Predacon for a Day

By: Miss Special

Note: One of things that keeps paralyzing this series is I keep worrying Mercy is a Mary Sue. Mercy isn't perfect, however, she is overly-confident, obnoxious, and pretentious. She's not supposed to be liked. The idea is to bide one's time until Mercy gets what's coming to her, and believe me, she'll get it.

Oh yeah, and, there's no romance in this series. I promise.

The dust coated her fur unpleasantly. One thing she really liked about her beast mode was its pelt, and it was getting dusty as she walked up a hillside.

It was a minor annoyance, really, but it was compounded by all the other annoyances she was currently putting up with. One annoyance was named Waspinator, and the other was Quickstrike.

She was sure Megatron was setting her up for a fall. These two had to be the most incompetent Predacons in the history of ever.

Her mission was to take the Predacons under her command to a specific place, where they would construct a jamming tower, and then guard it. A task easier completed alone, rather than done with two incompetents to watch over.

Waspinator buzzed ahead, as per her orders. He was the sentry while she and Quickstrike hauled the equipment up the hill.

Speaking of Quickstrike, she was about ready to maim him. He'd hit on her at least five times already, and if he did it again, she'd--

"Y'sure you don't want me to take yer load? A pretty femme like you shouldn't be exertin' herself so much."

Mercy shuddered, suppressing the urge to rip the scorpion-snake's legs off.

"Do you want me to tell your 'sugar-bot' you've been eyeing another femme?" she hissed, smiling out of malice.

"That… sure is a pretty grin you got there," Quickstrike said, trying to sound complimentary but sounding submissive instead.

"We're almost to the top," Mercy said, changing the subject. "Waspinator, do you see anything unusual? Like a Maximal?" Better be clear with this one.

Waspinator looked in every direction before answering, "Negative. No Maximalzzz in sight." He made happy buzzing noises.

"Good," Mercy said, pulling her load the last few inches. "Keep lookout while Quickstrike and I set up the array."

"Ooh, Wazzzpinator likezz lookout."

Good for him, Mercy thought as she picked up the first support strut and got to work.

Mercy stepped back, looking at the finished jamming array. It had taken a little longer than expected to complete it, thanks to Quickstrike, but Waspinator hadn't seen a Maximal, so things were going decently.

She climbed the array to get a better vantage point. Looking out over the landscape-- a land of hills and dust, occasionally dotted with a tree or two-- she couldn't help but smile. She loved her job, even if it meant being stuck with a couple of idiots.

"What d'we do now?" Quickstrike asked.

"You go outside the array's range and tell Megatron it's up and running. Then you come back here and help me make sure it doesn't get blown up."

As Quickstrike left, grumbling rather loudly to himself, Mercy returned to grinning.

"Weazzzel-bot zzzzmiles too much," Waspinator observed.

"Weasel nothing," Mercy replied tartly. "I'm a mink."

"It's all da same," said a new voice. Mercy looked down at-- what was his name? Rattrap?-- who happened to be aiming a gun at her.

Mercy's smile disappeared. No time to reprimand Waspinator on his apparently lacking sentry skills; if she wanted to pull this one out of the hole, she'd better act fast.

So she did. She jumped off the array and ran straight at Rattrap full-tilt.

Rattrap managed to fire off a shot before Mercy barreled into him, knocking them both over.

"Quick, grab his gun!" Mercy ordered Waspinator, who was idly watching the odd actions of the mercenary. He hesitated a moment, then landed, transformed, and wrenched the gun out of Rattrap's hand.

"Crazy femme! Get offa me!"

Mercy obliged. Really, her recent action had pushed her farther out of her comfort zone than she liked. It had been a desperate move.

She drew her own gun, pointing it at the now unarmed Maximal, who stood, hands in the air.

"I can't believe that worked," Mercy laughed, more out of discomfort and relief than amusement. "Watch him, Waspinator. And actually watch him this time or you'll be needing a trip to the CR tank. Understood?"

"Underzzztood."

Mercy checked out the wound on her arm. It hurt, but wasn't terribly serious.

"Leave it to you Maximals to miss anything vital even under pressure," Mercy said. "I see you're one of those Maximals who shoot girls."

"Yer a fine one ta talk! What kinda femme throws herself at guys?"

"Desperate ones. Very desperate."

"What zzzzhould we do with the Maximal?" Waspinator asked, keeping his and Rattrap's gun trained on Rattrap.

"Let me think…" she said deviously, though she really did need to think. Killing (or almost killing) him would probably make the Maximals hate her to the point where they won't have anything to do with her, and that would be bad for business. Besides, she wasn't getting paid to kill anyone. But she was a Predacon today, and she should act as such.

"Knock him offline," she said finally, shrugging.

Waspinator obeyed, this time without hesitation.

Time wasn't on Mercy's side today. Pretty soon, the Maximals would come looking for their missing comrade, and Quickstrike still hadn't gotten back from contacting Megatron.

Not to mention that Rattrap could come online at any moment. She wasn't sure what to do with him. Megatron would undoubtedly prefer the Maximal dead to captured.

She checked the position of the sun-- afternoon. Just to make sure, she opened a panel on her wrist and looked at her digital chronometer. She still had a megacycle to wait before the contract ran out, and she had to keep the jamming array operational until then.

Quickstrike still hadn't gotten back…

Earlier, Waspinator had buzzingly informed her that previous arrays didn't jam Predacon communication lines, but this one was apparently calibrated to jam any signal no matter who sent it.

"Waspinator!" she barked, finally giving up on the fuzor.

"Yezzzzz?"

"Stay here and guard the array. Under no circumstance must you let it fall!" Well, that was a bit extreme. Even if she failed today, she'd still have a shot with the Maximals. "And watch the prisoner! Make sure he doesn't wake up, or if he does, knock him out again. I'm leaving the jamming area so I can report to Megatron. Do you think you can handle this?"

"Wazzzpinator can handle anything!"

"That's the spirit! Here's your opportunity to upstage Quickstrike!"

"Wazzpinator will not dizzapoint!" Waspinator saluted.

You'd better not, Mercy thought.

Mercy jogged her way out of the jamming area. Her beast mode may have luxurious fur, but it wasn't very good for running.

As soon as she was sure she was out of the array's range, she said into her borrowed comm unit, "Megatron!"  Megatron didn't trust her enough to give her the decoding chip, so she was stuck with a two-bit piece of junk to communicate with. "Megatron, do you read? This is Mercy."

"Ahh, yessss, Mercy," came the crackling reply.

"The array is up and fully operational." She looked over towards the array, squinting her optics against the late afternoon sun. Yes, it was still there, she could barely make out its silhouette.

"It should have been that way several megacycles ago."

"I sent Quickstrike to report to you as soon as we finished construction, but I haven't seen or heard from him since." She would've liked to have asked if he knew about Quickstrike's whereabouts, but time was running thin and she couldn't afford to spend any on sneaking suspicions.

"You have a little more than half a megacycle left in your contract," Megatron said. "Do not forget that."

"I know. Mercy out."

Mercy moved to start her way back to the array, but seized up momentarily from energon overload. Unaccustomed to the sensation, she dumbly tried to think of a remedy of the situation and remembered that was why she needed a beast mode.

She muttered the command words to transform and headed towards the array without much grace.

She wasn't far from her destination, when she sensed something was wrong. Waspinator wasn't buzzing around the top of the array like she'd hoped he was.

She paused before climbing up the hill the array was built atop of. Praying her energon resistance had rebuilt enough, she transformed and quietly slunk her way to the top.

She looked around. She couldn't tell if the array was still operational, but it looked okay, except for…

It took her a moment for her to recognize the detonation charges. It wasn't hard to surmise the situation: Rattrap had woken up, overpowered Waspinator, set the charges, and left.

Well. Mercy wasn't an experienced mercenary for nothing. She knew how to defuse a bomb.

Each charge was set on an opposing support strut, so Mercy went for the nearest one and looked it over.

Yes, she'd seen this kind of charge before. Defusing one was tricky if one didn't know how, but Mercy had done this several times before and knew what she was doing.

Taking a small set of wire clippers from her sub-space compartment, she was about to get to work, when she heard a click come from behind her.

"I wouldn't move if I were you," said the heavily-accented voice.

"I wouldn't be so hasty," Mercy replied, smiling calmly. "I could slip and cut the wrong wire. Wouldn't it be a pity if both of us were to get blown to pieces?"

Rattrap pushed his gun into her back and yanked the clippers out of her hand. He took the gun away from her back but kept it trained on her, in case she should get any ideas.

"Da charges are set to blow in less dan two cycles," Rattrap told her. "I was tryin' ta give ya a chance ta run."

"Running would be bad for business." She quickly calculated in her head: Megatron said she had half a megacycle left and it had taken her maybe twenty-five cycles to get back to the array. Give or take several cycles-- estimations were too inexact. How much time did she have before the contract expired? She couldn't check her chronometer, and cutting a deal with an opposing side would show disloyalty.

And there was also the matter of her strategic disadvantage. But, if she sidestepped…

She dropped to knee and rolled to the side, knowing that if Rattrap fired now, he'd risk hitting a charge.

Still near the ground, she swept out with a leg and took Rattrap's feet out from under him. As he fell towards the ground, she lunged for his gun, but missed. Her momentum kept her going, and she took a few steps to keep her balance, but tripped on something.

She jumped back to her feet, stepped back over an offline Waspinator (which was the thing that tripped her) and drew her gun.

…Where had Rattrap gone?

She frantically looked around. He wasn't near the array.

She instinctively ducked as two shots sailed just overhead and then dove for cover. She found it behind a rock barely large enough to give her shelter.

Slaggit, where was he firing from?

As another shot went by, she was able to trace it to where it originated. There! A rocky outcropping on the hillside!

Mercy futilely returned fire, knowing the best she could do was keep him at bay.

This wasn't going to work. She had to do something with the charges before time ran out-- How much time was left?

As Rattrap's shots chipped away at her miniscule cover, she realized he was doing the same thing, keeping her in one place until the charges could detonate.

Stupid Maximal values! If she wanted to get herself killed, that was her decision!

"That's it!" Mercy growled. She'd hadn't been smiling since before the firefight had broken out.

Several things happened almost all at once.

Mercy broke cover, intending to run to the array.

There was a small triple-beep.

Mercy managed two steps.

The charges detonated, sending dust, debris, Predacon, mercenary, and Maximal flying.

Knocked silly, it took Mercy several moments to recover. Her optics were glued to the remains of the array, charred and smoking.

The triple-beep… It was a sound so familiar to Mercy that she sometimes didn't realize she heard it. She drew her chronometer from sub-space and checked it. It had stopped.

More importantly, it had stopped before the array exploded.

She turned to see Rattrap, still a little woozy, aiming his gun at her but holding fire. She grinned hugely back at him.

Showing him the chronometer, she said, "I'm neutral again."

"Ya sure are happy fer someone who just got blown up." He didn't lower his gun, but he relaxed a little.

Knowing he wouldn't shoot her unless she threatened him (Maximals are so predictable!), she stood and brushed herself off.

"Mission complete," she said smugly, taking in the devastated scene. She took a couple steps toward the Predacon base.

"What, you're goin' back ta Megatron?" Rattrap asked, putting his gun away.

"Just long enough to report and give him back his comm unit. Contract stipulated I was supposed to return all Predacon technology." She sighed. "I suppose that includes Waspinator."

She grinned at him again. "Hope to do business with you soon. If you need me, don't hesitate to ask." She went over, picked up one of Waspinator's limbs, and started dragging him towards the Predacon base.

"Fat slaggin' chance," Rattrap muttered. "Crazy femme."