up. Everything has its eyes and bellies set on him, and though completely defenseless he doesn't care. Just continues to roll along with his remaining foot never once reaching the ground.
He comes to an opening. He is through the forest at last, and his quarry is ahead. He cocks his gun a fifth and final time as he sees it across the banks. A formless, all-encompassing blackness, red vapor slits measuring him coldly. They're looking down on him from straight above, it feels like. It has something in common with the horned ring all the leaves in this forest bore. Between them: a river, longer and wider and deeper than any ever before beheld by human eyes. He wants to cross it. One human leg with a human foot is all it takes to get across.
"How do you intend to cross?" The form growled. It was a massive, screaming grunt, like a hundred voices, each making a dissonant harmony from the last across the octaves, echoing one another. He has no idea how he is going to cross.
The life in the forest behind him is screaming with one voice. He doesn't care. Without hesitation he steps to the bank with his one good leg, his stub refusing to float any further. He stares at the tar-black water, and it stares back. With his face. A reflection!
It's his. But it can't be. Shouldn't be! The water must be pretending, playing some trick, deceiving him!
But there is no deception. The abyss speaks truth. His skin is parting from his face in chunks, and his eyes turn to see more wiry worms inching away in the mud or to their deaths in the tar.
In the water is the face of a robot. A robot can cross the river, and that Joe Colton is one adaptive robot! Around him the wildlife begin laughing, and the red eyes beckoning him to join them on the other side of oblivion. Too late. He sees he is standing in the grass, and each blade bears the ring with the horns, bright gold and purple against the green. Happy to take him on one side of the river, just as fine as the other!
Colton sprung up in a cold sweat, and for a few moments wondered if he had been screaming. He probably had been.
He got up, stumbled to find a light, found it, turned it on. He was freezing, and burning needles were oozing from every pore. He couldn't get back to sleep. Time read 0219. He had to report for duty in roughly three hours. But what exactly would he be doing today? He couldn't remember, and for now he didn't care. He got dressed and left his quarters. His dreams had also been getting increasingly symbolic. He didn't care much for symbolism, but it occurred to him that he knew it was symbolic, not just nonsense. By that logic, his subconscious and conscious selves certainly cared about symbols.
Out the door, down the hallway, down a larger corridor, across the hangar catwalk, out into the open air on a platform fifty feet above the ground, running across the side of the whole facility. New Japan One. From here he had a good view of the stars, the moon, the helipads, the harbor. Beyond the harbor, the ocean. But in the harbor, alone, under the incandescent yellow building lights and vaguely blue moonlight, sat a square-cabbed Peterbilt with its legs at its knees. The newcomer, Convoy or something like that, was facing the ocean. A single truck, no trailer, nothing like that. Ironic how he had chosen the name. Was that what he'd meant it to do? He'd done little speaking in all this time he'd been here, and spent quite a bit of time alone. There was something odd and lonely about it all, even among men whose lives existed entirely on this little base in the middle of nowhere.
"Colton," a deep, level voice called out, with that Transformer vocal ring to it. He descended down the steps and began to make his way across to where the Autobot sat. He was ten or fifteen feet to the Autobot's right, and sat down with his legs dangling over the water.
"Like the view?" Colton asked. He was not chummy with this guy; none of them were. But he'd invited him, and he doubted it was just to stare off into the silence and the water. He thought again about the dream. Under the moon he had just enough light to see two reflections: he and the robot were separate now.
"It's not the view I'm looking for." And then silence. He was starting to feel like he was being led on, forced to prolong this until it evolved into some heart-to-heart. Or Spark, or whatever they called it. Four years working with all these people, and he still knew so little.
"Then what are you looking for? I'm looking for something specific here."
"We all do our best thinking when there's nothing to think about. In your species, external signals take priority over internal thought; it's much the same with all life, everywhere in this universe. But it certainly does little for those who have a lot on their minds." He'd first sized this guy up to be some secret weapon, like he'd sized up the others. And out of the philosophical Skids and Perceptor, it was not them but this Convoy that took the title of Philosopher. So that makes Leader, Muscle, Mouth, Heart; and Philosopher to succeed Monger. Five Autobots, joining the world in waiting for something to happen.
"Do you remember much, about before? Was there a before?" He nodded, and looking at him Colton saw something conveying age. Then he shook his head. The meaning was clear: 'there was a lot, but of it I can remember little'. Just like the rest of them. But he was thinking there was something worse about it - he might even be lying. He'd seen older men do it, to hide what they'd seen, and Convoy was definitely old. Maybe the oldest of all of them. Might even take the Old Keister title if Philosopher blurred too much with Heart and Brains. They sat in silence a little while longer; he found it jarring, and couldn't find much to like about it.
"I had this other war I was a part of. Not even a war, really, just some little incursion into some other country. Get in, find and extract target, get out. But doing that meant going through a whole city, death and guns on all sides, and the whole time, all I could think was... nothing, really. No thinking to it, just going. We were a bunch of animals with just enough discipline between us not to break down into chaos. We got our target, and then we had to go through it all again to get out. And when it was over, and things were quiet, I found myself wondering how I could go from that to this so quickly. I also wondered if I was eventually going to go mad. Maybe I have, but here I am." He didn't expect Convoy to respond, and he did not. He could see his blue eyes narrowing a bit further, and seeming to brighten in intensity. He even heard the vague sound of wheels turning aimlessly on the Autobot's body.
Below the two of them, the water was still. For now at least. It wouldn't always be. Eventually it would rise up and batter the harbor. Thankfully this whole place had been built to last. Above them, clouds lolled and rolled under the moon. And overhead, from every star, Colton felt like the eyes of a thousand worlds were looking down at them all. Every gun in every hand trained and ready to fire. In a thousand or a million years, this little watery mudball won't be so watery or so muddy. It won't be much of anything. He really should go into philosophy one of these days, or perhaps shout religious passages on the nearest street corner in long johns, cross etched into his forehead with red marker. Crazies and Tourists, some woman had once called them.
"We're letting them come to us," Convoy told Colton. "We can't fight them, not wherever they are. We force them to come to us in small numbers, and we fight as best we can until all are dead. Something is happening soon, may have happened already." That certainly told him what he already suspected, and hearing it come from this guy was somehow a bit more humbling.
They continued to sit there in silence for even longer. Colton got up.
"Good talk, but that's a bit too much thinking for one session. Us military types aren't fond of imagination."
"The whole of Galvanized Iron have earned their places by being the exceptions. The best Autobots I can think of were much the same," Convoy replied.
"How many of them can you remember?"
"Educated guess," he replied. Colton had to smile, and he could imagine an even sadder smile behind the Autobot's faceplate. He certainly was not humorless, as his kind of somber demeanor would have had him believed for all this time. He might've been the first to hear any sort of remark from him like that. He continued walking back. He had no idea what he'd do before having to say he was waking up.
Not much came from it. He was genuinely bored. Either he went back inside or went back to the one-man Convoy. He choose the former.
He was almost to his quarters when the urgency bell went off. Klaxons all around the base came on, so much like the alarms the Japanese people once installed. These were listened to, however. Three high-pitched consecutive bleeps and a tremolo whine. Planetary security breach. The young/old Autobot knew his stuff.
Prowl called a meeting in the hangar. All of Galvanized Iron, including General Abernathy, and all the Autobots, including Convoy, came into attendance. Skids was the exception; he was keeping an eye on their captured Destronger dogs. Perceptor had now set up a holographic system in the form of a big black block, and set it in the middle of the floor. They gathered in a circle around it as it powered up. First there was a green-blue globe, then a small stack of purple arrows circling it, pinging red in perfect rhythm with a clock. They were stacked, and no one could see how many there were.
"Sensors detected multiple anomalies entering Earth's magnetic field. Because of their electromagnetic signatures being garbled by that same field, we couldn't track them, or even count them. That was tonight. And..." He trailed off. Heads turned to follow his optics.
A yellow crane truck had entered through the oversized "Autobot entry". A former Decepticon, who had adopted a name of this world. Hightower. Behind him, a dump truck, bulldozer and shovel.
"Someone get them out," he sidetracked. "We don't need them listening in on us."
Hightower was reluctant, but he was starting to walk away. Convoy put a hand on his shoulder. The other three Decepticons hadn't moved at all.
"No," Convoy asserted. "They stay here."
"They're Decepticons, and we've had them walking around with us for three years now, but this is crossing a line." Below them all, Colton again found himself being surprised by this still-newcomer. He looked over some thirty feet to see the red and blue Autobot. There were hints of yellow and silver there, too. From what he'd heard he was a likeness of the Monger, and the significance of their colors suddenly occurred to him.
"They've shown no resistance since their arrival, and as per your command have taken more earthly forms. They've also made themselves useful, and we need all the help we can get."
"You're hopelessly naive, Convoy. Our Monger died protecting you from these cockroaches, and all we got out of it was you and them. And now they're arriving here again, and you believe they can change."
Suddenly, Colton saw something else happen. In Convoy's eyes, something was shifting. Their color changed from a simple blue to a kind of white-emerald. What did the eyes mean for Transformers? And then he spoke again, and something else was different. He wasn't the only one to feel it. Every other human and Transformer in the room felt it, and the ensuing sensation of being pulled.
"They're Autobots now, and we need them here," he stated with finality. Prowl gave up and continued, with some discomfort.
"Thanks," Colton heard as a mechanical whisper, and craned his head to see Hightower standing above him. Beside and slightly in front of him was Convoy. He was suddenly uneasy out of startlement. When had he moved? Whatever had happened, the Autobot did not reply.
"We haven't been able to track them, but our best guess is that they've all landed somewhere in North America, with some provisions made for the surrounding areas, such as Central America and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. We should prepare to respond to any reports or disturbances immediately. These Decepticons... (he was leering at the construction vehicles again) ...are varied in their approaches, from blatant destruction and domination, to deception and backstabbing, hence their name. We have no idea how many there are, but we can estimate a team of at least five. Enlisting the help of locals is not advised; people who know little often react with hysteria."
No need to tell them that. Every member of Galvanized Iron had dealt with hysterical behavior before. Prowl happened to be right about that. Hysteria got people killed. He doubted Prowl cared much for humans, but he was an Autobot, whatever that meant.
"The current plan is for Skids to bring a pack of four Destrongers, and for Grimlock and I to accompany G.I should anything arise. Perceptor, Convoy, Decepticons, you'll be sitting this one out, at the least." That stung. But the harder part was that he had a point. They didn't have a real chance to prove how they handle combat. Simulations and exercises can only say and enforce so much, after all. First time he was in combat his stomach had turned to a bag of rocks, and a squadmate of his was far too jumpy. At least the Autobot leader had an excuse.
"We start preparations immediately. If we receive no specific reports we mobilize in ten hours. Full augmented gear. Dismissed."
And with that, the meeting was over. More of a monologue than anything, and Prowl clearly knew these men had barely enough patience to sit through a lecture and have their time wasted waiting for him to ask if there were any questions. Not even Gen. Abernathy, that hawk of a man, could add anything of his own. The Autobot police car had turned into something of a martinet these past few years, and although he was a pragmatist and far more professional than most, he was also a prick.
Convoy had issued a challenge, and they had all listened and gravitated. In Colton's case, that was quite literal. Those two wouldn't get along too well. Prowl was paranoid and Convoy was trusting, and while the former was the center of it all, the latter was an outsider, almost an observer. Like a critic. Could he have been so important because he had some built-in leadership programming, or however these beings worked? Doubtful, but not impossible.
He remembered something else from the dream now. When he'd seen his robotic self in the water, his eyes had been the same shade of green. And the grass with the horned ring on it, that was a toxic color. This was its inverse, almost.
One of these days he needed to see a neurologist, he considered complacently.
...
...
Notes:
The Pretenders were introduced into the Transformers toyline in 1988. Their design was extremely simple: an outer shell resembling a human or monster housed a Transformer, and that remained true throughout most if not all of the toys. Its depictions in various fictions, however are much more varied, ranging from size-shrinking Alt. Modes to full-sized battle armor and space suits. And exactly WHAT the Transformer is pretending to be is prone to variance. One of what I think the weirdest concepts is happens to be Ultra Pretenders: a Transformable inner robot is housed inside a robotic-looking and fully Transformable outer shell, which again fits inside an even larger shell, which, ironically, is just a vehicle. Pretenders got pretty weird there for a while.
2001's Robots in Disguise featured a team of Autobot construction vehicles known as Build Team, the rough equivalent of Autobot Constructicons. One of them shared a name with 2009's Bayformer Constructicons: Hightower. I guess I was just fascinated by this for essentially no reason at all.
In Japanese media, Optimus Prime's name is nigh-impossible to pronounce in their language, and so his original Diaclone toy's name was used instead: Battle Convoy, shortened to just Convoy. Later media and toys depicting different characters and power-ups based on Prime would add their own respective prefixes.
Most of Prowl's depictions in media describe him as a morally gray jerk and pragmatist to rival the Decepticon Shockwave. On TFWiki, it has become something of a running joke that "Prowl is a prick." And he is.
Personal notes:
Gary Numan's "Berserker" and "God Only Knows. Just like Takara had its "Five Years", this story has those two. Just saying. Nothing like aggressive synths and 80s snare to write a story set in the late 80s to.
Have a nice day.
- The Toa of Science Fiction :-{ )
