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The Obliteration – Bridge

As the Obliteration set down on the north side of the fortress city and Vortex headed out to engage the fuel connectors, Blast-Off turned in his seat to address Brawl who had failed to shoot anything on the journey to Kolkular and thus was in a very foul mood. “Sorry, Brawl, but we didn’t block anything. I don’t know what happened. The ship’s weapons systems checked out earlier. Maybe there wasn’t enough energon to power them and they simply locked up. We’ll know for sure once Vortex gets the fuel port hooked up to the city's power grid.”

The space warrior then turned back to the view screen in front of him once he received the interrogator’s message. >>”No problem, Vortex. I’ll take substandard energon over no energon any cycle just as long as it gets us off this Primus-forsaken planet. Stand by.”<<

Blast-Off carefully monitored the energon intake as the fuel cell levels began to rise higher and higher. It took just over a breem to fill the warship’s tanks, not nearly as long as the space warrior had originally thought it would. That was a relief because the cyber-rat activity outside seemed to be increasing with each passing astrosecond.

>>”Okay, Vortex, the fuel cells are full. Unhook the connector and get back inside ASAP. The ship’s scanners are picking up an unusual amount of cyber-critters in close proximity. Some are quite large and probably hungry. I think they might be following the flow of energon which means they’re heading in your direction, so be on alert.”<<

Blast-Off then looked back over his shoulder at the ground assault specialist. "If you want, Brawl, go try the ship's weapons again. They should be operational now. Needless to say, shoot anything that gets near Vortex or the ship, itself," the space warrior suggested before returning his attention to the navigator's console where he began punching in the coordinates for their return trip to Polyhex. That way, once the interrogator was safely back on board, they could take off as quickly as possible and leave those cyber-beasts behind.

The Obliteration - Kolkular Exterior

"Shuddup! If it weren't you then it was Onslaught! Damned miser probably blocked the weaponsystems to make sure I didn't waste any energon!" Brawl raged, walking restlessly in a circle behind Blast-Off. This however came to a sudden end as Brawl noticed movement on a screen from the corner of his visor. Cyber rats. Before Blast-Off had even time to finish whatever he was saying, Brawl was gone.

And a moment later, the heavily armed Combaticon was standing on the ramp Vortex had used to move out of the ship, blasting away electron blasts from his gun at the cyber rats below while cackling manically in sheer ecstasy.

The Obliteration--Kolkular Exterior

Vortex chuckled a little at Blast-Off’s initial response. >>”Copy, that.”<<

Cybertron was a great planet, once. For a long time, combat-specialized mechanoids like the Combaticons could make a fortune off the wars of others. Given how long this war had gone on, Vortex had built up an impressive energy stash for what seemed like forever, and he only kept adding to it. He could have retired rich, maybe getting up there with the likes of Mirage or Grapple, some of Cybertron’s more notable wealth-mongers back in the day. But the times had gotten a lot harder recently, and the interrogator’s reserves had mostly dried up. There was definitely nothing here—on his home planet—that he could tap in to. He had become what he started out as: poor military grunt. It saddened him as much as it frustrated him.

Getting the word from Blast-Off, Vortex set to work disconnecting the Obliteration from Kolkular. No sooner had he completed the disconnect, than several cyber-rats scurried past him and scaled the short distance to the Kolkular output unit and began ingesting the trace amounts of energon left over.

“You sick little—“

He saw that Brawl had come out to join him, blasting away in his characteristic style. He couldn't fault him. He probably needed to let off some steam more than any of them. And they weren't hurting for energon for the time being. As Vortex moved to join his other comrades on the ship, the impact had come from behind, out of nowhere, knocking Vortex forward and slamming him against one of the fortress’ outer walls before he fell to the ground and felt jagged, metallic teeth dig into his back and shoulder plating.

The Obliteration - Kolkular Exterior

Brawl had been busy blasting at the cyber rats while waiting for Vortex to board the Obliteration when he caught a glimpse of something charging at Vortex and knocking the interrogator down. His gaze turned on the assailant for better look, Brawl recognized a beast that could only be a cannibalizer - a beast with its origins unknown and their bodies made up of bits and pieces of their unfortunate victims. Usually residing in the graveyard-like junkyards of Cybertron, the evacuation of Cybertron had left the whole planet for the cannibalizers to stalk on. Thus, it was no surprise that one of them had been attracted to their current position by energon.

"Hey! Where the slag that came from!" Brawl roared but instead of dwelling on the issue, he fired a low powered blast from his electron gun to catch the creature's attention.

Shocked by sudden surge of electricity through it's body, the cannibalizer stood up and turned away from Vortex to face Brawl - only to be blasted into pieces by Brawl in his two-barreled hovertank form.

"Don't just lie there Vortex! Get moving!" Brawl barked at his teammate, his cannons still smoking from the blast. "Who knows if there's more of those things coming!"

The Obliteration--Exterior

Vortex was acting purely on instinct now, with all of his many vorns of combat training kicking in as soon as he had been attacked. But before he could truly get a good look at what had attacked him, Brawl blasted the thing in to oblivion. Vortex had recognized the thing as a Cannibalizer, but only barely before it had met its end.

“Don’t need to be told twice, that’s for sure,” Vortex said, quickly running up the ramp and hustling back on board the Combaticon vessel. >>”Get us in the air, Blasto!”<< he shouted over the comm, slamming one actuator against the bay door controls as he did so.

With the boarding ramp closed up, Vortex leaned up against the wall, his systems analyzing the damage that the bite had done. It was negligible, thankfully. Nothing a few short breems in a CR chamber couldn’t piece back together.

“If cyber-rats and Cannibalizers are the future of Cybertron, I’m done with this planet.”

The Obliteration – Bridge

Blast-Off watched from the bridge as Brawl stepped outside and began gunning down as many cyber-rats as he could. Hopefully, this would finally appease the brutish soldier and keep him from losing control while around his own comrades. Brawl apparently had so much pent up aggression that he likely could’ve taken out an entire Autobot regiment all by himself. Hopefully, such an extreme would not be necessary as the cyber-critters seemed to be enough to satisfy the overly violent Combaticon.

Then the space warrior spotted something else approaching, something much bigger that was not a mere cyber-rat as he had initially thought. Unfortunately, before Blast-Off could contact Vortex to warn him, a cannabalizer attacked the interrogator from behind and sank its teeth into his armor plating. Thankfully, Brawl wasted no time in eliminating the much larger creature before telling Vortex to get back inside. Once the grey mech had hurried back up the ramp into the safety of the ship, he commed up to the bridge and told the space warrior to take off immediately.

>>“Roger that, Vortex.”<< Blast-Off responded before initiating the Obliteration’s launch sequence. The engines roared to life, powered by the newly acquired energon, as the space warrior entered the return coordinates to Polyhex. A few astroseconds later, the warship lifted off from the side of Kolkular and headed for the Kaon border, leaving the various cyber-beasts behind.

“Frag, that was close,” Blast-Off commented as he turned around to see if Vortex and Brawl had made it up to the bridge yet or not.

The Obliteration--Bridge

"Too close," Vortex said as he walked towards the familiar enclosure of the bridge. Upon entering, he sat down in the chair that he had occupied alongside Blast-Off previously on their way to Kaon. With one hand he carefully prodded the damage that the Cannibalizer had done to his right, rear rotator as he brought up the ship’s scanning systems on his nav-screen. It was good to see the Obliteration fully fueled up again. He couldn’t clearly recall the last time that it had been, substandard energon or no.

“Well, that’s done,” Vortex grumbled, composing a successful mission log entry to be transmitted back to Onslaught and Razorclaw in Polyhex. “Now maybe we get to leave this junkyard of a planet. Leave it to the beasts.”

Vortex leaned back slightly in his chair. That CR chamber was going to feel nice. Mercifully, it didn’t take long before the Combaticon vessel had closed in on the Kaon border, leaving the territory. The sooner they got back to the relative security of their holdings in Polyhex the better, in Vortex's view.

"At least you got some satisfaction, eh Brawl?"

The Obliteration – Bridge

Brawl cocked his head to look at Vortex before bursting into loud laugher, banging his chest with his right fist at the same time. "You bet I did! Did you see the explosion?! The slagger got its remains spread all over Kaon!"

"Though I don't get how it managed to sneak on you!" He added, clearly being bit puzzled over what had happened before he had interfered.