"Midnight
When it all comes down
Only the bravest
Fools are around."
-The Monkees, "Midnight"
"There," stated Pincher, pointing at a grid-map of Cybertron. "That's where the distress call is coming from."
"The Kalis Autobase?" asked Thunder Clash. "But that's been abandoned since Flame massacred the city's inhabitants and destroyed himself. No less than Ultra Magnus said there was no one left alive there."
"Nevertheless," replied Pincher, "there it is."
"Okay, so what are we going to do about it?"
The computer console Pincher was seated in front of unfolded into humanoid form and stood next to the aqua and grey robot. Mainframe's chest lights blinked in seemingly random patterns for a moment, then he nodded to himself and spoke.
"I do not see much reason for concern. Although we cannot remotely substantiate the distress signal from here, Decepticon activity in Kalis has been extremely limited since the aforementioned Flame incident. Suggestion: we send a small unit to investigate and link up with the senders, if any."
"A rational suggestion, Mainframe," agreed the Turbomaster commander.
"Of course, sir."
---
Cybertron was passing near a star - near enough that one of its moons caught the light and hung full in the sky above the silent ruin of the city-state of Kalis. Lower down, a pair of Autobots pushed through the treacherous wreckage to which much of the city had been reduced.
"Tell me again why we're here," grumbled Upstart, ducking under a collapsed power pole.
Trixter sighed and looked back at her partner. "Look, there weren't that many people at base when we left. Would you prefer it if Thunder Clash sent Groundshaker and his Tank Of Doom to cruise over and check it out?"
"He may as well have. It's not as though our flying ability is helping much."
"It got us here."
"Yeah, well, we couldn't seem to find the entrance from up there."
Trixter paused in her struggles through the twisted rubble to swat Upstart in the head. "It's an Autobase, Ups. It's supposed to be hidden."
"Yeah, well, I could deal with it being somewhat less hidden, eh? How important could a dump like this have been to anyone anyway?"
"In a war like this, every little bit of ground counts. You're the one who went through officer training. You're supposed to know these - hello, there."
Trixter stopped abruptly, and Upstart moved up next to her. "Find something, Trixie?"
She nodded triumphantly, and shoved aside a charred metal panel. "Just an abandoned base or two."
Upstart grinned. "And just about bloody time, too, I'd say. Care to let us in?"
"Me?" asked Trixter in mock wide-eyed innocence.
"Ah, yes...I AM technically in command, eh?" Upstart tapped in the outdated entry code Thunder Clash had given him, and the double doors set into the ground slid apart. "After you, m'dear." Upstart swept into a gallant bow.
Trixter swatted him in the head again and chuckled. "Chivalry's not quite as impressive when you're headed into unknown dangers, Sir Upstart." She stepped into the darkness ahead, and her footsteps rang hollow on the "floor".
"Elevator," she commented. Upstart ducked stepped onto the platform, and Trixter hit the button to send them on their grinding, creaking way.
"Atmospheric."
"Rubbish," returned Upstart with a smile.
The elevator clanged into the bottom of its shaft, and the pair stepped out into the central control room of the base. It was pitch-black. Suddenly, there was a quiet rustling noise. Trixter gasped and switched on her headlights, and the murky interior of the room was instantly divided into sharply contrasting areas of light and darkness. A mecharat jumped off a table and disappeared into the gloom. Trixter wiped her brow with relief.
"Hello? Anyone home? Mom? Dad? Lurch?" she called.
"Well, gee, that's nice. Nobody here, probably a faulty distress call, and we took HOW many sprocking breems to get here?" snarled Upstart.
Trixter glanced at her wrist instinctively, then shrugged. "Dunno, actually. I seem to have forgotten to switch my chronometer over from the last time we were on Earth. Though I can tell you that, US Eastern Standard Time, it's midnight, October 31st."
Upstart had flung himself sullenly into a chair, and was tracing caricatures of high-ranking Autobots into the dust on a table. "Great. Well, now that we've gotten knowing that, which was certainly number one on my "Critical List Of Very Important Things To Do", out of the way, could we please move on to getting the slag out of here?"
"We really ought to make a more thorough check of the base, Ups. I mean, not because I think we're going to find anything, just because - " Trixter broke off in mid-sentence and cocked her head. She blinked and asked, "You hear something?"
Upstart glanced up from his bucktoothed Grimlock and scowled. "Hearing spooky noises, Trix? Stories of the dead walking in Kalis dancing in your head?" He mockingly made spooky finger-wiggling gestures at her. "They're coming to get you, Trixter...you should probably fix your watch. I think the scary Earth-times are getting to you."
"An excellent suggestion," cut in a chilling voice. "A shame she's not going to get a chance to implement it." The Autobots glanced at each other, and Upstart scrambled up out of the chair over to Trixter as six hulking shadows separated themselves from those surrounding a doorway leading deeper into the base. A faceted orange creature, its arms extended nearly twice over by the gleaming blades protruding from them, proved itself the owner of the voice. "I had hoped our little ruse would attract more worthy prey, but I suppose we shall have to make do. Trick or treat, little Autobots."
"Icepick? The Pretender Monsters? I hauled my tailfins out here to find a bunch of Decepticons in reject Halloween costumes? It's gonna take more than a sprocking $4.99 Scary Rock Monster outfit from K-Mart to -"
"Upstart, MOVE!" shouted Trixter as she shouldered him back into the elevator.
Icepick's enraged tones echoed through the dingy elevator shaft as the Autobots clunked desperately upwards. "Find them! Destroy them! We may not have gotten the High Command to come to us, but we're certainly going to kill what we've got!"
As Upstart and Trixter dashed out of the base, they practically ran into the Pretender Monsters, who had inexplicably beat them to the surface. Upstart's optics widened as a spray of Wildfly's corrosive spit narrowly missed his head, then broke into a run at right angles to the advancing Decepticons.
"Count of three, Trix, we take to the air and ditch these freaks. Only two of them can fly, and they obviously lack my natural skill and grace, so we'll be at a lot less of a disadvantage than we are now. Ready?"
"Not gonna work, Ups," replied Trixter, sprinting along next to him. "I blew my fuel getting here. I didn't think we'd be quite so pressed for time."
"Charming. Any other suggestions?"
"If we could find someplace to go to ground, we could wait them out. At least buy ourselves some time."
"Sounds like a plan. Any ideas?"
"What about over there?" Trixter pointed at a rusted-out rectangular building to their right. Upstart nodded agreement, and they cut right, their feet rhythmically pounding against the riveted ground. Until Trixter's foot slipped out from under her, sending her sprawling to the ground. Bristleback leapt forward, slavering, and crashed down where Trixter had been kneeling mere seconds before.
Upstart glanced back at Trixter, who was hanging behind him with her wrist in his hand, and managed a worried grin as he rocketed just above the ground. "Bit of a spill, Trixie? Feet not cooperating with the old cerebral module?"
Trixter, not blushing only through lack of ability, managed, "Well, some people aren't exactly used to running away, I guess."
"Taking shots at my bravery? And so soon after I save your life? Some people just have no gratitude..."
They shoved through the door to their chosen shelter, and while Upstart trained his laser rifle futilely out the door, Trixter retracted her hand and extended a welding torch. She feverishly slammed pieces of scrap metal up over the door and windows and fused them in place, and after she finished, she dashed to the center of the room, and extended her hand again. Drawing her sonic pistol, she cast a worried glance at Upstart. "Right, so, now what? That's hardly going to give us much time."
"Er...pray for divine intervention? No, not going to work, our god's dead. Call for help? No, not going to work, all the Autobots here are dead. Dig a big hole...?"
"Ups, you're babbling. Snap out of it. In about a cycle and a half, Icepick and friends are going to knock down that wall and come in and make US dead. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"
"We could...we could set a trap. Set our weapons to overload - amplify my laser pack's blast with your sonic convertor - and make some kind of trigger to blow them all to the void when they break in. Can we do that?"
Trixter thought for a moment, then nodded. "Shouldn't be too hard. 'Course, if it DOESN'T work, we'll be completely defenseless."
"We can't beat them in a stand-up firefight as it is. Any chance is better than no chance, in my opinion."
"Right, give me your gun then."
Upstart turned his rifle over, then frowned. "Okay, now I feel completely defenseless."
Trixter pulled the scope off his rifle, then started disassembling the weapons. "What? Oh...use a hand-tool or something. Don't you have a close-combat weapon?"
Upstart thought for a moment. "Oh, yeah, I guess that'd work..." His hand slid in, and a chainsaw slid out.
"Not the most traditional or elegant weapon in the world."
"Hey, do your job right and I won't need to use it."
"Well, we'll find out soon enough," said Trixter, and attached the makeshift bomb to the door. There. It's magnetized to the door. Let's just hope they decide to come in that way."
"Well, we'll just have to give them the idea," said Upstart, hefting his chainsaw. As if on cue, Slog's razored arm carved through the metal sealing one of the windows. Upstart lunged at it with his saw, and as the rotating links bit into the shell's arm, it withdrew in a splash of yellowish fluid. Trixter, having extended her wrist blade, was fighting a similar struggle with Scowl. "Do we have a back door, Trix?"
"I'll make one. Hang on."
As Upstart continued battling the invaders at the windows, Trixter moved to one of the rear windows and began prying off her recent handiwork.
Upstart shoved Bristleback's armored snout back out the window and ran back to where Trixter was removing the last panel from the window. "Let's get out of here, partner, while we've got the chance," he said, and crawled out.
"What, no gallant 'ladies first' this time, Upstart?" Trixter called after him. Then, at the prompting of a definite buckling noise from the direction of the door, she scrambled after him, taking refuge as he did under a heavy piece of grating a few meters away.
"Fireworks time, Trix. I hope."
"Have I ever failed you before?"
And with that, the building exploded, the roof bursting in a blossom of fire. The walls fell almost delicately to the ground. The skeletal framework squatted, a thin column of smoke rising up to the moon.
"Beautiful work."
"Beautiful?" cut in a painfully familiar voice. "Crude is more like it. Crude and ineffective." Icepick stepped out of the flames, battered but deadly as ever.
"I'm afraid your carcasses are going to be the only art produced of war tonight, Autobots," added Slog.
One by one, the Pretender Monsters assembled in front of the pair, who watched aghast as their enemies rose from their infernal grave.
"Pretender shells...phase out!" commanded Icepick. The sinister sextet's shells took on a sticky consistency, and their gleaming robotic forms literally stepped out through their shells, which then solidified and moved to support their masters. Icepick transformed into his humanoid battle mode and leveled his gun on the Autobots.
"Ready to submit, vermin? Or would you like to continue to prolong the inevitable?"
Upstart sighed, and turned to Trixter. "Oh, I think we might give it one last shot..."
Trixter set her jaw and nodded. "I don't really have any other plans."
Icepick's eyes narrowed. "Why must you make this so difficult?" he asked, the sentence punctuated with the sudden roar of half-a-dozen weapons being fired simultaneously.
The Autobots ran with increasing hopelessness, not knowing where they were going, and boxed in by the city's dark and random architecture. Suddenly, there was a break in the overhead walkways and cables - and the ground. A huge chasm yawned in front of them, and the street they were on tapered out to a twisted and jagged point.
"End of the line, Trixie," declared Upstart, a grim look on his face.
"Go on, Ups. You can make it. Go without me."
Upstart cracked a beaten smile and shook his head. "Not about to abandon you, Trix. Not to those animals."
Trixter smiled back, and took Upstart's now de-chainsawed hand. "Your funeral, Ups. Literally. But...thanks."
"My pleasure. So what do we do now?"
"Well...we've got one chance left. But luckily, it's right from my area of expertise."
"Autobots!" interrupted Icepick. "The chase is over. This battle is over. You have been worthy prey, I give you that. But now you will die."
"Ha!" laughed Trixter, suddenly. "Don't listen to them, Upstart. They're nothing! It's not as though they're a powerful team like the Combaticons. We'll just have to take them out." She extended her blade and stepped forward, still holding Upstart's hand.
Upstart hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward. "Yeah - yeah, sure. They're just a bunch of Pretenders, anyway."
The Decepticons became visibly upset at this.
"'Just a bunch of Pretenders'?" muttered Scowl.
"Do you expect you can beat us, Autobots?" sneered Slog.
"We'll show you power!" growled Bristleback.
"Yes, we will," stated Icepick. "Pretender Monsters, combine to form..." as he spoke, Icepick began to change shape, expanding and combining with the other robots to form a huge Transformer that loomed over the Autobots like an Energon storm over a rust field. The gestalt roared, then finished with a voice which was an almost saurian bellow, "...Monstructor."
The Autobots, visibly shaken, moved back. Monstructor, in his haste to obliterate them, raised his solar cannon and stepped forward, the monster shells snarling like a pack of dogs at his heels.
This was his fatal mistake. The already-unstable protrusion on which they all now stood had been further weakened by the twin ravages of time and war. Feeling Cybertron literally move beneath his step, the giant glanced down, then up at the Autobots with pure hatred in his optics. A nanosecond later, the entire structure collapsed, plunging both Autobot and Decepticon alike down into the abyss beneath.
The Autobots' plunge, however, was cut short, as Upstart used his thrusters to propel Trixter and himself out and over to safety. The former's added weight was enough to pull them into a controlled crash just meters from the edge, but it was enough. The immediate threat was over.
Trixter and Upstart lay in a heap for a while after hearing Monstructor's satisfying collision with the canyon's unseen floor. Eventually, Upstart craned his neck and grinned weakly at Trixter. "So, in response to Icepick's original question, then...it's 'trick', is it?"
"Wouldn't really be appropriate otherwise, would it? Don't want to go around calling myself 'Treatster'," she smiled back.
---
Long after the Autobots had headed out to inform their commander about their less-than-productive search for teammates, Wildfly and Birdbrain's shells circled the chasm, at a loss for anything to do until their masters regained consciousness. Finally the weak call came.
"Come...come and GET me, you useless chunk of tube-grown organic pillow-stuffing..." came Birdbrain's shaking voice from far below.
The raven-black birdman paused for a moment, beating its wings thoughtfully, as it considered in its rudimentary brain how frequently it was used as armor, or cannon-fodder, or a mine detector, or any number of unpleasant tools. It gave its hoarse response with a chilling finality.
"Nevermore."
