Chapter 8 : Motormaster's Verdict
"Roadblock up ahead," Drag Strip radioed.
At least his radio was working again. As soon as Vortex had realized who the yellow Lamborghini was, he had prudently climbed as high as possible in case his engines failed, which also put his jamming equipment out of range. He was still keeping pace with them, though, and Drag Strip made a mental note to kill him later.
"Autobots and humans," Breakdown replied. "And they have--"
"Spikes." Drag Strip could see the faint multiple glitter in the distance when the flashing lights of police cars reflected off them. His forcefield was still offline, which meant a single shot could take out one of his tires. There were damaged vehicles to one side of the road, still smoking from what he guessed were Wildrider's guns, but the roadblock might as well have been a solid wall of steel. He couldn't get through it.
"Go first!" he shouted to Breakdown, and fired at the spike strips. Breakdown pulled out before him but hissed in fear over the comm link.
"There's so many of them," he said, "staring at me--"
Threatening him never did any good under those circumstances, not unless the one doing the threatening was Motormaster. "Close your optics," Drag Strip said desperately. "Just close them. Now!"
The Autobots seemed to realize at the last minute that the yellow Lamborghini wasn't Sunstreaker, but it was too late. Breakdown zoomed over what remained of the spike strips and hit the roadblock at two hundred miles an hour, laserfire spattering off his forcefield. Cars crumpled like paper, rocking aside from the impact.
There was no confusion about who the other yellow car was, though. Drag Strip saw a missile streak towards him and twisted aside, braking so hard that he went into a hundred-and-eighty-degree spin. He ended up facing away from the roadblock. The missile hit the road to his left and exploded, driving chunks of asphalt into his armor. The heat was so great that what was left of his paintjob on that side blistered and darkened.
But as long as his tires were intact, Drag Strip was still moving (and if they weren't, he'd drive on the rims). He threw his transmission into reverse and shot through the gap in the roadblock. Breakdown fired at the Autobots from the other side, distracting them just long enough for Drag Strip to turn and hit the accelerator again, though a new warning flashed in his diagnostic queue. His thrusters had joined his forcefield in offline status.
Still, he and Breakdown were past the roadblock thanks to his quick thinking, and he was pleased about that. Being the fastest was something he took for granted, but being smart enough to save one of his teammates was new. And it would be nice to have someone compliment me for a change. "Closing your optics was a clever idea, wasn't it?" he said over the radio.
"No, it was dumb," Breakdown said. "When my optics are closed, how can I see who's watching me or firing on me?"
Drag Strip growled under his breath. "Well, at least it made you brave enough to get through that roadblock."
"It didn't. It just made me so petrificated that I couldn't change course."
"Then it did the job," Drag Strip snapped. "How far is Wildrider now?"
"Thirty miles away, in Phoenix." Breakdown sounded worried. "He's playing tag with the police, though, and the Autobots are closing in."
That's Wildrider for you, Drag Strip thought with some satisfaction. That was why he had asked for the race to extend just past Phoenix – he had known Wildrider would never be able to simply drive through a city without stopping for a little demolition derby. If not for the slagging Combaticons, I could have cruised at the slagging speed limit and driven past him once he was distracted.
But now the idiot had managed to attract Autobot attention. Well, I might still get out of this with my tires on their axles. The Aerialbots were worse than useless in a city, so Drag Strip only had ground troops to deal with. He wasn't sure how he would handle them without a forcefield, though, and he could feel both energon and lubricant trickling from some of his injuries.
The end of the race was so close, though – he couldn't stop now. "Split and try to draw them off," he said to Breakdown.
The empty ground had given way to the city's outskirts. Gas stations and billboards and neon signs flashed past them, and Breakdown peeled off, racing down an exit ramp. Immediately Vortex dipped, reducing altitude to track Drag Strip through the city.
Drag Strip was growing tired, but he ignored that and tried not to pay attention to the warnings flashing in his peripheral vision. Have to win, have to win. Armor at less than half efficiency. Have to win, have to win. Weapons offline. When did that happen? Have to win. Energon level low, refueling required in… Oh, what the slag does it matter? I have to win. Somehow. He wondered which would be worse, dying or losing.
Losing, he decided. After coming so far, struggling through Combaticon traps and an Autobot roadblock, he didn't think he could bear the humiliation of losing. At least after you die, you don't know whether anyone's laughing at you or not.
There were more cars on the freeway now, even though it was still dark. Drag Strip forced himself to concentrate as he weaved in and out of the traffic – if he slammed into any vehicle that would be the end. At a speed of a hundred and fifty, his own momentum would smash him into scrap.
He rocketed up on to an overpass, trying to watch everything ahead of and behind him, on either side, above (Vortex) and in the distance as well (Wildrider, somewhere). It wasn't too surprising, therefore, that he missed the Autobots at first.
A station wagon ahead swerved trying to avoid him and struck the side of the overpass. Drag Strip shot past it, too preoccupied to even think of some insult about over-large vehicles with no maneuverability and less grace, and saw the police car driving up the overpass towards him, siren blaring. That alone would not have stopped him, but the car's headlights were at full intensity and he saw the red Autobot symbol on its hood.
He spun into a bootlegger reverse, narrowly missing the station wagon, and turned to flee. That was when the blocky, bulky red van roared on to the other side of the overpass, cutting him off. Drag Strip braked sharply and all the remaining energon seemed to drain out of him in a rush. How was he supposed to fight both Prowl and Ironhide?
He transformed and leaned over the side of the overpass, but there were humans lying in wait below, hiding behind a police van. They fired at him and Drag Strip jerked back, snarling at the fresh pinpricks of pain. That one glance was enough, though – he knew he was thirty feet above the ground, and if he injured himself any more in leaping off…
The Autobots thundered up both sides of the overpass. Drag Strip pulled his gravito-gun out of subspace, thumbed it to the lowest setting, pointed up and fired.
The blast hit the helicopter a hundred feet above him. Vortex's gravity instantly tripled, and he dropped out of the sky with a howl, rotors fighting and losing every inch of the way. For a moment Drag Strip thought he had miscalculated and that the helicopter would land on him, but Vortex recovered when he was less than forty feet off the ground. He jerked and bobbed in mid-air, then started to reel away.
Drag Strip put the hilt of his gun between his jaws, leaped up on to the guardrail and launched himself off into the air. His hands closed around Vortex's struts just as Ironhide drove over the spot where he had been standing a moment earlier. The Autobots transformed at once, drawing their own weapons, but Vortex was already weaving to miss any shots aimed at him, ducking behind the nearest available building and carrying Drag Strip along with him.
Any moment now, Drag Strip thought. Here it comes.
Vortex climbed rapidly, rotors humming. A hundred feet off the ground, two hundred, three – then his flight leveled off and he shot towards the nearest high-rise. In the wide blue windows just beneath the high-rise's roof, Drag Strip caught a glimpse of himself – a battered, nearly unrecognizable shape clinging to the helicopter – and his reflection loomed closer and closer as Vortex's speed increased. At that velocity and angle, the edge of the roof would have slammed into Drag Strip's midsection, folding him over and tearing him free of Vortex.
Drag Strip brought his legs up just in time. His feet struck the roof's edge and he used that leverage to kick upwards with all his strength. One foot hooked over the helicopter's struts as well and with an effort that made his already strained servos whine dangerously, he got his other foot locked in position as well.
"Let go of me!" Vortex shouted.
Now he could release one hand from a grip so tight his sensors had gone numb. Drag Strip pulled his gun free and jammed it hard against the helicopter's undercarriage. The rotors were spinning too hard for him to talk normally, so he pinged Vortex on the radio instead.
"Turn south-west and follow the freeway, or I'll fire!" he said.
"You wouldn't! You'll die too!"
"Better than losing." Drag Strip ground the gun's muzzle as viciously as he could into the smooth grey metal. "This is at its highest setting now, Vortex. You'll hit the ground like a meteor but at least it'll be over fast. 'Course, Swindle won't get much for you this time--"
"You can't do this!" Vortex's actual voice rose to a drilling shriek that he no doubt hoped would carry all the way to Motormaster's audials. "It's cheating!"
That just about did it. "No slag!" Drag Strip screamed back. "And if I were some melting-spark Autobot, I might care! Now you have till the count of three to turn! Thr--"
"No, don't shoot!" Vortex turned, rotors spinning wildly; if he had not been so high above the streets, cars would have been caught up in the wind funnel. "I'll get you there, you miserable glitch-ridden--"
"Don't forget predictable." Drag Strip kept the gun where it was but glanced back over his shoulder. Slag, the ground's a long way off. Still, that was a good thing – the humans' weapons weren't accurate at that distance and the Autobots had fallen behind.
Vortex soared just above the buildings and began to follow the line of the freeway, covering ground rapidly. Even in the near-darkness and at that distance the I-17 was easy to make out. The traffic along it flashed red and white lights – like stars and optics, Drag Strip thought as he let himself relax a little. At that height, only the Aerialbots could have reached him, and as long as he clung to Vortex he was safe from…
Something made him look back. Not down, at the city milling in disarray beneath Vortex, but at the buildings behind them. His audials were way ahead of his optics, though, picking up the growl of an engine and the pounding beat of hard rock that drowned out the sounds of sirens from below.
A dark shape raced across the top of a nearby building towards him.
In the past, one or two other Decepticons had asked why Wildrider's specialty was terrorism. After all, Wildrider could never be quiet or subtle; he plowed happily through walls and played music at a decibel level that made the ground vibrate. "He seems to be more of a simple thug," Hook had said.
Nah, that would be Motormaster, Drag Strip had thought. What the other Decepticons didn't realize – because they'd never taken Wildrider on in a fight – was that Wildrider never worried about his own safety, so he would find a way to plunge into any situation and take on any enemy.
And no matter how secure that enemy thought it was, Wildrider would prove it wrong. If he couldn't smash through a wall, he'd hit the roof or break into the basement. As Dead End put it, they would have called that "thinking outside the box", except it was difficult to fit "Wildrider" and "thinking" into the same sentence.
Even without taking his complete insanity into account, that kind of approach could terrorize anyone, and Drag Strip was no exception. He let out a strangled yell as Wildrider closed the distance between them, knocking over a television aerial in the middle of the roof.
"Yeee-haaaa!" Wildrider's guns fired, narrowly missing Vortex's rotors. "Two for the price of one!"
Vortex increased altitude at once, shrieking insults that had absolutely no effect. Wildrider revved his engine and roared forward, and for a moment Drag Strip thought (and hoped) he would simply fall off the building. Instead he deliberately hit a ventilation unit on the roof, flipped through the air and struck the top of an even taller high-rise thirty feet away, tires scrabbling for purchase. He drove forward, then spun around and hurtled off the roof like a bolt of dark lightning.
We're going to die, Drag Strip thought numbly.
One ton of laughing grey metal and red glass flew at Vortex.
Drag Strip felt his finger tighten on the gravito-gun's trigger of its own accord. Vortex's gravity increased instantly and he plummeted. Wildrider sailed over the helicopter's rotors, landed on another rooftop and swiveled easily as Vortex, fifty feet off the ground, struggled to recover.
"Shoot him!" Vortex screamed.
Without thinking, Drag Strip took his gun away from Vortex's undercarriage and aimed it at Wildrider. Immediately Vortex spun in a way that sent Drag Strip's gyros into a dizzying scramble. His grip loosened and he fell to street level, smashing through a colorful canopy and whatever was beneath it, which turned out to be a large wooden structure covered with soft organic products that burst and pulped under his weight.
"Predictable and stupid!" Vortex shouted, then flew off at top speed.
Drag Strip picked himself up shakily. All around, humans ran from the ruined storefront, except for one who whipped out a camera that began to flash. For a moment even that insolence didn't register, and then Drag Strip looked down at his battered bodywork. Any remaining trace of brilliant yellow had disappeared, replaced by a thick slime of red and green pulp.
I… I look like a freak, and that stinking creature is taking pictures--
He lunged towards the human, who squeaked and backpedaled rapidly. Drag Strip would have caught it anyway if Wildrider had not hit the ground twenty yards away, smashing into a parking lot. Pieces of cars flew through the air in a huge cloud of dust. The crash was so loud that Drag Strip's audials rang, but he knew better than to hope it would have stopped Wildrider.
He stowed his gun and transformed, wincing, just as gunfire in the parking lot blew wreckage out of the grey Ferrari's way. Suddenly he knew how humans and Autobots alike felt when they were on a road ahead of Wildrider – it was like trying to stand before a force of nature, a hurricane. You either smashed the storm with superior force or ran from it.
His radio crackled. "This is the best race ever!" Wildrider yelled at the top of his voice, to be heard over the music and shouts and sirens. "And you falling into that fruit stall was--"
"Shut it, just shut it!" Drag Strip shot off, trying desperately to stay ahead of the other Stunticon while not hitting anything else. He fled down the road, skidded around a corner and took the access road that paralleled the freeway. Thank Primus - no Autobots and no roadblocks. Drag Strip didn't think he could have taken on even a human in his condition; more warnings flashed in his diagnostic queue as he rocketed up on to the ramp with Wildrider in hot pursuit.
Forcefield offline. Weapons offline. Navigation system offline. Armor at less than 25% efficiency. Engine temperature increasing. Tire pressure at critical. I can't help that I had to brake so often!
He dodged past an ambulance wailing in the same direction and nearly clipped the side of a sedan as he threw the last of his strength into the last stretch of the freeway. At least he was outside the Phoenix city limits now, so the end of the race was nearly in sight. Just ten or fifteen miles more. Twenty, max. At any other time that would have been a laughable nothing. Just twenty miles more and it's over.
Wildrider fired at him. It was a casual, throwaway shot not intended to do more than announce Wildrider's presence and annoy the opposition, but with no defenses at all on Drag Strip's part, the laserbolt turned his rear diffuser to twisted scrap. He bit back a scream and increased his speed to nearly three hundred miles an hour, trying not to think of what would happen if a tire blew. Air pounded through his intakes.
"Hey, is your forcefield down?" Wildrider said on the radio, and then answered his own question by firing again. This time the shot blew half of Drag Strip's spoiler into melting fragments, and he did scream.
"You fragging maniac--"
"Aw, look on the bright side!" Wildrider said, switching his headlights on – the better to target me with, Drag Strip thought bitterly. Despite his superior speed, the Ferrari was steadily closing the distance between them. "Mine's gone too – finally blew it when I hit the road – so you can fire back. Or wait, are your weapons down as well?"
Drag Strip couldn't answer, because the headlights picked out the yellow Autobot (not Sunstreaker, thankfully) who stood on the hard shoulder of the freeway just ahead, rifle aimed at them. He thought the Autobot might well have fired, except that more shots snapped out from behind and the remaining half of his spoiler flew through the air. The Autobot gaped, open-mouthed, and Drag Strip hurtled past him.
He couldn't even scream that time. His spoiler was – had been – as much a part of his body as his wheels, and all his pain sensors seemed to be firing at once. Static flickered across his vision. Wildrider fired again, the shot mercifully tearing through the armor on Drag Strip's side rather than blowing up his engine.
He's going to kill me, Drag Strip thought dimly.
"I'm going to kill you," he managed to say.
"Go ahead and try, sunshine! Tires next!"
No, not my tires! Drag Strip raced past a billboard that was as broken as he felt, weaving desperately as he fled, as Wildrider's guns spat white heat again and again. Although the shots missed Drag Strip's tires thanks to his makeshift evasive maneuvers, they rarely missed the rest of him. They scorched holes in his armor and shattered one of his sidepods, and since he was zigzagging from side to side, he was losing ground – not to mention fuel that leaked from open wounds. His energon levels were in the red now. He was running on sheer terror and the last of his determination.
A USPS truck loomed up ahead and Drag Strip sped up, dodged before it and dropped to its other side – he would gladly have put anything between him and Wildrider at that moment. There was a momentary pause in the battle, and he saw huge scorch marks cutting dark swathes through the dry ground on either side of the freeway. Another billboard was burning nearby, and the firelight fell on a police motorcycle that was crumpled into scrap.
"I'll show you how to go postal!" Wildrider said, laughing, and the truck lurched off the freeway. Drag Strip didn't even look behind to see it tip over on to its side, because there was a large flashing sign just ahead in the shape of an arrow, pointing to an exit. The few trucks still on the road ahead of him were changing lanes, heading for the detour. An immense tanker with an Explosives 1.1D transportation placard did the same.
Why are they trying to get off the… oh. The light of the burning billboard was enough for him to see Motormaster standing on the freeway about half a mile away. Drag Strip had never thought he could feel so much relief at the sight of the Stunticon leader, but in the next moment he knew something was wrong. Why was Motormaster simply standing there motionless despite all the signs that they were driving through a battlefield?
The tanker slowed down to take the exit, which put it on Drag Strip's right. Wildrider shot at him again. The lasers missed, and Drag Strip slewed hard to the right.
If he had still had his spoiler, he would have been trapped against the tanker's side. Without the spoiler, though, he was low enough to slide under the huge cylinder of the tank. Wildrider yelled incoherently and fired at full force for the last time.
The lasers burst both of Drag Strip's rear tires and three of the tanker's front ones. Drag Strip cried out – not so much from agony as from the knowledge that he could go no further. He careened helplessly out from under the other side of the giant cylinder, rolling on rubber shreds, as the tanker shuddered on its own ruined tires and tried to turn.
Too late, Drag Strip thought. The body of the tanker plowed forward at the same speed while its cab slowed down, and when it did turn, it did so too fast. The cylinder might still have stayed upright if Wildrider hadn't slammed into its tires from behind.
Drag Strip rolled out of the way on his rims as the tanker rocked, its center of gravity unbalanced. He knew he was moving as if through sludge, but everything else seemed to take place in slow-motion as well. Ponderously, the tanker tilted and crashed down to the surface of the road. The force of its fall crunched its own metal and jarred through Drag Strip's aching frame.
But Motormaster's figure, just over ten yards away from them, didn't move or react. Drag Strip sagged down on his remaining tires. It's another trap, this isn't over…
He transformed and put a hand on the back of the tanker for support, so exhausted that he could barely move. The tanker itself had fallen at a sharp angle across the freeway, blocking all the lanes, and it was so large that he couldn't see Wildrider on its other side, but there was an odd gurgling sound coming from it and a sharp stink in the air.
Time suddenly sped up and everything seemed to happen at once then.
Wildrider's engine snarled as he revved up and leaped on the fallen tanker. He raced along the cylinder's length and bounced off the cab, tires just missing the driver who was weakly struggling out--
An Autobot shouted a warning and a green jeep appeared out of nowhere from ahead, streaking towards the cab. Hound, Drag Strip thought, which means--
Wildrider soared forty feet through the air towards Motormaster just as the hologram flickered--
Hound transformed, grabbed the injured human and drove away--
The hologram of Motormaster vanished entirely, revealing a gaping trench in the road. Wildrider tried to twist in mid-air but he was going too fast and he plunged into the trench hood-first. Metal crumpled and glass shattered. Wildrider disappeared from sight in a cloud of steam and smoke and dust.
Another Autobot who had been crouching beside the freeway with Hound stumbled up on to the freeway. Drag Strip couldn't recognize him, but he seemed unwounded and Wildrider definitely wasn't.
When in utter desperation, there was really only one thing left to do. "Motormaster?" Drag Strip said over the radio that seemed to be the last of his systems left functioning.
"Regrouping. Keep the slaggers busy. We'll be there."
Keep the slaggers busy? How, by falling flat on my face and going into stasis lock?
The Autobot peered into the trench and pulled a rifle out of subspace. Drag Strip drew his own gun and stumbled forward, glancing back as he did so for any other Autobots lying in wait. He saw a wet gleam on the road – the flames of the burning billboard reflecting off a huge pool of liquid that was trickling from the fallen tanker.
"Drop the gun!" the Autobot shouted.
Drag Strip turned, realizing that his approach had drawn the Autobot's attention; the rifle was now pointed at his chest. "All right," he said hoarsely. Even his vocalizer was glitched; after so much shouting at both Vortex and Wildrider, now he couldn't make any sound louder than a rasp. "All right, I'm dropping the gun."
If this doesn't work… if I don't judge the angle correctly… no, ifs are for Dead End. I'm doing it.
He stretched his arm out behind him as if getting ready to toss the gun away. His processors drew up an image of the road, the flames chewing through the billboard, calculations happening in nanoseconds.
Without looking back, he fired, once.
The gravito-gun's beam hit the billboard, instantly making it heavier than a concrete slab. Wooden supports snapped under its weight. The Autobot heard the sound and glanced in that direction as Drag Strip broke into a halting lope towards the trench.
The burning billboard tilted forward, then crashed down into the pool of liquid still flowing from the tanker.
WHOOM.
Drag Strip came back online to a darkness in which dozens of red alarms flashed at him. He couldn't see anything else, he couldn't move and now his radio was offline as well. He was trapped against two unyielding surfaces that felt hot and rough against the remains of his armor, and dust clogged his air intakes.
He stretched out blindly to one side and touched metal, then the jagged fragments of a broken headlight--
"Ow," Wildrider said weakly.
Drag Strip didn't know whether to be grateful that his teammate was still active or whether to hit him a good one for that little shoot-em-up session earlier. Before he could decide, heavy feet thudded on the lip of the trench above him. Fragments of road fell down on him, as if he wasn't injured enough already.
He stretched up to shield his head and a huge hand closed around his wrist. Before he could even gasp at the ruthlessly tight grip, Motormaster hauled him out of the trench and dumped him on the road before bellowing at Wildrider to transform.
Drag Strip struggled to his feet somehow – he hated looking weak in front of anyone, especially Motormaster. His visor was cracked into a spiderweb and he pushed it up, but that didn't make much of a difference. Hot gusts of smoke filled the air and obscured his vision, but through the cloud he heard something move towards him. Instinctively he brought his gun up.
"Is this a case of friendly fire or of my being taken off your slag list for good?" Dead End said, pushing the gun away. He turned to Motormaster, who had dragged Wildrider out as well. "Autobots converging on our position from the north. No Aerialbots in range, though."
Drag Strip stared at him. "You're here?"
"Where did you think I was? Still waiting outside Flagstaff?"
"You can be a real low-watt at times, Drag Strip," Breakdown said from somewhere in the smoke.
"Only at times?" Motormaster growled. "Throw 'em in the trailer and hit the road!"
Drag Strip thudded against the trailer's floor and managed to crawl out of the way before Wildrider was lifted in as well. As the doors closed and Motormaster's engine thundered, the warning Stasis Lock Imminent flickered across his vision.
But he had to find out first. "What happened back there?"
The inside of the trailer was fitted with an intercom and Motormaster's voice came through. "The fragging 'bots knew about the race. Three of the cowards came at me and while I was dealing with 'em another one started shooting. Blew the road up." His laughter was a low, mocking rumble. "They ran for reinforcements so I backed up a bit and waited for Dead End and Breakdown. Teach the 'bots a good lesson – they interfere with us and they get one hell of a mess to clean up."
Drag Strip had only one more question. He lifted his head off the floor, trying to speak as confidently as he could, and produced a raw whisper instead. "Did I…"
Wildrider chuckled. "You got such a one-track mind."
Drag Strip ignored that. "Did I win?" I did fly part of the way, but the rule's against using your thrusters and lifters... it didn't say anything about hitching a ride on Vortex.
"I'll decide when we're back at base."
Motormaster could be so slagging sadistic at times. Only at times? "I reached you first... too bad you bet on Wildrider."
"Bet on Wildrider?"
"…Didn't you?"
Motormaster's voice was half-contemptuous and half-exasperated. "No," he said. "You're such an idiot, Drag Strip."
The words Stasis Lock appeared and the world went dark.
tomorrow4eva : The Combaticons have Onslaught, who's a brilliant tactician. He came up with the electromagnet idea as a way to deal with the problem without the Combaticons getting their hands dirty - the Autobots would have been held responsible for whatever happened to Drag Strip.
I love it when characters think their way out of their problems. Course, blowing things up real good is also an option. :)
Taipan Kiryu : Yes, the combiner team rivalry's going strong here. Of course, in this chapter Wildrider's far more of a threat than the Combaticons, and no one's going to intervene when he starts kicking afterburner.
And Dragoness Eclectic's stories were what got me interested in the Stunticons to begin with, so I'm happy to hear that I've done nearly as well with this story. Thanks very much for your feedback!