The horde of Insecticons filled the dark room with a cacophony of eerie metallic sounds. Illuminated by the light from his own headlights, the gunner jerked his weaponry around, firing wildly at anything that moved. Everything around him turned into a sea of movement, a plethora of targets.
Warpath, Hound and Windcharger lay on the floor as flat and motionless as possible to avoid becoming Bluestreak's next unfortunate target. Warpath and Hound checked to see that the other was still alright, able to see by the light of their headlights and by the light from the forehead lamp in Hound's helmet. Cliffjumper took his chances with the berserk gunner, still managing to avoid the blasts of liquid nitrogen Ironhide aimed at him.
A stream of laser fire lanced across the floor near the gunner as Kickback swung out of the way of one of Bluestreak's shoulder mounted missiles without taking his finger off the trigger of his weapon. The source of the laser fire became Bluestreak's next deliberate target as he aimed both rifles at Kickback and squeezed the triggers with a death grip. The grasshopper Insecticon jumped several times to get away from the volley that followed him, but could not match the speed with which Bluestreak retargeted him.
After heavily strafing the clones in Kickback's path, Bluestreak riddled the Insecticon with dual beam rifle fire. While his silver wings shielded him from some of the blasts, Kickback took a barrage of laser fire to his chassis, and dropped down to the floor in a smoking heap.
"Bombshell, help me, help me!" Kickback begged as he reached out feebly.
Shrapnel and Bombshell hid behind the generator while Bluestreak continued to destroy the clone army single-handedly in his state of blind panic.
"You had better forget about your Autobot collection, Bombshell, Bombshell." Shrapnel frowned. "We're losing too many of our clones, our clones."
"Not yet!" the Insecticon leader replied as he turned to watch his first slave closing in on Cliffjumper. "Slave! Forget about that Autobot! Go after the one firing at us, us!"
Obediently, Ironhide let Cliffjumper go. The minibot scrambled back from Ironhide on all fours as Ironhide turned and plodded toward Bluestreak.
Bombshell laughed as he looked across at Jazz. "The tables are turning, Shrapnel. My second slave is thawing out, out." The frost sheen had disappeared and Jazz was almost back up to room temperature. Through the cerebral shell link, he commanded Jazz to stand up straight and turn around. Jazz obeyed without contest. "Now attack your friends, friends!"
Hound watched the turn of events from the floor. He carefully turned himself so as not to distract Bluestreak and cast a hologram of the silver gunner next to the generator where Bombshell was hiding. Ironhide and Jazz stopped in their tracks, confused by the double. Then Jazz aimed his photon rifle at the closer hologram and fired.
"Don't shoot at me, you fool! Get him, get him!" Bombshell ordered anxiously.
"More Autobot slaves aren't worth this, Bombshell, Bombshell," Shrapnel plied with dismay. He poked his head around the side of the generator to check the state of Kickback. The third Insecticon lay motionless, yet still functional, on the floor. He wished to sic some of the clones on the Autobots and flee.
But Bombshell had his sights on Bluestreak. The gunner would make an excellent slave with all of that firepower. He might even keep him for a while, the Insecticon leader considered.
"It's no use," Windcharger spoke quietly to Hound, mindful of Bluestreak standing nearly over top of them. "They know it's a hologram."
"You're right," Hound agreed softly and turned the image off. He stared down at the floor beneath him, knowing things were not going to end well.
Jazz aimed his photon rifle at Bluestreak and fired. He struck the gunner in the midsection, momentarily stunning him. Ironhide moved in and raised his liquid nitrogen jets at Bluestreak.
Then something behind them caught Warpath's attention and he suddenly raised his head in a moment of forgetfulness for his own safety. "Look!"
Hound and Windcharger immediately turned to see what Warpath saw behind them.
"I don't believe it!" Hound exclaimed hoarsely with wide optics as he tried to control the tone of his vocalizer.
A tall, dark figure loomed over Bluestreak. Faced with looking into the gunner's headlights, all Bombshell could see was a black silhouette accented with a few lights and a glowing blue optic band.
Bluestreak continued to rapidly fire all of his weaponry, until he noticed the air begin to vibrate and a pale aura emerge around him from behind, separating him from his targets. Alerted to the presence of something behind him causing the phenomenon, Bluestreak spun around and aimed both guns and missiles at the new target.
The gunner's optics cleared when he saw the tall, familiar figure looking down on him. He did a double take. "T-Trailbreaker?! Is it really you?"
"Yeah," the defensive strategist replied plainly. "I see you could use some help."
Bluestreak was overwhelmed by the appearance of Trailbreaker. Other than dents and some long, deep scratches, he was all in one piece. "What a relief! But how?"
"Never mind that right now," Trailbreaker answered, "Let's take care of these Insecticons."
Bluestreak turned back around. At that instant, liquid nitrogen gushed around the force field Trailbreaker cast to protect them and a cerebro shell bounced harmless to the floor.
On the other side of the force field, Jazz and Ironhide stared at them through dull, vacant optics. Like a robotic zombie, Jazz fired repeatedly at the force field, but the shots deflected off it.
"Fat chance they'll get through my force field!" Trailbreaker announced.
Bombshell uttered a tinny sound of frustration. It was clear that he would not be able to plant a cerebro shell on the gunner. "Enough of this! Clones, attack!"
The dark masses glimmering in the light reflected from their headlights scuttled toward the Autobots with mandibles clicking and clacking. Warpath and the others hurried to their feet. Cliffjumper joined them and together they fired on the approaching wave of Insecticons.
The four Autobots looked over at the two protected ones with dread in their optics.
"Can you let us in there?" Hound asked with great concern.
"If I do, I have to let Jazz and Ironhide in. They're too close," Trailbreaker responded honestly.
Windcharger set up a repulsive magnetic field and began waving it at the Insecticons as they leapt at them. Using the invisible electromagnetic force, he hurled clones off of Hound, Warpath, Cliffjumper and himself, at great expense to his energy reserves.
"I can't keep this up for very long," he explained with urgency in his vocalizer as he tossed Insecticons with the field generated through each hand.
"Somebody better do something fast," Cliffjumper yelled, "or we're not going to be around much longer!"
Bombshell and Shrapnel used the distraction to collect Kickback. Carrying their fallen comrade, the two Insecticons hastily retreated through the hole in the side of the generator room wall, leaving their clone army to make quick work of the Autobots.
Bluestreak stared back at Ironhide and Jazz, who still searched for some way to get through the force field as Bombshell commanded. Neither of them realized the danger they were in. The Insecticon clones would not distinguish between an Autobot that was under Bombshell's control an one that was not. There was not much time left for either of them.
Bluestreak glanced over at Warpath, Hound, Cliffjumper and Windcharger, who all had their hands full just keeping the swarming clones off of them.
"I'm running out of power!" Windcharger warned.
Panic started to set in again as Bluestreak realized that he would stand there and watch the other six be consumed if he did nothing. Something had to be done about Jazz and Ironhide so Trailbreaker could expand the force field.
Trailbreaker leaned over the gunner and Bluestreak glanced back briefly. It was then that Bluestreak knew what he had to do. He looked at the silver beam rifle in each hand and then looked up into the dull optics of Ironhide and Jazz.
Bluestreak aimed a rifle expertly at the foreheads of the two Autobots, then closed his optics and squeezed the triggers. He waited a moment before opening his optics again, expecting the worst when he heard the two Autobots collapse. Both Autobot's headlights were still shining, but neither moved. Trailbreaker expanded his force field and took Jazz and Ironhide into its protection.
Trailbreaker pushed the force field out even further and enveloped the remaining four Autobots along with two clones. Warpath and Cliffjumper dispatched the Insecticons quickly and together with Hound the three kicked the chasses outside the protective sphere. His energy nearly all spent, Windcharger doubled over with his hands on his knee joints as he paused to recover.
The first wave of Insecticon clones leaped at the force field, but could not penetrate the protective barrier and slid down its surface. In a matter of moments, the sphere was buzzing from the all of the Insecticons frantically trying to climb up its energetic surface.
With the defense now left to Trailbreaker, they refreshed their weapon charges and, together, Hound helped Warpath, Cliffjumper and Bluestreak take care of the remaining clones. Windcharger was low on power, but he put in his best effort to help dispatch the Insecticons with his hand weapon. They opened fire with everything they had. It was difficult to discern how many of the clones had been destroyed, because they moved quickly through the shining headlights and disappeared into the darkness after each artillery and laser blast.
"We must be cutting into their numbers by now!" Cliffjumper hollered over the sounds of gunfire. "I'm seein' more of the room each time I blast 'em!"
Warpath pivoted his torso and loaded the next shell into his firing chamber as his long tank gun barrel swung around to help finish off the Insecticons in front of Cliffjumper.
"WOW, BANG!" the tank minibot cried out, his blue face mask vents flashing blue in the darkness above his headlights as he spoke. "Let's ZOOM finish those Decepticons off!"
With a thunderous bang, he fired an artillery shell into the middle of a small group of Insecticons, blowing two of them to pieces and seriously damaging the third. Warpath was ecstatic at the site and sound of his destructive capability.
"Whoa!" Cliffjumper yelled to Warpath. "Watch how close you land those things to the generator. We don't want to blow the place up!"
"No problem, Cliffjumper!" Warpath hollered back. "I always ZING hit what I'm BOOM aiming for!"
They pressed on for several more minutes, blasting the Insecticons until it was obvious that less and less were appearing in front of the force field.
"Hold your fire!" Cliffjumper hollered and waited for the others to cease fire.
"Why are we stopping?" Warpath asked incredulously.
Cliffjumper did not respond immediately. Instead, he listened to what was going on around them. "They're leaving!"
The others looked surprised, and listened themselves. Sure enough, the metallic clanking of the clones' bodies and the tapping of appendages echoed away from the room and disappeared after about a minute.
"But why?" Warpath asked.
"Maybe they're running low on power, too," Windcharger suggested, feeling he was at his own limit.
"So what do we do now?" Bluestreak asked, looking around.
"Let them go," Hound answered. "Kickback took a pretty harsh beating. I bet they'll follow Bombshell and Shrapnel somewhere safe where they can fix up Kickback.
"Besides, we need to take care of Jazz and Ironhide," Trailbreaker added. "They're injured."
"You're right," Cliffjumper agreed. "We're not gonna be fast getting back up in that cargo lift, anyway."
So, the company of Autobots lowered their weapons, alone in the dark generator room. Bluestreak looked over at Jazz and Ironhide, who remained still where they collapsed throughout the entire fire fight. He needed to find out what had become of them after he fired at them to remove the cerebro shells, so, tentatively he approached Jazz while the Hound and Cliffjumper checked on Ironhide.
Jazz was lying on his side, facing in the other direction. Carefully, Bluestreak reached out his hand and gently turned Jazz over to face him. In the center of Jazz's forehead was the hole left behind by the cerebro shell. Part of the ruined control device was visible inside, and would need to be delicately removed and repaired. The motion stirred Jazz's sensors back to life, and he groaned as he slowly turned his head toward Bluestreak.
"What happened?" Jazz asked weakly as his optic visor brightened.
Bluestreak's expression curled into a smile as he held Jazz's shoulder. "You're okay." It was all he could say.
For a moment, he just stared at Jazz with relief. Jazz let his head go loose and he rested as he slowly came back to his senses.
Bluestreak then lifted his gaze across to Ironhide, who was similarly out of action. Cliffjumper looked back at him, narrowed an optic and smiled. Then he gave Bluestreak a big thumbs up.
Trailbreaker kept the force field up as the others picked up their friends and carried them back up to medical bay. They found no more Insecticons on their way back.