Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cliffjumper had been in a lot of tight spots. But he'd never been in a spot tighter than this. He was badly wounded and leaking energon everywhere, captured, barely able to stand…No, he didn't think he was getting out of this one.

In front of him was Starscream, second in command of the evil Decepticons. He looked at Cliff with a viscous glint in his optics. And Cliffjumper knew in that moment that the Seeker fully intended to kill him here and now. He could go down fighting, or on his knees. But he was going down. There was no way Cliff could defend himself, or physically injure his enemies in any way.

Emotional damage it was, then.

"Scream, it's been a while," Cliffjumper gasped out, trying to force a smirk. "Where's your master?"

The Seeker's wings flickered, and his optics darkened. At least Ol' Screamy made inflicting emotional damage easy. Starscream sneered, and moved, his talons faster than the optics could see. Cliff braced himself and refused to allow his optics to close. He'd stare his murderer in the face until the bitter end…

He felt the claws hit him, starting to penetrate his armor, and then the world…shifted. He couldn't explain why, or how but everything changed in a moment. The Nemesis bridge flickered and vanished, then reappeared again, and then everything was different. Instead of dark and sinister, everything was now a calming cream color. The Vehicons had all disappeared, leaving only Starscream and Soundwave on the bridge. They were no longer in front of him, but several feet away, not even looking at him anymore.

They were completely different colors.

"The frag?" Cliff murmured, before his injuries finally caught up to him and he collapsed.

"By Unicron!" he heard Starscream shout, before someone was touching him, checking his pulse. "He's alive. Soundwave, find me a med kit, now!"

Cliffjumper tried to speak, but his body was falling into stasis. Whatever was going on, he wasn't going to be around much longer to worry about it.

"How did he get on the ship?" he heard Starscream ask, before the darkness fell and he knew no more.

When Cliffjumper woke up again, he looked like a pincushion with all the wires and energon drips stuck in him. Looked like ol' Cliff had beaten the odds again. Ratchet would have him up and revving in no time. He couldn't wait to tell Arcee about that crazy hallucination he'd had. She'd fuss at him, but secretly she'd think it was hilarious, since he's none the worse for wear.

"I see you're awake."

He knew that voice. That wasn't a friendly voice. Cliff looked to his left to see Crazy Colors Starscream looking at him sternly, his arms crossed as he sat next to the medical berth. Frag. Not a hallucination, then.

The Seeker looked nearly harmless in his white-and-gold color scheme, with hints of green on his helm and peds. His optics were blue, but his Decepticon symbol was the same. Off to the side Soundwave was watching him warily, his chassis now a friendly shade of sunshiny yellow with the most Primus-awful, optic searing, bright neon green highlights on his chest and in pulsating lines along his chassis. His 'Con symbol was also bright red, and clashed so horribly with the rest of his color scheme that Cliff just knew this was a new—and highly effective—method of torture.

"Nice paintjob, Soundwave," Cliff's glossa said before his processor fully knew what was happening. "Really brings out your eyes."

Starscream blinked at him, the stern look melting into confusion. "Do you…know each other?" he asked, sounding almost hesitant. Soundwave shrugged and shook his helm. Starscream frowned, then seemed to shake himself out of his confusion, looking even sterner. "Your insignia implies you're an Autobot, so who are you and how did you get on this ship?"

It was Cliffjumper's turn to blink in confusion. "You brought me here."

"I did no such thing!" Starscream shouted at him, giving him a killer processor ache as the Seeker stood up, flailing his arms as he continued to shout. "I would never bring an Autobot aboard this ship! We're supposed to be in hiding—what kind of fragging moron would bring the enemy to his ship when they're in hiding? That's just asking to be discovered, and I don't think I like your tone, you…"

And as if this cycle wasn't crazy enough, Starscream actually stopped himself from ranting, closing his optics and taking a deep intake. After a few moments, he addressed Cliffjumper again, sounding completely calm and collected. "I do not know you. Soundwave has no recollection of any bot matching your description. You have seemingly committed no war crimes to speak of, which is remarkable considering your…alliance. The only information we have on you is that you are an Autobot. While that is more than enough to be wary of you, it is not grounds to convict you. By Decepticon law, you are innocent until proven guilty, and so I feel I have no choice but to allow you free range of this ship. But do not mistake this for weakness. Soundwave will monitor your location at all times, and if you try to leave this ship, contact anybody, or sabotage anything, I will blow your head off. Understood?"

Frag. New Starscream didn't yell. He wasn't acting threatening. He was completely relaxed and had the same tone as someone who was speaking of the weather. He wasn't sneering, or trying to act dominating. He maintained eye contact and simply told Cliff what was going to happen with the calm authority of a mech who was used to being obeyed.

It was the scariest thing Cliffjumper had ever seen, and after centuries of war, that was saying something. His words failed him completely, and he simply nodded.

Starscream studied him for a long moment, then gave him a friendly smile that made everything seem so much worse. "Well, then. Welcome to the Harbinger. I am Air Commander Starscream, second-in-command and temporary acting leader of the Decepticon Alliance. To whom have I the pleasure of addressing?"

It had been two weeks of Earth time. Cliffjumper had spent most of that time healing, so he hadn't been able to figure out how to escape. He hadn't figured out how everything had suddenly turned so wrong.

"LOL Ai luv yu, Starz~"

"Would you stop that? I'm trying to stop the navigation system from overloading and killing us all, this isn't the time for you to suddenly decide we need a Cuddle Commander Day! Why the frag did you decide on a Cuddle Commander Day, and how did you get it on the official calendar? Get away from me, frag it!"

He hadn't figured out what was wrong with the Cons. Cliff checked, and sure enough, Starscream was on his back, performing menial labor on the ship's systems, and a white Casseticon named Ravage was trying to curl up on his legs. Starscream was trying to work and kick Ravage off of him at the same time.

"Soundwave! Get your symbiont!" Starscream snapped.

"Yu ar mai favrit, an stuffs," Ravage purred. "Iz on yur feats, Starz."

"And my name is not STARS!"

Soundwave looked up from the datapad he ha been reading, inspecting the scene with a critical optic. Starscream had apparently given up on dislodging Ravage, and had gone back to repairing the ship, holding himself as still as possible so as not to disturb the white cat, who had curled up in a ball on his legs, happily purring. Soundwave hummed in contentment, before returning to his paper. Cliff could clearly see the spy was reading a colection of human newspaper comics.

How had this become his life?

But, this did seem to be a good opportunity to explore. He didn't think for one moment that Soundwave wasn't watching his every movement. But neither 'Con seemed to care about restricting said movement so long as he didn't try to leave, break anything, or contact anyone, just like Screamer had promised.

"Get off me, Ravage," Starscream muttered as he carefully extracted himself from under the console. Ravage ignored him with all the grace of well, a cat, and instead of flying off the handle ranting about his authority, Starscream just sighed and scratched Ravage's ears. Ravage gave a happy squeak and nudged Starscream's hand for more pets. Screamer's mouth quirked into a half smile.

Frag this. This was wrong on every conceivable level and Cliff wasn't going to hang around and watch it. He stood up and left with all the dignity he could muster.

As he walked through the ship, Cliffjumper was struck by how, well, empty it was. Besides Starscream, Soundwave, and Ravage, he hadn't seen a single soul on board. The ship was completely deserted, and not a Vehicon in sight. Cliff was certain that once he had healed, he'd be more than able to overpower the three cons and make his escape. He was more than a little bit worried that whatever had happened to the Cons might have affected his friends. And besides, Arcee must be totally nuts by now. Cliff knew more than anyone that she wouldn't be able to handle the death of another partner, not like that. Not because she was a few seconds too slow to arrive with backup. Scrap no, he had to figure out how to make it back without dying horribly. And that meant he had to bide his time and figure out what made New Scream and New Wave tick.

It took less than two days for Cliffjumper to be 100% sure he knew exactly what made the two 'Cons tick. Nothong but concentrated, pure, unadulterated insanity. Starscream and Soundwave had put streamers and balloons all around the bridge, as well as a large banner that read "Congratulations! It's a girl!" with the second sentence half-heartedly scribbled over. Soundwave had a Kazoo, of all things, and the tune 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" was being played on it. Cliffjumper didn't even want to know how Soundwave had gotten a Kazoo their size.

Cliffjumper eyed the decorations, the smiling 'Cons, and the oil cake that had the words 'Thanks for Being Decent' scribbled on it and wished he was trapped with normal Decepticons who tortured you in the normal way.

"What." He didn't even have the energy to make it a question.

"Cliffjumper," Starscream started in what was obviously a rehearsed speech. "These last few weeks you have been a model prisoner. You have kept your word and have not tried to escape, harm anyone on the ship, or behave like an Autobot in any way, shape, or form. Soundwave and I just wanted to show you how much we appreciate your courtesy. You are without a doubt the best prisoner we have ever had."

Soundwave threw a handful of confetti in the air and the song 'Everybody Dance Now!" started to blast out of his speakers. Ravage wound himself around Cliffjumper's legs as if he belonged there.

The whole thing made Cliff want to punch Starscream in the face, just for the principle of the thing. But that would make him lose his advantage. And besides, after five million years of war and rationing, he suddenly realized he really would do just about anything for a slice of that oil cake. So he tried to smile as best he could and look as much like a harmless prisoner as possible.

He'd never been so humiliated in his entire life, but frag if it wasn't good oil cake.

He wasn't halfway through his piece when an alarm started to blast through the ship. Cliff was instantly on alert, ready to jump into action the moment it would benefit him.

"Soundwave, report," Starscream ordered, ignoring Cliffjumper entirely. Looks like oil cake wasn't the only reward for lulling 'Cons into a false sense of security. Soundwave tapped one of the monitors, causing Screamy to inspect it critically.

"Scrap, they're attacking the natives," Starscream snarled, actually sounding upset about it. Pit, he actually might be upset; he'd been acting crazy enough for it recently. "I'd hoped if we went dark and acted as if we weren't on planet, they'd consider the organics beneath their notice. But it looks like that's not the case. Prepare a ground bridge."

Soundwave turned to the console and activated the bridge, which sprang to life next to Starscream. The Air Commander paused for a moment, biting his lower lip. "Soundwave. There are only two of us, and Ravage, of course, and we know there are at least five of them on the planet. To say nothing of the drones they use as cannon fodder. It's most likely that we're going to be quickly overwhelmed, and probably offlined. So I'm not ordering you to come with me. And I'd understand if you would want to stay behind."

Soundwave was silent for a long moment. And then, for the first time ever, Cliffjumper heard him speak. "I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."1

Starscream looked incredibly sad. "I'm sorry, Soundwave, but I still don't understand what you're trying to say."

Soundwave huffed, then turned to the ground portal. "This. Is. Sparta!"2 he cried, before leaping through.

"Soundwave! Frag it, wait for me!" Starscream shrieked, before diving after the obviously-even-crazier-than-he-seemed spymaster.

"I iz in yur spaes brij, fieting yur d00dz," Ravage giggled—yes, giggled—as he followed the other two Cons. And that left Cliffjumper alone, unguarded, next to an operational ground bridge.

"You know, I don't mind if I do," he informed nobody in particular, before diving into the bridge.

He emerged in the middle of a deserted highway, in the midst of a free for all between Soundwave, Ravage, and Starscream, and…what appeared to be Arcee, Bumblebee, and Bulkhead, as well as several Vehicons. Just like the Cons, the 'Bots were colored differently, and Cliff had a really bad feeling about this whole thing. He'd seen just enough human science fiction movies to be completely unsure which side he was supposed to be on right now, and that was never a good thing in the heat of battle. That didn't stop him from deciding to body press the nearest Cybertronian-it vagely looked like Bumblebee?-and then slamming Starscream with a spinning knife edge chop when he got too close.

Maybe Cliff wasn't the best when it came to big, philosophical debates like whose side he should take right now. He knew the other Autobots would have held back until they could be sure who they should help. But Cliffjumper was a simple bot with simple pleasures. He'd been fighting bots for no good reason way before this war started, and he'd keep fighting pointless fights long after it ended. He like brawling, okay? Primus could sort 'em all out when he was done.

But then he saw that there were three very squishable human children caught up in the middle of all this chaos. And he knew that the inhabitants of this world were under Autobot protection. If he ignored them, he would have visons of Optimus' Face of Disaproval for days, and Cliff hated that face. It took the fun right out of mindless violence. So Cliff sighed deeply, kneed Maybe Bulkhead in the lugnuts so the big guy wouldn't forget him, and grabbed the kids. Apparently, humans all screamed really loudly when touched, who knew? But Cliff shrugged and all but dove back through the ground bridge, since there was no cover for squishy people within fifty miles. Crazy flat Earth landscape.

Well, that was probably the shortest and most unique escape attempt ever attempted in the history of Cybertron. But he now had valuable intel: Whatever had happened to the Cons had probably happened to the Bots, and humans screamed really, really loud.

"Would you stop that? I'm rescuing you," Cliff informed his new human companions.

"Rescuing us? You robots just attacked us out of nowhere and then abducted us!" screamed one, a male with dark red hair and freckles.

"I know, it's so cool!" cheered one of the two girls, a blonde who obviously had a deep appreciation of the color black, as she wore it almost exclusively, even on her lips. She was a good head shorter than the other two children.

The last girl looked like she was in shock. But at least it was quiet shock, and the screaming had stopped. Her hair was red, like the male's, but a much lighter shade. It almost looked orange, really. She wore it in a ponytail, and now she was hyperventilating. Why was she hyperventilating? What part of 'I rescued you' did she not understand?

"Listen, I'm not with the attacking ones," Cliff tried to explain. "I'm with the rescuing ones. Um, whichever those were. It's complicated."

"Right. Well, how about I uncomplicate it? If you're really trying to help us, take us home. Now."

"Sure. I can do that," Cliffjumper said agreeably. "Where do you live?"

"We can't tell giant killer robots where we live!" Ponytail girl suddenly remembered how to speak just in time to be unhelpful.

"Well, I can't take you home unless I know where that is," Cliffjumper replied sensibly. Behind him, the 'Cons emerged from the ground bridge, all looking slightly worse for wear, but not seriously damaged. Starscream looked like he was having trouble deciding if he wanted to gut him or thank him, but either way, Cliff knew he wasn't going to get another chance to escape for a long time.

Finally, though, Starscream's optics flicked to the children, and he gave them a reassuring smile. "I'm glad Cliffjumper was able to rescue you, younglings. I am Air Commander Starscream, Acting Head of the Decepticon Alliance. This is Soundwave, our Head of Communications, and his Symbiont, Ravage. You've already met Cliffjumper, so might I have your names?"

The three kids looked at each other for a long moment, before the boy took a protective stance in front of the girls. "I'm Vince. That's Sierra and Sephie. What are you and where did you come from?"

Soundwave stepped forward, wiggling his fingers at Vince. "Hey. Take it easy, man. Over here. The pile of rocks waving at you. Here. Yeah, I'm actually a thing. I'm a being.3 "

"Please excuse Soundwave. He hasn't really been himself since we crash landed on your planet. But while I'm not sure about that pile of rocks nonsense, he is correct in that we are sentient beings. We are autonomous robotic beings from the planet Cybertron. Our home was destroyed after centuries of civil war. The survivors are spread out amongst the stars. Several of your earth months ago, we intercepted a message from the leader of the enemy faction." Starscream pushed a button on a console near him, and a holographic image of Optimus Prime appeared before them.

Cliffjumper's tanks churned at the malevolent looking, red optics of his leader as the mech's deep voice rumbled. "This is Optimus Prime to any surviving Autobots taking refuging among the stars. We are here. We are waiting."

"There's more coming?" Vince asked in horror.

"Waiting for what?" Sierra added.

"I am not sure," Starscream admitted. "Though I admit it's foolish, we had hoped that the Prime merely wanted his faction to stop the fighting, to settle down on a new home in peace. But with these recent actions, that does not appear to be the case."

"Yeah, well, yes! I am angry! You know, I'm getting totally screwed over here. The deal was that if I won the Hunger Games, I get to live the rest of my life in peace. But now, you wanna kill me again!"4 Soundwave interrupted, his arms waving wildly as he ranted.

Vince and Sephie gave each other a bewildered look. "Are you…quoting Johanna Mason?" Vince finally asked.

"I thank you for your voices: thank you: Your most sweet voices,"5 Soundwave somberly replied.

Starscream's wings drooped behind him. "Right, as I said, Soundwave and I ended up crash landing on your planet when we came to investigate the transmission. Soundwave was badly damaged in the fall and well, he's been like this ever since. I hardly understand what he's trying to tell me anymore, or even if he's still mentally competent."

"Who do you think you're messin' with, you dumb animal? My mental facilities are twice what yours are, ya pea brain! "6

"Ookay, not that this isn't fascinating, but can we get back to 'Why are you on our planet and will you please leave now'?" Vince certainly didn't appear to be a fan of giant robots squatting on his home planet. Sephie looked like she was about to start arguing with him, and Sierra looked like she was still in shock.

"If you do not want us here, the Decepticons are more than willing to leave your planet in peace," Starscream replied. "However, I cannot say the same for the Autobots, and with that transmission, more Cybertronians from both factions are bound to continue to arrive on your planet."

"So if you leave, we're still fighting evil space robots, is that what you're saying?" Vince looked angry. But scrap, if aliens from another world brought their civil war blood feud to his planet, Cliff would probably be angry, too.

"But if you stay, you can help us fight them off, right?" Sephie blurted out.

"Seph, no," Vince hissed.

"We would do our best," Starscream vowed, looking oddly somber as he looked Sephie right in the eyes. "We will protect your world and your people until our sparks fade and all are one."

Sephie fidgeted, feeling the weight of Starscream's conviction. Even Vince seemed to be taken aback, losing his hostility somewhat at the Decepticon's vow to protect them with his life.

Cliffjumper still wasn't 100% sure he was making the right choice. But he did know one thing. "Soundwave's right," he spoke up, causing everyone to look at him. "No matter what side is the right one, we were all promised that if we won, we could live in peace. Instead, our planet's uninhabitable and we simply moved to the next one, and we're still fighting and killing each other. It never ends. And I'll stop that from happening to your world, no matter what faction I have to put down to do it."

Starscream looked at Cliffjumper for a long, charged moment. Then he smiled and gave the Autobot a small nod. And then Ravage jumped on his shoulders and nearly bowled the Air Commander over.

"Oh, Hai, Hoomans! Yu can petz meh naow?" Ravage called, waving at the three children with a large white paw. Sierra automatically waved back, still looking more than a little stunned.

"Ravage! Get off me you walking scrapheap!" Starscream shrieked.

Chapter Text

Vince breathed a sigh of relief when the glowing alien portal let him off at his front porch, just like the robotic extra terrestrials had promised him. That meant Sierra and Sephie were probably safe too. He texted them just to be sure. Both answered that they had been delivered to their homes without any problems.

The teen paused at the new phone number on his phone. Starscream had told them Soundwave would give them access to his com systems. If any of them felt they were ever in any danger the robots wanted them to call for help. Soundwave would send them a portal to safety. The new number for the robots was listed under 'Bifrost' and had a picture of a winking smiley face next to it.

This day had been completely surreal. He had found proof of life on other planets, and that life happened to be giant Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots having a grudge match on his planet. Though Vince was left with the distinct impression that blue eyes = good and red eyes = bad. But he couldn't be sure.

And there was only one thing to do when he wasn't sure about something. Vince pressed one, and held the ringing phone to his ear.

"Um, hey Dad? I need to talk to you…"
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Soundwave was a mech of many talents, the chief of which was the ability to get information that the enemy didn't want him to get. He was the best hacker to come out of Cybertron in millions of years. His skills at getting past firewalls—any firewalls—had led to the rumor that he was technopathic. Which he wasn't, although that did sound cool. No, he was just very, very good at his job.

Or well, he had been, anyway. The end of the war hadn't turned out well for the Decepticon forces. The Autobots had been closing in on them, and it had led to a desperate attack on the space docks. Megatron had hoped that, even if they couldn't take Cybertron, then at least some of them might escape to the stars. The battle had been brutal. Soundwave had entered that fight with six cassetticons and hundreds of Decepticon soldiers at his back. Now he, Starscream, and Ravage could very well be the only ones who still functioned. Soundwave didn't like to think about it.

He still has recharge fluxes about Megatron's last order. Watching his leader…his friend…face down Optimus Prime alone while Soundwave ran haunted him every night. He never should have left him behind…

When he and Starscream had gotten the insane Prime's message, it was such a relief to have something else to focus on. Neither Con had hesitated to change course to Earth. He knew Starscream had held out hope that maybe, just maybe, destroying the Decepticons and their own planet had given the Autobots a change of spark. But Soundwave had known better. Mechs as twisted as Optimus Prime couldn't do anything but destroy and kill in a quest to sate his hunger for violence. And so he did what he did best: He infiltrated.

By the time they had reached Earth's moon, Soundwave had broken the security on nearly every electronical interface on the planet. It wasn't hard; humans didn't seem to value firewall protection like Cybertronians did—probably because viruses were not fatal to organics—and what protection they did have was laughably simplistic. In a matter of moments, Soundwave knew everything about the little creatures.

He would never know what had happened to cause the crash. He was lost in the human 'internet', his mind nowhere near the ship, when they struck earth and he was offlined. He was still connected; his own firewalls lowered so he could obtain information. By his calculations, his mind was connected to the human data net for twelve hours before he onlined again. By then, the damage was done.

He could not disconnect.

News, entertainment, opinions, blogs, highly classified government information…he heard it all. Everything the humans deemed important enough to put on their servers. Anything that could be hacked. It almost drove him mad. Maybe it actually had. All he knew was, although he was as capable as he had always been inside his own mind, when he opened his mouth to speak…

His words were gone. Swallowed up by the words of these humans. He always understood what he was trying to say, but Starscream could no longer comprehend his messages. It didn't matter if he was speaking, or writing, or connected to com systems, he had tried it all. No matter what, he always ended up quoting someone else.

What was the point of an intelligence officer who couldn't give intelligence?

It bothered him sometimes. But as it was only him, Starscream, and Ravage—who seemed to share his glitches in a way he couldn't fully comprehend—Soundwave wasn't too worried, just yet. His mind was as clear as ever. His weapons were still as deadly. He wasn't obsolete yet.

After all, you didn't need to talk to infiltrate enemy position.

He'd noticed odd readings at this cave system for several weeks now, but had been hesitant to leave Starscream alone with the new Autobot. But now that it had been established that he was a rather unorthodox ally, Soundwave felt free to explore the location that had been worrying him.

The cavern had been excavated by the Autobots, turned into a huge energon mining operation. There was enough fuel here to keep the Autobots and their war machines functioning for decades. They could easily defeat any resistance the humans could mount with his much energon.

This was bad. But the 'Bots had obviously rushed this job. Soundwave was sure that with a few well-placed explosive charges he could bring this whole place down around their ears, burying the energon and the drilling equipment in one fell swoop. His course decided, Soundwave felt there was only one thing left to do first.

Deploying Ravage, Soundwave connected to him through his internal comm. channel, so as not to give away his position. {Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty1} he called, to get his Symbiont's attention.

Ravage stretched for a second, taking stock of their location. {Ooh, teh fiet! Ai ar attak kitteh! Ai noms dem!}

{I go. You stay. No following.2} Soundwave rebutted, physically holding Ravage back.

{Noes! Yu CAN haz helps!} Ravage's lips curled up in a snarl and he struggled to escape from Soundwave's grasp. Soundwave quickly wrapped his last surviving Casseticon in a hug, ignoring the fact that Ravage was clawing at him to get away.

{No! Stop, Chewie, stop! Chewie! Chewie this won't help me! Hey! Save your strength. There'll be another time. The Princess. You have to take care of her. You hear me?3}

Ravage gave out a barely vocal mew of distress and stopped struggling, curling into Soundwave instead. {Ai is liek caer 4 Prinses Starz, Srsly,} he confirmed, a hint of amusement coloring his tone, even through his distress.

Soundwave held his friend for a moment longer, and then nudged Ravage towards the exit. {E.T. phone home4 } he ordered before sneaking towards his first target.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Starscream had a bad feeling about today. He'd woken up with a processor ache and feeling deeply out of sorts. A ship diagnostic showed a slow leak in one of the reactor coils; inconvenient, easily fixed. But now he had to contact the organics and bring them back to check for radiation damage. That wasn't going to help them convince the natives that they meant no harm. The navigational panel was threatening to explode again. Cliffjumper was particularly moody and unpleasant today. Both Soundwave and Ravage had decided to go AWOL, so once again he was single handedly required to fix everything himself.

He supposed it was flattering Soundwave considered him competent enough to handle everything on his own, but mostly he was just tired. Starscream was not a great leader. He was just a scientist, who had remained neutral until he literally had had no choice otherwise. And he had joined the Decepticons, not because of any moral obligation, but because the Autobots had destroyed his home in Crystal City. He didn't understand why everyone always insisted he was the best choice for high ranking leadership positions. When he tried to point out that he had neither the skills or interest in being a leader, the response was usually an amused smirk and more responsibility.

Lord Megatron was brave, just, honest, and the best leader Cybertron had ever known. But Starscream just knew he'd given the Seeker the second highest rank possible in the Alliance just to mess with his head. Lord Megatron did have a rather twisted sense of humor, after all. But if he had gotten himself killed and left Starscream as Supreme Leader of the Decepticons, the Seeker would never forgive him.

Finally, finally, he received a location beacon from Ravage, and Starscream huffily activated the ground bridge. "It's about time you showed up," he snarled as Ravage slunk back onto the ship. "Of all the irresponsible things you two have done—and that is a long list, you know—this has got to be…" The Seeker trailed off as the ground bridge shut itself down. Ravage looked devastated, and Soundwave was not with him. Soundwave never left Ravage on his own anymore.

"Ravage, where is Soundwave?" Starscream asked, a sinking feeling in the bottom of his fuel tank.

A flashing light on one of the ship's monitors informed him of a large energon explosion five miles out of Jasper. Ravage slumped onto the ground and wailed.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Cliffjumper wasn't the most comforting bot. Or sensitive, or a bastion of appropriate behavior. So he wasn't sure what he should say or do for the two openly grieving Decepticons. But he was aware enough to know that what he was thinking, which was more or less, "Gee, I didn't know Cons had feelings," probably wasn't the best statement at this time. So he just sort of sat around awkwardly, trying not to draw any attention to himself.

This was even worse than when Arcee had lost Tailgate. He used to deliberately act like an idiot to tick her off on more than one occasion. Her temper was worse than his, and that was saying something. He welcomed her verbal abuse, the brutal sparring matches. It was so much better than watching her drown under guilt and sorrow.

But he cared about Arcee. He didn't care about Cons. Heck, Starscream had been the one who did this to them all. Cliff wasn't sure how, but he vividly remembered the last thing he saw when the world was normal was Starscream's claws headed for his spark chamber. There was a connection there, he just knew it.

The only good Con was a dead Con. What did he care that Weird Starscream nursed him back to health? Or that Weird Soundwave would sit next to him when he had had a bad recharge flux, offering him silent comfort? Or that Ravage was adorable and tried to stalk his peds when he wasn't looking? Or that they were suddenly better at acting like Autobots then some actual Autobots Cliff knew? It didn't mean anything. They were still Cons.

He should be glad Soundwave was probably dead. No Autobot mourned then death of a Decepticon, except maybe Optimus Prime. But that was just because Prime was so nobly perfect, he made Cliff break out in rust.

This was wrong. He was willing to protect the humans, he hadn't been lying about that, but other than that he was just biding his time. He had no intention of joining the Cons. He was going to make them lower their guards, then escape and figure out how to make the world normal again. He was not mourning a fraggin' con, scrap it.

Because if he was, if he mourned Soundwave the way Arcee had mourned Tailgate, he would never forgive himself.

The slagging Con didn't deserve it. He didn't!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Blackness. Pain. Blinding, agonizing, searing pain. Then a cooling, soothing sensation. The pain lessened.

"I do believe he's waking up," he heard a dispassionate voice state from somewhere above him. Who was that? He had exploded. He was dead. Wasn't he dead?

Soundwave's optics snapped open, and he knew he wasn't dead. He wished he was, though.

He was strapped down on an operating table. Above him was the malevolently grinning Optimus Prime, his chief medic Ratchet staring at Soundwave as if he was a very interesting new specimen. Neither of these were good things.

Soundwave had enough leeway with his restraints to be able to look down at his torso. His paint wasn't even scuffed up. He didn't understand. He'd been right in the epicenter of an energon explosion, you do not come out of that unscathed.

He wished he could scream and yell and demand to know what was going on, and what they intended to do to him, and imply unpleasant things about the Prime's mother. But Soundwave didn't want the Autobots knowing about his current…difficulties…with language, and so he said nothing.

If anything, Prime managed to look amused at his defiant silence. "Something the matter, Soundwave?" he asked in a deep purr. "You always were such a chatterbox. Why, the very vivid description of what you would do to me for Rumble's death was so wonderful, I had an ecstasy of new ideas for a month."

Ratchet looked bored, more than anything, but he did scan Soundwave's voice box. "It doesn't appear to be damaged," he informed Optimus.

Optimus shrugged. "It makes no real difference to me, either way. I must say, Old Friend, I hadn't expected you to be able to revive his spark."

"Oh, I didn't Optimus," For the first time, excitement poured into Ratchet's voice. "This did."

Ratchet held out a dark green energon crystal, looking pleased as it pulsed wildly. "I theorize it's Light Energon."

Soundwave felt himself relax as the two continued talking. He thought vaguely that he should be upset. He should fight. But why? He could feel his circuits loosen up and the tension he was in evaporated. This place wasn't so bad. He could just rest here for a while.

Optimus snorted. "The lifeblood of Unicron? That is a myth."

"Perhaps, but it has completely remade him, as well as revive his spark. With such a weapon at our disposal, we would truly be unstoppable. Unkillable soldiers, Optimus, think of it!"

Optimus eyed Soundwave critically. He saw how peaceful and relaxed the so-called Light Energon transfusion was making him. He couldn't even keep his guard up against the greatest threat the Decepticons had ever known. And...he was humming a human love ballad. Disgusting. "I don't see how useful it could be for us, unless of course you would prefer to see our soldiers lazing around making crystal flower chains instead of fighting our war for us?"

"Yes, well, that side effect is most…unfortunate," Ratchet admitted. "But I'm sure we will be able to fix it with a few…experiments."

Optimus chuckled and stepped back. "Well, don't let me stop you, then," he said, turning and leaving as Ratchet's scalpel slowly descended on the captive Decepticon…

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Hey, uh, Scream?"

Starscream managed to pull himself out of his melancholy long enough to give a dull, unimpressed look at Cliffjumper, who was fidgeting over by the deep space radar. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Sorry for bothering you, but your little light thingy is flashing."

"What light thingy?" Starscream asked, getting up and walking to the monitor.

"Well I was sitting there and then it started to blink and all these random numbers started scrolling down the page, and I thought I should tell you just in case."

"That's a communication's line in deep space," Starscream murmured. "And that code is…it's…" He stared at the numbers in silence for a long, intense moment. Then he whirled to Ravage. "Ravage! Activate the Space Bridge, activate it now!"

Ravage jumped but hurried to do what Starscream asked. Starscream stood next to the portal, looking as anxious as Cliffjumper felt. Whoever or whatever it was Starscream was expecting, it was big. Big enough to temporarily override the listlessness the Seeker had fallen into when he realized Soundwave's termination.

The Space Bridge flashed for a few moments, smoking as the silhouette of a large mech appeared in it. It took everything Cliffjumper had to keep from shooting him on sight. He knew that mech.

The portal closed, and the mech stumbled, falling to one knee. Starscream was quick to reach him, whispering in awe. "Lord Megatron."

Megatron, looking regal enough to make Cliffjumper want to hurl in his new white-and-green paintjob, looked up at the seeker and smiled. "Starscream," he whispered. "I'm home." Then his optics flickered briefly before he passed out.

Chapter Text

There were three things in this life that Cliffjumper really hated. One, was the happy cream color of the Harbinger's medical bay. Two, was Megatron, leader of the Decepticons. And three, of course, was staring at Megatron in the happy cream colored medical bay.

It truly was a Primus-awful shade of cream.

Neither Starscream nor Ravage had rested for a moment since Lord Megayuck had passed out after walking through the space bridge. They'd wired the Con leader to one of the med berths, Screamer mumbling something about energon depletion, and had been watching him sleep for hours. It was creepy, but Cliff wasn't letting Megatron out of optic range for one millisecond.

Cliffjumper had kind of felt sorry for the way Starscream was treated by his leader before the Con had suddenly become halfway decent. Not that he would admit that under any circumstances. He had a rep to think of, after all. Nor was he willing to admit that some small, insignificant part of him felt really fragging ticked off at the thought of Megatron treating maybe-sort-of-decent Scream like scrap. But mostly he just liked the idea of taking potshots at Megatron while the glitchhead couldn't dodge.

Wait, no, he was good, well behaved, and totally trustworthy. He should be let off the ship alone without supervision, or perhaps left on the ship alone without supervision. He did not shoot injured bots between the legs when there were witnesses.

His happy thoughts of dealing amusing damage to bedridden dictators was sadly brought to an end when said dictator groaned and his optics flickered back on.

"Lord Megatron?" Starscream leaned over, looking hopeful. "Can you hear me, my liege?"

"Starscream," Megatron murmured. "Where are we?"

"You're in the medical bay of the Harbinger, my lord," Starscream replied gently, reaching over to stop the warlord from getting up. "You're very weak. You should rest."

"The…the Harbinger? The Autobot Warship you and Soundwave spent six months plotting to steal?" Megatron asked, his jaw dropping. "The one we all told the two of you was too dangerous to go after?"

"Perhaps," Starscream admitted with a small, rueful smirk. "The danger was not so great as you supposed."

Megatron threw his head back and laughed. "You crazy son of a glitch!" He actually sounded somewhat fond. "Is it any wonder why you and Soundwave are my best operatives? Where is Soundwave?"

Starscream's smirk slowly died, his wings drooping with remembered sorrow. "Soundwave went out to scout a potential Autobot mining operation two days ago," he said softly. "And he did not return."

Megatron frowned, then reached up and ripped energon lines off of his chasis. Several medical devices started screeching at approximately the same time his second in command did.

"Lord Megatron! What are you doing?" Starscream cried as Megatron pushed himself off of the berth. "You're still very weak!"

"One of my men is missing," Megatron hissed. "I will not lie here in comfort while he—" the leader of the cons spotted Cliffjumper leaning against the wall and his optic's narrowed. "What. Is that. Doing here?" he spat, glaring at Cliffjumper.

Cliffjumper glared right back.

"That's Cliffjumper, he's an ally," Starscream hastened to explain, still trying to coax Megatron back onto the berth.

Megatron scoffed. "If he wears that symbol, he's no ally of mine," he snapped.

"Took the words right out my mouth, Con," Cliffjumper spat back, his engines revving for a fight.

Starscream gave Cliffjumper a look that was a cross between puzzled and betrayed before he put both servos on Megatron's chest and pushed, trying to get him back on the med berth. Megatron, even in his weakened state, was more than capable of ignoring his second's efforts in order to glare at the resident Autobot.

"You're lucky you somehow tricked my second in command into feeling sorry for you and putting you under his protection, Auto-scum," Megatron snarled, his gun whirling as if trying to come online.

"I've never needed someone to protect me since my Creator, Decepti-creep," Cliffjumper snarked back, his stingers lighting up in response.

"Would you two stop comparing your bolt sizes for one minute?" Starscream all but shrieked at the both of them before a warning alarm flashed throughout the room. "Now what?" the Seeker snarled, running to the bridge.

Megatron and Cliffjumper gave each other one final scowl before both silently followed Starscream.

"Report," the Decepticon leader said as soon as he stepped foot on the Harbinger's bridge.

"One of the humans we saved is requesting a ground bridge to our location," Starscream replied, as he fiddled with one of the monitors.

Cliffjumper stiffened. "One of the kids is in trouble?" he asked, temporarily forgetting his hatred of Decepticons in general and Megatron in particular.

Megatron may not have been up-to-date on what exactly had happened on this planet, but he did understand the importance of protecting one's ally. "Starscream, activate the ground bridge."

Starscream quickly activated said bridge. Within a few moments, the whirling sphere had been brought to life. Before any of the Cybertronians could blink, several heavily armed men in military uniforms had rushed through, each training their weapons on the Transformers. A regal, blonde man with a hard look stepped through last.

"My name is Commander Leland Bishop," the man told them sternly. "Head of an undercover worldwide taskforce dealing with terrorist, supernatural, and extra terrestrial threats. I understand you have come into contact with my son?"

_______________________________________________________________________________________

"What gifts have you created for me, Old Friend?"

Ratchet looked up from his workshop, impassively acknowledging the Prime's return. He motioned towards the table where Soundwave was strapped down.

"Very little real progress has been made," Ratchet admitted, transforming a scalpel and nicking Soundwave's leg with it. The wound healed itself almost the moment the injury was made. "As you can see, Light Energon has remarkable restorative abilities. However because of that I find myself incapable of doing more than a few noninvasive scans. Most bothersome, that. I attempted a cortical physic link, but am unable to comprehend his processor. Though whether that is a result of Light Energon or just a part of his unique personality I cannot hope to theorize."

Optimus's optics narrowed over his prisoner for a moment, as said prisoner continued to hum his human love ballad. He seemed completely unconcerned and in very good spirits for one who had been left to Ratchet's tender mercies for hours.

"Are you telling me," the Prime said softly, in a very dangerous tone of voice, "That you have resurrected one of our most wanted enemies from the dead and filled him with an unknown substance that is both useless to us and prevents us from killing or even torturing said enemy?!"

Ratchet swallowed as Optimus's voice got louder and louder until he was eventually shouting in the medic's face. Ratchet was cunning and competent enough that he rarely faced Optimus' wrath. It made this moment all the more terrifying.

"Ah…perhaps for the moment?" he managed to squeak out when it became clear Prime was waiting for an answer.

Optimus roared and slammed Ratchet against the wall, his battle axe dangerously close to the medic's throat. "If you have not figured out a way to make this Light Energon useful to me in three hours, I will make an example of your incompetence in front of everyone, do you understand me, medic!?"

"Yes sir," Ratchet replied rather shakily. "I understand."

Optimus huffed and dropped, Ratchet, who fell to his knees as soon as he was free. "I expect better of you, Old Friend," Optimus warned him, before leaving the room.

Ratchet glared at his retreating back. "As if anything you are didn't come from me, you arrogant, conniving, fragger," he muttered under his breath, returning to his work feeling discontent and very hard put upon indeed.

_________________________________________________________________

"I am Lord Megatron, Leader of the Decepticon Alliance," Megatron stepped forward, seamlessly putting himself between the well-armed little creatures and the remainder of his crew. "It is very nice to meet you, Commander Bishop. Now get the frag off my ship."

"What the Illustrious Lord Megatron means is that we are most honored by your visit," Starscream interjected quickly. "But it really isn't the best time for guests. One of our crewmembers is missing, and we were about to go look for him."

"My, how concerning," Bishop replied dryly. "Almost as concerning as extra terrestrials of unknown motive or origin hiding on one's planet for an unknown period of time."

"That does sound alarming," Starscream agreed, biting his lower glossa in worry.

"When you find those fraggers, give us a call and we'll shoot them for you," Megatron added.

"Lord Megatron, please!" Starscream looked like he didn't know whether to scream in anger or cry in frustration. "Please just let me handle this!"

Megatron gave a long-suffering sigh, but nodded at his second. A good deal of tension left Starscream's wings as he turned to the suspicious humans.

"I am truly sorry for the alarm I have caused you. I was in charge at the time and it was my decision, and mine alone, that we should not make contact with your government. I had hoped we could resolve matters calmly and leave without disrupting the lives of your citizens, but I was wrong. I take full responsibility for my actions and ask humbly for your pardon."

Colonel Bishop didn't even blink at the apology. "You're a smooth one," he acknowledged. "I'm going to need you all to come with us for an assessment."

"And what, exactly, is an assessment?" Megatron asked, looking more irritable by the second.

"Nothing bad," Bishop assured him. "As long as you are telling us the truth that you mean no harm."

"We would be happy to allow you to assess us," Starscream assured him.

"After we find Soundwave and bring him back safely," Megatron added.

"That is unacceptable. I will not have potential threats running around my planet with no supervision," Bishop snapped.

"I don't have time to coddle organics!" Megatron snapped back.

"Commander, perhaps a compromise?" One of Bishop's soldiers, a tall, deadly-looking brunette with glasses and a no-nonsense attitude, stepped forward.

"You have a suggestion, Baroness?"

Baroness smirked at the Decepticons, her weapon slung carelessly over her shoulder. "I will accompany the robots on their mission, and observe," she informed her leader. "And one of them shall join us for assessment."

Commander Bishop nodded and turned to Megatron. "I assume this is acceptable to you?" he asked.

Megatron visibly grit his teeth, then bared them at Bishop in a way that might be considered a smile, if one was unobservant. "Ravage, follow the organics. Keep your tracking beacon on at all times."

"I can has hoomans?" Ravage squealed in excitement.

Megatron shot the Casseticon a bewildered look, then decided he didn't care. "Sure. Whatever."

"EEE! I CAN has hoomans!" Ravage cheered and jumped one of the soldiers, knocking him down and causing all of the soldiers to train their weapons on him.

"It's okay, guys," Ravage's human called out, laughing as he scratched Ravage's chin. "He's purring, it's all good."

"I luvs mai hooman," Ravage agreed.

"It's a giant robot with razor sharp knife claws kneading your chest, but it's purring so it's good," another soldier muttered, glaring at his buddy. "Blast it Firefly, you crazy lunatic!"

"Ravage, be careful with the squishy humans," Starscream warned, as he called up a ground bridge to Soundwave's last known coordinates.

"OK!1!" Ravage replied agreeably.

Megatron huffed at the delay and gave Baroness a look of barely-concealed annoyance as he motioned towards the newly activated ground bridge. "Shall we?" he asked her.

Baroness smirked. "After you," she replied. Megatron rolled his optics and disappeared into the ground bridge. Starscream, Cliffjumper, and Baroness followed.

There was a long silence after the ground bridge cut off, broken only by the sound of Rumble's purring. Finally, Commander Bishop sighed.

"Zartan, help me get this thing off of Firefly so we can start," he said, as the men tried to convince a perfectly content 200 plus pound death robot cat that he needed to move.

___________________________________________________________________

What used to be a state of the art Autobot Energon mine now resembled little more than a burnt out hole in the ground. The hope that Lord Megatron's confidence had inspired was rapidly dwindling as Starscream calculated the odds of any mech surviving an explosion at ground zero.

But Megatron, unlike Starscream, had never let such paltry concerns such as the odds of survival slow him down. He stalked through the bombed out mine with a scowl on his face, as if blaming the universe for his current fortune.

Baroness paused when she saw the level of destruction around her, but recovered nicely and hurried to keep up with the faster moving Cybertronians. "What has happened here?" she asked.

Megatron gave her a look, as if he suddenly realized that the universe wasn't to blame for his mood, it was this human's fault. Starscream, still trying to play mediator, took it upon himself to answer.

"The Autobots were mining energon here. It is a rare substance that both keeps us fueled, and powers Autobot war machines. Soundwave sabotaged the mine before they could produce enough energon to threaten your world. We think he was still here when the explosive charges went off."

Baroness' face softened ever so slightly as she considered the odds of surviving such a blast, as well as the damage such an energy source could have posed to her world. "I see," was all she said.

"Hey, Scream, check this out!" Cliffjumper called from further up ahead.

Starscream hurried ahead to where the Autobot was inspecting something critically. "What is it, Cliffjumper?" he asked.

"Look," Cliff pointed to an alcove. Underneath it were several Cybertronian foot prints, and the unmistakable signs of someone being dragged off. "Looks like Soundwave was here, and they took him."

"Are there any signs he was online?" Starscream asked anxiously.

"There's a lot of energon leakage here," Cliff admitted. "At least, I think there is? It's a weird color." He motioned to a bright green puddle of energon that was lying nearby. Its consistency implied that it had been leaked out of a bot rather than unprocessed in the mine. Cliff dipped his digits into it and brought it closer to his optics for a better look.

"What are you doing? Don't touch it!" Starscream shrieked.

"This mine isn't overly large," Megatron called as he made his way over to the two of them. "And Soundwave is no longer here."

"We found evidence he's been moved," Starscream informed his leader.

"That's a good sign," Baroness added. "Why would they move him if he was dead?"

Megatron blinked, looking a bit befuddled at her encouraging words. But then he gave her a small, but genuine smile, and a nod.

"Okay! New task; finding out where Soundwave ended up," Cliffjumper stood up, only to stumble and lean against the wall, as his optics started to dilate.

"Cliffjumper, are you well?" Starscream asked.

The Autobot stared at the seeker for a long moment, before he giggled. "I'm a-o-great, Screamy boy!" he laughed. "I haven't felt this good since Iacon beat Pollyhex in the Cube semifinals, now that was a victory party!"

"Are you over energized?" Megatron asked incredulously.

Cliffjumper stood up and looked at the Decepticon leader as seriously as he could currently manage. Then he burst into giggles again and started singing. "Protoform, protoform, what will you be?" He was hilariously off-key, and butchering the melody.

"Robots who can be happy?" Baroness asked, sounding amused. "Robots who can get drunk."

"Robots who are a pain in my aft," Megatron hissed, cuffing Cliffjumper on the helm, causing the Autobot to over compensate his balance and fall backwards. He looked slightly bewildered at his new position, before shrugging it off and going back to singing the Protoform song.

Starscream looked at the green energon still dripping from Cliffjumper's fingers, then took a small vial from his subspace and took a sample, being careful not to touch it himself. "This could be the most potent form of energon we've ever encountered," he informed Megatron. "Be careful not to touch it."

"I always loved that song," Cliffjumper informed Baroness over-seriously. "It's like, there's only one little Protoform, but he can be anything. It's so deep."

"I can see that," Baroness agreed, trying not to laugh at him.

"Starscream!" Cliffjumper continued, his optic's lighting up as he caught sight of the Seeker. "You're an okay guy." He looked around as if ensuring no one was watching, then lowered his voice to a very loud whisper. "I like you," he said, before putting a digit to his mouth and shushing himself. "Issa secret."

"Thanks," Starscream replied dryly. "We need to get you back to the Harbinger so you can sleep this off."

Cliff glared at Megatron, trying to point at him, but his digits wouldn't work properly. He waved at the Decepticon instead. "I don' like you," he snapped. "You're an afthole."

Megatron made a sound that sounded suspiciously like he was choking back a laugh. "You're right," he admitted, once he had calmed back down.

"I AM right. I am right! I am sooooo…" Cliffjumper slumped as his program shut him down to protect his processor from permanent damage from whatever type of energon he had picked up. The Autobot snored gently as Starscream sighed and picked him up.

"This outing has given us no answers and a great many more questions," he informed his still-conscious companions. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get Cliffjumper to a decontamination unit, and then to a berth to sleep whatever the frag this was off."

With that, he remotely activated the ground bridge and stepped through with his unconscious patient. After a silent acknowledgement of each other, Megatron and Baroness soon followed.

Chapter Text

Optimus watched his medic, the look in his optics promising pain, as Ratchet scurried about his scientific equipment. The CMO certainly acted as if he was in a better mood, which bode well, for Ratchet's immediate future, at least.

"You said you had something to show me?"

"Yes, yes, I finally figured out what the Light Energon is doing to our…guest," Ratchet replied.

Optimus' gaze flickered over to Soundwave, who had gone completely silent, staring at nothing. His limbs twitched every now and again, but otherwise he was completely comatose.

"Do enlighten me," the Prime purred.

"He's happy."

That was not an answer Optimus had been prepared to hear. He straightened up, giving his medic and incredulous look. "What?"

"The Light Energon is keeping every subroutine involving the feeling of happiness completely turned on without any pauses," Ratchet explained. "Our minds can't handle that much of a single type of stimuli without rest. At first, the victim feels irrationally giddy, as if over-energized. After some time, they will start feeling twitchy; as if their minds are going so fast they cannot comprehend their own thoughts. Delusions of grandeur are commonplace at that stage, as well as extreme risk taking behaviors. After all, the patient feel so happy, what could go wrong? Then the recharge cycle becomes glitched, so recharge deprivation is added to the patient's symptoms. As the damage becomes critical, the patient will either become comatose, as is the case of our young friend here," he nodded towards Soundwave for emphasis. "Or, as in the case of my other 'volunteer'…"

Ratchet motioned Optimus to follow him towards a locked door with a window on the far edge of his lab. Optimus looked into the doorway with minimal interest…

…Only to jerk away quickly as a Vehibot's arm appeared, trying to grab him and yank him into the doorway. The Vehibot looked crazed, its optics wide and twitchy, as it moved in a jerky manner.

"Don't look away they're coming they're coming, hear them? So loud, loud, loud," the Vehibot babbled, before laughing hysterically and launching itself towards the Prime again, growling. "I'll get you!" it vowed.

"Ratchet?" Optimus asked.

"If the subject does not go comatose, it experiences a complete psychotic break," Ratchet confirmed, a smirk on his face. "And thanks to the Light Energon, once released, our friend here cannot be injured or destroyed."

"And as such is extremely hard to stop," Optimus realized, a malevolent smile lighting up his features. "Especially when there are thousands of them at once."

At that, Ratchet faltered a bit. "Ah…pardon?"

"Come with me, Old Friend, and bring our Light Energon with you," Optimus ordered. "I have a gift for you that I think you'll enjoy."

_________________________________________________________

Baroness leaned against a computer console as she watched Starscream leaving the medical bay. "How is he?" she asked him.

"He'll be fine," Starscream assured her. "I decontaminated him, and there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage. But if dipping a digit into that stuff over energized him to that degree I'd hate to see what would happen if anyone every tried to use it as a fuel source."

Baroness nodded, watching him intently. "This Cliffjumper is not like the rest of you."

Starscream paused at that. "Not…not as such, no," he agreed, sounding wary.

"He is an Autobot?"

"I…guess? He's our prisoner, or he was. He sort of…defected? Maybe?" Starscream tried very hard to explain but found he couldn't. "It's complicated."

"Defections usually are," Baroness agreed. "Especially when there's bad blood on both sides."

Starscream chuckled. "Our war has continued for over five million years. There are more than a few hard feelings between both sides."

"That's a long time to be fighting."

"I can barely remember a time when I wasn't fighting, any more."

Baroness hummed. "I can imagine how tempting it would be to hide away on a new planet and just rest," she continued.

Starscream tensed again, looking at her with narrow optics. "Yesss…?"

"Relax," Baroness informed him. "It's my job to look for hidden motivations, especially if they might be hostile. But I don't think yours were. You just wanted to bury your head in our sand for a while, as it were."

There was a long silence as Starscream considered her insights into his actions on earth. "You're probably right," he admitted. "I was lost, out numbered, and desperately trying to hide from the fact that I was most likely now in charge. But it doesn't excuse the fact that I hid when I should have tried to warn your people that you were under threat. It was poorly done of me."

Baroness didn't disagree with him. She simply nodded, silently accepting his unspoken apology.

The silence that followed was awkward, at least on the Decepticon's part. Starscream had never particularly enjoyed acknowledging his mistakes; he felt overly exposed and a little vulnerable. Desperate to change the subject as quickly as possible, the Seeker wracked his processor for something to say.

"It's surprising that your people have managed to leave the ship without someone here to run the ground bridge," he finally said, wincing slightly as he realized it might be taken as an insult to their host's intelligence.

Luckily, Baroness was hard to offend, so she simply shrugged with a small smile. "The Commander is very gifted when it comes to reverse engineering advanced technology," she admitted. "He'll probably want you to share as much of your technological advancements as you're willing to share."

"As soon as I have a free moment, I'd be happy to explain our technology," Starscream agreed. "But I'm probably going to need Ravage back first."

"I wouldn't worry too much about your cat," Baroness commented, checking her phone and offering it to the second in command.

Her phone showed one of the human social media sites. On the top of a calming blue background, this particular site called itself Friendbook. A picture of Ravage waving at the camera was next, and then there was the message, that certainly sounded like Ravage.

LOL! HAI! Can yu see me, hoomans? AI am wavin at yu! #HaiHoomans #Deceptikitty Ravage

Underneath this was a statement that Ravage had responded to 52 FarmWorker requests from someone named James McCullen.

"I love James, but he's a bit of a dinosaur," was Baroness' explanation for that. "Nobody plays FarmWorker any more. But if he's putting your kitty on social media so he can spam requests for aid, that means Ravage is going through assessment remarkably well."

"I'm…not sure I'm following?"

"James isn't allowed to send FarmWorker requests to any of us anymore because several of our people started threatening physical violence. The fact that Ravage seems fine with it is a statement to your species' patience and benevolence. It's a good sign, honest."

Starscream's optics twitched as he saw Ravage had declared himself in a relationship with, 'Steeljaw BFF!' Never mind that Steeljaw hated his guts and was an Autobot besides that. "I think Ravage is just unique," he said, feeling rather cross. How many times did he have to tell that Casseticon we do not form friendly, one-sided relationships with the enemy?!

___________________________________________________________

Speaking of the enemy, Ratchet was in raptures. Or at least a very good mood, which was almost as surprising.

"An ancient Cybertronian battleground," he whispered, sounding awed as he looked at the unassuming valley, currently being dug up by Vehibot drones. Long dead Cybertronian warriors were being dug up and laid irrelevantly on the surface. Thousands had already been uncovered, and yet still more were still being excavated. "If even a fraction of these corpses respond well to the Light Energon treatment, we will have an army like no other in the galaxy. Optimus, did you know about this? That our people once landed here? Fought here? Possibly even left behind ancient, forgotten weaponry here?"

Optimus' grin would have been considered fond if it wasn't for the insane glint in his optics. "Why, Old Friend," the Prime purred. "Why else would I have bothered with this worthless chunk of rock?"

____________________________________________________

"It's incredible! Actual, sentient, adaptable technological life forms," Bishop's head technician gushed. The man was so technologically savvy that even his name was classified under the highest governmental red tape. But for all that, he was a bit of an airhead. Vince had once called the man Error 404 as a joke, and the nickname had stuck.

"Look, look, look, it's adapting to us right now," Error 404 continued, pointing to the monitor. On it, the mechanical cat-like creature was answering questions in that annoying text-speak thing that kids did and Bishop hated.

"What is your purpose on our planet?" the interviewer asked the machine.

It cocked his head, then smiled. "To noms ALL the cheezburgers! An happeh 2 halp hoomans. Yu R all mah favrit an stuffs."

Commander Bishop gave his technician a look. "What do you mean it's adapting?"

Error 404 gave him a Look. "Ever since Destro introduced it to social media, all of its replies have been 140 characters or less. You can see the difference right here on this print out, see?"

In spite himself, the Commander had to check. Sure enough, the read out of the early interview clearly showed the machine's answers to be longer and more detailed. But once Destro had given in to his stupid social media addiction and dragged their state-of-the-art machine in with him, the cat's responses had been short and clipped, as if giving a social media status update.

"It must have concluded the status update limit is a preference for human communication time and it's trying to accommodate us," Error 404 continued excitedly. "I've never seen an AI capable of such adaptive, independent thought!"

"The question is, is it dangerous?"

The technician shrugged. "It has the potential, of course. But it doesn't appear to have the motivation to harm us. Actually, it seems to like us."

At that, the machine turned to the one way glass mirror, its eyes lighting up before looking Bishop dead in the eye. It smiled and waved at him. "Hai hoomans! Ai can c u. Can u c me?"

______________________________________________

Arcee was bored. Optimus and Ratchet were off somewhere secret being weird. Goldbug or Yellowbee or whatever the Pit he decided his name was today was out on patrol. And Bulkhead was dumb as a sack of bricks. That just left her. Stuck here, on monitor duty, when she knew for a fact there were Decepticons out there waiting for her to come out and play.

Life was so unfair she thought she could die.

But she knew what Optimus would do to her if she left her post without a fragging good reason, so here she stayed. Watching the radar of nothing with nothing on it!

Except…wait.

There was a Con signature near here! And it was stationary! Just sitting there, waiting for her to come snuff it out!

"Oh, Bulkhead," she sing-songed, "How do you feel about smashing a Con?"

The Wrecker's scarred face lit up with interest. "I'm always down for that," he admitted.

"There's a Con giving off a homing signal at a nearby human base a few miles away," Arcee explained. "We can squash it, and the humans in one fell swoop."

_____________________________________________________

"McCullen, stop sending the robot FarmWorker requests."

Commander Bishop's second-in-command looked devastated as he looked up from his desk. "But sir…"

"No buts. Baroness just sent me a text saying you've sent it one hundred and forty-two requests in the last five minutes. It's creepy. It ends now. That's an order." Children. Leland Bishop was working with actual children.

James 'Destro' McCullen looked very hard put upon, but sighed and nodded. "Understood, sir."

The Commander gave him a stern glare. "And don't you dare start sending requests the other robots, either!" he added just in case. McCullen's face fell as his last hope died, in the same instant the base's red alert alarm went off.

Thankful that at least now he'll have something to report to Washington other than, 'Found robot aliens. Second in command immediately started request spamming them,' the Commander rushed to his command center.

"Report," he ordered as soon as he entered the room.

"Two more alien machines have entered our air space," one of the men informed him. "They fit the description of the hostile faction known as the Autobots, sir!"

"They've opened fire!" warned another as the base rocked under the Autobots' heavy fire power.

There was a loud snarl, and then the cat-like Decepticon was suddenly on the monitors outside the base. "How did it get outside?" Bishop yelled.

"Sir, it just…it just jumped through the mirror and was gone before I could blink," someone called through the com channel, sounding somewhat stunned. "I've never seen anything move so fast!"

"Autobots!" The cat snarled at the hostile machines, who had temporarily ceased fire when he had appeared. "You leef thees peeps alone or I'm gonna noms u!"

"Ravage," the feminine looking one purred. "It looks like today's my lucky day."

"I'm gonna pound you into the pavement!" howled the second one, swinging a wrecking ball towards the cat. Ravage dodged effortlessly, then jumped on the chain connecting the ball to the Autobot and ran straight up the large machine's arm, launching himself directly into the enemy's face.

"When I'm dun wif u, it will look liek u has gone thru papr shreddr," Ravage snarled as he tried his to chew the big bot's face off.

____________________________________________________

Both Megatron and Starscream looked up as Baroness' phone started to flash red and emit a high pitched beeping noise. The human checked it and pushed a button, rendering it silent.

"Is everything okay?" Starscream asked.

"No," Baroness replied. "Our headquarters are under attack."

"Your headquarters?" Megatron asked, straightening in alarm. "Ravage?"

"He is helping defend against two machines who have weaponry and defenses like nothing we've ever seen," Baroness replied. "They're like you. One is large, nearly 26 ft tall, purple and black with red eyes…"

"Bulkhead," Megatron spat. "I'd no idea that brute was still alive."

"The other is smaller, thin, yellow-and-white, with a feminine build."

"Arcee," Starscream grimaced. "Lord Megatron, one of us will have to aid Ravage and our new human allies. But one of us has to stay and keep an optic on Cliffjumper. He hasn't woken up yet and shouldn't be left on his own in case of complications."

"Agreed," Megatron was already calculating the data, trying to come up with the best tactic. "Starscream, you're faster than I am. You have also already come up with a disguise that will not alarm the natives if they should spot you flying. Take Baroness with you, and be careful."

Starscream bit his lip and looked towards the medbay, causing Megatron to growl.

"I think I can handle one unconscious Autobot without flying off the handle, Starscream, now go!"

Starscream saluted and transformed, opening his canopy to let Baroness inside before zooming out of the ship's cargo bay. Megatron watched him go, then sighed.

"Okay," he told himself. "I'm going to go stare at an Autobot, if anyone cares."

__________________________________________________

There were few things in life that were as satisfying as watching the life drain out of a Decepticon's optics while you held their spark casing in their hands.

"Get him off me! Get him off me!"

Watching Bulkhead roll around in the dirt while Ravage tried his level best to scratch his face plate off was a very close second. Arcee sighed in contentment as she watched the energon drip from the clawed sections of the wrecker's face and neck, even as she resumed shooting at the insignificant organic wretches that were amusingly trying to surround her.

The sound of a jet attracts the Autobot's attention, and she looks up in time to watch the Decepticon second-in-command transform, one of the organic humans ejecting from his cockpit into his hand as he lands. He bends over and ensures the human is safely on the ground before turning to her. Arcee gives him a pleased little smile.

"Starscream! Now it's a party!" she greets him as he aims his weapons at her. "Missed you, sweet spark."

"Arcee," the Seeker replies. "You're as lovely as ever, I see."

"Not as lovely as you, big bot," Arcee responds, winking at him. "Loving the new heel-struts, makes the optics go right to those yummy legs of yours."

"You flatter me, as always," Starscream gives her a smirk, never lowering his weapon for a milisecond. "Shall we take this elsewhere? Hard to dance with so little room to manuever."

"Oh, I'm sure we'll manage," Arcee assured him, before her face twisted into a snarl and she opened fire on the seeker. "We're both so flexible!"

Starscream twisted sidewise and dove for cover, even as he returned fire on the Autobot. Battle had been joined.

"I'm gunna eat ur face off!"

"FOR THE LOVE OF UNICRON GET HIM OFF ME!"

_______________________________________________________

Cliffjumper had such a helmache. He was in that Primus-awful cream med bay. Megatron was looming over him.

"Gah!" Cliff shouted elegantly, trying to activate his stingers and jump up. He was…less successful as he'd hoped, tumbling off the side of the berth and ending up on the floor in a heap. At least three heavy pieces of medical equipment landed on top of him. Megatron, the glitch, just stood there and smirked at him the whole time.

"Good morning, Autobot!" he shouted, yes, shouted. Primus, Cliff's helm was killing him.

"Not so loud," he begged the Decepticon leader.

"Yes, I am glad you had a nice nap!" Megatron shouted even louder. Afthole.

Cliffjumper groaned and gingerly stood up. "What happened?"

"You touched something you knew nothing about and got higher than Happy Hour on Vos," Megatron explained.

"Why are…why are you so…you?" Cliff moaned.

"Because if I wasn't me, the universe would lose an irreplaceable treasure," Megatron explained without skipping a beat. "And speaking of losing, let's talk about you."

"What?" Maybe Cliffjumper's processor wasn't connecting properly. Nothing about that last sentence made any sense.

Megatron's grin was positively feral. "Who are you, Cliffjumper? What made you take that symbol," he gestured to the Auto brand with a sneer before continuing, "and most importantly, why are you on my ship?"

Cliff's mouth opened, but nothing came out. He was having a hard time gathering his thoughts. He wasn't sure how to explain what was going on, or even if he should. What would he even say? Well, you're an evil monster, except I maybe died for a second and now you're not acting as evil as normal, but you're still a jerk? Cliff wouldn't have accepted an explanation like that.

Luckily, Cliffjumper was saved by the bell, or in this case, a beeping noise. Megatron looked like he was going to punch something.

"Now what?" he snarled, stomping to the nearest monitor and activating it. The distorted vision of Optimus' face appeared.

"Megatron, it's been too long."

"Prime," if Megatron disliked Cliffjumper, he loathed the Prime, and you could tell it by the way he spit his opponent's name. "What the frag do you want?"

"Bad day? You seem stressed."

Without warning, the Decepticon leader slammed his fist on the side of the monitor, cracking it slightly. "I'll show you stressed, you—"

"Ah, ah, temper, temper, Megatron. I've warned you about that," Optimus scolded. "I think the two of us need to talk."

Chapter Text

"I'm sure whatever you have to say will be greatly revealing," Megatron told Optimus, his voice dry as a desert. Then he reached up and disconnected the Prime's call.

"Did you just hang up on him?" Cliffjumper asked incredulously.

Megatron just smirked as the com panel started to beep again. The Decepticon leader deliberately ignored it.

"What if he has important information?"

"Of course he has important information," Megatron rolled his eyes. "However, he's not going to tell that information to me. And I'm in no mood to pick apart Prime's lies and innuendos in the hope of finding some kernel of truth that may or may not have been said. Especially when it's so much easier to frag him off by doing nothing at all."

For once, Cliff found he couldn't really argue with Megatron's logic. Except for one detail. "Aren't you worried about retaliation?" he asked. Before everything twisted backwards, Optimus Prime had always agreed to Megatron's discourses, hoping the violence would stop, if only momentarily, if he humored the warlord. Cliffjumper had privately thought his Prime had worried about what Megatron would do if he was ignored, as well.

But now, this new Megatron shrugged. "I did, once," he admitted. "But I have since learned that the Prime will do as he wills, and nothing I say or do will dissuade him from his course. I can only plant myself in front of him, so that he must go through me to accomplish his goals. And I have found I do not need to speak to him to do that."

With that, Megatron turned back to the monitor and activated it. The Prime looked fit to be tied as Megatron smiled at him. "Optimus, I've never told you just how much I love our little talks," Megatron informed his furious opponent.

"Megatron—" was all Optimus managed to spit out before Megatron hung up on him again.

The Decepticon turned to his stunned Autobot guest and gave him a pleased smile. "Also, my new method of dealing with Optimus' slag makes me feel incredibly happy," he admitted.

____________________________________________________________

There were three things in this life that Starscream knew to be true: Arcee's beauty was second only to her insanity, and she was an extremely dangerous opponent.

Especially in cases where Starscream was trying to limit collateral damage and she wasn't. The Seeker grit his teeth as the two-wheeler kicked him in the ribs before she whirled and fired at the organics who had come out in force to defend themselves. Frankly, they were just getting in the way and making his job harder.

Starscream rolled out of the way just in time to miss Arcee's blaster, and used the momentum to transform and take to the skies. The air was the Seeker's greatest ally and weapon; and he needed all the advantages he could get.

Luckily, a few strafing runs were all he needed to distract Arcee from blowing up the natives in favor of finding cover. Starscream chased her down, transforming again in midair and tackling her to the ground. He struck at her with his claws, trying his very best to gut her, but the Autobot was ready for him. She held up her blaster in time to block his claws, and the two suddenly found themselves locked in a battle of sheer strength.

"You should have quit while you were ahead," Starscream snarled at his opponent as his superior leverage was giving him a severe advantage, and Arcee's arms were weakening. The Autobot snarled at him, but then her optics glanced behind him and she smiled again.

"Hey, Starscream!"

Bulkhead's voice was so unexpected that Starscream froze for a moment. It was all the Autobot needed.

"Incoming!" Bulkhead laughed as he flung Ravage from his own body, the cat snarling as he flew through the air and connected solidly with Starscream, knocking both Decepticons away from Arcee and allowing her to regain her footing.

Ravage quickly regained his feet, giving Starscream a genuine smile. "Oh, hai, Starz," he greeted his commanding officer. "Did yu come 2 halp meh wif da fites?"

"Hello, Ravage," Starscream replied, rolling his eyes even as he aimed his rockets at the two Autobots. Bulkhead looked a little scratched up—pun intended, Ravage had really worked him over—but neither he nor Arcee were anywhere close to being down for the count.

__________________________________________________________

Optimus continued trying to call Megatron for several minutes. In that time, the silence on the Harbinger was only broken by the incessant ringing on the com channel, and occasionally by Megatron answering just long enough to mock the Prime before hanging up again. The longer this pattern went on, the more furious Optimus was each time Megatron answered, and that in turn made Megatron's mood improve exponentially each time he saw the Prime's face.

One side effect of this which Cliffjumper greatly appreciated, is the fact that Megatron seemed to have completely forgotten about interrogating him. The Autobot felt like he'd gotten a stay of execution. But finally, the com unit went silent, and Megatron sighed, a happy smirk featured on his face.

"Alright, I've had my fun," he informed the room in general, before turning to Cliffjumper. "I don't suppose you know anything about computers, hacking, or Prime's plan in general?"

Cliffjumper blinked at the sudden statement, but found himself shaking his head. "I'm mostly just the guy you turn to when you need to punch someone really hard," he admitted.

"Yeah, me too," Megatron replied, looking thoughtful. "Normally, Soundwave would have already discovered everything the Prime was up to by the time Optimus decided he was tired of trying to bait me. But since I have no idea where he is, we need a plan B."

"I can help!" a small, enthusiastic voice popped up. "I know everything there is to know about computers!"

Both Cybertronians looked down, to see a very excited Sephie waving up at them.

"What the frag?" Megatron stated with his usual elegance.

"You're one of those kids from earlier," Cliffjumper realized. "Sandy…no, Sophie. Sophie, how'd you get back on this ship?!"

The human stomped her foot. "It's Sephie, and I never left," she snapped.

"I saw you leave. Soundwave practically booted you out through the ground bridge," Cliffjumper argued.

Sephie huffed and rolled her eyes. "I snuck back through before it closed," she explained. "It wasn't hard. None of you robots ever look down."

"Who the frag are you?" Megatron asked, still trying to catch up.

"I'm Sephie Beller, and you are the coolest thing I've ever seen," Sephie gushed at the Decepticon.

Megatron studied her for a second, then nodded. "You are by far my favorite organic," he finally declared.

"Yes," Sephie whispered, fist pumping with both hands. Then she cleared her throat and did her best to look professional. "Anyway, like I said, there isn't a computer on the planet that I can't hack."

"That doesn't mean you can hack into the Autobots' computers," Megatron pointed out.

"Are they on the planet?" Sephie asked, her hands on her hips.

"They are."

"Then I can hack them."

Megatron's smirk turned softer and more fond as he looked down at the defiant little human. "I really do like this one," he informed Cliffjumper before turning back to the girl. "Alright, Sephie Beller. We shall do this your way."

"Really? Yes! You won't regret this," Sephie gushed, all but jumping into the hand Megatron offered to her. The Decepticon leader carefully carried her to one of the computer monitors and set her down next to it. Sephie hummed, then dug into her backpack and pulled out a laptop of her own.

"It might take a bit for me to figure out how to connect to your systems," she warned. "But once I figure out Cybertronian computer codes, nothing can stop me."

______________________________________________________

"Swap opponents," Starscream ordered his subordinate as he shot a rocket at Bulkhead. The Wrecker was much quicker than he appeared and hit the dirt just in time for the weapon to fly harmlessly over him. The Seeker barely had time to process before Bulkhead was back up and swinging his wrecking ball at Starscream's helm.

The Decepticon did an impressive flip to dodge the ball, and darted in close to his opponent so Bulkhead could no longer use his weapon of choice.

"If you think Ravage's scratches were bad, you haven't seen anything yet!" the Seeker snarled, before gouging the Autobot brand on Bulkhead's chest plate.

The Autobot grunted in pain, but moved sideways in time to ensure the blow, while deep, wasn't fatal. Bulkhead used the same momentum to punch Starscream so hard the Seeker toppled backwards. Starscream rolled as soon as he hit the ground, just before Bulkhead's wrecking ball nearly flattened him into paste.

Meanwhile, Ravage was most offended to note that Arcee apparently considered him a nonissue, and was ignoring him in favor of making potshots at the humans. The cat snarled, then rushed forward and wound himself around her legs in a way that all cats, no matter their origin, instinctively know. Arcee lost her balance and fell flat on her backside; Ravage clawed her face and danced away before she could retaliate.

Arcee touched the dripping energon on her face and her optics burned with hatred towards the Casseticon. She turned her weapon on Ravage and started to shoot wildly. Ravage nimbly dodged and two machine gun turrets appeared on his shoulders; he used these to return fire.

Meanwhile, Starscream all but danced around his own dangerous opponent. He nimbly dodged another blow from Bulkhead's wrecking ball; a quick slice from his claw nimbly disconnected the chain, leaving the Autobot's favorite weapon useless. Bulkhead didn't even slow down. He charged the Decepticon, swinging his fists.

Starscream dodged the first few blows, but he was tiring and the Autobot was just getting warmed up. Wreckers had always been among the most dangerous of the Autobot forces; and Bulkhead was no exception. Though their raw speed, sheer gutsiness, and brute strength were fierce, what truly made them dangerous was their intelligence.

Bulkhead faked a swing to the left, and when Starscream darted right to dodge, the Autobot was waiting. Starscream gasped when he felt the Wrecker grab his wing; he scratched at Bulkhead's wrist in blind terror but it did no good. The Autobot smirked at him and pulled.

Blinding agony wracked Starscream's processors as he felt part of his wing disconnect from his body. A wail escaped his lips without his permission, and the knowledge of how badly he was hurting only made Bulkhead more eager.

"Starz!" Ravage screamed, abandoning his own fight to charge Bulkhead. The wrecker, the trauma of his last encounter with Ravage not five minutes ago still fresh in his mind, let go of his victim and took an unwitting step back. Starscream collapsed to the ground, error messages and pain causing him to spasm slightly as his torn wing sparked, and Ravage positioned himself above his commander's body, snarling and puffing himself up to look more threatening.

He liked Starscream, and Soundwave's last request had been for Ravage to take care of the Seeker.

The Autobots would pay.

But neither Autobot looked impressed with Ravage's threatening demeanor. They were done playing games, and a damaged Seeker and a Casseticon were no threat to them. With a smirk, both Autobots turned their weapons on their enemies…

…Only to be blown backwards by explosions so big it nearly dented their armor.

"What?!" Arcee shrieked, as the Autobots looked to find the source of the new threat. They both met the eyes of a determined Commander Leland Bishop, who stood in front of what could only be described as a platoon armed with rocket launchers.

"Fire two," the Commander ordered, and another wave of rockets launched at the two Autobots.

Most human weapons were no threat to the Cybertronians. Even a single rocket launcher did hardly any damage. But as wave after wave continued to fire, the next line firing as soon as the first launched and ducked out of the way, the Autobots could soon feel their armor buckling.

"Let's get out of here!" Bulkhead hollered, transforming and retreating without waiting for his partner's confirmation.

Arcee grit her teeth. She had no desire to return to the base without an Autobot's spark to show for her efforts. But as error messages started to appear, she realized she had no choice. "Looks like the worthless little organics have some teeth after all," she hissed, before retreating. Hopefully Optimus would consider that knowledge worth having, and delay the punishment she knew was coming for abandoning her post.

Ravage kept his weapons armed until both Autobots were well out of sight. Then he seemed to shrink in on himself, his gun turrets disappearing into his body. He curled around Starscream and mewed in distress at the obvious pain the Seeker was in.

"I'm alright," Starscream assured the cat, giving it a shaky pat on the head. In truth, Starscream wasn't sure he could be repaired without an actual Cybertronian medic; but as there were none worth trusting on this planet he would survive and make due.

The two Decepticons looked up towards their unorthodox new allies as Commander Bishop walked purposefully to them. "Status?" he asked them.

Starscream considered. "Perhaps a little worse for wear, but neither of us are in any danger of offlining," he admitted. "I think we drastically underestimated you. You saved both our sparks today, and I thank you for it."

Bishop gave him a wry grin. "You gave us enough time to arm ourselves and get in formation," he replied. "And being underestimated just makes it more satisfying when you win."

"Ai luvs mah hoomans," Ravage purred.

_________________________________________________________

"According to this, Optimus Prime is making an army out in the desert," Sephie informed her new robot friends.

Far from being impressed at her skills, Cliffjumper just looked confused. "Is that written in human language?" he asked as he looked over the information. "Did you translate this?"

"Um, no?"

"Then why do the Autobots have their information written in your language, and not ours?"

Megatron simply huffed as he inspected his weapons. "Because Optimus knows my hacker is not here, and that I will need local help in order to get to his information now."

"So you're saying this is a trap," Cliff pointed out.

"Of course it's a trap. Do you think Optimus would try so hard to get my attention if a trap wasn't involved?" The Decepticon leader rolled his eyes and continued his preparations.

"But if it's a trap, why are you going?" Sephie asked.

"Because if there is an army out there, and I don't go, he will turn that army on the populous until I do show up. If there is no army, there are still enough Autobots on this planet that he thinks he can trap and defeat me. And if I do not show up, he will set those Autobot on the populous until I do," Megatron explained. "As I said, when Optimus decides on a course of action, there is little I can do, save to stand in his way. I cannot do that hiding away on this ship."

"Well, you're not going to do it alone," Cliffjumper snapped, stepping towards the Decepticon.

Megatron gave him a Look. "There is every chance we will not be coming back from this," he warned.

"Yeah, I know," Cliff confirmed. "And pit, I know we hate each other. But I'm not going to let anyone cause harm to this planet or its people."

Something flashed in Megatron's optics for a moment; but the Decepticon said nothing. He simply nodded and moved aside so Cliffjumper could walk through the doorway with him.

"Great! Giant robot fight matches! Count me in!" Sephie cheered, as she looked for a way to get off the counter and onto the floor.

"That's not a good—" Cliffjumper started, but Megatron cut him off.

"Actually, I need your help again," the Decepticon Leader said smoothly. "As you know, Soundwave is missing. I need you to see if the Autobots are holding him prisoner, and if so, where he is. They likely don't want this information getting out; so it will be much harder to find than the information Optimus wanted us to get. Can you help me?"

Sephie blinked, the beamed with pride at being asked for aid. "I told you, there's no computer on this planet I can't hack," she informed Megatron. "If the Bots have your boy, I'll know about it before you get back!"

"Thank you Sephie," Megatron smiled as he and Cliffjumper left the room and headed for the docking bay.

"You know there's no way she can find him," Cliff said conversationally. "It will take years of study before she can comprehend our language. She won't be able to understand anything she finds."

"Likely not," Megatron admitted. "But it makes her feel like she's contributing to something useful here, where it is safe, and therefore she is not trying to follow us to where we are going."

Cliffjumper froze for a second at the realization that Megatron had just smiled and conned a little human girl to her face, right in front of him, and neither of them had realized it. "Son of a glitch," he muttered, before rushing to catch up to the Decepticon.

Chapter Text

Cliffjumper could never get used to Earth's landscape. It was just so flat and boring. From space the planet's surface looked blue, and the human movies he's seen implied there was a lot of green. But he'd never personally seen anything but flat, brown, sandy dust that got everywhere, and the occasional plateau or canyon. That was also brown, sandy, and utterly boring to look at.

At least his spark was pumped full of adrenaline for the upcoming fight. Otherwise he'd probably die from the sheer, boring brown-ness of it all.

Above him, Megatron flew silently but with an air of determined impatience as he slowed his speed enough for Cliff to keep up. The 'Con knew whatever Prime had planned, he couldn't defeat it alone. But that didn't mean limping along at barely two hundred miles an hour wasn't frustrating.

But despite Cliffjumper's lack of jet-propelled speed, eventually the target location came into view. Optimus stood in front of some sort of Autobot dig site. It was massive and Megatron knew that the Prime would never have been able to hide it if the Decepticons had had more than four bots (plus one traitor but he didn't really count) on the planet. There simply weren't enough of them to monitor the situation, especially now that Soundwave was MIA.

Speaking of which...Megatron transformed and gave Optimus his best 'tell me what I want or I'll frag up your faceplate' look. "Optimus. Where is my communications officer?" he demanded to know.

"You mean your spy?" Optimus asked, grinning as his optics glinted with insane glee. "I assure you he's been enjoying our hospitality as our guest."

Megatron had seen the results of Autobot 'hospitality' too many times to count. It rarely ended with the safe return of a living Decepticon. He clenched his fists, visibly shaking with anger. "I. Will. Kill. You," he vowed, his voice soft and matter-of-fact.

"We both know you don't have the spark for that," Optimus commented, his gaze finally turning to Megatron's companion. When his optics met Cliffjumper’s, he blinked. For a split second, Megatron saw genuine surprise in the Prime's eyes, before it was carefully hidden away again.

"Cliffjumper," The Prime didn't sound pleased. "I should have known you were too stupid to stay dead."

The fact that Optimus knew the turncoat personally was not a good sign, in Megatron's opinion. Autobots were all murderous scum,but the Prime only bothered to learn the names of the extremely twisted ones. But Starscream had explained that Soundwave had found no evidence that Cliffjumper had ever fought against them, on Cybertron or here. And if Soundwave couldn't find something, it didn't exist. Add to that the knowledge that Cliff acted more like a Decepticon than an Autobot...

A picture was being painted about the defector, one Megatron felt barely able to glimpse. He was missing something…

...But in the meantime, he refused to let Optimus focus on anyone other than him. Bad things happened to mechs when Optimus focused on them. Megatron was strong enough to take it. Cliffjumper might not be, and Megatron refused to find out.

"What do you want, Prime?" Megatron spat at his Nemesis, stepping in front of Cliffjumper to regain Optimus' attention.

For a moment, the Prime looked so murderous that Megatron prepared himself to repel an attack. But then Optimus seemed to relax, then he smiled. "I'm here to offer you a gift," he said, and snapped his fingers. To Vehibots appeared, dragging the limp form of his third in command towards him.

"Soundwave!" Megatron didn't like how limp and quiet his friend was--Soundwave was always moving, and he never shut up. But he was obviously alive, and that meant there was hope.

___________________________________________________________

Cliffjumper’s fuel tank churned as he watched Wrong Optimus' lackeys dump Wrong Soundwave's body in front of Megatron like a sack of garbage. Even when they went back to the Prime, Soundwave just laid there, staring ahead blankly.

"What did you do to him?" Cliffjumper blurted out, as Megatron knelt to try to tend to Soundwave. This was so wrong. Autobots did not torture prisoners like this. Frag, Cliff had never even seen Decepticons break their prisoners this badly.

Optimus's smile turned decidedly feral. "The same thing I did to the rest of the Cybertronians in this valley," he informed them, before turning on his comm. "Ratchet, send me a ground bridge."

Megatron looked up to Optimus as the ground bridge swirled into being, and in all the millions of years Cliffjumper had fought him, he had never seen the Decepticon Warlord so enraged. "Prime!!!"

The scream was broken and feral, and sent chills up Cliffjumper’s chassis. Optimus turned out to be even crazier than Cliffjumper had thought, because Megatron's state seemed to excite him.

"It takes a while to kick in, so I needed something to keep you distracted," Prime explained. "Now if you don't mind, I'm going to borrow your space bridge. I need a massive amount of Cybertron corpses to take over the galaxy, you see." With that, he entered the ground bridge and vanished.

"I'm sorry, did he just say corpses?" Cliffjumper asked, still feeling raw and stunned by the whole encounter.

But Megatron didn't answer. He looked frantic as he gathered Soundwave in his arms. "We have to go," he said, sounding on the verge of panic. "We have to go now!"

Cliffjumper has seen arrogant Megatron. He'd seen smug Megatron, and gloating Megatron. He'd seen furious Megatron, and Oh-Primus-it's-so-obvious-he's-up-to-no-good scheming Megatron. Be he has never seen on the verge of hyperventilating, panicked Megatron before, and it's just as unsettling as Twisted Optimus has been.

"What's the matter?" He asked nervously, because he's not entirely sure he wants to know what could scare a mech like Megatron.

"I left her on the ship," Megatron whispered.

"What?"

"I LEFT HER ON THE SHIP!!!" This time, the words were screamed in his face. "Prime said he was after our space bridge. It's on our ship, and I convinced the organic child to stay there! Alone! Unprotected!"

Cliffjumper could feel the terror well up as he realized the implications. "If they discover her…"

That was about the time the first Cybertronian climbed out of the dug up pit behind them and started shooting.

____________________________________________________________

Apparently, the robots' written language consisted of circles, of all things. Big circles, little circles, big circles entwined with little circles...Sephie had never seen anything like it. She couldn't even begin to figure out how to decode it. It was frustrating, so she did what she always did when she was frustrated.

She called her friends to vent.

Weirdly, neither Vince nor Sierra were at all impressed that she'd snuck back into the robots' ship and had been there for two days now. Sephie didn't see what the big deal was. It was a weekend, after all. She always kept several days worth of food in her backpack. Her foster family never missed her. The robots were awesome. So what was Vince's problem?

But no, he had to go off on how dangerous and irresponsible she was, and he and Sierra were coming to get her, so get the robots to open the portal thing now, Sephie! She didn't bother to tell him that the robots weren't here right now. She'd watched Vince's dad open the portal from her hideout, and she knew she could duplicate what he'd done. It was pretty easy, actually. Just push a few buttons.

Vince looked angry when he boarded the ship, and Sierra looked uncomfortable. But then, they always did, so that was pretty normal, too. Vince opened his mouth, but then realized she was alone.

"Where's the robots?" He asked. Sierra looked less uncomfortable now that she realized the ship was empty of giant alien robots. Honestly, Sephie's friends were so weird.

"Starscream and Ravage are at your dad's base, and Megatron and Cliffjumper went to fight Optimus Prime!" Sephie explained.

"Who's Megatron?" Sierra asked.

"Oh, he showed up after you left. He's the Con's boss. They transported him here from space," Sephie explained excitedly. "And I'm helping him find Soundwave!"

"Soundwave's lost?" Vince sounded concerned. Sephie knew he didn't like the Cons being on their planet, but he didn't want them to get hurt. He was a sweetheart, deep down. It's why Sephie was friends with him.

"He was captured!" Sephie clarified. "And I'm helping them find him! Only it's kind of hard because for some reason, robots really love circles."

"Sephie, you're not making any sense," Sierra complained.

Sephie rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to start from the beginning, when alarms started blaring. All three kids clapped their hands over their ears.

"What's going on?" Sierra yelled over the noise.

"Dunno!" Sephie called back cheerily.

As quickly as it started the sound ended, and the children gratefully lowered their hands. Vince happened to glimpse movement from one of the monitors and the blood drained from his face.

"Um, guys?" He gulped and pointed to the monitor. On it was a dark blue and white robot that Sephie hadn't seen on the ship before. He had a handful of wires in his hand that he had just torn from one of the panels. He turned and looked directly at the camera, giving them a good look a his face.

His eyes were blood red.

He raised his weapon towards the camera and a second later the monitor went black.

"That was an Autobot," Vince said shakily. "There's an Autobot on the ship. He's probably trying to capture it. That means he's headed for the bridge. Sephie, get us out of here, now."

Despite what her friends thought, Sephie wasn't crazy. She had no desire to meet an Autobot without a Decepticon nearby to stop it from squishing her into paste. She hurried to the console and tried to activate a portal.

Key word being 'tried.'

"Guys, guys, it's not working!" she cried, on the verge of panic.

"We're trapped on a plane with a giant robot that wants to kill us!" Sierra shrieked.

"Hey, hey, calm down," Vince ordered. "It's going to be okay. We'll get out of this."

"How!?" Sierra shrieked.

Vince thought for a second, biting his lip. Then he looked towards Sephie, a determined glint in his eye that made him look like his father. "You said some of the Decepticons are at the base?"

_________________________________________________________

The humans had neither the technology nor the understanding of Seeker biology to repair any of the delicate wiring in Starscream’s wing. But their motor pool did have access to a blowtorch that could at least meld the metal plating together so he wouldn't injure himself further.

"Almost done!" The wielder, who had cheerfully introduced himself as Torch, informed him. Torch had steady hands, and Starscream had found him delightfully intelligent. The other members of the motor pool--nicknamed the Dreadnoks by the base in general--implied the man was something of a bibliophile. Torch had promised to introduce the Air Commander to the greatest works of human literature, and in the meantime, took his mind off the pain in his wing with the one language that was truly universal--math.

"Okay, Starscream, 10,849."

"Not prime," the Seeker said without hesitation. "2,557."

"Prime," Torch informed him with confidence. "8,329."

"Prime. This game is quite enjoyable," the Seeker informed the wielder.

The rest of the motor pool groaned.

"Speak for yourself," the one who introduced himself as Buzzer moaned. "It's a stupid game."

"You just hate it because you always lose," rebutted Ripper.

"How is fifty-one not prime?!" Buzzer snapped.

"Because it's divisible by the numbers 1, 3, 17, and 51," Torch shot back.

"Those are stupid numbers!" Buzzer shot back.

Despite the pain he was in, Starsceam found himself genuinely laughing at his new acquaintances' antics. The three men seemed quite pleased at his amusement, and Torch put the finishing touches on the weld and deactivated his blowtorch.

"There you go, mate. Good as new."

It wasn't, not really. Without the wires connecting, Starscream couldn't move the wing. He certainly couldn't fly. The thought hurt him, deep in his spark. But none of that was the Dreadnoks' fault. They were trying to help him, and Starscream refused to repay their kindness with petty cruelty because of his own pain. Only a monster would do that. So he smiled at Torch and thanked him for his help.

Torch shrugged and told him to think nothing of it, and the Motor Pool's CO, Sergeant Zartan, barked at them to stop gawking at the giant robot and get back to work. The Dreadnoks all waved goodbye to him and scrambled back to their jobs repairing army vehicles.

Starscream made sure he was well and truly unobserved before giving himself a moment to mourn losing the skies. But a moment was all he had, and then Commander Bishop was striding into the Motor Pool, a man on a mission, Ravage hot on his heels.

"Starscream," Bishop wasn't one for pleasantries, but he seemed even more curt than usual.

"Commander," Starscream greeted, trying to stand to his feet. A sharp agony in his wing and dizziness in his helm told him such things were folly, however, and he wobbled dangerously before sinking back to his knees.

Bishop looked deeply troubled. "Will you be alright?" he asked.

"My wings help with my balance," Starscream explained. That was actually an oversimplification of exactly how important his wings were, but it was true enough and explained the situation in a way these humans understood. "It will take me time to learn how to compensate."

"You may not have time," Bishop informed him. "Vince just contacted me. Megatron and Cliffjumper have been lured into an Autobot trap the desert, and my son and his friends are trapped on your ship with an Autobot."

Starscream blinked slowly, the sheer impossibility of the statement causing his processor to stall for a moment. "How…" he started, only for Bishop to cut him off.

"We can figure that out later. We need to get on your ship, now. Any ideas?"

Still struggling to process, Starscream closed his optics in thought. "Ravage," he finally stated. "Soundwave modified Ravage after he lost the other Casseticons. He has a portable ground bridge, he can open one anywhere on the planet." Nodding to himself now that he had a plan of action, Starscream opened his comm.

"Ravage, return to the Harbinger immediately. Your orders are to get the human children off safely and stop the Autobots from retaking the ship. Blow it up if you have to, but they cannot take the Harbinger, the space bridge, or any other Decepticon technology."

"Yez Sir," Ravage replied. "U got it, Starz."

"And come back," Starscream added as he heard the unmistakable sound of a ground bridge over his comm channel. "That's an order."

"Oh, Starz. Teh kitteh always comez bak," Ravage assured him. And then he was gone.

"I do hope so," Starscream softly admitted.

__________________________________________________________

The Autobot seemed to know the layout of the ship, because by the time Vince had contacted his Dad it had already made it to the bridge. Luckily, the alarm had locked the door so it couldn't just waltz in and kill them. Unfortunately there was no other way off the bridge. Not even a ventilation duct, which implied giant space robots didn't need to breathe, which, duh, robot. And not important right now.

There was a loud banging and dents appeared in the door from where the Autobot was attempting to break it down.

"What are we going to do?" Sierra whispered.

"The doors won't hold him for long," Sephie added.

"We just need to survive long enough for Dad to rescue us," Vince reassured them. And his dad would rescue them. They couldn't afford to think otherwise. "So we need to slow the Autobot down, and hide."

"How are we supposed to slow him down?" Sephie asked.

Sierra looked over to the side of the bridge to what honestly appeared to be the remains of a party, complete with giant streamers, a banner, giant robot party poppers, and a partially eaten cake with an oily sheen to it. "Guys," she cried. "I think I have an idea!"

___________________________________________________________

Goldbug buzzed in contentment as a crack appeared in the doors at last. He jammed his hands in the crack and started to force them open wider. The sooner he retrieved the Harbinger and got the space bridge for his Prime, the sooner he could go back to base and continue weeding out the traitors and spies.

He was surrounded by them. They mocked him, taunted him, plotted against him. Plotted against the Prime. They were in the walls, in the skies, in the ground, even inside the plating of his own allies. More than once he'd had to peel them out of other Autobots. And Decepticons were crawling with them. Optimus appreciated his efforts, made sure he had all the tools he needed to get them out. Optimus never told him he was delusional or psychotic like the other Cybertronians had. Optimus understood.

And Optimus wanted the Harbinger. He wanted the space bridge. Optimus always gave him what he wanted, and so he would give Optimus what he wanted.

With a final shove, he pushed the doors open and stepped into the bridge. Before he could so much as look around, there were loud popping sounds and he stumbled back as brightly colored bits of paper obscured his vision.

Goldbug waved the papers away and turned back towards the bridge. And then he saw the Spy.

The Spies had always been there. Taunting him. Mocking him. Crawling in the chassis of other bots. Collaborating with the Decepticons to destroy him. But he hadn't seen them until he got to Earth. Even then, he hadn't realized the organics were his Spies until this very moment, when he locked optics with one on the Harbinger's bridge.

The Spy had tied a banner to either side of the doorway. The banner contained the words Congratulations, It's a Girl! The word girl was scribbled over. The banner also contained a partially eaten oilcake, which the Spy had pulled back and aimed at Goldbug.

When he realized he had Goldbug's attention, the Spy smirked him.

"Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal," the Spy stated, and let go of the banner.

Goldbug didn't have time to blink before the oilcake hit him right in the faceplate.

____________________________________________________________

Fragging robot zombies that were invincible.

Fragging robot zombies that were INVINCIBLE!!!

It was a statement that bore repeating, because somehow, Cliffjumper’s life had taken a turn somewhere. A turn that meant he was fighting back to back with Lord Fragging Megatron against a horde of fragging invincible robot zombies.

Cliff's position allowed him to look down into the pit and luckily most of the former corpses just laid there and stared at nothing...rather like Soundwave, actually. But there were still several hundred that were getting up and attacking them. And they couldn't be damaged. Seriously, he was shooting them point blank in the face, the movies swore zombies died from headsets. But they weren't dying, their bodies just healed the damage and kept attacking. He was already exhausted, and he was trying to kill invincible robot zombies. How was this his life!?

"We can't keep this up much longer!" he called to Megatron, who was looking more than a little winded himself.

"We cannot fall here. If we fall. Optimus will use these abominations to destroy Earth and a thousand other worlds!" Megatron explained kicking an Invincible Robot Zombie™ away from his face and back into the horde.

"But how do we stop them?"

Cliffjumper knew it was bad when Megatron couldn't answer him.
____________________________________________________________

Ravage exited the ground bridge preparing for the worst. Instead he found three excited organics and one Goldbug covered in confetti and oilcake.

"Kidz! Git in teh bridge! Hurreh!" Ravage hollered at them, and they rushed into the Vortex while Goldbug wiped oilcake from his optics. As soon as they were through, Ravage deactivated the bridge and started wirelessly slicing into the Harbinger's systems, secretly setting up the self destruct sequence even as he puffed himself up to take on Goldbug.

The blue and white Autobot was dangerous, as crazy and psychotic as they come. He was impossible to predict, and almost as likely to kill his allies as his enemies. Only Optimus Prime himself was safe from the mech's delusions. Ravage certainly wasn't safe from him.

But Goldbug wasn't safe from Ravage, either. The Casseticon didn't wait for the Autobot to recover his vision before launching himself at Goldbug's throat. The Autobot managed to catch him at the last moment. The two struggled for a moment, Ravage savagely trying to end Goldbug's life and Goldbug barely pushing him back.

Finally though, Ravage's smaller size and weight worked against him, and Goldbug managed to get his arms wrapped around him. Not to be deterred, Ravage lowered his ears and bit Goldbug's arm. Their optics met, and they glared at each other, Ravage growling low in his throat.

And then Goldbug casually tossed him out the window.

Ravage yowled as he fell through the skies, hastily opening a portal midair that he fell through. He landed more or less harmlessly on an incredibly shocked Starscream’s head.

Meanwhile, Goldbug scowled as he realized Ravage would not be dying today and turned to the nearest station. The first thing he saw was a self destruct timer counting down from 04. He barely had time to process it before he was flinging himself from the broken window as the Harbinger exploded, trusting that he could survive the fall better that the epicenter of an explosion.

_________________________________________________________

Soundwave's helm was killing him.

It was worse than any hangover he'd ever had. He felt dizzy and nauseous and what was with that incessant blaster firing…?

He looked towards the noise only to have to squeeze his optics shut at the bright light that infuriated his pounding head. But even so, he'd managed to get a good enough look to realize his Lord and Cliffjumper were fighting impossible odds and were losing stamina.

Soundwave tried to stand, to help, but he was too weak. Whatever had happened had damaged him greatly. But he couldn't lay here and do nothing! He had to help! He could run and leave Megatron behind again!

The frustration overwhelmed him. But something was wrong...the emotion, it...it was...distant?

It was Megatron's frustration.

Soundwave started at the realization, and suddenly he understood he was feeling all of it. Happiness, anger, paranoia, fear, desperation…the hundreds of bots here, he could feel them all.

What had happened to him?

Soundwave started as a flare of pain suddenly shot up his leg and he heard Cliffjumper yell. He opened his optics--carefully, but the searing brightness had diminished--to see the Autobot defector had collapsed, energon leaking from a wound in his leg. Megatron was desperately trying to defend him, but it was obvious he wouldn't be able to keep up much longer. But how could Soundwave…

...If he could feel emotion, could he give emotions? And if so, what would help?

"Sleep...sleep, Data,"1 he finally realized. Oh, but his vocal glitch wasn't repaired. Bummer. But not important. He reached deep inside himself, dredged up the feeling of bone deep exhaustion, and flung it at the enemy combatants with all his might.

_______________________________________________________________

He'd had a good run. And then he'd had a weird run, but it was over now. Cliffjumper had finally, for real this time, used up all his luck and was about to offline.

"You need to get out of here," he told Megatron, feeling oddly calm. "You can't win and there's no sense in us both dying today."

"I will not abandon you," Megatron snapped.

Heh. Well, Cliff had always dreamed of taking Megatron down with him when it was time for him to go. This wasn't exactly how he'd pictured it, but it was nice to know dreams could come true.

And then, just as he was accepting his fate, the Invincible Robot Zombies™ stumbled. Then they fell and started recharging.

...It was official. Whenever he was about to die, something fragging weird happened.

He and Megatron gave each other bewildered looks, then a noise caused them both to turn.

"Soundwave!" Megatron cried, stumbling on exhausted peds toward his third in command.

Soundwave raised a shake arm and saluted. "I'm honored to be serving under your command, Lt. Hunter. Corp. Ben Dixon reporting and while I'm around I assure nothing will go wrong,"2 he declared to his leader. Then he purged energon all over Megatron's chassis and passed out.

Megatron caught him and checked his vitals, uncaring of the purged energon he was covered in. He laughed briefly, an hysterical edge to it. "He's alive," he assured Cliffjumper. "He's not broken, and he's alive."

Cliffjumper sighed in relief and looked over the battlefield. They had won. Not the war, of course, but for now, they had won.

It was enough.

Chapter Text

Destroying the Harbinger may have ensured the Autobots did not regain access to its advanced weaponry, but it also meant that the Cons were now without a base.  Luckily the humans had agreed to allow them to establish a base camp in one of the warehouses in Commander Bishop's base.

Unfortunately, this meant Bishop felt entitled to every piece of technology the Cybertronians had ever created, seen, heard of, or imagined, right this second. And even though it was Lord Megatron's duty to deal with belligerent allies, the Decepticons' Leader had parked himself beside Soundwave's sick bed and refused to move. Meaning this whole mess was now Starscream's processor ache.

Don't get him wrong. Starscream was thrilled Soundwave was alive. And he was understandably upset and worried about the processor glitches his formerly missing comrade was displaying. One moment Soundwave would be laughing hysterically, the next, staring silently into the distance. Often he would clutch his helm and beg them to be quieter even when no one was speaking. He still hadn't managed to stand on his own.

But Starscream was not a medic and could do nothing to help Soundwave except keep him comfortable. And more importantly, Megatron was not a medic and could do nothing to help Soundwave except keep him comfortable.  Sitting at his bedside was doing nothing but distressing the communications officer, so why not let him rest and go do your job for once, instead of making me do it, the Seeker thought to himself rather bitterly. 

"Look, I know you're anxious for our ground and space bridge technology, and I understand. I've given you the schematics and I am not lying when I tell you the only alloy strong enough to handle the heat of the element needed to power the machine uses a metal that does not exist on this planet. I've shown you how you can adapt our mining technology to your space rovers, allowing you to mine for it on asteroids and other planets," Starscream told a cross Bishop, biting his tongue to keep from adding, "What do you want from me?!"

"That's another thing," Bishop all but snapped at him. "This so-called element of yours just happens to not be on our planet either!"

Starscream rather uncharitably thought that had less to do with a lack of existence and more to do with a lack of intelligence needed to find it, and he didn't say that, either. Instead, he took a deep breath to compose himself, and tried a different tactic. 

"As we are not from your planet, it stands to reason that our resources would differ from yours. I suggest we focus on obtaining them, and I swear on my Spark I will teach you everything I know about how to use them. Besides asteroid mining, perhaps the wreckage of our ship will have some of the metal and alloys we need. Once you have a working model, your scientists can figure out how to adapt it to work with the materials earth has in abundance."

And maybe cyber pigs would fly, Starscream finished in the safety of his own thoughts. But the flight capacity of Cybertronian Pigs, (who were, interestingly, just as flightless as the organic variety) was not the issue here. The issue was that Starscream was seriously considering quitting his job and running off to live as a Neutral in a cave somewhere. It would be easy enough to 'misplace' some mining equipment somewhere…

But luckily for both Starscream’s piece of mind and the Decepticon Cause, Bishop agreed that this compromise was acceptable. Except now it was Starscream’s job to track the Harbinger's wreckage and carry it back to base to hand it all over to the little tyrant, and…

"You look stressed," Cliffjumper observed as they passed each other in the hallway. 

Starscream briefly considered answering him with a hand gesture Cybertronians generally considered to be Rude. He suppressed the instinct and instead gave a small smile. "It's nothing," he assured the Autobot. "I need to speak to Ravage. Do you know where he is?"

Normally when he was this stressed he took to the skies, but with his wing...well, a ground bridge to somewhere remote will have to do.

"Last I saw, he was in the motor pool with the Dreadnoks," Cliffjumper replied, before deciding that Starscream’s problems were Starscream’s problems and walking away.

Ah, yes. The Casseticon had formed a fast and slightly worrisome friendship with the Dreadnoks. They were smart, brave, and loyal to a fault. They also jury rigged blow torches and once held Bishop's car hostage for a lifetime supply of free strudels and orange soda. Starscream personally thought Ravage was quite unorthodox enough for one bot; the motor pool's influence could hardly help.

On the other hand, they had won their fattening pastries and unhealthy poisonous beverages from Bishop. Perhaps an alliance between the Dreadnoks and the Decepticons could be useful. Anyone who could help him one up that fragger had to be a good ally.

Thinking about Bishop was increasing his oil pressure again, so Starscream took a deep, calming breath. (It wasn't helping.)  He quietly made his way to the motor pool, where Ravage and the Dreadnoks were noticeably not fixing motor cars.

Instead, the humans were hitting small orbs through tiny metal arches with wooden mallets. Ravage was doing his best to pounce on the orbs as they passed.  Zartan was keeping order by helping nonplayers place bets on who would win.

Starscream privately thought Bishop would disapprove of the entire scenario, because Bishop was never happy unless he was sucking joy out of all he observed. Then he thought that he really needed a break, if he was thinking such uncharitable thoughts about a man who had helped them as much as Bishop had.

"Watch this shot." Buzzer gave a lazy salute before hitting the orb with his mallet. Ravage gleefully pounced it before it could pass an arch.

"Tough break, Buzzer," Torch called. "That's minus thirty points."

"Not so fast! It's Thursday afternoon and Copperhead's drinking Darjeeling," Buzzer protested.

Torch looked to the left corner, where a human in a mask was simultaneously drinking a cup of liquid and working on a small boat. "That true, Cop? Are you drinking Darjeeling?"

"Sorry, pal," Copperhead called back. "It's Gunpowder tea."

"Blast it!" Buzzer cursed.

"Wait, wait, not all hope is lost," a Dreadnok named Monkeywrench spoke up. "If Storm Shadow is sparring with Dice while Mindbender is experimenting with a South African Pygmy Hedgehog, it neutralizes the Wrong Tea Luck and divides everyone's score by eight."

Ripper immediately activated his comm. "Hey, Storm Shadow. You there?"

The unmistakable sounds of sparring came over the unit. "What is it this time, Ripper?" The tone was definitely that of someone who had had it Up To Here with the Motor Pool's antics.

"You sparring Dice?" Ripper asked hopefully.

There was a pause, then a pained grunt. "Get off this channel, Ripper," Storm Shadow ordered, and hung up.

"Now what?" Buzzer asked.

"I don't know about you guys, but that sure sounded like Dice's pained grunt," Torch volunteered. 

"I'll take it," Buzzer decided. "Quick, somebody call medical with a pygmy hedgehog related injury!"

One of the spectators cursed and handed a very smug-looking Zartan some form of human currency. Starscream decided that now was as good a time as any to reveal his presence.

“Ravage,” the Seeker called out. The Casseticon’s ears twitched. The next thing Starscream knew, he had an armful of happy, purring cat.

“Mah Starz!” Ravage chirped.

Starscream sighed, but he did have to admit hugging happy feline was making him feel better. “I need a ground bridge to the Harbinger’s last known location, Ravage.”

“OK!!1!"

Starscream rolled his eyes and called Megatron on his private comm. “My Lord, I’m going to the Harbinger to salvage the wreckage.” ‘And to get out of this base before I offline somebody,’ he thought privately.

There was a long pause before Megatron acknowledged him. “Understood,” he said at last. “But if there are any Autobots in the area, do not engage. Call for a ground bridge and get out of there immediately. That's an order.”

Starscream blinked. Retreat wasn’t usually in Lord Megatron’s vocabulary. Usually Starscream was the one who convinced Megatron that a temporary drawback was the best tactical option. The loss of Cybertron and Soundwave’s predicament must have affected him more than Starscream had realized.

“I will be cautious, my liege,” the Seeker assured his leader.

The Harbinger’s wreckage was scattered over a few miles. Bishop already had people salvaging it, but Starscream was able to direct their efforts towards the most valuable material. He also found a long distance communicator that was still in working condition and subspaced it quietly. Being able to contact space-faring vessels would come in handy.

The bridge was mostly intact, though the humans were hard at work to change that. Destro was in charge of the operation, and he looked very relieved to have Starscream there.

“Several of the consoles are still active,” he told his fellow second-in-command. “Some of them are flashing warnings, but I have no idea if they're just stating the damage to the ship or if there is a legitimate threat and we need to evacuate.”

A quick glance at the first console told Starscream that it was the former option. “It’s telling us there is a hull breach,” he informed Destro, who laughed.

“I’ll warn the men,” he joked.

Starscream grinned and checked each monitor to make sure none of them were serious. Most were warnings of critical damage to various parts of the ship, but luckily nothing was leaking harmful materials or radiation. The last panel, however, caused his optics to widen in shock.
“This is picking up a Decepticon signal,” he murmured, memorizing the location. He quickly called Ravage and got a ground bridge to the location. It wasn’t terribly far, but his peds weren’t really made for walking in rocky terrain. 

It didn’t take long to dig out the buried Decepticon. Starscream’s optics glistened when he realized the mech was a Seeker—he'd worried they were all gone, and he was the last. The Prime had particularly enjoyed hurting Seekers. An energon cube revived the mech.

“Lord Starscream,” he muttered as his optics powered on.

Starscream smiled. “Skyquake. It's been some time. I was beginning to think you’d been offlined.”

“Not yet.” Skyquake shakily got to his peds. “What has happened since I crashed on this planet?”

It took time to explain everything from the loss of Cybertron to their current situation. Through it all, Skyquake said nothing, a thoughtful frown on his face.

“So you are saying that Cybertron is uninhabitable, and the only Decepticons we know survived are the two of us, Lord Megatron, Ravage, Soundwave, who is severely injured, and an Autobot traitor?” he asked incredulously when Starscream finished. “And the Prime still lives?”

“That's the gist of the situation, yes.”

Skyquake opened his mouth to continue speaking, but loud, piercing screech interrupted him before he could say anything. Both Seekers turned towards the noise to see Goldbug. It didn’t surprise Starscream that the Autobot had survived the Harbinger’s explosion. The twisted ones always survived. But he was heavily damaged, leaking energon, barely standing. His left arm was missing. 

Skyquake activated his weapons as Starscream activated his comm. “Ravage, send a ground bridge, now!”

The bridge flickered to life and Starscream grabbed his fellow Seeker before he could charge Goldbug. He all but flung Skyquake into the bridge before rushing through himself.

Starscream entered their base and was immediately confronted by an enraged Skyquake. “We could have finished him! We could have avenged our fellow Seekers that he killed in cold energon! Why did you stop me?”

Starscream had centuries of practice of dealing with angry soldiers, so he looked Skyquake right in the eye, as if daring him to get out of line. “Lord Megatron gave a direct order not to engage the enemy,” he told the angry Seeker firmly. “As long as we wear this symbol, we will follow his commands.”

“Even if that command is a tactile error?” Skyquake spluttered.

“He is our leader,” Starscream replied. “And we follow his orders.”

The other Seeker considered this. “I understand,” he finally replied. “Where is Lord Megatron?”
“He's in the medical bay with Soundwave,” Starscream said, relaxing now that he knew Skyquake wasn’t going to cause problems. “I'll take you to him.

Megatron looked up at the two Seekers as they entered the med bay. “Starscream, you’ve returned,” he said, before looking at Skyquake. “And you’ve brought a friend.”

“Lord Megatron, our glorious leader,” Skyquake bowed slightly, his optics glinting with something that put Megatron on edge. “But where have you led us?”

 
Starscream grit his teeth. “Skyquake!” he snapped.

Megatron held up a hand, and his second unhappily fell silent. “If you have something to say to me, Skyquake, then just say it.”

“You convinced us of the necessity of war with the Autobots, Megatron, and they have annihilated us!” Skyquake hissed.

“They would have annihilated us anyway!” Starscream protested. “And other Decepticons may have survived!”

“But we don’t know that! If Lord Starscream had been in command we wouldn’t have lost in the first place!” 

The second-in-command of the Decepticons gaped in shock. “What?”

“Don’t think we didn’t notice! He always advised more caution, but you disregarded him, and got us all killed,” Skyquake raged. “And only now, when it is finally time to strike, you would have us cower in the dark while they pick us off one by one! I won’t let you destroy whatever left, Megatron.”

Instinct honed by millennia at war allowed Megatron to dodge Skyquake's shot. The Decepticon leader rolled behind some sort of terminal and winced as Skyquake’s next shot caused it to sputter and spark. That looked hard to replace. Megatron would have to apologize to Bishop if he survived the next few minutes.

The whole thing happened so fast that Starscream was just now realizing it had happened at all. “Skyquake, what are you doing?” he shrieked, activating his own weapon and aiming it at the other mech's spark. “Stand down!”

“You know I'm right, Starscream,” Skyquake said, as he continued to shoot at Megatron’s position. “All this would have been avoided if you had been in charge. You're a better leader than Megatron will ever be!”

“I won’t ask you again!” Starscream replied, his hands shaking slightly. “Cease fire, now!”

Skyquake smirked. “You're not going to shoot me. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for shooting the last living Seeker besides yourself.”

“Stand down!” Starscream shrieked.

“No.”

There was one last shot, and silence descended upon the medical bay. A harsh sob broke it. Megatron warily stood, to see Starscream on his knees, sobbing besides Skyquake’s corpse.

“I tried to make him stop,” Starscream cried. “There was no other way.”

Megatron closed his optics in grief, both for the death of Skyquake, and the horror at what the Seeker had made Starscream do to stop him. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing it wasn’t enough.
“He was wrong,” Starscream murmured. “You didn’t lead us into destruction.”

Megatron laughed bitterly. “Didn’t I?” he asked. “We both knew from the beginning it was a war I couldn’t win.”

“It wasn’t about winning. It was about surviving,” Starscream looked at Megatron, and the faith he saw in his second’s optics nearly shattered him. “I didn’t realize that for a long time. But you knew it from the beginning. Prime was always going to kill us all. But you held him off, kept us alive, and you helped us escape. I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Megatron scoffed. “So I saved four bots out of millions. That's not exactly something to brag about.”

“It is. Besides, you saved more than four. I know there are other Decepticons out there, looking for you.” 

Megatron swallowed as Starscream took a long distance communicator out of his subspace pocket and handed it to him. The look in the Seeker's eyes left no room for doubt or refusal.

“Call them.”