Eye-fire
Major
In two minds about everything
Posts: 597
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Post by Eye-fire on Mar 12, 2009 17:02:28 GMT -5
This is the first part of a fanfic I've started writing featuring Eye-Fire, Blitzwing and a new OC I'm in the process of apping called Tracker (And friend).
Its run away with me slightly, ballooing to 10 pages with o sign of stopping, is I'll be updating a couple of sections every day until done.
And now, with no further ado...
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Eye-Fire slid his fingers through the cold, wet mud of the jungle and raised it up to his optic.
Click, whirr.
He examined it. His optic was built for long range magnification, not microscopic, but it didn’t change the fact that he still had some of the sharpest optics on the planet which allowed to spot minute details all the same.
Click, whirr.
He didn’t like what he saw. Small red paint flecks, or rust, were visible in the mud, in what used to be a foot print before the rain had washed It away. Eye-Fire had still noticed the tell tale “squishy” look of the mud where the foot print had been.
He had been tracking this target for three days now. Consisting of a carbot sized mech and some sort of hound thing, Eye-Fire knows he had wounded the hound, which had either been rusted or painted red, he couldn’t tell, and they hadn’t been trifling wounds.
It should be dead, let alone moving.
Click, whirr.
Eye-Fire sighed inwardly, reached back and deftly pulled a device that Blitzwing had been playing around with and annoying Eye-Fire with out of the commandos hands. Surprised to have suddenly lost his ‘toy’, Blitzwing recoiled for moment before raising his fist in anger to smite the sniper.
Eye-Fire expected this base response from Blitzwing, and subtlety tightened his grip on the device. Blitzwing had found it and promptly decided it was important in some way, and Eye-Fire had immediately designated it as junk. Blitzwing stopped and lowered his arm, a smouldering look over his face. He had been planning to turn it in when he got back, and couldn’t do that if Eye-Fire destroyed it.
The click whirring stopped, Eye-Fire stored it in subspace. He’d return it when they were back at base and watch as whoever Blitzwing gave it too promptly throw in a bin, but until then it would make a useful hostage.
The two of them had been out here for three days now, three days too long in each others company. Blitzwing made it no secret that he didn’t like the skid plate licking sniper, and Eye-Fire resented being called skid plate licking, amongst other things. An agreement had been reached on the second day, where verbal communication was to be kept for important things only, and they therefore annoyed each other marginally less.
Eye-Fire signalled they were moving out, and Blitzwing shouldered his way past Eye-Fire with a grunt. Their truce on shaky ground already, Eye-Fire decided to let it slide and followed as the triple changer led the way.
- - - -
Elsewhere, deeper into the jungle a transformer gasped to clear his air intakes of the mud that built up in them as he unsteadily stumbled through the thick under growth. Beside him stalked what can only be partially called a dog. Possessed of three heads and with spikes and blades sprouting haphazardly over its rust coloured body, it looked like a beast out of some nightmare. The transformer had a blaster wound on the small of his back where his pursuers had tagged him, but a tree branch in the way had taken the brunt of the shot and saved his life. Various other wounds pockmarked his armour, mostly small dents and scratches that he had attained fleeing through the jungle.
Stopping to rest against a tree for a moment, he raised his hand up and scratched the one head of the hound. Though still alert and ready to act, it allowed its one head to close its eyes in satisfaction at the attention of its master. The two, Tracker and Hades, had originally been out trying to reach what had looked like an abandoned base in the jungle when he was ambushed by two Decepticons. He’d cursed himself for not spotting it, being well versed in such tactics himself. The only reason he hadn’t been blown apart right then and there was Hades charging where the ambushers had been, and though unable to harm them had distracted them enough for Tracker to escape.
He’d been unable to radio back to base, his radio having been damaged. They weren’t expecting him back for another two days, so it was unlikely he’d get any aid until then. He pondered for a few seconds why radios were so fragile before pushing the thought out of mind and continuing on. His only hope was to get to the base and hunker down until the Autobots sent help.
Tracker came to a large, open field that nothing grew on, and stopped as he was about to step onto it. Hades halted instinctually, waiting to see what was wrong. Tracker had seen this before, before had been pulled to this world. Having been an explorer and mapper of undiscovered planets in his past, he had seen just about all natural hazards out there. Finding a largish log, he picked it up and ignored the pain in his arms and threw it. Hitting the mud with a wet squelch, he waited. A few seconds passed, and the log beagn to sink into the mud, before disappearing under it.
As he had expecting, this was quick sand turned muddy by the rain. The field was unusually wide and long, too long to go around without his foes catching him. Most Autobots would be in trouble here, but Tracker wasn’t fazed.
Tracker transformed into a hovercraft. He had originally become an explorer due to his ability to traverse dangerous terrain easily while carting heavy equipment around. Having transformed, he set down for a moment to allow Hades to climb aboard and then set off across the quick mud.
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Eye-fire
Major
In two minds about everything
Posts: 597
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Post by Eye-fire on Mar 17, 2009 16:47:40 GMT -5
Blitzwing had taken to following Eye-Fire again. He’d had to grudgingly, though silently, admit that he had no idea where to go and couldn’t follow the faints tracks at all. This just made him more angry at the apparent ease with which Eye-Fire did it, and seethed as he watched Eye-Fire bend down to examine some tracks again.
The glitch wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Blitzwing. When that thing had charged them where they hid at the ambush the only reason Eye-Fire hadn’t been devoured was Blitzwing reacting quickly enough to draw his Electron Scimitar and swipe the beast across the face and back out into the clearing. He had been sure that he’d nearly cut off one of its heads, or at least knocked it loose, but when they caught up with their prey a few minutes later it had apparently been fine. Fine enough to attack them again and this time breath an acidic gas cloud that had lingered and slowed them down as Blitzwing had to hack a path around the acid cloud.
Eye-Fire could of course air similar grievances. He had stopped Blitzwing blundering into the corrosive gas only just and had saved the ignorant oaf from other dangers in this jungle, not least of which had been stopping him from putting a hand down on the open jaws of a Venus Decepticon Trap, or at least that’s what Eye-Fire called it.
Eventually they came to a large field of mud, and Eye-Fire stopped dead at the edge of it. The tracks stopped abruptly at the edge of the field. Eye-Fire didn’t know what to make of this, and stopped to think for a minute. Behind him, Blitzwing was first puzzled at the stop and then sneered as he saw Eye-Fire was dumb founded by this new development.
He stepped forward and spotted some foliage on the other side of the open field that had been cut through.
“Over there.” He said, pointing at the hole in the foliage.
Eye-Fire had spotted the hole first, but he couldn’t understand why the tracks had stopped so abruptly. Had the Autobot laid a trap? Was this a trick, the hole in the foliage just to confuse them?
He waved his hand at Blitzwing, indicating to leave him alone so he could think for a second.
“What are you waiting for? He obviously floated over this somehow to confuse us but didn’t hide where he a path.” Blitzwing said, turning to face the assassin. He was becoming annoyed and suspected Eye-Fire was now just stopping for no reason. Eye-Fire again waved his hand dismissively at Blitzwing, who shrugged and turned again, walking out into the field.
The mud was soft, and Blitzwing sank a bit into it, but otherwise didn’t notice anything untoward. Eye-Fire looked up, and noticed that Blitzwing was sinking further and further with each step, and that the mud was flowing back into place quickly behind him. Too quickly.
Realizing what was going on, Eye-Fire tried to shout a warning before Blitzwing took another step, but was too late. As Blitzwing placed his foot down, the mud suddenly gave way beneath him and he fell into it face first, getting one of his arms along with his legs stuck as he tried to break his fall, his other arm flailing as he sank further into the mud.
Eye-Fire reacted, leaping forward as he activated his antigravs to keep him above the mud as he slid through the air towards Blitzwing. Reaching out, he grabbed Blitzwing’s tank barrel on his back and tugged with all of his unfortunately puny might to try and free the triple changer. He managed to pull Blitzwings face free, who spluttered as he stretched out his hand for Eye-Fire to take and get a better grip.
Eye-Fire was too weak to pull Blitzwing free, and before long he’d over tax his antigravs and burn them out if he kept this up. Blitzwing knew this, and his own antigravs wouldn’t be strong to pull him free and he’d also burn those out eventually. His only chance lay in his foot thrusters. The jet nozzles were full of mud, and firing them risked damaging them badly, but they were the only thing he had that could give enough of a push to get him loose.
Waving Eye-Fire away, he braced himself for the sudden acceleration and possibly pain. Activating them, he felt something go, but wasn’t sure if this was just mud being pushed free or something more vital falling out. Blitzwing exploded out of the mud field, sending a shower of the sludgy stuff spraying into the air.
Eye-Fire had gotten clear and avoided most of the mud shower, but still felt small droplets splat against his black armour. Blitzwing shut off his thrusters and moved over the bank on his antigravs, shutting them down and collapsing against the side of a tree. Both of them were dead tired, and it was getting dark anyway. Moving a bit further from the mud field Eye-Fire began to construct a crude shelter, little more than a roof made of huge leaves to keep the rain off them.
Eye-Fire half dragged Blitzwing into the shelter, and then promptly collapsed himself. Neither bothered to say anything. Blitzwing contemplated thanking Eye-Fire, but decided against it. Other than going against who he was, it would be meaningless. Eye-Fire had acted because that’s what you did when the person helping to keep you alive was in danger.
Blitzwing reached into subspace, and withdrew two Energon rations, handing one to Eye-Fire who took it without word. Another meanginless gesture, as he knew that Eye-Fire would hand out his own rations if Blitzwing ran out for any reason, but it at least showed gratitude.
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Eye-fire
Major
In two minds about everything
Posts: 597
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Post by Eye-fire on Mar 17, 2009 16:48:17 GMT -5
Tracker woke with a start, trying to scramble up and take off a run, thinking the Decepticons had knocked him and captured him. It was only then that he felt Hades shift his weight to firmly but not uncomfortably stop Tracker from moving.
He’d blacked out earlier when he’d found a natural hollow in one of the huge trees and laid down to rest for just a minute. Unbeknownst to him Blitzwing and Eye-Fire had been delayed themselves, and was in no danger.
Tracker stopped trying to get up, and Hades settled back down, satisfied that his master wasn’t going to do anything stupid, and two of his heads went back to sleep as the other watched vigilantly for danger. Tracker turned over onto his back and looked at the hollow in the tree. He identified its species as one that when cute, secreted a naturally sticky sap that hardened into a very strong and tough almost plastic substance.
Tracker, along with having been an explorer and later guerrilla fighter, was also a naturalist. He had taken many opportunities on his travels to document and study both plants and animals extensively. He hadn’t had the chance yet, but he’d like to compare notes with the rather interesting Botanica, who as far as he could tell was part plant herself. That would have to wait until his life wasn’t in danger.
Sitting up and taking his machete, he made a cut along the tree and scooped the sap up with his fingers where it leaked out and started to apply it to the damaged areas of his armour to toughen those places up. He was careful not to let any get into his joints to gum them up. Extracting a small metal bowel from subspace, Tracker stuck it outside the hollow to catch some water, and then had Hades breath a small amount of the acid gas into the water, diluting the acid in the water and allowing Tracker to clean his hands and any place that the sap had gotten by accident.
Tracker himself and most of his equipment was immune to the acid, a thing he had learned to do early on after Hades had joined him when he had found Hades on Junk. Laying back down he extracted some of his own meagre rations and gave most of what he had taken out to Hades.
Tracker was very energy efficient, and didn’t need much to keep going. Hades on the other hand wasn’t, so he tended to always get more than Tracker.
After drinking the last of the Energon, Tracker lay back down and went into defrag. Tomorrow would be another hard day.
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Eye-fire
Major
In two minds about everything
Posts: 597
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Post by Eye-fire on Mar 19, 2009 8:20:40 GMT -5
- - - -
Eye-Fire finished his defrag cycle and got up, stretching as he did. Blitzwing, in contrast, got up slowly and lazily, scratching his helmet as he yawned in an attempt to dispel the tiredness. He didn’t know how Eye-Fire did it, but the assassin almost never seemed tired. The only time he’d seen weakness and lethargy from him was when he dragged himself into medical one day with half of his one leg behind him.
This was another curious point for Blitzwing, who tended to philosophize hazily in the mornings after getting up. Why exactly did Eye-Fire have such bad luck with the native wildlife? And it wasn’t just on Gillanan, as he’d heard Long Range talk about Eye-Fire’s encounters with alien creatures elsewhere that ended in violence. Was the sniper just really unlucky? Maybe, but Blitzwing wasn’t into karma mumbo jumbo. He liked facts that he could grab by the neck and throttle. One thing he’d thought was that due to Eye-Fire’s propensity to go out in the wilderness and explore that he would of course land into trouble with more of the organic things on this world, just because he’d have more chance to encounter them. But this didn’t explain why they all wanted to tear him a new exhaust port all the time.
These half asleep musings where dispelled when Eye-Fire knocked him on the shoulder, signalling it was time for them to move out. Pushing himself up off the ground, and kicking a rock that he’d been lying on, Blitzwing followed Eye-Fire, a grin spread across his face at the prospect of finding their quarry.
Of course, Blitzwing wasn’t the only one to do some thinking that morning. Inside Eye-Fire, another intelligence moved. Ghost, he called himself, giving a nod to the well known human saying, who had of course never encountered truly intelligent machines when the saying had been uttered.
Ghost had separate orders to Eye-Fire and Blitzwing from Shockwave, as he often did. Being hidden from most meant that he was useful, the only reason why he and Eye-Fire both were still around. Where Blitzwing and Eye-Fire were to kill their target and find this base that had been hidden in the jungle, Ghost was then to further secure anything that looked interesting for Shockwave. Shockwave hoarded any advantage he could gain over Starscream, and who knows, something in this base could be.
He also would like to try and capture that hound like creature that been with the target. He recognized it as superficially resembling a Cybertronian animal, but had seen it survive having a head carved off and a front lost and then no more than a few minutes later have both appendages intact. He hazarded a guess, based on its coloration and ability to either regenerate or reattach limbs, that it may be in some way related the Junkions, such as Screwdriver, who he had been careful in observing when he could.
Thinking that perhaps even a sample, a limb or an armour fragment, might earn him some tiny amount of goodwill from Shockwave, Ghost had been beating out a plan to capture the beast. This would all come later, though. Patience would win him this prize.
- - - -
Tracker pushed forward through the jungle, glancing over his shoulder every few minutes to see if his pursuers had caught up with him yet. Sliding down the side of a small hill, Tracker paused and pulled up the file from his memory that contained the map that he had been given. It wasn’t very detailed or probably accurate, as whoever had built the base had gone to great lengths to hide it in the jungle.
He’d been sent to find it for two reasons. One, it appeared to still be powered, as the area of the jungle that it thought to be in was markedly warmer than the rest of the area. A volcano had been ruled out on inspection of geological data of the area. Its defences were also still apparently active, as it had fired energy weapons of some sort at Skyfire when he had tried to do a fly over of the area. The AA fire had come from multiple directions spaced quite far away, making pinpointing the actual base impossible and making it too dangerous for him to be inserted any closer to the base.
While looking at the map he concluded that he must be close, and might encounter some sort of perimeter of some sort soon. Closing the file, he moved on, Hades a bit ahead of him sniffing the ground and generally being wary of traps or natural pitfalls. Five minutes passed, when suddenly two of Hades heads perked up and sniffed the air while the other let a low growl out. Before Tracker could stop him, Hades burst forward through a wall of green, disappearing from view. Tracker surged after Hades on instinct as he heard weapons fire and Hades attacking something unseen. Pushing through the plants blocking his way, Tracker paused for a second as he took in the scene. This was apparently one of the perimeter defence sites that had fired on Skyfire, Tracker could see the large energy weapons orientated to fire on aircraft, but it also possessed anti personnel weaponry along with a set of six mechanical tentacles for keeping the plants off the defence array and ripping anything else that got too close to pieces.
Given the rather formidable defences it possessed, Hades had done quite well. He’d ripped one tentacle free from its housing on the turret and had torn another in half, the still attached section flailing violently and had now set into a third as it tried to pull his one leg off. Most of the anti personnel had been caught in a blast of acid from Hades as well, still melting as the greenish gas washed over them, but some of them had either resited the acid or been missed completely. These guns now turned on Tracker, who narrowly avoided taking a blast of small bladed projectiles to his face as he dived forward to get close enough to disable the remaining guns.
He didn’t want to use his missile launcher mounted on his shoulder, the explosion might alert the Decepticons to his position and cause them to move faster, and he didn’t have the time to draw his rifle and fire, so his last option was to close and try and smash the guns with his machete.
Jinking to his left to avoid another blast of the scatterguns razor projectiles, Tracker reached out and swatted the barrel of the gun downwards to put off its aim, and was rewarded as the gun fired harmlessly into the ground in front of him. This gave him enough time to draw his arm back for another strike, which again knocked the barrel aside but didn’t damage it further. Seeing that the barrel was too strong to be bent or broken off, he took another quick step forward and grabbed the barrel with his one hand, straining to stop it from turning to him again as he shoved the blade of the machete into the guns housing and twisted it as hard as he could.
The push of the barrel against his arm suddenly went weak, and then failed as he managed to damage the servo that rotated the gun. Just to be sure, Tracker gave it another thrust and twisted again, succeeding in getting something to short out as balck smoke billowed out of the housing. Sighing as he relaxed, he was suddenly startled as one of the tentacles reached back grabbed him by his one leg and pulled him off his feet and up into the air. Hades had done well, but was eventually overwhelmed when one of the tentacles wrapped around his torso as another pulled off one of his two back legs, turning him around so that he couldn’t retaliate. Tracker kept hold of the machete, and used it to hack at the tentacle holding him. The blade bit into the metal appendage, but not very deeply. In response, the tentacle flailed and struck him agiant the ground, slamming him down hard and stunning him as it did so again and again until he lost hold the machete, it flying out of his grip and landing at the base of the turret.
Shaking his head to dispel the haze, Tracker transformed, the tentacle loosing hold as his leg folded back into the skirt of his hovercraft mode. He quickly backed up, keeping out of reach of the tentacles as he targeted his missile launcher at the base of the remaining tentacles. This was wasting too much time and was too dangerous, he had to end this now. Firing the missiles, both spiralled around different trajectories so that they couldn’t both be intercepted, the turret nevertheless tried. Interposing on of the tentacles, one of the missiles truck it and tore it off at the point of impact, allowing the other to fly past and into the base of the tentacles, tearing the remaining two off in the explosion.
Transforming again, Tracker rushed to where Hades had been dropped. Examining Hades, Tracker saw that the damage was superficial, and scooped up his torn off limbs as Hades waited patiently for Tracker to slot them back into place. After getting Hades mobile again, Tracker inspected the tower. While the two of them had been able to damage its weaponry, its armour was still largely intact, only showing small pock marks where the acid had covered it and minor denting where the explosion had hit it. Stepping around the one side, Tracker noted that there was another set of weapon emplacements, though these looked inactive. Picking up a stone, he threw it into the bushes in front of the guns, and saw as they briefly activated to target where the rock had gone into the bushes.
Further inspection revealed that the turret could actually turn, presumably to present an attacker with a fresh set of weapons to an enemy, but the track on which the turret turned was blocked by a large stone, stopping the treads from moving, though they were still in goof enough repair to be able to.
Formulating a plan, Tracker indicated to Hades to breath acid onto the rock blocking the treads, giving them their mobility back. Careful to stay on the side with the destroyed weapons, tracker pushed the turret’s one side so as to turn it so that the weapons would face the way he came while putting him on the other side, closer to the base while presenting his pursuers with something to waste their time on so he could make up some himself.
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