"MAX!"

The esteemed Guardian leapt out of the top of the Mesoamerican pyramid and almost flew off the edge of the first step down. Each pyramid had steps from fifty to a hundred in length from the ground up and falling down them was lethal if not painful. He waved his arms frantically to keep his balance and steadied himself with a sigh of relief.

"That was so close. Ha ha!"

A cracking noise made his success at not tumbling fade and he quickly turned around only to see the blunt side of a tail spear coming right at him.

"Oh sh-!"

Off the edge of the steps and flying, he barely acknowledged the hit but instead saw the steps near the base below coming fast. His legs were well over his head and his arm movements trying to correct his position didn't help any. He braced for a very hard impact when suddenly a black form wrapped around his body covering him and hit the ground, lessening the damage tenfold. Both he and his cover bounced a couple times before rolling onto the stone walkway and to the grass where they separated.

Max groaned and held his head, twisting his arm to make sure it wasn't any more than strained. He then saw the form to his left and there was Kia. She had shielded him from the impact and took almost all of it on herself. But she wasn't moving. In a panic, Max crawled to her and looked at her mangled body. Her head and spine were crooked and her arms looked dislocated.

"Kia? Kia, can you hear me?" He said in grief.

He kept replaying in his mind that dementors were supposed to be indestructible since they were technically alive but here she was, unmoving and broken. He carefully touched her bony cheek through her natural black cloak and closed his eyes.

Abruptly to his shock, she quickly jumped up and rolled across the ground as her bones snapped back into place and her head realigned with a horrific snap. She shook like a dog after a bath and gave Max a tilt of the head curiously.

Max gave a brief smile before scowling and punching her arm. "What the hell?! I almost thought you were dead! Don't ever scare me like that again!"

Kia spun in a circle and rumbled as if to laugh and rotated around him in affection. He got up and laughed alongside her as she stopped to perch on his shoulders, her cloaked lower half wrapped around his waist. She accepted the scratches underneath her jaw and let out a purr.

A roar interrupted their reunion and Kia uncoiled herself to float beside Max as he faced the temple he had just emerged from. The temple was shaking but with the dark of the night growing, it was hard to tell just what was happening. The night was settling in and since the temple wasn't close to towns or had any lights, the only thing lighting the temple was the half crescent moon and the semi visible Milky Way that streaked across the lower part of the sky.

A quake was suddenly felt through the ground and the temple roared again. Crackling and stone bricks fell loose from the movement until the top of the pyramid burst in all different directions. A massive form shot out head first and collapsed on the steps as it pulled its remaining body through. Wings longer than the temple was wide scattered the remaining top to the side as the creature lifted its head and bellowed to the sky. It coiled itself around the ruins of the temple and expanded its wings.

"Quetzalcóatl," Max fumed, narrowing his eyes.

The snake-like creature hissed and stared down at Max with utter hatred in its golden eyes. He, of course, gave a half assed smile in return.

Quetzalcóatl was a Transformer, specifically a Kanjian breed. No one except the Aztecs knew she wasn't an Earth-bound creature of myth and contrary to the original beliefs of Quetzalcóatl where it was created via a swallowed emerald and born male, she was actually a femme though that part wasn't known even by the Aztecs. Her name was Quakecoast but his guess was the Aztecs mistook the name pronunciation by accident which led to her current name.

He wasn't here to indulge the "god" nor bow before her. He was here to stop her. Local towns had reported missing persons, mostly tourists and guides, for almost a year and with growing numbers, there was suspicion but all those towns had one thing in common: they had catacombs linking them underneath their own noses and only one creature used the catacombs now. Her snake-like body was perfect for navigating them and she could snatch prey easily, dragging them beyond the realm of any help.

Whether she could transform or not from her amphiptere form was unknown but assuming the depictions of the creature Coatl as human from Aztec drawings were real, she must have been able to do it before. Max knew that over the years of being on Earth worshipped as the heathen god of wind, air, and knowledge as well as the symbol of death and resurrection took its toll on Quetzalcóatl's mind, and she began to believe she really was a god and an unbeatable one at that. Her delusions kept her from leaving long after the Aztec Empire was destroyed and now, she was convinced she was protecting the temples and its treasures...which Max had already stolen a grand majority of unbeknownst to her. This just proved his point how mad she had gone.

Her body was completely mechanical but her scaly armor was a shimmering metallic blue with green undertones at certain angles. Her underbelly was barely any lighter but held gold swirling designs detailed across her body. Her crown of metallic feathers on her head were a deep crimson with gold tips but as the feathers trailed down her spine to her tail, it shifted from crimson to gold. Her golden optics had light yellow pupils with orange edging which blended well with the gold swirls lining her face. Her tail tip was gold plated and resembled a tepoztopilli but with blue sapphire blades. It was hard to tell if it was cosmetic or an actual part of her. Her feathered wings had the same blue metallic sheen on the marginal coverts as her body, but the primary and secondary coverts blended to a crimson before then shifting down to the ends to orange then to a beautiful yellow at the tips.

Quetzalcóatl was a magnificent creature but what she had in beauty she lacked in sanity. The amphiptere stuck her tongue out to sense the dense air of the jungle and lowered to slither down the temple steps, some caving in from her weight and ruining the path.

Max began to back away as she drew closer and when she touched grass, he sprinted. Kia followed, using her hands to gather speed and they both heard a roar in response. The ground rumbled as she sidewinded towards them. Kia split off from Max heading to another part of the ruins but Max kept to his path towards the second temple.

"You pitiful insect! Face me!"

"I'd rather not!" Max replied.

The second temple had some overgrowth and a tree sticking out near the base in the stone. Max had never explored this temple but there was a chance it contained access to the underground catacombs he needed to get to.

The Aztecs were intelligent people, not just for their pyramids and cultural stability, before colonists of course, but also for their ability to think ahead. The catacombs ran between the pyramids and webbed out to villages and important sites for miles. It was like a subway system without the train. They transferred goods through it and there were airways to allow oxygen as well as hidden storage rooms where most of their treasures of the past were kept in case of intruders.

He glanced at the temple, planning his strategy of escape. Taking Quetzalcóatl head on was suicide but making her run for her conquest was the key to defeating her. She would pursue no matter what and that's exactly what he needed her to do.

Max ran to the side near some building ruins and tribute stones in the hopes to get out of sight. She followed until the shadows hid her target well and she soon realized she could no longer see him. She let out an angry grunt and eyed every piece of stone for him. She rounded the ruins but still found no trace of him.

Max was hidden behind a pillar and could easily detect her due to her scales reflecting the light more than any other object around. He kept to the shadows and maneuvered around past her line of sight. Each time she had her back to him, he moved closer to the pyramid.

"I am god here! I am the one who wins! You cannot escape me!"

He rolled his eyes and grumbled to himself. "Keep telling yourself that. It may come true."

He managed to get to the steps when Quetzalcóatl screeched angrily and stretched her wings before lifting herself off the ground. He watched as she gained altitude and her underbelly began to glow. Pulsing, her designs illuminated and trailed up to her throat where she let blue fire this time spew from her mouth up into the atmosphere. Every star, cloud, and even the moon seemed to glow brighter as the fire sent waves across the sky. When she stopped, the fire continued to pulse and the whole area was almost as bright as day.

She shook her head, her feathers ruffling in irritation. Knowing there wasn't as many places her enemy could hide now, she quickly scanned the area until she noticed a speck of red. Her pupils dilated before shrinking in anger.

Max knew when his gig was up when the giant amphiptere was making direct eye contact and wasn't swaying from it. Plan B: time to book it.

He didn't hesitate to climb up the steps to the temple as Quetzalcóatl swooped towards him. Knowing he wouldn't make it to the top in time, he activated his grapple and shot it at her. It caught part of her armor and he slid down the slope of the pyramid parallel to the steps to avoid getting eaten as she came at him with open jaws. Upon missing, she pulled up to prevent hitting the stone at high speed. The grapple caught and he was flying behind her.

She flew over the top of the pyramid and he used the momentum to detach at the right moment, landing on the top platform. He shrugged off the impact and smirked, "Thanks for the lift!"

Running into the temple entrance, he saw various markings on the walls and exotic stone busts of Quetzalcóatl peering down from the roof and along the walls. There was a faded mural of various color depicting Quetzalcóatl, both in a human-esque form and her current, in a very two-dimensional pose and villagers gathering around offering food and treasure to her. The light from her fire outside illuminated the picture in a way that was kind of poetic, down in flames their empire went and so did her rule over them.

A rumble broke his concentration and he scurried to the far wall and began feeling it. The catacombs were originally an open gateway but when reports from other tribes of intruding forces like the Spaniards became unignorable, the Aztecs sealed their passages and had a secret method of opening them in emergencies. Unless one knew where to look, the catacombs have never been found and they would remain sealed.

He had knowledge of them from an old priestess, one of the last living Aztec cultural preservers. By the 1700's, ninety-six percent of the Aztec people and most other Mesoamerican tribes were deceased. She had been a friend of his mother who met her on the coast of what is now Manzanillo. She came about as a crew member and found sanctuary among his mother's own people who welcomed her with open arms. He remembered when he was a little kid the stories of her people and passed down insights on the Spanish conquest against the Aztecs. Tales of vast creatures and spiritual advice he took to heart were some of the various reasons he became a self-taught explorer and researched every foe he came across. He owed a lot to her.

Max skimmed his metal gauntlet claws against the wall slowly, placing pressure among each stone when one sank inward, and the wall shook. Heavy hand-crafted bags filled with rock descended through a hidden hole in the roof and the stone was pulled apart by an unknown contraption. He always gave props to the Aztecs, they understood innovation like no other people.

A hiss alerted him to Quetzalcóatl and he barely saw the tip of her snout breach the end of the platform when scowled. Slowly, her head became visible, and she looked around the temple top with distain. Snarling, she brough her upper body at least part of the way through but her wings made it hard to go any further.

"And just where do you think you're going? You think you can just steal from me and get away with it?"

"...Yeah," Max snidely replied. "But I didn't steal anything this time so you're just being petty."

"'This time'? You've stolen my riches before?!" Quetzalcóatl roared.

Max inwardly cringed at himself and stared to the side, holding up a finger. "Did I say that? I meant to say...ah forget it. Yes, I did steal from you. And you know what, for an all-seeing god of knowledge or whatever you've enlightened yourself as, you're a terrible guardian. You know how much treasure I snuck by you in these temples? Check your stock and come back to me."

Quetzalcóatl looked dumbfounded and Max gave her a shrewd wave goodbye before jumping backwards into the hidden entrance to the catacombs and simultaneously bringing out one of his guns to shoot the bag holding the entrance open. The bag shattered and the rope flew up just as Quetzalcóatl lunged in fury.

Max only saw the latter half when the entrance sealed. The wall suddenly rippled inward from an impact alongside a huge thud and a groan. He gave a snarky salute and instead of taking the stairs like a normal person, he posed on the edging to the side to slide down the long slope into the dark tunnel. As he was gaining momentum, he could see brief specks of light from the ceiling above. Soon those specks vanished, and he noticed a transition between stone and reinforced rock indicating he was now below ground level. Right before the end of the stairway, he leapt off to keep his speed and sprinted down the tunnel.

The catacombs were vast, and it could take anywhere from a couple hours to days to navigate them into other territories. There were skeletons still in good condition down there and to his brief surprise, Aztec people staring at him as he passed. Souls of the dead were not uncommon entities to wander such ruins and not everyone passed on the afterlife. It wasn't the first time he dealt with spirits and seeing men, women, and children in Mesoamerican clothing looking directly at him was not the most shocking thing he had ever witnessed. Thankfully, they weren't being assholes like other spirits in the past he encountered and screaming at his face to go away to his annoyance. But they probably could sense Quetzalcóatl nearby so even the most hostile spirits believed he was doomed regardless, no need to scare a person that bad near death.

The tunnel became darker except by odd crystal formations that were embedded in the stone. Energon crystals to be precise. He passed a blue glow seeping through the cracks and recognized the substance immediately without slowing down. Energon fuel. When Quetzalcóatl landed on Earth, she probably had Energon with her and the Aztecs stored it in the catacombs for her in some of the secret rooms. Over the centuries, the Energon leaked out and grew crystals not just in the storage rooms but also grew outward in the tunnels themselves. This at least provided some light.

He slowed to a fast walk and one of the spirits he noticed was following as he kept appearing in his path every so often. An older man with blue earrings and tattoos on his cheeks with a decorative headdress, possibly a healer or a high position of other, glanced at him not with distain or aggression but was instead quite neutral. When Max passed him, he felt a small wave of cold air among the denseness of the underground. Suddenly, the man was walking beside him and he said nothing, neither did the spirit. As he reached an intersection of tunnels, he stopped and glanced down each one.

He had come from the North, so the left had to be East, right West, and forward was South. Before he could deduce where each would lead, the man walked in front of him. Without a single word, the spirit pointed to the East.

"That will send me to the outskirts of Veracruz...which is closer to a town than any other of the ends," Max said. "Thank you."

The spirit still stared at him, but he didn't get one step towards the eastern tunnel when a hand firmly touched his chest to stop him. It was the same coldness he got passing the man before. He looked towards the spirit and the entity gazed up to the ceiling, tracking it as far as tunnel could be made out. He wanted something or was warning him, and it had to do with the tunnel itself.

"What is it you want me to do?" He whispered.

A stone on the side of the tunnel slid out on its own before falling onto the ground. The wall gave a small creak as did the ground above and Max eyed the walls carefully before coming to a guess.

"Do you...want me to tear the tunnel down on my way out?"

The spirit slowly nodded. Max gave another glance at the tunnel.

"You either don't want any more visitors down here...or you know what I want to do with Quetzalcóatl. I want to trap her in the catacombs so she can't hurt anybody else. I was going to seal off the entrances only but destroying the tunnel might work as well. Once again, thank you!"

The man simply nodded again and walked away. Since standing still, there were a few whispers from other spirits he could hear but they grew silent when a loud bang echoed in the far northern tunnel. There were no spirits to be seen. That was his cue to leave. Quetzalcóatl was on her way.

He heard a growl and a hiss of frustration as well as movement despite how far she was. He sprinted down the eastern tunnel to put as much distance as possible between them.

"MAX!"

That was unbridled fury if he ever heard it. The light of the crystals was all but gone because none grew this far out which almost made for complete darkness. Now he could only use sound as his guide against Quetzalcóatl which was going to be hard. The tunnels echoed every sound so predicting where she was and how close would take basically luck.

He heard her turn and knew it was her turning because hitting the walls of the tunnel reverberated through the side and ceiling with various rumbles all the way and past him. She had a definitive ability of scent no doubt so he couldn't rule out predicting she was on his tail already. She was faster than he anticipated too.

What was he to do next? If he kept running, he was dead because it was only a matter of time before she caught up. If he faced her, she wouldn't stop and, in the darkness, he had to time an attack or a dodge perfectly or he'd just get squished, ran over, eaten...not a lot of favorable outcomes to put it lightly. The exit to the temple hidden near Veracruz was still several miles. Die or die against his will?

Halting, he scowled at himself and turned around to face the direction to his doom. His planned was ill-conceived but it was simple, jump on her and catch a ride. If he messed up, no more dealing with her at least. He felt the vibrations of the stone and estimated her distance between them. She was coming up fast, now or never. Crouching, he waited with his hand on the ground and perched to pounce.

Louder the rumbling grew, and he only saw a glimmer of light, her optics, come out from the darkness. Right as he did, he leapt up near the ceiling and barely missed her open jaws snarling at him. He felt suspended in midair for longer than it seemed his adrenaline was up so high. It was like everything turned to slow motion and he met her optics for that millisecond before time reached its normal speed, rolling onto her spine and grasped the feathers. She roared so he knew she knew he was still alive.

"Got off of me, parasite!"

He was about to retort when she angrily slammed her head against the ceiling and the rest of her body curved to hit the same spot as a ripple effect. Max hastily dodged by swinging to her side as she hit his location. His right hand caught the edge of it, and he cursed silently when he felt the bones crunch over the force of pressure, curling it under his left arm and clenching his teeth, but the main thing was he was still alive which made up for a broken hand.

Suddenly, moonlight seemed to trail them, and Max peered up in confusion when it dawned on him the ceiling was cracking as well as the ground above the tunnel because of Quetzalcóatl's rage, and it was going as fast as they were. He peered back and stared in horror as dirt and stone toppled and the moonlight doing nothing but making the disaster noticeable. Quaking made the tunnels echo with ear-piercing noises of stones against stones and the cracks above grew faster, faster than even Quetzalcóatl could go. At the rate it was going, the tunnel would collapse over them in a matter of minutes.

"Time to go!" Max stood up and quickly kept as much balance as possible on Quetzalcóatl's spine to walk towards her tail. The stone and dirt falling weren't overwhelming them yet but if he could time this, he'd only be crushed by dirt which he could save himself or Kia could find him easier in if she was tracking him.

Quetzalcóatl was beginning to panic when he noticed they were slowing down. He took that as his mark and jumped up skimming the falling stones to try and avoid them or at least plant himself above them to lessen the damage. As he did that, Quetzalcóatl's tail was caught and she was forcefully stopped in place. He could only hear her roars muffled by the tunnel as it crushed her.

"NO!"

Dirt built up around him too quick. He tried to claw his way out to no avail even with a broken hand, but the pain didn't register over the fear of being swallowed alive by the collapsing surface. Moonlight disappeared and he could only close his eyes as his chest became heavy. The darkness never felt so terrifying before.

Plumes of dust went for almost three miles before settling as there was now an odd, stretched line of nothing but upturned stone and dirt. A few areas alongside it were desecrated by the quake but when everything settled, the silence of the ruins haunted the jungle and the catacombs was peaceful again.

Seconds, minutes, hours; he had not a clue how long it was before a beam of light as small as a speck appeared. Then more were popping up like the stars had ignited one by one until a big chunk of light engulfed him.

He felt the pressure lessen and groaned, blinking his open and coughing. The first thing he saw was the stars and the tail end of the Milky Way. Then he saw a form moving at the bottom corner of his eye. Kia was frantically digging, and he gave hoarse laugh.

"Came right on time."

Using his remaining strength, he helped Kia dig and crawled out of his entombment covered in dirt from head to toe. He coughed a few more times before sitting on the ground and wincing when he used his broken hand to help him turn.

He sighed, "Ah damn it! Mmm, remind me never to do that again."

He cradled his hand and shook off some of the dirt from his hair. His tricorn hat fell off when he crawled up from the depths. The resulting shake send a wave of dust and dirt to cover part of his lap and he just accepted it. Kia tucked her arms in and lied on the ground in a loaf position beside him. He gave another groan before turning his attention to the collapsed tunnel ruins.

Quetzalcóatl was buried deep in the stone and a part of Max couldn't help but feel bad for leaving her in such a state. He tried to help her a few times but she refused. It was funny though; he never did anything to her this time. He was only here to return a lost artifact that caused much misfortune for an archeologist, ended up bringing bad luck that took her life, a Kanjian curse to be exact. It was Quetzalcóatl that started the fight today and she paid for it.

He honestly didn't know if she survived but she was out of commission which meant the locals of nearby towns suffering from her terror beneath the radar were free from her. She was no longer a threat for the time being or perhaps ever again. Max hated killing history, but at what point would history have enough strife to be declared a burden in the present where it must be destroyed?

Quetzalcóatl was a relic of Aztec history, but she was no god in real life. Perhaps it was better to keep her memory as a god in the history books instead of letting the world find out the Aztec god of creation, the god of air, wind, and knowledge was a monster lost to her own pride and greed. Of course, it was hypocritical for him to justify that because he stole from her on numerous occasions but at least he didn't pretend to be something he wasn't, and he wasn't a complete bitch about it either.

"Kia," he said softly. "Let's go home."

The dementor got up from her position and waited as Max slowly rose from his before both walking away from the relics of the Aztec Empire.

AN: An amphiptere is a legless, winged serpent dragon which is what the Mesoamerican creature called Quetzalcóatl was. Quetzalcóatl is male in description but given Transformers don't have true genders if one met humans, they would be at the whim of whatever said humans described them as. I made her a femme because it wouldn't have mattered and there aren't a lot of femmes in Transformer media so give a femme the chance to be a god.