The only stuff I know about Octane is from the comics, lol. I think they were the UK comics too. Oh man, I don't watch nearly enough TV to know what Shadow Raiders/War Planets us all about -- tbh, I referenced the name Feldspar from my geology textbook! (So boring, I know, haha)

 

really ? Most main characters of the show are in fact named after geo terms. Aside from Feldspar, there's graveheart, jade, mantel, mica, jewelia (more of a reference )

 

Lol srsly??? That's hilarious! Geology terms make great names, not gonna lie. Oh and hey, thanks for reading! I'll be posting part two soon now that the plot and characters have been introduced!

 

Arite kids, feel free to poke any holes in my physics here just in case I missed any significant sciencey details.  
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The corridors branched between separate facility domes were not necessarily long, just cramped and numerous. They were airtight by necessity and adjusted for artificial gravity, but unfortunately not well-armoured. This was due to budget cuts, of course. Security and safety had been ejected hand in hand.

Currently, the corridor lights had been cut, but the emergency lighting was doing its best in the form of auxiliary infrared gas bulbs lining the floors. The result was that of a hellish, underlit world, subterranean in its darkness and endless in its repetition. Down one of these dark, red-lit corridors, Twofist was trying his best to keep up.

"Artemia!" he panted. "W-wait up! Why are you going so fast!?"

"Keep up, shorty!" Artemia growled. She was moving at a good clip down the hallway with little in the way of stealth, clutching Rush's mean little pistol in her remaining hand. Her other shoulder was still short an arm, but apparently she wasn't letting it slow her down.

"No, seriously! I thought you were a scout! Y'know, sneaky!" Twofist hollered. "This isn't sneaking!"

"Keep yelling like that and every Autobot in this slagging facility will hear you!" Artemia snarled over her shoulder.

"Like that one?!" Twofist choked. He jabbed a finger at the dark shape approaching them at similar speeds.

"Hey, you!" a gruff voice shouted out. "Stop!"

Artemia's glitter-dusted optics glinted. "Nope!"

With a snap her arm up came up as she skidded to a screeching halt. Her slender torso turned, her weapon angled forward, and without blinking she squeezed off a shot. BKAM! Artemia twisted with the recoil to prevent the kick from smashing her grip back into her own face. In the narrow corridor, the gunshot sounded like a punch to the head.

The lone figure at the far end of the hall suddenly pitched backwards right off his feet in a spray of fuel. It hit the floor a meter away with a splat and a heavy crunch, limbs flapping loosely like an unstrung puppet.

Artemia blow the smoke drifting up out of the muzzle of her gun, and then tossed it over her shoulder. "Fist, catch," he said casually, as she began walking over towards the body.

Twofist hastily stumbled forward a step to catch the falling weapon. "Ooh, ow! It's hot!" he hissed, suddenly tossing the steaming weapon back and forth between his hands. "Primus!"

Upon approaching the fallen figure, Artemia knelt down and began one-armedly patting down the body. The dead mech appeared to be a run-of-the-mill flier, broad-winged and scuffed from ages of wear and tear and no maintenance. It wasn't anyone she recognized; no one from this facility had a proper flight mode except for Feldspar and one other.

And then she spotted the Decepticon sigil.

"What in the Pit..." she whispered, staring incredulously at the scratched purple badge. "Oh spark of a glitch..."

Twofist had finally managed to get a hold of the smoking weapon between thumb and forefinger before he stood back up again. "Yikes! Hey Artemia, what're you doing over there?"

"Fisty, we've got trouble," Artemia growled. "They're us."

"Huh?" Twofist was flapping his hand at the gun in a vain attempt to cool it down.

"They're us. They're us! These Primus-slagged Matrix-fraggers are Decepticons!" Artemia hissed as she snatched a knife off the hip of the body she had been searching. "They're raiding their own guys! They just killed our own guys!"

"Why am I not surprised," Twofist sighed, as he finally managed to grip the little gun without burning himself.

"Those-- backstabbing...!" Artemia seethed. "What's WRONG with these people?!"

Twofist shrugged. "See, that was my dilemma," he began, spreading his hands in supplication. "Either these guys got the wrong info, or they're just a bunchaohPrimus--"

Twofist was staring distinctly over Artemia's shoulder. She whirled around to see a second mech -- also a flier, burly and towering -- looming over her.

"MATRIX-FRAGGERRRR!" Twofist howled. He slapped Rush's little pistol into both hands, gripping it like death, and pulled the trigger.

The small corridor rocked with thunder as his first shot slammed into the enemy mech. The softhead shell smashed itself into the mech's chestplate, leaving the pointed head of the piercing bullet inside to slice into the heavy armour plating and tumble itself in through the mech's body. The sheer ballistic force sent the bullet exploding out the mech's back in a blast of fuel and shrapnel.

"Stop, stop!" Artemia shrieked. "Twofist you idiot, STOP SHOOTING--"

The other two shots that followed however missed their mark completely, burying themselves deep into the walls, BKAM, BKOW! But the noise didn't stop there. With an audial-popping, floor-jarring SLAM the entire wall ruptured into a flashing metal blossom, and the blackness of space screamed inward. The entire section of corridor leapt and shuddered as explosive decompression suddenly ripped the atmosphere right out into the broad vacuum of the moon's barren, frozen surface, streaming thin trails of vapour as it escaped out into the eternal night. The red lights began to flicker, and a warning klaxon began blaring.

The fuel-splattered bodies of the two shot Decepticons slid along the floor, tripped over the edge of the tearing hole and disappeared out of the ever-widening gap in an instant. Twofist had the foresight to grab onto some loose piping, but Artemia was a hand short.

Twofist's shout was lost in the scream of escaping air, but he thrust a hand out to Artemia just as she scraped on past--

His palm was met by a hard slap and a tight grasp of fingers. Too tight perhaps, but Twofist wasn't complaining.

Artemia could barely hear him over the roar. "--flow-- sonic-- velocit-!" he was saying, throwing his voice into the face of the shearing wind. "Gas constant-- essure-- drop-- fift-- cycles!"

"What?!" Artemia hollered into the wind, but Twofist could not hear her either.

"The gas content!" he tried again, "--of this corridor-- is pressurized-- 300K...! Takes-- fifteen cycles-- to empty--!"

Artemia could not fathom what Twofist was yelling about, but roughly twenty fuelpump-stopping minutes later, the air within the corridors had effectively drained out of the structure, and all semblance of atmospheric pressure had gone with it. Once the wind stopped trying to suck them out into the terrible vastness of space did Twofist tentatively let go of his pipeline and pull Artemia back into the shadow of the corridor after him.

Without a medium in which to speak in, Twofist switched to internal radio.

"Hey--are you getting this?" he said tentatively, tapping the side of his head with one finger.

Artemia stared at him quizzically for a moment, and it took her a moment to acknowledge. "Yes I can hear you," she replied irritably. "You can let go of me now.

Once they were safely within the corridor, and not within view of the moon's regolith plain, Twofist released Artemia's hand. The klaxon was no longer audible, but the flashing lights were still blinking.

"Sorry," Twofist muttered. "Got a bit, y'know, carried away."

"Stupid!" Artemia slapped him upside the head. "You used up all the ammo, that clip only had four bullets in it! And why the Pit were you discharging a projectile weapon inside a space station?!

"I was only doing what you were doing!" Twofist protested as he roughly bounced off the opposing wall. "Gah, this creeps me out, I hate space! Let's get outta here!"

With a few strategic launches off surrounding surfaces, the two jockeys slid forward through the remainder of the connecting corridor without further resistance.

 

Check it, kids! The story now has a cover to go with it!   And yes, they're all OCs except for Octane in the upper left there.  

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-fan-art/613538-acers-art-thread-2.html

 

"It's not working," Scunge said with a troubled frown. Or at least, his brows were creased, since the lower half of his face was partially concealed by a faceplate.

Scunge was still crouched on the floor, trying to tinker with the sleek black box. The flashy TORTURETRON 550 DX sticker was still emblazoned on one side, but the other side -- the bit with all the out-dated switches and bulb lights -- was being less flashy. A series of cables, all bundled together with twist-ties and plastic rings, snaked across the dusty floor towards the wheeling desk chair where Feldspar sat, arms still clamped behind his back. The thick bundle of cables ended at the back of his head, where the mech's head casing had been neatly drilled and sawn open to plug the cables directly into his exposed CPU. Feldspar's head was bent forward, jaw hanging loose, optics dull and unlit.

"What do you mean it's not working," Octane muttered, his gaze narrowing as he glared over at his technician. His overlong wings folded back in annoyance.

"I dunno. I mean, he's logged in and everything, but none of the regular interface syntax is responding," Scunge tried to explain. He stared helplessly at the narrow slip of screen on the Torturetron 550 DX. The display was so old that it the liquid crystal beneath the scratched plastic screen had dried up a bit on one half. "It's hanging on some kind of startup process running in the background or... or something."

Octane whipped around to glare at Turbogear. "What is he talking about?" The white-and-purple tankerbot demanded.

Turbogear wordlessly shrugged, looking just as puzzled.

Octane whipped back around to face Scunge. "Well, reboot it or something!" He ordered.

"I already tried that!" Scunge protested. "It just really wants to run this other process first. Look, I'll try to force quit whatever this subroutine is, but mind you this box was programmed a bajillion light-years ago and my handle on basic Lunix is kinda rusty. This thing is older than I am, so its bound to run kinda clunky..."

"Fine, whatever," Octane sighed with an exasperated flap of his arms. "Just how long is this going to take?"

"I dunno. A megacycle?" Scunge shrugged. "It's still configured for the last poor bastard who was plugged into it too, so changing the settings will take another half-mega too."

Turbogear meanwhile heaved a weary sigh in an effort to disguise his relief at the delay. "I wonder what old Feldy here is dreaming about in the meantime...?" he murmured, casting a glance over at the Lt-Colonel's inert face.

* * * * *​

What...? What's going on here? Hello?

Feldspar was staring up in a painfully bright light that was being shone directly into his optics. Beyond the edges of the fluorescent white glow was nothing but darkness and sinister shadows. Fuzzy lines of distortion interrupted his vision. Had his optics been damaged?

I can't move. Where am I?

In his field of view, a vague silhouette leaned in to stare at him. From the center of a wide, hexagonal head, a single yellow optic shone at him.

"Good. He is conscious," the figure said, his single light blinking slightly. "Have you begun the recording process?"

"Yes, my lord," a second voice said, emanating from off to one side where Feldspar could not see.

Feldspar fixated on the single yellow light rather than stare into the bright lamp. He could not speak either, and for some reason his vision kept jumping and flickering.

"Doctor Ultra Acinus," the first voice said, addressing Feldspar directly, "We have met before. You do remember our last conversation?"

The voice was very calm and cool, with a tone usually reserved for high-falutin college professors, Feldspar noted. To his surprise, he found himself nodding.

"Good," the one-opticked figure replied. "As I do recall, I suggested to you in no uncertain terms that you were to relinquish your thesis data to me. It seems that you were more prepared to face the consequences of defying that order."

Feldspar was even more astonished to discover that he was replying -- but in another mech's voice.

"I know what you are," the voice said raspily. To Feldspar, it sounded like it was wheezing from inside his own head. "And I will provide you with nothing, Shockwave."

The yellow light stared at him for about half a second too long to be a casual glance. The light then bobbed aside, nodding to the unseen assistant across from him. Then suddenly Feldspar's vision went crazy, blurring and distorting wildly as a hideously painful shock slammed into his head from behind. His senses reeled, but for some reason the rest of his body did not respond to the pain; rather, he lay completely slack, as though his mind were separate from the rest of his nervous system.

The electrical shock lasted for a few seconds before abruptly cutting off. The yellow optic focused on him again.

"As you have just now experienced, your own empathy device is performing as speculated," the cool voice went on.

"My invention isn't supposed to be used this way!" Feldspar snarled, though not in his own voice. "It's supposed to be a shared simulation empathy enhancer! What-- what have you done with it? Did you just turn it into a torture device?!"

"Precisely," said the flickering yellow optic.

At this moment, Feldspar realized what was going on. For some reason he was experiencing the last moments of this Ultra Acinus, but... how? Dimly he recalled Scunge, and his own complaint about the... oh, dear Primus. He was logged into it, and being forced to relive another victim's pain.

"However, your presence here today is not specifically to test your device," the singular optic went on. "It is your thesis work on the dual-altmode transforming cog that interests me. If you will not reveal the location of your notes, Doctor Acinus, then I must have you reveal them to me in person, however long it takes."

"And if I resist, you'll just continue to torture me with your twisted version of the Empathy Box," the doctor sneered.

"Correct," the optic replied. "As you can see, the device causes the mind to experience pain directly without actual physical harm. Your body will never tire, break, or shut down. You will be able to feel pain as a sensation for an infinite length of time. You will never fall into stasis lock. And there is no one who knows you're here."

"That is true," Acinus muttered. "But sooner or later, the pain will break me. And when that happens, I assure you that all you will get out of me is pure gibberish. Going insane will facilitate that nicely."

"You will work that hard to protect your research?" the lone optic asked curiously. "Very well, then. Assistant, raise the threshold on the empathy box, and set stimulation to fifty percent."

"Yes, my lord," the assistant replied, out of sight. "Er. Just a moment. It's telling me that my syntax is incorrect, but I'm copying it straight from the manual here..."

The yellow optic paused, and waited.

"...yeah, it's... huh. Slaggit, it just crashed," the assistant went on. "Hold on, it's rebooting now."

The yellow optic continued to wait. It folded its arms and leaned back slightly, as if staving off impatience.

"Aaand... great, now it's taking forever to load," the assistant sighed. "Did this guy program this? This is the worst code I've ever seen. It's more than fitting that he should be tortured by his own work, seriously. Talk about bad karma, eh Doc?"

"Proceed with the reconfiguration," the yellow optic sighed. "Now."

"Okay, okay. I mean, yes my lord. Two astro-seconds. Okay, it saved the settings from last time. Threshold up three bars, and stim set to fifty..."

* * * * *​

No sooner did Turbogear glance over at Feldspar when the Lt-Colonel suddenly burst out with a strangled scream.

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Turbogear did a doubletake and staggered away. "I didn't do anything!"

Feldspar continued to ululate a fuel-curdling scream in the meantime, his voice pitched high in agony. As he was a large mech, his voice was large as well, and it filled the derelict office with terrible echoes.

"What-- Scunge, what did you do?!" Octane shouted over the screeching.

"I-I dunno!" Scunge stammered as he snatched his hands away from the Torturetron. "The box didn't do anything! It's still loading some kind of other software, I-- I don't know what it's doing!"

"Shut it up or I'll shut it up for you," Octane snarled, with his hands up to cover his audials. "Now!!"

Scunge did his best to run a flurry of simple commands through the prompt, but none of his syntax proved to be useful. All the while, Feldspar just screamed and screamed, never pausing for breath, never stopping. It was nerve-wracking.

Both Octane and Turbogear watched the screaming mech in mixed horror and fascination. Feldspar's body did not move, but his mouth was open, and horrible noises were coming out of it. Turbogear winced and eventually looked away, but Octane was losing his patience. The sound of the mech in some kind of unreactive pain was off-putting, and to Octane it felt as though the screeching voice was trying to slice into his head, like a sinister shard of glass worming its way into his spark. To put it bluntly, it was maddening. His optic twitched.

Octane drew his laser rifle from his back and let the muzzle drop into his open hand. Before Turbogear could stop him, he opened fire on the captive mech.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UPPP!" Octane howled as the semi-automatic laser rifle discharged a flood of hot-pink plasma into Feldspar's body. By the time Turbogear managed to wrest the weapon away from him, it was too late; Feldspar's head and chest plate had been blasted into smoking, melted slag.

"Oh for Prime's sake!" Turbogear shouted as he jerked the rifle away from Octane's twitching hands, "Look what you've done!"

Octane responded with a swift jab of his fist that cuffed Turbogear upside the head. "I had to do something!" he snapped back.

"Stop yelling!" Scunge hollered, his hands still pressed against the sides of his head.

Turbogear staggered aside from the blow, but he kept his grip on the weapon. "Ow! You just-- why didn't you just unplug the fragging thing?!" he yowled, stabbing a finger over at the pile of cables on Scunge's side of the chair.

In a single stride, Octane had reached Turbogear and was now looming over him. "Give me back my weapon," he growled, looking positively belligerent.

"Are you crazy?!" Turbogear began, when suddenly the floor lurched.

Everything in the room bounced an inch up into the air before slamming back down in a series of jarring thuds, including the Decepticons in the room. Scunge had fallen over backward, Octane flailed his arms and managed to stay up right, and Turbogear fell to his knees. Meanwhile, all the desks, filing cabinets, shelving and bookcases began falling onto each other in a domino effect, landing on chairs and tables, wobbling back and forth, and smashing their contents all over the floor.

"What's going on?!" Scunge yelped.

 

ohhhh cameo by Shockwave !!! nice ~

Art's beautiful too

 

Hehe, I've got one more cameo to make....! And thanks, guy! :-D

 

Chapter 10: Out Of My Head

Elsewhere in the station, Doctor Bonesaw and his lovely assistant Starrunner were at work on their latest experiment; that is, their hapless patient.

Rush's headcase had been opened up. Off to one side on a trolley was a small saw for armour incisions, a drill with several bits and augers laid out on a tray, and various other instruments of unspeakable function. On the other side on another trolley were bits and pieces of Rush's brain casing and assorted contents, all neatly labelled with coloured tape and markered tags, and all still connected to Rush's neural net by their respective wires, filament cables, fibre optics, and assorted physical contact surfaces.

"...didn't understand what all the fuss was about," Starrunner was saying from behind a broad welding mask, her voice muffled. "So I told him, look, if you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out..."

"I think I know how this story ends," Bonesaw muttered. "And don't wave your welding torch around like that, it's unprofessional."

Starrunner lowered her welding torch only after nearly setting a nearby lamp on fire. "Oh! Good idea. Anyway, the mod did not stick at all, but thankfully one of the officers nearby caught the rest of his head in a bowl, or else the entire ceremony would have been ruined!"

"Imagine that," Bonesaw mumbled. He then frowned, and held his hands and soldering iron away from his work for a moment.

"Doctor, what's the matter?" Starrunner asked, glancing up when the doctor paused.

Bonesaw hovered over the inert patient's open headcase for a moment, squinting critically at something. "Hmm... there's... something in here," he muttered. "Tweezers."

Obediently, the nurse placed the delicate metal tweezers into the doctor's open palm. "Debris, you think?" she asked, doing her best not to block the light.

"Probably some stray buckshot, or a bullet," the doctor murmured as he reached in between bare wires and exposed circuitry inside Rush's head with the thin metal tweezers. "Of course, it could just be dust or HOLY Primus...!"

"I don't think you'd find that in there," Starrunner posed thoughtfully for a moment, before the rest of her attention span caught up. "Oh! What is it? The suspense is killing me!" she protested.

Bonesaw set his expression and carefully lifted the foreign debris through the maze in Rush's head, taking care not to touch any adjacent structures. As a rule, medics and surgeons had very steady hands, but Bonesaw was something of an admitted high grade-o-holic, but he never let that get in the way of a good day's work.

"Hmm... I'll have to... pull it out. Nurse, light," Bonesaw grunted, looking faintly alarmed.

There was a creak, and suddenly bright light flooded the operations stage.

Starrunner peered in over Bonesaw's shoulder. "Ooh, I think I can see it!" she exclaimed, as Bonesaw carefully inserted the pointy end of a pair of tweezers in between a sensitive synaptic dendrite chipset and a small portion of basal mechaganglia.

"Don't... disturb me," Bonesaw growled. "One stray twitch could permanently damage his brain. Especially this part. What is it again?"

"Motorbellum inferior," Starrunner replied. "Well, I don't think you could do worse damage than that thing in there."

Both Starrunner and Bonesaw stared raptly as the doctor gingerly pressed both ends of his tweezers around the foreign object.

The little blob squirmed in protest.
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Somewhere at the bottom of a deep, dark, static sea, Rushlight the Decepticon was watching a procession of figures moving along far off in the distance.

How odd, Rush thought. I'm in autistic mode, and yet there's something else besides me in here. Is that some kind of background subroutine that I'd never noticed before?

Hello? he called out. Or rather, he thought about calling out. He didn't even really have a form, either. In autistic mode, there wasn't supposed to be a sense of the Other, and yet here he was, expressing dualistic thought patterns on a subconscious level that was otherwise abnormal. Not that Rush noticed any of it; he was merely experiencing it.

The figures appeared as dim shapes, blurring and flickering on the horizon. Rush tried to get a better look at them, but it was the same at any distance.

There are ghosts in my brain, thought Rush. Holy scrap. But maybe they were just a minor psychic disturbance, and would go away soon. He hoped.

Then the procession suddenly began coming apart, drifting away into the infinite darkness in solid clumps. At such an elementary level of conscious cognition, Rush could not comprehend what was he seeing, or thinking, rather. What was happening? Was something happening now?

And without warning, the ghosts pixellated and redefined into clarity, and then began converging on him.

When Rush saw the faces superimposed on them, he opened his mouth to scream, and instantly drowned.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
There was a dull, heavy thud, and the world lurched. Light and shadow reeled in his vision, and without delay, the noisy spang of metallic instruments hitting the floor reached his audials. His arm, now functional again, flailed up and then slammed back down onto the table, along with the rest of his body.

Without waiting for the rest of the universe to finish coalescing into something that made more sense, Rush sat bolt upright and screamed.

Another voice screamed back at him. Oh Primus above, thought Rush, the ghosts have gotten out and they're coming to get me...!

His arm was already reaching out to grab the first thing within reach. In a wide-opticked panic, his fingers closed over a small laser scalpel, and without even a second thought he thrust it forward and stabbed his enemy in the chest. The ghost stared back at him in astonishment, and staggered away.

There was no time to lose. Rush scrambled off the table, and the world tilted again. He snatched up something that looked vaguely like a handle of some sort, and before the ghosts could catch up with him, he stumbled his way out of the room and out into the darkened corridor beyond.

A moment later, Bonesaw stepped out of the back room to see that his equipment had been jolted to the floor by the sudden earthquake, and that his patient was missing.

"Huh. Where'd he go?" he said to no one in particular. That was when he noticed that his assistant was standing stock-still with a surprised look on her face, with a small laser scalpel sticking out of her chest.

"Good Primus!" Bonesaw exclaimed. He jogged up to where the nurse was staring in amazement at the doorway. "Starrunner, are you all right?"

Starrunner glanced down at the scalpel protruding from her chest. "Oh!" she said, apparently having noticed it for the first time as well. "I'm fine! But my feelings are hurt," she protested. "That was so unneccessary!"

Bonesaw reached over and neatly tugged the scalpel out of her chestplate. Apparently nothing major had been punctured, and all that remained of the wound was a small slit in her thinner armour.

"What happened?" Bonesaw asked, scalpel still in hand. "Something caused a minor earthquake that knocked down one of the shelves back there, and then all I heard was a fuel-curdling scream. Was that you?"

"Goodness, no!" Starrunner exclaimed, looking back at him. "I was finishing the suture weld to close up his headcase like you'd asked, when suddenly he woke up and stabbed me!"

"Huh. Well that's no good," Bonesaw mumbled, frowning over at the open doorway. "I wasn't finished with him yet."

"Should I go after him, sir?" Starrunner asked.

"Uh. Probably," Bonesaw mumbled, with a shrug. "I doubt he'll get too far without this."

He held up in his hand an innocent-looking servo-motor with a freshly-welded patch on its side.

Starrunner stared down at it for a moment. "What is that?"

"It's his new fuel regulator, for the second stage T-cog," Bonesaw explained. "Without it, he'll run through his remaining fuel supply in, oh, ten, twenty cycles or so. He'll be running at top speed until he hits empty and collapses. Might be better to just wait until he stops flailing around before we drag him back in here to finish the install."

"Oooh. Well, I'll go after him anyway to make sure he doesn't hurt himself too badly," Starrunner offered.

"If you'd like." Bonesaw reached behind him, and drew out a small hand blaster that he normally kept hidden under the hood of his altmode. "Here. It'll be dangerous to go alone."

Starrunner took the blaster gladly, and slotted it into her magnetized hip holster. "What about the wiggly?" she asked.

"Hm? Oh, that. I'll tell you about it when you get back," Bonesaw assured her with a flap of his hand. "I still need to look it up on a fauna directory as soon as the Cortex network is back online. That jolt knocked out a dish or a cable somewhere."

And with that, Starrunner strode out of the dishevelled office and out into the red-lit maze beyond.

 

Chapter 11: Fire them before they fire you

"What was that?" Twofist panted. He clung to a nearby girder, in case anything else tore in through the walls and tried to suck him out into space.

By then, he and Artemia had managed to re-enter the main complex through the airlock which had not been damaged when the connecting corridor had been torn apart by the massive decompression earlier. But when a great tremor suddenly struck the station, bits of piping began to rattle loose, and a small section of ceiling came down. Fortunately, Artemia had punched him out of the way, much to Twofist's relief and dismay.

"That was me saving your pointless life!" Artemia spat at him. "Now get down from there before you fall on your skid, you idiot!"

Reluctantly, Twofist released his girder one hand at a time, and gently set one foot and then the other onto the floor, which hadn't been all that far away the whole time.

"Sorry, self preserving protocol there," he coughed self-consciously, as he stood back up again. "For some reason I don't mind you hitting me, even though I don't know why. But I was talking about that earthquake there, or moonquake, whatever. I think something big must've gone down at the refinery. Maybe they blew it up."

"Maybe," Artemia muttered, her optics narrowing. "We're gonna head down to the launch pad, grab a transport, and then we're getting the Pit out of here. Now get up and move, or I'm leaving you behind, wench."

"But those guys will be all over- wait, did you just call me a wench?" Twofist retorted, as Artemia stalked off down the corridor. Twofist jogged along after her with a skeptical look on his face. "Do you... even know what that means?"

"Yes. It means you're an idiot," Artemia huffed. She had lost both weapons now, but wasn't daunted yet. All she needed to do was to find another unsuspecting goon - one of Turbogear's goons, she reminded herself - and then she'd simply murder him and take his gun. In fact, that was what Accounting had been like, except instead of killing people for firearms, she merely destroyed her opponents' egoes and stole their jobs.

"Actually, a wench is... a female, of the swill-serving persuasion," Twofist tried to explain, as he continued pacing to catch up with Artemia's longer stride. "Y'know. A bar slut."

"Yes, and that's exactly what you are," Artemia replied dryly. "You're a lower lifeform. Also, a slut."

"I'm not a- look, the word doesn't mean what you think it means," Twofist insisted, emphasizing with his hands. "And-and I'm not a slut! Why are you calling me a slut?"

"Because YOU and Turbogear have been COLLUDING with- pirates," Artemia spat, treating the word like offal. "The only reason why you're still alive is because I'm going to use you as a hostage to get off this damn rock."

Twofist stopped in his tracks and just stared at Artemia's backside. As much as he liked watching her leave...

"Are you serious?" he said, optics boggling in disbelief. "Me? And Pervogear? That's not me, Arty! I... we weren't colluding! I was selling Syk down at the refinery, and next thing I know there are armed goons running the planks, so Bugbear and Airbuzz and me ran back to the admin building to find out what was going on!"

"Right, and you were looting your office mates because you were so concerned," Artemia growled. She continued striding ahead without him.

Twofist eventually had to run to catch up to her again. "I don't collude! I sell enhancers!" he insisted again. "If I had anything to do with this, you think I'd be shot at by, by... Seekers? That guy was a Seeker jet! You really think I'd have anything to do with-"

Suddenly, Artemia's heel was in his gut, and shoving him back down the red-lit hall. Such was the force of her sudden mule kick that Twofist tumbled skid-over-teakettle backwards, and by the time he had stopped rolling, the air smelt of burnt steel again.

In a panic, Twofist scrambled back up to his feet again, prepared to transform and bolt, when he saw Artemia standing in the distance. There was a bright pink flash, and a splash of glowing purple on the floor under Artemia's foot. Beneath her heel was a body that flopped with the impact of the laser burst.

Twofist dragged a hand down his face. Okay, then. Artemia was a relentless, murdering ex-soldier who was probably going to kill him or abandon him the second he outlived his usefulness. Yep.

"You scare me!" he shouted after her, as he dusted off his arms and knees. "Just wanted you to know that!"

"Shut up and grab his knife," Artemia sighed, as she kicked the pleading hand off her ankle. She then continued walking, now armed with a laser rifle under her remaining arm.

The dead mech was not a Seeker this time, but some land-bound APC mech with... a hole in his face, Twofist noticed, as he slouched on over for a look. He waved the sizzling smoke away and coughed. A knife, what knife? It took his roving optics a moment to find the vicious-looking hunting knife strapped to the mech's torso. With a few tugs, Twofist got the knife out of its casing, only to discover that the blade was the length of his forearm. He grimaced at his reflection in the well-polished blade.

"Artemia? You know I don't know how to use this either, right?" he called down the hall. "Arty?"

But Artemia had already turned the corner. Twofist debated running off without her, since she seemed intent on... killing anything in her way. But what if he accidentally ran into her, and she mistook him for one of the pirates? And how did she know Turbogear was behind all this?

Twofist continued to look indecisive until something, a strange sound, drifted down the tunnel. It was a long, drawn-out howl of some tortured animal, lost in the maze. Or so Twofist thought. The sound of it froze the fuel in his veins, and he shivered.

"Wha... what was that?" Twofist whispered, gripping his knife with both hands. "Arty... Arty, wait for me!"

And with that, Twofist took off after her, trailed by the spooky cry in the distance.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the rest of Octane's rogue crew were roving about the station, wrecking and looting as space pirates were wont to do. But as Whetstone and Pylon were finding out, there wasn't much to loot besides office stationery.

"I don't get it," Pylon sighed, as he rifled through the drawers of a desk. "I mean, tipping a bank, sure, okay. Robbing a cruise ship, even better. But this dump? What's this place got that Octane wants so badly?"

Whetstone was looking through a pile of datapads, just looking for the sake of looking. "Beats me," the jetmech sighed, dully. "I mean, besides this scraggy ersatz energon, this place has got no strategic use as far as I can throw it."

"Huh?" Pylon glanced up and over at his cohort. "What's ersatz mean?"

"Fake energon, stupid," Whetstone said boredly. He threw one of his datapads at Pylon, which bounced off Pylon's head.

"Ow, hey!" Pylon protested. "Quit that! Why would they make fake stuff?"

"It's fuel, but it's not energon," Whetstone explained, as he slid one datapad out from his pile and hurled it at Pylon again. "It doesn't make ammo, it doesn't run equipment. But Transformers can process it for fuel, so I guess it's worth that much."

"Ow. Ow, Primus, will you stop that?" Pylon fended off the next few datapad projectiles with his forearm. "So we're here just to pillage second-rate fuel?"

"Seems like it. I think Octane's got something personal with the boss around here, too," Whetstone went on. He flicked a pen at Pylon this time. "Or he's doing something secret for Megatron, obtaining encryption codes or whatever."

"Now that sounds more like it." Pylon successfully deflected the pen, at least. "Y'know, more official, and stuff. And what's with his pet spy running around with that other guy, what's his name, Rushhour?"

"Yeah, dunno. I think Turbogear gave him up to the medics to torture or something. What a sick a bastard," Whetstone sighed, as he tossed the rest of his datapads over his shoulder. "Also sounds like something personal."

"Oh Primus, that little speech he gave?" Pylon chortled. "Like he was some kind of movie villain? What a jerkoff."

"Yeah, until the little guy bit you," Whetstone pointed out.

"Yeah, the little scragger," Pylon muttered darkly. He absently rubbed his arm, where Rush had left marks on the paint. "Anyway. What a waste of time," he complained. "I wish this place had, like... money, or something. Currency. Heck, even weapons would be pretty good. I'd even settle for some por-"

And that was when the sound came. Like the howl of some strangled beast, it moaned and shrieked up from the corridor just outside of the open office door.

Instantly, Whetstone's wings hitched up in alarm and Pylon leapt back up to his feet, his doorwings flicking up in terror.

"Wh-what was that?" stammered Pylon, throwing his glance towards the door.

Whetstone had drawn his weapon, and was listening intently. "Probably those losers we passed down the hallway," he grunted, optics narrowing. "Goofing around like idiots."

Nonetheless, both of them remained silent, listening intently. And then it came again, closer.

"It sounds like..." Pylon breathed, his face slack with awe. "Like...!"

The sound of laser fire could be heard now, followed by screaming. "Get him, get him!" voices shouted in the distance. "Open fire!"

"YOU CAN'T FIRE ME!" something howled, "I QUIIIT!"

More voices screamed to a high-pitched cacophony of grinding metal and the revving roar of some high-powered machine weapon.

Pylon shuddered, and even stoic Whetstone withdrew warily.

"Pylon, go shut the door," Whetstone whispered.

"No, you go shut it!" Pylon hissed. "I'll cover you!"

But neither of them moved to approach the doorway as the horrible creature could be heard still slashing its way down the corridor with its screaming chainsaw.

"WHERE ARE YOUR ACQUISITION FORMS, SOLDIER?" the monster bellowed. Laserfire burst in bright flashes against the walls out in the hallway.

A flurry of footsteps suddenly pounded past the open doorway. Someone tripped and fell, but no one stopped to retrieve him. The revving song of a chainsaw grew louder and louder.

"Holy scrap, he's crazy! Run away!" someone was yelling as they fled.

All Whetstone and Pylon could do was stare in mute horror as some fuel-covered creature suddenly flared into view, wielding what looked like a two-handed, heavy-duty medical saw with spinning teeth on its rotating blades.

"THESE AREN'T STAMPED PROPERLY!!!" the creature roared as it swung its weapon down upon the hapless pirate on the floor. The unfortunate pirate with poor footing had only a second to scream before the saw smashed into his face. The saw ground into his optics and tore them out into a tornado of shattered glass and wires. The body of the pirate mech jerked and thrashed awkwardly as the monster bore the blades further down and down until it had cut into the chest, splitting open the breast plate and exploding all of its contents in an oily spray of fuel and coolant and glistening shrapnel.

Pylon opened his mouth and was about to yell something when Whetstone came up behind him and slapped a hand over his mouth to silence him. Whetstone however kept his own mouth shut too, but the both of them stood and watched.

The monster, by now covered in a greasy coat of spilled fuel and bits and pieces, then ripped its grinding chainsaw out of its victim with a splatter of fluid, and roared at the ceiling.

"NOBODY DEALS ME A PINK SLIP!" it screamed, before taking off down the corridor at a dead run.

It was a long time before Whetstone peeled his fingers off Pylon's face. It was an even longer moment before Pylon even dared to draw breath again.

"Was that-" he began, but Whetstone was already replying to him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I saw it too," he breathed.

Without a word, both pirates suddenly made a dash for the open doorway and slammed on the button until the door swished shut. Then there were faint scraping, squealing sounds as heavy furniture was dragged across the floor and pushed up against it.

 

wow.....things are getting weirder......

 

Gawd, the raid that never ends. D: XD

Chapter 12: The Twitch

The minor earthquake ended as abruptly as it began. Octane stumbled back and braced himself with one hand against a table, his optics wide in surprise as he prepared for potential aftershocks. Clutched in his other hand, the laser pistol was still smoking.

"What... was that," he growled, casting a long, hard glance at all the other optics pinned on him.

Scunge quickly bent his head down, but Turbogear wasn't even looking at him. "Sounds like... something at the refinery," Turbogear mumbled, looking vaguely distracted. Numerous reports were being commed back and forth, and he was trying to listen in on the most coherent one.

"Well, what is it?!" Octane snapped at him. He had obviously opted to close all channels except to those of his own men, and there was evidently no one reporting directly to him. Silently he snapped at one of his sergeants, who was not responding.

"I dunno!" Turbogear snarled back. "A gas leak, maybe? Call off your men and get them the Pit outta there before they start something irreversible!" Like a plant meltdown. Turbogear's tanks felt like they desperately wanted to invert themselves.

"Don't you tell me what to do!" Octane spat, as he shoved himself off the edge of the table. Standing at his full height, the jet tanker loomed over Turbogear, but Turbogear had faced taller, bigger things in the past, and he wasn't about to let Octane get into his face. In the background, Scunge began hurriedly packing his things.

"Hey! Hello, contractor here!" Turbogear seethed up at him, as he stabbed a thumb at himself. "Now that you've gone and KILLED my boss, our contract's over! Done! Finite! Now get the frell off my base!"

Something in Octane's vision tweaked, and he was quite certain it was the physical sensation of his temper snapping in half like a dry twig.

"YOUR base? Oh, I don't think so...!" Octane growled, optic twitching.

But Turbogear was already watching the jet tanker's gun-hand. In an instant, the blue Decepticon lunged forward and tackled Octane to the floor with a heavy CLUNK, flailing one arm in an attempt to slap the gun out of Octane's hand. The sudden slug of metal hurling itself into metal caused Scunge to yelp and fall over his equipment in an effort to protect the Torturetron and to keep it from being crushed beneath the tons of rolling, angry mechs.

Although Octane was bigger and heavier than Turbo, he was not by any means a skilled brawler. He had experienced his fair share of barfights and wartime skirmishes, but most of it had involved running away or using team mates for cover. Usually he preferred to not be there at all, period. Turbogear however had spent half a lifetime in the muddy, reeking trenches of E-Stalsem, fighting members of his own unit more often than with the enemy. In the trenches there had been no place to run.

"MY base!" Turbogear howled as he reared back and slammed a heavy fist into Octane's face. "You lying-" Crack! "-sack of-" Crack! "-scrap!"

Turbogear's fist came away with splintering shards of optic glass that glinted in an arc under the smoky office light. The sharp end of Octane's cheek developed knuckle-shaped indents.

In an effort to stop Turbogear from burying his fist any further into his left optic, Octane flung his arm up and with his laser pistol still in his hand, pistol-whipped Turbogear upside the head with the butt of the weapon. There was a ringing CLONK as chips of enamel paint flaked off Turbogear's helm on impact, and the jetbike-bot flinched with a dazed look. That was Octane's opportunity to retaliate.

"Geroff me!" Octane grunted as he thrashed Turbogear once more in the head with the butt of his laser pistol. "What the hell did you expect, you worthless-"

He did not even bother to finish his sentence while he lashed the length of the pistol over the back of Turbogear's neck. His other hand reached up to grip the muzzle of the weapon to close the loop, and with a grunt he slammed Turbogear downwards towards him. With a squawk, Turbogear found himself rammed facefirst into Octane's shoulder. The squawk turned into a breathless wheeze when Octane suddenly lurched forward, using his greater weight to roll the both of them over onto Turbogear's back, with Octane crushing him from on top.

"Get... off!" Turbogear croaked. He flailed his arms, trying to grab anything on Octane's back - a wing, a fin, anything - but Octane was so wide in the shoulders that Turbogear's upper arms were pinned, leaving his forearms windmilling uselessly.

Octane reared up and smashed his forehead downward into the brim of Turbogear's helm, denting that and himself on impact. But Turbogear's helm only act as a crumple zone, protecting the rest of his cranium from impact stress; this allowed him to crack a fist into Octane's jaw, wrenching the other mech's face away from himself. Hastily, Turbogear reached behind his head and snatched at the pistol pinned beneath it, but by then Octane had already recovered and was already whipping his fist into his face.

"What's the matter, scraphack?" Octane sneered as he brutally hammered his fist into Turbogear's face, the line of his cheek, his nose, his jaw. "Who's your boss now?!"

Turbogear struggled. Despite his attempts to fend off the blows with his arms, Octane was just stronger, and his fists merely glanced off Turbogear's forearms and rammed straight down into his face. The barrage of fists interrupted his vision with error alerts, and he could not see past the jolty lines of static that leapt and crackled as knuckles rammed into the cracking lenses of his optics.

But his legs were attempting a maneuver of their own. Turbogear's heels scraped frantically at the floor at first, but eventually he managed to hook one of his legs over the back of Octane's calf. Once the leg was locked, Turbogear fired one of his leg thrusters.

The result was a sudden flash and puff of black smoke, and a strangled howl from Octane. "You-!" He reared back to dodge Turbogear's left hook, only to smash his face into Turbogear's oncoming right hook.

Turbogear's successful hit drove into Octane's optic, shattering the yellow lens upon impact. Octane yowled in surprise and pain as the bulb node of the optical retina popped into glassy shards with a powder-soft poff.

"OH YOU MISERABLE CU-" Octane screeched, just before Turbogear popped another fist into his mouth.

With a thunderous, flaring burst, Turbogear fired both heel thrusters into the floor, the force of which jetted him straight out from Octane's winged bulk. Then it only took a hop and a skip to get him back up to his feet, and he was halfway to the door by the time Octane had stopped clutching his face long enough to spring back up and make chase.

"I'll fragging KILL YOU!" Octane roared at him, staggering sideways as he scrambled madly after the escaping indigo jetbike-mech.

Turbogear darted out the doorway, but stopped long enough to grab at the doorframe and swing himself halfway back in. He stuck his head back into the room and shouted, "You'll regret this!" He even shook a fist. "Once Rushlight finds you, you're dead! You hear me?! DEAD!"

With his depth perception impaired, Octane smashed his fist into the doorframe, narrowly missing Turbogear by a millimeter. By then Turbogear had gone, and was running pell-mell down the red-lit corridor. His shin-fins flashed like mirrors until he disappeared into the darkness.

Octane whipped back around, his wings flared upwards and frame practically puffed up in rage. "Scunge!" he snapped, "Stop fooling around and go after him!"

"Aww boss, I don't really do that kind of thug stuff-" Scunge began, but he was cut short by a sudden impulse to very quickly plant his face onto the floor. Which was just as well, because he managed to duck fast enough to dodge the table being hurled at him.

There was a startling smash as the table tipped over a projecting pile of debris and crashed into another pile further off.

"NOW!" Octane screamed at him. The socket missing an optic bled with dark, murky fuel and energon leakage down his pale face.

Scunge was out the door in an instant, lugging a small case of tools and his power drill with him. The Torturetron had been left behind on a tarp on the floor, along with the inert body of Lt-Colonel Feldspar still strapped to the chair, smoking quietly under the interrogation lamp.

Octane didn't even stop to watch Scunge take off. With a raging, thundercloud expression, the jet tanker spun around on his heel to retrieve his fallen weapon, and to see who and what else he could muster in terms of firepower. Radio comms flickered back and forth.

"And who the hell is Rushlight?" he growled at Feldspar. Feldspar of course made no reply, though a stray cable sticking out of the hole in his face sparked listlessly as if to comment that it didn't care either way.

Among Scunge's things, Octane found a crowbar, but nothing else useful. Primus damn everything, why didn't he assign a couple of guards at the doorway, he thought. He immediately commed the pirate pair that always sprang to mind whenever specific work needed to be done.

Empty threats, Octane decided belatedly as he turned about. Scunge would find Turbogear, and Octane would put a hole through the bastard spy's head, just like he did with Feldspar.

In a few strides, Octane was out the door just in time to miss the twitching of Feldspar's hand where the dead mech was still tied to the chair.