Note: Eh, just look at the note for FS #6-10. :-) And Cain was created by Hydra, and Halfpipe was created by Hooper_X. Everyone else is either Hasbro's or mine.
Firestormers #11: Shadows of the Past, pt. 1
By Trixter
A low throbbing sound greeted Dial as he slowly regained consciousness. The first thing he was aware of was an ache through his whole body; a dull pain that echoed the noise around him. Then he noticed the noise itself; a low throbbing which was so sublime as to have blended into the background of his thoughts. He seemed to be laying on a cold metal floor, and the sound was coming from above him. As his optics came into focus he could see that he was in a bare cell that would have been small for a normal-sized Transformer but was roomy for the Micromaster, with three walls of metal and a fourth that appeared to be composed of some kind of close-set energy bars. His head ached along with the throbbing, too, and he tried to keep from thinking, keep from doing anything that would make the pain in his head worse. He stared at the ceiling, lacking the ambition to look around at the surroundings that he no doubt would neither recognize nor be able to do anything about, and concentrated instead on those outside things, the cold and the noise, trying to shut out the pain in his head. But then he decided to revel in the pain. It was at least someting he knew was real, something familiar. Nothing had been familiar to him since this nightmare started, since the Decepticon commander DeRolle had decided it might be fun to use him as a guinea pig in some time travel experiment and sent him some incomprehensible distance into the future, where he was supposed to help another Decepticon commander named Xevander find where the ship he had been on had crashed on Earth. It only made it worse that it was a future where the war raged every bit as fiercely as it had in his own. Why couldn't it have been a future of peace, a future of hope that he could take back to his fellow Autobots to help them in their own battles? Sure, the Autobots controlled Cybertron now, but the war had just moved to an interstellar plane. They still got attacked, they still got killed, and the outcome still made no progress toward ending the main conflict. It was as brutal and senseless as ever. But at least at home he was surrounded by friends, things were familiar to him. Everything around him was completely alien now, and he felt so alone and helpless...
"Psst! Hey, Dial, you awake?" a voice hissed. Dial realized that the noise had faded away and he looked over, wincing at the stiffness of his neck as he turned his head, to see Upstart kneeling in the cell across the hall.
"Yeah," he sighed. "I'm awake."
"Can you see if there's anyone in the cells beside me?" Upstart asked.
Dial slowly, carefully got to his feet, his joints protesting the idea of functioning. He walked to the bars and peered into the cells flanking Upstart's. He could see Strafe slumped and apparently unconscious on the floor in the one to his right, but the one on his left appeared to be not only empty but open. "You've got Strafe to your right and an empty one to your left." Dial reported.
"Okay, good. You've got Afterburner on your left and an empty cell on the other side," Upstart informed him. "The row of cells stops after Afterburner's, so it looks like Trix got away, and I guess Air Raid, too. If it were the two Technobots who got away," he said with a smile, lowering his voice, "I'd say we were done for."
Dial smiled weakly. "Well, let me know when our rescuers get here," he said, laying back down.
"I...I know where we are, if that makes you feel any better."
"It probably won't. I'm sure it's not anywhere I've heard of."
"We're in the old Autobot Resistance base under Iacon," Upstart whispered almost reverently, as much to himself as to Dial. "Me and Trix used to live down here, back when the 'Cons controlled most of the planet. I guess some Decepticons have set up shop here now." He looked up at the ceiling. "That rumbling noise must have been one of the new underground transports passing over us. I can't believe all the stuff they've done to that city since we left. I remember back when it was just a scrapyard, and Trix had this dream that someday the two of us would get to leave Cybertron and go visit other planets and do whatever we wanted, and look at us now..." He smiled thoughtfully, then sighed. "I hope she's okay..." Suddenly self-conscious, he looked back at Dial. "You must be homesick, huh?"
"Yeah..."
"I'm sorry. Everything here must be so strange to you... Hey, y'think whoever captured us was involved in bringing you here? To this time, I mean. Maybe if we could get out of the prison here we could find the time machine or whatever and get you home. What did you say the guy's name was?"
"Xevander. His name was Xevander."
Okay, guys, I got us some help," Trixter announced as she strode into the shuttle hangar, a small group of Autobots in tow. Hearing her return, Air Raid and Furie, now bristling with weapons and very ready for battle, came out of the Starcruiser to see who she had recruited.
Trixter gestured first to an older Autobot who had come in beside her. "This is Maleeus. Yeah, he's the guy Dharma sent me to see," she added, seeing that they had recognized the name. "He's also apparently my father," she added with a smile, "but I'll explain that to you later." She turned to a cluster of four others standing behind her. "This is my old buddy Siren's Firestormer team: Siren, Whirl, Halfpipe, and Getaway. Turns out they were stopping over here, too, so I tracked them down to help out." Then she turned to the last one, preparing herself for the inevitable reaction of her teammate. He was a tall, almost lanky robot, with a dark olive green and black coloration and a painfully obvious mercenary guild symbol on his chest and forehead. "And this is Cain."
"Waitaminute, Trix, you hired a mercenary!?" Air Raid exclaimed.
Trixter sighed. "Listen, 'Raid, we need all the help we can get here. I want to get this taken care of without having to go to Prowl and get help from Autobot HQ. For one thing, we never did tell them about Dial, and for another, Prowl's probably none too happy with us for that stunt we pulled with the Twilight. I don't want our team charter pulled, and if that means hiring a mercenary, well, there he is. Get used to him, 'cause he'll be with us until we get Ups and the others back. And I'm paying, okay?"
"Okay, fine," Air Raid said with resignation. "So where are we going, anyway? You never did tell me who you think did it."
"You remember back when Dial first appeared, he said something about a Decepticon named Xevander being responsible for bringing him here? Well, the name sounded kinda familiar, then I remembered he had been some little provincial subcommander or something back when the 'Cons were in control here. I had heard rumors about him setting up a base in the old Autobase tunnels under Iacon a few years ago, but I didn't stick around to see what happened with it. So now we have a suspect and a motive," she added with a smile. "He wanted to get Dial back for whatever he brought him here for."
"Starting to sound like Nightbeat, Trix," Siren grinned.
"Someone has to," she returned. "He couldn't come. You guys armed? This is gonna be a big operation."
"You didn't give us much of a chance to get our stuff from our ship," Getaway pointed out.
"Ah. Right. There's plenty on the Starcruiser, go ahead and grab something and we'll get going. There's an entrance to the tunnels under the floor of Maleeus' warehouse. We'll head over there soon as everyone's ready."
The second Firestormer team set off at almost a run for the Starcruiser's armory, some calling dibs on certain weapons even before reaching the ship. "You know, Trixter," she heard Cain say from behind her. "If you hiring me is going to cause too much friction with your team..."
"Don't worry about it," she said. "Air Raid'll get used to you. I think he's just protesting on instinct, he knows as well as I do that we have to get the the guys back ourselves. And if not, well, it's only for a day or two anyway." She looked up at him with a half-smile. "Why do you care if I'm taking flak from my teammate for hiring you?"
He returned her half-smile with a shrug. "No reason."
"You need anything from the ship?" she asked.
"No, I brought everything I'll need with me, thanks. I supply my own weaponry."
Trixter noticed that Maleeus was still standing with her, and turned to him. "Aren't you going to get anything?"
"Oh, goodness, it's been ages since I fought anything," he smiled, shaking his head. "I'll just serve as a guide and let you and your friends handle that part of it, if that's alright."
"No problem." Suddenly there was an outburst of shouting from the Starcruiser and Halfpipe came running down the Starcruiser's ramp, lugging a huge shoulder-mounted missile launcher and laughing madly. Siren burst out the door after him, shouting for him to give it back. "Aw, slag... Guys, guys!" Trixter cut in, rushing over to the arguing pair. "Put that thing down! Those are contraband on-planet!" she hissed. "We're gonna be in enough trouble if we get caught as it is!"
"Okay, I got one for ya, Ups," Strafe called from his cell. "Do DeForest Kelly!"
Upstart sat in total concentration for a few minutes while the other Autobot fell respectfully silent. Finally he spoke, a grin stretching across his face. "DeForest Kelly was in "Night of the Lepus" with Janet Leigh, who was in "The Fog" with Jamie Lee Curtis, who was in "True Lies" with Bill Paxton, who was in "Apollo 13" with Kevin Bacon."
"All right!" Strafe cheered. "My turn..."
Upstart thought for a moment. "Okay, I got one. Do..." Suddenly he was cut off by the hydraulic whoosh of the door at the end of the room sliding open. Upstart and Strafe fell silent as two robots stepped in. The pair had complementary olive-green-and-brown color schemes, the larger of the two being ornamented with a massive arm-gun, two parallel rows of treads against his back, and a seemingly permanent sneer under visored optics. The smaller one was slighter and had wings in place of treads. His face was harder to read, but the look of his eyes told of a smirk under the faceplate. The latter dangled a tiny pair of shackles from his finger, Micromaster-sized exploding cuffs exactly like the ones Dial had been wearing when they first found him.
As they watched, the pair wordlessly proceeded to Dial's cell and the larger one pressed a series of buttons on a panel next to it. The smaller one leaned against the wall between Upstart's and Strafe's cells, ignoring the two Autobots completely. "'Ay, Ramrod?" he said, peering into Afterburner's cell. The Technobot was laying unconscious on the floor just as he been when he finally passed out after flinging himself at his cell's energy bars in frustration. "What's wrong with this one?"
The larger one looked into the cell, then shrugged. "Dunno. Heh, maybe we gave him a bit too much of the stun-juice when we brought 'im in," he chuckled.
"Tsk, tsk, you know we have to have these three alive," the smaller one said jovially. He turned an examining gaze on Upstart, who glared back at him, struggling not to show any fear. "It's hard to make ransom demands with only a corpse."
"C'mon, Nimrod, I'm opening the cell now," Ramrod called. The smaller one turned his attention away from Upstart and strode to the bars of Dial's cell. "This one's not looking too well, either," he added, nodding to the tiny blue form curled up in the corner, his forehead resting on his knees.
Wearily, the Micromaster lifted his head. "No, he's around. Just feeling a little homesick, probably," Nimrod said. "Well, then, just cooperate and if Xevander is in a good mood when we're done with you he'll have you sent home. It's not like you were some great hero or anything," he added mockingly. The bars disappeared and Nimrod stepped into the cell with the shackles. Frozen in apathy, Dial didn't protest as they were snapped onto his wrists and he was lifted up from the floor and carried out of the cell. "Look at the poor thing," Nimrod chuckled to his partner as Dial lay almost completely limp in his arms. "You almost feel sorry for him..."
"Aww, slag, Dial..." Upstart muttered as he realized just how deep the depression he had just written off as homesickness was. "Hold on, little guy," he whispered to him as Nimrod passed by his own cell. Ramrod overheard and shot him a warning glance, then followed Nimrod out of the cellblock.
"Have fun, you three!" Ramrod called as the door slid shut.
"Ups?" Strafe said tenuously a few moments later.
"Mmm hmm?"
"I think we're in some deep slag."
"Yeah, I'd have to agree with you there."
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