Disclaimer: Hasbro owns Transformers, I own the story. Any and all additional recognizable culture references, locations, songs, et cet, belong to their rightful owners.
Chapter 35: A Case of Mistaken Identity
By the time Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Amethyst, Jess, and Skynet and co. slid sideways into a room at the end of their hall's fork, Sideswipe was cussing out Breaker Labs. They were cold and dry from the artificial wind and sore from trying to control themselves in the twists and turns. They all crashed into a mound against the end room's far wall before the doors slid shut, cutting off the air flow.
"Damnit!" Sideswipe snarled, transforming and crawling on his hands and knees out of the pile. "My tires are burned bald from braking so damn much! I swear, that last series of turns spelled out 'ha ha'! Oww, my feet and tires hurt!"
"They wouldn't if you had only controlled your inertia better," Sunstreaker growled, standing up and out of the heap, "Or hadn't insisted on doing doughnuts and showing off."
Amethyst let Jess and Skynet out of her before assuming robot mode.
"Where are we?" she asked.
Looking around, the party realized that they had showed up in a kennel of some sort. By human terms, it was a large kennel, but by Transformers, it was a small room lit only by one light, leaving a corner in dimmer light. There were six cages on the bottom row, six on top, on either side of the wall, totaling twenty four stall-sized cages. The party walked up and down the aisle, peeking into the dark cages. Four were empty, but if one squinted into the darkness, they saw the creatures with in the other cages.
Most of the creatures were too disgusting or odd for description. All one needed to say was that the failed hybrid of metal and flesh would have been put out of its misery by even the most tender animal lover. They didn't know it, but these were the test subjects for Moriguchi's Effort serum; organic creatures that had been forced to take Transformer compound injections in his quest for an artificial Effort army. Some twittered in paint, but most just stared curiously out at their unexpected visitors.
At the end of the aisle, Sideswipe announced something, motioning for the others to come over.
"Hey, I found Anne!"
The others bustled over. Sure enough, inside one of the top right cage, Anne-Scarletclaw in robotic feline form was sitting erect and motionlessly in her cage with her optics wide open and her ears perked up while her tail was curled around her. Her metal had been recently polished and frankly, she made a magnificent looking statue.
"Anne?" Amethyst called, "Are you okay, sweetie?"
"New designation: Scarletclaw," Skynet said, "Adopted upon mistaken alliance with Decepticons."
"Yeah, yeah, thanks for reminding me," Amethyst snarled. To the cage, "Okay, Scarletclaw, give me a sign that you're alive."
Scarletclaw hung her head, sighing in exhaustion. Suddenly energy zapped from the walls, making her yowl and jump a little in pain before resuming her perfect posture.
"The cage zaps her if she moves out of her position," Jess diagnosed. "Another sick game of Breaker Labs, no doubt. They probably want to make her some statue or furniture piece."
"With those crush and wind halls back there, I can believe that," Sideswipe agreed, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "Man, it sucks to be Scarlet," he added, looking into the cage, "I can't even stand still for one of Optimus' speeches, let alone sit in perfect posture."
"Stand back," Sunstreaker said, waving the others away as he stepped back.
Lifting his foot, Sunstreaker kicked at the cage once, twice, and a third time. Finally, the lock gave away and clinked to the floor as the door swung open. With a pitiful mew, Scarletclaw leaped from the cage and into Sunstreaker's arms. Sunstreaker's optics widened in surprise as the feline began to nuzzle him and purr happily.
"Woha!" he said, "Er, um… you're welcome."
"Aww, she likes you, Sunny!" Sideswipe chuckled. "Well, now that that's fixed, how do we get out of here without getting killed?"
Right on cue, all the other cage doors undid themselves and opened up. The animals inside began to growl. Sideswipe's face scowled then he dropped his hands from his hips as his shoulders slumped.
"Oh, come on!" he yelled.
Somewhere, some guys at a control board laughed.
The Transformer-animal hybrid experiments came from their cages, baring white fangs against black bodies and imperfect maws, all dripping with saliva while claws and other weapon appendages appeared. They had been docile in their cages, but they had already been taught to maim and kill strangers.
"Oh, this is just great," Jess growled, drawing Pointblank.
"Rockpunch, Suspicion, eject and defend," Skynet ordered, drawing his Cassetticons from the air near his shoulders and tossing them into the air to transform.
"Alright," Rockpunch said as he and Suspicion landed in robot mode, fists clenched and ready for fighting. "There's, let's see, two, four, nine. No, three, six, twenty one… Uh… two, three, six, eight, who do we appreciate?"
"There's eight of us, you uneducated jug head!" Suspicion yelled, "Eight of us! We have a stupid twin, a murder twin, a she-cop, a cat, our boss and his gun-monstrosity-wielding girlfriend, and you and me: that's eight. Learn to count, idiot!"
Everyone looked at Skynet and Jess, who awkwardly looked away.
"Well, I'm sorry, but I dropped out of school for a reason!" Rockpunch snapped.
"You couldn't even learn to count to the first double-digit number? What kind of a person are you?"
"Hey, some of the best people in history couldn't count that high!"
"Name three!"
"Jesus—"
"He could count, and religious figures don't count!"
"Oh, well, then, screw you!"
"You realize that just about any human on Earth would gut you for that comment, right, Rockpunch?" Sideswipe asked.
"So, the guy's dead, why should I care?" Rockpunch said, shrugging up at Sideswipe.
"Rockpunch, honey, please," Jess sighed, rubbing her forehead, "Just quite while you're ahead, please."
"Insulting that guy is like insulting Chuck Norris," Sideswipe said, "Some one's going to kill you if they hear you, and that someone will be the person you're insulting."
"Oh, come on, it's totally true!" Rockpunch argued, "The guy had, what, eight, nine dudes in his group?"
"Twelve," everyone yelled at him.
"Okay! Okay! No need to get testy with me!" Rockpunch said, throwing his hands up in the air. "Jeez, and I thought Transformers don't have a religion."
"Oh, that's why we have some one called Primus to cuss with?" Sunstreaker asked.
All through this cumbersome conversation (which means no offense to the religious and is purely for fun, please don't crucify/flame the author), the animal experiments had hunkered down, getting ready to spring an attack on the party while Skynet just kept getting more and more annoyed with the conversation. Finally, he flung his hands up.
"Enough!!" he shouted.
As one, all the animals were suddenly lifted off their feet and flung back into their cages. The cage doors were promptly slammed shut and locked by invisible hands. The beasts screeched and roared in anger, but they were harmless in their confines. The party stared in dumb surprise at the cages before slowly looking down at Skynet.
"I hate talking about politics and religion," Skynet snapped, uncharacteristically using a pronoun around strangers. "Now, let's find a way out of here, okay?"
At that moment, a strange thumping noise came from over head and a moment later, a part of the ceiling broke away, dropping down a couple of small forms onto the floor in front of the party. One of the people was, surprisingly enough, Sam, in his old blue collared shirt and dark jeans with black high-top sneakers and a blue visor, all making his fiery red hair all the more vibrant. The other person with him, interestingly enough, was a young girl.
She appeared anywhere from sixteen to eighteen years old and as thin as a twig. Her long, thin, pale limbs were dressed in a turquoise and white cheerleader uniform with long white sleeves, but leaving her legs bare under a short skirt. Her knee-high boots were black and a triangular pack was on her back, nestled between two long, pig tails of turquoise and white hair bound by metallic silver ribbon. Her large, innocent blue eyes looked around curiously as she lied on her back, staring at her surroundings.
Sam sat up, making himself seen first.
"Oww-wee!" he whooped, rubbing his head, "Give a guy a break, will ya? Creepy dark salt mines, harassing metal claws, and now a knock on the head! What—"He looked up, finally seeing the party. "Are you doing here?" he finished, changing his original sentence.
"What are you doing here!?" Sideswipe asked.
"Skyfire and MJ got nervous, so they sent Alias and me down here," Sam said, standing up as he jerked a thumb at the new girl.
"That's Alias' human form?" Amethyst asked as Sam helped the girl to her feet.
"Yeah, she needed to shrink down to sneak in through the air vents," Sam explained.
"Hello," she squeaked.
"Cute," Jess said in approval.
Scarletclaw mewed as she nuzzled Sunstreaker. Sunstreaker stroked her head and back comfortingly in reply.
"Come on, guys," he said, "We gotta find the other Autobots and find our way out of here."
"What about the Decepticons?" Rockpunch asked. "Aren't you going to help them, too?"
"No way," Sunstreaker snarled. "They can all rot for all I care!"
"But Breaker Laboratories is the enemy of Autobots and Decepticons alike," Suspicion pointed out. "It would be wise to team up and defeat the Laboratories before they do serious damage to the Transformer kind."
"Speedy here's got a point," Sam agreed, "Let's team up, a rare dynamic duo or—what ever, ya know? Let's do it!"
"I don't—"Sunstreaker began.
"Who says team up, raise their hand," Sam said quickly as his own hand shot up.
Everyone but Sunstreaker raised their hand (or paw, in Scarletclaw's case).
"Sideswipe!" Sunstreaker exclaimed.
"What?" Sideswipe asked. "Seriously, bro, those claw things touched me very inappropriately and I don't feel like having to run for my life while another wall rushes in to give me a big, loving hug. If they're not an ally, at least think of it as one-less baddie to worry about."
To this, Sunstreaker sighed and rolled his optics, but continued to pet Scarletclaw as he glared at Sideswipe and said, "Fine! But I'm warning you: One wrong move and they're road kill!"
"What ever you say, cat nip man," Sideswipe snickered.
- - - -
Somewhere else, another dull white room waited. The only thing that would set this apart from others was a forest of numerous cables and wires hanging from the ceiling and a large TV screen embedded into the wall opposite the doors. The doors slid open with a hydraulic hiss, letting in a torrent of violent winds that dragged with them one very unfortunate Mustang-like machine. The car's tires screamed and smoked as it skid across the floor, sliding sideways into the wall with a violent crash of metal and glass. The car's headlights dimmed out as its engine died in an apparent state of unconsciousness. Outside, a tank suddenly took to the air as a jet-robot, clearing the last few feet of space before he flung himself into the room, rolling as the doors slid shut once more.
Cold Blitzwing transformed and landed in a kneeling position in the middle of the floor, but he was given no rest. The dangling cables suddenly reared up, and, like the tentacles of some unseen octopus, dove for Blitzwing. Blitzwing's cannons spun around in either direction, instantly freezing the cables in a rush of ice. Before the cables were given time to warm up and thaw the ice, Blitzwing swung his arms out, shattering the frozen cables and allowing them to rain to the floor. Blitzwing stood in the new clearance space in the room as the frozen ropes of rubber and metal thawed around him. When no other booby trap cables dared come at him again, he went over to the Mustang and knelt again.
A quick tap to the roof, side, and hood gave Blitzwing the desired reaction of reverting Tiestowing to his robot form. Blitzwing propped the unconscious boy up and began to examine his vital signs. The large TV screen over head flicked on, revealing the face of an amused Moriguchi.
"Ah, so the little patient has a visitor already, does he?" Moriguchi inquired. It was a lame opening statement, but Cold Blitzwing merely stared up at the screen as Moriguchi went on, "You know, you were supposed to kill the Twins and get smashed in that wall, but I guess not all machines can be programmed perfectly, can they? Well, here's what's supposed to happen to Josh, AKA: Tiestowing, here: He was supposed to be locked in here, get hooked up, and give us so many insights on the internal workings of a live Autobot Effort. But you destroyed half the cables, so I guess we're just going to activate the crusher now and leave it at that. But here's a tip that can help you escape: One is that the roof is very delicate. Good luck, Mr. Blitzwing."
The TV flicked off again just as a crunching, whirring noise started behind Blitzwing. Turning, Blitzwing saw that the walls were beginning to slowly inch towards each other. It was slow, but it was obvious that time was short. Ice Blitzwing's calm, neutral exterior warped around, becoming Hot Head. He shouted an Earthling cuss that started with F as loud as he could. He turned back to Tiestowing as he began to set Tiestowing back in place, fixing minor damages and the like.
"What is it with these Breaker Laboratory guys and trying to crush me?" he demanded. "I'm a Decepticon, I do the crushing, not these insects! All I wanted was to purge the world of weaklings through massive genocide. Is that too much to ask? Come on, people south of the border everywhere do it all the time!"
Hot Head's face warped and became Random, who went on, "But then again, everybody always says that south of the border is the worst place, and yet, it's so much fun! Like Mexico!"
Cold replaced Random and commented, "But it is all a matter of opinion as to what one calls 'fun'. For example…"
Cold became replaced by Hot Head as he threw the cables aside and took Tiestowing in his arms, bridal style.
"I like ripping the Spark chambers out of squealing Autobots!" Hot Head cheered.
Blitzwing stood and aimed his shoulder cannons to the ceiling as Random took control.
"I like dancing to the cha-cha!" he sang, shaking his hips a little.
Cold took over and smirked as he blasted the ceiling with ice.
"And I like control," he finished.
The unseen source of light in the room flashed and flickered before going out and sparks rained from the ceiling as a blizzard of ice daggers cut open the ceiling. Energy flew from the walls and was attracted to the robots. Blitzwing did not even acknowledge the electrocution, but Tiestowing shuddered in his arms as he absorbed the weird energy.
The walls began to brush the tips of Blitzwing's wings as a bright flare of light flashed up from Tiestowing's lights. Tiestowing's optics snapped open, revealing only briefly a blue orb of light before a whirlpool of red swarmed in from the edges, turning his optics Decepticon red. A color change came over his paint job as well, turning his heavenly silver into deadly black and his black accents into hansom midnight blue. The reborn Tiestowing sat up with a gasp as Blitzwing blasted through the hole in the ceiling.
Moriguchi had not been lying about the ceiling being weak; it had given away easily and emitted the two fliers into a chamber far different than any they had ever seen before.
It was enormous; as large as the cavern that had been the building sight of the Reborn Nemesis. In contrast to the other cavern, though, the walls were smooth and metal covered, lined with numerous elevators, ladders, and cat walks that had path ways crossing through the open air overhead. If one had grown up watching any sort of manga-style fighting cartoon, they would have a strange sense of de' ja' vu at seeing the enormous cavern, which, in truth, appeared to be some sort of arena. On the far end, though, stood three enormous, colossal humanoid machines colored black and dark grey, with body castings of relation to Omega Supreme. They were big enough to make even Skyfire and the largest of combiner teams look like a midget. Their size alone, coupled with the shadows that the machines stood in, were enough to make the Transformers wary.
Below them, the hole they had created escaping their death trap closed up as the crushing walls below came together, leaving a large pot hole where the damaged floor was. In the shadows high over head, four TV screens facing outward in a cube, much like the TV's one sees at basketball games, flicked on, showing Moriguchi's scarred face once more.
"Well, done, Blitzwing!" Moriguchi complimented, his voice echoing off the distant walls. "And congratulations on your new side kick. Now, all you have to do is just sit tight and wait for the others to come, and hopefully you won't be battling those enormous things over there all by yourself!"
The TV screens flicked off, leaving Blitzwing and Tiestowing to hover in the near darkness of the dim, enormous arena. Blitzwing floated down and landed, setting Tiestowing down on the floor.
"Side kick?" Blitzwing muttered. "What is the human talking about?"
"Perhaps he talks of me, brother" Tiestowing said in a thick Russian accent.
Blitzwing snapped his head around to stare at the younger Effort in shock. For a moment, he didn't know what to do. The look on his face resembled that which is given when a confusing joke is told.
"Mech, what is your name, rank, purpose, and relation to me?" Cold Blitzwing inquired.
"I am Tiestowing," Tiestowing replied, pronouncing his name as "test-o-ving". "I am the human hybrid son, or Effort, of Autobot Jazz, created as a faked peace gift by Breaker Laboratories. I am an avian soldier and I fight when and where you fight, big brother Blitzwing."
Blitzwing's face had begun to fall in dumb surprise at Tiestowing's answer, but now he smiled warmly at the last bit and the brain washed lad went on.
"I apologize for not realizing this sooner, but you are good for me. You are skilled in both ground and avian maneuvering and are strong and intelligent. Benjamin studied under you in the German military school, so you must be worth something."
Amazing, Blitzwing thought. The Breaker Laboratories chamber must have reprogrammed him somehow as a sort of sick joke or in another one of their random experiments. Now Tiestowing thinks he is my brother!
Well, so we thought the same of him, Hot Head grunted. So what's the problem? Just accept him!
Random Blitzwing took control of the body and wrapped an arm around Tiestowing's black and dark blue shoulders with a triumphant whoop.
"Woo hoo!" he cheered. "I have a little brother!"
- - - -
"Huh, that's interesting…"
Moriguchi turned away from the security footage screen showing the mushy scene between the two mechs and looked at the man that had spoken. The man was sitting at one of the computer terminals that were keeping an eye on the mechs' internal processes, and currently the man was looking at Tiestowing's body.
"What's interesting?" Moriguchi asked.
"The data pack we down loaded into Tiestowing made him a mech of Russian inclination and made him think that he was related to Blitzwing."
"Of course, you idiot; that data pack is meant to reprogram future artificial Effort soldiers,"
Moriguchi sighed and changed the subject. "How is our newest recruit going in the way of the energon bath?"
"He is getting dried off and sent here now."
"Time until he is ready?"
"One hour."
"Good. Have him equipped and ready for battle. I can't wait to see what his friends think of Benjamin's make over…"