29.June.09

The Queen's Advance

By: Blazemane   

Cheetor had been with the human resistance about a year. He had arrived in the year 2028, and it was now 2029. His robotically based durability in battle became a great asset to the Southwest American division, and also proved a liability in terms of the trust of virtually everyone else. They could all tell stories of what the machines had taken away from them. What cold hard metal coldly calculated, and without a second thought, did. Most thought Connor was crazy for reprogramming the terminators. They understood that everything a terminator did, it did because of its programming. And most people didn’t know what they were most frustrated by- the fact that machines would kill humanity without any remorse or pity, or that they would defend humanity without any sympathy or compassion.

And the same was said of this Cybertronian. Many were not born when the Autobots were around Earth, and had no first hand experience of their sentience. Those who were alive had whatever dear and precious memories they previously possessed of those metal hulks distorted by Cybernetic organisms. How could they trust this new arrival?

And what in the world was a Maximal anyways?

Of course, Cheetor had never met with the leader of the human resistance because of absolute precaution. Few people trusted metal like he did, but meeting an un-programmed machine was absolutely out of the question.

And thus, a year later, Cheetor still was placed where he originally landed. To those who he had been with him that whole time, however, Cheetor was far from mistrusted. He had saved many of their lives on many seemingly simple missions, and therefore, he was put to whatever use the resistance was allowed to give him.

In the meantime, he had made close ties with Jeff and Bill, the two he first met, as well as the technical adviser Mac and a few others. But he was fairly close to basically everyone. It was a small enough group.

As it stood now, they were in the final few hours of a four day journey from their region to a well guarded exchange station in the north. Many attacks had been made on the place, but it always stood firm.

About half had remained back at the base in the Chihuahuan Desert, while the other half, including Cheetor, made the delivery of chemical analysis documents to the exchange station. The placement of the base in Chihuahuan Desert had little land-based strategic applications- it wasn’t really defending anything. But its isolated location made it an ideal place for research. Ironically, this place analyzed many weapon structures and their reaction with different types of plaiting, and yet, even in 2029, they were left with the obsolete bullet-based weapons that existed before Skynet. This was because modern weapons were sparse, and therefore a precious resource. They had to be reserved for offensive strategies, and defensive outposts.

The searchlights in the distance showed that the crew was approaching its destination. Everyone was quite excited.

“…And I say to him, ‘Pete, you’re gonna’ get messed up if you stay next to that machine for too much longer.’ I was working on his joints you know, and those things can flail pretty wildly if you tweak the wrong parts. So Pete’s looking in the T-800’s shoulder joints-”

“What, he thought they were pretty or something?” Jeff interrupted.

“Yeah, something like that.” Mac continued. “So, I’m tweaking around, and somebody outside must have spilled coffee on themselves or something, ‘cause they let out this huge scream.” The people listening in began putting dots together and chuckled in anticipation of the reaction in the story “I hear that, and, well, you know, I jump for a second. And my wrench kinda’ moves to the left, so I touch some locomotive wire, and all of a sudden, the T-800’s shoulder comes ramming right into Pete’s face.” Loud laughter was heard all around, and some patted Peter’s back in mock sympathy. Pete couldn’t help but come into the conversation.

“And I’m all like ‘awwww’, ‘cause these shoulders are hard, right? And the machine’s just like ‘Sorry’. And I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, no biggie, you’ve just managed to break my nose.’”

“Did you say that out loud?” Somebody in the vehicle asked.

“Yeah right,” Peter replied, “those things are freaky. I’m scared one day I’m just gonna’ put one too many sugar cubes in my drink, and one of them is gonna’ come over and be like ‘you’ve wasted a cubic inch of sugar. Now you shall die.’” At this, Peter put one of his own hands to his neck and rolled his eyes around with an overly dramatic gurgling noise.

“Whatever happened to that guy?” Jeff wondered.

“The T-800? He’s still around. But we left him back at the desert to help keep the base safe.” Mac explained.

“Really? Wow, I just… haven’t seen him around much.”

“You are on the field half the time.” Bill observed. “I have seen him a lot though, like when my leg was healing a while back. One time I asked to play him chess, because I was bored. After complaining about the fact that there were probably ‘more efficient ways to spend his time’, he sat down, we played, and I lost in 10 moves.”

“Nice Bill, nice.” Jeff congratulated sarcastically.

“The problem,” Cheetor noted “was that you played chess in the first place.”

“Why do you have to be mocking chess, man?” Bill complained. “You hate it because you lost so many times, didn’t you?” A noticeable “ooh” arose from the listeners at the burn. Cheetor huffed.

“I am wasted on chess. I mean, it’s not originally from Cybertron, but the Autobots brought the concept back with them when they left earth. It became a 300 year old classic since then. But I can’t stand it. I used to try some games against Rattrap when we are on the Axalon, but really soon, I had to come up with some excuses not to.”

“Wait, so… you couldn’t beat me… like, for real?” Bill asked.

“No way.” Cheetor affirmed. Bill gasped in excitement.

“I always wanted to beat a machine! Name the time, and place, and we’ll-”

Perhaps the most horrendously loud explosion any of the passengers on the transport vehicle had heard in their lives cut off Bill’s proposal, and suddenly, everyone was either sliding backwards, or noting to themselves what a great invention seat belts were. Then gravity seemed to tip like a heavy, poorly supported wall, as the armored automobile fell on its side. It was a small fall for everybody involved, so nobody was seriously hurt, and the vehicle continued sliding on its side, hitting bumps along the way until slowly screeching to a halt.

“Is everyone alright? Sure you can say ‘yeah’ for yourself, but look around. Please report any seriously injured individuals to me immediately.” Mac had the presence of mind to announce. There was silence in response.

“Does that mean everybody’s fine then?” The ‘yeah’s began to pour in, intermingled with a few coughs.

“Stay in here for a second, I’m going to check things out.” Cheetor said. Moving along the wall which was now the floor, he got to the front and found the door suspended above him. He reached up and unlatched it, then threw upwards. The car door came to a rest a little but above the outer siding of the car. Cheetor climbed out, and slid off the car onto the dusty ground.

The night time was illuminated with debris that was freshly lit on fire from an explosion and lying all around. Everywhere one looked, they could see some torch or another. Cheetor looked east, the direction their vehicle was facing, and saw where the explosion had come from.

At the front of the caravan, the lead vehicle was now smoldering remains. But it still maintained most of its structure. Three of the passengers (there were only four) had already come out of it, and Cheetor stared in shock as the last one, Stacey, climbed out weakly. Her compatriots quickly assisted her. Cheetor would have liked to go and assess her injuries, but he was no medical ‘bot, and as long as she was alive, there was something far more pressing to be concerned about.

No ambush that began with an explosion ever remained un-followed upon by Skynet’s thorough soldiers. Cheetor looked northward, peering through the flames and demanding of his system an enemy signature scan. In the original Beast Wars, he was able to do this to detect Predacons simply based on energy signatures- mainly, their sparks. If a spark was detected, then more advanced scans were used (which had a rather limited range) to determine specific programming: Maximal or Predacon.

He was the only Maximal, and there were no Predacons, but the energy signatures he detected based on spark energy carried one major common characteristic with the machines that now hunted Earth: domesticated nuclear fusion. Granted, a spark determined a Transformer’s sentience, so the mechanics of it were widely unknown, and truly, nuclear fusion was an extremely small part of it all. But it was present in every Cybertronian’s spark, providing energy (much in the same way that a human’s heart is purported to guide its possessor in personal decisions, and by the same token, relied upon to pump blood).

Terminators had no sparks, but their energy was too, and far more than Cybertronians, derived from nuclear reaction. For Cheetor, Terminators were almost impossible to miss.

*Signatures detected* his computer informed him. Red circles began appearing from the corners of his optic sensors, and freezing in various locations. Cheetor couldn’t for the life of him see anything where the circles pointed, but he knew they were there, and they were approaching. The caravan had little time.

He quickly whipped around and faced south. He was extremely grateful that there were no machines to be detected in that direction. Climbing back onto the car, he began shouting orders into the tipped vehicle.

“Mac, we need your technical assistance to repair any vehicles worth repairing so we can get moving again. Peter, Bill, you need to assist him. Jeff and Samuel, assemble a team and start loading the M82’s. The rest of you, grab the HK416’s and get out there with, with, uh…”

Cheetor looked to the west and saw that most of the vehicles in the caravan had stopped without any damage. Out of the driver’s seat of one came out Jerome, the highest medic to come on the mission.

“Get with Jerome, and attend to any who need help.” he continued his broken sentence. “Jerome!” he shouted “We already need you near the front. Stacey’s car got hit!” He looked back to his crew’s transport. “Alright guys, come on out, get where you need to.” He got on his comlink and patched into a secure line to contact all the remaining transports on their radios.

“Attention… everybody else. Wait in your vehicles. We need the drivers to form a circle around one of the cars. Make sure the one with the documents in it is part of the circle- not the one in the center- that’s where they’ll look in first. Everyone still in a car, wait until the circle is formed, and then get out on the side that is facing inwards. These things are well armored, and if we can use them as a fortification, we can probably do quite well for ourselves. Go!”

Cheetor rushed off through the darkness and flames to Stacey and her three compatriots.

“Are you all alright?” he inquired.

“Yeah, we are. I’m probably the worst off, and I’ve only got a few burns.” Stacey responded.

“Can you make it inside the circle?” he asked.

“Pphht!” she scoffed, “What am I, an invalid?” she stood shakily to her feet and tried to suppress her wincing. “Alright, kitty, I’m gonna get everyone ready inside. I need you to scan what we’re up against. They are coming aren’t they?”

“Like clockwork.”

“O.k., then start figuring it out.”

“Yes ma’am.” Cheetor responded. The foursome began walking off as he scanned again. A few were coming in sight, but all of them were in close enough range for Cheetor to make a scan of different power levels in their core. He had quickly learned to differentiate the various units by the level of power reserved and released by their power cores; they just needed to be close enough. He began sorting.

“Alright,” he began in his com-link again. “We’ve got 15 T-800’s venturing our way. They’re ground assault units, so they won’t be wearing any skin. The few that I see so far aren’t anyways. The good news is that we’ve learned to deal with something like that. I expect plasma fire, but… whatever. The bad news is that we were shot at by an RV plasma cannon. It’s moving over here slowly, and it won’t be ready to shoot for about another 15 minutes, but we have to consider the possibility we’ll still be teaching the mis-wired metal heads a lesson by the time it is. The results would be catastrophic. So that’s our time table. We have to be separated from each other and firing off our own rounds at the tank in 13 minutes tops. One more thing, I scan a unit I’m not sure if we’ve ever met keeping pace with the RV.”

“Hey Cheetor, we’ve got a few in here trying to establish long range communications to call in air support from the exchange station, especially to take out the tank. Just thought you’d want to know.” Stacey chimed in.

“How long until they do?”

“About ten minutes.”

“O.k.”

Cheetor quickly ran back to join the rest of the crew. He immediately noticed that Jerome had applied some bandages to Stacey’s head. Everyone was busy setting things up. Not having anything else to do specifically, Cheetor ventured through the back doors of the tipped vehicle which the resistance team had made the front of the circle because of its total contact with the ground (the rest being suspended on their wheels excepts for Stacey’s which was a pile of scrap metal now).

Once inside, he quickly searched for the last weapons container in the car and yanked it off the ground by himself in a fit of battle adrenaline (being a robot didn’t hurt his chances with that either). When he got it outside, he opened it and began assembling the various pieces of the Barrett M82 which lay in one case. Also sitting in the weapons container was a Remington 870 pump action shotgun, and a GE M134 Minigun. There were ammo chains ready for both ’82 and the ‘134. Once Cheetor put it together, he mounted the M82 on top of the vehicle’s side which had become the roof. He propped himself up to the level of the car’s side by placing himself on the sturdy metal box which had previously contained the three weapons. In front, Mac was still working on the underbelly of the car with Peter and Bill. Behind Cheetor, a team of some 5 technicians were constructing the necessary radio.

“Guys,” Cheetor called to the three in front of him. You’re about 20 seconds from the metal’s firing range. You need to get out of there!”

“Wait!” Mac called. He made another seemingly insignificant twist with a screw-driver on one of the valves, before standing up and heeding Cheetor’s suggestion. The other two quickly followed him.

“Alright!” Stacey called to the 6 or so people who stood poised with their M82’s, watching the incoming line. “You know the drill. They fire at will, and so do we.”

“In firing range in 5,” Cheetor counted down, “4, 3, 2, 1, 0”

As if the terminators themselves were listening to his words, plasma shots began raining in as soon “zero” had been spoken. The rapidity with which this occurred made the 5 men operating the guns duck away from the incredible accuracy. They had already lost initiative. But Cheetor knew he could last a few plasma shots (he’d sure taken enough in his day, and even in the past year), and so remained to give cover fire for the rest of the men to stand up and pick targets.

Cheetor’s first shot flew where he intended- one of ‘800’s heads. Lights out. One blue streak flew over his left shoulder, but a second got him on his upper right arm. Accepting the pain and pushing his arm right back where it needed to be, Cheetor vindicated himself with a crippling shot to the offending machine’s chest. It didn’t quite hit its power cell like he hoped, so he kept firing while the T-800 tried getting up until it went totally limp with a final shot and a burst of dust from the round continuing through its armor into the ground behind.

The other five people were back up and returning fire. Three more machines were put down without a human casualty when the fire returned from the relentless T-800’s became too much of a danger for any of the front line shooters but Cheetor. There were still 10 approaching and now they were a mere 50 feet away from the make shift shelter. Another plasma shot grazed the left side of the Cybertronian’s head, but it wasn’t nearly close enough to be a lethal shot. Cheetor took a final desperate shot in haste which only flew into the knee of one of the terminators, before he himself got back behind the car. When the other five had retreated, all the fire-power had been concentrated on him, and well, he was no idiot.

A better plan was needed. Cheetor observed how many shots were left on his M82’s chain. Enough. Everybody else was preparing their HK416’s in fear.

“Get ready guys, this might not work.” Cheetor exclaimed. Moving towards the front of the tipped car, he took a deep breath before peering around, picking one of the cyborgs and cranking five shots deep into his chest (even for Cheetor, it was a bit of a struggle to hold onto a firing M82 without benefit of its mounts). The machine flailed its arms as each effective round resounded from connecting to its frame. It hadn’t even fallen to the ground before Cheetor strapped the gun to his back and converted to beast mode. He now had to rely on one asset: speed.

Dashing out into the open, and quickly gaining top velocity, Cheetor became an almost intangible target to his foes. But they tried to shoot him quite persistently. This distraction quickly became the chance the crew had waited for, and they resumed their Barrett fire, concluding the functionality of the one Cheetor had previously hit in the knee. The terminators now had to choose whether to attack the shelter or the cat.

Before nearly anybody, probably Cheetor included, had figured out the cat’s strategy, he was behind them. Transforming in the blink of an eye, he fired off three shots while still in motion. This made for rather pitiful aim, but two rounds still managed to find targets- not exactly effectively, of course. He quickly donned the cat he was known for again. Calculating as precisely as terminators do, 5 of them then decided to continue closer to the vehicles while Cheetor was confronted by the other 4.

In a fit of insanity, the warrior made a top speed dash straight towards the closest one. Jumping into the air, he transformed, and after accepting a streak of plasma right to where his cheetah head resided in robot mode, he landed on top of the T-800’s chest. The sheer force knocked the cyborg onto its back. Fearless, the machine aimed its plasma rifle at Cheetor’s head while Cheetor aimed his M82 at the terminator’s head. Cheetor pulled his trigger faster.

Wrestling the weapon, still pointed menacingly upwards, out of the terminator’s frozen grasp, Cheetor began raining plasma on the other three with his left hand. Holding only the barrel and trigger of the M82 with his right hand (the main weight being suspended on a strap around his shoulder), he sent bullets. The bullets were mainly distracters as they were being fired from the hip. Cheetor hoped this ammo would take out his opponent’s legs. But the actual aim came from the plasma gun which he was actually able to hold at eye level and look down the sights of.

In an exchange that lasted about 30 seconds, the Cybertronian and Cyborgs stood unblinking, unmoving, and shooting like mad. Before Cheetor finally finished off the last one which had fallen to the ground from Barrett fire, he had taken another shot to his cheetah head, (whose thick construction Cheetor quickly became grateful for) and a graze to the left leg which was about halfway between a complete hit and a complete miss. Perhaps if it had been a direct shot, he wouldn’t be able to walk, but he was now stuck with a somewhat minor limp.

Looking back to the encampment, he saw Peter holding his leg in pain on the ground near the center of the circle. Three terminator endoskeletons littered the ground, each one closer to the        fighters than the one behind it. The last two, unfortunately, were on either side of the car, and just about to cross into the circle. Towards the front, four soldiers rounded the corner and opened up with their HK416’s. T-800’s were a bit beyond vulnerability to this weapon, but the momentum of four different sources of automatic fire was enough to take the machine backwards. The other terminator aimed his weapon in some direction towards the center of the circle, not moving into it himself.

Cheetor acted quickly and desperately, practically vaporizing its chest with 10 plasma shots in fear that it was about to shoot something important or someone. It dropped apathetically to the dirt. He aimed back at the other machine getting up from the ground but could not take any shots because the soldiers were too close to him. Turning back into beast mode to achieve greater speed (and an attempted negation of his limp), he dropped the plasma rifle and the M82 and began running.

The last T-800 was already up and walking against the assault rifle fire, properly prepared this time. Picking up the gun which it had dropped involuntarily, it aimed it while in the process smashing one of the soldier’s in his arms path. Since his primary target was not the human, the attack proved quite severe, but not lethal. And then he fired.

Cheetor was just close enough at this point to see inside the circle of cars at what the gun ended up shooting- the radio which had been getting constructed. It didn’t stand a chance.

Time seemed to pause in either empathy or torture of the transformer as he pondered mid-stride. This was not the first time he had arrived at a scene just too late to save ultimate victory. Memories flashed in his head… he remembered going over a ridge, running full canter with Tigatron, when suddenly over the last hill a brilliant flash eradicated what was their only hope of contacting Cybertron. They were not fast enough. When they arrived on scene, all they could console themselves with was the rescuing of their leader from the clutches of Megatron who had obtained a clear upper hand.

Funny thing about clean up…

The terminator wasted not one moment after destroying the radio in picking his next target. But as he was pulling the trigger, Cheetor dragged him down after converting to battle mode. The shot strayed just to the left, and ended up plastering the right side of Jeff’s chest instead of his heart.

The terminator reacted immediately and thrust Cheetor against the side of the flipped car. Cheetor had forgotten one key thing: he had no strength advantage over them. It stood up quickly and punched Cheetor’s face with its curled fist so hard that the follow through dented the car behind him. It raised its right arm and prepared to come down on Cheetor like a crow bar. Defiantly, the Cybertronian caught the arm in mid-air. The left fist came flying but it, too, was caught. The terminator continued pushing like a trash compacter, and Cheetor’s arms shook visibly with the strain as terminator’s arms slowly came closer to meeting on opposite sides of his head. He was proving to be the weaker of the two.

The terminator, how ever, was alone in this fight as evidenced by the .50 caliber round which soon dug itself into the machine’s skull. Stacey had the presence of mind to save the day. Relieved of his enemy, Cheetor glanced at the flaming scrap metal recently destroyed. A cold fear swept over him as he checked an internal timer.

“We have 3 minutes left, commander.” he told Stacey. She reacted immediately.

“Alright, everyone get in your vehicles and start heading out. We’re too nice a target for the tank coming in if we’re all together like this. Come on, let’s go!” she ordered. People quickly scrambled, carrying Peter and Jeff on stretchers into Jerome’s car. Everyone was moving except Cheetor.

“Come on kitty, what’s your deal?” Stacey asked. He didn’t answer. “Cheetor!” she shouted.

“Can we take out the tank with the weapons we have on the caravan?” He asked still staring forward at the dead equipment.

“Not likely.” she admitted.

“I thought so. You have to let me go then. I have one weapon- I haven’t used it since the first day I got here.” He took the quasar gun out from behind the beast mode legs crossed along his back. “If I can get some shots down the tank's barrel with this, I should be able to deactivate it.”

Stacey disliked the idea of splitting up, but realized they had little chance against the tank otherwise.

“Understood. We’re moving out.”

“Thank you commander.” he said. As the armored vehicles began pulling away, he continued glaring at the radio’s fire. Without shifting his gaze, he cocked his quasar gun.

He had an old score to settle.

He converted to beast mode and began his dash. He checked the time again and saw that he had about a minute and a half left before the tank was charged. Fortunately for him, it had been closing in on the resistance team’s location during the whole battle, and it was only slowly changing course to follow the now moving caravan.

Time remaining: 00:01:13

Cheetor was beginning to feel all the wounds he had received in the fight. His beast mode hid most of their effects, as battle mode components became obsolete in beast mode. But his face, for one thing, had been shot twice and looked like it. Blue fluid was streaking over his lips and eyebrows, and most of the fur was tattered or fried. It was a wonder he could still see through both eyes.

Time remaining: 00:01:01

Target proximity: 103.96 clicks at 7­­­­ degrees Northwest.

Both of the numbers were rapidly descending.

*Warning: Incoming plasma shot*

The fact Cheetor was completely frozen in his tracks and ground into the dirt informed him that his computer told him a little too late. He had forgotten about the unknown cyborg variant guarding the tank. Resolutely, he stood back up with shaky limbs and a charred left side, and paid careful attention to all activities of the cyborg. He ran again.

Time remaining: 00:00:37

Target proximity: 45 clicks at 0 degrees North.

Cheetor could see the unknown model now. It was skinless like the T-800’s, and at the end of its right arm, instead of a proper hand, a sort of cannon was mounted. Cheetor saw the incoming shot this time and dodged as nimbly as he could to his right. The ground where he had been before shot up furiously. He continued his run.

Time remaining: 00:00:21

Target proximity: 22 clicks at 1 degree Northeast.

Now the new variant was beginning to run at him. Desperately, Cheetor continued straight for the tank. When he was in jumping distance, he transformed into robot mode. This change in his mass from horizontal to vertical distribution caused a third shot to zip by ineffectively. Then he was in the air, and holding onto the barrel weakly with his left hand.

Time remaining: 00:00:05

Target Proximity: Closed

Cheetor looked into the huge barrel, and fired three shots straight down it with the quasar gun in his right hand.

A plasma shot came in and smashed the arm holding him far above the ground on the tank’s barrel. He twirled to the ground from the force and smashed into the sand with a dull but painful thud.

And then… boom.

The tank’s barrel had been hanging over a sharp descent in the land- a short one, but sharp still. When the tank exploded from its ammunition’s reactions with Cheetor’s quasar, the explosion mainly remained at the level of the ground where the descent occurred. This shielded the transformer from what likely would have been his demise, but he was still scorched.

His unknown enemy was standing, not lying like he was, and therefore, fared much worse when the explosion occurred. Cheetor was staring at it, begging it wouldn’t get back up. Then, ever so slowly, ever so unstoppably, it did. Turning to face the Cybertronian, it began walking his way. He knew he had to get up. Trying to push himself back onto his feet, the warrior got a sight of his left arm. A direct hit, while perhaps saving his life by taking him off the tank in time to be out of the way of the explosion, had still shattered most of what lay in front of his elbow into blue splinters. Everything was still there, but nothing looked the same. Mech fluid was working its way out of the wound. When he finally stood up, he realized the extent of his damages. No directly lethal hits had been made against him, but the amount of ammo he had taken was depleting his fluid reserves quite rapidly.

* * *

“Head count!” Stacey shouted. Mac started counting heads. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten , eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

“We’ve got fourteen commander.” he informed her.

“What?” she yelled. “We came in here with fifteen.” She looked around for familiar faces and then the problem occurred to her.

“Where’s Bill?” Everyone looked around. There was no Bill to be found. And there was another problem.

“Commander, we’re missing the personal ATV we had on board.” shouted one of the soldiers. It didn’t take long at all to figure out what happened. Bill had gotten away with his own transport, likely to follow the cat.

“What an idiot.” she muttered.

“Should we retrieve him, ma’am?”

“No Jerome, he’s got to be too far away by now. That was the only ATV with us, and we have to keep these vehicles on course.”

“So… he’s a dead man?”

“Well, I can’t suspect he’s made it to the tank yet.” Stacey got on a radio. “Bill, listen to me. You are ordered to come back right now.” No response. “Bill!” She sighed. “Mac, how much time until the tank is charged?”

“Actually, ma’am… now.” Everyone tensed and awaited some sort of unspeakable calamity. What they got was a brilliant flash.

“What was that?” Stacey demanded.

Mac stared out his window and saw a huge cloud of smoke rising in the distance.

“I believe it used to be a tank.”

As the terminator got closer, Cheetor could make out more details, although his vision was becoming hazier. It was shorter than a T-800, and rather than red eyes, blue… optics would be more accurate, maintained its sight.

When it aimed its cannon at him again, he reached for his quasar gun and then realized it wasn’t there. When he’d been knocked off the tank, it had gotten away from him.

“Power reserves 79% depleted. Stasis lock commencing.” his computer informed him.

“Are you crazy?” he shouted rather informally to his system “that thing will tear me apart if I just sit down! Just… compromise or something. Convert to beast mode, and give me ‘till I’ve got 85%”

“Acknowledged.” He transformed back into the Cheetah and began running for the gun in the distance. As fast as he was, however, it had begun running before him, and he was forced to turn around and face it weaponless.

He caught it off guard with the speed at which he wheeled on it, and the back of his right arm came across its skull and neck. Unphased, it smashed straight back with its left hand, and Cheetor was sent back with a blue streak coming off in drops from his chin. He had actually taken hand-to-hand lessons from Blackarachnia when they had gotten back to Cybertron all those years ago. He had wished to employ them in this place, but an important part of martial arts, as he learned, was mentality and the infliction of physical pain.

Cyborgs felt no pain, and their mentality remained resolute even if all they had left was one arm to drag themselves closer to their target with. Martial arts meant very little against a terminator unless the force of blows dealt physical, tangible, interfering damage. And hitting one in the head with a back-arm didn’t exactly accomplish that.

Cheetor had a problem- he was on the ground. And then its foot came for his head. He was forced to hold its power back with his only functional hand. The terminator’s cannon morphed frighteningly into a saw and then dug into his good arm. He was forced to let go, but slid away from the offending foot as it plowed into the sand. Twisting on the ground, the Cybertronian kicked out the cyborg’s leg. When it came down, however, the saw was gone and replaced with a needle. Cheetor tried once again to hold back the machine’s weapon.

At this moment, his computer called quits… Perfect timing.

*Stasis lock commencing*

The sudden loss of resistance caused the terminator’s needle to crash into Cheetor’s neck and break. A little of its contents had gotten into him, but far less than what was intended. If the machine had rage, it would have employed it.

Perfect timing indeed.

As Cheetor’s optics faded out, his core was already trying to analyze a foreign nano bot system put into his circuits. Then a memory floated to him.

Watch yourself little cat…

Even as the terminator stood up and walked away, he had time for one last smile.

Always do big cat.

As an automated defense, his computer converted him to beast mode, and then went out. He had enough energy while he was in stasis lock- nobody dies of exhaustion while they sleep. But near his chest, a white light pulsated brilliantly. It was Cheetor’s spark- his heart. It determined his sentience.

It could not yet rest.

* * *

“Amy, its 11:37.” Bethany complained as she looked groggily at her roommate who was doing work at her computer. She didn’t sleep well with extra light, which is exactly what Amy’s computer was providing. Amy turned around.

“I’m sorry Beth, did I wake you up?” she inquired.

“No, you just never let me sleep.” Bethany explained.

“Oh, sorry. Um, I’m almost done with this essay. It’ll be like… twenty minutes, or at least, that’s what I’m shooting for.” She turned around and continued typing. “You never stayed up this late in high school?”

“Actually,” Bethany responded, “no.” She stared at the bottom of the bunk above her for a while and then got up.

“Where are you going?” Amy asked.

“If I’m awake, I’m awake. And now I’m hungry. I’m going to the kitchen.” She walked to the door.

“Oo Beth, the kitchen is on the first floor. It’s dark, and scaaaaarry in the halls. Are you sure you can handle it without me?” she asked mockingly.

“Oh, I’ll do my best,” Bethany said with feigned appreciation, “but thank you.” She walked out and closed the door behind her. Once there, she looked to her left and saw the stair case that led down to the other floors. It was pretty dark. But she liked the dark. Mostly.

She made her way to the stairs and started going down them. The light in between the second and third floor was out, so she had to feel her way down to the second level, but it wasn’t all that bad. And once she was traveling to the first floor, there was enough light. The college scaled back to save money during the night, so the few lights left were sparsely spaced. Their fluorescence cast a sort of silver that illuminated the ground in patches. One could see their whole way down the hall, but some places weren’t as bright as the others. And the windows only showed the darkness of night with some stars, so not much help was to be found there.

The kitchen was a straight walk down the hall, so she went that way. But something strange happened. It wasn’t as though her mind had decided to play tricks and make her see anything in the shadows and fluorescent light but beauty, or that she heard anything amiss. But she felt something in the halls. She made herself walk on, and assured herself that once she was in the kitchen, she would have a chance to calm down and know that nothing was there. But she couldn’t quite shake her nerves while in the hall.

About halfway between the stairs and the kitchen, a hallway led off to the left which held some pre-requisite classes. Bethany couldn’t help but cast a wayward glance in that direction. And there, at the end of the hall (being a solid wall rather than any door, or connection to any other hall), was the body of a security guard. Blood was on him and streaked across the floor. It would have been an incredibly grotesque site, but as most of the lights were off, a great deal of his wounds were hidden or dimmed in the darkness of the hallway. But one conclusion was undeniable- he had been mauled.

Bethany’s mouth dropped as she took in a sharp breath. She heard a shuffle somewhere around her and didn’t dare run back to the staircase. And she couldn’t bring herself closer to the dead body. She stood paralyzed, but the noise was getting closer.

Her ears tensed upwards involuntarily and even the most minute sounds began to menace her. She was frozen. She could do nothing but listen to soft threats in the midst of what was an incredibly quiet setting. Then something snapped into her petrified world- the sound of radio communication. She jumped and shrieked at the noise, and then stayed put again.

“Ryan, come in.” Silence. “Ryan, what were you talking about- who came in?” Bethany then realized it was the dead guard’s radio from which the sound came. The head of security was trying to contact him. She knew what she had to do.

With an incredible sense of fear, she traveled into the dark hall towards Ryan. As she got closer, she slowed. She saw more and more of him in her approach. With her hands shaking uncontrollably, she reached down and picked up the walkie-talkie strapped to his vest. She pressed a button in.

“This is Bethany Lewis,” she said tremulously. Her voice sounded so unhelpfully loud. “Ryan is dead. He’s… he’s been, mauled.” She said. Her shaking got worse.

“Bethany Lewis. You say he was mauled? Like, by an animal?” She didn’t dare look back at Ryan to try confirming it.

“Yes.” she said weakly.

“Just hang tight.” the voice on the other end told her. She sat shaking for a few moments, and tried slowing her breathing.

In the hall entrance, she saw the head of a cat come into view. She couldn’t tell what it was just based on its head. It walked further out, and spent a great deal of time sniffing the air- searching for something- searching for her.

Bethany now saw in the silver light that it was a cheetah. She needed a solution and in her desperation she looked back at Ryan without moving her head. She saw, near his hip, reflecting a streak of fluorescence back at her, the back of a polished black handgun held in a holster. She slowly stretched out her arm, wishing not to move her body at all for fear she would be heard by the predator.

She darted her eyes back to the thing. It still was looking forward, the direction of the staircase.

Don’t respond back, don’t respond back, she silently wished of the man on the other end of the walkie-talkie.

The cat sniffed, and took another step.

Her arm got closer to the gun, closer, closer.

Don’t respond back.

The cat looked at the window to its left.

Closer… closer.

“Lewis, are you still there?”

The cheetah’s head wheeled suddenly to the right, down her hall. Its gaze was on her. She threw caution to the wind and completely jerked her whole body towards the guard’s gun. She unsnapped the button on the holster and pulled the gun out. She turned around, with gun in hand, and saw the cat half-way down the hall, rushing towards her.

“Die you maniac!” she yelled as she pulled the trigger. She had never fired a gun, and her aim was rather sporadic. The first bullet hit the cheetah in its shoulder. It growled loudly from pain. She continued firing.

*Blam* Liquid flew out of the puncture and sprayed the wall next to the cat.

*Blam, blam, blam* With terrifying cries, the cat fell over itself in shock as it turned around, trying to run out of the hall. Its body shook visibly with every bullet delivered to its hide. It rounded the corner, and slipped. It corrected its footing when a bullet hit its paw, and it scrambled to the ground again. Then it was finally up and away, down the other hall in the direction of the staircase. Bethany had tried getting a last shot on the animal when it got out of harm’s way, and the bullet cruised into the window at the other end of the hallway. A hole remained in it for a few moments before the entire structure, virtually white with fractures, caved in on itself and splashed glass all over the floor in a crystalline shower.

She picked up the radio again.

“I saw it- It’s a cheetah! It tried coming for me, and I shot it.” She announced. The voice on the other end responded.

“You killed it?”

“No, I just shot it. It ran away.”

“How did it get in here?”

“How am I supposed to know?!” She looked at the other end of the corridor. The broken glass was mingled with the creature’s blood, a wet and sharp mass. Maybe it was the strange lighting, but she could have sworn it was blue. Whatever lights shone on it were reflected and intensified by the glass. Little sparks of intensified illumination dotted the sides of the hall as a result. And the cheetah’s blood had its own territory on the wall where it had splashed.

“What are we suppose to do about it?” she inquired of her unseen compatriot. She looked at her gun. Pulling the trigger was basic knowledge, but she wished desperately that she knew how to reload it or at least check how much ammunition was left.

“Do you have any ideas?” she asked again. She saw a fire alarm at the other end of the hall.

“Can you hear me, sir?” Scoffing in frustration, she put the walkie-talkie back down and slowly stood up. She took a deep breath, and held the gun at the ready as she began walking towards her original hall. She couldn’t hear anything, and hoped that was a good sign. Her breath became noticeably more ragged as she approached the broken glass, and she paused just in front of the two corridors’ intersection. She noted gratefully the fact that she always put shoes on whenever stepping out of her dorm room as she stared at the shards below. Then she rounded the corner.

She shot off a precautionary round as she did so in fear that her hunter waited near where it was last seen. Upon catching no glimpse of it, except for the trail of blood it left behind leading into a hall perpendicular to her current one, she internally berated herself for wasting a round of what was quite likely a very diminished supply. Keeping the gun pointed in the direction the cat had run, she looked at the fire alarm. But she quickly realized the problem with this solution. If she woke everyone up, and they began running around to get outside, the predator inside would have ample opportunity to take people down.

As it stood now, the doors to any staircases were all closed, so unless it was a technically knowledgeable cheetah (not likely), it was stuck on her level. The good news was that nobody slept on the first floor. The bad news was that she was on the first floor. She would have hoped for a response from the security team (whose office was also on this floor), but she had yet to hear anything, so she was quite perplexed concerning her next move. She considered fearfully, however, that perhaps the cat had become her responsibility to take care of.

She did the only thing she knew for a fact was worth doing. She went back to the radio and tried reaching the head of security again. A response finally came to her.

“I apologize. I’m back.”

“What was going on? You had me scared for a second.” Bethany asked.

“We had to discuss some things. Everything’s fine.”

“Have you seen the cheetah yet?” she asked.

“No,” he responded, “We’re locking all the doors from here as an extra precaution, but I don’t believe he could get through them anyways. We’ll be hunting him down. Do not deviate from your current position.”

And with that, silence resumed. Bethany immediately disliked the task given to her for she could stand no longer to be near the guard’s body. Come what may of her movement, she had to get out of that hall. She unhooked the walkie-talkie from off of Ryan. She got back to the broken window when she heard a gunshot and then mechanical whirring. Pacing carefully down the hall along the path of blue blood, she came near to her original staircase, and turned the corner where the trail led. Down at the other end she saw a door ajar with a bullet hole where the lock used to be, on the other end of which lay a staircase that led to the basement of the college. And the blue trail led down to it.

“Whoever you are,” Bethany said into the radio again, “I think one of your men just went down the basement, and the cheetah definitely followed him.”

“I instructed you not to deviate-”

“Didn’t you hear me?” she interrupted “one of your men just got chased into the foundations. Isn’t that like… big trouble for the guard?” There was a pause before the response came.

“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t worry about him.”

Then a surprised shout, quickly mixed with a confession of pain, echoed from the staircase and ended hardly after it started.

“Did you hear that?” she shouted into the radio. No response came. And it was time for a decision. Another person had certainly just died, and if he was the only one down there, the cat would eventually have to come back up. She couldn’t let if continue to roam through the college- not one more person could die. And the only way out of there was the staircase it had gone down, the one she was looking at with her gun raised.

She moved closer for better shots. She wished she could aim properly. One bullet to the head ought to do the animal proper justice, but she had failed to do that earlier. How could she be expected to do it now?

She was about halfway down the hall, sitting in whatever sort of a kneeling firing position she could imagine was proper when she heard the most amazing array of gunshots, metallic ricochets, and sounds of solid impact, like sledge-hammer beating upon anvil. But as far as Bethany could tell from the noise, the anvil was being dented and broken. Then there was nothing.

A slow shuffle made heavy movement up the stairs as Bethany stared at the black rectangle that was the open door. She tightened her grip on the trigger. Then the man coming up the stairs became visible in the light of the first level.

It was the new guard, McGuinty!

But he was a mess of blood. His pants were ripped and punctured all over, and red streams tracked down the sides of his face. His shirt was a collection of small holes. By all rights he should have been dead.

“McGuinty!” Bethany shouted, “Is the cheetah dead?” McGuinty, who was walking in a perpendicular direction to the door and to Bethany, northward, froze in his tracks and turned his head towards her.

“Not yet.” he said briefly, before turning back to look at his original path and continuing that way.

“McGuinty?” she asked in confusion. Then she heard the latch of a door out of her sight close itself, at the end of where McGuinty had walked. She hardly had a moment to ponder this before her radio beeped on.

“Hey, hey! Is somebody there?”

“This is Bethany Lewis.” she replied.

“The girl who shot the cheetah?”

“Yes.”

“O.k., look, I need your help. I need you to get to the security office and unlock the doors. Then I need you to pull the fire alarm.”

“Are you down the basement? You survived? Look, whoever you are, the doors were locked by your team, so how can I get through them? McGuinty just came up, and I think he had a key card, but he went passed another locked door with it, and he didn’t have a radio for me to call him back in here with. Besides, pulling the fire alarms is a bad idea. McGuinty told me the cat isn’t dead.”

“I’ve got him under control. He can’t hurt anybody. As for the doors, you’re going to have to shoot the locks out with your gun.”

“I don’t even know how many bullets I have left, and I don’t know how to check.”

“O.k. Look along the left side of the gun, close to the top of the handle, and near the front of it. There should be a small button. Push it in.” Bethany did as she was told, and moved her feet in panicked shock as the magazine fell near her feet. Berating herself, she picked it back up.

“I’ve got it unloaded.”

“O.k., well, the rest should be easy. Just count how many bullets are in it.” That was indeed easy. There were six left.

“I’ve got six bullets.”

“O.k. Put the magazine back in quick.” She did so. “O.k., you have two doors to get through, you should be able to do this. Get to the basement’s stair case. Once facing it, turn right, and walk until you hit your first door. Shoot at the door’s handle, and the lock should go. You have 3 bullets for each door, so if the first shot doesn’t work, don’t worry. Once you have the door opened, keep traveling south along the hall and you’ll hit the north door to the security office. Shoot it open the same way, and when you get inside, turn off the system-wide lock.”

“O.k. What are you going to be doing this whole time?”

“I’ve got some major work to do down here. But don’t worry, just get the doors unlocked. And Bethany, hurry.”

“O.k.” she said and then latched the radio to the side of her jeans. She ran to the end of the hall, towards the door leading to the basement’s stairs, and turned sharply to the right. She saw the predicted door and ran south towards it. Once she arrived, she took the gun and put it as close as she dared to the door’s handle, in good fear of a ricochet, and pulled the trigger. She needed all 3 shots to accomplish her task, but they were all on target, and the door handle completely fell onto the floor. Reaching her fingers into the hole where the handle use to be, she met little resistance as the door swung open. Then she ran to the last door, and beyond the glass at its top, saw the confined area of the office inside. She repeated her previous procedure in two shots and opened the door. It didn’t really matter now that the handle was shot but she closed the door behind her anyways.

“I’m in.” she spoke into the radio. She looked around, and then saw something was quite amiss. One of the overhead light panels was hanging onto the ceiling by one side, and reaching for the ground with the other. Papers were overturned and chairs seemed somewhat disorganized- one even remained on its side. Pushing this out of her mind, she found the orders to lock all doors on the main computer. There was an option to deactivate. She ran over to the computer and threw the roller chair in front of it away in haste. She grabbed the mouse in her sweaty palm and clicked for the deactivation.

A window popped up asking for a security clearance code.

“I have a problem here.” she admitted frantically.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need a clearance code.”

“Type this in: P-9-T-8-Q-0-Y-0” She did so. The window announced that her code was accepted, and then she heard the west door in the office unlock itself.

“It worked.” she said. She expected some sort of affirmation, but the silence from her partner on the other end was itself, not all that surprising. She opened the west door, and followed the hall it connected to, leading westward. She ran down until she was at the back doors of the kitchen. Bursting through them, she continued through the darkness (there were no lights left on in the kitchen) with tensed nerves.

*CRASH*

She had managed to trip over a chair left out in the open by one of the students, or some preoccupied cook. Pulling herself back to her feet, she continued running and made it through the double doors of the front of the kitchen and was greeted with the familiar sight of broken glass and blue blood. And there above the broken window lay the fire alarm she had earlier neglected to pull.

She began running towards it, and finally felt like it was all going to work out.

She made it to the fire alarm, reached for its handle, and pulled it down. She tensed for the annoying sirens that were certain to occur. Nothing happened. She pulled again, and the same thing happened, or rather, didn’t.

“Hey bud, I really wish you would talk to me. The fire alarm isn’t working.”

Around the corner near the staircase that led to the dorms came McGuinty. An incredible amount of relief swept over Bethany. Finally, she was not alone!

A smile swept across her features as her breath got more ragged, and she bent over from the absolute vindication of the weights of the night being taken off of her.

Behind her, she heard the doors of the kitchen get pushed open.

Time seemed to slow as she heard the light foot steps of a hunter pad across the floor. Bethany’s hair suspended itself in place for a brief moment while her head whipped around, and then it followed, splashing across her eyes and finally resuming its normal position to reveal to her vision the cheetah.

She turned around again frantically and saw McGuinty pulling out his handgun and placing a magazine into it. As soon as it was ready, it was aimed up.

“Shoot it!” she begged of him as the gun finally found a solid direction to aim.

Three loud shots rang out.

And McGuinty fell to the ground, his body shaking vividly with each round cranked into him. The gunshots had come from behind. A metallic body continued what must have been a somersault over Bethany’s head and landed in front of her, facing the machine. Bethany saw that cheetah legs adorned his back in a criss-cross pattern. Other spotted parts seemed to reside on panels on various places on his arms.

Quickly, he turned around.

“Run.”