Hey guys, new chapter time! I am still new to this, so reviews are always appreciated.

Knockout slowly rose from the floor, having fallen flat on his aft during the Nemesis' landing. The sky blue cosmetic surgeon turned medic pushed himself up, the almost rhythmic blaring of the warship's emergency alarms filling his thoughts, and only worsening an already bad headache. Looking to his left, he saw Breakdown, leaning against the wall next to the door of the medbay. "Morning." He said jokingly, the big orange mech smiling up at his conjunx endura. To his right, he was met with the energon-covered body of Skywarp. "Oh, right." he said out loud, not worrying about being judged for the lapse in his thoughts of his current patients. Their ship had just crashed on some backwater rock after all. He collected himself, standing back up on his own two pedes. Looking back down at his patient, he made sure his welds from earlier were holding.

The seemingly unphased medic made his way over to a set of storage compartments, wondering just how hard they went down. 'Enough to send most of them off to dreamland it seems,' he thought to himself, looking at all the troops that were currently under his care. Opening up the cabinets, he pulled out a clean rag. He turned around, seeing Breakdown standing over Skywarp's unconscious frame. "Any idea how long he's gonna be out for, Knock?" Knockout walked back to the examination table, starting to wipe away the residual energon from the fallen seeker. "Well, given his current condition? Who knows. The last time I had to make this many welds, it was just to make the patient more respectable before burial."

Breakdown meandered around the medbay, making sure all who were injured were still stable, and helping whoever hadn't been knocked out cold. He was now starting to realise just how much of a mess the place was. Cabinets had flown open, leaving medical supplies strewn about the place. Vital equipment like Sparkrate Monitors and Emergency Energon Infusors lay broken on the floor. Thankfully, it seemed that the stasis pods containing the more severely damaged Decepticons were still intact. He made especially sure to check on three stasis pods in particular, where inside lay vaguely flier-like frames, their features barely distinguishable.

Breakdown made his way back into the main room of the medbay, where he saw a very scratched and dented Starscream and Thundercracker, standing besides their comatose brother.

*CRASH*

The huddled group of 'cons turned to where the sound came from, figuring it was coming from beyond the door to the rest of the ship."What in the-"

*THUD*

This time, the door itself started to dent a little. Occasionally, they would hear a crash and the clanging of metal on the other side.

"Breakdown, ya in there?" came a gravelly voice booming through the door.

"Yeah Motormaster, im here." the assistant medic yelled back. "What's going on out there? It sounds like you're tearing the ship apart!"

"We are, kinda. When we crashed, we hit some pretty rocky terrain, tore up most of the bottom decks. The whole ship was shaking so hard, some of the beams came loose and got ya trapped in there."

Knockout rolled his optics. "Great, not only are we practically out of medical supplies, we're stuck in here." Suddenly, a thought came to him. "Oh scrap!" he yelled, running off towards the other room where the stasis pods were stored. Breakdown, knowing what he was getting at, nonchalantly strode up behind him. "Already checked up on our special patients, Knock. We've already lost so many, we aint about to lose these three."

"Sorry, lose who, exactly?" Starscream interrupted, as he and Thundercracker entered the room. "Yeah, shouldn't this be something we should know? Isn't secrets amongst fellow officers an Autobot trait or something?" inquired Thundercracker, peering into the cloudy liquid that held the so-called 'special patients'. Knockout looked uneasily at Breakdown, who simply shrugged. "Well, so long as Megatron doesn't reprimand us…" Knockout said. "Alright, fine. Just… brace yourselves, ok?" he stepped up, typing in something on each of the stasis pods' terminals. The blurriness of them began to dissipate, revealing three different yet familiar 'cons. Slipstream, Lugnut, and Blitzwing.

"What… h-how? They were lost back on Cybertron!" Starscream cried, throwing whatever composure he had left out of the airlock. "They quarantined themselves when they contracted a case of cosmic rust!"

"And a particularly bad string of it at that. I thought they went offline ages ago?" Thundercracker pondered aloud in a puzzled tone of voice, yet managing to remain much more calm than his brother. "So, how did you even manage find them?" he continued, looking back over towards Knockout. "Surely they would have concealed their spark signature to keep away from the Autobots."

"Believe it or not, big strong and stupid here's blind loyalty to Megatron is what led us right to them. He left some long-winded video log about why and how the three contracted the disease, and the location of what he assumed was to become his place of eternal rest." Knockout said with a sense of spite in his words. "The fools didn't want to end up being a burden on us, but even still, it's not like we were running too low on supplies for them to be treated at the time."

Thundercracker looked back at the three stasis-locked warriors, taking in what he could only assume to be rebuilt bodies. "Rust ate away their frames, right? That's why they look so… different." "Well, I don't mean to brag or anything, but I was one of the finest cosmetics experts back on Velocitron. Fixing them was difficult, yes, but nothing I couldn't handle." Knockout said, a smug look of pride across his face.

In the other room at this point, all of the troops present had come back online. Breakdown fetching the occasional thing for Knockout when anyone was particularly beat up. It was in this period that it was a sudden shock when the ship's alarms went silent. Replaced by a crackle of static, the intercoms of the ship came to life, broadcasting Megatron's voice. "Attention all Decepticons, as you have probably already deduced, we have crashed. I am ordering all available personnel to fan out, and help free anyone caught in the wreckage. Luckily it seems that no major part of the ship has broken off. However, due to the severity of the Autobots' surprise attack on us, we are grounded on this planet, known as 'Earth', for the foreseeable future. Megatron out."


Megatron slumped back down into his command chair in the centre of the bridge, letting out a heavy vent, as if trying to release the pressure of the past few hours. Had it not been so early in what would have been a Cybertronian day, he would have graciously poured a round of high-grade for everyone, or something to take the edge off. 'We did all that we could have,' he thought to himself. 'At least, what we could without stooping to the Autobots' level.' He opened up his optics again, looking up at the large screen in the front of the bridge, showing nothing but static. "Soundwave, do we have a visual of our surroundings?" "Imagery: Negative. Exterior camera status: Offline." the tall mech replied, not even turning away from his terminal to answer. Behind him, Megatron head the sound of footsteps, and small ones at that. Turning to look over his chair, he saw Rumble and Frenzy lifting up some of the floor paneling, getting at the central wiring and circuitry of the bridge.

The two cassetticons, as if knowing of Megatron's presence, turned and saw their leader looking down at them. "Oh, hey boss. Don't mind us, just seeing if we can't get some more of the ship's functions back online." Rumble said as he set down a panel, and descended under the bridge. "He he, yeah, I'm sure we can fix somthin' down there that would help. Don't worry about a thing!" Frenzy shouted out, as he jumped down to follow after his twin. Megatron glanced towards Soundwave, an optic ridge raised in speculation. "Are you certain that they know what they are doing?" he inquired to the communications officer of few words. This time, Soundwave did turn to respond to his leader. "Affirmative. Frenzy and Rumble: minimizing damage."

Megatron simply nodded, turning his attention back to the small monitor attached to his chair. He punched in a few commands, and over the next hour or so started contacting various divisions around the ship.

"Well, its bad, but I don't see the energon reactors melting down anytime soon!" Scrapper's voice shouted over the comms, trying to get over the loud whirring of the engine room of the warship. A loud *CRASH* went off in the background, and as the whirring stopped, so did everything else, as the power went out. Megatron was trying so desperately not to shout out his frustrations, however he was glad that nobody could see his exasperated expression in the now pitch-blackness of the bridge. After a few minutes of waiting around, the lights and terminals of the ship came back to life, along with the comms line that Megatron and the leader of the Constructicons were on. "Real sorry about that one, sir. But somebody had the bright idea to go and shut the whole slagging thing off." A clanging could be heard, as Scrapper threw a pipe in the direction of somebody. "Hey, watch that!" Mixmaster cried out in the distance. "I can't fix the Pit-forsaken thing if its active. I might have a few screws loose, but I ain't crazy enough to risk damage by working on a giant reactor when its online!"

"Ah, lord Megatron, it is so good to hear you again!" Starscream exclaimed, as if it had been millenia since they had last talked. "I can assure you that… most things are fine at the moment…" the air commander trailed off. Megatron could tell his mind was elsewhere, and he had a decent enough guess as to what. "And, Skywarp… is he going to make it?" "Yes, he… he'll recover, in time. He's conscious, thank Primus, but in a lot of pain. Knockout says he was wounded pretty badly though, shot right through his warp core." 'Right next to his T-Cog… the poor mech.' Megatron thought to himself. "He won't be able to transform for months, and Knockout is uncertain as to whether he will ever be able to warp again." After a long pause, Megatron said, "I'm so sorry… I should have never sent him down there to begin with." Suddenly, a new voice was heard somewhere behind Starscream.

"Ah, come on now, boss. Surely I'd be the bigger fool for agreeing in that glitched plan of yours?" Skywarp's weak voice chuckled. Megatron let out a vent of relief, glad to hear the seeker was energetic as always. Starscream leaned in, trying to not be overheard. "When were you going to tell me about our, 'special patients' Knockout brought along?" his tone now much more annoyed. "Ah… you found out about them." Megatron said after a pause. "I would have told you sooner, however we had only just discovered them before taking off. And that one only hindered further by the Autobots' attempts to ground the Nemesis." "Yes… of course. My apologies, Megatron."

...

"No sir, nothing unusual to report so far." came St-3's voice, trying to be as calm in a crisis as any bot could be. "A couple bad dings on most of the crew, some floors are without power still, but nothing that can't be fixed. But like you said to us all earlier, I don't see us being able to get airborne anytime soon," his voice a little more solem, drawing out the last few words. "And what of you? How are you holding up?" Megatron asked, in a more gentle tone than what he usually commanded with. It felt like ages before the response came through. "I'm worried, sir. About us, about all who fled Cybertron, and about the population of this world, too." "However do you mean?" Megatron inquired. "Well sir," St-3 continued, "We may have escaped the Autobot's wrath for now, but what about when they come looking for us? You saw the scanners same as we all did, sir. The natives are nowhere near as advanced as Cybertronians. Whoever already inhabits this world, they might be in danger because of us, and they wouldn't stand a chance against an invasion." Megatron collected his thoughts for a moment, then said, "We will do what we can in order to prevent any other worlds from falling to the Autobots. We may have lost our home, but I refuse to let another species' world come to ruin."

He would have went on, about how he had plans to meet with some sort of native authority to sort things out. However, his attention was diverted when Dirge commed in. "Yes, Dirge? What's going on?"

"Uh, well sir." The bright yellow and gray conehead stammered. "It seems that the locals have found us." he finished as, from sitting up on top of the flightdeck hangar, we watched as aircraft jetted on by, and various ground vehicles were driving up to the ship.


It was the Decepticon command, that being Megatron, Starscream, and St-3v3, along with some vehicon troops that would be conducting the official introductions. Soundwave was to stay onboard, patching into Laserbeak's live video feed to observe as well. As the ramp on the side of the Nemesis lowered down, bright sunlight flooded into the usually darkened ship. Slowly, they walked down the ramp and into the view of the many natives that surrounded them. "Well, they sure have some nice alt-modes." St-3 commented, looking at all the varieties of vehicles that have encircled their ship. However, as if on cue from saying that, the doors of each armored vehicle flew open, as many small, organic bipedal creatures swarmed out, weapons trained on the much bigger Decepticons. "Care to take that one back?" Starscream muttered to St-3.

One of the small creatures, in a dark greenish-black combat uniform, held up some sort of vocal amplifier, and soon shouted, "Throw down your weapons, and put your hands up! I won't ask again!" Most of the Decepticons were taken aback, as yielding one's armaments implied a military surrender. Megatron however, complied. He reached across to his right arm, and tossed his fusion cannon on the ground a few yards away, and proceeded to raise his hands over his head. "We do not wish to cause trouble, or bring anyone harm. For we are merely seeking refuge." All of the much smaller creatures stared up at Megatron in confusion, as if not understanding him.

"Oh, right…" the Decepticon commander said in an embarrassed tone. Soon enough, Soundwave had patched them in on what this native language, known as 'English' was. "Sorry about that, can you understand me now?" Megatron said, the new language feeling weird coming from him. "Yes yes, loud and clear, alien." The 'human' in command said in an annoyed tone. "As I was saying," Megatron continued. "I am Megatron of Tarn, leader of the Decepticons. Our faction has been exiled from our homeworld, Cybertron, after four million years of destructive civil war. We only wish to live peacefully here, as we are but refuges lost to the stars." Only Laserbeak had picked up the small creature say something along the lines of 'likely story' under his breath.

Just then, the sound of engines could be heard in the distance, along with a helicopter flying low overhead. The helicopter landed, alongside a white with blue and green coloring motorcycle, and some sort of law enforcement cruiser. From the helicopter stepped out another human, this one not in military uniform and of a darker body tone. "Damnit Bishop, stand down." The human shouted angrily at this 'Bishop'. He turned to the new arrival. "Ah, agent Fowler. What took you so long?" "Don't be a smart ass, 'Silas', or whatever your new codename is this time. I know your not a fan of the 'Cons, but our intel shows that they are the good guys." He walked past Silas, and pushed past the barrier that had been hastily set up by the soldiers.

As he got closer, he started to speak directly to the Decepticons. "Sorry about that, my colleague isn't that big a fan of Cybertronians. I am special agent William Fowler, of the United States military, and I can only assume you would be Megatron?"

"Yes, that is correct." Megatron said, confused as to how this 'Fowler' knew about them. He knelt down, getting closer to the human. "What I do not understand is how you obtained this knowledge of us?" Agent Fowler grinned at the question, and turned and pointed to the Helicopter and the two vehicles that came with it.

On cue, the three began to shift, transforming into their bipedal forms. "Really, Megatron? I would have thought you would remember your scouting party. It's only been, what, 40 years? 50, tops." Barricade quipped at his commander. The helicopter, Blackout, looming tall over him, stood rigid and saluted. "It is an honor to see you again, Lord Megatron." he deep voice boomed. The motorcycle had shifted into the ever familiar Airachnid, her extra legs held against her back. "Good to see you as always." she said politely.

Megatron could not hold back a smile, as he looked upon those who he had sent to Earth not too long ago to make first contact. "It is good to see that you all are well. However, we must get all official business done with before we can catch up," said Megatron. He looked down to agent Fowler, asking, "Tell me, is there anywhere that we could discuss the situation further? Our ship is not currently suitable for such things."

"Yes, of course. We constructed a military base around the wreck of your old ship, the Harbinger."

"Wreck, you say?" Megatron inquired, as himself and the rest of the Decepticons transformed, following the humans to their base.