Tendrils of literal shadow stabbed into the light, uncaring of how impossible that should have been. Had Rodimus been even a fraction slower, they would have passed straight through his spark chamber, with possibly fatal consequences at best. Instead, they passed over the mechs head, missing him by mere inches as he continued turning, tearing Countdown out of the escape pod.
From above came the roar of Dustoffs nose cannon, high intensity energy bolts slamming down into the tendrils without mercy. Despite not seeming to harm them, the gunfire still drew a reaction, as the tendrils pulled back into the dark accompanied by a glass-rattling shriek. That reaction brought Rodimus and Minerva the time they needed, both of them transforming mid-leap, engines roaring to life before they even finished.
With his spark still on the edge of stasis, there was nothing that Countdown could do but get dragged along for the ride, and try to make sense of his surroundings. This wasn’t an easy task when there was a larger bot literally transforming around him, an action that would have resulted in his getting at least a limb caught between shifting components had it been anyone less talented than Rodimus doing the transforming. Instead, he landed in a surprisingly comfortable seat, restraints locking down over his shoulders, windshield sliding into place above him and giving him a good view of the chaos.
Neither car could get up to speed in the tight confines of the warehouse, but they were both close enough to the ground, and their headlights were illuminating the area directly in front of them, that they could make a decent attempt at an escape. Shadow tendrils occasionally blocked their path, but they lacked the numbers to contain the vehicles, both of them punching straight through. Taking a turn sharp enough to clip a pallet and send its contents everywhere, they headed directly for the doorway they’d used to enter. “Dust, bring it down!” Rodimus ordered as they shot out into the narrow laneway, turning sharply once again to avoid plowing straight into the building directly ahead of them.
As he’d expected, he barely got the order out ahead of Dustoff launching a pair of missiles down through the broken roof, introducing the darkness within to a delicate mixture of liquid energon, nucleon and octogen. She'd carefully calibrated the missiles settings from the moment Minerva had reported the tripwire, which means that while the resulting explosion outright vaporised a good deal of the interior outright, the blast then mostly went up, reducing the roof to shreds. But for all that destructive power, her teammates right outside the warehouse experienced nothing more than a flash of heat and wind.
"Sweet Primus and all his heralds woman, have you heard of overkill?!" Hardtop exclaimed.
"You know there's no such thing with Defiled," she replied. "Best to give them the final mercy as soon as possible."
Groaning, Countdown shuttered his optics, trying to process all the conflicting data his senses were sending to his brain. "Overkill of Polyhex. Former Decepticon, data block alt-mode. Believed alive, wanted for involvement in ‘Pink Alchemy’ conspiracy…” Groaning again, he reached up and rubbed at his temples. “And that’s completely irrelevant.”
"It made me grin at least," Rodimus told his passenger, not bothering to go around a trash can. "Gears turning a little smoother?"
"I feel like someone sandblasted my brain module, but yeah, I think so.”
Turning another corner, Rodimus grunted in agreement. "That's a good description of deep stasis. You came down in an industrial district, nowhere for a shuttle to land.”
“Finding a rooftop that can handle our weight?” Countdown guessed.
“Pretty much, there’s a street up here that should give us some options.” Reaching the end of the alleyway, he shot across the small parking lot, clipped over the edge of an old garden, then flew over the sidewalk and landed on the road, wheels spinning as they tried to grip on the asphalt. “...Ah.”
Pulling up behind him, Minerva twitched her side mirrors. “What does that mean… ah,” she also said, taking in the sight in front of them. Rising up from beneath the street, was another shadowy mass. As the bots watched, dozens of tendrils reached out from its core body and pressed against the ground, as if it was a corporeal being trying to support its weight. Then, slowly and awkwardly, it began to drag itself towards the trio.
Before it could go more than a few meters, a salvo of purple energy bolts slammed into the core, making it ripple like water. Twisting in his seat, Countdown tracked them back to their source, catching sight of another burst launching from the top of a distant tower in the city center. He watched the bolts race across the kilometers between them in slight confusion, taking a moment to remember Hardtops presence. At least this time, he was spared the embarrassment of detailing the ‘cons resume out loud.
“Am I even hurting that thing?” the sniper demanded.
Switching back to robot mode, Minerva stepped in front of Rodimus. “At the very least, you seem to be disorienting it.” Her right shoulder pad transformed again, unfolding into a scanner array that slid in front of her face. “Hmm… Even for a Defiled, its Aetherical density is non-existent. It must have fallen victim to the Endsong a considerable time ago. But if that’s the case, how can it still manifest like this? No individual could have have a spark large enough to endure the song for so long…” Behind her, Rodimus revved his engine, making the medic twitch. “Sorry. But yes Hardtop, you are hurting it. What little Aether it has left is struggling to remain coherent. If you continue, we should be able to withdraw-" Her voice cut off as the Defiled screamed, like hundreds of voices mixed together, making her instinctively mute and cover her audio intakes.
As they watched, the shadows began to shift, becoming darker, more solid. gaining actual mass and shape to interact with the world. Slamming two of its tentacles into the road in front of it, the creature shattered the asphalt, sending large chunks flying into the air. One actually intercepted a shot, getting reduced to powder in the process, but the rest came to a halt, floating just above the Defiled, before shifting and reshaping into just over half a dozen spikes, each as long as Minerva was tall. “Hardtop, incoming!” Rodimus hissed, the roof of his vehicle mode flipping open to reveal a small weapons turret.
Hardtop adjusted his aim slightly, even as Dustoff swooped down, nose cannon roaring to life, and Minerva raised her own rifle and opened fire. Two of the spears shattered, then three more, and then they launched, just barely staying under the sound barrier as they raced towards the tower Hardtop had set up in. Another was shot down by the sniper mid-flight, but that still left one last spear to slam into the tower, the impact echoing across the dead city.
"Good news, this bastard has a really bad aim," Hardtop said in a conversational tone, even as the top of the tower blew apart, raining debris across his sniper nest. "That was way too high. Bad news, the shuttle definitely can’t take a hit like that."
“Then I guess we’re putting this poor thing down,” Rodimus said. “Countdown, can you fight?”
Cracking his knuckles, his tiny passenger powered up the blasters in his forearms. “Well enough.”
“Hardtop, if that tower starts to go, yell. Now, let’s get started.” His engine roared, and his wheels spun for a fraction of a second before grabbing the road, launching him down the street. He dodged to the left, avoiding a tentacle that crashed down into the asphalt, even as he adjusted his fuel mix slightly. The exhaust pipes running along both sides of his body twitched slightly, before flames started spewing out the back just as he passed underneath the creatures main body. Hitting the handbrake, the bot pulled a hard J-turn, spreading the flames over as large an area as possible, making the area as unpleasant as possible. Then, for good measure, Rodimus shifted back to robot mode and blasted the flames straight up into the Defiled.
Leaping free during the transformation, Countdown landed clear of both the flames and the core body, sliding to a halt and opening up with his own weapons, targeting the nearest tentacle. Out of the corner of his optics, he saw Minerva moving in, her weapons fire aimed towards the base of the same tentacle he’d been firing on. A moment later, purple bolts started slamming into the exact same spot, dispelling an even larger area of shadow.
As a final touch, Dustoff swooped down over the beast from above, spraying it with cannon fire. Between her and Rodimus, the Defiled was sufficiently distracted that it didn’t realize that the other three were being much more specific in their efforts. At least, not until one of Hardtops shots vaporized enough ‘shadow-mass’ that the limb began to tear itself loose. That, it noticed. Shrieking with a hundred different voices, it flailed around with its other tentacles, quickly turning the street, footpaths and handful of vehicles in its path into razor sharp shrapnel.
Countdown scrambled backwards, realizing just a second too late that he had absolutely no cover against the incoming wave of flechettes. All he could do was cover his face with his arms and wince in anticipation of the pain he was about to experience.
Then, at the last possible moment, Minerva was in front of him. Her backpack had unfolded and combined with her left shoulder pad, forming an armored shield that was as tall as she was. The storm of shrapnel impacted with an almost deafening noise, but the two bots were left untouched. “Captain?!”
On the far side of the beast, a tentacle that had half-buried itself in a storefront exploded in a massive ball of flame. When the fire died down, a slightly unsteady Rodimus emerged. “I’m okay, it’s mostly my paint job. Zagged when I should have zigged…” Watching as the beast flailed, its form becoming more solid by the second, he nodded to himself. “If it’s shifting like… Dustoff?”
“Yeah Rod?”
“Go high. I want you to prep for a Remi Entrance on my mark.” In response, the helicopter rose higher into the sky, keeping up the barrage on the Defiled as best she could despite the increased distance. Meanwhile, Rodimus took a deep breath and twisted his wrists, a pair of blaster pistols appearing seemingly out of nowhere. “Everyone, any limbs it sticks out, cut it off. Keep making it turtle up.”
Stepping out from behind Minerva, Countdown transformed to his alt-mode, a small, one-person buggy, with a large adjustable satellite dish behind the seat. “Do I want to know what that’s supposed to mean?” he asked, as he aimed the dish towards one of the tentacles that was moving a bit slower than the rest. Energy gathered in the dish for several seconds, flowing towards the center, before launching out in a constant beam of blue light, striking the target and carving a trench into its pseudo-flesh.
Rodimus laughed. “Come on, do you really think I’m gonna spoil the surprise with a setup like that?” he asked, opening fire with both pistols.
“Right, forgot who I was talking to…”
Under the barrage from multiple angles, the Defiled hesitated, seemingly uncertain of who it should attack first. Then, with a roar made up of a thousand screams, its mass shifted again, crossing the line between shadow and reality as it started to become a mass of flesh and muscle, more fluids spraying across the ground beneath it without skin to contain it. “Well, that’s disgusting,” Hardtop muttered.
“Try being close enough to smell it,” Minerva muttered, grunting as several bone spikes bounced off her shield.
“I’m a sniper for many valid reasons Minny. This is one of them.” Several eyes of different sizes sprouted from the top of the main body, looking around in various directions wildly. “And there’s another one,” he added, making a gagging noise before turning his attention to popping the eyeballs as quickly as possible.
Firing both pistols into a cavity that was starting to form teeth around the edges, Rodimus scowled. “Dammit, I hate being right sometimes. Dustoff, go!”
Even as he kept his weapons array locked onto the Defiled, Countdown aimed his sensors at the sky, curious to see just what Rod and Dustoff had planned. While his memory banks were mostly operational at this point, the data just wasn’t adding up. What WAS a Remi Entrance? Dustoff tended to prefer long range combat, so possibly a beam weapon, something that needed distance to build up for a full effect…?
High above, the forest camo patterned helicopter came to a stop, turning to face her nose towards the beast far below, and transformed. But not into her robot mode. Instead, she took on another form, with her head and upper torso atop a body that retained much of the mass of her helicopter form, and eight long, spindly legs reaching out around her. As she floated there for a brief moment, the pieces came together in Countdowns mind with an almost audible ‘click’
Dustoff had a twin sister, commonly known as Remi. Both femmes had inherited a beastial spider form from their mother Arachnia. And while Dustoff preferred to fight at range, that beast mode was suited for a devastating style of close combat, one that Remi had perfected to an art form, and one she had naturally taught to her sister.
Thrusters roared to life, legs arranged themselves in a crude drill, and the femme descended on her target with a wordless, fuel-curdling scream. Below, Rodimus dived for cover behind an overturned truck, while Countdown shifted gears, reversing behind Minerva as fast as possible. Barely three seconds after launch, Dustoff made impact with the Defiled with an indescribable noise, tearing her way through flesh, bone and shadow with horrifying ease, thrusters burning whatever her deadly claws missed.
As the smoke and dust cleared, it was obvious to the rest of the team that with that brutal strike, the battle was over. Dustoff stood tall on her spider-mode legs, covered in organic viscera, surrounded by pieces of her enemy no larger than Countdowns torso. For a moment, it was a truly horrifying sight… Right up until Dustoff whimpered with a clear sense of utter disgust, trying not to curl up on herself. “Oh Primus, it’s all over me… I’m gonna purge my tanks…”
Chuckling, Minerva twitched her shield, shaking off a few pieces that had flown her way. “You’ll be fine, you big protoform,” she teased the other femme, before folding the shield back into storage. “That’ll wash off just fine.”
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re not wearing it like an exo-suit!”
Shifting to robot mode, Countdown looked around at the carnage, wincing. “A Remi Entrance. Yeah… You know, I’d forgotten how enthusiastic… she can be.”
“She is a lady of many talents, many of them horrifying,” Rodimus agreed as he walked over, picking fragments of road shrapnel out of his chest plate. “But you certainly can’t deny their effectiveness.”
“That’s a word for it…”
“Does anyone have any water? Please?”
“No time for that,” Rodimus said, ignoring the high pitched whine and gleaming optics from Dustoff. “We’re lucky that more haven’t turned up already. Let’s get out of here and then you can clean off.”
His friend kept up the desperate look for a few seconds more, before sighing dramatically and relenting. “Fine…” she muttered, the quartet setting off again. Behind them, the bulk of the Defileds remains slowly faded away into flickers of shadow, as what lifeforce held it together was lost to the Endsong.
***
Sealing the hatch behind Rodimus, Huffer turned towards the pilots cabin. "All aboard and accounted for! Punch it!"
"With pleasure," his crewmate called back. "Everyone hold on, there's going to be turbulence."
Countdown chuckled weakly, even as he slumped into a wall mounted chair scaled for micromasters. "It'd have to be real bad to compare to the last time I was in orbit," he muttered, dimming his optics as the emergency overclocking faded and the exhaustion returned.
"Given the very small parts left of the Wayforward, we guessed as much," Hardtop said, placing his rifle in a storage rack, then grabbing a small water tank and turning to Dustoff. As he opened the valve on top, he gave her a grin. "Hold still stinky."
Dustoff ignored the teasing in favor of sticking her head under the water stream with a sigh of relief, even as Huffer groaned and muttered about how he'd be stuck cleaning the deck plating. As more of the gore ended up on the deck instead of the arachnoid, Rodimus could only pat him reassuringly on the shoulder, promising to get the mech some help.
A voice from the pilots cabin interrupted the moment. "Captain, Magnus is calling for you."
Suddenly looking much more serious, Rodimus went over to a handset mounted by the door, unhooking it and holding it to the side of his head. “Ultra Magnus. Countdown successfully extracted, although we were forced to engage local Defiled. No injuries, but Dustoff is going to need a serious decontamination shower.” He pretended to ignore the moan of misery from behind him. “Who was monitoring global aether readings… Perceptor? Excellent. Have him start a detailed analysis. Based on the nature of the Defiled we fought, we might be looking at a Scar Tissue World… I can’t be sure yet, no. Have Blaster deploy the warning beacons like we discussed earlier. Until we get confirmation, it’s best for Gorlam Prime to be off limits to salvagers.”
Shuddering, Minerva knelt down in front of Countdown. “You certainly picked a nice place to end up stranded,” she teased, opening up her medkit.
He snorted slightly, not powering up his optics. “Not like I knew the planets lifespark was hiding in a cocoon of dead aether,” he muttered. “And it’s not like I had much of a choice. When a transwarp drive goes, you’re there to stay.”
“One way of putting it,” the medic agreed as she started her scans. “And I suppose it does beat the alternative. Although, how exactly did you lose the Wayforward?”
Wincing as he thought back, Countdown couldn’t help but sigh. “Got pretty banged up from a lot of automated orbital defenses, made what repairs I could. I was hoping it’d hold together until I made it back to Commonwealth space at least, but…” he shrugged, frowning slightly. “There’s something else… something I’m forgetting…” Sitting up straight, the micromasters optics blazed to life as his memory files reached the front of his cortex. “Etheirys!” he exclaimed. “That was its name! The planet where I…”
Minerva scrambled back to make room as Countdown leapt to his feet, the commotion drawing the attention of the other bots in the room. He ignored them all, taking a deep breath of air through his intakes to center himself. Then his chest began to transform. Not into his vehicle form, instead carefully moving armor plating and internal components around in a careful pattern that formed a hole leading to directly below the collarstruts.
Everyone in the room froze. Revealed deep within the micromasters chest was a small, golden container, a crystal gleaming with a faint blue-white light visible in the front of it. It was a type of artifact that every bot present recognised, despite the fact that it simply couldn’t be possible. Slowly, with great care, Countdown reached into his chest with both hands, grasping it and pulling it free of its hiding place.
It was Dustoff that spoke first, saying what everyone was afraid to say. “A Matrix. That… That’s a Matrix.”
“They were all on Cybertron during the Fall!” Huffer managed. “None of them made it off… None of them.”
Hardtop shook his head. “Well strip my tires and call me a train…”
Rodimus picked up the handset from where it had slipped from his grip, speaking over the voice of his executive officer. “I’m going to need a Priority Alpha line to the Council as soon as we get back aboard. There’s been a new development.”
***
From above came the roar of Dustoffs nose cannon, high intensity energy bolts slamming down into the tendrils without mercy. Despite not seeming to harm them, the gunfire still drew a reaction, as the tendrils pulled back into the dark accompanied by a glass-rattling shriek. That reaction brought Rodimus and Minerva the time they needed, both of them transforming mid-leap, engines roaring to life before they even finished.
With his spark still on the edge of stasis, there was nothing that Countdown could do but get dragged along for the ride, and try to make sense of his surroundings. This wasn’t an easy task when there was a larger bot literally transforming around him, an action that would have resulted in his getting at least a limb caught between shifting components had it been anyone less talented than Rodimus doing the transforming. Instead, he landed in a surprisingly comfortable seat, restraints locking down over his shoulders, windshield sliding into place above him and giving him a good view of the chaos.
Neither car could get up to speed in the tight confines of the warehouse, but they were both close enough to the ground, and their headlights were illuminating the area directly in front of them, that they could make a decent attempt at an escape. Shadow tendrils occasionally blocked their path, but they lacked the numbers to contain the vehicles, both of them punching straight through. Taking a turn sharp enough to clip a pallet and send its contents everywhere, they headed directly for the doorway they’d used to enter. “Dust, bring it down!” Rodimus ordered as they shot out into the narrow laneway, turning sharply once again to avoid plowing straight into the building directly ahead of them.
As he’d expected, he barely got the order out ahead of Dustoff launching a pair of missiles down through the broken roof, introducing the darkness within to a delicate mixture of liquid energon, nucleon and octogen. She'd carefully calibrated the missiles settings from the moment Minerva had reported the tripwire, which means that while the resulting explosion outright vaporised a good deal of the interior outright, the blast then mostly went up, reducing the roof to shreds. But for all that destructive power, her teammates right outside the warehouse experienced nothing more than a flash of heat and wind.
"Sweet Primus and all his heralds woman, have you heard of overkill?!" Hardtop exclaimed.
"You know there's no such thing with Defiled," she replied. "Best to give them the final mercy as soon as possible."
Groaning, Countdown shuttered his optics, trying to process all the conflicting data his senses were sending to his brain. "Overkill of Polyhex. Former Decepticon, data block alt-mode. Believed alive, wanted for involvement in ‘Pink Alchemy’ conspiracy…” Groaning again, he reached up and rubbed at his temples. “And that’s completely irrelevant.”
"It made me grin at least," Rodimus told his passenger, not bothering to go around a trash can. "Gears turning a little smoother?"
"I feel like someone sandblasted my brain module, but yeah, I think so.”
Turning another corner, Rodimus grunted in agreement. "That's a good description of deep stasis. You came down in an industrial district, nowhere for a shuttle to land.”
“Finding a rooftop that can handle our weight?” Countdown guessed.
“Pretty much, there’s a street up here that should give us some options.” Reaching the end of the alleyway, he shot across the small parking lot, clipped over the edge of an old garden, then flew over the sidewalk and landed on the road, wheels spinning as they tried to grip on the asphalt. “...Ah.”
Pulling up behind him, Minerva twitched her side mirrors. “What does that mean… ah,” she also said, taking in the sight in front of them. Rising up from beneath the street, was another shadowy mass. As the bots watched, dozens of tendrils reached out from its core body and pressed against the ground, as if it was a corporeal being trying to support its weight. Then, slowly and awkwardly, it began to drag itself towards the trio.
Before it could go more than a few meters, a salvo of purple energy bolts slammed into the core, making it ripple like water. Twisting in his seat, Countdown tracked them back to their source, catching sight of another burst launching from the top of a distant tower in the city center. He watched the bolts race across the kilometers between them in slight confusion, taking a moment to remember Hardtops presence. At least this time, he was spared the embarrassment of detailing the ‘cons resume out loud.
“Am I even hurting that thing?” the sniper demanded.
Switching back to robot mode, Minerva stepped in front of Rodimus. “At the very least, you seem to be disorienting it.” Her right shoulder pad transformed again, unfolding into a scanner array that slid in front of her face. “Hmm… Even for a Defiled, its Aetherical density is non-existent. It must have fallen victim to the Endsong a considerable time ago. But if that’s the case, how can it still manifest like this? No individual could have have a spark large enough to endure the song for so long…” Behind her, Rodimus revved his engine, making the medic twitch. “Sorry. But yes Hardtop, you are hurting it. What little Aether it has left is struggling to remain coherent. If you continue, we should be able to withdraw-" Her voice cut off as the Defiled screamed, like hundreds of voices mixed together, making her instinctively mute and cover her audio intakes.
As they watched, the shadows began to shift, becoming darker, more solid. gaining actual mass and shape to interact with the world. Slamming two of its tentacles into the road in front of it, the creature shattered the asphalt, sending large chunks flying into the air. One actually intercepted a shot, getting reduced to powder in the process, but the rest came to a halt, floating just above the Defiled, before shifting and reshaping into just over half a dozen spikes, each as long as Minerva was tall. “Hardtop, incoming!” Rodimus hissed, the roof of his vehicle mode flipping open to reveal a small weapons turret.
Hardtop adjusted his aim slightly, even as Dustoff swooped down, nose cannon roaring to life, and Minerva raised her own rifle and opened fire. Two of the spears shattered, then three more, and then they launched, just barely staying under the sound barrier as they raced towards the tower Hardtop had set up in. Another was shot down by the sniper mid-flight, but that still left one last spear to slam into the tower, the impact echoing across the dead city.
"Good news, this bastard has a really bad aim," Hardtop said in a conversational tone, even as the top of the tower blew apart, raining debris across his sniper nest. "That was way too high. Bad news, the shuttle definitely can’t take a hit like that."
“Then I guess we’re putting this poor thing down,” Rodimus said. “Countdown, can you fight?”
Cracking his knuckles, his tiny passenger powered up the blasters in his forearms. “Well enough.”
“Hardtop, if that tower starts to go, yell. Now, let’s get started.” His engine roared, and his wheels spun for a fraction of a second before grabbing the road, launching him down the street. He dodged to the left, avoiding a tentacle that crashed down into the asphalt, even as he adjusted his fuel mix slightly. The exhaust pipes running along both sides of his body twitched slightly, before flames started spewing out the back just as he passed underneath the creatures main body. Hitting the handbrake, the bot pulled a hard J-turn, spreading the flames over as large an area as possible, making the area as unpleasant as possible. Then, for good measure, Rodimus shifted back to robot mode and blasted the flames straight up into the Defiled.
Leaping free during the transformation, Countdown landed clear of both the flames and the core body, sliding to a halt and opening up with his own weapons, targeting the nearest tentacle. Out of the corner of his optics, he saw Minerva moving in, her weapons fire aimed towards the base of the same tentacle he’d been firing on. A moment later, purple bolts started slamming into the exact same spot, dispelling an even larger area of shadow.
As a final touch, Dustoff swooped down over the beast from above, spraying it with cannon fire. Between her and Rodimus, the Defiled was sufficiently distracted that it didn’t realize that the other three were being much more specific in their efforts. At least, not until one of Hardtops shots vaporized enough ‘shadow-mass’ that the limb began to tear itself loose. That, it noticed. Shrieking with a hundred different voices, it flailed around with its other tentacles, quickly turning the street, footpaths and handful of vehicles in its path into razor sharp shrapnel.
Countdown scrambled backwards, realizing just a second too late that he had absolutely no cover against the incoming wave of flechettes. All he could do was cover his face with his arms and wince in anticipation of the pain he was about to experience.
Then, at the last possible moment, Minerva was in front of him. Her backpack had unfolded and combined with her left shoulder pad, forming an armored shield that was as tall as she was. The storm of shrapnel impacted with an almost deafening noise, but the two bots were left untouched. “Captain?!”
On the far side of the beast, a tentacle that had half-buried itself in a storefront exploded in a massive ball of flame. When the fire died down, a slightly unsteady Rodimus emerged. “I’m okay, it’s mostly my paint job. Zagged when I should have zigged…” Watching as the beast flailed, its form becoming more solid by the second, he nodded to himself. “If it’s shifting like… Dustoff?”
“Yeah Rod?”
“Go high. I want you to prep for a Remi Entrance on my mark.” In response, the helicopter rose higher into the sky, keeping up the barrage on the Defiled as best she could despite the increased distance. Meanwhile, Rodimus took a deep breath and twisted his wrists, a pair of blaster pistols appearing seemingly out of nowhere. “Everyone, any limbs it sticks out, cut it off. Keep making it turtle up.”
Stepping out from behind Minerva, Countdown transformed to his alt-mode, a small, one-person buggy, with a large adjustable satellite dish behind the seat. “Do I want to know what that’s supposed to mean?” he asked, as he aimed the dish towards one of the tentacles that was moving a bit slower than the rest. Energy gathered in the dish for several seconds, flowing towards the center, before launching out in a constant beam of blue light, striking the target and carving a trench into its pseudo-flesh.
Rodimus laughed. “Come on, do you really think I’m gonna spoil the surprise with a setup like that?” he asked, opening fire with both pistols.
“Right, forgot who I was talking to…”
Under the barrage from multiple angles, the Defiled hesitated, seemingly uncertain of who it should attack first. Then, with a roar made up of a thousand screams, its mass shifted again, crossing the line between shadow and reality as it started to become a mass of flesh and muscle, more fluids spraying across the ground beneath it without skin to contain it. “Well, that’s disgusting,” Hardtop muttered.
“Try being close enough to smell it,” Minerva muttered, grunting as several bone spikes bounced off her shield.
“I’m a sniper for many valid reasons Minny. This is one of them.” Several eyes of different sizes sprouted from the top of the main body, looking around in various directions wildly. “And there’s another one,” he added, making a gagging noise before turning his attention to popping the eyeballs as quickly as possible.
Firing both pistols into a cavity that was starting to form teeth around the edges, Rodimus scowled. “Dammit, I hate being right sometimes. Dustoff, go!”
Even as he kept his weapons array locked onto the Defiled, Countdown aimed his sensors at the sky, curious to see just what Rod and Dustoff had planned. While his memory banks were mostly operational at this point, the data just wasn’t adding up. What WAS a Remi Entrance? Dustoff tended to prefer long range combat, so possibly a beam weapon, something that needed distance to build up for a full effect…?
High above, the forest camo patterned helicopter came to a stop, turning to face her nose towards the beast far below, and transformed. But not into her robot mode. Instead, she took on another form, with her head and upper torso atop a body that retained much of the mass of her helicopter form, and eight long, spindly legs reaching out around her. As she floated there for a brief moment, the pieces came together in Countdowns mind with an almost audible ‘click’
Dustoff had a twin sister, commonly known as Remi. Both femmes had inherited a beastial spider form from their mother Arachnia. And while Dustoff preferred to fight at range, that beast mode was suited for a devastating style of close combat, one that Remi had perfected to an art form, and one she had naturally taught to her sister.
Thrusters roared to life, legs arranged themselves in a crude drill, and the femme descended on her target with a wordless, fuel-curdling scream. Below, Rodimus dived for cover behind an overturned truck, while Countdown shifted gears, reversing behind Minerva as fast as possible. Barely three seconds after launch, Dustoff made impact with the Defiled with an indescribable noise, tearing her way through flesh, bone and shadow with horrifying ease, thrusters burning whatever her deadly claws missed.
As the smoke and dust cleared, it was obvious to the rest of the team that with that brutal strike, the battle was over. Dustoff stood tall on her spider-mode legs, covered in organic viscera, surrounded by pieces of her enemy no larger than Countdowns torso. For a moment, it was a truly horrifying sight… Right up until Dustoff whimpered with a clear sense of utter disgust, trying not to curl up on herself. “Oh Primus, it’s all over me… I’m gonna purge my tanks…”
Chuckling, Minerva twitched her shield, shaking off a few pieces that had flown her way. “You’ll be fine, you big protoform,” she teased the other femme, before folding the shield back into storage. “That’ll wash off just fine.”
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re not wearing it like an exo-suit!”
Shifting to robot mode, Countdown looked around at the carnage, wincing. “A Remi Entrance. Yeah… You know, I’d forgotten how enthusiastic… she can be.”
“She is a lady of many talents, many of them horrifying,” Rodimus agreed as he walked over, picking fragments of road shrapnel out of his chest plate. “But you certainly can’t deny their effectiveness.”
“That’s a word for it…”
“Does anyone have any water? Please?”
“No time for that,” Rodimus said, ignoring the high pitched whine and gleaming optics from Dustoff. “We’re lucky that more haven’t turned up already. Let’s get out of here and then you can clean off.”
His friend kept up the desperate look for a few seconds more, before sighing dramatically and relenting. “Fine…” she muttered, the quartet setting off again. Behind them, the bulk of the Defileds remains slowly faded away into flickers of shadow, as what lifeforce held it together was lost to the Endsong.
***
Sealing the hatch behind Rodimus, Huffer turned towards the pilots cabin. "All aboard and accounted for! Punch it!"
"With pleasure," his crewmate called back. "Everyone hold on, there's going to be turbulence."
Countdown chuckled weakly, even as he slumped into a wall mounted chair scaled for micromasters. "It'd have to be real bad to compare to the last time I was in orbit," he muttered, dimming his optics as the emergency overclocking faded and the exhaustion returned.
"Given the very small parts left of the Wayforward, we guessed as much," Hardtop said, placing his rifle in a storage rack, then grabbing a small water tank and turning to Dustoff. As he opened the valve on top, he gave her a grin. "Hold still stinky."
Dustoff ignored the teasing in favor of sticking her head under the water stream with a sigh of relief, even as Huffer groaned and muttered about how he'd be stuck cleaning the deck plating. As more of the gore ended up on the deck instead of the arachnoid, Rodimus could only pat him reassuringly on the shoulder, promising to get the mech some help.
A voice from the pilots cabin interrupted the moment. "Captain, Magnus is calling for you."
Suddenly looking much more serious, Rodimus went over to a handset mounted by the door, unhooking it and holding it to the side of his head. “Ultra Magnus. Countdown successfully extracted, although we were forced to engage local Defiled. No injuries, but Dustoff is going to need a serious decontamination shower.” He pretended to ignore the moan of misery from behind him. “Who was monitoring global aether readings… Perceptor? Excellent. Have him start a detailed analysis. Based on the nature of the Defiled we fought, we might be looking at a Scar Tissue World… I can’t be sure yet, no. Have Blaster deploy the warning beacons like we discussed earlier. Until we get confirmation, it’s best for Gorlam Prime to be off limits to salvagers.”
Shuddering, Minerva knelt down in front of Countdown. “You certainly picked a nice place to end up stranded,” she teased, opening up her medkit.
He snorted slightly, not powering up his optics. “Not like I knew the planets lifespark was hiding in a cocoon of dead aether,” he muttered. “And it’s not like I had much of a choice. When a transwarp drive goes, you’re there to stay.”
“One way of putting it,” the medic agreed as she started her scans. “And I suppose it does beat the alternative. Although, how exactly did you lose the Wayforward?”
Wincing as he thought back, Countdown couldn’t help but sigh. “Got pretty banged up from a lot of automated orbital defenses, made what repairs I could. I was hoping it’d hold together until I made it back to Commonwealth space at least, but…” he shrugged, frowning slightly. “There’s something else… something I’m forgetting…” Sitting up straight, the micromasters optics blazed to life as his memory files reached the front of his cortex. “Etheirys!” he exclaimed. “That was its name! The planet where I…”
Minerva scrambled back to make room as Countdown leapt to his feet, the commotion drawing the attention of the other bots in the room. He ignored them all, taking a deep breath of air through his intakes to center himself. Then his chest began to transform. Not into his vehicle form, instead carefully moving armor plating and internal components around in a careful pattern that formed a hole leading to directly below the collarstruts.
Everyone in the room froze. Revealed deep within the micromasters chest was a small, golden container, a crystal gleaming with a faint blue-white light visible in the front of it. It was a type of artifact that every bot present recognised, despite the fact that it simply couldn’t be possible. Slowly, with great care, Countdown reached into his chest with both hands, grasping it and pulling it free of its hiding place.
It was Dustoff that spoke first, saying what everyone was afraid to say. “A Matrix. That… That’s a Matrix.”
“They were all on Cybertron during the Fall!” Huffer managed. “None of them made it off… None of them.”
Hardtop shook his head. “Well strip my tires and call me a train…”
Rodimus picked up the handset from where it had slipped from his grip, speaking over the voice of his executive officer. “I’m going to need a Priority Alpha line to the Council as soon as we get back aboard. There’s been a new development.”
***