Another 28 Dead Ends entry that is too long to fit in the wee little comments block.

Kick Ass Dead End

Dead End looked around warily. A thick fog shrouded everything, concealing broken concrete and rusting girders until he was nearly on them. Where in all this fog and ruin were Breakdown and Wild Rider? He scanned the surroundings, but something in the fog and the broken walls scattered and confused his radar. All he knew was that something moved out there.

Better go the rest of the way on foot. Likely to drive into a pit otherwise.

Dead End transformed into robot mode, strode warily forward--and promptly fell into a pit as the eroded concrete rim crumbled beneath him. He rolled gracefully out of his tumble, dried bones and skulls crunching beneath his weight. His gun was already in hand as he rose.

A ropy black tentacle covered with glistening slime the thickness of a tree trunk swung out of the fog and caught Dead End about the waist. Even as it flexed and lifted him, Dead End jammed his rifle muzzle into the length of tentacle near him and fired.

The tentacle parted, hurling Dead End to ground somewhere else in the pit. He landed on something that clanged instead of crunching. Dead End looked down. Drag Strip lay there in robot mode, his shell gray as death, but his optics were still just barely lit. Strange holes marred his chassis, like some monstrous drill bit had had its way with him. Black glistening slime mixed with energon dripped from the wounds.

As I thought. That thing is as dangerous to Decepticons as it is to organics. We will all die here.

Dead End heaved Drag Strip onto his shoulder and ran. Something large squelched along the pit--chasm or ravine, rather--behind him. Dead End heard skulls pop and bones crack under the thing's weight. He snapped a few shots off in its general direction, with no apparent effect. He ran his radar--the thing wouldn't show up, but Dead End was looking for something else.

He found it--a broken slab of concrete, tilted crazily into the ravine; an impromptu ramp up. Dead End ran up the slab, back onto level ground. He didn't make the mistake of stopping once clear of the ravine, but kept on moving past wrecked buildings to more open ground.

This looks like the main street of town. Long stretch of clear road, arranged as a boulevard.

Dead End deposited Drag Strip beside the road and tried to open a communications channel to Motormaster or anyone else who would answer. No one, nothing, just the hiss of an empty carrier. He'd left Wild Rider with Motormaster after the thing had thrown a multi-ton slab of concrete through Motormaster's trailer, crippling him. Breakdown had fled screaming into the fog at the first sight of the thing, screaming about "red eyes, all the red eyes, looking at me". Dead End agreed that the thing had too many eyes, and mouths, and tentacles, but that wasn't a good reason to go running off blindly. He and Drag Strip had chased after Breakdown, trying to find him in this maddening, fog-filled maze of ruins. They'd both found the thing, instead.

There's a good chance Drag Strip and I are the only ones still functional, only he's not. Myself, alone against that thing. And we found out it was immune to laserfire when it attacked Motormaster. He glanced down at Drag Strip, wounded and dead gray from energy drainage. Lousy, ugly way to die. Why couldn't Sunstreaker have punched out my laser core last week, instead?

Dead End's optics flared with ruby light as he heard the ponderous tread of the thing, monstrous hooves clicking on concrete. I'll make sure Sunstreaker has his chance next week.

Dead End shifted into car mode and tore down the street away from the ravine, away from the thing. He skidded to a stop just before the rubble of collapsed building and turned around, facing down the street toward the monster he knew was there, just from the gibberish his radar display turned into whenever he scanned that way. Dead End held down his breaks and revved his engine to near redline--then let go of the brakes and hurtled down the street, accelerating to nearly his full speed--

The thing loomed out of the fog, half as tall as Devastator, massive, surmounted by huge, writhing tentacles like some squat black anemone--an anemone with four monstrous, hoofed feet support its writhing, slime-coated body--

Dead End slammed into the thing at full speed, thousands of pounds of alien metal impacting at nearly two hundred miles per hour. The kinetic energy equivalent of a very large bomb tore the thing in half--it burst with a hideous noise, showering black slime everywhere. Dead End sailed through it, through the barrier of broken concrete, clear across the ravine and into the ruined building on the other side, which promptly collapsed on top of him.

Through it all, his forcefields held.

Under tons of broken concrete, Dead End's radio finally crackled to life. "Stunticons, this is Motormaster. This slagging fog is finally clearing; report in."

-- fin --

Kick-Ass Dead End

Kick Ass Dead End

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