Author's note: I should have completed one of my ongoing fics, but this idea's been brewing for a while, and before I knew it I'd written the first chapter. Warning : without giving away specifics, this is a dark fic. The title applies to both sides.
And speaking of titles, all my stories have chapter titles with something in common. A big plate of virtual cookies to anyone who guesses what links all the titles in this fic!
Chapter 1: A Sound of Thunder
Dead End's combat radar was nearly always active, but he tended to actively check it—as opposed to letting it run in the background—at quiet peaceful times like the morning on which the Stunticons drove back home.
Of course, that was what led to their doom, as he was to realize much later on.
The sky was still full of blue shadows and the air was crisp and cold against his plating as he drove in his usual flanking position on Motormaster's left. A few days without surface assignments had left Wildrider even more hyperactive than usual, and even Motormaster had started looking as though he was going to drive through a wall sometime soon, so it was probably best if any nearby walls weren't holding the ocean at bay. They left the Nemesis in the middle of the night, headlights off until they reached a human military base.
Then they drew themselves up in a line, lights and hi-beams flicked on simultaneously (with the exception of Drag Strip) and with a blare of horns the Stunticons surged forward in a wedge formation, Motormaster at the head. The resulting havoc was more than enough to satisfy them and no one sustained so much as a scratch, to Dead End's mild surprise. He was certain they would be deactivated when the Autobots showed up, though.
But instead of hitting the highways again Motormaster steered on to a narrower road that wound its way past dense clusters of trees that flicked damp brown leaves on Dead End's windshield. He activated his wipers and drove almost on autopilot, keeping his place beside Motormaster with a skill so practiced it was mindless. The road wasn't wide enough for more than two of them, so Drag Strip and Breakdown were in front while Wildrider brought up the rear, and at that time of the morning not even human vehicles were in their way, not that any of the Stunticons would have cared if they were. Tires ate miles of asphalt, engines purred and a satisfied calm filled their gestalt link.
Dead End felt certain something would happen, though. Perhaps in retaliation for what they had done to the human military base, perhaps because the wind rushing over his polished plating and the road beneath his wheels felt almost… good. Moments that came so close to pleasure never lasted long; the world simply didn't work that way.
So he checked his combat radar screen, observing their surroundings for miles around. And that time, he wasn't surprised to see the two blips that popped up on the periphery of his range.
Autobots, he thought even before he amplified and filtered the signals. Sure enough, the shapes he detected were those of mechs. It was possible those were other Decepticons, but Dead End doubted there would be any such reprieve.
He opened a comm line to Motormaster. "Probable Autobot activity," he said, and transmitted the coordinates of the two mechs.
For nearly a minute there was no response, and then Motormaster's brakes clamped down. The huge semi came to a halt so abruptly that his trailer nearly jack-knifed, tires throwing up a cloud of dust as they scraped the road. Wildrider hadn't been able to stop in time and he plowed headlong into Motormaster's trailer, which was now blocking the road, but since both their forcefields were active and Motormaster weighed so much more than he did, it had no effect other than to send Wildrider rebounding and make Motormaster growl a threat at him.
So much for the peace and calm, Dead End thought. Ahead, brakes squealed and engines revved as Drag Strip and Breakdown turned and raced back to them, Drag Strip as usual trying to get there first. "What's happened?" he said.
"Soundwave reports there are no 'cons in this area except for us," Motormaster said. "But Dead End spotted two mechs about a hundred miles due west. Breakdown, go check 'em out."
Breakdown hesitated, and Dead End didn't need a gestalt bond to know he was wondering why they couldn't leave well enough alone. They'd been fortunate so far; why risk it? But engaging any number of Autobots would have been safer than annoying Motormaster, so Breakdown transformed, drew his gun and slipped into the shadows of the trees by the side of the road. He was lost to sight almost at once, and Dead End couldn`t hear him either.
At least he'll show up on my combat radar… until the Autobots deactivate him.
The thought of that sent a painful twist through Dead End, as though invisible vises were tightening on his systems, but there was nothing he could do except watch and wait for the inevitable. He wished Motormaster had simply decided to charge the Autobots, though if those 'bots were Superion and Defensor, even the Stunticons might have found themselves outmatched. Breakdown seemed to be aware of that too, because on Dead End's radar screen, a glowing dot was carefully circling around the two blips.
Wildrider had never been good at waiting, though. Even after Motormaster rapped out an order to shut the fragging music off, he shifted back and forth on his tires, primed his weapons and revved his engine, which were all his way of asking, can we go now? Dead End expected the fighting to start at any moment—and nowhere near the Autobots—when Breakdown, somehow still alive, commed them.
"It's two 'bots." Even over their internal radios, his voice was quiet and wary. "One big black mech and the other… I think he's the one you flattered in that race, Motormaster. But they're working on some kind of machine in the middle of a big clearing."
"A weapon?" Motormaster said, though Dead End guessed that would make little if any difference to him.
"I don't know. It might be a hologram projector… it just produced a shimmery blue screen they're both staring at—"
"Stunticons, attack," Motormaster said, a grating chuckle just beneath the dark anticipation in his voice. His engine roared, drowning out even Wildrider's howl of glee, and he plowed into the trees.
They were taller than even Menasor, but they went down like matchsticks on either side, crunching and thudding heavily against the ground as they landed. Red and yellow leaves flew into the air like flames. Dead End hung back, well aware that the 'bots would be more than forewarned by the noise and more than willing to let Motormaster take the brunt of the attack, but Wildrider and Drag Strip had already disappeared into the cloud of smoke and fumes Motormaster left in his wake. Dead End accelerated minutely, dodging tree stumps and boulders as best he could. Ahead he heard an explosion, and he had time for one last thought—I wonder how long the Autobots will take to send reinforcements?—before he plunged into the clearing.
The bigger Autobot fired a projectile at Motormaster, evidently trying to cover the smaller 'bot who was crouched over the machine. The missile exploded harmlessly off Motormaster's forcefield, but it had bought the other 'bot enough time to wrench out a thick cable. The flat blue light disappeared from the machine.
Motormaster's horn blared and he charged at the black Autobot. That time, the 'bot didn't bother shooting him—he fired at the open clearing between them instead. Chunks of earth and rock boiled up from the ground and Motormaster swerved reflexively. Wildrider and Drag Strip had split up to flank the Autobots and they darted in like the two halves of a pincer, firing at full force.
The air shimmered over the Autobots and the laserbolts spattered harmlessly. Another forcefield, Dead End thought as Drag Strip slewed away. Wildrider, of course, came on at two hundred miles an hour. The smaller Autobot lurched up, and his shoulder-mounted cannon glowed.
Faster even than that, Dead End transformed, drawing his compressed-air rifle from subspace. In the split second before the smaller Autobot could fire, he pulled the trigger. A blast of wind stronger than a hurricane slammed into the Autobots and despite their forcefield they staggered from the impact. The missile struck to one side of Wildrider, who peeled away to avoid it.
Before the Autobots could recover, Breakdown—on the other side of the clearing—fired at them.
The forcefield flickered and was gone. Motormaster charged in. The thunder of his engine was so deep and solid that it sent raw tremors through the ground, and his cab—with tons of momentum behind it—struck the black Autobot. Metal crunched. The Autobot went down, hard, and Motormaster transformed.
The few seconds he took to do that, though, were enough time for the Autobot. His legs were a mangled, twisted mess from the collision and one arm was trapped beneath him, but the other was free. He shoved it up, hand retracting to reveal another missile, and he fired at point-blank range into Motormaster's abdomen.
Dead End never saw whether Motormaster's forcefield had withstood that, but the blast made even Motormaster jolt back. He swayed, then fell to one knee beside the Autobot—but his other leg lashed out in a brutal kick. His foot rammed into the Autobot's arm hard enough to shatter purple glass and dislocate the Autobot's shoulder-strut. Then he drew his sword.
"Trailbreaker!" the other Autobot screamed.
Motormaster drove the sword into the black Autobot's chest with all his strength behind it. Energy crackled over the blade and danced in bright arcs over the Autobot's jittering body. Slowly the black paint gave way to a dull grey and the light faded from the Autobot's optics.
The other Autobot tried to hurl himself at Motormaster, but Drag Strip and Wildrider were on him by then, grabbing his arms and wrenching them behind his back before they shoved him down to his knees. Breakdown hurried from the trees to join them, staying well behind the Autobot. Motormaster rose slowly, put a foot on the dead Autobot's chest to yank his sword free and subspaced it. Then he turned his attention to the machine.
Dead End ambled forward, wondering if the Autobots had considered the device worth dying for. It hardly seemed deserving of the effort. A small generator was hooked up to what looked like the lower part of a wide steel framework—flat where it rested against the ground, scooped on its upper surface. A digital display in the steel was dark and unlighted.
Motormaster's brow ridges drew together. The paint over his abdominal plating was scorched away, and the metal itself glowed red-hot beneath, but his armor was thick enough that Dead End guessed he was in discomfort rather than pain—and Motormaster would never have given in to any weakness. He turned on one heel and faced the Autobot.
"What's this thing?" he said.
The Autobot stared up at him with burning optics, but didn't answer. Motormaster stooped and hit him across the face, hard enough to snap his head to one side.
"What's this thing?" he said with no change in his tone.
The Autobot turned his head slowly. His mask was dented and a faint crackle of static came from his vocalizer before he spoke.
"Frag you," he whispered, the indicators on either side of his head flickering.
When Motormaster hit him for the second time, the blow sent the Autobot reeling over, one of his arms wrenched from Wildrider's grip. Dead End was mildly surprised the arm hadn't actually been detached, though it probably would be if he defied Motormaster for the third time. The Autobot struggled to push himself off the trampled ground, but before he could do so, Motormaster leaned down, shoved his fingers into a slight gap just above the Autobot's chestplate and hauled him up.
"Let's try again," he said. "What's this—"
The Autobot flung a handful of earth in his face.
Motormaster pulled back, startled, and his grip on the Autobot's chestplate slipped. The Autobot twisted violently. His arm, slippery with spilled oil and half-processed energon, jerked out of Drag Strip's hold and the Autobot flung himself towards the machine. Breakdown hadn't subspaced his rifle and he raised it to fire.
"NO!" Motormaster roared, and they all knew the command was directed at them rather than at the Autobot. The Stunticons' natural response to that sort of order from their leader was to freeze, and before any of them could shake it off, the Autobot yanked a lever on the side of the steel framework.
A flat blue sheen, like the rippling surface of a pond somehow held vertical, sprang up from the steel framework. It was easily a dozen feet wide, and even as Drag Strip sprang forward, the Autobot leaped at the blue projection. Wildrider bolted to the other side of the framework to cut off any escape route.
The Autobot vanished. The projection, insubstantial as blue smoke and thinner than Dead End's finger, swallowed him up.
"What the frag…?" Wildrider's optics flashed a blink and he waved his hands at the projection as if expecting to somehow feel where the Autobot had gone. A portal, Dead End thought, but where—
There was a clank and slide of transformation. Motormaster folded over into alt-mode and the sound of his engine was like tectonic plates crashing together deep beneath the earth. He roared ahead at the shimmering blue portal.
On the other side of it, Wildrider yelped and ducked out of the way, but there was no need. When he was a dozen feet away, Motormaster lit his thrusters and launched off the ground, straight at the blue surface. He disappeared into it and a sudden silence fell over the clearing.
Wildrider was the first to break it, of course. "Cool!" he said, and scrambled up from the ground. "My turn!"
"No!" Dead End shouted. "Wildrider, we don't…"
His voice trailed off as Wildrider plunged into the blue and was gone. Apparently the portal functioned just as well from either side.
"Hey, wait for me!" Drag Strip said.
"Stay where you are." Dead End rarely if ever ordered his teammates around, much less used that tone with them, but if anything was guaranteed to penetrate his apathy and fatalism, it was fear for his team. Drag Strip stopped in his tracks, caught halfway between Dead End and the portal. He knew what that tone meant, too.
"Comm Motormaster," Dead End said, and did so himself—or tried to. No reply. No one on the other end. The gestalt link registered nothing out of the ordinary, meaning their team was still intact, but on the comm there was nothing but dead air.
"I tried Wildrider, but he's not answering," Drag Strip said after a moment. "Come on, Dead End, let's see where they went. I don't want to just stand here."
"So you want to jump into that?"
Drag Strip made a derisive sound. "Wherever it leads, Motormaster and Wildrider are there. You telling me there's something the two of them can't handle?"
"Yes," Dead End said, folding his arms. "What if that's some kind of teleportation device and it lands us all in the Autobot brig?"
Drag Strip hesitated, then shrugged. "OK. I'll take a look."
A look? Dead End thought. There was nothing to see; the portal was like a blue mirror that reflected nothing. And with their luck, Drag Strip would probably end up decapitated if he poked his head into it. But when he said that, Drag Strip ignored him, stepped over the greyed frame of the dead Autobot and approached the portal. He touched the surface, then pushed his hand in cautiously.
"Doesn't hurt," he said, and grinned at the two of them. His arm was in up to the elbow. "Can't feel anything."
Abruptly his arm jolted in up to the shoulder and he let out a startled gasp. "Something's got—"
Dead End leaped forward, but he was too late. Even as he tried to grab Drag Strip's other hand, something on the other side of the portal hauled him through. Drag Strip tried to pull back but the soft trampled ground gave him no leverage to brace himself. His knee scraped against the upper surface of the framework with a shriek and he toppled forward. He was gone more quickly than if he had fallen into the ocean, and there was nothing but a smear of yellow paint on the steel to show where he had been.
His fuel pump hammering, Dead End tried the comm, even though he knew what he would hear—or more correctly, what he wouldn't hear. "Drag Strip?"
Silence. He looked up and met the fixed look in Breakdown's optics—a brittle control struggling to hold back fear—and he felt as though he stood on the brink of an abyss. How had he lost over half his team in just a few unhinged moments? What was he going to do next? Wait for them to come back, comm Soundwave, find another Autobot and beat him into saying what the slagging portal did? That was why Motormaster had stopped Breakdown from firing at the device—to preserve it for Megatron's possible use—but if Dead End had known his team was going to vanish into it, he would have blown it up himself.
"Um…" Breakdown said.
"Give me a moment to think."
"No, I meant, um, the Aerialbots are reproaching."
He pointed at the sky. Of course, the Autobots had managed to comm for help before one of them died and the other disappeared, and now five dots in the sky were streaking towards them at top speed.
"Oh…blast." Dead End took a step back instinctively before he remembered there was nowhere to go. He couldn't abandon Drag Strip or Wildrider, and for the sake of his continued future—what little of it there was—it would be advisable not to leave Motormaster either. Yet there was no way he and Breakdown could fight off five Aerialbots by themselves, especially if more Autobot reinforcements might be on the way.
And while the Autobots had previously just imprisoned the Stunticons after they had been captured and dragged back to the Ark en masse, Dead End wasn't sure what would happen now that they had actually deactivated one of the 'bots. He could see his entire team ending up in a drawer as the Combaticons had once been kept.
"I don't think we have much of a choice now." Breakdown's voice was small and quiet, but he took the first step towards the blue portal. His vents hitched once. With a quick look at Dead End, he stepped into it, cobalt-blue and white plating flashing in the early-morning sun before he vanished.
Alone now, Dead End glanced back at the Aerialbots, then around at the clearing in hopes of inspiration. Every instinct told him not to step through the portal—it was too much a blind alley to nowhere—and yet what else could he do? Sighing, he looked down at himself and wiped a few flecks of dirt from his fender-panels.
Then he walked up to the portal, debated for a moment whether to offline his visor, decided against it—he wasn't afraid to see what his death would be like—and stepped through. The portal felt cool and fragile as a thin film of ice.
And stepping through was just like stepping over the steel framework, as if the portal didn't even exist. Dead End's foot came down on the soft grass in the clearing, on the other side of the framework. He teetered for an instant, but then the rest of his body was through and he stood there, bewildered. The rest of his team had clearly been waiting, because they stood around in a semicircle.
"Took you long enough," Motormaster said.
Dead End glanced over his shoulder at the portal, which was still there. What did it do? Where had it taken his team before it had returned them to the same place?
He turned back to face Motormaster. The Autobot lay in a crumpled heap at Motormaster's feet, though he was clearly offline rather than deactivated. Dead End supposed that once they were back at the Nemesis, either Soundwave or Vortex could get to work on the prisoner to find out exactly what the device had done.
"Where are the Aerialbots?" Breakdown stared up at the sky, his helm turning from side to side.
"What Aerialbots?" Wildrider said.
Dead End's misgivings had started to climb when Motormaster had vanished into the portal, but now those particular needles were in the red zone. "Drag Strip," he said, "who pulled you in?"
"What? Oh, Wildrider did that, the crazy glitch." But there was amusement rather than anger in Drag Strip's voice. He transformed, spoiler springing up to gleam gold in the sunlight. "C'mon, let's head home."
"Where's the other one?" Dead End said slowly.
On the other side of the portal, the remains of the deactivated Autobot were gone. And now that Dead End's attention was on the clearing rather than on his teammates, he saw how untouched the grass and trees looked. There were no tire-tracks, no craters gouged out by explosions, no fallen trunks. It looked as though the Stunticons had never been there.
Motormaster prodded the Autobot's inert form with his toe, but there was no response and he transformed. "Throw that piece of slag in my trailer and put the machine in there as well. You get in too, Dead End. I don't want him waking up in there and disappearing again."
The last thing Dead End wanted was to be anywhere near the blue portal, but he remembered the lever on the framework that the Autobot had pulled. When he shoved it up again, the blue sheen winked out like a spark being extinguished, and after that he felt slightly better about carrying the device into Motormaster's trailer. He climbed in as well and made himself as comfortable as possible as the door clanged shut. Once they were back at the Nemesis, the strange device would be the Constructicons' responsibility and he wouldn't have to worry about it again.
Engine rumbling, Motormaster accelerated away. Dead End could feel his satisfaction through the gestalt bond, and although Motormaster in a good mood was a rare occurrence indeed, he couldn't relax. He jounced and swayed as Motormaster cut a swathe through the trees, trying to ignore the way the device and the Autobot's limp form both slid around with squeals of metal scraping against metal.
"Will you stop moping for once?" Motormaster's voice echoed over the intercom a few moments later. The drive was smoother now, which meant they were on the highway. "We won the battle, we got a piece of Autobot tech and we nabbed a hostage. Besides, Breakdown probably just imagined the Aerialbots."
"Did he imagine that dead Autobot as well?"
Motormaster said nothing more, but Dead End could feel the road unspooling even faster beneath the eighteen tires, and knew even Motormaster was trying to make it back to the ship before anything strange happened. Then his internal radio pinged with a transmission from Breakdown.
"Yes?" he said.
"Dead End… there's something different about the trees. The leaves were red and brown before, but now they're green."
Before Dead End could reply, Motormaster swerved abruptly. Everything inside his trailer shifted hard, and Dead End stuck out a leg to brace the device, though he didn't bother to stop the Autobot from clanking against the side of the trailer as Motormaster plunged off the highway. A guardrail went down, and once again wood cracked and splintered on either side until Motormaster came to a stop. The Autobot let out a soft semiconscious moan, but didn't move, lying facedown on the trailer floor. Motormaster's engine ticked like the hand of a clock as it began to cool.
"Are you all receiving me?" he said on one of the Stunticon frequencies. There was a chorus of "Yes" and "Sure, boss, what's up?" before Motormaster switched to a common channel that any 'con might have used. "Now?" he said brusquely.
"Yes." Dead End felt as though his laser-core had turned to lead; the inevitable had befallen them. "What's happened?"
Motormaster said nothing for a long moment, then replied, "I tried to contact Soundwave just now, to inform the base of this. He didn't reply. I tried the Nemesis mainframe. I tried comming Megatron directly."
Dead End tried doing so as well, though part of him wondered why he bothered. As Motormaster had said, there was no response. The world was very quiet around them.
Until the trailer door snicked open and the ramp clanged down. "Bring that Autobot out," Motormaster said, his voice deadly soft.
Dead End forced himself to obey, though by the time he had maneuvered the Autobot's limp body to the ramp, Wildrider and Drag Strip were there to haul the prisoner out. Breakdown took the device as well, so there was no risk of it being damaged when Motormaster transformed. He glanced down at the Autobot's body lying on the ground before him, then broke a long branch off a nearby tree.
Dead End spared it a single glance. Breakdown had been right. Crushed trees lay on either side of Motormaster's passage down the slope, and the fresh wounds of snapped branches oozed drops of sap, but there were no brown or red leaves in sight.
Methodically, Motormaster began to whap the Autobot across the face with the other end of the branch, leaving dew spattered across the blue optics and dented mask. Leaves snagged in seams and were torn off as the repeated strikes went on. Motormaster could be very patient when it came to inflicting the precise level of pain or humiliation required to achieve his aims, but it seemed to take a long time before the Autobot's optics glowed and he gasped as he tried to push the branch away.
Motormaster flung it away and put one heavy, black-and-purple foot on the Autobot's chest to hold him down. "What did that device do?" he said.
"Go… eat slag."
You're just prolonging the process, Dead End thought. Motormaster gave the Autobot a slow, evaluating look, then turned to Drag Strip.
"Go back up to the highway," he said, tilting his helm at the slope. "Stop a car and bring any humans in it down here."
"Don't." The Autobot couldn't get up but he shook his head, vocal indicators flashing. "Leave them out of this!"
It was too late, of course. It had been too late, Dead End thought, from the moment the Autobot had plunged into the portal, and now they were all following on a downhill road that led in a single direction. Drag Strip scrambled up the slope and out of sight, but a few moments later there was a screech of brakes from the highway. Metal crumpled and glass fragmented. Drag Strip picked his way back down more slowly, a terrified human clutched in one hand.
"It's a time machine," the Autobot whispered.
Motormaster's helm snapped around, violet optics slitted and burning as he stared down. "Go on."
The Autobot had stopped struggling by then. "I built it so we could observe the past, but when Trail… when we were field-testing it this morning we found out it could be used to travel into the past as well. Please, let the human go."
Motormaster bent so he was optic-to-eye with the human, though he did it slowly enough that Dead End guessed the abdominal damage was a little more serious than he was letting on. The human tried to twist away, but Drag Strip held it too tightly.
"You," Motormaster said. "What's today's date? Tell us and I'll let you go."
The human blinked, mouth half-open. "Uh…" There was a pause. "M-may fourteenth."
'The year, idiot!"
"The year?" The human swallowed audibly. "Nineteen eighty-four."
Nearly three years into the past, Dead End thought. Oddly enough, he felt a little better—it wasn't as though they had been flung back centuries or millennia. Circumventing a three-year detour seemed a little more manageable, probably requiring less power from the time machine's generator too.
Motormaster took the human between finger and thumb and flung it back in the general direction of the highway, while Dead End moved to stand beside the Autobot, who seemed to be trying to see where the human had landed. He coughed politely to attract the Autobot's attention.
"You can reverse the machine's effects, I take it?" he said.
One corner of Motormaster's mouth curled upward. "Why would we need to do that?"
"Well, what else can we…" Dead End began, then stopped. He felt a dark undercurrent snake its way through the gestalt link, and even without that, the vicious light in Motormaster's optics would have been warning enough. Lifting his foot off the Autobot's chest, Motormaster grabbed him by an arm and hauled him back up before shoving him at Dead End. His grin stretched wide.
"We're going to the Ark," he said.
Author's note: This fic references the G1 episodes "More Than Meets the Eye", "Starscream's Brigade" and "Masquerade". Wheeljack and Trailbreaker being a couple is inspired by anon_decepticon's wonderful story "After Atlantis". This fic also references one of the scenarios Wildrider sees in my story "Broken". Please review if you liked reading. :)