Transformers: Cybertron Saga.
The first is a clip from CHALLENGE OF THE GOBOTS #3: PICK UP THE PUZZLER PIECES.
Call this excerpt: Dr. Braxis(the other mad scientist) meets the Decepticons.
= = = =
Braxis-02I awake to the sound of one of my cell walls being decimated. Turbo's fighting against some other robots some distance off--I can hear that obnoxious voice of his a mile away.
Just as I thought. "Once again, Cy-Kill: you've come back to me, cap in hand--what the hell!?"
I study the three robots in my cell. These are the other megalomaniacal machines--leaders of a group of ne'er-do-well Cybertronians.
After collecting my self, I speak again. "Megavolt, I presume."
The leader glares at me, while the arrogant one with the bright red chest starts in immediately, leaning into my face. "Listen to me, you puny insect. We don't have to tolerate--*"
I groan, having been subject to similar threats from the Renegades and some of the Guardians.(Most notably the red Guardian idiot fighting...two blatant clones of the obnoxious lieutenant: Thundercracker and Skywarp.)
"Get over yourselves; this is all talk," I state, rolling my eyes.
"The esteemed doctor has a point, Starscream," states the leader. "Let's escort him out of here before the Guardian decides to use his brain and summon reinforcements."
If UNECOM gives me trouble, I was kidnapped by the Decepticons this week. It's certainly a change from the usual pace.
I shrug as the monotonous blue one(him I know quite well) unceremoniously plops me inside Starscream. We fly off.
Crasher may be down in the dumps about the components, but she's as demented as ever. Arrangements, indeed....
Braxis-03Decepticon Headquarters: also known as the underwater death trap. The leader gives me the standard spiel: behold, puny flesh creature, technologies far beyond what you could possibly imagine.
"Give it a rest, you sorry rustbucket! If you'd quit being a conceited **** for a moment, and cease with your infernal insults to my intelligence, you'd know that I can imagine a great deal.
"I am the foremost expert on robotics, and for all of your sturm und drang, you are all robots; your thoughts encoded in ones and zeroes--same as any Apple IIe."
"Don't you dare compare us to those primitive calculators!" spits Starscream, the jaunty red jet. He's not nearly as personable as Fitor.
"Indeed," adds the leader. "You are testing our patience."
"I beg your forgiveness, Megawatt." My latest quip elicits another of those glares.
Damn it; I'm actually beginning to miss those miserable Renegades.
I turn to Soundwave, the only one in this troupe who isn't a dolt. "Could you please ask them to quit breathing out empty threats and ask me what they want?"
The Blue One turns to his leader, who answers. "Very well. It's about your friends the Renegades. They have stolen technology that belongs to us. Using the stolen tech against their own enemies, the resulting gestalt failed in its first mission.
"Answer us, Doctor: why?"
I study the leader, who seems as irritated as I do about the mess Cy-Kill created. I grin...then laugh for a bit.
"Megatron," I smile after a moment, "I'd be happy to tell you what I know."
This will be an excellent time to vent.
Braxis-04I essentially explain to Megatron what I explained to Cy-Kill: due to internal differences between Gobots and Cybertronians--minor but notable--a Gobot can't simply build a set of robots and plug them together as a gestalt. Otherwise, the Guardians would have created an endogestalt long before landing on my planet.
"For one," notes one of the lime green construction Decepticons(Hook, I think), "sentient minds are required."
"Exactly." I'm so impressed that he understands the technology involved that I decide to overlook the fact that he addressed me the way one would address a four-year old--or that dolt Turbo.
"Your kind can create robots with sentient minds by building them, basically," I continue, "you don't need a Spark Agent."
"What's a Spark Agent?" asks Wildrider, the gray Stunticon, loudly.
"Akin to Vector Sigma, I believe," I answer. "While you could have done without said supercomputer--as your central processors were sophisticated enough to function independently--you probably would have only possessed the neuroprocessing power of the Dinobots."
The bright yellow Stunticon, Drag Strip, leans close to me. "You mean like old Motormouth?" he smirks, tweaking the nose of the rather bullish Motormaster.
I decide to ignore Drag Strip for the moment, proceeding to continue with my explanation.(I value my life quite highly, after all.) "The primary problem is that you Decepticons needed a gestalt, and the resulting neural load would have caused serial cascade failure."
"So, if Megatron hadn't taken us to Cybertron, we would have died," muses Dead End. "Not that it matters--we'll all die eventually...." He's rather cheerful.
"Yes," I answer. "Gobots, on the other hand, require Spark Agents; and all Spark Agents on Gobotron are female."
"The Gobot fembots?" questions Thundercracker.
Skywarp decides to be droll. "Crasher's been busy getting her ports tapped."
"Not quite," I counter after watching this fool sway his hips. "If that had occured, there wouldn't have been a Puzzler for another 500 thousand years at least--and Cy-Kill was on a schedule."
"So you found a way to circumvent the Spark Agent requirement?" asks Scrapper, another lime green Constructicon.
"That is impossible! Data packets have to enter a female Gobot."
"Which leads back to my theory: Crasher in a multi-Renegade gang-dive--serving her cause," Skywarp grins.
"No, you idiot!" I seethe. Megatron snickers; I must have stolen the words off his tongue.
"It may help," I continue, "if you consider--dare I say it--human reproduction." This predictably prompts the "ewww!" responses from the retarded elements of the Decepticon ranks.
Scavenger decides to chime in. "Actually, if you ignore the gross human mating part, the process of cellular meiosis is actually similar to our primary chipset process." That was the "useless" Constructicon? He's worth more than a number of the Renegades.
"Yes," I grin, "and we humans have a process called in vitro fertilization, which we designed to aid infertile humans who want to have a natural gestation process using their own DNA. DNA would correspond to data packets in your reproductive methods if you decide on using internal Spark Agents."
"So," muses Megatron, "by applying this in vitro process to the Gobots, you circumvented the need for Crasher to dive."
Skywarp still insists on his theory. "You still need data streams," he quips. "So where'd you get them if Crasher was such a clean girl?"
"We managed to obtain suitable data packets from various Gobot donors," I answer simply. "Dr. Go and I then extracted data packets from Crasher and set about creating chipset starters.
"It went downhill from there." I throw up my hands in exasperation.
"Explain." Megatron folds his arms.
Braxis-06"Soundwave." Megatron turns to the Blue One. "I trust that Dr. Braxis has been forthcoming. Do you agree?"
I eye Soundwave balefully. "It's useless to lie to someone who can extract information directly from my mind by reading my brain waves. Please confirm to him that I haven't lied."
Soundwave faces me, impassive as always. "Not by commission."
"I omitted unimportant details, and you know it. You're nitpicking."
Soundwave nods to Megatron, who smiles.
"Soundwave," he orders, "you and Thundercracker will escort the good doctor to a place of his choosing."
Soundwave salutes his leader. "As you command, Megatron." He carefully picks me up and leaves.
A few minutes later, I learn how these admittedly inventive robots manage to leave the bottom of the Pacific to carry out their nefarious plots. Soundwave places me inside Thundercracker's cockpit, then transforms--somehow displacing the bulk of his mass.
"Impressed?" quips Soundwave.
"You read my mind," I admit sardonically. "The ship: was it your design?"
"Affirmative."
We continue this refreshingly succinct bit of small talk as I request a trip to Paris. Considering I ordinarily wouldn't be caught dead in my beknighted homeland, I know the Guardians won't look for me there.
I'm a free man? Oh, no. This is going far too smoothly.
= = = =
The second is a snippet from AERIALBOTS #6: ULTIMATUM.
This bit I call: Slingshot versus the Stunticons.
= = =
Scene: 15"Where are you **** taking him!?" snarls Silverbolt as Breakdown and Drag Strip grab Slingshot.
"Relax, Chief Noh-wanna-fly," grins Motormaster. "Wildrider wants a little alone time with your playdate."
Scene: 16"What brings you to my office today, Sling-shit?" asks Wildrider, glib.
Slingshot scowls at the terrorist. "Your fellow Stunti-goons."
"Oh, yeah. Tick-tock." Wildrider leans in close to the Aerialbot. "Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock!"
"This is why everyone thinks you're nuts."
"Thinks? He is nuts," counters Breakdown, sullen.
"Yeah, I forgot--your whole unit's certifiable."
"Is that any way to treat your comrades?" Wildrider mock-admonishes, complete with wagging finger.
"What are you talkin' about, clown?"
After sitting on the floor, Wildrider claps his feet together, cackling. "Oh, what a tool! Tick-tock, scrap-heap!" he continues, looking up at Slingshot. "Fifteen days left."
"I still don't believe it." Drag Strip looks Slingshot over. "Him--one of us?"
Wildrider leaps up, snatches the Autobot sigil off Slingshot's shoulder, then slaps on a Decepticon sigil: all while giggling. "You gotta see it, you gotta see it--yeah!" The gray Stunticon spins around, then lands flat on his back, ecstatic. "You guys gotta see it...!"
"If it makes you feel better, Drag-along," states Slingshot as he quizzically observes Wildrider's twitching, "I'm not one of you."
"Not anymore," mutters Dead End. "That's why you're here. We're supposed to 'talk sense' into you--even though we're the worst group for the job.
"It matters not: we're all just piles of scrap that haven't oxidized yet."
Slingshot laughs abruptly. "Oh!" he chortles. "That's who he was impersonating!
"It's just that with Optimus' voice, I came up with 'Eeyore'. We were playin' 'Guess the Decepticon', and I was on Optimus' team."
"Eeyore...?" wonders Drag Strip.
"Oh, see: he's this talking toy donkey who's all pessimistic...." Slingshot notes that his captors are lost. "Donkey: Earth animal."
"Be specific--there are billions of those things here," scoffs Drag Strip.
"As if we care," adds Breakdown.
Slingshot shakes his head. "You guys need to get out of this junkyard more often."
"It ain't like we're invited to ribbon-cuttin' ceremonies, or presented with dink-shit keys to the city like you do-gooder piles of winged scrap." Motormaster enters the room. "My turn."
Scene: 17"We're handlin' this, Motormaster!" spits Drag Strip.
"You ain't defyin' me, are ya?"
"...never mind. He's all yours."
"Right answer, tool. Now get out! And don't ever try to keep secrets from your boss again."
"Sure thing, Motormaster," Wildrider trembles, a nervous grin on his face. He and the other Stunticons leave Motormaster and Slingshot alone.
"Idiots. They forget that I learn everything they know. Though you, sweet-bot," adds Motormaster, touching Slingshot's chin, "somehow managed to keep your pit boss out of the loop--'bout you havin' red optics and all.
"Energon? My private stash." Motormaster reveals a cache of energon cubes.
"This junkyard's part gas station--that's why you goons took it over," spits Slingshot.
"Listen, cutie: I know I don't heat your little engines like Silverscrap out there, but that ain't no reason to turn traitor. There ain't none!
"What are the Autobots?" Motormaster snarls. "They ain't scrap!"
"Yeah. That's why the Decepticons built a gestalt team of sports cars and a truck--who can't drive."
"I see Wildrider's drivin', and I raise you Fireflight's flying into trees!" chortles the tractor-trailer.
"'Flight ain't no worse than Skywarp. At least he don't need his supreme commander to ride his sorry aft."
"At least my commander can fly!"
"Megatron needs somebody to pick him up and fire him--he's useless in his alt mode. Optimus has his gun, his battle deck and Roller to lay waste to your sorry afts. Oh." Slingshot levels a mean grin at Motormaster. "And he's King of the Road, baby!"
Motormaster punches Slingshot's midsection. "Fifteen. Days. Or it gets worse. Pal." He pets Slingshot's head, then leaves.
= = =
The rest of each fic can be found below:
CotG: Pick Up the Puzzler Pieces
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4690037/1/P ... ler_PiecesAerialbots: Ultimatum
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4727034/1/UltimatumPlease let me know what you think. Thank you for your time.
~acsound
