“Are you insane!?” Rhinox yelled back through Sigma Prime’s comlink. “We can’t retreat! What about the Ark!?”

 “That’s exactly the point I’m trying to make, Rhinox,” Sigma answered. “Scourge doesn’t WANT the Ark. Scourge’s mission isn’t to destroy Optimus Prime or do any of that. He just wants all of US destroyed, which means if we’re all gone from here, he won’t bother the Ark.”

 “And what makes you think that!?”

 “Taran told me.”

 “Taran!? What’s he doing back here!?”

 “He’s stolen Cheetor’s shell and used it for himself.”

 “That little backstabbing….” Rhinox trailed off as he finished the unmentionable insult to himself. As if remembering what the conversation was about suddenly, Rhinox quickly reestablished the comlink connection. “Wait, why should we trust Taran? I told you what he did to us…”

 “Just… trust me,” Sigma replied back, pausing quickly to fend off an attacking Predacon. “Nighteye tells me that he KNOWS Taran’s Vexoran side. Taran wouldn’t tell us something like this unless he wanted us to succeed.”

 Sigma Prime heard a sigh on the other end of the connection.

 “Fine,” Rhinox conceded, “I’ll establish a connection with the others and tell them all to evacuate. But if all Scourge wants is us, then you can bet he’ll follow us.”

 “I know,” Sigma admitted. “Hopefully, a situation will present itself eventually where we can stop them from following us… at least for a while.”

 “Prime,” Rhinox sighed. “Well, here goes nothing…”

 Rattrap barely heard Rhinox’s command to retreat. He could scarcely stay awake, much less keep aware of the world around him. Corhada’s whip-hand continued to tighten around his throat…

 …Suddenly, the tightening stopped. Now that his circuits were no longer being strained and squeezed so much, Rattrap slowly recovered his full consciousness, looking at the battle ensuing in front of him.

 It seemed that… Cybershark?!….. had flown right into Corhada, full speed, knocking the Predacon unconscious. The shark-bot was now busy battling some kind of iguana/dragonfly fuzor.

 “Rattrap! I overheard the rhino callin’ for you guys to retreat! Let’s go sometime TODAY!!!”

 “You don’t recover quickly from having your neck squeezed in half, kid,” Rattrap replied hoarsely, standing up and rubbing his damaged neck.

 “My spark is bleeding for you!” Cybershark retorted, shooting the enemy fuzor point-blank in the face with one of his missiles. “But we’ve gotta get OUT OF HERE!”

 “Yeah, like I hadn’t noticed!” Rattrap replied, running to catch up with the already-retreating Cybershark, several Predacons starting to follow after them.

 Gryphtron closed his optics and waited for the end as he saw the Transmetal panther racing toward him, yelling, “Flashfire, terrorize!”

 Gryphtron heard the whirs and clicks of transformation, then a loud clang. After a few seconds, surprised that he hadn’t been attacked yet, Gryphtron weakly opened his optics to find Beastbot standing over the unconscious form of Flashfire, the Predacon’s head a few meters from its body, dripping mech fluid.

 “What-?” Gryphtron started to respond, only to be interrupted by his comlink suddenly coming to life.

 “Attention all units! This is Rhinox! Retreat! I repeat, RETREAT! I’ll explain the situation later, but just trust me for now! Head towards the canyons towards the west, we’ll try to lose the Predacons there! Rhinox out!”

 “You heard the man,” Beastbot said hurriedly, hoisting Gryphtron’s weak form over his shoulder and breaking into a run. “Let’s get outta here!”

 Magnaboss winced as Tripredacus socked him in the side of the head, sending the huge Maximal gestalt wheeling into the side of the mountain in which the Maximal base was located, face-first.

 Rhinox had recently sent him a message to retreat, but he didn’t know how he could under the onslaught of Tripredacus.

 Grunting, the gestalt lifted his body out of the Magnaboss-sized imprint in the side of the mounting, turning around just as Tripredacus uppercut him.

 Unable to take the stress of battle anymore, Magnaboss separated into his three components- Silverbolt, Ironhide, and Prowl. Prowl and Silverbolt seemed to be pretty damaged, as they made up the main body of Magnaboss, but Ironhide, who made up the arms and legs, seemed relatively fine.

 “Come on, guys, no time fer sleepin’!” Ironhide said as he transformed into his elephant mode, hoisting Silverbolt and Prowl onto his back via his long tusks. “Tripredahcus may be tough, but he ain’t very fast!”

 Ironhide ran between Tripredacus’ legs as the giant tried to impale him, instead only succeeding in burying its massive claws deep into the dirt. Tripredacus howled in frustration as he tried to pull his hands out of the dirt. Ironhide quickly retreated towards the west as fast as he could, trampling any Predacons who got in his way.

 Tigerhawk looked over the fallen form of Airazor, scorch marks all over her, her left arm and half of her chest blown off.

 Tigerhawk didn’t need to check her spark cavity; he knew she was dead.

 “Airazor… no…” Tigerhawk moaned, cradling Airazor’s limp shell to his chest.

 Suddenly, his comlink bleeped.

 “Attention all units! This is Rhinox! Retreat! I repeat, RETREAT! I’ll explain the situation later, but just trust me for now! Head towards the canyons towards the west, we’ll try to lose the Predacons there! Rhinox out!”

 “Prime,” Tigerhawk said, his voice dripping with hatred. His face grim, Tigerhawk picked up Airazor and flew off towards the others, dodging the occasional missile fire.

 “I’ll rip your optics out, Wasp-Boy!” Terrorsaur shouted, clawing at Waspinator’s optics as the two grappled in mid-air.

 Staying silent, Waspinator quickly took his gun out of subspace and shot Terrorsaur point-black, causing the dactyl-bot to let out an ear-piercing shriek as one of his engines exploded, taking half of his back with it.

 Grinning as best as he could with his odd facial structure, Waspinator watched as Terrorsaur fell towards the ground below, his back engine bellowing out a trail of smoke behind him. Swooping down, Waspinator leveled his gun at the injured form of Terrorsaur.

 “Now Dactyl-bot pay for taking advantage of Wazzzpinator for all thiz time!”

 Terrorsaur closed his optics as he waited for the final shot to be fired.

 Instead, he heard Waspinator’s comlink suddenly click on, and a staticky message was immediately relayed- something about retreating or something, Terrorsaur didn’t care.

 Grumbling, Waspinator switched off his comlink in the middle of the message and glared back at Terrorsaur, leveling his gun again.

 “Wazzzpinator finish Dactyl-bot off first,” Waspinator growled, “Not care what rhino-bot-“

 A missile grazed Waspinator’s arm, and he immediately looked up from his quarry, noticing a couple of Predacons heading his way.

 “Not in this lifetime, buddy!” an incoming Predacon yelled, who looked an awful lot like Waspinator in his original form, only more yellow and with a more humanoid head.

 Waspinator fired a few shots at the incoming Preds, distracting them for a nano, then flew away, yelling back to Terrorsaur, “This not finished, Dactyl-bot!”

 Grimlock shook the small armadillo-bot off of him, quickly taking the smaller Predacon by the neck and throwing him against the nearby mountainside, knocking the armadillo into stasis lock.

 Suddenly, Grimlock’s comlink beeped to life, relaying Rhinox’s message to retreat.

 Grimlock tried to run away from the incoming Preds, but groaned as he fell to the ground, his injured leg unable to support him.

 “Nnnnhhh… Grimlock, maximize!”

 Transforming to his robot mode with a roar, Grimlock took off, his injured leg now an injured arm.

 “Not fair,” Grimlock mumbled, “Me Grimlock just getting warmed up….”

 Dinobot knocked the giant pillbug off him with a roar. Trying to strike the temporarily-stunned Predacon with his sword, Dinobot found it nigh impossible- the armor around the Pred’s outside with so tough, his sword only nicked it.

 “Heheh… try again, Dino!” the pillbug chuckled, “Retrax, terrorize!”

 The pillbug quickly folded into a wide, armored robot with a gas-mask-like face, and used the claw on the back of his right hand to pin Dinobot against the mountainside, the sharp blades dangerously close to Dinobot’s neck.

 “Now it’s my turn,” Retrax grinned threateningly.

 Suddenly, the pillbug-bot backed away from Dinobot, Retrax struggling with every step as if he wasn’t controlling his actions.

“Wh-what’s going on!?” Retrax asked to no one, bewildered. The Predacon then was levitated up into the air and thrown against the mountainside so hard he left a shallow imprint in it as he collapsed to the ground.

“Bah… rescued by a female…” Dinobot growled as he saw Blackarachnia step towards him, the jewel on her forehead glowing.

“I thought we agreed you’d stop doing that,” Blackarachnia smirked. “Anyway, I got a message from Big Green. He just told us to retreat, said that he’ll explain later.”

“Why did I not receive the message?” Dinobot asked.

“Maybe ‘cause your comlink’s damaged,” Blackarachnia replied, pointing to Dinobot’s mangled comlink on his arm. “But that doesn’t matter right now. Let’s get out of here!”

 “All right, the message is relayed,” Sigma Prime told Nighteye, who was fending off a thrust from Scarem. “Let’s go, go, go!”

 “Affirmative,” Nighteye replied, punching Scarem in the face so hard the beetle’s face caved in partially. “I’ll get Rhinox and catch up with you guys. There’s no way the rhino’s gonna be able to fend for himself adequately in that makeshift body.”

 Nodding, Sigma shot an approaching Predacon in the face and kicked him over, breaking into an all-out run as Nighteye transformed into his owl mode and rocketed back towards the base.

 Rhinox heard another pounding on the base doors, and at first, he thought that this was just the sound of yet another missile blast thudding into the wall. But this one was different… it was almost continuous….

 Opening the base doors just wide enough for Nighteye to get in, Rhinox quickly disengaged himself from the defense systems after he closed the entrance up again.

 “It’s about time you got here,” Rhinox said as he wheeled up to the much larger Transmetal 2 owl. “I’ve set up a few traps for the Preds, but it won’t hold them back long, and that door that you just came through won’t last through more than a couple more missile blasts.”

 “Hey, be glad I came for you at all, with the way you’ve been grumbling lately,” Nighteye joked, transforming into his robot mode and hoisting up Rhinox on his back. “…There’s a back way out of this place, right?”

 “Yep,” Rhinox replied. “It’s on the other side of the cavern system, behind the Ark. But it’s there, hidden behind a large stalactite.”

 “Okay,” Nighteye said, readying his ion thrusters, “Hold on.”

 “I can’t,” Rhinox retorted angrily, “You know I don’t have any hands.”

 “Oh, yeah,” Nighteye snorted, chuckling a little. “Well, then don’t do anything that will make me let go of you.”

 Nighteye quickly grabbed on to Rhinox’s skinny arms and zoomed out towards the Ark.

 “This isn’t working!” Blackarachnia cried, shooting a few potshots at a few incoming Pred flyers. “We’re not outrunning them, especially with all our injured!”

 “Then we’ll just have to lose them,” Ramulus replied, lowering down on his ram-hoverboard until he was only a few feet above the ground, slowing down until he was going at about the same speed as Blackarachnia.

 “About time you showed up, ‘Ram!” Beastbot yelled from a couple yards away, sprinting across the barren plain in his beast mode. “Where the heck were you when we needed you!?”

 “You always need me,” Ramulus said, flashing a smile. “But naw, I was taking care of a few Preds near the back lines using good ol’ sniping tactics.”

 “Wait, back up!” Blackarachnia yelled, transforming into her beast mode so she could gain a little speed. “What do you mean when you said ‘we’ll just have to lose them’? I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but it’s not very easy to hide from two dozen Transformers!”

 “I don’t mean HIDE from them,” Ramulus retorted. “We need to find some kind of cave in the canyons ahead that we can enter. Then maybe we could blast the opening shut behind us. It won’t hold them forever, but it’ll probably give us enough time to get far enough away from ‘em in the cave system where they’ll give up on following us for the time being.”

 “Good….idea,” Beastbot huffed, pausing to fire a laser disc from his optic at an incoming turtle/alligator fuzor, slicing the Pred’s arm off neatly.

 “I’ll scout ahead and search for a nearby cave in the canyon formations, since I’m the fastest out of us,” Ramulus said, powering up his hovercraft and speeding ahead, dropping out of sight as he dipped down into the canyons.

 “Thanks a lot for leaving us to do the dirty work!!!” Blackarachnia yelled sarcastically to the retreating rambot.

 The rest of the Maximals all converged on Beastbot and Blackarachnia’s position after the two radioed them and told them all about Ramulus’ plans.

 “This is why I wanted us to head here,” Rhinox said distractedly as he fired one of his chaingun-arms at a charging boar. “I figured we could try something like this.”

 “So what we do with…uhh… injured ‘bots?” Grimlock asked, struggling with a grappling crab-bot. The dalmatian-colored raptor quickly gave up grappling and struck the crab in the head with his eye beams.

 “We’ll try to load them on Tigerhawk and my hoverboard,” Ramulus said, returning on his hovercraft. “I’ve found a cave, guys. It’s actually rather close- just about half a mile west from here. The cave goes down in a very straight path for at least a couple hundred yards- I didn’t bother to look any further down than that. Let’s get moving, guys!”

 “Who died and left you Prime?!” Rattrap exclaimed hoarsely, his throat still leaking mech fluid. “I ain’t trusting nobot who tried to murder our leader a few months ago!”

 “Hey, it wasn’t my idea,” Ramulus shrugged. “That Taran guy paid me to do it.”

 “Why you-“ Rattrap started to launch himself on Ramulus, but Grimlock quickly stepped in the way, holding Rattrap’s arms as the smaller ‘bot struggled uselessly.

 “We not have time to pick fights!” Grimlock argued. “Need all troops we can get now!”

 “He’s right!” Rhinox yelled, struggling to be heard over the sound of his firing chainguns. “Load up the non-functional Maximals on Ramulus’ hovercraft and Tigerhawk, and let’s go!”

 Razorbeast, the boar transformer who had earlier charged the Maximals, fired at the Maximals as they all loaded up on each the various functioning fliers in one way or another. He watched as they took off, albeit a bit slower than usual, with all the various ground-locked Maximals putting quite a bit of extra weight on the flyers.

 “They’re getting away!” Razorbeast shouted to Buzzsaw and a few other nearby flyers.

 “They won’t get far loaded down like that,” Buzzsaw sneered. “In fact, they’re doing us a favor! They’ve ever-so-nicely grouped themselves together! If we can just take out the flyers, they’ll all get killed by the fall to the ground below! FLYERS, LET’S MOVE!”

 The five or so nearby Pred flyers all took off after the retreating Maximals, laughing as they charged their weapons.

 Tigerhawk winced as a shot grazed his wing. Glancing backwards, Tigerhawk’s eyes widened a bit as he saw the incoming flyers.

 “They’re still following us!” the Transmetal 2 fuzor yelled to the other Maximals ahead of him.

 “No duh,” Ramulus grunted, holding on to the bottom of his horn-hovercraft by his hands. The surface of his hovercraft had Grimlock and Beastbot crowded on it. It was so much weight the hovercraft was actually struggling to stay aloft a bit.

 Unable to really do anything because of all the weight on his back, Tigerhawk merely growled and tried to speed up- only to find he was already at max speed.

 “Slag!” Tigerhawk cursed right before another shot hit him right in the rear. Tigerhawk faltered a little under the assault, and Airazor’s dead shell fell off his body, plummeting towards the ground far below.

 “Airazor!” Tigerhawk yelled, immediately forgetting about the other unconscious  forms of Prowl, Gryphtron, and Silverbolt on his back and diving towards the ground, hoping to intercept Airazor’s shell before it hit the ground.

 “Forget her, you fool!” Nighteye screamed, his form nearly overloaded with Rattrap, Dinobot, and Blackarachnia all hanging off of him. “She’s already dead!”

 Tigerhawk continued to dive, seemingly not hearing Nighteye’s protest. Seconds before he was about to intercept Airazor, one of Buzzsaw’s missiles struck the intake valve on his left wing engine, causing it to explode. Roaring in pain, and now minus one wing, Tigerhawk plummeted towards the ground below, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

 “Tigerhawk just bought it!” Cybershark said, the forms of Sigma Prime, Ironhide, and Rhinox on his back.

 “I can’t deal with that now!” Ramulus said, switching his voice into a perfect impression of Ultra Magnus’.

 That’s our Ramulus, Beastbot thought, chuckling. Still joking around even in the most dire of situations.

 “There!” Ramulus yelled, switching his voice back to normal as he pointed ahead to a black hole in the side of the canyon. “That’s the cave!”

 “Then let’s go!” Nighteye said, speeding ahead towards the hole, the other two flyers following him.

 Quickly filing into the cavern hole, Nighteye transformed back into his robot mode after Dinobot, Blackarachnia, and Rattrap had jumped off of him. Turning quickly towards the cavern opening, he waved at the approaching Preds right before blasting the top of the cavern, causing a small avalanche of rocks to block up the entrance.

 “NOOOO!!!” Buzzsaw shrieked as he saw Nighteye blast the cavern closed. Stopping short, Buzzsaw quickly ordered the other flyers to start blasting the rocks loose.

 “Scourge,” Buzzsaw spoke into his comlink.

 “That’s COMMANDER Scourge,” the comlink replied.

 “Whatever,” Buzzsaw replied, sticking out his tongue. “The Maximals have flown into a cavern and closed the entrance.”

 “Frag!” Scourge cursed over the comlink. “Well, by the time you break through the rocks, they’ll be long gone. Regroup back at the former Maximal base. Let’s repair our injured Transformers and get back up to full force again.”

 “Understood, Commander.”

 “I hope that’ll keep ‘em busy for a while,” Rattrap commented as he and the other Maximals trudged deeper into the cavern passageway. It was pitch black, but all the functioning Transformers had their infrared vision, on. Still, they could only see about 15 feet in front of themselves.

 “We still need to move deeper into these caverns, regardless,” Rhinox commented.

 “What do you think they’ll do with Tig-“

 Ironhide was interrupted from his question as a howl echoed down the passageway.

 “What in the name of gouda was that!?” Rattrap asked, suddenly near panicking.

 “Foolish vermin!” Dinobot answered, nearly backhanding Rattrap, “It’s just a dog howl. Probably a coyote or something trapped in these caves. It will probably run away as soon as we draw near to it, and even if it doesn’t, we can handle one fleshling canine!”

 “It sounds like multiple howls, I thi-“ Rhinox started, interrupted as a huge canine head suddenly lunged out of the darkness, grabbing the makeshift transformer around the midsection and lifting him up into the air with its mouth, growling loudly.

 Rattrap shrieked and pulled out his gun, firing a few shots at the head’s general area. The only response was another large canine head reaching out from the darkness and dragging him backwards with its mouth.

 All the other Transformers immediately took out their weapons and starting firing at the huge beast, who had now lumbered completely into their infrared view, a third head also mounted on its right side.

 All the other Transformers, that is, except Nighteye.

“Bruticus….” he mouthed, his tone that of one in awe.

The End

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