XL-2M99 and Bulkhead both find themselves inspecting a decepticon mine with unnaturally skiddish vehicon inhabitants.
AN- Chapter title is in reference to Miko's line "Bad things happen to bots when I leave their side".
She may not be all that wrong.
Two mechs were on the ground. One crumpled on the floor of an airborne warship, one crouched on the dirt of a rainforest.
Energon lay in little puddles by one. Thick, unhappy terror swarmed the other.
A groundbridge had already arrived for one and all help had been shoved aside from those in control of it.
A separate bridge was now arriving for the other and he was comforted to let the mechs who ran out of it support him through the vortex.
Within the autobot base, Wheeljack was storming away from a medical bay with enough anger to keep his worry at bay. Ratchet kept his patient on the berth while Bumblebee and Breakdown waited nearby. Arcee trailed after Knock Out, who had followed the white wrecker out of the base.
For the mech aboard the warship, no such comfort had arrived.
Earlier
It hadn't been the first time Bulkhead had scouted at this mine.
They had yet to make a strike on it; that was his decision. While Knock Out had helped them find this mine, Bulkhead wanted to watch it a little longer before attacking.
Something here really rubbed him the wrong way.
The mine was a pretty small operation. A lot of vehicons, but not all that much energon so far. It was placed inside a large set of winding tunnels and tall caverns. The nearest human city was twenty miles away. There didn't seem to be any human presence in his jungle.
But it seemed like something was here.
The vehicons were on edge. They moved around in teams. Miners stuck with fighting class. The talking done seemed to carry an edge of hidden panic; it was rushed and all too casual and seemed as though it was just a way to cover unease under the guise of normalcy.
"This does seem promising."
XL-2M99 set the datapad aside and thanked his visitor. "You said one of your friends went missing there?"
The flyer nodded. "Yeah," he replied, "XL-44L4."
The medic didn't recognize the name personally, but he nodded regardless.
"My friend XL-8K9C was last seen at that mine." The former miner clenched his fists beneath the desk. "While there have been disappearances at different mines, it seems SA:9 holds promise."
The visiting vehicon pointed behind himself.
"Do you want me to go grab a squad? Tear the place apart?"
XL-2M99 shook his head.
"No," he said, "Lord Megatron will not want to clear an entire squadron for a job he has not yet considered important."
"Well," XL-3T09 grinned with the way he moved his blank head and brightened his red strip of optic. "You want me to go tear the place apart?"
The medic couldn't really find it in himself to be surprised.
That said, he didn't want to put his newest companion in danger.
"I want to do it."
The 'grin' left XL-3T09's expression.
"You? You don't even have any weapons equipped."
"That may be so," XL-2M99 conceded, "But I have made up my mind. I was a miner for every stellar cycle the Nemesis has floated above this planet. I know how to inspect a mining operation for our missing comrades."
There was a moment before the flyer seemed to concede this.
"Fine. I don't even like being underground."
This time it was XL-2M99 who tried to convey a smile with a face that had no mouth.
Bulkhead didn't remember drones being so...
Well. This was the sort of fear and anxiety provoking camaraderie that normal mechs would show.
He wondered how it would effect his combat abilities if he started considering drones like normal mechs.
He wondered what had them all so scared.
So the last few Earth cycles he'd been sent on a job, he'd come here. Whatever was going on, he'd find out. And if nothing was, then the whole gang would come here to raid the joint.
Extra energon sure would be nice. Ever since Jackie had come to stick around and those other two had joined the base, it felt like he was always running on half a tank. Not that Bulkhead wanted his buddy to leave, far from it. It was nice to have Wheeljack around for so long; seemed like he normally would run by now.
Before they got that extra fuel though...
He scooted closer over the foliage and looked at the cave entrance. Two vehicons were standing there, talking closely to each other too quietly for him to overhear.
A green light erupted near the two of them and Bulkhead narrowed his optics at it. Was it time for shift change already?
Only two vehicons came out; a flyer with guns hot and another miner class with a red and white glyph painted on his shoulder. The newcomers shared a muted conversation with the guards and then the miner moved into the cave entrance while the other three remained outside.
Bulkhead crawled away from that entrance and slid deeper into the rainforest. He'd found a different entrance a few cycles before; while the cons had six entrances staked out, the wrecker had found at least two that weren't guarded.
He slipped inside the narrow tunnel as best he could when it was small and he was a bigger mech.
Somehow, even with his size and aptitude for being klutzy, he made it to one of the central caverns and watched it without notice.
If he'd already found paths they hadn't, Bulkhead had to wonder if any others had too. Perhaps there were more insecticons, hiding out among these subterranean jungle tunnels, preying on the energon dug up here. An even more superstitious part of him thought of Earth's various myths and monsters, buried under the jungle away from any humans. He shook the thoughts away. He'd been spending too much time watching movies with Miko.
Minutes ticked by. Though he often seemed impatient, Bulkhead was trained in tracking and that required a quiet touch; he knew how to hold still for hours.
It was around 1400 in this timezone before it happened.
First came a brush of wind. Bulkhead lost balance and righted himself.
Sure, faded yellow sunlight shone down the tunnel from the entrance, but such a direct blast of wind?
It felt less natural and more like someone had ran by.
No one was in sight.
Bulkhead frowned and returned to looking out into the cavern from his cover behind a large rock. One miner was heading near, seemingly inspecting the walls. That painted symbol from the miner outside was stark against his purple paint. He wondered what it meant; he'd never seen any vehicon that broke the standard purple look. Kinda figured it was a requirement to look the same. In truth, he was glad for it; it made it easier to kill en masse when the opponent always looked the same and had no face to show pain.
Speaking of faces- the miner glanced at the small tunnel where sunlight was filtering from. Just like the color on his shoulder, the faceplate was unique too; ruined, in truth.
A pang of memory struck him but he did not know why.
The wrecker hunkered down further behind his cover.
In a minute, the miner would probably move on from his inspection. Then he could relax his tensed joints and go back to his own espionage.
That didn't happen though. Instead the vehicon flinched, the undamaged part of his visor going bright in shock. One servo shot up for his neck and Bulkhead's optics followed but then-
The vehicon was gone. The wind had brushed him off balance again and then the miner seemed to vanish.
Bulkhead's optics went wide.
What?
A noise came from the tunnel floor behind him. The wrecker spun around.
The same miner was struggling on the ground, servos tugging at something green on his neck. But Bulkhead wasn't interested in him; his focus was on the vehicon above him.
It should have looked normal. But the movements were wrong. Short canisters were stuck in its thick arms; Bulkhead saw red slosh inside them, seemingly lowering as the liquid was administered to the standing vehicon.
What was more concerning was how it was staring at him.
Its visor was deadly gray.
That. That was not a living con.
But it was moving, holding the struggling miner down, looking straight at him, and then-
The movement seemed fast enough to be teleportation.
It was gone.
Bulkhead stared at the empty tunnel for a few clicks in shock.
Then his finger was at the side of his head and he tried to comm as stealthily as he could.
"Hey, uh...base?"
Static. Being underground was interfering with his comms.
Well, he could retreat.
The wrecker looked at the dragged dust the two vehicons had disrupted.
Or he could settle whatever disturbing thing this was himself as best he could. Bulkhead prepped his guns.
Yeah. That sounded more his style.
The thing he'd seen may have been quick, but it was no ghost; it left a trail behind. And if there was a trail, he could follow it. Bulkhead smirked and started off.
The miner being dragged was big enough that the earth beneath it had been upheaved. The wrecker followed the disrupted ground as it carved a path down another small tunnel. He was forced to transform just to fit, but as this tunnel wound around, his headlights helped him see which route to take at every fork. Hopefully there'd be a better way out of here. One that he preferably could walk out of, rather than drive over the lumps and bumps.
At this point, he was getting farther and farther from the mine. It made him uneasy. What else had its base of operations in this set of caves? Something that looked like a vehicon, apparently stole vehicons, but wasn't one at all.
The narrow tunnel was tall enough for him to stand easily, but still too skinny for him to fit inside of. Bulkhead continued to drive, listening to his own engine echo. It was a bit disconcerting.
Finally, the cave widened out. The wrecker folded up into root mode and looked around with the light of his guns. Tunnels broke apart and slid in different directions like a giant sized anthill; a catacombs, really. A catacombs that the decepticons apparently shared unknowingly.
The trail dragged down one tunnel proceeding upwards.
"Base?" he tried again. Still no response. Bulkhead shrugged and continued on cautiously.
Just as his driving had echoed in these tunnels earlier, the noises from further down the tube began to ring his way. Sounds of machinery working, it seemed like. The wrecker grew even more cautious.
The volume increased the closer he got. A voice, unrecognized. The sound of a radio issuing orders or something. What sounded like winches or cranes moving up and down.
It came from another cavern, much like the mines were built in. But this grotto was smaller than those. The construction in it seemed temporary rather than pseudo-permanent. And it seemed very human as well.
On the other side of the room, Bulkhead thought he saw one of the big metal roll-up doors humans used for warehouses. Was there sun on the other side? So close to this odd base of operations?
That hardly seemed hidden.
But the wrecker remembered how thick the foliage and rocks were out there; so many cave entrances went unnoticed. What was one more, with the door and everything?
The dead opticed vehicon was motionless by a crane. Human trucks were attached to a trailer bed where the living vehicon was strapped down. This time, Bulkhead could see more details; like the green stuck in the drone's neck and how it was joined by more green shards down the flank of his body.
Even without the fumes rising around it, he recognized the stuff. Bulkhead tensed up; he'd thought he'd gotten rid of the Tox-En on this world. But it was still here, and currently was keeping another cybertronian incapacitated.
Time again, humans proved to let their tenacity and creativity make up for what they lacked in size and strength.
The standing vehicon jolted; its head shot up at the green visitor who stood in the entrance. Those capsules of red and the green weapon in its servo all seemed to betray that it was dead; that the Tox-En couldn't affect it anymore.
The lightless visor only hammered in that fact.
Before the thing could move at that ridiculous speed again, Bulkhead shot it. And he shot again. Plasma tore over the miner on the trailer and hit the shielding of the standing vehicon. Then cut through the shielding.
He only stopped shooting when he saw it crumple unflinchingly to the ground. Reanimated dead or not, it was slagging melted; nothing was gonna keep walking with the holes he'd put through it.
The doors of one of the trucks opened quickly. Bulkhead saw the little red laser pointer of a human weapon land on his chassis. He really didn't want to know what those guns had been outfitted with (not after facing something with such speed and utilized Tox-En). The wrecker stepped in close and dropped a wrecking ball down onto the truck while the human leaped to the side. The alien spun around, an over large weapon still in gloved hands and face hidden beneath a mask. Bulkhead changed his mace into a servo and flicked the human away like Miko would a bug.
He figured it would be better for him to not wonder about the lethality of the action.
Better to be oblivious than...what?
Honestly? The Optimus voice in his conscious really couldn't be too loud about this.
There was only one faction of humans Bulkhead would consider capable of this. There was only one group of the aliens whose style it was to strap cybertronians down and turn them into that walking corpse he'd shot just moments before.
This was M.E.C.H. plain and simple.
He'd thought they were gone.
Their fake Optimus had been blown to bits and, last he'd checked, Breakdown had killed Silas.
Yet here they were, buried beneath some jungle and striking terror in the vehicons of the mine back there.
Oh slag- right. Bulkhead turned away from where he was crushing the rest of the human vehicles to look at the miner.
Why did M.E.C.H. have to do all this underground? First that train track in the mountain in Russia, now this cave; lights fastened to the walls to shine down on their test subjects.
They'd really done a number on Breakdown when Bulkhead had gotten there to get him out.
Screwing an optic out and then leaving the rest of the head alone made no sense; it meant their goal had never been the helm- it meant taking that optic out had just been for fun.
Bulkhead still came out of recharges with bad memory fluxes of that night. What he had seen was just disturbing to him. It didn't matter if he'd done it just to get a rematch with Breakdown; after walking in on the bad sci fi scene, he would've gotten any mech out of there.
The tools. The way they'd pulled plating apart and left it open. The way they would have eventually cut into the spark chamber.
The fact that they didn't bother to kill first.
The recharges where he'd imagine coming in three or so breems later; his imaginations filling in what state M.E.C.H.'s living experiment would be in at that point.
It terrified him.
M.E.C.H. was bad, plain and simple. Bulkhead didn't like them. He didn't want to leave anyone in their slimy little hands.
The wrecker came nearer to the trailer.
"Autobot?" the drone spat and tried to roll away; the human bindings held.
It always surprised Bulkhead to hear different voices from different vehicons. It really disrupted the identical image their cloned faces had.
This face wasn't identical. This voice was-
Wait, he had heard this voice before!
He'd heard it screaming on a cliff while he and the rest of Team Prime stood below in the valley.
Bulkhead cringed a bit in sympathy. Yeah, he was no fan of drones and had no issue killing them, but...that hadn't been a side of Ratchet he'd liked seeing.
The wrecker kept his guns out while he crouched down by the trailer, looking every direction for more M.E.C.H. agents. Any moment and more could come from one of the tunnels or open that big door or-
The vehicon moved as frantically as his poisoned form could.
"Get a-away, wheel grinder-"
Yeah right. And leave another cybertronian where M.E.C.H. could come finish the job they'd started on Breakdown?
Bulkhead couldn't do that. It would just make the recharge fluxes worse.
The wrecker didn't want to keep dreaming about these sick labs underground. Even if that meant not doing the usual thing and just ripping this drones wires out.
"Don't touch me!" the vehicon screeched but Bulkhead ignored the noise to rip the bindings away. He tossed the chains aside on the cavern floor and did a quick look around the room for options. Path he'd come from? Too tight and too long. Any of these other tunnels? Too unknown.
The door?
He stood up and transformed his servos to maces again. A few vigorous bashes at the steel door made the thing cave in and a good kick at it sent the bent metal crashing to the road beyond it.
No sunlight hit him. Instead, the door had merely been blocking a dirt road with clear tire treads on it. On both sides of the walls, Bulkhead could see other similar commercial doors.
Scrap.
He huffed and returned to the vehicon. The miner started to wriggle away, but Bulkhead grabbed one shoulder and felt the drone beneath go absolutely still. With his free servo, the wrecker tried to pluck the shards of Tox-En out and tossed them to the floor.
M.E.C.H. would probably be here soon.
Well, Bulkhead didn't plan on sticking around til then. He hefted the drone up over one arm and jogged from the room, even as the vehicon began to snarl threats and struggle in his unyielding grip.
"Keep it down," he muttered as he passed by the first sets of doors and looked around the corner. The road continued on.
No need in attracting any more attention.
No need in getting him shot full of toxins and then dragged away to some subterranean lab. Bulkhead had to experience that enough in his recharges.
The miner scraped at his paint and Bulkhead grit his dentae at the sharp sting the claw left behind.
Alright, now he was lost. Scrap, scrap, scrud. The wrecker grumbled and hit the nearest door away. Maybe it'd be something good rather than just another-
Nope. Just another room. Another lab or storage bay.
One of the gray optic'd vehicons with the mods stood unmoving, attached to hanging wires. Different pieces of electrical equipment Ratchet would probably yell at him for breaking sat around the room unrecognized by the former construction mech. Laying against human sized shelves, cybertronian sized weapons had been cut from their owners and left. A few pieces of vehicon miners, still purple instead of grayed yet, were stacked into a truck bed.
That was disturbing.
Bulkhead released his hold and the miner tried to stumble away. Instead of letting him (and therefore watching him fall from the effects of Tox-En), the wrecker set a servo around the skinny violet arm and steered them both for the shelves.
"Miners aren't armed, right?" he asked plainly. The vehicon moved his head so that the working half of his optic lines glared dulled red into Bulkhead's face.
"Didn't think so," the wrecker shrugged and then pulled one of the weapons up and slammed it into the vehicon's arms.
Maybe he was naive. He certainly had been called that before.
Without waiting long, he was tugging the miner in front of him and had one arm forward in its own gun. They turned the next wind in the road and Bulkhead felt his spark soar up. The road was lifting up in elevation. Maybe thi-
The next thought was interrupted by humans. All of them holding oversized weapons. All of them wearing the same mask.
Well, you know what happened to those that all had the same blank face? Bulkhead grinned and started shooting.
They made things easier on him when it came to his own guilt.
The con fumbled with the borrowed gun and then shot as well. Red bolts and blue plasma tore into their alien opposition. Desperation to not be dragged down by M.E.C.H. agents made Bulkhead shoot furiously until the green shards and kinetic bullets were no longer flying out of the smoke towards them.
"Come on-" the wrecker tugged the other forward, "We gotta almost be out of here."
He was right.
The next door he smashed through was the last. It lay across the road and breaking it down made his optics strain at the sudden light.
Without being able to help it, Bulkhead started to grin. He hadn't realized until now just how stressed he was; how strained and overtaxed all his systems were while he had fought to keep anxiety down.
"See?" he looked down at the expressionless vehicon standing limp with Bulkhead's servo around his arm. "We're out! Home free!"
The drone tried to tug away and this time the wrecker let him.
"Hey, mech," Bulkhead sobered up. "I don't wanna fight right now. Besides, you need a medic. You got Tox-En in your system. At least just walk off now instead of trying to make trouble. Or if you really need help, I can call my-"
The vehicon spun and thrust his borrowed weapon into Bulkhead's face. It didn't shoot, but the barrel had been warmed and prepped for firing. The heat made his optic coat over with soot and it just kept coming; the miner kept it on him even as the wrecker began to backpedal. Glass cracked and Bulkhead reached up instinctively to the fried optic. The gun left and the green mech was able to keep his palm right over the burn.
It slagging hurt. He hissed, falling to a knee, and failing to resist the urge to grind his servos against the hurt; broken glass was only ground into wires and protoform by doing this and that just made the pain worse.
See, this was why he always shot first, asked questions (or be nice) never with these guys.
"Tell your medic I said hello-" Bulkhead heard the drone hiss. Foliage crunched under the small con's pedes as he ran away while the wrecker still held at his burning face.
It hurt.
It hurt.
Enough.
Bulkhead fought his processor to cooperate and think. He was in sunlight now. No matter how thick or tall the trees overhead were, they weren't stone. The comm unit should work.
He sent an SOS over the radio instead of trying to craft up words and then collapsed downwards to cradle his bleeding injury.
XL-2M99 made it as far as the Nemesis before crashing down. He'd dropped the gun long before- at the edge of the mine, when he'd found he could not hold it any longer. As if the gun itself burned, burned, burned into his servo. He'd run all that way, unable to slow down no matter how the energon in his veins screamed at him. There had been no time to slow down. No time, none at all, or the autobots could have returned behind him. He could have been shoved down and turned onto his back only in time for one of them to land on his chest.
And yet the gun felt like welding fire in his servo as he ran.
It clattered in the dirt while XL-2M99 called in a groundbridge. As he waited for the bridge, he'd turned to stare at the ground near the discarded weapon. He couldn't look straight at it. He couldn't look away without feeling as if it too would creep up behind him.
He felt sick.
The bridge opened and he shot through quickly. The vehicons of the groundbridge control room moved to him- to ask questions, to assist him, to -to -to-
He left them behind to march through the purple halls. The poison in him made the walls waver and the floor moved beneath him. Or perhaps it wasn't the poison at all.
The medbay opened as soon as he keyed for the door. The interim medic shut it immediately and locked it as well. He backed up away from the controls, looking around the room he'd once been a patient in not long before, until his back hit the far wall.
No one was here to see. No one was here to help or comfort. No one was here to take advantage or mock weakness.
XL-2M99 folded down against the floor and shook uncontrollably.
