Meltdown

Porter C. Powell was a wealthy investor who had made a fortune investing in the right schemes.

He had also left a trail of broken deals, but it was hardly his fault that he knew when to leave a party.

His latest investment was biochemical engineering.

Prometheus Black was the leader in his field, and was just pushing the boundaries of what he was capable of, now that he was able to get human subjects.

Of course, it was unfortunate that Black's champion in the exhibition match against the Autobot went off the rails, but public opinion had a point about Colossus Rhodes' anger issues from using his device- it was too similar to the description of the many steroid scandals.

No one wanted to deal with such a drug, especially for a peace-keeping force that was recovering it's reputation, and even the perpetually technologically challenged Captain Fanzone wouldn't touch it.

Powell made sure to pull his investment. Black had become too much of a liability, and Powell was not going to risk his reputation for a liability.

At least when Sumdac's robots malfunctioned, there was a system to deal with it. Black hadn't even tried to stop the fight when it got out of hand.

"Bumblebee, what you did was reckless. Especially since you didn't tell us where you were!" Elita scolded. "What if they wanted to use the fight as cover to make you disappear? If we hadn't caught the fight on the television."

"Sari was with me!"

"Sari is a youngling." Elita started.

"Hey!" Sari protested the label.

"So I want you to at least tell someone where you two are going, even if it's not me." Elita grimaced at the compromise.

"Sound advice." Captain Fanzone surprised them. "Especially since Black had a government contract that allowed him to experiment on convicts. That Rhodes guy had a mile long rap sheet of assault and battery, which would have been nice to know before I got here." He glared at a lieutenant.

"Sir, we sent the file to your car." The lieutenant sighed.

"Had a government contract?"

"Apparently this was his shot to renew the contract if he got my approval on the work he had done. Having police on steroids isn't good for anyone, and we're not at war with anyone, so ... there's no point in his work. Be different if he used his ideas for medical purposes but he's apparently against that." Captain Fanzone sighed. "If there's anything worse than machines, it's people going on a power trip."

Captain Fanzone had no idea how prophetic his words were, as Prometheus Black met with a lab accident,

Prometheus was powerful, capable of so much more now.

Meltdown was confident in his new abilities, and he knew exactly what he could do.

Get revenge on all those that had stood in his way, in particular the machines and their creator, Sumdac!

But first, he needed a suit that would keep himself from melting through the floor.

And to fix the implants for Collosus Rhodes, they needed better protection, he hadn't considered how easy of a target they were.

Ah well, one lived and learned.

Bulkhead was enjoying working with the humans- he was the first to admit he had really only focused on two things in his life- farming and Space Bridges. He couldn't repair a shuttle, but he could engineer space bridges.

Well, as long as he had someone for the small delicate work when building one ... he tended to break things.

"Thank you, Dr. Chase."

"No problem Bulkhead." Dr. Chase wheeled himself backward. "The circuit boards are looking good and all connected."

"Great. Sorry about taking apart so many computers, though!"

"Don't worry about it. Now, how's your keyboard doing?"

The moment Bulkhead tapped a key, the alarms began blaring.

"Uh, was that me?"

"No, that means an intruder is in the building." Dr. Chase wheeled over to the lift up to the human area. "Let me see what's happening..." whatever he pulled up on the computer stunned him. "What is that?!"

Isaac Sumdac was honestly confused. He didn't know why this Meltdown character was so upset by his machines, but it wasn't the first time.

Detroit was considered an experiment by most everyone, the amount of robots used to automate daily life was higher than the rest of the United States, and tourism had picked up greatly in response.

That said, there were those that hadn't liked it. A few had even threatened him and Sari, over the loss of jobs that no one was applying for.

At this point, Isaac refused to be blamed for whatever this person was saying. He was not limiting his work just because people were upset.

Thankfully the autobots were swift in dealing with the problem. Though he could have done without the drive down the stairs.

Captain Fanzone arrested the walking acid man and his accomplice, and the incident was completely forgotten by the time he got back to his lab.

Professor Sumdac had a lot to do.

I might end up skipping the dinobots for now, I planned to have them next chapter, but it just doesn't work for me... I might just rearrange Everything instead... mostly because I want to get to Elita's discovery of Optimus sooner instead of later.