AllSpark energy. In the Transformers universe, it was the thing that made dead metal alive. A force that could birth an entire civilization of mechanical beings from nothing.
Kade didn't have that kind of power. Not yet. But what he had was enough.
The moment his energy poured into the wrecked SUV, changes started happening at a scale no human eye could follow. Deep in the vehicle's frame, steel atoms broke apart and reformed into structures that had never existed on Earth. Dead metal becoming something with potential. Something aware.
The engine turned over.
Not a sputter. Not a cough. A full-throated roar that shook sand off the cliff face behind it. The one surviving headlight flickered on and swiveled toward Kade like an eye focusing on a familiar face.
One of the insurgents stumbled backward, rifle half-raised. "What the..."
None of them knew the fuel tank was blown open. None of them knew the engine block was cracked in three places. They just knew a vehicle that should've been scrap was suddenly, impossibly, running.
Kade was faster than all of them. He grabbed the warped window frame, vaulted through the shattered windshield, and threw himself into the mangled cabin. Half a second later, automatic fire raked the SUV's exterior. Sparks flew, rounds pinged off metal that was suddenly a lot harder than factory steel.
"Oh, BRILLIANT!" An electronic voice erupted from the dashboard. Loud, offended, furious. "Not even thirty seconds old and you lot are already shooting at me? Unbelievable! No manners! You people are the WORST. The absolute bottom of the barrel. The skid marks on the underpants of society!"
The engine screamed. The SUV lurched forward like a bull out of a gate, hitting a hundred clicks in the space of ten meters on two blown tires and half an axle. It plowed straight through three insurgents who never had time to dive clear.
They didn't get up.
The SUV whipped into a handbrake turn that sprayed sand thirty feet high, then sideswiped two more guys with its passenger door. The door swung open at the last second like a flyswatter and launched both men tumbling across the desert floor.
"And the crowd goes wild!" The electronic voice switched to a pitch-perfect stadium announcer. Crowd noise and everything.
Inside, Kade braced against the roll cage with one hand and reached through the smashed rear window with the other. His fingers found the stock of a fallen AK-47, still warm. He racked the charging handle by feel, shouldered it through the side window, and started shooting.
Three-round bursts. Controlled. Each one aimed.
A head snapped back. A body folded. Another dropped mid-stride.
"Not bad," Kade muttered, shifting to the next target. "Barrel's shot to hell, though."
The AK's accuracy was garbage. The insurgents hadn't cleaned it in months. Inside twenty meters he could make it work. Beyond that, coin flip. But twenty meters was enough when your ride was doing the heavy lifting.
The insurgent leader had done the math faster than his men. While the SUV tore through people from the front, he'd circled to the rear. Probably figured a vehicle couldn't see behind itself.
He figured wrong.
"Oi! Yeah, you, mate. Behind ya!" The SUV chirped in a broad, cheerful accent that sounded like it had learned English from a Crocodile Dundee marathon. Then it switched to something that was either badly mangled Pashto or complete nonsense, rattled it off at machine-gun speed, and slammed into reverse.
The leader had no idea what had just been said to him. That was fine. The bumper hitting him at highway speed communicated the message clearly enough. He flew backward, ragdolling through the air, and landed directly on top of the captive his dogs had killed.
Fresh blood. Fresh meat. The dogs didn't recognize their master through all the gore.
Kade heard the screaming start and didn't feel a single thing about it.
By now half the insurgents were dead or broken. The survivors had figured out that rifles weren't doing it, and someone was scrambling for an RPG launcher from the back of a truck. Then another. Two men, two launchers, loading with the frantic speed of people who knew they were next.
Kade switched to single shots. Breathe. Squeeze.
The first man's head snapped sideways before his finger found the trigger. The second caught a round through the eye socket half a second later.
But there was a third.
Kade saw the flash before he heard the sound. The distinctive whoosh of a rocket-propelled grenade leaving the tube. Warhead already in the air, spiraling at the SUV on a thin trail of white smoke.
He didn't have the marksmanship to shoot an RPG out of the air. Not with this piece of junk AK.
The SUV did something impossible instead.
Its left-side wheels punched downward with hydraulic force and the entire vehicle tipped into a full lateral roll. The RPG streaked through the space where the cabin had been a fraction of a second earlier, close enough that Kade felt the heat on his face, and detonated against the cliff behind them. Rock and fire.
The SUV landed right-side up, skidding. Its crumpled hood panels flew open like jaws and a spray of bolts, brackets, and engine components erupted outward in a shotgun blast that shredded the RPG shooter where he stood.
"Same trick doesn't work twice, genius!" the SUV crowed. "Haven't you people ever watched ANYTHING?"
That broke them.
The remaining insurgents turned and ran for the intact vehicles. Kade leaned out and started picking them off, but the AK's accuracy gave up on him at range. He dropped three more before the last survivors piled into a truck and floored it toward the horizon, fishtailing through the sand.
Kade watched the dust trail shrink. "Bloody hell. Give me an Austeyr and they wouldn't have made it past fifty meters."
He climbed out of the wreck and stood in the settling dust. Bodies and burning vehicles everywhere. The silence after combat always felt the same. Too big. Too sudden.
He looked back at the SUV. Something pulled at the edge of his awareness. A connection, warm and electric, like a second heartbeat running alongside his own.
"So that's what the AllSpark does," he said quietly.
The SUV began to change.
Metal shrieked and groaned. Panels split along invisible seams, folding and rotating. The chassis telescoped upward. Axles became legs, doors became arms, the engine block buried itself inside a torso that was still assembling. Five seconds and the ruined SUV was gone. Something else stood in its place.
A robot. Five meters tall. Silver-gray, broad-shouldered. Its right arm hung limp where the original RPG damage had carried over, leaving a visible gap in the shoulder plating. Everything else was intact, solid, and very much awake.
Two blue optical sensors locked onto Kade from above.
The robot snapped to attention and saluted with its working arm.
"Commander, sir! Striker Blitz, reporting for duty!" Same voice from the dashboard. Loud, eager, practically bouncing. "Designation: assault and forward combat operations. Loyalty: exclusively to you, Commander. I am not affiliated with any Autobot or Decepticon faction. I serve under your direct command and yours alone."
Kade stared up at five meters of sentient metal standing at parade rest in the Afghan desert.
"Right," he said. "Good to know."
"Now, regarding our unit designation!" Blitz barreled on without pause. "I've been thinking about this, and I strongly recommend we adopt a name that commands respect. Something like 'The Thunder Legion.' Or 'Omega Strike Force.' Or, oh! 'The Invincible Mechanical Gods of...'"
"Blitz."
"Sir?"
"Shut up."
"Yes, Commander." Blitz saluted again, snapped back into vehicle form with a rapid-fire clacking of transforming plates, and sat there silently. Engine idling. Headlight watching Kade like an obedient dog waiting for the next command.
Kade didn't care about team names. This wasn't an anime where shouting your attack gave it extra power. If he called his outfit the Thanos Fan Club, it wouldn't matter. What mattered was whether Blitz and whatever came after him would be enough to keep Kade alive in a world where gods walked the earth and aliens fell from the sky.
He turned away from Blitz and looked across the aftermath.
The other captives were huddled near the cave entrance. Wide-eyed, trembling. Most of them looked like they'd watched something out of a fever dream and weren't sure they were awake.
Only one person wasn't falling apart.
The doctor, Yinsen, was crouched beside a wounded captive, pressing a torn strip of fabric against a bleeding leg wound. Calm hands. Focused eyes. He hadn't even glanced at Blitz.
Good man, Kade thought. A genuinely good man.
And then behind him, a groan. Fabric rustling. A sharp breath followed by a hiss of pain.
Kade turned.
Tony Stark was sitting up on the stretcher, one hand braced against the electromagnet on his chest, blinking at the carnage around him like a man who'd woken up in someone else's nightmare.
PLz Throw Powerstones.