"Detroit" (Challenge Zone - Completed)

[Karl Jak]

The three had barely rested.

The center of the zone started to collapse. A stadium, nestled in the only part of the city they had been unable to penetrate, crumbled apart like an egg as a towering machine rose from its walls. The final challenge was upon the three.

***​

Characters Involved: Skywarp (@Arthur Morgan), Thundercracker (@King Shark), The Red Baron (@Don Isaac)

Updates: You are now confronted by the final challenge in this area -- a mechanized creature known as a Jaeger (https://pacificrim.fandom.com/wiki/Gipsy_Danger_(Jaeger) - there aren't pilots, we can just assume it is controlled by internal corruption). It is Size 6. All of your are returned to your normal scale shortly after the conclusion of this post. Your soldiers will try to assist but many will retreat to the boast as 'Detroit' starts to gradually crumble. The entire remnants of the city remain your battle zone so enjoy the building smashing, as applicable.

Length of Scene: This Scene will last for 72 hours (with the option to add a little more, if needed, without penalty)
Post Count/Size: 3 posts / 3500 words ballpark (around there should be your target, but I’m not going to split hairs if you go a couple hundred below or feel compelled to write a whole lot of extra)
Other Stuff: Others MAY NOT join this scene if they move along this path.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

The thin silver wings of Don Isaac de Metralla's biplane glinted as they cut across the night sky like a knife's edge, slicing through the dim, distantly glimmering starlight with a barely discernible hum. Its revving engine droned, echoing against the clouds that pressed down on the sprawling city below like a sunless, murky blanket; the high-pitched notes singing out and sustained at a singular pitch, like a chorus of angels.

A dent in his left wing tilted the nobleman's steed to one side, making it seem as though it might tip over into a dive at any moment. It ripped through the stratosphere with a righteous cacophony, disturbing the brackish purple clouds of pollution that hung low in the atmosphere, the smog parting temporarily before its spinning propeller like fabric flapping in a breeze. The blade’s movements were rendered choppy due to damage sustained in battle, creating a short clicking sound with every revolution.

His attention oscillated between the instruments in his cockpit and the wasteland of sky-scraping glass and steel towers before him, as if he were watching a badminton match back and forth. The heavy fog that clung to the sea like a shroud of death crept its way inland, melding together in a thick opaque mass that reached up to the highest spires.

It felt like an omen, oppressive and sinister. So thick and silent it was almost peaceful... but the air was still laced with a portending feeling of dread. Bleak, like the most miserable of omens...

Isaac was grateful for the thick gauges of glass used on the craft— even if staring back at him from the window's icy reflection was an image of disfigurement, his high-born brow gashed with a deep, oozing wound.

To the average observer, the Don might have appeared pale and wan, but within him there was something far more powerful: a fervent drive that blushed his olive-toned cheeks and locked his determined gaze, hinting at the fire burning within his Santagrian blood. The man's jaw was clenched tight and his brow deeply creased, his knuckles white as bone, yet he refused to be daunted by the pain that stabbed through his flesh nor the damage to his craft; pushing himself past what seemed to be mortal limits, determined to see his mission through.

Suddenly, the steady ache building behind his eyes magnified as a violent streak of purple energy erupted beside him, searing through the night sky and blinding him momentarily. When the vibrant light faded away, a menacing midnight-colored fighter jet had materialized from the electric cacophony and now flew in perfect formation beside him— its engines crooning in a steady, panther-like purr.

A dazzling array of alien technology crackled across the jet's obsidian fuselage as it glided through the air gracefully, lightning embedded in the metal of its frame like veins. Each fractured fragment of circuitry shimmered and sparkled in frantic displays of power, fractals blooming across its body in twisting Lichtenberg figures that burned with otherworldly brilliance.

Despite the incredible spectacle unfolding before him, Isaac kept all emotion suppressed and focused his radium-green gaze forwards, unswerving, not even sparing any attention to the visitor that had come to join his flight.

"Watari," the nobleman gritted through his teeth, his voice ringing and dull. His eyes were steely and hard as he watched Watari glide alongside him out of the corner of his eye. Nothing further was said.

Go on with your business, he thought sourly. He was not in the mood for Watari's wit today.

An oppressive silence descended, and Isaac felt a chill creeping down his spine, like thousands of invisible eyes were scrutinizing and categorizing his person— the night air around them starkly illuminated as the yellow-tinted cockpit of Watari's jet flashed with a coruscating light, the shattered glass creating a halo of fractured sunshine at its epicenter.

Then, the light inside the dark jet's cockpit suddenly snuffed out, sinking into the shapeless murk of the clouded sky. The sensation of being scanned faded.

There was a sound like a crackling of radio static, bizarrely reminiscent of the clearing of a human throat.

"So," said the jet coasting alongside him, its voice more metallic than the ringing of a sword yet strangely flat, only the faintest echo of the vibrant Lady Watari's sublime cadence present. "You figured it out."

"Yes, I have seen through the mask of your deceit,” Don Isaac's voice dripped with temper, acidly hissing out his words. He clenched his teeth so hard that it seemed they would shatter like porcelain. Fury burned in his emerald eyes and he sneered as the words forced their way past his lips. "You thought me a fool, to be ensnared by your wiles for so long! But I have unraveled the mask you and your fellow creature hide behind, abomination. From this day on, I will no longer be subject to your malicious games."

There was a slight pause.

"Yeah, okay, maaaybe I deserved that," said Watari, if that was even this detestable machine's real name. "Look, for the record, I’m sorry. I didn't expect us to get so close, ya know? I ain’t one to be buddy-buddy with any organics—not my usual M.O. to pal around with squishy sorts like you, Don. But you were... pretty different. I guess what I’m trying to say is—"

"I don't much care for what you’re trying to say," the Don snapped, a spark of vexation smoldering in his emerald gaze. "What manner of creature are you? Start there."

"I’m... well, me and TC, we're Autonomous Robotic Organisms from the planet Cybertron," said Watari, as if reading from a script. "For many millions of years, we served in the Decepticon air force under our leader Megatron, fighting against a group of chumps called the Autobots, like that Broadside guy. We've pulled energy from planets all over the universe in an effort to help take back our home turf, but... well. I’ve already told you how we wound up... stranded here."

"Millions of years," muttered Isaac, his piercing eyes narrowing as his gaze fixed ahead again, pupils shrinking to pinpoints as he squinted towards the gently sloping horizon. "Yes... you did mention that before. By what names do you go by, and for how many years have you... existed?"

Though there was a tinge of curiosity to his tone now, he almost seemed to fear the answer. And Watari was definitely nervous about giving him a proper response.

The sentient aircraft hovered unsteadily, its wings hemming and hawing in mid-air, as if it were attempting to carefully choose its words before making its statement.

"In Earth years, right? Welllllll, I’d say I’m, like... maybe five to seven million years old? Let's go with six just to be safe. My real designation is Skywarp, but like I said, you can just call me Warp. TC's is Thundercracker. And we're called seekers, just so you know. Not abomination, creature, or whatever. Say that around TC and he might actually cry."

Don Isaac touched the soft fabric of the purple scarf Lady Watari— or Skywarp, rather —had gifted him, its rippling surface catching his gaze. Emblazoned upon it was the sharply-angled, glowering emblem of the army the two seekers belonged to, its dour alien visage flapping in the wind.

"Decepticons, you say?" he croaked out a mirthless laugh. "Ah, the very name might have raised many suspicions..."

His voice ached with bitterness.

Suddenly, an immense shadow cast over the seat of his biplane— the midnight black jet traveling above his own craft in a grotesque tango of sorts, weaving so close that the yellow glass of its cockpit, cracked and broken into jagged, tooth-like shards, skimmed atop his head of dark curls.

"Listen, Don. I know I fragged up," said Skywarp, vocalizer hissing out a heavy ex-vent. "I shoulda been crystal clear from the jump, instead of lyin' by omission like a cowardly glitch. But... you're cool, y'know? At first, it was just a little prank gone wrong, no big. But then we smashed a few faces in together, and nearly got deactivated takin' on that ugly fleshy with the ring to protect my brother, and I realized you're pretty metal, for an organic. Can you really blame me for being a little nervous to drop a bomb like that?"

"Yes, I can and I shall. But we will not speak of this any longer, at the present moment," Don Isaac replied coolly, his tone like an icy chill in the air. "The final stretch of this city still sits in darkness, and we will direct our attention to its liberation. Are we in agreement?"

The Don's words came in the form of a question, but the steel in his voice left no room for debate.

Skywarp did not need to be told twice. He moved near-silently, returning to his post next to the battle-scarred silver biplane, flying in perfect formation. Somehow, though, the jet emanated a distinct impression of sulking.

"Sure, Don. Whatever you want."

It wasn't long in their flying over the city that they sighted a towering blue figure stumbling on the street, his wide wingspan clipping against nearby buildings in his haste, causing their foundations to shake and their windows to rattle. His huge strides carried him pell-mell across the wreck-littered thoroughfare, his servos clutching at his face as he vamoosed in a jumbled, headlong run.

"Hey, that's TC!" Skywarp stated the obvious, his nose-cone already beginning to plunge downwards, positively giddy to escape the suffocating silence that had formed around them. "Looks like something’s up, we should go check on him."

Don Isaac followed after Skywarp, their aircraft modes coalescing into bipedal forms in mid-air as they crashed to the ground. The street quavered with the impact, the asphalt buckling beneath their combined weight, forcing Thundercracker to draw to a sudden halt a few paces ahead.

Once on the ground, Skywarp studied his wing-mate closely, his optics flashing bright with concern. The other seeker's turbines were shuddering and rattling from overwork, imperceptibly shaking his dorsal plating, both servos still covering his face-plates. His trembling digits parted to allow a solitary ruby optic to peek out and meet their gaze, shoulder pauldrons heaving with each labored breath. Searing, ghostly vapors streamed into the air from his vents, his anxiety made tangible.

Warp and Don Isaac shared a fleeting glance, the former briefly raising an optical ridge in silent question. He then slooooowly rotated his whole body to face his wing-brother, speaking in hushed tones. "TC... what's wrong, dude?"

Thundercracker's servos dropped to his sides. Don Isaac recoiled, but Skywarp moved in so quickly that he nearly tripped over his own pedes, his vocalizer choking out a harsh, agonized gasp.

The blue-painted seeker's face was a disfigured mess. What once had been a smooth metallic exterior was now ragged and peeled open like a tin can, revealing jutting injections of exposed wiring beneath, some of the shredded strands still sparking grotesquely. It was a slaggin' miracle his sole remaining optic was still there, though his lower mandible was split into two separate pieces, twisted and dangling like a mockery from his shattered visage.

Skywarp tentatively moved forward, his talons trembling as he reached for Thundercracker's face. But when the other seeker flinched away from him, the violet seeker froze mid-reach. Thundercracker's single optic blazed with a wildness that spoke of pain and desperation. He seemed like a cornered beast, unsure if he was meant to lash out or cower in fear.

“Aw, TC,” Skywarp sighed softly, his wings sagging in abject misery. "What have they done to you?"

TC shuddered, his vocalizer emitting a harsh, jagged sound as he attempted to answer through the disfigured ruin of his jaw, and then the ground beneath them began to tremble— shaking with a force that seemed to swallow everything in its path.

Optics flashing in alarm, Skywarp wheeled around with a mighty sweep of his black wings, drawing himself in front of Thundercracker while they surveyed the source of the sudden rumble echoing throughout the city. The buildings around them shuddered and began to crumble as the seismic force from the thundering grew, and in the distance emerged a large stadium-like structure, disintegrating from the bludgeoning power of something that was erupting within its walls.

CRRCKK-BOOM!

A gargantuan machine clambered through the ravaged ruins, its colossal metal fists plowing through shattered stone and brick like it was nothing but papier-mâché. Skeletal fragments of what seemed to be rusted railings and stairwells dangled from its limbs, creating a near-deafening clamor as they plummeted to the ground below.

One by one, dozens of red skylights flickered to life around the tattered stadium’s perimeter, casting eerie beams that lanced through the darkness of Detroit, the fiery crimson glare glistening like a sheen of blood upon the glass windows of skyscrapers both near and distant.

Slowly, the mechanical behemoth stomped forward on its heavily articulated legs, the shock-redistributing gyros of its knees hissing with each step as it advanced menacingly, broad shoulders swaying to the rhythm of a wretched dread as it advanced, like a gunslinger approaching a duel. Its chest pocketed a glowing nuclear furnace that hummed ominously, spitting out a purplish-black blaze as its embedded turbines roared in an inescapable maelstrom.

The titan moved with a calculated deliberateness at first, as if stalking its prey. Its long legs swung in an eerie precision, the engine blocks embedded within rumbling, loping along like a tiger closing in on its prey. Then it broke into a gallop, crushing the earth beneath its metallic feet and hurdling over low-lying buildings, rapidly accelerating into a full sprint that shook the ground beneath it.

Its legs crashed with each stride as it sped towards them, mechanical arms thrashing up and down in a controlled swing, brimming with murderous intent.

Naturally, Skywarp panicked.

"Scrap!" he yelped, one servo immediately latching onto the scruff of Thundercracker next to him, pointedly ignoring the way his wing-mate gasped and desperately tried to struggle out of his hold. "I’ll be right back Isaac, just— keep this bad dude occupied, alright?! I promise I’ll be back rapido to lend you a servo, I just gotta make sure TC is sorted!"

And with a crackle of warp-energy, the duo vanished. Thundercracker and his errant wing-brother gone in a flash of violet light, leaving Don Isaac alone to face the behemoth's wrathful approach.

Individual Post Wordcount: 2,408 Words out of 3,500 Words
Post 1/3

 

[Don Isaac]

Abandoned- though the Don, perhaps, should not have expected more. The behemoth that barreled towards him- and only him- was massive, an armoured colossus that dwarfed the ruined skyscrapers that trembled with every earth-shaking step. More than one of those mouldering monoliths collapsed in its wake, the city seemingly intent on burying them beneath its shattered structures.

And from through the plume of concrete dust and scintillating clouds of shattered glass, came ruin. Midnight blue armour, once the heraldry of some distant land, had been defaced with numerical script, carved into its hull, wrapping around limbs larger than The Red Baron itself, spiralling towards an impossible equation. An infernal flame blazed in its breast, a turbine shrieking like all the hounds of hell as it sprinted ever-closer, a baleful fire demanding to be fed as it pumped tainted power through myomers and great pistons.

"Damned Decepticons," Isaac sighed, his own mechanical legs carrying him forth, striving to build momentum as battered wings unfurled from around him, stripped steel snapping into place as he carved through the air.

It was not, however, the graceful takeoff that he had hoped for- his propeller sputtered into life, rather than roaring into action, his hull scraping against the rubble-strewn streets as he yanked the controls upwards, pressing into his armoured chest. His steed was suffering- Santagrian craft were not built with extended deployments in mind. Intense firefights, to be certain, but the manors of home were never expected to be far. The Red Baron rattled beneath him, worn bolts and battered armour plating protesting as, finally the propeller spun to life, granting him lift once more.

This was, however, precious time that his foe had not wasted. A massive arm swung upwards, the hand at its terminus splitting apart like a macabre, mechanical blossom as coruscating arcs of brilliant power cascaded across its palm, spun into shape by dexterous digits that spun like a weaver's loom. And then- it was released.

The thunderous crash of the great machine's footfalls was nothing compared to the crack of splitting air that came with the shot- the shot that the damaged plane was too slow to dodge.

Isaac felt his teeth crack, hairline fractures marring the ivory as he refused to give voice to the agony that claimed him, nerves ablaze as his muscles locked tight, trying to keep The Red Baron steady as its silver hull blackened beneath the electrical storm. It was one of the benefits of a purely analogue system, though, that when spasming muscles heaved against the lightning-lit yoke, sparking ailerons answered as his craft twisted and yawed, careening behind a broken building for a moment's respite.

He wasn't running- he had to tell himself that. He could hear the great machine pursuing him, the whirring of its turbine indistinguishable from the keening of a ravening beast, each pounding footfall threatening to shatter the foundations of his shelter as his wingtips grazed its corroded construction. His aching teeth chattered as he admonished himself, scarcely daring to look behind him as he pulled his steed to the side in answer to the burgeoning crackle of his pursuer's weapon- the blinding flash of pain and power detonating a scant few feet to his left.

Think, he demanded from his electrified grey matter as he subjected it to further G-forces, lips moving in silent prayer as he climbed, twisting around another incoming blast as he strove to escape the encroaching mechanical grasp of his foe. Think!

It was close- what remained of his savaged 'stache was standing on end, each follicle bristling against the wind, and they told a truer story than any other aspect of his senses could tell. That turbine, that hell-mouth into a world of dark industry and darker deeds, was hungrily gulping down the air around him, churning the atmosphere as if trying to drag him down into its greedy gyre.

Perhaps it was- though iron would do the trick just as well.

The sun died- a great shadow fell across him as it blotted out the sky, monolithic digits slowly closing around The Red Baron as it raced upwards, climbing, climbing towards the glimmer of light beyond the smog-choked skies. His mouth was burnt- he couldn't tell whether it was filling with blood or spittle, slavering at the taste of freedom just beyond the giant's grasp.

His propeller spun to a halt, and it all turned to ashes.

The numbness he felt in that moment was a small mercy compared to the agony this endeavour had wrought upon him. For a brief moment, he was swaddled in steel, a hand the size of his craft wrapping around him and squeezing, the hull groaning in protest- and then, he was flying again.

Or more accurately, he had been hurled towards the surly earth by a spiteful, dismissive God.

He was tumbling, spinning through the air, rudder over aileron- his hands were wrapped around the yoke, but they were unmoving, his eyes wide and blank, barely able to notice the horizon looming overhead as it spun like a top beneath him.

Think!

His thoughts were consumed by the colossus behind him- its strength, its enormity. It bent the tempest to its will, every step a seismic event. What could he do against such a titan, but be blown about it, like a leaf in the wind?

Did the bombs reduce your lineage to such?

That thought poured ice water against his burning nerves, freezing his spine into rigidity as he curled his fingers around the yokes. He felt the grit of broken enamel slither down his throat, flecks trapped in a bloody sludge oozing from within his mouth- and it did nothing to dampen the rueful, spiteful smile that blossomed beneath the ruin of his moustache.

No.

He slammed a fist into the transformation button, and like that, The Red Baron shifted from an ungainly missile into a slender steel silhouette, angling itself to shatter a smog-stained plate glass window standing within one of the few remaining structures that the titan's rampage had not yet felled.

The battered 'mech crashed through the window, broken glass only adding to Isaac's tally of grudges to settle as piston-driven 'pedes sparked against the concrete, trying to arrest his skid, and failing. His back crashed into a solid wall, dust shaking down from above as his craft slumped down, settling into a mass of worn pistons, scorched cables, and cracked steel plates.

He heaved a breath through bleeding lips as he rested his head against a velvet-lined cushion set into the back of his cockpit. He could rest a moment, spare his aching bones.

Let those wretched machines deal with their own, for now.

1,117/3,500.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

A sudden flicker of amethyst-colored light illuminated a dark street exactly fifty yards away, and Skywarp materialized from its fading electrical glow, still clasping firmly onto Thundercracker's shoulders. Before he even had time to react, the blue-painted seeker was forcibly shoved into a less-than-graceful sit on the pavement below.

The deafening thunderclap of TC's descent resounded through the empty streets as he crushed the wrecks of several cars beneath his immense weight. His jagged wings scraped against the side of a towering building, shredding its facade and shattering at least fifteen windows. Said building was Michigan Central Station, according to a nearby sign, though the barbed wire fencing surrounding its perimeter and the smashed, dust-laden windows all cast a dismal shadow of what it had been in bygone days.

"Alright, TC, let's have Nurse Skywarp take a look," insisted Warp. His wings were tall and quivering with alertness, his crooked talons outstretched and grasping, eager to prod the other mech's face.

Thundercracker jolted back, a fierce glint of metal gleaming in the darkness of his warped visage— all that remained of his upper mandible; a serrated edge of dentae bared menacingly from behind the mutilated, stripped plating of his lips.

"Sthay 'ack," he slurred in warning, shrill and barely even threatening. One clawed servo came up to brace against his wing-mate's chest plating, desperately attempting to force him back. "... 'on't... touch me!"

Undeterred, Skywarp's mechanical hand remained outstretched, his ruby red optics radiating with a sorrowful pity. His wings fell limp against the metallic hull of his frame with a sharp clang, his expression pleading.

"Come on, Thundercracker. We have to do it," the seeker urged, trying his best to reassure his injured wing-brother— though his continued attempts to grasp at his face probably weren't helping matters. "I know it'll hurt, but I'm here to help you. It won't take long— I promise!"

Distantly, the echoing sounds of combat began, the stuttering chatter of machine guns intermingled with the low, thunderous phoom of a plasma cannon releasing its energy barrage. Now frantic, Skywarp began flailing at Thundercracker with greater urgency, knowing all too well that time was quickly running out.

Shaking his helm in furious denial, Thundercracker shuddered, his single optic blazing with terror, and raised a leg in a desperate attempt to push Skywarp away. His pede slammed into the cockpit of the other Decepticon, crunching through its sunny yellow glass pane as he desperately tried to put space between them.

Skywarp gritted his dentae as his cockpit smashed further, contorting his face-plates into what was likely supposed to be a friendly, reassuring grin. Yet in the cold light of the Opealon night, it came off as an expression of pure menace. "It'll only— take— a second!"

In a final, desperate onslaught, he managed to subdue Thundercracker's wild movements and thrashing limbs; pinning the seeker with his own frame. With a swift move, he reached out towards the other mech's deformation-ridden visage, heedless of TC's shrieking vocalizer and the claws now digging into his own chassis.

Sccchink. His metal talons sank into the ruined mesh that made up the bottom half of Thundercracker's face, pinching the two split halves of his lower mandible together. As he struggled to reassemble the torn machinery within, Skywarp flinched at the sound of every single one of Michigan Central Station's glass windows shattering under the force of Thundercracker's agonized screams, his signature Sonic Boom reverberating around them.

Yet the violet seeker kept his servos steady— the shredded components pinched between his talons sputtering and sparking, weeping out a thin dribble of lurid, glowing energon over his claws.

Grimacing, Skywarp painstakingly forced the split pieces of his wing-mate's shattered jaw back into place.

"There," he declared a moment later, sitting back to admire his handiwork. Luminous pink lifeblood streamed from his talons and fell like rain onto the ground below. "That wasn't so bad, now was it?"

CLANG! A resounding clash of metal on metal rang out as Thundercracker clobbered him across the face-plates, sending him sprawling backwards with an inelegant squawking sound.

"I hate you," Thundercracker spat venomously, reaching up to clutch at his broken face. His solitary optic, now aglow with an ominous maroon hue, glinted dully in betrayal. "You're sick, Skywarp. Twisted, not to mention demented—"

He paused, as if considering what further insults to hurl Skywarp's way, and then jolted as he was struck with dumbfounded surprise. He could talk again! He could feel his mouth-plates forming words with a lot more precision, albeit with an underlying, slurring buzz... but that didn't matter.

Even if the damage was definitely still there, he could speak.

Skywarp slowly clanked upright across from him, the ear-splitting whine of metal scraping against asphalt piercing both of their audio receptors. He shook out his wings, wincing a little as his partially-melted one shifted, and then looked up to meet Thundercracker's gaze.

His face-plates split into a wide, fanged grin. "That was too easy. I should've been a medic or something!"

Thundercracker's gaze was fixed upon him, his lone optic sparking with muted emotion. Slowly, he shook his helm, one servo rising up to obscure the exhausted dismay that would've been on his face... if he still had one.

"Why," he whispered. "Why did I have to get stuck with you..."

"Funny," snickered Warp, ambling over and slinging one arm around his companion's shoulders. Their wings clattered loudly as they collided, like a pair of dish pans smacking together. "I ask the same thing about you every day!"

The pair suddenly lurched as the raucous staccato of machine guns veered closer to their location, cleaving through the oppressive air somewhere behind the abandoned intercity rail station shadowing over them— then abruptly fell silent. In its wake came the earth-shaking stomping of giant feet and a deep, cacophonous crash of structures being shouldered aside and destroyed, collapsing under the onslaught of the distant battle.

Turning to look up at the night sky, optics squinting in hopes of spotting Don Isaac's silver steed soaring overhead, Skywarp whistled low under his breath.

“Whoa, that sounded pretty close—"

A hulking silhouette the size of the Chrysler Building smashed through the rail station at their backs shoulder-first, its blue paint job and the scarlet streaks striping along its broad pauldrons calling to mind the patterning of a college tailback’s uniform. The titanic impact reverberated through the still night air, windows shattering and clumps of brick shooting outward from the epicenter like bullets; Skywarp and Thundercracker were sent sprawling helm over tailfins, their bodies flying away from the force of the blast.

An acrid smell of burnt metal and asphalt lingered in the air as Skywarp, embedded wings-first into a building thirty feet away, came back online. With a sudden jerk he tried to roll off his back and onto his pedes, searching for Thundercracker— only to jolt in surprise as a gigantic metal hand slammed down on the empty street before him, shattering the concrete beneath and sending a shockwave rippling through the ground, pebbles skipping up from the point of contact.

Warp's helm craned back slowly, his optics straining to take in the immense figure that loomed before him… and above him. Its armored blue plate armor glinted in the moonlight, viciously hunched over his much smaller winged frame, all of its gargantuan weight braced on one knee. Like it was a kid checking out a little skittering bug with a magnifying glass.

Chuckling nervously, Warp took a step backward. His thruster-heels roared to life, spitting fire and propelling him away from the immense humanoid suit of armor. But before the seeker could gain any altitude, the Goliath's monstrous digits clamped around his waist— eliciting a yelp as he was carelessly jerked closer to the creature's helm.

In the corner of his optics, he could just make out Thundercracker in the mighty grip of the titan's opposite hand, writhing and thrashing to no avail. The hulking figure's artificial helm loomed ever closer, yellow visor gleaming, and studied them with an oppressive intensity for what felt like an eternity.

Then, with a resoundingly dissonant CLANG of metal grating tortuously against metal, the monstrosity brought its hands together clumsily, as if the two jetformers were nothing but children's toys from an American animated television series that originally aired from September 17, 1984, to November 11, 1987.

And it just. Kept doing it. Smashing the pair of seekers together until Warp thought his wings might be about to simply fall off, various warnings and damage alerts flickering in his processor, screeching and demanding his attention.

"ALRIGHT," Warp snapped, purple warp-lightning crawling across his chassis like a hive of angry ants. His limbs writhed wildly as he repeatedly collided with Thundercracker's own metal frame, each impact more jarring than the last. His words became a shuddering staccato with every violent smash, punctuated by searing pain. "NOT- TODAY- FRAGGER-"

A burst of electrifying violet light trailed behind the seeker as he vanished from the metal humanoid's grasp, a sound like a soap bubble popping punctuating his disappearance. His form flickered and ghosted like a specter, still pulsating with warp-lightning as he re-materialized directly before the creature's visored face. Without hesitation, Skywarp lunged forward and teleported through the aforementioned visor, emerging inside the vacant helm of the corrupted machine.

With razor-sharp claws, he lashed out and grasped onto anything within reach— hanging webs of virus-riddled neural-net circuitry shredding and tearing as he dug deeper into the machine's tainted core. And then, with a deafening crackle like a fork of dry lightning shattering the sky, Warp vanished again— severing one hemisphere of the behemoth's control center from the rest of its body with a sharp, ear-bleeding SNAP of broken cabling, like a surgeon removing a tumor with precision and purpose.

Skywarp reappeared in a purple flash at street level, staggering a bit as his Warp Drive was depleted, and turned to watch as one entire half of the Jaeger's towering metal frame sagged, one arm drooping lifelessly as its circuitry lost connection with what remained of its brain.

Its metal fingers loosened their cruel grip around Thundercracker and the other seeker dropped like a stone, too dazed to react as he plummeted towards the ground from easily a hundred feet in the air.

Individual Post Word Count: 1,717 words

TOTAL WORD COUNT: 4,125/3,500 words

Skywarp has used 1 application of Focus to severely injure Gipsy Danger, severing one hemisphere of its corrupted control pod. 2 out of 5 Focus remaining.

 

[King Shark]

This entire war is quicksand. We’re just sinking further and further into it everyday. Why did I think that this was a good idea?

Thundercracker’s body hit the pavement, split the hardened tar, and punched a concave indent into its surface. The Decepticon lay there, staring up at the smoggy sky unblinkingly. He furled then unfurled the digits of his sprained servo, grimacing. The motion was cathartic, and he savored the ache that shot through his injured servo. It reminded him that he was alive, and that was something he was clinging to desperately.

We’re not going to make it out of this.

The massive form of the Jaeger, so impossibly large that he wouldn’t be able to behold it even if both of his optics were working, loomed up in front of him. The silhouette drew up in the cluster of buildings before him and brought up a hand that itself was larger than Thundercracker’s entire frame. He closed his optic and braced himself for the end.

Guess I won’t see my dog again.

He heard the thundering beat of footfalls slamming towards him, then felt himself lift bodily from his resting place. He was slung over a purple shoulder, and beheld Skywarp’s regal purple as he jostled unceremoniously about his wingmate’s backstrap.

“Just toss me down,” croaked Thundercracker, squinting his optic. “It’s too big. I don’t have it left in me.”

They vanished in a flash of electric purple.

They reappeared in a dusty living room. Skywarp, hunched, stood up tall through the gap of a ruined ceiling.

“TC,” he hissed, punching a clawed mechanical fist into an open servo. “You need to get yourself together. Isaac is-”

“Isaac is dead,” Thundercracker groaned, sitting up. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

He reached up and placed a hand on his aching lower mandible and felt the ruination, then moaned. His digits explored the area where his face had been, feeling around the cracks and crevices, before he pulled them away in revulsion.

“Pits,” he cursed. “I’ve spent myself. I’ve shot my entire livelihood on this entire damn war, and for what? This is worse than what we did with Megatron. At least that felt like it made sense. I just murdered someone, lost my entire face, and for what? To quash some galactic squabble that I don’t even get?”

Thundercracker stood up, his joints creaking, something popping somewhere, then drew up to Skywarp until he was face to non-existent face. The skull-like mask of his naked underworkings twisted into a grim caricature of fury like a skull laid bare, and he stabbed a finger into Skywarp’s shoulder.

“I’m not going to get to go home,” ‘Cracker spat, jabbing his finger. “No girlfriend. No dog. No life. You may not have liked it here, but I did. And now it’s gone.”

Skywarp’s lip plates moved wordlessly, looking selfish, and guilty, and unhappy. …and desperate.

“It isn’t over,” Skywarp spluttered. “We’re still here! That thing is just a-”

A deafening series of stomps in the background seemed to grow distant, dissolving into the background, and proving that their foe still needed to find them. It hadn’t so far, at least.

“Just a what?” demanded Thundercracker, turning his back on his fellow Decepticon.

“Well, it’s just a roadblock. And I need you to be here. Not wherever you are, lost in your weird thoughts about people and dogs and stuff, but here. Isaac knows about us, dude. He found out. He knows that I’m not a human in a plane, and that we’re Decepticons, and I think he’s breaking up with me. We had this whole entire weird exchange where he sounded pretty mad, and then he asked me to just do this one thing and-”

“Breaking up?” asked Thundercracker quietly.

“Yeah, dude. Breaking up. I think he’s pretty pissed. I think he’s going to get rid of the scarf. I had to bail on him to grab you, and I left him to fight the thing, and I think he’s really mad.”

“You left him to fight the-”

“Yeah, to fight the thing. I think I heard him getting thrown into something, and I bet that hasn’t done anything to make him less mad, so we should probably do something.”

Thundercracker whipped around, sparking under-face contorted, and stared with his one good eye.

“You left him?”

“Oh. Yeah, I left him.”

Thundercracker barked out a noise that was almost a laugh.

“Well, then we’d better do something, huh?”

“Yeah,” admitted Skywarp, frowning. “I guess we’d better.”

Thundercracker stomped across the dusty floor leaving foot shaped phantoms on the carpet in his wake before Skywarp’s claw-digits wrapped around his shoulder.

“Hey, wait. TC.”

Thundercracker stopped, waiting.

“Did you hear about the rainbow? The one that went to jail?”

Thundercracker hesitated, listening, and tensing up all at the same time.

“It went to prism. It was a light sentence.”

Thundercracker shrugged Skywarp’s hand off of his pauldron and stepped lithely through an enormous shattered window.

“Not now, Warp. We need to help Isaac.”

Skywarp sighed heavily and followed his wingmate.

Nearby, Isaac lay in the confines of the machine his ingenuity had created. It, like he himself, was a product of Santagria, a bold amalgam of chivalrous intent shaken liberally with a disrespect for mortality itself. The man was a marvel, that much could not be disputed. That he could move, still, was evidence unto itself of how little regard he had for the laws of nature and their influence over the mortal coil.

His arm, shaking, snaked its way past his control yoke and into his vessel’s console. His head, reclined on a velvet pillow, craned upon its neck. He pulled a switch and dropped a compartment much like a glove box, which flipped open to reveal two bottles. Isaac reached in, grabbed a bottle filled with deep red liquid, and liberated it from its prison.

The Don was entirely horizontal, his mech prone.

He plucked a cork from the bottle, holding the bottle carefully vertical, and sniffed the cork carefully.

His lips curled back, his nose wrinkled, and he fought back the urge to wretch.

“A terrible vintage,” Isaac stated to no one in particular.

He used his offhand to grab a rag, dumped some of the alcohol onto it, then pressed it onto the gash on his forehead. With his main hand he up-ended the bottle into his mouth, held it in his cheeks despite its volatility, then swallowed.

“Truly awful stuff,” he gasped, seething out the smell of wine that a lesser man might think of as an upper-shelf bottle.

He leaned up, pressed forth on his yoke, and felt the body of the Red Baron begin to move. Both products of Santagria allowed themselves a moment of uncanny recuperation, sitting up and feeling life in their vessels. Don Isaac de Metralla let out a sigh, took another abominable sip, then placed the bottle in a carefully shaped holder in the center console between him and the yoke - one placed there for the essentials.

“Decepticons,” he allowed himself with a sigh.

He fingered the scarf draped over his flight leathers, wrapped around his neck, and felt momentarily strangled by its placement. More fool him, for having been taken in. Skywarp had been too wily, and too good to be true. Flying with wingmates such as they had been a pleasure, but the pleasure turned to ash in his mouth in the wake of the betrayal he felt. The pleasant dance of courtship he’d enjoyed had been tantamount to a cuckolding, and his companions were just…

Well, Skywarp, anyway, had been a liar.

Thinking back on his interactions with Thundercracker, he could scarcely see the man as anything other than forthright. A few choice interactions flitted through his mind - the time back on the flotilla, where he’d danced with the Lady Watari, who in turn had indulged herself in a heated exchange with her wingmate. That time back on the island of the crone, where they’d taken their healing after they’d taken their licks, and he’d been gathering driftwood while his companions shared words. He’d seen them jabbing fingers at each other, looking troubled…had it been that obvious all along?

The Red Baron clambered to a stand.

Nearby, he heard tremendous stomps drawing closer to his location. The Jaeger was drawing close.

Isaac fingered the pin on his chest and thought of Racker, then seized on the neck of his bottle one more time. It was the grip of a desperate man, the one that belonged to someone whose bottle had become a tool and stopped being a thing of leisure. He swigged.

Don Isaac realized, then, that there was still something that he could do. Their foe seemed insurmountable, tremendous, larger than life while the rest of them were running on fumes.

But Thundercracker had tried, at least, to tell him the truth. A good turn deserved a good turn.

The Red Baron shambled out of the derelict walls of a crumbling building, peering left, then right. The Jaeger’s looming form was loping away from him, tamping down entire buildings in its wake, but unable to spot him in the toppled landscape of Detroit.

“Thundercracker?” rasped Isaac over the ‘comms.

Nothing.

He shuffled his ‘mech through crumbled architecture, then tried again.

“Thundercracker?” he hesitated, then croaked bitterly over the comm-link again. “Skywarp?”

“Go for ‘Warp,” Skywarp chirped back, sounding altogether too buoyant. “Isaac? Hey, Isaac? We’re here. Where are you? We should probably regroup. …by the way, did you hear about the rainbow that went to jail?”

Isaac groaned and took another swig of his wine - not his first choice of wine, but it was the only choice of wine.

“No,” he answered bluntly.

“It went to prism!” Skywarp answered, voice cracking. “It was a light sentence!”

The comms went dead. Isaac clenched his fist.

“Where are you? Is Thundercracker with you?”

Post 1/3 1698/3500 words

 

[Don Isaac]

Piston-driven 'pedes slammed against the ruined streets, trammeling the pavement beneath as he lumbered on in pursuit of the giant. A mechanical arm hung limp by his side, deadened limb swaying with every step forward as he slowly built into a headlong sprint. He couldn't trust the propeller to drag him away from the surly bonds of earth, not anymore. That earth was breaking apart beneath his feet, brackish waters tainted by the filth of a fallen city seeping through cracked stones, the sea rising to swallow up its misbegotten spawn.

Why was he even running towards the monster?

The Decepticons had built every moment they'd spent together on a lie- gleaming smiles and barbed wit, jests that were all the sweeter for the fact that they were all, ultimately, on him. The very memory of it was a bitter draught, one fouler than the fuel-infused wine that burned at the open wounds bleeding within his mouth. If he turned from his course, and allowed them to meet their fate beneath the heels of the titan trammeling the ruins to powder beneath its mass, then some might call it justice.

That wraith would have named it justice.

At the remembrance of that hated foe, he slammed a fist into the side of his cockpit, wings slicing through the dust-shrouded atmosphere as he took wobbling flight once more, legs snapping back into the fuselage of his steed.

There was no justice in this world- not at the hands of The Bomb, the cruelties of natural law, and certainly not at the claws of the Unmaking. Render down every ounce of matter in all the worlds, and you would find not an ounce of true Justice within any realm that had poured its chaff and cast-offs into the crucible of the crossroads.

No- there was only Chivalry.

His radio crackled- battle damage and the electromagnetic blessings of Saint Cherenkov had rendered it barely reliable at the best of times, but now, it spoke. A battle-ballad of unknown provenance blared through tinny speakers as his engine choked out plumes of black smoke, streaking through carnaged-choked streets as the giant only grew within his crosshairs.

It seemed larger than it had been, when it chased him earlier- now, though, it bore the wounds of war. Its skull was split, seeping a waterfall of ichor down the numerical graffiti etched into its warplate. Yet still, it held strong, stomping through the streets towards the streaks of brilliant energy the seekers unleashed from their concealed positions.

He'd not been put on this earth to settle for good enough, or to walk away from a fight. He had been granted every privilege to prepare himself for this moment, and it would not find him wanting.

His thumbs pressed into the trigger-buttons of the control yoke, uranium-tipped rounds ripping through the air and slamming into the back of the mechanical leviathan's knee. The thick armour plating and dense synthetic muscles layered beneath the steel did not yield easily- but it still bled, milky-white fluid seeping from its wounds.

And if it bled, it could die.

He screamed past the great machine as its knee buckled for a moment, its turbine roaring in mechanical fury as a weakened arm swatted at his passing frame- it was crippled, for the moment, and that moment was all he needed. It was almost an afterthought to him as he left the terrorising titan with a hastily-hurled blessing of the Enlightened Saint, ticking clockwork arcing towards the wounds hammered into the back of its knee. Any moment his arsenal could buy them was precious.

The propeller died - again- but he'd already made use of its speed. His 'mech shifted mid-air, twisting into a vaguely humanoid frame as it scraped against the rubble and ruin, skidding along empty roads as wild discharges of lightning streaked across the sky. Whatever Lady Wat- Skywarp and Thundercracker had done in the moments after his own battle had ruined its capacity for aim, thankfully.

His momentum halted behind the ruined wall of a long-fallen manufactory, and behind its mauled masonry- Thundercracker. The Machine was a ruin, half of its face absent, leaking liquid power across its chassis as it rested against the cracked concrete of its cover.

"Isaac-" it gurgled, energon bubbling around its lips as it stared blearily at his approach, an eye flickering in and out of life beneath the shredded remains of its face, flayed ferric tissues falling across its damage chassis..

He didn't give it more time to speak- he recognized a deathbed confession when he heard one, and he had no tolerance for such mauldin theatrics in this moment. He stepped in close, wriggling his limbs free from the control-cabling that ensnared them, placing his gloved hands on Thundercracker's shoulders.

"Racker," he said, radium-green eyes matching the myriad-old gaze of the machine. He always imagined such a creature would be old, aged beyond reason or fear, an alien intelligence that had seen entire species born and die in nuclear fires of their own making. But Thundercracker's were wide, fearful, brimming with pain and whatever mechanical fluid passed for tears within its synthetic biology. He was not looking into the face of an inhuman monster that had fought for millennia on alien battlefields- this was the stricken visage of a gut-shot levy, far from home.

"I accepted the position of commandant, because I believed that I could lead my comrades to success, and keep them safe- that's no longer true," he said, his face stony and calm. The machine before him cringed, trying and failing to invent an excuse for its behaviour as it turned its gaze away.

"So there's only one solution I can see," he said, reaching into his cockpit- near the heavy calibre pistol holstered by his side.

He pulled free a gleaming golden badge instead, pinning it to Thundercracker's chassis.

"I've led you into Hell, and forsaken my duty in search of glory," he spat, shaking his head, before returning his brilliant gaze to the stunned machine. "The consequences should fall on the shoulders of one able to bear them, instead of the guiltless," he said, pushing off and turning as he started to run.

"Do better than I did, Commandant," Isaac said, refusing to look back at Thundercracker in the aftermath of that declaration.

He didn't think he could bear to see him weep.

2,182/3,500 Words. Isaac has field-promoted Thundercracker to Commandant to permit him use of the teleporter-badge.

 

[King Shark]

Commandant.

The title felt hollow, like an indoctrination into the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame after the diagnosis of a terminal illness. Laying in the rubble, barely able to move, a husk of his former self, Thundercracker closed his remaining optic.

A low ‘vwip’ sound marked Skywarp’s arrival. It was a sound he’d heard so many times over so many eons, and it was still comforting to know that it hadn’t changed.

“He did it, then,” Warp stated.

Optic shut, Thundercracker felt Warp’s clawed digits lay themselves gently on his chassis where Isaac had attached the pin.

“A field promotion. Guess you’re the top brass, now, huh? I’m going to be honest, TC. I never thought I’d have to answer to you. I’m not sure I can do it, actually. It just feels wrong, you know? We’re supposed to be equals. I mean, I’ve always been the better one, you know. But equals in rank at least,” Skywarp droned on.

Thundercracker’s absence of face contorted in pain, and he clenched his mangled lip plates.

“You’re really hurting, aren’t you?”

TC tried to push himself up, groaned, then propped himself up in a haphazard seat against a jutting slab of shattered asphalt. He opened his eyes and looked Skywarp up and down forlornly. He didn’t look good, but he looked better than TC felt. There wasn’t a lot of time left. In the distance were the thundering footfalls of Gipsy Danger. He could hear the difference the injury to the back of the Unmade ‘mech’s knee joint had made in the timing of its steps. If he had more gas in the tank, that might be something he could capitalize on. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. When he searched himself, really looked deep, he was disappointed with what he found. He was spent. There was nothing left to give.

“It’s more than that,” ‘Cracker rasped. His voice was steel wool on rusty iron. “I’m out of gas.”

Skywarp’s brow plates furrowed, then alleviated. He cracked a smile.

“We’ve been out of gas before, dude. Just dig deep. We’re on the final push! All we’ve got to do is pump this thing dry, and-”

“No,” Thundercracker cut in, bitterly. He shook his head. “I gave my final push. Back there, in the University City. That was all I had left. What I did was wrong, and I don’t have the spirit to go on. I’m old, Warp. I’m old, and I’m tired. It’s time that you go on without me.”

“Can’t you get up?” Warp demanded, panic creeping into his voice.

He reached out a servo, fingers outstretched.

“Come on. Get up, TC. You can do it. Just get up!”

TC didn’t reach out to take his hand.

“I’m sorry, Warp. You’re going to have to go it alone from here. You, and Isaac. Get him through this, and get him home. I know you can do it,” he asserted, sagging back against his concrete prop. “Go on.”

“Are you Homeward Bounding me right now?” demanded Skywarp, blinking. “You can’t Homeward Bound me, TC! We don’t have the age gap! You’re not old enough for me to leave you in the dust!”

TC cracked a horrific smile, made all the uglier by the ruin of his deformed visage.

“Just do it. Isaac left me the pin. I’m going to use it to go back to base. We all know I’m not going to make it through this. Just look at me. The fight’s gone out of me. I don’t have anything left, I’m gassed, I’m plum tuckered, and I’m tired. I’ve got a dog at home. I’ve got a girlfriend. What am I even doing here? I had no business taking it this far. I should’ve gone back to base, like, three behemoths ago. We’re all feeling it. Look at Isaac! He’s been fragging nuts since the beginning, but now he’s really on the fringes.”

In the sky the silver streak of the Red Baron darted around Gipsy Danger’s helm, peppering him with harassing shots. Even as far away as they were, they could hear Don Isaac’s crazed shouts as he mantled himself in battle fervor, pushing past the boundary of what his body should allow, and transcending into the territory of ‘win or die trying’. It was noble, but it was fragging insane.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” agreed Warp, shaking his helm. “We really need-”

TC’s scowl was firm, and he put up a hand.

“I should really get back to him,” Skywarp corrected himself, looking off at the tiny biplane who dared to play David to the Unmade monstrosity’s Goliath. “You know, TC, I never understood you. You’re like this big, dumb contradiction that got way too soft for the squishies. After we get out of this mess, though– I’d like to meet your dog, and your girlfriend. And your illegal tuna operation.”

“It’s a big operation,” agreed Thundercracker, nodding sagely. “Way bigger than you’d think. I’m shocked I haven’t gotten shut down. There are auditing bodies and food safety organizations that have wanted a piece of me for years, but I’ve always managed to stay a step ahead.”

“A step ahead,” Skywarp mouthed, looking out at the sky. “Yeah, I guess you have.”

"Just, do me a favor will you?"

"Sure, TC. What is it?"

"When I'm gone, take care of Dexter, alright?"

"...that little red-headed guy from your squadron?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, dude. He's dead. Like, waaay dead. He's been dead for awhile. I don't know how you could've missed it, that guy wouldn't shut up when he was alive. Haven't you noticed how much quieter it's been?"

TC frowned, and thought back. It had been awhile since he'd seen him…

"Oh. Fraggin'...I thought he was with you guys."

"Nope."

"Oh. Well, uh, see to Isaac, then. Alright?"

Skywarp nodded, then paused, looking over his shoulder.

"How about one more flight before you go? You know. For old time's sake."

Thundercracker sighed, and the sound came out like a puff of rust. Mustering up whatever strength he had left, he pushed himself up to a shaky stand, then somehow found it within him to step forward. One step, two, and a third, then he was wing to wing with Skywarp. The Deceptions shared a glance, then began to transform.

Post 2/3
Word Count: 2772/3500

 

[King Shark]

Don Isaac de Metralla plummeted towards Gipsy Danger’s helm, flaming bottle of spirit in hand, then lobbed the explosive in a perfect spiral. It streaked through the sky, smoking, and splashed against the Unmade ‘mech’s visor, cracking it. The Don swooped, listing dangerously. The Red Baron’s propeller shuddered, made a noise like a cough, then stopped. It lurched downward just in time for a massive batting hand to swipe harmlessly overhead, pawing at the air the way one might swat at a mosquito.

The propellor coughed again, then spluttered back into some semblance of function. Isaac felt a breath of relief escape his lips, and realized that he’d tensed up into an entire knot of anxiety.

A flash of purple punched in beside him, and the Don’s eyes widened.

“Thundercracker?” he croaked, disbelieving. “I gave you leave to get out of here. What are you doing?”

“Relax,” cooed Warp, some of Lady Warp Watari’s deadly purr trickling into his tone. “He’ll be out of here soon.”

The two Jetformers streaked past Isaac, heading towards Gipsy Danger. They maintained pace next to one another, heading right towards their foe, tremendously outgunned but not out of the fight quite yet. They angled towards its nuclear reactor, which glowed an eerie yellow reminiscent of the ring wielding Unmade General that, prior, had been their harshest trial. In comparison, that fight felt small and far away.

“I’ll distract him,” Thundercracker stated, sounding impossibly strained. “I’ll draw his fire, and then I’ll activate the pin. You need to go in for the kill. Are you ready?”

“Ready,” Skywarp affirmed.

They engaged full thrusters. Skywarp shot towards the reactor, while Thundercracker rose up, parabolic in his trajectory, then tipped his nose cone towards the enemy’s soot-covered orange visor.

“One last shot,” TC told himself. “This is it. After this, it’s back to base, then back home to a normal life, where I can leave this war behind me. It was never my war to begin with, anyway.”

A part of him felt odd, getting ready to leave the battle. Back on Cybertron, desertion would mean a shot to the back, and he would be left for dead. He tried to tell himself that the feeling was unfounded– Isaac was a different sort of field commander. He had leave to abandon his post, and return back to where it had all begun, promoted to Commandant no less. Still, he couldn’t help but feel that he was going against everything he’d learned through millennia of combat.

He was nearly there. The visor loomed up before him, a bright orange canvas that eclipsed the smoggy landscape beyond it. TC was struck once more by the sheer enormity of the enemy, and was glad that he wouldn’t have to stay any longer. Could they really take down something so colossal?

Energon welled up in his core, and TC channeled it into two things: the pin on his chassis, and his afterburners.

“SONIC BOOM!” he bellowed out.

He caught a glimpse of Skywarp, nearly to the reactor, just as a cascading wave of decibels erupted from his very being.

The pin on his chassis, folded underneath him to his jet’s underbelly, glowed bright.

Then, like Skywarp, he vanished with a blip.

Many, many miles away, two guards stood sentinel at their posts at Command Point Two. An enormous flash of light seared their vision and they recoiled, bringing their forearms up over their eyes, and yelling.

When they regained their senses, they found an enormous smoking jet of striking blue tipped over, leaning on one wing, smoldering.

It folded itself up, shifted, and began to form into an mech that, to them, seemed enormous, but to itself was only a diminutive fish in an all too large pond.

Thundercracker sagged down to the ground, putting a hand against the grass - how long had it been since he’d felt grass? - and grimacing.

“I’m back,” he rasped, looking up at the guards. “Inform the troops.”

“And who the Hell are you?” demanded one of the guards, a plucky little man with a five o’ clock shadow.

TC thumbed towards the pin on his torn up chest plates.

“Against all judgment and reason, I guess I’m the Commandant.”

Post 3/3
Word Count: 3490/3500
Thundercracker is expending his third and final use of Focus to use the pin and field promotion given to him by Don Isaac to teleport back to Command Point 2.

 

[Don Isaac]

In the air over the sinking city, the doubt that had been festering within Isaac's heart slowly ebbed away, cast off like ballast onto the broken earth. His hands moved with a surety not shared by the battered craft he sat within, bolts rattling within scarred sockets as he ascended, steel creaking as the pressure altered with altitude.

Beneath him, the great beast of metal and malice rose, the best efforts of his arsenal only enough to pause its assault, the shattered glass of its visor peering upwards- thousands of jagged, glittering teeth through which a disturbingly organic interior gazed out hungrily at the world. Clumsy hands swiped at his steed as he twirled around that metallic mitt, iron digits moving through the poisoned air like icebreakers as he dived past the grasping claws.

It was tantamount to madness, fighting a foe like this.

But since when did he, or any son of Santagria pay heed to such insults? His teeth ached, throbbing with agony as he pulled his plane through the break-neck motions to keep him out of harm's way, his stomach seemingly resting in his heels as gravity played merry havoc on his mortal form. Yawing, rolling, he darted about the behemoth like an incessant insect- though he liked to think that he possessed more bite than a mere pest.

Still, he bit relentlessly- his pistol roared, doing little more than scratching the steel side of the monstrosity as he passed. It was like throwing pebbles into the ocean in the hopes of building a bridge, and the futility of it infuriated him, a snarl blossoming across his wounded visage as he stowed his heavy pistol once more, the smoking barrel able to bark nothing more than defiance against the leviathan.

But that didn't matter- the battered frame of Thundercracker soared towards the monstrosity's maw, glass shards glistening with the gore of whatever impossible biology maintained the beast's fury. He vibrated, potential energy bursting from angular wings in arcing blasts of bright ultraviolet light, a battlecry screaming out from the speakers that passed for his lungs, and then-

There was a sound like reality tearing apart, every wall that had ever been built coming crashing down, and the monstrosity fell- it staggered backwards at the raw concussive force of the blast, a tidal wave of broken glass cascading down its torso. Even more spilled into its open wound, shredding sensitive tissues as it screamed, howling in inhuman agony, in the warbling atonal pitch of the deafened, swallowing broken glass as it sought to sate its ravening hunger.

And Isaac was more than happy to sate it.

"'Warp, keep its arm occupied!" He shouted over the crackling radio as he sped outwards- he needed distance, momentum, time, quiet calculations of velocity running through his concussed grey matter. He couldn't afford a mistake, not now. They'd sacrificed too much to stumble now, to have all the glory he had sought, all the pain they had suffered, come to naught thanks to his own folly.

"Sure, sure-" came the response, Skywarp's scarred chassis twisting through the sky as they unloaded into its distended shoulder joint, the mechanical monstrosity roaring in pain and fury as it extended its arm to the side, snapping it into position.

"Sword Deployed," boomed the titan, its tone neutral, an impassionate declaration as synthetic syllables echoed off the fallen structures of the sinking city, its forearm detonating in a foul blossom of blood and pus, bone and sinew shooting forth. Razor-sharp vertebrae whipped through the air, snapping into rigidity, glistening with gore as it scythed through the air, narrowly missing Skywarp's frame as Isaac rounded about, setting himself on a collision course with the colossus.

"-Not so sure," the Seeker admitted as they dived away from the blow, the massive 'mech staggering to its feet as it swung wildly, trying to swat away the pesky flies that assailed it, their mandibles slick with its blood.

Regardless of its recovery, the Don's course was set. The Red Baron screamed across unfriendly skies, Isaac resting one hand upon the yoke as he hefted a lance in the other. The mechanical monstrosity stood before him, screaming in alien hatred as it swung its blade of bone- and within its breast, its mechanical heart spun, feeding power into its limbs, spinning the wind into unholy strength for its dread machinations.

Isaac tilted at it without reservation, the anthem of old Santagria coming unbidden to his lips as he hummed the tune over the roar of his battered engine. The turbine glowed crimson with waste-heat as it spun- there were teeth in there, gnashing and ravenous - marking it as the ideal target.

"Isaac, the slag are you doing?!" Demanded Skywarp, the voice of the machine tinged with an emotion that he'd scarcely heard from Watari's lips.

Concern.

The time for such petty things was far past them. The only paths before them were that of action, and all its consequences- or inaction, and the reward for such cowardice. Isaac had made his choice decades past, and he was not about to stray from his path now.

Faster, faster- his noble blood pounded in his veins, generations of desperate charges and glorious deaths impelling him forwards. He was far from the plains of home, but for centuries, it was the spilled blood of Santagrian Nobles that sanctified the land- perhaps it would exorcise whatever demons haunted this realm. Perhaps they'd build a statue in his honour, a memorial to honour the saviour of this Detroit.

His propeller stalled- but he'd built his momentum up to this terminal velocity, and that nigh-ruined component had long since served its purpose. His steed shifted beneath him, a single functioning arm snatching the lance from his mortal fingers and directing it towards the churning gyre, growing to fill his vision.

He nestled the spear between artificial knees as he fell towards the turbine, gliding upon the tempestuous winds it sucked into its gullet. His hands did not tremble as he directed the munition towards the gnashing maw of the colossus' turbine- unerring as an arrow.

"Santagria!" He howled, careening into that greedy maw, eyes feverish with a brilliant light, the holy glow of the distant Atom burning through those windows into another world..

There was an explosion of blood, bone, and steel, a shriek of twisting metal and wretched agony threatening to make his ears seep blood as baleful fires and ink-black smoke consumed his vision. Broken fangs, shrapnel, and burning blood sprayed across his armour and his face, scoring steel and scratching his flesh, tumbling teeth threatening to careen into his eye sockets as they skipped across his brow.

He laughed, as he fell, descending from the impact on wings of chemical smoke, unable to maintain control over his craft as he tumbled through an uncaring sky. He thought he could hear a voice, as he plummeted- but deafened ears were known to play tricks upon men.

3,343/3,500 Words. Godspeed.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

A sweltering detonation of heat shone forth from Don Isaac's lance as it plunged through the Jaeger's nuclear core, a sight both enthralling and terrible. Crimson sparks blazed with a fiery vengeance, cutting through the titan's chest and showering a resplendent panorama of destruction across the skies— a raging tempest of ash, flames, and molten steel lighting up the dark clouds above and the ruined towers below.

The silhouette of the massive titan was lost in the curtain of explosive damage that unfurled from its chest, spreading like a gluttonous inferno that dulled the wicked shade of the heavens overhead. An unearthly shriek rang out, Skywarp's audials squealing beneath the sheer decibels as the mechanized colossus failed to maintain its footing and toppled backwards, obliterating skyscrapers in its catastrophic descent to the ground.

Skywarp stared, transfixed, as Don Isaac de Metralla plummeted to his doom through the fetid air, the wreckage of the nobleman's mech descending in a furling spume of brackish smoke and ragged debris, reduced to a sinuous wisp of black against the backdrop of a diseased sky.

Snapping out of his daze, the seeker shot through the air like an obsidian arrow, his jets pulsing at full burn until his turbines howled in protest, limbs unfurling from his jet form like a flower in bloom and grinding with each rotation, his optics blazing bright with scarlet dread— his body lunging, servos stretched out to catch the mangled silver mech.

"I've gotcha, Isaac!" Warp shouted in desperation, his vocalizer shrieking with static, reaching out, straining like a catcher sliding to defend home plate. "I've gotcha—"

The scarred mech tumbled from the apex of the sky and punched Skywarp square in the chest, a hellish cacophony reverberating through the air as metal collided with metal— the seeker's plating clanging and squealing under the pressure.

Despite bracing himself for impact, Skywarp had the wind knocked out of him, and the two spun crazily through the air, their forms indistinct and blurred in their spiraling descent. The seeker's limbs rag-dolled briefly as his claw-tipped servos dug into the other mech's scarred fuselage, clinging to the craft's hull in a desperate attempt to break their downward plunge.

His wings snapped out, black as night and dazzling in the glittering firmament, doing their utmost to quell their terrifying velocity. Myriad warning signals broke through the darkness, blaring red lights on the seeker's HUD, while the thrusters at his heels roared and howled in defiance.

Anguish pulsed bright in Skywarp's mind, near crippling in its intensity; the agony of a flyer robbed of their aerial supremacy. His metallic plating began to shudder as the lightning emanating from his body in shades of purple intensified, his thoughts growing ever more frantic and frenzied. His Warp Drive engaged with a mechanical hum as he surveyed the city beneath him— his CPU making whirlwind calculations of distance and speed.

With an ear-piercing crack that burned with ozone, they were gone, leaving nothing but a pulsing gash in reality's fabric.

Unfortunately, Skywarp's Warp Drive was powerless to check their staggering momentum— it could only provide him the means to decide where they would crash-land.

They hit the ground like the detonation of a bomb, Skywarp's obsidian mass snatching the falling Isaac from his plummet, the seeker tumbling helm over tailfins as he smashed against the dirt. Dust and debris flew in all directions as his obsidian frame scraped harshly over the dry earth, yet Skywarp still cradled the tattered silver mech protectively, his arms embracing it close to his chest.

The duo skidded to a jarring halt, clouds of smoke billowing from their damage-scorched chassis and deep furrows carved in the earth behind them. Skywarp painfully rose from the rubble, his battle-worn armor groaning under the strain, and surveyed their resting place: a public park reduced to mere fragments of flora and foliage, a broken street stretching lifelessly alongside it.

Illuminated by the weak glow of a nearby lamppost, a bronze statue of a human figure perched atop a chair in the center of the park. Skywarp peered at it sharply, his ruby optics whirring and spinning to make out the name etched onto the monument: Hazen S. Pingree. A gallant soldier, an enterprising and successful citizen—

A sudden groan rent the air, jolting Skywarp out of his reading and yanking his gaze downward.

Don Isaac's mech was a mess of scarred steel, the remnants blackened and scarred, partly melted after his little dip inside the Jaeger's super-heated turbine. Skywarp's tanks churned in revulsion at the sight, deeply unsettled by the patchwork of char and soot; he couldn't even tell what the damage was, but it looked bad.

Recollection struck the seeker like a thunderbolt— that what lay cradled in his arms was not Isaac's actual body, but a mechanized shell. His optics darted to the cockpit, where the man inside was ensconced, their glow casting a glare of crimson over the bloodied Don.

"Hey," Skywarp hissed, straining to peer into the nobleman's cockpit. His voice was a rasp, the dark metal of his arms still clasping the twisted wreckage of his ally's steed. "I suppose it's not the time or place for this, but at the edge of oblivion, all bets are off, eh? Why not, here at the end of it all? This might be our last chance to talk things out—"

Isaac expelled a harsh breath. His reply was jagged, like the remnants of his mech.

"I do not," the man ground out between gritted teeth, spitting blood. "Wish to speak of it. Not now."

Skywarp rose unsteadily, gently dislodging Don Isaac's mount from where it sprawled across his chassis. He turned his gaze upward, but he didn't see their foe looming above the buildings in the distance, stalking towards them... not yet. Only thin streams of dark smoke wisping high into the air, bright embers fluttering on the breeze...

He clenched his servos in aggravation, wings jutting up sharply from his back. He began to pace, throwing the occasional glance in that direction, on high alert.

"Oh, come on," he wheedled. "We're in the middle of a full-blown battle for our lives here! A battle we're almost certainly gonna lose. And what are we doing while we wait for our inevitable demise? Avoiding each other! It's ridiculous."

"Skywarp," Don Isaac intoned in a low voice. His usual vibrant spirit had departed from him, leaving in its wake a mortal man dulled from weariness. "You deceived me. You presented yourself as something you were not. There is no hope of mending the damage which has been done."

"Look, Isaac," Skywarp insisted, still pacing, churning up grass under his giant metal feet. "Look. I admit, I pretended to be someone I'm not to get close to you. I did it for a cheap laugh... at least, initially. Cybertronians like me, we can live practically forever. We look at you flesh-creatures with your tiny little brains and your goopy little bodies and see an infant species. An inferior species... an amusement at best! Pests in need of extermination, at worst."

The seeker halted in his pacing, gritting his dentae in frustration.

"But you, you brilliant little gnat, with your lifespan that's shorter than that of an astro tick to me... you proved me wrong! You proved all my negative assumptions about organics wrong. That not all organics are the simple, disposable creatures I took them to be. That their short lives and tiny size when compared to mine don't make them any less valuable. They matter! You matter to me."

Skywarp shook his helm, turning his face away.

"What a revelation you've been."

He seemed almost disgusted with himself, a sneer pulling at his lip-plates as his optics dulled, flickering to black.

"A revelation," Don Isaac spat in mockery, his radium-green eyes blazing. "And yet you deceived me with lies to sate your own desires. Your heart may be colder than steel, yet colder still are the acts you have committed in service of your twisted amusement. Racker warned me, time and time again... I should have heeded him!"

Agitated beyond belief and quite through with his ally's dramatics, the nobleman's fingers flew across the instruments in his biplane's cabin, trying to force the propeller to turn and surge with life. With one last tug, it whirred into motion... then spun, spluttered, and died.

Grounded.

Isaac ground his teeth together in frustration, slumping in his seat. His head struck the velvet pillow behind his head with a muted thump.

"All those moments together. Our repartee... our dance," he muttered, voice tinged with bitterness. "It was all a lie. A construct, little more than gimmickry and pretense. You were never there. Not really."

A distant crash echoed through the hollow night, shaking the very ground beneath their feet. The light of a nearby streetlamp flickered uncertainly, and continued to do so as the reverberations of giant footsteps boomed closer... closer... closer...

Their heads snapped up at the thunderous clanking. Peering through the ruins, they saw their metallic nemesis, its bulky form casting a looming silhouette against the polluted sky. Its helm was split down the middle, practically concave, the bleeding internals illuminated by the expanse of moonlight above.

The mutilated reactor upon its chest guttered and sparked intermittently, like the contour of a great eye... scanning for them among the rubble.

Skywarp growled in exasperation, listening with half an audial as Isaac cursed, feuding once more with his biplane's antiquated mechanisms. Time was running short.

"Isaac," the seeker persisted, his tone very nearly pleading. "When we danced together, when we talked... that was me! Not just an avatar— me! When you step out of your mech there, you're still the same person, right? That's exactly what happens when I activate my holomatter form. It's just as much me as my real body!"

From within his cockpit, Isaac's eyes flashed with ire, still fixed upon his task.

"You mistake me, then," he declared. "Unlike yourself, what I present to others is not a facade. It is my body, my voice, my nature. The truth of me is written upon my form, armored or otherwise. My emotions are genuine, and yours are but the fantasies of an automaton, a machine!"

At last, his biplane's propeller began to sing its mechanized hymn— a low, rumbling drone that reverberated up and down the barren street. Its battered silver wings trembled and shuddered as if they too could sense the looming behemoth of metal and corruption that was slowly creeping closer, accompanied by the whirring of its own hydraulics.

The man's chest heaved with a shuddering breath of relief as he made ready to hoist his steed into the sky. But the winged shape of Skywarp stepped into his path, helm tilted in expectation, ruby optics intent upon his face.

For a wild moment, the Don considered if he might simply... vault his mount into the heavens over the seeker's helm. He soon dismissed this idea as somewhat lacking in decorum; besides, the blasted creature would undoubtedly give chase.

"Perhaps you relished playing the part of Lady Watari, but all the same, you knew it was false," the man said at last, meeting the seeker's burning crimson glare with his own stare. "And all of a sudden I realize that I have been foolish..."

Skywarp ex-vented a profound sigh, the lethargy of his despair evident in the droop of his wings. But then something stirred within him, and he met Don Isaac de Metralla's gaze with a glint of unwavering resolve gleaming in his optics.

"I promise you, I will make it up to you," he stated firmly, bringing one servo up to pound it against his chest-plating. "Seeker's honor."

And at that very moment, the Jaeger lumbered around the corner of a building... turning onto the unassuming street they stood upon.

The moment it appeared, its immense figure cast a towering shadow over the street. Its battered frame gleamed under the dim industrial lamps, glistening with dark ooze. It stood like a marionette poised at the end of its strings, silent and utterly unmoving, frame tilted crookedly to one side, parabolic helm and chest dripping with brackish gore.

There was a lengthy pause. The pair of flyers regarded the titan in turn, similarly inert.

Suddenly, everything happened all at once, the street erupting into a chaotic surge of action.

Don Isaac's biplane lurched unsteadily into the air.

The Jaeger raised its armament towards the aircraft, an electric stream sizzling along the length of its arm as it began to charge its lethal plasma cannon. A glimmering aura illuminated the internals of the metal appendage—

And Skywarp lunged for the Hazen S. Pingree statue, snatching up the solid bronze figure and hurling it with all his might towards the Jaeger's fractured braincase.

CLANG! Sparks flew as the two collided, further denting the monstrosity's helm.

The shattered visor of the creature glinted in the dim light, swinging towards Skywarp with a screeching sound that definitely didn't sound all that healthy.

Its plasma cannon whirred, targeting systems locking unerringly onto his form.

With a bloodcurdling shriek, the Jaeger retaliated by unleashing a deadly volley of fire from its plasma cannon. Fierce sparks of eye-searing flame illuminated the night sky as it unleashed its wrath, hurtling towards Skywarp in a violent shower of destruction.

Warp didn't hesitate— he dove for cover behind the nearest wall, trusting in his reflexes to save him. He skidded over the asphalt, sliding into the cover of an alleyway, his body clanking and crunching with the very beginnings of transformation; shifting and contorting, folding in on itself as he collapsed into his jet form within that cramped darkness.

He could hear the earth-shaking footfalls of the Jaeger pounding closer, and the seeker's partially-transformed body performed a rotation within the narrow alley that would have been simply impossible for any man-made craft to accomplish. With a roar of his thrusters, he burst straight upward, wings scraping and tearing at the cramped walls as he soared above the rooftops, scarring the sky like a phoenix born from fire.

The Jaeger lunged at Skywarp, its fingers outstretched like talons to snatch him from the sky. Still only partially transformed, Skywarp revved up his heel thruster— and plunged the fiery, sharp stiletto straight downwards, as if driving a hot branding iron.

It struck the infernal creature's grasping metal hand, blasting it aside with a scorching hiss and leaving its azure coat singed. Cackling, Skywarp hurtled away at breakneck speed— a hail of super-heated plasma fire chasing at his tailfins.

He soon rejoined Don Isaac's battered biplane in the sky, the pair swerving in a broad arc, serpentining away from the beast's desperate shots as they rolled and crested through the clouds.

"One last dance, eh?" Skywarp's voice crackled over the comms as they began to curve back around, a strained and unnatural cheeriness coating his words.

"Alas," came the dry reply.

INDIV WORDCOUNT: 2,544 Words
TOTAL WORDCOUNT: 6,669/3,500 Words (Nice) (I am sorry Alex, I needed to cover for Thundercracker leaving the fight)

Skywarp is using another application of Focus, queuing it up for the resolution of this conflict (THAT IS 2 FOCUS USED FOR THIS SCENE). 1 OUT OF 5 FOCUS REMAINING.

 

[Karl Jak]

Updates:

Both of you can pick an existing Major Injury and upgrade it into an Insane Injury

You will defeat the Jaeger. You require a resolution post of a length of your choice, but you have ~48 hours to post this.

Your challenge zone reward is something that you'll salvage from the defeat Jaeger. It's called a 'Drift Protocol', and it's a piece of technology that allows two Bond pilots to combine their Bonds, allowing them to co-pilot one much larger Bond. This reward can be declined and the two remaining people in this scene will receive +6000 Coin

The Red Baron receives 10 Points
Skwarp receives 10 Points
Thundercracker receives 6 Points

 

[Don Isaac]

One last dance.

Did they even have a first one?

Isaac bit back his reply- he had little interest in continuing to indulge in the venomous argument that had poisoned the air between him and the seeker. There was a foe yet to face- anything beyond the fleeting glory of battle and all its trials and tribulations was secondary.

"It's overheating," he elected to say instead, twisting out of the path of a brilliant blast of coruscating power. The leviathan's turbine had been shattered, flames guttering out of its torso as its plasma cannon glowed with radiant heat, unable to cool itself as it disgorged death time and time again.

"Yeah," Skywarp agreed, waggling their own wings to affirm the statement as they rolled through the smoke-choked skies. "It's angry- it can't keep that up for long," the veteran warrior assessed, millennia of experience coming to bear.

Screaming through hostile skies, two pilots' perceptions narrowed. They'd seen things few people would believe- Rygolic weapon platforms ablaze upon the vitreous dunes, Autobot warships ablaze within the orbit of Cybertron. Lasers glittering in the darkness of night and the void, bright as distant stars. All these hard-won lessons coming to a head, now, bearing down on the enraged machine.

Time to fly.

Tendrils, slick with rancid effluvia, wriggled past the jagged pseudo-jaws of its broken skull, cutting themselves on the broken glass as foul ichor drooled down its burning chest, a dozen tongues tasting the air for the chemical scent of its prey's engines. It raised its blazing arm, and fired one last shot, capacitors detonating in a flash of vaporising metal, long-suffering systems failing in a catastrophic fashion.

But its aim was still true.

To Isaac's side, Skywarp vanished beneath a wash of furious power, a mechanical scream of agony marginally comforting as it proved her continued existence even as ancient armour abraded beneath the assault. When that eye-searing maelstrom of power passed, Skywarp was falling- a wing had vanished, turned to molten slag that dribbled down her chassis. But to her credit, she didn't stop- they twisted, arms bursting forth from her frame as she descended, crackling arcs of iridescent violet energy heralding another translocation.

The great beast howled in rage and pain as it swung with its bone sword- a clumsy attempt, one Isaac barely deigned to acknowledge as he shifted, abandoning flight as he plummeted through the air as he impacted against the creature's steel skull, joined after a moment by the pained figure of Skywarp, a flash of violet lightning heralding her arrival.

"A saying, among the mercenary companies and their tank crews," Isaac said, wrapping a hand around a broken spur of gleaming glass to stabilise himself as he knelt by the great wound, the colossus' great sword flailing through the air as it tried to rid itself of its passengers.

"Kill the meat- save the metal," he said, plunging his whirling propeller-blade and a steel fist into the writhing mass of flesh that passed for the construct's brain, foul ichor spraying against his battered armour as he tore at the creature's flesh, a triumphant grin upon his face.

Until that jagged rent snapped shut like the jaws of a steel trap, glass and iron closing around the left arm of his 'mech and severing it, snapping cables and pistons like twigs as hundreds of tendrils the length of his own limbs writhed around it, dragging it down into those dark depths as it hungrily drank the oil spilling from sundered pipes.

"Hell," Isaac spat as Skywarp wrapped her ferrous fingers around that twisted pseudo-jaw, wrenching it apart as she pounded las-rounds into the flesh beneath, drawing out an ear-piercing shriek from the monstrosity.

"Keep at it- slag this thing!" Skywarp shouted, oil seeping from her fingers as she tore cuts into her own flesh by grasping those serrated false-teeth, keeping its mockery of a mouth wrenched open.

Isaac was never one to keep a lady waiting. With a roar of triumph, he drove his remaining arm into the brain-thing within the titan's skull, feeling its foul flesh spasm around the steel plating as he tore through something vital. The city, still slowly sinking, began to twist in his peripheral vision- the monster was falling, staggering backwards as he latched his fingers around something important and squeezed.

They both screamed as the titan fell, a primordial bellow that expressed a melange of emotions that had been begging for release since they first flew these unfriendly skies. Pain, rage, triumph - certainly not fear- came pouring out of them as they ripped, tore, and shot at the meat of the monstrosity, until it crashed into the flooded streets. A great wave of sea spray washed over them, threatening to dislodge them, were they not so intent on the ruination of their enemy.

Soaked with the cold waters that were slowly reclaiming the city, splattered with ichor, battered nearly beyond recognition, Don Isaac De Metralla, scion of distant Santagria, grasped something solid within the quivering, wailing flesh. With a snap of broken cables, he yanked it free, that undying mass of meat left inert in his wake.

There was silence, in that moment. The hellish hunger of the turbine had been stilled, the thunderous footfalls finally halted. Chests and chassis heaving with effort, Isaac and Skywarp looked upon their prize, silvery metal shining through the gore that slowly slid from its construction. It gleamed, despite its unwholesome origin-shining with an inner light that belied its nature.

"Just what is it?" Isaac asked, more to himself than to Skywarp, though the Decepticon pressed in at his side, a manic smile spreading across battle-worn features.

"A horrible idea," she grinned.

Isaac's broken arm and janky propeller has become No arm and No Propeller.
Skywarp's severe wing damage has become an absence of one wing (left).
DRIFT PROTOCOL: ACTIVATED. WE BALL.

 

[Karl Jak]

Using the Jaeger Protocol ‘drifts’ the two of you. This makes you co-pilots of a new Bond.

You have the option to redesign your entire Bond (the budget would be your individual budgets combined). The only caveat is that the two of you have to share the cockpit, as both of your pilots will be required to cooperate to move the Bond. The process of Drifting will cause you both to essentially share a brain and mind for the remainder of the event.

This process depletes any remaining Focus your individual characters might still have. Your new Bond may appear uninjured, but you will still retain any existing injuries for the purpose of Damage tracking.

Please sort out your new Bond before you move to a new island. DM me if you have any questions.

 

[Don Isaac]

"Grounded," Isaac spat, squirming out from beneath the ravaged fuselage of his steed. The collar around his neck felt tight, whatever sinister device Syntech employed to ensure a fitting climax to their grand performance lying in wait, keyed to some battered device lurking within his 'Mech's engine. The inspection was perhaps unneeded- the propeller was beyond salvage, chewed to shrapnel within the great maw of the beast they had laid low.

"You don't say," Skywarp smarmed from her own position upon the islet of flotsam that drifted above the waves, a raft of garbage entangled together by the dissolution of the city that produced it. The Deception wasn't faring much better, their aerodynamics similarly stunted by the wing that had been evaporated by the final salvo of the leviathan. "Personally, though, I was hoping you had another little button you could push to just get those wings flapping really hard, you know? Fly through the air like a very angry, metal bird."

"Sadly, Ornithopters are not a talent of mine," Isaac said, wiping his hands off on his battered coat. "I did experiment with dirigibles in my youth, so perhaps we can make use of your hot air," he said, smoothing out the remaining arm of his moustache, styling it with pungent engine grease.

"Well, I'm not going to give your engine intake-to-intake to get it running again," Skywarp said, worn servos whirring as they shifted form into something marginally more humanoid, seizing a broken plastic figurine from the trash-heap they drifted upon and tossing it into the dark seas surrounding them."Well- not on the… what is this, second date?"

The Nobleman sighed wearily, pressing his forehead against the scarred flank of his steed.

"It seems we've little other option," he said, pushing away from his craft and looking towards the gleaming component that sat atop a heap of scrap like an ichor-slick offering to a hungering steel God. Skywarp's knowledge of esoteric engineering had proved useful, for once- taking a gleeful, schadenfreude-laden delight in explaining the neural links that wriggled within its sleek silver construction.

"Isaac," Skywarp said, leaning in as she sat on her iron haunches, synthetic visage serious, for once. "Are you saying-"

Those metallic lips split in a mocking grin.

"-You want to be inside me?"

The Noble slumped against the side of his downed plane, groaning loudly as he clutched at his head.

"Atom Damn it."

"For real though," Skywarp said, carefully rising to her feet and navigating the morass that barely kept them afloat, fully aware that one mis-step might send her plummeting into the drink. "We're both- let's be honest - halfway into the scrapheap," she said, wrapping steel fingers around the scrap-wings of The Red Baron, appraising their aerodynamic potential. "So, doing basic mathematics- which I assure you I'm better at than you- two half-functioning wrecks makes one fully-functioning wreck."

The Don frowned. That was accurate maths, as far as he could determine. He'd kept a monk in his court to handle such matters, focusing his intellectual pursuits on more pertinent talents, such as warfare and rulership.

There was nothing for it, then.

"Plug us in then," he decided, turning to face Skywarp, shaking his somehow still-silken ringlets away from the nape of his neck. "Let's not sit around debating it any longer, 'lest we start to sink," he said, eyeing the ragged edge of their flotsam island, particulates of plastic drifting away from the trash heap into the open ocean.

"Really," Skywarp said, fiddling with the device as they adhered its connections to the base of her skull, brilliant lights flickering to life along its housing. "I'd have thought you'd have been a bit more, y'know- hesitant to jam weird technology into your head."

He scoffed, taking a moment to exult in his experience. "Of course not. I've used a Biocomputer before- damned thing cheated at chess," he spat, taking a set of electrodes from Skywarp's oversized hand and sticking them to the back of his skull.

"I'm not going to ask about whatever the heap that is," Skywarp said, inspecting the drift device closely. "So- just one thing- don't do anything weird while you're in there. I mean it- I don't want to remember jousting on jet engines or anything like that," the Decepticon said, slowly depressing a bright red button built into the steel housing.

"Like I'd care to peer that closely into your past," Isaac grumbled, until a surge of electricity ran through his spine, gritting his teeth as his back arched, muscles spasming wildly.

And then- the screaming started.

Tyranny- the word boiled his blue blood in his veins. Entire mortal lifetimes of oppression, an iron boot upon chrome necks, pushing, pushing- until a single voice rang out over the slow grinding of billions into dust.

You are being deceived.

Those words poured molten metal through his veins, pulsing with every beat|pulse of his heart|turbine, spurring his muscles|servos into action. Everywhere he looked, there was fire, searing his retinas|optics, a tide of rebellion streaming through an ancient world of steel and silicon tore itself asunder. It burned- it burned for millennia, a war dragging on for aeons as revolution became a civil war. As rebels became conscripts. As war became atrocity.

On and on it came, a ceaseless conflict that lasted longer than some stars burned, reason abraded away by the long, haunting moments between the thunder of artillery and the crash of the shells. His 'pedes|feet failed him as he staggered into the floating heap of trash beneath him, servos whirring|knuckles whitening as his digits dug into the morass, trying to ease his revolting gyro|stomach.

Had he vomited? Was that blood, or oil he tasted on his lips?

He coughed, gagging as he desperately swallowed down a breath of fresh air. His head throbbed, like pistons were hammering against the inside of his skull, aeons of knowledge threatening to burst out and attempt to repaint the battered form of The Red Baron.

"Isaac?" Croaked Skywarp, prone against the detritus, sprawled out along the rubble.

"Skywarp," groaned Isaac, clutching at his head, looking between the damaged Decepticon and the ruin of his Steed. He'd seen an unfortunate amount of vivisected Machines, in the vision that had burned through his mind. Transformation Cogs, Energon- Innermost and otherwise, the hydraulics, cabling, pipes, and tubing that served as blood and muscle.

They could do this.

He pulled a wrench free from the toolbox that had once rested beneath his seat, wiping a trickle of blood from his furrowed brow. "Skywarp- I'm going to need your cooperation on this," he said thoughtfully, moving to start working at the battle-scarred bolts of his steed's wings.

"What, like- getting your gloves on my internals? I don't know man, that's, like-"

"-Fourth date, yes," Isaac said, the cabling stretching beneath their skulls pulsing with a brilliant blue light. "But I'd say that we have the right energy," he said, working a bolt off as Skywarp's armoured panels shifted, folding away to bare whirring turbines and a burning reactor.

"We'll work on it," Skywarp said, a sinister steel smile gleaming.