Megatron gazed in wonder at the little animal.
It paced its cage slowly, the sharp yellow eyes were wandering along every bar, searching for a weakness, a way out.
Though normally not at all fond of the earth's organic population, Megatron couldn't help but feel fascinated. The grace and beauty of the animal was astonishing.
Every paw was placed with accuracy with each step, the long, slim back arched around the turns, the heavy head always perfectly balanced out and those eyes, those damn sharp, clear eyes always watching, taking in everything around.
Megatron wondered what they could see. How good they were, if they could compete with the abilities of a mech's optics.
Slowly he crouched down.
Already at the very first moment of his movement the animal had swooped around, facing him, body tense, ready for a jump to attack him.
Him, who was a robot, immensely huge in comparison to the tiny, fragile organic.
"So courageous" Megatron murmured and lay down on the floor, bringing himself face to face with the animal. "Even now. When you're trapped and caged."
The golden eyes stared at him intensely. The animal's jaw dropped slightly and when Megatron raised a hand to test its reaction, the cat shot forth, mouth wide open, baring long, sharp fangs and making a threatening hissing noise.
"Ready to fight until the very end. Interesting."
For hours Megatron lay there, watching the animal, taking in every nuance of its behaviour that was presented to him. Sometimes he teased it with a stick and was impressed at what that tiny mouth could crack. When he stuck a piece of rubber tube through the bars, the cat snapped at it and pulled – within some seconds it hat ripped the thing into tiny really began to like it. Perhaps organics weren't so bad after all… After some time Ravage came, bringing him another animal he had caught after his order. As far as Megatron knew it was a deer or something. It was about the size of the cat.
As he had ordered, it was still alive. Ravage had dragged it here by its hindlegs. They had some scratches, but the animal was still vital.
"Very good, Ravage" Megatron praised, being in a good mood. He picked up the cage with the cat and brought it to a small room. For the fun of it, he put in some boxes and spare items to give the prey a chance to hide.
The cage of the cat had a remote control, so he let the deer go in the room and left it, closing the door behind himself.
There was a control room beside it with a huge window.
Normally this was his torture room set, and most likely it was inhabited by Starscream. But today he would not use the acid sprays, electro pads or shooting devices.
Ravage had jumped up to the sill of the window, looking in curiously.
The deer had run away and hid, body shaking, in a corner of the room.
Megatron pushed a button and the cage of the cat opened.
It watched the bars fall with wide eyes and at first didn't do anything, waiting if something more would happen. Then very carefully it stretched out its nose and when it realised the cage was indeed open, it shot out like a bolt and sought cover behind some boxes first.
That was when Soundwave came in.
"Research done" he informed.
"What did you find out?" asked Megatron, not letting his gaze go off the predator.
"Organic object is a cougar. Predatory big cat of the American continent. Assumption: Captured cougar is an adult female."
"Does the deer fit for his prey?"
"Perfectly."
"Excellent! Continue."
Soundwave gave a full report about everything he found out about cougars while Megatron was still watching the big cat.
It obviously needed a while to calm down herself. Only after two hours she dared to leave her hiding place.
She was obviously smelling her prey for she determinedly took the right direction without being able to see the deer at the moment past the obstacles.
She crouched behind a box and very slowly peeked around the edge.
The deer had collapse in the corner, breathing quickly with fear.
To Megatron's surprise and satisfaction, the cougar did not immediately run for it but pulled back again.
Instead of taking the straight way, it slowly stalked closer, going from hiding spot to hiding spot. Its movements were incredibly slow when it was in the open, it had half closed its eyes to hide their bright colour and in unbelievable balance it slow-moved closer, the body a perfection of lax and tense muscles, the gaze never off its prey.
Always when the deer looked its way, it froze in motion, making it harder to be spotted.
It was an amazing sight.
The prowl took nearly the quarter of an hour until the cougar had reached a box standing pretty close by the deer. Behind that it crouched. Megatron saw that it stepped around on the floor with all four paws slightly until it obviously found the perfect placement. And then suddenly it launched forth, two immensely wide jumps and it was there. In that time the deer had scarcely the time to notice the mortal danger and try to stand up, but before it could make one jump to flee, the cougar practically embraced it, slinging its frontlegs around the deer's chest and with deadly precision the long fangs sank into its neck. When Megatron imagined being in the place of that poor deer, he could well understand that it must nearly already be scared to death.
A shrill shriek escaped the deer before its windpipe closed by the force of the bite.
It struggled a little, but the cat had it in a tight grip and didn't let go a bit.
For several minutes lasted the death of the deer, its eyes bulging, blood leaking from its neck, fighting for breath and now and then struggling in a futile attempt to get loose.
The cougar didn't rush. The strong jaw never let go until after nearly ten minutes the blood flow from the deer's throat stopped pulsing.
Tentatively the cougar opened its jaw, always ready to bite again should the deer move. But it didn't.
The first gaze of the predator was for her surroundings when she had let go of the deer's neck. Though she saw nothing around, she opted for being careful and dragged the deer into a shelter behind two boxes.
There she began ripping it apart to eat it.
"Fascinating" murmured Megatron. Then he turned to Soundwave, who had also patiently watched the scenario.
"Prepare the lab for cerebral download."
Some minutes later Megatron entered the laboratory with the cougar.
He had had quite some problems with catching her, and if he had been an organic, he would now have some bloody wounds. The cat had fought like mad, even against this totally superior opponent.
But now Megatron had her safely in one hand, paws stuck between his fingers and her head sticking out atop.
He held the still hissing and growling feline out for Soundwave to attach the delicate electrodes to its head.
When Soundwave applied the current, the cat went limp in Megatron's hand.
The downloading process took several minutes. Megatron was surprised to find so much information in such a tiny organic brain.
It left the cat weak and hazy, but not dead.
"Do you have it all?" the decepticon leader asked his officer.
"Affirmative" assured Soundwave.
"Good." An evil smirk curled up Megatron's lips.
"Extract the information that makes up the character and the behaviour of the cat.
And program a virus that is capable of overriding the behaviour script of a mech with it."
--
Prowl transformed and climbed the hill.
Taking out his binoculars, he scanned the horizon.
The sun was blazing down, the air was waving with the heat emanating from the dry desert floor.
There was no sign of anything hostile around.
He contacted his patrol partner. "Prowl in, everything clear."
"Here too" answered Hot Rod. "At least the floor."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that flying decepticons leave no traces on the floor and therefore it's stupid to look out for tracks on the ground."
"Copy. Prowl out." Prowl ended the transmission.
"High-flyer" he grumbled.
Hot Rod was in Autobot base for half a year now and since his first day he acted as if he owned the place.
He was a powerful fighter and had a good education, but still… he lacked millions of years of experience. And finesse.
Turning around, Prowl just wanted to transform back into vehicle mode when he caught sight of something that made him halt.
Sensors alert, he raised the binoculars again and searched the horizon again… this time the sky above it.
It was true, he saw a faint contrail.
Checking back on the databank of flightmaps he had from the humans he found that it was unlikely that it was of human origin.
He examined the contrail thoroughly and tried to estimate how old it was and where it was going.
After having some simulations run on his systems, he hastily sought out Hot Rod's frequency and tried to contact him.
It took a moment until he reached him.
"Hot Rod in."
"There is a contrail that leads into your area, Hot Rod, take care! Can you see it?"
There was a pause. "Yeah, I think I see it. What's it about it?"
Prowl frowned. Had the youngster already forgotten that he had taunted him about searching traces on the floor, instead pointing at the sky?
"It might be a decepticon" he said irritated.
"Uhm… yeah, right. I have a creepy feeling here in fact, Prowl, somehow, as if I was being watched or something…. Would you perhaps come and have a look? Perhaps when they concentrate on me, you can find them out without them finding you. If there is anybody, that is."
"You sure we shouldn't call reinforcements?"
"Uhm… no Prowl, come on, its just a contrail and me being somewhat jumpy, I would be hell embarrassed if we called up Prime now and it turns out it's all nothing."
"Alright, I'll be there, keep your head down and try to behave inconspicuously."
The behaviour Hot Rod showed was slightly out of character, he found. The Hot Rod he knew would never admit he was "jumpy". Strange.
Prowl disconnected and transformed to drive out to Hot Rod.
--
Megatron chuckled. "Very good."
Soundwave unwrapped the wire he had connected to Hot Rod's antenna to hijack his frequency.
"You will not get through with this!" the young autobot shouted and received a hard kick into his abdomen from Megatron for it.
"Shut up you idiot. And watch just how good it will work. Soundwave, deactivate his vocal processors also. We can not risk that he screams for help when the other bot comes near."
"Get your greasy fingers off of me!" screeched the youth, agitated, but Soundwave just plainly ignored his calls and thrashing, undid the armour around his throat and ripped the cables out which gave the vocal processors current.
Immediately Hot Rod fell silent and if Megatron saw it right, a bit of fear slowly crept into the defiant youngster when they carried him off to a hiding place.
--
Prowl shortly contacted the base and told them that he left his post to investigate a contrail sighting and gave the coordinates he was heading to. He received an affirmation and then ended all transmissions. For the case there really were decepticons, he didn't want to scream at them that he was coming.
Carefully, not too quick to avoid noise, he drew nearer to Hot Rod's position.
The contrail had nearly vanished. But it didn't exactly calm Prowl – since it should lead somewhere. What it did not.
When he was about a kilometre away from Hot Rod, he transformed and sneaked closer.
"Hot Rod?" he lowly called out when it were only some more meters to where his signal emanated from.
Prowl climbed a hill and looked out over the valley where he had expected to find the young warrior. But he was not in sight.
All of the few emotional circuits Prowl had suddenly shot to "Threat!" and only a second later, and a second before he could open a channel to headquarters, there was a strange noise behind him, an electric swoosh, and a hard blow to his head that sent him down to the floor.
It took his system a moment to reboot after that and when he came fully online, he was pinned down by two heavy bots while a third was wrenching his weapon from his fingers.
Prowl immediately tried to send an SOS call to headquarters, but he found the radio transmission disturbed and in the next moment he was yanked up and Soundwave appeared in his view.
"What are you doing?" Prowl demanded to know.
"Deactivating your commlink" informed Soundwave with his monotone voice and ripped his antennas off. Then he occupied himself with the bared contacts and short circuited them. It sent a deafening wheezing through Prowl's receptors that only slowly died down and left him totally without radio contact. It was pretty scary.
Prowl didn't ask them for Hot Rod with the hope that the youngster might be hidden somewhere and not caught yet by the decepticons.
Behind him his hands were, despite his struggle, chained together and when he looked over his shoulder he found the three seekers around him.
Starscream sneered a wicked grin at him.
"Congrats, Prowl, you just proved to be as dumb as I always thought you were despite your snooty behaviour."
Prowl's white lips turned into a grim line.
He was shoved forwards and his spark grew cold when he saw Megatron stepping from behind a ledge, grinning smugly and holding a struggling and strangely silent Hot Rod by the neck. The youngster was mouthing curses obviously, but not a sound came from him.
"Well that's a nice pair for my experiment" said Megatron darkly.
"Tie them up. We're done here."
Prowl frantically thought about a way how to escape or at least contact headquarters – but Soundwave knew what he was doing. Prowl's far-range communication was totally down. And against three seekers not even he stood a chance to fight bare handed, let alone with him chained and them armed.
They tied both Hot Rod and Prowl into tight bundles with chains and then connected the chains to Thundercracker and Skywarp.
That will be an adventurous flight, Prowl thought just before the seekers transformed and took off – pulling them along with them.
Fighting to look over to Hot Rod, Prowl tried to find out how the youngster was doing. He shortly caught a view of his face and saw that he was scared.
The seekers and their leader quickly gained height – and the only thing keeping Prowl and Hot Rod from falling down and probably breaking every circuitboard were some sloppily slung chains.
Prowl shouted over the noise of the jets at Hot Rod.
"Keep cool, Hot Rod! At the moment we are safer than it looks! Don't try anything stupid! Especially do not try to free yourself when we're over water, thinking that you could escape them! Against the flyers we stand no chance to flee! We have to wait for a better opportunity!"
You can wait long for that, thought Soundwave, able to make out every word with his keen audio sensors.
--
Red Alert blew a fuse when he failed to contact both Prowl and Hot Rod.
He had tried to reach Prowl half an hour after the tactician had told him the he was going to investigate a sighting.
And now both the bots out on patrol were unavailable!
"Red Alert to Prime! We have a situation here, Prime! I can not reach Prowl and Hot Rod after they had a suspicious contrail sighting! I've got a bad feeling about this! And I quite heard that you were sighing, but I tell you something is amiss now, really!"
"I'll send someone out to search for them."
--
Hot Rod stared down, at the brim of panic.
The mountains were damn close… and he knew should he fall against them with the velocity they had at the moment, there would surely not be much more left of him than bent metal and broken circuitboards.
For a moment he was thankful that his vocal processor was down – it would have embarrassed him immensely would he have accidentally voiced his fear now. Like… shriek like a sparkling when the seeker suddenly dropped several meters with turbulences, sending them both swaying in the air.
He clenched the shutters of his optics shut and silently mumbled curses and prayers.
How stupid that he had not paid attention after he himself had pointed out that traces in the sky meant no good!
Mere minutes after he had radioed Prowl suddenly a seeker had popped up behind him out of nowhere, snarled "Sneak attack!" and shoved him over, making him land flat on his belly with a heavy seeker on his back. He had tried to shoot, but the decepticon had easily twisted his arm and ripped the weapon out of his hand.
What a shame! His first close contact with decepticons, and he ended up that way!
In that matter it even was a slight gratification that they had also caught Prowl, the oh so old and experienced tactician.
Though he had a bad consciousness, for he knew the damn decepticon communication officer had imitated his voice over his frequency to lure the other autobot in.
Suddenly they lost a considerable amount of height and Hot Rod's optics snapped open.
But they were not falling, the flying decepticons were obviously intentionally driving downwards behind the mountains and soon the ocean came into sight.
When they were over the water, he felt a lot safer already. Should he fall down now at least he had a chance to survive.
But they never fell. After half an hour of flying and with the coastline long out of sight, a docking tower suddenly popped up from amidst the water and they slowed down to land there.
Megatron and the loud-mouthed blue and red seeker landed first and received the bound autobots before the two carrying seekers transformed and landed, too.
Hot Rod found himself in the arms of the said insufferable seeker.
"Now that's a cutie" he said with a high, screechy voice, "How old are you? Just sparked a decade ago?"
Hot Rod opened his mouth to answer with sparky curses, but was painfully reminded of his broken vocal processor by the silence that came instead of curses.
Damn it.
They were carried in, the portal was closed and the docking tower descended down below the water surface.
Hot Rod knew that the Nemesis had crashed in the pacific ocean somewhere and the 'cons had since used it as their base of operation. And the stupid seeker must be their second in command Starscream, he thought.
Twisting his head to take in his surroundings, he saw the other two seekers more clearly. One was mostly blue, the other black and purple. Thundercracker and Skywarp, he thought and that was when he understood how he could be so easily ambushed. Skywarp had warped up behind him. And he had already questioned his audio sensors for not being able to make him out earlier… What a mean trick!
But letting him observe his surroundings was obviously nothing that Megatron would let him do – they were put down and both Prowl and him got a cloth bag put over their heads, effectively blinding them.
Then they were shoved forwards and down some stairs.
Suddenly Hot Rod felt himself pinned against a wall by unbelievably strong hands and the bag was ripped off to reveal Megatron standing right before him, clutching his upper arms.
Hot Rot winced back with shock to find himself nose to nose with the decepticon leader.
The huge grey mech grinned maliciously.
"You don't need to fear me kid… at least not yet. Soundwave, check his system."
Hot Rod began to struggle, but against the strength of Megatron he could not put up anything.
The dark blue communication officer with the scary emotionless masked and visored face stepped up to him and plugged a cable into the comm port under his chin.
No, no! He mouthed and tried to bite it off, but he couldn't reach it and Soundwave roughly slammed his head against the wall behind him, holding him steady, while he was cracking his security codes and downloading information about his system.
Form the corner of his optic Hot Rod saw that Prowl was similarly pinned against a wall by a huge green and purple guy who had appeared additionally to the three seekers all pointing their weapons at the tactician.
Slowly Hot Rod was beginning to feel seriously afraid, though he would never admit it. They were trapped in the very headquarter of the decepticons and that slagging bastard of a communication officer Blaster was always mocking was so mighty that he had cracked Hot Rod's firewall within only some seconds! And now he was reading his system information out! Practically his very being!
To his shame, cleaning fluid threatened to gather in his optics.
He felt violated.
After some minutes, Soundwave ripped the cable off and Megatron shoved Hot Rod into a cell. The bars fell close behind him and he heard a deep hum, indicating that an electrical current was now flowing through them.
Hot Rod fought to get back to his feet halfway dignified with his hands bound behind his back.
Since Prowl was pressed against the wall where his cell was behind, he could no longer see him. But from the noises of struggling, an indignant huff of the tactician and a long pause after that Hot Rod assumed that they were doing the same system cracking to Prowl.
"Unable to crack his firewall" Soundwave informed after several minutes.
Megatron's face darkened. "What can you do?"
"Possibility: Try out different algorithms. Need more time."
"Alright, do what you need."
Hot Rod heard a banging sound when Prowl obviously went down to the floor in the cell beside his' and the bars close and hum. Then the decepticons obviously just left.
Immediately Hot Rod began to search the cell for chances to flee. But he was disappointed. There was just nothing in them. The walls were solid metal plates without even one single seam in them that might have been a spot weak enough to crack. There was no window, only the barred gate.
Hot Rod kicked against the wall, alerting Prowl.
"Hush, Hot Rod!" Prowl reacted. "Don't strain yourself. When your cell looks like mine, there seems not to be a chance to get out of it like this."
But what then? Hot Rod wanted to ask, but his vocal processor wouldn't let him. Primus was that frustrating to be silent! He felt horribly helpless.
And Prowl wasn't exactly helping – since he did say nothing more on his own accord.
--
Slingshot drew a sharp curve.
"Smell that?"
He flew zig zag lines, pinpointing a steam ray in the air.
It was a very very faint difference of the air's temperature and water density. But he could make it out.
Following it, he, Skydive and Air Raid found a place where rather fresh scratches on the dusty floor could be made out.
"Don't land!" said Skydive, "We take pictures from up here and send them to base and while they try to decipher what happened we track the trace."
"Good idea, go ahead, bookworm."
They flew some circles and Skydive contacted the headquarters.
"We found a place where obviously something has been going on. Here are pictures of it. We will try to follow the heat trace."
"Optimus Prime, copy. Do not get close to them! If you make them out, contact me immediately. Prime out."
--
Back in headquarters, Prime gazed at the pictures the aerials had taken.
Jazz stepped up beside him. "You called me?"
"It seems it's true, Hot Rod and Prowl have vanished. What would you say from the pictures here?"
"I'd say get Hound. He's the best in such things."
"Indeed." Prime called Hound up. While they waited for him to come, Jazz mumbled "What could that mean? It doesn't really look like decepticons."
"Well, who else would be able to snatch two grown autobots away?"
"You sure they have been kidnapped?"
"I hope Hound can tell us that."
Some minutes later the Jeep came running in. "Prime, how can I help?"
"Tell me what you would blindly guess what happened here" Optimus Prime pointed at the screen.
Hound scanned the pictures intensely.
"People were gathered here. A single bot came from here. This here looks as if some fighting has been going on with the scratches in the floor. And those dust rings here indicate a jet start. Three jet starts that is."
"Seeker trio" gnashed Jazz.
"What's the matter?" Hound asked.
"They got Prowl and Hot Rod! Prime, we have to send a rescue mission, perhaps we can fetch them before they reach the Nemesis."
But Prime shook his head. "I'm afraid though the idea is good, we are already too late for that.
Skydive, come in?"
"Skydive in."
"How hot is the trace you are following?"
"Very faint, Prime, it's been at least half an hour since they flew by here."
"Where are you?"
"The track is clearly heading for the pacific. We just passed Lead Mountain. Nemesis, I guess."
Jazz' shoulders slumped.
Also Prime hung his head. "Return to base, Skydive."
"Prime?"
"There is nothing more you could do. They most probably have already reached the Nemesis – and even if they haven't we can not attack them as long as they have Prowl and Hot Rod as hostages."
"Copy. We return to base. Skydive out:"
"But what are we gonna do?" asked Jazz nervously.
"For the moment – wait and think. I guess Megatron wants something in turn for them. He will most probably soon contact us. Until then we just have Teletraan's Sky Spy monitor the area around the Nemesis to see who moves out there."
--
After an hour Megatron sought out Soundwave in the cockpit of the Nemesis, which was the communication officer's base of operation.
"Any luck with breaking Prowl's firewall?"
"Negative. Firewall: One of the strongest I have ever seen. Working on it still."
"Who is that other guy?"
"Name: Hot Rod. Origin: Cybertron. Arrival here: assumable only six months ago."
"Anything about his capabilities?"
"Not much public. Absolvent of the three first ranks of fighter school. Good grades. No special abilities known."
"Hmpf."
Megatron brought the camera overseeing the cells to the big main screen.
Prowl was sitting with his legs crossed right amidst the cell, optics offline, motionless.
The young Hot Rod was pacing his cell nervously optics searching for a way out.
It made Megatron grin to see the coincidence.
"How is the virus?"
"Ready, my leader."
"Already? Good! How will it work?"
"It will override the behaviour script of the victim with that of the cougar. The code should blend in quite fine, it was surprisingly logical and easy to accommodate. The memories of the victim, however, will not be altered."
"Perfect!"
Oh how Megatron enjoyed Soundwave's work. Always so perfectly in tune with his ideas.
