turn to rust
Spacial setting: Charr
Temporal setting: the year 2005, between the events of "Transformers: The Movie" and "Five Faces of Darkness"
Existence, Dead End decided, was an exercise in futility.
Megatron was dead. Galvatron had vanished into space at the close of the Unicron War, and the Decepticons hadn't seen him since. The Autobots were victorious, having pushed all the Decepticons off Cybertron—or at least most of them. Ramjet and Thrust were always muttering about Dirge and some kind of secret resistance in the catacombs beneath Polyhex, but Dead End wasn't buying it. Anyone who went down to the Underworld was just asking to be eaten by Transorgs, or worse.
Dead End sat down on the dirt, leaning his back against the rotting hulk of what had once been some sort of building, and brooded. Charr stank, plain and simple. There was no fuel to be found here; Onslaught and his Combaticons had taken to space piracy in order to steal energon, or goods to trade for energon. Motormaster was more reluctant; space warfare wasn't a Stunticon's priority. Dead End and his teammates had been built for battle on the open roads, and on Charr, there were no roads to be found.
Dead End gritted his jaw and clenched his fists. When they had been created, Megatron had promised them the Earth as their inheritance. And what had it come to? Defeat. Despair. Dust and ash on Charr.
He wrenched his neck back, forcing himself to look up to the stars. The darkness in between them seemed to reach down to embrace him. What a relief it would be to let himself go, to let that oblivion overwhelm him and erase the pain and shame and fear. The problem, as always, was no sooner did he catch himself thinking about it than that little spark inside him started screaming its head off about not wanting to die.
In the end, that's what it came down to—Dead End did not want to die. Life might be full of suffering and disappointment and terror and boredom, but death might well be even less endurable. Or death might simply be an oblivion, and in a way, that was more frightening than the idea of hell. Torments might someday be overcome if you fought long and hard enough, but to be erased from existence was the end to everything you were and everything you might someday be. Furthermore, Dead End admitted that occasionally, life brought glimmers of triumph—the trumpets of victory, the feeling of wind on his windshield and road under his wheels, the camaraderie of his brothers.
None of which would mean anything if they all starved to death on Charr. Dead End didn't relish the thought of space warfare, but sitting here waiting for the end was worse.
***
"We have to go help Onslaught," Dead End told his brothers.
"Shut yer yap," Wildrider hissed, beckoning Dead End to kneel down beside him. He and Drag Strip were crouching behind a rock outcropping on a ridge overlooking a valley, apparently spying on someone below them. Dead End caught a glimpse of movement and a flash of bright green outside the ruin of the jumble of buildings that might once have been a town. Dead End wondered what kind of beings had lived on Charr. Perhaps the planet had once been fertile, with lush forests supporting organic life or geysers of fuel to feed silicon-based life. Was it disaster, or simply age, that brought Charr to ruin? And had its people fled the planet before it faltered, or were the remains the Decepticons occasionally found lying about the only reminders left that the race had ever existed?
"What are you doing?" Dead End whispered as he took a position between his brothers.
Drag Strip pointed by means of explanation. Dead End took a look—Hook and Long Haul were down in the valley, digging with their hands, while Bonecrusher kept watch. In a matter of moments, Hook was pulling up a trap door.
"They got an energon stash down there," Drag Strip explained. "Stockpiling."
Wildrider rubbed his hands together, his face an expression of unholy glee. "Yeah. And as soon as they're gone, we're gonna raid it! I'm hungry!"
Dead End looked at them both in disgust. "Are you two stupid or has the fuel-rationing damaged your neurocircuits? They're Decepticons, same as we are."
"They're hoarding fuel. Onslaught told us not to hoard," Wildrider replied.
"Since when did you care about rules?" Dead End asked. The irony was overwhelming, he thought.
"The rules say whoever drinks that first reaps the rewards!" Drag Strip giggled.
"You can help us," Wildrider offered. "There's six Constructicons—there'll be enough for the three of us to fill our tanks right up."
"No thanks," Dead End muttered. "Guys, we're Decepticons. We should be up with Onslaught right now, winning our fuel, not sitting around here stirring up trouble with the Constructicons."
"You wanna go into space and get scrapped?" Drag Strip asked, examining his comrade more closely. He was more accustomed to seeing his maroon brother too morose to move—and certainly too depressed to argue with the others. This "new" Dead End was somehow disturbing. "The one thing I am /not/ going to do is race you to our deaths!"
"Dying in battle would be better than dying down here like some pathetic scraplet—a helpless parasite," Dead End snapped, and stormed away.
***
Dead End drove through the large double-doors of the largest and most intact building on Charr. Blitzwing and Octane were lounging around inside, so Dead End transformed and asked them where Motormaster was.
"Out back, I think," Octane replied lazily.
Dead End tilted his head. "What, precisely, are you two doing?"
Blitzwing said, "We're supposed to be making this place into a new command center. Fixing it up, installing weapons, that sort of thing. Only it's kind of hard to do that without fuel, if you know what I'm saying."
Eyeing Octane, Dead End suspected that the purple-trimmed triplechanger was happier with nothing to do. "He's the labour and you're the management?" Dead End asked.
"Somethin' like that," Octane replied with a stupid grin.
Dead End folded his arms, "And you're content to just sit around and wait for someone to drop energon in our laps?"
Octane snorted, "I got deals goin' and if they come off, the energon problem is over… Why fight when you can bargain? Gets your chassis all dented, you get dirty, laser burns on the exhaust pipe, eeeewwww…." He raised an optic ridge. "Judging by your chassis, you, like me, have one of the last cans of polishing wax in the entire Decepticon army, and you want to go wreck your finish in battle?"
"Just because I'd rather leave a good looking corpse doesn't make me a coward," Dead End retorted as he transformed.
***
Motormaster was indeed out back, accompanied by Breakdown. The white Transformer was in the middle of a sentence. "…drove me crazy, but out here I'm positive that no one's watching me…and I don't like it. I don't like it, Motormaster, and I don't understand. I should feel safe here of all places, but instead I feel…forgotten."
"Am I interrupting?" Dead End asked as he approached.
Motormaster seemed genuinely surprised to see him. "Dead End…you're lookin'….good," he replied.
Breakdown shrieked, "The world as we know it is warping and twisting!"
Dead End grabbed his brother's arm before the white car could completely flip out. "Settle down, Breakdown, I've got an answer to this."
Motormaster raised an optic ridge. "If that's true, I'd love to hear it." He sounded tired.
"We have to join Onslaught's raiding party," Dead End told him. "We can't sit around here expecting someone else to fuel us. Wildrider and Drag Strip are…"
Somewhere over the eastern horizon came the sounds of laser fire, then an explosion.
"What was that?" Motormaster asked.
"That, I would guess, is the Constructicons catching Wildrider and Drag Strip raiding their energon stash."
Motormaster's optics blazed. "I'm gonna kill those two. I mean it. Between Breakdown and their idiocy I am going /nuts/. Rather than wasting energon trying to baby sit them, I'm going to knock them /both/ into stasis and that'll mean more fuel for the rest of us!"
Dead End reached out his hand, but Motormaster shoved him aside and stormed off in the direction of the fight.
Well, the good news was that Motormaster wouldn't let the Constructicons kill Drag Strip and Wildrider. Of course, any good news was immediately followed by twice as much bad news—that was the way of it. Dead End had no doubt that Motormaster would make good on his threat, and that meant two less mechs to help in the raids. It also meant that Motormaster was currently too busy fighting the Constructicons to help Dead End in his plan.
"Where's Onslaught?" Dead End asked, feeling tired himself.
"Left on a raiding mission. With his boys. Three cycles ago."
Dead End let out a very ugly curse word. Breakdown looked surprised.
"We need to get fuel, Breakdown. We need to /do something/ to get fuel. If I'm going to meet a messy and horrible and painful end, I'd rather get on with /doing/ it."
"We could ask Astrotrain."
Dead End fell suddenly silent. Breakdown might be insane, but he was far from stupid.
***
Aboard Astrotrain, Dead End looked out the window. The void of space surrounded them, swallowing them, sucking them down into oblivion. The Stunticon shivered.
Next to him, Breakdown was singing softly to himself, some sort of sing-song nursery rhyme. He had a toy car in the palm of his left hand and was flicking it around with his right index finger. Back the hold, Blitzwing—momentarily escaped from Octane's "management" by volunteering for this mission—snored, recharging for the battle ahead. Ramjet and Thrust were engaged in a heated game of Sirian poker. From his position in Astrotrain's cockpit, Dead End could tell that Thrust was cheating.
"I've got a vessel on scanners," Astrotrain said. "Looks like a Sheldorian frigate. What next, boss?"
It took a few moments for Dead End to realize that Astrotrain was talking to him.
"What's the usual armour on a Sheldorian frigate?"
"Thick, but if we can get through it, Sheldorians aren't a match for us."
He looked back over his shoulder. "Guys?"
"What?" Ramjet asked, frowning at his cards.
"Do we want to do this?"
"Beats me, you're the boss here," Ramjet replied, laying down three Regents. "I'm just the air commander."
Dead End watched the Sheldorian frigate appear on Astrotrain's viewscreen. It was lightly armed, but any one of its cannons could inflict a fatal wound on an attacking Decepticon. Dead End didn't relish dying at the pseudopods of the Sheldorians.
His fuel pump skipped a beat. He was running low on energon. And the Sheldorian vessel was guaranteed to be carrying fuel.
"Everybody fill up on the last of the energon cubes and check your weapons," Dead End commanded.
Breakdown looked up from his toy. "You think we can do this? Without Onslaught? Without Motormaster?"
"I don't know," Dead End responded grimly, "but I do know one thing: Decepticons don't sit around and wait to turn to rust."
FINIS