Subject: [FANFIC 1/10] Lord of the Flies Starring the Transformers Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 00:00:00 GMT From: David Filip Organization: University of Washington Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers Lord of the Flies Starring the Transformers written by David Filip Part One: Peaceful Cooperation and the Seeds of Disaster A small gray and red Autobot lowered himself down the shiny pink granite rocks of the mountain, finally finding the lake in the center of the island. Rather than stepping into the liquid to perform a much needed removal of fine particles from his joints and servos, he turned his head to survey the surroundings. "This planet is beautiful. The combination of metallic and organic life, the way the liquid pours into that river--" "Wait one astrosecond! I got caught up in these nasty creeper things" called a voice at the edge of the forest. "Ugh! I got it!" the voice said and moved toward the gray robot. This new robot was yellow and black, and seemed to be more rotund than the others. He asked the gray one a question. "Where's the Vice Principal with the megaphone?" The other robot shook his head. "I don't know. Ever since we left Earth there was something wrong with the shuttle. Ultra Magnus said it was nothing to worry about, but I don't think we landed where we were supposed to. I don't see any adults here." The rotund robot was startled. "But there were a bunch of us kids on board...there must have been more survivors, right?" The gray Cybertronian tried to look less disinterested and started off for the pool again. The yellow robot continued on and followed him. "What about the other kids? When our shuttle went down, I thought I saw some of it fall into the water! What if the kids didn't make it out?" Both of the robots now looked off to the giant scar on the island that lead right up the mountain. There were plenty of pieces of the shuttle strewn about the three astromile stretch that they almost paved the way to the mountain top, and the two kids knew that many of their classmates had perished in the crash on land as well as at sea. "Aren't there rumors of Sharkticons in these waters?" the gray one asked. "Yes, sadly." He hesitated for a moment and spoke again. "What's your name?" "Windcharger." The rounded yellow robot waited for his own name to be asked, but Windcharger was already off to play in the water and clean his mechanical systems. The yellow robot ran for a short while before catching up to the lake's edge, then gave a look of exasperation to the other Autobot. "My auntie Elita-One told me not to run on account of my axle." "Your axle?" "Yes, you see I don't have a properly sized frame, so whenever I run in robot mode, I have to store my axle next to the leg joints, and it cuts off mobility whenever I--" Windcharger clearly wasn't paying attention, so the yellow one tried to change the subject. "We should see if we can find all the other surviving boys, shouldn't we?" Windcharger only shrugged at this comment, but the other robot continued. "I expect we'll want to know their names and we should make a list. Then we'll have meetings." Windcharger still did not take the hint, so the bulbously shaped robot felt forced to continue. "I don't care what they call me, so long as they don't call me what they used to at the Cybertronian Boys' Academy." Windcharger's interest level increased a notch. "What was that?" The round robot looked over both shoulders, leaned forward slightly and whispered. "They named me after an insect from Earth. They called me Bumblebee." Windcharger shrieked with laughter and splashed water off to the side. "Bumblebee! Bumblebee! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!" "Windcharger! Please!" Bumblebee clasped his hands in apprehension. "I said I didn't want--" "Bumblebee! Bumblebee!" Windcharger danced out of the water and held his arms as if he were an Aerialbot on a strafing run. "Sche-aa-ow!" Then he collapsed to the sand at Bumblebee's feet and laughed in as many ways as he could imagine. Bumblebee's featureless metallic faceplate seemed to grin reluctantly, happy to receive even this much recognition. "So long as you don't tell the others...ah, I suppose I might as well clean my servos too." Windcharger dived back into the lake with incredible speed, but Bumblebee checked the temperature with the edge of his foot first. "It's hot!" "What did you expect?" "I didn't expect nothing. My auntie--" "Sucks to your auntie!" With this Windcharger did a series of clumsy dives and returned to the surface. "Well are you coming?" "I wasn't allowed to swim because of my axle--" "Sucks to your axle!" The two Autobots engaged in a brief splash fight before Bumblebee changed the subject. "What's the use. They're all dead, and this island is on a planet that no one knows about, and--" Windcharger suddenly felt the need to reassure his fellow exile. "No that isn't necessarily true! Optimus Prime is a SchoolMaster and the principal of the Cybertronian Boys' Academy! He has a big room with a bunch of satellite pictures that have every planet mapped out. He'll find us in no time!" Bumblebee recalled that The Cybertronian Boys' Academy was the greatest institution of learning in the galaxy, so he found comfort in the idea that Optimus would find them soon. "I guess you're right. We've got to do something in the meantime though. Let's look for the other students!" "That's the spirit! There have to be other survivors, and then we'll just stick together and wait until someone from the CBA rescues us!" "Yeah! My auntie always said--" "Sucks to your auntie!" * * * Many hours passed as Bumblebee and Windcharger searched through the island. They covered very little ground due to Bumblebee's axle problem, but discovered tasty and satisfying EnerFruit clusters in the trees. They eventually made it out to the beach and looked at the strange orange solution at the shoreline. Windcharger crouched down and looked at the endless horizon. "I think the liquid in the lake was water, but I doubt this stuff is." "You're probably right, but I heard rumors about this place. If those geology classes were right, this is Quintessa. I don't remember what the oceans are made of here, but it doesn't matter. Sharkticons swim freely in the sea!" Windcharger was about to comment until he saw something shiny on the dulled metal shores. "Look at that! It's Ultra Magnus' megaphone!" "A megaphone?!" Bumblebee was bubbly all of a sudden. "We could use this to call the others!" By virtue of the fact that Bumblebee wanted to grab the megaphone and hold onto it for himself, Windcharger used the magnetic devices in his right arm to pull the megaphone to his own face. "I'll do it! I'll do it!" He pressed a button on the handle of the megaphone and started to speak. "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY" his voice boomed, "IF YOU'RE WITH THE CYBERTRONIAN BOYS' ACADEMY, GET OVER HERE!" Bumblebee smiled at the overpowering sound of the megaphone. "Wow. I bet that could be heard for miles!" Windcharger tried it again several times, and was amazed when his companion pointed off to a hill. "Look! There's one!" The yellow transformer changed into the silliest Earth vehicle imaginable and climbed the hill at ten miles per hour. Had Windcharger a mouth, he would have smiled as even more Cybertronians came climbing from the island's hills. "What's your name?" Bumblebee shouted to the first of the new arrivals. "BLAM! I'm Warpath!" Other arrivals announced themselves as they stumbled through the foliage and onto the open metal beach. Some were in groups, some were alone, but they all enjoyed the chance to return to a larger community. "Huffer, Laserbeak and Afterburner here!" "Powerglide and Brawn, reporting for duty!" "Wheelie say find friends today!" "I'm Dead End, but I don't suppose anyone cares." "I'm Skids, this is First Aid and that's Beachcomer." Brawl announced himself in his usual way -- A gurgled yell. "Aaaaaaggggghhh!" Several young Micromaster students were also on the field trip, and they were now literally coming out of the woodwork. Bumblebee was pleased to see that so many of them were alive, but he was frustrated that the hyper little robots didn't slow down often enough to give their names or sit still. The robotic children tried to situate themselves around Windcharger and felt secure knowing they finally had a place to gather. Several fallen EnerFruit trees served as benches for the assembly. As many as twenty of the Micromasters could fit on one log at a time, sometimes only five of the biguns could share the space. Fewer and fewer Transformers came out of the jungle, so Bumblebee returned. Of these new arrivals, only two more weren't Micromasters. "I haven't quite gotten all of their names. I know all the biguns who are here, but the littluns are a little hyperactive and uncontrollable. My Auntie always said--" "Hey look, it's the twins!" Windcharger shouted and waved to the latest arrivals. "The twins?" Bumblebee asked. "You mean Gears and Swerve?" "No." "Hubcap and Cliffjumper?" "No." "Inferno and Grapple?" "No." "Ironhide and Ratchet?" "No." "Laserbeak and Buzzsaw." "No, only Laserbeak is here." "Prowl, Bluestreak and Smokescreen?" "Hey!" Windcharger snapped back in a tone of mock anger. "Now you're doing it on purpose." With a lighter tone he turned and said "Hi Rumble, hi Frenzy! How's it going?" The twins were famous among the Cybertronians, mainly because they were identical in almost every way. They had the same voices, they did the same things, they always stuck together, and they both seemed to have the same personality. Even though one was red and black, and the other was blue and purple, no one ever found a way to tell which was which. That they could finish each other's sentences did not help to end the confusion. "We're not too upset, even though we crashed--" "Runamuck and Runabout gave us some cool new language programming before we left Earth." "Now we can say things like 'heh heh, this island, uh'--" "really sucks 'nd stuff. Huh, huh huh, huh--" "Heh, heh heh heh..." Windcharger was very impressed by their display of applied learning, but Bumblebee looked down on it as if pieces of Earth culture from outside the textbooks were unimportant. "Well it looks like this is all of us" Windcharger mused. "We should probably start the meeting--" If Windcharger possessed a jaw, it surely would have dropped. From out of the jungle he saw a tall and powerful group of six robots walk toward the assembly area in single file. There could be no question who they were. With their imposing size, their uniform appearance, the large wings jutting from their strong bodies, their practiced synchronous walk, they were definitely the Cybertronian Boys' Choir. Five members of the choir stepped into a staggered formation while their leader approached the Autobot with the megaphone. The leader was gray and red, like Windcharger, but there could be no mistake that they came from separate mechanical lines. The leader looked both ways, surveying the endless beach, and then looked back at the megaphone in Windcharger's hand before he spoke. "Where's the SchoolMaster?" "There's no SchoolMaster. Only me." Windcharger replied. "There isn't a ship, then? Or a SchoolMaster Vice Principal?" "No. We're having a meeting. Come join us." The choir's head boy was visibly upset at this, but knew there was little he could do. Bumblebee already knew the names of all the larger robots, but didn't dare ask the new arrivals' names. He was so intimidated by their uniformed superiority and offhand authority that he snuck back a little closer to Windcharger as the Choir occupied two logs and took their places. "We're all going to have to look out for ourselves," Windcharger stated to his newly silent audience. Bumblebee started to speak when the silence became too long and uncomfortable. "So far we've just been collecting names. I haven't gotten to most of the littluns yet, but I know the biguns. That tank robot is Brawl, and the orange robot is Wheelie. Then there's the twins, Rumble and Frenzy. Wait you're Rumble...no you are--" Before the twins got a chance to tell the assembly their names, the black and purple choir boy stood up and started to speak. "You're talking too much! Just shut up or I'll step on you like a cockroach!" Enough laughter arose for several Micromasters to fall off the logs they used as benches. "No everybody!" cried Windcharger, "he's not a cockroach! He's really a bumblebee!" This made all of the children except Bumblebee and Dead End erupt into a burst of hysterics. Bumblebee was clearly angry and embarrassed, and Dead End either wasn't paying attention or didn't care enough about the situation. "Ha ha ha ha!" "Bumblebee! Bumblebee! Bumblebee!" "Heh heh heh--" "--huh huh, heh heh!" After a short period of sustained laughter and joking, the choir introduced themselves. Starscream was their leader, Skywarp was the one who insulted Bumblebee, and the other four were Thrust, Ramjet, Thundercracker and Dirge. No one seemed to care about the Micromasters' names, and the littluns didn't have the attention span to wait their turn to volunteer their names. Starscream was the first to speak seriously since the laughter had begun. "We've got to decide about being rescued." There was a buzz in the camp, and Huffer whined that he wanted to go home. "Shut up!" Windcharger said absently. He lifted the megaphone. "It seems to me we ought to have a chief to decide things around here." "A chief! A chief!" "I ought to be chief," Starscream stated with simple arrogance, "because I'm chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp." Another buzz, but Starscream did not find that comments about his high pitched voice were well received as he would have liked. "Well then," Starscream tried to continue, "I--" Starscream hesitated. Beachcomber, seeing this pause in the speech stirred and spoke up quietly. "Let's have a vote." "Yes," Skids agreed, "a democratically elected leader will surely be the best one to lead us, right? He'll know how to get us home and keep us safe!" "Let's have a vote!" "Yes!" "Vote for the chief!" "ZOOM! I say we ZOWIE! elect a leader!" "If we vote for a chief, we'll get some relief!" Wheelie was the last of the children to comment because his rhyme elicited nothing more than silence and dirty looks from every other child on the beach. Some of the Micromasters who shared a fallen tree as their refuge pointed at Dead End. "Let's elect Dead End! Hahahahahahahaha!" Dead End's cynicism was well noted, and when he heard this he stood up. With his weight removed from the edge of the tree's trunk, the Micromaster Race Car Patrol was catapulted to the side. "It's all pointless, and we just don't want to face up to that fact," Dead End spoke with a crisp yet grim voice. "We can't survive here! Why don't we just go off to meet our end now? We have done nothing wrong, our deaths deserve to be painless!" Without saying another word, the Stunticon transformed into a maroon Porsche and drove off toward the water. The children all called to him. "No! Don't go! There are Sharkticons in the sea!" but Dead End made up his mind. In a matter of minutes his vehicular form was completely submerged and he continued to drive out to the ocean floor. The children didn't know much about this planet's history, but they did know about the danger of Sharkticons, and suspected they'd never see Dead End again. After another brief moment of silence, another Micromaster popped up. "Him with the megaphone! Let's elect Windcharger!" "Windcharger! Windcharger!" "Let him be the chief with the microphone thing!" Windcharger raised a hand for silence. "All right. Who wants to have Starscream as the leader?" With dreary obedience, the choir all raised their hands. More excited, Windcharger asked "Who wants to follow me?" Whether a bigun or a Micro, every other robot except for Bumblebee cheered wildly and raised their hands for Windcharger. Eventually, Bumblebee even agreed. This toy of voting was even more entertaining to the kids than the megaphone; every bit of intelligence could have been traced to Bumblebee, and every bit of authority could be traced to Starscream, but in their elected official they saw a handsome young bot who carried a megaphone that was once held by the Vice Principal himself. Windcharger felt thrilled by his victory and made an elaborate display of counting all the hands, even though there must have been at least 50 kids when the micros were counted, and the choir only had six members. "I guess I'm the leader now, but the choir still belongs to you, Starscream." "They could be the army--" Afterburner suggested. "Or hunters!" Skywarp said, trying to have a hand in his own destiny. "Or they could be..." a Micro started to speak, but his attention wandered elsewhere. "What should they do, what should they do?" Wheelie started, "Windy, the decision is up to--" The remainder of his rhyme was shouted down by the others. "What do you want them to be?" Windcharger asked Starscream. "Hunters!" Starscream said it excitedly, as if it were a fantastic idea he invented all by himself. After the boys mentally settled themselves in their new roles, Windcharger continued. "Listen everybody. We have to take the time to figure this thing out. First we have to see if this is really an island. Everybody has to stay right here and wait while we go around and check. I'll take two others; any more than that and we'd lose people and get lost ourselves. So let's start the expedition! I'll go, I'll take Starscream, and..." There was no lack of eager faces, but Windcharger decided to take the most timid of the hunters, just to know the choir better. "And Thundercracker." Starscream, Skywarp and the three coneheaded choir boys around Thundercracker giggled as their blue friend got up and nodded his head nervously. "I'll come too!" a familiar voice said. "Sorry Bumblebee," Windcharger replied, "but you're no good on a job like this." "All the same, even with my axle--" "We don't want you," Starscream said flatly. "Three's enough." "I was with Windy before he found the megaphone. I was with him before anyone else was." The trio started to leave, but Bumblebee took Windcharger aside. Reflexively, the gray Autobot sighed. "Look, you can't come--" "It's not just that. You told 'em." "Huh?" "About being called Bumblebee, after I expressly told you not to...you just went right out and said it as if--" While Windcharger hovered between the courses of apology or further insult, Starscream's presence made him cut Bumblebee off in mid-sentence and he chose the latter plan to deal with the moment. "Better Bumblebee than Cockroach," he said with the directness of genuine leadership. "Just go back and take the names of the Micros, no one seems to know or care what their names are. That's your job Bumblebee, just go back to it." Windcharger raced to rejoin the other two. * * * "It seems we will have a chance to study this galaxy's civilization after all," Cyclonus 2795 commented. Unicron's decision to send tactical scouts into the further reaches of space had usually paid off with a greater knowledge of the galaxy's astrophysical threats. Nothing was more horrifying to the monster planet than to find unexpected gravity wells. Occasionally, these scouting missions found military unions who sought Unicron's destruction, but his minions were soon to find a threat of a different nature. "Yes," agreed his companion, Scourge 4033. "The ship left a trail of ionized gasses in Quintessa's atmosphere before it crashed. From all the readings of those gasses..." Scourge gasped. "What?" Cyclonus inquired, "what is it?" Scourge steeled himself before replying in a grim monotone. "The vessel was fueled by energon. It must be a Cybertronian ship." Suddenly Scourge's voice became panicky. "If these Cybertronians have the matrix, Unicron is--" "Enough!" Cyclonus waved his arm to silence Scourge and paced five steps away to the other side of the shuttle's cockpit. "We must inform Unicron of this event, and we must find any survivors of that ship to see if they know the matrix's true power. If they do..." Scourge activated long range communications systems while Cyclonus continued pacing in an effort to imagine an appropriately menacing threat. * * * "It's great to be explorers!" Starscream yelled as he and Thundercracker jetted along at mach speeds. "This is definitely cool!" Windcharger agreed from his magnetically locked position under Starscream's F-15 mode wing. They had been circling the island for about twenty minutes, and hadn't seen anything yet. Thundercracker, who transformed into a blue F-15 that was otherwise exactly like his hunting leader's, looked down at the mountain in the center of the island. "I see something! It's not a trail from our crashed shuttle, it's some kind of animal trail! Let's land!" As they got close enough to the ground the two jets transformed into robots and Windcharger deactivated the magnetic field generator on his right arm. They hit the ground running and found several lines that seemed burned into the ground by an energy beam. "This is just too damn cool for words, we should draw up a map," Windcharger suggested to his friends. "It's wacco." "Wizard," agreed Starscream. "Smashing," Thundercracker said, but he had no idea why any of these words were being used. They continued up the trail to find a rocky area on the top of the mountain. Starscream said "hey, get a load of this!" and pushed a boulder off the edge. They could not leave the sound of the resulting crash unobserved for less than one hundred astroseconds, and they just stared at the small crater it created below. "Wacco!" "Like a bomb!" "Whee-aa-oo!" When the boys moved on to survey the rest of the island, they started to snicker. "This all belongs to us," Starscream tried to say, but it barely came out through his giggling. With their eyes smiling, their mouths open, triumphant, they savored the right of domination. They were lifted above their problems, they were friends. "So do we fly back and tell everyone that this really is an island, and that we really are trapped?" Windcharger asked. "No," Starscream smiled, "we can just walk home. We might find something new." No sooner did he say this then Thundercracker shhhed them both. "Look," the blue Decepticon whispered softly, "it's the native creatures of the island. They made the trail that I saw before." Slightly off the side of the trail, the trio turned and looked at the bizarre animals. They had wire-like tentacles, five faces, egg-shaped bodies and floated on energy beams. Not one of the boys needed to speak the words to name these creatures, but all three simultaneously whispered "Wild Quintessons!" to each other in a frenzy of excitement. If they had trouble finding the EnerFruit here, they could always resort to eating the Quintessons! They truly felt lucky to have crashed on the island. "I'm going to get one of them," Starscream announced, but as soon as he jumped at the family of five, they scattered into the forest. Windcharger laughed, but Thundercracker had learned not to. Starscream's feelings were obviously hurt. "I was just waiting for the right place to get 'im, that's all." "I guess you should sometime," Windcharger said, "they always say that Quintessons are a great source of all the essential EnerProteins." Thundercracker asked "why didn't you--" but cut himself short. He knew that there was a strong moral leap from talking about killing an animal and the actual deed. He also knew that Cybertronians, as the peace loving beings they were, had a strong aversion to killing and all forms of violence. "I assure you. I will next time." -----David Filip----------------------- grimlock@u.washington.edu ----- Are you tired of conformity on the internet? You can rebel against the culture of the net in four easy steps! 1) Thank and encourage crossposters. 2) Discuss politics politely. 3) Support censorship. 4) Praise Apple Computers, Intel, Microsoft, AOL and the entertainment industry for a job well done.