CHAPTER SIX
Cybertron, long ago
“Another long night ahead of us, eh?”
Three bots were gathered around a small fire, keeping their gears and joints warm as another cold night fell over Cybertron. While it was far from an ideal life, it was one that the three of them had become accustomed to in recent times. Besides, it was far better than the other alternatives that awaited them.
Sitting down on a pile of scrap, Weirdwolf dug out a can of oil from his hidden stash. “In need of fuel, anyone?”
“Sure.” Skullcruncher held out his hand as the yellow wolf-bot tossed the can over to him. As he hooked up the can to his fuel tank, Skullcruncher looked over to their third member. “You want any, Thundersaur?”
“No,” the large saurian bot said. “I’m good.”
“You sure? You’re bigger than both of us, so I’d figure—”
“I’m fine, Skullcruncher. You and Weirdwolf need it more than I do.”
Weirdwolf snorted. “Too nice you are, Thundersaur. Need to be more vicious sometimes you must be.”
Thundersaur shook his head. “You guys are my friends. I don’t need to be vicious to you.”
“Yeah, but someday you’re gonna run into someone who isn’t as nice as you,” said Skullcruncher. “Then you’ll have to toughen up. That’s how you survive.”
“I know all about surviving,” Thundersaur snapped. “You don’t need to lecture me about—”
“H-hello?”
The three of them looked in the direction that the small, weak voice was coming from. Stepping from out of the shadows was a bot in black and green armor plating with purple accents. He stared at the trio with imploring eyes, looking lost and afraid.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t hurt me. I’m just… trying to get away from….”
“Easy there,” Thundersaur said, slowly walking over to the lost bot. “You are among friends here. What is your name?”
“I don’t… my name is not….” The bot sighed, looking down ashamedly. “My name is Kick-Foot. It’s a stupid name….”
“All the best names are taken,” Thundersaur said with a smile. “Would you care to join us? There’s plenty of fuel to go around.”
“Uh, are you sure about this, Thunders?” asked Skullcruncher. “I mean, we don’t know who this bot is or where he came from. For all we know, he could be a Functionist spy.”
“If we shun others based on appearances, we would be no better than the Functionists.” Thundersaur smiled at the newcomer as he extended a hand. “Welcome to the Foragers, Kick-Foot. It’s good to have you with us.”
Earth, now
“Krok. Hey, Krok. Krok. Yo, Krok.”
Krok groaned as his systems booted back online, finding himself laying on his back and staring up at a bright blue sky, partially obscured by trees. The sun glowed brightly and he had to readjust his optics so that they didn’t—
“Try kicking him.”
A large foot roughly collided into his head and Krok shot up, rubbing his cranium furiously. He turned around to look at his assailant, ready to let loose with a series of curses and insults… only to stop when he saw a purple and blue bot staring back down at him.
“Spin… Spinister?”
“Who’s Spin-Spinister?” asked Spinister.
Krok then turned back around to see Misfire standing on his other side. He quickly scrambled onto his feet and backed away, staring at the pair in complete awe.
“You’re… you’re alive?!”
“Pretty sure we are,” Misfire replied. “Unless this is the Afterspark, which… would explain a lot, actually.”
Krok closed his eyes and shook his head. “I… I must be dreaming. Where’s Crankcase and Fulcrum?”
“Haven’t seen them. Only bots we’ve seen so far besides you is some dino-bot and this green guy.”
“What green guy?”
“The one you landed on.”
Krok opened his optics to see a green and black bot lying flat on the ground in the spot where he had awakened in. The green bot then groaned as he started to pull himself up, his face caked in dirt.
“This is… way out of my league,” he muttered.
“Who are you?” Krok asked, reaching for his blaster.
“My designation is JP-93. I’m a special agent for the Autobot Secret Service. That is all you need to know.”
“What are you doing here on Earth?”
“Did you not just hear me?” JP-93 snapped. “I’m not telling you anything! All three of you are under arrest in accordance to the Tyrest Accord!”
Krok continued to stare nonplussed at the Autobot while Misfire simply shrugged.
“Don’t bother reasoning with him. He’s clearly out of the loop.”
“Aren’t we all,” Krok muttered. “What about that dino-bot you mentioned?”
“We left her on the beach,” said Misfire. “No idea who she is or why she’s here, but—”
“Both of you, shut up!” JP-93 said. “Once Ultra Magnus arrives, the three of you are going straight to Garrus-9. If you try to put up a fight, you will pay the consequences.”
“Wait,” Krok said, looking back at him. “Did you say Ultra Magnus? I thought he died.”
“Yeah,” Misfire said. “And Garrus-9 was shut down after it was taken over by Overlord and his forces.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” JP-93 growled. “Ultra Magnus is alive and well and Garrus-9 is still under Autobot control. You ‘Cons would be out of your mind to even think of trying to take over the Last Resort.”
“Well, no one ever said Overlord was always in his right mind,” Misfire remarked.
Krok continued to stare at the Autobot agent, not wanting to let this matter drop. “How long have you been here?”
JP-93 glared at him. “I’m not telling you anything.”
“I don’t think you even have anything to tell us. And even if you did, it wouldn’t matter and we wouldn’t care. Ultra Magnus is dead and won’t be coming by anytime soon.”
The Autobot agent took a few steps back as he leveled a weapon at Krok. “I suggest you stop talking. I’m not afraid to put you and your friends down.”
Before Krok could retort, the roar of a jet’s engine broke through the air. The three Decepticons and single Autobot all looked up to see a blue jet flying above them high in the sky. A large cylindrical object was attached to its underside; an object that looked awfully familiar as Krok enhanced his optical sensors to get a clearer look at it.
“Say… isn’t that—”
He was cut off as JP-93 fired his weapon, hitting him with an electrical current that quickly spread to Misfire and Spinister in a chain reaction. The three of them fell to the ground and the last thing Krok saw before the darkness took him was the large jet starting to change shape….
* * *
Fulcrum screamed as he fell from several hundred feet in the air. Apparently, Ultimate X-Spanse had thought it would have been a good idea to drop him without warning so that he could transform. The X-Men had already launched out in some sort of mini-vehicle and paid no heed to the K-Con as he descended towards the ground. A part of him wished his bomb mechanism still worked so that he could blow this island and everyone around it to smithereens, just out of pure spite.
Instead, he landed roughly and unceremoniously on the ground, so hard that he thought he had broken his transformation cog as it took him more than a couple of minutes. Once he was finally in robot mode, he found himself sitting between Ultimate X-Spanse and the X-Men, and a strange green Autobot that Fulcrum had never seen before. Laying nearby were Krok, Misfire, and Spinister; all three were in a state of stasis lock. Fulcrum would have to worry about them later, as the green bot currently had a gun pointed at him, apparently not at all concerned with X-Spanse and his mutant friends.
“More Decepticons,” the Autobot muttered. “Great. I don’t know where you guys keep coming from or what you even want, but—”
“This Decepticon is our captive,” said Ultimate X-Spanse. “We don’t mean you any harm… unless you give us a reason to.”
The green Autobot shifted his gaze to the X-Men but kept his weapon trained on Fulcrum. “Identify yourselves and state your business.”
“My name is Expanse, though I now go by the name Ultimate X-Spanse these days. We’ve come here to investigate strange occurrences in this location.”
“’Strange’ doesn’t even begin to describe it,” said the green Autobot. “You can call me JP-93, agent of the Autobot Secret Service.”
“What does the ‘JP’ stand for?” asked Jubilee.
JP-93 glared at her. “That is classified information.”
“Great,” grunted Logan—who also went by the codename “Wolverine,” from what Fulcrum had heard. “More of these mysterious robots. This day is just full of them.”
“Maybe there’s a connection,” suggested Beast. “Perhaps something here in the Savage Land is what’s dispensing them here.”
“How did you come by this place?” Ultimate X-Spanse asked JP-93.
The Autobot agent seemed to hesitate before answering. “I… I just woke up here. No idea how long I was offline. Everything prior to that is a blur. I’ve been trying to hail High Command but haven’t gotten a response.”
Fulcrum looked over at X-Spanse. “Ask him what cycle it is.”
JP-93 answered the question before X-Spanse could ask it. “The last date I have logged in is Cycle 9679. However, my chronometer is all scrambled, so I have no idea how much time has passed.”
“Ha! You too, huh?” Fulcrum slowly got to his feet, which caused both Autobots to twitch reflexively. “So something happened in 9679 that brought you to this time and place. Now, I have no idea how Terran calendars work; if I did, I would be able to tell you what cycle corresponds to what year we're currently in, and I would be able to figure out how much time has passed for you guys.”
“You know something that we don’t, Decepticon?” JP-93 asked snidely.
“All I know is that you guys are from a point in history where the war was still at its height. I’m from a point of time where the war has already ended and the two factions are at peace, such as it is. I have no idea what that means for the current time that we are all in, but that’s where we’re at.”
“You guys are time travelers then,” said Jean Grey.
“Except I do not believe they are all from the same time,” said Beast. “In fact, they might even be from separate realities!”
“Spare us the details, bub,” growled Wolverine. “Just tell us how we’re gonna get them back to where they came from.”
Before Beast could answer his fellow X-Men, there was a bright flash of light and all heads turned to see a large metallic figure materialize before them. Too large to be a human and too short to be a Cybertronian, the metal warrior was unlike any Fulcrum had seen before. Red eyes glowed from a fanged silver visage and large hands tightly gripped a mace and axe, while a golden shield adorned one of his arms. As the X-Men and their Autobot allies brandished their weapons, steam puffed out of Death’s Head’s grill-like mouth as he raised his own.
“Now then… which one of you is Jean Grey?”
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