Author Notes: So, I haven't dabbled in writing for about two years. Half of this was written several months ago, forgotten, found while looking through my files, and then picked up again.
The term 'outlier' is shamelessly stolen from IDW. So is the entire 'Shockwave has an interest in outliers' bit. I regret nothing.
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Contingency
Sure, everyone had known that this fight was going to be a bad one. Still, Brawn had thought that the entire thing could have been summed up in very few words.
Optimus Prime's grand speech before they went out? The one that was supposed to rile everyone up for battle? Completely useless. Once you know that there's gonna be a throw down, you should just go. The fancy words just weren't necessary.
What Brawn would have done, why, he would have just been straightforward.
'Shockwave. Space bridge. Weapon. Stop weapon from coming through space bridge.'
Easy peasy.
Explosions were rattling the atmosphere now; that much was expected, really, before he even got here. It felt as if the entire army - of both armies - were duking it out here and now. The glimmering lights of the space bridge shone through the late afternoon dusk, clearly visible from… Well, Brawn guessed they were a good two or three miles off. The ground was, for the most part, open and uncluttered by natural or human-built growth. The Decepticons had picked a fairly remote spot to build the bridge in the first place, and previous battles over it had razed the scrubby trees that had once been nearby to stumps and turned the thin grass into a mess of dust and loose gravel.
Something shook; Brawn assumed something had blown up somewhere. The minibot skid to a halt behind a large boulder, taking brief cover before trying to figure out what came from where.
He almost slammed right in to Windcharger.
"Primus!" The red frame yelped out, a little more jittery than usual.
"Hey, 'Charger." Brawn peeked over the rock; he let out a few shots from his gun. A yelp went out and satisfaction flowed through him. "How'r ya holdin' -" He stopped and stared. "…Where's your gun?"
"Lost it." Windcharger at least had the sense to look sheepish about it.
"Where?" Brawn shuttered his optics for a moment before glancing around, somewhat astonished. Windcharger could be a little empty-headed sometimes, but to lose his gun?
"Uh… Somewhere around six bombs ago?" A helpless shrug.
"So you've been runnin' around empty handed for, what, an hour?" Brawn rubbed his face, yet still found himself to be nothing more than only a little bit shocked.
"Uh…" Windcharger ducked behind the boulder again as dust flew up from nearby; most of the fighting was beyond where they took cover, but it wasn't exactly smart to just walk out there. Like Windcharger had been doing. For an hour.
"Pit, 'Charger." Brawn let out a sigh. "Here." He held out his gun, nozzle first. The last time he held it appropriately - with the handle and trigger facing the red minibot - he ended up getting shot in the leg. He wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.
"Are you sure?" Windcharger sputtered, but took the weapon. Thankfully, he didn't accidentally fire it. "But what about you?"
"We're next to Pit knows how many large rocks." Brawn grabbed a slightly smaller boulder that sat next to theirs; he glanced around quickly before tossing it.
In the sky, a jet - not one of the Aerialbots, he wouldn't make that mistake again, faction symbols were there for a reason - let out a shriek of fury as it was hit. Smoke bled from a thruster.
"The entire ground is ammo!" Brawn let out a grin. "Come on, 'Charger! And don't lose my gun!"
Then, they ran.
Honestly, Brawn wasn't even trying to get close to the space bridge. Frankly, the whole 'stop the weapon from coming through' thing was for people more specialized for the task. The heavy hitters, the higher ups; his job, as far as he understood it, was to keep the troublemakers on the outskirts.
Which was why he continued to throw boulders and stray metal at every Decepticon frame he saw.
Windcharger, for his part, was actually keeping up; Brawn was rather proud of him. Most of his shots were hitting their targets and he hadn't fallen behind or gotten himself hurt.
Later, Brawn told himself, he would have to bring it up to the others. Give Windcharger something to really feel proud of for a while. Something he could hopefully use to keep himself focused in the future; some positive reinforcement.
Speaking of keeping focused, Windcharger had stopped firing and was looking at the sky.
For a moment, Brawn thought that his friend had simply lost his thoughts again; then, he heard the sound of thrusters and looked up as well. "…Rainmakers?!"
Windcharger was still staring at the noxiously bright jets - even by Decepticon standards, which considered a purple and lime green combiner to be the height of fashion - as they flew through the air; they were moving in a wide circle around the battlefield. "What are they doing here?"
"Dunno." Brawn frowned; he had never actually seen them before, only heard of them. Had the Rainmakers ever left Cybertron before? "Maybe it's 'cause of the weapon ol' Bucket-Head is trying to get in."
"Makes sense." Windcharger shrugged; he turned to take a shot at a maroon sports car skidding up the ridge. "Hope it doesn't rain, though!"
Brawn cringed at the reminder; right, Rainmakers. There was a reason they were called that."Maybe they can't do that here. Here's hopin', anyway."
For several minutes, there was no chatter; simply gunfire and distant explosions. Brawn allowed himself to glance up on occasion, trying to keep an eye out for any sign of acid falling from the sky, but the brightly painted seekers seemed to be… Going around in circles. Perhaps they were keeping tabs on the battle? Reporting things back to Megatron and/or Shockwave?
Neon came in and out of his peripheral vision for what felt like a long while. It was impossible not to notice them against the comparatively drab Coneheads and the so-called command trine - to say nothing of everybody else.
He had his back turned for only a few minutes. Brawn had thrown a particularly large piece of what he thought might have been asphalt at Motormaster - it could have been Octane though, big purple truckformers all looked pretty much the same - when he heard the scream.
Brawn turned; all he caught a glimpse of was a flash of bright yellow, a streak of movement, and the flash of his gun misfiring as it hit the ground. Laser blast flashed harmlessly against the loose scree on the side of the hill.
The yellow Rainmaker flew off in root mode, arms wrapped around a flailing red frame.
It took a klik for what had happened to register, a second more before fear flared up.
"Oh slag." Brawn yanked his optics off the seeker and Windcharger with an effort, kicking up a huge trail of dust as he half stumbled, half skidded down the side of the hill to the relative flat at the bottom. He transformed as soon as he got down where his tires would grip.
He knew what was going on as soon as he saw the yellow jet take off with 'Charger. Everyone knew; the game of 'drop the bot' was a horrible favorite of the flying types and the seekers in particular.
They were going to drop him, and he had to be there when they did. Someone had to be there to get Windcharger away when he fell; like slag was he going to be conscious after hitting the ground.
If he was lucky, maybe he'd be able to catch him before he actually landed; at the very least, it could save Windcharger some damage, if not save his life.
Dodging gunfire and bodies while keeping an eye on where the Rainmakers were going was a trial in itself; the ground was awful under his tires. Sideswipe cursed at him when he almost slid into the front liner where he was grappling with a Decepticon that Brawn didn't try to immediately identify. Still, he saw it when the three seekers came in lower than he expected.
The yellow Rainmaker was still in root mode, still holding on to Windcharger as he landed. His wing mates were folding out from jet forms - so different from the earth alts adopted by the other seekers - touching down next to him, right in front of the spacebridge.
What were they doing?!
Why were they on the ground? What were they doing with Windcharger?!
Despite the distance and laser fire, Brawn saw the bluish purple rainmaker say something. There was no way to hear it, but he did see the deep, sheer panic on Windcharger's face at whatever the slagger said. The red minibot's flailing and struggling intensified; his pinned arms stilled in a way that Brawn recognized instantly.
Windcharger's magnets were powerful, and the power that they used was more than even most standard sized frames could supply. A single, focused bout of it sent him in to stasis under normal circumstance; hewould never use it in a situation like that unless something was very, very wrong. The yellow seeker screamed, loud enough that heads turned towards the seekers and the space bridge, one of his wings curled backwards as if Superion himself had decided to try origami with it.
The yellow seeker lost his grip; Windcharger tried to shift in to vehicle mode. He got halfway through before the other two Rainmakers reacted, catching hold of him between vehicle and root mode. His transformation stalled out, somehow; Windcharger continued to struggle.
The yellow seeker rolled to his feet, grabbing hold of Windcharger again as green let go long enough to key something into the control console. Then, the three Rainmakers went through the bridge, dragging Windcharger with them. They vanished in the swirling miasma of stars.
Brawn stood there, stunned from disbelief, in the middle of the battlefield.
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Megatron had called the retreat after Grimlock and the dinobots had broken through the Decepticons' ground line to destroy the space bridge controls; after the destructive roars, what had most likely been a fiery explosion and shrapnel flying everywhere, the bridge had collapsed. The Autobots had retreated after it did. There had been no point in staying after that.
On the up side, they had managed to gather quite a bit of energon while the bridge had distracted the Autobots. It was generally a good idea to have two plans going simultaneously every once in a while; the weapon had only been part of the entire scheme.
So, flushed with fresh midgrade, the troops were now in generally high morale. Hopefully, this would translate to less tantrums and not quite as much backstabbing and infighting. For a little while, at least.
The communication console in the main hall was on; a private line connected to his own quarters. It didn't actually mean anything; private or not, people tended to find things out. Both Autobot spies and Decepticons alike that may attempt to overthrow him - a red and white seeker in particular - had to be accounted for.
All the message had was a single green icon. A round, generic shape that was purposefully vague; the symbol itself meant nothing of significance and was chosen specifically to throw potential unwanted watchers off.
Megatron smiled to himself when he saw it; occasionally, it was nice to see an underling get what they wanted.
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"And then WHAM I shot him RIGHT in the face! BOOM!" Warpath gestured wildly. "See if he tries that again!"
Huffer barked out a laugh and Gears shoved a cube in the red tankformer's direction. The rec room was pretty quiet, most people were still getting repaired - such as Cliffjumper, who had decided it would be a fantastic idea to live up to his name during the fight - or dealing with reports - Bumblebee, notoriously, had to deal with all post-battle reports and summarizations. No one envied that job.
Windcharger was missing. That was actually not altogether uncommon after a fight; it happened fairly frequently that someone would get hit and fall in to stasis somewhere that the first round of extraction teams didn't find. It ordinarily took two or three outings before every last bot was recovered. However, Brawn had been unusually swift to follow Bumblebee when they regrouped. Gears had been there to see the rush, but had not much more than a shrug to tell the others what it was about.
"Do you think anyone is dead?" Gears wondered out loud.
"Don't be morbid." Huffer replied. "They'd have made an announcement by now. Trailbreaker and Hoist are still out there, too."
"Looking for the dead." Gears said, morosely. Several sets of optics rolled around him; this conversation happened after every fight almost verbatim.
Everyone looked up as the doors opened with a whoosh. It wasn't Bumblebee - or Jazz, or anyone else interesting, actually -, just Bluestreak, who headed straight for the dispenser to get a cube of his own. He looked around while it was being filled, but the rec room was more or less empty. The Dinobots sat at their own table in the center of the room; Bluestreak gave them a wide berth, barely missing a stray shot of fire, before heading over to their table with a cube in hand.
"Did you guys hear the news yet?"
"News?" Beachcomber was the one to ask it, but the lot of them perked up as well; 'news' typically meant 'juicy gossip', particularly if Bluestreak was the one saying it.
"Yeah, I mean, I thought they would have told you guys first. Maybe I'm not supposed to say anything, I mean, I didn't mean to listen in but Brawn's really loud and -"
"Spit it out, already." Pipes said.
"Brawn says the Decepticons, well, that yellow Rainmaker, took Windcharger through the spacebridge before it got shut down. And he didn't come back, that's why no one can find him."
For a moment, there was stunned silence. For once in their collective lives, a near identical expression marred the faces of the various minibots in attendance; it took several seconds more for a few optics to glance at each other, wondering if they had all heard the same thing.
"Are you serious?!" The incredulity was thick in Tailgate's voice, sharp with fear.
"Windcharger is stuck on Cybertron?!" Huffer gaped.
"There were Rainmakers?! Wait, the Rainmakers took him?! What do you mean they took him?!" Gears was actually standing on his seat, outrage taking over the shock on his faceplate.
"Grabbed him and flew off with him. I thought he was gonna drop him." Brawn walked towards their table; none of them were sure when he had arrived. "But he didn't."
Brawn seemed quiet; a bit too calm and subdued considering what he was saying. Windcharger had been Brawn's closest friend as far as most of them could remember; it wasn't like him. Several pairs of optics stared at him for a few long seconds, stunned in to silence.
"...And?" Huffer sputtered. "And what'r we gonna do about it?"
"We? Us? Nothin'." Brawn sat down hard on a chair; it creaked. Exhaustion rolled in waves off of his frame. "We're on fraggin' lockdown. Just us, too. Prowl'n Prime'r trying to figure things out."
That earned expressions of dismay. Even Warpath seemed upset underneath his mask, cannon turning downwards in a glum sort of anger. "BAM! So we're not even gonna be told what's, SHAZAAM, going on?!"
"Windcharger was, what, kidnapped, and we're on lockdown?" Gears kicked a table leg without even bothering to get out of his seat. "That's it?"
"That's it." Brawn huffed. "And it's scrap."
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Hound had gone missing.
The most infuriating part of this revelation, a feeling shared mutually between all in Autobot high command, was that they couldn't pinpoint exactly when he had.
It wasn't uncommon or even unexpected, really, for Hound to simply pack up and head out on long, terribly complicated adventures that a simple-minded mech might have naively called 'camping'. Naivety aside, a mech with more information wouldn't have dared to dub it so calmly.
Famously, Sideswipe had once declared that he could handle a few night of 'simple wilderness'. Believing that something either monumentally catastrophic or incredibly hilarious would occur on this trip, Beachcomber - easily the most adaptable of outdoorsmen - had been given a camera and gone with.
Both had returned less than three days after they had left - less than a quarter of their allotted time - and they had mutually sworn that Hound's idea of the 'great Earthen wilderness' was simply 'too intense for a sane individual to handle'. No one had dared to join Hound again after that.
It had not been a surprise, then, when contact had been lost. It would not have been the first time that it had; Earth had a surprising variety of places where a constant line of communication was simply too difficult to establish. Somewhere over a series of incredibly tall mountains and deep valleys, their line had simply been severed. The surprise had been when it never picked up again.
Sixteen days after they had lost contact - the last record had been five -, they began to look for him.
Something, in that time, had gone very, very wrong.
The first signs were clear once the pictures came pouring in; no one had been willing to naturally climb the mountains in a proper fashion to perform an investigation; it had been considered too risky and dangerous besides. Instead, the Aerialbots had been sent to send back a live feed.
Trees had all but been pulverized; the ground was scorched and bore unusually small, dotted pit marks. Branches were scattered in an unusual fashion and several animal corpses appeared to have been melted. It did not quite bear the hallmarks of a storm or the damage of a fire; briefly, they had been perplexed.
Samples had been carefully collected on Prowl's orders. "Something," he had said, "didn't seem right." It was an understatement.
Skyfire analyzed what was returned; soil, bark, leaves, even the remains of a partially melted, rotting doe.
"Acid." Was the quick result. "This is absolutely the result of a sudden, uncharacteristic for the region, bout of intense acid-laden moisture. This was a recent event. Most likely within the past three days."
"The Rainmakers." Prime concluded, optics narrowed and tone grim. "That's two Autobots in quite possibly under two weeks. The questions is... Why?"
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Author notes: Reviews feed my muses, like fish to a seal. Throw them at me, and they shall feed.