Girl-Combined Power

Stomp, stomp, stomp!

It was an enormous metallic foot attached to a gigantic metallic leg that was violently and repeatedly hitting the ground. So fierce was the action, that the ground - a beautiful patch of green with hills and valleys nearby- was shaking. In a nearby village, the occupants thought there was an earthquake, as items tumbled from the shelves in their homes.

The enormous metallic foot was obviously just one of two attached to a gigantic robotic form nearly 50 meters in height. Not only was its legs rapidly trying to crush something on the ground, its arms flailed wildly. This was a robot that seemed seriously disturbed, violent and uncontrolled.

Or so it seemed to Pyra Magna noting the giant robotic form from 5 kilometres away in the nearby hills. She was greatly concerned by the robot, clearly a combiner-class robot from the Transformers race, and the impact it was making on the environment and the risk to the nearby human settlement. It would have to be stopped. The problem being that a combiner-class Transformer is a very powerful Transformer, an amalgam of five or six individual Transformers whereby each individual would form a body part of the larger robotic whole. Powerful, and in the wrong hands or specifically the wrong faction of a war, potentially very dangerous. This combiner seemed to be from the Evil Decepticon faction.

Luckily Pyra Magna was not alone, being a part of her own combiner team, a rare totally female robot group which she took a lot of pride in. She looked around at her team, her fellow Torchbearers, and without need to communicate verbally she could see they all shared a common goal. The look of shock and incomprehension on their faces said one thing. This Decepticon combiner, no matter how powerful or dangerous it appeared to be, it had to be stopped.

“Torchbearers?” she commented as a rhetorical question. They all looked to her and nodded.

“Let’s go kick some giant Decepticon b-” started one of the team, Stormclash.

“Brawn! Or brains!” interjected Skyburst, choosing to finish her twin sister’s comment before Stormclash embarrassed herself.

“Torchbearers, transform and roll out!” exclaimed Pyra Magna.

All 6 Torchbearers changed into a vehicle mode, Pyra Magna as a form of fire engine, Stormclash and Skyburst into two helicopters. The three other members Jumpstream, Dust Up and Rust Dust changing into ground based vehicles- two cars and a motor bike respectively.

“Y’know, I understand she’s being all ‘Prime’ when she shouts ‘Roll out’ but some of us don’t roll. I feel a bit ..spurned,” commented Stormclash from her helicopter mode to Skyburst.

“Let it go, Stormcloud, let it go.”

——————-

“What the hell are you doing?” screamed the violet coloured robotic form, Nautica, to the giant robot that was smashing large holes into the ground with its feet.

“Must…. Break….” replied the larger robotic form with a voice that had different tones to it as if it was formed by multiple different voices speaking together at the same time.

“Chromia! You try something!” interrupted Nautica.

“Orthia!” Chromia shouted, “Stop this, before somebody …” her voice tailed off as she noticed 6 vehicles heading their way from over the nearby hills. “… sees us,” she finished quietly.

“We’re in trouble now, do you see who they are?” asked Chromia to Nautica.

The team approaching had a very distinct colour scheme, mainly a sea-green colour with highlights of red. Any human with a fashion sense would have been appalled by the colour-clash, but rarely for a robotic team they had a consistent theme that helped identify them. And this team was well known.

“Great, just what we need, another combiner,” said Nautica with a large degree of sarcasm.

The six vehicles rapidly approached and once in hearing distance, Chromia attempted to shout to them. “Torchbea-” she started but couldn’t complete her sentence as another voice spoke up.

“Torchbearers combine!” With that, the six vehicles started to change shape. The two helicopters swooped down to the ground, their blades stopping to spin and fold upwards, their front cabins rotating upwards and the rear sections dislocating and rotating forwards onto the main body of the helicopters. As they touched the ground, extra protrusions of metal appeared below their cabins, not dissimilar to feet. The two helicopters had become legs. Pyra Magna similarly moved around sections of her fire engine form and leaped into the air to land onto the two legs, becoming the main torso. The two cars followed, changing to become arms of the giant robotic form. The bike split apart into a flattened section and landed as a chest-plate on the mighty machine. Finally, seemingly out of nowhere, a huge and somewhat elegant sword of blue and silver appeared in the right hand of the combined form. A sword that was soon thrust in the direction of the other giant robot form.

“Stand down Decepticon, so declares Victorion!” the green and red combiner shouted with a voice sounding like a combined form of the six individual Torchbearers. The other giant robot looked around over its shoulder with a somewhat puzzled look on its face.

Nautica gave a deep sigh, “Stand down yourself Victorion, we’re all good here”.

Chromia moved forward, “Victorion, do please meet Orthia. Orthia, Victorion” gesturing to each giant robot as she said their names.

“He’s an Autobot combiner?” asked Victorion, sceptical.

“She.” clarified Chromia, “Meet the combined form of Elita-1’s team, ‘The Shield of Solus’.”

“What happened?”

“Well, someone,” started Nautica, “let’s call them Lancer, found an object out in the field. And they happened to start-”

“Messing with it,” interjected Chromia.

“-analysing it,” Nautica added objectionably, “and they sort of-”

“It was the Enigma of Combination,” clarified Chromia to Victorion.

“-yes, well, and it did what it’s supposed to do. They <ahem>, combined.”

“The problem is,” added Chromia, “they don’t know how to ‘un-combine’.”

Orthia roared in anguish and stomped one leg as she spoke, “Need. To. Break. Apart!”

“For matrix’s sake stop it Orthia!” shouted Chromia.

“What is it you shout?” Nautica hurriedly asked to Victorion “ y’know when you roar,” and added with a deeper false voice “ ‘Torchbearers combine!’ what do you shout to un-combine, split-apart, disassemble? What’s the magic word? They need to know!”

“There is no word,” responded the multi-voice of Victorion, “it’s not the word that causes the combination. It’s a desire, a wish to be combined. The problem with Orthia, she’s a female-combiner team. She’s happy to be combined!”

Both Chromia and Nautica stared intently at Victorion looking for more explanation.

“I don’t understand,” added Nautica, “she’s clearly shaking her arms and legs to get them off!” and gestured towards Orthia but the giant robot was not there. The shaking of her limbs was giving her momentum and she was clearly moving towards the small town in the distance.

“Damn it,” Nautica muttered.

——————-

The people of the small town stared in horror as the large robot form appeared over the horizon. Many ran out of their homes and gesticulated towards the metallic giant, heading their way. Some started to scream, others jumped in their cars and headed in the opposite direction out of town.

Victorion started running and with her giant legs and larger stride soon caught up to Orthia. She placed a hand on Orthia’s shoulder to stop her ongoing movement. Chromia and Nautica had transformed to vehicle modes to cover the distance but reverted back to robot modes as they approached the two combiners. Luckily they were still some distance from the human settlement.

“Orthia! You need to pause and listen to me,” guided Victorion.

Nautica added, “You’re a female combiner, so you’re not like the Hom-bots!”

“Hom-bots?” asked Chromia.

“They call us Fem-bots. What do you call them, Mal-bots? Boy-bots?”

“Normally, ‘idi-ots’, ” replied Chromia.

Victorion ignored them and continued with Orthia. “A female-combiner team is unlike the male teams. We actually like being together. We’re great together, we look out for each other and we start to think together. It’s as the humans call it ‘girl power!’ ”

“So. How. Do. We … break apart?” Orthia managed to ask, starting to control to speak as a combined form.

Nautica spoke quietly to no one in particular, “Get one to start bitching about one of the others..”

“Nautica!” admonished Chromia.

“What!?! We were all thinking it,” she answered even quieter.

“You need to think about your individual selves. The strengths you have as individual Transformers. Think about this in your collective consciousness and separate the importance and significance you have as individuals different to the combined power of Orthia. You can be powerful individuals. You can be powerful together. You can be both,” continued Victorion.

There was a quiet pause as Orthia stood motionless with her head lowered. Suddenly, the two arms of Orthia sprang from her torso splitting metallic panels, opening outwards smaller arms and legs and landing on feet as two individuals Nova Star and Moonracer. Then the torso of Orthia fell forward but before it hit the floor, it also split open and gained arms and legs whilst behind it the two remaining legs started to lose their appearance as giant legs and gain the necessary limbs to be individual robotic forms. Finally, Elita-1, Lancer and Greenlight stood with their two companions

Meanwhile Victorion too disassembled and the 6 individuals of the Torchbearers team took her place. Elita-1 moved forward to Pyra Magna with a degree of gratitude and without warning gave her a large hug. “Thank you” she said simply. The other members of the Shield of Solus team did likewise to their counterparts in the Torchbearer team.

“Don’t thank us,” muttered Nautica. Chromia leaned in to her and whispered, “We didn’t do anything.”

“All done?” Nautica asked to the other eleven female Transformers stood in the field. They all nodded with acknowledgement and a genuine sense of relief.

“Good, then let’s go and Fem-explain this to the Hom-bots!”

For International Women’s Day (originally posted March 2024) and dedicated to the special females in my life; my wonderful wife and 2 daughters, and to my Mum and sister.

Prequel number four! Though to be fair this is less prequel than the others* and more to highlight some of the female Transformers, as is the aim of my planned ‘The Alternates’ storyline to highlight Transformers from the hundreds of characters available that are lesser known. Many of these female Transformers coming from the classic period of IDW’s comic-book era. I particularly loved the character of Nautica, created and written by James Roberts, and have tried to continue her character as was.

*at one point I’ll have to deal with the Enigma of Combination lying about in a field.

As always, all characters are from Hasbro / Takara Tomy’s Transformers franchise. All text is my own. Backgrounds to images have been created using AI photo technology, though the general creation of the image is my own work.