“What about the tri-scan maneuver?” asked Shadow to Agus Atmadja, the Komodo dragon.
“Initiating scan,” reported Agus. A buzzing filled the air. “Negative.”
“Damn it!” snarled Shadow.
“Maybe we should abandon this project, sobat,” remarked Agus.
“I’m not going to call it quits yet, Agus,” growled Shadow. “We’re going to find out what’s inside the meteors. Speaking of, have you found out where they landed?”
“I’m afraid not,” replied Agus. “I can get one of the new Tech Beetles to look for them.”
“Don’t bother,” dismissed Shadow, “we need them focused on those crystals. I’m assuming that there are no conclusive results on them?”
“None, aside from the fact that the insane radiation they put out doesn’t affect us in any way, shape, or form,” answered Agus. Shadow was about to drill the Komodo dragon when the mobilization alarm started blaring. Shadow switched gears and brought up the mission statement. Eggman’s army had started attacking the western outskirts of Station Square and was met with three giant robots of non Mobian design. A firefight had started and Team Dark, along with the new Shade Platoon, was to go and beat back Eggman and take the robots in for questioning.
“We’ll talk at a later time,” growled Shadow. He sped towards the hangar and met up with Rouge and Omega.
“Two factions of robots fighting each other,” droned Omega, “it is a good day for destruction!”
“Keep the property damage to a minimum,” ordered Shadow.
“Aww!” groaned Omega. “I never get to have any fun!”
“All troops ready, sir!” reported Commander Hanson.
“Let’s move people!” ordered Shadow as he boarded the drop ship. “We’ve got a robot battle going on, and I want to find out about the unknown robots!”
Things had gone from bad to worse for the Autobots. Once Optimus, Jazz, Sonic and Amy arrived at Ironhide’s position, Eggman’s army was laughing at Ironhide. He had taken the form of a red van with hover generators where wheels should be and his cannons on the roof and had a red echidna in cowboy getup as a holo form. Optimus and Jazz just looked at each other and wondered what the hell was going on. Jazz’s vehicle mode looked like a saucer with the left and right sides of it cut off and the whole thing was smoothed out and rounded down. The hover generators were located in the same manner as Ironhide and the rear had tail-fins. Optimus tried to reason with the army, but they didn’t listen and started to open fire. It took quick transformations to robot mode and a quick setup of defensive barriers to hold off the volley of laser fire. Jazz’s transformation consisted of the rear extending away from the car on legs and the new component swung down and split down the middle to make legs. The front swung down to become the chest, making the doors turn into wings and the top of the car become his back. His arms swung down from underneath the front of the car as it moved to be the chest and the hover generators rotated to the sides of his shoulders. His head popped out, with a helmet design that made it have short horns and had a black color to it. He had a blue visor over his optics. Ironhide’s transformation was simplistic in form. The front extended, allowing for the middle and back to extend and split into four limbs. The doors swung up to become shoulder pads and the top two limbs swung to the sides of the torso and hands popped out from each end. The bottom limbs swung down to become legs with feet coming out of the bottom. His head popped up once the main body was complete. That’s when the firefight began. “This is getting out of hand!” hissed Optimus.
“Optimus,” called Sonic, “mind giving me and Amy some cover fire?”
“What for?” asked Optimus.
“Let’s just say that Sonic and I have a talent for splitting those kinds of robots open,” replied Amy. Optimus was dubious but agreed.
“Autobots, give the Mobians covering fire!” he ordered. Sonic and Amy charged at the robot army and started smashing them.
“Priority one Hedgehog!” shouted a robot. Sonic spin dashed it and it fell apart in an instant. This was repeated for 20 more times. The Autobots were amazed.
“You bots seeing this?!” quizzed Optimus.
“How can we not?” asked Jazz.
“Can we keep our minds on the fight?!” snapped Ironhide. Optimus opened his mouth to retort when a trio of civilian vehicles followed by a full G.U.N. squadron approached. This squadron was Shade Platoon, Shadow’s elite squadron. The civilian vehicles were an ambulance built like Ironhide being driven by a white echidna in full medical gear and a pair of smoothed out Volkswagens driven by a red hornet and a yellow bumblebee.
“By the Allspark,” sighed Optimus. “I thought we covered our tracks!”
“Bee, Cliff, and Ratch might have some explaining to do,” snarled Ironhide.
“Save it,” replied Jazz. As they were talking, the drivers of the civilian vehicles disappeared and the vehicles changed into robot mode. Ratchet was the ambulance. His transformation was like Ironhide’s. Bumblebee and Cliffjumper’s transformations were the same as well. The rear split and tilted to become shoulder pads for the arms that swung from the undercarriage to the shoulder connections. The fronts of the vehicles extended on leg like limbs and they swung up and separated to become feet. The top of the cars and the doors rotated 180 degrees and rotated to the back of the robots so the doors looked like wings. Once their heads popped out, the Stinger brothers were ready for battle. They set up defensive barriers as well and allowed their weapons to reveal themselves from their arms. The Stinger brothers started blazing away at Eggman’s army. As the Autobots kept up the fire, Shadow ordered Shade Platoon to observe. Optimus noticed this and turned towards Shade Platoon.
“Well?” he asked. “Are you going to help us? There are some civilians that’ll get caught in the crossfire. Just saying.”
“At the moment,” replied Shadow, “I think observation is key.”
“Conversion units,” came an order from the head of Eggman’s army, “convert into bipedal mode.” That’s when the computer controlled tanks surprised the Autobots. These tanks had four treads and a rotating barrel. Bracers clamped around the sides of the tank treads and had three fingered hands on the front treads and feet on the back treads. The treads extended and formed arms and legs while the body was the main rotating gun barrel. A small head popped up from the middle. What once were robot tanks were tank like, bipedal robots. They swatted Sonic and Amy over to the Autobots.
“Ratchet!” called Optimus. Ratchet transformed and drove to where Sonic and Amy landed. He got them inside his ambulance mode while Sonic was protesting.
“Come on!” he argued. “I’m still kicking!”
“Not in the mood to argue, sir,” hissed Ratchet. He finally shoved Sonic into the ambulance and bathed Sonic and Amy in a blue light. “That should get basic Mobian Biology out of the way,” he mused. “We’ll have you back on your feet soon enough.” While that was going on, Shade Platoon had decided to join in the firefight. The bipedal tanks, however, had crossed their arms in front and started generating shields. Laser fire just bounced off. Optimus and Jazz started planning.
“What do you say,” grinned Optimus, “make our sensei proud?”
“You know it!” cheered Jazz with a smirk. Optimus nodded with the same smirk.
“Autobots, give Jazz and I covering fire!” he ordered as they leapt over their barriers.
“Prime, get back here!” shouted Ironhide. Too late, Optimus and Jazz were charging into the enemy’s ranks. They intended to use hand to hand combat on the enemy. Stupid, yes, but it caught the robots off guard when their fists managed to get past the defense shields. Their sensei was an ancient Cybertronian martial artist from a time long before the war started. He always passed down his teachings to his students to keep the martial arts alive. Optimus and Jazz demonstrated three of the disciplines that day. They first used Crystalocution to disable the tank robots. This discipline is one of the deadliest as it focuses on striking a robot at its metal’s fracture points. This, in turn, causes the robot to fall apart in pieces. Optimus and Jazz had plenty of qualms about using it against sentient robots but used it against the robots of Eggman. Once the tank bots were down, Jazz swapped over to his usual style of Metallikato, a martial art that focuses heavily on spirituality and encourages having a wide range of attack strategies. It was perfect for a bot that goes with the flow, like Jazz. Optimus preferred Circuit-Su. It was a martial art that focuses on the willpower of the practitioner. Optimus had a lot of willpower to succeed and live life and so he put that energy into his attacks. Shadow added to the cover fire with his usual Chaos Spear.
“We’re losing too many soldiers!” called a robot from Eggman’s army. “Retreat!” As they left, a robot turned to face the Autobots.
“Here’s a welcome gift, robots!” he taunted. “Compliments of Doctor Eggman!” He fired off a shot from his tank’s barrel towards Optimus. Optimus leaned to his right to dodge and fired a shot from his own pistol at the tank. The tank exploded, but, amazingly, didn’t cause property damage.
“OH YEAH!” cheered Optimus. “Victory Dance!” Optimus and Jazz started dancing like loons while Ratchet got Sonic and Amy out and transformed. Ironhide meanwhile was talking to Shadow. He explained the whole situation and said that the Autobots need a base of operations.
“Well,” hissed Shadow, “until that day, you bots are coming with us to answer some questions.”
“All right. Now, if y’all will excuse me,” Ironhide replied to Shade Platoon. He stood up and grabbed a staff with a wrench head on one end and whacked Optimus and Jazz while they danced with their backs to Ironhide. The blow knocked them out and they fell flat on their faces in a comedic fashion. The wrench head of the staff broke off, but Ironhide didn’t know until a few seconds later. He then turned to Ratchet, who looked like he was holding something. A sheepish grin and wave from Ironhide made Ratchet utter a phrase that would be repeated during the Autobots’ time on Mobius.
“IRONHIDE, I NEEDED THAT!”