Tales of the Intermezzo - Rush Hour A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2007 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary As Fireshot drove down the ten-lane superhighway along the western coast of Honshu, he contemplated one of the core contradictions of his existence. No, not that he'd been created as a war machine to defend peace, or that he'd been built for a war that had moved away from Earth years ago. Nor did he contemplate the deeper meaning of what it was to be one of the first "RoadBots," hybrid AIs built using a combination of Cybertronian technology and human ingenuity in the wake of the Binaltech Project. Fireshot simply wasn't that deep. No, as he wove in and out of traffic, hidden speakers projecting the engine roar that his exponential generator did not make on its own, he wondered about the whole point of the disguise in the first place. "Here I am, holographically projecting a fake driver, making fake internal combustion engine sounds, wearing a license plate like it was a dog collar...and for what? To blend in? If they wanted me to blend in, why did they make me a car that costs a quarter mil to drive off the lot?" he muttered to himself, amusing himself by making the holodriver's lips move appropriately. "Sure, I look GOOD," he adjusted a side view mirror to get a better look at his own left side, "but why waste the time with this charade? By now, everyone knows that if you see a candy apple red GT ripping down the street, it's Fireshot! At least 'uncle' Mirage could turn invisible if he really needed to be sneaky." After a moment, he added, "Or at least TAG could upgrade my shell to a '13 GT," he snarled, referring to the Terran Auto Group, leading maker of the hybrid technology of the RoadBots. "Honestly...who drives a 2006 Ford GT around? If you can afford a GT in the first place, you don't keep it for the better part of a decade, you trade up every so often! I look like someone blew his retirement savings on a Midlife Crisis-mobile," he sulked. The honk of a horn interrupted Fireshot's reverie, and he focused his sensors on the distraction, making sure his "driver" looked in the right direction as well. A white SUV, some Mitsubishi piece of crap, was easing up on his right. Now THAT'S a vehicle you'd believe someone would still have an '06 model of. Another honk. The SUV's driver grinned in a predatory manner, pointing at Fireshot, then at himself, and then down the road. The man had a thickset, slavic appearance and a dishwater brown crewcut over beady brown eyes. Fireshot sighed. "Another squishy calling me out." It happened every so often, given how badly his disguise actually disguised him. Hotshot human drivers thinking they could outrace the RoadBot. But this was particularly insulting...at least the usual challengers were in riced-up streetrods of some kind, not glorified cargo trucks. Then again, traffic was pretty heavy, the guy must think he'd win on maneuvering. And on sheer insanity, to judge from some of the dents in the SUV's sides. So, finesse against demolition derby crazy, eh? Fine. Fireshot hated Mitsubishi drivers on general principle, what with that company leading the rival Diamond Motors group. In fact, he was on his way to scope out the one Mitsubishi plant left in Japan after they moved their main operations to Russia. His bosses at TAG thought they might be up to something. Fireshot's holodriver nodded and gave a thumbs up. "You're on, mister!" he said, exaggerating the mouth movements so that the human could make out what he was saying. Well, assuming the guy spoke English. The SUV swerved abruptly, cutting across three lanes and taking the lead, but he didn't seem to have much in the way of raw speed, and Fireshot snickered. Other drivers honked and a few overreacted and nearly got into accidents. He stopped snickering. Fireshot didn't have nearly so much love for squishies as some of his teammates, but he did know that if anyone got killed, he'd get some of the blame. "All the more reason to show this punk who's the king of the road as quick as possible, so he gives up," Fireshot hissed, pouring on the speed and weaving through traffic to close the gap between him and the white SUV. Unfortunately, most of his driving experience was on American roads, and while he didn't have the human problem with adapting to driving on the left side of the road, he still didn't have a lot of experience anticipating the reactions of other drivers in Japan. He felt panels flex as he had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting someone who he fully expected to keep driving obliviously, but who instead actually attempted to yield to him, screwing up his whole trajectory. He could just make out his opponent laughing as the SUV wove in and out of the increasingly heavy late afternoon traffic. "Not a lot of time left," Fireshot muttered. His navsystems were hooked into the traffic grid computers, and told him that despite Japan's advanced traffic control systems, a gridlock was coming up. They didn't happen nearly as much as they had in the old days, but they still did happen. When they hit that plug, the race would be over. Oh, sure, Fireshot could just transform and run on ahead, but that would be cheating. Clearly, the first person to reach the traffic jam would be the winner...assuming he didn't crash in the process. "Still, it wouldn't exactly be cheating to go up on two wheels," Fireshot grinned as he did just that, squeezing into a gap between two delivery vans and racing ahead of the white Pajero. Seconds later, traffic slowed to a crawl and the grid...locked. "Victoly!" Fireshot shouted, pumping the fist of his holodriver and shooting his opponent a sneer. His opponent sneered back, then the man vanished...and the vehicle transformed into another RoadBot! "Come on, old man!" the Diamond Motors RoadBot called back over his shoulder as he started running between the cars. "This triathlon's just starting! Hope you can swim!" "You little...Mitsu...PUNK!" Fireshot shouted, assuming his own robot mode and giving chase. "We're not at war, we're not at war, we're not at war," he reminded himself as he ran. The Terran Auto Group and Diamond Motors were merely business rivals, not warring factions like the Autobots and Decepticons. Of course, there were rumors that DM had been heavily infiltrated by Decepticons as a way of keeping an eye on Earth after being driven off the planet in 2007, but TAG had never managed to prove anything. Still, even a business rivalry had treaties and forms to observe. Japan was officially aligned with TAG, which meant DM RoadBots weren't really welcome. Clearly, his mission to check out the Mitsubishi plant was a success now, he'd found something suspicious. In fact, unless he missed his guess, since he didn't recognize this guy from the public rosters, the Pajero was a fellow Class 32 RoadBot. Experimental, cutting edge at the time of their building, his classmates also had a reputation for being unstable, something that tended to dog him unfairly. But it also meant that "enemy" Class 32s were even more unwelcome than the more proven Class 18 series. Heck, the corporate mascot Class 12s were more welcome, since you knew that at least they'd only misbehave on direct orders. "Watch where you're going, Diamond-head!" Fireshot shouted as he nimbly danced around the far more fragile human-driven vehicles. "You think I'll stomp someone?" the other RoadBot sneered, speaking in a faint Russian accent. "Ha! You may be faster on the flat than I am, but Rockhound is all about rough terrain, Dog-TAG!" The slow-moving traffic had now come to a complete stop, with the humans terrified of getting stepped on by the five meter tall metal titans racing down the road. "Looks to me like you have all the grace of a bear, Russkie!" Fireshot spat back. "I doubt your bosses'll like it if you step on someone, even if it doesn't slow you down!" Rockhound laughed and jumped over a customized Civic, coming so close that he almost peeled off one of its neon yellow decals. "Bears can be quite graceful, nyet?" "Congratulations...I'll get you a tutu and a unicycle and we can put you in the circus," Fireshot snarled, wishing he could just pull out his plasma lance and drop the Mitsu before this got out of hand. But he was under strict orders to keep all weapons stowed unless the other guy shot first, and Rockhound had to know that. After all, it was part of the publicity campaign that helped convince the general public that it was perfectly safe to have human-built Transformers roaming around in the open. "Now, we come to the aquatic portion of this race!" Rockhound chuckled as he dove off the side of the road, into the inlet below. "Can you keep up?" Fireshot sighed and stopped. He wasn't very good at swimming, and saltwater played hell with his finish. He'd hoped to be able to finish this himself. But no worries. A sound of crunching metal told him that Rockhound had met Fireshot's backup, Seablade, called in by radio as soon as the Diamond Motors RoadBot had transformed. Seablade LOVED to swim.... ============================================================================== Author's Note: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/RoadBot1 has the background I created to put the RoadBots into TF continuity, as well as Fireshot's and Rockhound's techspecs. Seablade is the second wave 1:32 scale Toyota, and his fellow 1:32 scaler, a Mitsubishi Lancer, will probably get named Skyscythe. Once I get them (already have 'em preordered) the review will most likely be http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/RoadBot2. If Fireshot seems a bit slow on the uptake in terms of realizing Rockhound is a fellow RoadBot, keep in mind that RoadBot minds aren't as advanced as Cybertronian ones. Also, Rockhound is a much newer model, with better passive defenses against detection and so forth. And Fireshot's ego certainly plays a role. :) Finally, like the Actionmaster War and Battlecross, this is a setting I'm likely to return to at some point.