Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers!
Please R&R
(This actually has a plot now! Enjoy!)
"Arcee to Delta Team, requesting rendezvous coordinates. Do you copy?" A familiar femme's voice lanced through the static his Communication Link had acquired after a lucky shot from a sniper nearly blew his helm off, he really would have to tell his partner about that one later, it was amusing to see her fuss over their injuries. Waving to the rest of the team to go onwards without him, he patched through to the missing member of their group.
"Arcee, you lost again?" he teased back down the line, "You're sense of direction could use some improvement."
"So could your aim Tailgate." She replied, the trace of amusement in her vocaliser making him give a chuckle of his own, "If you tagged that sniper back at the artillery depot, I wouldn't have had to break rank and engage the enemy hand to hand."
Looking about his position from the side of the secluded building that the Delta Team had left him waiting on Arcee, he warily checked around him for more Decepticon troops, it had gone oddly, and creepily silent. Deciding to keep his playful attitude he quickly quipped back at his partner. "By the sounds of things, I'm guessing you came out ahead?"
"Try waiting up for me next time and I'll give you the blow by blow." The dark blue femme replied as he loitered in the shadow of the building that had clearly seen better orns. "What's your position?"
"About half a click from the Depot, due north," Tailgate reeled off, waving to another scattered member of Delta Team as he tried to rendezvous with the main group which was, by now, five breems out of the area back to base and pointing the mech in the right direction. It was only his stubborn attitude that made the commander allow him to wait for Arcee as it was, plus a little blackmailing helped as well, no matter how many times Arcee had told him not to do it. "Think you can find it partner?"
"Trust me Tailgate." She replied smugly, "My navigation abilities are…" A sudden cry from Arcee on her end of the line made him jump in fright, the femme's voice being replaced by muffled cries and a fierce amount of static that made him cringe.
"Arcee?" he called down the link, lifting a servo up to his helm and pressing his communication link, changing Comm channels to try and get a better signal. "Arcee this really isn't time to be fooling around. The commander will have my aft if we're not back soon."
As he kept trying to hail his partner, he was unaware of two Decepticons clambering down the old walls of the building and it was only the sound and luminescence of a round of weapons fire above him that allowed the oblivious Tailgate to take notice of the leering shadows above him. "Frag." He cursed, spinning on his pede and grabbing his rifle, aiming upwards towards where the two shadows allegedly originated.
Nothing was there but fragments of the building's wall, peeled back in twisted shapes. "Great, Tailgate," he grumbled to himself as he re-magnetised his rifle back to his backstrut and began to trace Arcee's Communication Link frequency to her position, "Jumping at shadows again." Shuffling to peer around the corner, he never realised that one of the two Decepticon's had lunged for his main energon line, sending him into stasis lock as his processor foggily registered the abnormal pressure on his neck that was buried under his surprise of suddenly being grabbed…
===Two Orns Later===
"Urgh… that must have been some party…" he muttered to himself as he rebooted, his golden optics onlining with a brief flicker as they became flooded with error messages, which startlingly included the information that his frame had acquired damage he couldn't remember receiving. "Either that or a bomb dropped on my position…" he concluded as he gazed about what appeared to be a grimy cell, energon coating the walls in a gruesome décor that only a crazy megalomaniac would love.
As he tried to heave himself up into a sitting position, he found his wrists encased in stasis cuffs, much to his annoyance and horror as he realised he was lying next to another mech that was slowly going grey from lack of energon, the blue optics of the mech pleading with Tailgate to put him out of his misery.
"Oh Primus." He swore, shuffling back, jumping when his back hit the bloodied wall with an audible clang that made him wince.
"Get a good look Autobot." The Decepticon guard sneered into the cell, "It's your future there."
Scowling at the leering mech outside of the cell, Tailgate shifted and pushed himself up to sit with his back against the wall, raising his captured servo's to scratch an itchy static build on the side of his helm, belatedly realising as he searched for the static build up that his Internal Communication Unit had been ripped out and he yelped in pain as his fingers collided with the sensitive, jagged metal.
Laughing at his captive's misfortune, the Decepticon retreated back into the Guard office where another guard was swigging High Grade drunkenly at a Communication's Consol.
"Fraggers," Tailgate grumbled, resting his helm back against the wall, missing the familiar weight of his rifle that usually clung to his back, and missing his partner's quips that would brighten his mood, "Well, wherever you are Arcee, I hope you're doing better than I am…"
===Three Orns Later===
Reduced to a dented shell of a mech, Tailgate could only groan as a guard nudged him with a pede from his collapsed heap to make sure he was still alive, "Stop it," he slurred, his vocaliser crackling with static, "Frag off."
"He's still got some fight in him." Snickered the guard who would often take to beating the prisoners of the dark cells when he was drunk or simply in the mood. "But it serves you right for hacking the mainframe and sending out a distress signal."
"Bite me." Tailgate bit back, though it only came out as a moan of pain.
"Heh," he Decepticon snickered, "Good thing Arachnid is going to do away with you. Why did we even need him anyway?" the purple mech asked turning to his watching companion.
"Apparently Arachnid is having a hard time getting the femme to talk. She and her little minions found the sniper chatting with her through a comm. when they caught her." The other replied as their own links chimed and a summoning voice, filled with all things related to creepy and nasty rang out.
"Bring the Sniper to me."
Dazedly, he couldn't really remember what happened next. He was dragged by the arms through some corridors, some filled with tortured screams, some silent as his pedes scraped along the floor, echoing his groans of pain.
They stopped at a door as a guard typed in his pass codes, letting their captive rest on his aching knee joints between them before they dragged him in with a jerk, his processor's vaguely registering a familiar voice almost asking his designation, "Tailgate?"
"What did you do to him?"
The conversation between the two femmes continued, randomly spinning around his processor as he found the floor mildly fascinating through his pain as they hung him up like a prized catch.
"No! Please!" the tied up femme, Arcee, his partner, if his processor remembered correctly, was becoming frantic as the slow taps of the spider femme's pedes came closer to him, the swish of a transformation and a shriek of metal as something was poised to strike.
That can't be good. His rational side of his processor thought at time seemed to fade from his thoughts, while his survival instincts seemed to lie down and accept whatever was coming as inevitability.
A piercing sensation, followed by a hot stab of pain made him choke on the scream as a voice… his beloved partner's voice…. cried out his name in horror as everything became black and free of pain.
=== Millennia Later= Earth= Nevada= Jack's Room===
A human teenager, known as Jackson Darby, but Jack to his friends, awoke with a jerk, his heart hammering in fright as his nightmare quickly faded into the obscurity of his subconscious leaving him terrified and confused in the cool desert night.
Within his organic heart, the sleeping spark of a mech named Tailgate shuddered in memory…