I keep forgetting to pots these in a timely manner. Oops. Well this was for TF Mosaic's September writing contest on the IDW forums. The prompt this time was Dinobots. I had definitely been watching too much Ice Road Trucker the morning I wrote this lol
If it wasn't for his GPS, Optimus wouldn't have had any idea where he was in the washout of white around him. The cold, wet snow bank he'd skidded into nearly reached the top of his grill and was growing every hour as more and more flakes whipped against his frozen windshield, testing his wipers as he fought to keep them from piling up.
Though Cybertronians didn't experience the same discomfort from extreme cold as humans did, they were still far from immune, as Optimus had discovered. Most of his servos were frozen solid, preventing him from transforming and freeing himself.
Of course he'd insisted on making the trip to Alaska by himself due to treacherous conditions. So now here he sat: stalled out, window-deep in snow, waiting for someone to answer his distress signal and hoping they didn't skid off the road into oblivion on the way. Ratchet had refused to say just who he was sending, except to assure Prime that the ambulance wasn't going to attempt to traverse the icy roads himself.
When help finally arrived in the form of five mechs on foot, Prime understood Ratchet's secrecy. Had he known Grimlock and his ilk were to be his "salvation" he would have told Ratchet he'd rather wait till spring to thaw out.
The Dinobot leader stepped up to Prime in tyrannosaurus mode, one stubby arm tapping his hood.
"Him Ratchet say you Prime get stuck," he shouted over the storm, somehow still managing to sound smug. "Sent us Dinobots to save you." His toothy grin widened. "Me Grimlock never need saving, 'cause me Grimlock real leader."
Prime's gears ground as he tried again to transform. Tired and frustrated, he was about to tell Grimlock just where he could shove it when Slag summed it up for him.
"No more talk," Slag growled. "Me Slag hate snow, hate cold, want go home."
"You no give me orders!" Grimlock snarled back with a roar. Swoop gave a squawk and stepped between them just as a gust of wind caught his wings and picked him up, sending him careening into Grimlock's face. The tyrannosaurus toppled over as Slag burst out laughing, his amusement only adding to Grimlock's fury.
Sludge blinked dimly at the display while Snarl shook his head. The stegosaurus sighed and transformed, patting Sludge's shoulder to get him to do the same.
"You Sludge push, Me pull," he ordered. Sludge nodded and lumbered through the snow bank while Snarl did his best to get a grip on Prime's icy trailer. With their combined strength it was only a matter of ten minutes before they had Prime freed and back on the road. By then, Grimlock and Slag had ceased fighting and were watching while Swoop clapped enthusiastically.
"Aaaawwrk! Good job!" Swoop praised his teammates. Sludge smiled while Snarl wordlessly transformed back into his dinosaur mode.
"Hmmm," Grimlock snorted some snow from his wide nostrils. "You Prime go now, we follow. Make sure not get stuck again," he said, but there was somewhat less condescension in his tone than there had been before. He'd been somewhat humbled by the fact that Sludge, of all bots, had solved the problem before he could.
As Prime resumed his trek down the icy road, flanked now by Dinobots, he considered that perhaps the Autobots should make more of an effort to be inclusive to these "black sheep" in their ranks. However, when Grimlock regained his sense of humor a few miles in Prime decided he could go a very long time without having to see a Dinobot again.