Transformers: World War II

[LadyTevar]

Pathfinder rolled over to the dock, giving the crane plenty of room to drop... er... swing Breakout to the ground. Knowing him, he'd probably picked a huge fighting vehicle, possibly another tank since that was closest to his Cybertronian mode. "If it says anything, Hunter... he was always a tank-model, while I was a little racecar," Pathfinder answered, making it seem like the voice had come from someone inside the tank to keep the fiction up for the dockworkers and sailors. "Him and Deathstrike did a few rounds, and Breakout's got this feud going on with Blitzwing. You've seen both of them in action."

[Charon]

"This should be interesting then. And hell, I'm not about to say no to any," there was a bit of an emphasis on that word "help I can get my hands on. Can't afford to be picky."

[frigidmagi]

The boat had finally docked. I waited in the cargo hold surrounded by human vehicles and supplies. Now I just had to put up with the never enough damned unloading and I could get to work. A warmachine's job... At last.

[LadyTevar]

"Hurry it up, Breakout. The sooner you take the cargo sling, the sooner you can get to Blitzwing," Pathfinder teased over the comms.

[Cynical Cat]

"Wait," said Deathstrike. "Doesn't that mean Breakout is at the docks and has to sit around and wait until they get around to unloading him?" Autobots and their silly rules. It was hard to keep them straight.

[General Havoc]

Hornet couldn't claim that he understood, but then that was never really necessary when someone was being nice to him, and Stephanie claimed that she wanted his opinion, though why and on what subject was entirely beyond him.

Still, he didn't stop to think about the reasons why, preferring to believe, true or not, that Stephanie just wanted to talk to him. Accordingly he grinned and hopped over and had to remind himself that he wasn't supposed to hug humans (they were awfully fragile). Picking his way around the crated supplies, he sat down and tucked his knees up against his chest, wrapping his wings around himself.

He blinked as he looked around a few times before a thought suddenly came to him.

"Are... you gonna do tests on me?" he asked. He managed to sound both apprehensive and resigned in the same statement.

[Cynical Cat]

"Well," she said warily, noting his apprehension, "I will need to get a look at your insides so I can put you back together if you get hurt. But no tests."

[General Havoc]

Hornet hesitated for a second. "Oh..." he said, sounding just slightly sad for a moment. "Okay..."

He scooted over until he was next to Stephanie, clearly having undergone something like this before, if not many times.

"The others, back in Tennessee, said that I was..." he hesitated for another second, "they said I was built weird, and that some of the stuff I had inside me wasn't like the stuff they had inside them. I mean it was all smaller and everything, it was also... different. They said that they hadn't seen anything like it before." From anyone else it might have been a boast, but from Hornet it plainly was not, indeed he sounded slightly ashamed, his optics and head lowered somewhat.

Another thought came to him, and he glanced up at Stephanie. "Do... do you need to switch me off?" he asked, and this time he did sound slightly apprehensive, though only slightly.

[Cynical Cat]

"That shouldn't be necessary," said Stephanie reassuringly.

[General Havoc]

Hornet looked at least partly relieved, though equally plainly, he had been prepared to permit a human to shut him down, something very few Transformers were willing to countenance, no matter their affiliation. Indeed he hadn't seemed to see anything at all odd about the concept.

"I don't... know a whole lot about my systems," he said sheepishly. "What should I do?"

[Cynical Cat]

"Well, we'll worry about that latter. But sometime, when you're ready, you'll open up your panels and I'll take some pictures and you'll tell me about yourself. I guess we'll need another Cybertronian to help us. I only really know my way around Deathstrike's internals and he's somewhat nonstandard too."

[General Havoc]

Relief was apparent on Hornet's face, even without him speaking. Whoever had constructed the little bot clearly had gone to enormous trouble to ensure that his facial features were as responsive as possible. His optics and optic apertures even had motors built into them to simulate the eye movement on a normal human.

"Oh," he said, "Okay!" And relieved of the imminent threat of being vivisected (again), he smiled and seemed to relax.

He looked around for a few moments, as Deathstrike moved about. When he judged it providential to do so, he whispered (by his standards) a question to Stephanie.

"Is... Deathstrike really a Decepticon?" he asked. "I thought the Decepticons were working for the bad guys."

[Cynical Cat]

"Yes he is," she said. "He crashed on Earth a few years ago and I reactivated him. We didn't know a damn thing about Autobots or Decepticons back then. We thought he was some kind of space ship. He swore an oath of gratitude and well, here he is."

[General Havoc]

Backing himself up carefully to the winch, Cavalier could not help but remarking over the radio that this sort of thing could be much easier done in humanoid form. He knew it wasn't an option, the loading dock was a camouflage-only area, but if they were going to drag him all the way over here to act like a load-hauler, then the least they could do was put up with his complaining. Soldiers had the inalienable right to grouse, after all.

He locked his rear winch onto the cargo loader and began to run the motor, hoisting enormous pallets of supplies off the ship as workmen scrambled to on and offload each one. Presumably Breakout was aboard one of those pallets. Idly, Cavalier mused what Pathfinder would pay him to "accidentally" shake Breakout off his loading pallet into the harbor.

Not that he intended to do that... probably...

*----------------------------------------------*

Hornet just blinked once, twice. Plainly he had no idea that Decepticons would ever do such things. At the same time though, he looked puzzled rather than skeptical, as though trying to work out what Stephanie had said with how he imagined the world to work. There was no indication that he suspected Deathstrike might be feigning his allegiance. Indeed the very notion might not have even occurred to him.

"Is..." he asked hesitantly, "is that how come you came out here?" He seemed to be unsure of how to explain what he meant, and paused for a second. "There were... some humans back in Tennessee who came and did tests on me and they told me that they were allowed to work with me because they knew about Autobots or Cybertronians... more than the rest of the humans did at least. Are you... one of the humans who knows about Decepticons?"

[Cynical Cat]

"Yes," said Stephanie. "Sort of. The Ark, as I understand it, is somewhere in America. When Deathstrike crashed it was in Canada and it immediately became a big secret. He told the few of us who were able to talk to him about the Autobots and Decepticons and when the politicians realized that the Decepticons were working with the Germans and that there were active Autobots on our side, everything changed. America and the Commonwealth are allies, but they're still separate countries. There's all sorts of silly power games going on."

[General Havoc]

The politics were well above Hornet's pay grade, that much was clear. He knew what Canada was of course, and America, and even the Commonwealth, and he knew that they were all on the Autobots' side, but the political intricacies of who ran what and the power games being played by all sides were entirely alien to him. The key point to him was that Stephanie was the expert on Decepticons, or at least insofar as anyone was.

He nodded carefully, and posed his next question more quietly. "Do... do you think..." he asked, his voice nervous, "do you think I could be a Decepticon?"

[Cynical Cat]

"I don't know about that," said Stephanie. "Deathstrike's the expert and he doesn't think so."

[frigidmagi]

He locked his rear winch onto the cargo loader and began to run the motor, hoisting enormous pallets of supplies off the ship as workmen scrambled to on and offload each one. Presumably Breakout was aboard one of those pallets. Idly, Cavalier mused what Pathfinder would pay him to "accidentally" shake Breakout off his loading pallet into the harbor.

Not that he intended to do that... probably...

Breakout's alt mode was the 17pdr SP Achilles, a varient of the M-10 tank destroyer, which was itself created from the chassis of the Sherman tank. The average version of the vehicle was a little over 30 tons fully loaded. Breakout was heavier.

Additionally while Breakout didn't consider himself a prideful Bot, there were limits. And being treated as inanimate cargo brushed up on those limits. As such he sat on a pallet all his own and was easily identifiable when Cavalier hoisted him off the ship.

[LadyTevar]

"There he is," Pathfinder said, watching as the larger Breakout was lifted out of the cargo hold on his pallet. "You'll like him, Hunter. He's a good 'bot."

Still, the imp of the perverse wasn't far away. "Hey, Cavalier! Be careful when you let out the line... wouldn't want to have him drop suddenly..." If a bot could wink-wink, nudge-nudge, Pathfinder would be doing so. If he'd been playing out the winch, the chain would have a sudden drop of about a meter before recovering to set Breakout down smoothly. Yeah, Breakout would scold him, but Pathfinder thought it would be worth it just to scramble his gyros for a nano. The thought made the little tank feel like smiling. Even in Alt-mode, the Joes could almost see the smirk.

[General Havoc]

While Cavalier was usually fairly indulgeant with Pathfinder's inveterate schemes of mischief, there was a difference between permitting Pathfinder to abuse Breakout, and abusing Breakout himself. Not that he didn't think the idea was funny, but Pathfinder had 'conveniantly' neglected to mention that should Cavalier do this thing, it would be Cavalier who got the blame for it. For a second he considered doing it anyway as a lesson to Overload, a reminder of what happened when you assigned a tank to a job better done by professional winch or crane operators. But thinking it over, he decided against it. Breakout was going to be in charge here. No need to start things off on the wrong foot, lest he turn out to be a stickler for rules of engagement and other such bothers.

Of course, in the end, it scarcely mattered, for whether he was trying to annoy Breakout or not, Cavalier's winch was not a precision instrument, and he himself had scarcely any idea how to properly offload pallets of equipment scarcely any lighter than he was. He managed to avoid dumping Breakout into the harbor, but only barely, and when he finally set the tank destroyer down, it was with a (truly unintentional) two meter drop at the end.

Cavalier's engine grumbled an imitation of the things he wanted to say aloud right now, but could not.

Damned camo-orders...

[LadyTevar]

Pathfinder winced at the two meter drop. The worst part? He could tell that was totally unintentional. "Scrap... Breakout? Anything broken?"

[frigidmagi]

The impact is jarring, but does not bother me. I've dropped much father. In current Earth gravity I could drop hundreds of meters without any real damage. Prime builds his bots to last.

I am however annoyed. I have just spent weeks. WEEKS! As cargo. Worse, the time in transit has impacted on my usefulness in the war. It is not good for a warmachine to idle. I belong on the front. I gun the engine and roll right off the pallet without waiting. While aware there is a camo order in effect, I find it ridiculous. The Decepticons already know we are active. They already know we are fighting with the allies. The humans are already aware of the presence of giant machines running amok in Nazi forces. Also the Cons are perfectly aware of the presence of Bots in this base. There is no secret to keep. The camo order serves little to no purpose.

I do not transform however, I will follow the order, for now. I roar down the path taking a moment to revel in actually moving under my own power. I swing by Pathfinder and come to a stop.

"Pathfinder, I need to find the Human CO of the forces here, could you direct me?" I ask.

[Charon]

Hunter made his way over to the tank and looked it over. A fairly impressive piece of hardware. The Joe was already piecing together how to demolish it even as he admired it.

"Man we just keep getting the latest and greatest huh? Now if they could just send us a half-dozen of these babies we could push the Germans back a bit huh?" Hunter walked up to the tank and slapped the side.

[frigidmagi]

I am fairly used to biologicals walking up and touching me without care or permission while in vehicle mode. For some reason, biological beings seem to experience less fear and apprehension towards Cybertronians while we are in vehicle mode. They also tend to forget we are sapient. There was one young officer when I was serving Free League that kept starting mating behavior with his chosen mate on or around me! I am not a prude, but really! I am a warmachine... Not a bed!

This even holds true for their children. When I was in biped mode, most younglings would not approach me, unless I had been a part of their community for some time. In vehicle mode? I might as well been part of the playgrounds, or a nap area.

The Human's comment registers on me.

A dry chuckle escapes me in response to the irony.

I am after all older then his entire species. And if there were no Cons present in Enemy forces... It would only take 4 of me to to destroy everything in the operational zone (99.89% likely).

[Cynical Cat]

"You are clearly not a Decepticon," said Deathstrike as he moved a pallet of armour plate to the side. The humans were new to industrialized warfare and their technology was only beginning to be applied to the art of creating warmachines. They had tanks and powered flight for less than half a vorn, their material science had only recently truly become science, and motor transport was still in its adolescence. Sloped armour on tanks was new to them!

He shook his head. They were children. Vicious, bloody minded children who placed too much stock in exterior appearance. Imagine believing that light skin was a sign of genetic superiority. Their insecurities were truly legion.

The next crates contained wiring. "Next," said Stephanie, waving it away. Human wiring was crap compared to Cybertronian tech, but it would do in a pinch. "So," she said. "How do you think this Breakout is going to respond to your denting Cavalier?"

"Hard to tell," said Deathstrike. "Autobots are different in this regard. As a warrior he would believe that Cavalier earned it. Autobots tend to be rigid followers of rules though and adhere to inflexible moral principles. We'll see."

"You say moral principles like that's a bad thing."

"Principle should yield to circumstance and Autobot principles tend to be very . . . convenient for Autobots. We should have piece and restore Cybertron to the Golden Age. When Autobots ruled and we had no say in government. We should honor the Primes-who are always Autobots. And so on."