Same Side

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AN: Dear heavens, it's hard to think up these chapter titles. That's it, the next three chapters are going to be called 'Larry', 'Moe', and 'Curly'.

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Chapter Thirteen: Blast Away

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It was one of those situations that could have gone very, very bad.

The moment Trailbreaker slammed into the back of Skids, there was a chorus of car horns, people screaming and the loud, garbled Decepticon proclamation in a language that no organic could hlungope to translate. The explosion that sent the communications officer forward also startled him into transforming into his bipedal form. He rolled over the top of the green Autobot and stood in front of him, weapons engaged.

A silvery green flash descended upon him from a rooftop, driving a pair of jagged blades in his direction. Sixshot aimed to impale the unsuspecting Autobot through his spark chamber.

One of Trailbreaker's first defenses, however, was the gold-yellow shield that deployed upon his weapons' activation. This time, the lethal swords struck the crackling energy point blank and stopped the Decepticon in midair. Sixshot dropped out of his dive and landed on Skids' hood, cursing his luck.

Trailbreaker promptly relayed a distress call. It was one of his many talents, and only a handful of known Autobots could replicate his ability to transmit messages over such large distances. It was an encrypted signal that no Decepticon would ever decipher, due to their nature. At this moment, he was just hoping Bumblebee and Mudflap would be close enough to get here before this psychotic killing machine made tin cans out of him.

Their cover was blown, and the humans were quickly abandoning their cars to escape on foot. It was hard trying to find a spot to move when he had to worry about stepping on one of the organic natives, but he had inspected the visual entertainment recordings from orbit long enough to feel sympathetic to their plights. Dawn and Marcus from the region of All My Children had it especially rough without having to worry about a big metal foot coming out of nowhere and squishing them.

Sixshot lunged at him. The blue Autobot swiftly knocked him aside with his shield and opened fire on the Decepticon before he hit the ground. The silvery assassin tried another approach, twisted in midair and pounced off the wall of a human building. He crashed into the side of the transformed green one, sending the Autobot rolling over (and subsequently crushing) the human vehicles in the opposite lane.

Sixshot was seized from behind before he could leap towards the incapacitated Autobot, and found his body soaring through the air. Again, he regained his equilibrium and landed on both feet. Trailbreaker began to fire on him again, lacking the means to fight an effective melee battle.

Lorne just barely opened the door and felt on the street beside the overturned Twin, as a bruised and battered Teyla did the same. Both of the kids were unconscious in the backseat. Reaching through the open door next to Sam, the major pulled his charge out of the robot's interior. Leo was removed by his teammate and they tried to drag the pair of bodies towards a nearby alleyway for the best protection against their much larger enemy.

Groaning, Skids transformed without even getting up, climbing to his feet only when they had fully formed. There was a distinctly pissed-off feeling this whole thing gave him, and Sixshot was one dumbass Decepticon for picking it again on planet Earth.

Trailbreaker was effectively keeping Sixshot at bay, parrying the smaller Decepticon's lunges with a well-aimed swing of his shield, but his energy capacity wasn't meant to fend off one physical blow after another. It became harder to maintain his barrier over time, and none of the shells that actually landed on his enemy seemed to do any damage.

"You are finished, pathetic weakling!" The Decepticon hurled the boast in a screech and prepared his expansive array of soft-clicking weaponry to rip the Autobot apart.

It was then the massive red jet dove out of the sky, miraculously banked on a ninety-degree angle and swooped down on Sixshot. Storm Jet shifted his form several feet above and behind the Decepticon's back. While still in motion, he drove his arms, now transformed into a single, four-edged blade through the assassin's spark. Sixhshot convulsed for a second or two, his eyes flashed, and then went dead.

Storm Jet crashed to the ground on both feet as his foe perished. With on swift motion, he altered his hands back into their five-digit form and tossed the lifeless carcass of the Decepticon on the abandoned street. With a satisfying equivalent to a grunt, he turned around to face the startled blue Autobot. "It is a damned good thing I happened to be nearby, isn't it, Trailbreaker?"

"You?" The communications' officer stood down incredulously. "Of all Autobots, I get you? I had enough of traveling with your tight-aft attitude, Stormy. Go rescue someone else."

"Now, now, you shouldn't feel ashamed of your incapacity to dispatch such a ridiculous opponent. It is only natural," the much larger red one replied, scanning over Lorne and his group nearby. "I see. Defending the weak and defenseless, are we? Was this Prime's plan?"

"Hey, just 'cause you can't take orders from Optimus Prime," Trailbreaker retorted, and seemed to realize that they were still standing in the middle of a public city with several brave spectators looking on. "Uh oh. We'd better split before someone puts us on YouTube."

"Very well. Meet me at your rendezvous point, and bring the humans." Without another word, the crimson Autobot lashed out with one hand to seize the discarded corpse of the Decepticon, half-shifted into his aerial form and took off into the atmosphere, leaving behind a cloud of dust and the glimmer of glowing jets against the overcast sky.

Almost sheepishly, Trailbreaker changed back into his SUV guise with the dozens of citizens watching his every move. Skids turned around, noticed the spot where Lorne and Teyla were protecting the boys, and offered his services as a transport by transforming back. No one saw the group of four humans climb into the Chevrolet Beat amidst the thick overlay of dust, nor did they notice the pair of vehicles turning the corner at the stilled intersection, weaving between empty cars and trucks until they blended back into the stream of moving traffic nearby.

Teyla sat in the backseat with the students, dabbing at a bleeding gash on Leo's head. Neither of them had taken serious injury, though she had a distinct feeling that the case would be different had they been inside a normal car. It worried her that Sam seemed to be running a fever, since no infection could have set in so quickly. Perhaps he had been ill before they picked him up at the university.

"Major Lorne, if it is possible that more than one of these Decepticons have found our location, there may be more not far behind. Should we not try to contact Colonel Sheppard and the others?"

The major, still taken aback by the sudden assault by the strange alien entity, shook his head to indicate he didn't know. "Something tells me that Optimus guy knew about this, so there would be no point. We should take them straight to the designated safe zone and wait for evac."

It wasn't so much of a rendezvous point as it was an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of the city. The station was on a side road that predated the highway leading into New Jersey, far enough away from most traffic to make it easier to spot an oncoming attack from the Decepticons. Once they were far enough away, the plan had been to wait for a military transport to take Sam away and to the nearest Air Force base, which was in West Virginia. Except now, their quiet extraction had been blown to smithereens. The moment they got out in the open, they might very well get ambushed by the enemy Cybertronians, despite their powerful air support from above.

He had to stop doing favours for Colonel Sheppard.

Despite his convictions, they weren't followed or ambushed when they reached the city limits. Not a fifteen minute lapse later, and they met up with Mudflap, who had been connected to his twin from the start of the skirmish and came to help. He did an illegal u-turn across the unpaved median and joined up with the group at the back. After they reached the backroad, it wasn't long until the deserted gas station came into view.

The fact that both Storm Jet and Bumblebee were standing behind the ghostly building in their terrestrial forms was the first indication that something was wrong. Storm Jet's only alternative mode was his Cybertronian jet, of course, but the yellow Autobot had his pulsing cannon loaded and aimed at the larger bot. Skids, Mudflap and Trailbreaker came to a sliding halt in the tufts of half-dead grass and the two conscious humans leapt out of the car just as Trailbreaker went to investigate the problem.

"'Ey, Bumblebee! When will you ever learn to stop picking fights with the big guns?" the communications officer chided his long-time friend, interrupting the scene. Instantly, the yellow Autobot stood down and looked Trailbreaker with evident surprise. Even after hearing the news from Optimus, seeing Trailbreaker in one piece after the ambush on Cybertron was astounding.

"The dead roam the Earth!" cried a geeky voice over his radio and, forgetting all about Storm Jet, Bumblebee clapped a metal hand to one belonging to his teammate, nodding enthusiastically.

"Your timing is impeccable, chatty one," Storm Jet remarked placidly. He noted the presence of the four humans inside the green Twin's interior with approval. "This protogé of Prime's was not inclined to believe my tale until he saw the sparkling for himself."

Sam groaned, stirring back to life as if on cue. Bumblebee's attention snapped to him at the sound of his charge's voice and went to him in a flash. Rubbing his head, Sam climbed out of Skids' back seat and found himself face-to-face with the young Autobot he'd been so worried about until now. "Geez, Bee...what's going on?"

Of course, his guardian lacked the ability to explain due to the shortage of radio transmissions that included large robotic aliens and classified civilian extraction protocols. Instead, he offered Sam a massive hand to steady himself on, and the eighteen-year-old swaggered out into the dulled light, finding even that too harsh for his pounding head.

"I'd say introductions are in order," Major Lorne spoke up, standing in front of the still transformed Twins. "But you probably know more about me than I do. Our job is over, for the most part..." He glanced around at the surrounding Autobots. "...doesn't look like we'll be needed. Air evac should arrive within an hour."

"I am afraid they will not," Storm Jet interjected with his overpowering voice. "If I managed to decipher the incoherent military-grade babble over what you seem to think is a secure frequency, then your aerial support was shot down and decimated by a pair of Megatron's bumbling lackeys not too long ago. That was what attracted me here in the first place."

"So...wait, what does that mean? We can't get out of here?" Sam couldn't help but feel anxious. After the incident inside the city, not only were local authorities probably scouring every inch inside and outside of the city, but they were exposed to a lot of Decepticons.

"That means, young misinformed sparkling, that your own military cannot handle a simple rescue operation," remarked the older Autobot, the lights on either side of his face guard flashing upwards. "Now, there is a gorge several miles in geographical proportions precisely sixty-eight miles south of this location. Find a suitable cave, and the natural rock formations will prevent even the most advanced surveillance drones from locating your biological signature. Your military may feel so inclined to send more 'air support', but I have my doubts they will survive long enough to reach you."

"Wait, a cave?" Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned heavily on Bee for support. "We're hiding in caves now? Hold on a sec...who are you, anyway?"

"Does it matter, honestly?" Storm Jet replied bitterly. "I am the one Autobot within a thousand miles capable of keeping you alive, fleshling. Leave him to me, Trailbreaker. I will be able to transport him to a safe location faster than your landlocked modes ever will."

Bumblebee looked up at him sharply. Storm Jet outranked them all, but there was no way Sam was going anywhere without him. He was his guardian, after all. Trailbreaker had the same idea, apparently.

"Look, Stormy, we've got our orders and they're from Prime himself, so we can't just go galavanting wherever you want. We do this, we do it together, capiche?"

Storm Jet looked over the smaller blue bot with a crippling flash of his eyes, as one of his cooling servos released a hiss that correctly reflected his irritation. "If you insist," he said slowly. "Then I will lead you, and monitor this pilgrimage from the sky, but on one condition. It is a personal request."

"What got stuck up yo aft?" Mudflap asked, now standing by in his bipedal form.

The smaller infiltrator went ignored. "My interest is in preserving the knowledge imbued by the Allspark, not making new friends," Storm Jet growled. "These other humans are superfluous and untrustworthy. They will stay behind."

"You hit your head on a rock when you came to Earth? Because you're not listenin'," Trailbreaker told him bluntly. "Scram your condition."

"You will take the boy to the gorge and I will keep the Decepticons at bay." It was clear the larger Autobot was becoming angry. "Should you prefer to stand by and allow them to convene on this location, slaughtering the lot of you, then so be it! Megatron will stop at nothing to get his hands on that child. Did you all inherit the stubbornness of that fool you call a Prime?"

"Listen, guys," Lorne interjected before the argument could get out of hand. "No one can argue that having him on your side is a lot more useful than having us. Though it kinda hits my ego a little hard. We don't have any conventional weapons, so even if your enemies did show up, we can't defend ourselves. Teyla and I will stay behind and wait for ground reinforcements, and we'll tell them where you're hiding out."

"Is this a wise plan, Major Lorne?" Teyla asked out of suspicion.

"Trust me, Teyla. Look at them. Colonel Sheppard will probably give me an earful, but we're useless against these Decepticons. Let them take care of it, at least until we get our hands on some weapons."

There was no doubt that Major Lorne's behaviour was uncharacteristically odd, but Teyla knew better than to call him on it right there and then. She gave a conceding nod and inhaled slightly. "The major is correct," she said. "We will stay behind to await our transport."

"You're kidding, right?" Sam looked between the two. "What, you're leaving us?"

"A wise choice," Storm Jet said loudly enough to break the teen's train of thought. "I will transmit directions to the point of arrival from my lookout. And for the sake of Primus, do not loiter."

The air was momentarily choked with sand as the crimson Autobot shot skywards, transforming as he did so. No one said anything for roughly thirty seconds.

"I'm going to get in contact with the Compoud Alliance crew," Lorne announced. He glanced over at Teyla and turned towards the empty gas station, taking a radio out of the small backpack he'd rescued from Skids' back seat. "If Colonel Sheppard is back, I'll apprise him of the situation. Until then, it's up to you guys. Take care of this kids."

"Tha's right, you quit like it's gettin' hot, wimp," Mudflap babbled after him, waving a dismissive metal hand.

For once, Teyla was utterly astounded. Unable to find something to say to the Autobots or the two young students, she inhaled deeply and chased after Major Lorne. He was talking into the radio as she drew near, several dozen paces from the nearest set of ears...or audio receptors. She kept her voice hushed, though unsure of whether or not the Autobots could hear her. In a way, it did not matter.

"Major Lorne, you cannot seriously intend to abandon the mission," she said harshly. "Do you expect this...this Storm Jet to effectively protect Sam and Leo when he so clearly does not like humans?"

"No," he said in return, clicking a few buttons on the device in his hand, as though he had never seen it before. "I expect he's hiding something really important from us and quite frankly, I trust him about as far as I can throw him. I don't need to tell you how far that is."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Getting a message to the Compound or Atlantis any way I can. Thing is, something's jamming our radios. I wouldn't put it past those Decepticons, but one way or another we have to tell the others where they're taking the kids."

"Would it not be more reasonable to try and stop them from doing so?"

He paused long enough to give her a look. "I'm sorry, did you have a plan to stop the twenty foot tall scary giant robot from doing what he wants?"

The Athosian's sigh was enough of an answer, since there really wasn't a better answer to a question that plain. "I thought so," he added. "We're no help to them anyway. I know you want to do something, but we need to talk to Sheppard. The Daedalus is supposed to be in orbit within five or six hours, so we might be able to stall them long enough to get them to beam Sam and Leo on board."

They became aware of the now familiar sounds of transforming Autobots and the screech of wheels against worn dirt and pavement. Together, they spun around just in time to witness four different coloured vehicles speeding away from the abandoned yard and onto the old highway. Lorne charged after them, shouting in vain at them to stop, but they were specks on a gray line within just a handful of seconds.

He was still huffing a little when Teyla jogged up next to him. Shielding his eyes against the sun, the major looked at the rapidly disappearing robotic kidnappers and said, "Or not."

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Another Autobot might have enjoyed the silence on board his captor's ship, but Ironhide was not having fun. Nor was he enjoying the solitude of being in a prison with a smell so horrible he considered inflicting damage on his olfactory system in order to end the misery. Still, the ship was quiet, which was by far a better fate than it being too noisy. The last thing he could stand was an annoying buzz in his circuits.

More hours passed than he consciously remembered, though he checked now and then to find out that barely a day had passed since he had been brought here. He had no shortage of Energon, though a week or so of idleness might endanger his chances of escape. Naturally, he didn't plan on being here anywhere near that long. He would be fortunate to stand another ten five minute cycles. In his own fashion, he wondered the identity of the Cybertronian whom the hybrids had allegedly 'harvested', and continued to aimless shove aside the possibility that someone else had been captured online. If he had not been the only Autobot to be abducted by those ridiculous contraptions...

Ratchet, Skids, Mudflap, Trailbreaker. Of those four, perhaps Ratchet may have had the capacity to escape on his own. But the other three, two barely old enough to dodge the odd 'sparkling' remark and the third too careless and focussed on relaying high, low and even subspecial frequencies to act by himself. No, no, Trailbreaker would use those same skills of his to scan for and contact him once he was taken out of stasis. If he had been taken out.

Ironhide's emotional core broiled for a moment. Treating them equipment to be splayed out, carved into and drained of their very own sparks...Wraith aside, these half-bred creatures from the exhaust vents of the universe would not survive the next hour. Not a single one of them.

At last, the door to his would-be prison cell opened again and the same hybrid interrogator stepped through with a satisfied look on his face. Ironhide observed as he was trailed by two more of his kind, each bearing some strange contraption, and yet a third hybrid approached him with an energy-based projectile weapon in his hands. The weapons' specialist stared at them all with cold calculation.

"I am afraid the time has come for us to say our farewells," the hybrid scientist announced with an arrogant smirk. "I look forward to the sound you make as we extract your magnificent energy."

"You like sounds, do you?" Ironhide questioned, tightening his fists into literal sledgehammers. The hybrid's eyes flickered towards them, glinting with horror. "Allow me to entertain you."

With loud, violent snapping, the large black Autobot wrenched his arms free of the incapacitating blue beams and threw his weight forward. One of his feet came smashing down on top of a beam emitter. He destroyed the other three simply by knocking them on the ground, shaking off the tingling feeling in his servos as they hummed back to life. The armed hybrid near the back of their group began to fire on him frantically, but the weapon was the size of a toothpick comparatively, and the blue charges did little against his armoured plating. As the others dropped their strange contraptions and bolted for the door, Ironhide calmly lifted and armed his right cannon and blasted the floor out from under them. Only half of the two hybrids made it to their destination. This left his old friend, the interrogator.

"You will not escape this facility," the scientist told him, just as fearless as he had been during the Autobot's 'captivity'. "You may kill three, four, or forty of us and the results will end the same. We will see Earth in ruins! And we will harvest every last one of your lives to further empower our great empire!"

Ironhide pointed his cannon point blank in the creature's face. "It is a shame you chose those words to be amongst your last." He fired.

The large hangar door had been left wide open, exposing him to the even larger chamber beyond. Never being the greatest of navigators in foreign territory, the specialist made the quick decision to simply destroy anything that moved or looked threatening until he found an exit or an airlock. That was a sound plan. He sniffed the air, disregarding the unbearable odor and determined that there were no air currents in the vicinity. Being a vessel fit for the vacuum of space, this came as no surprise. With a sweep of his optics, he began to search for something suitable to blow up.

Unlike his personal 'quarters', this outside chamber was easily ten or fifteen times its size with notable ledges lined up in uneven increments vertically along the wall. There was a center pedestal possibly have his height and a circular platform around that. Around that platform was a pit, one that stretched so far down his sensors would not measure it at a glance. Rather than staring at the abyss, Ironhide decided to target the wall to his left, where many of the small, dart-like spacecraft were being stored. He locked onto the jagged, jutting structures with both cannons and began to meticulously and thoroughly destroy each and every one.

The blasts caused the entire ship to rumble under his feet. Massive chunks of strange half-organic hull cascaded down, bouncing off each other and breaking apart as they were swallowed by the pit. Ironhide did not stop, firing left, right, ninety-four degrees from his central position, and every other direction he spotted the ugly shapes of the alien vessels. He had figured these hybrids would have a few amongst them brave enough to come along and fight back, as the humans would. Sadly, he would have to simply make due with tearing the place apart around them.

By the time his cannons overheated and needed a brief cooling cycle, nothing remained of the large chamber but glowing scars and smoke. Through the hazy veil, he perceived something he overlooked before—a door on the opposite side of the center platform, identical to the one behind him. A surge of anger crept into the nodules of his logic system. With large strides, he kicked some of the debris off of the bridge as he crossed over to the other side. He made quick work of the door with his hands; it crumpled like a foil made of tin and the Autobot stormed into the hangar.

Proof of the dead hybrid scientist's claim lay in a heap in the middle of the barren floor. A jolt shot through his systems when he realized that the offline Cybertronian was dark, midnight blue with bright silver markings and he feared for an instant that he had been incorrect about Trailbreaker. The fear was soon eased when he stepped forward, and his gaze landed on the symbol etched into what used to be an arm: Decepticon. Ironhide spat some weak lubricating liquid on the ground, and turned his back on what remained of his enemy.

Ironhide. Respond.

Optimus? It was not possible. Their leader was on Earth, coordinating an appropriate attack on the Decepticons threatening the planet's destruction, not coming after him like he was some lost, defenseless sparkling. He sent a brief data burst to confirm both his location and his identity, and was both surprised and mildly outraged when he got his response.

It makes me happy to know you are alive, my friend. We are on our way to aid you in your escape.

Even in their own language, Prime knew how to choose his words carefully. To indicate the he needed rescuing would be a severe blow to his rank and ability. Now he would have to share his much anticipated annihilation of this miserable excuse for a spaceship.

You always had a terrible sense of timing, Optimus, he sent back, and because of the limited emotional rage there was no way his commander could detect the disappointment in the message. Are we in orbit, or am I still recharging?

The alien ship is on the surface of a planet not far from the Stargate. It will not belong before we reach you.

'Not long' was long enough to do a few more things. Rightfully destructive things. Ironhide began to charge his now-cooled cannons, preparing for an explosive storm.

Ironhide, I hope you aren't planning on destroying anything that may set off the ship's self-destruct mechanism.

His weapons whined as they powered down. Optimus ruined the fun in everything.

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TBC