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In the dark, a bare hundred metres from the accident site, two figures were huddled, surprisingly well concealed from the lights strobing the darkness and the people milling about.
'So, d'you think it's Motormaster?' one asked the other.
The one that was being addressed stared at the first one. 'Are you a slagging moron, Sideswipe? Motormaster is cab over engine like Prime.' The words were punctuated by what the speaker thought was a well deserved punch to the other's shoulder. 'This truck is a long nose. And besides, you really think that bastard Motormaster would just sit there while humans crawled all over him? He'd pitch a fit.'
The one called Sideswipe graciously conceded the point. 'You got that right, Sunny.'
There was a long period of inaction as they waited for the emergency vehicles to finish clearing the scene. It seemed to take forever, but eventually the ambulances on the side of the road ahead pulled out and raced on down the road past the watchers, their sirens wailing. It seemed to take forever for the other emergency teams there to decide what to do with the two vehicles.
'Primus, I'm so slagging bored! Ratchet and Red Alert would have had all this scrap cleared away in no time. What exactly are we doing here again?' Sideswipe whined.
Sunny - Sunstreaker - said, 'Skyspy reported something about a mad truck chasing down a car. The weather was too bad for a clear identification. So Prime asked me to get you and drag our afts on down here to have a bit of a looksee.'
'Since when have we been covert ops?' Sideswipe asked as he peered across at the accident. The truck was slowly limping away from the scene, and in the dark it looked enough like Motormaster form the angle he saw it that his hands unconsciously settled into fists. It wasn't so much that he was annoyed with this assignment, because he wasn't. It was novel and shiny and new and different and Sideswipe liked novel and shiny and new and different. Except the facts were pretty simple. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were front line melee warriors. Their job was to beat shit up, ask questions later. Everyone knew that. It was just "that thing the twins did". They hadn't been hired for their shining intellect or stealth abilities.
Sunstreaker made a noise of disgust. 'Since Skyspy thought it was Motormaster over there beating up on some poor flesh bags,' he said like it should have been plainly obvious. Motormaster was a vicious bastard, but the twins should have been enough to handle him on a night like this. Unless he had the rest of the Stunticons stashed away somewhere and then it could quite easily have turned into a slaughterhouse. As it was the point was moot. It wasn't Motormaster and the twins were left with little to do but head back to the Ark and write up the paperwork. 'Did you have a cup of stupid with your energon this morning?'
Sideswipe hit his brother. The sound of his fist on metal echoed with a dull clang.
'Hey!' Sunstreaker hissed and hit his brother in return. 'Watch my Duco! It's bad enough I gotta skulk around in this dirty ditch without you adding to the problem.' Five seconds later it had devolved into a scuffle in the bottom of the ditch, Sideswipe sitting on his brother's back and rubbing his face in the grass.
At some stage during their catfight, the last of the emergency vehicles - lights no longer flashing - had headed off in a small convoy down the road away from the rumbling twins, which was probably lucky for them. It was never easy to explain away giant robots from the same faction fighting in the dark, even to people who knew what Transformers were.
Sunstreaker threw his brother off him, Sideswipe skidding on his aft across the damp grass. 'Right,' Sunstreaker said through gritted dental places as he flicked mud and grass off himself. 'Let's get the slag out of here.' One thing he could say about his fights with Sideswipe... he never dented Sunstreaker's finish, because the pasting they'd both cop from Ratchet just wasn't worth the effort, Sunstreaker thought as he pulled a cloth out of subspace and attempted to wipe some of the mud away.
'Sunny!' Sideswipe sang out as Sunstreaker squelched back up to the road.
'What?'
'Come check this out.'
Sideswipe had headed down to the now quiet accident scene while his brother was engrossed in his personal grooming. The truck had been able to move off under it's own steam, but the other vehicle was a write off. It had been dragged off the side of the road, presumably for hard rubbish removal in the morning. It was by it that Sideswipe stood.
'What?' Sunstreaker said crankily.
'It looks so sad,' Sideswipe said, pointing at it.
At some stage in its life it had been a big, black, shiny car but now it was little more than scrap. But Sunstreaker could see what his brother meant. It did look sad. The truck had hit it on the side, and it looked like the ambulance people had needed to open the car with a tin opener to get the hurt humans out. But that wasn't what caught Sunstreaker's attention the most. Despite the dents and scratches and dirt and blood and other icky organic things, Sunstreaker could see the that the finish of the car was a rich, deep black, and if the car had been in intact condition as opposed to looking like a victim of the Dinobots, he would have been able to admire his perfect face in the reflections of the roof.
Whoever the humans were who owned this car, it was clear they loved and cared for it. He checked out it's still-relatively intact rear, where humans often put identifying devices. 'Impala,' Sunstreaker said. 'That it's name?'
'Could be,' Sideswipe said. 'Nice lines. Reckon Ratchet would fix it?'
'Dunno. If he refuses then Wheeljack might. It's the kind of thing right up his alley. But why?' Sunstreaker stared at him. 'What would you want it for? I mean,' he said, like his brother was slow, 'it's not like we need cars.'
'It wouldn't be for me, moron. It'd be for Carly and Spike on their wedding day. Carly never did get a new set of wheels after Shockwave vapourised hers on Cybertron that time.'
Sunstreaker shook out his dirty cloth, his nose wrinkling at the filthy colour of it. His brother was prone to stupid fits of generosity. 'What about the humans who own it?'
Sideswipe snorted. 'Look at it, Sunny. Humans'll never fix that kind of damage. They're not like us. Besides, I'll be surprised if any of them survived that in the first place, much less'll be able to drive it again.'
Sunstreaker shrugged. Sideswipe had a point. Fleshlings were notoriously fragile. Likely they'd soon as keel over than survive an accident like that. It was probably a good thing it wasn't Motormaster that hit them then, otherwise they'd be little more than bloody smears on the blacktop, their shiny Impala nothing but a sheet of tinfoil. 'Eh,' he said as he stepped up to the road and transformed, the tangled wreck of the Impala contrasting all the more with his sleek, golden Lamborghini lines. 'Why not? You can tell Carly it's from both of us.'
'Where are you going?' Sideswipe asked, hands on his hips. 'We gotta figure out how to get this thing home now.'
'Oh no,' Sunstreaker said, switching to comm as he peeled out and off up the road. 'Your idea. You figure it out.' He was laughing as he shut off the comm on Sideswipe's burst of creative swearing.