A/N: Sorry for the super-long delay! Real-life went and kicked me in the butt so I fell more than a little behind. Sorry about that.
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In space no one can hear you scream. Whining on the other hand…
"Are we there yet?" Tabitha asked for the nineteenth time.
"We'll get there when we get there!" Mallory snapped from the controls of the Duck's Areowing.
"How can you be so blasie?" Rahne asked her. "We're in space! Do you know how few people get to do this?"
"After everything we've been through I've been expecting this for a while." Tabby explained. "It's just not that impressive."
"Yeah we're just flying through nothing and also nothing." Wanda agreed. "Kinda like flying through Pietro's head."
"Hey!" Pietro protested as he started to undo his seat restraint.
"Don't make me come back there!" Wildwing shouted back. "Or make me send Grin back there!"
"We'll be good." Pietro gulped as Grin turned his head and looked at him severely.
"First time for everything." Tabby noted.
"Target dead ahead," Duke L'Orange said as they bore down on the crashed space ship on the moon that the Snarks had taken to infest.
"So how do we get inside?" Rahne asked.
"Yeah! Teleporters, docking bay, give us a hint!" Todd prodded.
"Just hang on." Wildwing said as he braced himself. The Snark craft loomed larger and larger ahead of them.
"You're not serious." Althea looked at him in amazement.
"Try me." Wildwing grimaced.
"Woo-hoo! This is gonna be one 'dacious landing!" Nosedive screamed as the Aerowing crashed inthrough the side of the ship.
"Systems functioning." Tanya reported. "The hull was weakened enough so we could plough through without any real damage. Unless you count the paint job."
"All right team, let's go get what we're here for. Where would the files be?" Wildwing asked.
"Main bridge." Tanya answered. "But we'll need a distraction."
"That's where we'll come in." Wildwing decided. "Misfits, you go to the bridge and get the information we're here for. We'll go to engineering and create a distraction to lure the Snarks off the bridge. Wait five minutes."
"Aww…I hate waiting!" Pyro whined as the Mighty Ducks took off.
"Just think of something pointless to distract yourself." Angelica groaned. "You do it easily enough back home."
"Ah let's just get to the bridge. Maybe they'll be one or two lizard guys we can beat up." Todd said. "Er, no offense Xi."
"None taken. After all, I am not a guy."
"Moving on." Althea said as she groaned. When they got to the bridge the Misfits found it empty. "Trinity, get all the files on Reptilon!"
"On it!" The triplets chirped. "We'll take this and that and some of these…" They muttered as they poured over the files. Then their faces turned pale and their mouths hung open in shock.
"What? What did you find?" Rahne asked them.
"We…we found the files on Reptilon's destruction." Brittany said hoarsely.
"Well, don't keep us in suspense, what happened?" Fred asked.
"It was—" A monitor flared into life. It showed the Mighty Ducks in a pitched fight with the Snarks in engineering. The Ducks were outnumbered.
"We have to help them somehow!" Lance said.
"Allow me." Todd said as he touched an intercom button on the wall. "Guess where I am. I'm on your bridge. Me and my friends are gonna steal your files and escape. YOU BIG FATHEAD! FATTY FATTY CHUNKY CHUNKY SCALEFACE!
"Your deaths will be very painful." The Snark Commander hissed over the intercom.
"Toad, you just insulted the Snark Commander and gave him our exact location!" Rahne pointed out.
"What was the point, Toddles? What's your plan?" Althea asked. Todd chewed his lip for a moment as he thought.
"Okay, I know you're gonna be mad but I forgot the rest of my plan."
"Oh the heck with it, let's just beat the Snarks up and leave!" Wanda grumbled.
"Sounds good." Tabby agreed.
&&&
"Trask." Scott groaned as he slapped his forehead. "It would be Trask. Who else is that obsessed with giant robots?"
"The Japanese?" Rogue suggested. "But seriously, can you stop that? We're supposed to be here on a stealth mission." She hissed. The X-Men and the Insecticons had flown to the factory where the Decepticons had been taken over. Surprise surprise, it was also a Sentinel producing plant owned by one Bolivar Trask.
"I thought you said you could pick any lock!" Kurt said as he frowned at Remy, who was attempting to open one of the side doors.
"Remy can, just keep your fur on homme." Remy snapped back. "Besides, what's the rush?"
"Um, friends?" Sooraya asked as she pointed up. "We are no longer alone."
"Oh no." Amira groaned as everyone looked up. "It's raining robots!"
"Ah hell!" Bobby gulped.
"Get them!" Scott ordered as he fired an optic blast at Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons. Megatron scarcely even noticed the attack.
"If it's firepower you want fleshling, have a taste of this!" Megatron fired his main cannon at the X-Men. Jean barely had time to throw up a telekinetic shield to protect them. She staggered under the impact and the ground outside the shield withered and blackened under the power of the blast.
"Split up, don't give them an obvious target!" Scott shouted as he fired another blast at the Decepticons.
"Rumble, eject. Operation: termination." Soundwave intoned as he launched a cassette from his chest cavity. It unfolded into a smaller robot that landed in front of Scott.
"Hope you brought your dancing shoes because its time to rock and roll!" Rumble leered as he transformed his arms into pile-drivers and started banging away at the ground, creating a crevice that opened up right under Scott's feet.
"Yeeow!" Scott gulped as he clung to the edge precariously, nearly falling in. "I've so had it with little punks who create earthquakes!" He snapped as he fired another optic blast right at Rumble. It struck the little cassette-bot right in the chest, bowling him over.
Lina panted as she beat her wings as fast as she could, pursued by the three Decepticon jets.
"I better get some window-wipers installed." Starscream sneered as he closed on her. "Because I'm about to get some bug splattered on my canopy!"
Lina closed her eyes as she woved to oneside, narrowly avoiding being hit. Unfortunately she was caught up in Starscream's thruster wash and dragged along. She blindly reached out to hold onto something and ended up grabbing his fuselage. She clung on for dear life.
"Oh god oh god oh god." She said as she kept he eyes closed.
"Hey Screamer looks like you've got an infestation!" Skywarp jeered.
"Perhaps he IS an infestation." Thundercracker added.
Summoning up her courage, Lina opened her eyes and crawled to Starscream's thrusters and filled them with her webbing, clogging them.
"What?" Starscream screeched as he plummeted from the air. "What's going on?" Lina leaped off and flew away just as Starscream had a swift and painful reunion with the ground.
Kickback and Shrapnel flew up into the air and landed on Skywarp and Thundercracker. "Let's play chicken!" Kickback hooted as he grabbed onto Skywarp and steered him towards Thundercracker.
"You're on, on!" Shrapnel tossed back as he grabbed Thundercracker and steered the hapless jet right back at Skywarp. Just before impact, the two Insecticons jumped off leaving the two Decepticons to crash into each other.
"And what am I supposed to be doing?" Gilaad shouted at no one in particular. His powers weren't of particular use here.
"Same thing I'm doing!" Amira shouted as she ran, jumped, and cartwheeled all over the place.
"What's that?" Gilaad shouted.
"Trying not to get stepped on!" Gilaad felt a shadow loom overhead and cursed as he dove out of the way, only narrowly avoiding becoming an Israeli pancake.
"Unbelievable." Megatron snarled in disgust as his army was being beaten by organics one-tenth the size of any Cybertronian. "I'll finish this myself!" He swung his canon at the closest X-Man he saw, which was Jean. She was busy telekinetically tossing around Soundwave and Astrotrain so she failed to notice the danger. "Farewell meatbag."
"NO!" Sooraya shouted as she exploded into a whirlwind of sand. Sweeping loose sand and dust up in her wake, she surrounded and engulfed the Decepticon leader. Sooraya struck at the one place where the robots were weakest: their moving parts. No matter how advanced the technology was sand in the gears and relays would halt even the mightest machines.
Megatron was barely capable of moving his limbs, his every motion seemed exagerratedly difficult. Bobby took the opportunity to freeze Megatron's joints, allowing Sooraya to reform herself.
Rogue bobbed and weaved, avoiding blasts of lasers as she flew toward her target. "Hey Mega-Breath! Think fast!" Megatron barely had time to turn before Rogue plowed into his chest, denting the metal inward with the force of her impact. Megatron started to lean and then fell backwards. The impact shook the ground beneath the X-Mens' feet.
"Hey bug-bots!" Rogue shouted at the Insecticons. "Whatever it is you're planning on doing, do it!"
"Bossy little fleshie, isn't she?" Bombshell rumbled. Shrapnel shrugged.
"Still, might as well do it, do it." Shrapnel used his antennae to summon forth gigantic bolts of lightning as Bombshell rained down his cerebro-shells onto the entire Decepticon army. Shrapnel directed the lightning down onto the shells, overloading the circuitry of the Decepticons and wrecking havoc with what Trask used to control them.
"Well that seemd to go all right." Peter noted as the Decepticons toppled over.
"I don't know." Gilaad asked as he looked around. "If this Trask guy was involved, don't you think he'd have had some back-up plan?"
"I did." A voice boomed from a PA system from deep within the factory.
"Trask." Scott growled. "Where are you hiding you creep?" Trask didn't answer. He simply pressed a button on his console. The main factory doors opened up and an army of Sentinels came flying out.
"I'd say something pithy and cutting to you freaks." Trask said. "But there's really no point as you're all about to die. Goodbye and good riddance freaks."
"TRASK!" A voice like a bull roar came from behind them. The X-Men whirled, seeing Megatron and the Decepticons rise slowly from the ground.
"Nobody….Nobody controls Megatron!" Megatron hollered, his optics bright red with fury. "Decepticons! Destroy those walking scrap piles and bring me Trask's head!" With savage relish, Megatron punctuated his command with a blast with his fusion canon that reduced a Sentinel to molten slag.
"Yikes." Kitty blinked as she saw the Sentinel melt before her eyes. "Like, what should we do?"
"Keep out of the way!" Amira shouted and Scott saw no need to contradict her.
"Let them slug it out!" Scott shouted to the already exhausted X-Men as they vacated the field.
So began the mighty clash of the robotic titans…alien Cybertronians versus human-made Sentinels. The Sentinels outnumbered the Decepticons by about three to one. It was the most one sided slaughter the X-Men had ever seen.
"I haven't this much fun in four million years!" Bonecrusher, one of the Constructicons said as he and another Constructicon, Mixmaster, each grabbed a Sentinel's arm and pulled as if it were a giant wishbone. The Sentinel was torn in half.
"DIE!" Starscream shouted as he blasted away at a Sentinel. The hapless machine, a tinker-toy compared to the complex Cybtertronian, whithered and fell under the barrage. "How do you feel, mighty Sentinel?" Starscream sneered in contempt.
"This unit…bzzzt!...still functions." The Sentinel droned as it lay prone on the ground. It tried to push itself back up but Starscream wasn't about to give it the chance.
"Wanna bet?" Starscream grinned as he placed the barrel of his null ray behind the Sentinel's head and dispatched him, executioner style. Elsewhere, Scrapper punched another Sentinel in the face with such force that it simply caved in under the blow. The Insecticons were leaping from Sentinel to Sentinel blasting away. Sometimes they would pause for a minute on one hapless machine to either take a bite out of it or simply laugh as it pitifully tried to swipe them off.
But no one was more in his element than Megatron. Furious at being used, he was blasting away at every Sentinel he saw, more than once coming periously close to blasting his own troops.
The X-Men were shouting encouragements at the Decepticons.
"You can do it, smash those tin cans! Er, I mean those other tin cans!" Remy shouted.
"Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again!" Kurt and Kitty chanted. "Harder! Harder!"
"As an X-Men it feels wrong cheering on the forces of evil." Scott confided to Jean. "But as a mutant…I just can't argue with this." He added as another Sentinel was pounded into scrap. Within minutes, every Sentinel on the field lay in pieces.
In a pique of spite, Megatron stomped around crushing every Sentinel head under his foot. "Where are you human? Come out here and join your creations!" Megatron screamed as he tore into the factory with his bare hands.
Trask meanwhile had started to make good his escape when the Decepticons started battling the Sentinels. "Dr. Braxis was right we shouldn't get involved with alien robots!" Trask cursed as he ran. "Now I have to get out of here before…yikes!" He yelped as he found himself hanging upside down.
"Look what I found!" Bombshell called as he held onto Trask by his ankle. The X-Men got there first.
"Trask. You are so dead." Rogue seethed. "It wasn't enough that you had to keep attacking us with your robots, you actually had to try to take over alien robots?"
"We ought to just let Megatron have him." Peter grunted. "It'll be far worse than anything we could do."
"Yeah and you squishes probably wouldn't like seeing him get smashed into a fine pate…hello? What have we here?" Bombshell wondered as he picked something off of the back of Trask's neck. Trask immediately passed out. "This looks a lot like the circuitry he used to control the Decepticons." Bombshell noted.
"But wait…if the Decepticons were controlled by Trask and Trask was being controlled too, then who—" Kurt never got to finish the question. The earth under their feet started to shake. A massive clenched fist burst its way through the ground. It was soon followed by a Sentinel, larger than any they've ever seen rising from the Earth.
"I am Mastermold!" It intoned. "I controlled Trask because he was flawed, as all humans are flawed. To eradicate all mutants, as is my purpose, I must eliminate all humans. The Decepticons were a means to that end. Now I will simply destroy all of you!"
"Constructions! You know what to do!" Megatron ordered to six yellow-green Decepticons that turned into construction vehicles.
"Mastermold thinks that he can stand against us, it's his termination." Scrapper growled as he punched his fist into this palm. "No one can stand against our gestalt!"
"Then I say we unite!" Hook said.
"What and go on strike?" Gilaad wondered. His confusion was soon erased as the six Constructions transformed and merged into a giant Transformer that dwarfed the ordinary Decepticons and Sentinels just as easily as they dwarfed humans. It rivaled Mastermold in sheer size.
"I am…Devastator!"
A/N: Coming up next: MASTERMOLD…VERSUS…DEVASTATOR! Place your bets!