The holographic human driver of the green army jeep moved his hand down on the turn signal as Hound moved the lever and steered himself toward the next highway exit. The Autobot decreased his speed and the illusory driver combed a hand through his wind-mussed hair. Hound sighed inwardly. After many tedious hours of driving he was finally off the main highway and about to start his winding trek up into a remote mountain valley.

The drive north was long and quiet, giving the scout plenty of restful time to reflect on recent events before beginning the real work of his reconnaissance mission. He followed a local road for a while, then turned onto a back road that headed through the countryside and up toward the Storm Mountain range. His maps indicated that there was a forest service road further ahead that would take him closer to his target in the wilderness.

It was good to get away from Autobot Headquarters for awhile. Although the presence of the Ark was a comforting reminder of his home world, he was worn down by the incessant undercurrent of war that murmured through its corridors. The memory of the Decepticons’ pivotal boarding of the Ark was never far from his thoughts whenever he returned to the reconstituted wreckage of their ancient spacecraft. How could any of them forget it?

The hijacking of the Ark was merely one mishap in a vast array of Decepticon atrocities that spanned the ages, penetrating right into the dim recesses of Cybertronian prehistory. His thoughts lingered dangerously close to a forbidden doorway. How many other tragedies had he witnessed on Cybertron? Yes, there were things that Hound would rather not remember. Then there were the things that he could not remember; those were the worst. Whenever he felt their tug, he knew it was time to go out on another adventure, or take on another scouting mission. He had hoped that this mission would relieve his mind of a stinging burden – a recent and ill-fated event right here on Earth – but so far it was still haunting his thoughts. Hound shifted down a gear as the road began to ascend through the endless evergreen sea. 

The image of a dozen frightened human faces was imprinted in his processor. They had trusted him to save them from the Decepticon triple changers, Astrotrain and Blitzwing. Momentarily distracted by the unforgiving memory, he jerked his steering wheel to the left to keep from trailing off into a ditch. I must remain focused, he scolded himself.

Eventually, the meandering country road reached a T-intersection, as Hound’s map had predicted. From there, Hound made a left turn onto the forest service road. The narrow track climbed in switchbacks, taking the jeep up into steep, rugged terrain. He hoped for a fleeting view of the distant scenery as he slowed at each corner, but the road was buried deep within the trees. Without a distraction, it was not long before the images returned to Hound’s mind.

The moment lingered, frozen in Hound’s processors. The human beings thought they were going to live; they always did. Blitzwing – impatient, malicious, and hungry for energon – paid them no heed as he knocked down a string of live power poles. A dazzling arc danced harmlessly across the triple changer’s armored chassis as the high-voltage lines fell to the ground. There was nothing Hound could do. He felt responsible for the deaths of those people.

The tragedy should not have happened. He was an Autobot and it was his duty to protect. That responsibility was deeply programmed in the scout. It was like an instinct. 

But it was his error that caused it to happen. He was the only Autobot there at the time. He was the one who conjured the image of Starscream, cast it upon himself, and then attempted to emulate the voice of the high-pitched air commander. Hound silently cursed himself. His choice was painfully sloppy; Decepticon lines of authority were never reliable. Not only did the triple changers exhibit outright contempt for Starscream and his orders, but they soon ascertained that they were being tricked by a poorly-voiced hologram.

Something small scurried out of the patchwork of shrubs and wild flowers by the roadside. Whatever it was, Hound was nearly on top of it when it tried to dart across the road. His tires sprayed loose gravel as his jeep mode lurched to a stop. Stunned, a small chipmunk momentarily froze in front of the intimidating vehicle, then bounded back into the shrubs from where it had come.

Get a grip, Hound ordered himself. He could not afford the luxury of indulging in memories like these. The event was over and done. There was no going back; no changing the past. There were only decisions to be made in the present.

Hound continued his journey. He was now in a region where few ventured, and there was no need for a hologram disguise. The illusion of the human driver flickered and then disappeared; a turret gun reappeared in the back of the green jeep.

He could forgive himself if his erroneous judgment was an isolated event. But the triple changer incident was not the only time he had misused his illusion-casting ability. A massive hologram of a rocket base in the desert had been his grand scheme, too. Optimus Prime trusted Hound’s judgment and went along with his plan. But Megatron was clever. He saw through the trickery and turned their plan against them. Megatron’s junk-bots kept the Autobots busy at the fake plant while the real Decepticons raided a real rocket base for fuel. It was a costly mistake.

Hound wondered if he was losing his scouting acumen. His holography was his trump card. It was the most powerful tool in his vast array of scouting and reconnaissance technology. He was a master illusionist. But he had fumbled once too often, and his mistakes carried dire consequences. The lives of the humans and the safety of his fellow Autobots were endangered whenever his plans failed. He drove onward.

The lonely road took the scout far into the wilderness. The last sign of human habitation was many miles behind him. He was on his own now, surrounded only by the timeless expanse of planet Earth.

The weaving mountain road carried Hound toward a narrow pass high above him. Long, pale stands of grass swayed as the green Jeep drove past them, coating the vegetation in a wake of fine road dust. Hound shifted into a lower gear as he climbed through ponderosa pines and fir trees. According to his maps, Bear Lake should be visible once he reached the crest of the gravel road. The Autobot scout slowed to reduce his engine noise as he approached the top of the pass. He could not risk the sound echoing into the open valley ahead. Careful to keep a low profile, he remained in jeep mode and stopped to survey the landscape. 

He was struck by the rugged beauty of the area. The lake spanned the length and breadth of the valley, and was surrounded by an imposing chain of mountains. Their massive flanks dropped thousands of feet from snowy-capped crowns above to the twinkling water of Bear Lake below, with its stunning blue-dye hue. Hound knew that the color of the water was due to natural minerals abundant in the alpine rocks. The serendipitous sprawl of Earth’s natural geography was awe-inspiring compared to the highly-structured and tightly-organized layout of Cybertron’s endless cities.  

Hound sighed. He had not come here to admire the view. He had a job to do. Two days earlier, Teletraan I’s Sky Spy satellite had picked up faint Decepticon energy signatures in the area, but had been unable to generate an image or even get a fix. Unusually high levels of electromagnetic interference blanketed the entire region. The Autobots had to know why Decepticons were congregating in such a remote location. Optimus Prime had promptly dispatched Hound on a standard recon mission with orders to investigate and report.

Although Hound did not know exactly where the enemy was located, it would not take him long to find out. He turned the turret gun radar scope in the back of his jeep mode toward the far end of the lake and slowly scanned back toward him, looking for some reading on activity. 

Hound’s scope found nothing on the first pass, so he turned his radar in the opposite direction. Immediately, the scout detected a long, metallic object moving far below him. It snaked gradually along the edge of the lake, roughly oriented in his direction. Hound studied the object for a moment, listening astutely to the drone of a distant diesel engine and the whine of steel wheels on a curving rail line. He relaxed. It was only a freight train.

He raised his radar scope and slowly swept it through a horizontal plane, canvassing the mountains on the opposite side of the lake for an energy signal. Still, there was nothing. There did appear to be dead spots where he could not get the radar reflection he needed to look into the nooks in the lay of the mountains. This was dangerous territory in which to be searching for an enemy because the geography created natural radar camouflage.

Hound started his engine and rolled to the right, following the ridgeline mountain road along the length of the long lake toward its far end. He kept his scanners alert as he drove, searching for any hint of a Cybertronian electromagnetic aura.

The jeep traversed the enormous range, following the twists and turns of the gravel road as it tracked the shape of the mountains, leading him alternately in and out of the forested slopes. In glimpses, his optical sensors searched the shadowy slopes across the lake while his other tracking sensors swept over the landscape around him and maintained his course. The land had been eerily void of the signs or sounds of human civilization until suddenly the train – now ahead of him along the edge of the lake – blew its horn. A series of insistent, short warning blasts from the rumbling diesel engine penetrated the wilderness. Then a long ear-splitting screech of steel sliding on steel cut through the air as the engine threw on its brakes.

Hound’s instincts told him that those horn blasts were about more than a moose or deer on the tracks. He hurried along down a dip in the road, across a wooden Bailey bridge over a creek and back up the winding one-lane road to the next lookout point. Just before he came out of the woods again, there was a thunderous metallic crash and Hound heard the awful, cascading sound of train cars impacting against one another.

Hound lurched to a stop and quickly aimed his radar gun down at the train below, expecting to find the worst. Immediately, his scanner picked out five Decepticon energy signatures gathered at the front of the immobile train. They had halted the train with brute force. The front end of the engine had crumpled around the resistive force of the powerful Decepticons.

To Hound’s amazement, the train had not derailed. Instead, its cars were neatly lined up behind an impacted engine. The Decepticons must have wanted something on that train for them to stop it without destroying it. He had to get closer to find out.

Hound followed the forest service road closer to the Decepticons and the train, and stopped just out of sight at a vantage point before transforming into robot mode. The Autobot scout took out his listening dish and knelt down to peer cautiously over the edge of the road and down the mountainside.

He zoomed in and focused his optics on the enemy figures gathered around the train engine. “Combaticons,” he whispered. They had prepared a small camp, complete with a modest supply of energon cubes, near the place where they had intercepted the train. They knew that the train was coming and had been waiting for it. The bulky tank Combaticon, Brawl, their tall and conniving leader, Onslaught, and the brutish interrogator, Vortex were standing in front of the engine. Blast Off and Swindle, the other two Combaticons, looked on.

The scout’s infrared radiation collector spied a human hiding in the trees a short distance away from the train. “That must be the train’s engineer,” Hound told himself. At least the man had not been harmed and was able to flee after the Decepticons hijacked his train. Although the man was safe, there was little that could be done to help him in his current predicament.

Hound adjusted the output on his listening dish so that it would transmit directly to his audio sensors, then pointed it at the group of Decepticons.

“Brawl! Vortex! Blast Off!” a commanding voice rang out. “Get those box cars open.”

Hound peered down at the tall, dark figure on the tracks in front of the train. The shorter, yellow and purple figure of the arms dealer, Swindle, walked up next to him and stood slightly stooped. Onslaught stepped back from the crumpled front end of the engine and dusted off his hands, pleased at their handiwork. Brawl boldly walked up to the first train car and leaned forward to fire the tank cannon on his back to blow it open.

“Have some sophistication, Brawl,” Blast Off, the brown and purple Combaticon, chided his combiner teammate, “that crude manoeuvre will only ruin the tachyon disrupter.”

“And what do you know about weapons?” Brawl shot back gruffly while looking the other Decepticon up and down. “You’re a crude Earth space vehicle.”

Blast Off was not about to let an insult like that go unchallenged. “My vehicle mode says nothing about me – and neither does yours,” he retorted snobbishly. His Combaticon body, the form that the dimwitted Decepticon Starscream had chosen for him, was merely a temporary vessel for his personality component. He agitated for the day he would shed it for his original Cybertronian form. Soon, they would ditch the Decepticons and return to their home planet where he could realize his goal. It was all part of Onslaught’s master plan. He crossed his arms smugly. “So you can wipe any pathetic ideas about your military superiority out of that small processor of yours.” 

Brawl’s temper flared like gasoline doused on an open flame. Blast Off’s pathetic attitude – always the moping victim – was infuriating. The whining elitist had no place in the toughened ranks of the Decepticon war machine. Blast Off’s impotent space shuttle form was a perfect fit for his persona – even the idiot Starscream could see that when he resurrected their sparks. As his previous boss’ hit man during his criminal life on Cybertron, Brawl revelled in his newfound firepower. Being a cannon on treads was also a perfect fit for his current role as Combaticon ground assault soldier. The green and black tank Combaticon turned and braced himself as he aimed the large tank cannon on his back at the mountainside next to them.

“You wanna see what real firepower looks like?” he seethed, his yellow optic band glowing brightly with pent up aggression. “Just watch me blow a hole right through the mountainside,” the Combaticon tank declared as he glared back at Blast Off. “Space shuttle,” he spat contemptuously.

Just then, a warning blast boomed over their heads. Caught unawares, Brawl and Blast Off both turned to see smoke trailing from the barrel of Onslaught’s sonic stun gun. 

“And I can blow two holes in the mountain,” Onslaught announced calmly, the dual cannons of his missile trailer alternate mode gleaming on his back. “Now, we’re going to get that tachyon disrupter off this train. We’re going to take it to Starscream. And we’re going to build a Neutralizer.”

Brawl glanced back at Blast Off. It was difficult to resist the urge to dislodge Blast Off’s face mask with his fist.

Onslaught glared down at them, ice in his vocalizer. “We need that Neutralizer to get through the space bridge and overwhelm Shockwave’s forces on Cybertron. We cannot afford to be beaten back again. This time we shall overpower them… and take what is ours. Now back to work!” he commanded, waving his hand dismissively.

Swindle rubbed his palms together and grinned slyly. “Starscream’s a fool to think that we’d really be his agents, especially after we crossed him once already. His hunger for power blinds him. He deserves what he gets.” He chuckled, thinking about how easily Starscream was convinced that they wanted to help him overthrow Megatron. It was a lie that the air commander – with all his mindless ambition – was too willing to believe. “I love a good double-cross!”

“I can’t wait to get back to Cybertron and rid myself of this,” Blast Off glanced down distastefully at the body Starscream had built from the scavenged, burnt-out scraps of World War II military equipment. “Uncivilized contraption. And the color scheme... it’s ghastly. Whatever was Starscream thinking? He must be color blind.”

The space shuttle’s petty fixation on appearance irritated Brawl. “Speak for yourself, Blast Off. I’m beginning to like my new form.”

“You’ll have all of the upgrades you want once we hijack a reconstruction facility,” Onslaught announced. “Now enough bickering. Back to work!” 

Onslaught turned and motioned to Vortex with a flick of his finger. The masked, grey Combaticon withdrew an intimidating energy cutter from subspace. He approached Brawl and Blast Off, wielding the glowing blade menacingly. “Mind if I cut in?” he sneered with a high-pitched, metallic chortle. The others wisely stepped aside.

From a distance, Hound watched as Vortex’s cutter sliced effortlessly into the first rail car. The searing blade severed the sturdy metal like a giant can opener. Vortex stood aside as the entire side of the boxcar toppled to the ground with a loud clang. 

Brawl pulled out his blaster and riddled the lock on the second car. The disgruntled Combaticon flung the sliding door open and glanced briefly inside before moving along to the next train car. Swindle took a look as well. He liked some of the things in there.

Vortex and Brawl continued moving down the long line of boxcars, alternately cutting and blasting them open for inspection. As soon as the cars were accessible, Swindle and Blast Off entered them, searching for loot. Onslaught waited nearby with his hands resting on his hip plates. He kept a firm hand on his stun gun in case any of them stepped out of line.

Hound watched as the Decepticons methodically ransacked the train, tossing unwanted crates and boxes out of the ruined cars. A cacophony of crashes and bangs echoed off the mountainside as the unwanted crates landed hard and split asunder, their contents strewn across the ground. The Autobot scout lowered his listening dish and leaned away from the edge, gazing off into the distance.

“They’re ransacking the entire train,” he said quietly to himself. But why steal the device – the tachyon disruptor – out in the country when it would be a lot less effort to rob the train at the nearest rail yard? They must have wanted to avoid the attention of a human news crew. That had to be the reason. If the story was broadcast on television, Megatron would find out about their subversive activities. Out here, the Combaticons would be long gone by the time anyone discovered the ransacked train.

Megatron would find out about this “Neutralizer” sooner or later. It was virtually impossible to conceal anything from Soundwave and the prying eyes of his airborne minion, Laserbeak. Whether Megatron discovered the Neutralizer under construction here on Earth – or learned of it from Shockwave on Cybertron – there was a good chance that it would be deployed against the Autobots. Hound had to warn Optimus Prime. 

He peered back over the edge. Even if Optimus Prime was alerted, what could the Autobot leader do? Soon the Combaticons would have the device and then they would be gone with it. Hound was the only one who had a chance to stop the Decepticons. The scout pressed his lip components together. He was only one Autobot and they were five Decepticons. He could not possibly win.

As Hound gazed down at the Combaticons, something rustled in the treetops nearby. Hound started and scanned his surroundings. His sensors picked up a large avian form above and behind him.

“Laserbeak!” he said in a whisper and prepared to grab his gun from subspace. That dirty bird must have discovered me while spying on the delinquent Combaticons.

Hound quickly drew his weapon and spun to meet the enemy. The boughs of a large fir sprung under the jostling of the large bird, obscuring its form as it swayed in and out of the shadows. Hound’s optics scanned the shifting patterns of light and dark, looking for its outline. Just as his finger closed around the trigger, the bird settled. The sweeping branches stilled and the bird came into plain view. Hound gasped and lowered his weapon. It was a huge raven – an old rook of the high mountains.

“That was close,” Hound said to himself as his servos relaxed. He looked up at the large black bird as it cocked its head and peered down at him. “I just about turned you into Thanksgiving dinner,” he muttered.

Relieved, he turned away from the raven and directed his listening dish at the Decepticons. Crates of broken goods littered the ground as the Combaticons continued noisily pillaging their way through the line of box cars. It was a good thing that he had not fired his weapon since it would have alerted the Decepticons below. A good scout did not give away his location.

Hound needed a plan. He tallied his arsenal: he had his holography, his hologun and turret gun, his radar scope, his tracking and scouting skills, and his shoulder-mounted missile launcher. As an Autobot soldier, he was adequately equipped to defend himself. His holograms could be used to bluff, deceive and disorient the enemy. But these were heavily-armed criminals. Masters of tactical combat, they were outfitted with the strongest body armor available to the Decepticons. Each and every one of them could easily outgun him.

Disguising himself as Starscream and demanding they give him the tachyon disrupter – once they found it – was not worth considering. Experience had proven that he could not pull it off. Besides, he could not fly. It would be suicide. He frowned and clenched his fist. He could not bear to stand by and idly watch the Decepticon plot unfold. There had to be some way that he could use his holographic wizardry to foil the Combaticons’ plan. But how?

The raven rustled then hopped from one branch down to another. Hound ignored the bird as he listened to the Combaticons’ conversation. He brainstormed.

Onslaught had joined Blast Off and Swindle in the search for the experimental device. Hound watched Swindle disappear from view behind the tree line as he walked down the line of cars, looking at the writing on the side of each car. Onslaught rummaged through scattered crates on the ground, checking that his teammates had not accidentally discarded the item.

“Hurry up!” he heard Brawl call to the others from a position well along the length of the train. The Combaticon was concealed behind a line of trees near the lake shore. “I’m half way done here!”

“Then why don’t you start searching yourself?” Blast Off chided him in an impatient tone.

Brawl grumbled something incomprehensible and then Hound lost the reception as static buzzed loudly in his audio receptors. He adjusted the output on the listening dish, turning the knob fruitlessly in both directions. White noise showered through the communication link. Hound tapped the side of his head, wondering if it was his own audio receptors, but the interference continued. When he turned to tap the listening dish, a strange electrical sensation suddenly erupted across the back of his hand. Hound extended the fingers of his hand and then shook it. The tingling sensation dispersed but the noise persisted.

Must be some kind of electromagnetic interference, Hound surmised, knitting his optic ridges. But it isn’t the Combaticons. He scanned the horizon line. The tall, thickly-forested mountains yielded no clue as to the source. Hound turned the listening dish over in his hands. The anomalous interference faded as suddenly as it had manifested. Swindle’s voice returned to the airwaves.

“Here it is!” the Combaticon proclaimed, still out of Hound’s line of sight. The others stopped what they were doing and went over to see for themselves.

“Get it out of––” Onslaught ordered, but the Combaticon’s voice dissolved into static.

Hound looked over his listening dish again. Something must be malfunctioning, he concluded. But it was working perfectly just two days ago!

A fierce electrical tremor abruptly shot through Hound’s motor contactors. Startled, he straightened and pulled away from the edge, standing up just out of view of the enemy. A strong tingling sensation intensified around his engine casing, then traversed through his power conduit and up his central column. The scout’s sensors were electrified. Whatever it was, his periphery scanner gave him a confusing readout on his surroundings. He had the distinct feeling that he was being watched.

Hound spun around and scrutinized his environment. His optics darted around, searching for the invisible watcher. He scanned the maze of endless shadows between the firs and pines behind him. Nothing. Slowly, the scout shifted his weight, scrutinizing everything in his field of vision, looking for anything – perhaps something that was hiding behind a tree trunk or a rock.

“Krok!” the raven croaked deeply from a branch above the scout’s head. Hound started at the unexpected sound.

“Easy now, Hound,” he calmed himself as he looked up at the oversized bird perched above him, “it’s just a bird - a big one. Nothing to be worried about.”

“Krok, krok!” the large black bird croaked again. The calls were louder this time. The raven’s shaggy throat feathers ruffled and its head bobbed each time it called. “Krok, krok, krok!”

Its distinctive call carried clearly through the air. Hound was certain that it could be heard on the other side of the lake. It cocked its head one way and the other, then turned to watch the green Autobot through one eye.

“Shhh!” he hushed the raven with a finger to his lip components. “You don’t want to get the attention of those Decepticons down there,” he warned. “They’ll blast you.”

Crouching down, Hound cautiously peered back over the edge of the gravel road. The Combaticons had pulled the tachyon disruptor from its crate and carried it back to their encampment at the front of the train. They did not appear to notice the raucous bird.

The raven unfolded its wings and spread its glossy dark feathers. The magnificent bird was bigger than any raven Hound had ever seen. Awestruck, Hound watched it hop off one branch and alight to a higher perch on the evergreen. The raven settled on its new branch and preened the underside of one of its wings with its stout black beak before cocking its head again to peer down at Hound.

“You’re curious, aren’t you?” Hound mused aloud. The strange sensation subsided with the knowledge that there was only him and the raven there. “I bet you don’t see too many of my type out here.”

Atop the tall tree, the raven gazed elsewhere. Hound decided to check his systems. All of his sensors reported normal status, as if nothing unusual had happened. There’s nothing out here, the scout assured himself.

“Krok!” sounded the raven’s throaty crow. “Krok, krok!” The sound reverberated eerily through the wilderness.

Hound glanced up at the talkative bird. Its busy chatter made the scout uncomfortable. Glancing down the mountainside at the Decepticons once again, he realized it was time to look for a new observation post. Remaining at this one was too risky. That bird was drawing too much attention to itself. He searched along the ridgeline, looking for another place where the road looked down on the Combaticon camp. 

“Krok!” the bird above called loudly. “Krok, Krok!”

Far below, Onslaught turned away from the tachyon disruptor and peered up the mountain slope.

“Stop making a racket!” Hound hissed, alarmed.

“Krok, krok, krok, krok!” croaked the raven contentedly.

Onslaught was now looking right at him. Hound froze, hoping that he had not been seen. His army-green coloration was a good camouflage in the woods. Long seconds passed as Hound remained still, waiting. Onslaught continued to stare up at the gravel road.

“Krok!” the raven called out enthusiastically, oblivious to the danger.

Suddenly, the tall Combaticon leader pointed up the mountainside. He must have said something because the other four Combaticons turned and looked as well.

Hound ducked back from the edge of the road as the sharp thunderclap of cannon fire reverberated throughout the valley. A massive incendiary shell hurtled through the air and exploded in the trees above Hound, spraying him with rocks and wooden shrapnel.

He quickly subspaced his listening dish and transformed into jeep mode. The Decepticons were sure to be on his tail at any moment. With a rush of energon giving his fuel pump a kick start, Hound’s engine jolted to life and he raced east, back up the forest service road the way he had come. A short way along the road, the slope of the mountain on the uphill side eased and the scout turned abruptly off road for the cover of the forest. Barrelling over fallen tree limbs and through the underbrush, Hound climbed the hill, hoping to obscure his trail.

The dust from Hound’s getaway had barely settled when Brawl, Vortex and Onslaught landed on the stretch of road where he had been listening in on them. Guns drawn, they began their search for the enemy.

“He couldn’t have gone far,” Onslaught concluded. “There’s only one road.”

“Krok, krok, krok!” came a noise from further up the mountainside.

Brawl turned and fired his electron gun at the sound. The huge raven flapped its wings and fled into the refuge of the forest, disappearing from sight.

“Stupid bird,” the green and black Combaticon muttered. 

“Brawl,” the Combaticon leader commanded the tank, “you go that way.” He pointed eastward along the mountain road. 

Brawl forgot about the bird. An Autobot was better game. He took off and flew east, high over the road, his weapon at the ready. 

Onslaught turned to Vortex. “Make sure he’s not still around here, trying to fool us.”

His grey teammate laughed maniacally. He jumped into the air and transformed into helicopter mode, catching his weight evenly as his blades chopped through the air. The strong gusts from the helicopter beat down the grass and boughs of nearby trees as Vortex hovered, then gained altitude.

“If he’s around, he won’t escape,” the Combaticon interrogator assured Onslaught, then lifted himself clear of the road and away from the mountainside to get a good view of the area. 

Onslaught raised his forearm in front of him and a panel popped open. He opened a split channel with Swindle and Blast Off, who were still down by the train.

“Hurry and secure the tachyon disruptor,” he ordered the munitions expert. “We’re going Autobot hunting.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Swindle agreed on his half of the communicator screen.

“A little entertainment is always a welcome diversion,” Blast Off responded coolly on the other half as he produced his weapon and checked its setting.

Onslaught closed the channel. Activating his leg thrusters, the Combaticon leader took off and headed west, surveying the road for the Autobot.

* * *

Hound kept his radar alert as he fled through the understory up the mountain. The three Combaticons appeared on his radar periphery behind him. While the scout was relieved to see two of them head away to the east and west, undoubtedly figuring he would have kept to the road, the third Combaticon on his radar was a concern. It hovered over the mountainside, searching for him in ever-widening passes. The throbbing pulse of chopper blades reverberated through the air.

As Hound rolled over the harsh landscape, rough branch ends and swaths of underbrush relentlessly scraped and smacked him. He steered to avoid the rocks, often choosing to pass over fallen branches or thin pine trunks. They snapped and cracked as the jeep climbed over them. But the terrain quickly became steeper and more difficult to pass, so he turned to his right and followed the contour of the slope.

A vertical rock face emerged on the uphill side of the slope, preventing Hound from ascending further up the mountain and over into the next valley. Immediately ahead of him, the trees thinned dangerously, threatening to reveal him to an airborne enemy. He scanned down the slope. The roadway lay a few hundred feet below him, but so did the approaching helicopter. Out of options, the jeep lurched to a sudden stop. It was the end of the line. Hound turned off his engine.

The beat of approaching helicopter blades pounded in his audio receptors. Going off-road had slowed him down too much. He did not have enough time to reach the pass further to the east. The Combaticon would be on top of him before he knew it.

A light wind rustled through the boughs toward Hound. He transformed, knowing that finding shelter immediately was imperative. The helicopter grew louder, though still out of sight. Hound frantically searched his surroundings, looking for somewhere to anchor himself. These pines are too far apart. He’ll see me.

He scurried back the way he had come, scanning the mossy rock face in earnest. The droning beats were deafening now. Hurry. In his haste, Hound stumbled over a protruding stump and landed on his hands. Get up! he ordered himself sternly, and promptly got to his feet. A few paces further along brought him to a jagged, water-worn crevice. Hound sized it up. It was too small for him, but he could still wedge himself part way into it. Just enough to hang on, he thought. He could disguise the rest of his body with a hologram. This has to work.

A light in the center of the scout’s helmet glowed brightly and an instant later the Autobot disappeared behind a three-dimensional hologram. Instead of a crevice, the rock formation now appeared to jut outward. Hidden behind the illusion, Hound tightly gripped the rock on either side of him as he watched the sky through the treetops. The percussion of helicopter blades made it impossible to hear anything else. Wind gusted through the trees toward Hound, tossing up pine needles and forest debris in a small windstorm.

The wind suddenly howled with ferocity. Hound watched the evergreen trees bend and shake with the force of each gust. He looked down at the lively ground around him. Dancing needles, pinecones and loose dirt were swept aloft in a cone of violently churning air. The airborne Combaticon was using his blades to create a tornado beneath him. If not for the partial shelter of the crevice, Hound would be sucked out of the forest canopy and dropped from dizzying heights to the hard earth below. His gaze followed the writhing funnel upward, where he glimpsed the ominous shape of a Sikorsky Black Hawk high above the swirling treetops. It was Vortex.

As the Decepticon’s whirling maelstrom closed around him, its massive suction dislodged one of Hound’s hands from the rock. Hound immediately found a new handhold, but it was eroded shale and began to crumble beneath his fist. His servos tensed as he tried to keep himself lodged in place. A tempest of rock and dirt eddied around him, blinding him. He winced and gritted his dental plates together. His optics were temporarily useless, but his radar was not. Hound activated his tracking device. But he could not get a radar lock without first disengaging his hologram.

The tornado pulled harder at Hound as it moved over him. Agonizing seconds crawled by as his tenuous hold grew weaker. The loose shale crumbled away in his impotent grip. He grimaced, realizing that he had to take action or fall prey to Vortex.

Hound abruptly switched off his hologram and pivoted his shoulder-mounted missile toward the hovering helicopter’s prone underside. The missile burst out of its launcher and cleared the forest canopy in a heartbeat, striking Vortex with a thunderous crash. The tornado instantly subsided. Above him, thick smoke billowed from the floundering helicopter.

“Aaaaagggghhh!” Vortex hollered as he lost stability and plunged into the trees. 

Hound lost sight of the Decepticon and then heard the tell-tale sound of Vortex transforming into robot mode before impacting with the forest floor.

The scout fled back eastward through the trees, pushing apart the dense boughs to find his way as best as he could. He was sure that the Decepticons would be able to see his location from above by the movement of the trees, but he had to put distance between himself and his adversaries.

* * *

Hearing the echoing explosion, Brawl turned from his course and headed back. In the distance, he spied the column of black smoke issuing from the trees near the summit on the ridge.

“If that Autobot’s not finished by that blast, I’ll finish the job,” the Combaticon snorted to himself, assuming that Hound was smouldering in the forest. “There won’t be enough of him left to recognize.”

As he flew toward the wreckage, Brawl caught a glimpse of something big moving through the trees below. Glancing up at the cloud of smoke gathering over the site of the explosion, he decided the unusual thing in the forest was not of interest. He wanted to see if there was anything more than scrap left of the pesky Autobot scout.

Moments later, Brawl landed near the source of the explosion. There was not much room for him to move around in the densely-wooded area, so he began snapping off tree trunks to clear some space. While he was busting up trees like so many matchsticks, a grey and black form rose up out of the smouldering underbrush, wheezing and cursing. With half an evergreen held in each hand, Brawl watched the grey Combaticon stagger to his feet and dust himself off. Vortex’s head snapped around to face Brawl.

“What are you looking at?” the Combaticon sputtered as tendrils of smoke drifted up from his burned circuitry. “You gotta problem?”

“You wanna make one?” Brawl goaded Vortex.

Vortex laughed off the challenge. “You have no idea how badly I could mess you up. But count yourself lucky. I’m not in the mood today.”

Brawl watched as Vortex brazenly walked past him and off into the forest. He had half a mind to shoot the no-good slagger in back. Just for kicks. But as he watched Vortex stride into the trees, a lingering doubt crept into his mind. There was no way an Autobot could have stood up to Vortex and won. But the little jeep did have a hologram generator. Brawl’s servos tensed.

“Wait a minute,” he snarled, tossing the broken trees to one side. He drew his gun and aimed it at Vortex’s back. “That Autobot can cast illusions. I’m not going to fall for this!”

Vortex froze. “What are you talking about, you moron?” he retorted with disdain.

Brawl’s finger tensed around the trigger. “You’re that filthy Autobot scout, aren’t you?”

“Put that thing down, you oaf!” Vortex demanded, spinning around to face his accuser. “I’m Vortex!”

“Sure you are,” Brawl responded sardonically. “And I’m Optimus Prime. You can quit casting that hologram to make yourself look like one of us because it isn’t going to save you, Autobot.”

“You’ve lost your processor!” Vortex sputtered. “That Autobot hit me with a mortar! He’s still around here… somewhere.”

“He’s around here alright,” Brawl mockingly agreed, “and I’m looking right at him.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Vortex sneered.

“If you’re a Decepticon, then why don’t you fly out of here?”

Vortex glared at Brawl. The mortar had damaged his flight system. “I don’t have to prove anything to you,” he huffed. 

“That’s all I need to know,” Brawl replied as he squeezed the trigger.

Vortex toppled to the ground and was still. 

“Ha, ha,” Brawl laughed, gloating. “Take that!”

But there was no hologram. Vortex was still Vortex. The only change was the blackened hole blasted in his chest.

“Well, whadda you know?” Brawl chided himself. “Guess I was wrong after all.”

Vortex’s red optic band flickered. “Uhh.... Onslaught?” he groaned.

Brawl looked up to see the Combaticon leader descend to the forest floor. Onslaught glanced down at Vortex, then spun around to face Brawl. He was clearly displeased.

“Do not settle your squabbles on my time,” he warned Brawl. “Or you’ll find yourself… replaced.”

“That lousy Autobot shot Vortex!” Brawl declared indignantly. “I tried to catch him, but he escaped into the woods!”

“No excuses! Remember, you answer to me,” the Combaticon leader reminded the tank, aggravation mounting in his vocalizer. “And only I tell you who to shoot and when to shoot them. You will do as I say.”

Brawl nodded.

“No more messing around,” growled Onslaught. “We have an Autobot to exterminate. One Autobot! This shouldn’t take all day.”

“I’ll fill that Autobot full of holes,” Brawl snarled. Then he remembered the large object moving through the trees and he looked to the east. “I know where he went!” Brawl declared and took off to look for the fool rushing so obviously through the forest.

Onslaught glanced down at Vortex. “Get up,” he ordered coldly before taking off to join Brawl in the hunt.

Vortex’s optic band flickered then glowed steadily.

* * *

Down by the train, Swindle closed the lid on the crate containing the tachyon disrupter. Arms crossed, Blast Off leaned against the train engine and watched Swindle work.

“You could give me a hand,” Swindle needled.

“What do I look like? An errand boy?” Blast Off retorted. “You do it.”

“Lazy space boat,” Swindle sneered as he banged the nailed lid onto the crate with his metal fist.

“Oh, don’t worry, Swindle,” Blast Off added facetiously. “You’re doing a fine job.”

“One of these days you’re going to get what’s coming to you,” Swindle retorted.

“And what’s that, Swindle?” he shot back. “Are you going to be the one to give it to me?” 

Swindle ignored him and picked up the crate. Blast Off stood up and huffed. He did not need to be there. Swindle was doing all of the work, anyway. Overcome with boredom, Blast Off transformed into shuttle mode and took off. He was anxious to see what was left of the Autobot after the recent explosion up on the mountain.

Disgruntled and muttering to himself, Swindle carried the crate toward the front of the train and placed it carefully next to the trees. Done. Now for the good part. His optics shone as he mused about what might still await him aboard the train – the part that had not yet been ransacked, of course. The temptation to steal was too great to resist. All that merchandise... so little time.

“One thing’s for sure,” he chuckled to himself, “I’m going to get what I deserve.” It was a veritable shopping spree, but without having to pay for anything. The others can take care of that Autobot.

He hurried down the line to the unbroken first box car and picked its lock with a well-placed shot from his gun. He would eventually join the others… but not until he had finished his plundering. By then, he hoped, they had done the hard work of exterminating the Autobot.

* * *

High up on the mountain ridge, Hound dashed through the trees and down the sloping landscape, heading back toward the road. He had to flee. He had just given his location away to the Decepticons. Rough evergreen boughs scratched and scraped him as he ploughed between them. The sound of snapping and breaking wood underfoot grated his audio sensors. His noisy escape might give him away, but there was nothing Hound could do about it for the time being.

I have to lose some altitude, he told himself. The terrain lower down the mountain, with its ravines and hidden crevasses, would provide ample opportunities to evade the Decepticons. If he remained on the top of the mountain it would be only a matter of time before the Combaticons found him. Even if he had remained perfectly still, a holographic disguise would not have prevented them from discovering him if they thoroughly searched the area. It was urgent that he remove himself from their vicinity.

Hound momentarily lost his footing on a patch of loose earth as it collapsed under the weight of his metallic body. He teetered as he skidded down the slope, narrowly missing several trees on the way. The small rockslide that accompanied his descent loosened several rocks, which tumbled down next to him. As dirt and debris raced him to the bottom of the slide area, Hound managed to regain enough balance to clumsily leap down onto a small plateau. He steadied himself and pressed on down the next, steeper slope, his radar guiding him through thick underbrush and saplings beneath the towering trees. The road to the pass was now sparsely visible through the wooded terrain that lay below him.

* * *

In the skies above the sprawling wilderness, Brawl searched persistently for the rustling trees he had just seen. The Autobot may have had a head start, but he was not going to get away. There was only so far an Autobot could travel on foot through the densely-wooded landscape.

Brawl flew in an easterly direction until he was sure that he had overshot the Autobot, then turned and circled back. He had not kept track of his location, and it was more difficult than he figured to find the same place again. The landscape beneath him was still and all the trees looked identical. 

Onslaught caught up to Brawl and the two hovered over a section of the expansive forest.

“Well, where is he?” the Combaticon leader asked impatiently.

“He should be right here,” Brawl protested, confused. 

Both Decepticons rotated mid-air to scan their surroundings. Just then, Onslaught caught sight of several trees just north of them shaking from the force of something large.

“There!” exclaimed Onslaught, pointing.

“Time for annihilation!” Brawl announced enthusiastically. He made a beeline for the spot, with Onslaught close behind him.

As the Decepticons touched down between the trees, the rustling boughs ceased their movement. At first, the two robots could not see anything between the overlapping branches. Brawl transformed into tank mode and pivoted his massive, turret-mounted gun toward the shadowy figure standing in front of them.

Onslaught swept the branches apart to see their target. Daylight suddenly flooded the understory to reveal that the source of the moving trees was not an Autobot at all. It was a large bear.

Unafraid, the big animal stood up on its hind legs and squinted at the robots. 

“A bear?” Onslaught asked with disappointment. 

Brawl lined up his sights on the beast and fired a massive artillery shell. The boom from the explosive blast shook the forest for miles. Sound waves echoed off the distant mountains with a resounding crack. An enormous swath of forest had been blown wide open; the tips of the surrounding branches sizzled ember-orange. There was no trace left of the animal.

“You wasted ammo on that pathetic beast,” Onslaught chided Brawl.

“It’s never a waste,” Brawl answered, a tendril of smoke trailing from the end of his gun barrel. He transformed back into robot mode. 

A shadow passed overhead. Brawl and Onslaught looked up to see Blast Off flying nearby. As the shuttle approached the site of the explosion, the bald patch on the mountain was impossible to miss. Onslaught and Brawl stood at one end of the oblong scar.

Blast Off could not believe his optic sensors. “I thought you were hunting an Autobot, not shooting at birds,” the brown and purple space shuttle spat at them from a distance.

Not one to endure a condescending jab, rage swelled up inside of Brawl. “Let me blast him,” he begged Onslaught. “Just one shot is all I need.” He eagerly drew his electron gun.

“No!” Onslaught commanded, his patience tried by the incessant posturing of his warriors. “Save it for the Autobot scout. Now fan out. He’s around here somewhere.”

Brawl obediently lowered his weapon, but shook his fist at the passing shuttle as a warning. “Someday, you slagger. Someday.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” the space shuttle laughed, brushing off Brawl’s feeble attempt at intimidation as he cruised past. Blast Off’s scanners swept the region of the mountain beneath him. Vortex was to the west, flightless and wading through the trees toward the road. Brawl was below, blowing up mindless targets while Onslaught watched. 

“Sometimes I don’t know why I stick around with this circus of misfits,” he sneered to himself. The shuttle banked away from the others and took off to search for Hound on his own.

* * *

Hound barrelled out of the trees and leapt down onto the gravel road. Now that he could see where he was, the scout turned off his radar guidance system. 

“At last,” he breathed the words through his vocalizer. Even in the face of danger, the human behaviors he had learned remained solidly with him.  

Hound bent over and fumbled with a compartment in the back of his leg. He opened the cover and knelt down to reach inside. “Where is that device that Wheeljack gave me?” he asked aloud. His fingers feverishly passed over his energon canister, groping for the spherical shape of the device. 

Wheeljack’s experimental sound shield generated a sphere of absolute silence around its user. It was a perfect stealth addition to Hound’s arsenal of reconnaissance gadgetry. And it would give him the advantage he desperately needed to escape from the Decepticons. He had forgotten about it until now.

“Aha!” the scout announced as he felt the round shape and its protruding handles. He grabbed it by one of the handles and closed the compartment as he stood up, scrutinizing the device for the activation switch.

There were two yellow buttons, one on each handle. “Press down both buttons at the same time, and it will activate the shield,” he said aloud, remembering Wheeljack’s instructions.

Hound pressed his thumbs down on the two buttons and waited. A moment later, his surroundings rippled for an instant and then were still. Unsure if it was working, Hound reached down and pick up a pebble from the road. He tossed it at a boulder a short distance away. The pebble silently ricocheted off its surface and rolled to a stop.

The sound shield worked, but left him deaf to his surroundings. Hound would have to get Wheeljack to modify the device. The shield in its present form would be useless for future information surveillance missions. But it was exactly what he would need to evade capture.

Glancing at the road winding off into the distance, the scout gritted his jaw mechanism. The mountain pass higher and further to the east was too visible. There was no way he could risk being out in the open with airborne enemies on the horizon. He would have to wait them out until dark, then pass through the sub-alpine forest where they could not see him. But the terrain ahead was steep and not easily negotiable. Striking out through the wilderness would take a great deal of time. Hound grimaced.

He raised his hood and tucked the sound shield generator inside his chest compartment for safekeeping. Then he removed his hologun from its subspace compartment, switched its setting from beam weapon to hologram generator, and squeezed the trigger. A translucent green image of that region of mountainside appeared before him.

Hound’s optics darted over the contour of the holographic landscape before him, looking for a hiding spot. There was a fold in the terrain, likely where a creek ran down the slope, not far away. Located in a dangerously steep section of the mountainside, there was nowhere for a Decepticon to land and search for him. If he found a spot to conceal himself where he could not be seen from the air, then he was home free. He would just have to wait for nightfall. As Hound mentally marked the route to the ravine, the hologram flickered and then disappeared. 

“What the––?” he started to ask, but an electromagnetic pulse buzzed in his circuits and interfered with his vocalizer. Fearing that a Decepticon was closing on him, Hound looked up. The sound shield rippled, momentarily disturbed by something, then remained steady. 

Sensors alert, the scout gradually looked around, studying his surroundings. He kept his hologun at the ready. The world was deathly quiet within his soundless sphere. Across the valley and over the lake, the wilderness was silent. His pursuers were sweeping the forest high above him and over the tree line, but the foliage surrounding him remained still. There was no obvious sign or source of the strange force that caused the disruption.

A raven glided across the sky above the trees, tilting its head to look at him through one eye as it passed over the gravel road.

Hound lowered his hologun, but was concerned. He could disregard an electrical disruption when it was confined to his listening dish. But now there had been another, and he began to worry that there was something wrong with him. He blinked and put his hologun away. There was no time to ponder. The presence of Combaticons nearby was a more pressing threat to his survival.

He had to get out of the open and back into the trees, and quickly. The ravine was not far. The scout hopped over the side of the road and down the steep slope into the woods. Barely able to contain his momentum, Hound knocked over saplings and ploughed through the underbrush as he stumbled down through the forested landscape.

* * *

As Blast Off rounded the mountainside, he glimpsed a green, metallic figure leap from the gravel road and into the forest. The Decepticon cut his thrusters and sailed toward the Autobot, watching from a distance so as not to be noticed. 

Far behind him, Vortex was heading back to the camp. Onslaught and Brawl were searching elsewhere. The shuttle chortled to himself. He was not going to give away what he had found; the others would instantly descend upon the Autobot and spoil the fun. No, he thought, I found the Autobot, so this is my kill to make. All he had to do was wait for the right moment. I’ll strike down that unwitting scout and leave him dead in his tracks.

* * *

Deep in the forest, Hound trekked over fallen trunks and stepped around rotting stumps as he progressed toward the ravine. The reaching evergreens on the steep slopes dwarfed the Autobot beneath their broad canopy. He could take his time now that the sounds of rustling vegetation and snapping branches were contained within the orb of silence. No Decepticon would hear him. 

Ahead, through a clearing between some pines, Hound glimpsed the adjacent side of the ravine. Relief washed over him as he waded through a thick swath of huckleberry bushes toward the opening between the trees. He was almost there. All he had to do was negotiate down the side of the ravine. Hound grabbed two pine trees to steady himself as he peered down over the sharp edge. He was standing at the top of a rocky precipice. Tree tops from the landing far below stood at foot level and dropped away quickly toward a stream of water trickling along a rocky creek bed. There was no easy way down. 

While Hound studied the lay of the land for another route to take, a brown and purple ship dropped silently out of the sky into view above the ravine. The ship hovered with its nose angled down at Hound. As soon as Hound caught sight of him, Blast Off transformed into robot mode, deftly withdrew his ionic blaster and took aim at the cowering Autobot.

Hound ducked back into the trees, followed closely by a series of blasts. “How did he know I was here?” Hound cursed aloud as he fled back the way he had come. The Combaticon unleashed another volley of shots. Their sizzling impacts flashed and smoldered in the ground around the fleeing scout.

Hound grabbed for his weapon and flicked the setting to beam. More shots glanced past him and he blindly returned fire. Following a brief pause, a volley of blasts cut through the forest uphill of him, hitting several large firs. The severed treetops plummeted to the ground and headed for Hound, rolling and tumbling wildly. He bounded toward the cliff to avoid being struck by the rogue trunks as they crashed downhill. Hound’s sound shield was up and he heard nothing, but he could still feel the thunderous vibrations.

Hound realized with dismay that he was trapped. Blast Off had the superior position and could fell trees on him until he was pinned and could not fight back. It would be suicide to try escaping up the unforgiving slope he had just descended. Soon the other Combaticons would arrive and mow the forest down just to destroy him. The scout’s fuel pump surged. There was only one course of action: he had to fight.

Another volley seared through the forest around him. Shattered fir trees cracked and split, spraying the air with wooden shards and splinters. Hound crouched and reloaded his shoulder-mounted missile launcher with a shell out of subspace and prepared to attack.

Before the third round of ionic gunfire could raze the trees, Hound leapt forward and fired his missile at the Decepticon hovering overhead. He deftly recovered from the missile’s recoil and opened fire with his hologun. But Blast Off was nimble and angled his torso away from the shell’s trajectory. Hound’s frantic shots missed their mark as the agile Combaticon danced in the sky. The missile continued its harmless flight over the lake in the distance. 

Blast Off swiftly retaliated with a rapid succession of blasts aimed at the exposed rock beneath Hound’s feet. Hound glanced down to see fissures eke their way through the granite bedrock. Before he could lunge for safer footing, Blast Off unleashed another ionic barrage. With a resounding crack, the fractured ground gave way and he fell from the precipice to the forest floor below.

Hound was lost in a blur of rock and debris as the avalanche ruthlessly crashed through the evergreens, smashing everything in its path. As the deluge of rock consumed the forest, terrible blows from unknown obstacles cracked and whipped against Hound’s body. The force of blow after blow knocked his processor offline as he tumbled over and over down the murderous terrain. 

Hound came online a moment later, but he was still falling. The forest tumbled and swayed all around him in a confusing jumble. The sky was nowhere to be seen. Loose earth rolled underneath him like ball bearings, propelling him into a trough where he bounced off jutting rocks and protruding roots. His descent seemed to last an eternity, but just when he thought his servos could no longer withstand punishment the rockslide began to slow.

As he rolled over in the debris, rough branches scraped and caught his arms and legs, slowing his descent. Hound caught a glimpse of sky. His hood was ajar, partially blocking the view in front of him. Moments later, he jolted to a stop when a large log hooked into his midsection.

Hound shook his head and feebly closed his hood to see where he had come to rest. Perched in a tangle of logs and intertwining branches over the creek, he watched as small rocks and a thin stream of dirt skittered down the ravaged mountainside: the last remnant of the avalanche. A curious object clinked and clattered down the slope then plummeted out of sight, smashing on the rocks below with a tinny clang.

The sound of the breeze rustling the boughs of the firs and water trickling beneath him filled Hound’s audio receptors. He gazed down at his damaged hood and realized that Wheeljack’s device had just shattered. He had to get away.

Hound vigorously tried to pry himself free of the logjam. As he struggled, Blast Off descended in front of him and hovered mid-air.

“You survived that better than I thought you would,” the space warrior stated coldly. “Now hurry up and get out of that mess,” he demanded, “you’re making this much too easy for me.” Blast Off looked up at the mountain to check that the other Combaticons were not coming. The rockslide had been awfully noisy.

Stunned, Hound pulled at the branches, but he was stuck. His hologun was gone, lost in the avalanche. 

“I said hurry up, pathetic Auto-scrap!” Blast Off ordered and aimed his blaster at Hound. “Don’t make me do it for you!”

“Don’t shoot!” Hound pleaded, raising his hands. “Please.”

The Combaticon laughed heartily. “Please? Please!”

Hound had no other option. He was stuck and could not free himself. “Please,” Hound pleaded, “I haven’t done anything to you.”

The pleas bolstered the Combaticon’s confidence. “Beg for your life!” he commanded forcefully. He wanted to see how much fear he had struck in the Autobot before he terminated his worthless life.

Hound stuttered.

“I said beg!” Blast Off demanded, and he put a hole through the log next to Hound. Weakened, the branch cracked under Hound’s weight and he dropped several inches.

Hound raised his hands higher. “I surrender. Please don’t kill me,” he begged.

Blast Off laughed. “More!”

“Don’t kill me,” the scout repeated. “If you let me go, I’ll erase my memory bank. No one will know what you were up to out here.”

Blast Off was not convinced. “That’s not good enough,” he responded sourly. He shot at the net of branches holding Hound. “Now it’s time to go for a ride.”

Hound’s optics snapped wide and he stared down the steep, rocky descent in front of him. Over the edge of the drop in the creek bed he could see the tops of trees hundreds of yards away and the blue lake far below. “No! Don’t do it!”

Laughing, Blast Off’s mood improved slightly. “Now that’s more like it,” he gloated and weakened the log with a second shot in the same spot. “But I can’t grant mercy. It’s just not possible.” The trunk cracked and bent precariously. It was the trigger holding back Hound and a pile of avalanche rubble. 

“You see, it’s not my fault that you’re an Autobot,” Blast Off shrugged as he explained nonchalantly. “Everyone knows what Decepticons do to Autobots. It’s just the way things are.”

Hound struggled to get free. 

Without further ado, Blast Off fired a final shot at the log and freed the jam. Moving up and out of the way he coolly watched as Hound was swept helplessly out over the edge of the creek. The thunderclap of rocks splitting asunder and huge sections of wood breaking apart echoed across the valley.

He descended to the level below to see if there was anything left of the Autobot to finish off. Amidst the strewn rocks and wood lay the bulk of the scout’s frame, face down. Three fingers from one hand were missing and bent servo rods and cables protruded from the elbow joint and leg where the limbs had been sheared by twisting trunks during the fall. A stream of hydraulic fluid trickled from the torn limbs and seeped into the ground. A dull pink glow emanated from beneath the Autobot’s torso.

“Hardly worth the effort,” the Combaticon grumbled without remorse as his feet touched down gently on the ground next to the broken Autobot body. He kicked its motionless head with a thud. The force tilted the head at an unnatural angle and he glared down at the dull optics. “The spineless wimp practically gave up without a fight. He deserved to die.”

Moments later, Onslaught appeared above the severed trees over the precipice, soon followed by Brawl. Blast Off figured they would come sooner or later. 

“You’re too late,” the space warrior chided them and hooked his thumb at himself. “I found the scout and I took care of him myself.”

“Fine work, Blast Off,” Onslaught commended his soldier as he viewed the remains from above. “Now with that out of the way it’s time to get down to business. Back to the camp.”

Blast Off joined the other two Combaticons in the air above the ravine. Without a second glance at the wreckage, they flew back to the train to collect their spoils.

When he was sure the Decepticons were gone, Hound shut off the hologram projector in his helmet. Next to him, the mirage of the scout in pieces vanished and Hound stared for a moment at the rock where the head had been.

It’s a good thing he didn’t kick that rock so hard that it went down the hill, Hound thought as he stood up.

The scout methodically assessed his damage. Dents pocked his dusty and dirt-coated skin plating. He first extended his arms and flexed his hands, then checked over his legs and joints. He found that he was sufficiently intact, although his mechanical systems had taken quite a beating. Hound did not know if he could still transform. He would need to find a flat area to check. The side of a mountain was no place to risk losing his balance or traction while his body shifted between modes.

Hound looked toward the west. The afternoon was waning. He began to search the immediate area of the slide for his hologun, moving aside large fir boughs and scanning up the slope for any sign of it. But it was nowhere to be found. For all he knew, it was buried under many feet of rock and debris, likely crushed. He sighed. Maybe it’s time to call for help, he thought. Beaten and lucky to be functional after run-ins with both Vortex and Blast Off, it would be the safest way back home. Skyfire could give him a lift. The airborne Autobot might even arrive with back-up as part of a rescue effort.

Hound frowned. He leaned over and picked up a handful of fine dirt and scattered it as he watched the scenario play out in his mind’s optic. He saw himself riding comfortably and safety in the air guardian’s cargo hold, then the indignity of returning to the Ark a wreck because he had failed as a scout. 

Wings beat behind him and he turned to see another raven settling in a tree nearby.

“Krok,” the bird said and then was quiet as it looked this way and that.

Hound blinked. A raven – a simple bird – had given him away to the Decepticons. How would he explain that to the other Autobots? Surely they would laugh. Earth creatures were not adversaries to Autobots, yet one of these black birds had threatened his survival with the attention it attracted to itself. 

A scout’s pride stemmed from his ability to take care of himself in remote regions, to be self-sufficient, and to elude the enemy. Hound’s duty required competence at those tasks. Calling for help should be a last resort, not the first choice in a situation like this. Convenience was not his style.

The bird spread its great, black wings and took flight. It glided over the trees down the mountain. As Hound watched it grow small, soaring into the distance before disappearing into the forest below, he realized it was time to go.

East was the direction of choice. He gazed up at the mountainside. He would have to find a way back up to the ridge road. It was the only way out of there, after all. His maps had not shown an intersection with another forest service road for miles and miles. If he had to camp out for several days to make sure the Combaticons were gone, Hound was prepared. He had his energon ration. It would give him time to implement minor field repairs, as all scouts were trained to do.

Hound crossed out of the slide and headed into the forest toward a hill on the rolling face of the next mountain in the chain. Its gentler slopes, populated less densely with trees, would be easier to traverse. However, with the sun going down in a few more hours, it would take him until the next day to climb it to the top.

As the scout departed, his attention focused on the trek ahead, several drops of red fluid leaked from a crack in the coolant tank behind the jeep’s front grill. Running down the inside wall of his frame, they splattered in the fine dirt where he had been standing, leaving a dyed trail in the ground. 

* * *

Back at the Combaticon camp, Vortex crashed through the trees on his final descent down to the lakeside. He was in a foul mood.

The violent felling of trees was impossible for Swindle not to notice as he picked over his pile of goods ransacked from the train. Seated comfortably next to his stash, he looked up and glanced back momentarily from his accounting then coolly ignored the angry helicopter.

When Vortex at last strode out of the trees it was with several alders, each ripped out of the soil by the roots, clutched angrily in both hands. Once free from the encumbrance of the forest, he chucked the annoyances to one side.

He glared at Swindle. The yellow and purple combat support jeep paid him no attention. “You got a tool kit on you?” he seethed.

Swindle glanced up. “What would I need one of those for?”

In a rage, Vortex marched up to the arms dealer. In one swift movement, he grabbed Swindle by the back, hoisted him to his feet and spun him around. Glaring into Swindle’s optics he reiterated himself. “I’m talking to you. Do you have a tool kit or not?”

“Hey!” Swindle pushed Vortex away and brushed off the interrogator’s touch. “I said no.” He sized up the helicopter Combaticon. Vortex’s torso was blackened and the metal distressed around a puncture large enough for Swindle to fit his fist through. Charred components were visible inside. “What happened to you?”

“That’s none of your business,” Vortex huffed and then turned his attention to Swindle’s loot. “I’m taking a look through this,” he declared and brushed past Swindle.

“Hey, that’s mine!” Swindle protested, grabbing Vortex’s arm as he reached for the pile. But Vortex wrenched his arm free and knocked Swindle away. Angered, Swindle pointed emphatically at the train. “Go get your own!”

But Vortex only laughed and glanced back at the mad Combaticon. “Why, when all the good stuff’s right here?” He picked out a handful of interesting-looking gadgets and looked them over to see if he could use them to fix himself.

There was a click from behind Vortex. He straightened and turned to see Swindle staring at him down the barrel of his arm-mounted scatter blaster.

“I said that’s mine,” Swindle glared at the Combaticon in his sights.

Vortex stood his ground, putting himself squarely in front of the loot. He wagered that the greasy black market trader would not shoot him and risk damaging the goods behind him. He rested one hand on his hip plating. 

“Tell you what,” Vortex bullied Swindle. He held out the clenched handful of Earth gadgetry in front of the dealer. “How about I just take these… and we’ll call it even?”

Swindle was not amused by the intimidation tactic. He had a better deal in mind. “You can take those,” he grinned slyly, tilting his head away from his blaster, “but I’m expecting them back with interest when you’re done.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Vortex declared with disgust and walked away. The gadgets were his now.

Swindle glanced at the crated tachyon disruptor in the distance and realized he could not fire at the other Combaticon without risking hitting their newly-acquired merchandise. He lowered the blaster and hurled himself at Vortex.

“Give those back!” Swindle ordered, grasping desperately for the devices. 

Vortex held out his arm to keep them out of Swindle’s reach as he wrestled with the other Combaticon.

“How about I sell them to you,” the helicopter chuckled as he mocked the dealer. The scuffle was turning out to be quite a welcome channel for his anger. Vortex darted his arm around, watching with amusement as Swindle tried to grab it each time.

“I stole them,” Swindle sneered at him as he struggled with Vortex. “You have no right!”

Vortex twisted himself away from Swindle, who was caught off guard by the manoeuvre. As Swindle stumbled forward, unbalanced for a moment, Vortex raised his hands together over his head. Then, in a swift blow, he pounded them like a mallet on Swindle’s helmet.

“Take that!” he growled with vengeance.

Swindle groaned and his legs buckled. Then he fell to his knees. Now that his selfish comrade had been beaten, Vortex turned and walked away to find a suitable place to sit down and repair himself.

Swindle teetered on his knees, the index finger of his left hand twitching, as his systems recovered. His diagnostic computer quickly rerouted his cerebral functioning through a different pathway while his automatic repair system looked after mending the superficial damage. Swindle recovered and shook his head. With Vortex’s back turned, the arms dealer’s optics locked on the unguarded hand holding the stolen gadgets. He could not let Vortex get away with the theft of his property. The slagger would do it again if he learned that Swindle gave up when pressured.

Grimacing, he leapt at Vortex. Unaware of the impending blow, Vortex’s hand was knocked open and the devices clattered to the ground.

Swindle grinned as he held up the recovered goods. “At last,” he said, a sense of fairness returning to his vocalizer. Now he could return to his accounting.

Vortex regained his balance and pulled his semi-automatic glue gun from its subspace compartment as he turned around to meet Swindle. Now the greedy, no-good double-dealer had his back turned to him. He would give Swindle a taste of his own medicine. Vortex fired a short round of adhesive capsules at the other Combaticon. The barrage exploded mid-air and streams of sticky cement ejected toward Swindle as he sat down with his loot. At the last possible instant, Swindle looked up.

“Aaghhh!” Swindle yelled in alarm as the super-sticky glue bombarded him.

Gooey threads of adhesive strung across Swindle and latched onto the pile of stolen goods behind him. He fought to free himself from it but, like a fly caught in a spider’s web, the more he moved, the more he became stuck. 

Gun still in hand, Vortex rested his fists on his hip plates and let out a hearty laugh at Swindle’s expense. “If you want those things so badly, you can be joined with them – permanently.”

“You rusty bucket!” Swindle cursed Vortex. He extended his arms, hoping to elongate the strings of glue enough to break the curing strands. But when that did not work, Swindle attempted to stretch it with his body. But the curing glue was becoming less forgiving. He shifted and it suddenly recoiled, snapping him back against the pile of merchandise, where it hardened over top of him. Swindle was glued into his treasure.

The fun was over. Vortex subspaced his weapon and casually walked around the back of the pile where Swindle could not see him. 

“What are you doing back there?” Swindle asked worriedly, trying unsuccessfully to turn his head. “Don’t take anything! It’s still mine!”

Vortex reappeared moments later, waggling some tools in his hand. “You had what I wanted after all,” he goaded the trapped Combaticon. “Thanks, Swindle.” 

“What about honor among thieves?” Swindle called after his Combaticon teammate.

“Honor?” Vortex snorted, his head turned to one side as he walked away. “The honor of gluing you to that pile was all mine.” He chuckled dryly.

Swindle cursed at Vortex as the helicopter sat across the camp from him with his back turned as he fixed himself. Vortex was very experienced in the various workings of Transformers, having been a master of interrogation in his former life on Cybertron. He had to know how inner mechanisms worked so as to pull the right puppet strings in his victims. Now he would reverse the sequence of methodical disassembly to repair his flight drive. 

Vortex was still working on his damaged torso when the other three Combaticons returned to the camp. He looked up as Onslaught, Brawl and Blast Off touched down near the train tracks.

“Well, did you get him?” he asked the others eagerly.

“I got him,” Blast Off boasted proudly, and glanced at Brawl. “I didn’t even need a tank cannon to do it, either.”

That was the last straw for Brawl. Blast Off was going down. He wound up and punched the braggart square in the faceplate.

The blow struck Blast Off across the jaw mechanism and sent him stumbling. 

“You’ll regret that,” Blast Off warned as he cupped his hand around his battle mask. A small fastener popped out from underneath the mask and slipped between his fingers.

Circling his fists, ready to fight, Brawl followed the unbalanced space warrior. When the moment was right, he would put his fist in Blast Off’s faceplate again.  That ought to silence the slagger, he seethed.

Blast Off glared back at Brawl, torn between keeping an eye on his opponent and retrieving the broken fastener that had fallen to the ground.

Brawl hunched down and stalked Blast Off, ready to strike at any moment. “You got lucky,” he hissed at the other Combaticon. “If I had found the Autobot first, there would’ve been nothing left to identify. You barely did anything.”  

“I can’t help it if they die easily,” Blast Off shrugged off the insult. “They’re made to be flimsy.” 

“You sicko,” Brawl snarled. “You didn’t even shoot him, did you? You played with him until he went offline.”

“Brawl! Blast Off!” Onslaught commanded. He had drawn his sonic stun gun. “Cut the nonsense or I’ll give both of you something to worry about!”

The two glanced sideways at the Combaticon leader, but their attention was still fixated on each other. Brawl lunged at Blast Off, but Blast Off narrowly dodged the punch and drew his ionic blaster to settle the argument. Onslaught raised his weapon and opened fire. The two robots shuddered as the high amplitude sonic waves disrupted their circuitry and seized their electromechanical systems. Onslaught lowered his stun gun and approached the frozen pair, plucking Blast Off’s weapon from his outstretched hand.

Vortex grunted and went back to fixing himself, disappointed that the fight had ended prematurely. The outcome of the match would have been interesting to watch.

Onslaught turned and, aiming the ionic blaster at the hardened glue binding Swindle, fired a short burst. The hot blast stream cut easily through the glue. Swindle pulled himself free and turned to check on his loot. Vortex’s glue had seeped through all of it.

“My stuff,” he moaned, “it’s ruined!” He turned to look at Vortex through narrowed purple optics. “You’re going to repay me.”

“Fat chance,” Vortex huffed, not bothering to turn around.

“Swindle,” Onslaught interjected. 

“Yes, boss?” the shorter Combaticon responded. 

Onslaught pointed to the east. “You can have what’s left of the Autobot. His parts are lying at the bottom of a rockslide halfway up the mountain, a few miles that way.” 

“Thank you, Onslaught,” Swindle responded gratefully. He scoffed at Vortex. “That starts to make up for it.”

“Make it quick,” Onslaught instructed Swindle. “So we can load up and get out of here before nightfall.”

Swindle nodded and took off. As he flew away from the camp, Onslaught looked to the west where the sun would disappear behind the mountain for the day. Dusk would soon fall in the valley.

Shadow was gradually falling over the forested mountainside as Swindle followed its undulating contour. The far eastern slopes were still bathed in the warm yellow of day’s end. The Decepticon soared high above the darkening forest slopes below him. Curious, he peered down one of the deep crevasses nestled in the folds of the mountain. The features at the base of the towering trees were obscured by swallowing shadow. When night finally fell, the wilderness would be engulfed in blackness. 

As he stared down into the dark evergreens, Swindle caught himself absent-mindedly descending toward them. He pulsed his leg thrusters and gained altitude until the road was just above optic level. Moments later, a beam of late afternoon sunlight glimmered off something metallic on the forested slope. It was nowhere near a rockslide but it was worth checking out, all the same. You never know when you’ll find a gem, he thought.

Swindle closed on the object and raised his pitch until he stood balanced on the lift from his leg thrusters. Tilting his head to one side, he took a closer look at the metallic object. The rusted remains of a teal hulk lay half-buried on the slope. Two faded tires were visible. He gazed at it for a moment. It was the carcass of some old vehicle that had plummeted off the road above long ago, and come to rest among the firs and pines. 

There was nothing of interest in a pile of scrap, so Swindle jetted away from the trees and continued eastward. After several minutes, he found what he was seeking. In the shadow of the mountain, a deforested gulch dropped into the tumultuous aftermath of a rockslide. He descended toward the toppled trees, then followed the path of debris down the slope to the bottom. The forest was eerily quiet.

The Decepticon set down on the rock pile at the end of the slide and looked around, puzzled. There were no parts there; no remains of an Autobot could be seen anywhere. This has to be it, he thought to himself as he looked back up at the freshly broken cliff on the steep slope above.

Swindle rummaged through the broken boulders, hoping to find a remnant of the Autobot scout underneath. He discarded large rocks to each side, growing frustrated that he could not find his prize in the pile of debris. Then a strange sensation passed through his circuits and he dropped the rock he was holding and stood up straight. A charge rippled up his central column.

“What is that?” the Combaticon asked warily. 

The trees rustled behind him. Swindle spun around, the scatter blaster cannon on his arm thrust out, ready to spit buckshot. But the trees settled again and remained perfectly still. The source of the noise was invisible in the darkening forest.

“Must be an animal of some kind,” Swindle reassured himself. He lowered the weapon. A deer or a squirrel was nothing to get spooked about. The momentary electrical tingle in his circuitry had already discharged.

Swindle turned his attention back to the slide. He frowned at the thought of walking away, empty-handed, from a train robbery and the termination of an enemy unit. He needed to find something to show for all of his trouble.

Swindle was keenly aware of the Autobots’ arsenal of specialized weaponry. The arms dealer yearned to get his hands on it as soon as he laid his optics on the Autobots’ powers during battle. Now was the prime opportunity. The scout’s hologram generator was somewhere in all the debris. He mused about the bounty with a crooked smile. That was one item he would not sell. It would remain his.

He turned on the round lights on either side of the front of his hip plate and illuminated the grey rock in front of him. Although there was still enough light to see, he hoped the light beams would glint off of some protruding metal and point the way to the treasure. He just had to locate it and dig it out. He walked across the slide, sweeping the beams up and down the slope, moving broken tree boughs as he went. But there was still no sign of metal in the debris. Swindle growled in frustration. Time was passing and the sun was getting low on the horizon. The clouds above were turning purple as sunset approached.

Swindle decided to trek back up the slide and take another look from a different angle. As he headed past a medium-sized boulder, a dark patch on the silt-colored ground next to him caught his attention. He knelt down, ran his hand through the fine dirt, and cupped a portion of it in his palm. Swindle examined it in front of the light.

The wet grit was stained a light hue of red. It appeared to be a translucent fluid, not the blood of a flesh creature. Perplexed, he knelt down and aimed the light beams on the small, soaked patch of earth. In better lighting, he noticed another patch about a yard to the east. Swindle stood up and shone the light on it. It looked like a leak of some kind; there was another small patch just beyond it.

Swindle clenched his fists as he swept the light beams further and uncovered more of a trail. It was clear that all was not what it seemed. The others had been fooled by the Autobot’s apparent demise. The scout had been injured and was leaking, but was functional enough to stagger off into the woods.

“Hmph,” Swindle grunted at the thought of aiming his scatter blaster at the Autobot’s processor to put him out of his misery. It might take a little longer to follow him to wherever he was hiding, but the end would be the same. Swindle would inherit the scout’s weaponry one way or another. Lights on to guide the way, Swindle forged a path through the woods, following the trail.

* * *

Hound was making good progress on his hike back up the mountainside. A soft, golden light penetrated the forest around the Autobot scout as he emerged out of the mountain’s shadow. The glow filtering through the veil of evergreen needles was a welcome sight. The shadows through the trees were long now and the forest scenery was a stark contrast of darkness and dazzling greens in the waning sunlight.

Hound stepped into the cool shadow of some close trees and stopped momentarily, an overheat alarm nagging his attention with its persistent warning. He leaned his arm against one of the trunks, surprised that the climb in elevation was wearing him down so quickly. This was the third time it had happened since he left the slide, each time forcing him to pause for several minutes. His scouting endurance was typically far greater than this. The climb should not have strained his systems to this extent.

He remained still and waited for his internal temperature gauge to register a cool-down before he continued uphill. Unseen, birds chirped in the lofty tree tops. Silently, he watched a meandering cloud of black flies buzz in the warmth of a wide sunbeam, mesmerized by the insects’ swirling dance. He hoped that he could fix his wounds and make it back to base without aid. But he would have to wait until he was out in the open before he could attempt basic repairs.   

Hound checked the output from his array of specialized scouting sensors. An odd background disturbance buzzed in his data channels, prohibiting him from receiving a clear reading on his surroundings. Only his optics seemed to be free of the electrical noise. He knitted his optic ridges and focused past it. It reminded him of the charged sensation that had disrupted his circuitry and left a tingle in his hand earlier that afternoon, back up on the ridge. As he recollected the strange experience, Hound checked his temperature gauge. His systems were almost back into the safe operating range.

It was possible that he was suffering from a low-level, lingering malfunction when he left Autobot Headquarters, and now that his systems were taxed the error was being amplified. Of course, he thought. That made sense. Since he was remotely linked to his listening dish and his hologun they might have both malfunctioned because they were picking up a bad data connection from him. While an internal fault was not a savory answer to the bizarre condition, given that he was far from help and home, it was better to have a sensible explanation for the experience than nothing at all.

A staccato burst of squirrel chatter shattered the reflective moment of silence and brought Hound’s attention back to his environment. He noticed that the high temperature warning had vanished. Hound pressed onward and upward. Branches cracked carelessly underfoot as the big robot trekked through the forest under the tall trees. 

Hound glanced up through the gaps in the canopy above him. He would walk as long as there was still light in the sky. Once darkness fell, he would have to stop for the night. It would be unwise to turn on his headlights while the Combaticons were still at large.

* * *

Swindle hurried through the forest, keenly searching for the next patch of soaked ground darkened by the Autobot’s leaking fluid. The discovery of each dark stain on the ground buoyed Swindle’s hope into certainty that terminating the scout would be as easy as winning a rigged bet. Blast Off had done the hard work of crippling the s