The war is over; the memories are not.
What enemies could not do, time has done...
And as the world crumbles to chaos,
No adversary could cause greater destruction,
Than we did to ourselves.
Chopper faced Sharpspike, snarling angrily at the missed opportunity to see the red mech offline by his own servos. The two silver mechs circled each other in the small confines of the repair room.
"We meet again," Sharpspike said, lifting his blaster and his mace.
"This time, not as allies, but as enemies." Chopper pulled a second sword off his rotary assembly, activating it. Both swords twirled in whirling fans of silver.
"We never were allies, you honorless excuse for a mech!" Sharpspike fired his cannon while lunging towards Chopper.
Chopper dodged nimbly to the side, and Sharpspike's cannon shot made a crater in the wall.
"Honor is for offlined scrap!" Chopper swung his rotor swords in a gleaming display, but each attempted hit was deflected by Sharpspike. Chopper's optic ridges furrowed in concentration as his swords whirled toward the gladiator's neck joint.
For an instant it seemed as though Sharpspike would lose, but somehow be deflected the blade yet again.
"We were built for different glories, Chopper. You know that as well as any who served in the wars." Sharpspike swung his mace yet again, and this time Chopper had to dodge.
"I was meant to win the war while your kind acted as cannon fodder!" Chopper swung his swords at Sharpspike's servo, without pausing or permitting even a brief respite from his blows.
Sharpspike jumped back and shot several weaker blasts with his cannon. The mace he was holding split into four pieces, three of them turning into drones and whizzing around him. The fourth extended into a morningstar mounted on a retractable chain.
"I thought you cared about honor," Chopper spat mockingly. "What, can't defeat me without the extra help?"
"They are as much a part of me as any limb, and they obey my orders without question." Pride gleamed in the gladiator's optics.
Chopper smiled, spotting an opportunity. "Limbs hurt when they are chopped off."
Sharpspike barely had time to engage the drones' evasive maneuvers before a silver blade slashed through the air. Even so, one was clipped and the fuel system was damaged.
The gladiator flinched slightly at the drone's injury. He barely had time to direct the damaged drone to dive at Chopper's helm before the shredded propulsion system shorted out.
The rotary dodged effortlessly, but the drone exploded in a spray of shrapnel when it impacted the wall. Several shards of metal glanced off Chopper's rotors, making him hiss, but they were a minor annoyance. He started up flight systems, lazily twirling back-mounted rotors in sync with his silver swords. Drone innards flew in all directions.
The two silver mechs clashed again in a shower of sparks. Chopper ignored the two drones attempting to dive-bomb him, spinning his back-mounted rotors at them to keep part of the gladiator's attention diverted.
While stuck in emergency stasis, the red mech could do little except search through old archives in his memory banks.
Gunfire sounds outside the makeshift bunker.
"We have to get out of here! They're getting closer!"
"Our commander is out there! He had vital intelligence on the enemy!"
Tools scrape against a rough surface.
"Well, send a team of medics to assist him!"
"There are no spare medics! The civilian builds don't have enough armor and all the combat medics besides me are injured or in retreat!"
"This one's not damaged too badly." Does he mean… me…? How did I get here…?
"Fix him, fast! I'll get my squad together—"
Right… there was an explosion. I think the other mechs survived, though. They patched me up as fast as they could, anyway… just couldn't fully fix my leg in time.
"Alright, you're done." The medic's voice moves closer. "Let's go find the commander. The tacticians needs that intel!"
Engines fire up as I transform. My leg is still damaged, but I won't need to walk as a jet. If I can save the commander, we might still have hope of victory. If I can't, the war will end… with our defeat.
"Go!"
"Sir." Wind and blaster fire roar around me. Scans ping the surface, searching for the commander's energy signature. The other medic is nearby, similarly searching the battlefield for our target. A missile shoots up from the surface but is easily evaded.
There! The commander is barely holding his own against several enemy troops.
The commander leaps upward, grabbing onto the other medic's wings as he swoops by. I launch an emergency carrying platform, and the two of us manage to drag him into the sky.
More blaster fire erupts below us. If only grounders were less heavy, we might be able to escape more quickly.
Something explodes under the other medic. He's leaking energon badly. We need to get to a safe place, and soon.
"I'm hit!" The medic accelerates, trying to get to the base faster, but his trajectory is starting to decay. The commander clutches the platform more tightly.
"Just keep flying!" The base is in sight now.
"I… need energon… emergency stasis activating…" The other medic's engines lose power. He is still gliding forward, but now his nosecone points toward the ground. He dangles from the other end of the emergency carrier, both mechs supported only by my engines.
"Drop me over Gamma Squadron. They'll catch me." The commander leans over the emergency carrier, pointing to a group of mechs on the ground. His other servo supports the injured medic.
Wings are failing. I can't carry the weight of both mechs much longer.
"We're at a safe altitude," I announce, struggling to ignore the strain in my wings.
The commander jumps, heaving the injured medic onto the carrier as he falls. The decrease in load is faster than I can compensate. The other medic and I veer upward, tethered by the carrier and spinning out of control.
One of the medic's engines explodes, severely damaging my sensory arrays. The cables holding the carrier snap off as the ground accelerates towards me. I am going to crash...
Pain flares brightly. Is that the crash?
It can't have been. A crash at that speed would surely have offlined me. I need help, but there are no medics left…? How did I survive the crash at all…?
My optics land on the wreckage of the other medic, half-transformed in his final act of protection. Shattered optics sputter weakly before dying out. Our code is the same: I understand. His programming must still have recognized me as a patient.
"You should be fine now. I patched up your damaged lines," the green medic informed his patient. "Of course, you can't hear me because you're in stasis, but I really think you should avoid Chopper. For now, I'll just have to carry you to the medbay… it's not even a real medbay."
There was a long pause.
"I think Sharpspike and Chopper are evenly matched. One of them has to win eventually, right? Maybe Sharpspike will. He shot Chopper first, and Chopper was lower on energon… but Chopper is strong. And clever."
He paused again.
"I should really stop talking to myself." The green medic glanced at the red mech he was carrying to the alternate medbay, if it could be termed as such. It was more of a half-empty storage room than a medbay.
"It seems we're evenly matched," Chopper finally observed, swinging a rotor-blade at Sharpspike. As with the rotary's other several hundred attacks, the blow was deflected.
"You will tire eventually." Sharpspike's trained optics noticed a slight decline in Chopper's dodging speed as the rotary evaded a cannon blast that decimated a table.
"Eventually." The rotary's cunning optics narrowed in concentration as he avoided a large fist. "How much of your stored energon will you lose in the meantime? Hundreds of cubes? Thousands?"
"That is none of your concern," Sharpspike growled, batting a rotor-sword aside.
"You think none of your subordinates will leap at the chance to skim a little extra energon while you're busy fighting me?"
Sharpspike roared in response, sending one drone towards a tiny gap in the rotary's defense.
"You know I'm right." Chopper hissed in pain as the drone carved a deep gash in one spinning rotor, but he quickly retaliated by reversing the direction of his dorsal rotors. Sharpspike's two drones instantly tumbled away, unable to compensate for the sudden reversal in wind direction.
The gladiator's attacks lessened for a nanoklik as he attempted to regain control of his drones.
Chopper was gradually tiring; his frametype had been designed for sudden speed and strength, not endurance, and the long joors of fighting had weakened him. He quickly formulated a plan, retreating to the corner of the room and swatting one disoriented drone out of the air.
Sharpspike predictably noticed and charged, snarling angrily.
"These aren't cheap." Chopper pinned the drone down with one pede. The tip of a silver blade toyed with the drone's inner workings, slowly cutting through its rudimentary flight sensors.
"Argh!" Sharpspike halted instantly, unable to fully disguise his sharp flinch. As a gladiator, he had long since become accustomed to pain inflicted on his own frame. However, since other fighters were rarely able to catch one of his drones—much less torture it in Chopper's precise method—the sharp echo of pain from the drone was an unfamiliar sensation.
"Are you willing to lose so much profit over a pointless fight?" Chopper's drawling voice wavered slightly as his blade carved through the drone's sensors with excruciating slowness. "We can make a deal."
"A deal," Sharpspike growled, steadfastly ignoring the drone's pain. His trained optics spotted a slight tremor in Chopper's sword. Satisfaction filled the gladiator as he charged up his cannon. "Even now, you weaken. I could offline you."
"Ah, but you misunderstand. A deal is profitable for both of us!" Chopper smiled, an eerie light in his optics.
"A deal?" Sharpspike stood ready for any sudden moves, but he liked profit. Profit was good enough for him, and Chopper was in no position to make a non-profitable bargain.
"Yeeessss… I get the one you call Blueservo, you get twenty-seven energon cubes." Chopper fully intended to give the gladiator the smallest, least pure energon cubes he could find, but that hope was quickly dispelled.
"Twenty-seven normal sized energon cubes is nowhere near what that fighter can earn for me," Sharpspike pointed out, raising his cannon again. "I know your tricks."
"Wait!" Chopper frowned, knowing that it would be nearly impossible to dodge a point-blank shot in his fatigued state. "We can negotiate!"
Sharpspike chuckled, aiming the cannon. "How about you give me fifty cubes, and I let you keep your spark for another orn."
"That's hardly a deal," Chopper protested. "Thirty cubes for Blue—"
"That," the gladiator growled, "was my final offer."
The cannon hummed with power.
"Alright, alright. The energon is yours," the rotary angrily spat. "But this isn't over."
Sharpspike lowered the cannon and smiled unpleasantly.
"I'm glad we could come to this... agreement."
Greyspring and Sharpspike marched through the tunnels, systematically testing the Iacon Underground's new security measures.
"Why didn't ya trade him, boss? Thirty normal sized cubes is a lot, and we coulda built another viewing station for the audiences."
"Two orns here and Blueservo has already earned me more energon than most Empties," Sharpspike commented, testing the strength of a newly-installed blast door with one fist. "No mech, not even that rotary, offlines one of my popular fighters until I say so."
"Fair point." Greyspring nodded in understanding as the two of them moved toward the next door.
Sharpspike slammed his servo into this door as well, grunting slightly when his powerful attack bounced off harmlessly. His fist had barely scratched the door's surface.
"Every orn, more high class mechs come to watch my gladiators fight. The wealthier customers are already demanding higher-stakes tournaments with other arenas."
"Something's coming," Greyspring agreed, recalling Iacon's very first gladiator fights. Back then, it was rare for mechs to be injured enough to need an actual medic. Now, mechs were getting severely wounded, or even offlined, in every match. "Something big is on its way."
"Maybe you're right," Sharpspike muttered. "In the meantime, I get the feeling Blueservo will earn me lots of profit."
Some Cybertronian units:
nanoklik - second
breem - minute
joor - hour
orn - day
decaorn - 10 orns / 1 week
vorn - year
megavorn - 1,000,000 years
Thanks for reading and sorry for the long wait! Updates from now on will be more sparse. Never fear, though... we may take a while to update, but we will never abandon this story!
~The Voids