//------------------------------// // Chapter 8: Greeting from Equestria // Story: Transformers Armada: Starscream's Requiem // by Legofan //------------------------------// Far off in the distance, a mountain range began to take form, right where it should have been. It was something to finally break up the monotony of the terrain, and the promise of something new lying in wait behind it. His trek from the Hive to his current location had taken several hours, and within that time, the first hints of morning had revealed themselves. There was maybe an hour or so left until the stars were no longer visible. Needing them for guidance, he pushed himself a little faster so as to reach the mountains more quickly. The sound barrier shattered around him as he went supersonic and began rocketing towards the mountains. As he reached the mountain, the first signs of color and life began to appear; grasses and trees fed by streams of runoff from the mountains’ melting snow caps. If he wasn’t pressed for time, he’d have taken the time to stop and revel in the new environment, but as it was, he needed to reach the westward end of the range as soon as possible. The mountains were giants, rivaling any he had seen on Earth, and even surpassing some Cybertronian structures. He wished he could get a measure of the range’s maximum height. With his altimeter was unresponsive, though, all he had was a best guess of 20,000 feet or so. Starscream climbed vertically, surpassing the mountaintops by a few hundred feet before leveling out and getting his first view of the land beyond the Badlands. He was disappointed. It was all desert; dry, cracked land near the base of the range, which faded into a sea of ever-shifting dunes of sand. Wonderful, he panned. Instead of a bunch dark nothing, it’s a bunch of light nothing. Setting his musings aside, he nonetheless veered west and followed the range. Gradually, the peaks of the individual mountains began to decrease in altitude as they neared the banks of the river that served as the west boundary of the mountain range. Following the peaks in their descent, he came across the river, and, as he had been expecting, there was a lone mountain on the opposite bank. There was a segment of the lone mountain’s slope that leveled out quite nicely, and Starscream took the opportunity it provided to pause and look for the star he was supposed to follow. He transformed into his equinal robot mode and set a hoof on the solid rock. By this point in the morning, most of the stars’ light had been drowned out by the gradually rising sun, but those were obviously not the stars he needed to follow, anyways. After a few minutes of individually checking each star’s brightness, he isolated the brightest one. True enough to the map he had been provided, the star led northeast of his position, the direction of Canterlot. He was one step closer to reaching the ponies. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized how little he actually knew of them. From what Chrysalis had told him, their society was ruled by multiple princesses, had an army of sorts, but was expected to behave similarly to humans, except less surprised about him being an alien. Of course, the changelings were supposed to be merciless, murderous conquerors, but that hadn’t exactly been shown to be true as far as he could tell. So really, he had no idea what to expect. He had never really been one for surprises, but this was one he couldn’t seem to avoid. Letting out a sigh, he jumped off the ledge, transforming mid-plummet and continuing his advance through Equestria. It was past midday now. The desert had quickly given way to a vast, grassy plain, which had in turn faded into the lush and full forest that he was currently flying over. Upon exiting what could be considered the desert, he had managed to spy a pony settlement; Appleloosa, by the looks of it on the map. He had decided to keep his distance from it to not attract unwanted attention, diverting his path to be more roundabout, as well as climbing to just under the cloud line. He refused to go above it so as to maintain visibility of the unfamiliar territory. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t conceal the roaring of his engines. He was certain that he had been heard, but so far, he hadn’t been enough of a disturbance to warrant pursuit. Starscream hoped to keep it that way at least until reaching Canterlot. Beneath him, the forest canopy slowly began to change. View of the ground became more and more obscured by the trees’ increasing girth, and its color began to shift from a dark forest green to some sickly mixture of green and brown. If he had to guess, he would say that he was now going over the Everfree Forest. Overall, it didn’t look like a very friendly place to be, but at least it was alive, unlike the Badlands. As if the forest wasn’t already grim enough, nature just had to throw some inclement weather into the mix to really brighten Starscream’s flight. The sky was seemingly clear, but in a flash, it began to downpour. Rain splashed off him and pooled in his open wound as lightning struck around him, and he maneuvered himself down towards the forest canopy to avoid some minor turbulence and to be less of a target for stray lightning bolts. He knew he could handle being struck, but he was unsure if Ivy’s repairs would. It wasn’t long before visibility had been reduced to almost zero due to the sheer quantity of water pouring from above. To avoid getting lost, and grumbling at the inconvenience, he carefully dove through the tree line to wait out the storm. He transformed and perched himself on a sturdy looking branch, which surprisingly held his weight as he wrapped his arms around it so as to not fall off. Thanks to the tree cover, very little rain managed to find its way onto the forest floor. Just his luck, though, Starscream happened to pick seemingly the one spot where runoff could. A constant stream of water drizzled onto his head before making its way to the ground. At least, unlike biological beings, his body was hydrophobic. Nonetheless, it was still an annoyance to have his progress impeded in such a ridiculous and sudden manner. But, there was nothing he could do about it now, so he decided to make the best of his temporary grounding and check out his surroundings. The multitude of branches that each tree possessed did an excellent job of keeping things mostly dry, but simultaneously, they blocked out most of whatever light there happened to be, so much so that the flashes from lightning could hardly be seen. It was almost unnatural how dark the trees kept everything. Aside from that and the distasteful coloring, though, there wasn’t really anything strange about this forest. So why am I so apprehensive? Suddenly, the only thing he wanted was to be able to escape the claustrophobic environment. Some movement below him immediately caught his attention. Looking down, he saw three pairs of glowing green eyes peering up at him, though the owners of the eyes were concealed by a bush at the base of the tree he was resting on. Two distinct growling noises could be heard coming from the bush. Starscream relaxed a bit, concluding that they were only wild animals, likely territorial and trying to scare him off. Confirming his suspicions, two of the three figures stalked out of the bush towards him, while the third calmly stepped out, staying between the other two. They were wolves, but made of wood and leaves. Two of them, the ones on the outsides, were adults, while the one in the middle, that regarded him with a curious, almost excited expression, was a much smaller cub. “Shoo!” Starscream commanded to the beasts, though he really didn’t expect them to understand. “I’m up here and you’re down there,” he taunted further. “Unless you can fly, you can’t get me, so don’t even bother.” The two adults glanced between each other, then back up to Starscream, then hardened their glares and growled significantly more loudly. The larger of the adults, presumably the male, made towards the base of tree, crouching down and tensing itself once there. Now set, the other adult leapt towards the crouching one, landing on its back. The crouched one sprung up just as the second one jumped, acting as a spring, propelling the other farther up the tree and to Starscream’s level. With a casual swat, he knocked the leaping wolf out of the air and into the trunk of the tree, but it was able to latch its jaw onto Starscream’s leg before it tumbled to the ground. Its jaw strength was admirable, as it hung there from Starscream’s leg using only the friction between its teeth and his plating, which was left undamaged. “Told you you shouldn’t have bothered,” he muttered to the creature, shaking his leg in an attempt to get it off. Surprisingly, that failed, and he groaned in annoyance. At the base of the tree, the male was leaping up and swinging at him while simultaneously barking defensively. The cub, even more surprisingly, was completely stoic. Those bothers, on top of the sounds from the storm around him and the trickle of water down his face were enough to make Starscream snap. For a quick second, he blasted his engines as loudly as he could, overpowering even his own audio sensors for that second. The noise had nearly the desired effect. The wolf that was latched onto his leg let go and dropped to the ground, following the male in a panicky retreat into the nearby foliage, whimpering all the while. The cub, however, did not flinch. Starscream stared at it, and it returned his unblinking gaze. “I don’t have time for you,” he finally spoke to the cub. “Go with your parents and bother someone else.” And to his surprise, the cub complied, though not without displaying its disappointment with the flattening of its leafy ears. As the cub was about to leave his line of sight, the consistent trickle of water that had slowly been annoying him ceased, and small glimmers of light poked through the canopy. Finally, the storm was over. With no amount of concern for the forest around him, he transformed and blasted through the tree line with a deafening roar, leaving a scorch mark on the branch he had been on and tearing off plenty of twigs. Not long after his odd encounter, he could see the faint form of a singular mountain jutting up out of a distant plain. It could be none other than the mountain that housed Canterlot. Finally, his journey was coming to a close. Eager to get the tedious and boring flying done, he pushed his thrusters a bit harder. However, he was careful to not go supersonic and disturb any nearby populations with the noise it would make; his engines were loud enough already. Beneath him, the border of the Everfree forest was finally quickly coming upon him, which meant that he was bound to be flying over the settlement of Ponyville any minute now. Due to its proximity to Canterlot, he doubted that he could approach the capital without alerting Ponyville as well, unless, of course, he were to go into robot mode. But that would slow him down considerably, and give those who happen to glance in his direction a greater chance of seeing him. Trading off silence for speed, he continued at his current pace towards the mountainside city. He climbed to just under cloud level to help reduce his chances of being caught prematurely, maximizing his distance from the ground while still being able to monitor his surroundings. Unfortunately, that distance wasn’t as considerable as he had hoped; this area’s cloud coverage seemed to be at a much lower altitude than Earth’s. The Everfree Forest came to a close, surrendering to a short stretch of flat ground, that leading into the outskirts of Ponyville. Coming close to the settlement, Starscream veered off to make a more roundabout path, but that didn’t prevent him from catching the briefest of glimpses at a small blue and a small purple figure in the small stretch of field. Due to his speed, all he saw of them was a blur, but he inferred that they were ponies. He hoped that they weren’t too intrigued by the racket he was making. A blip on his infrared scanners indicated to him that his hopes hadn’t come true. Something was gaining on him fast from behind. From the image generated by his sensors, it appeared to be nearly the size of his robot mode, but other than that, he couldn’t get any further detail. He supplied his thrusters with a tiny boost in power, pulling himself around sharply at the same time. During his turn, he transformed, allowing a better view of his pursuer during the brief couple of seconds that he was facing its direction. Then, he was back in front, transformed and speeding away. It was definitely a pony chasing him. It had wings, and its body was a light shade of blue, like that of the blur he had seen in the small field, and it had a rainbow-streaked mane. That it was the same pony was an easy conclusion to make. The distance between he and the pony was closing at a rapid pace, a remarkable feat for the organic, considering that he was nearly going the speed of sound. Which meant that it was going faster than him. And that would mean... From behind him, there was a loud explosion. ...that it could go supersonic. With that burst of speed, the pony easily caught up to him. It placed itself above Starscream, and then dived into him. It wrapped its forelegs around the center of his form and tried to drive him down. Despite the pony’s speed, it lacked the strength to alter Starscream’s flight path any more than down a few feet. The pony, however, was an inconvenience, and Starscream tried his best to get it off. Shaking failed, as did going in loops and performing other aerobatic maneuvers. For about a minute the pony was latched to him, struggling to force him down, to no avail, before it finally tried a more diplomatic approach. “I don’t know who or what you are,” it yelled in a raspy voice over the sound of the wind blowing by them, “but you’re gonna need to land right now, or I’ll have to stop going easy on you!” That was amusing; it seemed to have already tried giving its all, with poor results. He had little time to spare toying with this pony, though, so he made a sharp u-turn and began ascending over the approximate center of the settlement, where he hoped to deposit his cargo. “Get off me, you pest. I’ll give you one warning,” he replied to the pony as he broke through the clouds, now going up vertically. “Unhand me willingly now, and you won’t get hurt. Otherwise, any injuries you sustain are your fault.” “Bring it on!” the pony challenged back. “You don’t seem so tough!” Oh, so it’s a headstrong pony I’ve flown into. Further threats would have fallen on deaf ears, it would seem, so Starscream skipped the words and went straight into taking action. He continued to climb vertically. He and his blue companion were now well above the clouds. The air was much thinner than before, and he hoped that his assailant wasn’t too fond of low-oxygen environments. Guessing that he was a few thousand feet above ground, he sprung his plan. He suddenly cut all power to his engines, letting his momentum carry him up a couple of feet before gravity took over and tore him from the sky. The pony’s own inertia combined with his sudden change in momentum, and maybe in part to a little oxygen deprivation, was enough to wrench the pony’s grasp off of him. Now free of the pony, he allowed himself to free fall, reaching terminal velocity in a span of a few short seconds. He spun around to see if the pony was still pursuing him. To his surprise and delight, it wasn’t; it must have still been slightly disoriented. The clouds were coming near, and Starscream realigned himself to be falling nose-first towards the ground. He prepared himself to ignite his engines again and resume his original trajectory, when another explosion came forth behind him. The pony was shouting some sort of battle cry, and the yelling got louder as the pony got closer. Starscream tried to twist out of the pony’s path, but was too slow. Fortunately for the pony, there was no collision, but they were exceptionally close to doing so. However, with the speed they each were going, a strong amount of buffeting occurred, knocking both off their wanted trajectory. The pony was quick to recover. Starscream was not. He spun out of control, his engines cutting out on him, making him unable to correct himself. His flailing chassis tore through the clouds, falling towards a small body of water. Finally, as the ground came dangerously close, his he was able to regain control of his direction, but his engines still failed to respond in time. Diving front first, he smashed into the ground, bouncing and skidding, heading in the direction of the small lake. He heard some cracking coming from his wound, and sparks showered out from it as he attempted to restore power to his engines. That meant only one thing: the repairs had broken. Worse yet, he was still tumbling towards the water. His body skipped off the ground, finally above the lake. Using his engines to get away from the water with his reopened wound was going to hurt, but it was a far better alternative to having his reopened wound completely submerged. As soon as the tip of his wing dipped into the water, his engines roared to life, causing his chassis to skim across the surface of the lake and towards the opposite bank. He groaned in pain as the broken circuits discharged copious quantities of electricity, arcing into his other systems and beginning a system overload. Despite the protests of his internal protection mechanisms, he forged through it. It wasn’t soon enough before he smashed into the opposite bank, where he slid through the sand a few feet, before finally coming to a halt. Even though he wasn’t moving, his wound continued to spill out sparks. His mind was foggy from the pain, and his vision was a mess of static, error messages, and recommended procedures. He could feel himself fading from power expenditure. Despite his groggy state of mind, he managed to address the pop-ups in his vision. Which turned out to be a bad idea. One specific report read: Diagnostic report: excess power expenditure and system overload linked to engine engagement. Transformation recommended. To which he complied. His mind was too muddled to even recognize the pain that he should have been feeling, and his diagnostic systems were already shut down from the overload he had just gone through. Slowly, his body began to change forms, parts grinding against each other as they struggled to carry out the transformation command before all power was lost. There was an ample amount of discontent being displayed from the wound, as it seemed to glow from the amount of sparks spiking off of the broken connections. The command was successfully fulfilled, though. If he was conscious, Starscream would have been surprised that his ruined body was capable of carrying out the command. It wasn’t without a cost, though. The command now complete, his body went completely comatose. Tufts of smoke rose from the frayed wires, which were red hot and sizzling; some melted, even. It was going to take some time and some intensive work on someone’s behalf before Starscream would return to an operable state.