Chapter 8- Imposter
POV: Twinwave
" " Normal talking
": :" Bumblebee talking
(Note: this chapter takes place during season 2 ep 8 "Nemesis Prime" of TFP)
Everything was going well so far at base, everyone was gathered round the ground bridge framing while the ortal was deactivated to do some car racing, Raf's toy ones of course. "Yes!" Miko shouted as she took the lead and the tiny cars zoomed past the guardian trio and my pedes, "Go go go!" Jack yelled as his slowly caught up with hers.
They were nearly neck in neck now, "Put metal to the pedal Miko!" Bulkhead cheered as the cars took a loop and headed back towards the ground bridge. Come on Jack!" Arcee cheered, who knew everyone at base, except Optimus and Ratchet, could get so invested in the car race. At almost the last moment we watched Raf's yellow car kick into some sort of overdrive and completely overtake Miko and Jack, "No fair, Raf's scorching us!" she complained just as the communication signal was patched through.
"Prime!" Fowler yelled, a little less loud than usual. "I wonder what happened?" I thought as everything in base, including our car race, came to a stand still to see what Fowler was calling about. "Do you read me?" he asked, now we were at full attention to see what he wanted. But by his voice tone it couldn't have been good, "I'm sorry Agent Fowler, Optimus isn't here at the moment." Ratchet replied.
We'd kinda gathered behind him now, like we always did to get the rundown of something or a new mission. "Then I'll take that as confirmation that he's presently trying to run me off the road." Fowler shot back and our intakes dropped open, "Im sorry what?" I blurted out in slight shock. This was confusing, Opimus had just gone for a drive not to kill Fowler.
"Agent Fowler, that hardly seems likely." Ratchet replied, "Tell that to my buring treads." Fowler said with some distress in his voice. Like he was actually in real danger, but that was unlikely, right? The signal cut out after some crashing sounds coming from his end and the second it cut out without a word Ratchet fired up the ground bridge and targeted Fowlers current coordinates, "Arcee, Bumblebee, Bulkhead. Go see if Fowler needs help or is seriously injured and take out whatever is attacking him." Ratchet said. They nodded and transformed before Racing into the ground bridge, I looked down at the kids who seemed utterly confused like the rest of us.
"That couldn't be Optimus, I mean we saw him moments before the call." I said looking away from the kids and towards Ratchet, "The outcome that Optimus is intentionally trying or trying to run Fowler off the road is very low." Ratchet replied. He turned himself back to the co computer to monitor the situation and get word from the others that everything was fine, "Bulkhead, have you secured Agent Fowler?" Ratchet commed after radio silence from them.
Usually they would've checked in by now saying they'd got Fowler or something, "He's in one piece but Arcee raced off. Bee's looking for her and I'm going to follow once I get out of this gorge." Bulkhead replied before cutting out. "Did he say he was climbing out of a gorge with Fowler?" I asked more confused now than I was five minutes ago when Fowler called.
"I believe so but we just need to wait until they call for a bridge to get back here." Ratchet replied just as Bee called for the bridge. I don't think I ever saw Ratchet pull a lever so fast, he was just as anxious as the rest of us to find out if Optimus had actually tried to rail Fowler off the road. Bulkhead called us shortly after that, requesting a ground bridge as expected but when the mech's came through after finding Arcee the detail they had so lovingly withheld from us was that Arcee was unconscious.
"How did this happen?" I asked as Ratchet and Bee rushed her over to med bay where the doc had set up some sort of medical stand up examination station. He and Bee placed her in there and checked her vitals , "I don't know, she went after who we thought was Optimus but instead of staying to fight he turned tail and drove off. She went after him and Bee found her like this when I got there." Bulkhead replied.
We gathered with everyone else in med bay to see how Arcee was doing as she came out of the examination, "Arcee, are you alright?" Jack asked his guardian worriedly. She stopped right in front of Bulkhead and I, "Sure, except for being blind sided by Optimus." she replied. She turned to look at Fowler when she said that as to sympathize with him, "Didn't I tell you?" he retorted very "I told you so" like.
"Impossible." Ratchet blurted out coming up behind Arcee and joining the conversation, "She's only reporting what she saw Ratch." I said to him. He rolled his optics in response, "Why would Optimus try to knock off Agent Fowler?" Jack asked the group. Now we were getting into group discussion, "Maybe because Optimus believes he's a Descepticon all over again!" Raf said. It didn't make sense but then again neither did really any of the explanations to most of our conflict. "Or he's been faking being a good guy all this time!" Miko added, this wasn't helping to resolve this.
"If Prime has gone off the rails for any reason, we have a serious problem." Fowler reminded us, any of us off the rails or a Decepticon was a huge problem to the entirety of mankind. "This is absurd." Ratchet said, throwing his servos up and leaving us in med bay for his computers, "A quick check for Optimus' signal will reveal that he's nowhere near the location of tonight's incident. In fact he's just returning now." Ratchet said after what he called a "quick check for Optimus' signal".
The sound of a truck engine entered the hallway from the main door that led into base, the noise bounced off the walls as the Prime came back to a very spooked crew. Arcee, Bulkhead, Bumblebee and myself were already front and centre to watch him in case we needed to fire on him or protect the kids and Fowler. Optimus stopped and transformed before walking towards our gathered group who were peering at him like a science experiment, when he came to a stop I knew he could feel the tension emanating off everyone.
"Is something wrong?" he asked us in his usually monotone voice, "We were just...wondering where you've been." Arcee replied looking to us for help when she paused. "We haven't been able to reach you." Bulkhead added, he was also tense and I could feel myself getting tense too. Everyone was overly worried about what went down earlier, "I have been outside of our communication range." Optimus said reaching for something at his hip.
On instinct everyone transformed their blasters and I pulled my swords out, every weapon transformed in the room was trained on Optimus at the moment. "Easy." Bulkhead replied to the sudden movement for the Prime, "In a subterranean energon deposit." Optimus finished. He produced a shard of energon that he had been reaching on his hip for, the four of us looked at each other waiting for someone to discharge their weapons.
"Come on, it's our guy. Cant you tell?" Jack said from above and behind us in the human area, Arcee discharged her weapons and the others retransformed their servos while I slid my swords back into their case. Arcee walked forward and stopped in front of Optimus, "We're… sorry." she said, she dropped her optics and helm a little to look away from the shame I knew must be creeping over her.
"Don't blame them, Prime. I was attacked earlier tonight on an open highway by a big rig that bore a striking resemblance to you." Fowler said, everyone paused for a moment. Optimus was clearly thinking over the new information Fowler had given him and before any of us could speak again Fowler's phone rang, "Fowler." he answered. We couldn't hear whoever he was talking with but he turned from us, "What! That's not possible, I can tell you sure as there is fifty stars on my star-spangled shorts ( legit forgot this was american for a hot second) it isn't him!" Flower yelled into the phone before directly looking at Optimus
. "Alden military base is under attack by Optimus Prime." he said once he was off the phone, which made no complete sense because Optimus was right here with us now. "The truck?" Jack asked him cautiously, as if he was scared to know the truth, "The bot." Fowler replied and everyone turned to Optimus to find out what the frag was happening.
"Ratchet, send a ground bridge to the military base. We need to make sure whatever this is doesn't inflict casualties upon the humans stationed there." Optimus said, his mood did a whole one eighty from when he'd gotten here. Of course Ratchet was already on the matter and within seconds we were geared up and ready to go, so through the portal we went and when we arrived the base was in worse shape than I had imagined.
Everything was either on fire or about to be, troops we stationed in the air and behind sandbags and foring upon and very poor replica of Optimus. I mean it was heavily rusted and the blaster fire plus optics weren't even the same colour, yet people still believed it was him, rude.
As soon as we came running out of the ground bridge and saw it, weapons were transformed and swords were brought out, except it transformed and turned tail into Optimus' classic truck. It really wasn't a prime but we had bigger problems, that thing had left a squardian of helicopters coming our way which would mean more trouble for us, "Uh guys." I said pointing to the incoming forces and missiles.
The guardian trio pointed their blasters skywards but Optimus retransformed his servos, "Autobots, return to base. We must not inflict human casualties." Optimus said to us. Which meant "time to go before we die", so we turned and ran back towards the open ground bridge. Thankfully Ratchet had enough of a processor to leave it open for us so we could make a swift exit, the humans open fired from their helicopters as we ran but to my surprise those things were very inaccurate and only managed to hit above or below us.
The portal closed behind Optimus, the last through, and we were back at base eas quickly as we'd left. But when we got there Fowler was on yet another call, "No general Brice, Optimus Prime did not attack our boys. Because I was with Prime when I received the alert!… yes sir, the Autobots were at your base but only in response to the initial attack. But sir I- yes sir, I understand." Fowler said to whomever "General Brice" was.
We were regathered by the time he'd gotten off the phone and started talking to us, "So, what's the damage?" Jack asked Fowler. He sighed before turning to Jack, "All military personnel are under strict orders to destroy any and all BOTS on site." He replied with what sounded like a little bit of a heavy heart. "Are you kidding!" Jack said, "But their innocent!" Raf added. "OPTIMUS WAS FRAMED!" Miko yelled, yeah they weren't taking this as lightly as we were.
0"Though unfortunate, the military order changed nothing. Our imposter clearly poses a grave threat to humanity." Optimus replied to the kids comments, "A thirty foot transforming imposter" Fowler corrected. They were both right, that thing was no good the the humans if it was going to go around wrecking and blowing things up. Kind of like Dreadwing to Wheeljack and Bulkhead.
"They actually did it, those butchers managed to crack the code." Ratchet said suddenly and then the pieces started coming together, "M.E.C.H" Optimus said narrowing his Optimus. "Great, them again." I muttered as everything clicked for the rest of the group, "M.E.C.H abducted Breakdown and by all indications deconstructed him from cranial chamber to heel strut." Ratchet recounted for us.
It sparked a memory, literally, of the time we'd gone to rescue Breakdown and almost got ourselves blown up, "I was there." Bulkhead added the Ratchet's memory. "And we know that more recently they obtained Starscream's T-cog." Optius reminded us, "Which they evidently installed in a knockoff of you." Arcee added gesturing to Optimus. "Which scanned the appropriate rig." I said, "Fill the tank with energon." Jack added. "And say hello to Nemesis Prime." Miko said waving to us at the beginning, "So where do we start? M.E.C.H's base could be anywhere." Fowler said clearly he didn't understand the fact that we had tech and they didn't.
"Not necessarily, while M.E.C.H learned much of our biology." Optimus started, "They haven't necessarily absorbed our technology." Ratchet added he turned from Fowler back to his computers before continuing. "Without access to a ground bridge, Nemesis Prime would rely solely on it's vehicle mode for transportation." Ratchet finished, he brought up some diagrams of Optimus' vehicle mode onto the screen for reference.
"Chances are the M.E.C.H base is within driving distance of both incidents." Arcee concluded, she'd moved from standing next to us to standing next to Optimus assumingly to talk more directly to Fowler. "What are we waiting for? Let's get out there and mash M.E.C.H's little science project." Fowler said he was very serious about getting revenge on them for trying to run him off the road.
"Agent Fowler, I do not think it advisable to put yourself in harm's way of M.E.C.H's robot again." Optimus cautioned him, as much as I like Fowler he was a bit stubborn. "Well I'm not sure it's advisable for BOTS to be running recon with the military out there gunning for you!" he replied just as stubborn as ever, "We will maintain vehicular cover until absolutely necessary." Optimus replied.
He was right, we were going to stay hidden until we needed to be fighting or something. And so, we were off, driving of course. Arcee, Bulkhead and Optimus on their own with me and Bee running our own recon mission. I hadn't asked to come along but this was more of an all servos on deck situation so I had to.
Everyone had orders to call something in when or if they found anything, "Nothing but tumbleweeds." Bulkhead commed as he scanned the area around the military base, "Just a whole lot of empty." Arcee said as she scanned the highway. Bee and I took the middle ground between the two locations with Optimus searching in the other direction of us, we zoomed along the road until we saw some sort of spot lights ahead of us.
"Hey Bee, I think we got something you'd better call it in." I told him as we got closer, he did as I asked and commed it in to the others. We pulled slowly through the gate and I got off the top of his alt to walk along silently next to him, "Twinwave and Bumblebee, proceed with utmost caution, reconnaissance only. We will rendezvous at your coordinates." Optimus cautioned the two of us. In short what he said was, "we'll be there soon, stick to cover".
We drove and walked around the barrels that littered the year we were in, it must've been a factory before it was abandoned or M.E.C.H took it over because as we'd seen they didn't really care about other human lives. We crept towards the perimeter and untransformed, neither of us said a word to each other but I pulled my swords out of their case in case we had company follow us. I looked at Bee and nodded before we started heading into the heart of whatever this place was, we were trying to be silent but it's kinda hard when you're twenty foot tall robots who can turn into all sorts of things.
"Bumblebee." Optimus said from behind us, or it sounded like him, on a dime the two of us spun to look at mech only seemed to know my partners name and not mine, which meant he was either a fake or had spotted Bee first. Bee's instinct was to transform his blasters and train them on whatever was moving in the shadows, again I didn't and don't have range weapons so my swords stayed down until we could figure out what we were dealing with.
"Be on your guard, my double could be anywhere." Optimus said, except the Prime stayed in the shadow of the barrel, shady. ":Okay, but how did you get here so fast?:'' Bee asked him, I of course could understand my partner and didn't bother translating because of this was Optimus surely he would understand too. "I'm sorry, what?" Nemesis Prime asked us,
"Yeah not Optimus." I said before Bee started firing The thing came charging at us and I ducked as he punch at Bee before making a deep gouge with one of my swords where his main energon fuel supply was, that was before he picked me up and tossed me about fifty feet or so from bee and then kneed my partner in his chassis and sent him flying on top of me. I wasn't unconscious, just being crushed.
So as the imposter came creeping near to make sure we were both out I offline my optics till I heard his ped steps leave and more crashing follow. Clearly the others were here and taking care of him so now I needed to get poor Bee off of me to help the others.
After a few tries I managed to get some leverage on Bee's body and roll him off of me, he still wasn't uo though but before I grabbed my swords to help wherever was left awake with the Nemesis Prime problem I checked his pulse. He was alive and his pulse was stable which ment we were only knocked out like I originally thought, once I was done checking on him I grabbed my swords that had been flung out of my servos when I was tossed and put them back in their case.
I remembered the hit I'd gotten on the bot before Bee had been knocked out so I checked the ground for leaked energon and sure enough a trail of little dots made a lovely line leading to wherever that M.E.C.H bot had gone. I started to follow it, it wound past the others whom Nemesis had also knocked out but their houses were stable too. I didn't bother calling Ratchet about them because I had a feeling that the M.E.C.H base blocked any transmission signals that weren't their own.
After I'd passed the others and stayed on the hunt for the fragging robot I heard the familiar clang of someone getting thrown, but was it one of ours? Time to find out, "I guess I'm doing this." I muttered. I followed the noise which also had the energon trail leading it to see both Optimus and Nemesis Prime climbing a building at the heart of the base, Optimus was dented in a few places and leaking energon from his bottom derma but other than that he seemed to be fine.
I started climbing after them to try and help, M.E.C.H not matter how hard they tried weren't good at building bots but they didn't run from a fight and always seemed to have something up their sleeve. As I climbed I heard the distinct sound of Optimus' blade protruding from his armour, their fight above the concrete had begun.
So I climbed faster as the clang of the sounds met and bounced off each other, when I finally got one servo over the top and pulled myself over Optimus was on his knees with Nemesis standing over top of him from behind it all I thought I saw the tip of the fakes blade poking through the armour at the back. "My body can't feel PAIN!" Silas said and I heard him twist the blade in Optimus' chassis.
"OPTIMUS!" I screamed as his body dropped to the top of the building we were on, "Ah, I see you've brought a friend to view the show." silas commented when he noticed me. "Get away from him." I shot back producing my swords from their case, "If I don't recall earlier I managed to throw your little partner." Silas said as he charged at me.
I brought up both swords to block his attack and kicked between the armour plates on his torso, a weak spot for every bit known to Primus even if this one couldn't feel pain. That sent him backwards from me and probably angrier, I noticed the energon dripping from the wound I'd made on him had increased a little which meant Optimus had noticed it and had gone for the same spot.
But within my increased observation I'd also left myself open for attack, I was knocked backwards towards Optimus and both my swords clattered to the ground below us.
"Imagine an army of transforming robots, no one will stand in against the newly rebooted M.E.C.H" Silas said. He raised the blade of Nemesis Prime and I waited for the blow to my chassis but instead nothing came and the robot servos dropped to his sides like SIlas had left the control centre, "Thank you Primus for the save." I muttered before going to Optimus to check on him.
"You really need to stop getting yourself hurt." I said helping him to his pedes, he too noticed that the robot was at a literal stand-still and as he clutched his wound made an attempt to punch it in the faceplates. SIias must've noticed because it blocked the attack and blocked it by grabbing Optimus' servo and holding it in place before producing his balde. Then another stand still and Optimus and I took this time to get the fragging thing back for the pain it caused the two if us over the past forty-eightish hours, it was punched in the pace plates, the chassis, torso, we gave it the pits in other words.
Optimus took the liberty of giving it the final blow by taking a running jump over top of me and what Miko described as a "Hulk smash" into the roof of the building and sent it, and the concert of the room crashing down onto Silas below. The whole system and its operator were crushed under the weight of tons of metal and concrete. Optimus was kneeling at the hole he'd made in the ceiling to make sure the robots lights went out for real this time, but instead saw a familiar face. "Agent Fowler?" He asked surprised, it seemed as through the distraction in the operating room was because your lesson had stepped in for us.
But the interaction was cut short by the sound of helicopters incoming from a nearby base, probably to investigate the amount of noise we'd just made. "That would be our boys, I advise you to get back to base Prime. I'll handle Uncle Sam." Fowler said as Optimus and I both glaced behind us to see the incoming helicopters. "Well no point in stating, let's get the others and get out of here." I said to him, he just nodded and we both headed for the edge of the roof and jumped off. I grabbed my swords and headed for Bee.
(half an hour later…)
By now everyone had come to, well we'd helped them come to when we were getting our afts out of the M.E.C.H base as quickly as cyertronaianly possible. By the time I'd gotten to Bee he'd come to and was full of questions about what had happened, I clued him in as we went to get Bulkhead and Optimus went to go find Arcee. Now everyone was back at base and the kids were asking the questions.
"So how weird was it to see someone who looked exactly like Optimus kicking the scrap out of you?" Miko asked Bulkhead eagerly, he was still shaking off the unconsciousness and had to sit down in med bay once we'd gotten back to base. "It's a sight I won't soon forget." Arcee said with a distant voice as if she was reliving the whole ordeal.
Optimus was across from us getting his stab wound patched by Ratchet and his blow torch, "The question remains whether M.E.C.H will continue to function as we know it without its leader." Optimus said. "Oh yeah I forgot to tell all of you, we squished that bug under his own bot." I said to the guardian trio, they hadn't been there but deserved to know what had happened to that butcher as his machine.
"Well here's the kicker." Fowler said, apparently he'd been patched in sometime during the conversation because I jumped a little at the sudden sound of his voice. "We sifted through the wreckage with a fine toothed comb and couldn't find any trace of SIlas." Fowler finished. "So all that work just to bring the ceiling down on him and he disappears like a ghost?" Miko asked, she even sounded disappointed and hse hadn't been there.
"Do you know what might've happened to him?" I asked next, that man was a bigger threat to us as long as he was alive and his followers had hope. "None, but we have a team looking for him and the operatives that were present during the fight." Fowler said before signing off. Apparently our fight with M.E.C.H wasn't over yet, no matter how hard we tried Silas just didn't seem to die.
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