Disclaimer: Hasbro owns Transformers. I own the story and (almost) everything in it.
Chapter 21: And… Action!
Josh was eating the army-issue meals the Nazis had given him to survive while the Efforts and Transformers drank energon for breakfast when they heard jet engines scream as they flew by. Everyone looked up as the windows of the warehouse shook in their settings, rattling to the point of threatening to shatter. Things began shaking where they were. Balthazar was sitting back in a chair, his feet propped up on a table as he read a book about Hitler. Without taking his eyes off his book, he reached out and set a single finger on his thermos of energon set on a stack of crates beside him, stopping it from falling off.
When the roar of jets began to fade out, Balthazar sighed and rolled his eyes, "Must they always fly in such huge flocks this close to the ground?"
"It does wonders in the way of terror tactics, sir," Willium replied.
The double doors suddenly blew open and a black and purple and black and indigo pair of jets flew in. They went for the ceiling before spinning around and transforming into their robot forms, landing in the open expanse of the warehouse floor in a most dramatic and cool fashion. The Nazis appeared impressed and some stumbled away in shock from the Seekers. Balthazar rolled his eyes.
"Must you go through the theatre act tricks?" he sighed, shaking his head as he slammed his book shut and stood.
"Hey, we're good at it!" Skywarp said, shrugging cockily.
Thundercracker's cock pit opened up and out of it came Cartwheel. She climbed up to sit on his shoulder and he patted her head gently with one of his massive fingers. A puff of black smoke formed near the other prisoners and Shadowleap formed there with a dumb founded Benjamin. The Efforts and two humans instantly began to yell at him.
"Benjamin! What are you doing here?" Josh exclaimed.
"Kick their asses! Kick their asses!" Anne yelled.
"Go get help!" Becky ordered.
"Go get Pointblank from the blue haired dude and shoot everyone! Even me!" Jess yelled.
"What?" Benjamin asked, looking around as he scanned the scene.
"You're slow," Cartwheel called down.
"Watch out!!!" the prisoners all yelled at him.
Benjamin turned and just barely jumped out of the way of Frenzy when he tried sneaking up behind Benjamin to handcuff him.
"Alright, some action!" Rumble whooped, jumping down from his crate.
Benjamin responded by spinning around with amazing speed and kicking him in the face with the heel of his foot. Rumble flopped down, dazed, as energon leaked from his nose. Ravage snarled, out raged that a fellow Cassetticon of Soundwave had been harmed, and pounced for Benjamin. Benjamin dropped down on his back and kicked at Ravage's belly when it was exposed to him, flinging him back into the air and crash-landing into Frenzy, downing the two. Laserbeak shook his head and rolled his optics, covering his head with a wing. Buzzsaw looked like he was suppressing snickers.
"Ahem?" Smartmouth inquired as she and Ferrofluid approached Benjamin. "But when your captors bring you to their hide out, we expect you to lie down and die."
"Yeah, yeah, hi, I'm Benjamin," Benjamin replied.
"Benjamin?" Willium asked.
Benjamin froze, turning around to face the blonde German. His eyes widened and his shoulders drooped upon seeing Willium.
"Professor Walter!?" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here!?"
"Working," Willium replied, gesturing to Balthazar as he approached them.
Benjamin looked around at the scene and spotted the swastika on Willium's coat arm. His eyes narrowed as he backed up from him, fists clenched.
"I knew that you were up to something fishy," he hissed.
"You know this freak?" Anne asked.
"You know this boy?" Balthazar asked Willium.
"He's the professor I told you about, the tactician who quotes Blitzwing?" Benjamin reminded.
"He's one of my best students," Willium said proudly. "A bit slow and a stickler for rules, not to mention he begins muttering out his thoughts when they're fast, but a clever lad, none the less."
"Ah, that's nice," Balthazar said, nodding. Then, without changing his attitude, he added, "Cuff him."
Smartmouth jumped forward eagerly, wanting some action. Benjamin dropped down and swung a leg out to knock Smartmouth's feet out from under her. Smartmouth, in stead, jumped up high in the air. She hunched her shoulders strangely and twin white laser shots leaped from the air around her shoulders and at Benjamin, knocking her higher into the air. Both landed in fizzing hot spots on either side of Benjamin. He looked from one to the other and back up at Smartmouth as she landed, light-footed, on top of the blue and white Transport City taxi cab still parked near by.
"Woha!" he exclaimed.
Balthazar sighed and rolled his eyes, then drew his pistol and pointed it at Benjamin. The dark shadows of his angry personality were present on his face.
"Are you done?" he growled stiffly. "Good; allow yourself to be handcuffed…"
He swung his gun around to point at the prisoners.
"Or your friends will be painted with the blood of one of their own from a headshot."
"Josh, duck your head," Max instructed. "It's a big target."
The other prisoners started kicking him.
It was at that moment when a certain high-pitched Transformer's voice spoke from a radio set on a table in the Nazi's area.
"Starscream to General Balthazar; as ordered by the Lord Megatron, get your pathetic fleshling aft over to Dock 37 with all the Efforts and the prisoners. It's on the south eastern end of the city. Be there by one or you're in trouble you pathetic hairless squirrel."
"Is it me, or does he seem to be a bigger idiot than usual lately?" Shadowleap inquired.
"It's not you," Smartmouth replied. "He's been nutty with all the fighting lately."
"As crazy as me?" Balthazar said in the high-pitched voice marking his "craziest" side.
"If he is, I'm killing him," Smartmouth stated.
Balthazar closed his eyes and shook his head briefly, mentally struggling to grab control of his own body again.
"Load the prisoners in the truck," he instructed, placing one hand to his head while the other gestured to one of the swastika-branded army trucks. "We will bring the two tanks and two jeeps and Decepticon Mash with us. Come, come!"
The prisoners were un-handcuffed and led to the truck by several of Balthazar's men while Skywarp and Thundercracker flew from the warehouse with their Efforts in side their jet forms. Smartmouth, Ferrofluid, and Skynet all mutely got into the black and yellow jeep that was apparently Mash. Skynet made sure to keep a hold on the duffle bag with Jess' Pointblank inside. Benjamin, Josh, Max, Becky, Anne, and Jess and all got into the back of the designated army truck with a canvas cover on its back. Four Nazi guards joined them in the back and Willium drove with Balthazar in shot gun. A few minutes later the caravan started off through the ruined streets of Transport City with a tank leading the way, followed by a jeep, the truck, another jeep, and the last tank, with Mash driving around them.
As they drove, Benjamin told his friends about everything Shadowleap had told him. Everyone was just as awe-struck as he was about hearing the story.
"Moriguchi did what to the poor girl??" Jess exclaimed. "Oh he is so dead!"
"That explains the attitude," Anne commented, "But to that energon thing; so that means that now that we've ingested energon, we might be developing powers?"
"I think I may be able to detect lies now," Becky said. "When Rumble and Frenzy were having their bragging competition before breakfast, my head kept buzzing off the block."
"Let's test that," Anne said. "Max, say something about your self."
"I'm hot!" Max declared.
Becky waited a moment before she shook her head slowly, "Uh, no, that's not a lie, actually."
"Say that you're smart!" Anne ordered.
"I am a genius," Max said proudly.
"No buzz, oh, Primus, I hope that this thing is just broken…"
"You're vain," Jess told Max.
"I'm related to Sunstreaker," Max replied.
Becky sat up and exclaimed, "Hey! I felt it! He's lying!"
"Oh, damnit," Max cursed. "Sunstreaker's really cool, too."
"Anyone else developing powers we can use?" Jess asked. "Like invisibility or something?"
No one was.
"Um, so when you talk about this 'Changing' thing," Max ventured. "Does that actually and literally mean that the Effort can go from being human to being a Transformer?"
"Well, technically," Anne corrected. "The Effort was never human in the first place; just possessing human bodies. So, when they do this 'Change' thing they're actually just becoming an Effort in Transformer form."
"Thank you Captain Killjoy," Josh said, rolling his eyes, "For ruining the awesomeness of shape shifting."
"How do we do it?" Max asked. "I wanna go killer robot and kick some aft!"
"Well," Benjamin replied. "According to Shadowleap, an Effort can access their robot form by stabbing their Spark chamber, right by their heart, with something metal. It can be a bullet or something sharp and metal. Or they can soak in energon, but that's longer and more painful. The stabbing or shot thing is instant."
"Cool, hey, Nazi man, shoot me," Max told the nearest guard to him.
The mentioned guard reared his head back in surprise and exchanged looks with his fellow guards, who had raised their eye brows in amusement. Two looked at each other and one shrugged.
"Do not shoot the yellow-haired boy," Balthazar spoke up without looking back. "We can not kill him just yet."
"Come on!" Max bugged, "You know you wanna! Come on. Come on. Come oooon; you know you wanna. Come on, who's a good Nazi? Who's a good Nazi? Who's a good monster of death and heartlessness? Come on, who's a good—"
At that moment, a cruiser fell from the sky and crashed into a near by building, making the entire caravan slammed on its brakes. Mash's doors opened and Smartmouth, Skynet, and Ferrofluid got out, staring at the smoking warehouse. Thundercracker and Skywarp flew by over head, shooting into the smoking warehouse. Their fire was returned with a single, yellow-tinged laser blast from the smoke. The laser blast clipped Skywarp in the wing tip and he spun away, crashing into Thundercracker and sending both Seekers smashing into a building across the street. A yellow streak bounded out of the smoking building, shooting at the leading tank and blowing it up before kicking the first jeep in the caravan into the buildings before standing over the prisoner truck.
It was Sunstreaker, looking like a demon of hell with his paint scraped and his body dented. But the worst of his injuries… Okay, this author is going to put this to the reader as bluntly as possible: His right eye was optic gone. And it was very messy.
"I'm going to kill you all!!" he roared, his voice echoing out over the city.
Everyone and this means everyone, humans, Efforts, Nazis, Nazi Efforts, and Nazi Effort's second-in-command, screamed in panic at Sunstreaker's energon-bloody face and missing optic. Willium slammed on the gas with the truck in reverse, crashing into the jeep behind them and stalling the truck. The last surviving tank's soldiers were trying to figure out what the screaming was about and its port hole on top opened up as a soldier came out to see what the matter was. Upon seeing Sunstreaker, the scout dropped right back into the tank. They decided to pretend they were stalled and couldn't fight.
"Is he really going to kill us all?" Becky whimpered, sitting on Josh's lap and hugging him.
"Oh, nah, of course not," Josh said, suddenly feeling braver with Becky on his lap. "You know Sunstreaker; all bark no bite."
Sunstreaker shot at the truck, missed, and blew a hole in the ground deep enough to reach through the ten feet of reinforced concrete and metal to reach the water below.
"Most of the time," Josh squeaked, hugging Becky close to him.
"Woha, woha, Sunstreaker, hold up!" Sideswipe exclaimed, appearing beside Sunstreaker.
He, too, was dented and banged up from the crash, but the worst he had was some energon leaking from his audio receptors. Now he turned and yanked the canvas back off of the stalled army truck as he continued speaking, trying to keep Sunstreaker still.
"Let's get that nasty wound of yours cleaned up, yeah? There you go," he said, tying a crude tourniquet around Sunstreaker's missing optic area, covering up the metal horror. "There, all patched up. And you look rather dashing, if I do say so myself!"
Sunstreaker's remaining optic narrowed in hatred as he tucked the nozzle of his gun up under Sideswipe's chin.
"Or not," Sideswipe said quietly. "It's all opinion, you know, uh… Hey! It's the kids!" he suddenly exclaimed, seeing the prisoners. "Hey, Prowl! We found Becky, she's over here!"
Prowl came out of the destroyed warehouse, coughing and stumbling with energon leaking from wounds on his neck and sides. Upon hearing Becky's name, he perked up and half-stumbled over to the army truck. The haunted look in his optics finally faded out when he saw Becky. He started reaching out to pick her up.
"Becky…" he said softly.
At that moment, an orange and white streak flew from the sky and double-foot kicked Prowl in the chest, flattening it considerably as it sent him flying up the street to land, bouncing and skidding on his back. The orange and white streak took back up skyward to show that it was a slim Seeker femme.
"Guys!?" she yelled at Mash and the Decepticon Efforts. Apparently, something like this had happened before.
"This is entertaining, Solarflare," Smartmouth chuckled.
"I'm not fighting Sunstreaker!" Mash snorted.
As if to show Solarflare why, Sunstreaker suddenly appeared behind her and karate-chopped her back, making her engines chug and stall as she dropped to the ground with a small cry.
"Bro!" Sideswipe exclaimed. "Don't hit a girl!"
In payment for his chivalry, Solarflare stood up, turned around, and punched him in the face.
"Kick her aft," the red Lambo twin said before falling on the ground unconscious.
Prowl, by now, had started sitting up, rubbing his head where he had hit it. He looked up and gasped as Solarflare pounced on him. Sunstreaker was running after her, his optic flaring a strange, creepy blue while in the midst of a battle rage brought on by a bad day. Prowl kicked up at Solarflare, catching her on her abdomen and sending her flying over his head to land in a tumble beyond him.
"Usually, I like femmes," Sunstreaker said, aiming his gun at the Seeker. "But today, I'm making exceptions."
A black metal hand with yellow accents fell on his shoulder and spun him around. Mash head butted Sunstreaker in the head and the yellow Autobot stumbled back, shaking his head in surprise.
"Hurt her again and I'll murder you," Mash growled.
A flap of metal wings sounded out and black and dark orchid mech with the antennae and wings of a moth landed beside Solarflare, helping her stand. The Decepticon symbol was displayed largely on his large wings.
"Solarflare…" he said softly.
"I'm fine, Flickword, let's just kick some aft."
"Banzai!!"
At the last shout, Sideswipe landed a flying foot to the shoulder blades of Flickword. His recovery time was remarkable.
"Oh, now that's rude!" Solarflare snarled, guns flaring as she turned on Sideswipe.
"Hey, you're fight's with me, femme!" Prowl growled, standing up.
Thus their fight began; Mash versus Sunstreaker, Prowl versus Solarflare, and Sideswipe versus Flickword.
But going back to the Efforts and approximately ten minutes ago, just as Prowl was getting his aft kicked clear up the street…
Benjamin suddenly kicked at one guard and punched out another. Becky snatched the gun from the guard near her and swung it into the face of the same guard and Anne rabbit punched the guard beside her several times before he slumped over unconscious. Max looked at his fist, to the remaining guard sitting by him, and back again, then laughed and waved his hand dismissively at him.
"Yeah, right!" he laughed.
Fortunately, Jess took out the guard for him by standing up and kicking him twice across the face. Balthazar and Willium watched it all happen in less than a minute and a half and appeared to be fairly impressed.
"Wow," Balthazar stated.
"Mmhmm," Willium agreed, nodding.
"Later!" Max suddenly whooped, jumping from the truck.
His fellow Autobot Efforts also leaped from the truck, making a break for it, but were stopped when Ferrofluid, Smartmouth, and Skynet moved into their way. Smartmouth reached into her pocket, drawing out a small stack of cassettes and a hand-held computer that she tossed up into the air. When they landed, they had transformed into Ravage, Laserbeak, Frenzy, and Rumble. Buzzsaw promptly flew off to check on the Decepticon Seekers Thundercracker and Skywarp.
"Oh you have got to be kidding," Max muttered.
"Go back, or we aren't," Smartmouth stated.
Balthazar and Willium got out of their truck to watch the face off.
"Should we assist them, sir?" Willium inquired.
"Nein," Balthazar replied, shaking his head. "Let us see how well the Autobots have trained their children to fight."
"Well then," Benjamin said to the Decepticon Efforts, clenching his fists. "Then it's time for us to go on the hostile front."
"Let's do it!" Frenzy whooped, charging at Becky.
Then their fight began.