Credit for most of the characters below goes to Bob Budiansky, many of the story elements have roots in work by Simon Furman, and many details about the world this story takes place in can be attributed to the collective work of John Barber, James Roberts, and Mairghread Scott, among others.
------------------------------
"Brotherhood"
Grimlock studied the landscape. Some battle, well before any history he knew, had claimed thousands of lives on these fields, and the centuries - or perhaps millennia since - had turned the place into a vast cesspool of burnt orange and lime green, overgrown with chaotic solar arrays connected by a tangled network of powercables. The chemical stews that saturated the finely ground mix of oxidized metal and silicates weren't instantly lethal to a bot, but they were corrosive enough to cause harm, and the lingering radiation could do real damage to their circuitry if any leaked into a bot's chassis.
One of Prima's guards had said that this mess was the result of some weapon used here, but looking at the hulking corpses that formed the underlying terrain, Grimlock guessed it was the combatants themselves. He was no mechanic or engineer, certainly, but he'd seen the insides of enough bots to know what they were supposed to look like - the mechanisms inside these fallen titans were very different. They were as crude as they were enormous, filled with riveted pipes and frozen gears. They looked like they'd been built rather than born, and the toxic chemicals that pooled around them looked looked both like coagulated Energon pooled around a cold corpse, and spilled fuel from a crashed transport.
"You want me to carry you?" Grimlock asked sarcastically.
It actually wasn't a completely ridiculous notion. Though birthed from the same cybermatter, Slash was much smaller than her brother. One of the blacksmiths had claimed that Grimlock's protoform had been so hungry for life it had greedily consumed the raw, primal energon around them when their sparks had blossomed into existence, but Slash simply claimed (jokingly) that Grimlock was what was left over after she'd sucked up all the best stuff. She'd always been good at bearing that sort of thing with good humor, which was fortunate, because it had only gotten worse from day one.
"I think I'd rather you throw me across," Slash kidded.
"Don't tempt me."
"There has to be a better way to earn our silver than this..." she sighed.
This unsupervised excursion into Cybertron's wilderness was the last test Grimlock and Slash needed to pass to be admitted into the Primal Vanguard, the elite soldiers of Prima, and earn their 'silver.' Fighters of the Primal Vanguard were always easy to recognize by the color of their armor - initiates were not simply repainted when they became full members, their peripheral programming was altered using a secret ritual left behind by Alchemist Prime. It caused their outer dermis to become much stronger, and adopt a brilliant pattern of silver and gold. It was a deeply symbolic act that was a core part of the rite of passage - Grimlock and Slash would give up their respective, natural shades of teal, set aside their personal bond, and become part of a larger brotherhood.
Becoming part of the Primal Vanguard was a goal that Slash had set for herself many anocycles ago. Some of the other bots had started referring to Slash as a "she" when they were young, because her small size and lithe frame called to mind the slim build of one of their race's progenitors, Solus Prime. Unfortunately, in their part of Cybertron 'the Thirteen Primes' were not popular - bots mostly worshiped the Guiding Hand, and had a low regard for Solus Prime. Likening Slash to Solus had been intended, and received, as an insult.
But then the Primal Vanguard had come through, recruiting initiates to defend Cybertron from the host of off-world menaces that threatened it. Mixing, as they had, with the galaxy's other races, many vanguard members had adopted ideas from other cultures, including gender. Among them, "she" was a curiosity, but not an insult. Eventually, Slash had admitted to her brother that 'she' seemed accurate for her, as well, not because of her small size or her smoother voice, as many would assume, but rather because of some indefinable quality of her self-perception. Slash was a she, and though it might seem like a trivial and nebulous difference in the grand scheme of things, it made it more than a bit painful when the other bots treated her as inferior, or worse, treated the whole idea as an aberration.
Grimlock had been one of those bots, originally. He despised weakness, and 'she' had at some point come to mean just that in Iacon. He didn't understand why anyone would want to be a 'she', so it had taken some time for him to acknowledge that his brother, whom he always knew to be resilient, tenacious, and strong-willed, was in fact his sister. Grimlock's response had originally been to shut down anyone that referred to Slash as 'she' or 'her', but when Grimlock accepted her as a 'her', he'd switched to threatening and even heavily damaging anyone who slighted her for being what she was. Eventually Slash had convinced him that having her big brother come to her defense didn't actually help the situation - it might terrify the other bots into keeping their mouths shut, but it wouldn't prove they were wrong. So, she had decided that the Primal Vanguard was the place for her, and if that was where she was meant to be, then clearly, it's where her brother belonged as well.
Grimlock studied the landscape. Somewhere at the midst of this quagmire a flyer had detected a novel energy signature while passing overhead. Given his fragile wings, he hadn't dared descend into the tangled mass of high voltage cables, especially knowing that any number of strange predators might be thriving beneath them. Still, such an expedition had been beneath the interest of Nova Prime's elite warriors, who were generally more focused on off-world exploration, so the task of investigating the oddity had been passed to the two siblings as a way to prove themselves.
"We go up the leg of that one," he pointed to a ridge-line formed by the closest of the fallen titans, "we can follow that arm up to the shoulder. Maybe have a good view from there."
"Just about anything that will keep us out of this toxic swill is fine with me," Slash said. With a whirl of motion the two large, narrow wheels on her shoulders dropped to the ground, her body reforming into curved, bladed shape balanced between them. Revving her engine, she zipped forward, sawing through the dense undergrowth of naturally occurring atmospheric recyclers. With a bit less grace, Grimlock fell forward and twisted his body, converting into his much heavier alternate mode. His linked treads sank their teeth into the soil, and he rumbled forward.
As tracked bots went, Grimlock was fairly fast (definitely faster than that behemoth, Sludge) but he couldn't compare to Slash. She was already scrambling across some of the massive fuel pipes that stretched down from the solar arrays, carefully avoiding falling into the murk.
Grimlock had been a bit of a bully when they were younger; there was a time when Grimlock would have been tempted to create some distraction and dunk his smaller sibling in the cesspool as a prank, but they weren't immature beta units anymore. They were aspiring vanguard initiates in a hostile environment. True, he'd never been zealous about enlisting in the vanguard, because he'd never much liked following rules. Or bots. But traveling into space to fight aliens? That wasn't just an opportunity to escape working the docks in Iacon, that was an opportunity to test himself, to test his strength. He didn't believe in destiny like Slash did; it was too... functionist, and functionism was practically the embodiment of strong bots 'following rules' made by weak bots. Grimlock believed your fate was what you made it.
On the other hand, he'd never been certain what he wanted his fate to be. Being a dockworker didn't seem right, but neither did being some soldier in a giant army. The brotherhood offered by the Primal Vanguard had some appeal, true. Grimlock had never liked being alone, even on occasion when Slash had annoyed him, but the vanguard seemed like one of those places where you could be alone in a crowd. Slash claimed that he'd feel more comfortable once they'd been assigned to a tactical squad - that was where you formed real bonds, she claimed. Now, as he watched her teeter briefly on one of the pipes, he found that the juvenile thought of knocking her off was still a bit humorous, and he wondered if he would ever find a group of friends so socially dysfunctional that he could call them brothers.
Grimlock caught up to Slash and shifted back to bot form. They'd only just gotten here, and he'd already grown impatient with this swamp. He trudged straight into the stagnant pool of chemicals, and waded past the smaller, more cautious bot.
"For Solus' sake," she wrinkled her face, "I hope you don't expect me to help you wash that crud off."
"It stings," Grimlock said honestly, "but who knows? Maybe this will be the next great surface cleanser."
"Yeah, if we wash out of the Vanguard we can start a career in cosmetics," Slash laughed.
"You have to handle the detailing," Grimlock stretched his massive arms out, providing a bridge between a pipe Slash was on, and the foot of the titan they were going to scale. She scrambled across - other bots would have taken it as an opportunity to make sport of her small size, but to the two of them, it was just second nature.
The side of the titan was pretty steep, so they extended the climbing claws from their forearms, sank them into the decaying cybermatter, and began hauling themselves up. The pocked surface of the corpse provided some hand and foot holds higher up, and - although it was a bit risky to test - they found that the power-lines crawling across the surface could support some weight.
It was nearing nightfall before they reached the peak Grimlock had pointed out earlier, and it certainly made for a nice view. The solar panels of the forest below would close up under the light of Cybertron's moons, but right now, they were still open, glittering in the last light of the day. They sat and waited, consuming some of the energon rations they'd brought with them, and soon the stars shown above them. Most of the Primal Vanguard's duties were off-world, out among those stars, and because of that, their final test forbade them from accessing any of Cybertron's artificial satellites for guidance. They were supposed to do things the old fashioned way, just as the Vanguard would have to do on an alien world.
The two siblings studied the stars and did the calculations, though it soon became apparent that their target destination was relatively obvious. An area near the center of the swamp below them glowed faintly golden.
"That's... odd," Grimlock commented.
"Some plants have to burn off excess fuel to avoid overheating," Slash explained, "those stacks and towers must be sunk into an intense power source."
Having their bearings, the two decided to rest for the night - no sense in trudging through that mess in the dark.
They started picking their way down the back of the titan when the sun rose the next morning. When they reached the ground again, Slash took to the pipes, darting and hopping across them again, while Grimlock ultimately tired of trudging through the marsh, and shifted into his alternate mode. The toxic fluids lapped higher on him in that form, burning more of his skin, but his tracks pulled him through the sludge much more quickly than his feet could. At one point it seemed Slash had reached an impassable gap in the pipes, but Grimlock reached out with the massive armature mounted above his treads, seized one of the solar arrays, and ripped it down, forming a bridge. Slash returned the favor when Grimlock became entangled in the swamp's power-lines. It had turned into a minor fiasco when his temper had gotten the best of him, and in his frustration, he'd stripped the insulation from the cables, resulting in painful shocks.
Small and medium-sized insecticons skittered and flitted all around them, sometimes landing on them in a desperate attempt to siphon their fuel. Grimlock cringed at the thought - there was no telling what sort of viruses the little monsters carried in their programming. Agitated by the increasingly aggressive things, he shifted to robot mode to try and swat them away. He slapped his forearm to squash one, and the loud clang of his palm against his wrist rang through the swamp, echoing off the hollow pipes and stagnant fluids.
"Well, if anyone in the swamp didn't know we were coming," Slash said, "they certainly do now."
Grimlock shrugged - by the standards of the Primal Vanguard, it was a foolish mistake. Their drill instructor, Delta Magnus, would have had his head for it. Magnus wasn't here right now, though, and they weren't on some alien world fighting...
Something was moving through the orange liquid towards them. At first it was just a ripple on the surface of the fluid, but as it neared, Grimlock could discern a bladed fin. Whatever it was, the built-in galaxial rocket launcher of his alternate mode could certainly make quick work of it, but in the cramped confines of the swamp, it would be dangerous to use. Slash had explained that some of the solar arrays were probably refining energon from the pools they were standing in, and if that was true, every one of the pipes around them was a natural bomb, waiting for a trigger.
"Melee?" Slash asked, rhetorically.
"Yep," Grimlock drew his energo sword, an arm-length, straight, double-edged blade with a piercing, triangular tip.
They braced themselves for whatever was coming towards them. It was a rookie mistake for Vanguard initiates - as Delta Magnus had told them repeatedly, it's what you don't see that offlines you.
A heavy weight struck Grimlock from behind, where his alternate mode armature folded back in robot mode, and it bit into him. Grimlock knew there were creatures on Cybertron that fed upon other Cybertronians, going beyond killing them or parasitizing them for fuel - there were creatures that actually junked living bots, consumed their physical structures for nourishment and spare parts. These predacons were a far cry from the creatures Prima had subjugated in the early history of their world, but it was still startling to Grimlock to encounter such a beast.
It was also painful.
Grimlock couldn't reach the creature, or shake it off, so he twisted into his alternate mode where his armature would be free to move, and flung the thing off his back like a catapult firing a projectile. Another one of the beasts leaped out of a dense stand of filters at him, but he caught it in the jaws of his armature, digging the teeth of the clamp into it, and shaking it violently before throwing it into the sludge. The creature transformed into a squat bot mode, and started to get back up, with a primitive weapon in hand, so Grimlock rolled forward, pinning it under his treads. He grabbed its head with his armature's clamp, and ripped it off, finishing the fight.
Unfortunately, more of the creatures were crawling out from among the pipes and rising from the surface of the liquid, their pale green, lamp-like eyes glowing hungrily. Slash was dodging, bouncing about trying to avoid the beasts, which were all half-again her size or bigger. She sliced one clear across the face with one of her arm blades, probably nicking its lasercore, and left it to topple into the swamp.
"There are too many of them," Slash said.
She was right, eventually they would be overrun, "Ideas?"
"We've got to make it clear that we're not worth the trouble," she said, "get ready to catch me, and then spin as fast as you can!"
Slash cut up another one of the creatures, kicked it off of her, and then leaped towards Grimlock, whirling part ways into her alternate mode as he caught her in his armature's clamp. She rotated her wheels out flat and shifted their edges into a toothed shape, converting them into a pair of circular saws. Grimlock dug into the soil with his treads, and then began swinging his armature in a wide circle as fast as he could. As he built speed, Slash revved up her saw blades, and began cutting through pipes, cables, struts, and predacons indiscriminately.
Although neither of them considered themselves 'sadists' per se, there was always a degree of satisfaction in defeating an enemy, and a sort of morbid thrill in doing so by creatively chopping him into small chunks. Grimlock roared, his engine revving with his vocalization, and Slash laughed, her voice mingling with the buzz of her saw blades.
Just as Slash had hoped, the creatures realized that their prey would claim too many of them to be worth taking down, and retreated, scrambling through the pipes. Unfortunately, in their zeal, the siblings kept up their assault a few seconds too long - one of Slash's blades caught a power-line, severed it, and the arc of electricity struck a ruptured pipe.
The energon ignited, violently.
The purple liquid combusted, the solution of liquid cybermatter and microcrystals recombining with the elements in the air and releasing an intense amount of heat. The expanding air and unleashed energy leveled the solar arrays and boiled the liquid around them. Grimlock grunted as the blast flipped him over, and he lost his grip on Slash, flinging her into the murk.
The surface of the liquid was still burning when Grimlock, back in bot mode, fished his twin out of it. She was in stasis-lock. She was tough for her size, but she'd been right next to the explosion when it happened, and the damage had breached her armor, allowing the toxic chemicals to flood her body and begin corroding her circuitry. Grimlock held her up, and carefully folded her back into bot mode, trying to drain the toxic sludge from her in the process.
Their mission was scrubbed; priority number one was now getting his little sister to a mechanic.
Unfortunately, the ominous shapes that emerged from the shattered structures around them, had other plans.
A pair of narrow, toothy heads on long necks emerged from the wreckage behind Grimlock. Two voices sounded in unison, "What's this? An intrepid explorer? Or a foolish wanderer?"
Another voice burbled up from the liquid, coming from a sleek form with a dramatic dorsal fin, "What's the difference, Hun-Gurrr?"
"Wanderers taste better, Rippersnapper," a fourth voice said. "No they don't," the voice argued with itself, "they taste exactly the same," the two headed canid said.
"Sinnertwin," a deeper, slower voice from a lumbering mech spoke, "there're plenty of allicons to eat, no need to uh... to..."
A flapping creature swooped in low and settled on a strut from one of the fallen solar arrays, "Cannibalize them, Blot?"
"Yeah, that. Canalize them. Thanks Cutthtroat."
Cutthroat rolled his optics, "Yeah, you're welcome," he squawked, "you malodorous ignoramus."
"Huh? Was that an insult?"
"No, that was a complement," Cutthroat said sarcastically, "of the highest order."
"Oh, good," Blot said, genuinely ignorant of the subtext, "thanks."
"We call dibs on the small one," Sinnertwin's first head said. His second head nodded, "he'll be a delicacy for our pallets."
"Nothing but foil and struts on that one, if you ask me," Rippersnapper said.
"Knock it off, all of you," Hun-Gurrr said in his stereo voices, "I apologize for my friends. They have a rather twisted sense of humor, and like to make sport of anyone who finds their way to our home."
"Our territory, you mean," Cutthroat ruffled the blades on his wings loudly.
"Come now," Hun-Gurrr said, "this is a land of plenty, there's enough for everyone."
"Not the way you eat," Rippersnapper muttered.
Hun-Gurrr ignored him, "Please, tell us, what is your name?" he asked, "Why are you here?"
"Grimlock of Iacon," he said, "And this is Slash of Iacon" he nodded to the limp form in his arms. "She's badly injured, I need to get her to a mechanic..."
"She?" Cutthroat wondered, "That's unusual. I haven't seen a 'she' in... well, a long time. Give her here."
Grimlock stepped back from the bird-like bot, and growled. Cutthroat hopped back, cowed by the unspoken threat from the heavyweight bot.
Hun-Gurrr laughed, "That's the sort of attitude that would make you fit right in around here. Come, we have the means to repair your friend."
Grimlock was... wary. On the one hand, the demented sense of humor Hun-Gurrr's friends seemed to embrace was right in line with his own. If Slash wasn't in very real trouble, he'd likely have found their jokes funny - and Slash would have laughed. On the other hand, something about these bots felt off. It wasn't their weird robot modes - he'd never been the sort of bot to hold that against someone - but for some reason they made him uneasy. Either way, he was outnumbered five to one and as the combat accelerants ebbed from his fuel-lines, he began to realize he'd taken a fair bit of damage himself. His plating was ripped by the explosion and by the smaller beasts biting into him, and the corrosive chemicals of the swamp were eating away at his seals. He was in no shape to fight, and decided it was unwise to argue.
He shifted into his tracked alternate mode, and laid Slash gently onto his back, rolling along with the menagerie of bots that had found him.
Rippersnapper swam behind him, "Oh, you're what? A tank? A construction vehicle? How common."
Grimlock's temper heated a bit, but he held his tongue - and his fists. "What do you turn into?"
"Well... this of course," Rippersnapper said, referring to his bipedal, amphibious body.
"That's your alternate mode?" Grimlock was surprised.
"We're all in our alternate modes," Hun-Gurrr said. "We designed them ourselves, to suit this environment. Do you like them? Teeth and claws seem like they'd suit you."
Grimlock remembered his disgust when that smaller predacon had bitten him, "Why are you out here?"
"We're the guardians of The Well," Hun-Gurrr said, matter-of-factly.
"What well?"
"Why, the nucleon spring, of course," Hun-Gurrr answered, "That is what brought you out here, is it not?"
"One of our scouts reported a strange energy source. We were sent out to investigate it..."
"Then you have likely found it!" Hun-Gurrr said pleased. They came to an area where the solar arrays and natural refineries arched high overhead, leaving the ground concealed from above, but open to walk on. At the center of the clearing a strange, delicate structure - Grimlock couldn't tell if it was natural or not - produced a steady stream of fluid that glowed as if it were distilled sunlight mixed with lightning.
"This is... nucleon?"
"YES," Hun-Gurrr seemed enthusiastic to preach about its wondrous effects, "Cutthroat thinks it's Cybertron's innermost energon, springing from our planet's core, and mixing with electrum pockets in the crust. It provides an energizing effect like no fuel you've ever encountered. For us, it gave us the energy necessary to completely reformat our bodies. I used to be a mixing vehicle, can you imagine that? Sloshing a big drum of chemicals all day..."
Reformatted? Themselves? Grimlock wondered, "That sounds... painful." Cybertronians were capable of making slight alterations to their bodies without external intervention, but it was certainly uncomfortable. Big changes went beyond uncomfortable to the point of painful. Completely changing one's own alternate mode was unheard of. It would be so excruciating it would likely offline someone before they could finish, and many thought that it was simply impossible, forbidden by the primal laws of Amalgamous Prime.
"That's part of the beauty of the nucleon," Hun-Gurrr explained giddily, "it makes the pain go away. All of it."
"Well," Rippersnapper laughed, "Kind of. More like you just don't care about any other pain."
"Any other pain?" Grimlock asked.
"Rippersnapper," Hun-Gurrr growled, "don't spoil the wonder of this moment. Getting to see someone drink from the spring from the first time is always a thing of beauty."
"Oh, spare us, please," Cutthroat said, "just get on with it."
"Don't rush me!" Hun-Gurrr was growing increasingly impatient.
"I'm confused," Blot said, "are we eating them or not?"
"HA HA!" Hun-Gurrr laughed anxiously, "We talked about this, Blot; remember? The joke was funny, but now it's done."
"So it is a joke this time?" Blot asked, "Good; I don't like eating other bots."
"Oh for Mortilus' sake," Cutthroat said, "Do you have to start with that leaking spark scrap again?"
"Cutthroat..." Rippersnapper tried to shush him.
"No, Blot always acts like his exhaust doesn't stink, but then when the hunger sets in, he's right there with the rest of us, scratching for whatever he can shove into that mouth of his."
Grimlock had been edging away from the argument, trying to gauge whether he could outpace the bestial mechs in his alternate mode. On flat ground, his tracks could easily outrun them, in this swamp, though, it seemed unlikely. Cutthroat and Rippersnapper would easily overtake him, and Sinnertwin could probably keep up.
Hun-Gurrr growled in frustration, "You lot have ruined the best part," said, "Now we'll have to make him drink it."
Grimlock found his retreat blocked by Sinnertwin, who'd slipped around behind him, and now growled viciously.
"What the pit is going on here?" Grimlock finally asked.
Hun-Gurrr sighed, "The nucleon is everything I promised you, I assure you. Unfortunately... consumed raw, regularly, it's a bit rough on the internal systems. It's a real high, that's for sure, but it can literally burn you out. Get someone else to juice up on it though, and they can sate the need well enough."
"You've been bringing bots here to use as... fuel filters?"
Hun-Gurrr's heads looked at each other contemplatively, "I suppose you could put it that way."
"He wasn't lying about it being good stuff, though," Rippersnapper said, "Most bots are really revved up right before we start pulling them apart."
"Why not leave?" Grimlock asked.
"We can't, of course," Hun-Gurrr admitted, "That first dose, after you've had that, you'll never be happy with anything else. It's difficult not to just guzzle it down straight from the source."
"It controls you," Grimlock realized.
"And it is a cruel master," Hun-Gurrr's heads nodded, "unfortunate."
To Grimlock it was the worst sort of weakness. Physical strength and ability came in all sorts of forms, but to allow one to be ruled by some... thing... that was unfathomable. Disgusting. Horrifying.
Slash stirred in Grimlock's arms, evidently she'd dried out, and her autonomic systems had lifted the stasis lock, "Grim?"
It wasn't the time for sentimentality, "How bad is your damage?"
Slash's eyes glazed over briefly as diagnostic reports scrolled across the inside of her optics, "My casing's breached, I've got multiple shorts, and... I'm real low on energon Grim. I need a mechanic."
"You'd never get her to one fast enough," Hun-Gurrr said, "Not in your condition. But charge her up on the nucleon, and her internal repair systems will put her right."
"So you can eat her? What's the point?"
"Eat me?" Slash's systems began to pick up speed, but she was obviously weak from fuel loss. If there was a fight, she'd quickly deplete what she had left. She'd be back in stasis lock in no time.
"I'll make you a deal," Hun-Gurrr said, shifting to robot mode to hold up his hands in a gesture of compromise, "We saw how your little friend did against those allicons; she could be an interesting addition to our little pack of hunters. You both fuel up, and we'll all share you, Grimlock of Iacon. We'll spare her, let her become one of us."
"Let me become a junkie cannibal?" Slash had apparently been conscious long enough to catch the highlights, "Not happening!" she dropped to the ground, and the wheels on her shoulders rolled down to her forearms, transforming into sawblades. She tried to spin them up to speed, but the motors whined in protest. She didn't have enough power. She was barely standing.
Rippersnapper shifted to robot mode and pulled a rifle from his back. He cocked it menacingly.
"You can't fight us," Cutthroat said, perching on one of the small refinery stacks, "You'll need the nucleon to even have a chance, and once you use that, you'll be stuck here just like the rest of us."
"They're right," Grimlock said solemnly, helping Slash over to the fountain, "There's no choice."
"I'd rather die than become what they are."
"I know."
Grimlock gestured as if he was going to force Slash in against her will, and at the last minute, tossed her behind him. He lunged forward and dunked himself under the spilling stream of energized liquid, opening his maintenance seals to allow it to soak into his system more quickly.
Hun-Gurrr laughed, "Eager to try it first?"
"No," Grimlock growled. His processes became hazy as the nucleon sent his other systems into overdrive.
It was a side-effect Hun-Gurrr hadn't mentioned. Most bots, at their core, were driven by the prerogative to survive. When Hun-Gurrr and his fellow terrorcons had first used the nucleon, their first act had been to turn upon each other, the manic rush of the energy surge driving them to devour each other until only a handful were left. That hunger had never fully subsided, and they'd continued preying upon live creatures - including other bots - whenever possible.
Grimlock wasn't like most bots, though. For all of his uncertainty when it came to fate and destiny, Grimlock had two very clear drives. His first was to protect, and more than anyone else, he would protect his sister - not only from these predators, but from the nucleon's curse. Focusing on that kept his mind together, at least for now. The only other motivation Grimlock felt almost as ardently was the drive to fight. Aside from some time in fight clubs down by the docks, living in Iacon had always meant holding that lust for battle in check. Here, though, in the heart of the wild, he finally let the beast inside him off of its chain.
He tried to speak, to threaten their attackers into letting them pass, but his inner beast wouldn't allow it. The words came out scrambled, brutishly crude.
"ME... GRIMLOCK... SMASH YOU!"
He transformed into his alternate mode, faster than he thought possible, and plowed straight through the delicate formation that pumped the nucleon to the surface. The natural rods and pipes scattered and clattered, and the nucleon sprayed haphazardly through the air; Slash scrambled away to avoid it.
"YOU FOOL!!!" Hun-Gurrr shouted in horror upon seeing the structure's destruction, missing the more pressing concern that Grimlock was now on the attack. He ran straight over Sinnertwin, dragging him beneath his treads, and then ran his tracks in opposite directions. It spun him about and ripped Sinnertwin's limbs off. Rippersnapper opened fire on Grimlock with his rifle, but the nucleon charge repaired the damage faster than the weapon could deal it.
Cuttthroat tried to take off, but Grimlock loosed a rocket into the solar arrays above them. The detonation knocked the flyer out of the air, and set the spilled nucleon on the ground ablaze. Grimlock's armature snatched Cutthroat out of the air before he could regain his balance, and the grapple on the end of his boom-arm squeezed more forcefully than he'd ever been capable of. Cutthroat's body crunched like a thin-walled can, splurting energon; Grimlock swung him into Rippersnapper, sending them both tumbling through the brightly burning Nucleon.
Blot lumbered into Grimlock, pounding him with bestial fists, and flipping him over. Grimlock transformed quickly, but Blot got two good hits in in mid transformation - even surging with nucleon that was very painful, and left Grimlock staggered. Blot launched forward on his knuckles, slammed into Grimlock and wrapped his big hands around Grimlock's throat, trying to cut off the power to his main processor. Grimlock tried to pry the heavy bot loose, but the initial rush of the nucleon was already wearing off.
Suddenly, Blot loosened his grip and staggered back, flailing. Slash was hanging onto his back, Rippersnapper's rifle in hand, and firing it point blank into where Blot's robot head would be concealed. Grimlock drew his sword, holding it backwards in his hand, and plunged it sideways through Blot's beast mode head. Blot reflexively converted to robot mode, and with a final shot, Slash took the side of his real head off.
Grimlock switched to his alternate mode, swung Slash onto his back with his boom arm, and roared straight at Hun-Gurrr, plowing through flames and debris.
Hun-Gurrr's beast mode heads formed his feet in robot mode, and he used that to his advantage, actually biting into the ground to brace himself when Grimlock hit him. Grimlock came to a hard stop, but Slash leaped off, somersaulted over Hun-Gurrr's head, and fired several times into his back. Roaring in agitation, Hun-Gurrr gripped Grimlock, and flipped him over backwards. He spun as he turned back into his two-headed beast mode and struck Slash with his tail, sending her hard to the ground.
Grimlock roared as he switched back to robot mode.
Hun-Gurrr transformed to look his enemy in the eye, and then stepped aside laughing, "You can already feel it, can't you? The hunger? You can walk away now, but you'll be back. You need it. You need the nucleon. In time, you'll become just like me."
Grimlock tromped past him to see that Slash was still stable, then glared at Hun-Gurrr, the light of the burning nucleon gleaming in the red visor that covered his optics. With a clack and a pop he unmounted his alternate mode's rocket launcher and dropped it into his hand.
"No... Not like you," he said as he leveled it straight at the ruptured fountain, "Me... Grimlock... stronger."
"NO!!!!!!" Hun-Gurrr screamed.
Grimlock emptied the magazine into the center of the open space, shattering the ground, tossing up debris, and allowing air to rush further down into the well. The chain reaction reached the pocket of electrum that contributed to the well, and mixing with the energon, it detonated. The ground swelled and bucked beneath them, sending them rolling into the solar arrays, before it collapsed back down into a sinkhole. Regaining his footing at the edge of the hole, Hun-Gurrr switched to his beast mode, and snapped at Grimlock with one head, while moving to devour Slash with the other. Grimlock tried to reach his sword on the ground.
"I can still eat your little friend..." Hun-Gurrr snapped, lubricant flying from his jaws.
Slash rolled over with Rippersnapper's rifle braced under her arm. "Eat this, slag," she spat as she fired straight into the open maw. Hun-Gurrr's head snapped backward, smoke pouring from a hole that was open clear through the back.
Hun-Gurrr's remaining head snapped at Grimlock, snarling, "You monsters! Coming into my home..."
Grimlock slugged Hun-Gurrr to shut him up, and then caught his jaws in his hands, "Bite me." With great effort, Grimlock pulled them apart until the sound of straining metal gave way to a sproing and a hiss as Hun-Gurrr's pneumatics ruptured. Grimlock stomped down on the hilt of the sword, upending the blade, and violently pushed Hun-Gurrr's throat down onto it. Grabbing the sword, he hefted Hun-Gurrr up, and heaved him into the burning pit.
Slash staggered to her feet. Warning lights were blinking around the edges of her optics, where even Grimlock could see. Her teal skin had started to grey from energon loss; she'd deliberately over-ridden stasis-lock to keep fighting.
Grimlock's own internal systems were red-lining, both from the exertion of the fight and the damage he'd sustained, as well as the nucleon wearing off. His intakes sucked in air as fast as possible, desperately trying to burn enough fuel to keep him on his feet. They didn't succeed. Grimlock dropped to his knees next to Slash.
"So," she said, likewise out of breath, "do you think we passed?"
It would be a long slog back to civilization.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James N. McDonald is a "liberal academic" born and raised in Missouri and residing in Tennessee. He holds one degree in history, two degrees in psychology, but loves writing fiction. His first, completed novel, The Rise of Azraea, Book I, is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
