Year of the Snake- Part 1
**Prologue; Open Space, Earth Year 1961
Drifting. Blackness. Very cold. No pain. No senses at all. Only darkness.
Had it been so long since his ship blew up, stranding him in the middle of
nowhere? The internal chronometer placed it at sixteen solar months, four days. Almost a
year and a half of drifting aimlessly, banished to this void, had passed.
Then, a planet, rushing toward him like a bolt. Blue and green, it grew as he fell
toward it, the heat of its atmosphere burning against his metal skin, ripping chunks away.
"Too much..." he said, his first word in months. He slipped into unconsciousness, then
crashed into the ocean.
**Earth; Indeterminate Timeframe
Copperhead knew one thing: run. The two canines were at his feet, yipping and yowling,
before he'd even known who or where he was. Lush, tropical atmosphere, high deposits
of methane and carbon dioxide in the air, yet enough oxygen to sustain an immense
ecosystem. He couldn't look back, otherwise he'd lose speed. He couldn't turn, these
two were master hunters, and knew chasing him directly would tire him out faster.
"Maybe it's time," Copper grunted aloud as he ran, "to employ a bit of strategy." He leapt up, clinging to a treebranch, kipping his legs up in front of him for stability. He shut his eyes, concentrated, and within moments the coyote and her lupine friend broke off the chase, turning and running back to where they came. "Too easy," he thought as he dropped from the trees. "Maybe switching to beast mode would keep them off my trail for a bit."
"Wolves like eating snakes," came a female voice from behind him. It sounded vaguely familiar, but Copper was still too disoriented to realize exactly who was talking. He did, however, recognize the sound of a blaster charging, and he raised his hands in defeat. "And that coyote does whatever the wolf does... I should know, they're my kids."
The voice registered in his mind finally. "Arty!" Copper hissed, grimacing. Yet, there was also an upside to this. She wouldn't turn him into Prime for detention. Copper turned, arms still up, and looked at Arty.
"Long time no see, Artemis," Copper said.
"Who the slag are you and why the slag were you trying to hurt my kids?" she growled, training the gun on Copperhead's forehead, which sported a large, V-Shaped fork.
"What are you talking about, kids?"
"Inuarai and Blancwulf, the two that were chasing you. Your pod crashed- a PREDACON stasis pod- in my territory." Artemis was obviously not happy that she was face to face with her old friend. Did she even realize who he was?
"Arty..."
"DON'T call me that." She was now livid, her stellar blue optics narrowing and her feline lip curling. "My designation is Pantera, Maximal Elder, and you are a Predacon spy."
"Well, yeah... don't you even wanna know who you're talking to?" Copper smirked. ==Or would you rather I ruin the surprise?== Copper's eyes flashed bright green as the thoughts speared themselves into Artemis's brain. ==Don't you recognize the voice of your... brother-in-law... I might say?==
"You're slottin' out of your mind..."
"And in yours, Tera!" Copper howled, his stomach heaving with laughter. "I hate to pry..." Copper sniggered, ==but it's just too much fun.==
"GET... OUT... OF MY... MIND!" Pantera shrieked, opening fire on Copper.
The blast from her pistol hit Copperhead in the midriff, passed through him and buried itself in a tree, but there was something Pantera didn't realize about this snake: he wasn't actually there.
Copperhead was still clinging to a treebranch half a klick away. He cackled inside Pantera's mind.
==Never run afoul of a serpent, my dear. You're bound to get the fangs.==
Copper dropped from his tree perch and ran toward the forest, leaping over Pantera (incidentally kicking her in the back of her head in the scuffle) and disappearing in the waning light. The last sounds Pantera heard as the enemy vanished- though she could not be certain she was physically hearing them or whether they were inside her mind- was Copperhead's vague laughter and two words: "Remember Parseltongue?"
***
Sin was bitching, as usual, about something unimportant. "Megatron is glitched in the head, asking me to do... MENIAL PHYSICAL LABOR... this is not the task of a great Predacon mind."
"Armzzzbot shut her zzztinking wordhole and work like Megatron sayzzzz..." Waspinator droned, grabbing a burnt-out energon sink and tossing it to Sin. She caught it in her upper pair of hands. "Or Megatron will get Unicronic on armzzzbot'zzzz azzzzz."
Sin rolled her optics back in her head and threw the energon sink into the smelter. "And what, pray tell, is Megatron's desire with all this smelting?"
"Megatron wantzzz Armzzzbot'zzz loyalty," the bug buzzed again. Why, in the blue blazes of the Inferno, had this yahoo been assigned to the most powerful Predacon destroyer in the fleet? "Zzzo he zzzendzzz you to do degradinggg worrrrk. Zzzo get workinggggg..." Waspinator's wings buzzed as he lifted off, going to order around one of the other over-qualified workers Megatron had appointed to this task.
Sin muttered something under her breath about final, exacting revenge... the fall of a tyrant and the birth of a queen, but Waspinator didn't catch it.
"Hello, Tenderfoot," came a drawling, lecherous voice from behind her. Sin knew without looking that Quickstrike, the most despicable of the Fuzors, was standing behind her, ogling her skidplates.
"If you want something, Scalebrain, it would do well to ask instead of looking at my butt." Sin folded her wings down over her skidplate to block off Quickstrike's little peepshow. "Now," Sin growled, standing and, using a tiny little old Decepticon technique, increasing her height, "what do you want?"
"Uhh... umm... Ah..."
"Then go away." Sin's three fingered hand danced with an orange glow she called a Curse Ring- the energetic manifestation of Sin's connection to the Matrix. Her sister had died so she could have this power. A slight twitch of her arm, as if to raise it, and Quickstrike ran off like a rocket. Sin's optics just rolled over again. "Men."
* * *
Copperhead rocketed through the forest, ducking out of the way of branches and vines, creeper and wild animals. Twice the growl and spit of a jaguar broke the silence of the forest, but Copper knew he was safe: Pantera's roar would have had obvious markings to its sound- a mechanical "tag" in several of the audio tracks distinguishing the sounds as Cybertronian. These roars were pure fleshie.
"Can I say one thing?" Copper said to himself as he paused, energon reserves low. "I hate running." Copperhead looked around, and sensing no sign of Cybertronian life, began his trek again. Where to? His mind clicked onto a name- the Darkside- but Copper had yet to regain all his memory tracks. The Darkside was exactly what? It's something Copper simply KNEW he should remember, but...
"By Swindle, I've got it!" Copper shouted aloud. "Megatron's there. I have to get to..." Copper cocked his head. "Why Megatron?"
No answer came. "I'm a Predacon. But why..."
No answer came, of course. At length, Copper returned his question. "I'm a Predacon. But why must I..." Copperhead paused again, considering why he felt so strangely compelled. "Computer, access datatrax-" The computer grumbled and spat out a response in its irritatingly nonplussable voice. "Data systems damaged; unable to complete command."
Copperhead growled. Maybe it was time to get back to the Darkside, whatever that was.
"Computer, can you locate the Darkside?" he asked as clearly as possible, just in case the computer malfunctioned.
"Predacon Battlecruiser Darkside," it started, then projected a glitchy holo-map linking his position to the Darkside. Copper realized the scale of the map and groaned. Halfway across the continent... damned Stasis Pod had gone down in entirely the wrong area.
"Guess I'd better head out," Copper said to himself. He'd not taken ten steps with the sounds of voices- these were no biological bloodsacks, but the sounds of Cybertronians speaking. One was male, the other two, femmes. The two female voices had very distinctive speech patterns- they'd been the canines who'd chased him earlier. The third, the whiney young bot, was someone new. Probably their brother or something...
"Tera wants us to stay put," the boy groaned.
"Since when have we ever listened to something Tera ordered us to do?" replied the girl- the black and white wolf from whom Copper had been running earlier.
"Yeah but-"
"Jax, quit whining," the coyote growled, sitting in beast mode. "Whatever's out there, she said it was a danger to us."
"It's that thing you two were chasing earlier... the green and brown Pred. He didn't LOOK like much."
"Tera said..." Jax cut in again.
"TERA ISN'T HERE, JAXYL!" the wolf growled. "Nari, you wanna go snake hunting?"
The redgold coyote wagged her tail in approval.
"Blancwulf, Inuarai, you stupid..." Jaxyl yipped after them, but it was too late. The wolf and the coyote slunk into the darkness, searching for exactly what had been spying on them. Copperhead thought to himself that, now that Jaxyl was alone, he might be easy pickings... perhaps a hostage for Lord Megatron, a nice "I'm here, and worth having along" gift.
"I can hear you breathing," Jaxyl said to Copper's shadow as the snake slunk around, presumably outside most bots' fields of perception. "And no, I'm not particularly adept at it... you're just clumsy. Show yourself or I'll ventilate ya."
Copperhead, Predacon assassin, member of the illicit branch of the Destron Secret Police, found himself nearing the end of his rope. This upstart of a Maximal made a lucky guess, that was it. "You think you're a hotshot, kid?" the snake called into the clearing. "If I wanted to, I could override your core processor's security lockouts and walk you off a cliff."
Jaxyl's face turned sour. "You wouldn't...
"Nope... definitely not. I don't kill children," Copperhead replied. "But for you, I could make an exception." Copper pushed aside the brush, slinking into Jaxyl's clearing. The lithe Jackal-bot lowered his head, fangs bared, as his hindquarters and hackles rose. "Calm down, skippy," Copper sneered, his snake head distending, forming a bot's shoulders, spindly legs shooting from the serpent's flesh. Two arms, two thirds as long as the legs, folded out from within the snake's head, and bound each wrist were a pair of jet-black daggers (almost resembling obsidian, but definitely polymer, not mineral). "Like what you see? Might be the last time so get a good look, chippy." Copper's wrist blades whooshed deadly arcs as he prepared for fisticuffs, but Jaxyl was not having this.
"Wanna cut the slag here?" the boy asked before kneeing Copperhead in the groin (Cybertronics have nards?), causing the snake-bot to double over...
...but only as a feint. With deadly accuracy, the Predacon un-hinged his arms (quite serpentine!) and shot his fists into Jaxyl's chestplate, the twin daggers (fangs! poison-tipped!) running through the armor and out the boy's back. Copperhead simply gritted his teeth, raising the boy into the air (toward the burning hot sun... toward burning hot death! yeah! yeah!).
"I told you..." the serpent growled, now nose to nose with the teeny-bot. "You wouldn't see it much longer."
"Lick my tailpipe," Jax smirked, spitting a wad of... phlegm?... into Copper's face.
"Little BRAT!" he fumed, hurling the Maximal into a nearby tree. "Two things to learn about being a 'good guy!'" Copper straightened, menacingly, but Jaxyl continued laughing (naturally, Copperhead's ego told him to ignore it, but yeah, his ego came close to being bested by this punk). "One! Do NOT go up against a Decepticon Air Commander!" Copper shook off some of the dirt and mud caked to his armor, then continued. "Two! Do NOT let yourself get stabbed with any part of a venomous animal." Copperhead smiled and gazed at the two green fleshwounds on Jaxyl's chestplate. They'd begun to fester with the Pred's cybervenom... potent stuff, some of the best, culled from Copperhead's venomous mind itself. "Of course, you've got spunk so..."
Copper's forehead flare lit up again as it had before... this would indicate the bot was about to go mental- literally. The wounds on Jaxyl's chest closed themselves, whatever cybervenom the black fangs had injected converting itself to harmless CR energon. The boy was healed.
"Three: Don't underestimate your elders," Copper hissed as his body folded back into beast mode. With a chuckle, the Australian copperhead disappeared into the undergrowth.
* * *
Pandemonium, usually the order of the day aboard the Axalon, seemed utterly absent. Nothing- short of one pod falling and Cheetor not reaching it in time (...found it, Big Bot, but it's slagged... no sparks for miles...)- deigned to grace the Ax's main sensors. For some reason, this caused tension among the masses. Rattrap found shelter from this malaise by playing his favorite video game- Convoy's Big Decepticon Thwomping Adventure, for the Playstation. Rhinox tinkered on one after another hairbraned scheme, supposedly methods for their rescue from Cybertron. All they ever seemed to do was sputter and die within moments, showering the Maximals with sparks and pretty lights; practical for little more than taunts to the slow-talking yet fast-brained rhino-morphic. Dinobot, on the other hand, stayed active, practicing his swordsmanship in one of the wreck's two holochambers- CR tank sized virtual reality devices capable of giving the user the perception of room where there was not. The Darkside did not stock holochambers, and Dinobot found the Axalon's well-appointed luxuries vexing yet pleasing at the same time.
"A Predacon warship," the sharp-toothed and even sharper-witted raptor complained, "would not have such amenities... although," he'd continue with a growl, "they do serve a useful purpose." And Dinobout would follow that with a whirring slash from the spinning drill-bladed sword Grim Lach.
Meanwhile, the more important of the Maximals- Silverbolt, Cheetor and Primal (the flyers- insufferable pistons sometimes, Rattrap pointed out), performed their most (unbearably tedious) noble of tasks: scout duty.
"My duty is to inform the others if there is trouble," Silverbolt would drone to Rattrap, much to the pack-bot's chagrin. "For a good offense is a prompt defense... (blah blah blah I am so good blah blah blah handsome blah blah blah...)"
Aside from dueling Cheetor at Playstation and taunting Dinobot to no end, one bright point of Rattrap's existance seemed obvious: fightin' Preds. A lot of that was had, too, since the Predacons outnumbered the Maximals by quite an impressive margin. Be it the multi-armed moth-bot Sin, the idiotic yet unnervingly powerful Waspinator, or Great Megatron, the rex himself... nobody was safe from Rattrap's hyper shocking...
"Wake up, dope," Steeljaw growled from above. Rattrap was dozing again.
"Ah, for bootin' up cold, kitty litter..." Rattrap smirked, leaning back and peering at Steeljaw. "There's nothing happening."
"Oh, nothing happening," the iron blue cougar replied, grabbing Rattrap's shoulders and shoving his face into the viewscreen. "The convergence of twenty Preds is nothing."
The rat's sneer folded into a frown as he tried to make something of the blurred screen. "I don't see nuthin'--"
"Maybe opening your optics would help," Steeljaw growled even deeper, rapping Rattrap's helmet with his fist. "Look: Quickstrike, Sin, a batch of recently fallen proto's, too... one of them's Maximal."
"You mean a convert?" Rattrap asked.
"No... it'd show up with a Pred comm-signature. This guy's one of us... He seems to be..."
"He's drawing them away from the Axalon!" Rattrap howled. "'atta boy, whoever you are!"
"Come on, cheese eater, we've got work to do." Steeljaw hunkered down, his body shifting from robot to that of an imposing steel blue mountain lion, twin spike-studded discs mounted on his shoulders, the rifle and longsword he carried in robot form bolted to his hindquarters.
The red and silver rat followed suit, shrinking down to barely shin's height with Steeljaw. He was tiny, but dreams or not, Rattrap could hold his own in a fight. That's why Steeljaw- though loath to admit it- liked the little vermin.
To Rattrap, Steeljaw was like... another Dinobot. Yet less abrasive. And with more charisma.
Smelled better, too.
The Axalon's forward lift ground to a halt on the rocky bluff, and Rattrap and his companion stepped off. "Sounds pretty calm," the rodent noted, pricking up his hypersensitive aural receptor (beast mode had its perks, as always). "Got some comm static from the southwest, about three klicks... 'zat where the signal's comin' from?"
"Affirmative," Steeljaw replied, padding off the platform. "Climb on my back- my alt-mode is marginally faster than yours."
"Ah ah ah," Rattrap chided, waving one of his stubby silver fingers at the cougar, "don't forget yer physics. My added weight on yer torso would mean yer goin' slower than me."
"Of course, my mistake," Steeljaw replied, obviously not pleased with his oversight. Even less pleased, Rattrap wagered, with being corrected by a pipsqueak wharf crawler. "Shall we?"
"Ladies first," the pest replied, waving Steeljaw forward. The big cat simlpy rolled his eyes and hunkered down, folding his forelimbs back and hindlegs down. A pair of segmented metal bands wrapped themselves around Steeljaw's hind legs, and the ball-chain metal tail stiffened and laid itself across the cat's back, forming a makeshift gun turret. A tank mode. Very impressive.
The two zipped off in a crack and a cloud of dust.
* * *
The T rex- neither purple nor gold but brown and green, very natural hues- slashed at his enemies with the big sword he carried. "Take that, brigand!" he shoulded, carving Waspinator's head straight off. The green and gold arthropod's shell crumpled comically (for the others, definitely not for Waspinator), and was trod upon by the advancing Predacon legions.
The seemingly anthropomorphic lizard turned as he picked up the sounds of oncoming vehicles.
"Don't worry, don't worry! The cavalry has arrived!" a weaselly voice echoed off the canyon walls. The vroom of two engines- one buzzy, like a motorcycle's, the other a dull roar similar to that of a Humvee- rang through the aural receptors of the engaging Predacon forces like a death knell. They knew that the Cerulean Edge had come for their sparks.
When Rattrap and Steeljaw transformed, whooping their Maximal warcries, all but two Predacons had fled: Sin, who simply folded her arms across her chest (and her stomach), and her companion, a dark blue and silver Transmetallized reptilian. Neither Steeljaw nor Rattrap had seen the second Pred before- probably one of the windfall that emerged right after the Planetbuster blew up.
"Mind explainin' why yer little Preda-cronies were beatin up one of our own?" Rattrap demanded.
The femmebot shrugged. Her companion, a feral-looking, hulking brute of a lizard, kicked around one of Waspinator's former arms. "He's my charge," Sin replied. "Meggs wanted me to yank his programming out and put in some of our own."
"As usual," Steeljaw scoffed. "Well, you've failed, Sin, and we'll be kindly taking this new 'bot back to base."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," the until recently silent companion whispered. In a flash of white steel, the blue and silver Predacon drew his sword, swirling it in an air-splitting whistle around his head.
A fraction of a nanoclick passed before Steeljaw's own blade was out, clashing against the edge of Sin's newfound slave. "Your reflexes are most tempered," the masked foe hissed as their swords sparked off each other's lengths.
"Yours are most promising too," Steeljaw replied, obviously impressed by his adversary. "Shall we take this somewhere less confined?"
With a swipe of his sword, Steeljaw was out of the grapple, backpedalling into the more open cliffs, drawing his enemy away from the box canyon... and away from Sin and Rattrap.
Speaking of Rattrap, the vermin had wasted no time in lunging at Sin, biting and clawing at her. The moth had taken the hint, and shot skyward, playing off Rattrap's acrophobia and lack of wings. "Wanna dance, Willard?" Sin snarled in the ratbot's ear.
"It takes two to tango, wings," he replied, head splitting open to meet Sin's face with his boot. "Maximized right in the kisser, that's gotta hurt."
Rattrap didn't realize the two were now falling, but nothing stopped him from having fun. Ah well, he thought as both of them slammed into the cliff face, good while it lasted. Sin was flattened, but Rattrap managed to push off of her at the last possible moment, flipping in an uncharacteristically graceful manner onto the desert floor.
Dusting his hands off, Rattrap looked at the new Maximal. "Howdy," he said, extending his dirty palm. "Designation's Rattrap, Maximal Espionage and Tactical. And you might be?"
"I don't know," the lizard replied. "I remember emerging from my pod and immediately having to battle... all I know is that I am Maximal."
"Yeah, aren't we all..." Rattrap gave a sly look at the new one, then spoke again. "Once Steeljaw's free, we'll head back to the Axalon."
"...the Axalon?" Big Guy asked.
"Yeah, home base, the ranch, chez nous, kl'acha khomera... that's Sirian, ya know."
"Right... Rattrap," Big Guy started, "where are we?"
"Optimus thinks it's Earth, around 40 thousand BC... but... given some of the local fauna, I'd say somethin' more along the lines of... 2 and a half million... give or take a millennium."
"Oh, right," Bewildered Big Guy responded. "Who's Optimus? The name sounds so familiar."
"Fearless leader, don't ya know... Optimus Primal was in command of the Axalon when it crashlanded. You were in a pod in the stasis hold, just waiting to be released... I reckon ya came down when the Quantum Surge hit... but why ain't ya a Transmetal?" The last question was not directed at Big Guy. "Ah, never mind, we gotta get back to the Axalon- Steeljaw looks as if he's disarmed the Pred."
Sure enough, Steeljaw returned to Rattrap and Big Guy's position, throwing a brachial subunit onto the sand. "Ooh, and quite lit'rally, too!" Rattrap chortled, scooping the dismembered limb up, much to Big Guy's shock. "Don't get worked up, kid, it's a hobby of mine. I'm workin' on a collection... got enough for nearly three whole 'bots." Steeljaw found this time opportune to switch to his vehicular mode, which Rattrap soon emulated. "Looks like we're gonna take it pretty slow back, considering Big Guy back there ain't got the same hardware as the two of us." Rattrap smirked, leading the two back to the Axalon. On foot.
End of Part One Stay tuned for Part Two.