Tales of the Intermezzo - Cleanup A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2008 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary At last, the pieces fit together. The readings were clear, the conclusions unambiguous. The work of years clicked into place, confirming what Ironworks had hitherto only suspected. "Sentinel Prime is a turbo-revvin', axle-cracking, gear-grinding slag head!" he shouted to his desolate surroundings. A small planetoid circling an unremarkable white dwarf, equipped with a Space Bridge for reasons that must have seemed good at the time, but nowadays was at the aft-end of nowhere. "Teletran, put that in my official report and send it off," he grumbled after a moment. The semi-intelligent computer system of his repair ship complied without comment. Carefully but quickly, with the benefit of ages of experience, Ironworks put away the diagnostic tools, then cut off the comlink to his ship so he could complain aloud without Teletran misinterpreting anything as a command. "Slag-baggin' command structure and their Primus-forsaken obsession with security. 'Ironworks, the Space Bridge network out in the Tercio region has crashed, we need you to go out and fix it,' Sentinel told me. Claimed not ta know why it went down. Claimed the circumstances were classified anyway, and what little he did know he couldn't tell me. Bah! Either he's a moron, or he thinks I am. And thinking I'm a moron is pretty stupid itself." The diagnostic tools stowed, Ironworks extended a set of probes from his left hand and started adjusting the Space Bridge's controls. "Did he think I'd be able ta fix it *without* figgerin' out the AllSpark was involved? Coulda saved me Primus knows how many cycles by just *tellin'* me that up front, 'steada me wastin' time an' energon runnin' around th' fringes a' known space!" He closed the access panel and tapped a few controls, which lit up sluggishly. "Hh. Workin', if barely. But it's back onnagrid, should be able ta trace th' logs 'n see where th' problem started." So absorbed in his work was Ironworks that he didn't notice the figure skulking in the shadows cast by the system's wan primary.... * * * * "That's got it," Ironworks stood up, working out a burr in his rotator cuff. "Th' AllSpark overloaded Space Bridge Alpha-Tercio-Seven, and that cascaded through th' whole region. Heck, AT7 ain't too far away by stardrive, and if'n I c'n fix it, that'll bring up most of the network by itself. Then it'll just be down ta huntin' secondary overload spots. Teletran, prep for FTL," he ordered. Ship-mounted faster-than-light travel was expensive, both in terms of energon and technological resources, but if you were going to be out fixing the more efficient Space Bridges, you needed a way to get around without the things, eh? "Confirmed," Teletran replied. "Spinning up...KZZZZZK!" Silence. "Teletran? Slag, comlink's down. Let's try whisker comm," he snarled in annoyance, pointing a slim laser beam at his nearby ship's receiver dish. "Nothin'. I got a bad feelin' about this..." "You're gonna be feeling bad about more than that, Autochump!" shouted a gray and purple four-wheeled vehicle as it revved over a rise. It had huge balloon tires equipped with gravitic coils to keep it firmly on the surface of the planetoid despite its negligible mass. "Whut th'...?!" Ironworks sputtered, sweeping his comm laser onto the intruder reflexively. Of course, all it did was paint the truck's hood with a blue dot...even at full power it wouldn't so much as char a paint job. "Greasepit? I thought you got blown apart at Omicron Pass!" "I was, and don't think it didn't hurt!" Greasepit transformed and leapt at Ironworks, his telescoping arms reaching out to snare the Autobot maintbot. "But lucky for me, Blitzwing owed me big time, and was in the right mood to scoop me up and take me off for repairs," the Decepticon's brutish faceplate twisted into the semblance of a smile as he started to crush his Autobot prey. "And thanks to my jammer missiles, your ship won't be helping you out this time, rustbucket...but it'll take me to Alpha-Tercio- Seven just fine! And then *I'll* be the one who finds the AllSpark!" "Greasepit? You talk too much!" Ironworks growled, then deployed a cutting tool from his left forearm and sliced into one of the constricting coils. Greasepit's grip slackened as he yelped in pain, and Ironworks ducked out through the two serpentine arms. "Yer no soldier, 'Pit. Just a two-byte swindler," Ironworks taunted as he transformed and drove off. Unfortunately, he didn't have gravitic wheels, so he had to be careful not to bounce too high and lose control. "And you're just an old repaireon," Greasepit snapped back, returning to his own vehicular form and giving chase. "It doesn't take a soldier to crush *you*. And I don't really even have to...I just need to make sure when your ship leaves this system, it's got me on board and not you!" Ironworks frowned, his front window warping to reflect his sour mood. Even under good conditions, Greasepit could chase him down without hardly trying. 'Pit might not be built for speed, but few Autobots were slower than Ironworks. To top it off, Greasepit could go as fast as he liked without worrying about bouncing around like a pingbot, while Ironworks had to actually go slower than his top speed in this low-gravity environment. "Slaggit, this is why I take a ship everywhere," he snarled, trying to lose Greasepit in a tumble of boulders. "Mebbe I shouldn't'a left all my guns on the ship, tho'. At least 'Pit's sonic guns won't work fer squat out here, so we're probably even." Then the ionic burst pulverized the ground next to his right front wheel and Ironworks knew that was a false hope. Greasepit may be a two-byte swindler, but he wasn't enough of an idiot to go out into the vacuum without swapping his sound-based weapon for something else. "Come on, scrap-face!" Greasepit taunted. "At least *try* to make this interesting!" He punctuated the jeer with another shot of the ionic cannon that rested atop his truck form. It wasn't really meant to be a portable weapon, so the aim was going to be horrible without the careful calibration it was intended to have, but it's not like Greasepit needed to hit Ironworks in a specific weak point with it. One tag and it'd probably be all over. On the other hand, ionic cannons had other features...Ironworks couldn't help but chuckle a little, and he turned sharply to head back towards the Space Bridge. "What's so funny?" Greasepit shouted, firing wide over his target. From the frustrated sigh that followed, Ironworks could tell it hadn't been an intentional miss. "Your aim's what's funny," Ironworks shouted back as he rumbled towards the Space Bridge. "I might be better off standing still, but then ya'd just come try ta hug me some more, ya great poof!" Ironworks wasn't exactly sure what a "poof" was, but he'd heard it used as an insult in a bar on Starbase Rugby before, and figured a guy like Greasepit would know what it meant. "I'll show you poof, you rolling pile of spare parts!" Greasepit bellowed, transforming to robot mode so he could aim the ionic cannon more carefully. "See how you like it on full power!" Ironworks transformed as well and dove for cover while triggering a command to the Space Bridge. "I like it just fine!" he shouted back as the ravening stream of protons obliterated the boulder he'd sought protection behind. Then the Space Bridge activated, crackling with negative charge as it prepared to rend spacetime. The proton beam curved away from Ironworks and vanished into the Bridge. The lightning crackling around the Bridge likewise arced towards Greasepit and started feeding directly down the barrel of the ionic cannon. "What the...hey, I can't get this to shut off!" Greasepit started to panic. "It's gonna over..." The ensuing massive explosion cut off what Greasepit was going to say, not that the sentence really needed to be completed. "Welcome t' da wonderful world a' science, 'Pit," Ironworks chuckled as he walked over to the fallen Decepticon. "Positive ions an' negative ions attract. And y'attracted more trouble than y'could handle from this 'old repaireon,'" he kicked Greasepit in the head as the Space Bridge powered down. "Uhhnnn..." Greasepit replied, groggily. "Not fair." "Tell me 'bout it. Now I gotta wait fer Teletran ta reboot annen hang around fer a prison ship ta haul yer worthless chassis back ta Cybertron before I c'n finish my job. And Sentinel Prime is *still* a voidin' conduit." ============================================================================= Author's Notes: Ironworks is the first Transformer I bought as an adult (although in college I had a roommate with a bunch of TFs, and I played with his toys). I got it on clearance at Service Merchandise (a chain that no longer exists) for $1.90 in 1992, and it rekindled my interest in Transformers. Soon I was buying the G2 stuff that was then hitting stores, and it was a rapid slide from there to being the major TF geek I am today. And it's all Ironworks's fault. This story was written as an AllSpark 'Fic Challenge entry, to tell the tale of some "official" character (as opposed to fanchar) redone for the Transformers Animated setting. Now, given that I've seen a grand total of four episodes (the three-episode pilot and "Home Is Where The Spark Is"), odds are this won't end up fitting well into the setting once we see the full season, but that sort of thing never stopped me before. ;) Eventually the sector might get named, and I doubt "Tercio" will get picked, but it felt awkward not using any names at all, so I had to pick something. Maybe Ironworks still uses the old naming conventions, and everyone else has changed their maps. ;) "Cleanup" is set at some vague time between the opening scene of the pilot (which I'm saying happened at Space Bridge Alpha-Tercio-Seven) and the "fifty years later" when most of the series happens. Not gonna nail it down any more than that, in case the Space Bridges are still down in whatever ep we next see Sentinel Prime. I've redesigned Ironworks and Greasepit along TFA aesthetics, here's the rough design sketches: http://www.dvandom.com/drawings/tfaironworkssk.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/drawings/tfagreasesk.JPG A more polished drawing of the two fighting will probably come later, I'll edit in a link once I have one.