Expansive Plains Arrival Thread

[Hook]

The shrill, cacophonic buzz of insects invaded his consciousness, switching the Constructicon from the blackness of defrag to the blackness of turned-off optics. He did not turn them on, would not turn them on until he had determined if there were Autobots waiting around him. He was noted for his kinesthesia and visual acuity, and far too many people assumed that meant he did not know how to listen.

He lay on his back, grass crushed underneath him. He could feel the mass of smashed and broken blades against his metal, as well as the scurry of tiny, many-legged creatures over his body. He bit back a groan of disgust - there are seals to keep them from getting inside, he sternly reminded himself. Be quiet and find out what's going on.

His internal compass sense declared him to be laying with his head pointed precisely towards magnetic north. The temperature of his outermost armor led him to believe that he lay in sunlight. Rather close to the equator if the heat was any evidence.

Above his head, there was the soft, endless rustle of grass stirred by the wind. In the far distance, he heard the cry of some avian. Try as he might, however, he could not discern the subtle beat of a fuelpump or the stroke of anyone's engine.

Either he was alone, or he was surrounded by mechs with Ravage's caliber of stealth. In neither case could he think of a reason to leave his optics offline.

Hook turned on his optics. There was a segmented something with far too many legs on his visor, but past that he could see oddly dull grass rising meters above his head. No one stood over him or crouched near him.

He had never seen grass of such a grey-green color on Earth. However, after encountering the red-leaved plants of some places, he could admit that the planet likely had many strange flora that he neither knew nor cared about. From flat on his back, however, this grass looked much taller than he had ever seen any of it grow on Earth. Well, except for that brief trip to South America, but he was quite certain those grasses had feathery flower plumes. These did not seem to.

Be that as it may, however, he really should direct less attention from the local flora and more to how he had gone from preparing for surgery on Megatron to South America!

Automatically, Hook tried to open a line to Scrapper to ask what the payloader knew.

No connection was made.

Frowning, he cycled through each frequency that his individual brothers had claimed. No connection to Mixmaster. Nothing from Scavenger. Something that made him hope he could connect to Long Haul, but then it passed. Nothing from Bonecrusher.

His hands were shaking, he noted. He ought to find something to occupy them with.

He braced his hands against the ground, sending the tiny creatures trying to colonize him fleeing away, then pushed himself upright. Even sitting up, the grasses were still over his head.

Hook opened a line to the Decepticon base, wanting to yell at his brothers for turning off their comms. Honestly, radio silence did not mean they should turn off their radios so completely that he couldn't contact them.

No connection.

His hands curled into fists, clutching broken blades of grass. Logically, there was nothing to fear. There was no way a strike could wipe out the entire Decepticon base and fling him to South America alive and intact. Therefore, something else had happened.

It gave him the shudders to do so, but he reached down inside himself for Devastator. The gestalt mind left a stain on him but there was an infallible connection to his brothers inside that reflection-mind of Devastator's. All he had to do was grasp it.

Devastator felt wrong. The great gestalt was there, certainly, but... less. Missing pieces.

Missing his brothers.

Hook threw his head back, too civilised to howl like a wounded beast.

Instead, he broadcast a message on the general Deccepticon frequency. <Is there anyone out there?>

---

OOC: No, Hook isn't in South America. Poor Hook.

Dead End will also wind up on the Expansive Plains, not too far from Hook.

[Dead End]

Dead End was mildly surprised--as usual--to find himself coming back online. Evidently Silverbolt's lightning bolt had not actually fried his cerebral processor and lasercore with a lethal surge. Though if he had actually been permanently deactivated, but was still somehow a functional entity--like Starscream evidentally was--would he know the difference? The incident with Starscream's ghost raised all manner of interesting philosophical questions.

No sounds of combat. No damage reported by his internal diagnostics, but he was in the last stages of a full system reset and recovery. Something had shut him down to the deepest bare survival levels. No sounds of much of anything--just minor local lifeforms...

Local lifeforms? That wasn't right! Charr was lifeless! Dead End hurriedly brought his optics on line. He lay on the ground in deep, deep grass, looking up into an indigo sky. How very peculiar. Definitely not Charr. The sky didn't seem the right color for Earth, either. Nor it was Cybertron.

Dead End rose to his feet, listening carefully on all bands. No mechanical noises nearby. No beacons operating. Background static suggested the presence of an ionic layer in the atmosphere. No broadcast channels operating. The sun was the wrong spectral color for Charr or Earth. He wasn't on any one of the three planets he knew anything about.

The grass was quite tall, taller than he'd previous experienced on Earth. The world had an atmosphere--probably containing some insidious corrosive compound that would rust him from the inside out.

Where are my brothers? Dead End wondered with sudden apprehension. It took him seconds to check their private channels and discover the nightmarish truth: the rest of the Stunticons were gone. If they were still alive, they were far beyond his reach. Any of the other Stunticons (except Motormaster) would probably have panicked; Dead End simply felt a dull despair.

They're gone. Or I'm gone. Am I dead? Is everyone else dead?

About that time, Hook's broadcast reached his receiver.

// Is there anyone out there? //

It was Hook's encryption code, though a few years out-of-date. Probably a trap; an army of Autobots could be concealed in this long grass. Well, if it was, they'd find him sooner or later and that would be that. No point in prolonging the inevitable.

Dead End turned on his radar, mapping every terrain feature and identifying every vehicle, robot or large reflective object in 200 miles. Oh look, there's someone! Dead End transformed into car mode and began to push his way through the tall grass toward that someone. The pampas-like grass wasn't terribly conducive for cross-country driving, but driving below the "grassline" made him less of a target than flying over it. Or walking through it. And Stunticons had a habit of driving through terrain that wasn't conducive for it--like shopping malls.

// This is Dead End. Please identify yourself. //

[Hook]

<This is Dead End. Please identify yourself.>

Obviously, Hook had died and gone to the Pit if the only person who had heard him was a Stunticon. The lack of fiery burning had thrown him off at first.

<This is Hook of the Constructicons, as you well know, Dead End,> he answered irritatedly. <Describe your situation.>

The gravity was different, Hook finally allowed himself to notice. Lighter than Earth's-

-He frowned then abruptly turned to look at the angle of the sun. Either he was very close to the equator or this star was closer to the planet than Earth's was, given the temperatures he felt.

[Dead End]

It definitely sounded like Hook, down to the supercilious, irritated tone. But... voices were easy to imitate. Dead End made sure his guns were armed--he could just see them failing to fire right when he ran into the Autobot ambush, leaving him defenseless and quickly scrapped. He'd probably be scrapped even if his guns worked.

//My situation is that your codes are rather out-of-date for the real Hook. This suggests that you are trying to lure me into an ambush by pretending to be a known, reliable Decepticon in hostile territory. Therefore, I am attempting to ascertain your true identity.//

Dead End continued to roll through the grass, leaving a trail of waving tall grass around and behind him rather like some movie dinosaur stalking up on Hook.

[Hook]

Hook frowned slightly and pulled up his logs of Dead End's encryption code. Hmm, it had been different from what the version he had previously recorded. His cypher programs had simply unlocked it without bothering to inform him consciously of it.

<Ah, that delightful ability to decide what the worst possible situation is and then act on that. You do realize that your little theory could work from my direction as well.> A pause. <Of course, the real Dead End can find me with ease. If you shoot first, I shall remove your transmission.>

Yes, Hook. Threaten the Stunticon.

He reached up and removed the segmented, multi-legged creature from his visor. His pressure was precise - enough to remove it, not enough to crack the exoskeleton. He didn't want any... jellied internals staining his face.

[Dead End]

Hook--if it was he--was sitting down, making his outline indistinct, and too similar to several other models in Dead End's memory banks.

//If you are Hook, there would be no point in shooting you first. Therefore, I am not worried that Hook will remove my transmission. If you are not Hook, but are posing as him, I doubt you are an ally--therefore, I will kill you first if you are not Hook. Or you will kill me, in which case I will not care.

By the way, you could speed this process up by standing up and giving me a clear profile to identify. Of course, that would make you a better target to me, if I am an enemy.//

[Hook]

Dead End, unfortunately, makes sense in all of his claims. Except for the basic one that this is a trap destined to kill him.

Furthermore, if he stood up, he could gauge if Dead End was anywhere near him. No matter how tall the grass might be, a Transformer making his way through it would leave a trail.

Hook stood up and scanned the land in all directions. To the south-eastish there is a nice trail of broken grass and the swaying of grasses that suggested someone approaching from other. Farther to the southeast, almost beyond the bounds of his vision at this point, was a swath of vibrant green foliage.

Hm. Well, at least this planet seemed to primarily use chlorophyll, if he recalled Mixmaster's babbling about the flora's digestion process correctly.

[Dead End]

To Dead End's surprise, the unidentified robot actually stood up--and his profile matched that of Hook.

Dead End was getting tired of driving through the thick grass. He transformed and rose, skimming the grass in flight mode. He held his rifle at his side with one hand, just in case Hook turned out to be not quite the ally he ought to be.

Lime green and purple Constructicon colors: check. Decepticon markings: check. Perpetually annoyed expression: check.

"Hello, Hook. Do you happen to know where we are? I have a terrain map I generated for the region, but it matches nothing in my mission database. I do not recognize this planet, either. Indeed, I find the entire situation very curious."

[Hook]

Hook put his hands on his hips, looking nothing so much like a very irritated schoolmaster with a pupil he doesn't expect good things of anyway. "Curious is a very apt description of the situation. I suspect I'll have a much better idea of where we are when the sun sets."

He turns, surveying the rest of the landscape now that Dead End has identified himself as not being a threat to him. To the east, more of the green foliage. To the north, much closer, are hills dotted with the dull-green of the grasses at their bases but the foliage fades into reds as the hills get higher.

To the west, after he cranks up his long-range vision, he eventually detects the glint of light off a large body of water.

"Hmmm. Do your maps show any structures or other signs of habitation?"

[Dead End]

Dead End's visor flickered and glowed as he considered.

"There are some metallic structures in the lowlands to the east," he says, transmitting the terrain map to Hook in a quick burst of data. "The hills to the north are sufficiently irregular that a large structure could go undetected by my instrumentation. There's also traces along the ground in several directions--I have indicated them on the map as 'tentative paths'--that may be paving of some radar-reflective material. I cannot resolve them clearly in the ground clutter."

"Do you have any notion how we were transported here, or what happened to our forces?" Dead End forces himself to ask the question calmly, but inside, he's anything but calm. Where are my brothers? What's happened to them?

[Hook]

Hook turned back to the east, bringing the map up as a overlay on one of his visors. "Hmm. There is a 'tentative path' thirty-three miles to the north and east, that seems to working towards those structures. We will make for that; roads are always a good sign."

He transforms without answering Dead End's question and begins to roll towards the 'path' he has chosen to investigate. He can drive and talk at the same time.

Assuming Dead End is intelligent enough to follow him, he begins to speak. "After examining my most recent memory files from just prior to appearing here, I cannot determine a particular event that would have caused this. Of our forces that I have attempted to contact, only one has answered."

[Dead End]

Dead End transformed back into car mode and followed.

"That would be myself. No others, then. Were you in combat when this... happened?" Dead End was trying not just to find some common factor, but to lay that nagging fear to rest: Are we dead? Fear was perhaps too strong a word for it; it was more like an unsettling notion that wouldn't leave him alone.

[Hook]

"I was preparing for a surgery on Megatron. No, I don't honestly suspect that I'm dead."

Lack of his brothers and the presence of the Stunticon, aside.

[Dead End]

"Megatron?" There was surprise in that cultured voice. "That is very, very odd. Er, when was this?"

[Hook]

Odd? Well, Hook supposed that Megatron actually requiring surgery was rather odd. It had certainly surprised him at the time, but he had not been present at that particular battle. He and his brothers had been back at the base when the report came in that he needed to be ready to work on Megatron as soon as the warlord returned.

But why would Dead End ask 'when?'- Ah, yes. The Stunticons had been off racing around like hooligans at the time. They likely hadn't heard the news.

He gives Dead End a date that is roughly twenty years before what Dead End would know. It's a bare two weeks after the incident when Swindle sold his gestalt-mates for scrap.