Name: Hornet
Affiliation: Autobot
Sub-Group: N/A
Alt-mode: de Havilland Vampire
Quote: "Hi! I'm Hornet! Who're you?"
Background: On the night of February 12th, 1939, two young boys exploring the woods just east of the small town of Indian Creek, Pennsylvania, saw a blinding flash of light emanating from Laurel Hill State Park, accompanied by the sounds of an explosion. Investigating on their own recognizance, the children came across the wreckage of what appeared to be some kind of machine, completely inert, and so badly damaged that they could not tell if it was a robot or an experimental aircraft. Fetching help from a local garage mechanic, the boys convinced him to tow the machine back to town, heedless of the risks involved. While the local authorities were being summoned, the robot awoke in the middle of the garage, but rather than attacking or demanding to be taken to civic leaders, it asked, almost sheepishly and in obvious pain, where it was, and what was going on. It claimed to remember nothing of what had happened, how it had come to crash in Laurel Hill, where it was from or why it was here. All that it could remember was that it was a member of a group called the "Autobots", as well as its own name, "Hornet".
Federal Authorities arrived the next day, and took Hornet, first to Pittsburgh Air Force Base, then a few days later, to Oak Ridge Research facility in Tennessee. De-activated, powered down, and painstakingly examined, Hornet was studied in detail by the human scientists at Oak Ridge for two solid months, before they were finally forced to admit defeat. The robot was barely a third the mass of the other so-called "Autobots" they had uncovered, and its systems and design was nothing like them. After much dispute and debate, the US government finally informed Optimus Prime and the other Autobots of their find, and agreed to turn Hornet over to them, only to find that the Autobots themselves had no idea who Hornet was either. No Autobot by that name had ever existed on Cybertron, and certainly none had been present on the Ark. There were no records of the little bot's construction, nor did its physical construction bear any resemblance to that of their own models. The ruined remains of the Autobot's protoform indicated that he was an airplane, but of a design entirely alien to both human aircraft and Cybertronian spacefighters. And worst of all, Hornet's underlying code structures, the programs his systems used to communicate with one another and interpret the world around him, were written in a language that nobody, not even the Autobot's most expert scientists, could read, analyze, or even identify.
These mysteries led to raucous debate. Some declared that Hornet had to be a Decepticon spy or sleeper agent. Some believed that the US Government had built him as an attempt to reverse-engineer artificial life. Still others assumed that he was what he claimed to be, but that the records of his creation had been lost. Months of debriefings and deep-spark scans never produced a single shred of evidence from Hornet himself, for Hornet steadfastly insisted that he had no idea where he came from, nor why he was here, and nothing the Autobots found could contradict this assertion. Through all of the suspicious interrogations and questions, he insisted, sometimes forcefully, sometimes tearfully, on the only two facts he could remember from before his arrival: That he was an Autobot, and that his name was Hornet. Some believed him, and some did not, but despite his obviously spark-felt sincerity the Autobots simply could not take the risk that Hornet might be some kind of deep-insertion Decepticon plant. Hornet wound up little more than a particularly privileged prisoner of what he claimed were his fellow Autobots, his movements restricted and curtailed, and subjected to continual tests and investigations, pending some kind of proof of his claims.
But the outbreak of war with the Decepticons and their rapid conquest of most of Western Europe threw all the best laid plans on their head. No longer could the Autobots afford to spare resources to guard one diminutive Cybertronian, no matter how outlandish his claims, and for Hornet, who had been begging and pleading with the various Autobot authorities for months to let him out of his confinement, it provided at last the necessary circumstances. He asked to be allowed to help the other Autobots fight the Decepticons, and with the Axis overrunning the world, a Cybertronian flier, even one so small and weak as to be almost defiantly unsuited for combat, was an asset the Autobots could not ignore. The debate was vociferous, several Autobots predicted ruin if they let Hornet out, but in the end, Optimus Prime decided the matter himself in favor of letting Hornet go, though he declined to explain his reasons. By now, the Autobots knew enough about the little Autobots systems to re-design his protoform to something more appropriate for Earth. Though field maintenance on a bot of Hornet's complexity would be next to impossible, and his size and complete lack of armor would place him at extreme risk in any kind of combat environment, Optimus still authorized Hornet's deployment, and Hornet was by that point willing to take any risk, rather than remain locked away alone under the suspicious eye of the other Autobots.
Physical Description/Weapons: By the standards of Autobots, Hornet is extremely small, standing only ten feet tall and with a slim, wiry build. Though densely packed with necessary systems, Hornet is made from extremely lightweight materials, some of which have defied all chemical analysis to date. His humanoid form is strikingly human-looking in proportions, with few extraneous tires or vehicular attachments, save that his arms are actually articulated airplane wings, which lock into place when he turns into a vehicle. His head has what appears to be a flight helmet of sorts built into it.
In his original form, Hornet carried what appeared to be a pair of light laser blasters built into his wrists, but these have been replaced with two rapid-fire, high-velocity 20mm cannons. Though these guns are powerful enough to damage even other Cybertronians, the necessities of ammo storage have correspondingly reduced his other munitions. In humanoid form, Hornet's cannons fuse together into a double-barreled, one-handed machine pistol, carried at his side and fed by a external ammunition belt connecting the pistol to a port in the small of his back.
In vehicular form, Hornet is a de Havilland Vampire Mk. I, a single-engine, twin-tailed british model airplane, sized appropriately downward for an Autobot his size. Fast, maneuverable, and reasonably well-armed for his size, Hornet is suitable for employment as reconnaissance, and, if necessary, as ground support or interceptor, though his limited munitions, non-existent armor, and lack of discretion and maturity are marks against him for such employments. In both forms, his colors are silver with light blue trim, and the Autobot logo stenciled on both wings. While Hornet's original design called for four wing-mounted missiles, his need for ammunition for the guns has taken precedence. He now carries only a single missile hardpoint under each wing, and a slightly heavier stanchion for a bomb or other munition underneath his undercarriage.
Personality:
Be he Autobot or Decepticon, Hornet is unquestionably strange. He has the mannerisms and apparent mentality of (of all things) a human child, even down to simulated reflexes and sleep cycles. Such behaviors would have been absurdly difficult to recreate mechanically, and yet they seem to serve no apparent purpose, at least none that anyone has been able to figure out.
Hornet remembers nothing of his origins whatsoever, a fact borne out by an examination of his memory banks. How he came to be on Earth, who constructed him, what caused him to crash (if he did crash) in Pennsylvania, none of these things he has the slightest idea how to explain. His only recollection is that he is an Autobot named Hornet, with no qualifiers or other hints as to how either of these things came to pass. His processor is programmed with both human and Cybertronian languages, and he knows (or knew) standard Autobot identification codes, and carries an Autobot IFF transponder, though these facts can be interpreted in many different ways. As though the above were not strange enough, Hornet periodically experiences flashes of... something, audiovisual hallucinations or other types of typically impossible phenomena for robots. Perhaps this is all tied into whatever mysterious purpose he was built for, or perhaps something else entirely is going on. Yet in the absence of hard, analytical data, these mysteries must remain so.
In terms of his personality, Hornet is an easy bot to like. Kind, sympathetic, and caring, as well as deeply emotional, Hornet gets along easily with either humans or bots, or rather he used to, back when first recovered. The ensuing months spent in isolation, interspersed with interrogations, invasive tests, and frightening accusations, left Hornet badly shaken in spirit, skittish, shy, and almost desperately lonely. Set apart from the other Autobots due to his unknown background and the lingering suspicions that encircle him, Hornet has become, by necessity, a much quieter, more unobtrusive bot than he was reported to have been when first discovered. And yet buried deep inside Hornet is an irrepressible core of enthusiasm that insists on popping back up like a cork at the slightest encouragement from anyone. Whatever malice is hidden in his origins, none of it seems to be contained within his spark, though of course there are those who claim that this is all as the Decepticons would make it appear if they wished to design a purpose-built infiltrator. For his part, Hornet simply tries his best to find friends willing to take the chance that he is not what Ironhide and the others fear.
Should he find them, who is to say what might happen?
Weaknesses: To list Hornet's weaknesses is a lengthy affair. Though reasonably well-armed, fast, and maneuverable, Hornet has next-to-no armor whatsoever, for none exist light enough for him to carry. Strikes that a normal Transformer could easily shrug off, even from human weapons, are quite capable of badly damaging or even killing Hornet, something even more problematic given the fact that Hornet's exceptionally complex, unique, and almost alien design makes it very difficult for him to undergo field (or any other) repairs. Some of Hornet's components are simply unique, having no cognates of any sort on Earth, Cybertron, or anywhere else, and should they become damaged, it is difficult to imagine by what means they might be replaced.
As though that were not enough, Hornet's combat skills leave something to be desired. He is emotionally fragile at the best of times, a trend that his months in isolation have not improved on, panics easily under fire, though in fairness he does clearly try his best to help to the best of his capacities, and is (at least) a fairly quick study, grasping unorthodox concepts and tactics more rapidly than most of his fellows (albeit in his own... particular... fashion). If he is to prove useful at all, he will no doubt require a close eye and careful instruction, assuming that his very presence is not all a carefully constructed act.
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