Chapter Text
If you're a ground-based alt, Cybertron’s surface is a difficult-to-navigate maze of constantly moving spikes and large stationary mountain ranges. It’s a real slagging pain to navigate. Flyers can shove their opinions up their intake, B does not want to hear about how easy your patrol was. The constantly changing terrain of the “Horn Fields”, as they’ve been dubbed, proves a difficult challenge for any stupid enough to travel straight through, especially after a quake. Guess what B is doing.
A huge metal spike slams against B, sending him hurtling to the side. His tires slam back onto the ground, sending jolts up his suspension. His tires skid loudly as he tries to get moving again, not wanting to get slammed by another spike. Primus, this is the worst.
Damn, that one looked like it hurt.
An accurate assumption from the “One” voice, B’s side hurt like a glitch, but he had to keep moving.
That Cybertron looks like a huge pain in the aft to travel on.
The “Two” voice pipes up with its own astute observations. The voices in B’s head are very perceptive today.
No kidding.
A spike bursts out beside B, sending him swerving to avoid it. Frag , he should not be paying attention to the voices right now, B has to get through this “Spike Attack” in one piece. The voices in his helm are not in such a predicament, so they keep talking.
I can’t figure out what the tell is for the spikes coming out of the ground for the life of me.
What do you mean?
Yes, please enlighten us, o’ non-existent disembodied voice in B’s head, what have you figured out that every scout and geologist and scientist in Iacon hasn’t been able to figure out. As far as they can tell, the spikes are entirely unpredictable; the only thing the guys back home have figured out is that they form around the edges of tectonic masses, and tectonic movement causes them to shoot up. There is no actual way to track when and where they shoot out from in the field. Primus why did the cons have to slap their base here of all places. It didn’t even get good energon flow, why are they here?
Well, you can see the edges, yeah? Where the metal fractures?
Edges? B tries to look closely at the ground as he swerves around the end of a broken metal peak. He almost slams into the side of a new spike in his attempted study. Frag! Stop listening and focus, B!
I don’t follow. What am I looking for?
Around the spikes as they come out, they kinda punch through the solid layer of metal on top, and it fractures and falls apart.
A spike breaks through the ground right in front of B, and he has to swerve hard, nearly flipping as he narrowly avoids another crash.
Ooohh, I see it, yeah. Kinda looks like the ice on earth.
Well, I’m guessing this whole place is kinda like an energon cube, but full of that cyber stuff that Big had.
The stuff he fell into?
Yeah, that. The stuff that could form new metal. I think there’s a layer of hardened metal on top, but when the more liquidy stuff under it gets agitated, it just shoots up and hardens.
A spike bursts out of the ground right in B’s path. He doesn’t have the time or space to swerve around it, as more spikes start to crowd around B. In a snap decision, B slams his accelerator as far as it will go, and starts speeding up the still-extending metal. The spikes start to close in behind him, quickly crowding his rear bumper.
Oh, that makes good sense. You think the catalyst would be heat or something? Like the thing that starts the whole reaction?
B’s engine roars as he soars off the tip of the spike into open air.
That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I can’t use infrared or any other wavelength to check from here, so I have no way to know.
His momentum sends him flying into a spin, forcing him into his root mode to try and control it. He needs a place to land. B’s optics catch some foliage breaking through the chrome surface beneath him. A soft(er) landing.
Yeah, if you were there, you could probably feel the heat on the metal. Or see the heat travelling up to the surface.
B twists mid air, angling his quick descent to try and land correctly. Remember your training in the mines.
If Cybertron had more of an atmosphere, we could probably see some steam; that’d be an easy way to check from here.
Land on both peds. He extends his leg struts, pointing at the ground.
Hopefully their guys figure it out. Seeing Cybertron beat the scrud out of them isn’t fun.
Let your momentum carry you down. B lets his joints bend with his weight.
Some pre-emptive revenge.
Follow through and roll. B throws his shoulder down, clumsily rolling through the plants. He abruptly stopped, lying on his back, staring up at the slowing tips of the spikes. Looks like he got out in one piece.
Ha. That’s a bad joke, we don’t even know if they’re gonna kill it this time around.
You never know.
Primus, why are the “One” and “Two” voices so morbid, they sound like Ratchet and Elita. B lets his helm fall back on the ground and sighs. Maybe he’s hanging around Ratchet and Elita too much, and their pessimism is starting to rub off on him. His vents suck in large gulps of air as his fans try to cool his engine. Everything is quiet for a moment, even the voices fall silent for a bit, just letting the silence take over.
I’ve never seen a Cybertron with so much plant life, now that I think about it.
Yeah, it’s not super common. I think mine developed some at some point, though I died before anything substantial took hold.
As confusing as the voices are, B does appreciate never being left in complete silence. Thank you, processor, for hallucinating random voices so B doesn’t have to sabotage his scouting missions by broadcasting his exact location because talking is the only way to keep the cold, dead silence at bay.
B sits up and does a quick visual scan of his surroundings. The new mountain looms above him, thankfully still after its rampage. B stares at it for a moment, before getting to his peds and walking over. He remembers something the “One” voice said: “ You could probably feel the heat on the metal.” B steps right up to the mound. He squints his optics and places a servo on the shiny surface. It’s warm, barely. B stands there for a tick before he shakes his helm and steps back. Where his processor got that information, he doesn’t know, but if the voices know it, then he must have read it somewhere. Maybe he read something about the surface before he was assigned trash duty.
B turns and transforms into his alt and speeds off, leaving the spikes in the dust. He’s got a con base to find.