Chapter 7 : Breakdown's Plan B
If Drag Strip had not had the quickest reflexes of any of the Stunticons, he would have been deactivated by the blast, or at least gone into stasis lock. Instead, he turned the moment he heard the change in Dead End's voice, though he didn't run very far before the explosion hit him like Menasor's fist.
He sprawled face-down in the dirt. At first all he felt was shock as his sensors and stabilizers rebooted, but in the next moment they came back online and he gasped. Shrapnel was embedded in his back and legs. Drops of burning gasoline and melted rubber spattered his armor.
Drag Strip managed to lever himself up on his elbows, then ran another diagnostic. The shrapnel had missed his joints, thankfully, so he could still transform, but his forcefield had taken the worst of the explosion and was down completely. His self-repair systems would take at least a few hours to fix that.
His radio crackled. "Drag Strip? Are you dead?"
"Yes. I'm talking to you from the afterlife and it's much worse here."
"How amusing," Dead End said. "Though I doubt that existence could be worse than this one. But to return to the point, Wildrider is very much active, so it appears you were tricked in some way. A hologram, perhaps?"
A jolt of anger sent Drag Strip to his feet despite his injuries. "What d'you think I am, stupid? This was real!" Illusory flames didn't register on the olfactory receptors, didn't vanish when handfuls of earth hit them.
"Well, then, it was a real car decked out to look like Wildrider. What a waste of a Ferrari."
Drag Strip turned to look at the burning remains that were no longer even remotely recognizable as a car. He would dearly have liked to kick the wreckage anyway, but it was too hot to approach and he had to settle for climbing back up the slope. "Did you know about this?" he said.
"No."
"Oh, really?" Drag Strip suddenly remembered what he had overheard, days ago. "You're lying. Someone painted a Decepticon symbol on that car, and I heard you mention paint to Breakdown."
"That was…" Dead End sighed. "We intended it for something else, and why in the world would we ambush you?"
Drag Strip had reached the freeway again and transformed, ignoring the pain as he did so. An eighteen-wheeler sped past but the driver only gawked at him. "You didn't want me to win, did you?" he said as he tore off down the freeway, overtaking the huge truck.
There was a pause. "You're not exactly easy to live with if you accomplish anything--"
"If?"
"--but do you really think that means we want you dead?"
Drag Strip said nothing. As far as he was concerned, he had nearly been deactivated because of one simple reason – he had been thinking of someone else rather than himself, of his team rather than of his own purpose. He'd been soft and sentimental and had paid a price for it. Well, he wouldn't make that mistake again, and he would win the slagging race if he had to shove all the other Stunticons into a very large smelter for it.
"How far am I from Wildrider?" he said.
"About eighty miles," Dead End said. Drag Strip felt as if he had swallowed lead. "He's run into a roadblock, though. The Autobots know we're here."
To the Pit with overheating. Drag Strip accelerated and watched as his speed went past two hundred.
The world turned to a blur, and the wind rushing past him was a whip that spurred him faster. As he neared maximum velocity, even the grip of his wheels on the road felt different – he wasn't driving on a hard surface, he was skimming over something that had less friction than black water.
The road flowed fluid under him and the trucks on the freeway stood still. Drag Strip had forgotten about the joy of racing in the grim obsession of this one race, had forgotten the way time itself seemed to stop so that only he was moving. I could chase lightning and catch it at moments like these.
"It was probably Swindle," Dead End said after a while.
"Swindle? He decked that car out like Wildrider?"
"Of course, which means--" The radio crackled with static and went silent.
"Dead End?" Drag Strip said sharply. He tried the Stunticons' backup channel, which didn't work either. Had something happened to Dead End?
The leaden feeling spread through him again. The Autobots knew the Stunticons were back – and stretched out across the length of the I-17, where they could be picked off one by one. No, stop! That was Dead End's morbid imagination, not mine. Swindle was more of a danger to him right now than the Autobots, and if Swindle was involved in some dirty trick, that meant…
Drag Strip didn't need to look up to see the helicopter above him, and he didn't need to hear Vortex's laughter on the blocked channels to know what the Combaticon had done. He would dearly have liked to use his gravito-gun on the helicopter and watch it crash, but he couldn't afford to waste any more time.
Speed had never made a difference to Drag Strip's awareness of the terrain around him and any potential obstacles. The faster he went, the more honed his sensors were, and he saw the two black arches of a tunnel far ahead, cut into the side of a cliff – and the sign which blocked the left one. He hit the brakes and screeched to a halt.
Construction In Progress, the sign said.
Drag Strip's own radar was nowhere near as sensitive or long-range as Dead End's, but he scanned the area. There was nothing in either the blocked-off tunnel or the other.
They want me to go through the one that isn't blocked, he thought as he reversed, rolling backward. When in doubt, speed up. He streaked forward so fast that he splintered the sign into three pieces, and they flew spinning away as he plunged into the left tunnel.
"Activate the electromagnet!" Vortex yelled.
Electro--?
Something picked Drag Strip up and slammed him sideways. The impact drove bits of torn metal deep into his armor and he cried out. From hood to spoiler he was pinned to the tunnel's wall by a magnetic field so strong that it held him as immobile as a fly in amber, except for his wheels churning uselessly.
Drag Strip tried to transform, but the effort only made him shudder in pain. His radio still didn't work, either. Through a thin layer of concrete he felt power thrum through the magnet's hidden coils.
The chop-chop-chop of rotors grew a little louder and Drag Strip felt warm air wash over him. For a moment he thought Vortex would fire at him, burying him alive in the tunnel, but the Combaticon only shouted, "You're so predictable, Drag Strip," over the roar of engines, and took off again, laughing.
Drag Strip longed to fire on the helicopter, but he couldn't angle his guns correctly when he couldn't even move. He looked around as best he could, trying to find some way out of the second trap the Combaticons had laid for him, and saw a car zooming down the freeway towards him.
It was still nearly a mile away, but Drag Strip knew at once that it wasn't one of the Stunticons. A silver Datsun – that was the Autobot gunner Bluestreak, coming in fast.
Then another car peeled out from a side road and raced to keep up. A yellow Lamborghini – that was…
Drag Strip struggled wildly, but nothing happened. If he had to die, he wanted to go down fighting, not all-but-welded to a tunnel wall while Sunstreaker finished him off – and he knew that Autobot's reputation. Others might refrain from murdering a Decepticon who couldn't fight back. Sunstreaker wouldn't.
The two Autobots reached the tunnel, Bluestreak in the lead. He transformed just outside, whipped a rifle out of subspace and pointed it at Drag Strip. "All right, come out from there with your--"
The yellow Lamborghini opened fire. Drag Strip flinched, but the shots hit Bluestreak, knocking the rifle out of his hands and sending him reeling to one side. He vanished over the side of the guardrail as the yellow car braked to a halt and transformed.
"Drag Strip, what happened to you?" it said.
"Breakdown?" Drag Strip shook off his shock just in time. "Don't come in here!" Breakdown leaped back as if he had been shot at too. "It's magnetized!"
"Oh." Breakdown's own rifle was in his hands at once. He aimed at the tunnel's roof and fired twice. Drag Strip felt the power flicker out, and he hit the ground, bouncing slightly on his tires. Breakdown stowed the rifle and transformed again.
Even the knowledge that Wildrider now had an almost insurmountable lead didn't pull Drag Strip down that time; he was too taken aback by the Lamborghini's appearance. "You… you painted yourself to look like…" He remembered that Breakdown didn't like being stared at, even by his teammates, and turned away.
"I overheard Swindle talk to one of his human contacts about buying paint and I thought of this," Breakdown said as he rolled forward through the tunnel. "Only good thing about being Sunstreaker is that if he doesn't feel like talking, the Autobots don't try to make him – and they don't look at him much either. I figured it would be easier to keep an eye on everything that way."
"Serves the Autoblots right, too," Drag Strip said. "For – you know."
"I know. Come on, let's go."
"You're coming with me?"
"Might as well. I don't – hey, watch it!" The last exclamation was as Drag Strip twisted past him and pulled out in front, where he was supposed to be. Wheels spun and engine revved. Drag Strip was in the race again.
Taipan Kiryu : Appreciate the reviews. :) You're right about the importance of some sort of friendship within the team. Plus, for all his faults, Motormaster is extremely loyal to Megatron and to the Decepticon cause, so it makes sense to me that he'd demand the same loyalty from his subordinates and expect it to apply to the team as a whole as well.
And the Stunticons always struck me as the kind who'd knock each other around both verbally and physically, but would close ranks at once to counter any outside threat.
Oh, and that little shoving session on the road? Nothing compared to what Wildrider's going to do later. Stay tuned.
tomorrow4eva : Thanks for the feedback! Don't worry, the next chapter is huge. Considering who's in its title, that seems appropriate.