Artificial Mind

21

Being sheltered by a hand, Minnie kept her own hands over her ears. With her eyes squeezed shut she could hear the shouts of men, the gunfire, the fire of the Cybertronian weapons. There was sounds of things falling heavily to the floor, and more screams from the men.

When the hand which was sheltering her moved, she peeked up through the digits. Optimus looked down at her. "Ready?" He asked, Minnie slowly nodded hesitantly yet jumped up to stand. Climbing into his hand she quickly climbed up his arm and rested on his shoulder. Optimus charged out from where he was hiding, along with Ironhide, the small group charged through what little defences there was. Ironhide easily tackled two drones before turning and shooting at three more. From Optimus's shoulder, Minnie clutched on tightly with one hand, and used the other to provide cover fire from high up for the soldiers.

They had made it to the city centre. From a crater, smoke rippled and coiled slowly in the air. Soundwave had quickly flown back when he realised that the small attack force wasn't worth wasting time with. Knock Out had shouted at him to return and fight. This caused the red bot's shoulders to sag. He turned only to get hit across the face by Arcee. Knock Out fell to the floor unmoving by this point. For all they knew he was still unconscious and unable to appear in this fight.

"Shockwave," Minnie muttered only to end up shouting the name again. Sure enough, the purple scientist came driving speedily out from the crater. Jumping in the air he transformed and impacted against Ironhide. The two went charging backwards, each throwing punches and trying to fire at the other.

Optimus merely glanced at them before running and shooting. He was still making his way to the crater. Megatron was down there, the drones which had surrounded the crater had been scattered and mostly dealt with. For all purposes, Megatron was now alone in the crater, still trying to achieve whatever it was he was trying to do. Soundwave shot above them and landed on a roof. He made his way down only to be greeted with shots by Bulkhead. Laserbeak got injected into the air and he zipped about shooting and aiding his comrade. Soundwave joined him in the air and took to firing from above.

"Optimus-" Minnie started and then stopped when Smokescreen appeared and dealt with the drones which were sneaking their way up behind them.

"Need help?" Smokescreen smiled and turned serious when Optimus glanced at him. "Sir, I think you need backup." He said while dashing after his leader. Whether Optimus had a choice or not, Smokescreen was going to stick with them.

Reaching the lip of the crater they all looked down. They didn't even need to say anything, or do anything. Megatron turned away from a machine which was banging its way through the ground. His eyes narrowed upwards towards them.

"Time to move," Smokescreen said while scooping Minnie off of Optimus's shoulders. A few seconds after he'd done this Megatron had shot into the air, transformed and started to open fire on them. She yelped and curled up as Smokescreen transformed and sped away from the shots. She turned and looked out of the window.

"Why are we leaving? We have to go back! We need to stop that machine!"

"We need Ratchet," Smokescreen said while skidding and turning, Minnie vaulted to the side and ended up banging her head against the door. "Sorry." He said while speeding forwards again, Megatron and Optimus had taken to fighting, their battle out did the petty fights which the drones were participating in.

"I don't even see Ratchet! We need to go back, Smokescreen."

"We can't try shutting that machine down, we don't know what it does. We could press something and it could explode. That'd do more harm than good." He said while running a drone over and promptly knocking another off of its feet.