From grimlock@u.washington.edu Sun Jan 11 18:31:56 1998 Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 20:14:17 -0700 From: David Filip Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers Subject: [FANFIC 5/10] Lord of the Flies Starring the Transformers Lord of the Flies Starring the Transformers By David Filip Part Five: Raiders of the Lost Spark "Look at all this stuff in the cave," Huffer mused aloud. "I think the shuttle's cockpit crashed through here." Windcharger looked down at the large pieces of metal and torn wiring that lined the cave. "Yes, I think the entrance to this tunnel may have been created by the crash. That's why it slopes upwards and not down, the guidance computer might have attempted some course corrections. I suppose the stalactites ahead are from the point where pieces broke through a lava tunnel--" Suddenly he noticed his shoulder's tactile sensors were activated, and he spun around furiously. "AAAIIGGH! Starscream, would you cut it out?" Starscream jumped three metertrons back. "I was just tapping your shoulder because I had a suggestion. Sheesh." Changing the tone to match his intended subject, Starscream went on. "Don't you think it would be great if Afterburner put the heat ray on line? He could melt some metal down for us to make more weapons! There's plenty of exposed metal on this Quintesson island! We could use sharp metal spears instead of these plain Swiss Army Matrices, right? We could have better reach for hunti--" "That's not going to be necessary for long. After all, it's our plan to kill the beastie now." After a few thoughts about their armament and continuing deeper into the cave, Windcharger sighed. "You do realize we're being fools, don't you?" Starscream never let up. "Is the cold getting to your energon pump, Windy?" "Of course it's cold, but we're still being fools." "If you're scared, you can always go back," came Starscream's sarcastic reply. "I'm not scared at all. It's just--" A noise followed by several bright sparks came from behind them. "What the hell was that?" The dark cave lit up in slight flashes and slowly faded. Windcharger sent a nod in his hunting partner's direction, and Starscream translated it into a spoken word. "Run!" The two panicked Cybertronians scrambled past many stalagmites up the cave's incline until the light ceased to reach them. The crackling was still slightly audible, even after several minutes of high-speed spelunking. "It doesn't sound like it's coming after us," Starscream said, trying to regain his composure. "It's a good thing too. We've reached the end of the cave, so we'd better switch from our eyes to target imaging scanners. We want to know exactly what we're going to fight, especially if we have to make a stand here." "Where's Huffer," Starscream asked. "Well he was--" Windcharger cut himself off in mid-sentence. "You don't think the beastie got him?" Starscream nodded his head gravely. "I bet that's exactly what happened." The singer didn't know Huffer very well, and never chose to change this from Huffer's reputation as a complainer. Starscream simply wanted to say something honorable to justify his own bloodlust. "We shall avenge Huffer's noble death." "Right Starscream, we will--AAAAIIIIGGGH!" "What?" "Sorry about that," Windcharger said, somewhat embarrassed. "I just switched to my radar imaging scan, and I found a lot of the remnants of the shuttle's bridge in here. Including Ultra Magnus." Starscream switched his radar on. "AAAAIIIGGH! I mean, uh, yeah, that's Magnus all right. He looks kind of...uh..." "Dead?" Windcharger stepped toward the cracked and broken body of his former SchoolMaster Vice Principal. The massive red and blue Autobot, once a teacher, shuttle pilot and field disciplinarian, now lay with a smashed leg, a missing arm, and a body snapped at the solar plexus. "It doesn't look like any of us will be able to repair him without professional help, and I guess that's even less likely since we lost Huffer." Continuing to look at Magnus' body, he noticed a small rubber robot in the corpse's one attached hand. "Starscream...it's you?!" "Yes, I was playing a practical joke on Ultra Magnus a few minutes before we crashed, so I made a remote controlled decoy of myself. He confiscated it because I should have been in my seat when we were on the shuttle, but I guess that doesn't matter now, does it?" After prying the decoy's arm from Magnus' hand, Starscream noticed a cardboard box at Magnus' feet. "Look Windy, while we had to eat our ordinary energon goodies, our SchoolMaster was living the good life!" Starscream reached into the box to hold up the thin green tiles. "Magnus was eating Soylent Green the whole time!" "Wow," Windcharger commented as he quickly took a tile and ate it. "Soylent Green is the tastiest food that Cybertronians have ever made since cooked Quintessons. It's the main reason we made that treaty with Earth in the first place." "Do you ever wonder what goes into Soylent Green?" Starscream asked this while his companion pocketed the box. "Nah. The important thing is AAAAAIIIIIIIIIGGGH!" Windcharger covered his vocal component quickly and pointed slowly to the opposite side of the cave. "What do you mean? We already found Ultra Magnus' body, it's not as if it's too shocking to--" Starscream caught the hint and turned his head slowly to follow Windcharger's finger. In a whisper, he commented "The beastie is sleeping." This beastie was not the one described by Rumble and Frenzy, but no one expected reality to match up to the twins' hyperactive imagination. Scrunched into a vaguely spherical shape, the beast was purple with gray features. Its smashed and sunken head featured two bizarre conical protrusions, and it had several parts on it's arms, legs and body that suggested it could transform into a space fighter. Starscream looked at its legs, which were twisted and broken from knees that shouldn't have been reverse articulated. "There's something under the beast," he whispered. "Yeah, but the beast has probably seen better days. He almost looks like he fell out of a ship and got smashed into the mountain..." While he continued to look under the beast's legs, Windcharger wondered how it could have been bent so spherically. Was there another beast who had defeated this one? Surely not, but this beast seemed to be guarding something familiar, something he knew the other Cybertronians would want to see. He ducked to the floor, stared at the object under the beast, and finally noticed some markings. Windcharger looked up from the floor and gave Starscream a quick excited glance. "I can see what he's sitting on. It's the black box from our shuttle. Our flight recorder." "Now we can find out what went wrong!" Starscream suddenly put his hand over his mouth, realizing that his voice could awaken the beastie. Since it did not, he constructed a plan and smiled. "Windy, I think the beast is very tired. Maybe I can lift him up and you can grab the black box without disturbing him." The Autobot's vocal inflection clearly expressed his dislike of Starscream's plan. "That's crazy! What if you can't lift him? He'll fall and crush me!" "We all have to make sacrifices. You duck down to reach in, and I'll just--" "Uh uh," Windcharger shook his head. "I want you to reach in, and I know you want me to. There's only one fair way to decide who gets to stand back and lift..." Starscream anticipated Windcharger's plan and nodded his head. "Yes, we'll play a game of 'cube shell/sheet metal/welding torch!' The one with the best two out of three will hold the beast while the other reaches for the black box." Windcharger nodded and shook his fist with Starscream while they counted "One! Two! Three! Shoot!" Starscream's hand held out two fingers in an approximation of a welding torch's shape. Windcharger kept a fist. "Sorry," Windcharger said smugly, "but Energon Cube Shells absorb all the energy from your welder. Try again." "This is pointless! The beastie could wake up any minute now." "I understand," Windcharger replied coyly, "you're losing, and you know you're too predictable to beat me." Starscream felt a battle raging in his neural net. One warring faction told him that Windcharger's insult was petty and blatantly manipulative, something that should be ignored. The other side claimed that his honor had been tarnished by the remark, and that there was a good chance that he could win the next two rounds. Besides, why shouldn't the smaller robot be the one to reach under the large beast? Starscream sighed and gave in to the latter impulse. "One! Two! Three! Shoot!" Windcharger picked a cube shell again, but Starscream opened his hand flat in an approximation of sheet metal. "Hah! Who's predictable now? My wall of sheet metal crushes your pathetic energon cube shell! Why don't you just give up now and spare yourself the humiliation of further game playing?" Humiliation? Windcharger wondered why Starscream took games like this so seriously, but continued anyway. "One! Two! Three! Shoot!" Windcharger looked down at his open hand and at Starscream's pointed fingers. Starscream started tapping his feet happily. "Nya nya nya nya nya! My welding torch cuts right through your sheet metal! I, Starscream the great, have triumphed! Ackyukyukyukyukyukyukyuk!" His following tone was less triumphant and more condescending. "Prepare to reach for the box, loser." "You might be forgetting something." Windcharger's right hand slid into his red forearm and was replaced with the magnetic beam generator while he spoke. "You know they don't give us a lot of high-powered gear at the Cybertronian Boys' Academy. You'll have to hold the beastie in place while I reach for the black box. For as good as my magnetic beam is, it's not terribly strong--" Starscream's facial expressions stopped Windcharger. It seemed the large Decepticon already thought of a grander scheme "What if we can find something that will support him while we lift him? To lighten the load?" "Like what?" Windcharger asked. "We'll have to make sure it's just as dense and thick as the black box, and all the rocks over here--" "I know," Starscream giggled as he took a pouch from the jet cockpit mounted in the center of his chest. "You can use this pouch, and empty the right amount of sand. That way, it'll be a one-for-one switch. The sand for the flight recorder." Windcharger did not utter the praise that the singer expected for his brilliant scheme. Instead, Windcharger's face contorted in disbelief and asked an incredulous question: "What were you doing with a bag full of sand in your cockpit?" Indignant, Starscream replied "That's my business," and started getting to work. "You've got to activate your magnetic beam now." He quickly examined the beastie's broken frame and pointed to three areas near the top of the battered robot's chest and shoulders. "Focus it on these three points." Starscream lifted the beast as much as he could, but the creature seemed to be weighed down by several of the heavy rocks jabbed into its body. "Now Windy!" Windcharger turned his right arm's magnetic beam on and put his left hand into the bag of sand. An eyeball measurement of the black box indicated that three astroliters of sand should be removed from the pouch. He let the sand sift through his fingers slowly as he stared at the flight recorder. Finally, he reached his arm in and carefully replaced the black box with the pouch. "Got it!" As soon as he pulled his arm back, Windcharger deactivated his beam field and Starscream put the beast back in place on top of the bag. "So what do we do about getting out of the cave? Just walk?" "Yeah," Windcharger responded, wiping dust off their newfound treasure and sliding his right hand into place again. "I suppose we should look for--" The two Cybertronians' heads turned quickly as they heard the bag of sand rip and the beastie lunge forward. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" The boys screamed, looked at each other, looked back at the moving beast, checked each other again, and only stopped their screaming when they started to run. The beast's rounded folds and dents helped it to roll after the two boys, much like a giant boulder, and the cave's steep incline only helped the creature to roll faster. Never looking back, the two boys repeated the long process of weaving in and out of the various stalagmites in the cave, hoping that these protrusions would slow the beast -- often these structures did, but broke under the beast's weight. Tracking the shape of the cave in the dark forced the Cybertronians to rely entirely on their internal imaging systems, but just when they felt they had a head start on the beast, their optical sensors detected red light. "This shouldn't be...it just isn't right," Starscream cautioned. "Who cares if there's red light outside? Do you want to be crushed by that thing inside? We're only fifty astroseconds ahead of it!" Windcharger moved on as fast as he could, ignoring Starscream's slowing pace. Soon even Windcharger stopped, when he saw the bed of lava flowing in the tunnel and Huffer standing with arms akimbo. Next to the orange and blue robot was a large piece of shrapnel that had obviously broken off from the ship as it crashed. "Huffer? You're alive!? I thought the beast got you for sure!" Huffer held a hard expression on his face, but looked excited as he noticed what his leader was carrying. "You found the flight recorder? That's great! Toss it over and I'll float this armored panel into the lava. You can jump across onto the panel and then to this side!" The lava's eerie red light made Huffer's visage seem sinister, somehow. "Wait? Why don't you just toss the--" The rumbling intensified when Huffer cut his leader off. "Come on Windy! There's no time to argue! Toss it over!" Huffer's clawed hands caught the black box easily, but Huffer didn't move the panel at all. "You and Starscream ruined us! We could have been rescued by that ship, but you two had to argue! You destroyed what might have been our only chance to get home!" "You liar, you said you'd float the metal over! I tried the best I could! The best anybody co--" "You should have done better! Both of you! Now I'm going to go back to the camp and tell them that the beastie took our black box. Of course I'll also tell them that our fearless leaders suffered from a terrible accident when we tried to get it back...Then maybe we'll have some real leadership!" Anger coursed through Windcharger's system as he realized the lights he ran from earlier were Huffer's welding blasts on the wall, his attmept to kill the two leaders. "Who will lead the rest of the kids now? You?" "No!" Huffer replied. "But anyone could do better than this!" "I doubt it," Windcharger replied, wondering if he had become pessimistic all of a sudden. Huffer waved to Starscream as the singer arrived. "I hope this seals you in for good! Both of you!" The strobing white flashes and sparks from Huffer's welding torch opened the lava channel further in the mountain. Then he started burning away rocks in the ceiling, where a slowly moving sheet of rock threatened to carry out Huffer's wish by closing their exit. "You'll pay for this!" Starscream yelled as Huffer walked away. "Damnit!" Windcharger groaned as he attempted to use his magnetic beam. "Why does the Boys' Academy have to give us toys instead of useful and powerful devices? My beam almost hit the target, but not quite." "You mean you can't use your magnet to move the armored panel?" "That won't work either. I originally tried to pull Huffer into the lava stream." The beast became visible high in the cave above them. "I tried to set up some blockades with the rocks, but they'll only slow him down. The cave is too steep and he has too much momentum!" Starscream snapped his fingers, causing a spark from the friction. "But I do see another way to solve our problems..." He transformed halfway to jet mode and grabbed Windcharger to fly across the lava. Huffer's work with the welding torch cleared away many of the stalactites and stalagmites in this part of the cave, allowing limited flight. "Great work, Starscream! Now I can just sneak under this slowly moving sheet of rock." The sheet that Huffer cut from the ceiling was only three astrometers from the floor as it descended, meaning that Windcharger could crawl under it but Starscream could not. "What am I supposed to do?" he asked, returning to his complete robot form. Already on the other side, Windcharger replied. "It's easy. Just look away from the moving rock wall. Then look back." As Starscream did this, he noticed that the rock was slightly higher then it had been before. "Now do it again." "How does this work?" "I don't know. I picked this trick up from a couple Earth movies. Every time you look away from a rock that's sliding down, it goes up a bit. When you look back, it starts sliding again. Try it a few more times." By the time Windcharger checked Starscream's progress, the rock was above their heads and the beast was rolling toward the glowing red lava. "Starscream, don't you think the beast will sink in the lava?" "Do you want to take the chance that it won't?" Both boys started running again, and eventually they found daylight spilling into the cave and onto Huffer's carcass. Windcharger took the black box from Huffer's claw, but noticed that Huffer had been shot with several corrosive metal darts. "Sorry amigo, but you had it coming. You really had it coming." Then to Starscream, he said "take out your Swiss Army Matrix. I think the wild Quintessons are using us for target practi--" No sooner did Windcharger say this then two Quintessons appeared at the cave's entrance. They carried one blowgun for each face, for a total of ten tubes sticking from the two creatures. "Shoop, shoop, shoop ba doop ba doop," one of the Quintessons said incomprehensibly. "Klatuu barada nikto!" the other added. These statements in gibberish would have been far more threatening if the blowgun reeds hadn't moved so much while the creatures spoke. Starscream and Windcharger shared a quick glance and simultaneously dived forward, slashing at the two Quintessons with their knives quickly. Starscream slit the throats of the first Quint, ducking to avoid an airborne dart. Windcharger used his magnetic field to block pipe attacks as he slammed his knife into the Quintesson's gut. The two animals fell with a simultaneous Wolfensteinesque "Mein leiben!" "It looks like we've done well," Windcharger commented as he carefully folded his knife. Starscream transformed into a jet and took to the skies. "You're not out of the mess yet!" Windcharger turned his head to see the beast's lava covered body rolling towards him at tremendous speeds, so he transformed into a Corvette and attempted to drive down the steep side of the mountain. This escape technique proved to be more of fall. He saw a pack of Quintessons below, standing next to another large beastie. This one was blue and gray, and must have been the one Rumble and Frenzy described. This new beast carried a large blue energy rifle and fired several times, but Windcharger's out-of-control downhill slide served as an excellent evasive maneuver. The Quintessons also spat several darts his way, turning to fire a projectile from each face like a horizontal gattling gun, but they had no better luck than either beastie. Eventually Windcharger and the flaming beast from the cave both touched down and continued to roll towards the lake in the center of the island. While Windcharger rode off towards Starscream, however, the flaming beast crashed down into the crowd of Quintessons, crushing many of them. The blue beast shook his head as he saw the purple one crash, and yelled "where do you think you're going?" to several of the Quintessons who ran away. Starscream hovered in the center of the lake and yelled to Windcharger. "Give me the black box! Give it to me before it's too late!" Windcharger transformed to robot mode and ran over a hill. "Just sit tight. I already fell for that trick once." As Windcharger proceded down the hill, several of the wild Quintessons followed him ranting and raving. The Quintessons uttered a battle cry as they spat even more spears at Windcharger. "Thrakkazog!" At the shoreline, Windcharger activated his magnet and the fighter jet met him halfway. With a solid metallic "ping," Windcharger connected to Starscream's wing and the two took to the air. They both looked down on the mob of angry savages, glad not to be among them. Starscream became particularly entranced with the cold red-eyed stare of the blue beastie. "We're going to kill the beastie, you know." Windcharger had enough beastie-killing for one day. "Isn't that what we were supposed to do today? Besides -- Hey? What's that on my leg?" Looking back, he noticed a Quintesson whose tentacle held tightly to the wheel on his left leg. Windcharger grabbed onto Starscream's wing with two fingers of his left hand, held onto the flight recorder with his other three fingers, and demagnetized himself from the wing long enough to give the Quintesson a strong shock with the magnetic beam. Windcharger remagnetized himself quickly as he watched the vile creature fall to its doom. "Quintessons! I hate Quintessons!" -----David Filip------------------------ grimlock@u.washington.edu ----- Are you tired of conformity on the internet? You can rebel against the culture of the net in four easy steps! 1) Thank and encourage crossposters. 2) Discuss politics politely. 3) Support censorship. 4) Praise Apple Computers, Intel, Microsoft, AOL and the entertainment industry for a job well done.